site 53: Yuta Gamon

---Bzzz bbzzzb--bzzzzzz---

“Sigh...”

I wasn’t sure if the voice was exasperated, or resigned.

“You found out, huh?”

That was the last thing Zonko said before falling silent.

“Zonko! Zonko!” I shook and pounded at the Skysensor, but there was no answer. The only sound from the speakers was static. “H-Haha... This is some kind of joke, right?”

Several days after the terrifying incident at Enmeiji, I’d skipped school and stayed home so I could decode the list I’d found in Sarai’s dad’s study.

The seventy-second name on the list was GAMON YUTA. At almost the same time, the announcer on TV began to read the names of the casualties from the 256 Incident—the 256 bodies pulled up from the water at Inokashira Lake.

The screen was showing the name “Yuta Gamon.”

“What the hell? I’m dead? No, no, no. There’s no way.” I tried to tell myself that it was just somebody who had the same name as I did, but after her last ominous words, Zonko wasn’t talking at all.

“Hey! You can hear me, right?! Zonko! Zonko!” I stared at Zonko’s face, but the anxious breaths from my nostrils spun the strap around so it turned its back to me. “What the hell is going on here?”

If my mom saw me right now, she’d probably think I’d gone insane. I was staring into the antique radio my dad had left me and screaming.

Who was Zonko? After all the talking we’d done, I’d started to think that she wasn’t a bad girl, but now I wasn’t even sure if she was on my side. Thinking back, she’d started talking to me out of nowhere. The first time she talked to me was— That’s right. In Dr. Hashigami’s room at Seimei University. When I was panicking after finding his body, the radio had suddenly come to life and helped me.

“Was she really saving me, though?”

She’d started talking a lot more after that, but she never talked when somebody else was around.

The name “Zonko” wasn’t her real name; it was just the name of the strap I’d attached to the Skysensor. It was of a character named Zonko from an anime called Master Mast Murder.

When I talked to her, it felt like I was talking to the strap, so I’d just taken to calling her that. I didn’t know her real name. From the sound of her voice, she was either my age or a little older.

There was another problem: I had no idea how she was talking to me through the Skysensor.

The Skysensor wasn’t a cellphone. It was a radio. It could only receive transmissions; it wasn’t a two-way thing. But somehow, I was able to talk to Zonko. And no matter where I was, she could give me instructions in real time, as if she were watching me somehow.

Nothing about her made any sense, but given the strange circumstances when we’d first met, I’d accepted her surprisingly easily. I’d had to, actually.

But...

---Bzzzzzt-bbzzzzzt

The only thing coming from the Skysensor now was static.

That’s how she always was. She’d just show up, say something, and then go silent without giving me any answers. She wouldn’t answer any questions I had at all. That was what I hated about her.

“Why aren’t you saying something? Is this one of those shows where they have a mystery and say, ‘We’ll reveal the answer right after these commercials!’?”

Those shows never revealed the answer after the break. You usually had to wait until next week. Stuff like that is really frustrating!

Still feeling stunned, I turned back towards the TV screen. The news was still reporting on the same story.

The 256 casualties from the 256 incident, they said, were gradually being identified. Two hundred had been found. The names of the victims—I didn’t know if that was the right word, since they might have been suicides—were scrolling across the screen in alphabetical order. I read each one in turn, forgetting to breathe. Maybe I’d only imagined hearing my own name.

Twenty names were being displayed on the screen at a time. The announcer would read each one, then the screen went on to the next twenty. The wait was agonizing. I realized my throat was parched. I told myself it was stupid to get this nervous, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the screen.

After a few more sets of names, I found it again.

“Yuta Gamon.”

There was no mistaking it. The name was right there.

“Breaking news! It turns out... I’m definitely dead!”

I found myself standing up and dancing for no reason.

“Wahoo!” I shouted.

I’d seen mistaken broadcasts like this turn into a big deal online a bunch of times, but I never thought it would happen to me. This could be one of the biggest stories of my life. If anything, I wanted to update the blog right away.

Well, that would have meant putting my real name online, though, so no way that was happening!

“Man, talk about an LOL. This may even qualify as an ROFLMAO, it’s so weird.”

One of the victims of the 256 incident had the same name I did. Talk about a strange coincidence. I couldn’t make too big a deal out of it, though. It wouldn’t be fair to the other Yuta Gamon.

“Or maybe I’m the one who’s died... Nah, that’s impossible!”

I mean, I was watching TV right now. And the 256 incident happened days ago. I’d been alive like normal then. I was doing stuff like going to Café☆Blue Moon and drinking Master Izumin’s nasty tea, or updating Kirikiri Basara. And then after Sarai had chased me, I’d gone to his house and found the encoded list hidden in his ceiling. After that, I’d been there to see what happened to Myu-Pom’s friends. I remembered hearing her scream. It was a scream filled with despair that still echoed in my ears...

“.........Ugh.”

I remembered the scraps of red flesh in the wooden box and put my hand over my mouth. Myu-Pom seemed sure about what that was... but it sure didn’t look human to me. There was so little left that it was impossible to tell what it was. There was no way that could have been a person. And who was that pale boy who’d escaped?

It wasn’t that I couldn’t believe it, it was just... Yeah. It was impossible. The one thing I did remember, though, was the awful smell.

“And since remembering that smell makes me want to throw up, that means I’m alive. Q.E.D.”

Who cares if my name was on TV? Who cares if my name was on Dr. Hashigami’s list? It made a lot more sense to think that somebody with my name had been killed instead of me.

...It did, right? I mean, that explained why the name appeared on both lists.

“............”

I started to feel really cold all of a sudden and began to pace around the room.

“This is all because Zonko won’t tell me anything!”

I decided to start by proving I was alive.

That was easy. I could just pinch my cheek.

“Owww!”

It hurt! That really hurt!

“I’ve proven I’m alive! Q.E.D.! Q.E.D.!” There, that settled that.

No, wait. I needed more. I wanted more proof that I was alive. Maybe it would be better for my mental health if I went somewhere instead of just sitting in my room all day.

“...I’ll go ask Mom.” I walked out of the room on shaking, unsteady legs.

The calendar said it was spring, but the living room was freezing cold. Did somebody leave the air conditioner on? I rubbed my arms to warm myself up, but it didn’t do any good.

“Well, you know what this means, right? If I feel cold, it’s because I’m alive,” I said, to no one in particular, but in my mind I was thinking something else.

Is it cold because I’m dead?

If that was the case, then maybe it didn’t mean I was alive. Maybe I was just trying to run from reality.

...No, no, no. That’s overthinking it.

“Mom,” I called out, but of course, there was nobody in the living room. “...Oh, I guess she’d be out at this hour.”

Mom was always busy at work. She left earlier than I did in the morning, and she didn’t get back until very late. Sometimes I thought she might be a workaholic.

I thought it would be easy to prove I was alive, but I’d already run into a stumbling block.

Grr... What now?

“I know! The phone!” I called my mom’s number on my cellphone. If I could place phone calls, that meant I was alive. Yet another Q.E.D.! But just in case, I wanted to hear my mom’s voice.

“.........”

But the ringing sound was quickly replaced with the voice of an answering machine. She was at work, and she wouldn’t pick up at this hour. There was nothing unusual about that, but...

This was getting frustrating. I wanted something that would give me solid, unassailable proof.

At this point, I’d just have to go outside...

“Okay, I’ll go to Blue Moon!”

Master Izumin and Ryotasu should both be there. Maybe Sarai would be there, too. If I could see them and talk to them, that would prove it!

Proving that you’re alive is surprisingly difficult, I thought to myself as I left the house. I wanted to see somebody’s face so bad that I was willing to drink one of Master Izumin’s “lucky drinks” if I had to.

“Ugh...”

I went outside, my eyes squinting in the spring sunlight. The sun was dazzlingly bright. Somehow, this made me feel so much safer. It was cold in the house, but the sunlight was warm.

After what had happened with Myu-Pom, it felt like the only thing I could do was work on decoding the list, so it had been a long time since I’d left the house. I hadn’t slept that much, either. For that matter, I couldn’t remember eating. Had I just been that dedicated to my work?

“Yup! I’m alive! I am TOTALLY alive!” I raised out my hands in a pose like GLAY would do, but then realized that people might be staring and stopped. “.........”

I started to walk towards Kichijoji Station, but as I walked along by myself, in silence, I couldn’t help but think about what had just happened.

Dr. Hashigami’s list had had 256 names on it, as if he’d predicted the 256 incident.

The names almost entirely matched the released list of victims of the 256 incident.

My name had been on both lists. Why?

Were the people who died in the 256 incident murdered, instead of committing suicide? Had Dr. Hashigami somehow found a list of people who were going to be killed? Was that why some evil organization had killed him?

If that was the case, then maybe they’d kill me, too. I still had the gold tooth key, for one thing.

“Wait, this is a Mumuu-style conspiracy theory! I’ve been watching too much anime!”

I was about to become the hero of a grand story, get caught up in a vast conspiracy, and go on a great adventure. Yeah. That was definitely what was about to happen. If that was the case, then I wanted a beautiful girl to travel with me! Maybe some hot, slutty older girl, or a younger girl with a giant rack and a really sharp tongue!

“—Wait, what am I talking about?” I stopped in the middle of the road and looked around.

It was Saturday, so even though it was commuting hours, there weren’t that many students or salarymen around. It was a slightly warm, peaceful day in early spring. Everything felt shockingly normal.

But my heart was still pounding. It was like I’d been left behind as the rest of the world moved on.

“No, no, no. See? I’m touching this light pole!” I said, touching a light pole. “I can touch it! My hand’s not going through it!” If I was dead, then how come I could touch a light pole?

Suddenly, I saw a Seimei High School uniform amidst the crowd. There was no school today. Was somebody going to school for a club activity?

A thought occurred to me.

How many days of school had I missed?

A single day might be ignored, but if I’d been absent for multiple days, I would’ve expected a call from the teacher.

“Did I... get any calls?”

Mom was busy at work, but if she heard I was skipping, she’d make time to come and tell me I needed to go to school. But I couldn’t remember seeing her for the past several days...

Was I just spacing out? Or...

“Hmm...?”

As I tried to remember, I saw something fall from a girl’s bag as she passed by me. I picked it up and saw that it was a pink pass case for the train. The train pass inside had the name “Saeko Kitaya” on it.

I instantly realized I’d made a mistake. Now that I’d picked it up, I had to call out to her and tell her she’d dropped it. But those kind of communication skills were beyond me.

Sighing, I looked up to try to find her. But...

There were several women walking ahead of me, and I couldn’t tell which one of them she was, even though I’d just seen her drop it.

Maybe I was more of a mess than I thought.

With perfect timing—or maybe awful timing, depending on how you looked at it—the crosswalk signal in front of me turned red. Everyone stopped to wait for the light to change. At this point, it would be worse for me if I didn’t call out to her. People would think I took her pass case and walked off with it.

Sigh... I just wanted to get to Café☆Blue Moon...

I decided to work up my courage and talk to the woman in front of me who was wearing a suit.

“U-Um... E-E-Excuse me!”

Crap... I sounded really creepy.

“...Huh?” She turned around towards me, but quickly frowned and turned away.

Wow... totally ignored. That hurt. I mean, sure, I was creepy, but...

“U-Um... did you drop your... pass case?” I said, my voice trembling, but she didn’t even turn around.

At this distance, there was no way she couldn’t have heard me... If she was completely ignoring me, that meant she must not have dropped it. And even if she realized, there was no way I was giving it back after she was so rude, anyway!

Next, I talked to a girl who seemed to be in college and was wearing way too much makeup. She was playing with her smartphone while she waited for the light and looked like she was about to go on a date.

“U-Um, did you drop your pass case?” This time I was able to speak normally!

“Huh? My pass case?” She began to rummage through her bag. Eventually, she pulled out a yellow pass case and frowned at me. “...It’s right here.”

“Oh, sorry...”

Why’d she get so upset? I wasn’t trying to hit on her. It took a lot of courage for me to talk to a girl I didn’t know, and I was doing it out of the goodness of my heart anyway. Man, girls are such a pain.

Maybe I should just assume that whoever owned the pass case was long gone. Then I could just deliver it to the office at the station, and I wouldn’t have to try any more of these draining conversations.

I saw a high school girl in a blazer waiting on the right for the light to change. I’d talk to her, and if that didn’t work I’d give up.

“U-Um... S-S-Sa-Saeko K-Ki-Kitaya?”

“......?” The girl looked up at me when I said her name. She was a plain-looking, pig-tailed girl who looked like a background character from an anime.

She stared at me suspiciously. Since she’d reacted, that meant she must be Saeko Kitaya. She only looked upset because a strange boy had called her name, and it wasn’t because I was creepy... right?

“E-Excuse me... You dropped your pass case...”

“Huh? Oh, that’s mine!” She quickly took the case out of my hands. “Thank you so much!” She began to bow again and again. “I really appreciate it! I could’ve been in big trouble!”

“Oh, um, you’re welcome.”

She smiled and kept bowing. And then the light changed and everyone started to walk. The high school girl bowed once more and started to walk towards the station.

“I looked pretty cool just now, didn’t I?”

Whoops. I was starting to grin. It wasn’t often in my life that I had a girl my age who was grateful to me. “Yeah, she definitely has a thing for me. Maybe I’ll get another Basara girl?”

If this really was a fated encounter, I’d see her again soon. She could graduate from being an extra and become a main character. Her looks were, well, average at best, but that meant that she could differentiate herself from Ryotasu and Myu-Pom. Put her together with Ryotasu, the weird one, and Myu-Pom, the popular one, and you could probably have a pretty good girl band.

And there was one more thing I’d learned from my encounter with her.

“Dead people can’t give back pass cases.”

I felt stupid for being so scared a moment ago.

If I told Sarai about this, he’d laugh at me for sure. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he’d laugh. It was just the kind of asshole thing he’d do. Not, of course, that I minded.

“It’s great to be alive!”

It had been several days since I’d been to Café☆Blue Moon. I hadn’t been here since the incident at Enmeiji. Actually, I’d never been here this early in the morning. I wasn’t even sure they’d be open, but the sign said that they were.

Would anybody come to a weird shop like this?

“Huh...?”

There was someone here.

It was still morning, but Ryotasu and Sarai were both inside the café.

Shouldn’t they be at school? I’d been NEET-ing for a while, so maybe I wasn’t one to talk.

“Oh, Gamotan! Samurai Gamonosuke! ☆ I was just about to call you!”

“...Good timing.”

“Wh-What’s going on?” Ryotasu was one thing, but was I close enough to Sarai for him to wait for me?

I couldn’t see Master Izumin at the counter. Maybe he was back in the kitchen.

Instead there was a woman I didn’t recognize at the counter. She was wearing a black suit, and her black hair was tied back in a ponytail. She wore stylish silver-rimmed glasses and gave off an aura of a capable businesswoman.

“Hello,” she said.

“Oh... hi.” I bowed, a little scared. She was staring at me like she was trying to figure me out, and I didn’t like it.

Who was this woman?

Why was she staring at me like that?

“Wait, don’t tell me...”

Was this the older sister of Saeko Kitaya, the plain-looking extra character whose pass case I’d just returned? They were both kind of plain-looking, so they had that in common! Maybe she’d come here to thank me for helping her sister!

Wait... No way. That would be like something out of a bad light novel. And anyway, there was no way she could find me that fast.

“So, he’s the boy?” the woman in the glasses asked Ryotasu.

“Yup! This is Samurai Gamonosuke! ☆” Ryotasu puffed out her chest proudly.

“Huh? What?”

Was this somebody who knew Ryotasu?

“Right, Gamotan?”

“Uh, right.” I nodded. Ryotasu seemed to have introduced me to the woman in glasses, but I still didn’t know what was going on.

The woman saw my confusion and handed me her card. “I’m sorry for bothering you like this. Here’s my card.”

I took it.

“What?!”

The card read...

“Monthly Mumuu Editorial Department, Toko Sumikaze.”

“Mumuu? You mean THE Mumuu?”

“I think it’s the Mumuu you’re thinking of, yes.”

“Seriously?!”

Was this the woman that Myu-Pom was talking about? She’d said her name was Toko, after all, which matched the name on the card.

“Uhyaah...” I almost made a weird noise. No, I did make a weird noise.

This was my chance to meet an editor from the legendary occult magazine Mumuu! What an opportunity!

“U-Um, what’s someone from Mumuu doing here? Don’t tell me you came to see me...”

“Yes, that’s right. I heard about this place from Miyuu— I mean, Miss Aikawa.”

H... HELL YES!

An interview from a magazine! If I got an interview with Mumuu, that would make Kirikiri Basara the prince of the occult world! There’d be no limit to how high my hit counter could go! There’d be no limit to how much I could make off affiliates!

“Maybe I’ll be getting Ryotasu that ice cream sooner than I thought.”

“Poyah?”

It felt like everything had been bad news lately, but finally the pendulum was starting to swing back! Maybe this was one of those monthly biorhythm things?

No, wait. Wait. I needed to stay focused here. We were about to talk business.

“A-Ahem. If you’re here to interview me about Kirikiri Basara, then can you tell me more about what we’ll be discussing first? My site’s a very scientific one, you see. It’s just about trying to shine a light on the mysteries of the world. I don’t want to have a lot of amateurs flooding my site hoping to see scary pictures.”

“Wah-wah! Gamotan! Gamotan! You’re grinning! Grin, grin, grin, grin! ♪” Ryotasu was pretending to be a cat and jumping around the room. Since I was having fun now too, I decided to just ignore her.

“Where would you like to begin?” I asked, “Maybe some of my best stories? Or how I get my information? Or perhaps—”

And then the editor for Mumuu chuckled.

“Sorry, I’m not here for an interview. I came here to talk to you for personal reasons.”

P-Personal reasons? Did older girls have a thing for me? I mean, I was pretty average looking, but lately a lot of younger girls had been into me. So this was a little surprising.

An older woman, huh? I’d never really considered the possibility, but the editor was cute, even if she was a little plain. I could see it working, especially since we likely had similar hobbies.

“Gamon, stop grinning. Miss Sumikaze is here to talk about the 256 incident.” Sarai’s cold words brought me back to reality.

“...She wants to talk to me about the 256 incident?” I could understand if she wanted to talk about Dr. Hashigami, but why the 256 incident? Maybe she wanted to get the opinion of the guy who ran Kirikiri Basara? But we weren’t that well-known or important yet...

“Oh, right! Speaking of the 256 incident, the weirdest thing happened.” This was something I knew an editor from Mumuu would love to hear. “One of the victims had the exact same name as me. I couldn’t believe it when I saw it.”

“............”

“I never really thought about it, but maybe my name’s a lot more common than I thought it was. It really had me scared for a second, though! Ahaha!”

I was laughing, but...

“Someone with the same name...?” Sarai wasn’t laughing. That wasn’t unusual, but...

“That’s right! The exact same name. It was enough to terrify even me. Even though I’m the admin of an occult blog, you know? Haha! Hahaha... Huh?”

Why was the air suddenly so cold? And why wasn’t everyone reacting like I thought they would?

I’d expected Sarai to look at me like I was an idiot, like he always did. But instead he was making eye contact with the Mumuu editor, Toko Sumikaze.

“Um... what’s going on, guys?”

Toko’s smile vanished as she spoke. “It might not be somebody else.”

“...What?”

“You’re not the only one. My name was on the list on the news, and so was Sarai’s.”

“...Huh?” For a moment, I didn’t understand what she was saying.

Um...

It wasn’t just me?

Toko was on the list, too? And so was Sarai?

“I’m sorry... what?”

I looked towards Sarai for help, and he nodded back. “Sorry. My name’s not as common as yours.”

How?

How could he just admit it like that?

I’d come to Blue Moon to talk to Ryotasu and Sarai so that I could prove I was alive.

“Then that means that you two are dead, too! That doesn’t make sense! Since when did you believe in the occult, Sarai?” I snapped at them.

I didn’t regret it.