File 1: Kunekune Hunting

1

Beneath the clear May sky, I lay in a grassy field, drowning.

Plankton-like shapes were jumping around across the backdrop of the blue sky. It was what it looked like when you could see the white blood cells in your eyes—or so I had read somewhere.

The wind caressing my upturned face carried the stench of raw fish. I had no idea if it really was fish or not. Since coming to the Otherside, I hadn’t seen a single fish, after all.

I had fallen flat on my back in the middle of grass taller than me. The roots of the grass were submerged in water, so my back was soaked, too. It was what you might call a half-bath.

No, that’s wrong. Completely wrong. You wouldn’t call it that.

If anything, it was like one of the lie-down baths at the super bathhouse. Although, the water was a bit over 20 centimeters deep, so if I didn’t make an effort to keep my face above the water, it would pour in through my nose and mouth. There was no lie-down bath like that, and if there was it’d be torture. The lie-down bath of death.

In fact, I was getting closer to death by the second. My Uniqlo fleece and my camo pants were heavy with water. It had been... how many minutes since I ended up like this? There wasn’t a clock in sight, so I didn’t know how long it had been, but I wasn’t going to be able to keep my face above water for much longer. My neck was cramped and hurt, and my abs had refused to stop quivering for a while now. I just didn’t have the strength. You know when you try to run in a dream, and your legs flop around, not moving at all like you want them to? That’s exactly what it was like. My limbs were practically paralyzed. They had been ever since I saw that thing.

I never saw this coming—I was naive. I’d found this world, got excited, headed in to explore, then ultimately ran into something dangerous and ended up close to drowning.

What would happen if I died here? In the surface world, were they going to talk about the mysterious disappearance of a twenty-year-old female university student? Eagh, they were bound to write all sorts of things about me that weren’t true.

That’d suck. I’m sorry, Mom.

...No. If I was being honest, even if I up and vanished, no one was really going to care much. I had no friends, so the only ones I’d be troubling were the people in the university office who would notice I hadn’t paid my school fees, and the people at the student support organization who noticed I was behind on my student loan repayment.

Thinking about that only made it hurt more.

Even if I did make it to graduation, it was basically guaranteed I would be inundated by student loan debt. With my future looking as dark as it was, maybe dying here in the Otherside wasn’t so bad after all...?

...Still, I don’t want it to be painful or excruciating.Just how much were you supposed to suffer when drowning, again? I started to think, then I heard something nearby.

The sound of grass parting. Footsteps in the water... approaching. An animal? From the sound of the footsteps, whatever it was was reasonably large.

What could it be? It wasn’t just fish... I hadn’t seen any animal fit to be called one here in the Otherside. Not being able to see what it was through the grass was only making me feel more uneasy.

I considered laying low, but it was no use. They must have heard me gasping as I tried to come up for air, because a voice came from the other side of the grass.

“Is someone there?”

They’re human!

Caught by surprise, I couldn’t speak.

It was a young woman’s voice with an out-of-place sound of cheer in her tone, like she was going on a stroll through the park on a fine day. Meanwhile, here I was, inching ever closer to death.

“...Could it be, Satsuki?” the voice asked. Who was that? Not me, that was for sure.

While I was confused, the voice became worried, and spoke up again. “Hey, should I come help? Or are you dead already?”

“Ah! Ah! I’m not de—”

I opened my mouth, despite not having meant to, and water rushed in. The liquid that filled my mouth had no taste. None at all. Bwah. I hurriedly spat it out, and tried again.

“I’m alive! Help!”

While I was screaming shamelessly, I remembered... The reason I’d ended up like this in the first place was still around here somewhere.

“W-Watch out. There’s a dangerous one nearby,” I stammered.

“Dangerous? What’s it like?”

“W-White, and wiggling...”

When I tried to explain it, the image of that thing came back into my mind. Instantly, I was engulfed by an intensely sickening feeling, and I groaned.

I shut my eyes tight, trying to endure, but the white image in my brain grew more and more vivid, my mind being pulled towards it even as I knew that was a bad idea, and my head felt like it was being twisted around.

“Urgh...”

“What’s wrong?”

“When you see it, it messes with your head... You can’t look...” That was all I managed to say, and then my willpower and stamina both gave out.

My mind fell into an eddy of unceasing dizziness. My face sank into the tasteless water. Bubbles poured out of my mouth.

The sky I was looking up to swayed in the water. The bubbles rose to the sky, and the clouds burst.

Then...

Into that empty sky, devoid of birds, divided into nothing but white and blue, a bright golden color descended.

I felt a hand behind my neck, my body being lifted. It was almost too easy, the way I was saved from the water.

While I was soaked and blinking, the owner of the voice smiled at me.

“I thought you were Ophelia,” she said.

“Huh?” I replied.

No, I got it. I knew who Ophelia was, at least. There’s that famous painting of her, like she’s in the lie-down bath of death, drowning. I saw it on Wikipedia.

That wasn’t it. When I looked up at her, I was taken aback.

She was ridiculously beautiful.

Her slightly wavy blonde hair. Her straight nose. Her pale, smooth skin. Her long arms and legs, and a figure I could tell was impressive even through her clothes. She wore an olive colored jacket zipped up to her neck, along with jeans and lace-up boots.

I think she was my age, or maybe a little younger. Looking down at me with her sparkling indigo eyes, she asked, “Is it already messed up?”

“I-Is what?”

“Your head.”

“I-I think I’m still fine.”

Or so I replied—But was I?

Maybe my head was already messed up. A beauty like this saving me on the verge of death? If you thought about it, it really was too convenient. What was this? A middle-schooler’s delusion, or a hallucination I was seeing on the brink of death?

While my mind was still spinning, she said, “So, where is it? The thing that messes you up if you see it?”

She asked in such an easy-going tone, I pointed despite myself. Before I’d realized it, sensation had returned to my limbs. They were still numb, but I could move them somehow.

“That way... Uh, hold on, what are you planning to do?”

Once she had sat me up in the water, she stood up in the middle of the grass.

“No, I’m telling you. It’s dangerous!”

“Blech, you’re right,” she said, squinting and sticking out her tongue at something unpleasant. “That’s it, huh? Gross.”

“No, not ‘gross.’ I’m telling you, you can’t look.”

When I grabbed her arm and tried to pull her to a crouching position, I ended up looking directly at it again.

The faded sea of grass spread out as far as the eye could see. In the fields of the Otherside, dotted with dark groves of trees and ruins, there was just one thing that stood out, moving.

It was shaped like a person, if you stretched them vertically.

It was an inscrutable shape, like a long shadow cast on the ground by the setting sun had been peeled from the ground and then stood up.

It was white in color. A dirty white, reminiscent of smoke.

That white, lanky figure stood in the middle of the waterlogged, grassy field, twisting its body around. Was it dancing, or was it in pain? Kunekune, kunekune. It wriggled.

While watching those movements, my mind gradually went blank, and I started to feel sick. Despite that, I still had the feeling that I had to see more.

It felt similar to trying to remember a half-forgotten dream when you wake up in the morning. That niggling sense that you should remember it, and you almost can. It torments your brain.

“Urgh...” I groaned, letting go of her arm. With a lurch, my body began to fall over, and I leaned on her jeans-covered leg for support.

While I was taking shallow, repeated breaths, she plopped a hand down on my head.

“Hey, looking at that thing makes you feel super weird, huh?”

“Urgh.”

“What happens if you keep looking?”

“I-I dunno...”

“Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t.”

Her tone made it sound like it was no big deal for her, but there was no way she was fine. Huff, huff. I could hear her breathing quickly.

“Ahh, this is rough. Whew... But I think I’m starting to get it... I wonder what’s waiting at the end of this feeling...?”

“Eagh...” I couldn’t even respond properly anymore. Her breathing was getting more and more ragged, too. It felt like her body was swaying just a little, but I couldn’t be sure whether it was her or me doing it.

“It—It’s closer... than before... we’ve gotta... run.” I just barely managed to get those words out.

The white shadow had surprisingly little depth, so it was hard to grasp how far away it was, but I felt like it was closer than when I’d first encountered it.

My vision wobbled. The scenery in front of me looked unreal, as if it were being projected on smoke floating in the air. My head felt heavy, and I was about to lose consciousness, when the blonde-haired woman did a big windup and threw something.

The shining, sparkling, angular rock-like thing traced a parabola as it flew towards the white shadow.

The next instant, the white shadow twisted in place—then it vanished.

“Huh?” I said despite myself.

“What?! I... did it?”

From the way the blonde woman spoke, I wasn’t the only one who was shocked here. Letting out a sigh, she looked down at me as I clung to her leg, and cocked her head to the side.

“That just hit it, right?”

I nodded. You could say it hit it, or more like it dispelled the smoke-like stuff that white figure had been projected on entirely.

“Wh... what did you throw?”

“A lump of rock salt. Rumor is, it works on things like that, so I gave it a try. It really had an effect, huh. Color me surprised.”

Was that like spreading salt to exorcise spirits? It seemed too commonplace, so I wasn’t sure that it made sense to me...

“Whoa, oh, oh,” she stumbled, nearly falling over backwards.

If I hadn’t supported her, she’d have ended up on her back in the water. Having regained her balance, she turned back to me and grinned.

“Thanks. You okay? That sure felt gross, huh?”

“Y-Yeah.” The sickening feeling, the dizziness, and the numbness still lingering in my limbs rapidly dissipated. That feeling like I could almost remember something was gone, too.

“Can you stand?”

“Oh, yeah.”

When I realized I was still clinging to her leg, I hurriedly moved away from her. I was a little unsteady on my feet when I stood, but it looked like I’d be fine. My soaked clothes were clinging to my skin and it felt gross.

“Um, thanks for saving me.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, waving it off generously, and then introduced herself. “I’m Toriko Nishina. You?”

“Uh, erm. My name is Sorawo Kamikoshi.”

“So, listen, Sorawo. The place you came to this side from, is it close?”

Woah. She was suddenly addressing me with no honorific. Though I was put off by how forward she was being, I nodded.

“Yeah. Real close.”

“Nice. Can you take me there? I was a bit lost, you know?”

“Sure... T-Toriko.”

When I addressed her with the same lack of honorific, her face broke into a beaming smile.

“Hold on a moment. I’m going to go pick that thing up.”

With that said, “Toriko” went rooting through the grass near where the rock salt fell.

2

When I opened the door and passed through it, the air around me changed in an instant.

“Wah, it’s dark,” Toriko mumbled behind me.

The scene spread out before us was of an abandoned building in the evening. The roof and wallpaper inside were falling apart, and the gas stove and sink were blackened with dirt. Spread out on top of the dust-covered table were electric bills, water bills, and other bills, all browned to the point of illegibility.

When I turned around, the door behind us was already closed. It was the entrance/exit to the small living space behind a closed-out shop facing onto the shopping arcade. Normally, the door would have led into a narrow alley.

This was the passage to the Otherside I’d found.

Toriko looked around the room. “Where is this place?”

“Oomiya. East of the station—”

“Wha, in Saitama?! I didn’t think I’d walked that far.”

“Where did you enter from, Toriko?”

“Jinbouchou—in Tokyo. There must be something weird going on with space in there.”

I could hear noise from the shopping arcade outside: passing footsteps and the irritated ringing of bicycle bells. Each time the door to the pachinko parlor a few buildings down opened, I could hear the rattling of balls. Right—this was what was missing on the Otherside. The voices, the sound of cars, the slight hum of electrical apparatus, there was none of it over there. Only the sound of wind making the trees sway, or the occasional cry of a bird or insect; no sound indicating human activity.

That mind-numbing silence was something I had truly taken a liking to.

It was a quiet, peaceful world, one I had felt like I’d made all my own... but...

Suddenly, there was the sound of something scraping the ground, and I cringed despite myself. It was the sound of Toriko pulling back one of the chairs beside the table. Plopping herself down on the dusty seat, she let out a breath. After some hesitation, I likewise pulled back a chair and carefully took a seat, too. Across from me was Toriko’s face in profile. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but she had her elbow on the table, and she was gazing at the gas stove.

“How many times have you been?”

When I spoke, Toriko blinked as if waking from a dream, then turned to face me.

“About ten times, I guess?”

Seriously? This was only my third time.

“That often... So that’s why you were so knowledgeable,” I said.

“Nah, I’m not particularly knowledgeable.”

“I mean, you took out the Kunekune. I didn’t know it was possible to do something like that.”

“The Kunekune? That disgusting thing had a name like that?”

“I dunno if that’s its name, but... There’s rumors like that, I guess.”

“Looks like you’re the knowledgeable one here, now aren’t you, Sorawo?”

“I just had some background knowledge. I never thought anything like that actually existed.” When I said that, it finally sunk in just how abnormal of an experience I’d just gone through.

The reason I had known about it was I was majoring in cultural anthropology at university; I was interested in modern day true ghost stories as a research topic. Kunekune was a ghost story that had started to be told—primarily on the internet—around 2003 or so. The narrator encounters a white shadow that wriggles unnaturally, and looking at it messes with their head—That was more or less how the story went. I felt like the entity I had just encountered closely resembled that ghost story.

But it wasn’t as though I had thought the Kunekune existed. Cultural anthropology viewed monsters and curses as a theme for study, but it didn’t believe in their existence, only saw them as an aspect of human culture.

“Well, look at this, then. Do you know what it is?”

Toriko fished through her pockets, pulling out something squarish. What she laid down on the table was a silver hexahedron with a length of about five centimeters on each side. Each face was smooth like a mirror and reflected the room around us. The stripped wallpaper, the fallen ceiling, and the scattered garbage were all reflected clearly. However, the only thing not reflected in it were the two of us.

“Huhhhh...?”

Even when I tried looking at a different angle, or bringing my hand up close to it, nothing changed.

“...What is this?”

“It was on the ground where that thing from before vanished,” Toriko said, picking up the hexahedron and scrutinizing it. “How much do you think I could sell it for?”

“No, wait. What even is that thing?”

“I don’t know. I wonder. I never found the rock salt I threw, so maybe it turned into this.”

This was absurd. A mirror that didn’t reflect humans? Was that even possible?

Was it really okay bringing it back here...?

Though I felt uneasy, I couldn’t take my eyes off the object in Toriko’s hand. I thought I’d understood that the Otherside was an abnormal place, but the little hexahedron in front of me was an undeniable piece of physical evidence that shook my sense of what was real all over again.

It was about a month ago that I first found the Otherside.

Chasing the site of a real ghost story, I was investigating places people would have called haunted. I’d enjoyed playing at ruin exploration since my high school days, calling it fieldwork as I dove into all sorts of suspicious locations. Now, if we’re being literal about it, I was illegally trespassing, but... Anyway, while I was doing that, I found something inside this abandoned building. A door that led to an impossible meadow.

First, I propped the door open so it couldn’t shut, then I took two, then three steps in, and rushed back out. With just that, I returned home in a daze, unable to believe what I’d seen.

When I recovered and made a second go at it, I tried a bit harder, and I went five meters inside. My foot caught in the mud, I tripped, got covered in gunk, and then beat a hasty retreat.

The third time, today, I came dressed in proper outdoor clothes before going to the Otherside. Making use of my experience in ruin exploration, I wore warm clothes and shoes that were easy to move in. I was carrying too little equipment to be engaged in sports, and was dressed too lightly to be going mountain climbing, so I stood out pretty bad on the train. If I were seen walking around at night, I might have been mistaken for a burglar. Regardless, that was how I mustered the courage to make a serious exploration of the Otherside.

To which I encountered the Kunekune, and I nearly died.

“Hey.”

While I was deep in thought, Toriko suddenly leaned over the table and peered closely at me.

“...What?”

“Why did you know about that place, Sorawo?”

“The Otherside, you mean?”

“Is that what you call it? Who calls it that?”

“I-I just came up with it on my own.”

Yeah. The Otherside was just a name I’d made up for it. In comparison to the surface world I had known all along, it was in the shadows, on the other side. That was about all it meant.

...Though, really, I was the one who wanted to ask how she had known about the Otherside.

I looked at Toriko again. Just who exactly was she?

“Toriko, you—”

“Sorawo, did you see anyone else over there?”

When she asked that, speaking over me, it killed my initiative.

“I didn’t. You’re the first person I’ve met on the Otherside.”

“Oh, yeah?” Toriko lowered her eyes, leaning back in her chair.

“Are you looking for someone?”

“Yeah, kinda.”

“Right, you mentioned a name earlier. Satsuki-san... was it?”

When I spoke that name, at that very moment—

Bam! The sudden, loud noise made both of us jump.

It had come from the back door to the abandoned building—the door to the Otherside which we had just come through. It seemed someone, on the other side, had struck the door.

The noise came just once, and that was it. Total silence followed. Maybe she’d decided to see what was up, because Toriko quietly got up from her seat, but I was the one closest to the door. I blocked Toriko with one arm, standing up.

What are you going to do? Not voicing the words, I simply mouthed the question at Toriko, stepping silently towards the door as I did.

I brought my face close to the peephole.

I recalled there were ghost stories where, in a situation like this, someone would be peering through on the other side. Half-expecting to encounter someone’s bloodshot eye, I hesitantly peeked through the hole.

...?

Blue.

The other side of the peephole was pure blue.

A world of blue that was neither the blue of the sea nor the blue of the sky.

What was this?

“Hey, Sorawo...! How’s it look...?” Toriko asked in a hushed tone, and I turned back to answer her.

“I dunno. I can’t see a thing. It’s just blue—”

The moment I said that, Toriko’s eyes went wide.

“Get back!”

Even as she said that, she was undoing the zipper on her jacket, shoving her hand inside, and...

Out came the black luster of a handgun.

Ho...

Hold on—this was getting out of hand.

“Oh, it’s fine.” Seeing my expression, Toriko raised a hand as if trying to calm me. “It’s just a Makarov. I picked it up.”

Where?

“I’ve got a spare. I’ll give it to you next time, Sorawo. For now, though, it’s dangerous there.”

I don’t need it and, you’re the one who’s dangerous here... I was about to say, but I wasn’t reckless enough to argue with a woman carrying a gun. I quietly backed down.

Toriko held the gun in both hands as she approached the door. I didn’t know enough to tell if she was skillful or not, but the way she moved looked kind of pretty to me.

Pressing herself to the door, she peered through the hole. She stayed like that for a while, not moving.

“To-Toriko... san?” Trying not to agitate her, I called out in a quiet voice, and Toriko responded in a flat tone.

“It was blue on the other side, right?”

“Y-Yeah.”

“Okay, then.”

Letting out a sigh, Toriko lowered the gun, slowly turning the doorknob.

“Wait, what?!”

Before I could stop her, Toriko opened the door wide.

The dusty air flowed in.

Was it a field of blue? No.

Was it the unexplored fields of the Otherside? No, again.

There was nothing there but a simple back alley.

“Huh?!” I rushed over, leaning out the door.

The endless expanse of the Otherside—it was gone.

A narrow, dirty alley between buildings. A case of beer with empty bottles in it, a garbage pail, an abandoned bicycle covered in rust. Easygoing Hawaiian music drifting in from the arcade.

It was hopelessly banal, a scene that was unequivocally of the surface world.

“Whaa?”

I stood there in a daze.

It was gone.

My Otherside.

“Looks like we can’t use this entrance anymore... Wait, huh, whoa, wh-what’s wrong?” Looking at my face, Toriko asked in a confused voice. “Hey, hold on, Sorawo.”

Toriko tried to talk to me, but I just kept shaking my head.

I was about ready to cry.

It had been a completely undeveloped playground, my own secret place, and now I felt like it had been snatched away before my very eyes.

“Don’t make that face. I’ll take you to the place I went in through, okay?” Toriko said, sounding troubled. Then she walked over and reached out to stroke my head.

A pat on the head? What was she, some sleazy playboy? I was ready to clobber her.

Even as I was miffed at her internally, I opened my mouth to speak.

“That’s fine, but...” There was a whine in my voice. I cleared my throat and tried again. “It’s fine. I’m all right.”

When I pulled my head away, Toriko meekly lowered her hand.

In silence, the two of us looked at the threshold of the back entrance. There were no clues there that might allow us to speculate as to what had been there just now.

“If it’s blue, is that dangerous? It made you pull a gun...”

“I’ve heard about it. In that world, there’s all sorts of dangerous stuff, but they say the most dangerous is when it turns blue,” Toriko responded, the gun hanging at her side at about thigh level.

“Why? Does something attack you?”

“I wouldn’t know. I don’t have any experience with it, either. But...” Toriko suddenly let out an exhausted sigh. “I’m going to call it a day. I’d like to meet again. Give me your contact info?” she said as she stowed the gun in her jacket and raised the zipper.

Was it wise to tell her? This mystery woman with a gun?

“...You tell me, Toriko.”

“I don’t know my own number.”

“Can’t you just check your phone?”

“Didn’t bring it. I wouldn’t want to drop it on the other side.”

“...Ah!”

I panicked, pulling my own waterlogged phone out of my pants pocket.

Shoot. I’d forgotten.

When I fell into that tasteless water, of course my phone was submerged, too.

With a silent prayer, I pressed a button. There was a momentary flicker on the screen, then it powered on.

Thank goodness, I thought. But that relief didn’t last.

“...What is this?”

Looking at the screen, I let out a groan.

The familiar icons and apps were nowhere to be seen. My phone, which had been dipped in the waters of the Otherside, had been reduced to a worthless machine that showed strange designs and a mysterious text that looked like Japanese, but was completely indecipherable.

3

I encountered Toriko Nishina again a week later in the university’s cafeteria.

In between third and fourth period, I had just gotten out of the lecture for African History I, and was eating lunch. Out of nowhere, someone pulled out the chair across from me and sat down. Wow, how rude... I thought as I looked up. There was a face I’d never forget, even if I tried... That blonde woman who was in illegal possession of a firearm, waving at me.

“Heya.”

I continued chewing on my chicken with grated daikon sauce, staring at Toriko, unable to say a word.

Today, unlike last time, she was in normal clothes—the kind you might wear around town. A white blouse with a long, blue pleated skirt. The only thing she was carrying on her was a leather tote bag. It was a simple outfit, but her looks were good to begin with, so she looked exceptionally good in it. As for me, on the other hand, I was just wearing the usual sort of thing you might wear when heading straight to class from a nearby apartment, then going straight home when you finished. It was a cotton shirt and... erm, whatever jeans were closest on hand at the time. I was carrying a cloth bag I’d been fond of since high school. There was a pretty big gap in our “usual” appearances...

Toriko stared straight at me with her sparkling eyes. “Don’t you have any friends to eat with?”

“Would you leave me alone?!” When I got angry and responded despite myself, Toriko raised an eyebrow and got this happy look on her face.

Aw, crap. I didn’t mean to respond.

I hated people who were good at teasing others like this. People who thought it was okay to make fun of people for having no friends, or being unsociable, or being gloomy. Seriously, I wish people like that would leave me alone. There were people like that in high school, but when I ran into them right away in university, too, it was exhausting. I’d done my best to keep my distance from that nonsense, and it led to me being in May of my second year without being able to make a single friend.

I looked at her blonde hair, feeling exasperated. It was pretty, for a dye job. That pissed me off.

What was she doing here? How did she know where I’d be? Sure, I’d reluctantly told her what university I attended, but was she able to track me down with just that? I hadn’t given her my number, my e-mail, my address, nothing. Scary.

“Let me ask you one more time,” the mystery woman, Toriko, said.

I immediately knew she was talking about the Otherside. It was the only thing the two of us had in common, after all.

“Why don’t you go by yourself?” I asked.

“Let’s go together. Can’t we?”

“It’s not a matter of can or can’t... What would we go there to do?”

“That thing we brought back last time, that weird mirror lump... There’s this person who wants it, you see.”

“Oh, that...”

It was a mysterious thing, so fair enough. Maybe someone out there would want it.

“They can want it all they like, there’s nothing we can do about it. You only picked it up by coincidence.”

“It wasn’t coincidence. I know a way to get more.”

“A way? Wait, you can’t mean...”

As I was feeling a bad premonition, Toriko leaned in closer.

“The Kunekune, was it? Let’s hunt that thing.”

“Huh?!” I couldn’t help but raise my voice.

Hunt it? That freaky thing that drove a person mad just looking at it?

Was this woman an idiot?

“The money’s good, Boss.”

“Bo—”

I half stood up, then realized we were starting to draw attention. I sat back down, and spoke to her in a quiet voice. “...Are you for real?”

“You bet. I went out and bought a bunch of seeds. Look.” Toriko rolled a lump of rock salt across the table. “See? Let’s find happiness together.”

“You’re serious...” I whispered, dumbstruck, and by the time I came back to my senses I was shaking my head hard. “No, no, no. No way, no how. I don’t want to go anywhere near that thing ever again. I nearly died, you know.”

Besides, would that rock salt even work? Okay, sure, it did vanish when she threw rock salt at it last time, but still.

Toriko lowered her eyes pathetically, bringing a hand to her chest.

“I could die out there on my own. That’s why I want you to come with me, Sorawo.”

“Why me?”

“Because you seem trustworthy.”

“How?! We’ve only met once! How can you know—”

“Today makes two times.”

When my brow furrowed, Toriko smiled. “You manage to fix your phone?”

“Huh?”

“It was broken before, right?”

“Not yet, no. I don’t have the money.” I didn’t have anyone to call me, either, so I’d spent the whole week trying not to think about it, and it was still the same as before.

“How much do you think one of those mirror stones is worth?” Toriko asked, leaning in as if to tell me a secret, so I reluctantly lent her an ear.

“...How much?”

The price she named left me flabbergasted. I could buy myself all the smartphones I wanted and still have change left over.

As I stared back at her vacantly, Toriko grinned. “We’ll split it even. 50-50.”

“Seriously...?”

Yeah, she was serious.

We headed out of the university together, getting on the Saikyo Line at Minami-Yono.

Along the way, I got depressed trying to come up with ways to talk to someone I didn’t really know, but, surprisingly, Toriko didn’t try to start a conversation. We stood next to the train door, looking out the window in silence. It seemed she was in a good mood, because she was kind of smiling. It didn’t feel particularly awkward; I’d been expecting her to be annoying and keep trying to talk with me, so I felt a little let down.

It was easier this way, yes, but this only made me more curious about her. There was a lot I wanted to ask her, but how could I bring it up...? It had been a seriously long time since I’d been interested in another person, so my conversation skills had gone to pieces. After riding on the shaky train, a lot of ‘uh’s and ‘um’s said only inside my head, we changed to the Marunouchi Line at Ikebukuro and alighted at Ochanomizu with me, ultimately, never having said a word.

The place Toriko led me to was a building in Jinbouchou.

It was a tall, thin building with a bunch of shops in the back of Book Town. Ten floors in total.

“Here...?” I looked up at the building dubiously. “Is this really okay?”

“I’m telling you, it’s fine. Let’s go.”

Watching Toriko’s back as she headed into the building after that brief answer, I grew hesitant.

I wasn’t good with her type. It felt like I’d been targeted by a delinquent.

The reason I begrudgingly followed her, even as I thought that, was that I didn’t want to lose my connection to the Otherside.

Ever since I discovered its existence, the Otherside had been everything to me. I mean, wouldn’t that be true for anyone? If you found a secret world, all your own, where you could be free from all the bother, the entanglements, the nuisances of life, who wouldn’t want to go there?

Or maybe I was wrong about that.

Either way, it wasn’t that I couldn’t have resisted Toriko. Not at all.

Oh, fine. Whatever happens, happens.

I finally steeled myself, stepping into the building. We passed through a grimy entrance and got in the elevator. When the door closed, Toriko pressed the button for the fourth floor. We didn’t get off when the elevator reached the fourth floor, and she pushed the button for the second. Next it was the sixth. Like she was inputting a secret code, she pressed the buttons for floors in a ridiculous order.

This was the kind of thing you’d get upset at a child doing while they were fooling around, but Toriko’s face was dead serious.

“...What are you doing?”

“If you press the elevator’s buttons in a certain order, you can go to another world,” Toriko answered without her hands stopping. “Knowing you, you’ve heard that story before, right, Sorawo?”

“...I have.” I nodded. Yeah, I’d definitely read an urban legend like that online. That sounds kind of childish, was my first impression, so it didn’t really draw my attention. However, the trend in online stories about how to reach another world had stuck with me.

Who could have known I’d be taking part in one of them?

Third floor, second floor, tenth floor... The elevator busily moved up and down. Each time it stopped at the designated floor, Toriko immediately pressed the Door-Close button.

The fifth floor. When the door opened, a woman rushed towards us from the opposite end of the hall. Her hair was long and black, and her face wasn’t visible. That was because, before I could get a closer look, Toriko pressed the Door-Close button.

“Um, the person just now was trying to get on, you know?” I said, faulting her despite myself, but Toriko just shrugged it off.

“She always tries to get on on the fifth floor.”

“...Always?”

“On the fifth floor, a woman is guaranteed to attempt to get on, but you absolutely must not let her.”

What? That’s scary.

First floor, third floor, eighth floor.

The corridors of the building that I saw through the gap in the opening and closing door changed like a slideshow.

Second floor, seventh floor, tenth floor.

Under the flickering fluorescent lights, a door with ground glass windows opened, and a pair of women’s shoes came out into the hall. A man in a suit who was walking backward came to a stop and started to turn. The elevator door closed just before he could, and the scene in that hall was cut off.

I gradually came to realize how bizarre things were. We were traveling back and forth between a limited number of floors, and yet I never saw the same thing twice. Each time the door opened, an unfamiliar hall stretched out before my eyes.

“...Hey.”

“You figure it out?” Toriko cast me a sidelong gaze and smiled. Who did she think she was, looking at me like she understood everything? When I glared back at her, Toriko blinked as if she was confused.

I felt like the pace with which the door opened and closed picked up a little. Looking at the control panel and the floor number display, I was shocked. I couldn’t read the numbers. They should have been written in familiar Arabic numerals, and yet at some point those had been swapped out for some writing system I didn’t know.

The elevator finally came to a stop after some time had passed.

When the door opened, it was pitch dark. I couldn’t see a thing.

The light flooding out of the elevator looked like a smushed quadrilateral shape cut out of the ground.

“To... Toriko, you sure this is okay?”

Toriko had her head cocked to the side. “Huh? Did I mess it up?”

“Huh?”

“It was never this dark before.”

“Whoa, whoa...”

“Weird. Wonder if it’s night on that side.”

Though I was exasperated by her less than reassuring response, I leaned out of the door.

My head shot back with incredible speed. I tottered backwards, trying to retreat, and my back struck the elevator wall.

“Close it!”

The moment I shouted that, Toriko punched the Door-Close button with her fist.

In the instant before the door shut, I heard the chilling skitter, skitter, skitter of legs, and I thought I saw claws.

Muscular fingers ending in thick, split claws with a ridge in them. It left only a momentary impression, and then the door shut out the darkness.

The silent elevator shuddered, then surged into motion again. Rising.

“What... What was that?” I finally managed to ask, tripping over my tongue a bit. “Did you see that just now, Toriko, it—”

When I turned my head to look at her, Toriko had drawn her gun and had it pointed at the door.

“Wha?!”

“Wah! Don’t startle me.”

“That’s my line! Could you not pull a gun like it’s perfectly normal?!”

“It’s not like I have it on me all the time. It’s just, I was planning to meet with you today.”

“Why would you need it to meet me?!”

“It’s okay, it’s okay. Calm down. It’s okay.” That last part was in English for some reason.

“Not okay! I mean, where did you pull that from?! Do you keep it naked inside your tote bag?!”

“Sorawo, the way you talk is funny.”

“Huh?! How?!”

“You’re in a hurry to make a witty retort... I dunno, you sound like one of those people making a fuss on Twitter.”

“...?!?!?!”

While I was left unable to speak as I was struck by a whirling mix of confusion, shame, and anger, the elevator came to a stop once more.

As we watched, the door parted to the left and right. Toriko gave a satisfied nod.

“Good. We made it this time.”

Outside the door was the roof. On the other side of a floor made of broken concrete tiles, there was a waist-height iron fence, and above it a cloudy sky.

“Let’s go.” Toriko stepped out.

“Hey, is this really okay?”

“It’s okay, maybe.”

“Ahhh, I don’t think so.”

I was super intimidated, but being left behind by Toriko was an even more frightening proposition. Steeling myself, I headed out.

Moving away from the elevator, we approached the edge of the building. The clammy wind made my hair sway.

The iron fence around the roof was rusted, and I wasn’t about to try leaning on it. Touching it slightly, just to confirm it wasn’t going to suddenly give way, I peered over the edge.

Beneath the haloed sun that cast a somewhat blurred light, a field of dull yellow grass spread out as far as the eye could see.

The vast plain was uneven, appearing to rise and fall like there were waves. Here and there, there were seemingly artificial structures. Buildings covered in ivy, massive stones scattered about haphazardly. What looked like the wire-frame of a tower for carrying electrical lines poked its head out from the other side of the dark woods. Were those train tracks cutting across the marsh? Even further away, there was a range of low mountains.

“What do you think?” Toriko said, sounding proud for some reason.

“...Well, it looks like we’re not in Jinbouchou anymore, at least.” I turned around, surveying the roof. There were no stairs. Only the elevator door.

“How do we get down?”

“Over here.”

When I followed Toriko, there was a ladder at a break in the fence.

“Huh...? We’re going down this?”

“Are you afraid of heights, by any chance?”

“Well, no, but...”

I was fine with looking over the edge of the roof, but if I had to climb down the side of the building using a rusty ladder, that was another matter.

“It’ll be fine. I mean, I’ve never fallen,” Toriko said rather irresponsibly. I glared at her.

“I’m gradually starting to see how you operate, Toriko.”

“What do you mean, how I operate?”

“You think you can just worry about trouble after it happens, don’t you?”

“It may not seem like it, but I’m thinking about all sorts of things.”

“Oh, you are...?”

While I was hesitating to say more, Toriko stepped onto the ladder.

“I’ll go on ahead. If I’m down below, you won’t have to worry so much about falling.”

“Because you’ll catch me?”

“Hmm, you’re more optimistic than I expected. I only meant I could at least cushion your fall.”

“...No thanks. If I come falling down, get out of the way.”

The creaking ladder was scary, but I somehow managed to get down to the ground without falling and turning Toriko into a pancake, or having her dodge out of the way and getting turned into one myself.

While clenching and unclenching my tense, tired fingers, I looked around the area.

There was black dirt exposed in the area around the building, a narrow footpath stretching out into the tall grass.

I’d noticed this while descending the ladder, but this building was both similar and dissimilar to the one we’d initially entered.

For a start, it had no walls. Just pillars, and the floors and ceilings of each level. It was a hollowed-out ruin, with only the skeletal frame remaining. There weren’t any stairs, or even a shaft for the elevator.

Okay, so where did we come from, then? There was no floor on the first floor, just the bare earth.

Toriko walked over towards a drum that had been left by one of the pillars. When I followed her and peeked inside, the inside of the drum was scorched black. There were a bunch of concrete blocks piled up haphazardly nearby, perhaps having been used in place of chairs.

“Did you light a fire here?”

“Before, yeah.”

There was a rusty brown shovel leaning against the opposite side of the pillar. Toriko took the shovel in hand, thrusting it into the ground in the corner of the mountain of concrete blocks.

She dug in two, three times, quickly finding whatever it was she was after. Crouching down, she pulled something wrapped in a white vinyl bag out of the ground.

“Here.”

“Huh, what’s this?” Presented with some unknown object, I hesitated. Toriko wasn’t pulling back the package, though, so I reluctantly took it, unwrapping the bag.

“...” I stared down at the thing I had unwittingly accepted.

“It’s a gun.”

“Th-That’s obvious, just looking at it.”

A Makarov. Was that what she’d called it? It was the same kind as Toriko was carrying. The bag also contained a cardboard box filled with bullets.

“...Why are you giving this to me?”

“I promised last time, didn’t I? I think you’ll need a weapon.”

It’s scary, I don’t know how to use it, I can’t shoot, I don’t need it... There were a whole bunch of counterarguments that popped into my head. And yet, not one of them left my lips.

That was because the thing I’d seen in the elevator was seared into my memory. Some clawed thing, skittering towards me from deep inside that dark floor. I didn’t know what it really was, but if that thing came at us again...

“...I’ll take it.”

“Mm-hm.” Toriko nodded, then filled in the hole quickly.

From there, she taught me how to load bullets, and how to disengage the safety. Based on what she was telling me, it wasn’t all that difficult, though I had no confidence I’d hit anything if I fired.

“Do you want to test it?”

“No, that’s fine. It’s scary.”

“If you suddenly try to shoot when you’re in a situation where you need to, you’re going to fail.”

“I said it’s fine.”

I reengaged the safety, and after some hesitation, I stuffed it in my bag.

“Sorry, I wish I had a holster or something for you, but this gun’s just a thing I picked up.”

“Where?”

“This side. They’re just lying around occasionally. Maybe the military came through here. I’ve never seen them, though.”

I’d considered the possibility that other people had come into this world, but the military?

If so, wasn’t it possible we’d suddenly get shot?

While I was feeling less and less sure about all this, Toriko reshouldered her tote bag. “Okay, let’s go,” she said cheerily.

“Y-Yeah.”

We walked away from the building and into the grass. Our destination: the place I’d met Toriko.

Our goal: Kunekune hunting.

4

“Maybe we should’ve gotten changed before coming after all,” Toriko said as we were heading down the footpath. I was in agreement with her on that; we were not dressed for walking around outdoors today. My outfit wasn’t so bad, but Toriko was wearing a frilly skirt that left her legs exposed.

“Why did you come in that outfit to begin with?”

“I mean, I figured we had to come here before the sun set.”

“Why?”

“It’d be scary if the sun set here, right?”

When she said that, it occurred to me—I hadn’t spent a night in the Otherside yet.

“When night comes, what happens?”

“Dunno.”

Her saying that so easily took the wind out of my sails.

“You’ve been here ten times now, haven’t you? Was it in the middle of the day every time?”

“Because I was told not to come at night.”

“By who?”

“A friend.”

“What happened to them?”

“They’re gone now.”

Toriko answered my questions in few words, without turning around. Had they come together? Why was that person gone now?

Was it Satsuki-san?

It made me wonder, but I was hesitant to ask again. I could see a stiffness in Toriko’s back as she walked in front of me, and I got the feeling she didn’t want to talk about it.

We trudged down the path in silence. A footpath—without someone coming and going, this sort of path wouldn’t have come to exist in the first place. If people stopped walking this way, it would be covered by grass in no time. That was assuming my common sense applied here in the Otherside, though.

The sky was blue, Toriko had no shadow, and the wind blowing through the grass was chilly.

I was alone with a person I didn’t know, setting foot into the unknown.

A woman in fluttering clothes, walking through a field of dry grass. I had a feeling I’d seen an image like that in a commercial before.

...What was I even doing? Where was this?

Watching Toriko walk on without turning back, I started to feel a little bit lonely. “Hey. We had only met once, so what was it that made you think you could trust me?”

Toriko responded without looking back. “Hmm. Well, you didn’t report me to the police, for one.”

“Huh?”

“About the gun. I was sure the cops were going to turn up. Why didn’t you report me?”

Don’t ask me why.

“I didn’t want to get involved.”

When I answered honestly, Toriko skillfully turned around while still walking and pointed a finger in my direction.

“That. That’s what I thought I could trust about you.”

“How so? I may not be the one who should be telling you this, but I don’t think that’s a quality you should be looking for in a friend.”

“But it’s perfect for an accomplice, you know?”

“...”

I remembered something that I had read somewhere. The words of a criminal who’d been to prison. When an amateur criminal was stuck in the same room as a professional criminal, the professional would ask them all sorts of questions, and then when they were released, they’d use the info to shake them down.

Was I being taken for an easy mark because I hadn’t gone to the police?

“Did you know? They say that being accomplices is the closest kind of relationship in the world,” Toriko said, still pointing at me, a smug look on her face.

“I don’t know. Oh, and don’t point at me.”

“Oh! Sorry.” Toriko quickly withdrew her finger. “Was I bothering you?”

When she sounded so uneasy asking that, I was at a loss for how to reply. Something like, Don’t say that now.

“Well, it’s fine, but...”

“Thanks.” Toriko nodded in apparent relief, then spun back to face forward again.

What was that response for just now? I hadn’t agreed to being her accomplice.

While I was struggling to find a response, Toriko moved right on to the next topic. “Oh, right. Now that I think of it, what kind of places was that Kunekune monster supposed to appear in?”

“Whaaa, you’re asking that now? We’re heading for the spot where you met me now, aren’t we?”

“Well, you know, I was just thinking that you’d probably know what sort of places it lives in, Sorawo.”

“I don’t know if it lives in them, but, hmm...”

I recalled the details of the internet horror story that I reread after returning from the Otherside last time. There were a number of famous encounters with the Kunekune, but the thing they all had in common was...

“...The countryside, maybe? I say that because a lot of the stories involve someone who’s visiting the countryside from the city encountering it.”

“There’s a lot of countryside. Could you be more specific?”

“Sandy beaches, or rice paddies.”

“Hmm. What even is that thing anyway?”

“I don’t know. Wait, shouldn’t that have been the first thing you wondered about?”

“You’re a specialist, aren’t you, Sorawo?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Can you budge on that a bit?”

Don’t be unreasonable. It wasn’t like I was particularly knowledgeable about it, either.

“Hmm... Before I learned about the Otherside, I had thought the Kunekune was a variant on a snake horror story. The name is kind of snaky, and it appears in the rice paddy, which is spot on. In Japan, snakes are a sort of harvest god, right? In some of the stories of the Kunekune, it was connected with scarecrows, which was super suspicious. You see, the kaka in kakashi, or scarecrow, means snake in Japanese. It comes from the kaga in yamakagashi, which is a type of snake. Though, now that we’ve actually met it, the Kunekune wasn’t snaky at all, huh. Come to think of it, there was another famous internet horror story set in the countryside: Hasshaku-sama. It’s about being attacked by a 240 centimeter tall woman wearing a white dress. Just from the name, which means eight feet, you can already see it’s pretty long, huh. It shares being white with the Kunekune, too, so I’m thinking that maybe it’s also a snake god. Maybe the same person created both...”

I rambled on about whatever came into my head for a while, then snapped back to my senses.

What was I doing? I was clearly talking too much. While I was thinking I’d probably weirded her out, Toriko suddenly came to a stop.

“...Sorawo.”

“S-Sorry.”

When she spoke in a low voice, I reflexively apologized.

“No, not ‘sorry,’ look...”

Toriko pointed up ahead of us.

“Uwah!”

When I looked where she was pointing, I let out an unintended cry of surprise.

About five meters ahead, I could see a human-like figure lying across the path. It was blocked by the grass, so it hadn’t caught our attention until we got close.

Even though we were close to it, it didn’t stir.

Cautiously, I gauged the situation. It looked like it was a man in a white dress shirt. Dead, perhaps? The arms were thrust into the air, bent, and reaching for his face. His skin was blanched. In contrast to his arms, his legs were thrown haphazardly outside the path. His face was hidden by the grass so I couldn’t see it.

“...He’s not going to attack us if we get close, right?”

I was joking a little to try and dispel the tension, but I immediately regretted it, as I imagined a vivid mental image of the desiccated corpse sitting up.

Toriko slowly walked forward.

“Wh-What are you going to do?”

“Investigate, what else?”

Cautiously, she approached the corpse. It didn’t spring into motion. Though I wondered just what kind of grotesque sight awaited, I peeked into the grass to see his face.

“...What is this?” I said in monotone.

I couldn’t make out the man’s face at all. On top of the fact he was covering his face with both hands, there were these twisted, see-through protuberances that seemed to have grown out through the gaps between his fingers with an incredible vigor. The things were a translucent white, long, and had rounded tips. In some places they also branched out, reaching further. They looked both like delicate glasswork and like fungal filaments. They shook each time the wind blew through the grass, and they sparkled.

“Never seen this before,” Toriko mumbled to herself in bewilderment.

They were so mysterious that I found myself staring intently at them despite how gross it all was. Though the translucent protuberances were like mushrooms growing out of the corpse, it seemed they hadn’t grown from the surface of the face, but had erupted through the skin from inside the head. The teeth peering through his blanched lips were translucent, and meshed together like some sort of complicated puzzle. If the bones of his skull were disfigured and then they grew at random, would it end up with a result like this?

That was when I came to a frightening realization and shuddered. The man’s hands weren’t only covering his face. They were poking deep into his eye sockets.

“Hm? What’s this stench?” Toriko twitched her nose. Then, a little later, I detected it. There was an intense smell of raw fish, wafting in from somewhere...

We both came to a total stop and looked at one another, gulping.

The wind had stopped. It was so silent you could hear the buzz of tinnitus in your ears.

When I timidly raised my face, there was a white wavering thing that was rising up in front of us. It was like a madly twisting humanoid figure on the other side of the heat haze produced by the road in summer.

The Kunekune... had come.

5

“Urgh...”

Immediately struck with dizziness, I looked down.

Stealing glimpses of it out of the corners of my eyes, I tried to grasp the Kunekune’s shape. The lanky humanoid silhouette really did resemble a snake, like I’d thought. There were a number of rounded growths, connected by thin, string-like sections, but if I tried to focus my eyes on it, I instantly was hit with nausea.

“Th-This really is tough, huh,” Toriko said, her voice filled with revulsion. I warned her, didn’t I...?

“A-Are you okay? Should we run away after all?”

“No, no, we came here for this, so we’ve got to do it.” Digging through her tote bag, Toriko produced a lump of rock salt.

“Yoh!” With a silly shout, Toriko threw it. Her aim was precise, impressively so, and the rock salt was sucked into her target. And then...

Nothing happened.

Only the sound of the rock salt rolling across the ground. I hadn’t seen whether it bounced off or passed through.

“Toriko-san.”

“...”

“Toriko-san?”

“...Huh?”

“No, not, ‘Huh?’! It didn’t work!”

“Aww, geez. Well, if that’s how it’s gonna be...” Toriko pulled the gun from her tote bag, snapping into position.

Whuh? Whuh? While I was panicking, there was a loud gunshot.

“Eek!”

I ducked my head and Toriko kept firing. The sound of gunshots was sucked into the sky. Then, some seconds later, they came back as echoes. She didn’t hesitate to open fire. What was with her?

After a number of shots, Toriko stopped firing and cocked her head to the side.

“Huh?”

“Hold on?!”

There was no change in the Kunekune. I couldn’t even be sure she’d hit it. Toriko’s shooting form was solid, so I couldn’t imagine her missing completely, but the inscrutable smoke-like form of the thing was still doing its kunekune dance, the same as ever.

“Naw, I think its movements have gotten a little slower?”

“That’s a lie! Nothing’s changed! This isn’t working at all, is it?”

“M-Maybe if we shoot it a bit more—”

Before Toriko could finish, I was hit by an even more powerful dizziness.

“Urgh...”

I couldn’t stay standing and fell to my knees on the spot. Toriko did the same. The hand she held her gun in was pressed to the ground, and she was shutting her eyes tight with pain.

If I so much as took a glance at the Kunekune, that bizarre sensation would strike. Like I’d almost figured something out, but understanding it would ruin me. I lowered my face, calling out to Toriko.

“Can you move?”

“...No. My legs gave out. You?”

“It’s not looking like it.”

“Well, shoot. Sorry. What do you think happens now?”

“I dunno, but no matter what it is, it’s not going to be good for us.”

While we were crouched down on the ground, talking, I could sense the Kunekune getting closer.

Oh, crap. Oh, crap, oh, crap. What now?

“To-Toriko, status! We’ve got to verify the current situation!”

I only said that to suppress my own panic, but Toriko was quick to respond.

“Okay. Status, unable to stand. Unable to run. Horribly dizzy. Rock salt and gunfire ineffective. Anything else?”

Her report on the situation was surprisingly calm, and that helped me settle down a little, too. Swallowing my spit, I replied. “Also, looking at that thing messes with your head... I’m not sure I’d call this ‘okay.’”

“What do you think happens when it messes with your head?”

“There’s something... that it’d be really bad to understand, and it makes you feel like you’re about to.”

“What exactly does that mean? You’re going to have to be more concrete here.”

“Could you not be so unreasonable?! It’s something you’re not supposed to understand, so there’s no way I could concretely explain it to—”

That’s when I remembered. During my first encounter with the Kunekune, on the verge of my head getting all messed up, I’d felt like I managed to grasp something.

“...Toriko. This is just a possibility, but maybe if we don’t avert our eyes, and we keep looking, we might have a chance.”

“Do you seriously mean that?”

“We’ve already driven that thing off once. I was even more far gone that time. If we can recreate the same situation, maybe the same thing will happen.”

“Even though our heads will get messed up?”

“It’s necessary. It’s like matching wavelengths. If we’re going to hunt creatures from the Otherside, I think we’re going to need to come to terms with the rules and logic of this place.”

Toriko went quiet for a little while, then spoke with resolve.

“...Got it. I’ll do it with you.”

“No. Don’t look, Toriko. I’ll do the looking.”

“Why not?”

“If we both go crazy, we won’t be able to make it back. If I look like I’m about to go nuts... figure something out.”

This was nothing if not an unreasonable demand, but Toriko nodded without even hesitating.

“Okay. I’ll do something.”

“...Thanks. Please do.”

And so, I raised my face, and I stared straight at the Kunekune.

“Urgh... guh.”

That aberrant shadow had come closer than I’d thought, and I spotted it immediately. It was a shock like being punched hard, right in the brain. At the same time, the sense that I could almost understand was rapidly rising.

“This is bad, I’m gonna puke... Ulp.”

I groaned, I threw up, and then words I’d never intended to speak started to spill fluently out of my mouth.

“Uh, uh, according to, my brother, it was when the green had grown thick. What were all, all, all those people in pure white clothes doing in a place like that? W-W-W-With a totally unnatural bending of his joints, my brother, j-j-j-just-ust-us-ust.”

“So-Sorawo?”

“The sun rises! B-Before noon, a lukewarm wind will blow. No longer in my brother’s voice, the thing that seethed up right behind me. Scratching the tatami mats with bare feet, an incredible ocean of grays—”

I didn’t have the presence of mind left to worry about what bizarre words I was spouting. I couldn’t look away from the Kunekune. It was like it had seized my eyeballs and locked them in place. Just a little more, just a little more, and I’d understand...

It started to shine in front of my eyes. The edges of my field of vision were eaten away at with blue, as if someone had spilled a bottle of ink. The world was distorted as if I was looking through water. Left, then right, it swayed. Though only vaguely, I realized something was changing in my body. And so, I learned that the strange translucent thing growing out of the corpse we’d just found, it was trying to grow out of my face.

I opened my mouth to scream, and the translucent protuberance twisted and grew out of it. My teeth jiggled, I sensed them going soft, and all at once I felt my sanity being carried away...

—Then, at last, I understood.

The Kunekune reflected in my swaying vision moved as if it were sliding along the surface of the foreign body growing out of my face. It was very similar to the plankton-like patterns that appeared in my eyes when I stared up into the blue sky. Basically, it looked like the Kunekune was standing there, but it wasn’t. Like how white blood cells in the eyeball appeared to be floating when they were projected on the blue sky. The Kunekune was, in fact, a completely different thing being projected on something that was between us and the world. This foreign body was connected to whatever that was.

I understood something else, too. The reason that, the first time I’d encountered the Kunekune, Toriko’s rock salt had been able to drive it off. That was because I recognized something the Kunekune was projected on. When I looked at that thing and recognized it, the rock salt hit it. If I didn’t recognize it, there was nothing there!

“I get it! I get it! I get it! I get it!!” I kept on shouting. I couldn’t have stopped if I tried. I just shouted “I get it!” over and over, as if I were screaming it.

Then, suddenly, pain rushed through my cheek as if I’d been slapped. Toriko was in front of me. The hand she was holding the gun with was stretched out towards me, trying to wipe away the foreign body that kept on growing. It infected the fingers that touched it, turning them translucent, and they were beginning to become disfigured, but she didn’t seem to care.

Oh, hey. She’s a better person than I thought.

While I was looking at her face, beautiful even as it was distorted by desperation, thinking about things like they had nothing to do with me, Toriko must have gotten impatient, because she grabbed my head with both hands, and shouted in my face.

“You’re getting too much, Sorawo! Come back!”

With those words, my mind was suddenly clear.

Oh, right—if I went any further, there was no coming back.

With my body moving slowly, as if I was in a dream, I pulled the gun from my bag, and I tried to take a stance... No dice. I couldn’t aim. My hands were limp. I should have practiced like Toriko said to. Inhaling, I shouted:

“Toriko! Shoot! Shoot the Kunekune!”

Toriko looked me in the eye, then gave a big nod. She let go of my face, readying the gun as she turned and faced the Kunekune.

She pulled the trigger.

With the dry echo of a gunshot, a hot bullet rushing forth from the muzzle, it struck something between me and the world, a membrane on which the Kunekune was projected, and shattered it.

The sound, the heat, they seemed to blossom like a flower, and then rapidly shriveled.

That thing folded up like origami, folding and folding... until it turned into a tiny lump, and then fell to the ground. Taking the Kunekune with it.

“Whew.” Letting out a huge sigh, I dropped the gun.

Instantly, I brought my hands to my face. That foreign body that had been growing voluminously out of my mouth and face was no more. With heaving breaths, I slumped to the ground in a daze, then turned my face to look at Toriko. When I saw her hands were back to normal, too, I was relieved.

Then we got super scared.

“Uwahhh!”

“Wahhhh?!”

We both screamed in unison, scrambling to our unsteady feet. While I was hurriedly picking up my gun, Toriko nearly tripped as she rushed over to where the Kunekune had been and got down on her hands and feet.

“Found it!” Jumping to her feet with a shout, Toriko had the mirror stone that was reflecting the sun in her hand. It was something, folded into a cube.

We hadn’t talked over what to do, but we both turned on our heels and high-tailed it out of there.

With the horizon being dyed purple at the edges, the darkness of evening was on its way.

We raced through the wind-rustled grass, out of breath. The further we got from the scene, the harder it was not to laugh.

“That was scary! Suuuuuper scary!”

Toriko shouted, “But we did it! We hunted a Kunekune! We did it, Sorawo!”

“That was so crazy! Seriously, give me a break!”

It reminded me of when I was still young and innocent, and how, after playing until I tuckered myself out, I would race across the gold-stained field towards home.

Toriko and I both laughed as we ran. Incoherently. Like we were insane. Like children.

The tears came.

Thank goodness we didn’t die. Thank goodness we didn’t go crazy.

“Sorawo, when we get back, let’s have a party!” Toriko suddenly said.

“Huh?!”

I reacted with surprise, and Toriko happily went on.

“There’ll be money coming in, so let’s celebrate! I’ve never had an after party before, you know!”

What, she hadn’t?

“...Well, I guess I don’t mind.”

“Yay!”

These plains were a place I had wanted to monopolize for myself. Even now that I knew they were more bizarre and dangerous than I had initially thought, I still felt the same.

But now, if it was with this strange woman, I was starting to think I wouldn’t mind playing together.