site 24: Yuta Gamon

Wednesday, February 24th

I checked the time on my phone, and it was 5:12 PM. I looked up. The hallway was long and straight. I looked down towards the end.

There wasn’t much light, both because the sun was about to set and because several lights had been turned off to save electricity. It felt a little like something out of a horror movie.

“The professor’s not here after all...” I’d only wanted to whisper to myself, but my voice echoed more than I thought it would. I quickly looked around.

Building 10 was where the professors had their personal offices. It was the tallest building at Seimei University, I thought.

I was in a hallway on the sixth floor. There was no one here but me. Finals had just ended, it seemed, and so most of the students had probably gone home. But even accounting for that, the place shouldn’t have been this empty.

I hadn’t seen a single person since I’d come into the building.

Man, I want to go home. I really should go home.

I was wearing my high school uniform, so I felt really awkward. This school was for scientists. If someone saw me wandering around, they’d be sure to ask me what I was doing.

“How did this happen?” It was all thanks to Ryotasu that I ended up here.

Two days ago, Ryotasu had suddenly shown a willingness to actually do work for once. She’d run off to do research on the black magic agency. My plan had been to take this newly awakened Ryotasu and have her go interview Dr. Hashigami for me.

When I went to go home from school today, Ryotasu, who I almost never saw at school, ambushed me at the entrance.

“Samurai Gamonosuke ☆, don’t you think it’s time you visited the professor? Like, right now?”

For my part, I thought visiting the professor without an appointment might be considered rude, so I tried to get out of it. But “Awakened Ryotasu” was a lot more pushy than usual.

“You should go! ☆ If you don’t, you won’t be able to see him! ☆ Now’s your chance to stop being such a wimp-o-nosuke! ☆”

And so, well, I ended up reluctantly coming all the way to school.

The problem was, I was sure that Ryotasu would follow me, and she didn’t. When we got to the entrance of the university, my self-proclaimed servant familiar said, “‘Kay, good luck!” and headed straight home.

How could she make me do this by myself? Sure, I agree that it’s not right for me to sit on my butt when my self-proclaimed servant familiar was working really hard. It would be a bad example not just for her, but for our newest member, Myu-Pom.

“But still, you know... I can’t just show up for an interview without an appointment, right?” If an average, boring high school student like me just showed up and asked for an interview, a professor who was famous enough to be on TV would never accept it.

In fact, he might say, “Get lost, trash.”

My people skills weren’t very good to begin with. A sudden interview was out of the question.

And I’d looked at the bulletin board on my way here, and Dr. Hashigami’s seminar was closed for two weeks. That’s why he wasn’t here today. That bulletin board was what had told me how to find his lab, though.

“The professor’s not here. I’ll just take one quick look inside to make sure, and go home.” I could tell Ryotasu that I couldn’t find him. It wouldn’t be an excuse. It would be true, and it wouldn’t be my fault. It wouldn’t be my fault at all.

And so I decided to stop hesitating and take a step towards the lab.

I was interested in what the professor had to say.

Mostly for my own personal reasons, though.

First, there was my fortune-telling princess, Myu-Pom, and then now Dr. Hashigami, who’d switched from denying the occult to believing in it.

With these two on my side, Kirikiri Basara would be the king of occult affiliate blogs. It was only a matter of time before I became as popular as Mumuu Magazine, or Tokyo Sports Newspaper.

In other words, I would win! Forever! I’d have all the affiliate money I could ever spend! I could make enough money to live the NEET lifestyle, and do nothing but sleep all day! Work was for losers!

And my future was looking bright. Maybe I could make things a little easier for Mom, too.

But if I wanted to do this, I needed to make an appointment in advance and decide on my questions first. Then I’d have to come up with an article outline, and also decide whether to pay him for his time, or tell him that we couldn’t pay him, and ask if that was okay. And I’d need to bring everybody, not just me.

That’s how big this guy was. Ryotasu didn’t understand that. Yeah.

When it came right down to it, I was spooked.

“Wait, even if the professor’s not here, someone from his seminar might be...” Not that I was 100% sure what a seminar was, though.

I had the image in my mind that even if the professor wasn’t here, in a lab like this, one of his students might be up here working all night. If there were people here, what should I say?

—And finally I made it to the door of Dr. Hashigami’s lab. It was open a little, and I could see light coming from inside.

The hallway was cold. Didn’t the draft coming into the room bother them? Or maybe it was warm enough inside that they just didn’t care.

Man, this sucks. But I had to go in anyway, and so I knocked, softly. No answer.

Next, I knocked a little louder, but there was still no answer.

I took a look inside the room from the gap in the door. There was no noise. No sign of someone moving around. It was so quiet I thought my ears would hurt.

Was there nobody here, even though the lights were on? I opened the door and took a look inside the room.

“Excuse me...” I said.

Oddly enough, there was no one inside the room. Had they left the door half-open, and the lights on, while they went to the bathroom? “They should be more careful.” Was this normal at a university? Either way, it felt stupid to be so nervous.

Anyway, I was a bit surprised at what I saw in the seminar room.

Compared to the image of Dr. Hashigami I saw on TV, it was plain and undecorated. It felt like a place that was being used for research. I’d expected him to like things a lot flashier.

It wasn’t that big, either. It was honestly a little small, when you considered that his students would have to work here too.

In the center of the room were four desks. I wasn’t sure if they were for his assistants, or his students.

The desks were cluttered with papers and other things. They really needed to clean this place up.

The walls were lined with shelves that reached all the way to the ceiling. The shelves were stacked with files and books. I could see issues of Mumuu, the magazine where the professor’s column ran. There were also rows of books about Cthulhu, ghosts, aliens, and other occult topics. For a moment, I wasn’t sure if this was really a university professor’s office. A lot of this stuff was even worse than what you’d find on my bookshelves.

There was another door in the back that led to another room. This one was shut tight.

“Oh...” Maybe they were in there? Is that why they hadn’t heard my knocking or my voice? Maybe Dr. Hashigami was in there, busy grading his tests.

Crap. What if he’s really here? I hadn’t expected that, so my mind was going blank.

But weirdly, the idea of going home had vanished from my mind. I was pretty interested to see what was going on his room. Even if I couldn’t get an interview, I wanted to at least get a glance at his seminar room.

Man, I’m such a trend-follower. But that was a good thing, if I wanted to run an occult blog.

I knocked on the door in the back, then softly opened it.

There was no one inside it, either. The lights weren’t even on.

Once again, all the tension I‘d felt was for nothing.

“I knew it. I knew this was going to happen.” But if nobody was here, I could take this opportunity to get a look at Dr. Hashigami’s seminar room.

This place must be filled with amazing treasures. I probably couldn’t write about any of them, though.

If he was this into occult stuff, he must have all kinds of amazing things.

This room was smaller than the seminar room, and it felt like a meeting room or a break room. There was a sofa for guests to sit on. I realized now that this room also had a door connecting to the hallway. Maybe that meant that this was where he talked to visitors.

There was an expensive-looking work desk in the back of the room. On top was a laptop, a mountain of papers, and a lot of what looked like strange objects.

They weren’t just any objects, either.

There was a stack of Japanese holy talismans, a hollow paperweight in the shape of a pyramid, a box filled with rune stones, and one of those weird dolls you found in Southeast Asian gift shops. There was even a big crystal ball like you’d see a fortune-teller use in an old anime.

“Yeah, this is what a fortune-teller should be using.” I’d never seen a real one before. Man, I wish I could take a photo. If I could upload this, I’d get a ton of hits.

It looked like some kind of international occult goods exhibition. There was no organizing pattern at all. But that meant that occult lovers were sure to be interested in it. What caught my eye in particular was what looked like a knife, buried in a stack of papers.

“What is this? Wow! It’s so cool!” Even with the only light coming in from the other room, I could tell. The edge of the blade was red.

I’d seen knives with blue edges on Twitter, come to think of it. It wasn’t just a thin layer of blue paint. The blade itself was blue. It was mystical, and really cool looking.

Maybe this was the same type of knife.

Was it some kind of occult thing?

Maybe it was some cursed object from a foreign country.

I couldn’t help but pick it up to take a look.

When I held it in my hands, it was heavy. I was surprised at the weight, given its small size. This was no normal knife. Was it a replica made of plaster? Either way, seeing knives was always so cool. Maybe that’s just how guys are. It wasn’t an occult thing.

I held it with a backhand grip, like a character in a manga.

“Swoosh! Swoosh! Hyper-something-or-other slash!” I swung it around. I wasn’t quite sure what the name was supposed to be.

I knew no one was looking, but I was still embarrassed. What was I doing?, I said to myself, and chuckled. If I didn’t chuckle, I was probably going to grab my head and roll on the ground in embarrassment.

Wow, the handle of this knife was really sticky. It was kind of disgusting.

I carefully put it back on the desk, not wanting to touch it anymore. But the sticky sensation clung to my palm.

I looked at my hand in the dim light, and it was stained bright red.

“Huh?” No, it wasn’t bright red. It was red and black.

It was sticky, like half-dried paint. It stank a little. I wondered, What is this?

I didn’t want to think about the answer. My instincts were warning me not to. So I stopped myself from thinking before I came to the obvious answer.

I looked around the room for a tissue, wanting to get this nasty stickiness off my hands as soon as possible.

And then I saw it.

Once I noticed that something was wrong, I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I didn’t want to look, but I couldn’t help it.

I hadn’t noticed it when I came inside the room, but, under the desk, on the floor, was a round, bumpy sphere, about the size of a soccer ball.

It looked kind of like a pineapple, but the color was wrong and its shape was rounder. It was so dark that I didn’t understand what it was immediately.

The sphere had a human face on it, and there was a neck connected to it, and then a body. Only when I saw that the body was tied to a toppled office chair did I finally understand.

It wasn’t a pineapple.

It was a human head, slick with blood, with the scalp ripped off so hard that in some places you could see all the way to the bone.

I remembered the face of Dr. Hashigami, which I’d seen so many times on the TV. He was a man, but he had long black hair that went all the way down to his waist. But more than half of that hair was gone from his head.

Did he rip it off? With his own hands? Or... did someone else do it?

“Aah... aaaah...” I almost screamed.

My senses came back to me just in time, and I jammed my upper arm across my mouth.

A tiny little scream slipped out of my mouth. I didn’t even realize I was screaming, so it didn’t even feel like I was the one screaming.

I felt the strength start to drain from my knees. I felt myself starting to stagger back and fall to the floor.

—No. I couldn’t fall down here. I needed to stand up and run.

That’s what my mind told me. I looked around for something to grab.

What I found was a pile of books on top of the desk. Of course, it wasn’t enough to support my weight, so I ended up falling to the floor amid a shower of books.

The warning bells kept going off in my mind.

—This was bad. I needed to run. I didn’t know why, but I needed to run.

But my legs wouldn’t move. It was like my body and mind had split apart. I smacked my useless knees in frustration. And then the paint on my hands— no, it was obvious now that it wasn’t paint— stained the pants of my uniform. I had to wash it off. I couldn’t let Mom wash it. I had to wash it myself, I thought, and then I found my eyes turning toward the body again.

Was that... Dr. Hashigami? He wasn’t moving at all.

Did that mean he was dead? Of course he was dead.

It didn’t make sense for him to be tied to a chair. You couldn’t do that on your own, which meant that someone else had tied him up.

His face was bumpy and swollen in places, and looked nothing like I remembered it. What could do that to a person? It was barely a human face anymore.

His expression was frozen in pain. I couldn’t bear to look at it directly, so I looked away.

But that was a mistake. I saw what was near his outstretched hand.

“No way... This can’t be happening...” I froze. There was so much blood right next to his hand.

It was a dying message. Something you often saw in mystery novels. Seeing it in reality, though, just made me sick. A last message from a dead man would be filled with hate and rage. It wasn’t something you would want to read.

But it was too late. Now I could never forget it.

The handwriting was shaky, and it was almost hard to be sure that it was really letters.

If you tried to force it to make some sense, this is what it said: “CODE” Which meant— “Hey, you! The stupid-looking guy!”

“!!!!!” I suddenly heard a girl’s voice next to me, and literally leapt up in shock.

I leapt up so fast that I ended up hitting my head against the corner of the desk. My body spasmed from the pain.

I was so panicked that I forgot the obvious fact that dead bodies don’t talk, and that Dr. Hashigami was a man, and I crawled frantically away from the body.

—There was someone besides me and the body in the room! I only came to this terrifying conclusion after I’d already made it to the corner of the room and held my breath, shivering.

But the only place someone could hide in here was behind the desk. There was a body there, and I didn’t see anyone else... I thought.

The door to the other room was closed. Had I closed it? I was the one who opened it. But I didn’t remember closing it. I’d been in the room for only two or three minutes now. During that time, I hadn’t heard a single sound. I hadn’t heard anything from the other room, either. And the voice I’d heard had been really close. It definitely hadn’t been coming from the other room.

I wanted to scream, “Who’s there?” But it felt like screaming would only make things worse. I was too confused, nervous, and scared to even speak, anyway.

“Why are you panicking?! Get ahold of yourself, dummy!”

“Hyahh!” There it was again. I heard a girl’s voice. It was very close.

And it was muffled, like the speaker was wearing a mask.

I looked down at my feet. Of course, there was no one there.

I had no idea where the voice was coming from. My sense of direction and my sense of balance were both gone, and it felt like I’d been thrown into some kind of weird other dimension.

The fear that someone had found me in a room with a dead body started to slowly eat away at me. Then the fear turned into full-blown terror, and the terror stopped me from being able to think.

“Wh-Who’s there?!” I forced myself to scream.

I looked around the room, again and again and again and again.

“Where... Where are you?!” I should never have come here. I should never have come here to do the interview. I should’ve stayed in my room like a good NEET. This was all Ryotasu’s fault. Why did this have to happen to me?

“What did I do? Waaah!”

“Calm down! Stop crying, dummy!” The girl’s voice was surprisingly close.

Was I really hearing a voice from another dimension?

Was I insane?

Or...

I gulped and took the phone out of my pocket.

Nothing seemed wrong with it. It wasn’t even on a call. There was no way it could be coming from here.

Then... the only thing I could think of was my backpack, and the Skysensor I had slung from my shoulder. I gasped.

That’s right. That’s right!

It was only a few days ago, wasn’t it? I’d heard that old song coming from the Skysensor, even though it was turned off?

“No way!” I quickly took the Skysensor off my shoulder and opened the case.

“How long are you going to stay there?!”

“Uwah!”

A bossy girl’s voice was coming out of the speaker. It was as if the Zonko strap that was hanging off it was talking. I threw the whole thing away.

The radio landed on the floor, and I could still hear the girl talking. “Don’t you understand? If you stay here, they’re going to think you’re a suspect!”

“What’s going on? What station is this? What program is this?”

“This isn’t a program! I’m talking to you! You, the one with snot dripping down your nose as you freak out in front of a dead body!”

It was talking to me. The voice from the radio was talking to me. This was impossible. There was no way we could be having a conversation. The Skysensor wasn’t a phone. It was a radio.

Wait a minute. Whoever was talking to me knew exactly what I was doing. Why? What kind of magic trick were they using?

“Wh-Who are you? Where are you watching me from? Did you kill the professor?!” I grabbed the radio and shouted.

If anybody could see me right now, they’d probably think I looked like an idiot.

I knew that you could do two-way communication with a radio like this, but I was still screaming into the speaker like it was a phone.

“You’re about to be caught up in something really dangerous,” the girl said to me.

But her words only made me more confused. “Did you set me up?! Why are you doing this? Where are you watching me from?”

“Shut up! Shut up and listen! This is partially your fault for not thinking about what you were doing! You practically asked for this when you came here!”

“Stop yelling and explain—”

“I don’t have time! Even if I told you what was really going on, it would take you time to understand it. So I’m skipping it! Got it?!”

“But—”

“Instead, I’m about to tell you something really important. Just do what I tell you.”

“Do what—”

“If you want to get out of here safely, then listen to me! Got it?!” The voice on the radio was strong, and clearly wasn’t going to take no for an answer.

“What should I do?”

“Can you see the toolbox under the desk?”

It was hard to imagine a toolbox being in a room like this. I was sure there wouldn’t be one. But still, I looked under the desk, being careful not to glance at the body.

“There it is...” It was a full, professional-grade toolbox. It was weird to see something like that here. “D-Did you put that here?” I asked as I pulled the toolbox towards me, but the voice on the radio didn’t answer.

“Get out the pliers! Hurry!”

“The pliers? Why do I need pliers? I don’t need to bust the lock on the door—”

“Use it to pull out one of the professor’s teeth!”

“Wh-What?!”

“Do it!”

I was already enough of a mess. Hearing her tell me that made me start to think I’d be better off passing out and waking up in a holding cell at the police station.

“Wh-What the hell are you talking about? How is pulling a tooth out from a dead body supposed to help me get out of here safely?”

“You want the gold tooth on the far left! Got it? Don’t pull out the wrong one!”

“Listen to me—”

“I told you to shut up and listen to me! Do you still not understand the situation you’re in? You already touched one of the murder weapons!”

I’d... touched one of the murder weapons? Did she mean the pliers? No, wait!

“That knife!” The knife with the red blade on the desk. Thinking back, it was obvious what that red was now.

That was the murder weapon that killed the professor. And I was stupid enough to grab it and play with it.

“I’m so stupid!” I hated myself. I wanted to punch myself to death, right now.

“Stop wasting time! Somebody will be here soon!” The voice on the radio started to get more tense.

“But... But... I can’t pull out his tooth! I can’t!” I was also curious to know how she knew that someone was coming, but I didn’t have the energy left to disobey her anymore.

“Waah... Damn it! Why is this happening?!” I was crying. But I grit my teeth and gripped the pliers hard, then moved toward Dr. Hashigami’s body.

“There’s a gold tooth on the back left. Just pull it out. There’s no time!”

“H-How much time do I have left?”

“About thirty seconds.”

“Thirty seconds?!” That was barely any time at all. They were almost here!

“But who—”

“If you’ve got time to talk, then get started!”

I grabbed the professor’s jaw and shivered. It was cold and hard. I didn’t realize bodies got so cold and stiff.

I wanted to run away. I didn’t want to touch it.

My vision blurred with tears.

“Twenty seconds!” I forced the professor’s mouth open. It was harder than I thought, and it took me a little time.

I looked in his mouth. There was a gold tooth shining in the back left.

I forced in the pliers.

I was defiling a corpse.

It felt like the professor’s empty eyes were staring at me. I begged him to close his eyes, but it wasn’t happening.

My hands were shaking.

It was hard to get the pliers lined up against the right tooth.

“Hurry!” “I know! Don’t hurry me so much!” I finally grabbed the tooth with the pliers.

I pulled, hard. But it didn’t budge at all.

“Ten seconds!”

Shit! Shit! Shit! I couldn’t do this! This was crazy! I couldn’t do something this gruesome! Somebody make it stop! I want to cry—

“Five seconds!”

DAMN IT ALL! JUST COME OUT!

I crouched down and stepped on the professor’s forehead. With the head pressed firmly against the ground, I pulled on the pliers as hard as I could.

I felt the sensation of ripping flesh in my hands. More blood than I expected came out of the professor’s mouth.

I looked down at the end of the pliers, and saw something covered in blood, about five centimeters long.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking at.

I didn’t realize teeth were so...

“They’re here—” Just as the voice spoke, I could hear someone enter the next room.

I shivered and held my breath. Who was it? Who was there? It was obvious it wasn’t the girl on the radio.

Then was it the police? One of his students? Or... maybe the murderer? As best I could tell, there was only one person.

“You can escape if you go now. Go out by the hallway,” the radio said.

Whoever they were, the person was still in the seminar room.

I put the bloodstained pliers and the tooth in my bag, not caring about the mess the blood would make. Then I picked up the radio and closed the lid.

And then, my knees trembling, I silently opened the door to the hallway.

The hallway was even darker than when I’d arrived. No one else was here.

I crouched down and headed to the elevators as silently as I could.

I looked back behind me a bunch of times.

What if someone was following me? I was scared. My heart had been pounding hard since I’d found the professor’s body. It was so loud I worried the sound would echo down the hall and alert the person in the seminar room.

I made it to the elevators.

There were two elevators. One of them was stopped on the 6th floor. Maybe whoever was in the room now had used it to come here.

I went to press the button for the elevator, and then changed my mind and went for the stairs.

The lights in the stairwell were off, and it was dark. But now, the darkness made me feel better.

I ran down the stairs to the first floor, as fast and as silently as possible.

I made it outside. I was inside the courtyard of Seimei University.

No one had followed me.

I wanted to get out of here as soon as possible, so instead of heading for the university’s main entrance, I ran toward the high school. I passed two university students on the way, but it was dark now, and they didn’t seem to realize that I was covered in blood.

“Hahh... hahh... hahh...” I’d been in the bathroom for about twenty minutes, washing the blood off. I’d deliberately kept the lights off.

“It’s a curse... All the bad deeds I’ve ever done... I’ve been punished for them.”

Maybe it was because the black magic agency had cursed me, I thought to myself. I should never have sent Ryotasu there.

But hiding in Seimei High was the right move. Most of the clubs were done for the day, and the only room with a light on was the teachers’ office.

I ran into the furthest bathroom on the third floor of the special classrooms building, where no one was likely to go, and started to wash off my hands.

“I can’t... get the stink off...” The blood was gone, but it felt like I could still smell a metallic stench.

I kept rubbing with soap, again and again and again.

There were spots of blood on my uniform. I couldn’t get it totally clean here, but I should at least clean it with water. I’d have to wash it carefully once I got home, or my mom would find out. I had to be careful.

There was a stain on the knees of my pants that was too big for me to come up with an excuse. If I got anywhere near Kichijoji station like this, the cops were sure to stop me.

I had no choice but to strip down to my underwear and wash my pants in the sink.

It was just a school sink, and so there wasn’t any hot water. I kept washing them with cold water until my fingers went numb. I could barely feel my fingertips anymore. But I kept washing.

All kinds of questions filled my mind, but I refused to think about them. If I did, my brain would burst.

What happened? What did I just get caught up in? Who killed the professor, and why? Who had come into the room after me?

And more than anything... who was the voice that I’d heard from the radio?

The Skysensor had been dead silent since I’d left the university. I’d been too busy washing my hands and clothes to look, but I’m sure if I did I’d find that the power switch was off, just like it was when I’d heard “Gloomy Sunday.”

Was that voice real? If it was, maybe I was hearing things. That would make me like a psychic.

I’d managed to make it out of there because of the voice, after all. But there were a lot of things the voice said that didn’t make sense.

“Oh, right... What do I do with this gold tooth?”

I’d been so desperate to get out of there that I’d thrown the pliers and the tooth in my bag. The bag was lying on the ground at my feet. It was covered in blood, too.

“I have to wash it off. I have to wash off all the blood...” I rummaged through my bag.

The blood on the pliers and the tooth had stained some of my textbooks.

That alone was enough to make me regret doing it, and I felt sick thinking about the fact that I had even more cleanup to do.

I took the tooth and the pliers out my bag.

“Grrr...” The tooth was still stuck to the pliers. I removed it. Just touching it made me feel sick.

This was obvious, but it had been inside Dr. Hashigami’s mouth. Just the thought of touching it disgusted me.

I couldn’t carry it around when it was covered in blood, though. I forced myself to bring it over to the sink and wash off the blood.

I rubbed the blood off with my fingers. There were little chunks of flesh stuck to it in parts, and it made me want to throw up.

I felt guilty for doing this. This was desecration of a corpse. I was desecrating Dr. Hashigami’s very dignity as a human being.

“What’s going on? What the hell is going on?” I kept washing the tooth, trying not to throw up.

The root of the tooth had little depressions in it, and those depressions in particular were filled with little pieces of flesh. I bit my lip and carefully cleaned each one.

The dark red blood and chunks of flesh went down the drain. Little by little, the surface of the tooth became visible.

And eventually, I saw it. When I did, I turned on the lights, not caring who saw me.

It was so bright that for a moment, I couldn’t see. My vision came back quickly, and I looked down at the tooth.

“No way. Is this...”

Gold teeth were normally just put over the top of your real tooth. My mom had some teeth made of silver, so I knew that.

But this tooth was different. It wasn’t a real tooth. It was an implant.

So the root of the tooth that had been inside the professor’s gums was also made of metal.

It had a weird shape. Just looking at it was enough for me to tell what it was. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

“This... This is a key, isn’t it?”

There was a tiny key, about 5 centimeters long, buried in the professor’s mouth.

I felt cold sweat run down my back, and I shivered inside the cold bathroom.