site 35: Toko Sumikaze

I came into work at my usual time, and the whole office was in an uproar. It was even worse than when Dr. Hashigami died. Nobody was working. Some people were glued to the TV, some were sitting on the internet looking things up, and others were calling every expert they knew.

What was going on? Had something big happened? I was running a little late that morning, so I hadn’t really seen the news.

I took off my coat and headed to the sofa we used for guests, where the editor-in-chief was sitting. That was where the biggest TV in the editorial office was.

“Good morning. What happened?” But even when I spoke to him, the editor-in-chief just nodded a little and turned back to the TV screen. There were ten or so other editors around him, and they all had serious looks on their faces.

I turned my eyes to the screen. There was some text in the top left. When I read it, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“Over seventy bodies found in Inokashira Lake”

“What? Seventy?”

They’d found seventy bodies? Was Inokashira Lake even that big? It couldn’t have been very deep.

And that park was pretty busy, even on weekdays, and right near Kichijoji Station. They’d found seventy bodies in a place that was frequented by that many people? Was that possible?

The TV screen was showing an aerial shot of Inokashira Park. There was a male reporter aboard the helicopter, trying his best to remain calm (and utterly failing). “It’s been three, no, four hours since the first body was found. The scene is in chaos as even more officers arrive. You can see the whole of the park from up here, and you can see officers on boats pulling up bodies. Many of them seem to belong to women and children. This can only be described as a nightmare!”

Just like the reporter said, I could see police pulling bodies out of the water. They were all fully clothed. It was so terrible I couldn’t speak.

Often, drowned bodies will build up gas in their stomachs and swell, but I couldn’t see many bodies like that here. Maybe it hadn’t been that long since they’d died.

“Can they really show those bodies?” The editor-in-chief whispered.

At the exact same time, as if he’d somehow heard him, the reporter on screen turned to the camera with teary eyes and yelled. “Cameraman, try not to show the bodies! They keep ending up onscreen! We can’t let the viewers see that—”

And then the screen cut away. This time it was showing a female reporter inside the park. “We just got new information in! The police have now discovered over a hundred bodies! That’s right, the police say they’ve found over one hundred bodies!”

“Ascension...” A hundred. It didn’t seem real.

“There are still more bodies at the bottom of the lake, and in the end, they say it’s likely there will be over two hundred. They’re having trouble pulling them all out, and no luck at all identifying them so far.” And then there was another loud sound, different than the sound of the helicopter rotors above. “Look! Is that... Is that an excavator? It’s inside the park! It’s heading for the lake!”

“Wait, don’t tell me they’re planning to dredge the lake with that thing!” The editor-in-chief yelled. “There are still bodies down there! No, not just bodies! There might be something important down there that tells us what the hell happened! And they’re going to dredge it with heavy equipment? Are the police stupid?!”

That was a very Mumuu way to look at things, but he was right. This whole thing was crazy. It was best to preserve as much of the scene as possible. But for some reason, the cops were putting all their effort into getting the bodies up as fast as they could.

“What happened?! Why are there so many bodies?!”

Nobody answered me. Everybody else watching the TV was thinking the same thing I was. This was insane.

From the look of the damage to the bodies shown onscreen, they hadn’t been dead that long. That would mean that in a very short period of time — a day or two, probably — over a hundred bodies had suddenly appeared in that lake.

“Is this an occult phenomenon, you think?” I asked the head editor, fearfully, but all he did was nod. Nothing else.

It wasn’t good to make guesses. Maybe we needed more information first. I brought my laptop from my desk and connected to the internet.

How had they found all these bodies to begin with? When did they die? I wanted to know. I hit up all the news sites.

“Over Fifty Bodies Found in Inokashira Lake”

“Still More Bodies Found in Lake, Possibly Over Two Hundred”

As I followed the related story links, I kept seeing headlines like that. It looked like even the police and media didn’t really have details yet. But despite that, foreign news sites like CNN and Reuters had already put up their own articles.

Just for the hell of it, I hit up one of the aggregator sites. There was barely any information out yet, but the 2channel newsboards were filled with threads, and a real internet festival was underway.

I opened one of the aggregator sites just to see what I’d find.

“Over Fifty Dead Bodies Found in Inokashira Lake”

At around 6:00 AM this morning, at Inokashira Park in Mitaka, Tokyo, the police received a report of a body floating in the lake. An investigation revealed the body of a man in his twenties or thirties in Inokashira Lake. In the same area, five more bodies of men and women were found, and the Musashino police sealed off the park and began a more thorough search. By 8:00 AM, over fifty bodies had been found, but it seems that there are still more below.

2: Anonymous Reporting Live

Da fuq? Fifty?

8: Anonymous Reporting Live

WHHAAATTT?? THERE’S THAT MANY BODIES IN THE LAKE? SINCE WHEN? SINCE WHEN?

9: Anonymous Reporting Live

The hell? I was just there yesterday and I saw nothing!

10: Anonymous Reporting Live

I went out there last year with my girlfriend on a boat. It did smell kinda bad, come to think of it.

12: Anonymous Reporting Live

And there’s probably more. Holy shit. How many do you think they’re gonna find?

13: Anonymous Reporting Live

Japan’s fucked. See you guys.

16: Anonymous Reporting Live

Anytime there’s a disaster, they start off by saying, “There are only a few casualties,” and then it goes up from there, right? Same thing as that. They haven’t confirmed a bunch, so the number’s still small, that’s all. It’s gonna go up. Only when the coroner looks at the bodies and says they’re dead does an “unbreathing body pulled out of the water” turn into a corpse. The bodies are all lined up in front of the coroner right now, waiting for their turn.

17: Anonymous Reporting Live

What’s about to happen to us?

21: Anonymous Reporting Live

This is crazy. This is really crazy. I’m so scared I’m going to piss myself.

24: Anonymous Reporting Live

Who killed all these guys? This is way more than one guy on his own could kill, dumbass.

25: Anonymous Reporting Live

>> 24

Nobody said they were murdered. Take the hint. Hint: You’re the dumbass.

26: Anonymous Reporting Live

So what, you’re telling me it’s an accident?! Then what kind of accident was it? If anything’s impossible, it’s that. Be realistic.

31: Anonymous Reporting Live

It’s gotta be God in Inokashira Park. Did you know that God’s there?

32: Anonymous Reporting Live

Think it might be some kind of curse? There’s been a lot of nasty stuff going on in Kichijoji for a while now.

35: Anonymous Reporting Live

>>31

Nobody wants to talk about that. I’m bored of that shit, anyway.

36: Anonymous Reporting Live

Nobody here actually thinks that this was just a series of accidents, right? That’s absolutely impossible. There has to be somebody behind this.

54: Anonymous Reporting Live

>>36

Not necessarily someBODY. It could be someTHING, right? We should consider the possibility of vengeful spirits, a curse, or some kind of shamanistic element.

61: Anonymous Reporting Live

Did you guys know? Every year, about 80,000 people go missing in Japan. 98% of them are found, but the other 2% never are. You know what I’m getting at, right?

63: Anonymous Reporting Live

IT’S A TENGU! A TENGU DID IT!!!

67: Anonymous Reporting Live

A friend of a friend was saying, actually, that Inokashira Park was dangerous and that you should avoid it. Supposedly, if you’ve got a sixth sense, you can tell immediately.

71: Anonymous Reporting Live

They just drained the water from the lake and did a big cleaning a while ago, right? When was that?

75: Anonymous Reporting Live

>>71

Yeah, that’s right. They did it in 2014. It was on the news. Of course, nobody found any bodies then.

81: Anonymous Reporting Live

There were a ton of bikes down there, remember? If there were that many bikes, you could actually maybe fit 100 people down there. The water’s dirty, so you can’t see the bottom, after all.

83: Anonymous Reporting Live

Are you stupid? There’s no way. Idiots like you are how conspiracy theories spread.

84: Anonymous Reporting Live

Where’d they die, and how’d they get into the lake, you think!?!!? Somebody tell me!! Tell me! HOLMES!

89: Anonymous Reporting Live

No way one guy kills 50 people. Is there some kind of mafia or cult or secret society involved? I’ve never heard about anybody like that over there.

93: Anonymous Reporting Live

If it was some kind of group, what crazy ritual were they doing, you think? This isn’t the middle ages. What could they be summoning that needs that many sacrifices?

...

...

Could it be... SATAN?!

95: Anonymous Reporting Live

That’s scary as fuck... I’m never leaving my room again.

97: Anonymous Reporting Live

>>95

Stay in your room your whole life, NEET.

99: Anonymous Reporting Live

>>97

You can stay home and do solo hide-and-seek, and you might still go missing! Even being a NEET isn’t safe!

112: Anonymous Reporting Live

I’m seriously thinking it’s ghosts.

120: Anonymous Reporting Live

I could see maybe a killer stalking the street at night, and each day he kills one person and throws their body in the lake. Dunno if that killer’s human or inhuman, though.

126: Anonymous Reporting Live

Dead bodies float, don’t they? Everybody knows that. But they never found the bodies until this morning. And there’s nothing on them to indicate that they were tied down. Which means you’ve got one of two options.

・For some reason, the bodies weren’t floating even though they weren’t weighed down.

・There were no bodies in the lake yesterday, and they all appeared in a single night.

Either way, what the hell? There’s no way to explain that without supernatural intervention.

130: Anonymous Reporting Live

Did anybody from 2chan ever want to meet up there? I bet you could find something if you checked the backlogs. Like, maybe somebody set up a group suicide from here, or something like that?

133: Anonymous Reporting Live

>>130

Get thee to the Occult Boards! They’re filled with that shit. “Let’s all meet in real life and summon a dangerous spirit,” or, “Let’s meet in real life and face off with a demon,” or something like that. Or, “Let’s go vandalize a haunted area,” or stuff. Maybe one of those idiots did something and pissed off the spirits and got themselves killed.

134: Anonymous Reporting Live

I live in Kichijoji, and I’ve been hearing ambulance and patrol car sirens all day. Even if there’s nothing they can do about that, the media helicopters are annoying as fuck. How many of them are there?

158: Anonymous Reporting Live

I’m here at Inokashira Park! The cops got pissed and told me not to go in, lol

The park feels five degrees colder than the rest of the area. Is it my imagination? It’s so cold I started shaking. It wasn’t this cold five minutes ago.

161: Anonymous Reporting Live

Actually, I saw the ghost of a soldier at Inokashira Park two months ago!

166: Anonymous Reporting Live

Is it true that a lot of the media there are just passing out ’cause they’re sick?

171: Anonymous Reporting Live

Why Inokashira Park, anyway? If you wanted to ditch a body, you’d be able to hide it a lot better in the mountains or ocean than in a busy place like that. There must have been some reason they had to put the bodies there. And it probably has something to do with all the weird crap that’s been going on in Kichijoji for the last few months.

183: Anonymous Reporting Live

You mean a ley line or something running under Kichijoji? I’ve never heard anything like that. Was there any kind of spiritual connection in that town? I just glanced through the comments and realized that more people than I thought were into occult stuff.

“Maybe every commenter here is a dedicated reader of mine!” No, that doesn’t matter.

There was a vigorous debate going on, but all of them were just guessing. None of them had any useful information. I went back in front of the TV.

The editor-in-chief was using the remote to flip through the channels. Every one of them had interrupted their programming to report on the news.

“I’m here in front of Musashino Police Station.” The screen was showing the street in front of the station.

A female reporter was holding a clipboard and looking at the camera with a serious expression.

“There was just an announcement from the police. None of the bodies so far have shown any signs of external trauma. I repeat. None of the bodies found so far have shown any signs of external trauma.”

No wounds? Then they were killed by poison or drowning... Or maybe... a curse?

No way. I’d never heard of anyone killing a hundred people with a curse.

“Inokashira Park remains sealed off, and the officers are still doing their best—”

“I saw it! I saw it!” Suddenly, I heard a girl’s high-pitched yell from the TV.

The reporter looked surprised, and then turned to look outside the frame. The camera followed her. There was a chubby woman in her early forties coming towards the reporters and shouting something in a loud voice.

This was totally unplanned. The reporters all looked annoyed to have their broadcasts interrupted.

But the woman ignored them and kept on screaming. “Last night! I saw them! There were people going into the lake!”

Was she a witness? The reporters all started to whisper, and all the cameras turned towards her.

“What do you mean, ‘going into the lake’? Be more specific!” They started to shout questions at her.

She grabbed one of the microphones that were pointing at her and began to yell, flinging saliva everywhere. “There’s nothing ‘specific’ about it! I live in a condo there, and I saw the whole thing from my veranda on the eighth floor! The park was dark, but I could tell there were people there! It felt like there were a lot of people walking through the darkness. I’ve been living here for thirty years, and nothing like that has ever happened before! The place is usually empty at night, you see. Sometimes groups of rowdy teens will have parties and stuff, but what happened yesterday was totally different. The whole park was quiet. It was as quiet as it always is, but I could just tell that there were all these people! There’s lights at the front of the park, you know?! And I could see all these people walking under them into the park! Just like they were going for a walk! They jumped over the fence and walked right into the lake! While wearing their clothes, too! They went into the lake... and they didn’t come out!”

What she said didn’t make any sense. The woman was very excited, and it was hard to make out exactly what she was saying.

“Do you mean they all killed themselves?” The head editor whispered as he looked at the screen.

The reporters started peppering her with questions. “Tell us more about the people who were going into the lake.”

“There were men and women! And some of them were even children!”

“Do you mean they went into the lake in groups? Groups of how many?”

“No, they went in alone! One at a time!” The woman seemed irritated as she answered. “They all came to the park one by one! And not all at the same time, too! I saw the whole thing from my veranda! It was creepy and scary, but I was so freaked out by it I couldn’t sleep! I ended up watching it from 1:00 AM last night until morning! Every five minutes or so, one or two people would walk right in and then go into the lake!”

“What?” Was that... possible?

“Did you count how many there were?!”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“Call the pol— I couldn’t do that! It was... It didn’t seem real! I thought maybe they were filming a movie or something! I mean... I mean they all just walked straight into the lake, like it was most normal thing in the world! One at a time, like they were all waiting their turn! Nobody making a fuss! You couldn’t even imagine while you were watching it that over a hundred people died!” The woman finally broke down and started to cry.

What she said seemed so unreal that the reporters didn’t seem to know what to do. “A-Ahem... It appears that this woman is a resident of a condominium near the park. This is all so sudden that we’re not sure what to do. The police statement says they’re still looking for witnesses. Is this new information then? Um... let’s just send you back to the studio.”

But even back at the studio, the newscasters and guest commentators were too shocked to speak. It was impossible to believe what the woman had said, but if it was true, this was a group suicide.

“Um, sir, can we assume this is possibly some kind of group hypnosis?”

“Y-Yeah. Anyway, this is huge! Hey, Hirata! Get some people together and get your butts to Kichijoji!” Hirata hurriedly got ready to leave.

“Mumuu’s going to cover this?”

“Huh? What did you say?” The editor-in-chief asked, his eyes still glued to the screen.

“Is Mumuu going to cover this? You’re the one who said we weren’t a gossip magazine.”

“You can complain after you’re done. For now, we need to act, or we won’t learn anything!”

“You’re right. Should I go, too?”

“Sheesh! What the hell’s going on?” He didn’t answer. He was lost in thought.

It was true that what the woman had said was clearly something that Mumuu should investigate. I’d actually had goosebumps for the last few minutes. “Should I go talk to the woman on the news just now?!”

“Sumikaze! Get to looking!”

“Oh, right! Understood!”

I’d never seen him in such a hurry before. I quickly got ready to go. There were a bunch of things I wanted to check with the head editor before I left, but he was too busy dealing with others to answer my questions. I gave up and left the editorial office.