site 09: Toko Sumikaze

Tuesday, February 16th

By the time I got back to the editing department, the sun had almost set.

“I’m back!” I said, but there were only two or three people there to hear me. They all glanced at me, waved and said hello, then went back to their work. The others were probably all still out working.

There was only a week until the next issue had to be ready, but the place felt lifeless. That was a common sight, lately.

The twenty-four story building I was in, just five minutes’ walk from Gotanda Station, looked very nice from the outside. Since the company located there sold textbooks, academic books, and other serious works, it was probably important for them to maintain a proper exterior.

But there was a corner on the sixteenth floor that was very different than the others.

Mumuu Monthly. It was a monthly magazine that dealt with the occult. It had a lot of history, and it had gotten its start long before I’d been born. But these days, if someone was talking about it, you could expect them to be laughing.

Its editing department was blocked off from the rest of the floor with shelves, and there was stuff piled almost all the way up to the ceiling. For some reason, some of the lights were always turned off, which gave the whole place a gloomy look. According to the editor-in-chief, it was to save electricity, but I thought there was probably a much less high-minded reason for it. Compared to the rest of the building, the Mumuu editing department was a mess.

There were old, yellowed document drafts crammed haphazardly onto the shelves. What looked like ancient texts (but probably weren’t) lay in piles on the floor. There was some kind of huge stone sculpture that reflected some garish color in the light, and a strange life-sized statue— the kind you’d find overseas— holding a spear. There was even a little torii altar behind one of the shelves. All that weird stuff made it incredibly hard to see.

The company had only moved into this building a few years ago. In that short time, we’d easily made much more of a mess than any of the other departments. No one ever talked about cleaning it up, though. Everyone seemed to prefer it this way.

Not me, though. Not really. Maybe it was just because my sixth sense was a lot stronger than your average person’s. That torii altar and all that other stuff didn’t make the place lucky. Quite the opposite, probably. And personally, I found it really creepy. Thanks to all that, when I went into the womens’ bathroom alone at night, I’d hear voices that weren’t really there.

Thanks to my power, I’d had all kinds of awful experiences.

“Maybe it’s fate that I’m working for an occult magazine.”

Surprisingly, very few people in Mumuu’s editorial department had a strong sixth sense. Quite the opposite, in fact. And the things I told them were such common stories that they didn’t even think they were worth writing about.

I weaved my way through shelves that threatened to collapse at any minute and headed for my desk in the back of the department. “I’m so tired... Maybe I should’ve had the veggie and extra garlic ramen at Ramen Saburo.” I sighed and sat down.

I’d been in Kichijoji doing research on a story, so I’d thought about stopping, but for a magazine editor like me who was running around doing interviews every day of the week, anything with extra garlic was strictly forbidden. So I’d been forced to skip it. I used to go all the time when I was a student, but once I’d gotten a job, I’d almost entirely stopped.

I took off my heels and tossed them under my desk, then sighed. The shoulder where I’d been carrying my bag was stiff. I tried giving it a little massage, but it didn’t help me.

My bag was stuffed full. It held my laptop, my drafts, my reference documents, and my notebook, all of which I needed for work, as well as a camera.

I took the camera out of my bag. I hadn’t had a chance to use it today, either. Well, there weren’t going to be many chances for an editor at an occult magazine to use a high-powered camera like this. It was really kind of a waste.

The camera was just a hobby of mine. It wasn’t part of my job. Cameras these days were easy to use, and supposedly, even girls like me were getting into them. I’d gotten into it, figuring that it wouldn’t hurt with my job.

I was getting a little sick of it now, though. It was just taking up space. The camera itself was very compact, but if you included the lens, it was bigger than you’d think. Maybe I should just leave it at home.

I rubbed my shoulder and looked at my desk, where I saw an envelope I didn’t remember putting there. The handwriting on the front said “Isayuki Hashigami #26.”

“Ascension!” Oops. I said my favorite word again. It was useable in almost any situation, so I had a habit of saying it all the time. I’d like to fix that, but it had proven impossible.

“Mr. Hashigami’s latest article’s ready, huh? I should’ve stopped by and gotten it. Did Makabe pick it up for me, maybe?” For the past two years or so, Isayuki Hashigami, a professor at Seimei University, had been writing a column for Mumuu. The next issue would mark his twenty-sixth column. Last spring, his old editor had transferred to another department, and I’d taken over for him.

Dr. Hashigami’s house was in Kichijoji, too. But the article itself had a clear deadline, and he hadn’t said anything to me, so I hadn’t stopped by his house today.

I looked around the room for Makabe, but his desk was empty. Did he drop the draft off and leave again?

“Nah, knowing him he’s probably off having a relaxing lunch somewhere. Not that it’s lunchtime.” The new employees had a tendency to slack off at times, I thought. Though to be fair, I’d only joined the company a year before Makabe.

I decided to read it immediately. “Let’s see. ‘Why We Should Be Less Emotional About Ghosts,’ huh? Interesting.”

Whether you believe in ghosts, or not, you’re probably too emotional about them... is what Dr. Hashigami had said. That emotion was clouding our eyes to the truth and stopping us from seeing the true nature of the phenomenon.

—When you think of a ghost, what do you think of? Do you think of a person? If you do, you’re already too emotionally involved.

“I see. So maybe believers are more prone to preconceptions than non-believers.” Personally, I liked this new theory of Dr. Hashigami’s.

After the Mayan prophecy in 2012 had failed to amount to anything, it had become the subject of vicious online mockery. A famous source of articles we’d been using since the turn of the century was gone. Lately, there’d only been smaller topics to write about, and I remembered hearing the head editor complaining about declining sales. But now we had this new occult boom helping us out.

Dr. Hashigami had switched to believing in the occult, and his articles, discussing his attempts to research it from a scientific perspective, were gaining in popularity. It was like night and day compared to the first column he’d written for us. It felt like something must have happened to him, but... what could it have been?

“Hey, Sumikaze. You back?” I heard the voice of our head editor, Takafuji. He was the one who’d made such a mess out of the editing department. He was also a man who insisted on not dressing up, wearing a polo shirt and blazer at all times. If the hem of his polo shirt hadn’t been tucked in to his pants, I might have been able to show him a little bit of respect, but that didn’t seem to concern him in the slightest.

His skills as an editor, however, were worthy of respect. In the two years since he’d taken over the department, Mumuu’s sales had almost doubled, supposedly. Given the fact that the Mayans were lost to us as a source of income, that was pretty incredible.

“Dr. Hashigami’s article looks good this time.”

“Did you read it already?” Usually, he wouldn’t look at it this early.

“Hey, who do you think got it for you?”

“It was Makabe, right?”

“It was me! Me!”

“You did it yourself? Hmm... I hope that that’s not a sign of something ominous. Are we going to get attacked by UFOs from the Large Magellanic Cloud tomorrow?”

“Nah. If we were, someone I know would’ve told me about it. I’ve got connections all over the world, you see.”

“Ahaha! It was just a joke. You’re too old to be proud of knowing people like that, aren’t you?” Supposedly, it was true that he knew people all over the world, though. He’d been working at Mumuu since it was founded, after all.

“Anyway, I happened to have something else to take care of in Dr. Hashigami’s neighborhood. I figured that while I was there, I should pick it up.”

“I see. You’re really spoiling Makabe, aren’t you?”

“Don’t be stupid. I sent him on an emergency day trip to Yamanashi instead.”

“I take that back. That’s a dick move.”

“Haha.”

One of the older editors told me that he used to have a much more severe personality. But lately, he’d relaxed enough that he’d even talk to new girls like me. Maybe it was just because sales were good. The same older editor had told me that before I joined, we didn’t even have the money to send people on long-distance trips.

“Still, thanks for getting it for me.” I stood up and bowed. “If only Dr. Hashigami would get a computer. Then we wouldn’t have to go pick his stuff up, you know.”

I loved his work, but going all the way to Dr. Hashigami’s house every month was a bigger hassle than you’d think. I’d have been happier if he could have just sent it over email, but maybe people of his generation didn’t like that.

Still... I didn’t like that house. Well, there was something about it that my sixth sense didn’t like.

“So, hey, Sumikaze. Is Dr. Hashigami kind of a misanthrope?”

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“When I went to get the draft, his mom answered the door. I asked if he was away, and she said he was home. I wondered if it might have been rude for me to just come barging over like that.”

“I don’t think so. Whenever I go pick up the drafts he always talks to me. And wait, his mom? Not his wife?”

“Yeah, she looked like she was in her seventies.”

“Huh...” I’d been to his house over ten times, and I’d never met his mother.

“Wait, does he live with his mother?”

“I don’t know the answer to that, I’m afraid.”

I searched my memories, and quickly found an answer. “Oh, his mom died a long time ago, I think?” I pulled the folder that held all his drafts out from the desk.

It was my policy to always keep things neat and organized, so my desk was clean, even if the rest of the office wasn’t. “He talked about how his mom was dead in an article last year.” I flipped through the files, and sure enough, his eighteenth article talked about how his mother was deceased.

“You’re right. But you know, it was definitely an old lady who answered the door.”

Maybe a relative? But why couldn’t he or his wife come to the door themselves? His college-age son was there, too.

It seemed very strange to have that woman answer the door.

“There’s an ascension for you. Do you think that she might have been...”

“Might have been...?”

I looked around the room and lowered my voice. “A ghost?”

The editor-in-chief furrowed his brow and thought for a second, before slapping his hands against his knees. “That’s just great! I’ve been working for Mumuu for thirty years, and I can’t even tell when an old woman’s a ghost! I guess we’ve still got a lot to learn, huh?” He cackled and walked back to his desk, scratching his back with a ruler.

I wasn’t joking, though. Maybe it was best just to drop it. I didn’t have the right to inquire into his family matters, and as long as we had his article, that was all we needed.

A better editor might have made the choice to dig deeper. But I didn’t want too many people finding out about my sixth sense. I’d learned over the twenty-three years of my life that it was better not to let people find out.

So I put it aside, and went back to thinking about my own article.

I took my reporter’s notebook out of my bag and opened it to the page of notes I’d taken today. I was looking at a case where an underage girl had spent a year living with a mummified man. Lately, people had even been talking about it on the internet. The editor-in-chief had thought there might be shamanistic or ritual elements involved, and told me to write an article about it.

The incident itself had been discovered about two years ago. The police had gotten involved, and news articles were written, though they were brief.

It happened at a big mansion on the outskirts of Kichijoji. That’s where the tragedy had taken place. I’d actually gone to the vicinity of the mansion to do some research, and learned quite a few things. The head editor had been right that this was worth looking into. There were a lot of things that couldn’t be easily explained.

The basic outline of the case involved an older brother who died due to medical malpractice. His younger sister, who was fifteen at the time, spent roughly a year living with his corpse. The mummy man and the girl were siblings. That was fine. It made sense.

What was strange was that the brother’s body had already been given a death certificate by a doctor. So after that, who got it to the mansion, and how? No hospital or funeral home would do such a thing.

“If the mummy walked home on his own, that sounds pretty occult to me. Actually, he’d be closer to a zombie than a mummy then.” I’d been hoping I could write my article on that aspect of the case, but I’d eventually come to the conclusion that it was impossible. I’d decided to head back to the office for the day.

This was just a criminal matter. It would be hard to find anything occult related to it. A girl living with a corpse was weak material for an article by itself. But that didn’t mean I could tell the head editor that this was a bad idea. My pride as a journalist wouldn’t let me.

The reason he hadn’t asked me anything a moment ago was probably because he trusted me. That’s why I wasn’t ready to give up just yet. “Still, there’s not too much I can do...”

I couldn’t go and make something up. The head editor had been quite clear about that when I joined the department. But without some type of occult content, there wasn’t any point in Mumuu writing about it. Personally, I was willing to write with another focus, but I couldn’t just ignore the magazine’s genre.

“I wonder if there’s anything good online.” I just needed something to give me a place to start. The mummy incident had been discovered two years ago, but suddenly people online were talking about it. They might know something I didn’t.

I started by searching the name of the little sister— Seria Mina. When the police had announced the case, they’d left her name out of it, so it might not be on the internet yet.

“Hmm...” It was a rare name, so there weren’t many hits. The only perfect match was a certain Facebook page.

Facebook was a social network that required the use of your real name. There was only one person on it who used the name “Seria Mina.” Was she the girl I was after? I’d just have to take a look and see.

I was surprised to find a lot more posts than I expected. She’d been keeping a diary online for over five years. It would take time to read it all.

“Maybe I should’ve stopped at Saburo after all...” I sighed and drooled a little. Then I popped a piece of milk candy that I kept at the side of my desk into my mouth to assuage my hunger. Time to get to work.

I decided I’d start by reading the posts from three years ago. As soon as I started reading, I saw something strange. All of the posts were about her older brother. You could call the thing a “big brother diary” if you wanted.

March 20th.

Brother was nice enough to take me for a drive in his car this afternoon. He knows I don’t get out much, so he even took time off work. But my brother just got his license, so he’s not very good at driving. He’s not good with directions, and got lost several times. In the end, we didn’t make it to Shonan Beach.

“I’m sorry. Next time I’ll memorize the map,” Brother said as he slumped his shoulders.

You know, Brother, I’m very happy just to sit next to you. Just driving with you for hours was enough to make me want to cry. Perhaps God heard my wish that we never make it to the beach, and did that for me as a favor. Take me again, please, okay?

She seemed to have some kind of weird thing for her older brother. Of course, maybe she couldn’t help it. If this Seria Mina was the same as the one from the mummy case, her parents would have already been dead. She and her brother would have been using the vast fortune they inherited to survive. If he was the only family she had, that might explain her dependence on him.

It struck me as odd, though, that even though she would’ve been fourteen at the time, from reading her diary, I got the impression that psychologically she was much younger. I decided to throw away any preconceptions I had and proceed on the assumption that this Seria Mina was a different person.

May 12th

Let’s go to the sea, Brother. You love the sea, right?

May 13th

Brother asked me to make his favorite dish, French toast, today. I’m quite clumsy, and I’m always reliant on my older brother. But making French toast is the one thing that I’m better than him at. Mother taught me how to do it herself, after all. It’s the one thing I can do to make Brother happy. He was so happy when he ate it this morning. He even said he wanted to eat it every day for the rest of his life. Tee hee! Brother, that sounds like a marriage proposal. If I wasn’t his little sister, I might have accepted. No, I prefer being Brother’s little sister.

May 14th

Let’s go to the sea, Brother. You love the sea, right?

May 15th

The smell is so bad. I took many showers.

May 16th

Brother is so silly. He was watching a lowbrow comedy show on TV and laughing. I don’t like noisy programs like that. I just like to be alone with Brother, in the quiet, reading a book. That is my wish.

May 17th

Let’s go to the sea, Brother. You love the sea, right?

May 18th

It’s still May, but it’s hot, so I asked Brother for some ice cream. How could he bring me back red bean ice cream, though, of all things? Brother doesn’t understand at all. I would have been happier with chocolate.

May 19th

I don’t like the heat. That’s why I don’t really wear much.

Do you know what Brother said when he saw me, though? “You look lewd.”

He said that! He sounded so indecent when he said it, you see. I’ve never seen him so frantic in his life. Heheh. I look “lewd” to Brother, don’t I? For some reason, that makes me very happy.

May 20th

Why doesn’t Brother drive his car very much these days? Does he no longer like driving, I wonder?

May 21st

So many bugs.

May 22nd

Let’s go to the sea, Brother. You love the sea, right?

“What the hell?” I could feel a chill run down my spine as I read the diary.

At first glance, it was normal, and kind of cute. That’s what made it so hard to look at.

Because...

When these entries were written, the brother that was buying her ice cream and watching TV shows was already dead.

I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes with my fingers.

What most interested me was a phrase that kept showing up in the diary. “Let’s go to the sea, Brother. You love the sea, right?” Did that mean something?

I copied it and pasted it into a Google search. I wasn’t even sure what I was expecting to find. But...

“Oh.” I found something.

There were two sites that matched the phrase in the diary exactly. One of them was the Facebook page I was reading right now. And the other was...

“Kirikiri... Basara?” The exact same phrase was found in the comment section of this aggregator site. And not just once. It was on every article.

I gasped when I saw the dates. The most recent entry was—

“J-Just yesterday...”

222. Anonymous Tells It Like It Is

“Let’s go to the sea, Brother. You love the sea, right?”