Editing Phenomeno:Case 01 (section)

===Fall===

====4====

My brand-new apartment was fantastic.

The floors were nice and clean. The wallpaper was new. The unit bath was sterilized.

It wasn't right comparing it to that house, where the remnants of the previous inhabitant drifted everywhere, but I definitely learned that it wasn't right to skimp on housing expenses. This was even further from the university, but at least there were houses nearby. I could walk to a convenience store, and there were plenty of streetlights. Anyway, this apartment, whose surroundings were brightly lit, even at night, was introduced to me by Karasu-san.

From what I heard, one of Karasu-san's acquaintances was the landlord, and Karasu-san herself was also renting a room here. It annoyed me a bit that her room was a warehouse (apparently a storage place for strange magical items and costumes), but I couldn't complain. The rent had rocketed to 50000 yen, but it was a cheap price for a 10 square meter apartment with one bedroom, a kitchen, a loft and a unit bath.

It had been more than a week since I looked at that paranormal house with Yoishi.

It was a Sunday afternoon, on a rare day with no part-time work and no lectures—

I opened the window and took in the pleasant breeze as I sprawled out in my empty room.

At any rate, the previous week had passed by quickly.

First, I cried to my big sister to borrow some money to move here, then did so immediately. I didn't want to enter that house ever again, and while it was expensive having to hire movers, it was worth it. Furthermore, this apartment's walls were so thin they made you almost want to pick up your neighbors' ringing phones, which made it feel like you were among living people. You could greet gloomy people in the hallways, and if you opened the window, you could hear the lackadaisical voice of the bamboo pole merchants. Basically, this place was overflowing with life. For me, that was extremely important. I'd been drained of mental energy to the extremes, and I needed the comfort of living amidst people more than anything else.

I didn’t meet Yoishi again.

That night, I gave her a lift to the family restaurant and parted ways. Everything about her was a mystery, other than the fact that she was a high school student and that her real name was Yoishi Mitsurugi. I spoke with her for a little bit as I pedaled hard back to the train station as if running away, but in the end, I never found out what was going on with that house. She didn't try to explain, and I wasn't in any mood to ask.

However, I had a strange conviction that there was something dangerous there. I was the one who heard the creepy noises every night, and I even got a countdown, but somehow, I made up my mind because of Yoishi's one phrase: "This place is the real deal." I immediately thought that this was not a place I could deal with. If you think about it that way, it's thanks to her that I was able to make the decision to put myself in a peaceful place like this, but—

It's true what they say: Once on shore, we pray no more.<Ref>Original Japanese phrase used here is: Once it's past the throat, one forgets the heat (of the swallowed object)</ref>

Now that it was all in the past, I was truthfully somewhat curious.

What did she notice?

What was the countdown all about?

And just who was Yoishi anyway? It was hard to explain, but she seemed different from the average occult maniac. She wasn’t just getting a thrill by being close to danger, but she was also a daredevil who didn’t hesitate stepping into areas that a person’s instincts would say are dangerous—in other words, she had a sense of uneasiness about her that couldn’t just be explained as someone who wanted to die. Whenever she said something, I felt like the world I believed and lived in was about to collapse.

Sometimes I would take a peek at Ikaigabuchi, but Yoishi never appeared in any threads.

And of course, no one replied to the thread I'd started anymore, and it got buried deep to the point where it was hard to find. Krishna-san descended upon various threads, but they never touched on me or Yoishi's case. I was tempted to write that it was real, but I had no means of proving myself, and I still felt a little uncertain about the whole thing, at the same time, I buried myself in my normal daily life again. 

Indeed — The everyday normal continued.

Increased rent and utility bills that can’t wait. My scholarship alone was insufficient, meaning I had to start working part-time in earnest soon, so I started a part-time job at an Italian restaurant near the station. I also had to pay back the moving funds that I'd borrowed from my big sis. So I started working whenever I had no lectures. My urban survival began with a week of exhausting physical exertion and forced workplace smiles, and in an instant--

A week had flown by, and it was that sort of day.

My first university lecture in a while had just ended, and I was stuffing my textbooks into my bag, when I suddenly realized an unknown girl was staring at me.

She was short, yet her breasts were big enough to be noticeable through her clothes. Her hair was bobbed and cut straight like a Zashiki-Warashi's<ref>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zashiki-warashi Usually pictured as a small girl in a kimono with a straight-edged bowl-cut and straight bangs.</ref>, she had a baby-face that resembled that of a middle-schooler, and her red-framed glasses really suited her.

"Who is that?"

When I stared right back at her, she cleared her throat once and came over to me.

She started taking something out of her pocket, then put it back. I figured it was some sort of paper. She walked over to me, standing bolt upright, but in the end, never took out that piece of paper. She had a somewhat vexed expression as she glared at me (although her baby-ish face made it lose its bite), she then clicked her tongue and turned away.

"H-Hey, wait." I couldn't stop myself from calling out to her. "If you need something, just say it."

In reply, the bobbed-haired girl turned back around and said, "Moron."

"Mo-Moron?" 

No matter how much of a mild-mannered and sincere of a person I was, I wasn't one to stand being insulted by a girl I'd never met before. 

"Why are you being so rude? What's your name? What grade are you?"

I asked, but she simply snapped back, "Shut up."

"It's your fault in the first place." Then she pointed her small index finger at me. "People like you are the reason these things keep happening. Learn your place, fool."

"Fool? You..."

After that, she rapidly asked me.

"Do your shoulders ache? Do your ears ring? Are you able to sleep at night?"

Was she some sort of doctor's apprentice? I mean, did this university even have a medical school?

While I was bewildered, the girl finally pulled out the piece of paper from her pocket. She thrust it in front of my nose. Before I could even pick it up, she ran off like a rabbit, and by the time I picked it up, she had already left the classroom.

"...The hell was that?"

In the emptied classroom, I picked up the paper and looked down at it.

[[Image:Phenomeno-Vol1-case01-1.jpg|Height in pixel|thumb|]]
It was like a handmade business card.

It merely read—

"Beatnik Research Club President - Kurimoto Shiina"

—and the location of the Beatnik Research Club, situated in the western club building.

   ◯

That night, I saw a dream.

In my dream, I was still living in that house.

That old three-story mountain cottage-style building by the river bank.

There, I was looking at myself. It was like an out-of-body experience with my body floating in space, and I was gazing down upon a different "me" living my life. The "me" directly below showed no signs of noticing me and continued to live normally. It seemed I was looking a bit into the past. “I", who still didn't know the fear of the midnight sounds, was living there unconcernedly. ''Hey, give up on this house,'' I wanted to call out to him, but as a person just drifting through the air in a dream, there was nothing I could do. All I could do was stare blankly.

Eventually, I noticed that Yoishi was sitting next to "me." The two of us were sitting together on the old sofa I'd picked up after moving. The two of us didn't speak to each other, we just did what we liked. "I" was yawning as I watched TV, while she was just quietly reading an old-looking book.

It was just a dream, so I was free to make up any situation I wanted, but it's true that if I were to live together with her, it would be strange, since neither of us would really interfere with the other.

Eventually, the "me" down there got bored of the TV and proceeded to stretch, wash his face, and brushed his teeth. He should have studied a little or something, but he was going to bed now. As I observed myself as an outsider, I realized that I was a pretty worthless person. I boasted that I would rebuild my family's downtrodden lumber business, departed Shizuoka in opposition to my father and big sister, failed to get into the seminar I wanted, and then just wandered occult sites. Plus, I hadn't even written a single letter to my mother, who was the only one who agreed with my decision to move to Tokyo, and who I'd promised to send letters to. And in the end, I got lured by the cheap price and moved into a haunted house, running into a denpa girl along the way. I wanted to slap myself.

As I sighed and glared, "I" quickly curled up in my bedroom. I turned off the lights as if I couldn't see Yoishi, even though she was in the room. Yoishi seemed to notice the lights had gone off, as she closed her book and stared off into space.

I'd floated down to Yoishi, thinking I'd turn the light on for her.

"It's about time."

I had a horrible feeling when Yoishi said that.

And then—in the darkness illuminated only by the moonlight, I heard that sound.

From somewhere, the sound of something being scraped.

An ominous melody ringing across the border connecting this world and the other.

My whole body stiffened as I heard the sound, as if something somewhere was trying to crawl out of some sealed space. It was like watching those supernatural shows on TV, where they set up a camera in rooms where ghosts are rumored to appear.

This is a nightmare, isn't it?

I need to wake up as soon as possible.

Because, if I stay here like this—

I would end up seeing the "something" that was engraving numbers into this house.

I frantically tried to wake up. I waved my limbs around trying to touch something, but I couldn’t wake myself from the dream. It was like my body had been caught by some black hand that had seeped out of a different world. Feeling the despair of having been locked in a room with no exit, in the dream where only my ragged breathing echoed— I suddenly found myself next to Yoishi.

On the old, leather sofa, I held Yoishi in my arms.

I played with her body, as if I were trying to stain both of my palms with Yoishi's body heat. That was my wish, and yet, it wasn't. I mean, of course, I had some interest in girls as a regular eighteen-year-old boy, but my lust wasn't this twisted. I wasn't the type to release my sexual desires by turning myself into an unseen existence. I should have had that much reason left in me.

However—Yoishi showed no signs of fear.

If anything, she was in a state of ecstasy. Her expression was dangerous. I felt my rational mind flap its wings and fly away. I licked Yoishi's skin. I groped her breasts through her clothes. I lusted all over her soft body with the tips of my fingers. I pulled up her long skirt, exposing her pale thighs. Yoishi's eyes were barely open. Her lips were slightly parted, revealing her white teeth. ''Stop. Stop. Stop,'' I screamed from within my body, but I couldn't restrain the abnormal, sexual desire that was boiling up inside me.

However, the moment I placed a hand on her pale wrists—

I almost screamed. My arms were not ones I'd become accustomed to seeing, but were long and thin, like that of an old man. Those sleeves were gray and worn. I was wearing an old suit. I thought I smelled the scent of some cologne. I stretched out my trembling arms straight up to my face and stroked my cheek, my nose and my lips. And the feeling was horrifyingly unlike anything I had ever known. It was definitely that of someone else—and I knew whose it was.

Him.

That man standing in the corner of my vision. And at last, my face tilted against my will. I turned to the front window, where the moonlight was shining in —and there, my eyes locked with the man hanging over Yoishi.

At that moment—

I lost consciousness.

   ◯

I awoke with a violent shudder.

I was in my new apartment, lit by freakishly blinding fluorescent lights.

On the table next to me was an empty convenience store meal box I'd just eaten, and an unfinished bottle of oolong tea. A bag full of university textbooks and notebooks were scattered near my pillow. There were cheap curtains on the sash leading to the small veranda, which swayed from the night breeze coming through a small gap in the sash.

I let out a deep breath.

My heart was still pounding.

I came home from my part-time job, ate some food, and then fell asleep at some point it seemed.

''Stop fucking freaking me out.'' Cursing no one in particular, I grabbed the bottle and gulped down about a third or so of the remaining oolong tea. I felt so incredibly thirsty that even lukewarm oolong tea tasted delicious. After finishing it, I finally calmed down, and ruffled my hair as I exhaled sharply.

"...Calm down. It was just a dream. It's only been about two weeks since that thing happened. It's not surprising that I still have some fear somewhere in my heart. That's why I saw that dream, that's all it is."

I mumbled in an effort to convince myself, but my heart still didn't stop pounding. I could still vividly feel Yoishi's soft body in both my hands.

It was then that I realized something had been ringing in my head the whole time.

It was a small, but definite warning sound, like a phone from the neighbor, like a cell phone left ringing in my pocket. What...what's bothering me? I looked around the room. There was only a barren room there, with barely any furniture and fresh white wallpaper surrounding me. Nothing had changed since I went to sleep. However, the bell inside my head kept ringing relentlessly.

"What the hell is it?"

I stood up and looked around the room again. There was nothing out of the ordinary. The aftereffects of the scary dream were just lingering inside me, that's all. I was trying to make myself believe that, when I noticed it. Next to the wall was a ladder leading to the small loft. The light for the loft was different, so that place alone remained dark. Just then, I felt something cold travel down my spine.

Why did I end up picking a place with a loft?

That dark area, where someone could unexpectedly peep in from at any moment, amplified my unpleasant thoughts. But apparently, the warning alarm inside me felt like it was directed straight at the loft. I mustered the courage to look up, and the warning sound grew louder. I swallowed once and turned on the light next to the ladder to the loft. I placed a foot on the ladder, climbing it one step at a time. Then, with all my resolve, I peered into the loft.

The loft was, of course, empty. The only thing there was a cheap sleeping bag I'd bought in place of a futon, and a few books scattered about.

"Haaah," I breathed a sigh of relief, and was about to climb back down, when I noticed it. On the other side of the sleeping bag, on the furthest wall at the back, I saw something. Scratches. Two lines had been violently etched, one perpendicular to the other.

I let out a silent scream and fell off the ladder. My knees and shoulders made a horrible noise when they struck the ground, but I didn't care. I somehow managed to grab my wallet and cell phone before running out of the apartment.

Those weren’t just lines. Definitely not lines——that was...

"2" ("二").
The number "2"  ("二").

Even after I moved places—the countdown still continued.

I ran out into the residential area at night, and for the time being, ran to the nearest convenience store in search of light. As I ran, I tapped my cell phone, accessing Ikaigabuchi. I looked at the forum from end to end. I didn't care if it was Karasu-san, Suu-san, Yoishi or anyone else. I searched frantically to see if anyone I knew was posting. Then I found it. In a thread titled [Mysterious Dimension ☆ Ise Grand Shrine], "Yoishi" had posted a mere thirty minutes ago. Ignoring the serious discussion of how to see the Yata no Kagami<ref>"The Eight-span Mirror, part of The Three Sacred Treasures https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yata_no_Kagami.</ref> at the inner section of the shrine, I posted:【Hey, Yoishi. Please help me! 】

The occult maniacs who had their debate interrupted made all sorts of derisive comments at my tactless post, but I ignored them and kept posting: 【Yoishi! Are you reading this? Talk to me. He's still haunting me.】

However, Yoishi didn’t reply, and all I did was anger the Ise Grand Shrine maniacs. Even after reaching the convenience store, I continued checking other Ikaigabuchi forum threads in the parking lot. I tried posting in random threads that Yoishi might find interesting. I told her I was in danger and to contact me immediately. But I might have posted a little too much, as the entire forum soon rose up in arms, calling me a troll. If I got banned, I'd have trouble contacting her, so I started responding, ''"No, I'm not trolling! I'm seriously in trouble!"'' but people just coolly responded, ''"Yep, he's trolling."'' Eventually, someone called me a ‘DQN’<ref>2channel (4chan was created as an English version of 2ch) slang that has become widely used Internet slang. Derogatory in nature, can refer to dumbass and derivatives but also has other meanings like being socially inferior, or sometimes "Normie" or "NPC" but worse.</ref> and I exploded, writing in all caps: ''"YOU OCCULT MANIAC SCUM!"'' which set the thread ablaze. I was being bombarded with all kinds of abuse; It was like a 100 vs 1 flame war. Right as I was starting to feel like the world was against me, and the moment I was about to throw my mobile phone away, I saw the post:

【Are you Nagi?】

Someone had posted that message.

When I looked at their name, it said "Krishna."

That miraculous name was like a gift from heaven, one that almost made me crumble to the ground. I tried to type back a response, but my fingers were trembling too much.

As I struggled to reply, Krishna-san posted again.

And—

It stated:

【Come to the place written on the card I gave you that afternoon.】

====5====

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."
[[Image:Phenomeno-Vol1-case01-2.jpg|Height in pixel|thumb|]]
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.

====6====

"In short, it was just a schema."

It was on an evening, about five days later.

Krishna-san was talking to me in the Beatnik club room at the university.

"Or rather, a reverse schema. You see, that house makes people uneasy."

Krishna-san and I were facing each other in the clubroom, with the beautiful evening sun shining through..

"The house...makes people uneasy?" I repeated like a fool, and Krishna nodded in confirmation.

"In the past, Ikaigabuchi investigated similar places too— there are many reported cases around the world where the structure of a building causes strange psychological changes in the people who live there. Some of them turn into murder scenes, and there have been many cases of people who lived there turning to crime. There's no actual scientific proof for the correlations, but I'm of the opinion that they exist. People's minds, after all, are unstable things that can be manipulated in any direction by the slightest load."

"W-Wait a second. What exactly do you mean by that?"

"Basically, that building wasn't built for people."

Those words sent a chill through me like I was gripped by the heart.

"I'll avoid saying their name here. But the architect who built that building was a promising young man who had won several architectural awards since his university days."

As she spoke in remembrance, Krishna-san was illuminated by the golden sunlight, and her beautiful straight-bobbed black hair glittered.

"He was supposedly a very serious person. Maybe too serious. He was the type of person that wondered what buildings are—and he would lose sleep pondering over that. Above all he loved seeing his clients happy, so he put his ingenuity to the test. One day, however, he realized the futility that arose when one person asked him for a different design, and he watched the house he'd put his blood and soul into demolished in the name of 'renovation.' Families change. Preferences change. It's an inevitability in life that can't be avoided, but he couldn't bear it."

—''If you took care of it properly, it would last over a hundred years.''
—''Sometimes, people should adapt to the building.''

"Leaving behind those words, he vanished from that atelier one day. His family reported him missing, but he was never seen again and was eventually declared dead a few years later. That was over thirty years ago. That atelier was his final work, and had at some point been dubbed 'The Wish-fulfilling House.'" 

Krishna-san pointed out the third-floor window, to a visible residential area.

"This country tossed aside countless traditions with the Westernization of the Meiji era. One of these traditions, I believe, is housing. Tiled roofs became scarcer over the years, and the number of buildings that can be lived in and passed down through several generations has become rare. We have entered an age of mass production and mass consumption. We weren't inheriting treasures anymore, believing instead that you could reset life every few decades. That way, we could satisfy the economic activities of supply and demand. But I can't help but feel that this is weakening something that was inherently important to the people of this country."

That story made me recall something.

My father said something similar.

It takes thirty years to grow one strong, healthy tree. And yet, the Japanese lumber industry found itself in danger of going out of business in the face of massive imports of cheap lumber from emerging economies. It wasn't that he was worried about his job. He was afraid that the idea—that you could get an unlimited amount of cheap wood—would become ingrained in the minds of the people of this country. In the past, people would pray to the gods of forests, cut trees while offering gratitude towards them, then carefully built houses with that wood. Whenever they rebuilt, they tried to reuse the original wood whenever possible. Even on this earthquake-riddled island nation, Houryuuji temple<ref> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C5%8Dry%C5%AB-ji</ref> has retained its majestic appearance even after a thousand years. He said that the skill of the carpenters who understood the finest details and characteristics of the wood was, of course, amazing, but what was more important was their reverence toward nature's gifts.

I always agonized over having been born into a family whose business dealt with lumber.

Did I take care of the buildings I lived in as I grew up? Did I ever think about the feelings of those who built them? I thought of the construction sites for renovation and new buildings I saw every day within this grand city, and wondered if a day would ever come when his wish would be fulfilled.

According to Krishna-san, everything originated from the design of that house, which was the intent of the architect. When an architectural friend of Krishna-san took a look at the house, they noted that while it looked simple, it used extremely high-level techniques. Even the rattling of the house was due to the fact that the beams and other structural elements had some mechanisms in them to make the structure squeak, in order to protect the building from wind, rain and earthquakes.

"The meaningful space under the stairs is the center-point of a sturdily built house. The kitchen, which gets overused the most, was deliberately omitted. The living spaces were deliberately cut off from one another. It was certainly a house that was built to last."

Krishna-san mumbled as she pushed her red-framed glasses up.

"Normally, houses should revolve around the inhabitants, but not in this case. The inhabitants inevitably begin to feel like the house was built for something other than themselves. This causes a disturbance in the mind’s equilibrium. What do you think would happen when a boy who'd just recently arrived in Tokyo with few friends, decides to live there?"

"So, in other words, it had nothing to do with ghosts?"

"Indeed, you're probably much more mentally fatigued than you realize, having moved to a city alone and all. Then there was that sound. You must have endured it at first, despite feeling afraid. But eventually, you reached a limit, and then what do you think a person would do?" 

Under her glasses, Krishna-san gazed at me with her big eyes. 

"They create a reason to escape from their fears."

"Create...a reason?"

"Yes. They create a reason for the sounds. In other words, you were subconsciously carving numbers into the walls of the house at night."

"But—"

I was speechless, and Krishna-san leaned in closer.

"Think about it, Nagi-kun. Where does fear come from? It comes from the unknown. That’s why people study and learn. They research inexplicable things to escape from the fear of the unknown. All human wisdom has been built up to escape fear. Cooking developed out of fear of starvation, clothing developed out of fear of external temperatures, and buildings and weapons developed out of fear of external enemies. Everything began with human fears. You thought there was an inexplicable sound at night. However, no matter how much you searched the house, you couldn't find the source of the noise. Of course not. You'd have to know that the house was deliberately designed to make sounds, but you had no way of knowing that. So then what did you do? Cornered, you created a reason for the sounds. In other words, a reverse schema."

Is that even possible?

No—it had to be. Otherwise, how would the number "4" ("四") have been carved into the back of a shoe I'd been wearing all along? I was the one wearing it, so it had to have been me.

My lower body was trembling. Another self acting independently of my will. No, I was terrified of the fact that I was not in full control of all my functions.

"Well—"

Krishna-san sat back down and sighed. 

"It was also my fault for knowing there was such a property nearby, and neglecting it. I’m sorry," she said, as she bowed her bobbed head, which flustered me.

"No, no, no, please don’t. It all started with me being greedy because I wanted to skimp on living expenses and didn't immediately move out. Please raise your head," I frantically said.

"Mmhmm, it was your fault," she nodded readily. "There are no shortcuts for granting wishes."

I had no excuse at all, and I just hung my head.

However, I realized there was one question that was still unanswered.

"Hm, wait a second? Then why were the numbers counting down?"

Krishna-san shook her head, saying ‘I don’t know.’

"Huh? You don't know?" When I asked back, Krishna-san’s big eyes glimmered with amusement for some reason.

"I don't know. I don't know, but, I think you probably carved a '10' ("十") on the wall."

"A '10' ("十")? Not a '7' ("七")?"

"Right, the number '10' ("十"). But maybe it wasn't meant to be a number to begin with. It could have been anything for you. Carving anything on the wall as the source of the sounds would have alleviated your fear. But here's where a certain coincidence occurred, which was the cause of this incident. There was an accidental scratch on the spot where you carved, right from the start. You subconsciously remembered carving '10' ("十") somewhere. Yet when you woke up, it overlapped with the scratch that was originally there to create '7' ("七"). And that was what gave birth to something else inside you—a 'ghost'."

...Ahh.

I recalled the first time I saw the numbers, the feeling of uncontrollable anxiety. It was the feeling of knowing that something was happening that I couldn't cope with or understand.

"After that, you continued carving numbers into the wall in accordance with the sound you heard after sleeping. The countdown was probably because of your subconscious desire. If the numbers went up, they would go on forever. I think it was a hope that somewhere along the line it would end one day." Krishna-san then added with a mischievous look on her face, "But you're quite simple. If the countdown had truly finished, you may have ended your life. I'm glad we made it on time."

And with that, she showed me a soft smile for the first time.

"Alright? I hope you've learned your lesson to not enter the world of ghosts out of pure curiosity. And you should respect all beings as well as the living. That's the main goal of Ikaigabuchi, after all."

And the Krishna-san who said such things with complete seriousness, was, as I had imagined, a pure and straightforward person.

Although—

She had a far more moe-like character look than that of a father or big brother.

   ◯

And with that, the complex, tangled and inexplicable threads had been unraveled.

According to Krishna-san, she'd realized that the structure of the building caused anxiety in the psyche of its inhabitants the moment I made my first post. In an effort to keep it under wraps, she indirectly tried to tell me through Karasu-san—but Karasu-san was pretty careless to begin with, and she became drunk on top of that, so the important message never got across to me, which is why things had escalated to this point.

In any case, everything had been solved, so it was alright.

''"I'll give you a warning, though."'' As I was leaving the house, Krishna-san had told me. ''"You don't seem to have much tolerance for this field. Maybe I shouldn't be saying it as an administrator for an occult site, but you shouldn't delve into the occult genre too much. At the very least, make some friends in Tokyo you can confide in, get a girlfriend, and construct a proper, solid identity before you dabble in the occult as a hobby. And especially— don't get into it like that girl named Yoishi."''

...Which sounded about right.

As Krishna-san had said, Yoishi was abnormal. She had, how to put it, it was as if she had her feet planted firmly on the other side. Her bizarre level of focus on the paranormal was probably what helped shape those urban legends.

Stepping out of the western club building, I was met with an extraordinarily beautiful sunset.

The clear orange color shone straight to the depths of my soul.

Damn.

My tear glands had weakened completely after this incident, and I was about to burst into tears again out of of thankfulness for the peace I had gained. But with a gulp, I managed to hold back the tears. There were a lot of students about, and beyond the gate of the western club building was the affiliated high school. There were many high school girls going home as well. I didn't want to embarrass myself as a university student.

Just then—

I suddenly noticed one of them was staring at me.

She was a slender girl with beautiful black hair and fair skin. Her uniformed figure was dazzling, and the way she stood there made her strangely stand out from the rest of the world...

"Wait...what?" I eventually realized that I recognized the beautiful girl, and I couldn't restrain myself from running over to her. "Are you, by any chance, Yoishi?"

The girl then turned her glass bead-like eyes towards me.

"Oh, it's you."

Judging from her sleepy reply, she apparently wasn't staring at me.

Yoishi, dressed in her school uniform, stood out in a different way, partly because of her looks. As ever, she was someone far removed from the concept of ‘ordinariness’.

"Yo, how unexpected. You attend our affiliated school? What year are you in?" I spoke to her with a big smile on my face.

"That has nothing to do with you."

Yoishi's response was quite cold.

There was not a hint of that vitality-filled, ecstatic look in her eyes when she faced the paranormal.

"I hadn't come to school in a while—looks like I shouldn't have come at all," she muttered with a disgusted expression, but I noticed she didn't have the irritating odor from before. It seemed she'd taken a bath. Glossy black hair, an ironed white blouse, and a black tie. I narrowed my eyes as I gazed at the contrast, and said, "Pretty good."

"What is?"

"Ah, it’s better for you to live clean and dressed like that. And you look good in that uniform."

However, Yoishi turned her back to me, saying, "How absurd". 

I intended to praise her, but it apparently just annoyed her.

"If you have nothing to say, then I'm going."

She turned on her heel, and I hurriedly stopped her.

"You were staring over there, did you want something from Krishna-san?"

"—Krishna." She reacted to that name, and her glass bead-like eyes immediately became full of life. "I see—then Ikaigabuchi is here."

As usual, she was very responsive to anything occult-related.

I then got carried away and dared to drive the conversation in that direction.

"I owe you a lot too. I was told all about that house. Didn't know something like delirium over a building even existed. I completely freaked out when I learned the truth."

I was probably on a high after having been freed from my bottled-up anxiety. I kept on rambling. I was babbling on and on. Everything I'd heard from Krishna-san, about the truth of the incident. I talked about the architecture of the house, the regret of the architect who disappeared, and even the housing problems that Japan was facing today, and so on.

However, Yoishi's reaction was worse than I'd expected.

Without turning towards me, she muttered emotionlessly, "That's good to hear," and walked away. 

I was weirdly bothered by her somewhat lonely, slender back, that looked as if it would fly away if someone blew on it, so I followed her.

"You're looking kinda down, what's up? Is something still bothering you?"

The moment I said that, I remembered.

Come to think of it, that day, she said something to me at the house. 

『Did you notice?』

...Right. What did she notice back then?

When I asked her that, she halted in her tracks.

She slowly turned around and answered with another question.

"Do you really want to know?"

Those cold black eyes were going to swallow me—

I heard something inside me say, don’t do it.

From here on was a story you shouldn’t know, it warned.

"You can still turn back," said Yoishi. "If you peek from this side, you’ll end up being seen by the other side as well – It’s that kind of story."

Those words, also spoken by Krishna-san, gave me goosebumps once more.

But—

I wonder why.

At this moment, a bizarre sense of excitement assailed me. I wanted to view the world as she did. I wanted to stand where she stood. I wanted to know the secret of how her words would always shake the world I believed in so much.

"I'll listen. So tell me," I said, and the moment I did, either my mind was playing tricks on me, or did Yoishi seem to have a slightly forlorn expression on her face?

However—

I would only later realize that this was the turning point.

A bizarre, grotesque, irredeemable story about wandering through the darkness of humanity began right here.

The journey around the boundary between this world and that one -- the journey around "Ikaigabuchi”(Abyss of the Spirit World), began at this very moment.

Eventually, Yoishi nodded once and then began to narrate.

"I’ve been wondering for a while. Why is it called 'The Wish-fulfilling House'?"

"Why? Because--"

"The title lacks a subject. Whose wish is it fulfilling?"

Those words gave me chills--

I immediately began regretting my decision.

"That house isn't a house of hope. The only thing I felt was intense malice from within," Yoishi whispered with the expression of a princess who'd been locked away in a dark castle for a millennium. "The architect with an unusual love of architecture who disappeared. The countdown that began with '7' ("七"). The mysterious space under the stairs. Someone's Wish-fulfilling House. There's only one answer that ties everything together."

My goosebumps wouldn't disappear.

What was she trying to say? What was going to come out of this?

The night-colored girl uttered with a glimmer in her dark eyes:



"The architect is still inside those stairs."



"W-wait a sec--"

"Of course, he’s not alive anymore. But then it all comes together. Why there's a meaningless space under the stairs. Why it was named 'The Wish-fulfilling House.' And why the numbers began with '7' ("七")."

"Wait, that doesn't explain anything. It didn't start with '7' ("七"); it was originally '10' ("十"), and I just happened to write the number over an already existing scratch—"

"Wrong." Her words twisted my world. "You originally wrote '10' ("十"). That much is true. But there was never a scratch originally. Someone added a scratch that changed it to '7' ("七")."

"How...how can you say that happened?"

"I saw it."

"Saw what?"

"I saw your scrawled '10' ("十") had been scratched from the top, and turned into a '7' ("七")."

"Then...then, the reason Krishna-san kept saying there was no ghost in that house was because—"

Yoishi turned her eyes to the western club building, with a sad look on her face.

"Ignorance is bliss, after all."

...Ha.

"That is that person's kindness, something I lack."

...Hahaha.

Hahahahahahahahahahaha.

I had to laugh, or else I would have gone insane.

"You're lying, aren't you? You're making this all up, right? Oh, I got it! It's an occult story you read somewhere!" I continued laughing, praying that that was the case.

Yoishi looked at me sympathetically with a mournful gaze.

"It's all true. Because—" When I could no longer utter a word in rebuttal, Yoishi quietly landed the final blow. "After you were carried out, some man I'd never seen before was clicking his tongue on the stairs."




As the world went dark—

Only Yoishi's cold, sweet voice reverberated.

"Welcome...to the world on ''this side''."

























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