The Zashiki Warashi of Intellectual Village:Volume3 Chapter ?

Status: Incomplete

Chapter ?: Welcome to Zenmetsu Village

Part 1 (Jinnai Shinobu)

“Uuh…myuh…”

I felt a slight shaking and awoke. Only once I awoke did I realize I had been asleep. I was on a tour bus and most of those on board were my classmates and my homeroom teacher. The only exceptions were the bus guide and the driver.

The tour bus was driving along an elevated highway, but the outside scenery was almost entirely cut off by the tall soundproof panels covering the sides of the road. The bus was driving so smoothly I would never have guessed it was keeping steady at 80 kph.

Oh, that’s right.

We had a school trip at the start of September…

“Hey, hey, Shinobu-kun.”

The eccentric beauty Madoka-chan was saying something from her seat next to me.

This was not a case of a lovey-dovey space developing. As usual, she did not fit in with the rest of the class, so she had been forced to sit next to me, the class president.

“Shinobu-kun, why do you cling to the girl next to you while you nap?”

“Hagwah!?”

I frantically moved away from Madoka.

I-I have my reasons, Madoka-san! In fact, I think most personal mannerisms are deeply related to one’s household environment.

However, Madoka did not seem to mind.

“What a pain. They call this a trip, but we’re only headed to an Intellectual Village. Is this a way of exchanging technology?”

“Well, it’s a school event, so all of the events were decided on by some stuffy teacher. I do agree we need to make sure a school trip doesn’t involve a trip to a love hotel, though.”

Also, three days and two nights was much too short. I had the feeling we would spend more time travelling between locations than staying put anywhere.

And then…

The head of a classmate (a guy) stuck up from the seat in front of me. It was as if he was peering over a fence. He was the guy known in our class as the Love King.

“Jinnai, we’re almost to a zone simply filled with noteworthy things.”

“What? We’re on the highway. Are you the hopeless kind of student that buys a pile of souvenirs at the service area?”

“We’re almost at Four Mountains. The scenery will change once we leave the tunnel,” said the Love King while lightly waving around an expensive-looking mirrorless interchangeable-lens camera. “I hear there’s a huge junction there and it’s popular with people who like buildings and factories.”

“…That’s targeted toward an incredibly niche audience.”

“No, don’t make fun of it. Even sports stars have this hobby. It’s widely recognized.”

I wanted to argue that it didn’t matter if famous people did it too, but I decided against it since that would just lead to a long, drawn-out debate.

“It’s actually really large-scale and quite rare. As the name suggests, the junction is surrounded by mountains and tunnels on all four sides and it leads the cars into the tunnels. Well, it also seems the base of the junction is a highway exit and rumor has it the junction was created for the sake of a gigantic semiconductor factory. Is that really true, though?”

“…”

As the Love King continued speaking, Madoka looked out the window disinterestedly next to me. This was unsurprising since the Love King had been speaking only to me.

The atmosphere was a bit strained.

However, Madoka must have been used to this because she showed no sign of being hurt. Even now, she was using her cell phone to photograph a piece of chocolate shaped like an animal. It seemed she was trying to collect all of them, but…

What animals does she still need? I know the bottle cap doll’s beckoning cat series had a total of 20 different kinds.

I could only come up with that completely unrelated data.

And as I thought, the tour bus entered the tunnel.

Was this tunnel through Suzaku Mountain?

For a highway tunnel, it was quite small. It did not even have the standard orange lights. As soon as the bus entered the tunnel, it was pitch black. The noise of the engine must have been echoing against the wall because we were wrapped in an odd distorted noise.

It was not a very long tunnel.

After only a few minutes, the white light of the exit came into view.

“It doesn’t really matter, but will you even be able to photograph the scenery with the soundproof panels along the road?”

I received no response.

It was possible there was simply too much noise for him to hear.

It did not bother me much, so I gave a small yawn as the tour bus left the tunnel.

For an instant, the bright light of the sun blinded me.

But I would quickly adapt to it.

While I felt the thick moisture of fog on my cheek as I stood there, I raised a hand over my face to protect my eyes from the bright light.

And then I realized something odd.

“Huh?”

Why was I “standing”. Just a moment before, I had been sitting in a seat on a tour bus that was full to capacity.

And…

Where am I?

Why am I standing in the middle of a dense and dark forest?

I felt a pressure coming from all sides. It was as if invisible walls were pressing in against me.

The area spreading out around me was not a carefully maintained Intellectual Village plantation. Nor was it a walking path surrounded by negative ion oxygen. It was the type of place you felt like you would run into a group burying a corpse if you arrived at night with a flashlight in hand. Branches and leaves covered the sky. The sunlight was cut off, so the trees had to compete for the nutrients of the soil. Trees would kill off other trees and nature would rot nature. It was a truly “untouched” place. Thanks to the undergrowth that reached over a meter high and the great amount of ivy growing from branch to branch, many areas had almost developed into green walls.

I heard a solid clunking sound.

While still confused, I turned in the direction of the sound. I found a giant concrete pillar that seemed to stab through the green as it rose up.

“That’s part of the elevated highway… Then this must be…”

The surface of the concrete had the words Four Mountains printed on it. I realized I must have been in the area that stretched out below the highway. This was the basin surrounded by the mountains. According to the Love King, each of the four mountains had a tunnel and the Four Mountains Junction connected those tunnels in a cross shape. That meant this area was only a highway trip away from many different areas.

Is there any kind of village in this basin?

“I don’t see any houses…”

Then again, if I made my way through this deep forest and sought help at a home, I would probably be mistaken for a Yamanba.

In every direction I only found forest, forest, and more forest.

To put it bluntly, the conditions on the surface of Four Mountains was just about as bad as it could get.

You could be as ecological as you want, but too much nature was harmful.

But where did Madoka, the Love King, and my other classmates go?

Had they been “thrown from” the bus just like I had?

Or had I been the only one to disappear and the bus had continued along the highway without any trouble?

In other words…

“You have got to be kidding me… Don’t tell me I’ve been left behind.”

Part 2 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)

People seem to do it a lot, so I hope you are not confusing the National Police Agency with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. The latter is the organization that upholds the public order of Tokyo. And so its Investigation Department 1 normally only handled incidents that occurred within the jurisdiction of Tokyo.

However, there were exceptions.

“Uchimaku, head out to Kinki right away.”

“…What?”

The department chief had a grim look when he arrived and that was the very first thing out of his mouth. I could not help but open my eyes wide.

He continued nevertheless.

“I assume you have heard Hasebe Michio is being transported.”

“Yes. Isn’t that unkillable death row inmate being transferred here from his previous regional location?”

I called him unkillable, but not because he was some ridiculous monster.

He had been sentenced to death in a murder case over twenty years prior, but the odds of it being a false accusation had been quite high from the beginning. After much heated debate, this prisoner’s execution had been pushed further and further back. That was why he was called “unkillable”. We were on the verge of finding out if a request for a retrial would be accepted or not, so the higher ups of the National Police Agency had called him in to Tokyo for a more detailed investigation.

The department chief continued speaking in a disinterested voice.

“His prison vehicle disappeared from Four Mountains Junction. It disappeared while on the highway. Both the policeman and the prisoner aboard may or may not still be alive. The prison vehicle has not even been found yet. Even its GPS signal vanished. To put it bluntly, we have no idea what to do.”

“…Seriously?”

“Normally, the search would be left to the local police, but this is no ordinary prisoner. I cannot deny the possibility of individuals or factions within the prosecutors and police who would find it troublesome for Hasebe to have a retrial. The organization’s reputation is on the line once again.”

Hasebe Michio had been in the process of being transferred from the regional police to the Tokyo police, so we did have an official reason for the two police departments to cooperate in this search.

“Are you saying it’s possible someone might try to protect the police’s reputation by making it look like Hasebe killed himself? That way the suspect dies before the retrial can take place.”

“I do not know if anything that blatant will happen, but if the physical evidence is hidden, this could easily be treated as if Hasebe escaped of his own free will. Someone could be trying to crush any chance of a retrial by framing an innocent man of an arbitrary crime.”

“…”

“At any rate, even if this is a joint operation, the local police will still do most of the work. We can only send someone to keep an eye on things. Uchimaku, I am sending you. Someone with no inconvenient titles will have the easiest time moving around. Carry out the role of a small fry like the small fry you are.”

I did not like the reason I had been chosen, but I could not ignore an official order.

This is the painful part of being a police sergeant!

As the department chief handed me a ticket for a cheap seat on a domestic flight, I asked him something that had suddenly caught my attention.

“By the way, do you really think Hasebe was wrongfully accused?”

“I have no idea. I was not in charge of that case.”

Part 3 (Jinnai Shinobu)

I stood still for so long I lost track of time.

I had been inside that tour bus, but had suddenly found myself standing in this forest upon exiting the tunnel.

It seemed I was in the untouched nature spreading out directly below the junction.

It was unclear what had happened to Madoka, the Love King, Nagisa, or my other classmates.

Incidentally, I had no food or water, so I really did not want to walk endlessly through the forest.

“…No good.”

I had pulled out the cell phone in my pocket, but had groaned at the “no signal” indicator.

What hurt the most was how little about the situation I knew. If my other classmates were lost in this barricade-like forest as well, it might have been best to search through it as much as I could on my own. But it was possible I alone had been trapped in this strange situation. If that was the case, searching would be completely wasted effort. Walking through a deep forest while possibly stranded would only increase the risk of death. Doing that for an illusion that might not even be there was no laughing matter. …It may sound as if I am exaggerating, but being so lost you lose all sense of direction is no joke.

If I was to call for rescue or contact my classmates to see if they were okay, I needed my cell phone.

Not being able to use it was a serious issue when it came to deciding what to do next.

“That means…”

I looked over at the giant pillar towering up in front of me. It seemed to stab through that eerie nature that looked like new trees had grown on top of old rotting ones.

The rectangular pillar had a long narrow metal staircase leading up it while reversing back and forth countless times.

What is that staircase for?

Whatever the answer to that question, I would likely be able to make my way up onto the elevated highway using it.

If I walked along the shoulder of the highway, I could avoid being stranded in the forest. Emergency landline phones were set at fixed intervals in case of an accident, so I would be able to call for help as well.

However, there was one problem.

“This fog…”

The fog was so thick I was not sure I could see even a few meters ahead. With that fog enveloping everything, I was worried about my safety while walking along the highway, even if I was on the shoulder. The drivers might cautiously slow down a bit, but they would not be thinking about the possibility of pedestrians. If a car hit me, I would be sent straight to heaven.

Should I continue through the forest with the very real possibility of becoming stranded?

Or should I climb up onto the highway with masses of steel shooting by at high speed?

“What am I supposed to do…?”

Part 34

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