Phenomeno:Volume 4

Prologue

Thanks to her tendency to suddenly throw up whenever she tried to pry into the paranormal that lay in the crevices of this world, I had unconsciously forgotten, but the girl known as Yoishi Mitsurugi, was a beauty.

“I thought I’d start by getting to know you a little better.”

With a line like that, she started living—or rather, parasitizing in my loft apartment for about a month now, and a lot of things have happened. So many things have happened that I now realized something basic.

She always looked like she was in a daze, but I too would often find myself in daze when looking at her profile. It was because I was overwhelmed by the length of her eyelashes, the depth of her eyes, and the beauty of her lips, which were shaped in a cheeky curve, though her nose was what somewhat small. Argh, it can’t really be explained well just by describing her features individually. Anyway, when they’re mixed in together with her black hair and her straight-cut bangs, it’s like they begin to take on a kind of fairy-like aura, and I think to myself:

What a waste.

That’s right, If I were to give an analogy, she was like a wild cat, untouched by human hands.

To begin with, her abnormality in not taking a bath was evident of that. She was so stubborn about it that if you were to let her be, she probably wouldn’t take a bath for the rest of her life. The dirt, sweat and odor on her body combined to form an awful stink and that’s why, on the second day of her parasitizing in my home, I forced her to take a bath. She looked truly annoyed and babbled something incomprehensible: “Frequent cleaning weakens an organism’s immune system”, but what’s really annoying is someone who’s unaware of their own stench to the people around them. Of course, I couldn’t do it with her naked, so I made her sit down in front of the bathroom sink in her school uniform, and washed her damned long hair twice. I rinsed it afterwards, applying the hair treatment I had bought, and carefully dried it with a hair dryer. Thanks to that, her black hair regained its original beauty, like pearls that spilled downwards, but it was a little funny to see Yoishi endlessly fiddling with her shiny, silky black hair with an iffy look on her face, as if it were not her own.

Speaking of ‘wild cat’, she usually had her arms on her knees, looking a little lonely as she gazed at something only she could see. If one were to see that scene alone, she would resemble a young girl who was dreaming, and in a sense, it could be a scene from a fairy tale. Yet suddenly, in an instant, she would realize something. That something was a faint sensation born in the border between this world and that one, a strange feeling that had been twisted by the malice of humans. She alone would notice these tiny scars that most people would live without noticing; She would raise her beautiful eyebrows, and whisper, “It’s strange”. Before I’d realized, I would find the ground swaying beneath my feet, and be inevitably thrust down to the world beyond, forced to run away with tears in my eyes every time.

That’s right, if you leave out the occult part, she’s like a quiet and inconspicuous sixteen-year-old girl. With a height of about 160 cm, she probably doesn’t weigh that much. I’d say she's on the skinny side, but her butt is in pretty good shape. If she walked with her chest up, she would look good in her own way, but since she was always hunched over with her back rounded and her head hung down, her beautiful appearance was rarely communicated to the world. She seemed to have no friends of her own age or sex at school -- Was it because she slept or read books in class? Or was it because of the barrier she set around herself that made her hard to approach? Was a cold wind blowing at her feet? Or was she carrying an invisible old woman on her back? Whatever the case may be, she always had a gloomy atmosphere surrounding her.

“Say, don’t you have some club activities or something?”

I asked Yoishi on a certain day.

I was concerned about her future, as soon as she got home from school, she started opening all kinds of creepy books such as, ‘A History of Medieval Execution Devices’, ‘A Genealogy of Homicidal Maniacs’, ‘Case Files from Unsolved Atrocities’. I thought that if she at least started club activities, she’d make friends, start paying attention to the way people looked at her, and that might change her in various ways – however--

“It’s meaningless.”

Yoishi retorted without even closing the book she was reading.

“I mean, student life isn’t just about studying all the time. I'm sure that having silly conversations with friends is something important that you’ll only be able to experience at this time of your life.”

She cocked her head to the side in response, as I continued to add:

“How should I explain this, having high school friends is like having a telepathic understanding, or like having a comradery with someone who you share meals with, something like having a blood fellowship with someone who can understand you without having to talk about it. I’m sure that it will be an important asset for you in the future.”

“Future…?”

“Yes, the future. Don't you have something you want to do in the future? I don’t know if you want to go on to university or get a job, but you’ve thought about it a little, right?”

“No.”

“Huh, no...? You haven’t even thought about it once?”

“Most of what we plan and worry about for the future, with all of its undetermined complexities, will be for naught.”

“Well, that’s true, but…”

I tried to come up with some kind of rebuttal, but Yoishi suddenly began speaking something incomprehensible.

“It is said that a first-rate professional Shogi player can read 30 moves ahead in the beginning, and 500 to 600 moves ahead in the middle of a game - but even with that much, the difference between victory and defeat can be a momentary error in judgment, or a hole in one's thinking. That is to say nothing of this world, where countless people live.”

I thought life and Shogi were different, but, at the end of the day, wasn’t everything in life like a composed shogi problem? I didn’t know anymore, so in the end, I kept my mouth shut. It wasn’t until much later on that I realized she had dodged my question.

At any rate, I don’t know if it was because she’d read countless books, but I was no match for her when it came to arguments. She would thoroughly answer questions that she could answer, but in situations like this when she decided (one-sidedly) that it would be safer not to answer, she would often brush me off like this. And the me of the time wouldn’t even realize that she was being evasive.

However, the signs came suddenly.

On a certain day, I found a stuffed toy of a frog dangling from the edge of her worn-out bag. “So, you like those kinds of things too, huh?”, I laughed. She glared at me and took off the doll and placed it inside her bag, but I was probably somewhat relieved at the time. No, you might even say that it gave me strength. It was a kind of hope: If Yoishi’s heart, which was completely stained pitch black, still had the mentality of attaching a stuffed doll to her bag, there was still some hope after all.

Thereafter, I started trying different things. Her meals always consisted of snack food from the convenience store and soft drinks in PET bottles, so I cooked her some stir-fried spinach as a test; She sniffed it incessantly for about a minute, before finally eating it. Without describing It as delicious or unsavory, she simply ate it in silence, without leaving any leftovers behind. She still wouldn’t take baths voluntarily, but when I called on her to take a bath once every three days, she would somehow manage to sit down meekly in front of the bathtub. She even started to clean up her own vomit when I told her to. That was without a doubt the training of a wildcat, but it was definitely accompanied by the sense that things were somehow moving forward.

The fact that a high school girl who I was not in a relationship with was parasitizing in my loft was certainly not something that I could be open about from a socially acceptable point of view. However, a hope was starting to bud inside me that I might be able to help her adjust into society: She who had diverged to the paranormal and away from the common sense of this world.

I would turn Yoishi Mitsurugi into a respectable high school girl.

Well, I didn’t exactly know what being a respectable high school girl entailed, but at any rate, shouldn’t Yoishi Mitsurugi be improving her lifestyle and habits so that she can smile and live more brightly under the sun? I’m sure that she would be cute when she smiles. I mean, she has all the ingredients. I’m sure it will be so adorable that it would be enough to remake the landscape of the entire universe. I wanted to see that smile—no, it didn’t matter what I wanted, at any rate, I was determined.

Yes, everything begins with determination and resolve.

And with that—

The ‘Yoishi Mitsurugi Rehabilitation Plan’ had begun.

---

Case 09: Dear Nostradamus-sama

“Have you ever been on a date?”

It was on a sunny Sunday afternoon around the end of November. I had gotten up early, taken a shower, tidied myself up properly, changed into a clean pair of shirt and jeans, and after wallowing in indecision, finally broke the ice.

“A date is, well, going out somewhere alone with the opposite sex.”

I elaborated further in a somewhat restless tone, and Yoishi, who was doing something in the loft, looked down at me and spoke nonchalantly without expression, “I have”, leaving me flabbergasted.

“Huh…? Y-you have? Ah, I guess that’s right… You’re a high school girl after all. I mean, you might have even had a boyfriend or two in the past, but – it’s somewhat unexpected, no, sorry. Anyway, uhhh…”

Flustered and incoherent, Yoishi pointed her long index finger towards me, Koumei university institute first year, Yamada Nagito, who had just turned nineteen the other day.

“I’m always going places with you.”

“You idiot, those are creepy haunted spots! And what’s more, that’s definitely not something you’d call an exciting date!”

“I don’t know about it being exciting, but –”

After gazing at me with her large eyes, she muttered briefly.

“I had fun.”

My heart suddenly started pounding for some reason. I felt a heat around my solar plexus, where it began to squirm and writhe.

“No, ummm… It’s not like I didn’t have fun as well, and to be precise, there were some places where I was looking for a moderate amount of scariness – but anyway, what I'm talking about is a little different from that.”

--Why am I in such a panic?

I coughed once to clear my throat, and forced myself to return to the topic at hand.

“Anyway, let’s try going on a date.”

“…A date.”

“That’s right. The weather is nice, so you and I should go to somewhere, let’s hang out someplace fun for no reason in particular, somewhere that’s not a haunted place. I mean, it’s coincidentally my day off today, and I just got my salary; I can’t take you anywhere too expensive, but eating out or watching a movie is fine.”

‘How about it?’, I ask her again; Yoishi pondered for a while before giving a single nod and withdrawing to the loft. She seemed to be changing her clothes from the spare jersey I gave her which she’d been wearing at home recently. Eventually she came down from the loft dressed in her usual black blazer from the Koumei high school.

“You’re gonna go dressed like that?”

Yoishi nodded once.

“…You need to buy some clothes, too.”

“I’m fine with this.”

With a blunt reply, she stood up and left the apartment ahead of me.

  ◯

Ah man, how long had it been since I’d been on a date?

I guess the last time was when I had a girlfriend in high school. No, if you were to include that time I went shopping with the girl I was friends with, then it’s a little more after that. Come to think of it, Christmas is just around the corner. Christmas, isn’t it a big occasion for lovers, or couples who will soon become lovers? I mean, I don’t mean to say that the two of us are headed in that direction, however, if by some chance that should happen, since it’s Yoishi, she would probably continue to live shamelessly with me in my loft. And then to picture the two of us wearing Christmas hats and ringing crackers in front of the cake...but—

…Oh wow, we don’t look good together at all.

With my thoughts swirling on such matters, I became completely quiet. Of course Yoishi wasn’t the talkative type to begin with, so we walked around town looking like we had come back from a funeral.

“Let’s watch a movie.”

I suggested as such, Yoishi nodded and followed me in silence.

We barely spoke to each other in the theater, and after we finished watching the movie I commented, ‘That was entertaining, wasn’t it?’, to which Yoishi merely gave a small nod in acknowledgment. After that I suggested we drink some coffee and went around to a famous coffee shop, but the vicinity of Kichijouji station was packed to the brim on a Sunday, and we couldn’t get in because there was a long line of customers waiting outside.

“It’s crazy how many people are here.”

Saying that kind of silly line, I turned back to see Yoishi looking deathly pale as she staggered along.

“Hey, are you okay?”

“…People.”

“People…? What about them?”

“People, people, people - vasovagal reflex.”

I didn’t understand well but, it seemed she was suffering a severe bout of dizziness from being in a crowd. Come to think of it, she seemed to be able to see the malice of humans as well as ghosts. And if she was exposed to a certain amount, she’d end up inverting it as a vomiting phenomenon. In other words, walking in the midst of this many people, she might start vomiting all of a sudden. Realizing that, I panicked, and started looking for the entrance to a restaurant we could enter.

Thankfully, we found a seat by the window that had just opened up on the second floor of a fast-food restaurant, I sat down as if clinging on to it, and sat Yoishi there.

“Are you alright?”

“…Ugh.”

“Don’t throw up in here, alright? The toilet’s right over there.”

“…Understood.”

I crossed my arms over the table and stared with a sigh at Yoishi as she lay collapsed on top of it, I then stood up from my seat to buy a drink for the time being.

The restaurant was so crowded on Sunday afternoon that it was a miracle that we were able to get a seat at all. Families with children, happy-looking couples, groups of excited girls. Anyway, the brightly lit restaurant with seating for around 70 or so people was filled to capacity, and everyone was truly enjoying their Sunday afternoon.

It definitely seemed a bit noisy, and it was difficult to carry a conversation without raising one’s voice in this situation -- but I wouldn’t say it was excessive. It would be best to wait here for a while until Yoishi recovered. At any rate, I ordered ice coffee, orange juice and apple pie for the both of us and climbed the stairs to return to my seat on the second floor.

However, when I reached the second floor, I saw Yoishi rise from her seat as she suddenly caught sight of something.

--What the heck is she doing?

As I held the tray and stare at the scene, Yoishi dizzily walks off somewhere. Her gaze was fixed at one point somewhere, shining brightly as if to suggest she had found something unbelievable. Of course, having walked the depths of the world beyond with her up to this point, I had a dreadful premonition. There was no way a ghost disturbance could happen in a fast-food restaurant on such a peaceful Sunday afternoon – but it’s Yoishi we’re talking about here. It wouldn’t be out of the ordinary for anything to happen.

Yoishi kept walking towards somewhere, and eventually bumped into a table with a thud. The three high school boys sitting there went silent all at once. All three had their mouths gaped open halfway as they stared at Yoishi. However, what flummoxed them was not her actions, but rather, her beautiful features.

“Wow, you’re so cute.”

“Why are you wearing a uniform on a Sunday?”

“Are you alone?”

They call out to her one after another in a casual tone of voice.

“That uniform is from the Koumei institute? It’s a private school, right? We’re second years in a government school, but how about you? What year are you?”

The guys who had outrageous hair styles like the main characters of an RPG game continued throwing questions at Yoishi without a care. Ugh, I let out an exasperated groan. They say you can't judge people by their appearances, but you can almost always judge a high school student of this age by their looks. They are probably the so-called "playboys" whose heads are full of this and that of the opposite sex.

“Say, you wanna go to Karaoke?”

The guy in the back, who had his collars opened up way more than necessary to flaunt off his silver necklace called out to her; I decided to move her away and was about to head over to the seat, when—

“…..Ug…”

“….Huh?”

“…Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrgghhhh!”

Yoishi sparked all of a sudden. With an imposing stance, she vigorously spewed vomit and excrement containing a mixture of glistening gastric juice and whatever soft drink she had drunk this morning right down on their table.

“Aaaaaaggghhhhhhhh!”

The three of them shouted out as the surrounding clamor quieted down at the same time.

--Oh man, she’s done it now.

I reflexively looked up to the heavens, but it was already too late. The three high schoolers cowered and froze for a moment in front of the half-eaten French Fries covered in Yoishi’s vomit and excrement before immediately scrambling and stumbling their way out of the restaurant.

In the deathly silence of the restaurant, I moved without saying a word. I placed the tray on our seat, grabbed some napkins, and approached Yoishi, who stood stock still.

“Are you alright?”

I wiped the area around Yoishi’s mouth, but she was still staring off somewhere. Sadly, I had already gotten used to the sour smell. I borrowed a table cloth from the employee who had rushed over and skillfully wiped the spilled stomach juices and former soft drink when I came to a realization, ‘Ah, so that’s why’.

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that the age group of the three guys just now, was, in a sense, a mass of sexual desire. Yoishi must have been bathed in the malice aroused by the sexual desire to take a beautiful girl out somewhere, to do this and that to her and to be happy. I was convinced that that burst the dam of the vomiting phenomenon Yoishi had been holding back – but apparently, that was not the case.

“That girl…”

Eventually, Yoishi weakly pointed somewhere.

She pointed to a girl, still in her upper elementary school years, sitting alone in a four-seater in a corner by the wall.

“That girl? What about her?”

“She has no head.”

“…Huh?”

I looked again at the girl who looked like an elementary school student.

…No, she looks completely normal to me. It’s sounds obvious to say it, but there’s no way a person can exist without a head.

“The girl you’re talking about is the one sitting in the corner seat over there, right? The one wearing a red skirt, white shirt and colorful sneakers, the one who looks a little mature.”

Nodding in agreement, Yoishi gazes at the girl once again – but eventually gives a small shake of the head.

“I can’t see it.”

“….”

Now it was my turn to sink into silence. I turn to gaze at the girl once again, but regardless, she still had a head. I guess they were called ponytails, her long hair was tied at both sides of head, and beneath that was the cute face of a would-be beauty in the near future. She looked cheery as she jotted down something spread out on her desk.

“Are you… feeling alright? Have your eyes gone bad or something?”

Yoishi staggered off once more when asked.

She went straight to the girl's seat and sat down across the table without saying a word.

‘Whoa, wait a second’, I thought to myself – but the school girl smiled cordially and greeted Yoishi. She was diligently writing on something laid out on her desk, and said something like, “Be right with you in a minute.”

Reluctantly, I headed towards the seat and watched the girl from behind Yoishi.

The girl in the elegant white shirt had countless pictures spread out on the table. Seeing them one by one made me feel cold somehow. All of them had some kind of unpleasant composition.

As I was thinking such things—

“This one is about a thousand yen.”

The girl happily jotted down something on the back of one of the pictures.

“This one is five thousand yen.”

She continued to write what seemed to be a price on the back of another picture. After she finished, she gathered the photos together in a shuffle, then looked at Yoishi, then me, and smiled with a grin.

“Sorry to keep you waiting. Are you the Aizawa-san that sent me a mail?”

“Uh, no… we’re…”

I replied, not knowing what to say; The girl pointed at the seat next to Yoishi.

“It’s fine, have a seat. I’m used to people not using their real names. Which one do you like?”

It seemed the girl had mistaken us for someone else. After taking a glance at Yoishi, who still had her gaze fixed at the girl’s head, I sat down next to her for the time being.

“I have many pictures, all high quality. You see, it’s my policy to sell only authentic ghost photography.”

I kind of got the gist of things with that statement. She seemed to be an elementary school girl who was meeting customers through the internet or something in order to sell them ghost photos.

“Well then, please choose at your own leisure.”

Saying that, she spread the photos once more, and sure enough, they all had an unpleasant air about them.

There was one with several men and women smiling. One picture of a couple with the sea in the background. Another one with an old man looking at the camera while standing in front of an old dilapidated house. The subjects have black lines plastered over their eyes, possibly because they are missing something, or because they’re superfluous. Arms were completely missing in the middle, or conversely, another person's head was peeking out from the back of the neck. There were pictures with countless white balls of light -- or what were known as orbs.

But Yoishi took one mere glance at them and spoke:

“They're all common phenomena that occur with digital cameras. If you were to move your arm at the moment the photo was taken, it can look like it disappeared. This peeking head is an exposure problem, and these white lights are merely due to a smudge on the lens.”

The girl smiled happily in reply. “You know a lot, onee-san.”

“Sorry. The real thing – it’s only worth showing to those who know the value of it.”

The girl once again took a photo out of her bag, it was bizarre at first glance.

It was set in a rural landscape somewhere. A photograph of five men taken around the entrance to the mountain. Their faces were not obscured by black lines. And, the face of the second man from the left was… stretched as long as a horse. It was stretched out from the top as if it had been twisted by pliers – and yet, he had a broad grin.

“Of course, This person wasn’t deformed or anything, and he normally didn’t look like this. For some reason, only this picture was taken this way. However, a few days after this picture was taken, he died.”

“…”

Yoishi held the picture up, and gazed intently at it.

“Any others?”

“How about this one?”

The next photo she took out was taken in the living room of an old house. It was a tatami room with a table, a sunken hearth, and a chest of drawers. It wasn’t a very large room, but there was a red line running straight down the center of the room. It felt creepy, like blood was dripping down from the ceiling.

“Hmm…”

Yoishi pondered as she gazed at that picture, however, the fact that she wasn’t calling them out as fake creeped me out. I averted my eyes trying not to look at those incomprehensible photos.

“Is this one not to your liking either, Onee-san? you seem to be looking for something hardcore. All right, all right. Then, I’ll have to bring out the ace up my sleeve. However, it's best to be careful with this one."

...Hey, don't tell me there’s still more. As I unconsciously stood up a little, the girl takes out a study notebook from her bag, and from its pages, she takes out another photo wrapped in some kind of thin paraffin paper.

"This is a picture we all took when we played ‘Dear Nos.’"

"Dear Nos?"

"Ah, by ‘Dear Nos’, I mean Kokkuri-san. You summon ‘Dear-Nostradamus-sama’ in the beginning, so it’s shortened to that.”

The girl explained cheerfully, however -- "Kokkuri-san is that, right? A pseudo- séance that occult enthusiasts say should not be performed because It’s commonly known that Kokkuri-san rarely appears in actuality, it instead invokes low-grade spirits that wander around the area and cause hauntings. There were various versions of the name, such as ‘Angel-sama’ or ‘Cupid-sama,’ depending on the region, but the pattern of writing ‘letters,’ ‘numbers,’ ‘yes/no,’ and drawing a "torii" on a piece of paper, placing a coin on top of it, and asking questions was the same, I thought, but--

But, was it called ‘Dear Nos’ or something among the elementary school kids of today?

"By Nostradamus-sama, do you mean Dr. Michel de Notre Dame?"

Yoishi inquired, ‘As expected’, the girl smiled once more.

"But it's different. It's not that fortune teller from the past. Well, that person wasn't originally a fortune teller either, but—calling him Nostradamus-sama makes everyone believe him. Elementary school students really are gullible, after all.”

Aren't you an elementary school kid yourself? As my inner voice retorted unconsciously, I saw the picture, and at that moment -- an unpleasant shiver rose from beneath my feet.

It was set in a dimly-lit classroom at sunset. Amidst the rows of desks, a group of girls in their upper elementary school years were facing us. They were probably classmates of the pony-tailed girl in front of me. However, two of the girls had lost their eyes, while the remaining two had twisted, blurred faces. And -- what was it? Something resembling a black mist floated in the air above their heads. As I began to ponder on the black stain, the warning bells began to ring violently inside me with a loud riiiiiiiiiiing. I averted my eyes immediately. Don't think about it-- Don't notice it. This wasn’t that kind of thing.

"How was this taken?" Yoishi asked.

"I was the one who took it. It's because I can sense the type of places ghosts are at."

The girl gave an innocent smile.

"Kokkuri-san – you probably know that it's generally a game of low-class ghosts, but the thing that that manifested at that time, was something else. I still don't quite know what it was back then. Some of the girls I did this with are still absent from school.”

Yoishi remained silent, but I couldn't bear it anymore and asked:

“And you’re okay?”

“I was scared at first, but being afraid doesn’t change anything – and don’t you think just being afraid is a loss? I know when there’s something there. I can aim my camera there. So rather than staying afraid all the time, it would be better to swap the fear for a little money, right?”

“…”

“Say, won’t you buy it? I’ll give it you for just 10,000 yen, onee-san.”

Who would buy such a thing? As I thought that, Yoishi readily nodded, took out a ten thousand yen note from her purse and placed it on top of the table.

“You know when something is there, don’t you?”

“…Eh?”

“So, have you noticed the thing next to you?”

I was immediately startled by her words.

The girl was alone, of course. There was no one next to her.

I rose up involuntarily, pushing back the chair behind me which fell down with a thud. I turned around to pick it back up again, only to see that numerous customers were staring at me. A look of alarm, as if to say, ‘What are the guys who just caused a vomiting ruckus up to now?’

“I see – Onee-san is a person who can see.”

However, regardless of me, the two denpa girls continued their conversation.

“You can only feel them?”

“Yes. I know they’re there, but I can’t see them. What kind of person are they?”

“Their eyes are dark. I think it’s a woman. She's moving her slender hands constantly, fiddling with something.”

I found it unbearable to keep up with their conversation any longer, so I stood up and returned to my previous seat. I put the drinks I had left on the tray – and took a deep breath.

--Ugh, today was supposed to be a date. And yet, why did things turn out like this? It’s a Sunday for most people. A peaceful holiday where the sun is still out, shining warmly, just before the full-blown winter season. I went out in the morning, thinking we should do something fun once in a while, but before I’d realized, my daily life had lurched into occult territory once more. Was this my fault? Did I make some fatal mistake somewhere?

I looked at the seats of Yoishi and the girl, lamenting the absurdity of not knowing who to blame for such a situation, but the girl selling ghost photos was still staring at Yoishi’s face with her lips tightly-knit.

Yoishi, too, stared at the girl’s face, but her gaze barely moved at all, perhaps it was because she still couldn’t see the girl’s face. But – just what the hell did that mean? No matter where I looked from, I could see her face like normal. However, Yoishi, who could see things that were better left unseen, couldn’t see the girl’s face. Yoishi wasn’t the type of person who would lie, so I guess it was true, but – I had no idea what it meant.

Shaking my head, I had no choice but to return to the seat with Yoishi, the pony tailed girl, and the woman with no eyes I couldn’t see.

“Say, won’t you help me?”

The girl asked Yoishi as her voice trailed off.

“Onee-san, you know how to drive this thing away, don’t you?”

The girl who displayed a proud demeanor was there no longer, in her stead, was someone who was scared, as expected for a girl her age. Confused by the complete change, I looked towards Yoishi. However, she was still squinting in the direction of the girl’s face. Why couldn’t she see it? What was this phenomenon? It was like I was a philosopher, struggling with one of life's most difficult questions.

“Onee-san, tell me. What is this? Why is it haunting me? Is it because of this thing that I can tell when a ghost is there?”

“…Who knows?”

Yoishi finally looked away from the girl, and focused her eyes on the ten thousand yen note placed on the table. The movement of her gaze made the girl take notice of the money once more, and she moved to grab it, but – for some reason, Yoishi prevented her from doing so by placing her index finger on the ten thousand yen note.

“If you really want me to drive it away, it’ll cost you fifty thousand yen.”

…Whoa, whoa.

Her remarks made me drop my jaw.

The girl seemed sit stunned for a while, before eventually slipping out a giggle.

“I’m no match for you, onee-san.”

Her expression returned to mature one she had earlier, and spoke:

“Not this time. I'm not really bothered if there's someone next to me, and thanks to that, I can make some extra money.”

Saying that, she picked up the ten thousand yen note from the table, and held out the ‘Dear Nostradamus-sama’ picture in exchange.

“But you’d better be careful, because I think this is really dangerous. if possible, exorcise it properly, or burn it – Ah, maybe you don’t need to worry about such things, onee-san.”

Declaring that, she said, ‘Well, see you’, stuffed the remaining ghost photographs back into her bag, picked up her drink and left. I kept sight of the small girl from behind until she disappeared from sight, and then asked Yoishi, trying my best not to look at the seat next to the girl – in short, the seat where Yoishi had said a woman was.

“Don’t try to extort money from elementary school kids.”

“Why? She was the one trying to peddle ghost photographs to me.”

“Yeah, but fifty thousand yen is too much.”

“I think it’s cheap for a proper exorcism.”

…Well, I guess that might be true. In the first place, I’ve never paid for any exorcisms from my own pocket, and I had no idea how much Krishna-san, the manager of one of Japan's largest occult websites, ‘Ikaigabuchi,’ paid her investigators, or spiritual experts, for their services.

“So, you’ve done exorcisms before, huh?”

Yoishi gave a small shake of the head.

“…Huh? You were gonna charge her fifty thousand yen even though you can’t do it?”

“What happens to her is none of my concern.”

Saying that, Yoishi stood up unsteadily with the ghost photo in her hand.

“Once you have peered into the ‘abyss’, there is no salvation for you.”

“By ‘abyss’, you mean the world beyond? Wasn’t that the dream mansion for me? But you saved me back then.”

I spoke to the figure that was about to head somewhere, and Yoishi turned to look back.

“You were—”

“Wasn’t the girl really in trouble? She looked like she was about to cry when you told her there was someone besides her, right? She might have had a somewhat cheeky way of speaking, but she's still just in elementary school. Sure, she might be a little eccentric to be peddling ghost photos, but isn’t it natural to lend someone a helping hand if they’re in trouble right before your very eyes?”

Yoishi took a sigh in exasperation in response and spoke:

“You really are such a nice person, after all.”

“What are you on about?”

“There are those in this world you just can’t save, no matter how hard you try.”

“Then, why did you suggest an exorcism?”

Yoishi turned her back to me and spoke:

“I only wanted to confirm it.”

“Confirm what?”

“Confirm whether or not she truly wanted to be rid of it.”

Saying that, Yoishi took the ghost photo in hand to the smoking area separated by a glass window. The smokers inside were all aghast as soon as the uniformed high school girl brazenly walked in – she quickly said something to one of the guys inside, borrowed a lighter, and started burning the picture on the ashtray.

--Ugh… She just paid 10,000 yen for that picture.

I watched the scene in a daze, but when I asked Yoishi after she eventually returned to her seat, she simply replied:

“It wasn’t a good thing to have.”

  ◯

That night, I lay in my futon in the dark room, unable to sleep as I was tossed around by my conflicting doubts.

My thoughts swirled around the ‘abyss’ as Yoishi had called it.

『Once you have peered into the ‘abyss’, there is no salvation for you.』

If I recall correctly, she had said something similar back in the abandoned hospital incident. I had presumed that the ‘abyss’ she mentioned referred to the world beyond -- but that didn’t seem to be the case. I was once saved by her, when she descended to the mansion at the depths of my memory. If she hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t even be here thinking like this. It was a veritable ‘depth of the abyss’, for me, a place where I wandered on the border between life and death --- but I wonder if that was even close to what she called ‘the abyss’.

After that, I thought of the elementary school girl I met today. I recall how the imbalance between her indifferent smile and her actions distorted the scene. Ten thousand yen for one ghost photograph, was it? I mean, when I was in elementary school, even five hundred yen was a lot of money. Even the New Year's money I received once a year at New Year's was almost confiscated completely. That’s why it certainly felt wrong for an elementary school kid to meet with adults through the internet to trade ghost photos for tens of thousands of yen. But – kids are kids. They will still have plenty of opportunities to get back on the right path, and I think it’s the role of society and adults to help them do so.

But – on the other hand, a voice inside me asks myself whether that was something that I, a mere half man, should be doing. In other words, it was hard for me, a halfwit, to find an answer even if I thought about it. If I were to run into that elementary school girl again somewhere, I had no concrete idea on what to do.

“…Ugh.”

With a sigh, I looked up at the loft where the light was leaking in from.

It seemed Yoishi was still awake. She was clacking away on the laptop she had brought with her. I had no idea what she was up to. She’s been at it for a long time now, maybe she’s browsing some grotesque NSFW underground websites that make Ikaigabuchi look like mere child’s play.

--Trying to rehabilitate her really is impossible, isn’t it?

Like Krishna-san had said all along, does that mean a large miracle is required? When I recall the cold words she spoke today, I lose confidence, and at the same time, I get this sick twisted feeling in my stomach. They were probably sound arguments, but I felt they were worthless opinions. They sounded like the kind of thing I would expect to hear from a small, narrow-minded adult, the type of person I despise.

Looking at the light coming from across the loft reminded me of that and irritated me, so I pulled the covers over me and closed my eyes tightly. But that didn't make me sleepy - on the contrary, it made me remember all the more.

If I remember correctly, Yoishi had said that she couldn’t see the girl’s face. No, actually, that was the beginning of the whole problem. I wonder if she’s solved that mystery yet.

In order to confirm that, I threw off the futon, when—

An uncomfortable feeling took hold over me.

The room felt unnaturally dark. No, it was obviously dark with the sole light coming from Yoishi’s laptop, but between the light from the loft and my bed, there was another darkness present, an invisible darkness of an unknown nature. Drifting there as if blending in the dim light – it was like a black mist, like black ink stained on a shirt --- I had a feeling, I had seen it before somewhere….

Ahh. I remembered.

It was in the ghost photo which Yoishi was supposed to have burned. The photo of the elementary school kids playing that Kokkuri-san-like game called ‘Dear Nostradamus-Sama’. I'm sure I saw something black like this in that twilight classroom scene.

I closed my eyes tightly. And then slowly opened them. However, it was still there. It wasn’t just my imagination or an optical hallucination. There was definitely something hanging in mid-air in that part of the dimly lit room.

Before I’d realized, the sounds of Yoishi clanking away on her keyboard had disappeared.

The world was deathly silent, absent of all sound.

“…Y, Yoishi.”

I couldn't help but let out that voice, when—

“I know already.”

I heard a voice from the other side of the loft.

“…W-what should I do?”

“Ignore it.”

...I-ignore it? That’s impossible…!

“It’ll disappear eventually.”

How long do you mean by eventually…?

I was about to ask, when I felt that black mist move. Its center wiggled in a vortex, creating a gap in the space. I think I smelled a damp scent wafting from there. An odor I had smelled somewhere before. It seems that smells are sometimes directly connected to memory. Completely disregarding any chronological order, they can suddenly materialize sights and visions seen in the past. That might have been the case this time. That nostalgic fragrance brought back the memory I least wanted to recall.

…Hey, stop it.

Sentimentality is a gap – and the wounds of a broken heart. I was supposed to be standing in my 10 sqm loft apartment, but somehow, I found myself thrown into my mother’s room at home.

The frayed tatami mats.

The ingrained scent of mosquito coils.

And standing in front of me, lay the sooty, old fusuma.

It opened slightly ajar once more, and from the darkness beyond, something peeked my way. I bite down on my clattering teeth, and pull the bed covers over my head. It was already over. Everything was over. I would never run back there again. I would live reality. I would plant my feet on the ground, and I would live my life, one step at a time – is what I kept repeating to myself over and over in sheer desperation, but the fusuma door continued to open.

The darkness opens its mouth, and something inside places its hand on the edge of the fusuma.

“…S…stop it, don’t come out of there.”

But – at that moment.

I felt someone’s presence, standing right beside me. As I held my breath, someone touched my shoulder, startling me. They lifted the futon suddenly and slipped into the futon.

“….E, EEEEEK!”

“Be quiet.”

It was Yoishi’s voice.

I realized her slick, long hair was touching the tip of my nose, and her cold palms were on my back. There was no rubbing, stroking or kind gesture from there on, but the palm of her hand had barely managed to hold back my mind from collapse.

Yoishi’s brow was right in front of my lips, and in the darkness, my foolish thoughts drifted to ‘Ah, she really does smell like this.’ My lower half began to stir sexually for a moment, but what struck me more profoundly was mystery of the life form. Even Yoishi was a lifeform who came into this world through the stomach pains of someone somewhere. Such an obvious fact came rushing towards me as if I had never thought about it before. A feverish body. Shoulders that rise and fall slightly with each breath. And the faint sound of her heartbeat – I match my heartbeat to the heartbeat of Yoishi as a life form. I match my breathing. I slowly breathe in, and exhale deeply; I repeat the process. We became so synchronized in the darkness to the point where it felt as if Yoishi was breathing in the air I breathed out. And that brought me a deep sense of tranquility. It made me feel like I was not alone in this world, it was like it was telling me that I didn’t need to suffer all alone.

The next thing I knew, the fear in me had disappeared. As I matched Yoishi’s breathing, my eyelids closed silently - and I somehow drifted off into a peaceful, relaxed slumber.

Looking back, I don't know if it was a dream or what.

However, when I woke up the next day, there was no sign of any black stain floating in midair, and Yoishi was asleep in the loft; it was the beginning of just another normal day.

  ◯

It was three days later, on a Wednesday afternoon, that I bumped into that elementary school girl who sold ghost photography.

My university lectures had just finished, and I was walking out the school gates, absentmindedly wondering whether I should kill time at the Beatnik society clubroom in the western building until it was time for my part-time job, or just hang out at a bookstore... when a voice called out to me.

“Good afternoon.”

I turned my head in the direction of the polite greeting to see the pony-tailed elementary school girl from that fast food restaurant on Sunday, smiling at me with a red school bag on her back.

“I see that Onii-san is also from Koumei High School, Are you a university student?”

I was surprised as I answered her cheerful and friendly manner of speaking.

“Oh, it’s you, kid. So, are you from a school near here?”

“It’s not kid, it’s Akane.”

“Hm?”

“My name is Akane Nanamori. I’m a sixth grader at the first Musashino Elementary School.”

“Is that so – I’m Yamada. Nagito Yamada.”

I stood out like a sore thumb talking to a girl as adorable as a child actor on TV in front of the university gates. Students passing by glared at me like I was some kind of pedophile.

“So, was there something you wanted?”

“Yes, I wanted to meet that Onee-san once more. That black tie and blazer was the Koumei school uniform, right? I think I'll go to this school too. Girls wearing ties is really lovely.”

“I don’t know if it’s what you’d call lovely or not, but, well, the affiliated high school is past these zelkova trees, just down the road.”

Akane smiled once more and said, “That's okay.”

“More importantly, Nagito-san. Do you have some time?”

“Me?”

“I'd like to talk to you a bit more.”

I was a little startled to hear her say that with a big grin on her face. That’s how fearless this girl was. She had the kind of amiability that jumps into the middle of people's hearts without warning.

“Ummm… My part-time job starts at 5.” I spoke. “Well… it’s fine if it’s up until then.”

The two of us briskly made our way to a park in a residential area nearby. It wasn’t particularly a big park with merely a sandbox, swings, and gym bars.

I bought a bottle of orange juice and some canned coffee at the vending machine at the entrance, handed over the orange juice to Akane, and as soon as I sat down on a bench there, was asked:

“Are you going out with that Onee-san?”

“….Hrrrk!”

I had just taken a gulp of coffee, and involuntarily choked at the unexpected question. As I frantically tried to spit out the coffee that had entered my windpipe, Akane spoke happily, flapping her legs back and forth.

“A university student and a high school girl from the affiliated school. It must be nice have a date on a Sunday.”

“…No, that’s not it. That might have been what you’d call a date, but me and Yoishi aren’t going out.”

“Is that so? But when that onee-san vomited in the restaurant, you sure took nice care of her. And you even cleaned up after her properly.”

“Saw that, did you?”

“When you throw up that much, everyone’s bound to see it.”

…Well, that might be the case. I concede as I take another gulp of coffee to calm the cough that had finally subsided.

“But that onee-san is really beautiful, isn’t she?”

“Well, maybe.”

“I was mesmerized by her at first. Her black hair is so silky smooth and beautiful, and she really does look cuter with her straight-cut bangs not covering her eyebrows.”

…Her hair might have looked beautiful now because I was the one washing it every three days, but if left alone, it would become stiff and shaggy in no time. And in the case of her bangs, she cuts them herself, the reason being that it’s troublesome if they cover her eyes.

“Ah, but that might be because of how she is. She’s fair, and has a nice figure, and the black tie really suits her in a gothic style.”

…Well, she might have a nice ass, but her breasts weren’t all that much, and her black tie just looked to me like she was going to funerals every day, wait— What the hell was I thinking? I thought to myself as I saw Akane speak ecstatically, and began to wonder if Yoishi held such appeal.

“Yeah, she looked so nice, and I thought to myself: I want to be like that. And then she suddenly looked my way and threw up with a blarghhh! That really shocked me.”

“She has a habit of spontaneously throwing up.”

“But it seems like she’s been able to see ghosts a lot longer than me, that’s amazing.”

“You’d be better off not being able to see those things.”

“Huh? Is it possible that you can see them too, Naigto-san?”

I replied in the negative and shook my head in response.

“I've seen things that I thought might be like that, but that might have been just my imagination. There is a word called ‘schema’, which means that even a stain on the ceiling can look like a person's face if you’re afraid of it.”

Akane's eyes widened in admiration as I arrogantly repeated the second-hand information I had heard from Krishna-san.

“Ooooh, it seems like you’ve been through a lot, Nagito-san. Tell me, tell me, have you been on many adventures with that onee-san? Next time you go, take me with you.”

“No way. It’s not what you’d call an adventure anyway. I’m always getting myself dragged into an awful mess.”

“…Is that so? At any rate, when that onee-san threw up, you dealt with it so lightning fast, right, Nagito-san? It was like you were born to be a puke janitor.”

…Hey!

“I thought that was so sweet of you and what a nice boyfriend you must be. The last time I got sick and threw up outside - I got scolded a lot.”

“…Huh?”

Taken aback, I asked her in reply.

“You were scolded… just for throwing up?”

“I guess my mother must have been embarrassed. She was all dressed up that day, and someone throwing up must have been disgusting, right? One time, there was this girl in my class who got sick in class and threw up, and the teacher got very angry.”

“No, but that's your own kid's or student's vomit, right? There's nothing wrong with that. Everyone gets sick sometimes. It's a normal reaction of the body trying to get rid of impurities.”

Akane reacted with a hmm, and looked at me seriously.

“Nagito-san, you really are a nice person.”

“I don’t really think I’m especially nice or anything.”

“Say, is it alright if I ask you something?”

Akane suddenly turned to me and held up one small finger.

“Tell me three words you think of when you hear the word『family』.”

“…Family? Why?”

“Just do it! The things that come to mind immediately. Don’t think!”

She rushed me, waving her hands impatiently; That’s right, she was still in elementary school, I had forgotten that due to her mature manner of speaking. Realizing that fact once more, I decided to go along with her demand.

“I got it. Emmm… three things, was it? First is --『tree』. Second is 『help』.And after that is, uhh…”

When I tried to think of a third word, that dark room suddenly sprang to mind. The word 『Fusuma』filled my head with bitter memories. But I shook my head to get rid of it, and remembered my mother's gentle smile with her eyes partially closed, and spoke:

“『Relief』, I guess.”

Akane looked at me in fascination for a while, and said, “Oh, well.” She seemed to have guessed that I had replaced that last word in the end, I squirmed uncomfortably on the bench before repositioning myself and asked:

“So, what's this all about?”

“What do you mean by ‘tree’?”

“Ah, I guess I said that because my family’s in the lumber business.”

“Oh, I see. So the ‘help’ you spoke of next referred to helping out your family with their work since you were a child. Then we come to the ‘relief’ you mentioned. That one alone seemed somewhat artificial, but, it’s fine, I’ll let it pass. I’m sure the real answer lies within Nagito-san’s heart.”

“….Oof.”

“You see, the order of these word associations is supposed to go from ‘pleasant’ to ‘unpleasant’. In short, the most positive image of the family first comes to mind, followed by the most negative. Of course, there are children who think of negative words first. Like me.”

“…What did you think of?”

“Hell, Cleaning – Maze.”

Akane spoke those words, and grinned once more.

But this time, the smile was lonely, resembling a lost child desperately trying to find the place they belonged.

“Say.” I asked: “Why ‘Kokkuri-san’ – or was it ‘Dear Nostradamus-sama’? Why were you playing something like that? Were you searching for something?”

“Nothing, really.”

Akane spoke with indifference, as she swung both legs back and forth.

“Nothing? Then don’t do it. Nothing good comes from playing ‘Kokkuri-san’.”

“I know. But I was told in class that there are no such things as ghosts. They called me a liar. That’s why I had to prove it. There are many things that elementary school kids have to deal with.”

“….”

As I gazed at her lonely profile from the side—

Well, that’s true, I was convinced. When I think about it now, something like cliques existed in my elementary school years. There was definitely a world of children, A place that existed in the absence of adults.

“Then, were you able to prove it?”

“Yeah, they stopped calling me a liar.”

“…Is that so?”

“But…”

“…Hm?”

“They're all afraid of me now.”

Suddenly –

As she muttered that, Akane’s profile became perfectly transparent. I reflexively rubbed my eyes and looked once more. Her skin, her capillary vessels dissolved in the air, only the faint vestiges of the elementary school student known as Akane Nanamori remained—

I found myself reaching out with my fingertips and poking Akane a little on the cheek with a plop.

“Whaa…?”

“Ah, sorry.”

“…Y-Yamada-san, Nagito-san, are you a pervert? You prefer little girls?”

“NO! It just looked like you were about to disappear. I mean, it really did.”

“I won’t disappear! I’m not about to!”

“My bad. Sorry. No, you know Yoishi said— I mean that high school girl from the other day, she said she couldn't see your head, or something like that, so maybe I just felt that way.”

“…That onee-san said that?”

Akane then nodded in a strangely impressed manner and hesitated for a moment before asking.

“Say, is it alright if I ask you something?”

“…Hm?”

“That onee-san, is she dead? Did she die once somewhere?”

“…What?”

“I can tell. People like her. Because they’re cut off. Their body and soul.”

“Umm, well…actually…”

With my hands on my knees, I decided to ask her. I don’t know if it was something prudent to ask an elementary school kid, but I wanted to know the opinion of a person involved with the world beyond, whether it was an elementary school kid or a girl, no matter how trivial their opinion was.

“Do you think a person like that can be saved?”

“…Saved?”

“Ah, by saved, I don’t mean to sound outlandish or anything, I just wanna know if you can help them smile and go on with their lives?”

Akane started her answer with "I don't know, but..." and continued.

“I don’t think it's a problem that Nagito-san can do anything about.”

“What do you mean?”

“Unless that onee-san wants to be saved, it’s not going to happen.”

Frustrated, I ruffled my hair, and spoke:

“That’s the thing I can never be sure of. Is she giving me a sign that she wants to come back? If she really had no attachments to this world, she would have died long before I could do anything about it. But I can't help but feel that her attraction to the occult is a different kind of impulse. I don't think someone’s eyes shine like that when they’re rushing to their death.”

“Aah—”

Akane gave a mature smile in response and replied:

“She might just be… giving it a try.”

“A try?”

When I asked her that, Akane said ‘Yeah’, and gave a lonely smile in response.

“Because I'm the same.”

  ◯

Eyelids are such a marvelous thing: a thin piece of skin that separates your eyes from the world.

Without them, how restless of a world would people have to live in? When a person is tired, when they want to think things through without any obstructions, and when they end up face to face with things they don’t want to see – they are truly a reliable shield. A trustworthy partner that provides hearts and minds a brief shelter from the cruel realities that draw close without mercy. But nowadays, eyebrows are being treated rather unfairly by those who complain about their eyebrows swell up on some days, or those who wish they had double eyelids. To them, the eyebrows should have a thing or two to say: I am your shield, the last fortification that moistens your eyeballs, prevents impurities from entering, and maintains your peace. Only the warm rays of the sun are allowed to penetrate gently, but that is because of the sun's greatness—

I wake up every morning with this thought in my head, but on this particular day, the sun was a bit too strong. Regardless of how thin and cheap the curtains in my room were, wasn’t the light from the sun a little too strong?

Could it be that I’d forgotten to close the curtains before I slept? I wondered while rubbing my doozy eyes as I woke up, when I found two legs straddling me.

As I look up from the navy blue socks, I am struck by the curves of the white thighs and see -- a short black skirt. The exposed skin between the top of the knee high socks and the hemline of the skirt were perfectly formed, and though the undergarments weren’t visible, the chain of the white blouse, black tie and black blazer were of the distinctive Koumei high school uniform.

“It’s eight o’ clock.”

The sunlight bounced off the long, black hair from her shoulders, Yoishi looked down on me for some reason as she spoke.

“Let’s go on a date.”

“…Huh?”

“Since It was ruined midway through the other day.”

Yoishi said that as she tried to throw off the futon, I panicked and tried to stop her.

Hey, isn’t this development a complete reversal from always?? I was always the one fighting to wake her up after she had spent all night surfing the net, made her wash her face, made her eat, and if the situation called for it, strapped her to the back of my mama bike so that we could ride together to school.

“A date--? Isn’t it a weekday? What are you gonna do about school?”

“There are countless things in the world more important than school.”

She spoke with a serious expression on her face, making me feel it was useless to try and argue with her.

It couldn’t be helped, I thought to myself, as I grabbed a fresh pair of pants and shirts before heading in to the unit bath to change. There, I suddenly remembered, opened the door a little and spoke my mind.

“Say, it’s about that girl, the one who was selling the ghost photographs. Can’t you help her somehow? I ran into her the other day and had little chat, she’s not a bad kid.”

“You met her? Where?”

“She was hanging outside the university. So, I talked to her for a bit.”

“…”

“Anyways, it seems she was called a liar in class, so she tried to rebut them by playing ‘Kokkuri-san’ or something.”

However, Yoishi didn’t answer at all. I finished changing my clothes, and washed my face, applied water to my disheveled hair and fixed it up a bit, and when I came out of the bath, I saw her with her hands on her lips, lost in thought.

“Hey, Yoishi.”

Yoishi looked at me in a daze after I called out to her, and she spoke.

“Anyway, let’s go on a date.”

However, even though she said that, the place she took me to was the second district of Musashino’s Kichijoji Honcho, in short, the Koumei institute as usual. And moreover, it was the Beatnik research society club room in the western club building. It was, in a nutshell, the headquarters of the occult website ‘Ikaigabuchi’.

“W…why are you two here together so early?”

Shiina Kurimoto, aka Krishna-san, the leader and representative of ‘Ikaigabuchi’, with a baby face that looked like a middle school student, and owner of a voluptuous bust, asked us in astonishment, But I was befuddled as well. I had no idea how this qualified as a date, nor the reason why Yoishi had suddenly dragged me out here.

“Let us play ‘Kokkuri-san’ here.”

In response to Yoishi’s abrupt demand, both Krishna-san and I dropped our jaws at the same time.

“K…Kokkuri-san?”

I ask in return, and Yoishi nods in silence.

Krishna-san, who was using a computer on the work table, raised her trademark red glasses with her middle finger, and answered firmly:

“No. You know what ‘Kokkuri-san’ is, don't you?”

“Yes—'Kokkuri-san’ is what is known as a Ouija board in the west, a pseudo- séance that sometimes causes mass hysteria. Most of them are a kind of automatic writing caused by one of the members involved deliberately directing the movements, or by the involuntary muscular movements of the fingers, or through hypnotic states; but sometimes, they are prone to dangerous interference by low-level spirits.”

“If you know that much, then you know it’s not something I’ll allow.”

“This ‘Kokkuri-san’ will be a little different, and it might affect this person.”

Saying that, Yoishi grabbed me by the sleeve of my clothes.

“I may not be able to save him, so I'll keep you as insurance.”

......No, I didn't ask you anything about danger or insurance.

As I’m left dumbfounded, Krishna-san asks:

“What do you mean by insurance?”

“You know specialists who deal in exorcisms, correct?”

Yoishi spoke with a blank expression, causing Krishna-san to frantically grimace back in protest.

“They don’t have the time to get involved in such things. In the first place, they are lending us their help because they agree with Ikaigabuchi’s aim of promoting the segregation of ghosts and people. As long as it's not something urgent or of social significance...”

“This is one of the dangers that’s spreading now here in Musashino.”

Krishna-san went silent after hearing that.

“…What do you mean?”

“A pseudo séance known as ‘Dear Nostradamus-sama’ is beginning to become something of a fad among elementary school students; It doesn’t just summon any low-level ghost, but rather, a specific wandering ghost.”

  ◯

A light-blocking curtain is an amazing thing.

When used, it gives a strange feeling of airtight closure, creating an otherworldly space. And the curtains in the Beatnik research room were excellent at blocking out the light, unlike the ones in my apartment. Originally, this place was intended to be used to verify archive footage, but the moment the drapes were drawn, it became so dark it was hard to believe that it was almost 9 AM, even blocking out the noise outside the window, leaving the room in complete silence.

In the dark room, Yoishi set up a candle she had brought in preparation in the middle of the round table. She then moved four chairs and arranged them around the table. There was one more seat than the number of participants, but it seemed that was part of this particular ‘Kokkuri-san’.

As me and Krishna-san sat around the table, Yoishi took out a scrap of paper of some kind from her pocket. When opened, I saw that it had the Japanese syllabary, numbers, a yes-no, and instead of a torii, it had a hexagram, the so-called Star of David, a six-pointed star with triangles crossing upside down - scrawled on it.

After all arrangements had been made, Yoishi sat down as well. She then proceeded to place an engraved ten-yen coin from the Shōwa era in the center of the paper and placed her own index finger on top of it.

“Let’s begin.”

Spurred on by Yoishi, Krishna-san and I had no choice but to follow her lead, and we both placed our index fingers on the coin. After a deep breath, Yoishi began to speak.

“Dear Nostradamus-sama -- Thou who art linked to the gate of the swirling spiral, who art uninvited by fate, please preach to us with wandering Kotodama.”

Those appeared to be the words Yoishi had researched over the past few days by digging through the internet and visiting Akane’s elementary school.

“Those are some shady sentences.” I spoke.

“I believe the words don’t mean anything.” Yoishi whispered in reply. “What’s important is that they, on the other side, know they are being summoned.”

“Who do you mean by ‘they’?”

When I asked, Yoishi’s fair, well-shaped face, illuminated by the flickering candle-light, seemed to smile enchantingly. However, that gaze lingered on the seat in front of me – the empty one between Krishna-san and Yoishi, causing me to shudder in fear.

“Dear Nostradamus-sama -- Nostradamus-sama. Please appear here, preach to us the path with the wandering kotodama.”

As Yoishi continued to repeat those words in a low key tone of voice, it felt like the club room alone was being isolated from the world around it. It did become considerably colder recently, but the dry air had changed into something slimy – or should I say, the atmosphere of the room had become muddy, as if something cold and creeping began to hang at my feet.

However – Nothing was happening, was it?

As I was about to say that out loud…

With a thud, someone banged on the window from outside, startling me.

Krishna-san and I froze in place. The reason being that the Beatnik research society was located on the third floor. There was no way someone could have banged the window. It must have been hit by a ball or something. I wanted to make sure, but I couldn’t take my hand off the ten-yen coin, so I stayed where I was.

Suddenly, I felt someone’s presence cross directly behind me, and yet, I couldn't dare look behind me in the fear I would witness something unpleasant. On the other hand, I was afraid to look at the empty seat in front of me. Krishna-san being right next to me was a source of comfort, but the fact that she herself remained silent also scared me.

I came to realize that Yoishi’s mouth movements, which were repeatedly chanting the incantations with her eyes half-open, had ceased.

In the concrete clubroom, silence alone, was deafening.

The candle continues to flicker and sway, and I wondered…

…Wasn’t it strange? The other side of the window which was abuzz a moment ago, had fallen silent… No—there was a sound. I didn’t know how to describe it; it was like something was ringing in my ears. Like an uughh… or an ughoo… a muffled sound, like hearing someone’s voice underwater.

“---It’s here.”

It was the moment of Yoishi’s low whisper.

My finger moved with a twitch, and instantly, a cold sweat ran down my spine.

The ten-yen coin beneath my finger – was moving. No one was putting power into their fingers, and yet, the ten-yen coin twitched and wriggled as if it were a living thing.

“Don’t lift your fingers under any circumstances.”

Krishna-san nodded nervously at Yoishi's request, and I nodded back, holding back the tears in my eyes.

“Is this Nostradamus-sama?”

In reply to Yoishi’s question – there was silence at first.

Eventually, the ten-yen coin began to move sluggishly and stopped when it reached the position of ‘Yes’.

“I have a question.”

In reply, the fingers started moving again as if they were being dragged by the ten-yen coin – However, this time they stopped at ‘No’.

--No? Does that mean questions aren’t allowed?

Isn’t asking questions the main part of ‘Kokkuri-san’?

“I'd like you to tell me something.”

Yoishi asked once more, however, the ten-yen coin stayed firmly planted on ‘No’.

“Are questions not allowed?”

In response, it began to move once more. With a dragging sound, the ten-yen coin shifts sideways and stops at the position of ‘Yes’.

Is this what Yoishi meant when she said this Kokkuri-san would be a little different?

“Well then, can you do anything?”

The ten-yen coin stayed motionless for a while. Eventually, as if dragging and oscillating, it stopped at some letters, and moved, again and again.

『D』『I』『S』『A』『P』『P』『E』『A』『R』

“Is that about making someone disappear?”

In reply to Yoishi’s query, the ten-yen coin… moved to ‘Yes’.

--Making someone disappear, it can’t be.

“Does that mean – to kill someone?”

With a twitch, the ten-yen coin moved and slowly swayed at ‘Yes’.

My fingertips were now frozen stiff, and my palms were completely drenched in sweat. My eyes were glued to the ten-yen coin in front of me, to the point where I might inadvertently forget to breathe. Was this what you’d call a prank from of a low-class ghost--?

No, I recall what Akane had told me before.

She said she played this in order prove she wasn’t a liar. As a result, she became feared. Yoishi had said that ‘a specific wandering ghost is summoned’—which meant…no way. Did she actually end up summoning a real ‘God of Death’?

“Understood. Those were all the questions I had. Please return.”

However, Yoishi spoke that with her usual expression.

But—

With a rustle, the ten-yen coin moves to ‘No’.

“Please return.”

The ten-yen coin stayed firmly put at ‘No’.

Even though this was a predictable development in ‘Kokkuri-san’ type ghost stories, actually witnessing the phenomenon of involuntary return first-hand made me realize I would have panicked if I were doing it alone.

『D』『I』『S』『A』『P』『P』『E』『A』『R』

『N』『A』『M』『E』

Haa…haa….haaa…haa….

The ten-yen coin moves – and forms meaning. My breathing becomes ragged as I comprehend the words.

“So does that mean you won’t go back until you’ve made someone disappear?”

Yoishi asked in a clear tone, and the ten-yen coin drags towards ‘Yes’.

--Oooooh, Oi, what are we going to do?

In tears, I glance at Yoishi, then Krishna-san. I could see the sweat appear on Krishna-san’s forehead. Her lips were pursed tightly together, and she had at some point, taken her phone out with one hand. In all likelihood, she had looked up the specialists over at ‘Ikaigabuchi’ on her phone, her finger one button-press away from dialing their number.

However—at that moment.

“Well then—”

Yoishi spoke the words I could never have imagined.

“Well then, please make me disappear.”

……………………………………………

The ten-yen coin did not answer. Could that be because it was the first time this summoned entity had heard such a request? I felt a hint of something confused.

“—Stop it.”

The moment Krishna-san spoke that out loud—

…’Yes’.

The ten-yen coin under my finger formed a small arc on that spot.

I looked up in shock and saw that a black mist had been hanging over our heads for who knows how long.

Yoishi’s long black hair ruffles softly as it slowly sinks into darkness. Seeing that made my body feel an imaginary floating sensation. In the midst of the silence, as if time had stopped – Yoishi merely wore an expression of ecstasy. To be honest, I had no idea what had happened to Yoishi. I noticed more darkness spreading out from the darkness, and before long, the black mist expanded wide enough to envelop the upper half of Yoishi’s body.

“….Hey….Wait a minute….”

The mist continued to enshroud Yoishi. Her face -- her upper body, along with her arms outstretched towards somewhere else, they all continued to disappear.

“Nagi-kun, no!”

Krishna-san’s scream reached my ears, but I had already taken my finger off of the ten-yen coin. I stood up with enough force to throw off my chair and clung to Yoishi’s body, which was enveloped by the black stain-like substance.

“Hey, Yoishi! Stop messing around!”

However, the moment I embraced Yoishi’s soft body with both hands, a horrifying chill closed in on me. That was being transmitted through Yoishi’s body to me, and its root was – Yoishi’s outstretched hands, in short, something present inside the mist.

I saw –Yoishi’s outstretched arms, suspended in midair. I saw the thing her white hands were grasping.

It was black. Black and soft – threaded like someone's hair. Yoishi grasped it, as if putting her hand on its roots. And she pulled it out from the darkness. Without any mercy to the other side’s resistance, she dragged it over to this side. However – I couldn’t see anything. There was nothing in Yoishi’s hands. But for some reason, perhaps because of the way it was held as if it were wrapped in both hands, I couldn’t help but be reminded of a human head, and I thought I could hear the sound of a child crying out somewhere.

“Go back.”

Yoishi spoke as she pulled with all her might on what resembled a human head in her hands.

“There’s nothing left for you to consume.”

In the darkness -- did I hallucinate?

I felt I saw Akane Nanamori's head in Yoishi’s hands.

In mid-air, her pretty face was disfigured in a disheveled mess, and she was crying.

“You’re mistaken.”

And with those parting words –

Yoishi Mitsurugi collapsed audibly in front of my eyes.

  ◯

“What on earth is going on, Nagi-kun?”

After informing the driver of the destination, that was the first thing Krishna-san asked after the taxi started moving.

“Ummm… where should I begin?”

Supporting the unconscious Yoishi with my right arm and feeling exhausted, I explained the events that had transpired thus far.

I told her about the girl selling ghost photographs in the fast-food restaurant. The fact that Yoishi had said she couldn't see her head. And about the photo of 'Dear Nostradamus-sama', the ‘slightly different Kokkuri-san' that the girl said was real. How Akane and her friends played it and the unfortunate result, etcetera, etcetera.

“…..Sigh. So that’s what it was.”

Sitting in the passenger seat, Krishna-san breathed a deep sigh after she had finished listening to everything.

“No, I don’t understand any of it…. Just what did it all mean?”

Krishna-san pushed up her red glasses, which had slid down at some point, with her middle finger and spoke:

“In all likelihood, that girl has a knack for conscious out-of-body experiences.”

“Out-of-body… experiences?”

“That’s right, an ‘Astral projection’, so to speak. Recently, methods of intentionally separating the soul have been circulating on the internet, and if that girl uses the internet, it's not surprising that she knows about them.”

“Ahh, now that you mention it.”

I’d also read a thread on ‘Out-of-body experiences’. But if I recall, in the end, no definitive method was ever worked out, and only a few enthusiasts remained after being certified as trolls.

“That’s right. An out-of-body experience isn’t something anyone can easily do, and it is difficult to distinguish from self-hypnosis and lucid dreaming. In general, when it comes to self-hypnosis, it’s very dangerous for a novice to perform these experiments alone, in the absence of a person to dispel their hypnotic state. It depends a lot on the aptitude of the individual and should never be done willingly – I suspect that child did have that aptitude. I believe she's one of those kids who could do it anywhere at will to some extent.”

“Huh? Then, the Nostradamus-sama from a while ago was, in other words…”

“Yes, that child herself.”

Ah—

Exhausted, I finally understood. That’s what she meant when she said she had been called a liar and had to prove herself.

But…Wait a second. Then does that mean that black mist which turned up at my apartment that night was also Akane? Did she come to check our state of affairs? But – if that’s the case, then something doesn’t add up.

“…Um, Krishna-san. If that thing from before really was Akane herself, and if she is a kid who can do astral projections, then who was the one who took those ghost photographs she had? Could you press the shutter of a camera even if your soul was detached?”

“That girl was able to shift her soul slightly.”

As I tilted my head in befuddlement, Krishna-san shaped her small finger like a knife and held them against her neck.

“She must be a child who can detach only from the neck above like this and peer into the spirit world.”

“…Ah.”

I see. So that’s how it was.

“She has no head.” “I can’t see it.”

Yoishi had said so in the fast-food restaurant. So that was, in short, because Akane had left her head on the other side?

“In short, the child could have peeked into the world where the dead roam when she used her astral projection and identified their location.”

“But – But, if I recall correctly, Akane told me she couldn’t see them, only know they were there.”

“We who cannot see it can only imagine what kind of world it is. I told you once before that I used to recognize people by their auras when I was a child, but people were just a blur of light, and I couldn't even tell whether it was the living or the dead I was seeing. However, it is highly likely that my teacher Takita-san and Yoishi can see them more clearly. From there, it's a matter of individual disposition -- but it's possible that only the head of the girl which went to the other side in spirit form did not return.”

….Aah, I see.

I understood the Akane’s situation – but if that was the case, did that mean that Yoishi normally saw people in their spiritual form rather than their physical bodies? Is she always in daze because her mind can't cope with looking at their every detail, and whether willingly or unwillingly, she throws up when she sees something incomprehensible? Hey, hey, hey, what kind of world does she usually see......?

I felt goosebumps in my arms, and rubbed them, when—

“To put it frankly…”

Krishna-san added as she scratched her bobbed hair.

“No one knows anything about the world beyond.”

“…Huh?”

“For conveniences’ sake, the world is divided into this world and the next. Since time immemorial, It is merely something devised by the living out of a sense of regret for the dead. For those who believe in it, the afterlife does exist, and for those who don't, it's a fairy tale. But for example -- hmm, yes, it’s easier to understand if you think of the deep sea, thousands of meters below the surface. Only a tiny percent of the world and the ecosystems that exist down there have been established. For some scientists, it’s a world filled with even more mysteries than Mars. We know next to nothing, but we do know that there is life in the depths of the sea. And if we were to liken highly trained psychics to divers, they can only dive a few dozen meters into the shallows at most. As for what lurks thousands of meters under the sea, no one knows.”

Hearing that—

I suddenly recalled the scene I saw one day when I went to visit a remote island with my father. I remember feeling horrified seeing the color of the open sea from the ferry. On that sea, I clearly saw the moment when its color changed from blue to black. I later learnt that it was from that point, that the Suruga Trough began, but I was terrified at the time, feeling as if hell was opening its mouth. It was the first experience that made me realize that there was a world right there in this world that I could never enter, even if it took me a lifetime.

“One of the biggest reasons astral projections are considered dangerous is because there are cases where repeating them can weaken the connection between body and soul.”

Krishna-san continued speaking quietly.

“For that girl, it may have been like holding her breath and picking up a pretty marble from the bottom of a swimming pool just for the fun of it. However, after carelessly repeating out-of-body experiences, she might have become constantly out of phase, and then, perhaps – her head ended up disappearing from the neck up.”

“Is… Akane alright now?”

“I don’t know.” Sighed Krishna-san.

“In the end, it’s always a problem on our side. Around evening time, a few friends gather around a peculiar piece of paper. They address things that aren’t supposed to be there. Then three or more people put their fingers on a ten-yen coin. Ordinary people would have doubts at the onset about the ‘maybe’ in this situation. If you start believing even 1% of the time, that’s when the paranormal comes into play. In other words, what makes ‘Kokkuri-san’ so dangerous is that it is a form of séance that leads to a state of mind that is easy to connect with. From a probabilistic point of view, it's usually stranger that the ten-yen coin doesn't move. Everyone tries to move it in one direction or the other and immediately gives up on the direction in which it doesn't move, but sometimes the direction of movement just happens to match. It feels as if it moved regardless of one's intention. At that moment, the probability of paranormal existence jumps up in the mind of that person. Therefore, it is best not to play ‘Kokkuri-san’ if you are apt to believe in it -- And the real problem is the human mind that starts to think about playing games like 'Kokkuri-san'.”

Krishna-san's voice, which had gotten louder at some point, startled the taxi driver – but I recalled something. Three words Akane had mentioned regarding ‘family’.

Those were ‘hell’, ‘cleaning’ and ‘maze’.

She said the first word that comes to mind was ‘pleasant’, and the last word was ‘unpleasant’ -- What was life like for an elementary schoolchild who’s first thought when she hears of ‘home’ to be ‘prison’? Somewhere originally meant to be a place of safety to rest your body and mind, what would compel someone to feel as if it were a place to be lost and search for an exit?

“Children follow and believe their parents as though they are the only absolute God.”

Krishna continued to speak sadly.

“Whether that is right or wrong, it’s not something they can decide, as they only have an extremely narrow set of morals. I would like to hope the adults around her handle things wisely, but— from this point onwards, we're stepping into private territory, and that's not something an outsider can carelessly intrude into based on speculations, so it’s difficult. There are some things in this world that can't be dealt with by effort alone.”

Oddly enough – Yoishi said the same thing in the fast-food restaurant.

I've certainly witnessed parents beating their children badly on the street. I’m always confused about whether to stop them, or to overlook it. I wonder if that’s going too far as a part of their upbringing, but then I end up thinking that just might be my point of view because I’m not the parent. Maybe I'll understand that one day when I become a parent. Maybe the parents who beat their children are the ones crying on the inside. That’s what I hope – but, no matter how much I think on it, as I am now, I wouldn’t know.

“Well then, now it’s my turn to ask the questions.”

Suddenly hearing that voice, I look up to see Krishna-san turning towards me.

“Why is this taxi heading towards your house?”

“…Huh?”

“Why is this taxi, meant to be heading to Yoishi’s house, headed to your apartment? I have been wondering about this for a while now.”

…Oh no.

I was in a hurry and gave the driver my home address without thinking about it – it sounds extremely suspicious for sure. Sweat trickled down my clothes and I gently looked at Krishna's face. The petite, baby-faced occult website manager frowned, and her large eyes behind her red glasses glittered with a light that would not allow any lies.

“U…ummm…”

If I had lied at this point and said it was because I didn't know where she lived, things might have turned out fine.

But I wasn’t good at lying, and if the truth did come out some day, then this person’s trust in me – assuming she still had any left — would be lost to the very core. She would never take my words at face value ever again. I didn't want that.

“Uh… Actually.”

I started from the beginning. How Yoishi had crashed into my apartment for almost a month now, bringing along nothing more than a single bag. How I had been struggling with Yoishi, who was parasitizing in my loft and who ate, slept, bathed and lived wrong in every way, and that a lot had happened during that time and that I had finally decided on the ‘Yoishi Mitsurugi Rehabilitation Plan’.

After I had told her everything:

“…In short, right after the incident with Takamura-san?” Krishna-san asked, dumbfounded.

“It’s already been a month… under the same roof?”

I nodded quietly.

Krishna-san let out a deep, deep sigh as she sunk in her seat.

For a while, only silence filled the interior of the car, and I felt the taxi driver's ears were becoming like Dumbo. It was really awkward.

“Ever since I first met you – we haven’t seen eye to eye on this.”

Krishna-san eventually muttered.

“I keep telling you it’s impossible to bring Yoishi back to this side, and you stubbornly continue to try, always putting yourself in danger.”

“……..”

“And it’s already becoming your life. I’m sure that determination was already solidified when you recently jumped off the roof of the school building.”

The fact that her voice did not contain anger, but more like she was letting loose, had the opposite effect of making my conscience ache.

“I’m sorry.”

When I apologized, Krishna-san spat out that it was nothing to apologize for.

“It’s not something to apologize for – but, there’s nothing much a girl can do when a boy has decided to do something, and that makes me a little sad.”

Hearing that timid line made me feel a deep sense of guilt and remorse, and I lowered my head. I suddenly felt a gaze and looked up and caught the eye of the taxi driver looking in the rear-view mirror. For some reason, I felt the taxi driver was saying this with warm, wrinkled eyes:

-- I'm glad you’ve met a nice woman, kid.

Did he mean Krishna-san – or was it this paranormal high school girl who was leaning over like a corpse beside me with her long black hair covering her face?

I had no idea.

  ◯

“Things can't go on like this forever, I'll try to come up with something as well.”

After helping me put Yoishi on my futon downstairs, Krishna-san said this and left.

“However, in the unlikely event that you do something strange or indecent to Yoishi – I will never ever ever talk to you again! I’ll revile you for the rest of my life -- no, for the next seven generations!”

She yelled out loud while blushing just as the door closed.

I wouldn’t do something like that – or rather, was she really going to live seven generations beyond my time, I thought exasperatedly as I saw her off.

It was still just past noon, and bright outside.

I absentmindedly gazed at the light pouring in from the window and realized that, in the end, Yoishi didn’t go to school today. She’ll probably end up being marked absent without reason.

In the first place, how did she explain her parasitizing in my loft to the school? The fundamental question is, where the hell are her parents? Tuition fees for private schools don’t come cheap, so who the hell is paying for her? The girl who was shrouded in all that mystery was right now comfortably asleep next to me. Seeing her eyes closed with a strangely cute expression on her face, it was as if she was replenishing the sleep deprivation caused by staying online until dawn, rather than collapsing from extreme mental fatigue, and that started to piss me off. I glared at her fair, well-formed face – but then I thought…

In the end, didn’t she manage to save that girl? Before, she said something like ‘What happens to her is none of my concern’, but at that time, the thing Yoishi had dragged out from that black mist-like thing was the head of that girl that hadn’t returned.

“It’s definitely not what I would call the smartest way of doing things, but this girl does turn up to help in the end.”

It was right when I said it—

“…That’s not it.”

Her long eyelashes twitched, and Yoishi opened her large eyes.

“Huh, you woke up? What are you talking about?”

I called out to her, and Yoishi replied with a dazed expression:

“I didn’t help anyone. That’s not something I can do. I was just curious about why that girl's head was missing.”

….Ah.

I was relieved thinking that everything had been resolved amicably, but there were still a lot of things left I didn’t understand. Yoishi threw up abruptly at that fast-food restaurant that time. I don't know if it was a ghost or malice that made her throw up, but it was because she felt something incredibly horrific there. Besides that, Akane Nanamori also said that when she pawned off that photo to Yoishi. That this photo was really dangerous.

“But what a pity.”

Yoishi spoke while looking up at the ceiling.

“That girl, doesn’t have long to live.”

Her stilted speech, painted my world dark.

“….D, doesn’t have long to live? What do you mean?”

“Combined with what you heard, the girl’s classmates doubted she could sense places where ghosts wandered and take their photos. And to prove that, she used Kokkuri-san. She probably summoned herself by herself.”

“Ah, I understand that much. So, the astral projected head of hers didn’t return, right? Then didn’t you pull something out of that misty thing? Wasn’t it her?”

Yoishi quietly shook her head.

“I couldn't see her head from the beginning, nor could I see a ring of light or anything that resembled a guardian spirit. This was very unusual. There's usually more than one entity standing over everyone's shoulder -- Did it already escape? Or was it consumed? -- There was nothing on that child's shoulder.”

“Oooo, Oi, consumed?”

…No, that was it. When we were playing ‘Kokkuri-san’, it was the last thing Yoishi said. ‘There’s nothing left for you to consume’. Who… was consuming what, exactly? If that wasn’t Akane, then what on earth was Yoishi talking to?

But then – I remembered.

Come to think of it, what was that woman sitting next to Akane in the fast-food restaurant? Yoishi had described her as a woman with dark eyes who was fiddling with something….

“Y-Yoishi…. What… did you see?”

I ask, opening my parched throat.

“What was the ghost of the woman you saw sitting next to Akane in the restaurant?”

“I called it a woman for convenience’s sake – but, that wasn’t entirely accurate. It’s face definitely resembled that of a woman. It had slender arms, but the torso was long and thin, stretching like a snake into the darkness beyond. Sometimes it comes floating up from somewhere at great speed and eats whatever is there. I believe it's using that 'Dear Nostradamus' as an entrance now.”

“…W, wh, what the hell is that monster? Why the heck did it suddenly appear?”

“In all likelihood, the hexagram used in ‘Dear Nos' is to blame. It’s the Star of David in the West, but - in this island country, it's more like a Kagome crest. It's an old belief in places like Shinshu. Kagome points to a 'Curse God'."

“…C-curse God?”

“I’ve seen them several times before. But I didn’t know what that was. I tried to get that girl’s head back, but that was impossible. Maybe it’s not something possible for a human being to do”.

Those decisively hollow words… made my skin crawl.

I can feel the presence of something other than me and Yoishi in this room, something else was creeping in.

“As that child continued her astral projections, she ended up being marked. It’s often said that an astral projection is dangerous because it weakens the connection between body and soul, but that’s not the only reason. If something unfamiliar wanders aimlessly in front of you, then the things nestled in the 'abyss' will take an interest.”

After that, Yoishi gazed at me with her glass bead eyes, and spoke.

“You often ask me what I see. You ask me what the world beyond is like, but even I don’t understand it well. However – right now, I recalled something awfully similar.”

“That is…?”

“The sea at night. The dark, black – sea.”

“….”

“It’s too dark to see what lies out there. It’s so vast and so deep that it’s enough to overwhelm you. If you’re lucky, you might catch a glimpse of something peeking out of the water, but what that is and where it came from is something no one will tell you, and it’s not something one can know as long as they are alive.”

Those words made me recall Krishna-san’s words once more—

Before I’d realized, the dark sea appeared before my eyes. The rough sound of the crashing waves was right up close to my ears. I recalled the fear of being dragged in, of something huge staring back at me.

“S…say, Yoishi. If Akane had peeked in the ‘abyss’ you’re talking about – and if that black mist-thing that appeared in the clubroom at that time was the entrance to it – then how were you able to come back after being swallowed by it?”

In reply, Yoishi sat up with a curious expression on her face.

“Why, you ask…?”

And then, she told me, with a gaze that seemed to taste the despair inside me.

“Because, I’m---"

“Someone who's already been thoroughly consumed.”

---

Case 10: The Invisible Friend

Movies can change your life. It’s possible that a person, who was thinking of ending their life, would, after seeing this movie, happily trot out of the cinema and go buy a flower for themselves—

A guy in my high school who was really into movies said that; I wonder how he’s doing nowadays.

The ‘Yoishi Mitsurugi Rehabilitation Plan’ had gotten off to a hopeless start, but I was instantly comforted when I remembered this line and that film buff's boundless, radiating smile. I reassured myself, thinking I’d only just started. Having said that, I had realized something: The only thing besides the occult that brough a faint glimmer to Yoishi Mitsurugi’s eyes, was movies.

She’d sometimes wander off to the rental store, borrow a few films and watched them alone on her computer. What types of movies did she watch? …Well, it was obvious. She wouldn’t be watching anything like a teary-eyed drama about human relationships or a thrilling action adventure that made you scream with excitement. One day, she was watching a splatter horror film with intense concentration that had more blood 'splattering', rather than 'gushing', I asked her if she’d ever been moved emotionally by anything, and she looked at me with a curious expression.

“Animals… you said you had no interest in them. Then, look, what about kid stuff? Wouldn’t it be refreshing to be a child again?”

“The world of children is much crueler.”

Her words suddenly made me bitter as they reminded me of the incident from the other day, but I refused to back down.

“But even you might have kids one day.”

“I will not - I will never do anything to leave my genes in this world.”

Yoishi asserted flat out, without losing her expression.

I’m still a long way from seeing her smile, I thought, but when I heard that, I also had a deep feeling of relief somehow.

That was in a way, a declaration of Yoishi’s chastity, a declaration of her virginity. I think I was somewhat relieved to know she was a virgin. No, it wasn’t because I was into virgins or anything like that, it was just a sense of relief that the cause of her twisted nature was not a result of sexual abuse suffered at the hands of a close relative, like what might have been for Ayana Takamura, who disappeared in the underground place of the Koumei institute.

It's been about half a year since I met her. But Yoishi was yet to even speak of her family. It was actually difficult to ask her, since she was emitting a hundred-meter aura in every cardinal direction suggesting that if you were to ask about her family, she’d put a curse on you with all her knowledge. That’s why I didn’t ask, and I felt I would probably never have the chance to.

“But – saying that.”

It was also true that it would be a problem if I don’t ask some day.

After all, someone else's daughter was living -- or rather, parasitizing - in the loft of my apartment. Whenever I’d see Krishna-san, she’d persistently ask: “When are you going to resolve the situation?”, and moreover, this was not a normal situation.

I mean, was it my fault?

When I think about that day again, I still get angry.

In the first place, when Yoishi came to my apartment, it was bad enough that Karasu-san happened to be there. Karasu-san was from the old guard and a regular visitor to the occult site ‘Ikaigabuchi’. She was a beautiful woman whose age was unknown, and her actual profession was being a fortune teller, but she had a propensity to be too easy going or too mischievous, to think everything is fine as long as it's funny and to take no account of the trouble she caused to those around her.

She babbled something incomprehensible like:『There, there, it’s fine, isn’t it? It’s better to live together first than to get married out of the blue.』wearing a grin on her face; At that time, I was pinned down with my legs tied. During that period, Yoishi finished shifting her things in the blink of an eye. Even though I say she shifted her things, she took out from her bag what seemed to be the only possession she had brought along: her laptop, and threw all my stuff down from the loft, but that was the start of her life as a parasite in my home.

But they say, ‘There’s no use crying over spilled milk’, and it’s not in my nature to grumble about things that have already happened. Yes, even if it’s a misty hope behind the fog, the journey of a thousand miles begins with the first step. It's all about action, determination.

Having said that, I was painstakingly working to improve Yoishi’s eating habits, and trying to change her life cycle to a daytime one every day. I made her clean up after herself, made her habitualize taking a bath, and hoped that one day – I could fill in the blank pieces of Yoishi Mitsurugi that existed inside me. I hoped that a day might come... when she would finally smile.

And thus, it was on a Sunday in December.

“Yoishi! Lunch is ready!”

It was in the afternoon that day, I had cooked Chinese style fried rice with lettuce and pork for two people and called out to Yoishi in the loft, but there was no reply, nor did she come down.

“Heeeey, Yoishi!”

I called out once more, but there was no reply; I clicked my tongue and climbed up the ladder.

There, I found her lying in her permanently laid out futon wearing her school uniform, she had headphones on and some sort of video was playing on her computer. It was a little unusual to see her excited with eyes wide open. I crawled up to the loft and stood next to her, wondering if she had rented a hit film, when I realized…

The LCD panel of her computer wasn’t playing a movie. It looked like some kind of amateur home video. It appeared to be an event at some kindergarten. It showed smiling children marching in a line in an auditorium-like building, with their parents around them, creating a very congenial atmosphere.

“What is this--? A video of someone you know?”

I asked, but Yoishi silently put her index finger to her lips.

“It starts now.”

“…Huh?”

Yoishi unplugged the wire from the headphone jack, and the audio started playing through the computer speakers. I had no choice but to sit down next to Yoishi in my apron and peered into the screen with my face up close.

Mixed in with the noisy cheers of the crowd was the frolicking voices of the kindergarten children. The slight camera shakes and frequent panning of the camera in search of a subject truly did resemble a home video. The cameraman’s focus seemed to be the children in their yellow uniforms for most of the time – but at certain points, the camera was panned to the left as if they had suddenly noticed something. The camera wanders through the parents as if looking for something, or rather, someone. But after doing so for a while, the camera abruptly returns to the march of the school children once more.

“Why did it turn to the left just now?”

Yoishi operated the computer in silence and rewound the footage again.

The footage starts to play once more. The cheerful kindergartners. The smiling parents looking at the camera. And the camera suddenly pans to the left once again. It lingers for a while in search of a subject, then returns to focus on the kids in the front again—

“Huh?”

I suddenly noticed something strange.

“Show it to me once more.”

Yoishi rewinds the video once again. The video pans left from the marching school kids. In the far back rows of the parents --Ah, I knew it. There was a kindergartner dressed in a yellow school uniform and a hat. It was too blurry and far away to determine if it was a boy or a girl… but, that child alone stood still in the corner of the parents' section, with their head down, looking like they were the only one not taking part in the fun event.

“Why is that child… not taking part in the march?”

As I uttered that, Yoishi rewound the video again and played it back once more. This time from the point the camera panned to the left. It showed the figure of the lone kindergartner amidst the parents, and that was when I finally felt a sense of unease. For some reason, a shiver ran down my spine.

“…P-play it once again, please.”

After a few more replays, I finally realized what that was.

More so than I saw earlier, no, the more I replayed it…. The more different that kindergartner’s body leaned. It seemed as if their body was turning towards us slowly. At the same time a shivering cold took over me, and I remembered.

It was something I had seen on the internet, a famous ghost story among occult enthusiasts.

It began when a university film club snuck into a train station late at night to film. They wanted footage of an empty station, but after they finished filming and checked the footage, they somehow found a woman on the platform with an umbrella on the next platform across the tracks. The student who was director among them seemed angry on why no one had seen her during filming, but as they replayed the footage, someone noticed.

Why was the woman there alone at the station after the last train had departed?

Moreover, each time the footage was replayed, wasn’t the woman turning her body towards the camera, little by little?

Everyone laughed in the beginning, thinking such a thing wasn’t possible, but after ten replays, everyone started to go quiet. The woman whose back was clearly turned away from the camera, had turned her body far back enough that her face was visible. With long black hair and head hung down, her movements which indicated she would soon look up and face the camera, made everyone tremble with fear, and the film was sealed and burnt in a temple. After that, it was said that the film crew members met with strange accidents and died – I didn’t know the details. I think there might have been some embellishments as well.

Suddenly recalling that story, I panicked and stopped the video.

“….Ooo, Oi, Yoishi…This, it can’t be…?”

Yoishi, who was close enough to catch my breath, spoke happily.

“It’s the real thing.”

  ◯

Yoishi called the rental store to check; It seemed that the person who rented the DVD previously returned it with the wrong disc, and the shop owner failed to check it, so it found its way here.

“What kind of person had this in their possession, I wonder?”

Yoishi eyes lit up as she asked, and after we gulped down the fried rice that had already turned cold, we rode together on the mama bike and headed towards the rental shop.

We arrived at the rental shop, a complex attached to a video game and book department. It was crowded with customers on a Sunday. I stopped my mama bike at the entrance and locked it, while Yoishi quickly headed inside towards the reception. I entered the shop belatedly and watched from a short distance, the young male shop assistant was apologizing profusely and seemed to be asking if she would like to borrow it again.

“I don't have time for that anymore.”

Yoishi shook her head, and then pressed the apologetic-looking employee, “Instead, I'd like you to tell me who rented this film before me.”

However, despite it being a mistake on the employees’ part, he refused, saying “I’m afraid we can’t do that.” Well, that was obvious as it was personal information. Yoishi persistently nagged him for a while, saying, "Do something about that", but the shopkeeper just bowed his head and refused to do so.

Eventually, Yoishi left the reception area, and I followed her.

As I approached Yoishi, who seemed to hide behind a pillar, she spoke:

“We'll see what happens here for a while. That employee is bound to contact the previous borrower to retrieve the original disc.”

“I see.”

We killed time by pretended to see a trailer of a new film on display on the monitor there, while keeping an eye on the employee from earlier, he soon started making a phone call somewhere while looking at his computer screen. After staring intently at the fingertips of the employee pressing the buttons on the push-button phone, Yoishi took out her phone and inputted some numbers. She then pressed the call button after the employee had finished talking and hung up.

--This girl could actually be a detective in the future.

I watched her in amazement, but as Yoishi said “Hello”, I involuntarily held my breath.

“Sorry for disturbing you once more. I’m calling from the video rental store again.”

I drew closer to Yoishi and leaned my ear into the phone to catch the voice from the other side.

〈…I told you I can't come today.〉

The voice from the other side seemed to belong to a woman. She spoke in a somewhat muffled tone of voice.

“Yes, I understand. There was something we forgot to mention – actually, the film has been booked by another customer, and if it's all right with you, we'd like to come and retrieve it now, so may we come over to your house?”

〈………………..〉

The woman on the other side briefly went silent as if troubled by the request.

However, she eventually consented with a small, muffled〈…Understood〉, “Is this address alright?” Yoishi asked as she gave her a random address.

Thereupon, the other party must have said 'no', and Yoishi immediately apologized.

“We’re sorry, it seems the address has been entered incorrectly in the system. Can you please inform us of the correct one once more?”

After that, Yoishi quickly jotted down the correct address she managed to wring out of the woman on a piece of paper. All I could do was watch on nervously.

“You’re… amazing.”

I said that to Yoishi after she hung up,

“Let’s go.” said Yoishi, and we immediately set off.

The address led us to a residential area near Shakujii Park, far north of Kichijoji Station. The area was densely populated with rather small dwellings via several small alleys, making it difficult to get a sense of direction.

Yoishi checked the address on the telephone pole with the paper in one hand, and continued walking. I followed behind, pushing my mama bicycle.

“Say. It’s alright to visit that house, but, what are we going to do about that DVD the person mistakenly put in there instead of the film? Isn’t it still back at the shop?”

“You receive the film and return it to the shop as the shopkeeper doesn’t know your face, and you officially receive that DVD instead. You then return it to this person again.”

“Ah…. I see.”

“If you do that, we can talk to that person twice, and watch it once more.”

“If possible, I don’t wanna see that again.”

As I told her that.

“It’s here.”

Yoishi stopped in her tracks.

It was— one of the small developments in a residential area. Strangely enough, even though it was broad daylight, the house seemed dimly lit. The plot of about 83 square meters was surrounded by a wall, and along the inside of the wall was covered thick with many dogwood trees that had not been touched for quite some time now. The nameplate on the rusty iron gate read 'Iizuka'. Peering inside through the spider-webbed gateposts, I saw a doghouse by the front door. But there was nothing inside – or rather, the entrance to the kennel was boarded up and nailed shut, which felt creepy.

“Huh… what a creepy house.”

I turned back to see Yoishi had her lips pursed together, her pale face seemed to be even paler. She looked like she was trying very hard to endure.

“H...hey, are you gonna throw up? Is that it?”

--Shit. I had forgotten to bring along a plastic bag since we had left in a hurry.

As I fumbled around both my pockets:

“…It’s alright.”

Yoishi muttered as she staggered to the sooty intercom next to the gate and pressed the button. A chime rang out from inside the house, and eventually a quiet voice came through the intercom speaker, “…Yes.”

Yoishi had a deathly expression on her face and didn’t say anything, so I had no choice but to answer in her stead.

“W…we’re from the rental shop that called earlier! We’re here to pick up the film!”

The front door opened inaudibly – And a woman who looked to be in her thirties appeared.

“…Please come in.”

“S-sorry to disturb you.”

Leaving me aside, I thought that Yoishi, dressed in a high school uniform would be nothing but suspicious, but the woman didn’t seem to care about that at all.

We took off our shoes at the entrance, went past the creaking, dimly lit corridor and were shown into a 10 sqm living room, where we sat down in front of a wooden table as indicated by the woman.

“I’ll bring some tea.”

While the woman was in the kitchen, I managed to get a look around the room. The ceiling wasn't so high, and an old, worn-out carpet lay spread on the tatami. There were several stains on the carpet, probably from children spilling on it.

Come to think about it, there were a number of stains on the tatami in the living room of my parent's home. I guess that’s how it is in a house with small children. However, it was as silent as the grave inside the house, as if there wasn't anyone else present besides that woman.

Nonetheless, it was dark.

Despite the curtains of the sash leading to the small courtyard being open, a gloomy darkness clung to the room. Was the room just bad at receiving sunlight? The warm winter sunshine continued to fall outside in the courtyard, but the room received none of that blessing.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting."

The woman eventually brought two teas and an open DVD.

"...Here, I'm sorry. I ended up returning it with the wrong disc."

"Ah, yes, that seems to have been the case."

I said that while taking the disc from the woman, when "...Well then", she looked at me in the face.

Her emaciated face… shocked me. I checked her appearance carefully once more. Her face, without any makeup, was pale and had several deep wrinkles. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her lips looked parched. Even though she wasn't that old, there were many white streaks running through her shoulder-length hair.

--She was dead, while alive.

I shook my head in a panic as I suddenly thought such insolent things.

"Ah, ummm - - About the DVD you mistakenly put in. Hmm... that is..."

I looked to my side, puzzled as what to say.

"I have a question."

Yoishi, who had been quiet all this while, suddenly spoke up.

"Are you the one who shot that video?"

"…Which video are you referring to?"

"The video taken at that kindergarten."

In response, the woman's eyes opened slightly.

"…Did you see that one?"

"I'm sorry. We had to make sure of the contents."

"…How much of it did you watch...?"

"All of it."

Yoishi answered.

"We saw all of it, including the child who shouldn't have been there."

A chilling cold air rose at these words.

I gripped my knees as I sat in the formal position.

"...Is that so?"

The woman looked away from us, and her gaze focused downwards, as if she stared on the stains on the carpet. She stayed like that as Yoishi asked her.

"Who is that child, and what meaning does that video have? Actually, a lot of bad things have happened at our store since then. I believe you have an idea of the kind of things that are happening."

Yoishi had spoken that much, when--

"Mai!"

Suddenly, the woman turned and sent an ear-splitting scream my way, causing me to buckle reflexively.

"Go over there!"

After looking closely, I saw that her focus was behind us, and I turned back to see a paper sliding door closing behind me.

"…That was my daughter, I beg your pardon."

"....Ah, not at all."

Apparently, her child was in the next room.

"--Have you heard the rumor of the child known as 'Shōko-chan'?"

"Huh?"

I tilted my head in puzzlement at the unexpected question, as the woman continued.

"My daughter really loves that rumor in her kindergarten. She says it's a secret friend that the adults can't see and only the preschoolers know about."

"Is the child in that video that 'Shōko-chan'?"

Yoishi asked, but it seemed as if her question didn't reach that woman.

"One day, a lone frog was found stabbed to death at the end of the bamboo in the kindergarten's hedge."

The woman narrated the tale, letting her words fall to the floor.

"The teachers seemed to have been frightened and removed it, but after a few days, another frog stabbed to death was discovered. And then... they gathered all the children together and cautioned them not to do such poor things to living creatures. They didn't intend to go into who did it, but one of the children was brought to tears and said, 'I tried to stop it’. They then asked if he knew who did it, and after hesitating for a moment, he answered, ‘Shōko-chan’. However, there was no such child bearing that name in the kindergarten. The teachers thought it must have been someone’s nickname, but shortly afterwards, the child who told them the name had a traffic accident. The child survived, but the shock was so severe that he soon transferred to another school. After that, a strange rumor started spreading among the children: ‘Takuya-kun had an accident because he tattled to the teachers.’”

“Does that mean he got into an accident because ‘Shōko-chan’ held a grudge against him?’”

Yoishi interjected, and the woman nodded slightly.

“However, as I mentioned earlier, there were no children named ‘Shōko-chan’ enrolled in that kindergarten. Nevertheless, some of the old staff members knew the name, and there were stories from children of all generations: of children who were locked in the barn where entry was forbidden, or children who had burns on their stomachs, backs and other parts of their bodies that were not easily seen by adults.”

“That film—”

Yoishi asked her:

“Were you the one who made that video?”

“…Yes.”

“Were you trying to film your daughter?”

“…Yes.”

“Why did you turn the camera midway through to an irrelevant direction away from your daughter?”

“…That was… I somehow felt I had to point the camera in that direction… Yes, I unwittingly pointed my camera that way.”

“Do you think the child in the film present where they’re not supposed to be is ‘Shōko-chan’?”

“…I don’t know.”

“How many times did you see that film?”

However, the moment Yoishi mouthed those words.

I was horrified, as the woman suddenly grabbed her hair tightly and started to pull with enough force to tear it all off.

--Hey Yoishi. Stop it. Something's wrong with her.

I gently tapped Yoishi’s knee with the intention of telling her so, but she continued her interrogation without a care.

“Did you watch it until the child turned his head completely? Did you make eye contact wi—”

“A, …AAAGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

The woman started screaming, and I shrieked back in fear.

But - at the same time – Yoishi sitting right next to me started making a strange noise.

“…B, Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrgghhhh!”

The pale Yoishi suddenly began to vomit loudly on the spot.

“U-ooooooooooooo…”

Despite being screamed at from the front and the side, I still managed to catch Yoishi’s vomit in mid-air by holding out my hands thanks to my reaction speed, which was in a realm where it could be called that of a master or an expert. I somehow managed to protect the carpet in someone else's house from her vomit, but my hands were now filled with her warm puke.

“…I, I’m terribly sorry.”

I apologized to the woman, but I didn't know what to do from there. I had no idea what I was doing anymore, I was here in this creepy house, sandwiched between two denpas, with vomit in my hands. The woman who shouted for a while fell silent again, and Yoishi being Yoishi, didn’t care about the drool on her mouth, and continued to ask questions.

“You returned that film to the rental store on purpose, didn’t you?”

The woman looked up slightly at Yoishi’s question, but I looked at her, startled.

--On purpose? What do you mean, on purpose?

“You must have deliberately returned that film to the rental store. Was it because you were afraid of the footage of the schoolchild turning towards you every time it played? Because you felt something would happen if you looked at their face? No. Maybe you already made eye-contact with the child in the video -- and maybe, something already happened in this house. Perhaps something is happening to your daughter."

“…Please leave.”

The woman spoke in a frail voice.

“I think you’re better off not knowing any more than that. Besides -- you two are not from that store, correct?”

…Damn, we got caught.

I mean, wasn’t it obvious?

A high school girl school uniform who asks such sharp questions and then suddenly throws up in her companion's hands can't possibly be an employee from the rental store.

“Please excuse us.”

I apologized, stood up and kicked Yoishi on the knee with my toe.

It was an obvious signal that enough was enough, and that it was time to leave.

  ◯

When I went outside, I felt a dazzling sense of brightness.

The oxygen was thick, the sunlight felt warm. Above all, there was a sense of liberation, as if I had escaped from a monotone world and discovered a world of color. I wanted to take a deep breath, but the sour smell from the liquid on my hands prevented me from doing that. As I contemplated on what to do with it:

“If we don't hurry, it could get bad.”

Yoishi spoke that, and began to walk at a brisk pace. She still looked pale, but her gait was steadier than before.

“H, hey, wait a second! My bike! You push my bike!”

Yoishi tossed her black hair, turned around and tilted her head in puzzlement.

“Don’t act like you don’t know why. My hands are full because of you, the least you could do is push my bike.”

Yoishi then stood motionlessly in place as she stared at the vomit in my hands as if she had just noticed, and spoke:

“Are you a vomit maniac or something?”

“…Huh?”

“How long are you going to keep carrying that around as if it were precious material?”

“…Y,Y, You bitch. There’s no way anyone would carry this around because they liked it! If you’re gonna go around throwing up everywhere, then it’s your job to carry a plastic bag with you at all times! I mean, is this stinky crap something you can just casually throw everywhere? It's a nuisance to the neighborhood, so throw it in the toilet of a park somewhere! And wash my hands while you’re at it!”

Hearing my fervent speech go that far, Yoishi finally put her hands on the mama bike.

Although she seemed very reluctant to do so, we went to the toilet in Shakujii Park together. After dumping Yoishi’s vomit in the public toilet by the entrance, I thoroughly washed my hands with soap in the hand-washing area. Not having a handkerchief, I wiped my wet hands on the back of my jeans.

“Say, have you heard the term, Imaginary companion?”

Yoishi suddenly asked me out of the blue.

“Imaginary companion…? Ah… it’s that, right? A friend who only exists in your imagination when you're a kid, right?”

“Yes, also known as an imaginary friend. Children are in their own way, under pressure adults cannot perceive. Their minds have not developed resistance or anything yet, so they create the ultimate ideal, an imaginary friend to protect themselves.”

“I’ve heard about it before, so what of it?”

I asked that much, when I suddenly realized.

“….Eh? Wait, are you saying… that’s what we saw in the DVD?”

Yoishi shook her head and said ‘I don’t know’, before walking off.

“At first, I thought that was the case – but, I feel it’s different somehow.”

Her white face hung downwards as she moved away, I drag my mama bike in a rush to catch up with her.

“Wait, why is there an imaginary friend in the video?”

Besides that, according to the story that woman named Iizuka told us, the image of the rumored ‘Shōko-chan’ sounded more like it was the target of everyone’s fear. It was nothing like an ideal friend that appeared in order to protect a child’s spirit. On top of that, wasn’t it weird how all the other kids shared that image?

“Right, it’s weird.”

Yoishi muttered happily for some reason.

“That’s exactly what makes me curious.”

Her eyes were suddenly filled with vitality. They shone with such energy that it was hard to believe she had just vomited a few moments ago.

“Anyways, we’ve already lost twenty minutes. Let’s hurry up.”

“Hurry up…? What for?”

“We need to hurry up and make sure that video isn’t seen by anyone else.”

As I looked at Yoishi, who had already taken a seat on the back of the mama bike and was waiting for me to get on, I felt deeply dismayed.

--Oi, just how many times did we see that dangerous video?

Thereafter, we rode double on the mama bike illegally back to the rental shop, and as per Yoishi’s suggestion, I returned the movie that should have been returned originally and took back that creepy DVD with the kindergartner once more. The store employee put the DVD in a cheap case, as though he felt bad about giving it back bare-cased, but even so, it felt scary to hold the DVD with that creepy thing in it directly in my hand. Staring at the light bounce off the disc inside the case made me reluctantly recall that grainy video. A chill ran down my spine as I recalled the kindergartner with their head hanging down, and how, with each successive replay, their body slowly turned towards us and head raises up with each playback.

Despite that, I had no choice to take it with me, so I quickly made my way to the exit and thrust the DVD into Yoishi’s hands, who was waiting outside the shop.

“Here. So, what do you plan on doing with it?”

“I wonder.”

Yoishi gave an irresponsible comment, but—

Didn’t you take it back because you had some kind of plan?

“Say, what did you mean when you said that woman deliberately returned this DVD to the shop?”

“Same as you are now. She didn’t want to hold it for a long time, so throwing it away was the best option, and I believe she threw it away many times over. However, in all likelihood -- this ended up returning.”

“Ended up returning??”

“There are things in this world imbued with such a nature, like ’A doll that’s been loved for a long time’, or ‘A creation you put your heart and soul into’, Most of the time, it's just that the original owner hasn't quite let go of the old feelings in their heart and is calling them back."

That suddenly made me recall the doll memorial in the temple I saw when I was on a school field trip to Kyoto. I recalled that in one corner of that temple, a smaller temple surrounded by shimenawa was built separately, where countless dolls were bunched together and how they stared coldly at me. I recalled the bundle of hollow stares that suggested they were no longer needed by their masters, and I remember running off reflexively.

“It would be best to seal it off somewhere.”

--Hey, don’t tell me you plan on swiping another shimenawa from a temple again? I had a bad feeling as I stared at Yoishi play around with the DVD in her hand by spinning it round, when—

“Oh, Nagi-kun-- and Yoishi-chan?”

Hearing a familiar voice call out my name, I turned around and saw Karasu-san there for some reason.

She was wearing what could be called her trademark black camisole with a fluffy fur shawl, twirling her car keys with her fingers, and had a broad grin covering her entire face.

“What are you two doing here on a Sunday?”

The female fortuneteller and longtime regular of ‘Ikaigabuchi’ asked me as she wore her beautiful black hair tied high on her head today. She was a tall woman by nature, and also a beauty with a flamboyant face. In addition to all that, she had a loud voice, which made her truly stand out. With her appearance alone, she gave the impression of a large sunflower blooming in full bloom, and we were instantly the center of attention from everyone around us.

“Us? What are you doing here?”

I asked back in a hushed voice.

“Me? Well, I’m just wandering around because it’s my day off, but…? Aaah… could you two be on a date? A date! I love it, I love it!!”

It’s not a date; Your voice is too loud.

I was about to say that, when she suddenly grabbed me with her arm and put me in a tight headlock. Under the fluffy shawl, my cheeks were buried in Karasu-san’s soft bust, and I could smell her nice fragrance. Locked in a headlock, I was dragged towards the parking lot.

“Say, say, say, Nagi-kun? Don’t you have anything to report to me?”

“W-what are you talking about?”

“There you go again, playing the fool. You’re still living together with Yoishi, aren’t you? Which means… you’re together now, right? In short, it’s become that sort of thing, right?”

“…Huh?”

“Tell me, tell me, what did you think of Yoishi-chan's lips and all that?? That girl’s a little strange, but she's got some serious quality, doesn't she? Even as a woman, her eyebrows and eye shape make my heart throb, so I don't blame you for losing patience, but aah, damn, I'm so disappointed in myself. If I could meet a girl like that, I wish I’d been born a man!”

“—A-are you... are you nuts! What are you talking about?!”

“Oh my, you're all red-faced. After all, a 16-year-old girl makes a big decision and walks into a guy's house. Oh, the two can’t possibly still be platonic, right? I think that’s super unhealthy.”

“Which one is unhealthy?! In the first place, if you hadn’t placed me in a headlock like this back then, I wouldn’t have been caught up as an offender of the Youth protection ordinance. Yoishi wouldn’t have started parasitizing in my house.”

I finally managed to break free of Karasu-san’s headlock and declared that.

“Be thankful, I arranged a special event in your springtime of youth.”

Karasu-san laughed as she cheerfully slapped me on the shoulder.

--It’s no good. Her pace might have made me genetically incapable of fighting back… is what I thought, when—

“Hmm?”

Suddenly, Karasu-san stared at me and gave a puzzled look. She skillfully raised only one of her slender, well-groomed eyebrows and put her hand on my cheek.

“W, what is it?”

“You’re having trouble with women, aren’t you?”

“Trouble with women? Yeah, I’m having trouble with you!”

I retorted scathingly, but Karasu-san replied with no, no, no, and started stroking my chin and cheekbones with her fingertips even further.

“This is—trouble with a woman far younger than me. And it’s not Yoishi either. Right—if I had to guess, I’d say a girl of elementary school age. It can’t be, don’t tell me you touched an elementary school girl. You know that’s a crime, right?”

“Of course not! I mean, you’re the one who helped a high school girl parasitize in the loft of my apartment, so please don't talk to me about crime.”

Ah, her fortune-telling was always like this. It was, how do you say: Out of focus? Unreliable? It wasn’t there when you needed it, and there were times when she would gleefully tell you of disasters that had already passed by. That elementary school girl she mentioned was probably the girl selling ghost photographs -- Akane Nanamori. That was already a bitter memory that remained within me.

“Well, be careful. These days, elementary school kids can be very mature.”

She spoke somewhat elatedly -- The carefree fortuneteller then waved a "Yoo-hoo" to Yoishi, who had remained silent for a long time.

“Yoishi-chan, how have you been?”

As if finally noticing her at last, Yoishi silently turned her eyes towards Karasu-san.

“My, my, Yoishi-chan is as cute as ever. Your deep eyes look like they could steal my soul, I can't help but adore them. I think I might lean that way!”

Even in the face of such cringe-worthy dialogue, Yoishi maintained a blank expression.

On the contrary, she waited for Karasu-san to finish speaking, before muttering:

“Is the apartment next door yours?”

“…Huh?”

“Next door to our apartment -- room 101. I heard you're using it as a storage space.”

“Ahh, that’s right, but… what about it?”

Karasu-san nodded cheerfully, and Yoishi asked a strange question:

“Who’s in there?

…Huh?

I looked at Yoishi’s face with my mouth agape.

Not ‘what’s in there?’, but ‘who’s in there?’

“Who, you ask, ermmm…. there's just a bunch of stuff in there…”

Karasu-san spoke somewhat evasively, prompting Yoishi to interrogate her further.

“That's strange. I can sense the presence of at least ten or so people in that room at any given time.”

Her words sent a shiver down my spine.

T…ten? Eh, what? What did that mean?

Astonished, I looked at Karasu-san to see that she too, was unnerved.

“......Oh, uh—that is, I mean….”

“What DO you mean?”

When I pressed her as well, the female fortuneteller finally opened up reluctantly.

“Actually...... There's a lot of items in that room with a shady history, you know, items that have been entrusted to me by customers.”

“Items with a shady history?”

“No, no, no, no, it’s not a big deal! It’s merely common stuff like ‘A mirror with a person trapped inside’, ‘a meat mask that can’t be taken off once worn’, or ‘a laughing doll’! But more so than being kept in storage, they are items that are sealed away because they can’t be touched presently – Ah, but Nagi-kun, you don't have to get all teary-eyed. They've all been spiritually treated. Nothing will happen unless you go in there and break the seal!”

“T-that’s not the problem here! Don’t seal such suspicious things next to someone’s apartment! No, I mean, please don't say such things in front of her right now!”

If it says ‘Enter and you will die,’ Yoishi would enter even if she had to kick the door down. If there was a sign that says you will be cursed if you open it, she would use any and all means necessary to open it.

As expected of her, Yoishi whispered:

“Show me that place.”

“…Eh?”

Karasu-san was at a loss for words; I shouted out loud as if moving her out of the way.

“No, no! Don't make things more complicated than they already are! We need to get rid of that DVD first!”

“That’s why, I need to see it.”

“…What did you say?”

“There might be something we can use.”

  ◯

…Oi, you gotta be kidding me. The moment Karasu-san opened the door to the storage room, I was already at my wits end.

As soon as we entered, I saw countless talismans stuck on top of the front door. They were also stuck above the door of the modular bath, and another in the cramped kitchen. For some reason, many of the talismans were old, and some were blackened as if they had been blasted from above with a gas burner. But the most bizarre thing about this room was that the partition door leading to the living room had been removed and was replaced by a thick, old shimenawa. You would never see such an impressive thing even at a shrine. And it was definitely not something you’d find in an ordinary rental apartment.

“…Karasu-san, please explain it to me.”

“You’ve seen it before, haven’t you? A shimenawa?”

“I understand that, I’m a regular user of ‘Ikaigabuchi’ too! What I’m asking is, why is there such a huge shimenawa in a place like this? It's strange, no matter how you think about it! This is just like the doll memorial in Kyoto…”

I said that much, and then, Ah, I understood.

…I see. So that’s why Yoishi wanted to see this place. This was a room built exactly for that purpose, a room for slowly purifying items that couldn’t be out in the world, items that had a certain history about them – Wait, this wasn’t a time to be accepting.

“K-K-Karasu-san! If you had something like this next door, you should have told me when you introduced me to this apartment.”

“No, because, you were in a very precarious situation at that time.”

“Being in a precarious situation means that I don’t have the right to make such a basic choice?”

I yelled out loud at Karasu-san, but I felt my voice being swallowed by the darkness behind the shimenawa.

There were countless boxes placed in the dark living room behind the shimenawa, but even I, despite having no ability to sense the paranormal, could tell. Something felt wrong. I could tell from that fact that although the light in the corridor was switched on, the living room right next to it was dark, as if it repelled the light. It was, how should I put it, otherworldly. The air itself was distinctly different. There was something so thick in the air that made me believe it was dangerous, to the point where even the gravity there might be different.

However, Yoishi took off her shoes, quickly went under the shimenawa alone by herself, and muttered “How wonderful” to herself.

“Right, right?”

Karasu-san nodded happily as she followed, and seeing Yoishi happily pick up the suspicious items one after another and stare at them as if she were admiring antiques made me think dark thoughts to myself:

--Hey, take a look. This is what a true occult maniac looks like. In internet slang, they're the ‘denpas’ who suddenly broadcast their occult fantasies to the world. Ever since the cat incident happened, some people in the western club building branded me as a ‘weirdo who likes scary stories’, but even that perception will be completely overturned when they find out about this kind of existence. I'm sure they will understand how normal, how much of a beginner I am in the unfathomable world of the occult -- I thought such thoughts to myself, while I waited in the corridor, refusing to go through the shimenawa by myself; I saw Yoishi in the living room lift something and ask Karasu-san:

“This is?”

“Oh, they’re opposite mirrors that were in the storehouse of a large landowner in Toyama. It is said that if you hold the two mirrors up to each other on the night of the new moon, you will multiply.”

“What do you mean by multiply?”

“They say that your reflection in the mirror starts to take on a different personality. If you were to close the mirror in fear, the self in the mirror would remain there, and begin life anew in the world of the mirror. It is said that the mirror was originally used in a local brothel, but the details are unknown. Anyway, it's dangerous, so it's wrapped up nice and tight and can’t be opened.”

“Hey…Yoishi, don't open that thing, okay?”

I warned her from the corridor, but of course, Yoishi wasn’t listening.

“This cell phone is…?”

“This is similar to the story, ‘The Monkey's Paw’ by W. W. Jacobs. From what I’ve heard, it seems to be a cell phone found in the hands of a child who committed suicide, and if you were to press the call button on the phone and make a wish, the wish will be granted in a dubious way. Like getting into the school of your choice, but losing a leg in exchange.”

“And these shoes?”

“Ah, those are dangerous. A certain man is said to have crafted them from the skin of his wife. They seemed to have been at bad terms from the start, but the husband killed his wife and made shoes out of her skin so that he could trample over her, again and again. But it seems that shortly afterwards, the husband jumped off a building while wearing those very same shoes.”

…What the hell is that….? Why, why the hell is that thing here??

“This rope is…?”

“That is said to have been used by people who hung themselves in the dense woodlands. The local police and fire brigade found it when they made their regular patrols, but no matter how many times they cut it off when they recovered the bodies, people kept using it to commit suicide again and again for some unknown reason. It was as if the string was enticing them, so they handed it over to a local shrine, but the head priest there also ended up committing suicide, so after a series of events, it made its way here.”

…Wait, what the heck were the events happened that brought it here? Why the hell were so many dangerous things all gathered in the apartment next to mine? Now that I think about it, when I ran away from that ‘Wish-fulfilling house’, Karasu-san quickly introduced me to this apartment, but why was a cheap place so close to the university vacant up until now? Wasn’t it because it was a dangerous place?

Once a person starts thinking negative thoughts, those thoughts begin to growl and spin, faster and faster. I began to worry about the potholes in my life one after another.

I was in a situation where I was going in and out of the Beatnik Research Society, aka one of the largest occult sites in Japan, my apartment had a collection of cursed items next to it, and moreover, a girl resembling a vengeful spirit inhabited my loft. I'd become numb to the fact that Yoishi was close by because of everything that had happened, but this was definitely not a normal life. I tried to roughly recall the people I’d met since I came to Tokyo, since the ’Ikaigabuchi’ offline meeting, it’s been nothing but a string of dangerous people starting with Karasu-san, and in the ultimate form of Yoishi Mitsurugi. No, the ultimate of the ultimate was the evil priest, Sako Takita. He was undeniably the worst of the worst, and I don’t know if I’d go so far as to lump him with Yoishi, but anyway, the only sane ones are the Kurimoto siblings – no, wait, wait. Am I not being fooled by Krishna-san’s large bosom and baby face? Even she is clearly involved in the occult, and as long as she is the leader of ‘Ikaigabuchi’, she can be thought of as a major figure in the occult, right? According to Sako, she was ‘on the verge of breaking down once’, and even her eloquent younger brother, Yukihito Kurimoto said he had ‘died once’. Oooo…. oiii, does that mean that none of them are sane? Does that mean none of them are sane human beings of this world? If I keep on associating with them like this, I’ll surely be dragged to the world on the other side, won’t I? No, both of my feet are already immersed in the other si – Argh, look at them, your feet. Can you see them clearly? Is that the ground? Are your feet there? Isn’t it just an ink-like darkness, spreading outwards….?

“………………”

--No.

….It’s….dark.

Before I realized, I was standing alone and still, in the dark.

…Was it a blackout?

But when I reached out my hand, I found that the walls of the apartment that had just been there had disappeared.

…Hey, where is this? Yoishi---? Karasu-san?

I look around frantically, but no one was there. I didn’t even know if I was in a wide, or a narrow place. A sticky darkness alone enshrouded me, a lukewarm darkness that penetrated through my nose and through my mouth.

I grabbed my hair and was about to start screaming, when –

• SLAP*- I was smacked on the shoulder.

“--Yes, deep breaths.”

When I came to, I saw Karasu-san’s smiling face in front of me.

I had slumped down to the floor, and she was crouched beside me, looking at me.

“Take a dee—ep breath in, then hold. Yes, slowly let it out--- Repeat that three times.”

I didn't understand it very well, but I did what she said, I started to breathe better and calmed down. I looked down at my feet in a daze, they were still there. I was wearing gray socks, and sitting on the floor of the apartment. And the fluorescent light was there and all. I was drenched in sweat and there was a wall against my back.

“You'd better remember.”

Karasu-san smiled as she gently stroked my hair.

“Your fear most likely comes from forgetting to breathe.”

“Breathe…?”

“It’s probably the effect of your childhood asthma. If the fear inside you intensifies, then like now, make sure you're breathing properly. No matter what kind of paranormal lies ahead of you, you’ll definitely make it through somehow. As long as you're breathing properly, you're invincible. You're not broken at all.”

I felt my nose reflexively sniffle. That was the kindest look I’d ever seen from the ‘outrageously’ dressed Karasu-san. And that soaked into me like the sunlight on a warm spring day. It became a strong Kotodama, and strengthened the foundations of my heart.

“…Thank you.”

I unconsciously spoke those words of thanks out loud—

“No, you don't have to thank me. Maybe, so…”

Uhehehehe, Karasu-san laughed slack-jawed and my sense of security collapsed in an instant.

“—Let’s use this.”

I heard Yoishi’s voice and raised my head to see she was casually holding up the creepy rope from earlier.

“Use it… for what?”

In response to Karasu-san’s question, Yoishi took out the DVD from her pocket.

“This rope is a ‘sewing thing’.”

“…Hmm? What’s that?”

“It may be the final result, but it is tinged with the idea of ‘sewing’ the subject to the spot. Maybe the first person who committed suicide with this rope is still haunted by it, unaware of their death. Or perhaps the rope is still faithfully protecting the wish of its first master. The number of things clinging to this rope is so numerous that it makes it hard to fathom their true nature, and the only thing they’re staring at, is our necks.”

After uttering those horrifying lines—

Yoishi began to unravel the somewhat overtly thick straw rope, split it to a reasonable thickness, and began to tie it around the DVD from all four sides.

“…The rope needs something to bind to, and in this, there exists something to be bound to.”

The way she crouched on the living room floor, mumbling something with her mouth as she handled the rope, was, as expected, a ghastly sight.

“Shut up… Be quiet… It doesn’t matter what color it is.”

I heard such intermittent speech, but I had no idea who she was talking to, and quite frankly, that scared me. Eventually, something that resembled an object bound with rope rolled on the floor, and Yoishi sat down there as if her mind was at peace.

“It should be fine now.”

Yoishi muttered, causing Karasu-san to sigh in exasperation and shrug her shoulders.

“And so, the number of strange things keeps growing.”

  ◯

About a week had passed since then.

I had no idea what happened since then, and Yoishi didn’t talk about it either.

It turned out that the apartment next door was a haunted tool shack, but nothing strange happened. I didn't get paralyzed, or hear any strange noises, and I didn't feel any of the presences Yoishi mentioned. Maybe it really was like Karasu-san said, and the items had been spiritually treated. I was a little disturbed when I went to sleep at night as expected, but… well, if something abnormal were to happen, then the walking spirit sensor in my loft, Yoishi Mitsurugi would warn me about it – But now that I'd had time to calm down, a lot of things didn’t add up.

As I’m attending a lecture at university, I think to myself: What did it all mean in the end?

Assuming the kindergartner turning towards the camera in the video was ‘Shōko-chan', and supposing that the video was shot by that woman named Iizuka – Yoishi had said that the woman purposefully returned that DVD back to the rental store. Was it because something had already happened in that house? Did something happen to that woman’s daughter? Then—in short, what the hell happened to her? Was that the reason behind the immense darkness in that house? I didn’t know. Or perhaps it was better that I didn’t know -- but somehow, I wasn’t satisfied. Was it alright if we were the only ones that were saved? I couldn’t shake off those doubts.

I’m sure that was because -- the bitter memory of not having been able to save Akane Nanamori still cast a shadow over me.

Having said that—

After my lecture had finished, I got on my mama bike and headed towards Shakujii Park by myself.

For the time being, I intended to ask around about the rumored ‘Shōko-chan' in a nearby kindergarten.

I didn’t know how asking around would help. No, I’m sure the situation wouldn’t change. I understood that it was already over – or almost over. Still, I couldn’t come to terms with it unless I understood the end myself. If I didn’t get to the point where I was absolutely sure that there was nothing more I could do, I felt like something would swallow me up someday. I felt that leaving things in an ambiguous state would be an opening for the monsters to pounce on me. Krishna-san would say that I was an idiot, or that I hadn’t matured, but I was beginning to feel that this was what it meant to me to face the paranormal.

And the other reason—

The only other reason -- would be Yoishi.

It would be because of the ‘Yoishi Mitsurugi Rehabilitation Plan’, the goal to see her smile.

I would definitely see her smile someday. I recently learned that when I muttered this in my mind, that strangely enough, I felt less afraid. To begin with, if I were to decide that Yoishi’s reformation was finished as she was now, then in all honesty, I couldn’t call it progress. It would just be a bunch of muddling around in the dark, trying to make things add up. That’s why, I had to act. Even if it was something I couldn’t deal with, I had to act in any way that I could. That was my resolve as a mere human being facing off against the paranormal. Besides, Isn’t that what Karasu-san told me as well?「As long as you're breathing properly, you're invincible」. I was deeply dejected hearing her laughter at the end, but even so, those words touched me more deeply than I had expected. It gave me hope that maybe it was true. Even when I was too scared to move, I still managed to make it through somehow. I had to make sure that I really was ‘invincible’ in the face of all kinds of paranormal.

“—Well then.”

I searched for kindergartens in the vicinity of the Iizuka household, and looking at the map search results on my phone, there were two kindergartens within walking distance of that house. If you were to consider the range with the bus service, the number of kindergartens would increase, but for the time being, I decided to check the ones close by.

In the cold wind, I turned up the collars of my pea coat and pedaled hard on my mama bike. Eventually, I reached Oumekaido Road, where I turned toward Shakujii Park.

I arrived at the Iizuka household shortly thereafter, but only gave it a fleeting glimpse before passing it by. It was still dark and gloomy, and it was hard to tell if anyone was there or not. The boarded-up doghouse was still there, and the curtains were closed.

The kindergarten was located less than five minutes away by bicycle. It was a cute building painted with colorful colors. There were many children playing inside the kindergarten, probably because there was still time before the end of the school-day.

I parked my bike by the fence and watched the children. It was a curious feeling: I wondered if I too, had such fun times once, giggling and running around half-buried tires and monkey bars.

The children, tiny in stature, were already developing their own individuality. There was a boy who was managing a group and leading a game, a boy who was in a world with only two girls, and there was even a gigolo-like preschooler who had several girls as his attendants. When you think about it, a kindergarten is the beginning of the outside world for most human beings. From here, they would experience the world outside the warm confines of family, they’d experience a world that was unjust and unreasonable in many ways.

Welcome to the real world.

Gazing at the children and uttering such strange thoughts out loud, which could neither be described as encouragement nor sympathy, I suddenly take notice of one kid in particular. That boy came right up to the fence I was leaning against, and looked up at me curiously.

“Yo.”

I tried greeting him.

The boy just gave a ‘yes’, and small nod in acknowledgment. However, he did not smile cordially from there. Apparently, this boy had acquired the individuality of not quite being able to fit in with the group.

That was just what I needed, so I asked him:

“There’s something I wanted to ask; Do you know the child called ‘Shōko-chan'?”

As soon as he heard that proper noun, the boy was instantly startled. So, he did know, I thought to myself. I smiled and said: “It’s alright.”

“I know her too. So, let’s keep ‘Shōko-chan’ a secret between you and me, okay?”

“…Okay.”

“Where is ‘Shōko-chan’ right now?”

“…”

“Is she here?”

I spoke and looked around inside the kindergarten.

The boy then shook his head in silence.

“Then… where?”

“…She was taken away by that auntie.”

“Auntie?”

“Mai-chan’s auntie.”

--Mai-chan? Huh….Wasn’t ‘Mai’ the name that Iizuka lady shouted when she yelled, ‘Go over there’….?”

“Is Mai-chan also one of your friends?”

It was right when I asked him that question. A woman in an apron who appeared to be a nursery teacher gave me a suspicious look and asked: “What is it?”, her watchful eyes were definitely on the lookout for any suspicious persons.

“Ahh, n-nothing...” As I stammered, the nursery teacher grabbed the boys’ hand and began to pull him away, “Let’s play with everyone.”

The boy looked at me regretfully, but muttered quietly.

“Mai-can… already died.”

“…Eh?”

“It’s because Mai-chan was good friends with ‘Shōko-chan’.”

  ◯

--What did it all mean?

I was frozen still in that spot for a while, before I started pushing my bike, and thought to myself.

Mai-chan was already dead? I had easily assumed Mai-chan’s auntie to be that woman named Iizuka, but --- was the ‘Mai-chan’ that boy mentioned different from the Mai from the Iizuka family? Was this not the kindergarten where the rumor of ‘Shōko-chan’ originated from?

No…that boy knew about ‘Shōko-chan’. There was enough indication that the conversation was relevant. I don’t think it could have been a coincidence. In other words, the kindergarten mentioned in that woman’s story was that place. However, if that were the case – I felt a chill rise up. I had a terrible feeling of dread, so I jumped on the mama bike again. I pressed on the pedals as if something was rushing me.

--Wait a minute, let’s get everything straight. Let’s assume that Mai-chan’s mother was that woman named Iizuka…. 'Mai-chan' and ‘Shōko-chan' were supposedly good friends. Then ‘Shōko-chan’ was something dangerous. At the very least, it wasn’t human. However, if that boy was telling the truth, then ‘Shōko-chan’ was taken away by Mai-chan’s mother – in other words, by that woman named Iizuka. Does that mean that something called ‘Shōko-chan’ was in the Iizuka household right now? Damn it, I didn’t get it. In the first place, wasn’t ‘Shōko-chan’ supposed to be in the DVD, already sealed away by Yoishi? And yet --- And yet, that, what was this unpleasant feeling? What was this uneasy feeling of having looked over something important? Like an invisible puddle slowly drenching my feet.

At that moment – beneath my feet, something with a splash made a water pattern in the dark puddle that couldn’t have existed.

In an instant, I stopped my bicycle involuntarily.

“That’s right…..I….”

I didn’t see that girl named ‘Mai’ in the Iizuka household at that time.

I saw the paper door slide shut, but I didn’t see get the chance to see the girl properly.

A terrifying chill crawled over my entire back.

And then, all of a sudden – I heard the siren of a fire engine.

The kind of sound that resonated inside you when a fire engine is dispatched, if I recall, it was a warning siren linked with the accelerator. As if being guided by that sound, I started pedaling my mama bike once again. I stood up, pedaled as hard as I could, and went flying.

With each alleyway I turned, the sound of the siren kept getting louder from all sides. I was close. I knew the fire engines were all converging somewhere extremely close by. Eventually, I could see black smoke rising over some rooftops. Curious onlookers were gathering in sparse alleyways. They must have all come out of their houses after hearing the sirens. I pressed my way forward while avoiding them. And with each pedal stroke, my conviction deepens.

I turned down the last alley and flew into the street where the Iizuka household was visible, but a crowd of people was in front of me, so I couldn’t go any further. I parked my bike in the shadow of a telephone pole nearby and continued running from there.

“I’m sorry, please let me through!”

I shouted as I continued forward, but the police at the frontline were shouting angrily and pushing back the crowd, halting my progress. Even so, I could see it through a gap in the crowds. It really… was true. The windows of the Iizuka household were broken, and a black smoke bellowed forth from within. Even from a distance, I could tell how strong of a fire raged within, the fire hose from the fire truck had practically no effect.

“Ah……”

Bitter emotions escape through my mouth without forming words. It was the house I had just passed by. And the house I had entered just recently, albeit only once. The sight of it burning to the point of being unmanageable was just too much for me.

Right then, I felt something cold on my arm, and I turned around.

I looked back to see Yoishi, holding my hand. She had mixed in with the crowd; her pale face looked at me.

“I made a mistake.”

“What mistake?”

“I was wrong about ‘Shōko-chan’.”

Her words darkly distorted the landscape. For the time being, I led Yoishi away from the crowd of people. When we arrived back where I had put my mama bike, I asked:

“Are you telling me that it was ‘Shōko-chan’ behind us that time?”

Yoishi looked at me once, and vaguely nodded.

“But it’s a little more complicated than that.”

“…No, wait a minute. Explain it to me from the beginning in a way I can understand. Just what was ‘Shōko-chan’ anyway? I just came back from that kindergarten. I heard ‘Shōko-chan’ was taken away by that person named Iizuka. And that her daughter – ‘Mai-chan’, was already dead.”

I relayed the story I had heard from the boy in the kindergarten, and Yoishi gave a small nod.

“I heard it as well. Albeit a few days ago.”

“Then….”

“I don’t understand everything either, now that this happened, I can only speculate but – the only thing I can say is that ‘Shōko-chan’ was a living spirit."

A shiver ran down my spine.

A living spirt. It was – in short, a strong emotion that a living human unconsciously emits. Jealously, resentment, and excessive affections turn into curses that cause misfortune, but….

“By living spirit, do you mean to say it’s a living spirit of children? Is that the imaginary friend you mentioned before? But why would an imaginary friend of children be cruel to them?”

“That’s not it. It’s not from children.”

Yoishi’s clear eyes contained a glint of sorrow as she spoke.

“After giving birth and raising them all that time, kindergarten is the place where your children first begin to live with other people’s children. That is the first time that parents see their children through the lens of others. That is when they first start comparing their children to other people's children. Why can’t you do the things that other children can do? Why is that child more adorable? Why don’t you listen to me like those other children? Why, why, why – Yes, a kindergarten is the beginning of the outside world for children, but it’s also true for their mothers.”

“Hey…it can’t be….”

“That’s right, it’s always the adults who distort children.”

“….No way, then ‘Shōko-chan’ is….”

“—Yes. ‘Shōko-chan’ isn’t an imaginary friend of children. It’s an imaginary child of countless mothers.”

For a moment, the face of a child I’d never seen before flashes across my mind – It was the figure of the child in that DVD, slowly turning around towards me. The child slowly turns their face towards me, and looks up.

That fair, well-formed face, and red eyes look me in the eyes, and smile.

“The proper child who has all the ideal attributes not present in your own child – the child one yearns for. That’s what ‘proper Shōko-chan’, and the ‘yearned Shōko-chan’ originally was. However, the girl transformed at some point. She transformed into the being that blamed her own child for not being able to become the ideal child. Eventually, that warped ideal child turned into an existence that blames and harms countless children - 'Harmful Shōko-chan’."

“No… wait a second. A moment ago, you said it was a little more complicated, what did you mean by that? Why was that imaginary child taken away by Iizuka?”

“That woman, never had a child to begin with.”

“…Huh? Then who was the Mai-chan that died?”

With a somewhat cold gaze, Yoishi focused at one section of the crowd gathered at the scene of the fire.

It was a group of women who looked like young mothers around thirty years of age. Even though it was the scene of a fire, there was an atmosphere of enjoyment in the spectacle.

“I heard it from them. They said that woman was divorced by her husband. They said it was because she couldn't have children, but I don’t know if that was true or not. Whatever the case might have been, she lived alone since then and took ‘Mai-chan’ to the kindergarten every day for a walk. That’s how she became famous at the kindergarten, as Mai-chan’s auntie.”

“But… then that means that Mai-chan exists, right? She had a child, right?”

I made my counterargument, but –

The strange uncomfortable feeling from the story didn’t allow the goosebumps on my arm and back to go away.

“When you were standing in front of the house, did you notice what was next to the front door?”

Yoishi looked at me as if she could see into the depths of my soul, making me feel a horrifying chill.

Next to the front door – Ahh, I’m sure it was…

A doghouse. And its entrance was boarded up with layers of planks.

…The name tag on that was doghouse was—

“That’s right—”

“’Mai’… was the name of her dog.”

“Iizuka-san used to have a collar on her dog. However, that changed at a certain point. Just like the kindergarten kids, she knit a yellow school uniform for her dog, put it in a baby stroller, and started walking it. Those people laughed at her, saying it was creepy for her to treat a dog like a human being.”

Yoishi’s gaze didn’t waver as she pointed to the crowd of amused gossiping mothers who were watching the fire.

“I don’t know when Iizuka-san brought ‘Shōko-chan’ home from that kindergarten. But she ended up so far gone that she didn’t even notice that her dog ‘Mai-chan’ and been replaced by ‘Shōko-chan’.”

“………..”

“The thing she called ‘Mai’ back then was no longer a dog.”

I recalled the face of the woman I saw in that house, of Iizuka. I recalled her sullen eyeballs that made me reflexively think ‘She was dead, while alive’. And – when that woman shouted, ‘Go over there!’, the sliding paper door was indeed shut from the other side by something. That’s right, it was shut intentionally by something that had a will to do so. There was no chance it was done by a dog.

“But, then… what about that DVD? Didn’t Iizuka-san film that? And didn’t ‘Shōko-chan’ show up on it?”

Yoishi shook her head in reply, ‘That’s not it’.

“Iizuka-san, who had no child, couldn’t have been allowed to enter the kindergarten. And in this day and age, when outsiders are closely scrutinized, she should not have been able to attend a kindergarten event. That’s why, there’s no way that film was shot by her. And If that was the case, there could only be one reason why she would have that DVD in her possession. She was given that video by one of the mothers whose child did attend that kindergarten.”

Yoishi’s face contorted, as if she was on the verge of vomiting while looking at the crowd of mothers with their small children.

“And that was probably how it all began. Her own child’s sunny, happy day – and she passes it to Iizuka-san, a woman without a child of her own. At first glance, it seems like an act of sharing one’s happiness, but to Iizuka-san, it was without a doubt, a sad, painful, and miserable act. She might have tried returning it and throwing it away many times. On the other hand, she may have repeatedly watched that recording of children’s development with mixed feelings. Then one day, Iizuka-san finally noticed. The cameraman panned the camera to the left unexpectedly, and she saw the child that was not participating in the event.”

“…Ah.”

“Yes, in that moment, everything changed. Iizuka-san, unable to bear a child of her own, was granted the perfect child every parent idealized: ‘Shōko-chan’.”

A repeated view of the kindergarten event.

Then, the image tilts to the left.

A child who should not be there appears.

“But--”

I shook my head to shake off the image in my mind.

“But then, that’s just too sad for Iizuka-san, Isn’t it?”

“It is.”

Yoishi affirmed with her face pale, devoid of blood.

“I believe it started as a small matter born from a small act of malice. But, even after finally having gained a child, Iizuka-san was just like the other mothers. She, too, wanted to show off to everyone. She wished for the existence of the perfect child she had been granted, ‘Shōko-chan’, to spread far and wide into the world.”

“Ah—so that’s why she returned that DVD to the rental shop? That’s what you meant when you said she did it on purpose?”

Yoishi nodded in agreement.

“Children who were initially wished only to be born healthy, somehow become a product of their parents' egos. The tendency to give them unusual names, unusual hairstyles, and to dress them in peculiar clothing may all be substitutes for a perverted proxy competition by adults.”

‘But…’ said Yoishi, looking up at the house engulfed in black smoke.

“Children never grow up the way their parents want them to.”

The black smoke, which showed no sign of ceasing, bellows up into the sky as if mocking the firefighting efforts.

“Is it ‘burning Shōko-chan’ now? Or ‘laughing Shōko-chan’?”

When Yoishi muttered those words, I felt I heard a child’s laughter from the blazing flames.

And amidst the red, black flames that danced and wiggled, I thought I saw the figure of a red-eyed child standing still.

Unable to bear it, I looked away.

Besides me, Yoishi quietly stared at the group of women. They must have been the mothers who gave birth to the imaginary child, and in the light of the blazing red flames, they seemed to be laughing.

“Ughhh…..”

A bitter feeling welled up from the pit of my stomach, when—

Yoishi, standing next to me, plunged down first.

Her beautiful white face was twisted in pain, and she started vomiting.

As several people frowned and looked towards us, I gently put my hand on her back.

Eventually, Yoishi raised her pale face, and asked sorrowfully:

“Say—don’t you think having kids is scary?"

---

Translator's Notes and References

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