File 18: Alone Together in a Mayoiga

1

“It’s a dog,” Toriko said all of a sudden, so I stopped writing in my notebook and looked up.

“A dog?”

“Isn’t that what that is?”

Toriko was looking towards the east side of the slope. I laid my pencil down on top of my notebook, then walked around the AP-1 to stand beside Toriko and look down from the ridge.

The dry grass lay flat, with a thin layer of lingering snow dotted around the landscape. It was the first Saturday in March; there wasn’t even a hint of snow left in the surface world, but there was here in this one. Down at the bottom of the hill we were on was a field of tall grass with large puddles scattered around.

I looked in the direction Toriko was pointing for a while before spotting something that was moving.

“Where’s the dog?”

“It was just moving...” Toriko was looking through a pair of binoculars. I shaded my eyes with my hands and squinted. I had figured since Toriko had a pair of binoculars there was no need to buy one for myself, but it was inconvenient at times like this. It was too much effort to lift up the rifle and look down the scope every time too.

“Huh? I lost it. Where’d it go...” Toriko said, turning left and right with the binoculars. “Huh? Was I seeing things?”

“Maybe? We’ve hardly ever seen anything alive and moving during the day in this world...” I had started to say when there was a big gust of wind. The distant grass swayed in waves, and I saw something in the middle of it.

“Ah...!”

For an instant, it looked like a naked person, down on all-fours, and I was shocked. Its limbs had looked long enough, and its size about large enough for it to be human. Its two black eyes sparkled in the sunlight. The moment I thought, It’s looking at us too, it moved. Once its four large legs started running, it vanished into the grass in no time.

“See! You saw it, right?!” Toriko shouted excitedly, and I got caught up in her enthusiasm.

“I did! I did! There was something there!”

“Hey, that was a dog, right?”

“May...be...? Did you get a look at it through the binoculars?” I asked.

“Not a clear one... But I think it was a dog. It had ears and a nose.”

“I think most animals have ears and a nose.”

“What did it look like to you, Sorawo?”

I had to think about that. I had only seen it for a second, and when I tried to remember it only a vague fragmentary image came to mind. “Hmm... It seemed a bit big for a dog, you know?”

“A wolf, then?”

“No, it was thinner...like a deer, maybe?”

“Deer are more brown. It looked kinda white to me.”

“Couldn’t that be the lighting? It was kinda brown too. It was blending into the grass after all.”

A goat, a pony, an escaped cheetah, an emaciated boar... We came up with all the theories we could, but our recollections of the creature were all vague, so we couldn’t prove any of them. There was no disputing it was some kind of animal, though. The way it moved around so quickly on four legs wasn’t human.

We kept watching to see if it would make another appearance, but the only things moving were the grass swaying in the wind and the clouds drifting across the sky. It was cold just sitting there, so we gave up and turned to go.

I headed back to the AP-1 and opened up the notebook on top of the vehicle. It was a waterproof one, making it safe to use outdoors. It was size B6, made of something called Yupo paper, and felt smooth, but was still easy to write on.

I wrote a 犬, the kanji for dog, on the map, then added a question mark.

“Is that it?” Toriko asked, peering over my shoulder with a dissatisfied look on her face.

“What more do you want me to write?”

“Why not draw a picture?”

“There’s no need.”

“I mean, anything we write over here is nonsense once we go back.”

“...” I’d forgotten that.

“Okay? Go on, draw something,” Toriko continued, triumphant, and weirdly pushy. I was kinda frustrated, so I passed her the notebook and pencil.

“You draw.”

“Whaaa? I wanted to see your drawings,” she complained, but took the notebook and scribbled something before handing it back. She added a dot to the upper left of my 犬, making it look not entirely unlike the face of a dog with its tongue sticking out.

I silently took the notebook back, put a cap on the pencil, and shoved them both into my mountain parka.

“Say something, would you?”

“That looked pretty lazy...”

“You meanie!”

“I mean, it’s still practically an ideograph.”

“It looks like a dog’s face, right? It’s a picture.”

Toriko was insistent, but when I thought about it again, I didn’t know anymore. Some kanji were pictographs to begin with, so where did it stop being a picture and start being an ideograph?

“Well, whatever. I’ll be looking forward to seeing how it turns out back in the surface world,” I said.

“Okay. If it’s a proper picture, you’re treating me.”

“Is that the game? And wait, treating you to what?”

“I meant you’d be paying the bill at the after-party. But I can ask for anything? Hmm, what should I go with, then?”

“You better think carefully. Because if it’s not a picture, you’re the one who’s gonna be treating me.”

Before we moved on, I turned back to the swaying grass once more.

Was it really an animal...?

The other world was suddenly full of life once night fell, but it was never like that during the daytime. We had seen things in the distance a number of times. But were they alive? Were they trash blowing around in the wind? Or some phenomenon unique to the Otherside? It was hard to say.

Besides, we had never met a normal animal here in this world. There were the human-faced beasts that had chased us when we wandered into Kisaragi Station, the Walking Gallows, which had been created when a robot meant for carrying luggage wandered into a glitch, and then there was the Kudan... That thing we had just seen might not have been an animal at all, but something more sinister.

Toriko apparently was thinking the same thing as me, because she took the AK off the AP-1’s rack, and checked it was loaded before sitting in her seat, gun still in hand. “Could you drive, Sorawo?”

I nodded. If that animal, or whatever it was, came after us, I’d feel a lot better if Toriko was holding a gun. I sat in the driver’s seat, and started up the AP-1. The diesel engine let out a happy sound, and white smoke came out of the exhaust pipe.

We were currently on top of a low ridge that ran from north to south, rising and falling as it went. We had climbed up the west side, and were using it to survey the surrounding terrain. The verdant mountains in the north stretched out like a person lying down to sleep, and to the south was a series of hills, none of them particularly different from any of the others. Looking back the way we had come, there was a single campfire in the middle of an open field. I couldn’t be sure it was a real campfire. One of the entry points from the Farm was near that campfire, and there had been the remains of small animals caught in spider webs there. It felt dangerous, somehow, so we were avoiding it. There was no one around, so it was strange that it was still burning, the same as when we had come before. But if there was someone feeding the fire, that was an issue too, though.

We were currently...I’m not sure where. I hadn’t figured out how this location connected to the other places we knew in the other world just yet. I was recording nearby landmarks to try and puzzle that out.

I checked the compass one more time, then started off in the AP-1. We were heading towards the mountains in the north. If we went someplace higher up, we might get a slightly better understanding of the surrounding area.

This was our third trip to the other world since the start of the new year. With the university on spring break, it had been easy for us to get things done, but the snow was taking its time to melt on this side, so it took a while before we could start exploring again.

At the start of February, the ground had still been covered with snow, so all we were able to do was check on the AP-1, which had been left here since Christmas. It finally started to thaw in the middle of the month, so we decided to try bringing the AP-1 back to the surface world. It made it through the gate just fine, and we were able to get it into a room on the Farm.

Then we ran into a problem.

The AP-1 was 2.2 meters long, 1.5 meters wide, and 1.8 meters tall. I measured the doors, and they were nowhere near wide enough for us to take it out into the hall.

But I wanted to clear this hurdle somehow. The multiple gates on the Farm were all in the same building. If we could take the AP-1 through the building to the other gates, it would make exploring them much easier.

I considered just smashing the walls to widen the doorways ourselves, but I had to conclude it was too much for us to handle. Even if we could do it, we would run into more problems with the stairs. The building was three stories, and there were gates on all of them.

Seeing no better option, I consulted with Migiwa, and asked if we could have some construction work done.

“I’d like to make it so we can move the AP-1 around the building, and access all of the gates.”

When I openly explained what I wanted, he just looked at me in silence for a good five seconds. He may have been exasperated, but he didn’t stop us, so it all worked out in the end. As a result of our discussion, we were able to expand the doors of all the rooms with gates and install an elevator to move between floors. Migiwa had already planned to make it so we could bring vehicles out through the basement where the Round Hole was and had brought in heavy machinery to make a ramp there, but it wasn’t finished yet. We’d delayed the elevator until later and were just expanding the doorways for now.

Surprisingly, the operators from Torchlight were the ones who came to do the construction. I was just thinking I recognized some buff foreigners who had shown up when their company president, Sasazuka, came to greet us.

“When you run a PMC in Japan, it’s often convenient to have a construction business too,” she explained, and gave me another business card with the name “Tomoshibi Engineering” on it.

On the site, Toriko and I were given helmets, goggles, and dust masks, and we endured the loud noise and dust to stand guard. If one of the gates opened somehow, the workers would be in danger, so we couldn’t be completely hands-off with the construction.

For the first construction project, we chose to expand the doors of two rooms on the first floor. It didn’t need to be pretty, so the job got done faster than I’d expected.

The AP-1 passed through a doorway framed with yellow foam rubber, turned to move down the hall, then entered the other newly expanded door. The test was a success.

The second project was putting in new doorways for all of the rooms on the first floor, and after that we were done for the time being. The second and third floors would wait until the elevator was put in.

With all the preparations complete, we made our first real trip into the other world since Christmas.

Since Christmas...

The knife I’d received then was still in my pocket. I felt like if I put it away somewhere, it would never get used again. Toriko had gone to the trouble of getting me a practical gift, and she had said she wanted me to be able to use it regularly.

Coward that I was, I have to admit I was intimidated by the big emotions behind the present. But I was pretty shocked when I made Toriko cry recently, so I was trying not to act too dense. I didn’t know how far I could go, and I wasn’t sure of my own feelings yet...

The AP-1 puttered along. I threw bolts from my nail bag at regular intervals and occasionally adjusted things so we didn’t go off course. Toriko sat up straight, keeping an eye on both sides of the ridge. When our eyes met, she smiled at me.

I couldn’t take it and turned my eyes back to the front. Hopefully I wasn’t blushing. Look at this—right after I had resolved to do better. Every time I was struck by the inevitable realization that Toriko loved me, my heart went into panic mode.

2

The ridge road continued into the mountains where we eventually found our path blocked by a dense coniferous forest. It was so thick that not only were we unable to go any further with the AP-1, we questioned whether it was wise to even advance on foot. We headed down the western slope, hoping to search along the edge of the woods.

We had left early in the morning, so it was only 11:00 a.m. If time didn’t get all weird like when we encountered the Yamanoke, there was still plenty of time before sundown. We had brought our tent and sleeping bags too, so we could spend the night in this world if we needed to.

Still, we weren’t planning to go that far today. Our primary objective was to explore the area around the gate and map it out. We had made it through a night here before, but that didn’t change the fact that the Otherside was more dangerous at night than during the day. Toriko and I agreed that we should avoid camping out any more than necessary and go home like good little girls when we were able to.

We continued through the foothills, tracing the edge of the forest. The water seeping out of the slope flowed along our path. Was it meltwater? There were a large number of fallen leaves in the places where the current slowed. Looking at those leaves, I realized something. The type of trees had changed. Looking up, the conifers had been replaced with deciduous trees, and the space between them had widened too.

“Isn’t that a road, Sorawo?” Toriko asked and pointed up ahead. She was right. I could see a slanting surface that followed the mountain face. It was maybe wide enough for one vehicle, at most. It looked like the AP-1 could use it, but...

We stopped in front of the hill, and both got off the vehicle for a moment. Before going any further, we checked the depth of the flowing meltwater at our feet. It’d be bad if there was a gutter there. I threw a bolt in, then poked at it with a branch... It was fine. No more than a centimeter deep, which was just how it looked.

We splashed across it, then went up the hill on foot to take a look. The hill road was covered in fallen leaves and curved gently as it continued up the mountainside. I couldn’t see the glimmer of any glitches either. Looking at the side of the road, the ground beneath the leaves was solid, so a landslide seemed unlikely.

Deciding we were probably good to go, we headed back to the road we had come from and boarded the AP-1.

The leaves crunched beneath our treads. I kept looking over my shoulder, checking that nothing was following us as we climbed the hill. There was a steep upward slope on the right side of the road, densely forested, and on the left side there was an equally steep downward slope. I kept to the right-hand side to avoid carelessly pitching us down the hill. Unlike mountains in the surface world, you could clearly hear the sound of the wind shaking the branches of the trees and the leaves rustling here. The lack of singing birds or chirring insects made it that much easier to hear.

“It makes me uneasy, somehow,” Toriko said in a low voice. “The other world is always quiet, but when you go into the mountains, it feels even more lonely.”

“You’d usually expect a place like this to be teeming with life, after all.”

“Do you think there are animals that wandered in from the surface world, like us?”

“It’s kind of strange that there aren’t. I wonder about that,” I said, looking up at a branch that reached out over the road like a person’s arm. “There are plenty of plants, at least. I don’t know a whole lot about plant types, but these don’t seem all that different from what we see in the surface world.”

There had clearly been something off about plants we’d encountered in the residential area north of the skeletal building, but that had to be an exception. The situation in which we’d encountered them had been special too.

Toriko glanced behind us. “If that animal we saw earlier really was a dog, it may have wandered in here from somewhere. Shouldn’t we rescue it?”

“If it wanted human help, it’d have come to us, I think. It might even be so hungry it decides it wants to attack us instead, human or not. That’s what worries me.”

“Wait. Are you a dog-hater, Sorawo?”

“I don’t hate dogs... Toriko, have you ever run into a feral dog? They’re pretty scary.”

“Huh? Have you been attacked before?”

“In a ruin, once. Maybe I invaded its territory. It started growling like crazy. Thinking back now, it was an ordinary mutt and on the small side really, but I was just a kid. I didn’t have a gun like I do now, so I got super scared.”

“What’d you do?”

“I knew if I turned my back it would chase me, so I stared it down while slowly backing away. Once I was out of the ruin, I got on my bike and booked it. It still came after me, barking, for a while. I thought I was gonna die.”

“It wouldn’t attack a person on a bike, right?”

“I can look back on it and think that way now, but when you’re scared, you’re scared. Its eyes looked crazy.”

I looked over my shoulder, just to be safe. Okay, good—we weren’t being followed.

“Even if that was a dog, what if there’s a pack of ferals that have established themselves on the Otherside?” I asked. “If they rush us all at once, they could be more dangerous than some of the monsters we’ve faced.”

“Uh, yeah... I wouldn’t like that. I’m not confident I could shoot them right away,” Toriko said with a frown, then her face lit up as she had an idea. “I know! How about we get something like pepper spray?”

“The kind they sell for self-defense?”

Hmm... That might be a good idea. It was best to avoid shooting, after all.

“Yeah. If we mess up and spray it into the wind, we might get ourselves too, though.”

“That still beats getting bitten. The outdoor shop we went to a while back had bear spray, so maybe that’d work?”

“Yeah, let’s go with that. If it works on bears, it’s gotta work on dogs too.”

Now that I think about it, I had the most fun when I was talking to Toriko about stuff like this. I never felt tense at all when we were talking about exploring the other world. It was exciting, and the back and forth between us came easy. Toriko was quick-thinking, reliable, and could make up for my shortcomings. I don’t think I could have asked for a better partner. That made things easy on me, but...

Was this the kind of relationship Toriko wanted?

While I was lost in my own thoughts, Toriko suddenly spoke. “Oh, but wait... If there’s dogs, maybe there’re bears too?”

“There’s an unpleasant thought. Well, sure... It’s possible, I guess.”

“I know, right?”

“Wait, no, hold on. We don’t even know that that was a dog yet. Right now, it’s possible that any animal could be here,” I said.

“Well, sure.”

“Right? I mean, it’s rare enough to even meet other humans in—”

It happened in the middle of that sentence. with what felt like almost pre-planned timing. Somewhere in the distance, there was a dry bang. As it echoed across the mountains, growing fainter, the two of us looked at one another.

“That was...” I said, and Toriko nodded.

“It was a gunshot.”

I stopped the AP-1 and killed the engine. We stayed put, listening for a while.

There were rustling leaves, and the babbling of the stream down below. The wind stirred the fallen leaves.

“Was it just one shot...?” I asked.

“Sounded like.”

“Could you tell what kind of gun it was?”

“Not from just that...”

“It was pretty far off, right?”

“I think so.”

Was there someone other than us here? There had been the unidentified victims of the Kunekune, Abarato (who had lived over here for weeks), and the US Forces trapped at Kisaragi Station, so it wasn’t that surprising. Still, it brought a possibility that I hadn’t considered in a while to mind, and I started feeling restless.

Dogs or bears were one thing. But humans with guns were a much more serious kind of trouble. The Otherside was just for me and Toriko. I didn’t want anyone else here.

“What do we do?” Toriko asked. It took a while before I could respond.

What if we encountered another human being and they were hostile to us? Abarato had been friendly, but the next person we ran into might not be. Worst-case scenario, it could turn into a shootout.

Was that being too pessimistic? Maybe I needed to calm down a little. The person could be a fellow explorer, like us.

But what if they weren’t sane?

Or what if they thought we were monsters from the Otherside, like that time at Kisaragi Station?

Hmm...

“If we do run into someone...I’d rather not get shot,” I replied.

“Do you want to make sure we stand out?”

“If anything, I’d prefer they not find us before we find them.”

The AP-1 was painted red and white. Red stood out in the wild, so it would help prevent us being shot by accident, but it wasn’t good when it came to hiding.

“What do you think, Toriko?” I asked, and Toriko had an immediate answer.

“I think some degree of risk is unavoidable. We could probably get a new paint job, but I think the noise is the bigger problem anyway.”

True enough. The sound of the AP-1’s engine stood out as obviously out of place in the other world. If we got close enough, it would give us away instantly.

“How hard we should try to hide is a matter of balancing risk against convenience. If you really want to be careful, we could stop riding the AP-1, put on camouflage, paint our faces with mud, and crawl everywhere... But do you really want to go that far, Sorawo?”

I shook my head.

“I figured. Even if we did all that, I’m not sure it would hide us from the non-human things here anyway.”

“Yeah... I get it. Let’s keep going as we are for now.”

“Okay.”

I started up the AP-1 and we kept going. The hill curved gently to the right, then eventually there was a big bend in the road. The incline grew steeper, and the engine got louder. I could tell the AP-1 was working hard. Once we got past the short, steep hill, we came to a slightly wider road.

It was paved. The cracked asphalt, full of potholes, was maybe wide enough for two cars to pass each other. On the side with the mountain there was a concrete retaining wall, and on the side with the valley there was a dirty, dented guardrail.

We stopped for a moment, looking left, then right. The road curved in both directions, but because of the dense forest on the valley side it was hard to see far ahead. If we went right, it would take us back in the same general direction we had come, so we went left instead. I put down a gardening pole with phosphorescent tape so we wouldn’t miss the road we’d come by on the way back, and then we started moving forward again.

This mountain road ran east to west, and we had been heading westward since leaving the ridge road where we’d seen the dog(?). The road we were on had a rather gradual upward incline. Our original goal had been to head somewhere higher up where we could survey the surrounding area, but there didn’t seem to be any breaks in the concrete barrier. Wasn’t there anywhere with a fork in the road that would take us higher?

As I was thinking that, I saw a spot up ahead where there was an indentation in the retaining wall on the mountain side. I had thought it was a fork in the road, but I was wrong. There were concrete steps climbing up the retaining wall. A sign for a bus stop stood at the bottom of the stairs, and an aged wooden bench sat next to it.

I stopped the AP-1 in front of the sign. We couldn’t read the name or destinations. Not because of text corruption, but because the sign was totally sun bleached. The timetable had suffered a similar fate, with only the grid-lines still barely visible. The text had all been blurred by rainwater that had seeped in through a gap in the clear plastic board.

“Judging by the location of the ink stains, it looks like there was one trip in the morning, and one at night...” Toriko said as she crouched to look at the timetable. Then she stood back up. “You think the buses still run here?”

“Even if they do, we definitely shouldn’t ride them.”

I looked at the time. It was just past noon, so we decided that was as good a time as any for a break. We sat down on the bench together, lighting up a single-burner gas stove to boil some water. I pulled out my notebook and pencil while we waited, and sketched in the path we had taken here. The plan was to copy it all over to a larger map once we figured out how this all connected to the places we already knew.

Once the water came to a boil I turned off the stove and poured the hot water into our instant soup cups. I had sundubu-jjigae, and Toriko had clam chowder. We’d bought them at the convenience store on our way here along with rice balls and fish sausages. The rice balls were pollock roe, salmon, pickled plum, and kelp. We couldn’t read the labels, but we could still identify them by the color of the package and the pictures. While I was trying to decide which I wanted, Toriko said, “Let’s split them.”

“Oh, yeah, that’s an option too, huh?”

I wiped my hands with a moist towelette before breaking the rice balls in half. When I told her that the dried seaweed was soft and delicious after dipping it in my jjigae soup, Toriko got jealous.

“Must be nice. Maybe I should have gotten bread to go with my clam chowder instead.”

“I don’t think it goes that bad with rice, though? It’s seafood, after all.”

“I’ll give it a go.”

The way Toriko stared off into space, mumbling to herself about how the clam chowder and rice kinda worked together, but also kinda felt wrong somehow, was sort of weird and funny. It suddenly occurred to me that there were plenty of times I had seen her when her face wasn’t so beautiful, or she had an unguarded expression on it too.

Once we finished eating, we boiled some more water to make instant coffee. Deciding I should move around and let the food settle, I stood up, cup in hand. I crossed the road to look over the guardrail at the bottom of the cliff. I could see the glow of glitches here and there in the woods, but nothing moving. If I’d had line of sight to it, would I have been able to see that seemingly fake campfire from here too?

Turning back around, I looked up as I took a sip of coffee.

“Oh...?”

“What is it?”

“There’s something up there.”

Toriko came over to stand next to me and we looked up together. Deep inside the copse of trees on top of the retaining wall was a flat surface.

Toriko peered at it through her binoculars. “That’s a roof, I think.”

“Let me take a look.” I borrowed the binoculars to see it for myself. That was definitely part of a tiled roof on the other side of the branches. I had planned to climb the stairs from the moment I spotted them, but knowing there was a building right there made me feel tense.

I finished my coffee and picked up the trash before moving the AP-1 over to the bottom of the stairs. We put the blue sheet over it just in case it rained. If this were the surface world, people would have gotten really mad at us for parking at a bus stop.

We each checked our equipment, then looked up at the stairs again. They were steep and narrow, with green moss growing over the concrete surface.

I went first on account of my eye. Putting the rifle on my back, I climbed cautiously with my hands on the steps. When I reached the very top, I peered over the edge.

“Okay, there’s nothing there,” I called out, and Toriko followed me up.

At the top of the stairs there was a footpath partially buried beneath the undergrowth. Making a mental note to buy a hatchet for future expeditions, I used my rifle to shove the bushes aside as I continued down the short, straight path. There was a tall wall running alongside the path all the way into the distance.

The wall was made of old bricks and stood maybe two meters tall. There was a tiled roof on top of it. The brick wall had decorative blocks at fixed intervals, and it was possible to peer in through them.

I brought my face close to one such indentation. Unlike this shady path, it was bright on the other side of the wall. There was a well-maintained garden. It had a pond with a little bridge, and large garden stones. The small gravel path was lined with trees and flowers.

“Hmm?” I took another look with my right eye. Nope, nothing changed. It sure was a garden all right. This was so different from the ruins and incomplete buildings we had seen on this side before now that it actually made it feel unreal.

“What’s wrong? You’re making a funny face.”

“Could you take a look too, Toriko?”

“Sure, I don’t see why not.”

I moved away from the hole so Toriko could look in. When she did, her eyes widened.

“W-Wow, that’s super pretty! It sure took me by surprise.”

“It looks that way to you too?”

“It’s a lovely garden. Never knew there was stuff like this in this world too.”

“It doesn’t seem like a glitch, but...it feels weird, seeing so many flowers blooming when it’s still so cold.”

“Hmm, I wonder.” Toriko looked a while longer. “It might actually be consistent with the season. The flowers that are blooming are plum blossoms, daffodils, and camellias.”

“Really?” I asked.

“I don’t know about all of them, but I think these are winter flowers. There’s still some snow piled up in the corner too.”

“So it’s not just an illusion? There really is a beautiful garden in there...?”

I looked up at the wall.

“Think we could climb it?” I asked.

“Want me to give you a boost on my shoulders?”

“Let’s try walking around first. There could be a way in.”

We had left the gardening poles that we used as markers back on the AP-1, so I stuck phosphorescent tape on the wall directly in front of where we had come up, and then we started walking. There wasn’t anything to suggest whether it was better to start going left or right, so we just decided to go right. Toriko and I were both right-handed, so it was easier without a wall on our right-hand side.

The wall eventually bent left, and the path with it. We occasionally stopped to look around, but nothing stood out as unusual. There was the sound of flowing water, so maybe there was a river somewhere nearby.

The wall bent left again. We went a little further, and suddenly came out into an open space. It was an empty gravel lot surrounded by pine and cedar trees. Looking up ahead, there was a large gate in the wall.

We cautiously approached the gate. It had an iron grate with a design like there was ivy wrapped around it, and there was a large, cast-iron door in it. The gate was wide open, and we could see a mansion through it. It was an old-fashioned building. I don’t know if it dated to the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, but the brick and plaster wall with a tiled roof showed a compromise between Japanese and Western design sensibilities.

Turning to look behind us, there was a steep hill paved with rough gravel. The branches of the dense trees on either side of the road covered it like a canopy, leaving it dark even in daytime. It felt it’d be a little scary to walk down that way.

It looked like there was another path if we kept following the wall, but I was more interested in the mansion in front of us.

“There any glitches?” Toriko asked.

“None...that I can see, at least.”

That the building was so normal actually made it creepy. I tried throwing some bolts, just in case. As they rolled to the ground on the other side of the gate, it kind of killed my enthusiasm a little. I was suddenly reminded of a doubt I’d had since I first learned about the Otherside. Maybe there was no other world at all, and I was just a deranged person, throwing around bolts and mumbling to myself...

Toriko looked around awkwardly too. “We haven’t wandered back into the surface world without realizing it, right?”

If we had, we could be caught red-handed violating the firearm and sword law, and were about to be trespassing in someone’s mansion too.

I looked around, then shook my head. “If this were the surface world, there’d be a lot more noise. Besides, it feels totally different here.”

“Yeah, I thought so... What now?”

I looked through the gate for a while. There was no movement. Nothing showed as strange in my right field of vision either.

“Let’s go in. I want to see for myself what kind of place this is.”

Toriko nodded. We passed through the gate and onto the mansion grounds.

3

I stepped from stepping stone to stepping stone along the white gravel path to the front garden.

There was a green lawn spread out on either side of us. The path carved through it like a white river, and there was a large, blackish garden stone at the end of it. Stone lanterns were placed at bends in the path. The pines in the garden were bright green and shapely, almost as if a gardener had worked on them. Straw mats were wrapped around some of the trees, and bamboo poles and rope made of straw had been used to create enclosures to protect others from the snow.

“This is different from what we usually see...” Toriko said in a quiet voice. “Buildings on this side always seem more ruined.”

“Yeah. It’s too neat and tidy.”

This place was too clean, too orderly. The buildings we encountered always either looked like they had been brought to this side from the surface and left to fall to ruin, or were pseudo-buildings that had been abandoned at some bizarre point in the construction process. This mansion was different. No matter where you looked, it was properly maintained.

Unlike other places, nothing seemed suspicious here. At a glance, it looked like an oasis of safety, cut off from the area around it. Yet I still felt restless. There was no sign of danger, but it felt awkward being here.

Toriko seemed to come to some sort of conclusion. “Oh... There’s nobody here,” she mumbled.

That was what felt wrong about this place. If we wandered into a mansion like this in the surface world, we’d have heard at least some noise, like the voices and sounds made by the people living there. Even if we couldn’t hear them, I’m pretty sure we’d still have this vague sense that there were people inside.

There was none of that here. The mansion looked perfectly lived-in, but it didn’t feel like anyone was here at all.

Nothing happened on our way to the entrance. We came to a stop in front of a retro-style door made with wooden lattice and frosted glass. The hot spring hotel in Seibu-Chichibu had been old too, but this place looked better built and maintained.

“It’s like the set of a movie,” I said, and Toriko nodded.

“It feels too good to be true. Maybe when we go inside we’ll find nothing but walls?”

“I guess we should take a look...”

Normally, it would have been dark on the other side of the frosted glass, and I’d have hesitated to open the door, but this time I could see it was brightly lit. I just didn’t know how to feel.

I checked for glitches again before opening the door. I thought it might rattle, but the door slid open easily, like it had been oiled.

There was a small stone-paved entranceway with a raised threshold leading into a broader entrance hall. On the right-hand side of the stone floor there was a shoe cupboard that came up to about my chest. There were potted plants and a small porcelain puppy sitting on top of it.

On the other side of the threshold was a screen that made it so we couldn’t see any further into the house. It was made from a single sheet of wood, the knots clearly visible, and had intricate fan and butterfly patterns carved into it. A hall continued past the screen.

I stood where I had been when I opened the sliding door, unable to move for a while. Normally, this being the other world, we should have been able to trudge in without saying a word. But this was clearly not a ruin. It felt like a house someone lived in.

Come to think of it, there wasn’t a doorbell. If anyone’s here, they probably heard the door opening, though...

I hesitated before taking a breath. “P-Pardon our intrusion.”

My voice was quiet, probably because of how tense I felt. Toriko’s eyes bugged out and she stared at me.

“Wh-What’d you say?”

“I was saying ‘pardon our intrusion...’”

“What for?”

“It’s a sort of ‘may we come in?’”

“Never heard it before.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“You surprised me. It made no sense to me, so I thought you’d gone nuts.”

Yeah, maybe you don’t hear it that often lately. Maybe it’s unsurprising that someone born overseas hadn’t heard it. I might not have used it myself since the times I went to deliver the community circular to the neighbor’s house as a kid. That was the situation this reminded me of. Not that the neighbor’s house had been nearly this impressive.

Anyway, there was no response. We cautiously entered the mansion and left the door open behind us.

As I looked down at the raised threshold of the entranceway, I was presented with another dilemma. The wooden floor was polished to a shine, and the idea of treading on it with dirty shoes seemed unthinkable to me.

“What do you think, Toriko?”

“About what?”

“My customs are telling me to leave my shoes at the entrance, but my reason is asking, ‘are you crazy?’”

“Tracking in dirt can only get us in trouble if there are normal people living here. Seems pretty unlikely here in the other world, wouldn’t you say?”

“Well, yes, but...this is our first time encountering a place like this here. I think we should consider the possibility that someone does live here.”

“If someone does, they would have to have shoes of their own,” Toriko said, opening the shoe cupboard.

“Whoa...” she said.

“Looks like they do, huh?”

There was a whole selection of shoes inside the cupboard. Sneakers, pumps, high-heels, men’s leather shoes, running shoes for children, lace-up boots, sandals... The cupboard was full of footwear in a wide variety of sizes and styles.

“Wait, just how many people live here?” I asked.

“I don’t think they do. These are probably all new,” Toriko said, looking at the shelves closely. “They sure don’t look used. None of them are dirty or scuffed at all.”

Toriko closed the cupboard, seeming a little creeped out.

“Yeah, this place is definitely weird,” she said. “Let’s keep our shoes on.”

“Hrm...”

Should we assume there are sane people here and act polite, or assume there were monsters and go in ready to fight? Reason tells me that Toriko’s right, but still...

As I was hesitating, Toriko got fed up. “You can be polite about the weirdest things. You know that, Sorawo?”

“Hey, saying they’re weird is uncalled for.”

“Okay, how about this then?” Toriko took some plastic convenience store bags out of her backpack. We always carried a number of them with us because they were easy to use outdoors. “We’ll put our shoes in these, and if things go south, we put them back on, and bail, okay?”

“Toriko... You can be pretty smart sometimes, huh?”

“Heh heh. I know, right?”

We removed our shoes and put them in the bags, then took the step up into the entrance hall.

“There are taverns like this. You know, the kind where you carry your shoes in with you,” Toriko said.

“Sure are.”

The plastic bags crinkled noisily as we carried them, but I accepted that as a necessary compromise. Besides, if we wore our shoes on this wooden floor, our footsteps would have echoed through the whole house. We weren’t part of a special forces unit trained to move silently, so masking the sound of our footsteps had been beyond us to begin with.

With my assault rifle on my back and my Makarov in hand, I moved around the screen to head in deeper. I could feel the cold floor through my socks. In the hallway just past the entrance hall, there was a fusuma sliding panel on the right and a half-open wooden door on the left.

I knocked on the door on the left. No response. I pulled it open by the doorknob. There was a reception room inside. White couches were placed around a round wooden table. The red carpet had Chinese-style patterns sewn into it. Large windows were framed at the top with wooden arabesque fretwork. A cute chandelier that looked like a flower petal hung from the ceiling. By the wall, there was a tea cabinet with glass doors behind which I could see teapots, teacups, and other tea paraphernalia, along with small bowls, a flask for serving sake, and sake cups. A vase with a single branch from a plum tree decorated the top of the cabinet.

When I opened the fusuma on the right side of the hall, a warm draft of air came out. This time, there was a Japanese-style room. In the middle of the tatami flooring, there was a sunken hearth with a charcoal fire in it. An iron kettle hung from a pot-hook attached to the ceiling, whistling and steaming.

“Boiling water...?”

I stepped over the threshold and into the Japanese-style room. Purple cushions were placed around the sunken hearth. In the corner of the room was a low, black table, and it had a snack tray stacked with apples and mandarin oranges.

The fusuma on the opposite side was wide open, and I could see into the next room. It was a large tatami room with rows of short folding tables. Lacquered vessels sat on top of them. There was black lacquerware, red lacquerware, and lacquerware with golden maki-e designs. They came in many varieties from soup bowls to lunchboxes, trays, cups, and vases used for flower arrangement. Everything looked expensive, but the way they were displayed seemed haphazard. It was less like they were on display, and more like someone had taken everything that they had out of storage, and they were in the process of organizing it.

“Hmm? Could this be...?” I mumbled quietly to myself. I felt like I’d read about a situation like this before.

I walked to the back of the tatami room full of lacquerware and opened another fusuma. This one led to a small, six-mat tatami room, with a hanging scroll decorating an alcove. It bore an India ink painting of mountains. Dim light shone in through the paper of the shoji doors. The room felt a little warm because there was a round fire bowl laid out on the tatami with a charcoal fire burning in it. It felt like someone had been here until a little while ago, and they just happened to have stepped out.

“Do you think there’s people here after all?” Toriko said, not sounding confident.

I thought about it as I responded. “I...may have figured out what this place is.”

“Huh? Really?”

“Yeah—I think this is a Mayoiga.”

Toriko cocked her head to the side when I said that. “Mayoiga? Is this more internet lore?”

“Nah, it’s older than that.”

Mayoiga is a well-known story from Kunio Yanagita’s Tono Monogatari, or Tales of Tono. The storyteller finds a luxurious mansion in the mountains. Whoever owns it seems to be wealthy, as there are many horses and cows tied up in the barn and chickens frolicking in the yard. When the storyteller goes into the house, he finds bowls and trays laid out for a meal, and there is freshly-boiled water and other signs of human activity, but he doesn’t see anyone. It is said that places like this are called Mayoiga, and if you find one and take one thing, or one animal from the house, you will be blessed with good fortune.

Tono Monogatari is a Meiji Era collection of strange accounts and legends from Iwate Prefecture, and a classic of Japanese folklore. Many of the stories record the names of the storyteller or the person who experienced the events. In some ways, you might say it’s similar to our modern true ghost stories.

When I explained all that to Toriko, her brow furrowed with confusion.

“Um... So, what I’m hearing is that it’s good luck to steal something from this place?”

“Well, that’s how the story goes.”

“Seriously? Is that okay?”

“It’s an old story, after all. They don’t all have to be reasonable.”

“I don’t like it...”

“In the original story, the person who found Mayoiga didn’t take anything back. When he returned to his village, a bowl drifted down the river to him, and he got rich after picking it up.”

“A bowl... Oh, so that’s why. You thought of Mayoiga when you saw them, huh?”

“Yeah. The story goes that if you scooped rice into that bowl, it never ran out.”

“Wow, that’d sure save money on your food budget.”

Toriko didn’t sound all that impressed, but she still turned to look back at the rows of lacquerware.

“So, you want to take one back like the story says?”

“Nah, I already looked at them with my right eye, and they don’t shine silver, so they don’t feel all that special. Even if we brought one back, it’d just be an ordinary bowl.”

“Aw, shucks. Then we’d just be ordinary thieves too.”

I crossed the room and opened the shoji. There was a small inner garden with a water bowl and dipper, and a square veranda around it. It was surrounded on four sides by similar shoji, and we could walk around the veranda to the other rooms.

“Pretty as this place is, it’s as fake as all the other buildings in this world. This one just happens to look like a Mayoiga.”

“When I thought it looked like a movie set, maybe I wasn’t far off the mark.”

Walking out onto the veranda, Toriko looked up at the square of sky cut out by the tiled roofs. I could see the reflection of the drifting clouds in the inner garden’s water bowl.

“This place is good enough to be a heritage site,” I said. “It feels like it’s been standing here for centuries.”

“Yeah... What now? You want to leave?”

“Since we’re here already, I want to look around some more. You don’t get to walk around inside a Mayoiga every day.”

“I knew you’d say that!” Toriko said with a laugh when she heard my response.

4

We went from room to room, looking around the (building that we theorized was a) Mayoiga.

The tatami rooms divided by fusuma panels were so clean and bright that it felt like someone had just finished cleaning them. All of the furniture, like dressers and wardrobes, was old in design, but still in good condition, shining with a black luster. There were kokeshi and other Japanese dolls, wooden bear carvings, and vases filled with flower arrangements here and there. It was hard to believe no one actually lived here.

I pulled open one dresser and inside were kimonos and rolls of kimono fabric. Toriko took an interest in them, but neither of us had any idea what to do with a kimono. If we pulled them out, I wasn’t convinced we could put them back as we found them, so I closed the dresser without touching anything. I was a little scared to disturb a place as orderly as this.

We soon returned to the hall that was connected to the entranceway, and opened another door there. This one was a large Western-style room. It looked like a dining hall. High-backed chairs were placed around a long table. I counted ten of them. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, and lights modeled after candelabra were placed at fixed intervals along the wall.

I crossed the dining hall with a sideways glance at the trees in the yard outside the window, then opened the door on the opposite side. When I did, Toriko and I both let out sighs of admiration.

On the other side of the door was a kitchen. It was old-fashioned, with shelves made of wood, but there wasn’t a speck of dust anywhere. The pots, pans, and cookware were all arranged neatly, and the built-in shelves were lined with bottles full of condiments and glass jars of spices. Herbs hung from the ceiling, giving off a fragrant aroma. The large, steel oven had a brick chimney that went up to the ceiling. It was so large that you could have roasted a whole piglet in there. Everything seemed to sparkle in the light that was shining in from the garden window.

“What a pretty kitchen...” Toriko mumbled. I nodded.

“This is amazing. It’s like a super luxurious version of a Muji store.”

When I said that, Toriko slapped me in the arm.

“Ow! What?”

“Can’t you come up with a better analogy than that?”

“Like an IKEA model room they really sunk a lot of cash into...?”

“Geez!”

“Ow! That hurts! You’re always so quick to hit me.”

“That’s your fault, Sorawo.”

“You sound like a domestic abuser when you say that, you know?”

To be honest, my actual first impression was different. It was like I’d wandered into one of the picture books I read as a child, but I was way too embarrassed to say that out loud.

“Besides, have you ever been to an IKEA, Sorawo?”

“Uh... No.”

“Didn’t think so. You’re always joking around like that.”

“How did you know I’d never been?”

“You don’t go to IKEA without a car.”

“You don’t have a car either, Toriko. Have you been?”

“Uh... Yes.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“How about we drop the subject?”

“Weren’t you the one who brought it up?”

“Fine, I get it. Let’s go there together sometime.”

“Fine by me...”

I have no idea what it was that she “got.”

There were two other doors in the kitchen. One was a back door leading out into the yard. When I opened the other, it led into a narrow hall. There was a staircase with a handrail. It turned at a landing before continuing up to the second floor.

Toriko sniffed the air. “Do you smell something tasty?”

“Now that you mention it...?”

I poked my head around the back of the stairs, and found another door there. Inside there was a storage room with huge hunks of meat-on-the-bone hung up. They looked like the legs of large animals. Through the dry, yellowed surface, I could see the red of the meat and the white of the fat. There was a large amount of dried meat hanging in the back, and it smelled delicious.

“Is that what you call whole bone-in ham?” I wondered aloud.

“Wow, this mansion just has everything, doesn’t it?”

“The way things are going, maybe it’s got a wine cellar too?”

“It just has to! If we’re gonna take something back, do you want to grab something from there?”

“But we haven’t even found it yet...?”

We decided to stop counting our chickens and go up the stairs that we’d already located.

The second floor was large too, even if it wasn’t quite as big as the first. It had a twin bedroom, a double bedroom, a washroom that was the size of a one-room apartment, a retro-style toilet with mosaic tiling on the walls... We were getting more and more numb to how posh this place was by now, but still came to a stop despite ourselves when we came upon one room.

It had walls filled with nothing but clothing racks, and there were all sorts of colorful outfits on display. There were even shoes and bags. You could probably open an apparel shop with all that stuff.

Is this what they call a walk-in closet? As I stood there admiring the sight, Toriko strode in, and started digging through the racks.

She’s so careless...I thought, checking for danger with my right eye. Toriko, who had been oohing and aahing at the clothes, suddenly seemed to realize something and started acting serious.

“Oh? Huh? There’s this, and this... Oh! Is that it? Hmm, I think I get it.”

“What’s up?”

“Look at this, Sorawo. It’s neat.”

I headed into the room thinking, What’s going on? Toriko took an outfit off the rack and spun around, holding it out in front of me. It was a white, one-piece dress with a floral pattern.

“What...?”

“Hmm, no, that’s not it,” she said with a groan, returning the dress to the rack.

“What are you...?” I started to say, but before I could finish she thrust another hanger towards me. It was a super feminine lavender blouse with soft sleeves.

“Yeah... Not this either.”

“Toriko-san?”

“Haven’t you ever wanted to try on clothes like these, Sorawo?”

Toriko wasted no time waiting for my response before she went back to digging through the racks.

“Hey, hold on,” I objected.

“This Mayoiga sure is amazing, huh? Did you notice?”

“What are you talking about?”

The third outfit she was holding when she turned back around was a navy blue, knitted one-piece that looked rather mature, like it would clearly show off the lines of your body. It would obviously never look any good on me, but Toriko pushed it towards me anyway. The way she grinned as I pulled away frightened me.

“S-Stop...”

“I’ll bet the clothes here are a perfect fit for you.”

“Huh...?”

Caught by surprise, I looked down at the knitted one-piece. Is...it? I wondered.

“They’re all retro style, or vintage, I guess you could say. The fabric and tailoring are solid too. They’d cost us some serious cash back in the surface world. The way things are going, I’ll probably find some that fit me. Since we’re here anyway, why not try some of them on?”

“Whaaa...”

“Look, if we’re gonna take something back, clothes must be a better choice than bowls or dried meat.”

“Who was it that expressed disapproval about the idea of stealing something again?!”

“Now, now. Come on, put down your stuff.”

“Wait, uh, you’re serious about this?”

“If you like, you can pick out an outfit for me too.”

“No, no, no.”

“Now, now, now. Come on, take off your top.”

Toriko closed in on me. She was weirdly into this. The look in her eyes was different from usual, somehow.

“L-Let’s go to a changing room, at le—” I started to protest, but Toriko held up her index finger, waggling it at me theatrically.

“This is the changing room, Sorawo.”

What’s she so smug for...?

In my confusion, Toriko relieved me of my gun and bags, then stripped me out of my coat. It was like I was her dress-up doll. The room was pretty warm, but she didn’t stop at my coat, and proceeded to remove my shirt as well, so I started feeling a lot colder.

“Achoo!”

“Don’t move. Bear with me, here.”

“Oh, sorry,” I apologized reflexively, but Toriko wasn’t listening. She glared at the frilly shirt and fluttery skirt that she had put on me, grumbling to herself. It seemed she wasn’t satisfied.

“Okay, I’ve got it. Take off the clothes.”

“Okay,” I replied in monotone.

“Let’s have you try this on next.”

“Okay.”

I had no idea what I was supposed to do now, so I just let her do as she pleased. If she were acting as weird as she had when we were in the hot springs together, I might have been able to shove her off of me, but this felt different.

She rapidly changed me from one outfit to the next, then Toriko’s hands suddenly stopped.

“Yeah...” Toriko had a serious look on her face as she looked me up and down several times, then finally her expression loosened up. “All done,” she said, taking my hand and leading me to the mirror.

“Well?” she asked.

When you act so proud of yourself, I can’t possibly give a negative opinion...I thought as I looked at the mirror.

“Whoa...”

My mirror reflection stared back at me in disbelief. I was wearing a Chinese-style one-piece with pink designs on a black and white base. Its short collar stood straight up, and the waist had a corset-like design. The sleeves were three-quarters length, and there were lace gloves on my hands (when did those get there?). The hem was at about the middle of my thigh, and I was wearing tights along with lace-up boots (when did those get there???).

Well, there was no worry of me giving her a negative response. Honestly, it was cute. I don’t know if I’d say that about the person inside, but the clothes themselves? Absolutely adorable. They looked ridiculously good on me. Sure, it had a very “otaku” feel to it, like I was doing cosplay, but it fit the retro vibe of this mansion to a tee.

“Well?” Toriko asked again.

“Wow... It’s cute,” I answered in a daze.

Toriko’s reflection grinned. “I know, right?! I just knew this kind of thing would look good on you!”

“What kind of thing?”

“This kind of cute outfit. I bet we could go heavier on the frills.”

“No, no, no, no...”

I spun around in front of the mirror. My boots clacked against the wooden floor.

It’s cute...

“Like it?”

“...”

“Sorawo?”

“This is so frustrating.”

“Just be happy.”

“I’ve never dressed like this in my life, so I feel uneasy. Can I take it off now?”

“No! You need to keep it on. I’m getting changed too.”

“You too?”

“Hold on. It’ll only take a sec. I found something for me while I was looking for your clothes,” Toriko said, grabbing a number of outfits, then turned back to me. “Turn the other way.”

“I’m the only one who has to? How’s that fair?”

“Just do it, okay? About-face!”

She’s so arbitrary...

I shifted my weight from left to right as I listened to the rustle of clothing behind me.

“Okay, all done.”

When I turned back around, Toriko was dressed like I’d never seen her before. She wore a shirt with the buttons done up all the way to the top, and had, well...I’m not sure how to describe it...it wasn’t a necktie, or a scarf, it was this kind of voluminous, pleated piece of fabric decorating her chest. Over top she wore a jacket with golden buttons. It was a blue so deep it bordered on black, and the front hung open. Beneath she wore a slim pair of pants that were the same color as the jacket, along with leather riding boots on her feet. It reminded me of an old military uniform, and it made her look even taller than usual. The outfit came off a little cosplay-y, much like my own, but maybe all of the clothes in this room were a little out of date. Then again, since the person wearing them was already so stunning, I hardly noticed.

As I stared at her admiringly, Toriko turned around, lifting the hem of her jacket.

“Is it me?” she asked.

“You look so cool I’m getting mad.”

“Why would that make you angry?” Toriko laughed, reaching out with her white-gloved hand. I instinctively took it, and she dragged me in front of the mirror again.

“What do you think?” she asked.

“About what?”

“About the two of us?”

Looking at the two of us side-by-side in the mirror... The clothes looked good on us, and I had to admit that we made a pretty picture.

“Not bad, I’d say.”

“I know, right?! Oh, thank goodness. I’m glad you liked it.”

Toriko quickly lifted my hand. The inertia made me spin. As I stumbled, I found her hand around my waist.

“Huh? What? What?” I babbled as Toriko peered at my face with a smile.

“I just remembered I said I’d teach you to dance before.”

“Now?!”

“We could go looking for a ballroom.”

Eek... Her face, her face is too close.

Toriko’s voice was a touch lower than usual. There was a gentleness in her eyes, and a confidence in the smile on her lips. It was like changing clothes had let her “get into character.”

I, on the other hand, had received no such benefits. I was just my ordinary self in a cute outfit. Just as I was about to go into panic mode, there was a scratching sound from the wooden floor.

Over Toriko’s shoulder, near the entrance to the room, I came eye to eye with a creature I’d never seen before, and froze solid.

“Tori...ko.”

“Hm? Is something the matter?”

Unable to take my eyes off the creature, I moved just my face, signaling, Behind you, and Toriko turned around too.

“Huh?”

There was an animal on the other side of the door. Quadrupedal, and standing maybe eighty centimeters tall. It was covered in long, light fur, and had thin legs—actually, its whole body was generally thin. The black eyes at the end of its long snout narrowed slightly, and it stared at us.

“The dog from before...!” Toriko said in a small voice.

“That’s a dog?!”

“I’ve seen people walking them before.”

The animal was big, long, and thin, but now that she said that, maybe it was a dog. It certainly resembled the one we had seen off in that distant field.

The dog didn’t bark, but wasn’t acting friendly either. It just looked at us, unmoving. It was probably wary of us, but I couldn’t be sure whether it was hostile or not. I was scared that it might lunge at us if I made any false moves. As I stared at the dog, weighing our options, I heard a voice.

“Hana, what’s the matter?”

A slim, elderly lady approached from behind the dog, her steps echoing throughout the mansion. She had her gray hair tied back behind her head, wore a brilliant orange camo jacket, and had a gun resting on her shoulder. That was how hunters dressed.

When she saw us, the old lady’s eyes widened.

“Oh, my.”

Both Toriko and I were too surprised to say anything. In the time we had been exploring the mansion, we had gotten used to the idea no one was here. We had long since forgotten that the owner might show up.

“It’s so rare to see guests here,” the old lady said.

I suddenly snapped back to my senses. “U-Um, would you happen to live here?” I asked hastily.

“Yes.”

“I-I’m sorry! We were so sure nobody lived here...”

“Oh, my! It’s quite alright. Don’t fret.”

“No, I mean, we just let ourselves into a stranger’s house, then started going through her wardrobe...”

“No, no, it’s fine. Really. After all...” the old lady said, smiling mischievously. “This isn’t my house either.”

5

The old lady said her name was Todate and then led us downstairs.

“You can keep those shoes on. The clothes too. I think they look quite nice on the two of you.”

“Y-You’re sure?” I asked. “They’re dirty shoes.”

“Yes. You must have come in through the entrance over there, I suppose. The one over here is a Western-style entrance, so coming in with your shoes on is perfectly fine. It’s an odd layout for a mansion, though.”

Toriko kept quiet, leaving the talking to me. Her face was calm, but I knew better. She’d gone into her usual shy mode.

I was a little hesitant to do it, but just to be safe, I’d given them a quick check with my right eye. Neither the old lady or her dog had that silver phosphorescence around them or revealed a monstrous true form. The dog had turned her head towards me when I did it, so I hurriedly looked away. She must have felt me looking at her. Trust those canine instincts.

We followed Todate and her dog into a hall with a high ceiling. The stairs from the second floor curved as they led us down into the hall. Marble flooring, a dark red carpet, and heavy double doors. If we had come in through this entrance, I would never have even considered taking my shoes off.

Todate crossed the hall as if she knew it well and opened another door. It led to a small café-like room that had a number of round tables with chairs around them and a wall that was all windows. A wood fire in the fireplace kept the room warm.

“Please, have a seat. I’ll put on tea. Wait just a moment.”

“Oh, you don’t need to trouble yourself...” I said.

Todate left through another door. Her dog stayed behind, lying down in front of the fireplace, resting her jaw on her front legs. She looked even longer when she lay down like that.

Toriko looked at the dog. “What did she say the dog’s name was again?” she asked.

“The dog? I think it was Hana.”

“Hana! Hanaaa!” When Toriko called her name, the dog turned her head towards us for just a second, then immediately looked away.

“Looks like she isn’t gonna warm up to me that easily, huh?”

“She seems pretty clever, so yeah.”

“Probably doesn’t wag her tail for anyone but her master.”

The dog looked like she was stretching out and relaxing, but I could kind of tell she was wary of us. If us intruders made any false moves, she’d be on her feet in an instant. I couldn’t help but feel nervous, having never been so close to such a large dog before.

It wasn’t long before Todate returned with a tray in hand. She wore a loose-fitting sweater, having taken off the orange jacket, and her gun was nowhere to be seen.

“I just made mugwort mochi. Would you like some?”

“W-We would.”

The mugwort mochi had that slightly warped shape you would expect from homemade ones. Since they were served on lacquered dishes with stylish toothpicks, they looked classy. I was still a little cautious, not yet knowing what Todate was like, but she seemed like a decent enough sort for now. Once she had taken the first bite, I cut off a little using a toothpick and ate it.

Yum!

As the grassy aroma of Japanese mugwort spread through our mouths, Toriko and I couldn’t help but look at one another. These tasted too good for them to be poisoned. Were these really homemade? If they were, then Todate was pretty talented.

The hot green tea she served us was sweet and went well with mugwort mochi.

While Todate was taking a sip of tea, a relaxed expression on her face, I spoke up. “Um, Todate-san. You live here, right?”

“Yes.”

“But you just said it wasn’t your house...”

Todate raised her eyes a little before responding. “Why yes, I did... If I called this a Mayoiga, would the two of you understand what I meant?”

Toriko looked at me in surprise. I nodded.

“We know about them, yes.”

“Well, that does make this a lot simpler.”

“When we found this place, I thought it was a Mayoiga too,” I said.

“Yes, of course.”

Toriko leaned in close to me. “Hey, is Mayoiga that famous of a story? Is it something everybody learns?” she asked.

“Er... I dunno.”

“I remember being told it as a young girl,” Todate said. “I got lost while hunting in the mountains, and the next thing I knew, I was here. You could probably tell from what I was wearing before, but I’m a hunter, you see. When I came across this house, I thought, ‘Oh, I’m saved,’ but when I came to ask for directions, there was nobody here. I assumed that the owners were simply out at the moment, so I waited, but no one came. Eventually, it occurred to me: “Oh! This is a Mayoiga, like the one from the story!’”

Todate drew a circle in the air with her toothpick before continuing to say, “You know how the story goes? That if you bring something back from the mansion, you’ll be blessed with good fortune? Well, it occurred to me that if I did that, I would probably never be able to return here.”

“That’s how it goes in the original story, yeah,” I said.

“That felt sad to me. You see, I’m quite fond of this mansion. The layout is a bit strange, yes, but... Oh, that kitchen...”

“Oh! The kitchen...” Toriko mumbled, and Todate’s face lit up like a child’s.

“You saw it? Why, it’s simply wonderful! Ideal, like something out of a dream or a picture book. I simply fell in love with it!”

“And so...that’s why you took up residence here?” I asked.

“Why, yes, it is,” Todate nodded, slightly embarrassed.

I was dumbfounded. Who would ever think to make a Mayoiga their house?! It wouldn’t have occurred to me, that’s for sure.

“So, what’s your story? Did the two of you get lost as well?”

“No, we came across the mansion while exploring this world...”

“Exploring! My, my, it sounds like you’ve been having fun. So you weren’t lost, but came here on your own? I wouldn’t have thought it possible.”

Toriko and I looked at one another.

“...Have you never gone home since coming here?” I asked.

“Never. If I left, I worry I wouldn’t ever be able to come back.”

“If you come with us, you can go home,” Toriko offered, and Todate seemed to consider the idea for a moment.

“Hmm, if I ever find a reason that I simply must go home, I may take you up on that. I lived alone for a long time before coming here, and this is the ideal house for me, so I have no lingering attachments to my former life. But thank you,” Todate said, looking at our luggage. “At first, I thought you were fellow hunters, but what you said just now makes more sense. That’s not hunting gear, after all.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“It’s those guns. The two of you are carrying some incredible rifles. They’re automatic, aren’t they? Like the kind soldiers carry.”

“Y-Yeah.”

“They don’t look like airsoft guns. Where did you get them?”

“We picked them up. Here on this side.”

To be more precise, I had permanently “borrowed” my M4 from the US Forces, and Toriko’s AK was a memento from Abarato, but those details would just complicate things, so I glossed over them.

“Oh, I see.” Todate seemed surprisingly willing to take my explanation at face value. “I’ve picked up a number of things myself. Guns. Bullets, too. I assume they were dropped by hunters who wandered in here, like myself...” Then, lowering her voice, Todate added, “Although, I do wonder what could have happened to those people.”

The fact that she didn’t call us out on our flagrant violation of the firearm and sword law actually left me more confused than it would have if she had. I’d always been under the impression that because of how tight the laws regulating hunters in Japan are, they were rather careful about how guns were to be handled.

Her dog snorted, adjusted its position in front of the fireplace, and then stopped moving again. Maybe she had started to feel hot after being toasted on just one side.

When she saw us distracted by the dog, Todate smiled. “She didn’t bark at you while I was away, did she? Hana can be so unsociable.”

“I’ve never seen a dog like her before. What breed is she?”

“I don’t have a breeder’s certificate, so I can’t be completely certain, but I believe she’s a Borzoi.”

That was rather vague. Toriko must have felt the same way. “You’re her owner, and you don’t know?” she asked.

“Ah, but there’s where you’re wrong. I’m not her owner.”

“Huh...?” Toriko and I both looked at her, bewildered.

“I met Hana after finding this place,” Todate explained. “She had a collar, so I suppose she must have wandered in here with her master. Whoever they were, they were nowhere to be found, and there was a torn-up hunter’s vest nearby, so a bear must have got them.”

“There are bears? We’ve never seen animals on this side.”

“Oh, yes, there are. I’ve yet to take down a bear myself, but there are a lot of animals,” Todate said, amused by the dubious looks on our faces. “It’s incredibly difficult to find animals hiding in the mountains. If even a hunter like me struggles with it, it might be impossible without training.”

“But we don’t even hear bugs chirring or birds singing...”

“No, you wouldn’t. It’s always unnervingly quiet. But the bugs and birds are there. They’re just hiding, you see. All of them.”

“Not just at night?”

“Once you get used to looking, you’ll see them even during the day. The way they hide is a little strange. It’s like they’re hiding in the blind spots of human vision... I’m not sure I can describe it very well.”

With a frustrated wave of her hand, Todate returned to the previous topic. “I brought Hana back here when she was weakened, and fed her... There was a picture of a flower on her name tag, so I decided to call her Hana, which means flower.”

Todate looked fondly at Hana as she spoke. Hana raised her head and looked back at her. For a moment, their human and canine gazes intertwined. There was a gentle warmth between them, like that of a couple who had been together for many long years. It caught me by surprise.

“These days, I don’t think I could bring myself to go hunting without her. I came back to Japan after losing my husband, and I’ve been alone ever since, so we may be similar in that way.”

Todate looked back to us, her eyes narrowing as she smiled. “Kamikoshi-san, Nishina-san, you two look like you make fine partners. Traveling around with guns, exploring together? Why, it must be great fun.”

“Yeah, I guess...” I said awkwardly.

I don’t know how she interpreted my response, but Todate smiled. “I envy you. If only I could have found a friend like that when I was younger.”

Hana snorted unhappily, as if she understood exactly what Todate was saying.

“Well, yes... I do think you’re a good partner,” she mumbled, and beside me Toriko broke into a beaming smile.

It felt like I was sitting next to an IR heater, the way waves of heat washed over me. I felt one side of my face getting toasty. Not wanting to look at Toriko, I turned my head away. My eyes met with Hana’s as she was stretching, but she heartlessly looked away, so it didn’t help at all.

“We heard a gunshot before coming here. Was that you, Todate-san?” I asked Todate in an effort to change the subject.

“Yes, it probably was. Did I startle you? I apologize. I found a deer and took a shot, but it got away.”

Toriko, seeming to remember something, said, “Come to think of it, I think we saw Hana before that. In a meadow below the mountains.”

“Oh, did you? I noticed she was missing. I wonder if she went out to have a look at the two of you,” Todate said, looking at Hana lying by the fireplace. “Hana is fast, so she goes off quite a long ways sometimes. On her own, leaving me behind. I worried at first, but I’m sure she understands things better than any human, so I let her do as she pleases now.”

Todate let out a slightly troubled laugh before continuing.

“Oh, goodness me. Here I am, letting a big old hunting dog wander wild and free. It wasn’t long ago that I’d never have even considered doing that. In the time since I started living here, the lack of other people to see what I’m doing has really led me to let myself go.”

“There’s no one on this side, after all,” I said.

“That’s exactly it. Oh, now I’m all embarrassed. I used to have things far more together, you know?”

The way she bashfully pressed her hand to her cheek as she said that was so elegant. If this was how she was after letting herself go, I was practically a wild dog by comparison...

Suddenly, Hana raised her head. She went over to look out the window. That made me look outside too, but all I saw was the trees in the garden.

“Hana?” Todate called her name. Hana didn’t respond. Her attention was on something the rest of us couldn’t sense.

“What’s gotten into you?” Todate asked, rising from her seat to go place her hand on Hana’s back. Hana turned her head to look back at Todate. Their eyes met. “Something’s nearby. A bird, or a deer, perhaps.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“If it were a bear or a boar, Hana would be more alert.” Todate waved a hand at us. “Since we have the opportunity, do you want to go and see?”

“Huh...?”

“I’ll have to change into my outdoor clothes. Let me teach you how to find a living creature.”

6

Toriko and I hurriedly changed back into our exploration outfits before heading outside. Todate, who was waiting at the entrance with Hana, looked at us in amusement.

“Oh, you brought your guns with you?”

“Uh, yeah. Is that a problem?”

“No, not at all. It’s good to see you’re so motivated.”

Despite saying that, Todate was carrying her gun too. Maybe she figured that if we did find something out there, she couldn’t rely on Toriko or me to be able to hit it.

Hana began walking ahead of us. Todate followed as if it were natural for her to do so, and we trailed behind them.

The side of the mansion that we hadn’t seen yet, the one with the Western-style entrance, had a circular driveway for cars. Here, too, the trees had been maintained, but not by Todate. They must have been like this all along.

Hana left the grounds and turned right, walking with a confident gait. She followed the wall until we reached the first gate that Toriko and I had come across.

Hana’s face was turned to the left as she walked. She was keeping that dark, hill pathway—the one with branches growing over the top of it—in her line of sight. I thought that we might be heading there, but we kept going straight instead. Hana never took her eyes off the hill road, though.

“What’s at the end of that road?” I asked, but Todate shook her head.

“I don’t know. I’ve never gone that way. It’s too dark to see, and I find it a little scary.”

That had been my initial impression too. “Oh, I see.”

“I’ve walked all around the area surrounding the mansion, but that place is the one exception. Hana won’t go near it either. There may be some danger that I can’t sense there, so I’ve made a conscious decision to avoid it.”

Hana slowed down at a bend in the wall. If we took another right turn here, we’d be back at the spot where Toriko and I had climbed the stairs from the bus stop. But Hana didn’t go that way, instead stepping into the trees ahead of us on our left.

Todate turned back to us, a finger pressed to her lips. We nodded. Taking her cue from Hana, Todate slowed to a cautious pace. I followed along with Toriko, checking for glitches with my right eye as we advanced.

We avoided the underbrush, staying in the shadows of the trees as we headed deeper into the copse. There were small wet noises as we tread across the moist leaves on the ground. In the silence of the forest, even those were easy to hear. Todate would occasionally turn back to check that we were keeping up with her.

Hana’s pace was relaxed, but it seemed she knew what she was looking for. As we descended a slope, her steps slowed, then came to a complete stop.

Todate crouched low and headed over to Hana. Hana lay down where she was. We had stopped behind the two of them, but Todate signaled to us, so we crouched down and moved closer.

Todate pointed up ahead.

“There. Do you see it?”

I looked in the direction she was indicating. There was a shallow valley at the bottom of the slope, and a stream narrow enough to step over cutting through it. I could hear its babbling from here. The slope heading back up on the other side was much like this one, covered with little more than scattered trees. That didn’t change under scrutiny from my right eye.

“I’m not seeing anything...” I said.

“Don’t try to look too hard.”

“Huh?”

“Stare vacantly, without focusing your eyes. It might be better to use your peripheral vision. Now try to move your head slowly, without focusing on anything.”

I was confused, but tried to do as she said.

Stare vacantly, without focus...

“Oh...” I swallowed involuntarily. Something moved where there should have been nothing. The shape of a deer with antlers emerged from the background. It was about fifty meters ahead, beside the stream.

“I see it!” Toriko cried out, her surprise equal to my own. The deer raised its head, possibly alerted by us.

It was an odd way of seeing something. This was completely different from it being camouflaged with color or patterns. The only things I saw directly were the outline of the deer, and its movements. It was like an optical illusion, where even though I knew something was going on, my brain was still tricked. That impression grew even stronger as I tried to focus on its antlers. It was impossible to tell them apart from the shadows of the branches and leaves. I couldn’t find the dividing lines between its body and the background.

“Is that thing really a deer?” I asked, but Todate did not answer. Her gun, which she had lifted into a firing pose, was pointed at the deer.

Todate fired. And a burst of smoke obscured our vision for a moment. On the other side of it, the figure of a deer stumbled as if pushed. It took one step forward, then its legs gave out and it crumpled to the ground.

Todate exhaled, lowering her gun and standing up. Hana rose too, then started down the slope. As we followed, I noticed I could now clearly see the fallen deer next to the stream.

Still alive, it struggled weakly with wheezing breaths. A red wound between its head and neck showed where it must have been hit. The shape of its face was kind of weird. Antler-like structures had developed around its eyes in several overlapping layers that were like the underside of a maitake or kikurage mushroom. It was like it was wearing a blindfold.

Todate drew a knife as she knelt down, grabbing the deer’s antlers with one hand, and inserting the blade into its throat with the other. The deer didn’t so much as groan. When she withdrew the knife, the animal’s ragged breathing stopped, and blood of a surprisingly deep color flowed out onto the ground.

Todate stood up. “You two did well.”

That finally brought me back to my senses. “Wow... You took it down in just one shot.”

“Not just one. Look,” Todate said, pointing at another bullet wound on the thigh of its left hind leg. “This was the one that got away before I met the two of you. I was worried about it, so I’m glad it stopped here.”

Todate took some rope out of her bag and began tying it to the deer’s hind legs.

“What now?” I asked.

“I butcher it. It has to be done immediately, or it will start to stink.”

Todate tied each of the deer’s hind legs to a different tree, pointing the head downwards. The blood flowing out of the slash wound in its neck created a thin red stream. Todate stuffed some of the fallen leaves on the ground into the deer’s anus, then took her knife again and began making incisions around the anus. At that point she turned to look at us.

“Are you two okay with this sort of thing?”

We nodded, and Todate went back to work.

She stuck the knife in its belly and made a vertical incision. Steam escaped, and there was a bloody smell. She reached in to grab the innards, pulling them out one after another. The long intestines came out together with the anus. Todate threw most of the organs aside haphazardly, but the heart was an exception. She washed that brilliant pink lump the size of a person’s fist with water. Once it was clean, she cut off a piece with her knife and gave it to Hana. The dog received it as if it were hers by right. Then Todate cut off another piece and put it in her own mouth, like they were sharing a fruit of some sort.

“You eat it raw?!” Toriko’s shocked exclamation was met with a mischievous grin from Todate.

“Just one bite. You shouldn’t imitate me. I’m a bad, bad girl.”

Having finished her share, Hana looked up at Todate with her dark eyes. Todate patted her on the head and Hana moved away again.

There it was again. That sense of closeness between them made my heart skip a beat. One touch, and one scrap of heart meat—that was all it was, but I suddenly felt like I was seeing something very private.

Todate put the rest of the heart in a Ziploc bag and resumed butchering the carcass. She removed the bones with an experienced hand, slicing off hunks of meat.

“You two are used to using guns. That surprised me,” Todate said without stopping her work.

“Huh? Why do you say that?” I asked, not sure what we were being complimented on. We hadn’t fired a single shot.

“You’re careful not to point the barrel at others. You’d be surprised how many people can’t do that.”

Well...maybe she was right. I’d been no good at it in the beginning, and only became more careful with constant warnings from Toriko.

When my eyes met Toriko’s she gave me a smug look. I wasn’t amused.

“I’d say that about does it,” Todate concluded, her hands stopping. The deer was fully butchered, and there were now four skinned legs, and some vinyl bags full of red meat piled on the rocks at the edge of the stream. Looking at the time, it had only been thirty minutes. That felt like it couldn’t be right.

All that was left were the cleanly separated skin, the head, the bones, and the organs. We were apparently going to take the head back, and bury the rest. With proper preparation, the organs were edible, but it was a headache to do it, so she only bothered occasionally.

We felt bad not doing anything to help, so we volunteered to help dig the hole at least.

The severed head of the deer sat beside Hana, watching us as we used branches to dig a hole in the ground. I didn’t feel that strange camouflaging effect anymore, but those antler-like flaps over its eyes really were weird.

“What are those things over its eyes?”

“It’s a mystery, isn’t it? I thought it was a mutation or some kind of sickness at first, but every deer I’ve caught has been like that.”

“Was there something they didn’t want to see?” Toriko mused to herself.

“Like they were trying to avoid seeing something scary...?”

Once I said that, it hit me.

That might be exactly what it was. Todate said all of the creatures in the other world were hiding. What from? Not humans, that was for sure. There were generally no humans in this world, after all.

In that case... Was the other world exposing the deer to some kind of terror, like it did to humans?

Had they developed a structure that covered their eyes in order to escape that horror? It would take an exceptional amount of time for a creature’s body to change like this.

Just how long had the Otherside existed...?

7

It was around three o’clock by the time we had carried the meat back to the Mayoiga. We were asked if we’d like to stay for dinner, and were tempted, but ultimately decided against it.

“We’ll head back before dark today,” I said.

“Oh, that’s too bad. Do come visit again sometime. I’m always eating with Hana, but I’ll make my best game dishes for you next time you’re here.”

I wasn’t surprised to hear that at this point. This person was cooking and eating the animals she caught here in the other world.

“They may look a little strange on the outside, but the meat is proper meat,” Todate explained with a smile, as if this was self-evident. “It will be delicious. I guarantee you that.”

I didn’t doubt her. With that fresh meat, her cooking skills, and the Mayoiga’s incredible kitchen, how could it be anything but delicious? I really wanted to try it. Although it did make me think of the concept of Yomotsu-hegui from Japanese myth—where if you ate the food of the land of the dead, you could no longer return to the land of the living...

Just as I was thinking about that, she passed me a silver insulated bag.

“Here’s your share of today’s deer. I put some of the chuck and tenderloin in there. It should be simple enough to cook, so try it for yourself.”

“Th...Thank you,” I said.

“It should keep for a long time if you freeze it.”

“Oh, okay...”

Forget Yomotsu-hegui, I was bringing meat from the Otherside back to the surface world.

Is this gonna be okay? Don’t they seize this kind of stuff at the border?

Whatever the case, Todate and Hana saw us on our way as we left the Mayoiga. We climbed down to the bus stop at the rear of the mansion, boarded the AP-1 once more, and headed back down the road we’d come here on.

“Well, that was an odd experience...” Toriko said, looking back at the top of the mountain. I nodded.

“It felt unreal. Everything was so pretty, like we were in a dream.”

“And then butchering the deer was so real.”

“I’m surprised how fine we were during that. The smell was pretty intense, though.”

“And the organs too.”

We drove in silence for a while before Toriko spoke again. “Sorawo, I thought you’d be more grumpy about it.”

“Huh? Why?”

“You don’t like it when there are other people in the Otherside, right?”

“Ohh. Yeah. For some reason, I didn’t mind that much...”

“Did you have a change of heart?”

“I don’t think that’s it.” I thought about it for a moment, then added, “It might be because those two are complete by themselves.”

“Complete?” Toriko asked.

“She had no real interest in us.”

“Huh? Really? She seemed nice to me.”

“But I don’t think she was interested in us. Todate-san only needs Hana, and vice versa. They have their own world, and their interest in other people doesn’t extend beyond them being a way to kill time. That might be what made it easy for me to deal with them.”

“Hmm... Okay.”

Toriko gave a vague response that left me unsure whether she was convinced, then she held up the insulated bag. “What do you wanna do with the meat she gave us?”

“It’s a bit much, even for the two of us. Maybe we should give Kozakura-san some as a souvenir?”

“Oh, hey, how about a barbecue party then? It can double as our afterparty.”

“These cuts are big enough to make steaks out of.”

“It’ll take some courage to eat meat from the other world, though.”

“I was thinking that too, but it’s too late now.”

“How so?”

“She said she made those mugwort mochi too, right?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m thinking maybe the mugwort in those was grown on the Otherside too.”

“Oh...”

8

After returning from the other world, I occasionally dreamed about the Mayoiga.

It was always the same dream.

Todate and Hana stood in front of the gates of the mansion, looking towards the dark hill road that led into the forest.

Something was climbing the hill, the gravel audibly crunching beneath it.

What appeared next changed each time.

An expensive black car with tinted windows that prevented me from seeing inside it.

An old ox-drawn cart.

A four-horse carriage.

A portable shrine carried by a large group of people.

A big, black, bear-like creature.

I never managed to see what expressions the person and her dog greeted them with before the dream ended.

Although we hadn’t had a single frightening experience in that Mayoiga, every time I had that dream, I would wake up with my heart pounding.