Tsukumodo:Volume 2 Eyes of Death

The eyes are as eloquent as the tongue.

The proverb is used when the eyes reveal everything even when it's not put into words.

That said, it's naturally not so easy to read someone's mind just by looking into their eyes.

In by far the most cases, words are necessary to convey things, and we can't really read someone's thoughts off their eyes.

In the first place, not all people show their feelings in their eyes. Some of them don't even show them on their face.

My workmate is like that. She only alters her mien so slightly that it's impossible to tell whether she's happy or angry, and when someone gets to see her deadpan for the first time, he almost certainly shrinks back. But even though she's unable to even just put on a friendly smile, she feels a vocation to attend to customers. I have not the slightest idea what's going on in her head.

Although I feel that I'm slowly starting to get the knack of understanding her thoughts.

Or is that just me?

◆

Not only your brain remembers things.

Your ears remember sounds,

your nose remembers smells,

your hands remember touches,

and your eyes remember scenes.

Have you ever felt familiar with something on hearing, smelling, touching or seeing it even before your mind reacted?

One theory says that that's because your subconscious mind has memorized it, but I feel otherwise.

I believe that our ears, our noses, our hands and our eyes can also remember things.

Among those, I'm especially intrigued by the memories of the eyes.

If you see what a person has seen in his life, you know his life.

Others' lives are very interesting; but once you hear about them, they quickly become boring.

That is because of subjectivism—bragging, exaggeration and lies.

But it's the life itself that's interesting, without any bragging, exaggeration or lies.

Therefore, I watch for myself.

I watch others' lives through their eyes.

As I did on any other day, I took a look at the empty seats in the first wagon.

There tended to be comparatively many empty seats in the first wagon of this train.

I wasn't exhausted; I was going to be sitting for hours later at work anyway. That notwithstanding, it was a daily exercise for me to sit in this wagon.

But before taking a seat somewhere, I looked around at the people on the other side.

There was a sleeping person, a reading person, a person applying make-up, a person playing a game, and many others. But among them, there was a girl who was looking out of the window. She was probably still in high school.

I sat down opposite of that absent-minded high school girl and started observing her.

She was wearing the uniform of a private school that was three stations from here. If my memory doesn't fail me, it was a quite famous all-girls school. The school badge on her collar was colored green, so she was a third-year student. Judging from the scratch she had in her kneecap, she either belonged to a club that did sports, or she had made that injury during PE.

After finishing that evaluation, I corrected the position of my glasses and looked at her—or more precisely, at her eyes. She noticed me and returned my gaze. I sharpened my eyes, projecting my consciousness.

Her eyes lost their focus for a moment.

Connected, I smirked in mind.

Looking at others means connecting to others to me. Once connected, I would go deeper. I would get the feeling of being drawn into their eyes when gazing at them. But in fact, it's the opposite: I throw myself into there of my own accord. Into those eyes, and into whatever lies beyond them.

I could see; I could see something—the memory of her eyes.

The things she had seen showed in my eyes, as though as her eyes had become mine.

The first picture her eyes had memorized appeared.

It was an alarm clock. Its clock hand was indicating 09:00 am. The field of vision extended for a moment, and then zoomed in on the clock. It was set to ring at 07:00 am.

(I see. She's indeed a bit late for a high school student. Looks like she overslept.)

Most likely, she had taken a second look at the alarm clock in surprise. Unable to accept the reality, she did so for nearly a whole thirty seconds, even though she would have been better off hurrying up already.

(Oh, that wouldn't be of any use anyway, I guess?)

When she went to the kitchen and ignored the breakfast prepared for her, her mother wasn't at home anymore. After that, I only saw how she prepared for school in a hurry. At first, anyway. To my mild amusement, she grew slower and slower as time went by, apparently feeling that it was of no avail.

I wanted to peek a bit deeper, but the girl stood up because the train had arrived at her station. Our connection broke off immediately. If the connection was as weak as that, I couldn't see any more than that.

Well, it was a good pastime before work, I comforted myself.

That's not what I really wanted to see. I was convinced that there must be more interesting things hidden behind others' eyes.

I let my disappointment out as a sigh and got off the train.

Would I come across an interesting sight today?

Suddenly, I heard the emergency break of a train.

I quickly turned to the origin of the noise. I was positive that I had heard something get squashed. A few seconds later, a scream echoed through the station.

There was a wave of people that assembled at a certain point of the opposite platform, and one that went away from there.

I rushed to that point.

"Somebody's fallen on the rails!"

"Somebody got run over! Hey, call the station staff!"

Confusion and horror could be heard from everywhere. Upon arriving, the station employees started to disperse the crowd with aggressive-sounding roars.

I dived into the crowd.

It was an express train that was never scheduled to stop at this station, thus only the last wagon was still more or less by the platform as the train had come to a halt. Something sticky could be found on the rails the train had passed.

"Don't push! Step back!"

The moment I heard an employee yell so, I felt my body leaning forward.

"Huh?"

Pushed by a wave of onlookers, a few people and I fell together from the platform. The pain of the impact ran through my body. Because I had fell on another person, however, there was no serious injury.

The clamor welled up again, and the station employees pushed the onlookers away from the rails. "Are you all right?" someone yelled from above, upon which some people stood up and others stayed on the ground.

I shook my head slightly. Not to the level of a cerebral concussion, but my head was aching a little.

I pressed my hand lightly against my forehead, but the moment I did so, I noticed a sticky touch on my face.

I automatically looked at my hands.

They were blood-red. Did I injure my forehead? I calmly tried to explain it to myself, but I immediately realized the truth.

There was not only blood around me, but also all kinds of repulsive things somewhere between liquids and solids that I had never seen before in my life.

Exactly. The victim had been run over about where I was sitting.

I shrunk back in terror and put my hand behind me.

However, that hand touched something.

"!"

My brain instinctively tried to picture what it was.

I was already familiar with that sticky touch. I imagined the thing twining around my fingers as black and longish. There were a few possibilities I could think of to explain the substance that was entering the gaps between my fingernails, but I was unable to determine it exactly.

I turned my head around and cautiously looked at my hand.

Its form was far from what I was used to see. It looked so grotesque that I would classify it as ugly anytime if asked to decide between nice and ugly.

My hand was touching something that would usually be called a "head."

That head was lacking an important part that made it look most awkward to me. It was not the parts below the neck.

There were no eyes.

"Are you all right?" a station employee yelled from above. I removed my gaze from the head and nodded. "We're bringing a ladder right now, please hold on for a second!"

The employee ordered his colleagues to bring a ladder and started to get in contact with every person that had fallen onto the rails. Fortunately, nobody seemed to be seriously injured.

I could see a bunch of men rushing toward us with a ladder from afar.

I looked again at my hand.

Not because curiosity had gotten the better of fear; I just wanted to take a proper look to make sure what had happened to the eyes.

A thread of sorts was sticking out from the eye sockets. The nerves? Or a thread of sticky blood, perhaps?

But there was nothing ahead of them. What should have been there was...

—in sight.

The eyeballs were lying right behind the head.

"Are you all right? Can you stand up?" asked a station employee as he climbed the ladder down. He was almost here!

I became nervous.

Why would I become nervous?

I only had to wait for help and climb back onto the platform. There was nothing to worry about. Despite that, I didn't want the employee to come yet.

I hadn't come to decision yet.

I was in need of more time.

But he was almost here. Now that he wasn't looking was my only chance.

Once he was here, there would be no chance anymore.

But common sense and my conscience slowed made me waver.

Only a few steps until he would get off the ladder and come to me.

(I won't be getting such a chance anymore.

If I let that chance slip, I will regret it for the rest of my life.)

Nobody had noticed my intent.

Nobody was taking heed of me.

And certainly nobody would care if that went missing.

I reached out my hand and picked it up.

And then I stuffed the eyeball into my pocket—

◆

"Mm...," I muttered as I, Tokiya Kurusu, looked around while referring to the piece of paper in my hands.

I had originally been tending the Tsukumodo Antique Shop, but then I received a call from the owner Towako-san and Saki, a co-worker of mine, and was asked to bring them something.

The place they sent me to was located in a certain theme park.

With the entrance fee being a whole 5,000 yen, I had naturally never been in that park before, but I managed to get in this time as a staff member.

Inside, there were several attractions as they could be found in an amusement park, and families as well as groups of students who were enjoying their Sunday evening to its fullest.

Leaving that noise behind me, I headed to the place written on my memo.

Before long, a building with a somewhat creepy air about it came in sight. I went to the door, whose mysteriously designed inscription read "The Mansion of Divination," and entered.

The illumination inside was deliberately kept dimmed, causing me to lose my orientation for a moment. Once my eyes got accustomed to the dark, I noticed that there were different rooms in here.

In front of each door, there was a sign that outlined the type of divination that was conducted in the repective room. Apart from orthodox divinations like the "Crystal Ball" or "Cartomancy," there were also curious ones like "Cobra & Mongoose" and "Cell Phone Divination." Among those, there was also a strange sign that said "Relic Divination."

"Welcome!"

I entered the room and was welcomed by a Saki who wore a black robe with a black hood. She was holding a broom. Unable to recognize under that hood, she continued treating me like a customer.

"This is the Relic Mansion. We will read your fortune and..."

"Hoohohoho! Fear not, lost soul! Yours truly, a mighty witch of old, shall resolve all your... Oh, it's just you, Tokiya?"

Towako-san abruptly stopped her entrance performance upon noticing it was me. She was dressed quite revealingly and a bit like a bondage mistress. Had she been holding a whip on top of that, she would have certainly passed as one. Uncommonly for her, her hair was tied up.

Saki, too, finally noticed that it was me and took off her hood. She was wearing a cat-ears hair band on her head, and the robe was adorned with a tail where her bottom was.

"What's with that outfit?"

"I'm a black cat!"

"...and you're really okay with that?"

"Yes."

"Surprising."

"Why? It's black."

"...I see. Yeah, that's great."

Saki had the incomprehensible character trait of being very particular about the color black and not caring about anything else as long as it was black. Most likely, there was nothing to comprehend there in the first place.

"I guess you two are supposed to depict a witch and her familiar, a black cat in the form of a human?" I asked.

"What are you talking about?" Saki said, pulling off the awkward—and in her case absolutely normal—feat of showing surprise with a perfect deadpan look.

"Huh? You're not?"

"Why would you think of anything else than a Beckoning Cat when talking about cats and commerce? This perfect plan not only improves customer service generally, it even serves to attract customers! ...How careless of me. If I always dressed like this, Tsukumodo might flourish as well."

"Hardly!"

(To begin with, you don't seem have any customers here, either!)

"So? I can have a mighty witch resolve all my troubles here?"

"Hey, it's all about building some atmosphere, some atmosphere! But more importantly, did you bring them?" Towako-san asked.

"Yes."

I had brought a great number of Relics with me. Needless to say, fakes that were in our shelves.

"Right, fantastic! There wasn't enough atmosphere here yet, you know."

As she had said, there were a few small Relics like a pocket watch and a silver plate on the desk, but apart from that, there was only some indirect lighting, which left a somewhat blank impression.

"And how's business going here?" I asked, causing Towako-san to contort her face. Well, I could have guessed as much, since she had asked me to bring something to improve the atmosphere.

Okay then. The reason those two had ditched the Tsukumodo Antique Shop and were working at a place like this has nothing to do with them trying to set against the red figures by means of a part-time employment—though that's not entirely wrong, either. A staff member of this theme park was in search of a substitute for a bedridden fortuneteller happened to come across the Tsukumodo Antique Shop, took a liking to the mood of the shop and asked us to have a go at it.

Attracted by the pay, the two agreed to work there for a week. That pay was, however, not based on hours or a fixed sum, but on pieces. Therefore, when she learned that part of her earnings here would go straight into her pocket, Towako-san immediately recharged her batteries. Money talks.

She was even sly enough to put "Tsukumodo Antique Shop" on the visiting cards she distributed here.

"By the way, how's the shop doing? Do you somehow get along alone?"

"That's a good one."

If it was such a flourishing shop, one wouldn't find all three employees leisurely talking here.

"I'll reduce your wages if you sell less than 10,000 yen a day, got me?"

"We haven't ever sold that much!"

"Shut up. I don't want the extra gain to be higher than the main gain."

"You don't sell much here, anyway, do you?"

"Hmph! Just you wait for a week. And you don't get anything from the extra cash!"

"Right, right. I'm not expecting any! Anyway, I'm returning to the busy shop."

The moment I left the room, someone else entered.

"This is the Relic Mansion. We will read your fortune and..."

"Hoohohoho! Fear not, lost soul! Yours truly, a mighty witch of old, shall resolve all your..."

I left the Divination Mansion as I heard from the room behind me a performance and footsteps quickly leaving again.

◆

I informed my employer about the events and took the day off, and hurried straight home, ignoring the suggestion of a station staff member to go to the hospital for a brief check. After arriving there, I carefully took a handkerchief out of my bag.

The weird bulge in the cloth made it clear that there was something inside.

That said, there was most likely no one who was able to guess what that was.

I gently opened the handkerchief as if I was dealing with some fragile freight.

A eyeball appeared.

I took off my glasses and put them on again into the right position.

The eyeball was staring straight at me from below.

It was a very peculiar sensation to meet someone's eye directly.

A normal person would certainly not have thought of it as "peculiar," but as "repulsive."

But while I did feel fondness, I did not feel the tiniest bit of disgust or fear.

I gulped down and fixed on the eyeball. The eyeball silently returned a look.

It remains unclear if a severed eye possesses something like a "gaze," but our gazes intertwined.

I felt how my consciousness was sucked into the eyeball. Connection established. Success.

I could apparently also peek into a bare eyeball.

(What will I see? What will it show to me?)

I saw something. I saw something that I hadn't seen for myself. It was the eye's memory.

I saw tracks—as they were usually seen when standing on the platform. He was apparently waiting for the train. The field of vision moved and revealed an approaching train. The gaze focused on the word express for a moment and was dropped again.

Suddenly, the picture moved.

The field of vision made a sudden turn and showed a woman who was standing behind. That woman started to tilt over bit by bit. No, the eyes were tilting over—or more exact, the eyes' owner.

The field of vision made another sudden turn.

A giant metal monster was approaching at overwhelming speed.

Everything turned black at once.

"...!"

I came around.

I noticed that I was breathing wildly. I noticed that my back and my hands were drenched in sweat.

However, there was nothing disagreeable about it at all.

It was not cold sweat my back and my hands were drenched in.

It was not fear that made my breath go wild.

I touched my cheek with the back of my hand. It was hot. I didn't need to look into a mirror to realize that my face was flushed. And there was one more thing that I realized by touching my cheek.

My cheeks were pushed up.

I looked at the eyeball.

I saw a reflection of my own face on it.

The face was smiling.

I was laughing.

I was excited.

The sight of the immediate death had enraptured me.

And then I finally noticed:

Aah, I've finally found what I've been yearning to see for all this time.

I didn't sleep a wink that night.

Still excited, every attempt to sleep failed with me sitting in front of the eyeball before I knew it. As I repeated this procedure, the sky dawned.

Although the eyeball always showed me the same scene, I didn't get enough of it regardless of how many times I viewed it.

Nonetheless, I had to go to work once the morning had come. Of course, I made sure to put the eyeball into the freezer before leaving. I had no idea what would happen in case of decay, but that was pretty much the only conservation measure I could take for the time being. Maybe I should buy some formalin.

I reluctantly left the house, the eyeball.

As usual, I sat down on a seat in the first wagon.

As usual, I thought about peeking into the eyes of the person on the opposite.

However, I already found myself unable to see a point in that daily routine of mine.

I was not interested anymore in seeing a rushed latecomer, or an early-morning marital argument, or a drinking get-together that had taken place the other day.

I wanted to see it. I wanted to go straight back home and see that last scene that had burnt itself into the eyeball.

A woman sat down opposite me. That woman was absent-mindedly gazing into the distance. Normally, she would have been just what I was waiting for, but I wasn't interested anymore.

But something bothered me; I had a feeling that I'd seen her before somewhere. Due to the nature of my job, I had a whole lot of onetime encounters. I suspected that she was one of them as well, but my gut feeling told me otherwise.

I had a feeling that I'd seen her many times.

But I couldn't remember where.

Was it just my imagination playing tricks on me?

No, that feeling was too strong to be dismissed so easily.

I adjusted my glasses and peered into her eyes. I was hoping to find out who she was by connecting to her through her eyes.

She didn't notice my gaze, and we connected in a matter of seconds. My field of vision overlapped hers.

Through her eyes, I saw someone's back. A man's. From how near it was, they must have been pressed against each other. The scene took place outside. The place was crammed, but the people were waiting for something in a queue. Where is this...? Ah, that's a platform. At a station.

(...Huh?)

All of a sudden, the back in front of her eyes tilted forward. Because of a push.

The man turned around.

His eyes met mine—no, hers—widely opened in blank astonishment.

"———!"

I started up on the spot, attracting the curious gazes of my surroundings.

"Ah..."

While withstanding their looks, I seated myself again as though nothing had happened. They probably thought that I'd nodded off or that I'd just noticed that I'd missed my destination.

Only the woman in front of me still seemed to be miles away.

I also started to gaze at her in an absent-minded manner. I had realized why I had the impression that I'd met her many times before. I hadn't actually met her. But I had seen her. Countless times.

That moment, the train arrived at a station and stopped.

The woman stood up and got off the train. I followed suit, as this was my arrival station.

There was a sign at the platform, seeking witness reports of the accident that had occurred the day before. There had been speculations in the news that it wasn't an accident, but an incident.

The woman from before walked up to the sign, stood still for a moment, and then headed to the other side of the platform.

To the place where the man had fallen from the day before.

She was looking down at the tracks.

"Excuse me...," I tried addressing her. She whipped around. In contrast to the expressionless face she had shone during the train ride, she had grown horribly pale.

"W-What is it?" she asked in a forcedly calm manner.

I had only spoken to her on impulse, so I was pretty much at a loss for words.

"Ah, um, yes..."

Suspicion started to show on her face.

"This is my name," I said as I spontaneously took a business card out of my bag and handed it to her. She took a look at the card and grew even more suspicious. "Because I thought there might be something on your mind."

"What's up with you? Out of the blue."

Apparently, suspicion had changed into anger. That was no skin off my nose, though. And most of all, I had a joker on hand.

"You lost something important yesterday, didn't you?"

"!"

She was visibly baffled.

"You lost an important person or an important thing in your heart at once, didn't you?"

She was trembling hard.

"Rest assured: I do not plan on doing you any harm, nor do I know anything. I only sense a tremendous aura of loss from you."

"......"

"I do not know what you have lost or what your are worried about, but I would love to assist you in searching for a path to move on."