Chapter 5: Fifth Week of October: Mika

“I’m Mika, and I’m right behind y— bwaaaaah!”

The moment it appeared behind Yuichi, he lashed out with a backfist.

His senses told him that it hadn’t sneaked up behind him; it had actually appeared out of thin air. That meant it was some sort of supernatural being, which meant he didn’t have to hold back.

A second later, Yuichi turned around, smartphone in hand. The thing he had sent flying had hit the wall, and now sat limply on the floor below.

“What happened?!” Mutsuko cried, arriving in Yuichi’s room in a hurry.

Yoriko, who he assumed had been downstairs watching TV, showed up a moment later.

“Yu... did you bring another little girl here?!” Mutsuko said with theatrical shock.

The person who had hit the wall and then fallen was indeed a little girl.

“Don’t say it like that!” he shot back.

It wasn’t as if it was his fault. He wasn’t bringing the little girls here. They just seemed to keep following him.

Yuichi looked at the unconscious girl.

Calling her a little girl seemed slightly deceptive. She looked about fourth grade age, and was done up exactly like the Dress-up Mika doll. The label “Mika Doll” hung over her head, as well, so that was probably exactly what she was.

“Family conference time!” Mutsuko declared.

“Again?!” Yuichi shouted in frustration.

Yuichi hadn’t personally been involved in what had caused all this, but it had all started a few days back.

They were having their survival club meeting in the usual room, where for once, Mutsuko was actually discussing something relevant to survival.

There were five of them in attendance today: Mutsuko, Kanako, Aiko, Natsuki, and Yuichi.

“Today, we’re gonna learn self defense techniques!” Mutsuko declared.

“Wow, that’s pretty survival club-esque,” Yuichi snarked. He actually still felt it wasn’t quite there, but he swallowed his objection. The club was really just a place for Mutsuko to do whatever she wanted.

“This will be a class for the ladies! Our club is full of cute girls, any one of which would make a tempting target for dangerous weirdos! So I’d like to teach you how to deal with gropers!”

Yuichi glanced over at Natsuki. She certainly was a pretty girl, but he couldn’t imagine that she needed any such countermeasures.

“What?” Natsuki looked back at Yuichi, her cold eyes reflecting their usual unknowable emotion.

“Um, I was just thinking you probably already know how to deal with gropers...”

Natsuki was a skilled fighter. Your everyday pervert wouldn’t stand a chance against her. Even a superhuman one, she could probably handle.

“Really? I was just thinking I’d like to learn how to deal with stalkers,” said Natsuki.

“You let one live in your house!” shouted Yuichi.

There was a man who served as Natsuki’s underling in her serial killings. Yuichi didn’t know the details of their relationship, but it did seem as if they lived together.

“I think stalkers are a bit of a different thing,” said Mutsuko. “That’s not really a self-defense problem... Ah, Yu, you might not have a lot to do this time around.”

“Yeah, guess not,” Yuichi agreed. He didn’t really need self-defense techniques at this point.

“Which means you get to be the groper! Come over here and glare at your sister with your bestial eyes of wanton desire!” cried Mutsuko.

“Can’t you put that some other way?!” Yuichi stomped up to the whiteboard to stand facing Mutsuko. The club room was full of clutter, so this was about the only place where they’d have enough space to move around.

“Okay! Well, I call it self-defense, but to be honest, stopgap self-defense tricks won’t be any help to you at all!” Mutsuko declared.

“Did you really just say that?! What’s the point of the class, then?”

“So, you might think it’s just a matter of having more in-depth knowledge, right?” Mutsuko added. “But you still hear about girls with long years of martial arts experience losing to guys who aren’t anything but strong.”

“Um, so are you saying this is all meaningless?” Aiko asked.

Yuichi agreed. If you could lose even after years of training, it was hard to imagine what the point of learning would be.

“Well — and this isn’t just about women — if you end up freaking out in a real conflict situation, there’s not a technique out there that will do you any good,” said Mutsuko. “So the first thing to learn is presence of mind! That’s what you need! Not to panic! If you don’t learn that, any self-defense technique will be pointless!”

Presence of mind. It was easy to say, but far more difficult to achieve.

How well could you keep your head in a real combat situation? Yuichi had been through quite a few in his time, and even he couldn’t attest to doing that perfectly.

“So, if a pervert attacks you, the first thing you should try to do is run,” said Mutsuko. “Don’t even think about fighting back! The next thing you do is call for help. That’s also something you can only do if you’re calm.”

“This is more sensible advice than I expected from you, Sis...” Yuichi was impressed. He’d assumed she’d be rolling out the killing moves with glee.

“You be quiet! Ah, and when calling for help, it’s better to shout ‘fire’ than ‘help me’!” added Mutsuko. “It increases the chance that someone will come. Of course, the psychological isolation seen in modern cities suggests that people might not come even then, so it’s still good to know at least a few self-defense techniques you can pull out for times like that!”

“May I ask a question, Sakaki?” Kanako raised her hand.

“Yes?”

“What about strength differential between men and women? If men are naturally stronger, is it even possible for a woman to fight back against them? Um, I don’t really like saying this, but I’ve heard there are places where they’re taught that it’s better not to struggle, since it can get you killed.”

“What the heck?” Mutsuko burst out. “That’s loser talk! Never just roll over for someone! Between playing dead and fighting, you should always fight! Even if casting off your pride would save you, what’s the point in living after that?!”

“Um, do we really have to make this a life-or-death thing?” Yuichi decided to pour some cold water on Mutsuko’s growing fire. If he let her go on, she’d probably take the conversation more and more into the wrong direction.

“Ah, sorry,” said Mutsuko. “You’re right. Certainly, there is a difference in the strengths of men and women. Individuals differ, naturally, but women on average have less muscle mass than men. That’s going to be a disadvantage, but I can also say it doesn’t matter too much. Let’s say a man’s strength is ten, and a woman’s strength is five. But if you want to kill someone, you only need a two!”

“Sis, I really don’t think this is about killing...” Yuichi said.

“What are you talking about? The potential to kill is a part of deterrence techniques!” Mutsuko declared. “What’s the point in just hurting them a little? Well, anyway! Just talking won’t get us anywhere, so let’s move to the demonstration! Okay, grab your big sister’s left wrist and give me your best sweaty panting!”

“I’m not gonna pant!” Yuichi reached out with his right hand and grabbed Mutsuko’s left wrist.

“There’re a lot of things you can do if you’re grabbed, but let’s go with the most orthodox one! This is sort of like the yorinuki technique of Shaolin Kempo!” Mutsuko opened her left hand, and without moving her wrist, dropped her elbow and pushed forward. That slightest of motions was enough to free her. She then used her freed right hand to strike Yuichi in the face.

As it hit him, Mutsuko stepped forward, spread her feet, dropped her hips, and plunged her elbow into his solar plexus.

“You said it was yorinuki! Where’d the elbow strike come from?!” Yuichi said angrily, after the elbow landed.

“This is the yorinuki dingzhou! It’s a combination of Shaolin Kempo and Bajiquan!” she declared.

“Don’t just cram stuff together like that!”

“Aww, but I feel like, ‘I’m right in position! I’ve gotta go for the elbow!’ That’s how well they work together!” Mutsuko seemed very confident about the combination, but it didn’t seem suitable for a self-defense technique.

Just getting your hand away was good enough; a proper dingzhou elbow strike would require a lot more training.

“Um... but Sakaki doesn’t seem too affected. Does that move really work?” Aiko asked dubiously.

It was true that an attack for self-defense wasn’t any good if it couldn’t cause the enemy to flinch.

“Well... Sis’s attacks aren’t that tough,” said Yuichi. It was easy for him to endure an attack he knew was coming.

“Yes, you looked surprised, but you could have dodged that, couldn’t you?” Natsuki asked, speaking as someone well experienced with Yuichi dodging her attacks. She clearly found it strange that he would let Mutsuko’s pitiful-by-comparison attack hit him.

“Uh, yeah, I could’ve dodged, I guess...” Yuichi trailed off. Mutsuko’s martial arts skills were considerable compared to your average girl in high school, but they were nowhere near Yuichi’s.

The reason Yuichi had let her attack land had to do with a certain compulsion in his mind, which told him that if he opposed his big sister, it would spell trouble later. Even so, he was hesitant to admit that in front of a bunch of girls.

“Now, let’s see what happens if you’re grabbed from behind!” Mutsuko announced. “Noro, want to come up and try?”

“Me?!” Despite her surprise at being named out of the blue, Aiko walked up to the whiteboard obediently.

“Okay, Yu! Grab Noro from behind!”

“Um, are you sure? Maybe you’d better do this, Sis.” Yuichi was hesitant. Even if it was just practice, it would still feel a bit awkward to grab Aiko from behind.

“I-I’ll be fine! Don’t worry!” Aiko said, flustered.

Yuichi timidly approached Aiko from behind, and wrapped his arms around her. He kept just enough distance so that they were only just barely touching. After all, given the difference in their heights, the most natural way for Yuichi to grab her would be her upper chest. That would be really awkward.

“Hold her tighter! And do some sweaty panting!” Mutsuko ordered.

“No way! And what’s with the panting obsession, Sis?!” Yuichi dropped his hips and wrapped his arms around her waist. He didn’t have to be breathing heavily to feel Aiko’s sweet aroma tickling his nose. It was making Yuichi even more tense.

“Both of your arms are locked down in this position, but put simply, the areas you can move are your head, your legs, and your hips,” said Mutsuko. “If you’re close to the groper in height, you can try to break his nose with the back of your head! But in this case, you probably can’t reach. So Noro, drop your hips and spread your legs.”

“Like this?” Aiko did as she was told.

“It can be surprisingly easy to get away if you just go limp and sag, but let’s assume your opponent bears your weight,” said Mutsuko. “You’ll end up slouching forward. See, you might think you can’t move if you’re grabbed, but you can do more than you’d expect. Now, grab Yuichi’s leg from between both of yours. Once you have it, pull forward as much as you can, and when his leg is through... then squat down and break his knee!”

“Okay!” said Aiko.

“Don’t you dare! You too, Sis! This is crazy!” he complained as he restrained Aiko from following Mutsuko’s orders.

“This is one way to make up the man-woman strength differential! Use your weight! Of course, this is only one situation,” Mutsuko added. “You never know how they might grab you, so it’s important to judge your opponent’s posture to find out what you can move and in what directions!”

“So, would this work on Sakaki?” Natsuki asked coldly.

“W-Well... I guess it wouldn’t work,” Mutsuko said awkwardly. “Ah, but you can kick your heel into his crotch! There’s no way to train the... balls...” But Mutsuko trailed off even as she spoke. She was probably remembering that that wouldn’t work on Yuichi, either. “Umm, s-so what about this, then? Yu, this time, try to clamp a hand around Noro’s mouth from behind!”

As she said that, he cast a glance at Aiko. She nodded, so Yuichi did as he was told.

He wrapped his right arm around her waist, and clamped his left hand over her mouth. It really did feel incredibly awkward.

“This one’s much simpler, because your hands are free!” Mutsuko declared. “Noro, try grabbing one of the fingers on the hand covering your mouth, and breaking it!”

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Hey, Noro, don’t just do whatever she says!” Yuichi shot back.

“H-Huh?! I can’t move it!” Aiko grabbed Yuichi’s index finger with both hands and applied pressure. Even if she wasn’t really trying to break it, it was still probably all the power she could muster. It just wasn’t enough to break a finger that Yuichi could do a handstand on.

“Um, what I’ve observed is that there aren’t any techniques that will work against Yuichi...” Kanako said, in a statement that shook the very foundations of self-defense.

“Which means that if Sakaki ever attacked a girl, she would be completely at his mercy?” Natsuki continued, delivering its finishing blow.

“Oh, how can this be? I’ve created a monster!” Mutsuko cried.

“You’re only realizing that now, Sis?!” Yuichi shouted.

The self-defense class came to its end with the entire club feeling dispirited.

✽✽✽✽✽

“Personally, Lady Aiko, I feel you require no self defense,” Nero said as he walked at her feet, in dog form.

They were in the forest on Aiko’s family property, walking the long road from the gate to her mansion.

“I guess not,” she said. “I just thought it would be cool if it worked.”

“They say that ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing.’ And you have me to protect you, Lady Aiko.”

“You know a lot about our local sayings...” Aiko had thought Nero came from another country. But if he spoke their language fluently, maybe it was natural that he would know the proverbs, too.

After walking for a while, Aiko caught sight of some commotion going down in front of the mansion. There were a large number of people there, coming and going. Aiko walked in the front door cautiously, finding it all very suspicious.

“Welcome home, my lady.” The maid, Akiko, bowed reverently as she arrived.

“Akiko, what’s going on?” Aiko asked.

“Well... the mistress decided abruptly to throw out all the trash lying around...” Even the usually level-headed Akiko seemed a bit out of sorts.

Aiko looked at the people coming and going. They were dressed in work clothes, and looked more or less like sanitation workers.

“Did we have that much trash here?” she asked.

“Well, ah... your mother seems to be considering anything she bought and left lying around to be trash.”

Aiko’s mother, Mariko was a shut-in who did nothing all day but watch TV in her room. Home shopping programs were a particular favorite of hers, and anything she saw that she liked, she immediately bought.

Those were the things Akiko was referring to. She had more health and beauty items gathering dust than Aiko could count. But while Aiko certainly thought they were useless, Mariko had always been stubborn about keeping them. It was a tremendous surprise to see her mother suddenly decide to throw them out.

“Hmm, I think I’ll go talk to her.” Aiko climbed to the second floor, but instead of going to her own room, she headed to her mother’s.

She opened the door without knocking and peeked inside.

She was surprised.

The windowless room, for once, was brightly illuminated. That allowed her to ascertain, immediately, that the room was almost completely empty. Even her mother’s beloved TV was missing.

Standing at the center was Mariko, in a track suit, looking around the room with a satisfied smile.

Mariko Noro was a pure vampire. Because of that, she couldn’t be out in the sun, so she spent the daylight hours locked up in her room. That might be why her skin had always looked so unhealthily pale, but today, she seemed very energetic.

“Mom! What on earth is going on?” Aiko exclaimed.

“Oh, Aiko! I’m decluttering! Decluttering! I’m bidding goodbye to my attachment to simple possessions! I never realized how good it would feel to throw everything out and tidy up!”

“Um... well, I guess that’s okay... I mean, since it’s your own stuff you’re throwing out...” It still seemed a bit excessive, but when Aiko thought back to the cluttered state the room had been in before, she thought maybe it was fine, after all.

“Huh?” Mariko looked at Aiko in confusion.

“Uh?” Aiko tilted her head. She had a bad feeling about this.

“Um... well, I ran out of things to throw away, so I thought I might throw out things you didn’t seem to need anymore, either...” her mother said.

“Mom! Don’t do stuff like that without asking me!” Aiko flew out of her mother’s room, and ran to her own in a panic.

It was safe.

Now that she thought about it, it was locked, so it wouldn’t have been possible for her mother to just barge in and start throwing things away.

Next, Aiko hurried to the basement. That was usually where the family put things they weren’t using. Aiko’s possessions were among them.

She normally found the basement creepy and tried to avoid it, but this was no time for such reticence. She arrived at the basement door just as the cleaning men were about to move in.

“Um, excuse me. Please let me through,” she said as she went deeper in.

Once she arrived, she found herself surrounded by her old toys and dolls from childhood.

“Um, we were told to throw out everything in the storage room here. Is that not all right?” the worker man asked.

“Huh? Was this all that was in there?” Aiko had come down in a flurry, but now that she had arrived, what she found there didn’t seem to be anything much. It was just the toys she and her brother had played with, long ago.

Hm, well, I guess I don’t really need them anymore... Aiko thought, as she glanced around at all the weathered old toys. She’d never given these a second thought since they’d been placed here, and she probably never would again. Maybe there really was no point in just keeping them around.

“Okay, you can take them away,” she said at last. If it would make her mother feel better, it was a small price to pay.

Aiko started to turn back, but stopped. She had a feeling that someone was watching her.

But that can’t be the case... she thought.

The basement was full of boxes, with lots of dark places where the light didn’t reach. But she could see just at a glance that there was no one around. There was nothing there but toys she never played with anymore.

Soon after that, Aiko began receiving phone calls.

At first she thought it was a prank, but they just wouldn’t stop. Even when she blocked the number, they continued, as if mocking her. It was clear they were no ordinary phone calls.

It got bad enough that she couldn’t even get a full night’s sleep. The calls would continue all through the night.

It was just like that old ghost story. The place they were calling from kept getting closer and closer. It wouldn’t be long now until they reached Aiko’s house.

“Hmm... and you say this Dannoura person abruptly began seeing numbers over people’s heads?” Makina asked.

“Yeah,” said Yuichi. “She said it started during summer vacation, but she didn’t get them from anyone. You really think it has nothing to do with Outers?”

They were in the student guidance room. Makina and Yuichi were talking, and Aiko was listening, half asleep.

It seemed the one who had sent him the love letter recently was Chiharu Dannoura. Chiharu also had special eyes, like Yuichi’s, that let her see things most people couldn’t. Yuichi had come to ask Makina if it had anything to do with the Evil God War.

“If there was no contact — assuming Dannoura isn’t lying — then it’s probably not connected to Outers,” said Makina. “Outers are dramatic. We like our flashy appearances. If an Outer bestowed a Divine Vessel on someone, they’d do it in a way that would leave an impression.”

“So it’s not a Divine Vessel?” Yuichi asked.

“Well, there’s nothing inherent connecting Divine Vessels and Outers,” she said. “Divine Vessels choose their hosts randomly, or at least, that’s how it was originally. So there’s a chance that Dannoura is a carrier.”

“If she is a carrier, could she detect the resonance?” Yuichi asked.

“Yes. So you may want to enlist her aid, if you can.”

The conversation seemed to be drifting further and further away from Aiko. The next thing Aiko knew, she was slumped against Yuichi. She must have fallen asleep.

“Hey, what’s wrong, Noro?” Yuichi was looking at her in concern. “Are you okay?”

“Ah? Um, sorry. I just...” Aiko’s words were groggy. She wondered if it would be appropriate to tell him that she was worried about something as trivial as crank phone calls. Besides, they were only phone calls. It wasn’t as if Yuichi could do anything to stop them.

“Have you been having trouble sleeping lately?” Yuichi asked. “I wasn’t sure if I should say something, but if there’s something bothering you, you can let me know, okay?”

“No, it’s really nothing...”

“You’re lying,” Makina shot back. “I may not be Sakaki, but I can identify a lie or two. There’s something deeply bothering you, isn’t there?”

“Well...” Aiko hesitated.

“Just tell us. Whatever it is, I’m sure my sister can handle it,” Yuichi said, partly joking.

That did make Aiko feel better.

She decided to confide in them.

Half mumbling, Aiko began do describe the strange thing that was happening to her.

✽✽✽✽✽

An urban legend: the Mika Doll Phone Call.

Perhaps it would be fastest to start with the Mary Doll Phone Call, since the Mika doll was just one variation on that.

One day, a girl who had thrown away her doll began receiving phone calls.

“I’m Mary, and I’m in the junkyard.”

Then, the next day:

“I’m Mary, and I’m in the park on the corner.”

Over the course of a few days, the calls would start to get closer and closer. Eventually...

“I’m Mary, and I’m right behind you.”

And then she appeared behind her. It was that kind of ghost story.

The Mika Doll Phone Call was more or less the same thing, except the doll was Mika, instead of Mary.

The main difference was that the Mika doll had an official voice chosen by the manufacturers, so you immediately knew that Mika was the one making the calls.

In other words, unbelievable as it might seem, it was obvious from the start that you were being called by a doll.

In the old days, people used to believe that dolls had souls. Even now, doll funerals were a regular occurrence.

For the Japanese, it was a ghost story that hit close to home.

✽✽✽✽✽

It was another siblings-only family conference.

It was just around 8:00 PM. Mutsuko and Yoriko sat around the table in Yuichi’s room.

The girl who had been sent flying was there, too, with an annoyed scowl on her face.

Mika’s official backstory was that she was in fourth grade. The girl did look to be about that age, and besides that, she looked exactly like Mika.

“Yu, even if she is an urban legend, she’s still a little girl, you know,” said Mutsuko. “Maybe you should have held back a little more?”

“I did hold back... but I had to make contact, so...” Yuichi had sensed something amiss, so despite not looking back, he had still restrained his power.

Yuichi could grasp a person’s sex and age more or less by touch, another fact which Natsuki would probably label “creepy” if she heard about it.

“How was that holding back?!” Mika, the one who’d taken the hit, objected angrily.

“You managed to get off with just a few bruises, right?” Yuichi asked.

“Oh, I guess that’s true! You’re lucky,” Mutsuko said. “If Yu had been serious, you might have lost your eyes, your nose, and your ears!”

“I get to lose most of my five senses just for standing behind a person?! Look at my face! It’s really swelled up!” Mika pointed to her cheek as she leaned forward, her tone almost boasting.

“You brought it on yourself, didn’t you?” Yoriko replied frostily.

Yori can be pretty cold from time to time... Yuichi thought. He was starting to get a little worried about her.

“Anyway, isn’t she a pretty dangerous yokai?” Yuichi asked. “They keep calling you and coming closer, and in the end, they attack you, right?” The ability to appear behind someone certainly felt like an ideal assassin’s power.

“W-Wait a minute! I’m not dangerous!” the girl cried. “I was just playing the role to scare her a little bit! Come on, don’t you know how the story ends?!”

“How it ends? Actually, yeah, what does happen after Mika arrives?” Yuichi knew the story, more or less, but was pretty vague on the ending.

“Good question,” said Mutsuko. “There are a lot of variations, but generally, the story ends right after she appears behind the person. The rest is left up to your imagination, to play upon your own fears.” Mutsuko was quite well-educated on urban legends, ghost stories, and other tales of mystery.

“R-Right! It’s just to scare them!” the girl cried. “I wasn’t planning on hurting anyone! It’s just a warning against throwing your dolls in the trash!”

“You say, ‘It’s just to scare them!’ but you’re still breaking and entering, so...” Yuichi said. Explaining the law to a yokai might be a little pointless, but breaking into someone’s house just to offer a warning felt extremely unacceptable.

“That reminds me, Yu,” said Mutsuko. “Why did Mika come after you?”

“Oh, I was holding Noro’s smartphone.” Yuichi said, showing the smartphone in his hand. “She said she’d been receiving strange phone calls and it was freaking her out, so I decided to help her.”

“So you were answering the calls in her place. But what if she had still come to Noro, and not you? It’s not like you to leave her all alone!”

“Well, uh, actually...” Yuichi said.

“G-Good evening...” The closet opened, and Aiko peeked out, looking rather awkward about it all.

“Oh! Noro, you’re so compact and cute! I can’t believe you were in the closet!” Mutsuko cried.

“So, that’s that,” Yuichi said. He’d had Aiko wait in the closet, under the assumption that she couldn’t be attacked from behind in there.

“Good show, Yu! Sneaking Noro into your room without us knowing!” Mutsuko approved.

“I’m impressed you got that past me while I was in the living room, Big Brother,” said Yoriko.

Embarrassed, Aiko walked from the closet to take a seat at the table.

“But you really should have consulted with me!” Mutsuko added. She looked unhappy, but also faintly amused.

“I like to avoid relying on you when I can,” said Yuichi. “Besides, I thought it was just a crank call. Of course, I wanted to be safe, too, just in case.”

Yuichi was getting fairly used to strange phenomena like these, which was why he hadn’t just dismissed the phone calls as a prank offhand. But even though he didn’t want to rely on her, he had brought the phone into their house just in case he might have to.

“Which means that Noro is the reason Mika came out,” Mutsuko mused.

“That’s right,” said Yoriko. “These things always start when someone throws out a doll.”

It was exactly that, Yuichi thought. Noro’s own expression suggested that that was true.

“Yes! It’s outrageous to just throw a doll in the trash! That’s why people like me punish people like her!” Mika banged a fist on the table as she spoke.

“I think it’s okay to put dolls you don’t want anymore in the combustibles, personally,” said Yuichi. There was nothing wrong with throwing out toys that were broken or unwanted, as far as he could see. Yuichi couldn’t understand why dolls deserved special treatment.

“I see,” said Mutsuko. From what you’re saying, it’s less like the urban legend and more like a ghost of wastefulness. A type of tsukumo-gami, perhaps?”

Tsukumo-gami were a class of yokai: objects that took on spirits as they aged.

“But why does this only happen with Noro’s dolls? It surely can’t happen to everyone who’s ever thrown out a doll...” Mutsuko tilted her head.

“Maybe because I’m a vampire?” Aiko asked. She didn’t seem to have any other ideas, but it was hard to imagine that your doll would take on a spirit just because you were a vampire.

It seemed much more likely that Yuichi was the cause. Worlds were getting mixed together because of Soul Reader, and it was causing more and more strange things to start happening in his vicinity.

“You know, too much is too much!” Mika declared. “Your house threw out so many dolls, of course they’re going to start haunting you! It’s a lesson, you know? You’re rich, so I thought if I threatened you, you might hold a big funeral! Why didn’t you hold a doll funeral? Then we could have struck a deal!”

Mika got up in Aiko’s face as she spoke. She did seem to have a fourth grader’s mentality.

“Aren’t those doll funeral things kind of a pain to deal with?” Yuichi asked. He wondered if there was even a temple nearby that would take them in. It seemed like an awful lot of effort to find a temple that would hold a doll funeral and then pay for it.

“Doesn’t throwing away a doll you played with as a child make you feel even slightly guilty?” Mika thrust a finger at Aiko.

“Actually, I never played with Mika very much, so I don’t have many memories of her... I was more of a Sylvanian Families person...”

“Wh-What did you say?!” Mika’s eyes burst open.

“Oh yeah, you’ve got the Sylvanian Families displayed in your room,” said Yuichi.

“What?! This is doll discrimination! What do you like so much about rabbit-people holding a kappa prisoner?!” cried Mika.

“Ah! Those ones weren’t for sale,” said Aiko. “I did want them, though.”

It seemed there had been a line of kappa in the Sylvanian Families. Yuichi remembered her describing it to him once, very happily.

“But if you don’t even remember being played with, why would you take on a spirit?” Yuichi asked. If that was the case, it seemed to Yuichi that this had nothing to do with Aiko.

“Besides, it was my mother’s idea to throw out the dolls,” said Aiko. “I don’t see why I’m getting blamed for it. Why didn’t you go after my mother?”

“Everyone always blames the mother! It’s ridiculous! It’s still the child who played with the doll!” Mika cried.

“It was my brother who played mama to Mika, so why didn’t you go to him?” Aiko asked, rather cruelly. Kyoya probably wouldn’t want to have his doll-playing past revealed in a place like this, nor to have an urban legend yokai sicced on him.

“I wonder if she’s not the real Mika doll,” Yuichi commented. She did seem Mika-like, but she was a real little girl. She wasn’t a doll at all.

“Right,” the girl said. “I’m more like the guardian of Mika dolls. Their avatar? I’m the representative of all the poor sad Mika dolls who got thrown away!”

“So where’s the actual Mika doll that Noro threw away?” Yuichi asked.

“It’s being burned up somewhere, obviously!”

“Um, if you’re the guardian of Mika dolls, shouldn’t you be saving that one first?” In this situation, Yuichi thought, most people would want to save the person on fire before anything else.

“Wh-Whatever! Just stop being so careless with your dolls! Now, I’m busy with my doll preservation awareness program, so I’ll be going now!” With that, Mika disappeared, just as abruptly as when she had first arrived.

“Is it... resolved, then?” Aiko asked uncertainly.

“I have no idea...” Yuichi said.

He seemed to be dealing with a lot more yokai lately. The idea that this might keep happening was a wearying thought.

“I’m Mary, and I’m right behind you!”

“I’m Jessie, and I’m right behind you!”

“Ruff, ruff! I’m Yoshiko, and I’m right behind you!”

“I. Am. Robot. R1845A952. Standard. Time. 215678. Sixty-eight. Centimeters. Behind. Your. Present. Coordinates!”

“I’m Sgt. Drake! Right behind you, soldier!”

Holding the smartphone in one hand, Yuichi kicked back at each new arrival. He had grown very accustomed to it by now. He felt like he’d been doing nothing else these last few days.

And today, once more, Yuichi’s room was filling up with personifications of arriving dolls.

“Hey, Noro?” he asked. “Tell your mother to stop throwing away dolls. This is starting to feel less like a ghost story, and more like Toy Story.”

Aiko sat on the bottom bunk — Yuichi’s bed — watching. “I know. I’m really sorry... Mom’s gotten really into decluttering lately, and we’ve got dolls lying around all over the place...”

Upon hearing the commotion, Mutsuko came to Yuichi’s room. “Yu... did you bring Noro here for more personal time together?”

“It’s not personal time! And Yori’s here, too!” he shouted.

Yoriko, having grown accustomed to the commotion of the past few days, was sleeping soundly in the top bunk. She was surprisingly tough.

“Oh! Well, if Yori weren’t here, you’d probably be doing it, right?” Mutsuko asked.

“Doing what? And of course not!” he shot back.

Just as he was saying that, the smartphone rang again.

“I’m Booh! I love honey in my tummy!”

Yuichi kicked the yellow bear across the room with an air of annoyance. “Can’t these things come here without calling first?!”

“Monsters like them are governed by rules,” said Mutsuko. “They have to follow them!”

“Sakaki, I’m really sorry,” said Aiko. “I didn’t know it would turn out like this...”

“It’s not your fault, Noro,” he said. “But how many of these things did you throw out?!”

“Um... about two trucks’ worth...” Aiko said apologetically.

“And it was all toys?! Rich people, I swear!” Yuichi was honestly kind of impressed.

In the end, he smacked down every one of the thrown away dolls, stuffed animals, and robots that haunted him, strong-arming the situation to a resolution.