File 11: The Whispered Voice Requires Self-Responsibility
File 11: The Whispered Voice Requires Self-Responsibility
1
The next time I spotted Satsuki Uruma, I was leaving the Junkudo bookstore in Ikebukuro.
It was a Saturday afternoon, and Toriko and I had been meeting up on the first floor. We had meetings in Ikebukuro a lot lately. I was at Minami-Yono on the Saikyo Line, while Toriko was at Nishi-Nippori on the Yamanote Line, so when we wanted to go to Kozakura’s house at Shakujii-kouen, Ikebukuro was the perfect spot.
We could have each headed for Kozakura’s home on our own, but somehow, this just sort of ended up being our habit. I don’t even remember which of us suggested it first. It was probably Toriko.
I finished paying at the register, then went to pick up Toriko—she was looking at the display of new releases in literature.
“Sorry for the wait.”
“What’d you buy?” she asked.
“Books on camping and survival.”
In order to move on to the next stage of exploring the other world, we needed to think of ways to spend the night over there. Though the other world was dangerous at night, needing to return home before dark curbed our range of exploration too much. In order to make longer trips, we needed to figure out how to stay safe at night, and in order to do that, I was going to need to learn survival skills, even if it was only until we figured out something better.
Fortunately, there had just been a camping boom, and that had brought out many books I could reference on the subject. Because we were coming here to meet up already, I picked out a few.
“You don’t need to buy books. I’ll teach you,” Toriko said, sounding displeased. She apparently had experience with camping, gained from lessons from her parents when she was younger. Still...
“You said you’d forgotten what you learned, Toriko.”
“And I’ll remember it all as we go.”
“There you go, just saying things at random again...”
“I’m not saying it at random! My body remembers—it’ll be fine!”
“Sure, sure. You can teach me out in the field.”
I felt people glancing at us as we talked, so I looked at Toriko, and our eyes met.
“What?”
“Oh, no. Nothing.”
“Hmm.”
When I brushed my hair—which had grown to shoulder-length—back over my ear, Toriko looked away awkwardly.
“Maybe I should cut it after all.”
“Huh... Why?”
“Can’t I?”
“There’s no reason you can’t.”
“Well, you and Kozakura-san did both say I’d look good with long hair, after all.”
“It’s not just with long hair, but long hair would look good on you... I think.”
As Toriko tried to avoid making eye contact, I squinted at her. What was it, hmm? Was there something she felt guilty about?
In truth, I knew why Toriko was acting like this. It had all started with one comment from Akari Seto.
According to Karateka, if I grew my hair out, I’d look a little like Satsuki Uruma.
Oh, yeah? I’d thought. She’s much taller than me, and has a nasty look in her eyes. Isn’t the only resemblance that we both had black hair? Yeah. Satsuki Uruma looks way meaner than me. Don’t lump us together.
...Maybe I should have played it off like that, but once she pointed it out, it was unexpectedly important to both Toriko and Kozakura. This was right after they both suggested I grow my hair out, so that only made it several times more awkward—because neither of them was over their feelings for the missing Satsuki Uruma yet.
Incidentally, for our last after-party, which included Karateka, we had pizza at Kozakura’s house. Obviously, we couldn’t throw out the MVP, who had traded blows—actually, who had landed a one-sided beatdown—on Sannukikano before the party. But, in retrospect, having her eat pizza when her tooth had just been put back in was maybe not the best choice.
Regardless, ever since then, Toriko seemed to feel slightly guilty towards me. Even though I didn’t really mind.
Really, I didn’t.
I left the bookstore, standing in front of a slightly quiet Toriko. We stood behind a crowd waiting at the crosswalk for the light to change. There was a pedestrian path, left like an island in the middle of a major street with constant traffic. Two crosswalks intersected it, connecting the opposite shores.
When I looked up, I came to a sudden stop.
On the far shore, across the crosswalk, in front of a ramen place that had a long line of foreign tourists in front of it, there was another group like ours, waiting for the light to change.
There she was, again. Among them.
A tall woman in black, with long black hair and glasses—Satsuki Uruma.
“Sorawo? What’s up?” Toriko, who was beside me, asked suspiciously, having noticed I was acting strange.
I couldn’t respond. Toriko bent her knees a bit and looked at the opposite bank at the same eye level as me.
“Is something there?”
I looked at the profile of Toriko’s face as she said that. There was no sign she had realized something was wrong. In which case, I really was the only one who could see that thing.
Looking back with that thought in mind, Satsuki Uruma stood out from the scenery around her as if she had been cut out of a photograph and then pasted there. Her head was hung, and she was as immobile as a still image—just like when we had encountered her in the other world.
Speak of the devil and he shall appear. There’s a saying that goes like that, but I hadn’t even spoken of her, so it seemed like it should be against the rules for her to show up like this.
The light turned green, and the people around us began to walk. That broke my line of sight, leaving me unable to see Satsuki Uruma for a moment.
When I was able to see the far shore again, the woman in black was nowhere to be found.
“Sorawo.” Toriko put a hand on my shoulder. I took a deep breath, then shook my head.
“...Sorry, I was a little out of it.”
Toriko furrowed her brow and looked closely at me. “You okay?”
“Yeah, I’m good now. It was nothing.”
“Well, okay.” Toriko stroked my arm anxiously, then moved her hand away.
It hardly happened anymore, but on very rare occasions, perhaps because of flashbacks to past trauma, I would lose consciousness. Toriko experienced that, too, so she wouldn’t doubt what I had said.
What I feared had become reality.
After we encountered the Yamanoke, the shadow of Satsuki Uruma that had appeared in the other world suddenly vanished. This won’t be the end. She’ll come back. Maybe even in the surface world... That had been my fear, and unfortunately it had been right.
What now? This had turned into a problem.
I couldn’t bear the thought of her constantly stalking us. It was good that only I could see her, but it took a lot of focus to keep it from Toriko.
The moment I began walking across the crosswalk, half lost in thought, a car raced past, right in front of my eyes.
“Whoa, Sorawo! That was close! What’re you doing?”
“H-Huh? But the light’s green...?!”
I looked up in confusion. At some point, the light had turned red. Not only that, we weren’t on either of the crosswalks, but the island in the middle of the road.
“...Huh? Why am I here?”
“Hey, are you sure you’re okay, Sorawo? You wandered over here on your own, then came to a stop. Don’t you remember?” Toriko said, and what was going on finally sank in.
Then... I’d really lost consciousness?
The cars raced past in front of me one after another. If I had taken another step forward without coming to my senses, I’d have been run over by now.
I’d only meant it as a way of distracting Toriko.
The road leading towards the station started getting crowded, and the speed of the cars going by slowed. An advertising truck recruiting for a sex service stopped in front of us. The commercial song, praising the high pay, blared from the truck’s speakers. The female characters on the side of the truck had all been blotted out. I was so distracted by it, I didn’t notice there was someone else there until they called out to us from behind.
“Um, excuse me. Um...”
I turned in the direction of the shrill voice, and there was a woman in her late forties standing there. She wore a frayed sweater, wrinkled skirt, and sandals on her feet. She also had a black bag that she carried diagonally over her shoulder. Her hair was oily, and the scent of an odd, powerful incense hung in the air around her.
The woman looked to Toriko, then spoke in a tone filled with passion. “Hand! Hand!”
“Huh?”
“The hand. You’re the one, from the photo.”
Toriko and I looked at one another. I had no idea what she was going on about.
“I saw it on a blog, and always thought it was pretty, so I printed it out, and I always keep it with me.”
The woman raised the flap on her shoulder bag, and showed us what was inside. There were a number of paper folders. Each of them had titles like, “THANK YOU,” “SORRY,” “DREAM,” and, “!!!DEVIL!!!” written on them in thick marker. The woman pulled the file that said “THANK YOU,” and pulled out a photograph from inside.
“This, this is it. It is you, yes?!”
The picture she put in front of us was of Toriko.
Toriko was sitting on the train, looking at her phone. Her hand was uncovered, and you could tell it was see-through. The translucence only extended as far as her fingers here. Since she wasn’t wearing a glove on it, this might have been from around the time we encountered Hasshaku-sama.
“What? Why—”
The moment Toriko started to speak, the woman began rambling.
“I’ve been looking for you all this time. You and your shining hand. There aren’t many people as beautiful as you, so I thought it would be easy. The photo was from the Yamanote Line, so I looked around the major stations along the Yamanote Line every day, and I managed to draw you to me. Now, I can finally meet you. My wishes have been given form. Everything is connected.”
I felt a chill in my brain.
I stepped in front of the woman without a word. I talked to Toriko over my shoulder.
“When the light changes, run.”
“Sora—”
“Don’t say my name!”
Toriko closed her mouth just in time. I didn’t want to give any personal information to someone like this.
The woman’s eyes widened as she finally seemed to register my existence. She thrust her closed left fist towards me. It was an odd gesture, with her thumb sticking out between her index and middle fingers.
“You, stop! Don’t look at me!” she rambled, pointing her left hand towards my face.
Before I could do anything, Toriko shouted, “What are you doing?! Stop!”
“The evil eye! This is the evil eye! Ahhh, you can’t turn such a terrifying eye on other people! Don’t look at me!”
Toriko seemed to be mad because she thought the woman was making an offensive hand sign at me, but I understood what she was doing. She was warding against evil. There were legends of “evil eyes” that could curse with a glance all around the world, and tales of using rude gestures to resist them were also widespread. I never expected to be on the receiving end, though...
It was clearly the act of someone ensnared by superstition, but in this particular case, she wasn’t far off the mark. My right eye could, in fact, drive people insane, after all. When I thought about it, I actually thought that was a little funny.
That must have shown on my face, because the woman arched her eyebrows and began screeching.
“What are you laughing about?! You vile brat! You bitch! Satan!”
I thought about saying “that won’t work on meeee” and threatening her, but decided against it. There was nothing to be gained from agitating someone like this.
“Let’s go.”
The light had just changed, so I called out to Toriko and turned around. We walked around the advertising truck, which was still stopped in an inconvenient position, and ran across the crosswalk. As we deliberately dove into the crowd crossing from the other side, the woman behind us was shouting.
“Wait! Please, wait! Just a glimpse! That shining hand—”
We didn’t wait around to let her finish before vanishing into the crowds of Ikebukuro.
2
“Congrats. You got yourself a fan,” Kozakura said teasingly after she heard the story.
“Stop...” Toriko spat the word in distaste. “It’s not funny, even as a joke.”
There was a bigger scowl on her face than I’d ever seen from her before, and I couldn’t help but stare. It was rare to see the usually aloof Toriko show such disgust.
“Right, Sorawo?”
“Huh? Oh! Yeah!”
My mind was wandering, so I ended up giving a half-hearted response. Toriko’s suspicious eyes fell on me, and I looked away.
Once Toriko and I had managed to lose the woman, we came to Kozakura’s house in Shakujii-kouen. Although we were on schedule, we decided to be cautious. We took a roundabout route from the station, so we arrived a little late. Thanks to that, we were having a late lunch, too. The curtains in Kozakura’s room were always shut, though, so it didn’t really make a difference.
“Did you realize photos had been taken of you?” Kozakura asked as she poked away at her keyboard.
“I remember having a photo taken on the train. It was a while back, though. I didn’t like it, so I started wearing gloves... But I think it was just that one time.”
“So that one photo got put up on the net, and you ended up with a passionate fan, huh?”
“Seriously, I told you to stop!”
“If only she were a cute girl.”
“That’s not the problem!” Toriko raised her voice.
“The way she was forcing her feelings on me was scary on it’s own, but she said awful things to Sorawo, too. I can’t forgive that.”
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. I’m sorry.” Kozakura gave an unemotional apology, taking her hands off the keyboard and leaning back in her chair. “It’s not coming up.”
“What’s not?”
“Your photo.”
There was a single browser window open on Kozakura’s screen. She had apparently been searching the net all this time. The image search results screen was filled with unconscious drunks and passengers wearing strange outfits. It seemed she hadn’t just been idly chatting with us.
“I tried every search keyword that came to mind, but nothing’s coming up. How did that woman find it?”
“I think she said something about a blog,” I suggested.
“A blog, huh? Those can be marked as non-public pretty easily, so it could be hard to chase down...”
“Speaking of that, how’s the other search going?” I asked, and Kozakura frowned.
“Nothing so far. I found traces of the name after that, but I couldn’t find the videos, as usual. You, Sorawo-chan?”
“It’s the same for me. I tried applying different kanji to it, and I got some results that seemed right, but the links were all down, and there was nothing in the cache.”
“I checked YouTube, Niconico, and where else was it? I probably found the same things, but they were all gone.”
“The only leads were the fragments of text left in the Google search results, but they all looked like reposts.”
That’s when Toriko piped in. “Hey. You’re searching for Lunaurumi, right?”
“Yeah. That’s right,” Kozakura said.
The ghost story video uploader named Lunaurumi. For a while now, Kozakura and I had been trying to dig into that unknown person’s identity. Our first information came from Natsumi Ichikawa, a childhood friend of Karateka—my kouhai, Akari Seto. Just before she began to have problems with Sannukikano, Natsumi had been watching videos from someone calling themselves Lunaurumi.
It was my theory that Natsumi had been drawn into the bizarre events as a result of those videos. What she had watched was called a self-responsibility story, which infected those who listened to it, though she said she didn’t remember exactly how the story went.
The self-responsibility stories were a series of ghost stories that said “read this and you’ll be cursed,” and involved young people in ruined buildings or sealed rooms, dying because they were possessed by something. Because they shared many similarities despite the different narrators, it was suspected that there was some connecting factor between them. Some common elements that were given included the names of the being that chased the victims (Yamanin, Yamagishi, Negishi, and so on), damage to the eyes, a portrayal of being pulled by the hair, and visiting a medium for advice only to be met with anger.
I suspected the videos had been made to bring the viewer into contact with entities from the other world. Kozakura was of the same opinion. That meant someone was spreading self-responsibility-type net lore around with the goal of infecting an undetermined number of people.
That was Lunaurumi.
We had reason to be confident our guess was right because of her name.
Luna Urumi. “Moon” and “Opaque.” Satsuki had the kanji for moon in it, and Urumi sounded similar to Uruma.
I had even suspected it was her acting under a slightly changed name at first. However, according to Natsumi Ichikawa, Lunaurumi was a high school girl wearing a sailor suit. Neither Kozakura nor Toriko knew anyone like that.
I was looking at this with clearer eyes than them, and my theory was that this was another fangirl that Satsuki Uruma had created during her time as a tutor. They both must have suspected the same, but that they didn’t say so showed how strong their lingering feelings for her were.
Whatever the case, I needed to get to the truth behind who this uploader, who was referred to as Luna-sama in the comments, was, and her connection to Satsuki Uruma. Then, whether it was intentional or not, I needed to stop her from getting large numbers of random people involved with the other world. It was beyond dangerous and too much of a nuisance.
That I could skip that preamble and explanation when I was dealing with Kozakura meant that the conversation went fast, and it was easy for us to accidentally end up leaving Toriko out. I thought the sulky look Toriko got on her face when that happened was adorable.
That’s why I just gave a curt response, and got on with talking to Kozakura. “So, the original video, the one that got reposted, was apparently making the rounds on a site for smartphones.”
“See, that’s the thing... If I’m being honest, I don’t understand smartphone sites and apps all that well. You’re the young ones here, so maybe you have some idea?”
“Nope. Not at all.”
“Even though you were in high school just two years ago.”
“Only people with a lot of friends use them.”
“And you, Toriko?”
“I got into university through a qualification exam. I barely even went to high school.”
“What, are there nothing but loners in this room?” Kozakura let out an exasperated sigh. Toriko shook her head.
“We’re not anymore.”
“Haha. You’re making me cry.” With a nasal laugh, Kozakura swiveled her chair back to look at the monitor. “Maybe we should try asking your kouhais again? They’re even younger than the two of you, after all.”
“I’m not keen on the idea, but maybe we should...” I responded grudgingly.
I didn’t want to get Akari and Natsumi any more involved... though, setting Natsumi aside, I was scared that, if left to her own devices, it seemed likely Akari would carry another problem our way.
“There’s no telling when those search results might vanish, too, so better grab a screenshot.”
Kozakura typed “Luna Urumi” into the browser’s search bar, and pressed the enter key.
Then, she froze in place.
“...Huh?”
“What is it?”
Kozakura silently pointed at the screen. Toriko and I looked over her shoulder. The browser showed just one search result.
Runa Urumi’s Whispered Ghost Stories: The Blue-eyed Woman
“Hey, do you think this kanji is read Urumi?”
“I... think so, probably.”
“Sorawo-chan, was there one like this before?”
“It’s the first I’ve seen of it.”
“It says ‘The Blue-eyed Woman’...”
Toriko and Kozakura both stared at me, and it felt awkward.
“Uh, well, look, it could be about dolls, you know? Like a French doll...”
“The timing’s a little too perfect for that, don’t you think?”
She was right—the timing was too on point. No matter how much I searched before, I hadn’t found anything, and yet here it was, showing up all of a sudden. It was like we were being watched...
The three middle-aged ladies who had appeared at Kozakura’s house the time with the Time-space Man crossed my mind.
The information we were seeking was in front of our eyes, but we just stared at the screen, unable to move for a while.
There was almost no information to be gleaned from the search results page—only that the link was to a YouTube page. The time on the thumbnail indicated the video was four minutes and thirty seconds.
“Let’s... try playing it.”
“Huh?”
Kozakura looked up at me, eyes wide.
“Hold on. This is going to be a self-responsibility story, too, isn’t it?”
“I have no doubt it is.”
“You’re going to open it knowing that? Something’s gonna come for sure!”
“Even if something comes, Toriko and I will deal with it. Right, Toriko?”
When I turned to her for confirmation, Toriko grinned. “Yup. We’re pros, after all.”
“No, no, no, no, no.” Kozakura was shaking her head. “This is crazy! What’re you getting so carried away for?!”
“But if we don’t open it, we still won’t know anything.”
“Yeah, but still.”
“I’ll click. Pass me the mouse.”
“I don’t wanna! No, no, no!” Kozakura shouted, and her chair immediately rolled backwards, mowing down a pile of books on the floor, at which point she jumped out of it and bolted out into the hall. I’d never seen her move so fast.
“Kozakura-san?!”
“No way am I watching it! Are you out of your mind?!”
I heard her shouting from the hall, and then a door slammed shut somewhere.
“You’re being cruel to Kozakura, Sorawo.”
“Well, yeah, I am.”
I looked from the door back to Toriko. “I know what I said, but you should get away, too, Toriko.”
“Why? If you’re watching it, I will, too.”
“Thanks. But you remember what happened with the Kotoribako, right?” I said, and Toriko frowned.
That time, the Kotoribako appeared when we carelessly read from Satsuki Uruma’s notes, and Toriko and I nearly died. Satsuki Uruma had appeared with it, but that was a secret only I knew. I had no idea what would happen this time. For that reason, I felt it best to halve the risk.
“With my eye, if there’s something abnormal, I can detect it. So you go be with Kozakura, Toriko.”
“...Okay,” Toriko said reluctantly. “But scream right away if you’re in danger, okay?”
“I know.”
“The video’s four minutes, thirty seconds, so... if you haven’t called me in five minutes, I’ll come running. Okay?”
“Okay.”
Even after I’d replied to her, Toriko kept looking at me with a furrowed brow. I was about to tell her, “It’ll be all right,” when Toriko suddenly moved.
An instant later, I was in her embrace.
“Huh?!” I let out a strange cry and stiffened. The sensation of Toriko’s warmth, her scent, her softness, and her firm muscles all filled my head.
How many seconds did it last? Toriko hugged me for a while, then moved away.
“Be careful, okay?”
“O... Okay. It’s gonna be all right.”
I was still a little shaken up when I responded. Honestly, I had been calmer before she hugged me.
After watching Toriko leave with a worried look still on her face, I closed the door.
Whew... That surprised me. I wish she wouldn’t do things like that so suddenly. I don’t know how to respond...
I took the Makarov from my bag, pulled the slide, and checked that it was loaded. I crouched next to the desk, gun in one hand, and grabbed the mouse.
Honestly, I was scared, too, but this wasn’t a time to hesitate. If I didn’t hurry, Toriko would get worried and come back.
I took a deep breath to calm myself, then clicked the link.
The screen changed to YouTube. The view count was in the single digits. The poster’s name was “rnurm.” Nothing was written in the video description. Holding the Makarov’s grip with both hands, I focused on the video.
There were a few moments of darkness, and then a girl in a sailor suit appeared on the screen.
It was a wide shot: from the front, at a slightly upwards angle, showing from her mouth down to about her stomach. The background was a dirty concrete wall, which was exactly the sort of thing you’d expect from a ruin. I focused with my right eye, searching for any hints of strangeness. I wasn’t sure about the other side of the screen, but inside this room, around the PC, there was no silver halo appearing.
“Good evening. I’m Runa Urumi.”
What?
The moment I heard the voice, a cold, throbbing numbness spread from my ears to my neck and down my back. It felt like something was running down my spine.
“Hello to any new viewers. And to the rest of you, hello again. Hee hee.”
It was an amateur voice, not sounding particularly theatrical. It didn’t feel like she was a voice actor, or a broadcaster, or a pro with that sort of vocal training. If anything, she was stuttering a bit. But the voice itself was incredibly alluring.
“Please, be careful. For everything past this point, you need to take responsibility for yourself. When you finish listening, something may happen to you. If you don’t want that, stop the video now.”
Each time the girl spoke, the throbbing grew. It felt like she was whispering right next to my ear.
It was my first time hearing a voice like this. Something entered through my ear, whorled around inside my head, and my consciousness spun around with it, as if being sucked in...
“—Sorawo!”
“Whaa?!”
I jumped because there was a shout in my ear.
“Are you okay? What happened?”
Toriko was standing next to me. I shook my head. “...What was I doing? Did I say anything?” I asked.
“You were just standing by the window.” Toriko looked out the window, perplexed.
Outside the window... For some reason unknown to me, I had opened the blinds that were always closed and stood there, staring outside. The Makarov, which should have been in my hands, was laying on top of the desk. I had no memory of placing it there.
There was nothing of particular note outside. Just a mossy wall. The orange of the evening sun was shining into the room.
“How many minutes has it been?”
“Five minutes. How was the video?”
I looked back to the screen when she said that. The YouTube screen showed an exclamation mark inside a circle on a gray field. In other words: “The video could not be found.”
“...Looks like it’s gone,” I mumbled, still feeling dazed.
“In the end, we still know nothing,” Kozakura grumbled. “Honestly, after making a huge fuss at someone else’s house...”
“You were the one making a fuss, Kozakura.”
“Oh, be quiet, you idiot.”
We were on the way back to the station. I thought about what had happened while I listened to Toriko and Kozakura talking behind me.
That poster uploaded the video to the net at the perfect time, and once I’d seen it, she pulled it down, like it had done its job. It was almost like we were being watched.
Were we really being observed? Or was that another “phenomenon” from the other world? Either way, this wouldn’t end here. If the video was of the self-responsibility type, something would happen to me for watching it.
“Hey, it’s okay if you want to stay the night. It’s already getting late.”
“It’s not that late. It isn’t even 7:00 yet.”
“It’s getting dark out!”
Kozakura kept talking to Toriko in a shrill voice behind me. This was the first time Kozakura had decided to come with us as far as the station when we were going home. Normally, she’d give us a curt “get going” and shoo us off, but it seemed she couldn’t handle her fear today.
“...If you insist, then okay, but do you have bedding ready for us?”
“I don’t, but you can sleep on the couch.”
“We can’t both sleep on the couch.”
“Well, then stay up all night. I won’t be sleeping, either.”
“What do you want to do, Sorawo?” Toriko asked, and I responded without turning around.
“Kozakura-san, are you sure you want that?”
“How so?”
“I think something will be coming to me because I watched the video. If we’re together, you’ll be caught up in it.”
“Guh...”
“Yeah, she’s right. Kozakura, I know you’re scared, but I think you’re better off sleeping alone tonight.”
“I’m sure you two have it easy since you’re together!”
“Well, since we’ve come all the way to the station, do you want to get dinner? Once we get some alcohol in you, I’m sure your mood will—”
I started to talk, but I felt something pull my hair from behind.
“Ow! Hey... Stop that!”
I turned around in indignation, but Kozakura and Toriko just stared blankly at me. They were about three meters behind—not a distance from which they could have pulled my hair.
Huh? I thought, and then a moment later, the figure standing behind the two of them jumped into view.
Satsuki Uruma.
That shadow, which had never twitched before, suddenly moved.
The black-clothed arm rose, and reached for Toriko’s shoulder.
“Toriko!” I screamed and ran towards her. I grabbed her by the shoulder and pulled hard.
“Wah?!”
Toriko fell forward, her hands on the ground.
“Ow! What was that for—”
I was hardly listening to Toriko.
Right now, I was standing so close I could have touched Satsuki Uruma. It reminded me of the time with Hasshaku-sama.
I slowly looked up, and Satsuki Uruma was looking down at me. Her two brilliant blue eyes, far deeper in color than my right eye, were like terrifying holes leading to the depths of the other world. I felt like I was going to fall into them, and I lost my head for a moment.
That’s when it happened. There was the sound of a car braking, and a white van pulled up right next to us. I looked a second later, and two men got out of the sliding door, which was already open, and grabbed me.
“Huh...?!”
Before I could respond, I was lifted up, and thrown inside the van. I gasped as I struck the floor, which was covered by a rubber sheet. There were two more men inside the vehicle, and they held me down and covered my head with a bag.
Who are these guys?!
The moment I tried to resist, I felt a sharp pain in my neck. As I was thinking, I’ve been stabbed with something, I was struck by an intense drowsiness. The strength slipped right out of me. Forget resisting—I couldn’t even keep my eyes open. There was someone lying next to me, and they groaned.
Toriko...!
There was the sound of footsteps, and the body of the vehicle sank. The door slid shut, the engine roared, and the van suddenly accelerated. Someone was outside, shouting. Shouting my name.
Beneath the waves of drowsiness, my consciousness sank into the darkness.
3
Sorawo... Sorawo...
Someone was calling my name.
Come on... Wake up...
Toriko?
Where am I?
Hurry—you have to...
Burn them... Hurry...
“Ah...!”
I suddenly snapped back into consciousness. When I opened my eyes, my vision was obstructed by the bag over my head. The rough fabric allowed just a little light through.
There was a lingering drowsiness, probably from the drugs, which made my head throb. My whole body felt sluggish, and I wanted to lie down as soon as humanly possible. I tried to move, but found that my hands and feet were bound. I was sitting in a chair with my hands tied behind my back.
“Urgh...”
There was a groan from beside me. Had Toriko been caught too? I panicked and was about to call out to her, but I sensed the presence of other people.
“I see you’re awake.”
It was a man’s voice.
Footsteps approached me from behind, and the bag was pulled from my head.
A concrete floor and walls filled my widening field of view. The area I was in was wide and dark with no windows. It felt like the ruins of some sort of manufacturing facility.
There were several men and women surrounding us at a distance, their eyes on us. They wore everything from a suit, to T-shirts and jeans. All unfamiliar faces.
No, wait. I recognized the one.
The suspicious woman who had called out to us in Ikebukuro this afternoon. When our eyes met, she jumped a little and looked away, then hid behind another person.
I turned to the side, wondering if Toriko was all right, and what I saw caught me by surprise.
The one tied to a chair only a few meters away from me wasn’t Toriko, it was Kozakura. Having not yet fully regained her senses, she was scowling and shaking her head.
“Who’re you people...? I don’t remember doing anything that would get me kidnapped,” Kozakura asked in a husky voice. “You don’t look like yakuza. Are you looking for a ransom? Sorry, but my assets are limited, and she’s just a broke student. Did you mistake us for someone else in the neighborhood?”
“There’s been no mistake here, Kozakura-san.”
I shuddered at the voice from behind me.
I knew that voice. That all-too-alluring voice that was soft, sensitive, and seemed to creep inside my head through my ears.
The owner of that voice approached with heavy steps, passing in between Kozakura and me, and then turning to face us from the front. It was a school girl in a cardigan and sailor suit. Her hair was quite long, with braids tied into circles on the sides of her head before they flowed down her back. Her eyes narrowed in satisfaction as she looked at us, sitting there, unable to move. It was my first time seeing her face, but I knew her immediately.
“...Runa Urumi.”
“That’s riiight.”
Runa Urumi clapped for me and then said, “Sorry for scaring you. Are you feeling all right? I did ask them not to use anything too powerful on you, at least. Oh, don’t mind all these people. They’re really useful, though. They’ll do anything I tell them to.”
Giggling, Runa Urumi continued. “Oh, so like I was saying, I have some important business with Kozakura-san.”
“What?”
“I’ve been thinking I’d like you to tell me about Satsuki-sama.”
Kozakura looked up at Runa Urumi’s face, and was quiet for a moment. “That’s why you abducted me? Just to ask that?”
“I mean, if I asked you normally, I’m sure you wouldn’t tell me.”
One of the onlookers brought out another chair. Runa Urumi sat down as if that were the perfectly natural thing to do here, and turned to face us.
“I did my research. You were collaborating with Satsuki-sama to research the Blue World. Until she went missing, you and Toriko Nishina were the ones who were closest to her. Am I right?”
“...”
Kozakura made no attempt to answer. The Blue World must have been their name for the Otherside.
In a voice tinged with exasperation, Kozakura asked, “You’re a Satsuki fan...? You’re in high school, aren’t you? When did you meet her? Just how many underage girls has she laid her hands on?”
“Oh, trying to pull the seniority card? Not cool, Kozakura-san,” Runa said teasingly. “Here’s the thing. I’ve never met Satsuki-sama.”
“Huh?”
“If we’re being exact, I’ve heard of her, but we’ve never spoken.”
Seeing the dubious looks on my and Kozakura’s faces, Runa began proudly telling her story.
“I’ve been a streamer since I was in middle school. It’s just that back then, I didn’t really do PVs, you know? Though, let’s be blunt, I wasn’t popular at all. I tried changing apps, and did all sorts of stuff, but I stayed buried... Just when I was thinking of giving up, there was this time when I was listening to other people’s ASMR videos to use them as a reference. Oh, do you know what ASMR is?”
“Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response,” Kozakura responded instantly, and Runa clapped her hands.
“Niiiice! Yeah, that. You probably got it.”
“...What’s that?” I whispered, and Kozakura responded with no humor.
“In broad terms, she’s talking about sound fetish videos. Recordings of sounds like cutting hair, typing, flipping pages, and other things that it feels good to listen to.”
“Yeah, ear cleaning and whispers are popular, but... what I found then was a sound like nothing I’d ever heard before.”
“You got into 18+ stuff?”
“Hey, don’t ask dumb questions like that,” Runa said in no uncertain terms, then got this enraptured look on her face. “It was... the sound of God.”
Kozakura and I looked at each other.
“Even now, I can remember it clearly. The video was titled Blue World. The thumbnail was... a blonde, foreign girl, but that was probably just some license-free photo. I listened, and I couldn’t tell what the sound was at first. It sounded like it might be the boundless sky, and the wind blowing through it. Or perhaps of sinking deep into the sea. It was a mysterious sound, and I wondered what it was as I listened... and then God appeared.”
“What do you mean, God?”
“Something really big, really scary, and completely inhuman... floated up out of the sound.”
“Big, scary, and inhuman...? Isn’t that...” I whispered to myself, and Runa nodded passionately.
“Yes! God, of course! I was completely shocked. I mean, here I was listening to ASMR, and God appeared inside my head. You’d never see that coming, huh?”
Well, no, I don’t suppose I would...
“I got surprised and scared, but for some reason I just couldn’t stop listening. As I did, the words of a woman who could convey the word of God came out. That was—”
“Satsuki?”
“Yes! Satsuki-sama! And in that moment, I understood. I had lived all of this time for her, and from now on, too, I would always live for her. That realization made me drop to my knees then and there. Satsuki-sama touched me inside the sound, and bestowed upon me a gift. That is my Voice. The gift of the Blue World, which will make anyone do as I say. I know exaaaactly what I should use it for, too.”
“...Does that video still exist?”
“You want to hear it now, too? Well, sorry, it’s gone. I mean, once I finished listening to it myself, it was gone before I realized. I couldn’t find it in search, it wasn’t in my local cache, and there was no play data left. I don’t even remember how I came across it in the first place. That’s why I even started to doubt there ever was a video. But I had clear memories of it, and I remembered. To the point I can play it back in my head. I’m sure the video changed its form into the Voice, and entered me. This is what they call a revelation, right?”
What was this story? A sound burned into her memory by a video that it was doubtful existed. An unknown “God.” The sudden appearance of Satsuki Uruma in this disorganized tale. And her gift...
In a low voice, Kozakura asked, “And that’s how you came to worship Satsuki?”
“Worship, yes! I worship Satsuki-sama. The lady who bestowed this Voice on me. The messenger of the Blue World... I already know she exists. I am chasing after her, hoping to meet her just once more.”
“No matter how you slice it, that’s bizarre. You’re crazy, all of you.”
“Not all of us. I’m the only one who worships Satsuki. The rest of them worship me.”
When Runa looked to the people surrounding us, they nodded passionately. Even in the dim light, I could see the redness of their cheeks and the moistness of their eyes.
I could feel an intense furrowing of my brow.
I knew these guys were a cult...
The thought had occurred to me because that Thank You Woman was with them, but I wasn’t happy to be proven right. You can’t reason with cultists. No matter what their object of worship was, of all the types of groups in this world, they were the ones I least wanted to be involved with. Honestly, when it came to cultists, I’d be happier dealing with monsters from the other world.
Maybe she felt my eyes on her, because Runa Urumi spun around to face me.
“Oh, right—one other thing I wanted you to tell me. Who are you?”
“You kidnapped me without knowing?”
“Honestly, they were supposed to bring me Kozakura-san and Nishina-san. But, surprise, they brought me some girl I don’t know.”
“I’m terribly sorry!”
There was a loud voice from behind us. I twisted my neck to look back there, and there were four men on their hands and knees groveling behind us. The men who had kidnapped me and Kozakura, I suppose.
“Forgive us, please, Luna-sama!”
“Let us try again! I swear we will not disappoint you this time!”
The men were shouting, but Runa gave a disinterested sigh. “Well, what’s done is done. So...? Who were you again? What do you have to do with Satsuki-sama?”
“That’s my student. No connection to Satsuki,” Kozakura answered before I could.
“Student? Even though you’re not a professor?”
“She’s a weirdo who comes all the way to my house just to learn from me.”
“She has some dangerous toys for a simple weirdo, though?”
One of the cultists brought my tote bag to Runa. She peered inside, and pulled out the Makarov, still in its holster.
“You’ve been to the Blue World, too, I see. I’m right, aren’t I?”
When I didn’t answer, Runa took her hand off the Makarov.
“I mean, it’s that eye.”
Runa rose from her chair, walked in front of me, and looked closely at my face.
“This isn’t an implant, or a color contact. Woooow, just what did you have to look at to end up with an eye like that?”
“Luna-sama! It’s dangerous. That woman has the evil eye,” the Thank You Woman shouted from behind us.
“Evil eye?”
“The demonic eye that brings calamity. You mustn’t let her look at you. It will harm your body.”
“Hmm. Is that a fact?”
That question was directed at me, though I didn’t know how to answer it.
“...I dunno.”
“Hmm. If it’s that scary, maybe we ought to pluck it out.”
The moment Runa said that, one of the men standing behind us pulled out a knife and stepped forward. I tried to flee in terror, but my hands and feet wouldn’t move an inch. I was bound to the chair using the sort of plastic zip ties that were generally used to hold cables together.
No way. They couldn’t carve out someone’s eye that easily... As I stared at the dull gleam of the knife, unable to believe the situation I was in, Runa let out a cheery laugh.
“Hee hee, I was joking! Just joking! You can stand down now.”
At Runa’s instruction, the man obediently returned to his former position. I was terrified as Runa looked down at me and smiled.
“They’re all so docile. They love my voice, and they’ll do anything I order them to. Even if I don’t tell them clearly what to do, they can read what I might want, and are one step ahead of me. If I hadn’t stopped him, you wouldn’t have that eye now.”
Runa reached out and stroked my cheek.
“But that would be a shame, wouldn’t it? It’s such a pretty eye... Is this a gift from the Blue World, too?”
Unable to utter a word in response, I just took shallow breaths and stared at Runa’s face.
“Hey. She’s not involved. If you have something you want to ask, ask me,” Kozakura interjected. Runa took her hand off me, and walked over to Kozakura.
“That’s true. I was originally planning to interview you, after all.” Runa walked around behind Kozakura, and whispered in her ear. “Now, to start off... Will you tell me the girl with one blue eye’s name?”
“Eek...!” Kozakura let out a shrill cry and ducked her head. She was supposed to be whispering, but I had been able to hear her, too, even at this distance.
Her voice before was alluring enough, but this was on a whole other level. There was clearly some kind of mode shift happening. It was bad enough hearing it nearby, but who knows what would happen to me if she whispered right in my ear.
Kozakura twitched and stiffened in her chair. Her eyes widened, and goosebumps rose on her neck.
“Ah... Ah...”
“Hey. Tell me. What’s her name?”
“Ka... mikoshi... Sora... wo...”
“And how do you write that?”
“The ‘kami’... is paper, and the ‘koshi’... is the ‘etsu’... of Joetsu...” Kozakura submitted to the voice and spilled the information. Suddenly, I noticed the believers’ eyes were fixated on Kozakura as she was interrogated. They all looked incredibly jealous, with flushed faces. It was super gross—the worst kind of scene.
“You’re Kamikoshi-san, huh? Nice to meet you.”
When Runa stood upright, Kozakura slumped like a marionette with her strings cut.
“Would you mind waiting just a moment? I’ll have your other friend, Nishina-san, brought along in no—”
“Don’t you touch Toriko!” I shouted despite myself. Kozakura and Runa both looked at me in surprise.
“Hmm. Oh, I see. You’re Nishina-san’s partner then, huh?”
Nodding in satisfaction at her own explanation, Runa moved away from Kozakura and approached me.
She wrapped her arms around me from behind the chair, and brought her lips to my ears. Then, she spoke in a low whisper.
“I’m sure you can tell me some interesting things, too—”
“Eek!”
I froze with fear.
It reminded me of seeing a picture of hell as a child, and being terrified by a punishment where molten metal was poured into every hole of the person’s body. That was what Runa Urumi’s voice made me remember. It felt like cold, liquid metal was being poured in my ear. This was nothing like the “whispered ghost story” I had heard through the speakers while watching her on the other side of a monitor. It was a voice with weight, pressure, and a numbing electric sensation.
If I kept listening to this voice, it would ruin me. I’d go completely mad. Even though I was certain of that, all I could do was listen.
Runa whispered.
“I’ll do you later, okay? For now, sit still.”
“St... op...”
“Shh... Quiet. Good night, Sorawo Kamikoshi-san.”
The liquid metal voice filled my brain, and flowed down my spine. It pushed into my mind, and I was helpless to stop it.
4
I was thrown down on a mattress, and my eyes snapped open.
As I quickly tried to sit up, I watched the door close with a loud noise, right before my eyes. It was a rusty metal door. It was locked from the outside, and I realized I had been locked in.
My head felt awfully heavy. I felt like if I relaxed, that voice would come back to me. The spine-tingling sensation of Runa’s voice...
I stood up on shaky legs and surveyed my prison. There was a window much too high for me to reach and a flickering fluorescent light. There was an air vent at about the same height, but even if I had been able to climb that high, there was a metal lid on it, so it wouldn’t do me any good.
The door had a covered peephole at about eye-level. If I poked my finger into it, I could see out from inside, too. I pressed my face to the door and looked out, but the cultist who had thrown me in here was nowhere to be seen. The footsteps got more distant, and soon, I could no longer hear them at all. I could only see a very small area: the hall five meters to the left and right, and the metal door on the wall across from this one. It was probably another confinement room like this one. I removed my finger, and the lid lowered, closing the peephole.
The only things in the room were a beat-up mattress and a worn blanket. There was a Western-style toilet in one corner of the room. It had running water, at least. It reminded me of the “New York-style” room we had stayed in down in Okinawa. I had thought it was like a jail cell then, but I’d never expected to get chucked into a place like this myself...
I took a deep breath.
As I closed my eyes and stayed put, the sensations I had felt during that time came back to me.
That time back during high school when I was being chased around by the cult my father and grandmother joined.
The anger, irritation, and the painful determination not to let things go anyone else’s way.
I detected a hot, dry smell—like the kind made when you used a frying pan without water or oil—deep in my nose.
With each careful breath, many things fell away from my thoughts.
Uncertainty, worry, confusion.
What would I do when I got out of here? Should I go to the police? What was happening to Kozakura? Was Toriko still all right...?
I chased all these things from my head. I focused my mind on the highest priority: How was I going to get out of here and survive?
I hadn’t felt this sensation in a while—I’d rather never have tasted it again. I worried I had gotten completely rusty, too.
But you were waiting inside me, all this time, huh?
Welcome home, me.
I’m home, me.
I felt like the anti-cult mode me that I had built up over my middle and high school years was welcoming me back. But when I was in this mode, I thought of almost nothing but what was essential. That inclination had let me escape countless times.
The time I escaped out the bathroom window with my mind in a hazy state after my grandmother drugged me, the time I shut myself in the shed on the roof of a cultist-owned building, the time I slid down a rain pipe from the fifth floor of a building, the time I was chased by guys with dogs out in the mountains... She had saved me a good number of times before all the cultists died and I was set free. The me of this mode was reliable.
...If I thought about it, I had to wonder why—with all the times Toriko and I had been in danger in the other world—I hadn’t entered this mode once there. It was strange that she hadn’t shown her face once, despite the threat to my life...
I slapped my cheeks with both hands.
That was enough reminiscing. It was time to switch over.
The fundamental method for dealing with a situation of confinement was to build a trusting relationship with the people imprisoning you. To greet them, talk about your family and yourself, and to thank them when they brought you food. To never show fear, and give the impression that you are an equal human being in everything you do.
However, that method assumed long-term confinement. I couldn’t use it here. I was facing Runa Urumi. Her encounter of the fourth kind had given her a seductive voice that completely took control of her followers. Any time that passed put me at a greater disadvantage. I needed to escape as soon as possible.
Besides, I had no intent of seeing my enemies as human.
I searched the cell once more. Blanket, mattress, toilet. I went to work, looking for anything that could be of use.
The dingy mattress was coming apart at the seams. I shoved the fingers of both my hands inside, and tore. I ripped off the outside, and exposed the insides of it. Springs were peeking out through the flattened cotton.
I pulled out a number of them, and checked how firm they were. The parts from near the center of the mattress were pretty worn, and I could twist them even with my bare hands.
I checked the toilet. The seat was rickety, and I could probably tear it off, but it was plastic and didn’t seem likely to be of much use. It was dirty, too. I tried to take the lid off the tank, but it was caulked shut, and I couldn’t.
What about the handle on the side of the tank for flushing? When I grabbed it and gave it a rattle, the base of it was pretty loose. This might work.
I grabbed it with the blanket, put my feet against the tank, and used my weight to pull as hard as I could.
The handle broke off at the base, and I landed flat on my back.
Ow...
Regardless, I still had the handle in my hands, and this toilet would never flush again. I reflected that I should have probably used it first, but it was too late for that now.
I pressed a spring against the handle, and wrapped the metal wire around it as I stretched it out.
The wire was curled, so it was hard work. The edge of the toilet tank served as a jig, too. Even with that, by the time I had wrapped four of them around it, my hands hurt pretty bad. Regardless, I had a jumble of metal with considerable weight to it now.
It wasn’t a weapon. Even if I hit someone in the face with it, with my strength, it wasn’t going to be more than a distraction. This tool served another purpose.
I stretched out another spring to create a wire. Then I opened the peephole on the door again, and used the wire to keep it propped open.
I listened closely, but I heard nothing.
Okay. I was ready to go.
I put the blanket over my head, and looked up to the ceiling.
I threw the hunk of metal at the weak shine of the fluorescent light.
The first time it missed, hit the wall, and fell back down.
It was hard to throw straight up. I got as close to the wall as I could, and made another attempt.
It hit the ceiling, it bounced off the walls, it came down on my head.
I tried and tried again. When I eventually hit the light, it just bounced off and came back down.
While I was doing this, my neck and shoulders started to hurt. I stopped to massage them a bit, then got back to it.
Again and again.
Right around the time I got to thinking that maybe I should make a sling from the edge of the mattress, I hit it for the fifth time, and perhaps due to the accumulated damage, there was a small explosion as the glass finally shattered.
I hurriedly turned my face downward, and fine pieces of glass rained down on the blanket over my head. When I opened my eyes, the room was pitch dark.
There was a single sliver of light shining in from the peephole on the door. Outside of that, it was all darkness. I brushed off the shards of glass and sat by the wall. After all that work, my right arm was clearly at its limit.
I sat in the darkness with a blanket over me, and waited.
I thought I could get them to open the door. I had no solid plan for what happened after that.
I wish I had a gun. Saying that’s not going to help, though.
I’m counting on you, me.
Well, I’ll give it a go, me.
I’d survived on spur-of-the-moment decisions up until now. Surely, it would work out this time, too. I wouldn’t consider any other possibility. It was pointless to.
Still, as I sat there alone, the thoughts I had set aside started to cross my mind.
For instance, yeah... The doubt I’d had before.
Why had I never entered this mode while exploring the other world? I ended up wracking my brains every time, and my life was definitely on the line, but it was clearly different from my anti-cult mode.
The one thing that might have been a little close was the time with the Time-space Man, when I was chasing after Toriko when she went missing. The reason I hadn’t been confused when I encountered a doppelganger in the glitch was because I had this sort of experience. No, well, that doppelganger might be a separate entity from this mode of me, though.
What was the difference...?
I heard footsteps outside the door, and stood up.
They’re here.
I lay in wait as the footsteps drew nearer, then stopped in front of the door. I saw two men through the peephole, as well as Kozakura’s head as she was being held up by them.
“Hm?” One of the men let out a suspicious grunt.
“What’s up?”
“Hey, why is this open?”
He brought his face close to the window, and it blocked out the light from the corridor. The room got even darker. He shouldn’t have been able to see much of anything. Maybe just my right eye reflecting the light a bit.
I focused my consciousness on my right eye, and looked directly at the man peering into the room.
The man stopped and seemed to look back at me. The light was behind him, leaving his face shadowed. What kind of expression was he making? It didn’t matter. I continued to look at him, eye unswerving.
That’s when I realized something strange. The man had a silver halo around his head. That phosphorescence stuck out from both of his ears, writhing like slugs.
Could it be that I was seeing Runa Urumi’s power of control?
With his head wrapped in light, the man silently used a key to open the door.
“Hey, put this one in her room first—”
The man’s hands stopped, and no sooner had he turned back to the other man who had raised his voice than I heard a dull thud.
There was a groan of shock and pain, then the sound of something being slammed into the door across the hall, which made an incredible echo.
The one who’d been taken out slumped to the ground. I thought I heard ragged breathing for a while, then the original man came back to this door. He grumbled as he turned the key, and opened it. Past the man blocking the doorway, I saw another man leaning against the door across the hall, unconscious.
“What the hell...? Why’d I go and do that...?”
The man stumbled into the room.
“It’s your fault, huh? It’s gotta be you...”
The way this was going, he’d beat me to death. I needed to create an opening... As I kept looking, without averting my eye, the slug-like phosphorescence in his head began to wriggle around.
“Urrrgh...”
The man groaned and majorly stumbled. He collapsed to the floor, catching himself with both hands.
Now.
I threw the blanket that had been on my head at him as a distraction, and charged toward the door. The man shouted something as he tried to seize me, but I narrowly dodged him and got out into the hall. Putting both hands on the door which opened outwards, I slammed it with all my strength. Noticing there was a door bolt, I slammed it in.
There was a voice that seemed to be weeping—or convulsing with laughter—inside the room.
I helped Kozakura, who was lying on the ground beside me, to her feet. She was so light that it surprised me.
“Are you okay, Kozakura-san?”
“Sorawo-chan... What about you...?”
“I’m fine. Can you stand?”
“I dunno. Let me hold onto you.”
Kozakura stood on unsteady legs and tried to catch her breath.
“What’d you do to these guys, Sorawo-chan?”
“Used my right eye, drove them crazy,” I replied. Kozakura looked at me like she couldn’t believe it.
“Sorawo-chan...”
“Yes?”
“You’re not normal, are you?”
“I’m focused.”
“Oh, okay then...” Kozakura looked at me dubiously.
“We’re going. Let’s hurry up and get out of here. If you’re having trouble walking, please, hold onto me.”
“O-Okay.” Kozakura clung to my arm. She looked really frazzled. She shook her head over and over, maybe trying to chase away the haziness.
“Are you okay? That voice sure is crazy, huh?”
“Yeah... Sorry, I probably blabbed a whole lot of stuff to Luna-sama. About you, Sorawo-chan.”
“Luna-sama?”
When I repeated that, Kozakura’s eyes widened and she stopped talking.
“This is seriously bad... If I go nuts, you escape without me, Sorawo-chan.”
“Will do.”
I gave her a frank nod, and Kozakura sighed.
“Sorawo-chan, you really are a psychopath, huh?”
She shook her head in dismay. I gave her a somewhat miffed response.
“I’ve been meaning to say this for a while, but that’s not a word you should be casually throwing around at people, is it? Isn’t this harassment?”
“Oh, shove off! If this counts as harassment, what you’re doing to me is straight-up abuse!”
“Why?! I’m trying to save you here!”
“Not now, I mean how you normally treat me.”
“Please don’t talk nonsense.”
As we argued in hushed voices, Kozakura and I quickly walked through the cult building.
5
There were a total of four confinement rooms. We looked at all of them—just in case—but they were all empty, so we hurried on our way.
When I was brought here, I had been rendered unconscious by Runa’s voice, so I didn’t know which way we had come. I tried asking Kozakura, but she had been pretty out of it and couldn’t tell me anything that I could rely on as fact. We had little to go on. There had to be enemies in the direction Kozakura came from, so we were forced to go the opposite way.
The floor and walls in the hall were concrete. There were fluorescent lights placed at intervals on the ceiling and not a single window.
“This is probably underground, huh?”
“Looks like it. Feels like we went down a flight of stairs.”
We were trying to talk in hushed voices, but it echoed more than expected. Looking at one another, we held our breath. Was that a voice in the distance...? I couldn’t be certain. I felt like there were traces of Runa’s voice still clinging to the inside of my eardrums. If I kept quiet, I could hear the whispers coming back to me.
“...We’ll need to find a way up. Let’s look for stairs,” I said.
Kozakura nodded.
“Still not up to walking on your own?”
“Sorry...”
“It’s okay. Let’s go.”
As I walked down the hall with Kozakura hanging off one of my arms, there came a path that diverged off to the right. The way ahead was coming to a dead end soon, and the two doors there had signs indicating they led to the men’s and women’s restrooms.
“Want to go fix your makeup, Sorawo-chan?”
“I thought you weren’t in the habit of going to the bathroom together with other people.”
“...Did I say that?”
“If anyone came after us, there’d be nowhere to run, so please try to hold it in. Let’s try going this way.”
We turned right in front of the washrooms, and the hall soon came to a dead end at a heavy-looking metal door. There was a lever we could move to retract the bolt on the door, allowing us to open it. Was this not so much a door as a hatch? I put my ear to it, but I couldn’t hear anything—maybe because the metal was so thick.
There was no time to waste wandering around, so I gave the lever a pull. There was a loud clacking sound as the door bolt disengaged.
The metallic sound echoed down the corridor and faded away. I watched and waited for a moment, then slowly opened the hatch. It was pitch black inside. I felt around next to the door and managed to locate a switch. The lights came on when I pressed it, instantly brightening the area in front of me.
Once my eyes adjusted to the brightness, there was a narrow hall ahead, and six more rooms with peepholes in their doors on either side of it. There were sounds of stirring inside the rooms, but no voices.
There was another door at the end of the hall. This one was a wooden door, its paint stripped by dampness and mold, and all it had was a simple doorknob with no keyhole.
“More confinement rooms? This is a long way from where we were taken, though...”
“Shh. I’m going to take a peek.”
I opened a crack in the peephole of the nearest door and peered in. There was a slapping sound from inside, and it was clear someone was there. In the dim lighting, I could see a room that was close to seven square meters. Once my eyes adjusted, I could see the whole floor was padded. So were the walls. It’s pretty different from the room they put me in, I was thinking, when something fell from the ceiling and slammed into the ground.
It was a person.
In front of my shocked eyes, the person who had just fallen slowly stood up. It was a man. He was wearing a slightly dirty pink shirt with slacks. His feet were bare. The man’s neck was twisted in my direction. The side of his face was smushed completely flat. His eyes, nostrils, and mouth looked like clay that had been whacked against the wall—just slits on a flat surface. Despite this, he didn’t seem to be in any pain at all. The next moment, he vanished, then some seconds later he slammed to the floor once again.
I gently closed the peephole’s cover.
“What is it?” Kozakura asked.
“It’s a Fourth Kind.”
“Huh?”
“There’s a Fourth Kind in there.”
A person who had experienced physical changes to their body and mind as a result of the influence of the other world—a fourth kind contactee. Toriko and I had also had encounters of the fourth kind—and I had no doubt Runa Urumi had, too—but we learned afterward that we’d been fairly lucky. It seemed that in most cases, people who were in contact with the other world underwent a serious transformation. Even if they survived, they could never go back to the life they’d had before.
The others may have noticed us, because the sounds from beyond the other doors grew louder. There were sounds like the grinding of teeth, the rough sounds of two long objects grinding together... They were muffled, perhaps by the padding, but none of them were sounds a sane human being would make. Just like we had seen at the DS Lab, there were a number of Fourth Kinds interned here, too.
“Do you want to look?” I turned and asked Kozakura, but she shook her head vigorously.
“Do you think... they’re trying to treat the victims, too?”
“I don’t know. The rooms are padded, at least.”
When we opened the wooden door at the back, we discovered that it was a closet. There was an LED lantern, the type you might use while camping, hanging from the end of a steel rack. I lit it, and there were bags of goldfish food, fertilizer for plants, car batteries and chains, army gloves, and more. There were a bunch of cleaning supplies in a tall, thin locker like the kind you might see in a school. The end of the mop was stained with a bright green liquid.
“Looks like another dead end here.”
“Damn... Do we have to go back?”
When we turned back to the hatch, I noticed a noise. I heard several sets of footsteps from far down the hall.
“People are coming.”
“For the toilet?”
“There’s more than one or two of them.”
I pulled the handle inside the hatch, trying to close it as quietly as possible. I then pushed the switch next to the door. That left the LED lantern as our sole source of light.
“We’re going to hide. Get in the back. Hurry.”
“But where...?”
“The locker’s the only place. You go on ahead.”
“...Seriously?”
I hurried Kozakura along, and we got in the locker together. I reached to turn off the lantern, plunging us in complete darkness. If we closed the door, it would be too tight—I’d likely end up crushing Kozakura.
“Are you okay?”
“Murrrgh.”
That reply sounded unhappy. It seemed she could breathe, though, so we were good. With the closet door in the way, I could hardly hear the Fourth Kinds anymore. All we could hear in the suffocating darkness was our own breath. I was breathing fast, and so was Kozakura. Her body was quivering. Oh, right. Now that I thought about it, she was way more prone to fear than I was.
I heard the echo of the hatch opening. Multiple sets of footsteps came inside, and they were talking.
“We’ll use #2 and #3. Bring the chains.”
“Okay.”
“What about #5?”
“#5 kills too often. I want to pull out immediately once we have what we’re after. It would be fine if we were going to kill them all, but now is not the appropriate time for that.”
“Understood.”
The door to the closet opened, and a light shone through the long, thin air holes in the locker door. I could feel Kozakura stiffen... It’d be bad if she cried out. I instinctively hugged her head close, pressing it against my belly. She’d have to put up with a little discomfort.
The guys who came into the closet were right beside the locker, rummaging through the things on the steel rack. I heard the clinking of chains. Kozakura started to shake harder and harder in my arms. I needed to calm her down... but how? There was nothing else I could do, so I tried patting her on the head.
Surprisingly, Kozakura’s shaking stopped.
This was effective? I was dubious. Kozakura didn’t move at all. I started to suspect that she had suffocated and died.
The guy left the closet with the chains, and I heard them open a metal door. There was a mumbling voice, somewhere between man and beast. The sound of metal fittings and chains continued for a while.
“We’re good to go.”
“Good. We’ll hurry to the Round Hole.”
The footsteps, which had increased in number, left in a hurry, and the hatch closed hard.
We waited for about a minute, but there was no sign of them coming back. I let out the breath I had been holding, and finally realized I had been patting Kozakura’s head all this time.
I stopped, then pushed open the locker door.
“It’s all right now.”
I moved away from her, and went outside. The closet and cell doors were left wide open, the lights still on.
“Looks like those guys were in a real hurry.”
I turned back because there was no response, and Kozakura was still in the locker scrutinizing me. Her face was a bright shade of red, perhaps because she’d been having trouble breathing.
“Kozakura-san—”
“Why did you pat it?”
“Huh? What?”
“Why did you pat my head just now?”
“Uh, I figured I needed to get you to calm down a bit.”
Kozakura’s shoulders heaved with each breath.
“Did I do something to offend you?”
“Don’t you ever... touch my... No, damn it... Ahh....”
“Come again?”
“It’s fine. Forget it.”
Kozakura shook her head, finally getting out of the locker. At some point, she had recovered enough to walk on her own. For some reason she kept her distance from me, peering dubiously into the open cells instead.
“This isn’t for treatment. They’re keeping the Fourth Kinds like pets.”
“Think they can make them obey?”
“I dunno. What I can say is that none of the patients at the DS Lab understood words, but—”
At that moment, one of the iron doors was struck from the inside. Kozakura jumped into the air and clung to me. “What, what, what, what?!”
When I saw the number 5 above the door, the conversation from earlier flashed through my mind. “#5 kills too often...” they’d said.
“Sai! Sai! Nngah! Oh! Nahhh!”
There was a howling voice—I couldn’t imagine those were human words. There was another bang on the door. It repeated again. Each time, the hinges holding it to the wall shrieked.
“...Let’s get going. This guy knows we’re here,” I said, and Kozakura nodded vigorously.
I took the lantern from the closet and opened the hatch. Peering out through the crack, I confirmed there was no one around, then returned to the hall.
Once the hatch was closed, I could no longer hear #5’s howling.
“What was that...? Did you see it, Sorawo-chan?”
“I haven’t looked, but that guy’s messed up bad.”
I held up the lantern and jogged down the hall, stopping at the corner. On the right were the toilets from before and a dead end. On the left was the path we initially came down. I heard footsteps from there again. More of them than last time. There were probably more than five people.
“Let’s hide in the toilets until they pass by.”
“What if they come in?”
“From what I saw earlier, she has more male followers than female. If we hide in the ladies’ toilet, they might not find us immediately.”
We rushed into the women’s room. Surprisingly, it wasn’t that filthy inside. The pastel-colored tiles reflected the lantern’s light. It was a night and day difference between this and the unsophisticated interiors we had passed by so far. I headed for the door that was furthest back, looking to hide in one of the stalls.
“...What?” Kozakura muttered in surprise.
There was no toilet in the stall, only concrete stairs leading down.
“...Oh! I know this one,” I said despite myself.
“What do you mean, you know it?”
“This is ‘The Round Hole in the Basement,’” I explained to the suspicious Kozakura. “There’s net lore like this. There’s stairs leading down, hidden in the last toilet stall at a cult facility.”
The Round Hole in the Basement was an account given by a group of high school students who snuck into a suspicious building. The boys set out to explore a building owned by a new religious movement out in the boonies, and found a hidden staircase to the basement in the toilet. Once there, they witness strange things...
“You want to say this is a phenomenon of the other world?”
“It’s a little half-baked for that. The guys who came and took away the Fourth Kinds earlier said they were going to hurry to the Round Hole. They could be deliberately overlapping with it, the same way they used the self-responsibility type stories. They’re deliberately reconstructing the elements of a horror story.”
“In the original story, what happens if you go down this hole?”
“If I recall, there was something like a round gate. When the narrator passes through it, he’s sent to another world that’s a little different from the one he came from.”
Even as we whispered amongst ourselves, the footsteps were approaching from outside the restroom.
“They’re coming this way... We’ll have to go down, huh?” I asked, and Kozakura nodded reluctantly. Using the lantern to light the area at our feet, I stepped onto the stairs.
There was a landing a little ways down, and it met with another downward staircase from the opposite direction there. It seemed they’d been kind enough to install a hidden staircase in the men’s room, too. We descended another level, and the stairs stopped there. There was a pair of double doors at the end. I slowly opened them, and on the other side was a room about twenty-five square meters in size lit with orange lights. In the center of the room there was a massive iron ring so large that it could touch the walls on either side of it.
“This is a dead end. Is your eye picking up anything, Sorawo-chan?”
I focused on my right eye, and there was a thin, wavering film, like a translucent silver bubble, inside the ring.
“It’s a gate. I couldn’t say where it leads, though.”
“Can we go through?”
“If Toriko were here.”
Unfortunately, we couldn’t use the gate as is. Like the one that appeared in Kozakura’s garden, this one was meaningless without some means, like Toriko’s left hand, to open it.
Toriko...
Where was she now? The cult’s abduction team was supposed to have gone out to capture her again. Hopefully, she was getting away all right. The worries I had forced deep down into my heart began to surface again, but I managed to swallow them somehow.
I heard footsteps enter the restroom above. They were coming this way.
There was nowhere to hide in this room. Kozakura drew close to me, but all we could do was wait helplessly.
If I used my right eye, would we be able to escape in the ensuing chaos? As my eyes raced around the room, trying to find a way out of this, I saw a slug-like sliver of phosphorescence peeking out of Kozakura’s ears, too. If she was left alone, Kozakura might be taken into the cult. That said, even if I could see it, I couldn’t touch it with my hands.
“There’s nothing to do here,” I told a frowning Kozakura. “Kozakura-san, you covered for me when we were originally talking to Runa Urumi upstairs, right?”
“You noticed that?”
“Well, yeah. Of course. Thank you.”
“You’re acting creepy all of a sudden.”
“I thought I’d say it while I still can.”
“Well, I am an adult, unlike you.”
The heavy footsteps descended the stairs, and the double doors opened. Runa entered the room with more than ten bodyguards.
“Oh! Found you.” Runa said in an inappropriately cheery voice as she pointed towards us.
In my right eye, I could see the lines of her voice all flying out of her throat and toward us. I tried to bat them away, but they passed through my hand without me feeling anything. Those lines entered both my ears, leaving a throbbing reverberation.
Kozakura’s back shuddered, and in a self-mocking tone she said, “If I was going to run into you again, I should’ve brought earplugs.”
“...I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t actually work.”
The cultists surrounded us as we cowered. In their hands they carried stun guns, harpoon guns, and pepper spray. Only one had an actual gun. My Makarov. I felt the anger well up inside me instantly.
Don’t touch that. It’s mine. That’s my Makarov. Toriko gave it to me.
“I wondered where you’d gotten off to, and you came all the way here without permission. I can’t let my guard down for a second, can I?” Runa said admonishingly.
“I didn’t see any signs saying ‘Keep out.’”
“Oh, it’s fine. I’m not blaming you. I’m more interested in how you got out of jail.”
Runa circled around to the left of me.
“The guy I assigned to you was a complete mess. He wouldn’t do anything but scream and thrash for a while. It was so bad he couldn’t even hear my voice. That’s never happened before. I was surprised. It scared me. When he finally calmed down—I heard about it. What you did with that eye of yours.”
Stopping at a point diagonally behind me, Runa continued.
“The evil eye, was it? You really do have it. This is the first time I’ve met a girl other than me who has such a powerful and beautiful gift. Sorawo Kamikoshi-chan, was it? I think we could be friends.”
“Not gonna happen.”
“Why not?”
“I hate cults.”
“What cult? You mean what I’m doing? This is just a fan club. I don’t mind disbanding it once I find Satsuki-sama. They’ll all be too happy to disappear. Isn’t that right, everyone?”
“Yes! That’s right!”
“We’ll disappear! Immediately!”
The cultists all shouted in unison.
“See?”
“Shut up,” I said through teeth gritted with disgust. “What I want is for the two of us to be able to go home, right now, together. If you lay a hand on Toriko, I’ll never forgive you. I’ll drive your whole fan club insane—make them bite through their own tongues.”
“...!” Behind me, Runa gulped, then began to walk again. She passed directly behind me and continued circling around the opposite side.
“...Kamikoshi-san, you’re wonderful. Very cool. I want you as a friend even more now. If it gets you so angry, I want to get my hands on Toriko-san, too. That’ll get you real fired up. If I pour my voice inside you then, I wonder what kind of face you’ll make, hmm...?”
My head suddenly cooled.
Okay. I get you.
If that’s how you want to play it, I’ll take you out right here. Your luck ran out when you carelessly got so close to me. If I grab and pull you in close to me, your followers will be hesitant to use their guns and whatever. That’s when I’ll use my right eye.
Having made up my mind, I glared at Runa who was to the right of me, and was about to spring when...
“What’s wrong? Why the scary face?” Runa smiled.
In front of me, I saw Runa hugging Kozakura from behind. I redirected my attention at the last moment, right before I would have caught Kozakura in the crossfire.
“Whoa. Did something just come flying?”
Runa put a hand to her forehead, deliberately shaking her head.
“I felt woozy for a moment there. Scary stuff.”
Kozakura looked at me with her eyes wide. Her lips trembled, but she didn’t utter a word.
“Honestly, it doesn’t matter if you hate it. If I whisper, ‘Be my friend,’ to you, that’s all it takes. But we wouldn’t be real friends that way, now would we?”
Runa began returning to her original position, holding the non-resisting Kozakura like she was some kind of teddy bear. She stopped right in front of me.
“Well, if I have to, I’ll use my voice, but that takes time, you know? I’m a little busy at the mo—”
Mid-sentence, Runa looked behind me, and called out.
“Welcome hooome.”
That made me look, too, just as a group of several men came out of the silver gauze of the gate. These were some of her more muscular followers, and they were armed with nail guns and crowbars.
Just one of them had nothing. He was clearly a Fourth Kind. From the shoulders of his dingy jumpsuit up, he was like a mass of white mushroom, and the thin, wiggling eyelash-like organs growing out of the edge of it were affecting the silver phosphorescence that filled the iron ring. It looked like they were organs that could open the gate, like Toriko’s left hand. The reason he was so docile and obedient might have been that he had been tamed with Runa’s voice.
“Luna-sama, the other side of the Round Hole is clear,” the leader of the advance squad said.
“Okaaay. Let’s go then. Wait just a moment, Kamikoshi-san. Everyone, keep an eye on her. She’ll try to run off in nooo time.”
“We understand, Luna-sama!”
“Okay, you come along, too, Kozakura-san.”
“What are you planning to do...?” I asked as Runa took Kozakura’s hand and headed towards the gate.
“Would you explain for her, Kozakura-san?”
At Runa’s indication, Kozakura turned back to face me. “She plans to go to the DS Lab. When I gave her information on the DS Lab, she found out about Satsuki’s notes... She intends to steal the notes, and use them to summon Satsuki.”
“That’s right. I had found out that Satsuki-sama worked with some lab or something, but never knew who they really were, you know? The Dark Science Lab, was it? They were enough of a surprise on their own, but to think they had her notes, too! I need to have them. What’s more... Kamikoshi-san, I hear you can read those notes, right?”
This was depressing. She already knew everything. I could see why Kozakura’s interrogation had taken so long.
“So, you see—I need you to be my friend, or I’m in a bit of a bind. Let’s discuss the rest when I get back.”
Runa smiled at me, then stepped inside the gate.
“Wai—!”
I tried to chase after her, but her followers surrounded me. Before there was any chance to use my right eye, the bag was over my head again. Countless hands grabbed me as I struggled, and carried me off to somewhere.
We climbed the stairs and walked down a long corridor. Even if I couldn’t see, it became clear along the way that we had gone back down the path I had originally come from, but I lost track after that.
We turned a number of times, climbed some flights of stairs, went outside, and then back inside again. I was suddenly put down, and made to sit on a chair. As they bound my hands behind it, one of them spoke up.
“I will keep watch. The rest of you—go rest.”
“Understood, Chief.”
Several sets of footsteps departed, and it got quiet.
Suddenly, the one man who remained spoke.
“Luna-sama said to watch you. However, unexpected accidents can happen.”
What’s this guy talking about?
“The power of that eye—it’s simply too dangerous. Luna-sama seems awfully interested in it, but I do not think a monster like you should be let anywhere near Luna-sama.”
Finally, I got it.
Oh, crap—this guy’s gonna kill me.
“...If you lay a hand on me, you’ll be scolded.”
“You’re right. I expect I will be. But you’re still not anyone special to Luna-sama yet. Not her friend, at least. The one Luna-sama is really obsessed with is Satsuki-sama. Not you.”
I could hear the complicated emotions whirling beneath plain speech. This guy was jealous. Runa Urumi, the object of his adulation, had taken an interest in me, who had come out of nowhere.
“I can make any number of excuses. You turned your evil eye on me, and I shot you in my frenzied state—is what I think will be the simplest script. You have a record, after all. I lost my senses when she laid that eye on me, and when I regained them I had already pulled the trigger. Oh, how could this have happened? ...If I beg for forgiveness like that, Luna-sama should be convinced.”
I felt something press against my head through the bag. Even without seeing it, I knew—it was the barrel of a gun. My Makarov.
“This is for Luna-sama anyway. If you survive, you’re sure to bring harm to her.”
Even after all this time trying to keep my cool, I had to panic a little now. I was going to be shot to death here? By a cultist driven mad by jealousy? Without ever seeing Toriko again?
“...Hold on. Calm down.” My voice trembled. That was no good. If he sensed my fear, he’d just get cockier. If I underestimated him, I’d die. That’s how these things worked.
Wetting my lips, I continued.
“Think this through calmly. Runa Urumi needs my eye. She wants to read Satsuki Uruma’s research notes.”
Though, having read them once already, I thought that was madness.
“So, if you kill me, she’ll be really disappointed, and angry. Especially when she’d just gotten her hands on Satsuki-sama’s notes.”
“It pains me to sadden Luna-sama, but she is the one I follow, not Satsuki-sama. When she finds Satsuki-sama, Luna-sama will surely dissolve her ‘fan club.’ If she does, I’ll lose everything.”
When he pushed the barrel against me even harder, I started talking faster despite myself.
“I-If you shoot me with the bag on my head, won’t that spoil the plan you were just talking about? If the script’s that I used my eye, and you went crazy, you need to take the bag off first or—”
“I won’t fall for that. Give up and die.”
The man took a deep breath, then stopped. I’m gonna get shot...! Even though I couldn’t see anything beneath the bag, I squeezed my eyes shut tight.
There was the echo of a gunshot.
...
“...Huh?”
As I realized I was still alive, the man raised his voice in panic.
“That sound was—”
More gunshots. Continuous this time. They echoed, so they were from inside the building. There were screams mixed in with them.
“Who’s there?!”
The man shouted angrily, and almost simultaneously three shots rang out. There was another shot, louder than the rest. The sound of the bullet tearing through the air. Then, a dull impact.
The man behind me groaned, then dropped to the floor.
Footsteps ran over to me, and then around in front of me. The bag was torn from my head.
I looked up, and there was a blonde woman, staring at me, out of breath.
“Toriko...!”
“Sorry for the wait, Sorawo,” Toriko said, then hugged me tight. She smelled of sweat and gunpowder. There was no doubt about it: this was the real, living Toriko.
6
“Why... are you here?” I mumbled, still unable to believe it. This was just too convenient... Was this an illusion my brain was showing me right before my inevitable death? But the realness of the Toriko here, right before my eyes, was enough to blow away all that doubt.
The jacket and the camo pants I was used to seeing during our forays into the other world. The boots on her feet. The AK hanging from a sling and the Makarov in a holster.
Toriko cut the plastic ties that were binding my wrists, and I stood up from the chair. Turning to look, I saw the man lying face down, clutching his thigh and groaning. He wasn’t dead, but he’d lost a lot of blood. Unconcerned, Toriko was doing a thorough check of the man’s body.
Once I was up and had picked up my Makarov from the ground, Toriko passed me a sheathed knife.
“Huh? What’s this?”
“I took it off this guy. You hold it.”
I took the knife as instructed and was then handed a water bottle. I was feeling parched, so I accepted it gladly. I gulped down half of it and was catching my breath when Toriko looked down at the man. “What do we do with this thing?” she asked. “Just leave him?”
“Won’t he die?” I asked, but Toriko shook her head.
“Dunno. Honestly, this is my first time shooting a guy.”
Toriko had asked me once before: could I shoot a person? It looked like she’d been prepared to do it herself, at least. No... If I’m being honest, I feel like I already knew that. Even before now, Toriko had shot several things that could only have looked like human beings to her on my command.
I was prepared to do it, too. But...
“You okay? Do you feel sick?” Toriko leaned over and peered at me, her brow furrowed with concern.
“Nah. It’s just... Once I saw your face, it kinda took the edge off.”
“Get it together, will you? I think there are still enemies around.”
Even as I nodded, I was at a loss internally.
Up until a moment ago, I could have put a bullet in this guy’s head and finished him off without hesitation. I mean, he was a cultist, he tried to kill me, he took the gun that meant so much to me, and I’d have actually felt a bit sorry for him, leaving him in pain like this.
But I couldn’t convince myself to do it now. Not since I’d seen Toriko’s face.
It was like magic.
The harsh me, surrounded by enemies and prepared to do anything to survive, melted away the moment I saw Toriko’s face. The me when I was acting alone, and the me when I was together with Toriko were like two entirely different people.
This wasn’t the time to agonize over that, but it troubled me. As I stared down at the bleeding man, feeling indecisive, other footsteps closed in.
I looked up quickly. On closer inspection, this was the open room that Kozakura and I had originally been brought to. Seeing a figure climbing the stairs in the corner, I took aim with my Makarov.
“Sorawo, wait. It’s okay.” Toriko put a hand on my arm. The one who appeared from the stairs—was Migiwa of the DS Lab.
He had taken off his suit and was wearing just a shirt and vest. His sleeves were rolled up, and he held a shotgun. The barrel had an alligator-like attachment on it, and I realized it was the gun that Kozakura had used before. There was a collapsible police baton hanging from his waist, too. Looking at me, he smiled just a little.
“Oh, good. You were all right.”
“Even Migiwa-san’s here...”
They came to save us together? How had they found this place? No, where even was this place? I had a lot of questions, and no idea which one to ask first, when Migiwa rushed over to our side. With his sleeves rolled up, I could see a tattoo dense with Mayan text on his arm. There was a sheathed machete on his back. Scary... There was no way this guy was a law-abiding citizen.
“Where is Kozakura-san?” he asked, and I snapped to my senses. Right! This was no time to be staring off into space. I spoke up, probably later than I should have. “She was taken by Runa Urumi. She’s planning on going to the DS Lab through the gate!”
“The DS Lab? What for?” Toriko asked with a dubious look on her face. I was a bit hesitant to answer.
“...To steal Satsuki Uruma’s notes.”
“Wha?!”
When I quickly explained that they were a cult with knowledge of the other world, Migiwa’s face grew grim.
“Please, tell me how many headed to the DS Lab.”
“I don’t know the exact numbers, but I think there were more than ten. From what I saw, they don’t have guns, but they’re armed with construction tools. There were two Fourth Kind contactees with them, too. Every one of them is brainwashed by Runa Urumi’s voice. Kozakura-san’s been hit by it, too.”
“This is bad. There’s hardly anyone at the DS Lab right now. They’ll be free to tear the place apart,” Migiwa whispered, pulling out his smartphone and putting it to his ear.
“What does she want something like Satsuki’s notes for?” Toriko asked me in the meantime.
“...They’re going to try to use them to summon Satsuki-san from the other world. Runa Urumi worships her.”
“...”
“Though she’s never actually met her.”
“...I see.”
When I added that last bit, Toriko looked a little relieved. It was a number of times now that I had seen Toriko get hurt when she realized the Satsuki Uruma that she loved and respected had been out picking up other girls when she wasn’t around. I felt a mix of concern for Toriko, and irritation that she wouldn’t just get over the woman already. It made me want to shout out loud.
Migiwa returned his phone to his pocket. “I can’t make contact. It seems the situation has gotten bad. Could I ask you to show me to the gate?”
“The thing is, I was blindfolded most of the way... This guy ought to know, though,” I said, indicating the man bleeding at my feet, and Migiwa knelt down next to him.
“Do you want help? If you tell us where the gate is, I’ll stop the bleeding.”
“Shut up... I could never... betray Luna-sama...”
Yeah, I didn’t expect that to work. If he’s that fanatically devoted to Runa Urumi, dying for her’s easy—or so I had begun to resignedly think, but then I suddenly had an idea.
“Oh! Right, Toriko, your left hand!”
“Sure, sure, what is it this time?”
Totally used to it at this point, Toriko grabbed the glove on her left hand with her teeth as she pulled it off.
“The space next to this guy’s ear, grab it hard.”
“Right, right... Whoa?!”
In my right field of vision, the bonds of Voice wrapped around the man’s head began thrashing around as Toriko seized them in her translucent hand.
At the same time, he let out a scream. “What’re you doing?! Stop!”
“Sorawo, this thing’s flopping around in my hand!”
“Good! Now give it a yank!”
“Whaa... Ergh! Come out, you!”
Toriko pulled with brute force, dragging the Voice out of the man’s head. The man screamed and his eyes rolled back.
“Wh-Wh-What do I do with it now?!”
“Err, no clue... Try crushing it!”
“You need to think of this stuff first!” Keeping it as far from her body as possible, Toriko squeezed her left hand.
The Voice scattered, like a creature made out of water. I felt an echo of Runa’s whispering voice deep in my ears, and my head sunk into my shoulders a bit.
“Did you do something to him?” Migiwa asked, looking up, and I nodded.
“He may be more reasonable now. Try one more time.”
Migiwa produced a small tube with some liquid from a pouch. He flicked the cap with his thumb to remove it, revealing a needle. When he jabbed it into the man’s neck, he gasped for breath and regained consciousness.
“Wh-What did you do...? What did you steal from me...?!”
Confusion gradually spread through the man’s wide eye’s. You could see the sense of loss. In mere seconds, the man hung his head, and he seemed to shrink noticeably.
“I will only say this once more. If you lead us to the gate, I will save your life.”
The man nodded easily, and powerlessly, in response.
“Hey, Sorawo... What did I pull out of this guy?” Toriko asked as she shook her left hand. I thought for a moment before responding.
“His faith... I guess.”
While Migiwa was staunching the bleeding, the man obediently told us the way there. Leave this place, cut across the yard and enter the building across from here, go up a floor, then down two floors using another staircase. From there, follow the underground passages right, left, left, straight, and there was a washroom at the end of the hall... In terms of location, it was under the building we were in now, but he said there was no means of going down there directly from here.
I considered the possibility that he was lying, of course, but it matched what my own sense of direction had told me. I would have wanted to bring him along as a guide, but the leg that had been shot by the AK was hurt pretty bad. The man did not resist at all as Migiwa stopped the bleeding, then proceeded to bind him with plastic ties. I couldn’t decide if that was because his wound had left him groggy, or because of the loss of faith.
We couldn’t wait around here forever. Once we were ready to go, we hurried downstairs.
We left the building that was like a factory with all the machines removed, and came out into a yard with large buildings surrounding it on three sides. It might be better to say this was not so much a courtyard as an empty lot. The gravel on the ground had thick grass growing up through it, like a parking lot that had been left abandoned for many long years.
The time on Toriko’s watch said it was late at night—3:00 a.m. to be exact. It was completely silent. The area around us was pitch dark, the premises were surrounded by trees, and the stars in the sky were clearly visible.
“Where is this?”
“The mountains of Saitama. Near Hannou.”
Hannou... That was far west of Shakujii-kouen on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line.
“How did you figure out we were here?” I asked as we ran across the yard.
“When the two of you were abducted, I contacted Migiwa-san. He came as soon as I explained the situation, and we talked about it. He figured the guys who grabbed you two would be back for sure.”
“Why?”
“You had a gun on you when you were taken, so they had to know we wouldn’t be going to the police. They would either contact us using the gun as blackmail material, or break into Kozakura’s now uninhabited house.”
“My initial assumption was that this was a profit kidnapping, and that Kozakura-san was their target. I believed you were only caught up in it. I never would have imagined it was a cult,” Migiwa explained.
“Migiwa-san and I waited for them at Kozakura’s house, with traps set up in the garden and entrance hall. They came faster than we expected, so we almost didn’t make it in time. Migiwa-san clobbered the guys who fell for them...”
“...Traps?”
“We may need to apologize to Kozakura a bit later. We put some nails and holes in the walls, and maybe broke some things...”
“A-And?”
“There were four in total, but Migiwa-san took them all out. It was incredible.”
“I may have done too much. I was surprised to see how well Nishina-san worked. Your mother must have trained you well.”
“I don’t know about that. I was just in such a hurry to rescue the two of them.”
“Toriko...”
Putting herself in danger for me like this. It touched my heart, but at the same time I was a little frustrated. I wish I could have seen Toriko then. I was jealous of Migiwa for not only getting to see it, but being her battle buddy, too.
No... Don’t be like that, me. Migiwa put himself in danger to come here, too.
“And this place? How did you hear about it from them?” I asked while I was trying to change my thinking. Would cultists spill their guts so easily? Or did they resort to torture or something?
“Migiwa-san made me wait outside while he did the interrogation,” Toriko said, sounding dissatisfied. Migiwa turned his head to the side.
“You can leave such things to me. It’s not a job for a normal person.”
“Wha... What exactly did you do to them?”
As I was imagining some gruesome scene of torture, Migiwa smiled. “Have no fear. I didn’t put so much as a scratch on them. I merely borrowed the bathtub and some towels, and we played with the water for a bit. Though, I neglected to clean up before we left, so I may also owe Kozakura-san an apology.”
I didn’t know exactly what he did, but I was sure of one thing. No way was this guy a law-abiding citizen.
“...Your arms look pretty awesome,” I said.
Looking down at his arms covered in Mayan text, Migiwa smiled shyly. “This is embarrassing. It was a youthful indiscretion. I was doing some things in Central America a long time back.”
“Some things?”
“The castanets were in vogue at the time... No, let’s not bother with that story.”
From the way Migiwa spoke, it sounded like a story he’d rather forget. If it weren’t for the situation, I’d have wanted to press him for the details.
We entered the building across the yard. There were wooden fences on either side of the hall. Inside them, they were divided into a number of enclosures. In one of those enclosures there were stairs up to the floor above.
“Kind of an odd layout, huh?” Toriko whispered suspiciously.
It was odd, yes. It was like a barn, but there were no signs it had been used. Besides, why would you put stairs to the upper floor in a cow’s stall?
Even though I thought it was suspicious, I still ran up the stairs. There was a hall lined with glassless windows, and when I peered into rooms as I passed by, there was one with nothing but a long line of urinals, a kitchen that contained a mannequin torso that belonged in a clothing store, a child’s room with “HELP” written on the wall in red paint, and more bizarre scenes.
“What is this place...? There’s no sign of anyone having lived here. It’s like a haunted house,” Toriko said, sounding creeped out.
“It’s deliberate. These guys use the props from ghost stories to contact the other world.”
“Is there some sort of motif here?”
“This is, unquestionably, The Farm in the Mountains.”
The Farm in the Mountains was a famous true ghost story. This story, which became topical when a celebrity told the story like it really happened to them, involved a series of events at a bizarre facility.
There was a farm-like building that was still under construction in the mountains. There were no cows there, and no people, either. The stairs to the second floor hadn’t been put in yet, and there was a room covered in ofuda. This place was ensconced in a bizarre atmosphere, and despite it actually existing, no one knew what it really was.
I could see some elements of the design of the building we were now in seemed to have been lifted from that story. If I considered their goal, it wasn’t surprising. Speak of the devil and he shall appear—they were trying to use a building to test the theory that speaking of something frightening could draw it closer. If I thought of the way they had spread the self-responsibility type stories as a part of that same flow, it made sense. Their activities were all ritualized attempts to contact the other world.
That their ultimate goal was to summon Satsuki Uruma made me think: Are you people crazy? But for the person beside me, it was no laughing matter.
I could understand how the man who tried to kill me felt. He worshiped Runa Urumi, yet all she spoke of was Satsuki-sama. The more he served her, the further she went away from him. It must have been hard on him. Never would have thought I’d find myself sympathizing with a cultist.
“Sorawo, is something up?” Toriko called out to me, and I looked up.
“Huh? Nothing, really.”
“You sure? You were looking a little depressed.” Toriko cocked her head to the side a bit as she looked at me.
“I’m fine. Thanks,” I replied with a smile.
She’s sure paying close attention to me, huh? Geez.
Once we found another set of stairs and descended two floors, we came upon an underground passage. Migiwa took point and Toriko brought up the rear as we advanced cautiously. I was in the middle.
Along the way, we came to a place I recognized. There was the sound of weeping from inside the confinement room. Even when we passed in front of the cell, it didn’t stop.
“What’s all that about?” Toriko asked in a quiet voice.
“I dunno?” I said. The look in Toriko’s eyes seemed like she wanted to say something. It pierced into me.
She suspects me of something. I’m offended.
We encountered no cultists along the way. Descending the hidden stairs in the toilet, we were finally standing in front of the Round Hole again.
“This gate is connected to the DS Lab?” Migiwa asked.
“That’s what they were saying.”
“Let’s hurry. We gotta save Kozakura,” Toriko said hurriedly.
“Okay. Walk in front of the iron ring, then.”
“Okay.”
We approached the Round Hole with Toriko leading the way. I focused on my right eye, and the silver haze shimmered in front of my eye.
“All right. Now touch the space inside the ring.”
Toriko reached out with her left hand, and touched the curtain.
“I-It’s there... I just pull it back, right?”
“Right. Give it a good hard yank.”
Toriko swung her left arm wide.
Bang! On the other side of the parted curtains, there was a dimly lit parking garage.
We leapt through as the thin membrane began to recover on its own.
7
The gate closed behind us. We were in the underground parking garage beneath the building that housed the DS Lab. No one was here. We walked between the luxury cars parked here as we hurried to the elevator.
When Migiwa pressed the up button, the bell chimed and the door opened. When we got in, the control panel had been forced open, and the hidden keypad that allowed you to go to the DS Lab floors was exposed.
Migiwa plugged in the number and the elevator began to rise.
“We will have to reconsider our security measures,” Migiwa said.
We each checked our magazines as we waited for the elevator to arrive.
“From what you saw, Kamikoshi-san, what poses the greatest threat?” he asked.
“Runa Urumi’s voice. It’s something like an intangible tentacle from the other world, and it brainwashes you if you keep listening. It can probably pierce through earplugs, too.”
“What are we gonna do about that?” Toriko asked.
“If I’m looking at it, your hand can touch the Voice. Like you did earlier.”
Toriko scowled. “That again...? It feels really weird, you know? Like a living creature. I can’t help but imagine what it looks like.”
“It’s not that gross when you can see it. Don’t worry.”
“Say that after touching it yourself.”
“You mentioned there were two Fourth Kinds as well, correct? Do you know what they were like?”
“One was like Toriko, able to touch substances from the other world. The other I haven’t seen.”
“There were another ten or so humans armed with construction tools in addition to that, yes?”
“Those numbers and weapons were just an educated guess. Treat them accordingly...”
“Thank you. Let me warn you in advance: should the need arise, I will shoot. I believe that may prove shocking to you, but please understand the necessity,” Migiwa explained.
“I understand.”
“Okay.” Toriko and I both nodded.
“How much experience do the two of you have with this sort of thing?”
“This sort of thing?”
“How should I put it...? The in-and-out.”
The in-and-out? There had to be a better way to say that.
“This is my first time doing anything like this.”
“Mama taught me to shoot a gun, but this is my first time actually doing this, too.”
“I understand. I will draw their attention, so you two do your best to stay out of sight and move safely. I can handle the rest somehow, but I will need to ask the two of you to handle Runa Urumi.”
The elevator slowed, then stopped.
The door opened in front of our readied guns, and a dark hall with barely any light appeared before us. Migiwa led the way as we left the elevator, guns ready. The word “LAB” was written on the wall in the elevator hall.
This was the floor with Satsuki Uruma’s research room. I remembered it well.
The area was silent, but there was a sort of uneasiness in the air. Like lots of people had been here until just a little while ago. I peered into the corridor from the elevator hall. There was a single door open, and light leaking out of it.
“That’s Satsuki’s research room,” Toriko said in a hushed voice.
We approached the open door, keeping an eye out as we did.
My expectation that the room must’ve been torn apart proved to be incorrect, and it was actually still neat and tidy.
Though, thinking about it, that should have been obvious, huh? Runa Urumi worshiped “Satsuki-sama,” so she wouldn’t tear it apart like during a household search.
The notebook that had been on the desk last time we came was already gone. If I recall, Migiwa had said it was sent to the UB artifact warehouse.
Once we had cleared the room, Migiwa returned to the doorway.
“They must be on the upper floor. Let’s go.”
“...Yeah,” Toriko said, sounding sad to leave.
“Is something wrong?” I asked.
“...Before, when we were in the dark corridor, there was light pouring out of this room, right? When I saw that, I couldn’t help but think, ‘Oh! Satsuki’s come back.’ So, I’m feeling a bit down...”
I shouldn’t have asked. I got miffed, and told Toriko in a voice I must admit sounded grumpy, “This really isn’t the time, is it? Come on, hurry up and let’s go. Look, Migiwa-san is already going.” I started walking with large strides, taking firm hold of Toriko’s hand.
“Whoa, hold on!”
“Just hurry up, okay?” I half dragged Toriko out of the room.
Migiwa nodded to us, and then continued down the corridor. I followed behind him without letting go of Toriko’s hand. No way was I going to let her look back.
We reached the stairs and started going up. There was the slight echo of voices from up above. One floor up, there was another dark lab, and no one was there. When we climbed another flight of stairs, we came out on a comparatively brighter floor.
Peeking in from the stairs, I saw a white hallway. This was the medical floor where the Fourth Kinds were kept.
There was blood splattered on the floor here and there. Following the blood spots with my eyes, I saw a man slumped against the wall, and a nurse kneeling down, attending to him. The man was the doctor with the shaved head who we had met before.
The doctor was sweating profusely and breathing heavily. There were several nails sticking out of his left shoulder and chest, dyeing his white coat a bright red. He’d been attacked with a nail gun. The doctor and nurse looked up at us. Migiwa brought a finger to his lips, making the gesture for silence. The nurse pointed around the corner, and Migiwa nodded.
Toriko pulled out her smartphone. When she put just the camera around the corner, the hall appeared on screen. We could see two cultists walking down the hall of Fourth Kind treatment rooms towards us.
The walls facing the hall were filled with windows for the treatment rooms. If we fired off a shotgun here, there would be damage to the rooms. While I was thinking about what to do, Migiwa reached for the end of the shotgun, and twisted the spreader. The alligator mouth that had been horizontal was now diagonal. He disengaged the safety, adjusted his grip on the shotgun, and then revealed himself to the enemy.
“Halt! Drop your weapons, or I’ll shoot!”
The two stopped in shock, then started shouting incoherently as they turned their nail guns in our direction.
Migiwa pulled the trigger.
The shot, constrained into a 45 degree angle by the spreader, hit both of them. They fell to the floor, the sound of the gunshot echoing until it faded away.
Migiwa walked over to the fallen men and kicked their nail guns away towards us. They seemed to still be breathing, but were in no condition to resist. Migiwa quickly bound them with plastic ties, then hurried back to us.
“Migiwa. The rest are upstairs,” the doctor said between ragged breaths. “They headed for the warehouse. They’ve got Kozakura-chan.”
“I know—”
That’s when it happened: another man appeared at the door to the stairs. This one had a shotgun in his hands. He raised the barrel, pointing it towards us. Migiwa had his back to us; he hadn’t noticed the man.
“Look o—”
Before I could finish my warning, Toriko fired. The AK’s bullet hit the man in the upper arm, and the impact shook him to the left. He pulled the trigger almost at the same time. The barrel went wide, and the shot tore into the wall above my head.
The man dropped the shotgun and fell down. Toriko turned to look, but when she saw the bullet holes behind me, she went pale.
“Sorawo! Are you hurt?!”
“I-I’m fine!” I shouted back, and Toriko arched her eyebrows, then let out a big sigh of relief.
“Whew... I panicked there.”
Toriko seemed even more shaken up than me, who had nearly been shot to death, so I went over and put my hand on her back.
“I’m fine. Just fine. Didn’t even get a scratch.”
As I patted her back, I could feel the tension in her muscles. Yeah. This situation was a first for Toriko, too. Maybe she was more tense than me because she had a greater understanding of just how dangerous guns were.
It was true she was a good shot, and the AK made for a reliable weapon. But Toriko was no pro. When she saved me in the mountain farm, Toriko’s hands had been quivering then, too. Toriko was a kindhearted girl. She had to be afraid to shoot people, and even more scared to get in a gunfight. She was enduring it for me. Even I had to realize that much.
Migiwa got the shotgun away from the man and bound him like the other two from before. “I apologize. I let my guard down. This is embarrassing.”
“Toriko was looking, so I’m fine. Right, Toriko?”
Toriko let out a long breath, then nodded. Through the palm of my hand, I felt her tension lessen slightly. “Thanks. I’m calm now.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll go take a look, okay?” Toriko moved away from me, and poked her head out the door the man she shot had come from.
“...Doesn’t look like any more are coming.”
“Roger that. Let us be on our way.”
As Migiwa started to walk away, the doctor called after him. “Who are these guys?”
“A cult led by a Fourth Kind. They worship Uruma-san.”
“Aw, shit. So that’s why they asked me where the notebook is.”
“Did you tell them?”
“Before I knew it, I’d blabbed everything, including the door code to the warehouse. It makes no sense.”
“You couldn’t have done anything. There’s no resisting her voice,” I said to the frustrated doctor.
“Don’t worry about it. Just rest,” Migiwa added. “Can I count on you to look after him?”
The latter half of that was directed to the nurse. Seeming to come back to her senses all of a sudden, the nurse nodded.
“Let’s go, Sorawo,” Toriko said.
“Y-Yeah.”
Toriko picked up the shotgun the man had been holding and handed it to me as if that were a perfectly natural thing to do.
As the nurse went about administering first aid, the three of us climbed the stairs.
8
There was a red carpet under the soft lights. The table to the left in the hall in front of the stairs and the reception counter were both polished to a shine, giving the place a relaxed, hotel-like atmosphere. The last time we visited the DS Lab with Kozakura, this was the first floor we got off on.
“They’re here all right,” Toriko said in a quiet voice. I could sense people in the lobby.
“Hold on. I’ll take a look with this.”
I pulled out my smartphone and, like Toriko had done before, I stuck the camera out from inside the stairs and looked at the screen. As expected, there were three cultists watching the lobby. The gunshots down below had, obviously, alerted them to our presence. Worse, these three were all armed with rifles or shotguns. Oh, yeah, it occurred to me, hunting rifles are legal to purchase in Japan, huh? The conditions were supposed to be strict under normal circumstances, but Runa Urumi’s voice could probably do something about that.
“They’re here!” one of the lookouts shouted. His gun turned our way and he immediately opened fire. The bullet nearly grazed me, so I panicked and pulled my hand back.
The other lookouts fired, too. The bullets tore holes in the wall we were hiding behind, and chunks of trim board flew everywhere.
“This is dangerous. Please, stand back,” Migiwa told us, and we backed away from the corner.
“They’re waiting for us. What now?” I asked.
“The enemy aren’t robots. I figure Migiwa-san and me can win a shoot-out if the two of us take them on together,” Toriko said with a serious look on her face. Migiwa shook his head.
“No, that would be dangerous. I cannot expose the two of you to gunfire.”
“But you don’t wanna get shot either, right, Migiwa-san?”
“If you will pardon my rudeness, I believe I am more ruggedly built than you are, Nishina-san.”
“If you’re going to go that route, then I can say I make a smaller target than you.”
They had both naturally excluded me from their fighting force. Yeah, sure, I was useless with a gun, but I didn’t like feeling I was in the way.
“Hey, I’ve got a shotgun, too, you know? The shot spreads, so even I should be able to hit, right?” I interjected, and Toriko frowned.
“It doesn’t spread that far. This is close range, and they’re behind cover, too.”
“Regardless, I believe it would be a poor idea to engage in a straight-up shooting match with them. It would be best if we could raise some sort of smokescreen...”
When they both contradicted me, I was not amused.
“Hmm, well then... How about I make an opening? Do you mind if I try?”
“What’re you planning to do?” Toriko asked.
I got down on all fours and approached the corner again, sticking out the rear-facing camera of my phone. I didn’t want it getting busted, so I was going to pull it back in if they looked like they might shoot, but maybe because they were being wary, no bullets came.
I could see one of them on the phone. If reinforcements came, that would be trouble. We needed to deal with this quickly...
I looked at the three I could see on my phone’s screen and focused my mind on my right eye. Nothing happened at first. Then, after about ten seconds, the middle one started scratching his head constantly. The other two looked uneasy, too, mumbling curses so loud I could hear them. They clicked their tongues, spat, and glared at one another in irritation.
“What’s going on here?” Toriko, who was looking at the screen from behind me, asked.
“I thought I’d test if my eye worked through the screen, but...”
Finally, unable to bear it anymore, one of them pulled the trigger. There was a boom, and chunks of the reception counter went flying. He hadn’t been aiming at all.
“Get the hell out here!”
“Shut up! The hell do you think you’re doing?!”
“Don’t piss me off! I’ll kill you!”
“Oh, yeah? Why don’t you just try it?”
Things were escalating quickly. Just as I was thinking they might shoot each other, Migiwa leaned out around the corner and opened up with his shotgun.
One, two, three shots. The spreader caught all of his targets, and the three men dropped in no time.
By the time I hesitantly poked my head out, there were no longer any guns turned in our direction.
The men lay bleeding on either side of us as we crossed the smoke-filled lobby.
“That eye... It’s really dangerous, huh?” Toriko said, sounding a little dazed.
Migiwa agreed. “I never would have expected it to work through the screen. Was that something you had tried before?”
“Uh... No, no it wasn’t.”
As I answered, I was reminded once more how messed up my eye was. Maybe they were right to call it the evil eye.
“I’m glad you’re the one who got that eye, Sorawo.”
“Huh? Why?”
“It’d have been terrible if someone bad got it instead,” Toriko said in a somber tone, and I was speechless.
I’ll have to do my best not to be bad, then...
We moved past the lobby, and the entire wall at the end of the hall was taken up by a door that was about four square meters. Looking through the crack where the door was open, I saw thick stone stairs leading upwards.
“The UB artifact warehouse is past here,” Migiwa said and tried to move on, but I stopped him.
“Um, Migiwa-san. Hold on a moment.”
“Yes?”
“I think it would be better if Toriko and I went it alone from here.”
Migiwa turned and furrowed his brow. “Why is that?”
“Her—Runa Urumi’s voice. If you get hit with it, you won’t be able to resist. Like you saw with the doctor downstairs. With my eye, I can see her voice, and Toriko’s hand can knock it away, but we can’t handle any more than that.”
“What will happen to me if I hear the voice?”
“You saw how I drove those guys crazy with my eye just now? She can give more direct orders for what she wants you to do. If you turned your gun on us, we’d be helpless.”
It might have been possible for me to drive Migiwa crazy with my right eye, and override the effect of her voice that way, but I couldn’t predict how the interaction of the two would play out. Besides, considering how skilled with a gun he was, Migiwa would waste no time in shooting me.
“Do you agree, Nishina-san?” Migiwa asked, and Toriko thought for a moment before answering.
“I’m with Sorawo. I wouldn’t want to get in a shoot-out against you.”
“Very well. I will be on standby here, so if you require assistance, please, call me.” Migiwa cleared the way, and indicated the direction of the warehouse with his right palm. “Please, both of you, be careful.”
With those polite words of parting from Migiwa, we turned towards the stairs that led to the warehouse. We climbed, guns ready. There was a thick double-layered hatch at the top of the stairs, and beyond it was an area that resembled a display room in a museum.
The hatch, which normally would have been closed, was wide open. There was a spiral staircase wrapped around the support pillar in the middle of the warehouse.
The wall was lined with a number of glass cases, each filled with a variety of objects. A stuffed cat with five legs, a statue of Mary with cracks that resembled oracle bone script, a Swiss Army knife with tools that could only be meant for torture... All of these were likely items gained through contact with the other world.
I recognized a number of them. The ones they had bought from us. The family photo where the faces occasionally became dogs, and the plant that had grown in the shape of a shirt, both of which were still fresh in my memory, caught my eye. At the bottom of each case was a simple plate bearing a number. I couldn’t tell if proudly displaying these items of otherworldly origin showed a composure of the mind, or an insane degree of contempt. As habitual explorers of the other world, we probably weren’t in any position to decide one way or the other.
We climbed the stairs, and came to the second floor of the warehouse.
It was an open showroom that used up the entire floor. I tried focusing on my right eye to see what would happen, and the silver glow of the items in the cases made the dark floor shine like a starry sky. Several of them were colored differently, or didn’t shine at all. It interested me, but there was no time to go looking around, so we kept on climbing.
The next floor up was also part of the warehouse, but it was slightly different. There were few glass cases here. Instead, there were plastic and metal cases of varying size and shape, along with wooden boxes and simple shelves. They had numbered plates on them, so I could tell the containers must have held UB artifacts. This wasn’t a display room, but simple storage.
One of the few glass cases near the stairs was broken. Someone must have stolen whatever was inside.
It had to be Runa Urumi. Did that mean it had held Satsuki Uruma’s notes...?
That’s when there came a voice from upstairs.
“Oh, you came? Kamikoshi-san.”
Beside me, Toriko jumped a little.
“I’m impressed you made it this far. Was it the power of your eye? Wow.”
Toriko brought her face close to mine and asked, “This voice—it’s Runa Urumi’s?”
When I nodded, Toriko rubbed her face, as if trying to refocus herself.
“I get what you were saying now... This voice is nuts.”
“I know, right?” I pointed to my right eye. “Let’s end this quick. My eye, and your hand. With both of them together, we can take her out.”
“Once we’ve dealt with her voice, what do we do next?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you want to do with Runa Urumi herself?”
Oh, right...
“Punch her out, then stuff her mouth full of cloth or something?”
“You’re so violent...” Toriko criticized.
The voice came from above again.
“Hey, since you’re here already, why don’t you come up here? Help me out, Kamikoshi-san.”
What an attitude...!
Toriko and I looked at one another, nodded, then climbed the spiral staircase.
9
We finished ascending the stairs and reached the highest floor of the warehouse.
Unlike down below, the walls here were lined with piles of labeled boxes, and there were cabinets overflowing with files. There was a large, latticed skylight in the back, and beneath it was a desk surrounded by potted plants. The strongest impression the place gave off was of a lab at the university.
Runa Urumi was sitting on the desk, and she waved to us. Next to her sat Kozakura in a revolving desk chair, her eyes gazing absently at the thing in her hands.
There were two bizarre silhouettes lying at Runa’s feet. One was the Fourth Kind I had seen before, with a head that looked like a large, swollen mass of fungi. The other crawled like a lizard, with the ends of his arms and legs ending in broom-like appendages that branched into many thin filaments. His head was grotesquely shrunken, a mass the size of a person’s fist with wrinkles like a pickled plum.
The woman who was reading files on the other side of the desk stood up and, noticing me, began shouting. “Satan! You snake! What have you come here for?! Return from whence you came!”
“Whaa... No way.” Toriko shook her head in disbelief.
It was the Thank You Woman. She came with them, too, huh?
“Luna-sama, this one’s too dangerous. Why did you leave her alone? Please, don’t be so arrogant.”
“I didn’t exactly leave her alone. I mean, we had everyone downstairs, right? These girls managed to take all of them out? Isn’t that amazing?”
I didn’t respond, simply turning my shotgun towards Runa.
“Whoa, there.”
“Give Kozakura-san back.”
“Hey, calm down, okay? If you shoot, you’ll hit Kozakura-san, too, you know? Maybe don’t threaten me with things you can’t do.”
“How’s this, then?” Toriko said, taking aim with her AK. “I won’t miss.”
“Ohh, you must be Nishina-san, huh? You really are pretty, just like I heard. I’ve got all sorts of questions for you. Put the guns down—let’s talk, okay?”
I saw something in my right eye. The silver stream left Runa’s mouth, flowing towards Toriko’s and my ears.
“Toriko, sweep it!”
When I raised my voice, Toriko’s left hand quickly swung through the air. The Voice that had been in front of my eyes was knocked back, writhing as it retreated. Runa blinked. “Huh? Did you do something?”
“Your voice won’t work—I can see everything.”
“Oh yeah...?”
I was feeling pretty smug, but Runa didn’t really seem to get it. Thinking about it, Runa didn’t have an eye like mine, so that was only to be expected, I guess. I doubt she’d ever thought of her own voice as having physical form.
“Luna-sama, it’s Nishina-sama. Could her shining hand be interrupting your voice?” the Thank You Woman interjected. “That woman’s evil eye can likely see the workings of your voice. You mustn’t face the eye and hand at the same time.”
The way she talked was cultish and unpleasant, but her powers of perception were not to be underestimated.
“Hmm, so your gifts are partners, too, then,” Runa said to Toriko. “Nishina-san, I heard you’re chasing after Satsuki-sama, too. That puts us in the same position. I think we could get along.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I’m not. I envy you, Nishina-san. Getting to be with Satsuki-sama, to travel the Blue World together... I’m jealous. If I’m being honest, I’d like to catch you with my voice, and squeeze you for every last drop of what you know about Satsuki-sama. That’s exactly what I was planning to do, in fact.”
The overly friendly tone of voice she had used up to this point sobered, and I thought I caught a glimpse of the seething emotions inside her. It seemed I wasn’t the only one. Toriko’s finger, which was on the AK’s trigger guard, jumped a little.
Runa smiled again.
“But if you’re seeking Satsuki-sama, like I am, there’s room for us to work together, isn’t there? I think that, as fellow gifted, there’s a lot we could cooperate on.”
Reaching for the desk, Runa lifted up a notebook with a black leather cover.
“Satsuki-sama’s notebook. I can’t read it myself, but if we had Kamikoshi-san there helping us, I’m sure...”
“Hands off Satsuki’s notebook.”
There was ice in Toriko’s voice. It was about as cold as it was when she warned those thugs at the beach in the other world. I watched, thinking she might open fire at any second. Runa took her hands off the notebook, her smile never fading. The Thank You Woman behind her carefully took it from her.
“I’m fine either way. Because, to tell you the truth, even without Kamikoshi-san’s eyes, we may still be able to read it.”
“What do you mean?”
Runa pointed to the Thank You Woman.
“She did the research for me. If we go to the Blue World, we can probably read the notebook there.”
There were a number of files open on top of the desk. Photocopies out of books, handwritten notes on loose leaf, photos and diagrams, and more were all scattered there. Were those the contents of the Thank You Woman’s bag?
“I don’t know the way there, but you do, right? There’s a gate at Kozakura-san’s house, too, isn’t there? If we can go to the other side through there, we can read the notebook. Then we can call Satsuki-sama.”
“Why would you listen to a headcase like—”
I was being snarky, but Runa cut me off.
“Don’t make fun of my mom!”
Mom?
Looking at the Thank You Woman again, there was certainly a resemblance... So she made her mother call her Luna-sama, and wait on her like a servant, but then she still got mad if anyone insulted her?
“Whatever, just give the notebook back. Hurry up!” Toriko said sharply, showing no intent to hear Runa out.
Runa furrowed her brow.
“What do you mean, give it back? Is this yours? It isn’t, right? It’s Satsuki-sama’s. You’ve been treating me like a thief this whole time, Nishina-san, but aren’t you the one trying to take possession of someone else’s things? Pointing a gun at me like that, isn’t this an armed robbery?”
“Shut up. You don’t know a thing about Satsuki.”
“You seem to want to think you were special to Satsuki-sama, but you weren’t, you know? I’ve heard from Kozakura-san. Satsuki-sama had her eye on other girls, too. It’s true you were with Satsuki-sama before she vanished, and maybe you were even the last one to see her. But have you ever imagined what Satsuki-sama was doing without your knowledge?”
“Shut up...!”
“Aw, are you mad? Well, I’m right, aren’t I? Kozakura-san and Kamikoshi-san won’t bring it up because they feel bad for you, but everyone knows. You do, too, and you just don’t want to admit it, right? Satsuki-sama threw you away. Because you weren’t good enough for her. If that weren’t true, she’d have taken you with her, now wouldn’t she?” Her tone was pitying, but only her tone. “You poor thing.”
Toriko said no more. She lowered her gun with a more violent movement than usual, then clenched her fists and strode towards Runa.
Uh-oh. She’d let the blood rush to her head.
“Toriko! You can’t get close!”
My warning came too late.
The two Fourth Kinds at Runa’s feet got up, and leaped at Toriko. The Fourth Kind with the broom-like limbs wrapped around Toriko’s lower half with his countless fingers and toes.
“Let go!” Toriko pounded him with the butt of her AK. There was a dull thud, and the sound of fingers breaking. He let out a pathetic wail, but did not let go.
The big-headed Fourth Kind lumbered towards her. The eyelash-like growths that rimmed his swollen head shone in the moonlight that came in through the skylight.
I instantly turned my shotgun towards him.
...It’s no good, I can’t shoot. I’ll hit Toriko. I gotta get closer.
I dropped the shotgun there, and rushed towards Toriko as I drew my Makarov. There were countless fingers wrapped around Toriko’s right arm, and her AK fell to the ground and rolled. The big-headed Fourth Kind was closing in.
“Why you...” Toriko pressed her translucent hand against the big-head that was closing in.
He let out a shrill cry.
There was a silver handprint left in the indistinct features of his massive face. That print which shone like a puddle was clearly causing the Fourth Kind great pain.
He stumbled and backed away. Maybe she noticed the effect, because Toriko quickly stroked the fingers grasping her with her left hand. There was a cry of pain from her feet, and countless fingers fell to the floor. The many-fingered Fourth Kind shrank back, crawling away from Toriko like a mop made of flesh.
With heaving breaths, Toriko turned back to face Runa again.
“Hmm, that hand of yours is pretty awesome, huh?” Runa moved away from the desk she had been leaning on to fall against Toriko’s chest. Caught by surprise, Toriko stopped moving. I heard Runa’s whispering voice.
“Shh. Calm down, Nishina-san. Let all the stress out of your body...”
From behind her, I could see Runa’s Voice, crawling up Toriko’s neck like a living creature and quickly entering her ear.
Toriko’s knees bent, and her body tilted.
This time, it was my turn to let the blood rush to my head.
“Toriko!”
I caught Toriko from behind as she was about to fall. I could see Runa’s smirking face on the other side of Toriko’s body, and I leveled the Makarov at it.
“Luna-sama!” the Thank You Woman cried. Runa just maintained that slight smile.
“What are you going to do? Shoot?”
“You think this is an empty threat?”
“Really, now? I think you give away too much. Though, if you were planning to kill me, I think you’d have fired already. Nishina-san put down the gun to come punch me, too. You’re both so kind.”
Runa gripped the barrel of the gun pointed at her and tried to move it aside. I gave no ground. Runa got irritated.
“Geez, could you stop getting in my way already? You have nothing to do with Satsuki-sama, right? Fine, I’ll give Nishina-san and Kozakura-san back to you for now. I just want to meet Satsuki-sama as soon as possible.”
“No! Sorawo, you can’t! Don’t let her have Satsuki’s notebook!” Toriko shouted as she stood in my arms, struggling to recover from the effect of the voice.
For some reason, Toriko’s desperation pissed me off even more than Runa’s cocky attitude. I started shouting despite myself. “Every one of you is all Satsuki, Satsuki, Satsuki... Give me a break already! How long are you going to keep clinging to a woman who’s gone?! She’s not even human anymore! That thing’s a monster! The person you knew is never coming back, Toriko!”
They must not have expected my outburst, because Runa and Toriko were both silent for a moment.
That was when I heard another voice suddenly whisper.
“...Satsuki.”
It was Kozakura.
“Satsu... ki...”
Kozakura, who was just sitting in that chair, was holding something shining in the hands that lay on her lap.
I recognized it. It was a cube made of mirrors, five centimeters to a side.
The mirror stone we found when we defeated the Kunekune.
“Kozakura-san... That’s...?”
Kozakura looked up at me from where she sat, a dazed look on her face as she opened her fingers. The mirror stone sitting atop her outstretched hands drew my gaze on its own. We were not reflected in the room its mirrored surface showed.
No...
That’s wrong. There was someone there.
A lone figure, standing in the darkness.
“Sorawo?”
With the effect of the Voice waning, Toriko struggled to stand on her own feet. I hardly noticed as I stared into the mirror stone.
“Sorawo, what’s up?”
“Someone.”
“Huh?”
“There’s someone—reflected.”
Someone, other than us, reflected in the mirror stone...?
As I stared, half in disbelief, I suddenly realized who it was.
I nearly screamed.
The one reflected in the surface of the mirror stone was Satsuki Uruma. Instantly, I turned around. At some point, she had gotten there—right behind me.
“Satsuki is... here,” Kozakura whispered again.
“Sorawo...?”
Toriko followed my gaze. She looked around the dark warehouse, then back to my face.
“...Is it Satsuki? Is she here?”
“No! She’s not!”
My denial was too quick, and too desperate.
“...You can see her, huh?” Toriko said in a whisper.
I couldn’t compose my expression. The cold sensation of destruction caught in my throat, and I was unable to speak, just shake my head.
“You can see her. I’m right, aren’t I?”
What do I do?
What do I do? What do I do? What do I do?
She found out.
I knew it might come out eventually, but I was sure it’d be okay. I thought I could trick her. The words I had feared finally came out of Toriko’s mouth.
“Wait, Sorawo—have you been able to see her all this time?”
You’re wrong. You’re wrong.
The lie I so wanted to tell refused to come out of my lips.
I felt like I was drowning. Only able to manage the shallowest of breaths.
Convinced, Toriko lowered her voice. “I knew it. That’s how it is, huh?”
You knew it?
“It’s been a mystery to me for a while now. Sorawo, you occasionally would get this dangerous look on your face, glaring at something I couldn’t see.”
No way.
“I couldn’t be sure of it before now.”
I tried not to let it show on my face.
“There aren’t many people you’d react to with such intensity, you know?”
I never thought she suspected it.
“Did you think I didn’t realize?”
“Oh, uh.”
“You did, huh?”
The voice she addressed me with was calm. That actually made it scarier.
I couldn’t see Toriko’s face.
Toriko’s face, which was always by my side.
Toriko’s face, which was so pretty I felt like I could stare at it forever.
“Satsuki-sama... is here?” Runa asked from behind me. “Hey! Is she there? Is Satsuki-sama—”
I was so cornered I couldn’t even think what I wanted to: Shut up. I’ve got bigger fish to fry. Get lost. The situation was so beyond my capacity to handle, I couldn’t think about anything at all.
“She’s not here! She’s not here! I’m telling you, she’s not here!” I shouted like a child throwing a tantrum.
Two booted feet entered my downcast vision. Still barely able to breathe, I looked up.
There was Satsuki Uruma, clearly looking down at me with her two blue eyes. The next thing I knew, I was flat on my backside. I tried to get away with my legs still weak, and my back hit the desk.
I had faced Satsuki Uruma—or the being that took her form—several times before now. Each time, I had faced my fear. I diligently used my head. One time using my gun, another my right eye, and resolutely ignoring her another... Yet now, I could do nothing. Nothing came to mind.
The moment that Toriko uncovered my lies, everything supporting me just collapsed entirely.
With slow motions that reminded me of a massive deep sea creature, Satsuki Uruma moved her body, looking from me to Kozakura. The long arms covered in lacy sleeves reached out, putting her fingers around the mirror stone in Kozakura’s palm.
“Ah...”
As Kozakura let out that lonely exhalation, Satsuki Uruma lifted up the mirror stone.
No one but me could see her. Everyone was watching the mirror stone as it floated into the air of its own accord.
When it reached the point in front of Satsuki Uruma’s face, the mirror stone began spinning like a top on one of its corners. The blue, shining eyes were reflected in its surface. It gradually picked up speed, and as it did, the blue light grew so bright it could illuminate the room.
“Satsuki,” Kozakura whispered, and the very next moment, the light burst.
There was a sound like a thunderclap, and the ultrablue flash engulfed everything.
When I recovered from the impact and opened my eyes, I was in a field. Long grass swayed in the wind beneath the dark sky.
It’s the other world.
If the time was the same as in the surface world, it was just past four in the morning. Was that purple blur on the horizon because sunrise was coming?
Satsuki Uruma was standing in that grassy field.
Toriko, Runa, and even Kozakura gulped. The Thank You Woman let out a terrified cry, and fell to the ground. The two Fourth Kinds let out indiscernible groans and lowered themselves to the ground.
It wasn’t just me. Everyone could see her clearly.
“Satsuki!”
Toriko was the first to shout.
“Finally... Finally, I can see you...!”
Toriko crushed the grass underfoot as she raced towards Satsuki.
No—you can’t do that, Toriko.
Even in this situation, my words remained trapped in my throat, not a single one able to escape.
Toriko reached Satsuki Uruma’s side at last, and clung to her. But Satsuki didn’t react in the slightest.
“Hey! It’s me! Hello? It’s Toriko!”
Toriko was almost crying. I was shocked by that. Was Toriko this willing to show her weakness in front of Satsuki Uruma?
“I’ve come for you, Satsuki...!”
Her ungloved left hand took Satsuki’s hand. For just an instant, I could see a tense shudder in Toriko’s shoulder.
That brought the first reaction. The blue eyes fell on Toriko. Like a massive bird of prey, Satsuki Uruma brought her face towards Toriko.
Ahh. This is no good. Toriko... Toriko’s going to be taken away.
My shoulders were frozen with despair when, at that moment, someone suddenly grabbed me.
“Get it together, Sorawo-chan.”
Kozakura stood there, grasping my shoulder. Her eyes were focused, like she had finally regained her senses.
“Kozakura... -san.”
“That’s not Satsuki—not the Satsuki I know!” Kozakura sneered, as if spitting blood, and then collapsed. Moving her arms weakly, as if trying to push me away after I quickly caught her, Kozakura continued. “Move... Quickly! Catch her! Toriko’s going to go away!”
Kozakura’s shouts gave me the push I needed. I struggled to my feet, nearly tripping over them as I moved. I hugged Toriko’s waist from behind, as if I was tackling her, and my momentum brought us both tumbling to the ground.
“Ahhh?!”
As her hand was torn away from holding Satsuki Uruma’s, Toriko let out something like a scream.
“Sorawo, hold on—”
“Don’t go,” I said, not wanting to hear Toriko’s protests. “You can be mad at me. You can hate me. But don’t go. You can’t go with her. Absolutely not. You can’t. Don’t go, don’t go, don’t go—”
I felt like nothing I could say would convince her, so I just kept repeating myself. I didn’t want to let her get a word in edgewise. I didn’t want her to tell me to let go.
Toriko looked back at me, bewildered. As I repeated myself, even I lost track of what I was saying. What kind of face was I making now? Was I crying? Was I angry? Or...
Satsuki Uruma looked down at us impassively as we tussled in the grass.
Suddenly, she looked to the side.
Her gaze was on Runa Urumi.
“Satsuki-sama. We meet at last.”
She was saying the same sort of thing as Toriko. Her voice quivered, but it was less with tension, and more with ecstasy at having met the object of her worship.
“I have waited for this day to come for years, ever since I first received your divine revelation. I am your disciple, Runa.”
Satsuki looked down at Runa, saying nothing. Runa went on in an impassioned voice.
“I am your humble servant. Take me with you—to the far side of the Blue World. Take me, and no one else! Please, choose me, the one who loves you more than anyone else!”
At some point, Toriko had stopped moving and, like me, watched as Runa and Satsuki Uruma faced one another. I couldn’t say what was going on, but the tension was rising. Something irreversible could happen at any moment. I was afraid to watch, and afraid to look away, too.
Perhaps sensing that, Runa continued even as she tripped over her own words.
“Do you need proof? Proof that I am one of the chosen ones, the gifted...? I have the qualifications to be with you, Satsuki-sama! Please, listen to the boon you bestowed on me... the Voice.”
Runa took a deep breath. It happened just as she was about to unleash the Voice from her throat.
“Luna-sama, you mustn’t.”
Unexpectedly, it was the Thank You Woman who interrupted her. Up until then, her legs had given out, and she had been trembling in fear, but despite her obvious fright, she crawled towards Runa.
“Please, run away. Can’t you tell? This is the evil eye...! It’s so... vile...”
The Thank You Woman closed the distance between them, holding up her hand to shield her face from Satsuki, as if she were approaching a bright light.
Runa turned around, shouting in irritation.
“What are you doing, you stupid woman?! Don’t get in my way! Stand down!”
The Thank You Woman did not follow her order.
“Satan... You vile bitch... Don’t you dare... deceive my daughter.” Chanting that like some sort of mantra, the Thank You Woman walked in front of Runa. In her hands, she held Satsuki’s notebook.
“Run away. You can’t do this. It’s hopeless. I’m hopeless and finished, too, though,” the Thank You Woman muttered.
“What do you think you’re doing?! You stupid woman—don’t try to act like a mother now!”
Not responding to Runa’s insults, the Thank You Woman opened the notebook and began to read. Here is how I heard the words she spoke:
“There was a small gate, and the one person calling the devil finally entered the door, and the flashlight turned on, and off, and on, and off, around, and around, and around...”
A spell? No, this was more nonsensical...
“A and B and C and D were lazy, and urinals, urinals lined up, and people came, approached, coming, because the creepy voices called before. They called, so it’s fine, I opened my eyes and...”
The bizarre words continued without pause, then suddenly stopped.
The next thing I knew, there were a number of figures standing behind the Thank You Woman. There were four white-haired elders wearing what looked like crowns, and they looked down at the Thank You Woman without emotion.
“What’s that?” Toriko whispered.
I had a vague understanding of who they were. Or what they came from, to be more precise. They closely matched the portrayal of the unidentified old men who appeared in the net lore story The Round Hole Underground.
The men wearing crowns appeared behind the Thank You Woman as she read out of the notebook—it was a composition that almost made it look like she was about to sic her summoned monsters on Satsuki Uruma.
But was that notebook something so kind and easily used?
In the next moment, my worries were confirmed.
The four expressionless old men squinted their eyes. The corners of their mouths turned upwards. Those smiles, which showed their gums, were full of greater malice than I had ever seen before.
The Thank You Woman turned around, and the old men watched with horrifying smiles as she backed away.
With nowhere to flee, caught between Satsuki Uruma and the old men, the Thank You Woman’s face filled with despair.
“Run...”
Saying that to Runa one more time, the Thank You Woman balled her hands into fists, and thrust them toward Satsuki Uruma.
It was a hand sign, with her thumb protruding from between her index and middle finger. The warding symbol to protect against the evil eye.
It had no effect whatsoever.
Satsuki Uruma raised both her arms, then sandwiched the Thank You Woman’s face between them. Her thumbs dug deep into her eye sockets.
The Thank You Woman screamed. The blood ran down her cheeks, wetting the grass at her feet.
“Mom!” Runa shouted. “Satsuki-sama—Stop! Why?!”
The old men showed their wrinkled throats, letting out a croaking laugh. They shook with laughter, as though the Thank You Woman’s screams after having her eyes crushed were too hilarious not to, then collapsed like paper that had been wadded into a ball and vanished into the void.
There was a bubbling of blood, and then the screams stopped.
Satsuki Uruma released her grasp, and Runa’s mother collapsed powerlessly.
“Satsuki... -sama...”
As Runa Urumi stared vacantly upwards, Satsuki Uruma’s bloody hand reached out for her.
There was an incredible scream. That scream, filled with something like the pain and terror of being skinned alive, made me and Toriko cover our ears despite ourselves.
“He... lp...”
The Voice released from Runa’s throat looked twisted, like barbed wire. At the end of it, the two Fourth Kinds were still cowering on the ground. The Voice wrapped around them, and dove inside their bodies. The Fourth Kinds rose, groaning. The many-fingered one crawled towards Runa, and the other one began rubbing the air with his swollen head.
The Voice was soon replaced by a gurgling sound. When Satsuki Uruma let go, Runa shook her head back and forth sluggishly, standing where she was. Her back was still to us, so I couldn’t see the look on her face.
The many-fingered Fourth Kind finally reached Runa’s feet. His fingers sought out Satsuki’s shoes, wrapped around them, trying to snake from her ankles up to her thighs. The Fourth Kind’s back swelled up, and countless hands and fingers burst forth from it with explosive force. The other parts of his body continued spreading out across the ground. It was as though a tree made of human parts had suddenly sprouted. The tree of meat grew high, writhing and convulsing in pain, then suddenly blacked at its furthest extremities and began to wither. There was a sprinkling sound as the nails fell from his rotten fingers.
The big-headed Fourth Kind was shaking his body around wildly. His head struck the air where there was nothing, creating silver waves as it did. The thin hairs around the circumference of his head connected those waves, eventually beginning to form a gate. I could see the dark warehouse on the other side of that silver phosphorescence.
“Toriko—Let’s run!” I said, and Toriko seemed to snap to her senses as she looked at me. If she resisted at this point, I was ready to punch her out and drag her with me, but Toriko bit her lip and nodded.
“Kozakura-san!”
I turned around, and Kozakura was down on the ground, covering her head.
“Are you okay?!”
“No... I can’t take any more of this... Get me out of here quickly...” the powerless whisper came back. For someone with as little resistance to fear as Kozakura, this situation had to be utter hell.
Toriko and I supported one another as we got to our feet. Runa was still standing there, in front of Satsuki, beneath the tree of meat.
“Runa! You alive?” I asked hesitantly. Runa slowly turned to look at me. When I saw her face, I gulped.
Her mouth was open wider than I had ever seen. Her lower jaw had fallen, and her tongue lolled out of it. That face, drooling, with her eyes rolled back into her head, had lost all sanity.
Raising her arms and thrusting them out before her, like some sort of zombie, Runa began shambling towards us. It was like she was trying to get as far away from Satsuki Uruma, who was behind her, as she could.
Toriko and I looked at one another. There was no need to talk. In an instant, we knew we had both thought the same thing.
We had to save Runa.
Ten minutes ago, I would have been able to abandon her without much hesitation. I mean, if you think about it with a clear head, she was our enemy. For me, she was the head of a cult, and for Toriko, she was—no, even if I decided not to think about that aspect, there were still way too many things about her that pissed me off.
Still, I couldn’t abandon her.
It was the Thank You Woman who changed my mind. When I heard the scream Runa let out when Satsuki Uruma killed her mother, I just couldn’t...
Toriko and I took a firm hold of Runa’s arms and pulled. Though she still had that crazy look on her face, with her jaw open so wide it might get dislocated, Runa fell towards us.
I looked back over my shoulder. The gate that Runa’s slave—the big-headed Fourth Kind—had opened was already more than large enough for us to pass through.
“Sorawo, you take Kozakura!”
“Got it! You go on ahead!”
I left Runa to Toriko, and rushed to Kozakura’s side.
“We’re running! Stand up!”
“I can’t.”
“...Okay, fine then. Hold on.”
Kozakura hugged me tightly. With her arms around my neck, I could stand up and lift her. By pure chance, I ended up carrying her like a princess. Thanks to her being the size of an elementary schooler, even with my muscles, I could still just barely manage to do it. It may not have been elegant, but I stumbled forward with my legs spread wide, and rushed through the gate.
It being a direct gate with almost no interstitial space saved us. I walked two, three steps on the boundary between worlds, and was able to return to the surface.
“Sorawo, hurry!” Toriko shouted from the surface world. It was as I was rushing to her side. There was an intense pain in the back of my head, pulling it backward.
As Toriko looked at me, her face stiffened with surprise. Raising her head from my chest and looking over my shoulder, Kozakura got the same look on her face.
“Satsuki...”
That one word uttered by Toriko told me everything about the situation.
Satsuki had grabbed the hair on the back of my head.
The hair I had let grow so long I could tie it back.
The hair on the back of my head, which Toriko and Kozakura had liked so much.
The hair that, the more it grew, the more it made me look more like Satsuki Uruma. That hair.
“Toriko, pass!” I shouted, and Toriko’s eyes widened as she seemed to regain her senses. I shook free of the arms Kozakura had wrapped around me, and threw her little body towards Toriko.
“Eek!”
Kozakura screamed as she traced a short parabola in the air, and Toriko caught her just short of hitting the ground.
During that time, I pulled out the knife I had stolen from one of the male cultists, and unsheathed it.
I put my hands behind my head, and put the blade to my hair.
The knife had a good edge to it.
Slice, slice, slice. Three cuts, and my head was free. The excess momentum sent me stumbling forward, and Toriko and Kozakura both grabbed me, pulling me out of the other world.
I turned back, and my eyes met with Satsuki Uruma’s, who was looking at me through the shrinking gate. I don’t know what she did to our savior, the big-headed Fourth Kind, but his head was crushed into a crescent shape, and a black bodily fluid oozed from a hole I couldn’t be sure was a mouth or a nose as he convulsed.
I saw Satsuki Uruma’s lips moving, so I responded.
“No, I mean, it was red that day.”
Satsuki Uruma spoke again. I vigorously shook my head.
“No, I did not promise, and if I cut it loose, I couldn’t live, and horned faces would come flowing, wouldn’t they? Then there would be a trial, right?”
“Sorawo?”
“I do not know when the end will come, but that is unforgivable as a person, right? Because I can not forgive that.”
“Sorawo! What’re you saying, Sorawo?!”
“When I burn, and only my bones are left, I will definitely come—”
I was conversing with Satsuki Uruma, but that came to a sudden end when I was slapped on the cheek. The next thing I knew, Toriko had grabbed my shoulder, and was looking closely at my face.
“...Toriko? Why did you hit me...?” I asked in a daze as I slowly came to my senses.
What was I saying just now? During the conversation, it totally felt like it had meaning. Over Toriko’s shoulder, I could see the gate shrinking. The shining blue of those evil eyes faded out of view, and the hole in space completely closed.
Toriko turned back, too, looking at the place where the gate once was.
I remained tense, worrying that Satsuki Uruma might reopen the gate and come after us, but after a minute or so, I was able to convince myself she wasn’t planning to for now, and I was finally able to let out the breath that I had been holding all this time.
Stumbling, I put my hand down on the desk. The Thank You Woman’s files were still on top of it. Satsuki Uruma’s notebook and the mirror stone were both nowhere to be found.
The light of the morning sun shone through the skylight at a shallow angle, illuminating the upper part of the wall. The shadows near the floor remained thick. I leaned on the desk, slowly sitting down.
Runa Urumi lay at my feet. She was in a bad state, but still breathing. Her face looked so bad, Toriko took off her jacket and placed it over top of it. Then, pulling out her phone, she asked Migiwa to arrange for a doctor or nurse.
While I idly listened to her, Kozakura sat down to the left of me. “You came to save me, huh, Sorawo-chan?”
“I guess I did, yes.”
“I did, too, Kozakura,” Toriko added, having finished her call. Kozakura shook her head.
“I thought you two didn’t care what happened to me.”
“Nuh-uh. That’s not true anymore,” Toriko said.
“...Well, we couldn’t leave you now,” I added.
“What do you mean, ‘anymore,’ you idiot? You’re making me cry here.” Kozakura laughed weakly.
“Sorawo, um, your hair...”
Toriko reached out, stroking my disheveled hair.
“It’s just gone back to its original length,” I said. Toriko nodded, seemingly satisfied with that answer.
Come to think of it, in the self-responsibility series of ghost stories, one thing listed as a common feature of them was a depiction of someone cutting their hair short to escape from a curse. When I noticed that I had acted in accordance with the ghost story without realizing it, I felt kind of uneasy.
“Sighhhh. Maybe I’ll cut my hair, too...” Kozakura grumbled.
Unsure what she meant, I didn’t know how to react. Kozakura turned her neck until it cracked, then let out a deep sigh.
“I’m at my limit. Hold on... Sorawo-chan, lend me your lap...”
Before she had even finished speaking, Kozakura laid her head down on my thighs, and closed her eyes. I could feel the tension fade, and her body go limp.
“Kozakura-san...?”
I called her name out of concern, but all that came back was the sound of deep breathing. I didn’t know if she’d passed out, or gone to sleep... Whichever it was, she didn’t need first aid, so I kept leaning back against the desk.
Toriko sat down next to me, on the opposite side from Kozakura. The conversation came to an end, and we remained silent for some time. I was the first to open my mouth.
“You’re not going to get mad because I kept quiet about Satsuki-san, huh?”
There was no answer.
“Even if you do, I have no intent of apologizing. It’s crazy, trying to follow her.”
“...”
Toriko remained silent. She didn’t react to my comment at all. I went on, saying whatever came to mind.
“I’m glad you came quietly when I suggested we run. If you’d said, ‘But—!’ or ‘Let me go!’ I was planning to deck you one.”
“You? Hit me?” Toriko let out a listless laugh.
“Is that weird?”
“A little, yeah.”
“I was serious.”
“Yeah. I know.”
Is that really true?
“You’ve slapped me plenty of times before now. Like, that time we almost died from the Kotoribako, I think you really went to town on me then.”
“I think so, too. I mean, I got this left hand because I slapped you after the Kunekune got you. You were talking nonsense again just now, so my hand moved before I could stop myself.” There was something competitive about the way Toriko said that.
“You’re pretty violent, you know that, Toriko? You going to become a domestic abuser?”
“No... Isn’t that kind of an awful thing to say?” Toriko pursed her lips, sounding hurt by the suggestion, so I decided not to follow up on it any further.
“...When you took her hand, I thought it was over,” I said, and Toriko raised her face to look at me. “You met the person you’ve been longing to meet all this time. My lies were uncovered. I thought, it’s over, she’s through with me...”
“That’s not true at all, Sorawo. Not true at all,” Toriko shook her head. “Satsuki was important to me, of course, but you’re already important to me, too. We’re accomplices, aren’t we? You could trust me a little more, you know?”
I hadn’t expected those words. I felt like there was something warm throbbing deep inside my chest.
“But—is it okay? I mean, I...”
“It was cold,” Toriko said all of a sudden.
“What was?”
“When I took Satsuki’s hand...”
Toriko rubbed her left hand as she spoke.
“Her hand was cold... so very cold. It felt like there was no blood flowing through it. It wasn’t like that the last time I saw her,” Toriko said, seemingly bewildered by her own words. “To be honest, I was mad at first. But when it looked like you might be taken away, Sorawo, all of that went out the window. Just the thought that I might lose you, too... It was maddening... I was s... scared.”
As Toriko stuttered, I reached out and offered her my hand. “How about mine? Is it cold?”
Toriko looked me in the eye, then looked down to my hand. Then, gently, she gripped it in both of hers.
“It’s warm,” Toriko said in a hoarse voice, and brought my hand to her mouth.
Her lips brushed the knuckle of my index finger.
“Thank you, Sorawo—I love you.”
When Toriko closed her eyes and whispered that, the warm breath that leaked through her lips brushed my fingers and the back of my hand. That sensation, which raced down the length of my arm, felt numbingly sweet.