File 2: Hasshaku-sama Survival

1

In one of the older department buildings on campus, I was being pushed against the wall in a dark corner under the stairs.

It was raining outside. With her hand on the wall as she peered into my eyes, the light behind her made Toriko Nishina’s blonde hair seem to glow ever so slightly.

Afternoon classes had already started, and there wasn’t a soul around. Voices repeating Chinese words could be heard from a nearby classroom.

That was the lecture I should have been attending.

“Hey...”

“Don’t move.”

With a serious expression on her face, Toriko brought her hand to my chin, turning it to the left. Her face came in closer, practically brushing my nose.

What, what, what? What was with her? Was she going to bite me?

As strong and forceful as Toriko was, I might still have been able to push her away or beat her up. Being the refined university girl I was, though, it took time to work up the will to do these things. I was at the point where my slowly filling resort-to-brute-force progress bar was at about sixty percent. While a system message displaying “Emotionally preparing for launch of counterattack...” appeared in my head while my back was pressed to the cold wall, Toriko suddenly spoke.

“So pretty.”

“Huh...?! Wh-What are you saying, out of nowhere...?” While I was caught off guard and flustered, Toriko took aim with her phone and, flash, she took a photo.

“Look at this.”

On the screen of her phone was me, brow furrowed and looking this way.

One of my eyes looked kind of weird.

“Your right eye’s super blue.”

Toriko was right. It wasn’t any ordinary blue, either. It wasn’t the color of any living creature... It was artificial, like a mineral—the deep azure of Ryukyu glass.

When did that happen...?

While I was dumbstruck, my mind unable to keep up with what was happening, Toriko brought her left hand up in front of me. As if she was showing off her nails, or was a noble lady demanding I kiss the back of her hand, but it seemed the correct answer was closer to the former.

The fingers of Toriko’s left hand were all see-through. Her shapely nails and the flesh beneath were as transparent as the clear winter sky. It was as if her fingertips just melted into the air.

“Whoa, how’d you do that?!”

Toriko angrily shook her head. “This isn’t something I could do myself, obviously. It’s gotta be that thing’s fault. The Kunekune!”

The other world that was unlike our own, the Otherside. We’d encountered a creepy creature called the Kunekune there, taken it out, and come back alive. That was three days ago.

I’m pretty sure the discoloration of my eye was caused by staring at the Kunekune. That thing caused bizarre changes to the human body just by being looked at, after all. As for Toriko’s left hand... Could it have been caused when she tried to scrape off the fungus that was growing out of my face with her bare hands? When I thought it happened because she was trying to help me, I couldn’t help but feel a little guilty.

“Let’s have someone who knows this stuff take a look,” Toriko said after thinking for a while. “I know someone with an interest in the other world, someone who’s researching it.”

“Oh, yeah...?”

“It’s the person who wanted the mirror stone—that thing the Kunekune dropped—in the first place. I’m going to be meeting with her so I can sell it anyway, so let’s go together.”

As I listened, the furrows of my brow deepened. An Otherside researcher? And she wanted that weird thing from the Kunekune?

No matter how you looked at that, she wasn’t normal. This wasn’t a cult or something, was it...?

“What’re you making funny faces for, Sorawo?”

“Listen, if I’m being honest, this sounds dodgy as hell. Toriko, this person isn’t taking your money, is she?”

“If anything, I’m taking hers. If I find something odd in the other world and bring it in, she’ll buy it off me. I’m ripping her off like crazy,” Toriko said with a smile and a hair-pulling gesture.

My brow only furrowed more.

“You don’t want to, Sorawo?”

“...Okay, I’ll go with you,” I reluctantly answered. If Toriko was being tricked by someone, I’d have trouble sleeping at night if I abandoned her. But if they were working together against me, I was done with her. In preparation for that, I decided I’d leave my beat-her-up progress bar at sixty percent.

“Great. Don’t worry, this should work out nicely for you, too, Sorawo. The money’s good, you know?”

...Make that seventy percent.

2

Walking through the rain, Toriko took me to a high-class residential district a short walk from Shakujii-kouen Station on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line.

It was a three story house surrounded by a tall brick wall. The whole of it was covered in ivy, giving it a bizarre atmosphere.

This is the kind of place the local kids would definitely call a haunted house.

When the door opened, the entryway was made with old-fashioned tile, and one pair of Crocs sandals were neatly lined up there.

The moment we entered the house, the temperature instantly dropped. Beyond the threshold of the entrance stretched a dark corridor. I couldn’t see far; when I squinted, a white shadow cut across the end of the hallway.

“Eek!”

I almost grabbed on to Toriko, but managed to stop myself just short of it. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to notice. Leaning in towards the hallway, Toriko raised her voice. “I’m heeere!”

“You’re so noisy. I know. Get in here already,” came a brusque female voice from deeper inside.

Toriko stripped off her boots and headed in, traipsing down the hall without hesitation. I hurried after her. How many years was it since I’d been in someone else’s house?

Opening the door that was at the end of the hall on the left revealed a dim, cluttered room with several LCD monitors and what looked to be a young girl. She was sitting cross-legged on a chair. In her hands she held a large mug with art by Tove Jansson printed on it. Judging by the scent wafting from it, it was filled with hot cola.

In the light of her multi-display setup, the girl looked as pale as an antlion. Her free-growing, messy hair had been drained of color, too. She wore a baggy T-shirt and leggings, her feet bare.

How old was she? She looked like she could be in primary school, but the eyes turned on me had none of that childlike innocence.

Toriko entered the room as if she were used to doing so. The hall and entrance were so empty that it would be easy to assume the house was vacant, yet this room had books and junk piled everywhere. With care not to knock over any of the accumulated things, I followed Toriko in.

On top of a tower of computer books with animals drawn on the covers, there was a self-enlightenment book of the type they sold cheap at Book-Off. Next to those, a yellowed booklet on regional history shared space with a specialist magazine on modern architecture. Hanging from the ceiling were a model of an irregularly shaped polyhedron and a strange paper airplane. I had no idea what kind of specialist she was supposed to be.

Looking at me, the girl raised an eyebrow. “Who is that?”

“Sorawo. My friend.”

“You have a friend...?” When she heard Toriko’s response, the girl’s eyes narrowed with suspicion. “How much did you buy her for?”

“I didn’t buy her. She came free!” Toriko said, pursing her lips. Who was she calling free?

Toriko moved some books off the sofa and plopped herself down. Then, patting the spot beside her, she looked up at me.

“Have a seat, Sorawo. No need to be shy.”

“What are you saying? This is my house, you know.”

“Erm...”

When I hesitated, it seemed to finally occur to Toriko that she should introduce her.

“This is the acquaintance I was just telling you about: Kozakura. She studies the other world and cognitive science...”

“Wait, what did you tell her about me?” The girl named Kozakura turned a suspicious glance in our direction.

“That you know a lot about the world on the other side.”

“I know a lot, huh...”

Having said that in a sarcastic tone, Kozakura turned to me and gave me a halfhearted nod.

“Sorawo-chan, was it? Please, have a seat.”

I did as she said, sitting down next to Toriko immediately. As I did, I was running mental simulations on the best way to punch Toriko out and run for it if I had to.

“Since you’ve brought her to me, does this girl have something to do with the other world, too?

“Yep. Met her over there.”

“My condolences.”

When she said that with a serious look, I didn’t know how to respond. Ignoring my bewilderment, Kozakura turned to Toriko.

“And?”

Toriko held her hand up right in front of her eyes.

“...What? You want me to kiss the back of your hand now?”

“No, that’s not it. My fingers. Look at them.”

Moving her eyes, Kozakura frowned.

“Blech, disgusting. This isn’t contagious, I hope.”

Even as she said that, Kozakura never looked away from Toriko’s hand.

“It’s not just me. Look at Sorawo, too.”

“Hmm?”

Kozakura rolled her chair over to me, peering into my right eye.

“Is it artificial? No? Hmm, what’s going on here?”

She spoke while staring into my eye, so I was forced to look her in the eye as I responded, whether I wanted to or not. “Um, well, in the Otherside—oh, the Otherside is just what I decided to call it, but, anyway—over there... we encountered it. That thing. The Kunekune. Do you know it? The famous internet horror story. You look at it, and it drives you crazy. I looked at that thing for a long time, and at some point, without realizing, I ended up like this. Um, yeah.”

My face was burning. I could tell my back and armpits were dripping with sweat.

Yeah, that’s right—I was always super shy around other people. Looking someone in the eye and speaking in a logical way when we’d just met for the first time was way too difficult for me.

Kozakura continued to look at me for a while, then looked away. “And you, Toriko?”

“I touched the Kunekune and ended up like this. Well, not the Kunekune itself. Sorawo had been affected by it, and...”

Toriko explained how we first met, and the incident with the Kunekune to Kozakura. Hers was a perfect, logical explanation, unlike mine.

Why is it I can talk normally with her, I wonder? I looked at Toriko’s face in profile, captivated by that mystery, until Kozakura’s angry shouting pulled me back to my senses.

“You’ve both had an encounter of the fourth kind! Yet you come in here, uninvited, and start touching everything!”

“Hey, you said to come in.”

“Shut up, you idiot!”

“Um... What do you mean, the fourth kind?” I asked hesitantly.

“A long time ago, Hynek divided close encounters with flying saucers into the first, second, and third kind. The concept seems equally applicable to the other world, so I’ve adapted it. The fourth kind refers to cases in which the encounter has an effect on the body.”

That the previously unsociable Kozakura suddenly became so talkative left me feeling daunted.

“The first kind are simple sightings, the second kind are incursions, and the third are encounters with a living creature. As the degree of contact deepens, people are entranced by the other world. They get addicted, and some never return...”

“Like Satsuki,” Toriko mumbled to herself. Kozakura frowned and went silent.

“Isn’t that...?”

Toriko looked at me, then hesitantly responded. “The person who disappeared on the other side. My... friend.”

When she said that, I remembered. Toriko was looking for someone—for her friend.

3

“Satsuki was originally my friend, actually,” Kozakura explained between sips of hot cola. “We were in the same class in university. I don’t know where she learned about it, but she noticed the existence of the other world, and then dragged me into a ‘collaborative research’ project on it.”

In that case, this woman of unknown age is at least old enough to be going to university?

“So, Kozakura-san, you also, um... went to the other world?”

“No, I hardly ever went myself. In fact, I was always warning her not to because it’s dangerous. When I did, soon enough, she said she’d found herself a spirited assistant, and she brought Toriko in.”

When I looked to her, Toriko continued the story.

“Satsuki was my tutor. I never went to high school in Japan, so I got into university by taking a high school equivalency exam. That’s how we got to know each other. Eventually, she started to teach more than just my studies—she taught me about the other world, and I ended up exploring it with her...”

Toriko’s brow creased with sadness as she continued.

“It would have been three months ago, I guess. That’s when she suddenly stopped contacting me. I thought she might have gotten hurt on the other side, so I went alone to search for her a number of times, but...”

“I told you going alone is reckless, didn’t I?” Kozakura grumbled.

“Come on, she’s my friend. The way I see it, if she’s in trouble, I’ve got to help her. —Right?”

When Toriko said that as if it were self-evident, the strong-willed light that filled her eyes was daunting, and I looked away despite myself.

...Her tutor and her precious friend, huh.

I didn’t really get it, but I was angry for some reason.

Without looking at Toriko, I spoke to Kozakura. “Kozakura-san, what exactly is the other world?”

I managed to speak normally. When I was mad, it seemed my mouth would move, and I could get some momentum going. Maybe I should just stay angry forever.

“What do you think?” Kozakura turned the question back to me.

“I... At first, I thought it was an illusion only I could see. Until I learned other people could enter that world, I’d always been suspicious of it somehow.”

“I see. It’s not the case we have multiple people sharing the same hallucination. If you get mud on your boots over there, they’re still muddy when you get back. Whatever is over there, it’s real in some way.”

Kozakura put her mug down in a space on the desk then leaned in closer.

“The other world acts in a way that appears intimately tied to human cognition. From Toriko’s explanation of the ‘Kunekune,’ I can hypothesize its very existence is dependent on the subjectivity of the one who encounters it. In the past, I suspected the other world might be a virtual space. However, the fact it is possible to bring objects back from over there, and the changes you two experienced to your bodies serve as powerful proof to the contrary. Furthermore, a number of the items I’ve gathered from the other world thus far are—though I’m not fond of saying it this way—unable to be explained by existing science.”

“Come to think of it... That stone from before, I hear you were the one who put Toriko up to bringing you more?”

“Ah, yes, I’d almost forgotten. Toriko, did you bring anything?”

“Yep.” Toriko pulled a plastic container out of her tote bag. Kozakura put on some disposable rubber gloves, carefully opening the lid and pulling out the contents of the container.

It was that mirror stone. The mysterious and bizarre object left behind when we defeated the Kunekune. The faces of the cube, which shone as if polished, clearly reflected the inside of the room. Except for the three of us. In that dark room, the mirror stone looked like it was wrapped in a silver halo.

“It’s bigger than the last.”

“Isn’t it, though? We worked hard for it,” Toriko said, puffing her chest up. I wished she wouldn’t sum our terrifying experience up as having “worked hard.”

When Kozakura opened a desk drawer, unceremoniously pulling out a bundle of cash, my eyes went wide.

“Good work. If you come across anything else, bring it in.”

“It’s a pleasure doing business.”

Without even counting the bills, Toriko stuffed them into her tote bag, then turned to me with a grin. It felt so unreal that I was struck dumb.

“So, what is this stone anyway?” Toriko asked. Kozakura looked thoughtful.

“Let’s hypothesize that the Kunekune is a living creature that gets inside humans through their sense of sight. ‘It’s better not to understand.’ In other words, if you recognize it—if you understand it—there’s no escape.”

Toriko cocked her head to the side. “If recognizing it let us shoot it, wouldn’t that be its weakness?”

“There could be varying depths of understanding. Those victims who ‘understood’ it sufficiently either became unable to move, or lost their sanity. You survived because there were two of you. One to recognize it, one to shoot.”

In my head, I flashed back to the corpse that had been killed by the Kunekune. That man whose name I didn’t know, his fingers dug deep into both eye sockets. I knew now—he’d realized the Kunekune was moving around in his vision, and he’d crushed his own eyes. Though, even after doing that, he hadn’t been able to survive...

“When the Kunekune enters your cognition, that creates an interface for contact between the human and the Kunekune. When the Kunekune was in Sorawo-chan’s cognition, Toriko shot it, and that destroyed the interface. Or perhaps solidified it. Or perhaps crystallized it. In short, this may be Sorawo’s ‘cognitive interface’ in physical form.” Kozakura pinched the mirror stone between two fingers, lifting it up to eye level.

“My interface...?”

“Something like the skin that forms over milk if you let it get warm, I guess?” While I was confused, Toriko gave her clumsy opinion. “Why doesn’t it reflect humans though? Is it because Sorawo’s a misanthrope?”

I glared at her despite myself, but Toriko acted like she didn’t notice. Kozakura responded with a serious expression.

“That could well be the case. Or perhaps this mirror stone is reflecting the perspective of the Kunekune, which is trapped inside in some way.”

In the end, we didn’t learn anything that would fix my eye or Toriko’s hand. We tried asking Kozakura, but she said, “Don’t ask a cognitive scientist to do a doctor’s work,” and cut us off.

When we went outside, it was still raining. Standing beneath the eaves, I raised my heel and fixed my shoe.

A wad of 10,000 yen bills was thrust in my face.

When I looked up, Toriko had broken the band keeping the bundle of banknotes together and was smiling at me. Low clouds hanging in the background, as a blonde beauty pushed a large sum of money towards me—it was an incredible image, unlike anything I’d seen before, and I sort of stood there in a daze.

“We’ll split it down the middle. 500,000 each. That good with you?”

“...Yeah.”

I accepted it. It was money. So much money. Wow.

“Now you can get your smartphone fixed, huh?”

“Huh? Ohh, yeah.”

To tell you the truth, the first thing that came to mind was my student loan.

“I never did thank you properly, huh. Thanks, Sorawo.”

“No, thank you...” I mumbled in response.

“When do you want to go next?”

“Anytime’s... Wait, no, hold on.” Finally recovering from the shock the wad of cash had inflicted on me, I continued on. “Nothing’s been resolved at all. Not my eye, nor your hand. Shouldn’t we have pressed her harder for answers?”

“If Kozakura says she doesn’t know, she doesn’t know. If she figures something out, she’ll tell us. I guarantee.”

“Can we trust her?”

“We can. Because Satsuki trusted her,” Toriko said confidently.

“...You were awfully close with this Satsuki-san, huh.”

“Yep. She was more important to me than anyone. If she’s lost on the other side, I’ve got to go save her...”

I didn’t know what to say. It was not unlikely that this Satuski-san had lost her life somewhere—just like that corpse which had crushed its own eyes. It shouldn’t have been impossible for Toriko to imagine that.

While I was hesitating to speak, Toriko smiled sadly.

“To be honest, I was feeling uneasy. Satsuki had told me not to go alone... That’s why, when I met you over there, I was super happy!”

“Uh, okay?”

“It occurred to me when we beat the Kunekune. It’d be hard for me to do alone. But if I’m with you, we might be able to find Satsuki.”

“Huh?”

What was she saying?

“You want money, right? If you find strange things in the other world and bring them to Kozakura, she’ll buy them off of you, like she did today. Oh, obviously I like money, too, so we’ll split the take. It’s not a bad deal, right? Win-win for both of us.”

“...”

I stood there at a loss for words. So, what? Toriko caught me because she thought I’d be convenient help for finding Satsuki-san, or whatever her name was? Because she’d feel lonely skulking around by herself?

I felt the anger seething up.

Fine.I see how it is, I thought. If that’s how Toriko wants it to be, let’s hurry it up and find this Satsuki-san.Once we do, I can be rid of this nuisance.Then they can go be all buddy-buddy on their own.

“...Okay.”

“I thought you’d say that!” Without a clue as to how I felt, Toriko smiled happily.

4

Just past 10:00 in the morning, three days later, I was reading a book on the first floor of the Shosen Grande bookstore in Jinbouchou when Toriko turned up late.

“Did I keep you waiting?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

“Isn’t this where you’re supposed to say, ‘I just got here’?”

“Did you think this was a date or something?” I said curtly, heading outside without listening to her response. Toriko followed. It was raining outside, the same as ever, but neither of us put up an umbrella. We were dressed so that it didn’t matter if we got wet today. Toriko and I were wearing the same clothes we wore the first time we’d met. Me in my Uniqlo fleece, camouflage pants, and sneakers. Toriko in her army surplus jacket and jeans. She had lace-up boots on her feet.

“Sorawo, did you bring the gun?” she asked bluntly. Fortunately, no one was around to overhear and object, but I couldn’t help but speak in a tiny voice when I replied.

“...I did. Just in case.”

I’d bought a holster at a survival games specialty store, and it was wrapped together with the Makarov in my waist pouch. It was a leg holster, the kind that hung from your thigh. I’d bought exactly what the shopkeeper suggested.

We entered that tall, thin building from before, and headed for the elevator. I watched the order Toriko pressed the buttons in and took notes. Four, two, six, two, ten, five. When we got to the fifth floor, the woman with no visible face ran to catch the elevator again. It was so scary, I shut my eyes. One, three, eight, two, seven, ten... The numbers on the display changed to something unreadable at some point, and then eventually the elevator stopped on the roof. That pitch black floor we’d seen last time never appeared.

The door opened, and a damp wind blew in. I stepped out onto the empty roof with Toriko.

It was gloomy beneath the cloudy sky. There was no rain. Looking out from the roof, I could see the shadows of the clouds drifting across the uneven plains. At the distant edge of the mountains, there was a strangely angular cloud that looked like a blocking artifact. It sparked with lightning and showered that area in a torrential downpour. It was the first violent weather effect I’d seen in the other world, but it was a mystery that we couldn’t hear any thunder. All we heard was the howling wind and rustling of the grass. When I looked along the foot of the mountains, for a moment, I felt like I saw something triangular moving between the branches of the trees. It was too far off to figure out what it really was.

We descended the creaking steel ladder on the outside of the skeletal frame of the building, then checked our equipment when we got down to the ground. Once I’d attached the holster to my thigh and felt the weight of the Makarov, I relaxed just a little. The fact that bullets had worked on the Kunekune played a large part in that. Like Dutch Schaefer said, “If it bleeds, we can kill it.” ...Not that the Kunekune had bled at all, though.

Taking our experience from last time into consideration, I’d brought gloves, too; trekking gloves from Ikebukuro Seibu’s sporting goods section.

Toriko had thick gloves with pads on the backs. They were called tactical gloves, apparently.

Once I was fully outfitted, I stood up. “So? If we’re looking for Satsuki-san, where should we go?”

“I’ve been to the north and the east a number of times, but I never found her. When I went west, I met you. I think you’d know that area better than I do. Were there any signs of other people?”

“I wasn’t really composed enough to be looking, but it felt like the marsh just went on forever. What else? Isn’t there anywhere Satsuki-san was likely to have gone?”

“She wasn’t exactly the type to discuss future plans...”

That surprisingly unreliable answer irritated me.

“Well, can I decide then? When I looked from up top, I saw something like a ruined building to the southwest. If you haven’t been there, let’s set that as our goal. If your friend’s injured and unable to move, she might take shelter in a building with a roof, right?”

“Got it,” Toriko nodded without objection.

Diverting from the footpath from east to west that passed in front of the skeletal building, we headed into the plains.

It had seemed to be close when I was looking down from above, but once we got walking it wasn’t really. The whitish ruin we could see ahead of us just wasn’t getting any closer. We continued to walk on in silence, occasionally consulting the compass. The needle sometimes twitched, or spun around as if confused before pointing to “north,” though, which was kind of suspicious.

“Sorawo, are you in a bad mood or something?” Toriko, who was walking behind me, asked. “I hate when people aren’t clear about things, so if something’s up, say so.”

“Not really. It just occurred to me you’ve put surprisingly little thought into this.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re firmly resolved to save your friend, but it seemed like you hadn’t put any thought into how you were going to do that.”

“If you’re going to call me out on that, yeah... I know in my head that I can’t hurry too much, but when I think of Satsuki being in trouble, I just can’t sit still,” Toriko replied in a troubled tone.

“Hmm. You seem awfully concerned for her.”

“Because Satsuki was my only friend.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, I hope you find her, then.”

Toriko went quiet for a bit before speaking again. “...Hey, Sorawo, that isn’t very nice.”

“What do you mean, ‘that’?”

“That sulky tone of voice! Could you stop acting like a child?”

I snapped, turning back to face her. “I ought to say—” It was just as I was about to give her a piece of my mind, when I suddenly heard a man’s voice. It made me freeze.

“Stop!”

In the grass, not ten meters away, was a man I didn’t know. Over his camouflage clothing, he wore a thick coat with dried leaves woven into it, and was carrying a big gun like I’d seen in the movies. One of those AK-something-or-others. He didn’t have it readied—the barrel was pointing at the ground. He had a swarthy face full of stubble, and there was a glint in his wide eyes.

“Don’t move!” Toriko shouted in a sharp voice.

When I looked, Toriko had her gun drawn, and was aiming straight at the man. The man stopped, taking his hand off the AK, and turned his palms to Toriko as if signaling for her to stop.

“If you go any further, you’ll die. It’s a glitch.”

“A glitch? What’s that? Whatever, just drop the gun.”

“I refuse. I just saved your lives. Look.”

The man slowly lowered his right hand, putting his fingers into a small bag hanging from his belt, and pulling out a metal bolt.

“Look closely,” he said once more before tossing the bolt. It headed about a meter ahead of me.

Juban! There was a sound I’d never heard before and a flash of light. I closed my eyes reflexively, and my face felt hot.

When I hesitantly opened my eyes again, I gulped. The bolt was stopped in mid-air. The red hot metal was wavering on the other side of the hot air.

“What is this...?” Toriko whispered from behind me.

As we watched, the bolt blackened at the end and shriveled away. That wasn’t how metal burns. It was like a match being struck. Soon, the entire bolt was a burned husk, and it fell to the ground. There was an area in the middle of the grass with a diameter of about sixty centimeters where nothing grew, and it was surrounded by ash.

I stumbled backwards. The blood drained from my face. If I’d stepped forward, who knew what would have happened? As I sunk to the ground, someone gently caught me from behind. It was Toriko supporting me.

The man reshouldered his AK, the grass rustling as he approached.

“It’s a Toaster. You step into it, it’ll fry you to the marrow. It reduces things to ash in an instant, so you can’t even cook with it. The Zone’s full of these sorts of dangerous glitches.”

“Wh... What are glitches?”

“Dangerous spatial anomalies. Supernatural traps. Walking through an area with such poor visibility without confirming what’s in front of you is practically sui... cide...”

In the middle of talking, the man trailed off. His eyes were suddenly unfocused, and it wasn’t clear where he was looking.

“Mi... Michiko?”

“Huh?”

I turned, thinking there might be someone else there, but there wasn’t anyone else on the plains for as far as the eye could see. Toriko was watching the man suspiciously, too.

“Michiko, is that you? You’ve come back?! Why are there two of you...?!”

The man closed in, his face contorted with emotion. I was shocked, and struggled to get to my feet. Toriko took aim again and shouted.

“Calm down, old man! I’ll shoot!”

With the gun trained on him, the man came to a stop. Bewildered, he continued to speak.

“Michiko...”

“I’m not Michiko! Take a closer look, old man!”

Sanity gradually returned to the man’s eyes. “Ohh... Sorry, you two aren’t Michiko.” Shaking his head, he exhaled. “I got confused. I’m fine now.”

“Really?”

“It’s true. Please, lower the gun. I’m really fine.”

In contrast to his words, the man had a look of severe disappointment on his face. I thought he might start crying. We watched tensely as he covered his face with both hands, then let out a long sigh.

Toriko waited for me to stand, then slowly lowered her gun.

5

The man gave his name as Abarato. He said he’d come to the other world in search of his wife, who had mysteriously vanished.

“I’m sorry. I’ve been searching for my wife so long... When I saw you two, it seems I mistook you for her. I’m truly sorry.”

“Right...” I replied dubiously.

This went beyond a case of mistaken identity, didn’t it? Wasn’t it kind of weird that he would hallucinate both of us were his wife at the same time?

Also, as he got closer, I realized something. The old guy stank.

I had thought his swarthy complexion was a tan or something, but he was all grimy. His hair was all stiff, too. I couldn’t even guess how long it must have been since he’d last bathed.

“About how long have you been here?”

“This is my 38th day this time.”

The immediate answer caught me by surprise. Toriko seemed not to have expected it, either, and asked him about it. “You’ve been spending that much time here? You don’t go home?”

“I do go back, occasionally. When I need to resupply. Otherwise, I’m here all the time. There’s no point returning to a world without my wife.”

“You... You really cared a lot about her, huh.”

I tried to say something harmless and inconsequential, but I magnificently failed to do so. Abarato glared at me, responding with indignation.

“No, it’s not ‘I cared about her.’ I care about her. Now, and forever. Michiko is alive. She’s waiting for me to save her!”

“I-I’m sorry...”

Seeing me cower, Abarato’s expression softened a little. “No... I’m sorry, I lost my temper there. There’s no point getting angry at you.”

I looked at Abarato, still tense. This man had, in a short time frame, blown up and then apologized twice now. He was clearly unstable. He wasn’t aiming his gun at us now, but there was no telling what might set him off.

“We were still newlyweds. It was an arranged marriage, but we bonded over our taste in movies, and became close in no time...”

Unprompted, Abarato launched into the story of how he and his wife, Michiko-san, had met.

“It was almost a year since we had gotten married. One summer night, we had been drinking beer and snacking on edamame after work, and we were about to watch a movie together. I went to my room, then called out to my wife in the living room, asking which movie she wanted...”

Abarato’s words cut off.

“...There was no response. When I returned, my wife was gone. There was nowhere to hide in our tiny apartment. There wasn’t any sign of her having gone outside, either. I was gone for maybe ten seconds. In that time, my wife suddenly vanished. Leaving no trace. Just a warm depression in the cushion she’d been sitting on, and a second beer she’d just poured.”

It must have been painful to remember, because his voice trembled.

“It took a long time for me to digest the situation. Once I had accepted the fact of her disappearance, I searched for her like a madman, but I had no leads, and no idea where to look for more. Grasping at whatever straws I could find, I consulted mediums and shamans. One of them told me... That Michiko had met with a kamikakushi.”

“Kamikakushi...” Toriko mumbled the word to herself, looking to me questioningly.

Stories about people vanishing without any warning were not uncommon in folklore. In old times in Japan, this was called kamikakushi, which means to be hidden away by the gods. People would be dragged off to other worlds, or wander into them, never to return. In the story of Samuto-no-Baba from Toono Monogatari, the girl who disappeared manages to return once, but then vanishes again. I hear that stories about being sucked into the “fourth dimension” were popular in the seventies and eighties.

When I was researching this, as part of my interest in true ghost stories, one thing that caught my attention was a rise in urban legends and net lore about entering another world. Where someone sets foot in a place similar to the world they know, but warped in strange ways when examined closer, making them flee in terror—these sorts of stories had seen a marked rise in the last ten years or so. There was a time when I had taken them as no more than “stories,” but now I was forced to acknowledge there was a shred of truth in them.

Though, as for whether I’d have believed in the other world before I saw it myself...

“And you believed that?” I hesitantly asked, to which Abarato nodded.

“My wife had been abducted by someone, she had evaporated of her own will, mental derangement, I looked into all the possibilities. Yet, none of them made sense to me. That being the case, I was forced to consider a preternatural cause. Someone had snatched my wife away from the world I knew. I investigated. In my search for a lead on where the victims of a kamikakushi were spirited away to, I pored through old stories, folklore, and legends. To find a way to contact other worlds, I apprenticed with a shifty shaman. I fasted, sat under waterfalls, did anything. Then, at last, I found the Zone.”

Abarato waved his hand, gesturing to the other world around us.

“The entrance was at an abandoned shrine in Chichibu. There were rumors that some youngsters had up and vanished while doing a test of courage at the place. I searched through the records to find if there was any truth to that, and I was able to locate one of the people involved in that test of courage and hear their story. While I was investigating the site, for just an instant, as I passed through a torii gate, I saw a dry field of grass swaying, like some sort of phantasm. With repeated trial and error, I learned that by passing through that torii at a specific time and angle, it was possible to enter that field.”

While listening to his story, I became frightened. Abarato told the story plainly enough, but I couldn’t imagine how much time and effort must have been left out of this brief version of his investigation.

Abarato blinked, as if coming back to his senses, and then looked at us in puzzlement.

“By the way... Who are you girls? Why have you come here?”

“The same reason. An important friend went missing here.”

When Toriko responded, Abarato nodded repeatedly as if he understood. He started to get misty eyed. “I see... It must have been hard for you.”

Abarato strode over and took Toriko’s hand. My eyes bulged. She was so vulnerable as he closed in, Toriko hadn’t even had time to react. After an enthusiastic and one-sided handshake, Abarato turned to me.

“You came here together to find your friend, right?”

“Huh?! Erm...”

While I was mumbling, Abarato came to his own conclusions, nodding to himself once again. “I get it. Really, I do. You just couldn’t sit still. I was the same. You lost someone so precious to you, and no one else will understand. It’s painful, I know.”

“Um, er, well.” While I was at a loss for how to respond, I tried to catch Toriko’s eye over Abarato’s shoulder and was shocked. Toriko’s eyes were just as moist as his.

Hold on... What’re you sympathizing with him for?!

I came close to shouting that at her, but maybe it was only natural she would. The old guy was in the same position as Toriko.

I’m different.

While I stood there, unable to do anything, Abarato made a proposal to Toriko.

“You girls don’t seem used to the Zone yet. If you’d like, I can show you a safe route...”

“You wouldn’t mind?” Toriko asked.

“Yeah. I can’t just watch you girls walk into a glitch in front of my eyes.”

“You heard the man! This is great, huh, Sorawo.” Toriko turned to me, speaking with a flawless smile.

I could only nod.

6

“Always throw something ahead of you as you walk. If you have nothing to throw, poke at it with a long stick.”

Abarato took the lead, throwing bolts ahead of us as we walked. He had a carpenter or construction worker’s nail bag around his waist, and in it he said he kept a large supply of nuts and bolts.

“This world is full of death. There are traps everywhere, yet we can’t see them.”

Like he said, the bolts Abarato threw would fly up high into the sky as we watched, or be melted to slag, making the presence of a hidden glitch apparent.

Was it just good luck that neither Toriko nor I had tripped one yet...?

Abarato had his own names for the glitches. Buddhist Altar Rice was a glitch that was a white mass that looked like ground meat, jutting out of the ground in a cone. When approached, it let out an ear-piercing metallic sound that resembled that of a dentist’s drill. One that looked like a jungle gym composed of hair, a Mist Net, was almost invisible, and the bolt passed through it, too, so if there hadn’t been a bird’s feather hanging there, we would have walked right into it.

Glitches like the Toaster, where he actually knew how they functioned, were the minority. For many glitches, all he really knew was that something was there.

“You don’t try to find out?” I asked.

“Unless I need to in order to move forward, it’s faster to work my way around. I’m not here to research the Zone, after all.”

Kozakura would have taken an interest. As for me, whenever a new glitch appeared, I was fascinated to the point of wanting to stop and observe it. That said, even without Abarato’s warning, each glitch gave off a dangerous enough impression that I had no intent of approaching them.

“It’s not just glitches. There are strange creatures that roam the Zone. Some are like warped versions of animals and plants we know, while others are disgusting, and will make you vomit at just the mere sight of them. If you haven’t encountered any yet, you’re fortunate.”

“Haha...” I gave him a vague smile. What would this guy’s reaction be if he heard we’d come to this other world to hunt a Kunekune before?

Still, the thought that there might be other creatures that were even more disgusting made me flinch. Maybe I’d need to practice with the gun a little, after all.

The abandoned building we were heading towards gradually got closer. Its concrete surface was pockmarked, as if it had been riddled by heavy gunfire, and reminded me of a mass of coral that had turned white after dying.

Toriko called out to Abarato, who was walking ahead of us. “Hey. I should have asked this first, but you haven’t run into anyone, have you? A woman. Tall, with long, black hair, glasses, and a nasty look in her eyes.”

Those features she described... was that Satsuki-san?

“Sorry, not ringing any bells. It’s rare to encounter other people in the Zone to begin with. And when I do spot them, I do my best not to approach.”

“Why?”

“Because it could be one of them.”

Abarato lowered his voice.

“They’re everywhere. Watching us. They’ll tap your phone, steal your mail. Follow you in groups to harass you. Spread bad rumors online. Reporting them is no help—they’ve infiltrated the police, too.”

Cautiously, Abarato continued.

“You two, are you safe on the other side? Have you ever been pushed from behind on the station platform? Ever had strange symbols written on your doorplate? They imitate humans, hiding in our society. Even if you blow the whistle on them, no one will believe you...”

Abarato continued, as if talking to himself. Toriko turned back, and we exchanged glances. I shook my head. I had no idea what he was talking about.

“Um... who are ‘they’?”

“Denizens of the Zone. They sneak into our world, and they abduct people. They took Michiko!”

Abarato’s voice was distorted with anger and hatred.

Th-This is...

I gulped.

This incoherent suspicion—I hadn’t taken any credits in psychology, but I could still tell. Abarato wasn’t sane.

He was an emotionally unstable man, fully immersed in conspiracy theories, and he was carrying an AK.

Th-This guy’s bad news.Like, really bad.There’s no telling when he might decide we’re with “them.”We’d better not stimulate him any more than necessary... I was thinking, but then Toriko went and opened her mouth.

“How do you know we aren’t ‘them’?”

No, don’t say that!

I was sweating bullets, but Abarato’s response stayed calm.

“When I first spotted you two, I was intending to hide. However, as you approached, you seemed so very... human, I couldn’t help but call out to you.”

“We seemed human?”

“You two were arguing about something, right? As far as I’m aware, they don’t do that. They don’t have emotions like humans do, you see.”

I had complicated feelings about this. Basically, the only reason we didn’t get fried by the Toaster was that Toriko and I had been squabbling.

“You say that like you’ve seen ‘them’ before. Have you?”

Abarato gave a big nod. “Yeah. In the Zone, I’ve spotted what looked like humans a number of times. I thought it might be Michiko, or, if not her, someone else who wandered into this place, so I approached, but none of them were. One had human form, but stood there like a tree, never reacting, while another was like someone had tried to make a human out of clay, only to abandon it part way. They were strange beings...”

“And outside the Zone?”

“I told you already, didn’t I? In our world, they imitate humans. They laugh at me behind my back, then act like nothing happened when I turn to look. They step on my foot on the train, then treat me like a molester when I glare at them. They sneakily take videos, then put them online...”

Abarato’s words trailed off. He came to a stop, crouching low to the ground.

“Another glitch?” Toriko asked.

“No...”

Even as he said that, Abarato made no attempt to stand. Toriko and I, who had caught up to him, looked at one another.

“Look, there’s footsteps. Can you tell?”

Where Abarato pointed, there was a slight depression in the ground. I could see the grass was bent at the root. It looked like someone had pushed a pole down against it, but... was it a footstep?

Toriko crouched next to Abarato. She got down on all fours, bringing her face close to the ground, like a dog.

“Going towards that building, huh,” Abarato muttered. He meant the abandoned building we’d been heading for.

“Hey, Toriko. Looking at the footsteps, do they tell you anything?” I called out to her from behind. Toriko raised her head.

“I dunno, but... it could be Satsuki. Let’s go!”

Her eager response made me wince. I questioned what she could possibly tell from such an uncertain track, but seeing how Toriko looked, I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

“Oh, yeah? Here’s hoping.”

My response was colder than I intended, which disturbed me. Abarato stood up, and, without another word to us, started walking again. I caught a glimpse of his eyes, which were glazed.

“Michiko. Are you there? Just wait, I’m coming to save you now...”

Mumbling his wife’s name to himself, he walked forward through the grass. Toriko stood up, too, and followed behind him.

I watched them from behind with a miserable feeling.

I knew. It wasn’t right to take out my frustration on her. Toriko wasn’t in the wrong here. She was just desperate to help her precious friend.

I’d placed my hopes in her, then started feeling betrayed all on my own—it was pathetic. Even though I was vaguely aware of that, I turned my unjustified anger against Toriko.

Tormented by feelings of alienation and self-loathing, I followed.

7

As we approached the white building, Abarato’s pace quickened, ultimately turning into what was almost a run. He’d been so cautious before, but it was like he’d completely forgotten about glitches now.

Toriko followed behind him, while I kept up with her, wheezing as I did so.

I was watching anxiously for Abarato to burst into flames, or get blown away, or die some other incredible death, but fortunately it never happened, and he reached the building unharmed.

The abandoned three-floor building stretched out horizontally, which made me think of a school in some way. Its wide open entrance had no door. It was gloomy inside, and I could vaguely see what looked like steps between thin pieces of lumber.

“Look! There’s no questioning it. The footsteps continue inside,” Abarato shouted, pointing to the grassless area which spread out in front of the building.

In the exposed ground, littered with chunks that had broken off and fallen from the walls of the building, there were depressions like the ones we had seen before. They did seem to head towards the building, as Abarato claimed, but I felt there was something off about the now much clearer details of the indentations.

They weren’t foot-shaped. They were circles, about thirty centimeters across, with straight-line patterns, like a typeface used on a high-quality inkan seal. The stride was maybe two meters.

No. There was no way these were footprints. Not human ones, at least!

“H-Hey, Toriko.” I tried to stop her, but even as I was calling her name, Toriko passed through the door following Abarato. Driven by rising unease, I went after her.

When I entered the abandoned building, the difference in light levels blinded me for a moment.

Toriko and Abarato had stopped just inside the door. The floors inside the building had all collapsed, leaving no ceilings, and dim bands of light that shone through the windows that lined the walls were all shining on a single human figure standing in the center.

It was a woman.

She was tall—very tall. Easily standing at two meters or taller, she wore a long, pure white dress. She was facing away from us, and her long, black hair cascaded down her back.

A single name flashed through my mind. Hasshaku-sama. A monster with a height of eight feet, so about 240 centimeters, and a female appearance, that attacked young men. She was a famous internet ghost story, just like the Kunekune.

“...Satsuki?”

When Toriko whispered that, I doubted my ears.

“Wha...? Your friend was that huge...?!”

“No—or she shouldn’t be, at least, but, somehow... I’m feeling nostalgic,” Toriko replied without looking back.

...Nostalgic?

Bewildered by the unexpected word, I hesitantly looked back to the woman. We’d made a lot of noise barging in. She couldn’t have failed to notice us, but the woman didn’t budge. She just stood there, her back turned to us.

The “bizarrely tall woman” was one template for a monster that had existed since long, long ago. Take the yama-bito women in Toono Monogatari, for instance. They were tall and had unusually long, black hair, a typical mark of a monster...

While I stared at her, I started to understand what Toriko meant. Even though the woman looked kind of massive and suspicious, there was this throbbing deep in my chest, and it was growing ever stronger. It was a loneliness that made me want to burst into tears, like the excitement of seeing someone you haven’t been able to for a long time.

When I rubbed my eyes, which had misted up on their own, I noticed something even stranger. For an instant, the woman vanished, and I saw something else there. It was a frame-like construct, made with two thin pillars overlapping... Did that make sense? I tried to focus on it, but it wasn’t working. I blinked repeatedly, and finally started being able to see the woman appear to overlap with that construct.

“...Toriko, that frame, what do you think it is?”

“What do you mean?”

“Where she’s standing, there’s something there, isn’t there?”

Toriko went silent a moment, then gently cocked her head to the side.

“I don’t see it. I don’t see anything.”

When she said that, it troubled me. I could see it so clearly.

The construct, which appeared superimposed over the woman, was supported by two straight pillars. The lower one didn’t touch the ground, and seemed to be floating slightly. The upper one had a number of horizontal bars intersecting it. Taken on the whole, it looked like a poorly balanced drawing compass, or a warped torii gate.

The true ghost stories I had read before flashed through my memory. Making metallic sounds and white flashes as they went up and down the mountain, the Compass Men of Hyougo... Several sightings of an inverted torii that traveled the mountainside late at night...

The pseudo-torii was outlined by a faint light, and it felt wrong, like a badly-shopped image. It was a silver halo—shining just like the mirror stone when I saw it at Kozakura’s house.

I was about to ask Toriko if she couldn’t see the light, either, but the two in front of me jumped a bit.

A moment later, I noticed, too.

The woman was turning.

Her black hair swayed fluidly, and her head, in its high position, slowly swiveled. Once it had turned to its left extremity, it stopped. The profile of her face, which was peeking over her shoulder, was obstructed by a screen of her hair, which made it hard to be sure whether or not she was looking in our direction.

After her head, it was her shoulders. Her left shoulder turned to face us, and then her long torso started to twist. Simultaneously, that inexplicable feeling of nostalgia, which had been tormenting me all this time, assaulted me as if the volume had just been turned up on it.

I want to go home.To go back.I want to see that person.

I felt something catch in my chest, and I came close to sobbing. Where was I going to go home to? Who was “that person”? I had no idea. Yet the emotion continued to rise on its own, even with no target.

The superimposed pseudo-torii moved at the same time as the woman. When one leg touched the ground, it pivoted on that point. There was a po sound from somewhere. It sounded like a bubble forming, or like when your ears popped from a change in air pressure. Po, po, popopo. I heard that continuous bubbling, popping sound, and at the same time, the space between the torii’s legs began to change color. It was gradually stained a deep blue. However, neither Toriko nor Abarato showed any reaction to that.

Oh.

In the blink of an eye, I had a sudden realization. If this pseudo-torii was only visible to me, then the cause had to be...

I closed my right eye as a test. Instantly, the pseudo-torii vanished.

I knew it.

I closed my left eye, looking with only my right. This time, it was the woman’s form that vanished, leaving only the pseudo-torii standing there.

My two eyes were seeing two different things at the same time.

When the pseudo-torii pivoted, the blue light grew stronger. Whether I liked it or not, it reminded me of the time I first met Toriko. The world of blue I’d seen through the peephole in the door of that abandoned building in Oomiya which was connected to this other world—the blue leaking from that pseudo-torii was that same vivid blue. My sense of danger rose faster and faster. It was dangerous to be here, but I wanted to approach that blue light...

Then, Abarato, who had been silent all this time, suddenly roared.

“Michikoooo!”

Without so much as looking at me, who was shockedAbarato fixed his eyes on the woman, his whole body shuddering. I was shocked.

“At last... I’ve found you at last. I’m sure of it.”

“Th-That’s her? It’s not, right?”

“No, it’s Michiko,” Abarato declared. “Yes, Michiko wasn’t that tall... and her hair was shorter... but I can tell. That’s Michiko. Look, she looks more and more like her... She’s getting shorter...”

Mumbling to himself, Abarato stumbled forward.

“H-Hold on!”

I grabbed his pack, trying to stop him, but Abarato walked on without looking back. His pack slipped from his shoulders, falling to the ground with a loud thud. Pulled down by the shoulder straps, his AK rolled across the rubble. Abarato continued walking, seemingly unconcerned.

“Ahh, I knew it... I’m sorry I made you wait, Michiko...”

With a tearful wail, Abarato dashed towards Hasshaku-sama.

Here’s how it looked to my right eye. When he approached the pseudo-torii, Abarato’s entire body was dyed in the blue light. There was this expression of shock on Abarato’s face. Maybe he had realized the woman before him was not Michiko-san, or maybe he saw something entirely different in the blue light. Abarato stopped, as though frozen stiff...

And then he vanished.

A moment later, po, that popping sound reached my ears.

With a mix of danger and nostalgia, I stood there assaulted by a whirling eddy of incomprehensible emotions. There was something inside me that envied Abarato for having disappeared beyond the blue light. My reason screamed at me to run, but my body didn’t move.

Then it happened. Toriko, who was standing in front of me, began walking towards the woman. Instantly, I grabbed her arm.

“I have to go—Satsuki’s there.”

Ignoring her self-directed mumbling, I tightened my grip.

“It hurts. Let go, Sorawo.”

“No can do. Stop.”

Toriko shook her head. Ever since we entered this building, Toriko hadn’t looked back at me once.

“Come on, it’s Satsuki. She’s right there.”

“No, she’s not!”

Seeing Toriko start to talk like Abarato made me shudder. For the two of them, Hasshaku-sama apparently looked like the important people they so badly wanted to see. It superimposed the image of someone close to its victim onto itself, then kamikakushi-ed its tricked prey—was that the kind of being it was? If so, why had I not been tricked by it? Because my right eye had seen its true form? Or because, unlike the other two, I had no one precious to me...?

Toriko was still trying to shake me off and head towards the woman. Repeatedly calling the name of her friend I didn’t know.

“Satsuki is—”

Why you...!

The blood rushed to my head. You don’t know how I feel! The progress bar of my feelings reached 100%, and the next thing I knew I was shouting.

“Don’t leave me behind! You idiot!”

I wasn’t used to shouting, and my voice caught in my throat, making me sound whiny and shrill. I’d let out such a pitiful voice in an attempt to get Toriko’s attention.

“Don’t leave me alone! Don’t go...!”

What was coming out of my mouth was no more than childish begging.

But maybe it reached her ears—Toriko stopped.

Toriko stubbornly refused to turn and look back, so I reached out for her shoulder to turn her face in my direction, and—

“Sorawo, no!”

There was a shout from behind me, snapping me back to my senses.

“What’re you doing?! You can’t go near it!”

The voice calling after me belonged to Toriko. But why from behind me? She should have been in front of me...

I blinked in bewilderment, and suddenly I realized it wasn’t Toriko’s arm I was holding.

It was Hasshaku-sama.

I was grasping the living arm of Hasshaku-sama.

“Ha...”

Then reality assaulted me from my left eye’s view.

The feeling in my palm was cool, moist, and soft. Still unable to think, I looked up. The veins were visible through her smooth skin. Following the curve of that arm up the side of her dress-covered torso, beyond the wet luster of the black hair which cascaded over her bare shoulders, a set of arched lips peered out, and above their intense, rainbow color, my eyes were inevitably drawn to—

Suddenly, a gunshot rang out, knocking Hasshaku-sama’s head back.

I ducked my head, looking behind me to see Toriko holding her Makarov with two hands.

“Get down!”

I didn’t squat because I’d heard and understood the command so much as I was intimidated by the force of it. Toriko fired the Makarov three more times, then raced over to me.

“Come on, get up! Where were you planning on going, Sorawo?”

“Huh? Huh?”

While I was confused and unable to understand the situation, Toriko pulled on my arm, taking me away from Hasshaku-sama.

“Wh-What was I doing?”

“You ran after the old man. Mumbling nonsense to yourself.”

With a furrowed brow, Toriko shook her head.

“‘Don’t leave me alone’? That ought to be my line...”

Having finally digested the situation, I shuddered.

I’d let my guard down. It had tricked me, too.

This thing lured Abarato in with the illusion that his wife was there. It did the same to me. Taking advantage of my... feelings for Toriko.

What? How embarrassing...! I squirmed as an incomprehensible mix of terror and shame hit me.

The monster’s overlapping images of the pseudo-torii and its female form showed no damage from Toriko’s shots. It was still standing there. Its pull remained strong, so not only could I not run, it took all I had just to hold my ground where I was.

“Sorawo. How are we supposed to take this thing out?” Toriko asked me, as if that were the natural thing to do. Did that mean she trusted me? Wasn’t she just sloughing responsibility off on me...?

Even as I thought that, I somehow managed to regain my focus and said, “I’m thinking about it now.”

The nostalgia, the image of his wife which pulled Abarato in, the form of the eight-foot woman, all of them were illusions. We were being made to hallucinate. What was it that was really here right now?

Hallucinations... Last time, the Kunekune tried to invade our bodies through our sense of sight. When it did, that created a hallucination in my perception regarding where the Kunekune was located. Could it be the same with Hasshaku-sama? When the creatures of the other world came into contact with humans, did they always cause some sort of hallucination? Or was I getting that backwards, and they were trying to make contact with humans by way of these hallucinations? It might be that their contact with my right eye was what allowed me to see their true forms now.

If so, it was worth trying the same method as before.

I focused strongly on the vision in my right eye. Hasshaku-sama’s form faded, and all I saw was the pseudo-torii.

“Toriko, try shooting her in the head.”

When I said that, Toriko nodded, and she pulled the trigger on the Makarov. The bullet struck one of the pseudo-torii’s pillars and bounced off.

I knew it! If I recognized it, she could hit.

She fired a second shot, then a third. Each hit sent sparks flying, and small, stone-like fragments scattered. But...

“Is it working?” Toriko asked. I shook my head. The enemy’s movements were unchanged.

“Okay, then we’ll try this one.”

Toriko re-holstered the Makarov, picking up Abarato’s fallen AK. She removed the magazine, checking it before reattaching it, pulled the lever, then got in position.

She looked surprisingly good doing it.

While I stared admiringly at her, Toriko opened fire. The shots were far louder than the Makarov’s, and I hurriedly covered my ears. A continuous spray of bullets tore into the stone of the pseudo-torii. It carved holes large enough to see into the stone surface. However, even after fully unloading on it, the injured pseudo-torii still stood there, continuing to turn. The blue light wasn’t fading, and the feeling of nostalgia beating in my chest didn’t weaken.

When I didn’t say anything, that must have clued her in, because Toriko bit her lip.

“No good, huh...”

I desperately turned my head around, looking for anything else we could use.

If this kept up, I’d only be able to wait until I ran out of willpower and was pulled in. But bullets didn’t work, and my right eye could only see it, while Toriko...

Ah!

An idea rapidly came together in my head.

“Toriko! That hand!” When I started shouting excitedly, Toriko looked at me like she had no clue what I was on about. “Your left hand! Take the glove off!”

“This? What am I going to do with it?”

Toriko took the tactical glove off, exposing her translucent fingertips. I grabbed her wrist, walking towards the pseudo-torii of my own accord.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Sorawo?! What?!”

I spoke rapidly as I tried to explain, “It seems my right eye is able to recognize the true forms of creatures in this other world. Considering that, it wouldn’t be weird for your left hand to be the same, right?”

“T-True forms? Huh? What do you mean?”

Looking into Toriko’s confused eyes, I hesitated for just a moment, then I told her, “...Sorry, I’m gonna make you touch something weird. Forgive me, okay?”

“Huh? What? Hold on...”

There was no time to get her consent. I forcibly took Toriko’s hand, and I shoved it into the blue light.

“Grab that!”

“What do you mean, ‘that’...? Eek?!”

In my right eye’s vision, I could see Toriko grabbing the blue light.

“Wh-Wh-Wh-Wh-What is this?! I can’t see it! What am I grabbing?!”

“I knew it! Now just hold on like that!”

In my excitement, I was shouting despite myself. This was just what I was aiming for. If my right eye could “see” the true forms of other world entities, then Toriko’s left hand might be able to “touch” them—that was my conjecture.

Toriko’s translucent fingers were digging into the light. It was an incredibly strange scene. How must it have felt? Toriko was wincing, trying to keep the rest of her body away from the left hand she was holding on to it with.

“Ew, this thing is all soft and moist! Hey, can I let go now?”

“Put up with it.”

“For how long?!”

I pulled my own Makarov from its holster, the unfamiliar action taking me a lot of time.

“Hold still now, Toriko!”

I turned the muzzle towards the blue light, then I squeezed the trigger as hard as I could.

There was a strong recoil, and I nearly dropped the gun. Still, I couldn’t possibly miss. I’d put a hole in the light, right next to where Toriko was holding it. A pitch black hole.

One moment later, bobobobobobo, there was a bubbling sound from that hole, and a black sphere erupted from it.

Toriko looked up, crying out in surprise. When I looked up, with my left eye, I saw Hasshaku-sama’s tall body doubling over backwards. The bubbling sound trailed on, almost like a scream. The way Hasshaku-sama twisted violently, it was as inhuman as a balloon struggling as the air escaped and it deflated.

In my right eye, black orb after black orb spouted from the hole, then immediately vanished without a trace. Even when they touched my body, I felt nothing. In the time it took me to look at her with both my eyes, Hasshaku-sama shrank and faded. The eruption of spheres weakened... then stopped.

The next thing I knew—the whole area around us had changed. We were sitting on moss-covered stone pavement. It smelled of earth and greenery. I saw a dilapidated shrine, surrounded by thick grass. There was stone scattered around us. The remnants of broken torii gates. There was a gloomy forest around the area, and up above the tips of the trees I could see the evening sky.

I could hear birds and bugs. This was the surface world.

I stood up, looking down at Toriko.

“You okay?”

Toriko bent all the fingers of her left hand, glaring up at me.

“You made me touch something weird.”

“I told you I would. How did it feel?”

“It was kind of like... a feeling that ruins people...” Toriko shuddered. “Ohh, I want to wash my hand.”

“You think that shrine has water, maybe? Where are we?”

Toriko finally stood up, opening her smartphone.

“Blech. It’s saying we’re in the mountains of Chichibu.”

“Seriously?”

Now that she mentioned it, I felt like Abarato said he’d entered the other world through a shrine in Chichibu.

There was no sign of Abarato nearby. He’d probably passed through the blue light to somewhere else. Kamikakushi—When I considered we’d nearly met the same fate, I felt terror, together with a lingering trace of that longing.

Toriko let out a resigned sigh, using the AK as a crutch to stand.

“It’s a long way home. Hopefully we can catch a bus along the way, but... Huh?”

From among the shattered pieces of torii gates that littered the road to the shrine, Toriko picked something up. It was a woman’s white, wide-brimmed hat. Had Hasshaku-sama left it behind? It had a silver halo, and Toriko held it up in both hands, staring at it.

“...Don’t go putting it on or anything.”

When I told her that, and Toriko vaguely nodded, I could tell her mind was elsewhere, with another person who wasn’t here right now.

“Toriko, didn’t you think Satsuki-san might be there?”

“I did. I really wanted to go,” Toriko responded in a quiet voice.

“Why were you able to resist?”

“...Because I was worried about you.”

“Huh?”

As I asked her to repeat herself, unsure what she had meant, Toriko turned her face towards me and smiled.

“You seem so vulnerable, Sorawo. Like you’re going to go off somewhere.”

I’d never expected Toriko to say that to me, so I was struck dumb. Unable to respond with an, I could say the same to you, I just stared back at Toriko’s smile.