Chapter 1 - Continue

1

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Those were the first words to come to Shinichi’s mind as he headed toward the banquet hall where the creepy noises were coming from.

The boogeyman. Bloody Mary. Sewer alligators. Various such urban legends exist all throughout the world. They’re easy enough to laugh off, sure. After all, most of them are nothing more than tall tales. There’s almost always an explanation for such far-fetched nonsense. A bad prank. A joke gone wrong. A misunderstanding, even. But maybe, just maybe, there really is something to them sometimes. Ever heard the one about the monster with blue skin that haunts the Jailhouse?

Let’s turn the clock back about 20 years.

Scary stories about a creepy blue monster had been around since Shinichi’s parents were children. On the edge of town sat an abandoned mansion, nicknamed the Jailhouse for its high stone walls that made it seem impenetrable. They were so high it was nearly impossible to even get a peek at the place. A thick padlock held the front gate shut, too. It really was like a jail.

But it was also a rumor mill. It seemed like someone had a new story about it on a daily basis. Someone claimed they’d been chased by a blue monster near the property. Another said someone’s friend snuck inside and was stung by a blue grasshopper-like bug. They then came down with a high fever and passed away a few days later.

Most of the stories involved a blue monster of some kind. Its height varied between two and five meters. It was supposedly the result of an actress’s failed plastic surgery, or the terrible side effect of a drug used on a sick young girl. Some said the monster ripped the skin from the poor souls who wandered inside the mansion and wore them like clothes, but others were quite sure that it ate its victims. Each iteration of the story was crazier than the last.

Shinichi couldn’t help thinking it was stupid whenever he saw his classmates shivering in fear over such gossip. If a monster like that really existed and was attacking people who came near the mansion, there’d be a huge uproar. The police and the government would be all over it. Besides, most of the “eyewitnesses” hadn’t actually seen anything themselves. There was nothing more unreliable than a story that came from a friend of a friend.

But about half a month ago, Shinichi had started having a recurring nightmare. In it, night after night, he was eaten by the blue monster.

Have all those stupid stories gone to my head?

He resented it.

The Jailhouse monster is nothing but a lie.

So last week, he had finally decided to prove it and rub everyone’s noses in it. His plan was to sneak into the mansion, record what it was really like on the inside with a video camera, and then play the footage at school to show his classmates what gullible fools they were. His bravery might even impress some of the girls.

But getting into the Jailhouse was harder than he’d imagined. He tried setting up a stepladder he’d quietly borrowed from the storage room at school to climb over the surrounding stone walls, but they were topped with barbed wire. The lock was thick, so there was no breaking in the front gate, either.

Unable to find a way in, he nearly gave up on the idea. Then one day, as he was walking around the perimeter of the property with his best friend, Kota, he spotted a square hole about 50 centimeters across along the bottom of the wall. No such hole had been there the day before, but why it was there wasn’t what mattered to Shinichi. This was his chance to get in.

Shinichi got down on the ground to crawl through the hole. Kota followed, and once on the other side, they found themselves on the mansion grounds. They ran across the yard, which was wider than the field at school, and made their way to the front of the building. Slowly, carefully, Shinichi reached out for the doorknob. The heavy door creaked as it opened.

“Hey, Shinichi. I think this is a bad idea,” Kota nervously called to him as he peered inside the building.

“What’re you talking about? Don’t tell me you believe in all those stupid monster rumors.”

Shinichi had laughed off Kota’s worry at the time, but he should have known better. Kota was great at rock-paper-scissors, and he could guess his way through even the toughest exams. His intuition was never wrong. He must have sensed something creepy the moment they stepped foot in the mansion. That was why he’d tried to warn Shinichi.

“Let’s go home. This is dangerous,” he’d said.

But dragging the sniveling Kota along, Shinichi forged ahead. He turned on his video camera, intending to record every room, but he never expected what he’d actually find.

Where there’s smoke, there’s fire. Truer words had never been spoken.

Before Shinichi now towered a naked giant, easily over two meters tall. Its cobalt blue skin gleamed, covered in some kind of liquid. With every move it made, its abnormally large muscles swelled like balloons. Its hulking form appeared masculine, but it had no male genitalia between its legs. It had no features on its chest to make it appear feminine, either. Its skin was as smooth as could be without a single hair on its blue body. And since it was slimy, it almost seemed like an amphibian. Whatever it was, it wasn’t human.

Shinichi held his breath and gulped. He reached up and touched his favorite New York Yankees cap to pull himself together. He was dead if the monster found him. Trying not to make a sound, he took a step backward. Kota must have realized the same thing. He took a step back as well. But then...

With the worst timing possible, Kota’s wristwatch started beeping a shrill alarm. The monster slowly turned towards them. Its head was wider than its shoulders, and horribly unbalanced. It was like a super deformed cartoon character, but with none of the inviting cuteness. Its bald head was elongated and malformed, and it oozed a strange, green liquid. Its disturbingly large eyes glared at Kota. The horrible sight must have been too much for him. Kota’s knees buckled and he slumped weakly to the ground.

“H-Hey! Get it together!”

This was bad. Shinichi took a step to his right to try and help Kota, who was staring blankly into space like he was catatonic. Unfortunately, the monster was more agile than he expected.

Its right arm reached out for Kota’s neck so quickly that he had no time to fight back. As his eyes opened wide in horror, five long, narrow, blue fingers wrapped around his neck like snakes. The next instant, Kota was dangling high in the air, held aloft by the monster.

He kicked his legs, but the blue giant showed no sign of letting go. Instead, it began to tighten its grip. Kota looked down at Shinichi. Bright red blood filled his wide eyes. His expression distorted painfully as he tried to shout something, but the crushing pressure on his throat prevented any sound from escaping.

Shinichi was frozen to the spot. He couldn’t do a thing. Incalculable fear prevented him from taking even a single step.

The monster let out a low growl, and Shinichi heard the sound of something tearing apart. Kota’s pupils swiveled to opposite sides of his head, his tongue lolling from his mouth. He never moved again.

Expressionless, the monster shoved Kota’s head into its mouth. Its face still blank, the monster tore off Kota’s right arm and tossed it aside as if the wristwatch disgusted it, then pushed the rest of his upper body into its mouth. Only his two legs dangled from the corners of its thin lips.

The monster chewed and chomped, not bothered by the lower half of Kota’s body spilling out of its mouth. Blood spurted everywhere, gathering on the floor in a pool that quickly reached Shinichi’s feet.

“Oh... Oh God...”

Shinichi desperately tried not to scream. He knew he couldn’t afford to. The monster seemed to be focused on eating Kota; this was his chance to escape. He stepped back, still watching the monster. Despite it being the dead of winter, sweat dripped from his temple.

The monster’s right cheek bulged. It didn’t take Shinichi long to figure out why. It was Kota. The monster was sucking on Kota’s head like it was candy. It pursed its lips as if trying to blow a bubble with gum. Kota’s face then popped out from between its lips. His hair, which he’d proudly styled with buckets of wax in order to make it stand on end, was now slick and dripping with the monster’s saliva. He looked nothing like he had when he was alive.

The monster began rolling Kota’s head in its mouth with its tongue, either bored with eating or not particularly enjoying its taste. Kota’s eyes were rolled up into his skull, his mouth agape. Shinichi had to look away. His entire body was shaking uncontrollably. Loud chattering echoed inside his mouth as his molars clacked against each other over and over.

The monster then spat out Kota’s head along with a great glob of saliva. It spun through the air and landed with a wet smack at Shinichi’s feet. A sticky, dark red fluid spattered from his brow. Unable to hold it in any longer, Shinichi let out a scream so loud his throat nearly split.

“Someone! Someone help! Heeeeeeeelp!”

But the only one that heard him was the monster.

2

Closing the thick field guide he’d borrowed from the library, Hiroshi let out something between a yawn and a sigh. The cottony insect he’d caught a glimpse of that morning on the way to school was definitely a Prociphilus oriens. In flight they resembled falling snow, so they were commonly called snow bugs throughout the northern hemisphere. He’d heard they were mostly found in Hokkaido and were rarely seen in Honshu. This was his first time ever spotting one himself.

He loved insects so much that whenever he came across a rare one, he fell victim to a sort of tunnel vision. Normally he would have feverishly gathered data on it and dashed out of the school building as soon as class was over in order to observe the subject more. Right now, however, his head was somewhere else altogether. The reason was obvious.

Putting the field guide into his bag, Hiroshi turned around. Many of his classmates were still hanging out in the classroom, chatting away.

“Where did they go this time?”

“Shinichi mentioned he wanted to go snowboarding. Maybe they ran off to find a snowy mountain.”

“Last time they hitchhiked to Disneyland, right? The teacher really reamed them for that one, but they just never learn.”

They were all talking about Shinichi and Kota, who had skipped school that day. They were both free spirits known for doing as they pleased without regard for the consequences. They weren’t bad kids, but they were a headache for the teachers. And no one seemed to know where they’d slipped off to this time.

Normally this would be cause for alarm, but these two disappeared so often that no one was really surprised. The teachers and their parents only sighed defeatedly and shook their heads, wondering where they’d managed to run off to now.

But who really cared, anyway? They’d slink back home later that night when they’d run out of money and were starving, just like they always did.

Hiroshi’s gaze moved to the desk by the window in the very back of the classroom that had been vacant for a week. Judging by his classmates’ attitudes, no one seemed concerned about the person who should have been sitting there. They were so unconcerned, in fact, that Hiroshi almost started to wonder if that seat had always been empty.

In the third trimester of the school year, a new kid named Shun had moved to town. He was extremely introverted, and Hiroshi hardly ever saw him talking with anyone in class. Hiroshi himself never would have gotten to know him if he hadn’t gone chasing after an out-of-season Curetis acuta two weeks ago.

He’d stumbled across Shun in the hills behind the school, where he was working away on his computer game. He’d offered to let Hiroshi play it, and Hiroshi was so enthralled with it that he’d found himself running out to the hills every day after school to play more and discuss the game with Shun. Then, last Thursday—a week ago—he’d finally managed to beat Shun’s game.

After that, Shun had stopped coming to school, and Hiroshi hadn’t seen him since. He had no idea why. Nothing had seemed amiss when they’d parted ways that evening. Their homeroom teacher said he was out with a cold, but Hiroshi wasn’t the type to blindly believe what he was told. Shun was in good health when he saw him last, and no cold would keep him out of school for a whole week.

What could have happened?

Hiroshi smirked when he realized he was concerned for Shun’s well-being.

You okay, there? Maybe you’re the one someone should be worrying about.

Hiroshi was voraciously inquisitive. Whenever he found something that piqued his interest, he abandoned everything else to study it intensely and at length. Curious phenomena made his brain kick into overdrive, and he would puzzle them out until he arrived at a satisfactory explanation. His interests were varied, too. Though he was primarily into biology, subjects such as physics, astronomy, philosophy, architecture, and anthropology also tickled his fancy. When it came to the unscientific, however, Hiroshi turned his nose up at it. Things like the occult held no interest for him whatsoever. It was pure delusion. But there was something else—something very real—that Hiroshi had tried and failed to understand: the human heart.

The voices of three girls whispering around a table reached his ears.

“Doesn’t she just piss you off lately?”

“I know, right?”

“She’s, like, such a brag.”

They were trying to talk discreetly so no one would hear them, but as the conversation became more heated, their voices grew louder. The girl they were talking about was the fourth member of their little clique. Hiroshi had seen all four of them chatting away with smiles on their faces just moments ago. He hadn’t sensed any friction between them then. But clearly something wasn’t right. The minute the girl in question left the room, the others had begun talking behind her back. It just didn’t make any sense to Hiroshi.

No matter what theories he tried to put together or complex equations he tried to use, there was no solving this mystery. He’d invested a great deal of time in researching the subject, but it didn’t help. In fact, the deeper he dug, the more baffling people became to him. In the end, he’d given up on trying to understand.

And yet here he was. Shun hadn’t been to school in a week, and during that week, Hiroshi hadn’t stopped thinking about him. That was why not even the Prociphilus oriens had been able to hold his attention.

“Well, this is unexpected. I’ve never seen you look around the classroom so restlessly, Hiroshi,” said a female voice from just over Hiroshi’s shoulder.

He turned around to see Anna, the class president. Her long, black hair swayed in the breeze coming in from the window.

“Usually you’re either absorbed in a book, writing strange equations in a notebook, or studying an insect.”

She spoke to Hiroshi with a friendly smile, but it couldn’t hide the traces of exhaustion on her face. The area around her eyes was puffy, as if she hadn’t had much sleep. Her eyes were also a bit bloodshot. But it was understandable given that she’d lost both her parents in a tragic accident at the end of last year. It had barely been a month since then.

“And what about you? You talking to me is equally unusual.”

“Well, I happened to notice you staring over there,” she said as she pointed to Shun’s empty desk.

Hiroshi wasn’t easily shaken, but her sharp intuition shocked him a little.

“I wasn’t staring.” Feeling like he’d been caught, he quickly tried to explain himself. “I was just wondering what would make someone miss an entire week of school.”

“So you are staring.”

Hiroshi shut his mouth. It wasn’t like him to give up on a debate, but there was no way he could confute Anna. She was completely right.

I’m intensely concerned about Shun.

But even he couldn’t explain why.

“Have you heard anything from him?” Anna asked.

Hiroshi shook his head.

“Why would you think I had?”

“Well... You two have been getting friendly recently, haven’t you?”

“No, I haven’t done anything of the sort,” he said coldly as he pushed up his glasses.

“Huh? Really? But I’ve seen you two talking about games during breaks.”

“The game he made was very interesting, and I was curious as to how one would create something like that, so I was asking him for advice. That’s all.”

“So you are friends.”

“Is that... how it works?”

The word “friend” didn’t sit well with Hiroshi. What did it even really mean? If being friends with someone meant talking trash about them as soon as their back was turned like those girls did, then Shun was no friend of Hiroshi’s.

But then... what is Shun to me? I love the game he made. The mind that created such a thing is fascinating to me. Thus, talking to Shun about games is fun. And now that I’m denied it, I’ve been restless all this time.

“Hey. Want to go visit him?” Anna suddenly suggested.

“Who?”

“Jeez... Shun, obviously.”

“Wouldn’t that be a nuisance while he’s sick? It’s not like a visit is going to cure him. It’s a pointless venture, in my opinion.”

“Oh, listen to yourself. You’re obviously dying to see him.”

Hiroshi’s eyes opened wide. She was absolutely right again. It was like she could read his mind.

“Come on. Let’s go.”

Anna then grabbed Hiroshi’s hand and, half-pulling him, led him out of the classroom. Everyone turned to watch, wondering what in the world two people who’d never spoken to each other before could be getting up to. Hiroshi shrugged off the awkward attention and followed after Anna.

3

With Anna’s help, they reached the public housing where Shun lived. She went directly to the building marked “C” without consulting a map and proceeded to the top of the stairs.

“Have you been here before?” Hiroshi asked.

“Yeah. Yesterday and the day before,” she quickly responded.

“Three days in a row? Isn’t that a bit much? That’s far more than what your role as class president calls for.”

The exquisite scent of European pears wafted from the small box she was carrying under her right arm. She’d bought it at the fruit shop by the train station on the way. Hiroshi now realized why the cashier had given her a strange look.

“Stop it. I wouldn’t impose every day like some sort of stalker.” Anna pouted in front of the easternmost door of the building. “It’s the opposite, really. I buy the fruit as a gift and get to the door, but never have the courage to ring the bell.”

“Why not?” Hiroshi asked, head slightly cocked. What she’d said made no sense to him.

“I mean... Shun is probably not coming to school because he hates it there. Yet here I am, someone who will remind him of school. That’d be insensitive, right? I want to cheer him up, but I’m a little scared to face him... So I always end up turning back at his door.” She looked down at the box in her hands and gave a small smile. “Then I get depressed about how worthless I am and eat all the fruit myself. I’ve gained two kilograms because of it.”

“There’s no need to worry. Fruits are mostly water, so you’ll pass it quickly. They say that it takes approximately 7,000 calories to generate one kilogram of fat. If we use that pear as a basis and just assume it’s 200 calories, you’d need to eat seventy of them to gain two kilograms. Or did you actually eat 14,000 calories in two days?”

He tried to explain it gently since she seemed concerned about her weight, but for some reason, Anna flashed her pearly white teeth and started giggling.

“Thanks. I’m glad I brought you with me. I feel a lot better than I have the past two days.”

Why was she so hesitant to see him? If she disliked him so much, then there was no reason for her to come in the first place. There was a great deal about this that Hiroshi didn’t understand, but he could at least see now that she was using him as a pretext to visit Shun. In that case, he only had to play his role. And so he reached out a finger to ring the doorbell, but Anna suddenly grabbed his hand.

“Wait, I’m still not ready.”

“If you’re feeling so uneasy, we can simply leave.”

“No, it’s okay. Could you just give me five seconds?” she said as she closed her eyes and pressed her left hand to her chest.

What could possibly change in five seconds? The human heart continued to baffle Hiroshi. He checked his wristwatch, counted out five seconds, and rung the doorbell.

“Ah! Why’d you press it?” Anna asked frantically.

“You said to wait five seconds.”

“I know, but... Oh my gosh. What am I going to do?”

Apparently quite distressed, she hunched her shoulders forward and began pacing around Hiroshi. She looked like she might run if the door actually opened. Hoping to avoid that, Hiroshi grabbed her wrist firmly. Anna then stopped pacing and seemed to steel herself for what was to come. Practically standing at attention, she kept her hand pressed against her chest.

They waited for a bit, but there was no answer. There wasn’t any sound from inside, either.

“...Maybe they’re out?” Hiroshi suggested.

He then pressed the doorbell three more times, but the results were the same.

“Shun? Are you there?” Anna called out, but no one answered.

Hiroshi’s shoulders drooped. It must have gotten cold out with the setting of the sun. His breath as he sighed looked like a puff of white cotton candy.

“It would seem no one is home. You might gain a little more weight, but perhaps we should give up and go home for today.”

Hiroshi let go of Anna’s arm and turned to leave just as the door flew open.

“...What’s this? Why are the two of you here together?”

Shun appeared from behind the door. He looked healthy for being out with a week-long cold. In fact, he looked great.

“We came to visit.” Her cheeks red, Anna took a step forward. “You haven’t come to school all week. We were worried you might have caught something serious.”

“Oh, sorry. But as you can see, I’m A-okay,” Shun said, swinging his arms.

It was just as he said. He was perfectly fine. He even seemed happier and healthier now than he normally did at school. He was smiling and everything. Hiroshi could feel his heart lighten to see him like that.

“My parents are at work, so it’s just me here... Want to come in?” he asked, shyly looking away.

“We... won’t be imposing, will we?”

“Not at all. You came at a good time. There’s something I wanted to show Hiroshi,” Shun said and beckoned them inside.

At his insistence, they stepped into the foyer. Hiroshi bent down to remove his shoes when he felt a sharp gaze boring a hole into his left cheek. Looking up, he saw Anna glaring at him.

“...What is it?”

“Nothing,” she said and turned away, lips pursed into a pout.

“Are you angry or something?”

Anna didn’t respond. It seemed Hiroshi was dead-on about her being angry, but he had no idea as to why. Unlike math or physics problems, he just couldn’t figure people out no matter how much he racked his brain. He decided to give up on trying for now and followed Shun into the apartment.