site 41: Yuta Gamon

By the time I got out of Blue Moon, it was totally dark.

I ignored the way Ryotasu and Myu-Pom were looking at me, and focused my full attention on writing an article on the One-Man Hide-and-Seek and Kokkuri-san victims. When Master Izumin kicked me out, the two of them were long gone.

“Sheesh. And to think they call themselves Basara Girls,” I mumbled as I walked out onto the streets at night.

It was the weekend, and the area around the station was pretty busy. I decided to avoid going that way and take the long route home. Like always, I searched for keyholes as I walked. I was searching as hard as I could, but I only found at most one or two keyholes a day. I’d been astonished to find out that if you excluded apartments and houses where people lived, there just weren’t that many keyholes out there. It was bad enough that I was thinking of asking for help on Kirikiri Basara... Of course, there was no way I could do that.

“Oh.”

Suddenly I came across an abandoned parking area. The chain on the entrance was locked with a padlock. I quickly walked over to the chain, being careful to see that no one was around me. I took out the gold key and went to put it in the padlock. But...

“Another no, huh?” I sighed and went to leave, only to freeze in shock as I turned around.

A cop on a bike was getting closer. And he was looking straight at me. I felt all the blood drain from my body.

Shit. He saw me. He was going to question me. If he did, I was doomed. They’d lock me in an interrogation room for days, and try to make me out to be Dr. Hashigami’s killer.

Run! Run! Run! my mind told me. But if I ran away here, I’d only look more suspicious. And so I froze completely.

The policeman got off his bike and wordlessly approached me. His sharp eyes were peering right into me. I was like a frog being stared at by a snake. I couldn’t speak or run. All I could do was look down and try not to meet his gaze.

The officer stopped in front of me. It was all I could do to keep from just collapsing to the ground in despair. He grabbed the chain I’d been fiddling with and shook it violently. The sound of shaking metal echoed through the area.

“What is this about?” the cop said.

I screamed without thinking. “N-N-N-Nothing!”

“...” He kept shaking the chain, but eventually gave up and sighed. “Don’t waste my time.”

“I’m sorry...” I bowed as low as I could, and surprisingly, the officer said nothing else. He just glared at me and then rode off on his bike.

“T-That was close...” If he’d have searched me I would’ve been finished.

No, now wasn’t the time to be relieved. That cop might decide to come back.

My whole mind was filled with thoughts of getting out of there. And so I started walking down the road the opposite direction the policeman had gone. It was only when I got to the area in front of the station that I relaxed. I wanted to just crouch down right on the ground. I looked around to see where I was.

I was right in front of the big sign in Harmonica Alley. Just like I’d expected, it was packed. Just being around so many people was making me sick. I couldn’t stand to be here for more than a few minutes. But when I looked at the Harmonica Alley sign, I remembered something.

—They curse people with black magic, supposedly. I heard that unless you bring them the hair of somebody you want to curse, they won’t accept your job.

Was it Master Izumin who’d said that?

The owner of the House of Crimson, Aria Kurenaino. Ryotasu had said that she was pretty close to our age, and she was also very pretty. No, at this point it didn’t matter if she was pretty or not. Last month, Ryotasu and Myu-Pom had taken a piece of my hair to the House of Crimson. Pretending that I was a jerk who’d cheated on them, they’d paid more than sixty thousand yen to have a curse put on me.

At first, I hadn’t believed in curses at all. But come to think of it, hadn’t all these bad things been happening to me since the day I’d been cursed? Ryotasu had explained to me that a “devil” that Aria Kurenaino had a contract with was the one who actually did the cursing. I’d run into that devil, or something like it, just a few days ago... or so I thought.

Yeah. That was the night of the twenty-ninth. The same day as the 256 incident. I’d run into the devil just a few streets away from here.

Huh? Was that a dream or did it really happen? It didn’t matter. What mattered was this: What if Aria Kurenaino’s curse really had done this to me? Or maybe Aria Kurenaino was behind the whole thing, and she was the one who’d killed Dr. Hashigami, and hypnotized 256 people as part of the Inokashira Park incident.

“Haha, yeah right!” I forced myself to laugh. If I didn’t, I was going to start suspecting everyone of everything. Maybe the recent occult boom was starting to affect me, too.

It wasn’t good to just flail around randomly. My priority needed to be finding the keyhole that matched this golden key. Both Ririka Nishizono and Aria Kurenaino seemed suspicious, but now was a time for caution.

After telling myself that and starting to walk forward, my shoulder collided with a man holding a cigarette.

“Damn it kid, that hurt!”

“I-I’m sorry!” I apologized, and then looked at him and shivered.

His hair was in a punch perm, and he was wearing sunglasses at night. I looked closer and saw he was missing his front teeth.

“Where the hell are you looking when you walk? If apologies were good enough, we wouldn’t need the cops!”

“I’ll look in front of me when I walk. I promise!” That was all I said before I ran down into Sun Road Shopping Street.

I bought some gyudon takeout for dinner, and then went into one of the side streets of Sun Road. Instantly there were fewer people. I was sick of the crowds, and finally started to feel a little better.

Suddenly I turned around.

“...”

There was only one person on the street walking the same direction I was. This time it was a young man in glasses, but I couldn’t see his face. And then I felt the headlights of a car coming in front of me and looked back ahead. The car passed by me.

If I walked quick, I could be home in ten minutes. As I walked, I kept looking around for padlocks and keyholes where I might try the gold tooth key.

“...” What was going on?

After about five minutes, something seemed wrong. It wasn’t the padlocks. It wasn’t that cop, either... It wasn’t Ririka Nishizono or Aria Kurenaino. It was something else.

It felt really nasty. Between now and leaving Blue Moon, nothing had happened besides almost being questioned by that police officer and bumping into that scary guy. So why did I feel so bad?

I turned around once more, confused. Once again, it was just the other young man walking in the same direction as me. I turned back forward and shivered.

The young man I just saw walking about thirty meters behind me was wearing glasses.

“It’s the same guy from in front of the station...”

I’d been careful to watch for cops and scary men, but I hadn’t been thinking about him. He was just some random extra! Why him? What was going on? Was he following me?

I felt something cold run down my back.

—No, no, no.

I tried to chase the thought from my mind. It was a coincidence. It was just a coincidence! If you wanted to go northwest from the station, this was the path you’d take.

But I found myself walking faster.

After I’d run into that man at Harmonica Alley, I’d bought takeout at a gyudon place. It was dinnertime, and it had been crowded inside the store. There were two other people in front of me waiting for their takeout. So I probably spent five minutes or so waiting there. During that time, where had the man behind me been, and what was he doing? He wasn’t in the gyudon place with me.

Maybe he was buying food somewhere at a convenience store or fast food place. Maybe it had taken him five minutes or so to get food, just like it had taken me. Did he have a plastic bag or anything in his hands? Had I seen it when I’d turned around? Damn it, I hadn’t looked. I wasn’t sure if he had or not.

Why hadn’t I looked more carefully? I wanted to know. I wanted to turn around again, but wouldn’t it be unnatural to turn around three times? If he was tailing me, and he knew I’d caught him — he might attack me right here. He might stab me, just like Dr. Hashigami was stabbed.

I remembered the look on the dead body’s face. The color of the blood on the floor. I remembered the color of the blood as it soaked into his clothes. I wanted to scream and run.

But I couldn’t. I needed to pretend not to see anything. It wasn’t good to make rash decisions. I didn’t have any guarantee he was tailing me at all, but it felt like it would be a bad idea to just go home. If I went inside my house I could probably escape him, but it was also possible that his goal was to find out where I lived. If that was the case, I couldn’t let him find out. I might be putting not just myself in danger, but mom, too.

So when I got to the intersection in front of me, I quickly turned right. I glanced behind me as I did so.

The man in glasses was still following me. He was walking right under a streetlamp. The light seemed to glint off the rims of his glasses.

And then I got even more confused. I knew the man’s face, somehow. I couldn’t remember from where. I couldn’t remember from when.

When I was running from the scene of Dr. Hashigami’s death, I’d passed by a bunch of students at the school. I’d passed by people who weren’t students, too.

Where was it? Where had I seen him?! The alarm bells were going off in my mind.

—Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap. Crap.

I panicked and went even faster. Would the man turn right like I did, or keep going straight? That was what I hoped to find out. If he turned, that meant he was following me. If he didn’t, it would just mean I was getting paranoid.

Go straight. Go straight.

I turned back a little as I walked, waiting for the man in glasses to appear. And the man—

—turned right, without the slightest hesitation.

“Aah...!” I almost screamed. I bit down hard on my molars to stop myself.

That settled it. He was following me! He didn’t look like a detective. He felt too young. And he was too thin.

Then who was he? The real killer?! Or was he someone who’d seen me fleeing on the day of the murder? Was he planning to blackmail me for money?

I just needed to run. I needed to get out of here. But to where? Back to the station? There was a police box there. But I couldn’t go to the police! If I did, they’d arrest me for Dr. Hashigami’s murder! So where should I go?

I smacked my hand against the case on my shoulder. Say something, Zonko! You’re the one who got me into this mess! This happened because I listened to you, so come out again and help me!

Of course, just like Zonko had said, she wasn’t going to talk to me when there were other people around.

Eventually I came out to Itsukaichi Street. That would mean that since leaving Blue Moon, I had gone north and then back south, zig-zagging across Kichijoji. Home was only a twenty-minute walk away, but I’d already been walking for almost an hour.

If I went left, I could get to Seimei University. Instinctively, I didn’t want to go there, so I turned right. That would take me further from home. I’d be heading back towards Blue Moon. But once I got there, I had no idea how I’d escape.

I looked back, and didn’t see the man from before. Was this my chance?

I started to run. And then I started to ask myself what I would do next.

I’d been running without thinking, but of course, I didn’t have the stamina to run for kilometers at a time. The man would quickly realize that I’d run. At that point, I wouldn’t be able to make excuses. He might try to catch me for real.

What do I do? Why did I run? What the hell am I doing? Think, you idiot!

As I ran, almost in tears, the light in front of me turned red. I ran across the crosswalk without stopping. In front of me was Musashino Hachimangu Shrine.

There was no time to turn back. I went under the torii arch and into the dark shrine grounds. I could hide in this darkness. That was my bet.

Instead of going to the main shrine, I snuck behind one of the smaller shrines and hid there.

It hurt to breathe. It was taking a long time for my breathing to calm down. I put my hand over my mouth to make myself harder to hear, but it didn’t seem to be working. Sweat was pouring out from all over. I felt hot. I wanted to rip off my duffel coat and strip down to a t-shirt. I threw the bag I was holding with the gyudon onto the ground, so it wouldn’t make any noise.

Was that man still following me?

Did he see me go into the shrine?

If he didn’t, I might be okay. But if he did, I was screwed. There was no place to run.

Please don’t be following me... I prayed silently.

I closed my eyes, and I waited for the nightmare to end.

...But it was no good.

A lone shadow was standing just under the torii arch at the entrance.

From where I was hiding I could only make out the silhouette, but it was definitely the man in glasses I’d seen before.

“...!!”

What do I do? I’m screwed! I’m gonna be murdered here at this shrine, and some old guy walking his dog is gonna find me in the morning, and then I’ll be in the evening papers. Will my mom cry, I wonder?

And then—

“Don’t you think it’s stupid that past this point is a sacred space?” The man’s voice echoed throughout the quiet grounds.

It was an intelligent voice. There was no irritation, rage, or anything else contained within it.

“Even if, hypothetically, gods were real, do you think they would choose to live in the middle of the city, with all these cars around?” He was calling to someone.

Who was he calling to?

It was obvious. It was me! He knew I was here, and was trying to scare me!

“Why Kirikiri Basara?”

...Huh? What did he just say? What did he just say?!

“Does it come from the mantra of Gundari Myouou, ‘On Kirikiri Basara Un Hatta’?”

He... He knew who I was!

“I heard about you from Miyuu Aikawa. I found out that you were at Seimei University on the day my dad died, too.”

“...?!” He knew Myu-Pom?! The only one who knew that I was at Seimei Building 10 that day was Ryotasu...

Did Ryotasu tell Myu-Pom? And did Myu-Pom tell him? And did he just say, “my dad”? Was he talking about Dr. Hashigami? My mind couldn’t keep up. I couldn’t think.

And then I gasped.

I remembered.

I remembered where I saw his face.

—On TV. It was during Dr. Hashigami’s funeral. He’d been there.

He was Dr. Hashigami’s son...!

“I didn’t kill him!” I’d leapt out of the darkness and screamed, without even realizing it.

It was true that I’d seen his body, and that I hadn’t told the police, and that I’d ripped out his gold tooth with a pair of pliers. But... But I didn’t...

“It wasn’t me! I didn’t do it!” I felt like I was going to cry. “Believe me! Please, believe me! I didn’t...”

The man — Dr. Hashigami’s son — didn’t move at all. He scoffed a little, his face still cold.

And this is what he said.

“I don’t think you did it.”

“...Huh?” He didn’t...?

“R-Really?”

He nodded.

I felt relieved. At the same time, all the energy drained from my body, and I dropped to my knees right there.

Dr. Hashigami’s son slowly walked towards me. In the dim light of the streetlamps, I could just barely make out his expression. I looked so pathetic, but he didn’t bat an eye.

“You’re definitely the admin for Kirikiri Basara, right?”

“A-Are you... Dr. Hashigami’s son?”

He nodded. “Sarai Hashigami. I’ve commented on Kirikiri Basara several times,” he said.

For a moment I didn’t understand him, but his words bothered me.

I thought a little. Part of me thought that it was a really small world, if Dr. Hashigami’s son was commenting on my blog.

I let the name echo in my mind. And then the fog in my mind lifted.

“Sarai... you mean you’re THE Sarai?”

Sarai Hashigami nodded a little.

Maybe the bigger surprise was that Sarai’s dad was Dr. Hashigami.

“I’ve heard most of your personal information. Yuta Gamon. A second-year student at Seimei High.”

“Oh, yes... that’s right.”

“I’m a student at Seimei U.”

“Huh...?!” We went to the same academy? I had no idea he was so close. It was possible that I passed by him on campus without even knowing it.

“I want you to tell me something.” Sarai looked me dead in the eye. “Did you see the place where my father died?”

“...I-I...”

“There’s no need to lie to me. I don’t think for a moment that you’re the killer. There’s signs that my father was locked in there and tortured for at least a week. That would’ve been impossible for you, in light of a number of factors.”

Huh? Really? Was that just what Sarai thought? Or was that what the police thought?

“But from what I heard from Miyuu Aikawa, you visited my father’s lab around 5:00 PM on the twenty-fourth.”

I was surprised to find out that Myu-Pom had told Sarai. I felt a little betrayed. And wait, did Myu-Pom actually know Sarai? The two of them got in a fight on Nico, didn’t they?

“It’s not right to blame her. She was actually worried about you.”

“I-I see.” He always seemed to be reading my mind. It felt like he was making fun of me, and I found it pretty annoying.

“If it’s true that you saw the scene, ran, and never called the police, I find your actions inexplicable and upsetting, but...”

“...” I couldn’t say anything.

Of course I couldn’t.

“So, did you see where my father died or not?”

I gulped, and slowly nodded. “I... did.”

Sarai didn’t move an eyebrow. “If there’s anything that bothered you, please tell me.”

“Huh? Anything...?”

“Anything. The police aren’t giving me much information, so I barely know anything about my father’s death.” Sarai grabbed me by the shoulders and got closer. “So tell me. What did you see there? If anything seemed strange, tell me, no matter what it is.”

Part me wanted to tell him that this wasn’t how you asked people for help, but when I saw his expression, I couldn’t. There was nothing in his face that made me think he viewed me as an enemy. If anything, he seemed to be looking to me for help.

Of course he would... His father had been horribly murdered, and the killer hadn’t been caught.

Still... things that seemed strange, huh?

The whole thing was so bizarre that I didn’t even know where to begin.

The biggest thing that I remembered was — the gold tooth key in my pocket. But there was no way I could tell Sarai about that. I mean, what was I supposed to tell him? “I ripped out your dad’s gold tooth with a pair of pliers, and I’m still carrying it around with me?”

“...CODE.” So the word that came out of my mouth was his father’s dying message.

“What did you say? Code?”

“Your father wrote letters on the floor, in his own blood. In English. C, O, D, E.”

Sarai gasped and took his hands off of me.

“You’re telling me there was a dying message?”

“Y-You didn’t know?”

Sarai shook his head. “The police wouldn’t tell me anything.”

Why wouldn’t they tell him?

“CODE... I’ve seen that somewhere...” Sarai put his fingers to his temples and closed his eyes, lost in thought. “At home... in the study? I think I saw a document that said that, a long time ago...”

The study in Sarai’s home. That would be Dr. Hashigami’s study.

I reflexively put my hand into my pocket and grabbed the gold tooth key within. If there was a lock that this key would fit, it would be in Dr. Hashigami’s house.

If I went there...

“Let’s look. For a clue.” The words came out of my mouth without me thinking, and I was a little surprised at them. “For an important hint to find the real killer...!”

And also, a hint to that would prove my innocence.

“No, but...” Sarai frowned for a moment, suddenly hesitant.

At this rate, I was going to lose my chance. I grabbed onto Sarai.

“Please! Don’t you want to find the real killer?!”

“Of course I want to know why my dad was killed! But it’s impossible!”

Sarai pushed me away. I tripped and fell to the ground. He was looking down at me. He kept trying to adjust his glasses to calm himself down, but it only showed how frustrated he was. Just like on the net, it didn’t take much to set him off.

“Someone ransacked my dad’s study the day he was killed.”

...Ransacked it? What?

“After carefully analyzing me and my mother’s actions that day, I was able to determine that they entered the study between 4:15 and 5:30 PM. That matches up with my dad’s time of death almost exactly. It was a carefully planned crime. Of course, they would’ve taken any evidence.”

When I heard that, I felt as if I were on the verge of stepping into an abyss of conspiracies. I felt the presence of some vast, invisible, and unknowable enemy.

I started to shake.

I glanced at the Skysensor bag that was hanging from my shoulder.

—You practically asked for this when you came here!

Zonko’s words from that day echoed in my mind.

Was I supposed to just spend the rest of my life in fear of the police and the real killer? No. No, I didn’t want that!

I’m still a high school student! I’m still seventeen! Sure, maybe I planned to never leave my room, but that was so I could be lazy, not because I wanted to live in fear of some unseen enemy.

There was no way I wanted to spend the rest of my life in fear.

“Just because they ransacked your study doesn’t mean they took all the evidence!” I stood up and grabbed Sarai. “L-Let’s just look at it! Take me there! Please!”

“D-Don’t blame me...! No matter what happens...” Sarai hesitated a moment, feeling a bit overwhelmed, but then he nodded.

“This isn’t a video game or an anime, okay?”