Editing Ghost Hunt:Volume3 Chapter4 (section)

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Lin-san and I followed Naru who walked ahead of us. There’s a dead silence in the school building where afternoon classes had started.

“Naru! Where are you going?”

“There’s something I want to check,” was his short reply, and he headed to the 2-5 classroom.

At present, Taka’s 2-5 class had apparently transferred during school hours.  The classroom was deserted; unattended, it was cold. It appeared totally different when there were people in it.

It’s the cursed seat. The girl who was sitting on it was injured and hospitalized right now.

“What are you going to do?”

Naru took out the belongings inside the desk without a word. He peered into it and then turned it over. “…Found it.”

…Lin-san and I peered into the desk as well.

A paper was stuck directly deep inside it. Naru peeled off that paper. Behind that, a board of hitogata was affixed with a packing tape. He tore off that hitogata and held it out to Lin-san.

Lin-san regarded the hitogata and remarked, “…It’s well-made. There’s no mistake it’s Enmi. However this…doesn’t put a curse on a specific individual, but seemingly on someone who has this seat.”

“Indeed.” Naru nodded. He turned to the dazed me and said, “This seat doesn’t cause accidents to anyone in particular, but to the person who sat on it. Besides that, I believe the one it’s cursing isn’t a person but the desk.”

…I see.

“If we take this as an example… we can suppose that the curse at the track-and-field clubroom also didn’t target anyone specifically, but the entire track-and-field club members. …Let’s go and see.”

The tenement-like building where the track-and-field clubroom could be found lay on the edge of the field.

Naru glanced inside and tilted his head a bit in doubt at the clubroom’s concrete floor. “Is it usually underground?”

“Yes. It can also be above the ceiling, but…”

Naru cast his eyes up at the ceiling Lin-san had mentioned. It was a ceiling merely formed by a square board. Naru dragged a chair from that area and stood on top of it. He started examining the room’s ceiling board. “It’s possible that any of the guys have moved it though…” Naru knocked on the ceiling board.

Dust descended upon us, and I covered my eyes. In haste, I looked down and blinked. The floor nearby a locker had a crack, and I noticed a small rise on it at that instant. “…?” When I looked at it properly, I could tell that the concrete that covered the floor was broken, and that that spot was slightly elevated. I touched the little risen concrete as a test.

—It budged.

With all my might, I lifted that chunk of about thirty centimeters on all sides. The ground under it became visible. “Naru!”

At my call, Naru jumped down from the chair. He looked at the gap I’d indicated and came digging up with his immaculately white hands. Oddly, I felt as though I’d committed a crime, so I hurriedly helped him dig.

“…I got it!” I touched a hard object with my fingertips right away, and I pulled that out.

It’s a hitogata made of a whittled board. On its surface, characters were written with black ink, but I couldn’t read them because it’s muddied.

When I gave it to Naru, he handed it over to Lin-san. Lin-san simply nodded wordlessly.

Naru turned around to me. His eyes held a faintly tender expression. “Well done, Mai.”

…Uwaaa, he p-praised me!

“As expected, it’s Enmi. No doubt about it. All we have to do is to collect the rest of the buried hitogata. Mai did a very good job this time.”

…Ehehehe~ I didn’t do much.

“Collecting them all will be difficult,” said Lin-san, and Naru stood up while he dusted off the dirt on his hands.

“I don’t think so. We could ask the culprit.”

“How will we find the culprit?”

“It’s not impossible. We should find out who’s connected to that cursed seat and the track-and-field club. The culprit would be at the extension of that line.”

“…Yes.”