site 72: Asuna Kizaki

When I was in the FBI, I was on the special investigations team, where I used my superpower called psychometry. But even though I had a special power... I never believed in ghosts.

Sure, even in America people talked about the occult. Actually, they believed in it more than we did. But all the criminals I ever dealt with were living people. Even the strangest cases always came down to having tricks or natural phenomena behind them. Maybe that’s why ever since I was a little girl, I never believed in the occult.

Come to think of it, Moritsuka always talked to me about the occult with that innocent smile of his. No matter how many times I told him it wasn’t real, he always said the same thing.

“But don’t you think it would be more interesting if it did exist?”

Right in front of me there was a ghost—if you could call him that.

It really did exist.

In the booth at a small, abandoned radio station. Everything I’d discussed with Yuta Gamon here was making my head hurt. Maybe this was all a dream. If it was, I hoped I could wake up.

Suddenly, I glanced down at the radio—Gamon had just told me it was called a Skysensor—that I was holding. Maybe it was because I was holding this that I could see him. I used my psychometry by mentally flipping a switch, but there was a chance that my power was still leaking out.

Did that mean that if I carried something of Moritsuka’s, I’d be able to see him, too? No, that was stupid. It was avoiding reality. I drove the scene, which was rapidly starting to resemble a romance movie, out of my mind.

“Listen, um, Asunya—I mean, Kizaki. There’s one more thing... I’d like your help with.”

“One more thing?” I tensed up a little, expecting him to ask for money. But the next words he spoke were serious.

“Can you catch the person who killed Myu-Pom’s friend?”

“Myu-Pom? Who’s that?”

“Oh, her real name is Miyuu Aikawa. She’s Basara Girl Number Two. She does fortune-telling on livestream. She was the fortune-teller I just mentioned... and one of the 256.”

Fortune-telling, huh? That sort of uncertain stuff had never been a part of my life, so I didn’t really understand it.

“Myu-Pom’s friend... was just killed. And they haven’t caught the person who did it.”

“When was ‘just’? Where?”

“A place called Enmeiji...”

I instantly remembered. Shinoyama had told me about that case, where the victim was a student at Seimei, just like me and Gamon.

“I see. So you knew the victim.”

“Indirectly.” He was a little weird, but he seemed to really care. Maybe I’d had the wrong idea about Gamon a little.

“I’m with the FBI, so I can’t directly arrest anyone in Japan. But I can ID the killer and get the cops to act. Of course, I’ve got the rights to do that.”

“Then...”

“I can’t promise you I’ll catch them, but I’ll do my best to try. At least, as long as I’m alive,” I said.

Gamon looked a little relieved. “You’re exaggerating, Asunyan.”

“I told you not to call me that.”

“I-I’m sorry.”

Was he making fun of me because I looked like a little girl? It honestly felt like he was just trying to make me mad.

“Oh, um. Thanks. Kizaki.”

“It’s fine. She was a student at my school, too. Even if we never met.”

Anyway, an “exaggeration,” huh?

As long as I’m alive...

I wasn’t exaggerating. I’d meant it. I didn’t have a lot of time left. Of course, there was no reason I had to explain that to Gamon.

“By the way, why do you think there are two of my Skysensors?” Gamon’s radio, which was now slung on my shoulder; he was pointing at it, confused. “I mean, I’ve got one, too.” Gamon showed me the one that was slung from his shoulder.

They both looked the exact same. They even had the same anime character strap attached to the base of the shoulder belt.

“Can I touch it?” Gamon reached out with shaking hands toward the radio I was holding.

“Can ghosts touch things?” I asked, just as his fingers touched the radio.

No, I couldn’t tell if he touched it or if his hands went through it. The second his fingers reached it, I was shocked to see the one on his shoulder disappear, bag and all.

“What...”

There was no flash of light or anything, like out of a fairy tale. It simply vanished in an instant, without a sound. As if it had never existed...

But Gamon himself didn’t even notice.

“Yuta Gamon... where’s your radio?”

“Huh? H-Huh?” Only when I told him did he realize. He was frantically looking around for it. “Wait... Where is it? Where did my Skysensor go?!”

This was another bizarre thing I’d just witnessed.

Moritsuka, what’s going on in this town? I asked silently. No, Gamon was a ghost, so trying to use normal logic on him was a waste of time to begin with. At least, that’s what I tried to tell myself. If I didn’t, I might start panicking like he was. “It disappeared.”

“It disappeared? What do you mean?!”

“Don’t ask me.”

Both Gamon and I sat there in silence staring at the spot on his shoulder where the radio had disappeared. Of course, no matter how long we waited, the radio didn’t come back.

Gamon’s shoulders slumped. Maybe he’d given up.

“Listen.” And then he turned towards me with a serious expression. “Can you turn the power on on the radio you’ve got?”

“Why?”

“I want to see if it’s broken or not. It’s something that reminds me of my dad.”

I nodded back, then had him tell me which of the many switches on the radio to flip, and turned the power on.

--Zzzzzz zzzzzz

Static began to pour out from the speaker. It had sunk into a lake once already, so it must have been pretty sturdily built.

“Good, it’s not broken.” Gamon was staring at the radio with a look of relief. As the anger he’d displayed when I brought up his parents suggested, he really cared about his family.

“Has anybody but your dad ever held this radio for a long time?”

Gamon seemed confused at my question. “What do you mean?”

“I just used my psychometry on this radio. And there was a weird girl’s voice.”

“A-A weird girl’s voice? Zonko, maybe?”

“What? Who’s Zonko?”

“Sometimes this radio just starts talking. In a girl’s voice. It’s really bratty and always tells me to do things.”

What was he talking about? No, I couldn’t use common sense on Gamon. I just couldn’t. He was dead.

“Who is this Zonko girl, though?”

“This.” Gamon pointed at the character strap tied to the radio. “MMM’s Zonko.”

“An anime character?”

“That’s right. Master Mast Murder.”

“And it talks?”

“Oh, no. The radio talks, and it felt to me like it was Zonko talking. So I just decided to call it Zonko.”

My head was starting to hurt again. I had no idea what he was saying.

I decided to stop listening to Gamon and use my psychometry again. I told Gamon to sit back down in his chair, took off my glove, and touched the radio. I did the same performance as I’d done before.

“I’m sorry.”

There it was again. I could hear it. And...

Something seemed strange about what I was seeing after Gamon sank into the water. I took a closer look.

The moon was flickering on the surface of the water, and deep within its light, I could see another image. That’s how it felt.

This happened sometimes, when I read memories. It was probably particularly strong memories from another temporal axis, leaking out onto this one.

What time were the memories from? I focused my mind on tracking it down. It was like finding a thin thread and following it. Given how exhausted I was, it wasn’t something I really wanted to do.

I found it. Once I identified the time, all I had to do was rewind and play it.

The movie screen showed... a small room and a microphone. And an audio console covered with buttons and instruments. It was the same thing I’d seen when I touched the booth’s microphone a moment ago. These were the memories of when Yuta Gamon’s father, Koresuke Gamon, was still alive.

There was a mirror in front of him, and I could see his reflection. He was sitting in front of the microphone, reading from what seemed to be a script. He looked like a very kind man. He looked very plain, not at all like my image of a pro radio DJ. Outside the window, a young Yuta Gamon was staring at him, eyes shining.

But then I realized something was strange. Something was different from when I’d used my psychometry on the microphone before.

What was it?

I stared at the image on the projector, carefully observing it.

“What’s this?” There was a window in the studio facing outside, and reflected in it was another stream of images.

An image leaking out from a leaking image? That had never happened before. A warning bell rang in my mind. But the memories wanted to speak to me. I had to see them.

I went deeper within the memories.

The new memory was at roughly the same point in time as what I’d just seen in the recording studio. But this was completely different.

It was a fairly large room, like some kind of meeting hall. In a corner of the hall was a pile of backpacks and bags. The radio must have been lying on the pile, because my field of vision was tilted.

The room had no windows and was dimly lit. The only source of light was a ritual fire from the back of the room. At first I couldn’t tell because of the dark, but there were more people in the room than I’d thought. Everyone was wearing eerie masks and shaking their bodies from side to side.

Was this... a ritual?

And then...

Someone ran up to the man in white robes who was sitting closest to the fire. The man who ran up was the only one not wearing a mask. It was the man I’d just seen in the DJ booth: Koresuke Gamon. He grabbed the man in white by the collar and violently lifted him up. But then all the others wearing the masks rose and charged, piling on him.

Suddenly, the screen began to flicker. By the time I realized something was wrong, my mind had been pulled back to reality.

“Gaahh!” My heart felt like it was being squeezed like a dishrag. I couldn’t even breathe. I just held my chest and endured the pain.

I had to catch my breath, I thought. But it was beyond a level I could control. All the blood vessels in my body were on fire, and the flames threatened to burn my body to ash. The pain overwhelmed me, and I started to pass out. And just when I thought I was done for...

“Hey! Wake up!” Gamon grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me violently.

It was enough to barely wake me up. I grit my teeth to endure the pain. My tote bag was right next to me. There were painkiller capsules inside. If I took some...

I rummaged through the tote bag with shaking fingers. Gamon helped me.

“This?” He found the pill case I was looking for. I nodded and he took out a capsule from the case.

I put it in my mouth and desperately swallowed it, then closed my eyes. I tensed up my body for a while and endured the pain. Gamon took out a bottle of mineral water from my bag and offered it to me, so I took a sip.

After fifteen minutes or so, the pain stopped.

“Hahh... hahh...” That was close. I was lucky that I’d survived.

“Are you okay now?”

“Yeah. Thanks.” I caught my breath and took another sip of water.

I’d been using my psychometry constantly since I’d gone back to being an investigator. It had taken a bigger toll on me than I’d thought. If I didn’t cut back on using my power, I’d be in real danger.

“Kizaki, are you sick?” Gamon asked. He’d been watching over me the whole time, trying to see if there was anything he could do to help.

“Don’t worry about it. It’s got nothing to do with you.” I stood up from my chair. I looked at my phone and saw that I’d missed a call from Shinoyama. Maybe something had happened. It was time to go back to the station. “If I ever want to contact you in the future, what do I do?”

“Hmm, go to Café☆Blue Moon. Sarai and Toko are there, too.” He seemed to know a lot of people.

“Are they like you?”

“There’s no other useless NEET like me out there. Sorry.”

“That’s not what I meant. Do they still have their memories of when they were alive and are living out their normal lives?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“What are they like?”

“One’s an editor at Mumuu. Then there’s Basara Girls One and Two, I guess. Also, the son of Dr. Hashigami. He’s smart, and he loves to prove people wrong, but that’s all he’s good for. Oh, and he’s in college.”

“Answer me seriously.”

“I am answering you seriously. Everything I just said is true. If you come, you’ll understand.”

It sounded like a bunch of weirdos. Then...

“Are any of your friends a detective?”

“A detective? Oh, come to think of it, there was a weird detective in a trench coat I talked to a little after I died.”

“What? Is that true?!” I grabbed Gamon without thinking. “What’s his name?! Was it Moritsuka?”

Gamon nodded, a little scared.

“Where is he now?!”

“I-I don’t know. I only ever met him once.”

Oh wow... So Moritsuka was in the same state Gamon was in. Then, would I someday be able to speak to him, like I could speak to Gamon?

“I’m sorry for grabbing you. Moritsuka was the person in charge of this case before me. If you see him, tell him about me.”

“I-I don’t know if I’ll see him again.”

“Please.”

Gamon nodded a little. “Oh, don’t forget about the interview,” he said. “A Japanese FBI High School (Hot) Girl Psychometer is sure to pull in a lot of hits.”

Hits. I wished he’d stop calling me that long title.

Then suddenly, Gamon sighed deeply and started reading the letters on the walls with a sad expression. On the surface, he seemed to be doing well, but maybe it was just an act. He’d seen his own body yesterday. It would make sense.

“Yuta Gamon. I’m glad I got to talk to you,” I said. “I want to believe that there’s a reason we met like this.”

It was because of the hint that Moritsuka had left me. If he had left it for me, there had to be a reason. If I could gain information from the 256 people who’d died, maybe it would help me solve the case.

Or maybe I was just hallucinating. If I was, Shinoyama would notice and send me to the hospital. But if that happened, then fine. For now, I would just do what I could.

“Maybe it’s irresponsible to say this, but... there are things you can do because of who you are now. Thank you for your help. If I need something, I’ll come to you.”

There was nothing else I could say to him. Gamon and I could speak to one another, but we weren’t the same. There was a cold, unbridgeable difference that separated us.

The living, and the dead. Even if the line was a thin one, the places we stood were very far apart. And he could never go back to where I was.

That’s why I parted with him then.