Editing Phenomeno:Case 01 (section)

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It was past two o'clock late at night.

I'd left my bicycle behind, so I plodded my way to the university on foot.

Of course, the front gate was closed, and the security guard eyed me suspiciously. As if to escape his gaze, I went in a circle and followed the zelkova trees on my left along the university wall. After a short walk, I reached the western building, which housed the Beatnik Research Club room.

"Kurimoto Shiina — Krishna."

I was so stupid.

I had realized nothing.

To think that the administrator of Ikaigabuchi, Krishna, was a person who attended the same university as me—

And for that baby-faced girl to be Krishna, was unimaginable.

I went straight to the clubroom building on the far end, and as I entered, I was met with surprise. There were still quite a few students left inside, and some club rooms were still noisy. ''Is this some kind of nightless city?'', I thought exasperatedly, but hearing such characteristic small talk, I felt ashamed of myself for being frightened by ghostly disturbances. At the same time, I felt pathetic for getting involved in such a silly ruckus. I walked with heavy feet to the Beatnik Research Club on the third floor. Upon arriving, I saw light shine through the frosted glass. I knocked on the door and heard a familiar voice, so I introduced myself. "It's 'Nagi.' Nagito Yamada."

"It's open."

"Excuse me."

Opening the door, I found myself facing a bleak, dimly lit, concrete-walled room of about sixteen square meters.

There was a single steel cabinet placed against a wall.

In the middle was a relatively large worktable.

And around it were four chairs, three of which were occupied  by both men and women.

At the center—

Was the baby-faced girl who'd given me a business card in the classroom a few days ago.

Her red-framed glasses were still the same, but she was dressed in a kind of black dyed shrine maiden outfit, paired with tall wooden clogs, she sat perched on a chair. This suited her too well. I had no interest in such types, but I came frighteningly close to understanding how people who liked lolis and cosplay felt.

"Uh, hey, I mean, hello, are you Krishna-san?" I asked, and the girl nodded with an extremely disdainful expression.

"I warned you to leave that house immediately."

"Huh?"

"You didn't hear anything from Karasu-san?"

"Nothing at all."

Krishna-san cutely clicked her tongue and said, "Anyway, get in."

I entered and looked around the room again—next to the small occult site admin was a woman who seemed to be in her late twenties dressed in simple white clothes, who in no way looked like a student, and a bald, middle-aged man wearing monk attire, who also looked nothing like a student.

"Eh...huh...um."

I didn't know how to greet them, so I just stood awkwardly at the entrance. Krishna-san then made a motion with her small chin to “Sit down there.'' I sat down on the chair that had been prepared for me, and when I did so, the middle-aged monk suddenly came up behind me and grabbed my shoulders with his thick arms.

"Um... Wait, what's going on?"

Thereupon, Krishna-san asked me while pushing up her glasses:

"Why are you willingly trying to peek at the other side?"

And from there, her raging lecture had begun.

"Are you listening? As long as we don't peek from our side, we won't be seen by the other side. You can have an interest in the occult, It’s an admirable human quality to want to know about things you don't understand. Still, the other side's business is the other side's. To them, not being able to see them does not count as an excuse. Even though humans aren't able to see them, we have enough power to be able to feel them. If you think a place is creepy, you should immediately understand that there's something you can't see, and pay it due respect."

In the face of her stern gaze, even I, the fool, could understand.

"So, basically, I've been possessed?" I asked tearfully.

"At this rate, you're pretty screwed."

Her expression became even sterner, and I stiffened.

"Krishna-san."

The woman in the white dress called out to her. She had no make-up on, and held a strangely-shaped rosary.

"It's almost inside."

...What? What is almost inside?

"Could you remove it here?"

"I can try."

The two finished their strange conversation.

"Wait, Krishna-san. Who are these two?" I asked while trying to escape the rather strong monk.

"Ikaigabuchi investigators," she bluntly replied.

"Investigators?"

"I'll explain later. Just shut up and obey."

"It's pointless. The main body isn't here." I heard from a feminine voice, seemingly far away.

"It seems we will have to go to that house, after all."

"That does seem to be the case."

The middle-aged man and Krishna-san's voice sounded like a record playing at low speed.

I'd started to go limp. The monk was strong, but that wasn't the only reason. It was as if I didn’t realize that I was on the verge of collapse under the burden of a heavy load—and as soon as I realized that, all my sensory organs frantically tried to show me my level of fatigue. A feeling of fatigue covered my entire body, as if my whole body was sinking into a bottomless mud pit.

"You can't move? You'll be ok, just don't move," At the end of Krishna-san's strangely gentle voice, I lost consciousness.

To be honest, I don't remember much after that. I think I was loaded into a car. And then, I think there was a lot of shaking. My consciousness came back when I felt a familiar sense of coldness on my skin, one that seemed to want to wring me dry. My body was still heavy and my consciousness still felt muddy, but my survival instincts seemed to scream that wherever this was, it was bad news.

When I came to, I was in front of that house.

The middle-aged priest was carrying me on his back, and we were walking up the stairs leading to the entrance.

—''No way! Hell no! I don't want to come back here again!'' I wanted to shout, but in reality, I couldn't even move my fingertips anymore. Not caring for my will, I was carried by the middle-aged man, and I was now again in front of the entrance to that house alongside Krishna-san and the white-clothed woman. Krishna-san easily opened the door. I was sure I'd locked it, but it opened without a sound. And an ethereal light glowed from inside.

"Who's there?" Krishna-san asked sharply.

I forced my resistant eyelids shut.

—''No! I don't want to see them!''

I don’t care who it was, I don't want to deal with this anymore. I give up. I decided right then and there. If I was able to see the sunrise tomorrow, I would go straight back home to Shizuoka. It was impossible for me to live alone in the demonic city of Tokyo after all. I wanted to rebuild my family's business and came to Tokyo to study for it, but I was too much of a wuss to live alone. I was better off living in the countryside, surrounded by family and friends. My father and sister, who were against my decision were right after all. Ahh, my mother alone supported me, but now I just felt apologetic toward her. But I tried. I did my best. I couldn't have imagined this turn of events, and I couldn’t cope with it, so—

"Close the door on your way in," someone answered from inside the house.

I recognized that voice. That cold, clear and somewhat definitive manner of speaking.

"If you want to know what's to happen, then please abide."

Right—this voice.

"Yoishi," my whisper echoed through the silence.

"Yoishi?"

Krishna’s voice, which sounded as if it was suspicious of her, overlapped with Yoishi's lackadaisical voice saying, "Good evening."

"There was a spare key near the faucet below, so I used that to come in."

"Let's go in."
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Hearing Krishna-san's decisive call, the middle-aged man entered the foyer, still carrying me. He took off his shoes and continued on to the living room. Krishna-san and the woman in white followed behind. When I looked over the middle-aged man's shoulder, I saw Yoishi sitting with her hands clasping one knee in the middle of the empty living room, and a lighted candle in a small empty can besides her; That was the source of the faint light.

"Who are you, and what are you doing here?" 

Krishna sounded as if she were scolding her, but Yoishi still answered lackadaisically.

"Be very quiet. If you brought that person here, then you already understand what's going on in this house as well."

"Yoishi...I see," groaned Krishna-san.

"So you're 'Yoishi.' You’re the girl that occasionally posts on Ikaigabuchi." Yoishi remained silent, but Krishna clicked her tongue and continued. "I have no problem with you having an interest in the occult. But there is a difference between having an interest and actually walking in the abyss. You should be aware that you're messing around in a very hazy boundary line."

"Nothing to worry about," flatly responded Yoishi to Krishna-san's harsh tone. "I’m confidently aware of that much, at least."

...Wow. She's undeterred by Krishna-san’s threatening attitude.

This is why girls are scary. My big sis was scary, too, and when my mother snapped, she was scarier than my dad.

However, Krishna-san responded somewhat sadly. 

"I understand — I get it. I've seen kids like you before. That's why I say this. People who harbor expectations from the abyss of darkness always drag others into it, whether they intend to or not. That's a very—very dangerous thing."

The middle-aged man slowly lowered me down from his shoulder and leaned me against the wall. As I sat there, I could do nothing but forcibly listen to their incomprehensible conversation. My powerless body felt like it was being dragged about, and I was fully aware of my endless sense of helplessness. What happened here, what was happening here, and what was about to happen here, it’s as if all of it went against the rules I’d lived by thus far. I could do nothing here. I could only listen to their creepy conversation and be a bystander to their lurid theatrics. However, the desire to get away from it all was stronger than my desire to learn the truth. I just wanted to get out as soon as possible to a brighter place.

"Krishna-san." Just then, the monk interrupted both of them. "It's begun."

Along with his words, that sound began.

From somewhere in the building, that sound echoed.

''...scratch.''
''scratch, scratch, scratch.''
''sssscraaaaaaaaaaaatccccchhhhhh.''

That sound alone echoed, as if overpowering everything. ''Scratch scratch crunch crunch'', something creaking somewhere. Something made a carving noise. The sound was the loudest thing I'd ever heard. It was almost as if something was trying to crush this place from outside and I desperately closed my eyes. I was completely in tears, and the world was filled with nothing but creepy noises.

—''Please, stop this already. Forgive me.''

As I was about to tearfully shout that out loud, I heard Yoishi’s voice.

"How lovely." Her happy voice entered my ears, and I felt enraged.

—''Lovely? Are you fucking insane? It's beyond sanity to sneak into a house alone in the middle of the night with a ghost milling about and just sit there with nothing but a candle. Ahh, I get it, you're that kind of person. You're like a friend of ghosts. Then great. Can you tell your friend to stop scaring the shit out of me? I'm sorry for barging in on your house. But I didn't know. I cleaned up after myself and left already, so tell them to stop bothering me already. I mean, tell your friend to stop following me to my new place and stop giving me countdowns. I don't know what sort of grudge they have against the world, but I'm completely unrelated to it, so stop, tell them that.''

Of course, my body wouldn't move and neither would my mouth, but I begged Yoishi with all my might.

However, Yoishi didn't care for my feelings at all.

"Hey, are you scared?"

I heard an inexplicable voice full of expectation in my ear. It seemed Yoishi had come right next to me, but I kept my eyes firmly shut. Instead, I screamed at her with my soul.

—''Of course I'm fucking scared. I'm super fucking scared. My body won’t move and some incomprehensible sound is echoing through my head, and the only people around me are psychos and ghosts. Right, this house only has psychos in it now. A psychotic administrator that gathers and edits creepy articles, a psychotic woman holding some bizarre religious items despite being old enough to know better, some psychotic baldy who seems to only have bodybuilding as a hobby. And then there's you. A psychotic girl with straight cut-bangs covered in black. On top of that, there's some gloomy douche of a ghost that never shows itself but does annoying pranks like carve numbers. Seriously, cut it out. Are all of you actually enjoying an emergency offline meeting here right now? You're all just waiting for me to piss my pants, aren't you? Come on. Knock it off. I've apologized. I was wrong. I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to see those numbers anymore. Next is "1" ("一"), and then what? What's next? I don't want to know. I mean if you're gonna kill me, do it at once. Stop chasing and dragging me around—''

—However.

At some point, the sound had stopped.

My eyes were tightly shut, and the outside of my pitch-black world was filled with silence.

What? How? What happened—

I became worried that everyone had left, but I was also afraid that if I were to open my eyes, something else would be there.

Still, I couldn't just stay like this. I was already exhausted. I'd begun to feel reckless. If you're gonna kill me, just do it. I don't want to be hunted to death like this. Just give me a bad end already.

I opened my tearful eyes. But, all I saw was the same house I lived in as before. And everyone was still there.

Krishna-san stood in front of the door to the bedroom.

The woman dressed in white stood in the middle of the living room with her eyes closed.

The monk lingered by my side, and Yoishi alone stared at me emotionlessly.

Everyone was standing at the same spot they were before I had closed my eyes. I met my tearful gaze with Yoishi's eyes, who nodded once in return. She then looked straight down.

I followed her sight.

It focused at my feet.

As if cutting across the space between both of them, a thick scratch had been carved into the floor.

"AH, AHHHHHHHHH," I screamed, pulling my sluggish body away from it. But I was paralyzed with fear, and could only move in a strange, squirming way. However, I got out of there anyway, mobilizing everything I could to move.

I already knew it was coming.

It was—"1" ("一").

"It's '1'. It's all over. I'm tired of this, I'm going home, back to Shizuoka."

"Calm down, Nagi-kun," I heard Krishna-san's voice call out to me. Before I realized it, she'd started calling me Nagi-kun, but I couldn't care less at the moment, and continued to crawl away. I was desperately trying to flee from that number.

"I won't! What's the point of me staying here!? What's going to happen next!? What's going to happen to me!?"

"Pull yourself together, Nagi-kun," Krishna-san's voice sounded out once more—''Ouch''. Goddamnit, it must have been the monk. A tremendous thud echoed down my back. Then, the woman dressed in white started chanting something unintelligible. It was filled with strange rhymes I'd never heard before, countless words whose power were making my head go insane—

As I frantically flailed about, trying to escape, suddenly a long black skirt blocked my path.

It was Yoishi, dressed in her usual black clothes. 

"Move," I said in a trembling voice, but this time her eyes weren't glass beads, nor was there a glimmer to be seen, rather, this time, Yoishi had a look of fascination as she reached out to me with her hand.

"Give me that thing."

......That thing?

"The thing you’re holding," she said, and I looked at what I was holding in my hand.

It was the key to my apartment. It was the key I'd left in my pocket. I was holding it with my back hand, and there were wood shavings stuck at the end. For a while, I didn't know what that meant. But then the wood shavings fell off and landed on the "1" ("一") that had been ominously cut at my feet.

"Wha..."

—It can’t be.

—That's impossible; there's no way.

"Yes," said Yoishi in a whisper. "The one carving numbers into this house… was always you."

With those words—

My consciousness went completely blank.