Chapter 2 - Kimon: Jailhouse

1

The recent pleasantly warm weather couldn’t hide the fact that it was the dead of winter. The temperature dropped quickly as evening set in, and the north wind mercilessly assaulted the people hurrying home.

“Ugh, so cold.”

Shun lifted his head upon hearing a familiar voice and looked around. The sun was sinking low on his right over the giant chemical plant, now three years abandoned. The place was silent and still, as if frozen in time. Wandering aimlessly, he’d somehow ended up on the edge of town.

On the other side of the abandoned plant—Shun’s left-hand side—towered a wall easily taller than a castle wall. Aside from the metal gate, the wall was made of stone. It stretched to the next crossing on either side, and the area it encompassed was larger than the property Shun’s middle school sat on. The wall itself seemed quite old and was falling apart in places. Random graffiti covered it here and there, but it was just a jumble of spray-painted letters that made no sense to anyone. Cigarette butts and empty beer cans were carelessly cast aside along the road next to the wall. The lack of foot traffic here made it a prime gathering spot for delinquents. Barbed wire was wound around the top of the wall, possibly in an attempt to discourage that kind of thing and make it harder to illegally trespass.

While dazed and staring at the graffiti on the stone wall, Shun heard a loud sneeze. Focusing his eyes, he looked around. About twenty meters from where he was standing, he could see two figures sitting in front of the arch-shaped gate.

“Hey. Why do you think Takuro called us out here?”

“I dunno.”

“He didn’t tell you anything?”

“Nope. Nothing. He called me out of the blue, just like you, and told me to come. That’s not so odd, is it? He’s always doing stuff like this on a whim.”

A short, blond boy—Takeshi—shivered from the cold while sipping canned coffee. Next to him was a girl—Mika—who had a very irritated look on her face. Shun knew them both from school.

Takeshi was the class clown who was always saying something stupid to get people to laugh. His parents ran a restaurant, so he was extremely picky with his food and often complained about the school lunches. He loved milk and drank upwards of two bottles a day, yet he didn’t seem to grow at all. Mika, on the other hand, was so attractive that it was hard to believe she was in middle school. It seemed everyone in class had a crush on her, but she had a tendency to look down on others.

Shun had always been intensely introverted, but he found it especially difficult to deal with these two since they often hung out with Takuro.

“Urgh...”

He moaned a little and clutched at his abdomen. Just the thought of Takuro sent sharp pain shooting through his stomach all over again. Since Takeshi and Mika were friends with Takuro, Shun wanted to avoid them if at all possible. Fortunately they seemed not to have noticed him, so he slipped into the shadow of the abandoned plant and peered over at them. Takeshi was apparently very cold. He had on a down jacket on top of multiple layers. Mika was the opposite, wearing only a thin coat over a camisole.

“Mika, do you know what time it is?” Takeshi asked as he crushed the empty coffee can in his right hand.

“Don’t you have a watch? It’s almost five,” Mika answered, fidgeting with the hem of her shorts.

“I’d like to go home by six,” said Takeshi.

“I see,” Mika replied.

“We have two reservations at the restaurant tonight, which never happens. My mom was insistent that I help out.”

“Then why don’t you tell Takuro that?” Mika’s displeased expression seemed unlikely to abate any time soon. Her tone was also quite curt.

“No way. How could I? There’s no telling what he’d do if I went against him.” Playing with the suspenders hanging lazily from his cargo pants, Takeshi’s thin lips formed a pout.

“True. Takuro needs a replacement for Naoki, after all.”

...Naoki?

Shun knew that name, and his heart skipped a beat when he heard it. Last December, before Shun had moved to town, Naoki Ohashi had been hit by a truck and died.

“What’re you gonna do, Takeshi? You could end up his next target.”

“Oh, no need to worry about that. It looks like Takuro has already found a replacement,” Takeshi said, throwing the crushed, empty can onto the roadside.

“A replacement? Who?”

“Huh, I figured you already knew. It’s the new kid. Uh, what was his name?”

“Shun?”

“Yeah, him. Takuro’s been sneaking off with him during breaks and stuff lately. Takuro wouldn’t leave a mark on him somewhere visible, so I doubt anyone else has noticed, but that’s got to be what’s going on.”

“Now that you mention it, he did have a bandage on his ankle last week. Could that have been...”

“Yeah, it was probably Takuro’s handiwork.” Takeshi gave a small shrug. “At least it isn’t me.”

The corners of his lips drew up in a smile. Seeing that made Shun a little dizzy. His stomach made a strange sound like a dog growling. He felt awful. He wanted to throw up. Unable to stand any longer, he sank to the ground. It didn’t help at all.

Curled up there, a few minutes passed before he heard a sound in the distance like the spinning of a hamster wheel. Turning his head to look, he saw a hand truck carrying three cardboard boxes stacked on top of each other slowly approaching. Printed on the side of each box was the name of Takuro’s father’s hardware store. Shun had a bad feeling about this.

He held his breath, waiting for the hand truck to pass in front of him. Just as he thought, Takuro was the one pushing it. He was wearing a different jacket from the one he’d had on earlier in the hills behind the school. He must’ve run home to change. Big beads of sweat dripped from his cheeks as he pushed the massive load along. His breathing was quite ragged as well.

A look of displeasure and anger was plastered across Takuro’s entire face. It was quite clear he was irritated at having to do something so bothersome. Shun couldn’t allow himself to be found. Holding his breath, he patiently persevered until Takuro was gone.

2

“Oh, you’re finally here.”

Mika stood up, noticing the hand truck approaching them. Her inner thighs were a little numb from sitting on the cold asphalt for so long.

“You took your sweet time.”

The stack of cardboard boxes obscured Takuro from view, but she recognized the Smile store logo on the boxes. It was definitely Takuro behind them.

“Jeez. How long were you gonna make us wait?” she asked as she jogged up to the hand truck.

“Yo,” Takuro greeted her.

He was wearing a fashionable combination of a parka-like jacket and corduroy pants. The smell of bergamot wafted from his soft hair. Mika recognized it. It was the scented hair oil she’d given him for his birthday.

“What’s with all this stuff? What in the world are we doing?”

“Sorry. Can you guys help me carry it inside?” Takuro asked, nodding toward the stone wall.

“Inside? You don’t mean inside the Jailhouse, do you?”

Everyone in town called the giant mansion inside these walls the Jailhouse. Mika had never understood why people called it that until she came here herself. The stone walls three times her height surrounding the place certainly made it look like a prison.

“H-Hey. You’re not serious about sneaking into the Jailhouse... right?” Takeshi asked, the panic audible in his voice. “A monster lives here. If you go in there, you never come out. Tons of people have already gone missing—”

“You still believe that crap when you’re in eighth grade? So stupid. It’s obviously made up.”

“It’s not. I’ve heard people at our restaurant talk about it. Years ago, a friend of a friend of some guy snuck into the Jailhouse on a dare and was never seen again.”

“A friend of a friend, huh? That just reeks of hearsay,” Takuro snorted and smiled.

“But—” Takeshi tried to argue.

“Even if that story is true,” Takuro cut him off to say, “there’s no proof he was attacked by a monster. He could have run away from home or gotten involved in something criminal, so someone made it seem like the work of a monster.”

“You mean like with Naoki?”

“Hey, didn’t I tell you never to bring that up again?”

Takuro’s expression turned dark. Normally he had the eyes of a friendly puppy, but every now and again the slightest thing would cause his real personality to shine through. His sharp, malicious glare shut Takeshi up in an instant. It was only natural. Anyone would flinch at a glare like that, even if they weren’t a coward like Takeshi.

“I, like, totally don’t believe in the monster rumors either.”

Mika intervened as Takuro was about to grab Takeshi. She wasn’t exactly saving him. She just didn’t want to waste time on stupid fights. That was all.

“But isn’t it still a bad idea to sneak in? That’s breaking and entering, right? It could be a real pain if anyone found out.”

The moment she said that, a certain thought crossed Mika’s mind.

If I got arrested, would mommy and daddy worry about me a little?

“Stupid. Who said anything about sneaking in?” Takuro said with a sly grin.

“Huh? We’re not?”

“This is my house.”

Stroking his bangs, Takuro puffed out his chest proudly and retrieved an old key from his jacket pocket. The key looked like an antique, and had a head shaped like a four-leaf clover. Possibly made of brass, it shone gold as it reflected the evening sun.

“My dad bought this place,” Takuro explained as he turned away from the others and inserted the key into the hole in the sturdy-looking iron gate. “He was planning to build a new store here eventually. Told me it’d be mine once I graduated college.”

“Wow, that’s amazing,” Mika remarked in honest awe.

“Don’t be stupid,” Takuro said with a long face. “An out-of-the-way place like this would never get any customers.”

“Oh. Well, I guess...”

“I told him it was bound to be a failure, but my dad seems to have some kind of plan. Maybe he’s gonna make a haunted house instead of a hardware store.”

The click of the key turning in the lock echoed. Takuro tried to push the gate open, but the hinges were so rusty that it refused to budge.

“Hey, help me out here!” he barked at Takeshi, who was standing there with his hands in his jacket pockets and spacing out.

“Oh, sorry,” Takeshi apologized as he hurried over to Takuro.

“Mmmmrgh!”

The two boys pushed on the gate so hard that veins were visibly bulging from their temples. Mika, arms crossed, watched them struggle. Physical exertion wasn’t her thing, even if Takuro asked her for help. The heaviest thing she was interested in lifting was her Persian cat, Heart.

“Okay, I get this is your dad’s land... But why are we here?” she asked.

“My dad asked me a favor. We’re starting remodeling next week, so he wanted me to bring this stuff over. Come on, Takeshi, put your back into it!”

“I am!”

Takuro lightly poked Takeshi in the head, and he let out a pitiful squeal in response.

“I managed to get this far with the hand truck, but the boxes have to be carried the rest of the way and I can’t do that by myself. That’s why I called you guys for help.”

“Takeshi can carry the boxes. My job is chatting with you.”

“Yeah, that was my plan from the beginning.”

“Hold on. You want me to carry this in by myself?”

“Hey! Don’t slack off, idiot.”

Takeshi hung his head as Takuro snapped at him.

“It’s not really like you to help out your dad,” Mika commented.

Her tone was rather thorny, though that wasn’t her intention. She wasn’t sure why it had come out that way herself. Maybe it was because she was jealous of Takuro for being able to help out his dad with work.

“What’s wrong with that?” Takuro asked in a slightly lower voice. He must have sensed the animosity behind her words.

“Nothing.”

“So you pretend to be a good boy even in front of your parents, huh?” she almost said, but she managed to hold herself back.

I know a side of Takuro even his parents don’t. He can be his real self with me. That’s good enough, right?

The last thing she wanted to do was anything that might jeopardize her comfortable relationship with him.

As Mika was thinking, the iron gate stubbornly creaked open. Beyond the overgrown weeds stood a giant Western-style mansion the likes of which she’d only seen in movies.

3

After confirming that Takuro, Takeshi, and Mika had disappeared beyond the gate, Shun emerged from the shadows of the abandoned plant and walked over to where they’d been standing. The empty can Takeshi had tossed on the ground rolled over to his foot, blown by the wind. Peering through the gap they’d finally managed to open in the gate—wide enough for one person at a time to slide through—he spotted the three of them walking toward the mansion. The weeds seemed to be giving them a tough time with the hand truck.

“Hey, idiot. I said put your back into it!” Takuro jabbed at Takeshi’s head over and over.

If he were over there, Shun would be the one in Takeshi’s position. He was grateful they hadn’t spotted him so far, but as he watched them, he quietly began following after them. When he did...

“What’re you doing here?”

Someone suddenly clapped him on the shoulder from behind. Desperately holding in the urge to scream, he turned around.

There stood Anna, the class president, looking perplexed. The frills around her skirt danced in the wind.

“Wait, is the gate open? How—”

“Anna, over here.”

Grabbing her arm as she tried to peer inside, Shun once again hid himself in the shadow of the abandoned plant. Poking his head out from the darkness, he checked their surroundings. Nothing had changed. It seemed they hadn’t been noticed.

“Shun... My arm.” Anna frowned, as if troubled.

Shun finally realized he was still holding on to her left arm.

“Oh, sorry!”

He quickly let go of her cream-colored cardigan.

“You scared me, just grabbing my arm and running off like that. Goodness. What in the world is going on?”

In her right hand she held a plastic handbag you couldn’t really call stylish. The name of a cram school was printed across the front. She must have been on her way there. From her blouse’s breast pocket hung a shiba inu keychain, swaying idly as it stared up at Shun. He had one just like it. Anna had given it to him as a present the other day. The moment his eyes fell on dog’s innocent face, an intense pain assaulted his temple.

“Are you feeling sick?” Anna asked, looking at him worriedly.

“No, I’m fine.”

He shook his head slightly. The pain had already subsided.

“Uh... Um...”

He felt like he had to say something, but he was so nervous that all he could do was stammer. Not only was he super shy, but now he was in front of Anna of all people.

Anna, the class president, was the only student who’d been friendly and talked to him on his first day of school. She was also the one who taught Shun about the dip in the science room floor that was a tripping hazard, about how the English teacher would call on students based on the date, and about the hills behind the school.

“Come talk to me if you’re ever in need,” she’d said.

It didn’t take long for him to develop special feelings for her. That lustrous hair that stretched down to her hips. The way her eyes narrowed when she smiled. The slight lisp she spoke with. The more he looked at her, the more enamored he became.

But the more he became aware of it, the more nervous he became around her. As he was now, it was practically impossible to even talk to her. He cursed himself for being so pathetic, but there was nothing he could do about his natural-born personality. Any normal girl would quickly lose interest in a guy who looked at the floor every time she talked to him, but Anna was different.

One time in class, the homeroom teacher had made a bad pun that, for some reason, Shun found so funny he did a spit take. Upon seeing this, Anna smiled happily and said to him, “Hey, you laughed. Your eyes look like a shiba inu’s when you laugh. It’s cute.”

That was the first time a classmate had ever called him “cute.” Flattered and embarrassed, he remembered being unable to concentrate for the rest of class.

“This keychain looks just like you, Shun, so I couldn’t stop myself from buying it. It was a set of two, so I’ll give you one,” she’d said the day she gave him the keychain.

“Thanks...” His heart was about to burst, but he mustered all of his courage and replied, “I’ll value it for the rest of my life.”

It was the honest truth.

Anna always had a smile on her face and was kind to all. Just watching her was enough to fill Shun with happiness. But sometimes she had a dark, dead look in her eyes that made his heart hurt. The flashes of emptiness inside her smile. The tiny sighs she let slip during class. The bags under her eyes. Surprisingly, no one else seemed to notice these changes in her. Not even the boys sitting next to her or the girls she usually chatted with offered a word of concern.

Why didn’t anyone notice? Why didn’t anyone ask her if something was wrong? It vexed Shun to no end, but he didn’t have the guts to ask her himself. What sort of suffering was she holding inside? The curiosity got the better of him now, causing him to glance up at her from the side.

Anna was always kind to him, the new kid. He had to do something to pay her back. Yet despite his earnest feelings, his mouth stayed tightly shut like a clam.

“Um...”

He still couldn’t think of anything clever to say. He nervously rubbed the underside of his nose, but still nothing came to him.

“Hm?”

Anna peered at Shun’s face quizzically. He’d never seen her so close before. His anxiety ballooned and his mind went completely blank.

“Oh...”

With their faces this close together, Shun noticed that the bags under her eyes—something he ordinarily found charming about her—were darker than normal. Her eyes were also a little red.

“Have you... been crying?”

In his desperation to say something—anything—he blurted out the worst possible thing. Anna looked shocked, then put her right pinky to her eyelid.

“Oh, heh. You can tell?” she said, looking down and trying to laugh it off.

“...Did something happen?”

“Not really. There was just some dust in my eye.”

Normally, Shun would have just nodded and left it at that. In fact, he thought about doing that now, but what he said next surprised even him.

“Are you sure?”

Anna blinked repeatedly and looked back at Shun with curiosity.

“What does that mean?”

“I mean, Anna... Sometimes you look a little depressed.”

Shun fidgeted nervously, unable to stop the runaway train that was his mouth. What was with him? It was like he wasn’t himself. Sometimes he found himself playing the chatterbox in his dreams, so was that it? Could this be a dream? His legs were feeling light and the whole situation seemed surreal.

“Aw, you saw through me?”

Anna looked up at the sky and sighed. Her breath condensed into white vapor in the cold.

“I thought I’d already gotten over it, you know. People stopped talking to me about it, so I thought I was fine... But I guess I’m not.”

She seemed to be trying to act cheerful, but there was a pitifulness to it.

“Sorry.”

Feeling like he’d started to pry into something personal, Shun bowed his head in apology.

“Oh, right. You started during the third trimester, so you wouldn’t know about the accident.”

Anna put her hands behind her and spoke quietly as if she was talking to herself as she began pacing.

“My parents died in an accident last December,” she explained as if she were reading a passage from a textbook. Perhaps that was the only way to keep her composure. “It was a Sunday, and it was snowing. We’d gone as a family to the department store and were on our way home when a truck came hurtling from the opposite lane and crashed into us as we were turning. That’s when everything ended. But for some reason, I survived.”

She spoke calmly, her tone steady and body now completely still. She looked and sounded fine, but Shun knew better. He could tell something was wrong because she never once looked him in the eyes.

“It turned into a three-car pileup with seven fatalities. Everyone except me died. That’s weird, right? I was leaning forward, talking to my parents in the front seats. So why was I the only survivor? They were killed instantly, but I was unharmed. It doesn’t even sound possible, right? So why—”

“Sorry.” Unable to listen to any more, Shun apologized again. “I’m really sorry I asked something so insensitive.”

“No, it’s okay. There’s no use in crying forever. I’ve got entrance exams this year, so I have to get over it quickly.”

Anna rubbed the edges of her eyes and turned back to Shun. The evening sun obscured her face so he couldn’t see her expression, but something told him he didn’t need to see it to know how she was feeling.

“Can I ask a question now, Shun? What are you doing here? Do you know what this place is?” she asked, gazing at the stone walls.

“The Jailhouse—a mansion that’s rumored to house monsters, right?”

It was the most famous supernatural spot in town. There practically wasn’t a day that went by that one of his classmates didn’t talk about it.

Apparently twenty years ago a young couple and their wheelchair-bound daughter lived there, but they disappeared one day. The girl was extremely sensitive to ultraviolet rays, so she wore a thick coat even in the middle of summer and never revealed her bare skin. The mansion was abandoned now, but every so often you could hear creepy noises coming from the grounds. Some even claimed they’d seen monsters. Others thought the couple hadn’t moved, but rather they were so beset by their daughter’s illness that they committed suicide. Perhaps their ghosts still haunted the mansion’s halls.

There were all kinds of stories and people never seemed to stop talking about them, which is how even someone new to town like Shun knew about them. He was a bit tired of the rumor mill already.

“Oh, so you came even though you knew? Are you a fan of horror movies or something? Are you interested in the occult?”

Shun violently shook his head from side to side. Just a black cat crossing his path was enough to make him weak in the knees. He’d never even gone inside a carnival haunted house before. If he watched a horror film, he’d surely faint.

“Then why?”

“Takuro’s group is inside...”

“Takuro?”

Anna’s expression stiffened instantly at the mention of his name. Pursing her lips, she stared into empty space. She almost seemed to be holding something inside.

“Is he planning something again?” Anna muttered quietly, then turned her back to the plant and began walking toward the giant gate.

“Wh-What are you going to do?” Shun asked, hurriedly following after her.

“I’m going to put a stop to his evil schemes. I don’t want there to be more victims like my mom and dad,” she replied forcefully, continuing to look forward.

“What are you talking about? Ah! Ow!”

Shun’s nose smacked into Anna’s back when she suddenly stopped. The pain caused tears to well up in his eyes.

“Hey, Shun.”

Anna slowly turned around to face him and his whole body stiffened. He’d never seen that expression on her face before. Anna’s lips parted slightly.

“My parents were killed by Takuro,” she said, her voice quivering with rage.