Editing Phenomeno:Case 02 (section)

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When I went back to my apartment, Yoishi was no longer there.

She'd noticed the key I'd placed on the desk, as she'd locked it and placed the key in the post.

When I entered the foyer, I heaped the coarse salt I'd received from Krishna-san at the edge of the door, and finally took a deep breath. I told myself that I would go see Krishna-san again tomorrow and talk to her about having taken the notebook.

When I went to the living room, I found that my futon had been properly folded. She may be well-raised after all, I thought, and at the same time, I was worried if she would be alright after having stayed out all night.

Where did she live, anyways? What high school year was she? Was she a part of any clubs? What subjects was she good at? What were her hobbies? Did she have any pets? What were her favorite books?

I knew nothing about Yoishi.

I didn't know where she lived, her phone number, or her email address.

If I wanted to contact her from here, the only way to do that would be to make a post on the "Ikaigabuchi" forum. For such a tenuous relationship, the only thing that lay between us was the great question of life and death, between the world on this side, and the world beyond. It was like suddenly dating in a castle keep without even filling the outer moat.

"Well, I'm probably thinking of dumb examples because I'm tired..."

I’m just gonna sleep.

At any rate, my body felt as heavy as lead.

It was still just a bit past seven, but I changed out of the clothes I had been wearing since yesterday, and washed my face. After brushing my teeth and feeling refreshed, I laid out the futon and laid down, but immediately jumped back up. No, it wasn't that I'd been mesmerized by the lingering flowery scent of a high school girl or anything.

—— The pillow reeked.

An extremely sour scent was soaked into the pillow. That was terrible considering I was tired and just wanted to sleep. That bastard, next time I see her, I'm going to force her to take a bath. I had no choice but to roll up the cushion and use it as a pillow, and I lay back down again. But the strong odor was again driving my sleepiness far away.

Since sleep was out of the question, I remained lying down and looked up the Hachiouji abandoned hospital on my mobile phone. I had looked it up on my computer before, but hadn't checked using my phone. But when I saw the search results, I was astonished. Even on a cell-phone-specific search site, or perhaps because it was a cell-phone-specific site, I got an absurd number of hits.

"That place is actually pretty famous."

I began opening the pages on the search result from the top.

For the most part, they were community forums, or some occult sites specializing in the local area. But I found a single keyword common in them all.

The phrase that it was "a hospital that grants wishes."

I'd heard that phrase somewhere, I thought, and realized it was something I’d been brandishing myself up until a while ago. Fool, there are no shortcuts for granting wishes. I mumbled the exact same words Krishna-san had told me, and I looked at the posts on the site with a smirk in my face. I jokingly felt like I was looking at a group of cute juniors—

"My height grew!" "I got a girlfriend!" "My hernia got better" "I got a job" "I won a lottery!"

Every forum was full of those types of posts.

"Hey, hey, are you serious?"

I suddenly got up and kept reading.

It seemed those words written on the notebook and the wall — "Please fix my sickness" "I'll do whatever you ask if you fix me" had caused such rumors to spread. There was even a wiki with information, so I took a look.

 * There's a resources room in the basement of the abandoned hospital.
 * There's writing on the wall saying "I'll do whatever you ask if you fix me".
 * Say "〇〇〇〇 will fix you" three times at the wall, using your real name.
 * Say your wish, "In return, give me △△".
 * Afterwards, return something in the hospital back to its original position.
 * Say to the wall again, "〇〇〇〇 fixed it".
 * Your wish gets granted.
…Was apparently how it was summarized.

"How absurd." I groaned.

And as I read other related sites, I slowly became depressed.

I found a picture of someone screwing around inside that hospital. Someone who burned medical records and had bonfires. Someone peeing next to that, and another making a peace sign with a beer can.

"I see. No wonder Krishna-san was enraged."

She always said:

— The moral deterioration of the Japanese people has been severe in recent years.

Since ancient times, the Japanese have been a noteworthy people in their reverence for invisible beings. This may be tied to the belief in eight million gods, and there are indeed many gods in Japan. As the saying goes, "When you die, you become a Buddha", no matter how much conflict you may have had during your life, you must be revered no differently than a god after death. From the point of view of a contemporary mind, it may seem that we just can't decide who to worship, hence we erratically believe in just about anything, but I still think that the Japanese disposition to fear and revere the invisible is not a bad thing. Well, Maybe it's because we still believe in a vague mountain god in my hometown, and so respecting other such entities is something I take for granted.

My gaze fell on the bag I had left next to the living room door. 

I crawled closer and took out the notebook. It was the journal filled to the brim with the clean writing of the eight-year-old who had departed from this world. I opened the yellowed, worn pages, and read through it from the beginning.

The boy was apparently admitted to the hospital initially for a check-up. He was looking forward to going back home as soon as possible. However, as the hospital stay dragged on and the number of tests increased, the boy's letters seemed to have become smaller and less cheerful. After that, he began writing mostly about what he'd do if he could leave hospital. He wanted to ride a bike. Play soccer with friends. Go out with his family. Go fishing for crayfish. Play video games. Run as hard as he could. He wanted to be able to do things that children normally do. Mid-way through the middle of the notebook, he began just wanting to go home. He wrote that the examinations were painful. He wrote often about suffering from seizures. My breath caught in my throat at reading the heavy sentiments that could only be expressed by one who had suffered.

And that’s when it finally dawned on me.

Why I'd clutched at the notebook in the darkness.

And why I brought the notebook out and never let it leave my side.

I couldn't stand it. I couldn't stand the thought of this boy, who died so young, to be left alone in that dark room.

He was —— me.

I had infantile asthma when I was child.

It went away as I grew up, but at the time, the mere hint of an attack was enough to send me into a panic. It felt like air was being sucked away from my surroundings, that I'd been plunged into a bottomless, deep ocean alone, as I was beset by a severe inability to breathe. That sense of blinding despair — it still remained there, soaked into my body. When I was sleeping and felt the signs of an attack, I'd run crying to my parents. And at that time, I found one thing more comforting than any doctor or medicine — the palm of my mother's hand. As she stroked my back with her warm palms, a strange feeling of security spread through my chest and before I knew it, the attacks had stopped.

I looked down at the last page of the notebook.

"Please fix my sickness."

I had a mother, but did this child have anyone to act as a bulwark against his suffering?

Did he have a safe place to run to?

That was probably the reason why I brought this notebook with me.

Suffering until death and continuing to become a plaything in a haunted spot after death, I couldn't forgive that.

However, I let out one long breath.

Nevertheless, I still didn't know what to do with this notebook. If I were to take care of it to the end, it would probably be best to wipe away the writing om that wall, but I didn't have the courage to go back there again.

"Sheesh... I'm such a worthless wuss."

I scratched my head, when--

Suddenly, my cell phone vibrated.

I jumped a bit and answered without checking who the caller was.

《Yo! Little Nagi!"》

I stiffened at the bright, carefree voice echoing from the receiver.

《It's me, it's me. How ya doin'?》

"H... Hi, sis."

—— Yes.

It was Akira Yamada, genetically my bigger sister.

《Whaddaya mean, 'hi, sis'? I toldja to lemme know when you're coming home for summer vacation.》

Incidentally, my big sis was a bit of a gangster back in the day, so she still talked like that.

"Ahh, sorry, um, about going home. Umm, Obon is the best time, right? Around the end of July, then.”

《Hey!》

I shuddered as a low, cool air drifted in from the other end of the phone.

《Tell me an exact date. Unlike you, I work, I need ta ask for paid leave. Ya hear?》

Akira, four years older than me, graduated with a two-year degree at a junior college near our home in Shizuoka, and worked at a company in our hometown. I'd never won against her in a verbal spat, and I don't think I could win against her in a physical brawl either. On top of that, I'd also become indebted to her because of the of the incident the other day. Basically, my current position was the worst and weakest in my eighteen years of life.

《Mum and dad are waiting for their useless son, and you're all grown up now. It’s time you started payin’ your elders some respect.》

"... I know."

《Hmm? What's with that crappy answer?》

"I'm sorry. I understand."

《So, when? Around the end of July?》

"Umm. They should post the mid-year exam dates next week, so I'll call you immediately after that."

《Mm. Next week it is. If y'don't call me by next weekend I'ma beat you.》

"Yes."

《Ahh, one more thing.》

"Yes?"

《The bonfire this year, we're takin' care'a it. Get home before Bon festival. 》

With a clang, she hung up. I stared at the call time displayed on the cell phone LCD reading 1 minute 37 seconds, and breathed a deep sigh.

My sister Akira, who changed the atmosphere of the room in a mere 1 minute 37 seconds — terrifying.

After that, I looked up at the ceiling once more.

—— I had my hands full. I was carelessly sticking my hands into lots of things and then leaving them be once I'd gotten in over my head. I tried living at a cheap place and ran away, becoming indebted to my sister in the process, and it wasn't even like I was paying much attention in school, nor was I intending to spend my life studying the occult like Krishna-san. On top of all that, I didn't even know what to do with a notebook I'd taken from a haunted place.

Suddenly, I thought of Yoishi's gloomy, white face.

She was incredibly beautiful, but her emotionless, inorganic face was like that of a doll.

There was no way I could handle her.

I rolled over and fell asleep at some point.



   ◯



I was in a white, foggy world.

There, Yoishi was smiling radiantly, an expression I'd never seen before.

— Hey, so you can smile, after all.

I called out to her, but she didn't seem to hear. Not noticing me, she happily frolicked about. She was playing about with something that was slithering below her. I thought it might have been a dog or something, but when I looked toward her feet, I was aghast. There was a snake.

No — it wasn’t a snake; It was a creature I had never seen before with an unusually long torso. At the end of the torso was a face. And, it too, was Yoishi. A face even gloomier than Yoishi's usual gloomy, darkened face was stuck there. And the human Yoishi kept kicking it incessantly, laughing to her heart's content. ‘Hey. stop it’, I called out, and human Yoishi turned towards me, then the snake Yoishi also looked at me. And both of them asked at once: Why? Why, you ask? — It shouldn't feel good kicking a person. I said, but the human Yoishi just laughed. The snake Yoishi went silent, as if to say, ‘Pathetic’. It's alright, this child is a bad child. So said human Yoishi as she resumed kicking. It's alright, I'm bad. The snake Yoishi said and continued to suffer while being kicked. I kept shouting at them to stop, stop. But the more I shouted, the more the two of them got lost in kicking and being kicked.

Eventually, snake Yoishi's stomach was kicked open, and reddish-black blood began seeping out into the area—

I opened my eyes.

...What sort of dream was I having?

The room's light remained on. I absentmindedly checked the time on my mobile phone and found that it was past one 1 AM. I'd been sleeping for just about six hours. My throat felt thirsty, so I stood up and was about to get some water from the kitchen.

I heard a bizarre sound from the apartment hall. It sounded like something being dragged along. Was it my neighbor? I thought of leaving it be, but eventually that something went thud and bumped into something. And then silence.

"...Now what?"

I fearfully crept to the door, looked through the peeping hole, and was shocked.

There was a revenant there.

No——

Yoishi Mitsurugi, who could only be described as a revenant, stood stock still in her school uniform.

"H... hey, what're you doing?"

I asked through the door, but she didn't respond.

I had no choice but to unlock the door, and open the door, and there was Yoishi wobbling in place.

"I'm asking what you're doing there."

When I said that again, Yoishi seemed to have finally recognized me. Her glass bead-like eyes turned to me, and she mumbled, "Oh, you."

"W-what do you mean 'oh, you.' Don't act like you've coincidentally met me when you're standing in front of my house. How long have you been th-"

-ere, I was about to finish, and then I realized.

Yoishi was drenched from head to toe. I was a little shocked to see that her drenched blouse had become transparent and I could see her undergarments, but I could see brown water dripping from her skirt.

And moreover— it was putrid. It was the most putrid she'd ever been.

"Were you cleaning the gutter or something?"

I asked, pinching my nose.

"I've never had a part-time job like that."

She answered with a serious look. Good god, it was impossible to have a conversation with her. In any case, making a racket in the hallway this late at night would bother my neighbors, so I let her in. And when I closed the door, her odor was even more painful. I immediately decided what I was going to do right then. I could do nothing about the contamination of the hallway. But beyond that, I decided to stop it at all costs. I decided to eliminate the rotting odor before it reached the living room.

‘Come on’, I grabbed Yoishi by the collar, and dragged her into the unit bath. On the way, I was disgusted to see some brown droplets spilling in the corridor from her hair and the edges of her clothes.

"I'll find a jersey or something, but for now you need to take a bath."

I then shoved her in and shut the door.

I heard "I hate baths" from inside, but:

"I don't care, get in. Wash your body at least three times."

I yelled back angrily, and then I started going through the cardboard boxes I'd left unopened since moving in.

Even if it was the cusp of summer, she'd still catch a cold like that. And the biggest problem was this sewer stench. I'd just moved into an apartment with new wallpaper that smelled nice, so this was too much. From the bottom of a cardboard box, I found a pair of jersey clothes that had been sent from home, and went back to the bathroom. But I knew the moment I went closer. The sharp odor wafted in the air, and the bath door was open.

"I said wash—"

"I found out what that abandoned hospital is."

Said Yoishi, whose tired eyes twinkling slightly.


   ◯


— Ah, why?

I'd forced Yoishi to sit in front of the unit bathroom sink, and was washing her hair with a shower. I'd been spraying her with hot water for some time, but the brown water kept leaking out like a sewage drain.

It seemed Yoishi had gone back to that hospital alone. She went there just after waking up around noon, but it was six o’ clock by the time she’d left the hospital after investigating various things, and everything was pitch black by then. Her penlight battery had died, and after wandering the mountain at night, she fell into the river.

"Use a taxi or something."

I said, and she fell silent.

"... Don't tell me, they turned you down?"

"......"

... Well, it's no surprise given how drenched she was.

In all likelihood, she walked all the way to the train station like this, and ignored all the shocked looks as she came here. I sighed, imagining Yoishi sitting alone on the train, soaking wet, with her immediate vicinity vacated.

"Listen, Yoishi."

I ran hot water through her hair and gave her advice as someone older than her.

"Appearances are important in this world. People say that looks don't matter, but making a good first impression is quite important. That's how you get off to a good start. That's why you should at least take a bath every day. And if you're going to someone's house, go at a normal hour. You probably don't care what time it is, so I'll tell you, it's half past one. That's when most people are asleep."

But it was as if Yoishi wasn't listening to a word I’d said.

She'd shut her long eyelashes together and looked like she was comfortable staring somewhere else.

This was starting to become silly, but the brown water had finally returned to being clear, so I put shampoo all over her head and forcefully rubbed. It lathered up beautifully and the unit bath was immediately filled with the scent of shampoo.

"So what'd you find out about that hospital?"

When I asked that, Yoishi answered, eyes still shut.

"I have nothing to do with the incident that happened there."

"You mean — about Zippo-san's friend?"

Yoishi nodded slightly.

"Then, what about you disappearing?"

"I don't want to talk about that."

... Don't want to talk about that?

Then why'd you come here?

I thought, as I kept washing her hair.

"There's a ghost online."

She said, words that made no sense.

"Have you read self-responsibility horror stories?"

"You mean the ones that say 'It's your own responsibility if you read past this'?"

Those were famous online, horror stories that were said to curse you just by reading them. There were several patterns, like becoming possessed by knowing the story, or being possessed if you understood the meaning, those types. But to be honest I didn't really believe in them.

"Those are make-believe, right?"

I said, but she began explaining, "Not all of them."

"Ghosts are very sensitive to things that notice them."

The way she said it gave me goosebumps.

"If you talk about ghosts, ghosts gather. If they know you can see them, they come closer. All of those stories conform to this nature of ghosts. I told you before that the really interesting stories always have some sense of discomfort in them — but that's why. If you describe the facts about the ghost accurately, it becomes a strange sentence. Because there is a truth about the other side that is difficult for humans to comprehend. That's why when a story has some incompleteness, it's, in a way, actually complete."

As ever, she was terribly verbose when it came to talking about ghosts.

"I don't get it, but —"

I asked anyways.

"What do self-responsibility type ghost stories have to do with that abandoned hospital?"

“They’re identical in that you become possessed once you know the truth.”

At those words, my goosebumps crept down my neck to the bottom of my feet.

In other words, she wanted to say that I shouldn't ask anymore. Krishna-san always said, if you peer into the other side, they would also see you. They were essentially saying the same thing, but it is still differently more intimidating when she says it.

“Anyways…"Yoishi added. "The person who became hospitalized had nothing to do with me. I'm fine with just figuring that out."

She closed her eyes again and went silent.

After that, she wouldn't answer me anymore.

... So to summarize.

Apparently, she, in her own way, felt responsible for last year's incident. That fact that someone who she'd gone with to a haunted place ended up hospitalized. And that she knew the place was dangerous. Even though she couldn't stop it, she wanted to know the answer, and had visited the hospital three times and learned enough to be convinced in her own way.

I still had no idea what that hospital was, but, for better or for worse, I was busy. I was enjoying washing Yoishi's hair as the shampoo bubbled like a summer cumulonimbus cloud.

No shame in admitting it, I enjoyed cleaning. I get an irresistible pleasure out of making dirty things clean. People around me said I was weird, but I even loved cleaning ventilation fans, which are considered tough to clean. When I scrubbed that stuck-on grease with an unwanted toothbrush or something and the original metal became visible, I was filled with an irrepressible excitement. Look, this thing is actually this pretty, that sort of feeling. I don't know if it's because of this, but I liked the last scene of the ugly duckling: when the duckling is actually a swan, I like that sort of thing. European folktales, about bear hide, and such. In that sense, Yoishi's dirty, dirty head was a fun challenge to me.

In the end, I ended up shampooing her hair three times. Afterwards, I rinsed it too, and almost felt regretful that my house had no treatment, because Yoishi's hair had become so polished and smooth. I placed a tower on her head and wiped.

"Look at that. If you clean it properly, it becomes this pretty."

I wiped the fogged mirror in front of us with the towel to show Yoishi her face.

As our eyes met in the mirror, my heart skipped a beat.

Yoishi, with her clean, wet hair, was incredibly beautiful. Her glossy skin and dark, thin, straight eyebrows were exquisite, and the large dark eyes beneath them were as beautiful as the clear night sky. She was probably just dazed, but her half-opened lips had a seductive curve.

She was just like that — a waste of treasure.

However, instead of saying "thank you," Yoishi said in a tone devoid of emotion.

"You're useful."

I was about to say "Are you serious?"

Suddenly, something strange assailed my nostrils. Ahh, I looked at her uniform. Come to think of it, she was still wearing her muddy uniform. I wanted to take it off and clean her all over, but that was way beyond what I could do.

"You do the rest. You can use the soap there."

I stood, but the strange odor grew stronger. It was like the smell of rotting fish I used to smell from the factory near the river when I was a child. Odd. The ventilation fan is on in the unit bathroom, and the smell of shampoo should have been lingering in the air until now, at least after washing her hair ——

And then Yoishi suddenly said.

"Did you, by any chance, take something from the hospital?"

"... Huh?"

At the same time, she stood up, and tried to go somewhere —

Before she vomited.

She vomited again.

The toilet bowl was right next to her, but she vomited the sparkling intestinal liquid right onto the floor.

"Hey, you, Yoishi!"

I was about to shout at her, when I got a jolt.

I saw the reflection in the mirror, which almost fogged up again with steam, on the other side of the unit bath—

In the hallway, was a blue-laced sneaker.

The legs were pale and discolored, worn and battered like a drowned body.

Unlike me, frozen in place, Yoishi suddenly shouted.

"Get out!"

Or rather than a shout, it was like a threatening howl, and I jumped up.

Still dripping saliva from her mouth, Yoishi had turned around to the other side of the mirror — to the hallway.

"H-hey, Yoishi."

I fearfully looked in the direction Yoishi looked, but there was no one there anymore.

Only the droplets from Yoishi remained in the hallway.

"Ah, hey, wait."

But before I could stop her, Yoishi crawled out into the hallway.

Drops of hair and river water dripped from her clothes. She slithered into the living room on her own, scattering them everywhere. She splendidly barged onto my new carpet and continued. And without any hesitation, she went to the bag I'd tossed aside, and started rummaging through it.

"This."

She took that notebook out of the bag and looked at me.

"So you had it then."

I didn't know how to explain it, so I just kept quiet. and Yoishi said at me:

"This is how I got here."