File 15: Overnight on the Otherside

1

In the later half of November, after the exam period ended, we were finally able to pick up our newly souped-up AP-1. We had it brought back to Kozakura’s mansion again, and Toriko and I went there to listen to Natsumi’s explanation.

“So, like I thought, it turned out an engine swap wasn’t enough on its own. So, I started by replacing the whole chassis. I looked for junk parts from a combine harvester, and transferred over an entire set of tracks... It was a lot of trouble, let me tell you. I mean, I’ve never messed with any of this stuff before,” she explained.

“I’ll bet. It feels a lot more rugged now. Looks tough,” Toriko, who was crouched next to the AP-1 and looking at the thick, rubber tracks, said out of admiration.

“Oh, it’s tough all right. The movable track rollers will sink into the earth where the terrain allows it, which should make it a fair bit easier to drive over uneven ground.”

Natsumi put her hands on the hips of her jumpsuit, and thrust her chest out. Her tone was brusque, but filled with pride.

“The engine used to be gas, but now it’s diesel. It’s a water-cooled, four-stroke cycle, three-cylinder engine. It needs diesel oil now, so make sure you don’t get the wrong fuel.”

“Got it.” I nodded, examining the newly remade body of our vehicle. The engine—which had formerly been underneath a white cover on top of the treads on the right hand side—had been removed, and in its place there was a large engine straddling the left and right treads. It looked like, since we didn’t need to drive over the ridges of a tobacco field, she had squished the space underneath and placed the engine there in an attempt to maintain balance.

“What kind of speeds can we get out of it?” I looked up and asked. The main reason I had asked Natsumi to mod the AP-1 was to remedy the fact that our transportation couldn’t break three kilometers an hour.

“Your normal driving speed’s about ten klicks. Top speed is fifteen.”

“That’s all?” I asked despite myself, and Natsumi gave me a cross look.

“Let me just tell you, ten klicks is fast enough that you’re going to fly off the front if you hit something. This thing doesn’t even have proper seat belts, just these little ones you wrap around your waist.”

“Oh, that’s right.”

“Yeah, you bet that’s right. This thing’s light, so if you wanted to, we could get thirty, forty kilometers per hour out of that engine. But you want to take it off-road, right? So we really shouldn’t.”

“About how fast is ten klicks?” Toriko stood up and asked.

“About what you’d go on a granny bike.”

“Ohh. That slow, huh?”

“That’s ten klicks off-road, okay?”

“Oh, that is pretty amazing, huh?” Toriko said, sounding surprised. Natsumi shrugged, as if to say, You finally get it.

Hesitantly, I asked, “So... How much extra do I owe?”

Natsumi scrunched her face up and thought for a moment before saying, “100,000 yen will do. For parts.”

“Huh...? Is that enough?”

“Well, that is the number I originally gave you and all.”

No, she was obviously taking a loss here. I had asked her to take on the job and waive the labor fees as a reward for our help with the Sannukikano incident, but now that I could see how major the modifications were, I felt bad.

As I stood there, wondering what I ought to do, Toriko, who was now sitting in the left-hand seat, spoke up. “I’ll pay, too. The same amount as Sorawo. Does having double the money help cover it a little better?”

“Honestly, yeah, it does.”

“Okay, we’ll do that then.”

“Thanks.”

Since I was the one who brought up the idea to Natsumi, I had been intending to put up all the money myself, so I was a little torn. “Are you sure?”

“Of course. It belongs to both of us, after all,” Toriko said with a grin.

That’s when Natsumi interjected, looking a little miffed. “That’s right. It’s your car, so learn to maintain it yourselves, would you? If you totally wreck it, you can have them tow it to my place, but if you’re taking it off-road, I think there’ll be a lot of little problems...”

Toriko and I listened closely as Natsumi explained what to do in the event that we ran into mechanical problems. I was taking notes, but anything written in the surface world was impossible to read in the other world, so I needed to commit as much of it to memory as possible. It actually confused Natsumi that we were listening so seriously. But if the AP-1 broke down on the Otherside, fixing it could be a matter of life and death.

With her lecture concluded, Natsumi climbed into the driving seat of the truck she had used to come here. Seeming somewhat mystified, she said, “Still, this may be an odd thing to ask now, but after putting in a weird order like this... Where are you planning to drive it?”

“We’ve got a good place. No one goes there, so we won’t be causing any trouble.”

“Oh, yeah? Somewhere nice and out of the way, huh?”

“Yeah, sorta.”

“Hmm. Well, be careful out there, would you? If a bear shows up, the bear’s going to be faster...”

As we watched the Ichikawa Automobile Repair Shop’s truck go, Toriko and I looked at one another.

“A bear, she said.”

“I wouldn’t wanna run into a bear,” Toriko quipped.

“Yeah, my eye and your hand wouldn’t do anything to it...”

“We could at least try your eye, couldn’t we?”

“Even if it did do something, it’d just turn an ordinary bear into an insane one.”

I got into the AP-1’s right-hand seat, and turned the ignition. There was the initial whir of the motor, then a sputtering sound, followed by white smoke, and a satisfying vroom. Thanks to the new muffler, it felt quieter than the old gas engine.

“Okay, how about we take it out for a test drive?”

“Let’s go!”

We took the AP-1 into the other world through the gate Toriko had opened.

To the place where no one else would come, or be bothered by anything we might do—our playground.

2

We started our test run with the new, souped-up AP-1 right next to where we came out of the gate. We climbed up and down hills, and did donuts in the fields. Once we had gone through all the motions, we stopped the AP-1 by the gate, and cut the engine.

“Hey, let’s do something about these seats,” Toriko said now that it was quiet, sounding threatened.

“Yeah... Our butts are getting destroyed here...”

When we drove over bumps in these hard plastic seats, we were painfully reminded that there were hard, pointy bones inside our soft, fleshy bottoms. Natsumi had been right—when we were only going three kilometers per hour, all I thought of it was, Oh, it’s shaking. But when we were going ten klicks? That was a huge difference.

I got out of my seat and stretched my stiff waist. “Let’s go and buy some cushions.”

“At an auto parts store?”

“I dunno. These are a lot smaller than a car seat.”

“I’ll settle for a floor cushion, or anything at this point... Let’s just find something.”

Whatever the solution was going to be, we had a vehicle for our next excursion now. Leaving the AP-1 behind, we rubbed our behinds as we headed back to the surface world. We spent the next three weeks buying a variety of things, and making other preparations.

We were able to solve the comfort problem with a pair of seat cushions designed for large bikes. There were cushions with gel in them designed for people who ride for long periods of time, and we found some that you tie to the seat using a belt that we were able to install on the AP-1. They were expensive, and when you include the ones we bought but couldn’t use, we’d blown 300,000 yen, which was a depressing thought for me.

We had talked about how it would be nice to have a garage next to the gate to store the AP-1 in before, but that proved surprisingly easy to accomplish. There were portable garages made of fabric and pipes, and it seemed like something we could assemble by ourselves.

I know I said it was surprisingly easy, but the kit still cost us about 400,000 yen. Once you factor in the ladder, crowbar, shovel, hammer, and other tools we needed, too, it was closer to five hundred thousand. The assembly was a lot of work, too.

To prepare for the task, we found a flat area near the gate, cut the grass there, and plucked it out by the roots to prepare the ground.

Next we had a big cardboard box containing the portable garage we had ordered online delivered to Kozakura’s mansion, and opened it up on the other side of the gate. Drawing lines on the ground with a measuring tape and carpenter’s square to make sure we got all the dimensions right, we dug deep holes at each of the four corners to put pipes into. We placed the connecting pipes between them along the long left and right sides, making sure that they were parallel. In order to keep the connection points from coming apart, we had to pound on them with the hammer, as well as flatten the metal pipes in a number of spots, too. This was already some pretty exhausting work.

With the two parallel lines on the ground finished, we put the other vertical pipes up along them. I held the pipes straight upright, while Toriko banged on the top of them with a hammer, using a piece of wood to distribute the force. Four on the left, four more on the right. Combined with the initial four in the corners, we had a total of twelve pipes of the same height.

Next, we ran arches over the top, connecting the left and right. The pillars were supposed to be angled slightly, and that tension was what fixed the arches in place, so it required a little brute force. This part was really tough for the two of us to do. We struggled from the very first arch, and it was bad enough that, after talking about it, we decided we might be doing something wrong, so we headed back to the surface world for a bit to check out portable garage assembly videos on YouTube.

Once the six arches were in place, we installed the support beams for both sides and the center of the ceiling. The frame of the garage was fully assembled, and we were both so happy we could have screamed. We put the tent over top of the frame, and pulled it taut with stakes and rope. Finally, our garage was complete.

When we had met up at 10:00 AM, I had taken the task lightly. “We’ll be done a little after noon, don’t you think?” I’d said. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It ended up taking a whole day’s worth of work. But setting that aside, now we wouldn’t have to leave our precious AP-1 exposed to the elements. The beer we drank at the end of that day tasted ridiculously good.

After that, we bought a metal storage shed, too.

Because the AP-1 was so tall and wide, we had ended up having to buy a portable garage meant for a minivan, but since it was also comparatively short, there was space left over inside. We decided to put the shed at the back of it.

I was going to order a smallish one, but I was shocked to find that even those easily came to two or 300,000 yen.

“That’s expensive...! Huh? They really cost that much? It’s just a shed, right? Okay, maybe it’s weird saying it’s just a shed.”

“It’s not a good idea to cheap out on something we’re going to use. I mean, it’s going to be outside, and we wouldn’t want it leaking or getting rusty, right?”

“Well, no, but... I thought it’d only be six thousand or so...”

“That’s way underestimating it.”

This was the price without assembly or construction costs, so it was still cheaper than it would normally be. In other words, normally, when you buy a shed, there are workers who assemble it for you. But we had no choice but to handle that part ourselves.

“If we called Akari, I bet she’d be more than happy to help...” Toriko said. We were laboriously hauling the concrete blocks that were going to serve as the foundation through the gate.

“No.”

“I thought you’d say that.”

“No bringing in other people. This is just you and me. No telling them, either.”

“Okay, okay. Don’t get mad.”

“I’m not mad.”

We carried the heavy metal panels into the garage, worked ourselves into a sweat assembling them, but in the end we somehow managed to get the shed set up. I’d thought it might be, but it was pretty dangerous doing it by ourselves. I spent the whole time we were working worrying that we were going to injure ourselves or tear through the tent.

We emerged from the garage, covered in sweat, and collapsed onto the grass. I was staring idly into the sky, feeling the chill of the wind brushing against my cheek.

“We should’ve built the shed somewhere with more space, and then built the garage...” Toriko muttered.

“I know... Don’t say anymore...”

The tools that we had used building the garage had just been left lying out up until this point, so we rounded them up and put them in the shed, then returned, exhausted, to the surface world.

“Yuck, I’m all sweaty! I need a shower!”

“You can go first, Toriko.”

“Why don’t we take one together?”

“Nooo. You first.”

“Why not?”

I pretended to ignore the hurt look Toriko gave me. Ever since that time we went to the hot springs, Toriko had taken to saying this sort of thing occasionally. I had to wonder what she was thinking, especially when she was originally so reluctant to get in the bath together. I didn’t mind getting in with her, but the way she invited me always felt pretty sketchy. If I took off my clothes in front of her, I could be sure she was going to start staring again, so I didn’t want to.

In our regular trips in and out of the gate to work, at some point, it became customary for us to use the shower in Kozakura’s mansion. Kozakura had looked unamused at first, but when we made a point of always bringing a gift, her attitude softened a bit, and she told us we could use it whenever we wanted.

“I haven’t been blinded by the gifts, you hear me? I’m just relieved to see you two pick up some modicum of social graces,” was what Kozakura said as she accepted a rather nice cake that we had bought in one of the basement-level food markets in Ikebukuro.

“So you don’t need any more gifts, then?”

Toriko said more than she needed to, as always, and got a rant about how “that’s the problem with you” that she could have avoided.

It had gotten more common for us to join Kozakura for a meal once we had freshened up in the shower now, too. Not that any of us cooked it, of course. We ordered pizza, Chinese, and other things. There was also a stock of cans of beer and chuuhai in the fridge that we had bought at the convenience store along the way, so we often drank together, too. Toriko and I needed to head back before the last train, though, so we never drank all that much.

I felt like my impression of the dining room kitchen in Kozakura’s mansion as this cold, desolate place was slowly falling apart. It felt lived in now, you could say... Though, maybe it was just getting messy.

Whenever she got some alcohol in her, Kozakura would talk about the hot springs. “That was a great trip, you know? The food was good, and maybe it’s okay to be able to relax and soak in the bath once in a while.”

“Uh, sure...” I agreed noncommittally.

“I wasn’t interested in going to a hot springs hotel at all, but if that’s what it’s like, I wouldn’t mind going again. Whether that’s back to the same place, or trying a new one.”

“Y... Yeah,” Toriko said.

Whenever she brought up the topic, Toriko and I both stopped saying very much.

Kozakura still didn’t know about the strange mannequins we had encountered on our way back from our late-night bath. That had happened to us on the first night of a two-night stay, so Toriko and I had spent the rest of our time there on high alert. Fortunately, there were no further incidents, so Kozakura was able to wholeheartedly enjoy the trip, even if no one else could. It hadn’t been a bad idea for a trip, though, and I was glad that Kozakura didn’t get caught up in what happened to us. But when I thought about what could happen the next time...

The other reason for it was a change in the way things felt between Toriko and me. That time, in the hot springs, when we were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder... Yeah, I think there really was something a little weird about us.

No, that’s wrong. Toriko was being weird. Not me. Let’s be clear about that.

“Sorawo, I love you.”

Thanks. I’m glad to hear it.

“Your boobs are cute.”

Hold up.

The way she ogled my chest as she said that shocked me pretty bad. I hadn’t expected Toriko to be that brazen.

No, well, I didn’t imagine that she was perfect—the way I had back when I first met her—anymore. Though she was beautiful, and seemed flawless, the way that she could be a real slob, laughed like a goof whenever she got embarrassed, and froze up when she didn’t know what to do was pretty lame.

But still, wasn’t what she said uncalled for?

I had been doing my best not to stare too hard at Toriko’s naked body. It was just too beautiful. I felt like just seeing her living and moving was going to drive me crazy. But Toriko ogled me without hesitation...

The more I thought about it, the more I felt like Japan’s culture of public bathing was insane. Why was it okay for us to be naked? Wasn’t that nuts? Was it because it was fine if we were all the same gender? Was that a valid reason? Wasn’t that logic... kind of breaking down here?

When I thought back to me and Toriko, gabbing away in the nude, my mind went blank. How had I been able to do that?

Frustratingly, Toriko seemed less concerned with what happened that time than I was. If anything, she had acquired a taste for it, and wanted to bathe together again. Even my repeated refusals hadn’t deterred her. She was so brazen. It was almost like she thought I’d given her permission to get that close to me emotionally.

Well, no... I started to get worried. Maybe I had given her permission. Had I given her some sort of signal without realizing it myself? Was that why Toriko’s attitude had suddenly gotten so weird?

But then again, Toriko was acting strange before that moment, too. When her eyes were darting around the changing room. No, it started even before that, when we decided to go on the hot springs trip, and perhaps even before then. Thinking back... Yeah, why was she sleeping naked that night in Naha? Because she was drunk? Was that all?

My train of thought fled from the recollection of Toriko’s naked body, tracing past memories backwards.

In Okinawa, she’d made a big deal of praising my rather plain swimsuit... but when I praised hers, she got super shy... So shy that I felt embarrassed, too...

She had a Mom and a Mama...

She grew up in a house with two mothers that were married...

She ended up on her own...

Got enthralled with Satsuki Uruma...

Ended up on her own again...

...

It always took me a lot of courage to go the next step in this train of thought.

Maybe Toriko wanted to get even closer to me than I had been thinking...?

Sorawo, I love you.

I love you, too.

That’s what I said... Without really thinking about it...

That had to be it, right...? After that, Toriko suddenly started acting weird.

The image of Toriko as she gripped my hand so tightly it hurt, her eyes seeming to cling to me, was seared into my brain.

The mannequins appeared and prevented it, but if not for that interruption, what would have happened between us after that?

Whenever I thought that, my train of thought always came to a stop.

It became hard to breathe, I felt a clenching in my stomach, and my pulse quickened... This physical response that I had gotten so used to now made me aware of my own feelings.

I was scared.

Of Toriko?

No... That wasn’t it.

I wasn’t afraid of Toriko. Even if she was acting a little shifty, Toriko was still Toriko. My precious, irreplaceable partner.

What I was afraid of was not knowing how to respond to Toriko. When this woman who would follow me anywhere, no matter how dangerous, who was always with me, and who I could trust tried to get closer to me, how was I supposed to deal with it? I didn’t have an answer.

I didn’t have the knowledge. Or the experience.

I felt like I was a little child again.

Oh. I see now.

Looking at Toriko beside me with her flawless smile, I felt lonely, but also like I had realized something.

I’m a child...

3

In order to escape my worries, I immersed myself in preparing for the trip. I hung out at the outdoor goods store, weighing my options when it came to tents, sleeping bags, fire starting tools, and more. I bought things a little at a time.

I didn’t have any proper experience with camping because, to be blunt, all I had ever done was some illegal trespassing and squatting in ruins. Toriko had gone camping long ago, when she was still little, so we were both starting from scratch and learning as we went when it came to learning how to camp and to gather the necessary equipment.

When I was at one store, crouching down in front of a glass case filled with knives, Toriko called out to me, sounding worried. “You’re looking at those knives with a face like you’ve been driven into a corner and don’t know what to do. You okay?”

“I was thinking we might want a knife.”

I had read a number of books and magazines that provided an introduction to camping, but most of the books had a section in their second half on how to use a knife and suggested buying a good one that cut well. After reading that a number of times, I started thinking we needed one.

Next to me, Toriko brought her face next to the glass. “Whoa, isn’t this one cool? It says it’s made of meteoric iron. That’s iron. But from meteors.”

Though I was unnerved by how her face was suddenly so close to mine, I still somehow managed to reply. “B-But it’s stupid expensive.”

“We can afford it.”

“We have enough expenses as is.”

“Hmm, but we really are going to want a blade, huh? We can use it as a weapon, too.”

“A weapon...”

I tried to imagine myself swinging around one of the knives in the display case. No, no... What am I going to fight? Sure, if I used my right eye, I think I could cut the monsters from the other world, but...

It sucked that, upon remembering the time Satsuki Uruma grabbed me by the hair and I instinctively cut it to escape, I couldn’t write the idea off as completely ridiculous. I got lucky that time, as I’d happened to have a knife that I had stolen from a cultist on me, but who knows what might have happened if I was empty-handed.

Still, an amateur like me arming herself with a knife wasn’t realistic. I gave up on it and moved away from the display case. “I dunno. Maybe it’s not for me. Even if I had one for self-defense, I’d probably panic when I needed to pull it out and end up cutting myself.”

“How about something bigger?”

“What, you mean like a katana?”

“No, I’m thinking something more practical. Don’t you want to hack through the underbrush or the tall grass?” Toriko said, demonstrating with a slashing motion.

“Ohh, you mean a nata hatchet.”

“Yeah.”

We had talked about it when we were building the portable garage. It took too long to mow the grass by hand, so we went out and bought a sickle. When we came back from the other world carrying a sickle and wearing gloves, Kozakura spotted us and said, Could you do my yard, too, while you’re at it?

“Do you think we can walk around with a hatchet? It seems like it’d be heavy and it’d get tiring.”

“We’ve got the AP-1, so we can just keep it there, right? I was half-joking about using it as a weapon, but I think it would be useful for splitting firewood and a whole bunch of other stuff.”

“Hmm. That does sound useful, but... I think I’ll hold off on deciding for now. There’s a lot of other stuff we need too.”

“Okaaaay.”

She accepted it so easily, like an obedient child; I gave her a resentful glare out of the side of my eye. She has no idea what I’m going through here...

“So, how are we going to start a fire? I was thinking that a gas burner might work.”

Toriko’s question brought me back to reality. “Well, I was planning on getting a fire starter, too, but a gas burner does seem like it’d be easiest.”

Our exploration kit had already included waterproof matches, but we had agreed we needed a more simple and reliable way of starting fires. When night came in the other world, we wanted to be able to avoid a situation where it was pitch-dark before we could get our campfire going. In addition to buying more matches, we picked up a fire starter set which consisted of a magnesium rod with an iron striker... basically, the modern equivalent of flint and steel. We would carry them on us as a last resort, but the gas burner was what we were going to use most of the time. Even slightly wet wood could be set alight if we fired a gas canister meant for a camp stove at it.

We needed all this firepower if we were going to overcome the task we had set for ourselves.

That task was to spend a night on the Otherside.

Up until now, we had been avoiding the night in the other world. Except for the few times we were thrown over to that side with no warning, we always went through the gate early in the afternoon, and returned in the evening before it got dark, like we were a couple of elementary school girls following their curfew. The night was scary. The other world was bright and empty during the day, but once the sun went down, it was full of bizarre sounds and presences. Back when Satsuki Uruma was still human, she had warned Toriko and Kozakura that night was dangerous and told them to avoid it. Based on my own experience, I had to conclude she was right.

But I also knew it shouldn’t be impossible to stay in the other world. There were indications that Satsuki had done so herself. Palehorse Battalion had also been able to stay in the other world for a long time after they got trapped at Kisaragi Station, even if they did produce a large number of madmen and Fourth Kinds in the process.

There was Abarato, too. He had stayed in the other world for several days searching for his missing wife.

Basically, what I’m getting at is that a night on the Otherside didn’t necessarily have to have fatal consequences. Not immediately, at least...

Only being able to operate during the day was a major impediment to our ability to explore. The biggest problem was that we couldn’t travel long distances. We could only travel so far from the gates we knew—a limitation that had always frustrated me. I had put up with it when our only means of transportation was our own two feet, but now that the AP-1 was faster, and could travel further, the only way to expand our range was to set out into the night. That was what the camping goods, and the fire, were for.

On a Friday in mid-December, we set out on our final practice run.

We entered the other world through Kozakura’s front yard and set up our tent next to the gate so we could flee at any time. It was a cute red tent that was large enough for both of us. Toriko had suggested an unobtrusive green, or to go in the opposite direction with raincoat yellow or fluorescent green instead, but I had pushed for red.

“It just feels half-hearted, you know? It doesn’t work as camouflage, but doesn’t stand out if we get lost, either.”

“But it is cute. I want this one.” From the moment I saw its picture in the catalog, until I set eyes on the genuine article in store, I was in love.

“You sure do love cute stuff...” Toriko said in exasperation.

“Oh? Do I? I think I’m pretty normal.”

We piled up charcoal and firewood next to the tent and ignited the gas burner. The charcoal turned bright red under the burner’s fire and burst into flames together with the firewood.

“We did it!” We clapped our hands and smiled at one another in relief.

Hunkering down next to the entrance to the tent, we waited for sundown. The western sky turned red starting at the mountain line, then gradually changed to purple.

For an instant, that purple became an incredibly deep blue. So deep it was nearly black. It was a color I had never seen in the surface world. I had seen the same blue when night came at the Beach of the End.

The sun set.

As we watched the skies, night came to the other world.

The field, which had been empty except for the sound of the wind through the leaves before, was now filled with the presence of living things. There was a rustling in the grass, voices that could have been either birds or people in the distance, indistinct whispers carried on the breeze, and a subtle white noise, like tinnitus or radio static...

“...It’s about time, huh?”

“Yeah.”

Standing up, we looked around the grassy field on which night had fallen. If we were lucky, the “flag” we had set up would be visible, but...

“Well, Toriko?”

“Hmm, I don’t see it. Want to try going up on the hill?”

“I’d rather not go too far from the gate, but maybe that’s the only way.”

“If it looks dangerous, let’s bail right away.”

“Okay... I guess we’ll go, then.”

Remaining cautious of anything that might be approaching, we began climbing the hill to the east of the gate together. Every step away from our tent and campfire made me more uneasy. Fortunately, there were no glitches on the hill. We walked through the grass, relying on the stars to light our way.

It didn’t take long to reach the summit, providing us with a 360-degree field of view. We squinted and started looking around the area again. The mountain ridges and treetops were like shadow pictures on the starry backdrop.

Toriko was the first one to spot our “flag.”

“Found it. Isn’t that it over there?” Toriko said.

Looking in the direction Toriko was pointing, there was a line of light far off in the darkness, stretching straight up towards the night sky.

That was the “flag” we had raised.

“Oh, good. It was close enough to see.”

“Can you tell what direction it is?”

I looked down at the compass, glowing green due to its luminous paint. The unreliable needle shakily pointed...

“It’s roughly... northwest, I think?”

“We haven’t been that way yet, right?”

“Nope.”

“So...?”

I looked back at Toriko, then nodded. “So we’ve got our first destination. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Before embarking on our first long-distance trip, we talked it over and decided we needed a destination. If we just wandered around randomly without direction, there was a good chance we would run into trouble. That was why we would set another gate as the destination, in order to ensure we had a way out if we couldn’t turn back.

For that, we used the Farm.

We had discovered multiple gates at the Farm that were connected to places we didn’t know. After deciding on one that seemed reasonably safe, we would raise a flag there that would be visible from a distance. Then we would reenter the other world using the gates at Kozakura’s mansion and in Jinbouchou, and if the flag was somewhere we could see, we would set it as our destination. That was the plan.

The first thing that came to mind was a physical flag. I thought if we got one of those expandable/retractable plastic poles that they use at events and in front of stores to put up banners, then put a flag on the tip of it, that would be a good, cheap solution. But once I found out that those poles were, at most, three meters long, the idea had to be thrown out. They weren’t going to be of any use at that height.

The next candidate was one of the poles that people fly carp streamers from on Children’s Day. If we got a large one, it would be visible from a distance, and if we actually used a pennant as large as the ones they use for carp streamers, it might stand out pretty well. I think it was a good idea, but this one got rejected, too. The reasons were cost and the hassle involved in setting it up.

While there were some pretty large poles out there, they easily cost over a 100,000 yen, and required a solid base on the ground. That meant having to dig a deep hole to install a receptacle for the pole, which was a whole lot of work. If we tried it at one gate, and we couldn’t see the pole we had set up, we would have to try it again at the next one, and we didn’t have time for all that busy work.

That brought us to our next plan, which was using light. The light from a searchlight was visible from a distance, and we wouldn’t have to worry about the wind knocking it over like a pole. I worried they would be too expensive when I went looking, but I was surprised to find we could actually afford one.

Hand-held miniature searchlight: 16,000 yen.

Portable 24-volt power source: 30,000 yen.

...Sure, that was still expensive, but even if we couldn’t use those two items as a flag, we would probably have other uses for them while we were exploring, so I went out and bought the stuff. If we attached a 2,000 yen timer switch to them, we could make them light up automatically right at sunset.

We entered the other world through one of the gates at the Farm and installed the searchlight. Our first choice was next to a river, with nothing around to obstruct our view of it. There was a rocky area with large stones lying around by the riverside, and we found a flat rock the size of a table there, so we climbed up on top of it, and set the searchlight there pointing straight up.

Once the timer was set, we returned from the other world to the Farm, then went through the Round Hole to the DS Lab in Tameike-Sannou. Then, taking the roughly hour-long trip to Shakujii-kouen, we passed through the gate at Kozakura’s mansion and went back to the other world.

If you consider how much effort all of that took, we were lucky that we were able to see it with the first gate we tried. The DS Lab was close to Jinbouchou, and the skeletal building let us look out over a wide range, so that would have been a better spot for spotting the searchlight, but we were practicing camping on this side tonight, too, so it worked out well that it was visible from the gate at Kozakura’s mansion.

As we watched the pillar of light, there were three short cries, like those of a pheasant, from some undetermined direction. The wind blew in from the east, making the grass at our feet sway like the hair on our heads.

“Let’s head back,” I said, and Toriko nodded, holding her hair in place with her hand.

We both hurried down the hill, back to our tent, and stopped at the campfire. The warmth of the fire was reassuring, but the darkness outside grew deeper and deeper, and it looked terrifying.

We went inside the tent with our shoes still on. When we pulled the zipper on the entrance down, it was almost pitch-black inside. I fumbled for the switch on our LED lantern, and it filled the tent with white light.

There were two sleeping bags laid out for us on top of an insulating mat on the floor of the tent. We had chosen envelope-style sleeping bags with a zipper on the side, just in case we needed to get out of them in a hurry. They had been advertised as being usable in winter, too, so if we put a blanket over top of them, they would be more than warm enough.

With our pillows inflated, and the sleeping bags ready, Toriko gave me a troubled look. “What should we do with our shoes when we get in our sleeping bags?”

“Hmm... I guess it’s safe to take them off, right? Let’s leave them somewhere where we can put them back on quickly.”

“Gotcha.”

We took off our shoes and laid them at our bedside, and then got into the sleeping bags with our clothes still on. I turned off the LED lantern, and the tent was dark once more. Only a faint outline of our campfire shone through.

“Well, good night,” I said, and Toriko responded in a whisper.

“Do you think we’ll be able to sleep?”

“What else can we do?”

“I mean, it’s not even 6:00, right? In the evening...”

Toriko was right. Even though we were in our sleeping bags, I didn’t feel even the slightest bit sleepy. If anything, the tension and excitement were keeping me wide awake.

I adjusted my pillow, trying to find the best position for it. “We sleep when the sun goes down, and wake when it rises. That’s what humanity’s always done.”

“That was before we had fire, right? Even primitives stayed up later than this.”

If this were a normal camping experience, things might have gotten more exciting once it was dark out. Everyone eating curry together, singing by the campfire, playing games inside their tents, and talking until they fall asleep... Not that I’d know what that’s like. Still, that wasn’t going to happen this time. This was our first night in the middle of the other world.

“We have to stay quiet, you know? There’s no telling what might happen, and we need to run right away if things get dicey.”

“I still think going to sleep at 6:00 is overdoing it. Can’t we stay up a bit longer?”

“If we leave the lights on and make noise, we won’t be able to notice if something weird comes our way. I’m pretty sure Abarato-san must have laid low at night, too.”

“Here we are, camping out alone together, and we can’t do more to enjoy it? That’s no fun,” Toriko said sullenly. Even in the dark, I could see her pouting. I had noticed this in Okinawa, too, but when we were in a situation where you would normally play around, but Toriko wasn’t able to, she got super upset about it.

“We’re alone together all the time.”

“But this is our first time camping out!” Toriko corrected me, her voice sounding sulky. Was that important?

“Well... As long as we’re not too loud, I think it’s okay to talk.”

“Okay. Let’s talk, then.” Toriko moved closer, sleeping bag and all.

“Quietly, okay? Quietly.”

“You got it,” Toriko said in a hushed voice. It sounded like she was enjoying herself. The sudden change in attitude made her earlier sulking seem like a lie.

When it comes to things like this, she’s always more childish than me...

Just as I was thinking that, Toriko said something that made her sound like a kid in elementary school.

“We should’ve bought snacks. Do we have anything?”

“Snacks...? If you want CalorieMate, or some hard candies, we do have those...”

“Open ’em up. There’s tea, too, right? Where’d we leave the vacuum flask?”

“I think it was over... Hey, wait, this isn’t a field trip, okay...?”

“Oh, it’s fine, it’s fine.”

As we were sipping at the steamy tea and munching on the snacks that were supposed to be our portable rations, while speaking in whispers about what equipment we should buy next, and where we should have the after party, the campfire finally burned out, and it was completely black inside the tent.

As we each strained to hear the other’s whispers, at some point, we had gotten so close we were almost touching. I could feel Toriko’s leg touching mine through our sleeping bags and blankets. The moment I noticed it, I instinctively pulled away.

Maybe she was surprised by sudden motion, because Toriko stopped talking. For several seconds, silence fell, and, laughing a little, Toriko asked, “Huh...? What’s up?”

“N-Nothing. I just... wanted to change positions.”

“Oh. Okay. Did it hurt?”

“Nah, I’m fine.”

Once that oddly evasive exchange was over, Toriko fell silent again. I panicked. When I moved just now, it wasn’t because I didn’t like her touching me, I was just surprised, and moved reflexively.

Before I could blurt out something to that effect, Toriko suddenly whispered, “It’s getting cold, huh?”

“Huh? Oh... Yeah, I guess it is.”

Now that she mentioned it, I was feeling chilly. I think that with the heat of the fire gone, the air outside actually was colder.

“So... These sleeping bags, they’ve got zippers, right?”

“...? Yes, and?” I replied, not grasping what Toriko was getting at.

“I was thinking, they’re the same model, aren’t they?”

“Yeah, we bought them together.”

“Maybe we could zip them together, and make one big sleeping bag?” the woman lying next to me in the darkness suggested in an incredibly calm, relaxed tone of voice.

“...”

“What do you think? Sorawo.”

“...”

“Sorawo?”

I was so close I could hear her whispering, but I still couldn’t tell what sort of expression was on her face as she said that. In all our other idle banter, even if I couldn’t see her with my eyes, I’d been able to tell exactly what expression she was making, even as it rapidly changed from moment to moment.

I took a deep breath, and carefully replied, “That might be possible, yes.”

“Do you want to try it?” Toriko asked without hesitation, and I felt forced into a corner.

“N-Now?” I managed to squeak, and I sensed Toriko nodding.

“I’m sure we’ll both feel warmer that way.”

Her whispers were so close I could feel her breath. In the darkness, I couldn’t even move an inch. I knew the longer I took to respond, the weirder things were going to get, but I was frozen solid.

Not long ago, I might have felt confused, as well as shaken up. And yet, despite some grumbling, I’d have ultimately done as Toriko said. But now, I didn’t feel like I could do that at all.

Something.

I needed to say something.

Anything would do. “Let’s save that for when it’s light out,” or, “I’m warm enough,” or, “It’s too much hassle.” Anything.

The sound of my own gulping was awfully loud. Maybe Toriko heard it, too. I felt her body stiffen in the darkness. Feeling desperate, I opened my mouth.

“It’s—”

“Shh!” Toriko exhaled sharply.

“...Huh?”

“Shh! ...Listen.”

Now that she said it, I finally noticed.

There were footsteps.

Someone’s footsteps on the grass, approaching us.

There was a sound like metal and leather brushing against each other, and I realized Toriko had gone for the Makarov under her pillow.

“You think... they’re alone?” I asked.

“Sounds like.”

The footsteps came up to the tent, then stopped. I felt like I heard a slight breathing, but no voices beyond that.

How long did they stand there? Suddenly, the footsteps started moving again. They changed direction, circling the tent once. Then, without stopping, circled it again.

The footsteps didn’t stop again. Round and round, clockwise, they continued doing loops around the tent.

“This seems safe,” I whispered quietly.

“Huh?” Toriko was dumbstruck. “Are... Are you serious, Sorawo?”

I nodded.

“It’s creepy, but I think we’ll be safe if we don’t go outside. This happens all the time in ghost stories set in the mountains.”

“It happens all the time...”

The beings of the other world tried to drive people mad with fear. That was easiest to see with the ones at Kisaragi Station, but they didn’t tend to try and cause direct harm.

Well, no. There were some dangerous exceptions to that, like the Ninja Cats, and the Kotoribako, but... at the very least, after a while, I could say that the footsteps circling our tent showed no sign of changing, so I was convinced this was just that kind of “phenomenon.”

I don’t even know how to describe how I felt when I noticed I was actually relieved by this.

I knew this fear. I could handle it. I reached for my pillow, too. When I felt the cold metal of my Makarov, I settled down.

I grabbed the blanket which had slid down and pulled it back over my sleeping bag.

“Let’s go to sleep.”

“Wh-Wha... You’re kidding me, right?”

“I think it’ll actually be safer if we go to sleep, so we aren’t conscious. Let’s sleep.”

“Do you think we can sleep...?”

It felt tense not knowing what might happen, and I was still uneasy. Though I was trying to act tough, I didn’t think I was going to be able to get to sleep that easily, either.

I twisted around in my sleeping bag, huddling closer to Toriko of my own accord. There was an audible gulp from her. I wasn’t going to link up our sleeping bags’ zippers, but I was probably fine with us sleeping close together like this.

“Good night.”

“Go... Good night.”

Toriko snuggled up closer to me, and I felt her breath on my forehead.

Soon enough, my body, which had been cold, gradually warmed up.

Surprisingly, and I was genuinely surprised by this, both of us drifted off to sleep in no time at all.

We both woke up, practically at the same time, to the sunlight shining through the fabric of the tent, and the chilly morning air.

Our faces were so close they were almost touching. We both blinked repeatedly, then jumped up.

“It’s morning!”

“We fell asleep!”

When we tried to get out of our sleeping bags, I noticed. We each had the zipper open on just one side, and we were holding hands through the openings. We must have been squeezing really hard for a long time, because my fingers ached horribly.

It looked like we had done some skillful maneuvering in our sleep, and also been really, really scared.

Falling asleep while quivering in fear in bed, and the next thing you know, it’s morning. That’s another common trope in ghost stories, I analyzed, as if the whole situation had nothing to do with me. Maybe people were just surprisingly good at sleeping in the midst of terror. Though, it could be more accurate to say we passed out.

When we opened the tent door, the chilly air came in with the morning light.

Even with the blurry sun of the other world, the sunlight shining on the other side of the hill was plenty bright.

Nothing was out of the ordinary outside. If someone had really been circling our tent all night, there should have been some trace of them, but there were no tracks, no items left behind—nothing.

“We made it through the night, huh?” Toriko said. I simply nodded in agreement.

AP-1, check.

Tent, check.

Campfire, check.

Destination, check.

Camp, check.

That was the practice run over and done with.

Now, it was finally time for the serious exploration to begin.

4

The day we chose for our first long-distance expedition was a somewhat misty Tuesday as the year was about to come to a close. The weather forecast said there was a fifty-percent chance that the urban core was going to see its first snow. It was pretty cold.

“What? You’re going today? Of all days, today?” Kozakura said dubiously, furrowing her brow, when we dropped by to give her our regards before setting off.

“I know it says there’s going to be snow, and that does worry me a bit,” I admitted.

“Snow... Well, yeah, there’s that, too.” Kozakura glanced over to one of her screens. The clock displayed in the corner said it would soon be noon.

“But snow in Tokyo is never anything to write home about anyway.”

“Ohh, now you’ve gone and said it. If someone from Akita, and someone from Canada manage to get stranded in the snow, I’m never going to let you hear the end of it,” Kozakura said teasingly. Then, readjusting her attitude, she continued. “But hold on, the snow on that side might be different, right? If it piles up, you’ll have a serious problem on your hands.”

“By the same token, it’s also dubious whether this side’s forecast applies to the other world. I took a peek in the gate just now, and the sky was clear in every direction, so I think we’ll be fine,” I said.

“You just casually pop in and out of bizarre places. I really don’t like it.”

“We’re doing everything we can to prepare, so we’ll be okay,” Toriko piped in.

“Well... If you’re both okay with it, then fine,” Kozakura said in resignation, leaning back in her chair.

“We’re heading out now, so do you want to come see us off?” I asked, but Kozakura slowly shook her head.

“I’ll pass. When I do things I normally wouldn’t, I feel like it sets an event flag, and I don’t like it.”

“Is that how it works?”

“You two can just run off like always, and come back the same as ever. When should I expect you? Tomorrow?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Okay.” Kozakura looked back to the monitor, not even glancing in our direction anymore. “Take care. And try to be careful... Seriously.”

“Okay. Later.”

“We’ll be right back.”

Toriko and I walked out the front door of Kozakura’s house and then through the gate to the other world, as usual.

The sky in the other world was faintly cloudy—the same as it was in the surface world today. The wind was blowing in from the northwest, and it was pretty cold. If someone told me it was about to snow, I’d probably agree, but the air didn’t feel that humid, so it probably wouldn’t accumulate—that was the sense I got as someone who grew up in snow country.

We took the AP-1 out of the portable garage and loaded the equipment for our expedition—which was in storage—onto it: a folded-up tent, sleeping bags, a toolbox, shovel, crowbar, waterproof sheet, rope, bottles of potable water, and a bundle of gardening poles we could place as guideposts. With our backpacks and two assault rifles hanging somewhere we could get our hands on them quickly, we were ready to head out.

“You’re not forgetting anything, right?” Toriko asked, taking one last look inside the portable garage. I pointed to each item in my luggage as I checked it was there.

“I think I’m good.”

“Okay. I’m pretty sure I am, too.”

We checked the direction one more time, then boarded the AP-1. Riding it felt a lot better now with the new seat cushions. I started the engine, and turned the body towards the direction we were heading, then looked at Toriko, who looked back at me.

“All right... Time to set out.”

“Go! Go!”

The new and improved AP-1’s rubber treads trampled the grass as we started to move forward.

The AP-1 was originally meant to work in the fields, so once it got going, it could continue at a constant speed without stepping on the accelerator. But this was the other world—the ground wasn’t level like the fields on a farm. It was bumpy, with big ups and downs. That’s why I needed to watch our direction carefully and make little course corrections to keep us from flipping over.

There were also glitches to watch out for on top of that, so it was a lot to manage. I looked ahead with my right eye, then we both threw bolts to check that it was safe and occasionally set up a gardening pole as a guidepost. There was fluorescent tape wrapped around the tips of the poles, so we would be able to see them in the dark if we shone a light on them.

I think we set out at around 1:00 PM. The first hour breezed by. If we took the vehicle specs Natsumi gave me at face value, we’d have already gone ten kilometers, but with all the detours and slow downs, I have to guess we’d gone seven, maybe eight at best.

The vibrations were making my butt hurt, and my concentration was fraying, so we decided to take a break. I found an old vending machine covered in ivy standing on its own and parked the AP-1 next to it.

When I turned off the engine, silence returned to the other world. Because the AP-1 was the only thing here that made a lot of noise, the recoil when it stopped made this place sound incredibly quiet.

“Whew.”

“Hah. This is pretty tiring, huh?”

We got out of our seats and stretched and drank some water while we rested for a while. In between sips from her bottle of water, Toriko pressed her face up close to the vending machine.

“Aww. It looks like it’s broken.”

“It’s well beyond just ‘broken.’ The thing’s a wreck. Geez.”

From what I could see of it through the vines, the cans on the other side of the yellowed plastic were sunbleached to the point they were almost completely white.

“But still, if there was a working vending machine here, wouldn’t you want to buy something, just to see what would happen?”

“I get where you’re coming from, but even if we could buy something, there’s no way I’d drink it.”

“In that case, we could sell it to Kozakura, or—Oh! I know, we brought a crowbar! How about we bust this thing open?”

“It’s not shining in my right eye, so it’s probably just a piece of debris.”

“Aww...”

“No, don’t ‘aww’ at me. If there was a swarm of bugs when we opened it, you wouldn’t like that, would you?”

“Yeah, you’ve got a point. I wouldn’t.”

Though she wasn’t happy about it, Toriko gave up on the idea.

It’s not like I wasn’t curious, but our goal this time was to open up a new route. There were places of interest dotted around the other world, but we couldn’t stop and investigate every single one of them. It’d never end.

Putting the lid back on my bottle of water, I turned to look back the way we had come. We didn’t know how far it was to our destination, so we were being as conservative as possible when placing guideposts. There was only one that I could see from here. It was a yellow marker next to the tracks left by the AP-1 as it crushed the grass.

“Hey, Sorawo, what do you want to name this road?”

“Huh? Isn’t Route 2 good enough?”

“Let’s give it more of a proper name. Route 1 was fine because it was the first road we made.”

“Okay, then you come up with something, Toriko,” I said, unable to be bothered doing it myself, and Toriko just sort of stared at me in confusion.

“Me? You’re okay with that?”

“I have no sense for names. Come up with a good one.”

“Okay...”

I wasn’t all that invested in the outcome when I said it, but Toriko put a hand on her chin and started thinking seriously. Wait, was it that big a deal?

After around a ten-minute break, we started moving again. This time, we traded seats, so Toriko was in the driver’s seat on the right, while I sat on the left.

Suddenly, it hit me that Toriko was being awfully quiet. “The name can wait. You need to focus. If the AP-1 hits a glitch, we’ll be calling this the Road of Tears and Distracted Driving, or something like that. Got it?”

“But that sounds awful.”

“I don’t care how it sounds, so long as it makes you regret it every time we come through here.”

“You’re mean!”

We continued across the grassy field, taking occasional breaks, and swapping drivers whenever we did. Our route twisted and turned a little because we detoured around rocky areas and forests, but we followed the compass in a more or less northwesterly direction.

“It hasn’t made much of a difference over the short distance we’ve traveled, so I didn’t think much about it, but this shaking worries me over longer distances,” Toriko said, glaring at the swaying compass needles. “We’re aiming for roughly the middle of the needle’s swing, but I think that’s going to take us further and further off course. It was a good idea, using the searchlight, but it’s kind of inconvenient that we can only see it at night, huh?”

“Well, yeah. We’re going to have to come up with something that works during the daytime, too.”

“We should build the highest mast we can, and fly a flag from it, right?”

“I don’t care what we use, so long as we can see it from a distance, but there’s limits to what we can do with a physical pole... It’ll fall over if the wind is too strong, but if there’s no wind, the flag won’t flap, and we won’t be able to see it.”

“What if we got something lighter than the ones for carp streamers? You were telling me about it before, remember? That festival in Akita where they hang a bunch of lanterns from bamboo poles...”

“Akita Kantou?”

“Yeah, that’s the one. You use some loooong bamboo poles in that. They probably hold up well in the wind, too.”

“Can we buy something like that...? What would we do for the flag?”

“Stick a mirror on the end. Or wrap reflective film around it. I bet we could see the reflected light from a long way away.”

I was impressed, and looked back at Toriko, who seemed proud of what she’d come up with.

“You sure are smart, Toriko.”

“Really? Aw, shucks,” Toriko said, tilting her head towards me. “Give me a pat.”

“...Huh? Are you a dog?” I said despite myself, confused by the sudden request.

“If you won’t pat me, I’m gonna rub your face, Sorawo.”

“Whaa...”

My eyes darted about for no good reason. There was nobody here to see us. Obviously. On this grassy field, yellowed in winter, there was only me and Toriko.

Honestly, I might have almost felt reassured if Satsuki Uruma was still standing there. But now, I had only two options. Pat Toriko’s head, or have her rub my face.

“Ngh!” Toriko shook her head, urging me to do it. How brazen. Having no other choice, I put my hand up, then placed them on her golden locks.

“...Good girl.”

“Good. That’s the way to do it,” Toriko said once I gave her a perfunctory petting.

...What, who made you the boss?

I withdrew my hand, not sure what to make of this, and Toriko returned to her previous position. Then she resumed throwing bolts, as if nothing had happened. Except now she had a satisfied smile on her face.

I looked down at my hands, feeling left behind. Was that the right thing to do? I had been wearing gloves, so the lingering feeling in my hands felt awfully vague.

5

It was 4:00 PM. The sun hid behind the thick, low-hanging clouds, leaving the area around us a little dark. In another hour, it would set entirely. If we were going to camp, we needed to find a place to set up our tent soon.

The AP-1 was descending the slope into a depression surrounded by hills on all sides. The grass had been torn up, exposing the bare ground, and there were piles of trash on it. In the middle of household garbage like snack boxes, and disposable plastic bottles, there was larger trash like a broken CRT TV, old tires, and a dresser covered in stickers from a children’s program. I could see a silver light deep inside the mountain of trash, making it easy to guess that this was some sort of glitch. Other glimmers suggested there were more items with aberrant properties mixed in with the garbage.

We took a route around the trash pile while talking about coming back to dig through it later. Then, as we looked back in the direction we were headed, which was the opposite side of the depression, we both gulped.

We could see the silhouette of an animal on the ridge ahead of us. It had straight legs, like a herbivore. I thought it was looking our way, but it didn’t move at all. It just stood there, the gray sky at its back.

I engaged the brakes. Next to me, Toriko picked up the binoculars and looked through them.

“Can you see it?”

“...I can. I don’t think it’s alive. Probably.”

Toriko handed me the binoculars, so I looked through them, too.

She was right. It wasn’t just not moving, it was frozen solid. The texture of the body didn’t look alive, either. I didn’t know if it was stone or metal, but it looked inorganic. What animal is it modeled on? I wondered. Is it a sheep, or a cow? I can’t make out the head, so it’s hard to figure out what the silhouette is supposed to...

“...Ah!” I nearly dropped the binoculars.

“Sorawo?”

Toriko looked at me suspiciously, noticing something was up. I couldn’t respond.

“Sorawo, what’s wrong?”

“Ku—”

“Ku?”

“It’s a Kudan...”

“No way.” Toriko snatched the binoculars away from me, and took another look. “...You’re right. Creepy.”

Lowering the binoculars, Toriko looked over at me, saw how stiff I was. “You want me to go on ahead, and take a look?” she asked considerately.

I shook my head. “...I’ll go with you.”

“All right.”

Toriko picked up her rifle, and checked that it was loaded, then laid it on her knee. I started the AP-1. The engine got louder, and we began ascending the hill out of the depression.

When we reached the ridge line, there was a Kudan statue there. It had the body of a calf and the face of a person. I had been preparing myself for it to be my father’s face again, but it was vague, not looking like anyone’s face in particular. This wasn’t a stone or bronze statue. The figure was plastic, and the paint was stripping. Its feet were rooted to a concrete slab, like something you might see at a playground in a park in the countryside.

“Sorawo, look.”

When Toriko called my name, I was finally able to tear my eyes away from the Kudan statue. For the first time, I saw the scenery beyond the ridge.

There was a road at the bottom of the grassy slope. It was paved. There were guard rails along the road, and beyond them it dropped off, and there was a river.

“It’s a river!” I raised my voice despite myself. If this river connected to the one on the other side of the gate at the Farm, that meant we were getting pretty close to our goal.

We decided to leave the creepy Kudan statue alone, and headed down the slope.

When we got closer, it became apparent that the road was fairly old. Grass grew through the cracks, and there were noticeable potholes. The road snaked alongside the river, heading more or less northeast.

We got down out of the AP-1 and looked around the area. I put my hands on the guard rail and looked over the edge. This side had a concrete levee, dropping straight down into the river. On the opposite bank, there was a river beach, with uneven round stones all over it. The current was decently fast and flowed from the northeast.

“We set up the searchlight on a beach like that, didn’t we? You think the place we’re going is on the opposite bank, maybe?” Toriko asked, observing the far shore.

“Could be. If so, we’ll have to cross somewhere.”

“In terms of direction... Uhh, which way should we be heading?”

“It should be upstream, I think. Though, I feel like that’ll take us a bit further away from it, too.”

We looked up at the darkening sky. The wind had gotten colder, and that forecast for snow was sounding more and more realistic.

“We could give up for today, and pitch a tent. Or...”

“Or we could bet it’s not far now, and keep on going, right?”

The searchlight wasn’t set to turn on until after sunset, so we didn’t know how far, or in what direction, our destination was. That made this harder to decide.

“What should we do?”

It was a waste of time to overthink it. I broke free from my hesitation and spoke up. “Do you mind if we keep going? I think we can put up the tent without the pegs in five minutes. If it gets dark, we’ll still be able to take shelter quickly.”

I had anticipated this sort of situation, so I bought a tent with the flysheet and inner tent combined so that it could be set up in a short period of time. My decision wasn’t made purely on the fact that it looked adorable or anything.

Toriko furrowed her brow. “Theoretically, sure, it might be possible. But in an emergency, when we’re flustered, we’ll make mistakes.”

“I wouldn’t do this if I was on my own, but if you’re there to watch, that puts me at ease. If I mess something up, you’ve got my back, right?”

Toriko blinked as if she were surprised. “I’m happy that you... trust me like that, but...”

“But?”

“Oh, fine. I’ve got your back. Leave it to me.”

“I’m counting on you.”

Our AP-1 raced full speed down the riverside road as darkness approached. Natsumi was right: 25 kilometers per hour was nothing to make light of. Even in its current state, this was still a paved road. The rubber tracks spun quickly, crossing cracks and potholes. There was occasionally the glint of a glitch, but visibility was good here, so there was no risk of missing one.

After driving for about ten minutes, there was a change in the scenery. Buildings began to appear on both sides of the river, and the number of them gradually increased.

Ashen gray ruins, covered in rust and grass. The way they had so many identical windows facing onto the river made me think of a housing complex, or a hotel. Their fire escapes were rusty, with the paint peeling, and they had even collapsed in many places.

The river snaked along, overlooked by ruins on each bank, and turned towards the northwest. That was the way we had originally been headed. Feeling a little relieved, we were able to chat casually about how one ruin or another looked like it’d be worth exploring, and we should come back some time.

Then...

“Sorawo, stop!”

I engaged the brakes as Toriko’s shout echoed. There was something lying on the road up ahead.

“A person...?”

The white limbs cast across the asphalt looked feminine. We got down from the AP-1, and approached cautiously, with guns drawn.

It wasn’t human.

The creature had the body of a woman, clad in a thin kimono, and the head of a calf. It wasn’t moving, nor did it show any sign of breathing. It was strangely glossy from the top of its head, to the tips of its unsettling toes, and even the kimono it was wearing.

Toriko tried throwing a bolt, and it bounced off with a loud clink.

“...The thing’s made of glass,” Toriko said quietly.

It was a monster with the face of a cow, and the body of a woman. A cow woman.

No, it wasn’t even that, it was a glass sculpture. There, lying on the road.

“What is this thing?”

I had no answer to Toriko’s question. This made no sense to me. But if we were seeing this right after the Kudan statue, it seemed unquestionable that something was happening, and I was the target...

“Sorawo.”

“What?”

“You okay?”

I looked down, following Toriko’s gaze, and realized at some point I had wrapped my arms around myself, with my hands grasping my upper arms, and was I shuddering. Unconsciously, my grip got stronger, and even with conscious effort I wasn’t able to loosen it.

Once I managed to let go of my arms, and was able to look down at my quivering fingers, there were white flakes in the palms of my hands.

It was snow. Little snowflakes fluttered down from the deep gray sky. The dry snow looked almost like ash.

That was when the sun hidden behind the clouds set. I could feel a sudden change in the air. It felt like the babbling of the river, which we had been hearing all this time, stopped for an instant.

There was a gust of wind down the slope on our right, which faced the road. The road along the river darkened as we watched, the last lingering light of daytime fading fast.

At the same time, there was a light in the corner of my vision, and we both looked left. On the opposite side of the river, to the northwest, there was a pillar of light rising.

“There it is!”

That was our searchlight. It was close, too! Even eyeballing it, I could tell it was only a kilometer, maybe even less. If we hurried, we could make it there. But...

“Of course it’s on the opposite shore...” I ground my teeth. “Sorry, looks like we might have to pitch a tent here after all.”

“...Here?” Toriko said in a low voice, looking at the glass figure lying on the road. She looked both ways, and then walked over to the guardrail, and leaned over it to stare intently upstream.

“Wh-Whoa, that’s dangerous, Toriko.”

Toriko turned back to look at me as I tried to stop her, then pointed upstream. “Over there. Look.”

“What?”

I did as Toriko suggested, and leaned out to look.

Beyond the gentle leftward curve in the river, I could see some sort of lattice structure. It wasn’t possible to make out the details from here, but it looked like it continued from the road out over the river...

“A bridge!” I shouted as it hit me.

“Looks like it. Let’s keep on going!”

We jumped on the AP-1 and took off at once.

Giving the glass figure of a cow woman a wide berth, we picked up speed and raced down the road without streetlights. At this point, I realized something pretty important. We had no headlights!

While I swore that, if I made it back in one piece, I was definitely going to install some lights, Toriko pulled out her own flashlight and turned it on. I could see snowflakes dancing across the ring of light on the road.

The snow was building up as we watched. Our AP-1 left clear tracks in the thin, white, ash-like snowflakes covering the asphalt.

In the northwest, the pillar of light flickered out. That was my fault for cheaping out on batteries, and setting it to go out after only a short time. Shoot... I should have made it stay on for an hour, at least.

“Things might be bad over on the right. Prepare yourself before you look,” Toriko said in a tense voice. I turned to look, and gulped.

There were a number of four-legged silhouettes on the slope. Kudans. They weren’t statues this time. Their bodies heaved with each breath, their feet shifted, their tails swayed... They were alive. The whites of their eyes stood out awfully well on their shadowed faces. Staring at us. With human eyes.

“Huh?! Just now...” Toriko cried out in surprise, snapping me back to my senses. Her eyes were wide, and she was looking behind us.

“What’s wrong?”

“There was someone... walking.”

“Huh?!”

I turned to look despite myself. It was so dark back there, I couldn’t even see the tracks the AP-1 had left behind it.

“Wh-What were they like?”

“It was a woman. Like the one we just saw...” Toriko trailed off for a second, then shouted. “There she is again!”

My eyes snapped back to the front. This time, I saw her, too. A woman, next to the guardrail, stumbling along, wearing nothing but a red kimono. Her steps were unsteady, and little horns protruded from her head. As we got closer, I smelled rust.

It was the cow woman.

We both stared vacantly, unable to react as we drove past. Soon, she was swallowed up by the darkness.

“Was... Was that her?” Toriko asked.

“I think it was the same one as before,” I replied.

As we drove on in confusion, once again, the woman in the red kimono appeared ahead of us, on the left.

Her kimono hung open, her limbs were too pale, she smelled of blood, and she had the head of a cow. Exactly the same as before.

The AP-1 passed the woman again, and again, and again. Gradually, the rate of her appearances sped up. I had a feeling the number of bovine shadows with human faces on the ridge to our right were increasing, too.

“We’re still not there?!” I cried out in disbelief, unable to hold it in anymore. If that thing we had seen earlier was really a bridge, it probably should have shown up by now. “Could we have gone past the bridge?”

“We can’t have. I’ve been looking the whole time,” Toriko said, never taking her eyes off the left side of the road. “Do you see anything with your eye, Sorawo?”

“I’ve been looking for a while now, but... I don’t even know.”

There’d been no new developments for over ten minutes now. If anything, the situation was degenerating. More and more, I questioned my own sanity. We were driving down a road to nowhere, with only a single flashlight to light our way.

“This is getting bad, isn’t it?”

The more time passed, the more terror crept into Toriko’s voice. Not good. I already felt like I was losing it, but if they got Toriko, too, we were finished.

I pulled out my Makarov, and leaned towards Toriko.

“Sorawo?”

Taking aim at the back of the cow woman up ahead, I pulled the trigger. A muzzle flash lit up the darkness. The cow woman’s head was thrown back, as if she had been pushed from behind.

I took another shot from the moving vehicle. My bullet struck the cow woman in the side of the head.

She crumpled, vanishing behind us.

“...Was that okay?” Toriko asked, and I shook my head before answering.

“I dunno...”

The AP-1 raced onward as we held our breaths, not knowing what might happen next.

Eventually, a familiar sight appeared up ahead.

The cow woman collapsed on the road, her red kimono hanging open.

She wore the same outfit as before and had fallen the same way. The only thing that had changed was the texture. She didn’t have the glossy appearance of glass, but didn’t seem soft and limp like a corpse would be, either.

A Kudan stood next to the cow woman, as if nuzzling up to her. Its head was lowered, lapping at the corpse’s blood.

Can we run it over? Does this thing have the power to do that? The idea crossed my mind, but... I gave up on it.

If I got carried away and ended up damaging our precious AP-1, that would be pretty terrible.

Seeing no other choice, I stopped the AP-1.

The Kudan stopped licking the blood, and slowly raised its head.

“Wahhh?!”

“Eek?!”

We both screamed.

The face of the Kudan that looked up at us, covered in blood from the nose down, was mine.

6

Toriko and I both froze, our guns still aimed at the creature.

My face was attached to the body of a cow, with messy hair, and clouded eyes. I felt my mind retreating from that corpse-like gaze and the saliva dripping from bloodstained lips.

Its mouth opened, and spoke.

“The Red Person,” my voice said. “The Red Person came.”

Oh, I see.

I listened to my own voice as if in a daze.

I’m forgetting.

Who was the Red Person again?

“Do you really have to go? Is it not too soon?” I said.

“I told that person, too. It is terribly unfair, would you not agree?” I shook my head in distress.

“I must light a fire to welcome them. If I do not feel heat and pain, it will not be fair.” I nodded, and—

Gunfire echoed, blasting a hole in my forehead.

Letting out what seemed like a sigh, I lowered my face, and crumpled to the street.

“...Uh.” I blinked, as if waking from a dream.

There was a thin puddle of blood, like someone had thrown a balloon filled with it at the ground, and the Kudan and the cow woman were nowhere to be seen.

I looked beside me, and Toriko was holding her AK, looking at the puddle of blood in dumb shock. Smoke rose from the muzzle.

“Sorry, Sorawo. I-I shot it,” Toriko said, stumbling over her words. “I just... I couldn’t take it anymore.”

I wanted to say something, but I couldn’t get the words out. Instead, I shook my head. In between quivering breaths, Toriko slowly lowered her gun.

I noticed a vague brightness around us, and looked up. At some point, we had ended up in front of a ruined building. Light from a neon sign turned the snow pink and blue. It was missing letters, and emitted an insect-like hum. Even if it hadn’t been broken, we couldn’t have read it. Text from the surface world was indecipherable in the other world.

I couldn’t hear the river anymore. Looking around, the snow covered fields and empty lots stood out. It was like we were at a dilapidated roadside building in the country. The neon sign shone cold and alone in the vastness of night, without a single streetlight to keep it company.

Based on the privacy wall in front of the building, and the list of prices, as well as the green vinyl curtain covering the entrance to the parking lot, I concluded that this ruin had to have been a love hotel.

And yet, I knew this hotel.

“We weren’t here before. What’s going on...?” Toriko held her AK close to her, wary of her surroundings.

“I dunno, but... do you remember the building we went inside that time with the Yamanoke?”

“You mean the observation platform?”

“Every time it turned, the other world changed a bit, right? I think something like that’s going on here.”

“And what it brought out was this, uh... hotel?”

“Sorry, this might be my fault.”

“Huh... Why?”

Though it felt a bit awkward, I told her, “I think I know this place.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve been inside.”

“...What do you mean?!” Toriko’s eyes were wide.

I couldn’t read what the sign said, but one glance was enough for me to remember it. On that day, I had been lured in by the neon sign, too.

During my high school years, when I didn’t want to go back to my house because it had become a hangout for cultists, I went from one abandoned building or ruin to another, searching for a safe place to hide.

One day in winter, the place I found was a love hotel in the suburbs. The building was pitch-dark, and clearly abandoned, but the neon sign was still lit up for some reason. Figuring it must not have been long since they went under, I went inside.

Only the sign was getting electricity, because none of the lights worked. Though the first floor had been torn apart, once I smashed through the plywood that was blocking the stairs to the upper floors, those were untouched. Wandering through the cluttered, dusty building with a flashlight in hand, I found a relatively intact room near the emergency exit, and decided to settle in there.

Then, after staying for a time, I went back to my house.

When I gave that simple explanation, Toriko looked up at the neon sign, her face filled with emotion.

“Oh, yeah...? So this is a place from your memories, then...?”

“W-Well, I guess you could say that.” I winced a bit when she summed it up using words that were prettier than the reality of the situation.

“Huh? But hold on. Is it possible we ended up here because I shot that thing?”

“...There’s no point worrying about it. I have absolutely no idea what the logic behind it is.”

A gust of wind blew past, chilling our bodies which were sweaty from terror, and tension. Toriko shivered, and looked up to the starry sky. Dancing snowflakes looked beautiful in the neon light.

“I feel like the snow’s getting heavier.”

“Yeah...”

“What do you wanna do? Put up the tent here?”

I considered it.

When we wandered into a different aspect of the other world and encountered the Yamanoke, we were able to go back to where we came from when the revolving observation platform returned to its original position. Would the same happen here when time passed? Or was there some condition we needed to satisfy?

After encountering the Time-space Man, when we came back from a deep place in the other world, we were able to open a direct path home using my eye and Toriko’s hand. I looked around with my right eye to see if there was anything that would let us do that again, but there was none of that silver shimmer that we could use as a starting point.

It was too dark, and too cold to try anything else. Even if this was a different aspect of the other world, surely morning would still come. In our current situation, now that we had lost sight of the bridge we were heading towards, it was probably best to shut out the outside world, and sleep until it was bright out. But I was too scared of the snow to try pitching a tent outside. I didn’t know how much would fall, and if we were exposed to the wind, that would make it really cold.

I looked to Toriko, who was waiting for my response with a tense look on her face. “Want to try going inside?”

“Inside?”

“The love hotel.”

“The love hotel?!” Toriko shouted out, like she had lost the ability to do anything more than parrot words back at me. I nearly burst out laughing.

Okay! We’re doing it, Toriko!

We’re going to a love hotel together!

But sorry... This love hotel is an abandoned ruin...!

I held the light and Toriko held her AK ready as we peered behind the green vinyl curtain. There was room inside for five cars and all the spots were empty.

Now that we had checked it was safe, I got back in the driver’s seat and drove the AP-1 inside the parking lot. Meanwhile, Toriko kept a watchful eye on the surrounding area.

Once I turned off the engine, it was suddenly very quiet. Our footsteps echoed through the little parking lot lit only by flashlight.

With no power to the automatic door that led further inside, we got out a long crowbar, stuck it in a gap, and forced it open together.

Putting the heavy long crowbar back on the AP-1, we grabbed our respective backpacks and sleeping bags, and got ready to explore. I took a handheld crowbar that could double as a nail remover, and hung it from a tool belt at my waist along with a bag full of bolts. Toriko was even more incredible. She had a serious two-handed ax with a leather sheath attached to the outside of her thigh.

“Can you use that?”

“I’ve chopped a lot of firewood. That was when I was still a kid, though.”

“No, but still, you don’t need one that’s that big, do you?”

“For someone my height, one this long is actually easier to use. Don’t I look good with it?”

“It’s not a matter of whether you look good with it or not... You do, though.”

“Oh, good. They say ‘An ax makes a woman look beautiful,’ after all.”

“I’ve never heard that before?!”

Regardless, with our preparations complete, we went inside the hotel.

I proceeded down the hall with an assault rifle on my back and a flashlight and a Makarov in my hands. We soon came to a stonework lobby. It was cold and empty, and the panels that guests would have used to choose a room were all dark. Shards of shattered vases and dried up bundles of flowers littered the floor. Using my crowbar to pry open the door to get behind the front desk, I headed behind the privacy panel. I looked over all the keys to the different rooms on the wall until I found one that had a different key holder from all the rest.

“There. I think this is it.”

“What’s that?”

“The master key. I hear every hotel has a key that opens all of the rooms.”

Once I explained that, Toriko’s eyes sparkled.

“Wow, Sorawo. You’re really used to this sort of thing, huh?”

“I don’t think it’s anything praiseworthy, but... I’ve done it a lot. That was when I was still a kid, though.”

That was only three years ago, max.

Besides, I’m still a kid now...

“Is something wrong?”

Whenever I was feeling down, Toriko noticed. But I couldn’t do the same myself, you know...

I sighed. “Let’s go. We’ll find a decent room and get some sleep.”

“O-Okay.”

With the elevators out of service, we decided to use the employee stairs. Like when I had come, they were sealed off with plywood. I was about to use my crowbar to pry the way open, but Toriko stopped me, and unsheathed her ax, breathing wildly through her nostrils.

A dreadful snapping and cracking echoed through the whole hotel, and then the way upstairs was open.

“Sorry... Didn’t mean to make so much noise...”

“...Well, what’s done is done. The way’s open now, at least,” I said, trying to assuage Toriko’s feelings, then cleared what remained of the plywood and started climbing.

When we reached the second floor, there was a cold draft, as if a window had been left open somewhere, so we kept going. The third floor was in pretty good shape, so we decided to search for a place to sleep there.

“I hear there are people who have girls-only parties,” I said, and Toriko looked at me dubiously.

“What’s this about?”

“Girls’ parties at love hotels.”

“Oh...”

“It’s a lot like what we’re doing, I’ll bet.”

Toriko slowly shook her head. “I think it’s totally different.”

We both sounded confident, but we weren’t in a good place mentally. At an unfamiliar place in the other world at night, with no idea as to where we were, it would have been weird if we weren’t feeling at least some degree of psychological strain. Though I was doing my best not to dwell on it, I had no idea what was up with this building we had wandered into. It was clear this wasn’t the “place from my memories,” exactly. Just very similar, as if someone had created a highly accurate replica by reading my mind.

What the hell? Why does a building like this exist? If I thought about it even a little, I was going to go insane.

As I kept the doubts that were constantly trying to surface at bay, we went around opening rooms with the master key, and clearing them. We ran into broken furniture, mold on the walls and floors, and leaky ceilings, but after a number of misses, we finally hit a good room. It looked undamaged, and if we could just overlook some dust, it was perfectly livable. Being halfway between the employee stairs and the emergency exit was also convenient if we considered that we might need to flee.

There was a bath to the left of the entrance, and on the right was the door to the toilet, and a sink. Water had been cut off, though, and the TV obviously wouldn’t turn on. I tried taking a look inside the fridge, but it was empty. No amenities to speak of. I wouldn’t have touched them if there were, but when they weren’t there, I still felt like I was missing out on something. But that was fine. So long as I had this big bed that dominated the center of the room, that was good enough for me.

However, though I had thought I would be fine with my sleeping bag and the blankets from the bed, an unheated hotel in the winter was colder than I imagined. Even if there wasn’t any obvious damage to the interior, this place was still a ruin. There was a persistent draft coming from somewhere. We put our larger things down next to the bed and headed out of the room for a bit. Using the flashlight to light up the wall near the elevator, we were able to find a keyhole. It needed a different type of key than the master one we had, so I slid the end of my crowbar into a gap in the wall panel, and pried it open. Inside was a shelf, and it was packed full of linens.

Heading back and making the bed with the sheets and pillow covers we had acquired, we also piled up the blankets we had collected. With all of these, we probably wouldn’t freeze to death.

We lit up an LED lantern and put it down on the glass table. Then we boiled water with a camp stove of the variety that used gas canisters. Considering how bad the draft was, we didn’t need to worry about carbon dioxide asphyxiation.

Pouring boiling water into a seafood flavor package of Cup Noodle, I waited for two and a half minutes. I just knew instant ramen was going to taste way more delicious in the other world than it did in the surface world.

When I had finished eating, I boiled more water to make instant coffee. A sip of steamy coffee, with some salty youkan jelly as a snack, and I was finally able to settle down.

“See, this is already starting to feel like a love hotel girls’ party,” I said, but Toriko stubbornly shook her head.

“It’s absolutely not.”

“I mean, we came to a love hotel, ate, and chatted, right?”

“It’s different, okay? This isn’t a girls’ party.”

“What would you know about girls’ parties, Toriko?”

“More than you at least, Sorawo!”

“Oh, yeah? Is that right? Well, let’s hear it then, what are girls’ parties like?”

“Well...”

For the next little while, we argued back and forth about what the girls’ parties that people who were not us went to were supposed to be like. Neither of us had any experience, or knowledge, so it was an argument that could never amount to anything.

“Fine, then when we get back, let’s go to one! Not in a stupid ruin like this! To a real love hotel girls’ party!” I said on the spur of the moment. Toriko nodded.

“Okay.”

“Then you’ll see what... Wait, what?”

“Fine. Let’s go. For real. I mean, I’ve never been to one, either.”

“Are you serious?”

“You’re the one who brought it up, Sorawo.”

“Sure, but...”

“Then let’s go. To a love hotel girls’ party. You eat honey toast and stuff, right? Not that I’d know.”

“Well, I only know what I’ve seen online...”

“When we get back, let’s schedule something, and go. I’ll be looking forward to it.”

“S-Sure...”

Huh...?

Paying no heed to me as I fell silent out of worry, Toriko let out a yawn.

“I’m getting sleepy.”

“...I guess we should sleep.”

We took off our coats and shoes, and got under the covers. There were already plenty of blankets, so we didn’t need to use the sleeping bags. Each of us took three blankets for ourselves, then we pulled the large comforter attached to the bed over us.

We decided to turn the lantern down, but leave it on. I checked that my gun was in reach, then lay my head on a pillow.

“Good night.”

“See you in the morning.”

I could feel the Cup Ramen and coffee warming me up from the inside. Thanks in part to exhaustion, I was asleep in an instant.

7

How much time had passed? Suddenly, I thought I heard something, so I opened my eyes.

The room was quiet and freezing cold. In the white light of the LED lantern, nothing seemed to have changed from before we went to sleep.

I heard it again. A slight electric noise—like a chime.

“Toriko.” I shook the mass of blankets next to me. When I did, the lump in the blankets collapsed without resisting, spreading out across the bed.

Oh, I see, I thought. Toriko must have had something to do and got out of bed while I was still sleeping.

Getting up, I put on my shoes. Then, as I shivered in the cold, I slipped my arms through the sleeves of my coat.

I moved away from the bed, looking for Toriko. The bathroom was dark and dry. Knocking first, I looked inside the toilet, but Toriko wasn’t there.

Where did she take off to? I wondered with some concern when I heard a faint chime again.

That’s when it hit me. Silly Toriko must have left the room without thinking about it. The auto-lock trapped her out there, and now she was ringing the bell, trying to get back in.

There’s just no helping her. Geez... I laughed to myself, then undid the chain and opened the door.

A chill wind blew in from outside.

There was a Red Person standing there.

Far taller than I was, and looking down at me.

I felt a sense of nostalgia welling up inside me.

I remember that time.

When I was all alone, you asked me.

“Do you not need those people?”

When I went home after that, they were all gone.

I don’t know if you did something, or it was a coincidence. But that night, in the abandoned building, you saved me.

I’m glad to see you again. What’s up?

I smiled, and the Red Person bent over slowly, and hugged me.

It felt incredibly soft and warm, just like that time.

Huh?

Why didn’t I start the fire?

Well, they never came home.

Are you mad?

I got the kerosene ready and everything. Just like you said to.

I know I didn’t dump it over my head. But I didn’t want to get wet. Besides, if they weren’t coming back, it didn’t feel like there was any point to doing it.

Don’t be angry.

Huh?

“Do I not need that girl?”

What girl?

...

I need her.

I really do. I need that girl.

I need her, so you can’t take her away.

You can’t, got it?

She’s special.

Huh?

A replacement?

I don’t need a replacement.

She’s the only one I need.

It’s fine, you don’t have to watch.

You don’t—

Suddenly, my vision shook.

I was no longer standing in a dark corridor, but on a field in the middle of the day.

I knew this place. This was the sports field at the elementary school I’d gone to.

Why am I here again? School’s not out yet. If I don’t go back inside, they’ll get mad at me.

I looked around in confusion and spotted a rusty iron door in the corner of the field.

It was built right into the concrete ground, and when I pulled on the handle, I was able to open it even with my elementary schooler muscles.

Inside, there was a ladder leading down. Even when I was in elementary school, I had always loved exploring unfamiliar places, so I excitedly began my descent.

Once I reached the bottom, there was a hallway with an iron mesh floor. I could hear water running beneath my feet. Immediately, I started walking forward.

However, the corridor soon came to a dead end. I had only gone maybe twenty meters forward. An iron grate blocked my way, and a ladder on the wall led upwards.

Is that all...? I thought, disappointed, and climbed the ladder, opening the hatch to go outside. For some reason, it came out in the same place I had gone down. What was more, it had been noon just a moment ago, but now the sky had turned to evening colors.

Scared, I ran towards home. The familiar scenery along the way seemed wrong somehow. Here and there, unfamiliar buildings replaced the ones I knew, and something was off about all the road signs and other signs along the way.

When I arrived home, out of breath, it was strange there, too.

Where our garden tree once stood, there was a tall cactus sprouting a bright red flower. In our garage, there was a compact sports car. The intercom had been replaced with a little lever, pointing downwards. It had a plain wooden handle, with some sort of small black symbol on it. Two cow-like statues with human faces looked down at me from next to the front door.

This was supposed to be my house, but... Confused by the chaotic scene that seemed to demand I find all the things that were wrong with it, I walked around behind it. Peering in through the kitchen window, I could see my father and grandmother speaking happily at the low table in the room that held our family’s Buddhist altar.

I thought that was weird because normally, Dad wouldn’t be home yet at this time of day. Grandma was wearing a sea blue kimono that I hadn’t seen before, too.

Something resembling a doll was lying on the table between them. It was like my Licca-chan, or a Barbie doll, but far prettier. They were talking about what to do with it, and even though I hadn’t been given it yet, I worried they were going to take it away from me.

That’s when I heard footsteps coming down the stairs, and my mother entered the kitchen. I couldn’t see her face from where I was, but she looked the same to me as she always did.

Relieved, I called out to Mom from the window.

At that moment, something felt very wrong to me.

Mom was supposed to be dead.

After her death, Dad and Grandma went nuts.

That’s why I ran away...

That’s how I met that girl, and how I’m here now.

So, was that Mom?

If she was real... then what was I?

Time seemed to stretch out as Mom noticed my voice and slowly turned to face me.

I can’t look.

There’ll be no going back.

I’ll lose something precious to me.

I knew that instinctively. And yet, I couldn’t move. Still staring through the window, as if frozen, I couldn’t take my eyes off my mother as she was about to turn around.

No.

Toriko.

Toriko, save—

In the next instant, there was an incredible crunching sound, and the whole world went dark.

“Sorawo!”

Someone grabbed me from behind, and I tripped as they violently pulled me backwards.

I stared up at the ceiling, confused, and found myself in the dark hall of a hotel. In the light of the LED lantern shining out through the open door, a disheveled Toriko had wound up to take another swing at the Red Person with the ax she was carrying.

“Toriko! Wait!” I shouted despite myself, clinging to her leg.

“What?! Let go, Sorawo!”

“It’s not what you think!” I cried out in desperation. “That’s the Red Person!”

“What’s not what I think?!”

“It’s the Red Person! It’s the Red Person, so it’s not what you think!”

Toriko looked at me with murder in her eyes. Her left hand reached out, grabbing me by top of my head, and forcibly turning me to face the Red Person.

“Take a good look! There’s no way this guy’s harmless!”

“B-But it’s the Red Person,” I kept complaining, and Toriko finally lost her temper.

“Don’t judge based on appearances! Who are you gonna trust, Sorawo?! This guy, or me?!”

With just those words, it was like the scab that had grown over my perception was torn off. Reeling after the first blow from the ax, the Red Person’s mouth hung open, as if yelling something at me. It was pitch-dark inside it. Like the soot from a fireplace.

“Wha... What the hell is this guy?!” I shouted.

“You awake now?!”

“Yeah... Yeah, I am!”

I was practically screaming.

Had I let this monster hug me without question because of fond memories?!

Past thoughts rushed back into my head.

This guy tried to make me douse myself with kerosene and commit suicide by burning myself to death!

Now that I finally realized it, I was shocked by the fact I had never found it strange before.

“Pull yourself together, Sorawo! You need to look at him! With your right eye!”

Once Toriko said that to me, I was able to regain control of myself. I focused on my right eye, and glared at the Red Person.

If he’d just tried to kill me, that’d be one thing.

But, no—that wasn’t enough. He tried to take Toriko from me, too.

“Okay. I’m looking right at him,” I said in a suppressed voice. Because if I spoke any louder, my emotions would get out of control, and I’d have ended up shouting out loud. “Kill him good, Toriko.”

“I’m on it!”

Toriko took the ax in both hands again.

The heavy steel blade tore through the air with a low-pitched whoosh, burying itself deep inside the Red Person’s body.

There was no scream. Repeatedly and without mercy, Toriko brought the ax down on the enemy caught in my vision.

An ax makes a woman look beautiful.

It sure does, I thought.

Ash flew in place of blood as the Red Person was hacked to bits. The severed limbs that fell to the hallway carpet were like burned-out husks, with embers lingering in the severed edges, but trampled under Toriko’s hiking boots, they vanished in no time.

Breathing heavily, Toriko lowered the ax and looked back at me. “You okay? Can you stand?”

I clutched her hand and pulled myself up, then was immediately overcome with incredible nausea. Doubling over, unable to speak, I puked on the Red Person’s remains.

Even once there was nothing left in my stomach, the gag reflex wouldn’t stop, and it took a while before I realized Toriko was rubbing my back.

How long had that Red Person been deceiving me? The thought of it was maddening.

This meant that ever since back in high school, when I met him in that ruin, he had been messing with my perception. Even when he appeared at my apartment door, I paid no mind to it. As if it were natural for him to be there.

Now that Toriko had saved me, I stumbled back into the room. She offered me a glass of water, and I rinsed out my mouth at the sink. My reflection in the mirror showed my face was a mess.

“Sorry, Toriko. I’m so sorry. I never realized I—” I started to say in a voice that was hoarse from vomiting, but Toriko put a finger to my lips.

“Shh. Just rest for now. We can talk in the morning. Okay?”

“Yeah...”

Maybe because I had just experienced a memory from my school days, I nodded like a child. No, that’s not it. That was a false memory. It never actually happened...

At Toriko’s suggestion, I took off my coat and shoes, and got back into bed. Toriko sat next to me, patting my head as I lay there. It’s usually the other way around, I thought as I felt her gentle hand stroking my hair, and I gradually calmed down.

But I couldn’t sleep. When I closed my eyes, that scene came back to me. Vividly. Mom, about to turn around...

The terror I felt in that moment was hard to put into words. I shuddered just remembering it. Not because Mom was scary. I loved her, and was devastated when she died. The memory of how much she cared for me was often what kept me going in the hard times that followed.

But I was truly terrified then. I knew that if our eyes met, everything would break down, and there would be no going back. Of all the terrors I had come to know since learning about the other world, I had never been more frightened than in that moment. Just imagining the thought of seeing her eyes made me want to scream.

What if that wasn’t a fabricated memory, but something that actually happened? What if, even if the world was slightly distorted because this was the Otherside, that had really been Mom?

What if our eyes had met, we spoke, and I went into the house?

What if that wasn’t an illusion the Red Person was showing me, but there was a world within the shifting aspects of the Otherside where my mother, who I thought was dead, was actually alive?

What if there was a world where my father and grandmother never fell in with a cult because of her death? What if I was presented with the possibility of the four of us living together as a family?

Would I have been able to stay the same as I am now?

There would be no place for this “me” in that alternate Kamikoshi family.

I mean, obviously, their me would be happier. The other me who had never experienced betrayal by her own family, madness, and an onslaught of malice. If she lived a peaceful life, full of happiness—she’d be a completely different person.

Most of who I was now had been desperately scraped together from the pieces left after my mother died. Therefore, I was convinced that if I caught a glimpse of a possibility that might upend that foundation, it would shake me to the core.

I could try to explain my fear, but it didn’t make it any less scary. If anything, my head became a mess, and my mental state deteriorated even further.

“Urrrrgh,” I groaned and clutched my head. As nails dug into my skin, and I pulled my hair, I realized that pain could rob me of the power to think.

“Don’t do that, Sorawo. You’ll go bald.” Toriko grabbed my hands and tried to stop me. I brushed her off, and sat up.

“Sorawo...”

I looked at Toriko, who seemed so concerned. “Toriko, slap me.”

“Huh?! Why?!”

“If I keep thinking, I’m going to go crazy. Please.”

“You... You want me to hit you?” Toriko sounded shrill. I shook my head in frustration.

“Anything that brings me back to my senses will do! Come on!” I shouted, then shut my eyes tight and braced for the pain.

Honestly, anything would have been fine. If she didn’t stop at a slap, and just straight out punched me, I would have welcomed it. I wanted a strong sensation that would wipe out the mess currently filling my head.

I know you. You get upset when I call it domestic violence, but you really like slapping me. You were really into it when you chased out the Yamanoke, and you’re kind of weird any time you start rubbing my face. But, whatever, I can forgive it. You’re Toriko. So hurry up and—

I sensed Toriko moving. I cowered reflexively, and a hand touched my left cheek.

It was followed by a hand on my right cheek. Slowly, gently.

Stop it. That’s not what I want. You need to really haul off and whack me. Don’t you get it, Toriko? I’m halfway to going mad right—

Something soft touched my lips, and my mind went blank.

Ki...

My eyes opened involuntarily. Golden eyelashes were right there, ready to kill them, so my eyes hurriedly slammed themselves shut again. But in that instant, I completely understood the situation.

Toriko had my face cupped in her hands, and she was kissing me.

Beautiful people always smell good. It’s just not fair, I grumbled internally, remembering my own exhausted face from the mirror. She’s got some nerve. Thinks she can get away with this just because she’s beautiful, and her lips are soft. Does she eat nothing but lip balm three times a day?

“Mmph?!” I was shocked to feel something wet through those soft lips.

Wha?! She slipped me the tongue!

I struggled, reflexively pulling away. I couldn’t stop her.

“Hah!”

Once our faces separated, Toriko let out a violent laugh. That fierce, unrelenting smile was so beautiful, I just stared up at her, forgetting to protest.

“How was it?” Toriko asked, her face triumphant, defiant, and scared.

“How about... you tell me first,” I said, not entirely sure what I was asking. Toriko licked her lips, and looked upwards and to the side as she mulled over it.

Don’t savor it, you dummy!

I thought her face had suddenly loosened up a bit, then, unable to hold back any longer, burst into a massive grin.

“Ah-hah!”

I was taken aback by her sputtering laugh. “What the hell?!”

Her lips quivering with laughter, Toriko came right out and said, “It tasted like puke!”

“...You jerk!” I shouted, and Toriko broke up. She clutched her belly and collapsed on the bed.

“You’re the worst! I’m done! I’ll be sleeping on the sofa! Goodbye!”

“Sorry, sorry. Don’t go.”

As I tried to get out of bed, Toriko stopped me. “E... Even if you smell like puke, I’ll put up with it, so...”

The rest was lost in another gale of laughter. If something tickled Toriko’s funny bone, she’d be at it for a while. She fell back into bed, still holding me, and this time wouldn’t let go. I let her hug me from behind for a while, a scowl still on my face.

“Whew... Okay, I’m sorry.”

“Geez, what’s even going on...?”

“But, hey, you’re back to your senses, right?”

Like the ends justify the means.

“...Thanks to you,” I replied begrudgingly.

The impact of that kiss had blasted the terror that had seemed so deep-rooted clear out of my head. It was all gone now.

“I’m glad it was me,” I murmured unconsciously.

I’m glad it was this me here today.

I lost my Mom, and went through hell, but just being able to meet Toriko was enough to make life satisfying.

Honestly... I couldn’t imagine living without her anymore.

“Huh? What’d you say?” Toriko asked, and I repeated myself angrily.

“I said I’m glad it was me! There are people who would flip out if you did that to them out of nowhere, okay?”

“That’s all right. I wouldn’t do it to anyone but you, Sorawo.” That one nonchalant comment was enough to torpedo down my pitiful attempt to fight back.

“Hey, turn this way.”

The moment I reluctantly turned to face Toriko, she hugged me as hard as she could. She patted my head like crazy, and mussed my hair.

“H-Hold on.”

“Sorawo, I love you. You understand that, right?” She whispered into my hair, as if speaking to my roots. I struggled with myself for a moment, then took a deep breath.

“I know. What do you think I am?”

“...My—”

“We have the closest kind of relationship in the world, right? You said it yourself, didn’t you?”

This time, Toriko hugged me tight without a word.

“...That hurts,” I protested.

“...”

“Hey!”

Oh. Wait, am I supposed to hug her back, maybe?

By the time I realized it, it was apparently too late, and Toriko had already loosened her grip on me, satisfied.

Under the mountain of blankets, we stared at one another for a time. Then, unable to take Toriko’s sparkling eyes staring into mine any longer, I quickly surrendered and closed my eyes.

“Good night.”

“See you in the morning.”

Before I fell asleep, I noticed that, at some point, we had started holding hands. I didn’t even think of letting go.

8

The next morning, we opened the shuttered windows, and a fresh coat of snow covered everything beneath the clear skies.

“Wow! It’s all white!” Toriko exclaimed.

“It stuck, huh?”

We put our coats on, and headed outside. There was maybe ten centimeters of accumulation. The AP-1’s tracks could handle it.

Both of us had grown up in snow country, but I had never seen a scene like this before: fresh fallen snow as far as the eye could see, untread by anyone. Just making our mark on the snow was exciting. We laid down side-by-side on a slope and spread our arms to make snow angels, threw snowballs, made a half-hearted attempt at a snowman, and generally fooled around for a little while.

It got cold, so we made some instant corn soup in the parking lot and drank it. We had been looking around the area as we played, and were easily able to find the bridge a little way down the road.

It seemed likely to me that there was more to night in the other world than just the living creatures becoming more active. I was thinking that it warped time and space—or perhaps human perception of them, too. That had to be why no matter how far we drove last night, we never reached the bridge.

After finishing a breakfast consisting of soup, CalorieMate, and coffee, we prepared to set out. We checked the room that we had stayed in one last time to make sure we weren’t missing anything. Then, loading our stuff on the AP-1, I started the engine.

Driving through the green vinyl curtain, we came out of the parking lot and onto the street.

The other world was shining white under the sun.

There were two tracks left behind us. After going a mere hundred meters or so, the bridge came into view. It was a Japanese-style bridge with scarlet railings, like something you might see over the river in a hot springs resort area.

We stopped the AP-1 in front of the bridge and got off for a moment. It would have been too scary to keep moving without checking that the bridge could handle our weight first. We crossed, using a shovel and long crowbar to feel around for any hidden holes. Not finding any unusual warping or damage, it seemed like our vehicle would be able to cross without issue.

Taking the same route back, we then recrossed the bridge on the AP-1. When we reached the opposite shore, we turned right, and drove alongside the river. Eventually, we found a slanted road that would take us down to the riverbed. We slowly descended the slope as I worried we were going to lose traction and slip, then proceeded across the rocky river beach. The ground here wasn’t level, so this was the most uncomfortable part of the drive yet, but the movable track rollers Natsumi had installed absorbed the shock, making it a lot better than it could have been.

Once we had gone about ten minutes at low speed, we spotted a massive, familiar rock. This was where we’d set up the searchlight!

“We made it!” Toriko declared triumphantly.

“Hurrah!”

Our shouts echoed across the other world until they were absorbed by the fresh fallen snow.

Next to the giant rock was a natural shelter where no snow seemed to have accumulated, so we parked the AP-1 there.

“Yayyyy!” Toriko cried out.

“We did it!”

We high-fived each other. It looked like we could call our first long-distance expedition a success.

“Whew, I’m beat,” said Toriko with a sigh. “Let’s go home. I want to take a shower.”

“Want to borrow one at the DS Lab?” I suggested.

“You think they’d let us?”

“I’ll bet they would.” I got down from the AP-1, and pulled my backpack and rifle off the luggage rack.

“The crowbars and other heavy stuff can stay here for now. Let’s put a sheet over it. We’ll take back just the stuff that might be damaged by the humidity.”

“Okay.”

“Now, as for the gate, let’s see... There it is.”

Snow had partially buried the pile of stones that indicated the location of the gate. It was faster to just look with my right eye.

“Let’s goooo.”

“Ah! Wait, hold on.” Toriko hurriedly called out to stop me, then started digging through her own backpack.

“What’s up?”

“Here. For you.”

What came out of her pack was a stylish wooden box. It was painted white, with an unfamiliar logo burned into it. I set my own baggage down on the snow, and accepted the box.

“What’s this?”

“A present. You can open it.”

I did as I was told, and slid open the lid. The inside of the box was lined with an orange suede material, and it contained two knives, side-by-side. Simple, pretty knives with wooden handles. They looked like the type that folded up. Comparing the two of them, they were slightly different sizes.

“The small one is yours.”

“Huh? Then what about this one?”

“It’s mine.”

Despite having said it was a present, Toriko reached out and took her own knife first. Folding it with a snap, she laid it flat on her palm.

“Look here.”

The back of the handle bore a similar brand to the box. It was a symbolic design—a flying bird. On the opposite side was a swimming fish.

“These are...”

“Yeah. Our symbols.”

The bird from her name, and the fish from mine.

“Th... This is pretty embarrassing, you know?”

“Oh, yeah? Well, if you don’t want it—”

“No, I do. I really do.” I reached out, but Toriko suddenly raised her voice.

“Ah! Wait, wait! I want to hand it to you myself.”

“O-Okay.”

Toriko lifted my knife out of the box, and placed it on her open palm. The blade was turned towards her, the handle to me.

“Will you accept it?”

The knife’s point was aimed directly at Toriko’s heart. Her indigo eyes stared directly into my own.

Toriko, it’s dangerous, looking into my right eye like that...

Despite thinking that, I couldn’t look away.

“...Of course.”

I reached out and took hold of the handle with its fish and bird symbols.

“What do you think? I tried to choose one you could use while camping.”

“Yeah...”

Testing my grip on it, I found it fit in my hand so well it was scary.

“This fits too well... Don’t tell me you measured my hand or something?”

“Huh? I can figure out that much without taking measurements.”

“O-Oh yeah?”

I tried folding the blade. Without needing to exert any excess force, it easily slid into the slot in the handle. Despite the seemingly simple shape, she had customized the size, and the symbols on them. These had to cost a pretty penny...

“Thanks. I like it. Seems easy to use.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“But why so suddenly? To celebrate our first long-distance expedition?”

“Well, it’s that kind of day, you know?”

“That kind of day?” I asked, not following her, and Toriko’s eyebrows drooped.

“Christmas is, well, it’s a family event. I thought you might have some bad memories, so I couldn’t bring it up, but...”

“Uh, what?”

“But watching you, it didn’t seem like you did. It was like you just weren’t thinking about Christmas at all, so—”

“Christmas?”

“Go figure.” Toriko sighed, seeing the confused look on my face. “Yesterday was the 24th. Today’s the 25th,” she explained.

Now that she mentioned it, I made the connection between the date and what was happening here. Looking down at the present in my hands, “...Oh. It’s Christmas,” I said, sounding like an idiot.

“That’s right. I’m glad I was able to give it to you.”

“Th... Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

Christmas...

Oh, yes. I see now. That’s how it is, huh?

So, then... I spent Christmas Eve, of all nights, with Toriko, in a love hotel...?

It was a ruined one... and I threw up a lot, but still...

As I was thinking silly things, Toriko suddenly spoke up. “Christmas Highway.”

“Huh? What?”

“That’s what we’ll name this road. Isn’t it great? That’s okay, right?”

I couldn’t say anything for a while, but once I finally regained my faculties of speech, I mumbled, “That’s... a good name you came up with...”

Every time we drive down this way, I was sure it would remind me of what happened.

“Good. It’s decided, then.”

Toriko smiled, not knowing how I felt.

“Merry Christmas, Sorawo!”