Editing Internet Shrine Maiden Tsugumi-chan:Volume1 Chapter1 (section)

===Part 13===

When mid-sized cargo ships or passenger ships passed below, the drawbridge would raise its two halves to clear the way. In other words, it was like the giant crossing between a land route and a water route. To accommodate this, its structure was more complex than a normal bridge.

For example, the joints used to raise the two halves of the bridge and the engine room used to supply power to those joints.

The gyaru sister’s first thought was some giant gears fitting together in the engine room, but…

“If there was a dead body caught in there, it would’ve been noticed by now.”

There were a few flat switchboard-like things on the wall. The metal doors were labeled with colorful tape saying things like “lights”, “below”, and “traffic signal”, but she felt no need to touch them. There was no hiding a dead body in there.

She left the engine room. She was scared, but she returned to the bridge and found a stairway leading down from the sidewalk. A metal stairway.

Physically moving away from the online shrine maiden reminded her how useless she was. While nervously descending the stairs, she found an identical pathway on the lower level. Or rather, it looked like the two directions across the bridge were fully separated.

Even now the bridge would shake irregularly. Due to Tsumugi and the Ghastly Crusher. She didn’t know how many thousands of tons the drawbridge weighed, but that wasn’t an opponent for a human being to face. If Tsumugi were defeated, all hope was lost. Left alone, Rainy would simply be tormented and killed.

No, she couldn’t give in to those negative thoughts. It was true this wasn’t like a vertical phone manga or a pay-to-win game. She couldn’t hope to battle that real ghost head on. Hell, she didn’t even know the proper terminology for it. But she did hold some tickets allowing her to take a few actions.

With that in mind, she gathered strength in her gut.

She was scared, ''but she couldn’t stop here.

(But where else can I look?)

“Hmm, this ain’t good. Is it not this way?”

She had no way of knowing. The gyaru sister looked both ways to make sure no cars were coming before she hopped over the guardrail, cut across the wide street, and slid below the guardrail for the opposite sidewalk. She enjoyed playing flashy sports like free climbing, cycle ball, and skateboarding around the city, so she had naturally picked up how to use various urban obstacles to run and climb.

But…

“This side is pretty much the sa-”

Out past the railing, something twirled around and flew her way.

It was one of the online shrine maiden’s bottle rockets.

“Whoa!?”

Rainy quickly ducked before realizing something.

This was odd. She saw an orange glow near where Tsumugi’s stray bottle rocket had exploded. Like heated metal. It was hard to miss in the shadowy night. Flattened to the wire mesh floor…was what looked like the a footprint. Probably from a 23cm pump.

“Could it be…?”

Had she found it? Rainy pulled a launching type of firework from what she had been given. It didn’t look like the type you were meant to hold while using, though. She remembered she had been given a bundle of incense sticks and tried lighting it with them.

Bright light filled her view. By waving it side to side, sparks shot out like a hose, scattering over everything. It was highly effective. A few more footprints continued further in before suddenly making a turn. There was an orange glow on the metal railing there. Forming a pair of hand prints.

Rainy briefly imagined something was crawling up from the outside of the bridge, but that wasn’t it. The gyaru sister noticed something odd about the weight distribution shown by the intensity of the glow in the footprints. With pumps, the heel could easily break if you put too much weight on them, so why would someone do that? Because the footprints were facing backwards.

(So did she back up, bump into the railing, grab at it, but fail to escape before she was pushed off? …So is she attacking people who cross the bridge late at night because she’s searching for her murderer?)

Rainy followed the same path and peered down from the railing.

She gasped. She held a hand to her reeling head. She had only seen it for a split second, but her mind badly wanted to reject it. The image had defiled her brain. She had to remember what it was she was looking for.

It wasn’t on the drawbridge.

The gyaru sister recalled the flat metal box with the tape label saying “below”. And she recalled the crosswalk in front of the mall parking lot that had metal spikes that rose from the ground. …What if something similar, but on a scale large enough to stop cargo ships and passenger ships, was installed at the bottom of the ocean canal on either side of the drawbridge?

When the drawbridge was closed, the giant spikes would jut up nearly to the surface of the water.

So even with water below, a fall would mean certain death.

At any rate, Rainy had seen it. So she gathered strength in her gut and shouted as loud as she could.

“I found herrrr!! She’s directly below!! She fell from the bri-”

''Gweeeeeeeeeen!!!

A ringing sound far louder than before erupted. What was it called? The Groan? It was the weird noise that kept phones from working. Rainy grimaced and held her head, but then it hit her.

She was only a few meters away, but this might distort her voice too much to reach the upper level of the bridge.

But didn’t this also mean this was critical information for the Ghastly Crusher? Enough so that she was going this far to interfere?

Then continuing to do what that ghost least wanted had to be the right choice!!

“Her………………is………………ridge!!”

She could get through.

She could.

“……bod………..bel……..the…..!”

She tried over and over. She wasn’t about to give up. Maybe it was the continual screaming until she thought she would damage her throat, but she was reminded of when she had done karaoke with everyone recently. She had promised Chatty she would sing that song to the end even though it clearly wasn’t designed for a human being to sing. All while smiling. She wasn’t going to lose a single one of her friends!!

“Her body is…below…bridge!! I don’t know what you’re going to do…just hurry up defeat that thing and rescue Chattyyyyyyyyy…………yyyyyyyyyyyyy…………yyyyyyyyyyyyy…………yyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!”