Chapter 5 - Kikokushuushuu: Blue Shadow

1

Silence fell over the mansion once more. Shun closed his eyes and cupped his hands to his ears, but all he could hear was Anna’s uneasy breathing next to him. He had no idea where their other classmates had disappeared to.

The shadows cast by the chandelier swayed creepily from right to left. It hadn’t ceased its dancing even after the front door closed and there was no more draft. But why? All Shun could think was that something supernatural was trying to scare them by shaking it.

Over ten minutes had passed since everyone split up, but there was no sign of anyone returning. Shun and Anna stood alone in the entrance hall of the mansion.

“We should find someone and let them know what happened,” Anna said, leaning against the staircase handrail. “If we work together, we might be able to break the door.”

“Yeah... Good idea.”

Of the six of them trapped inside the mansion, Takuro was the strongest. Shun would rather avoid him if possible, however, and Anna likely felt the same way. But he wasn’t the only one they could go to for help.

Shun looked around. The hanging lamp in the hall was on, illuminating further into the house. At the end of the long hall, he could see the easternmost door Hiroshi had entered. Surely he would be the most dependable in a situation like this. Hiroshi would come up with an escape plan in no time.

“Wait here.”

Leaving Anna behind, Shun proceeded down the hall. No one had lived here for nearly twenty years, or so the story went, yet the floors didn’t creak with age and not a speck of dust hung in the air. It actually made Shun feel guilty about not taking off his shoes.

An inlay of clouded glass decorated the door Hiroshi had entered at the end of the hall. Through it, an orange light could be seen from inside. Shun couldn’t be sure, but he thought he could make out some kind of table as well.

He grabbed the knob and turned it to the right, but just like the front door, he was mysteriously unable to open it. He jiggled the knob furiously, pulling and pushing at the door, but the result was the same.

Why? When did it get locked?

Shun was absolutely sure Hiroshi had entered the room. That meant the door must have been locked after that, but it didn’t seem like Hiroshi to lock the door from the inside. Were all the doors connected to the entrance by some mechanism that locked them at the same time?

“Hiroshi? You’re in there, aren’t you? Open the door.”

Shun banged on the door but got no response. It was clear that Hiroshi was in there, so what was the deal? Intense unease caused Shun’s breathing to grow labored.

“What’s the matter?” Anna asked. She came over when she noticed Shun trembling at the door.

“It won’t open and he won’t answer me, but I know he’s in there!”

“Huh? Why...”

As her face stiffened, the click of a lock from a different door in the room could be heard. Then a dark figure appeared on the other side of the clouded glass.

“Oh, that must be Hiroshi. Thank goodness. He was probably investigating another room you can get to from inside. Hiroshi, can you open this door?”

Anna reached out to knock, but Shun hurriedly stopped her.

“What?” Anna asked, looking at him in surprise.

“Look closely. Something’s strange.”

Still gripping her wrist, Shun nodded toward the door. The figure was slowly drawing closer. Only its silhouette was visible through the clouded glass, but it had broad shoulders and thick arms—there was no way it was Hiroshi. Shun and Anna backed away until they were up against the wall on the other side of the hallway. They both held their breath as the figure passed by the door. Shun could hardly believe what he was seeing.

What is that?

Pain shot through his temple. Grimacing, he looked at the door again but the figure was already out of sight. They heard another door open and close, then silence. Shun gasped for air and, leaning against the wall, sank weakly to the floor. Anna sat down next to him.

“What was that...?” she asked, her voice hoarse and her eyes still glued to the door.

“You saw it too?”

She nodded meekly. They had both seen the same thing, which meant that neither one of them was hallucinating. Its body was huge and muscular, like a pro wrestler’s. And weirder still... it was blue. It had appeared to be slouching, but only its chest was visible through the door. Shun guessed it had to be at least two meters tall. The arms dangling at its sides were unnaturally distended and unlike anything Shun had ever seen.

“Could that be the spirit haunting this place? Its silhouette was quite different from the ones I normally see, though.”

“I don’t think it was a spirit,” Shun answered, trying to control his breathing. The pain was gone, but his heart was still trying to jump out of his chest. “Allegedly no one’s lived here for twenty years, yet there’s electricity and the place is even clean. Would a spirit turn on lights and open doors? I don’t think so. I think... someone’s living here.”

Shun suddenly realized how talkative he’d become. Usually he was so nervous that his body shook after saying a single word. He chalked this uncharacteristic behavior up to the extremely bizarre situation he’d found himself in. Maybe it was really getting to him.

“If a spirit can open doors, maybe it can do things like clean too. It’s not like we know what their habits are or what they’re capable of.” Anna stared into empty space and whispered, “It... might have even been Naoki.”

“You mean the kid who died in an accident before I transferred here?”

“Yes. I think it was probably his spirit.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I don’t know. It’s just... a feeling. When I saw that blue figure on the other side of the door, I instantly thought of Naoki.”

“So he was a big guy?”

“No, quite the opposite. He was short and slight... and so very kind. He never said no to anyone no matter what they asked. Takuro took advantage of him. He was always dragging him off somewhere during lunch to bully him.”

Shun’s chest suddenly felt tight. It was like Anna was describing him instead of Naoki.

“None of the teachers or other students seemed to notice though.”

“But you did?”

“Yes. I accidentally witnessed it.” Anna regretfully bit her lower lip and continued, “So I wrote an anonymous letter to the teacher. About how Takuro was bullying Naoki, I mean. Apparently the teacher talked to them both, but there was no way either one of them would admit it, right? So in the end, nothing changed. And... I couldn’t do anything after that either.”

Anna let out a heavy sigh that sank to her feet.

“I was scared of being ostracized from the class. I knew Naoki was being bullied, but I was scared of harm coming to me, so I pretended I didn’t. That’s... probably why I was punished in that accident in December.”

Looking at Anna’s downcast face, something occurred to Shun. The truck accident involving Anna and her parents happened in December of last year. Naoki Ohashi was also hit by a truck around the same time. It was hard to think two major accidents like that would happen back to back.

“The truck that struck us swerved into our lane because it was trying to avoid Naoki suddenly jumping into the street.”

“...I see.”

Whatever comfort he tried to offer would only come off as shallow, so Shun kept his comments to himself. Awkwardness settled in between them. Shun, unable to bear looking at Anna on the verge of tears any longer, desperately tried to think of something worth saying.

“But... why do you think that giant man we saw was the spirit of Naoki? It looked nothing like him, right?”

“My friend who went to the funeral overheard people talking about how being skinny always bothered him. Apparently he was working out every day. That thing we saw... might be what Naoki wanted to look like in life, don’t you think?”

Shun’s expression clouded over. If that was her reasoning, it seemed like a stretch to claim that gorilla-like figure was her dead classmate. Anna must have immediately sensed Shun’s doubts, so she went on to explain herself more.

“But that’s not my only reason for thinking that. During the accident... I saw something from the car.” She stopped talking as a bitter, pained expression crept across her face.

“What did you see...?”

“Naoki lying in the road.”

As if remembering the scene, she shook her head and groaned.

“The truck trailer flipped and spilled a blue liquid all over him and the road... According to my friend, his body was still blue at the funeral. It was some chemical they apparently couldn’t wash off.”

Shun didn’t know what to say.

“Naoki must be after revenge,” Anna continued.

“Revenge? Why?”

“Because I knew he was being bullied but didn’t do anything.”

“But what could you have done? You told the teacher, didn’t you? Isn’t that enough?”

“Maybe that just caused Takuro to escalate the violence.”

“It would be absurd to blame you for that.”

“Perhaps, but... it was still cowardly of me to pretend I hadn’t seen anything.” Anna took a deep breath. “I’ve been keeping something quiet for a long time.”

She looked up at Shun with a determined look in her eyes. It was like she had resolved herself to do something.

“That wasn’t an accident,” she uttered, her voice trembling.

“What do you mean?”

“That day... Before the crash, I saw Naoki standing in the shade of the concrete wall by the road. He was waiting for a truck to come, and then jumped into the road... At least, that’s how it looked to me.”

“So it was suicide and not an accident?”

He chose to end his life instead of suffering at Takuro’s hands any longer?

A sharp pain dug into his chest like his heart was being pierced by a drill. It all sounded so familiar.

That might be me someday.

“No, that’s not it.” Yet Anna denied it. “It wasn’t an accident or a suicide.”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“It was murder,” she said in a whisper, her lips barely moving.

Shun was stunned. He opened his mouth to say something, but he couldn’t find the words.

“I saw him. I saw Takuro running for his life right after the crash.”

“What do you mean?”

It frustrated him that he could only seem to repeat that one phrase. The question was pointless anyway. Shun, as Naoki’s replacement, knew the truth of it better than anyone. A dull pain ran through his left ankle.

2

“Jump from here.”

Shun remembered how the dark of night hung over the school. How Takuro pointed to the window with a wry smile on his face.

Yet Shun had felt no fear. If he disobeyed, Takuro would just punch him in the stomach and spit on him like usual. Certainly, that would be less serious than if he jumped from a third-story window.

Normal, happy people who didn’t know any better would say things like, “You can do anything if you try hard enough. You have to muster all your courage and fight back.” That’s how they would try and console victims, but Shun’s case was beyond even that. Being treated like a bug had slowly broken down his self-esteem. The more Takuro called him an idiot or a retard, the more Shun came to believe he really was one... or worse. He had no argument otherwise. Looking back at the “experiments” Takuro conducted on him without a care for his well-being, any confidence Shun had that he was even human was long gone.

I am a bug.

His human emotions faded one by one, leaving only the urge to die.

“Jump from here.”

Those words had come as a relief to Shun. You could even say he was grateful. Now he could be at peace. He could end everything. And so he obeyed. That was all there was to it. Naoki must have felt the same way.

“No one suspected anything?” Shun asked. “You said none of the teachers or other students realized he was being bullied, and it sounds like he was a quiet kid. Didn’t it seem weird that he’d just jump into the street like that?”

“Everyone seems to think it was the curse of the Jailhouse.”

“What curse?”

“They say he was here up until right before the accident. He saw a ghost and it drove him mad with fear, which is why he ran into traffic.”

Such a possibility wasn’t out of the question. The site of the accident was only a few hundred meters away from the Jailhouse.

“Where did that rumor come from?”

“One of our classmates said they saw him climb the stone wall of the Jailhouse.”

“Who was that?”

“Takeshi.”

I see. So that’s how it is.

The pieces of the puzzle were slowly coming together.

“Takuro must have asked him to lie and say he was there when he really wasn’t so that no one would suspect foul play in Naoki’s death.”

There was no way a scaredy-cat like Takeshi was hanging around the Jailhouse of his own free will.

“...Shun, are you okay?” Anna asked suddenly. “Takuro’s been bullying you too, hasn’t he?”

Shun frantically tried to hide his shock behind a forced smile. Anna gave him a worried look.

Stop it.

He almost screamed out. She really seemed to be concerned about him, but he only felt like running away. It was like his body was trying to remind him of his own worthlessness.

“Don’t get the wrong idea,” Shun replied, smiling. “I’m not like Naoki. We’re just... horsing around.”

Shun sounded like a textbook bullying victim. He wasn’t scared of Takuro’s vengeance. He just desperately wanted to hide his patheticness.

“Stop lying. I’ve seen you two, you know. Last Sunday, I was in the same classroom.”

“...Huh?”

“I was there before you came. I heard footsteps approaching, so I hid underneath the teacher’s desk. You had no idea, did you?”

That meant she’d heard everything Takuro had said too. Shun was so embarrassed he wanted to disappear.

“What in the world were you doing there in the middle of the night?” he asked.

“The same thing you were,” she replied, her brow furrowing awkwardly. “My uncle has been taking care of me since my parents died, but it’s actually been suffocating with them worrying about every little thing. I don’t know if that’s why, but my last test my grades were worse than usual. The teacher scolded me. He said I wouldn’t be able to get into my dream school if I kept it up. Going to a private school would be expensive, so I’ve been trying hard to not inconvenience my uncle’s family... but I just couldn’t focus. And the more I worried, the worse I seemed to get at everything...” Anna continued to speak rapidly, almost like she was possessed. “And then I happened to overhear my aunt and uncle fighting. It was about money. Things haven’t been going well with my uncle’s job, and now they’re saddled with a burden like me. Of course they’d fight.”

Shun could only listen as she continued to blurt out her story.

“I’d always assumed I’d study hard and get into a good high school, but I can’t trouble them that much, can I? I didn’t know what to do. I just keep causing other people trouble. When I had that thought, I started hating everything. Why didn’t I die along with my parents? It’d just be better for everyone if I disappeared. Stuff like that.”

Anna sighed.

“I really was thinking of dying, but then you interrupted me and all those feelings boiling inside me cooled instantly,” she said in a lighthearted tone as if she was trying to make a joke.

“Were you the one who called the ambulance?” Shun asked.

“Yeah. I couldn’t just sit there and do nothing after seeing what happened.”

“Then you interrupted my attempt too.”

“I guess we’re both just rude, huh?”

His eyes met hers as she looked up. Shun smiled even though it wasn’t particularly funny. Anna returned his smile. It seemed the inner workings of their hearts were perhaps much the same.

“We’re birds of a feather, aren’t we?” said Anna.

Her words offered Shun a small amount of comfort. Here was a girl skilled in sports and academics. Everyone loved her and all the teachers respected her. She was the class president, perfect from every angle, yet she also held an emptiness inside her much like Shun did.

“Well, there’s no use in sitting around here.” Anna stood up, smiling awkwardly, and said, “If that’s really Naoki, then I want to apologize to his face.”

As Anna turned to set off, a piercing scream echoed down the hall from the direction of the staircase.