File 19: Hasshaku-sama Revival

1

We shouldn’t have come.

I chewed on that thought as I sat at a table in a café. Next to me was Toriko, brow furrowed, and an awfully worried expression on her face. Mine must have looked much the same.

The woman sitting across from us must have been in her early thirties. She had cleaned herself up a little, probably because she was meeting us, but her hair was a mess, her sweater was frayed, and she looked far more exhausted than her makeup could have hoped to hide. It all spoke to the great emotional burden she bore.

“I want you to search for my husband,” she said as she laid out photos on the table. They were of a man in his thirties. He had on a clean white shirt, had short hair, and a clean-shaven face—he looked like the kind of guy who could have shown up in a TV commercial.

Nothing like when we’d met him.

Yes... Toriko and I had met the man in question. He’d said his name was Abarato.

It happened not long after I first met Toriko. We had entered the other world to search for Satsuki Uruma and encountered a man. He’d stopped a more ignorant me from stepping into a glitch, making him quite literally my savior.

Abarato claimed to have found the other world while searching for his wife, Michiko, who had mysteriously disappeared. He already seemed pretty unstable at that point; it was bad enough he mistook both of us for Michiko. I don’t know if it took advantage of that obsession to do it, but an Otherside entity (in the form of Hasshaku-sama) took him away.

His photos were in front of us. Photos of Abarato before he was driven mad by the loss of his wife.

The woman asking us to search for him claimed to be that wife.

Michiko Abarato. The very same person he’d said had “met with a kamikakushi.”

“It’s been years since my husband vanished. My husband’s name is Seiji—Seiji Abarato. We were alone in our house one night in October. I went to take a bath, and when I returned he was gone. The door was locked, and his shoes were right where he’d left them.

“The TV in the living room was on. There was a DVD case lying open, as if he had been planning to watch a movie. It was Stand By Me. But the disc wasn’t in the DVD player, or anywhere to be found. I contacted the police, of course. But there’s been nothing. He’s been missing ever since. The glass door to the balcony was closed too, but there was an unfamiliar child’s shoe there, and the toes were pointing into the room.”

Toriko and I were silent as we listened to Michiko’s request. We were dumbstruck, unable to do anything more than exchange glances with one another. I don’t think we were even managing to nod along.

“I’m sorry to have sent you a letter so suddenly. I was grasping at straws. I’m so grateful that you replied.”

Everything Michiko Abarato said made sense. Nothing came off as suspicious.

She showed some signs of confusion, but anyone would be confused after their husband vanished.

Still... What was this I was sensing?

I tried to remember what Abarato had told us. Hadn’t he said his wife disappeared on a summer night? That she had vanished from the dinner table while he was choosing a DVD? The pieces didn’t seem to fit. It had been several months ago, so I was fuzzy on the details, but...

No, that’s not it. That wasn’t the problem here.

There was no question that the wife, Michiko, was the one who was supposed to have vanished.

So who was this person in front of me now?

I looked at Toriko once again. Her pretty brow was knitted with unmasked confusion and alarm.

“As I said in my letter, I started receiving postcards the other day. I believe they’re from my husband. The pictures on them are all of places that meant something to us. But one of them, just one, had an unfamiliar picture. It was my only lead, but someone told me there were people who could search for a missing person.”

I interrupted her. “You heard from someone...?”

“Yes. Um... Oh, gosh. Who was it? I’m sorry. I can’t seem to remember who it was at the moment. I think you must know them, though, Kamikoshi-san.”

I had no idea who it could have been.

Someone who can search for missing people...? Me?

Even if Akari was running her mouth, she wouldn’t have introduced me that way. Everything about this was wrong. It was off, somehow.

“If you can find my husband, I’ll pay any price. Please, I’m begging you. Help me, Kamikoshi-san.”

There was a picture postcard on the table next to the photos of Abarato.

The photo printed on it was out of focus, like it had been taken by an amateur, and the shot composition was lazy. It showed a blue sky, and a ruin standing in a grassy field. A white building, full of holes, like dead coral.

I recognized the place.

That was where Abarato had vanished. The building in the other world where we encountered Hasshaku-sama...

2

“And why did that make you come to my house?!” Kozakura snapped at Toriko and me as we sat in front of her with awkward looks on our faces.

“We, uh, wanted to share the...sense of weirdness with you...” I said.

“Well, I don’t! What am I even supposed to do after hearing that story? It’s creepy.”

“We were hoping for an objective opinion,” Toriko explained. “Me and Sorawo are having a hard time looking at it with a clear head.”

“Objective?” Kozakura said.

“So, be honest. What do you think, Kozakura?”

“I think I never should’ve let you people into my house.”

“No, not about that...”

Kozakura glared at Toriko then leaned back in her chair. “I don’t know this Abarato guy, but when you met him in the other world, he’d already lost it, right?”

“Saying he’d ‘lost it’ might be a bit of an exaggeration, but he did seem pretty unstable at the time, yeah,” I said.

“In that case, doesn’t it seem more likely that the husband only thought that his wife had disappeared, but that was a delusion, and he was the one who actually disappeared? His wife is just looking for him.”

I cocked my head to the side. It was true enough that Abarato had been unbalanced, but the idea that he went crazy after losing his wife, and the idea he convinced himself he’d lost his wife because he went crazy were complete opposites.

“Is it possible for someone to convince themselves their wife’s disappeared?” I asked.

“It is, and it’s pretty normal.”

“Pretty normal...?”

Kozakura sighed at my confusion. “There’s a mental disorder called dissociation. Dissociative amnesia and dissociative identity disorder are two of the more famous examples, but—”

“So, memory loss and multiple personality disorder?”

“Those would be the common names for them, yes. When the mind, personality, and other aspects of our self that are usually all unified—at least to the degree we perceive that way—lose the function that keeps them all together, we call that dissociation, or a dissociative disorder. It’s often blamed on things like PTSD, being abused as a child, or undergoing some severe stress.”

For some reason, Toriko glanced at me.

“Huh?”

We immediately looked away from each other, and Kozakura continued.

“Dissociative disorders have a wide variety of causes, so it’s hard to generalize about them, but there’s a condition called dissociative fugue. People who develop it tend to suddenly disappear. Then they’ll turn up in another place, living a brand-new life.”

“A new life? What do you mean?” Toriko asked.

“Their personality up to that point changes, and a new personality, a whole new person is born. In some cases, the original personality suddenly resurfaces and they go home, but then they have no memory of the time they spent as the other personality.”

“What happens to the original personality while they’re living their new life?”

“It’s lost.”

“Where does the new personality come from?”

“I’d have to say that it’s created by the person’s brain.”

“Hmm...” Toriko thought about it, seeming mystified.

“So Abarato-san was experiencing dissociative fugue?” I asked.

“I didn’t say that. I only said it’s possible he convinced himself that his wife, who was still there, had disappeared. He might have taken on the personality of ‘someone who lost their wife to a mysterious disappearance.’”

Then, seeming to reconsider, Kozakura waved her hand.“That’s strictly an example. I’m not a doctor, and I don’t go around diagnosing people I’ve never met. The point is, humans can bug out surprisingly easily. And in some pretty weird ways too.”

Kozakura’s theory was a cautious one that didn’t step outside the bounds of what was realistic. If I didn’t know about the Otherside, I might have bought it. But for us, that was going to be the biggest problem.

“Kozakura-san, how would you explain it to his wife?”

“What do you mean?”

“Could you tell her ‘We met your husband, but in another world, not this one, and then lost him when he got taken out by a woman who was 240 centimeters tall?’”

“Well... It’d be a bit hard to decide how to word it,” Kozakura acknowledged with a frown.

“Yeah, that’s the thing. Since the other world is involved, I have to assume something weird might be going on.”

“If you’re assuming there is, then how many times have I told you not to get me involved?”

“Well, you’re the only one we can count on...”

When I said that, Kozakura looked like she was ready to puke.

“Y-You okay, Kozakura?” Toriko asked.

Kozakura covered her face and shook her head.

“How did my life end up like this...?”

“Kozakura-san?”

“I’m all alone in this house, and my only guests are crazy women who have no clue how other people feel...”

“Why not try buying a cat?” Toriko suggested.

“Oh, should I go put on some tea?” I offered.

Kozakura let out a deep sigh, gazing up to the ceiling.

“The wife was sane, right?”

“Huh? Oh, right.” I was confused for a moment when she went back to the original topic, but I still responded.

“I don’t know if she’s sane, but...she didn’t come off as strange when we were talking to her.”

“Well, why don’t you believe her for now? If the husband and wife are saying different things and there was something obviously wrong with the way the husband was acting.”

“That would be the normal response, huh?”

“You got a problem with it?”

“No, I thought the same way...which is why I ultimately decided to accept Michiko Abarato’s request.”

Kozakura’s eyes widened when I said that. “Why?! You should just stay out of it. You two aren’t detectives or anything like that.”

“I wanted to set her free as soon as I could...” I said, looking down at the postcard in my hands. “I wonder what’s up with this.”

Kozakura recoiled, a look of displeasure on her face. “Is that the postcard you mentioned? Keep it away from me.”

“Oh. I looked at it with my right eye and it’s just an ordinary piece of paper.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

As Kozakura and I were talking, Toriko quietly interjected. “If Abarato was the one who sent it, he might still be alive.”

Kozakura turned a dubious eye towards her. “And so what if he is?” she asked.

“Abarato might be calling out for help from the other world. Their stories are contradictory, but we can be sure that Abarato and Michiko-san are both suffering after losing their partner. We’ve got to help them.”

“Yeah. Of course you’d say that,” Kozakura muttered with resignation then looked back at me and, in an off-hand tone, asked, “So...what are you going to do?”

“I think we’ll go there one more time. To the building in the other world where Abarato disappeared.”

3

It had been a while since we entered the other world through the building in Jinbouchou.

We followed the usual procedure in the elevator and arrived on top of the skeletal building. Every time we did it I found it strange how this cumbersome process was now an established way to pass through the gate. It was oddly consistent compared to the illogical nature of the Otherside.

Based on past experience, the other world wasn’t completely illogical. There was some otherworldly logic behind everything. It only seemed illogical because we couldn’t understand it. I suspect that the appeal of that unknown logic was the reason why a scaredy-cat like Kozakura found herself just barely unable to let go of her interest in this place. She and I were similar in that regard.

From on top of the skeletal building we could see that the snow had almost completely melted. Now that it was the end of March, even here, where snow lingered longer than on the surface world, it was starting to feel more like spring. The brown, flattened grass was starting to turn green again.

“It’s over there, right?” Toriko said, looking to the south. Hasshaku-sama’s building was visible on the other side of a vast plain.

I looked through a pair of binoculars—my own, which I had bought because it ended up being too inconvenient to keep borrowing Toriko’s. They weren’t that expensive, and I figured anything waterproof would do, so I just went to the outdoor shop and chose a pair I liked the design of. These were pastel blue, with 6x magnification.

I didn’t see anything moving. With my right eye, I could spot the glimmer of glitches here and there. I shuddered, thinking back to how I’d nearly stepped into one. That could have been the end for our adventures right there.

“Let’s go,” I said, lowering the binoculars, and we headed to the ladder.

Even though we did it every time, climbing a ladder down ten floors was always a pretty tense experience. By the time I reached the ground I was all sweaty. I unzipped the jacket I’d bought at Workman and felt a pleasant breeze against my chest.

“Isn’t there anything we can do about this ladder...?” I wondered aloud. “I think using it might low-key be the most dangerous thing we do.”

“Maybe it is, but do you have any ideas?”

“It’s tough. I mean, considering the height.”

The skeletal building had no other way up or down—it was just support pillars and floors. There were no stairs, let alone an elevator shaft.

“Do you think we could attach a lifeline, then lower ourselves from the roof using a winch?” I suggested.

“We’re gonna hang in midair as we go up and down? Isn’t that scarier?”

“Hmm, you could be right.”

I’d never measured it, so this is only a rough guess, but if we assume three meters per floor, the roof had to be thirty meters high. You didn’t need acrophobia to be scared of that.

“It might still be a good idea to have a lifeline for when we’re climbing down, though.”

“Yeah. They use them on construction sites, so why don’t we go to Workman and take a look?”

“Oh, yeah. They do, huh? I’ve been thinking of mountain climbing gear.”

“Oh, yeah?”

“I think there’s gear like that for tree climbing too. Let’s do some research when we get back.”

“Good call.”

As we were chatting, we stayed on the first floor of the skeletal building and sorted out our equipment, as per usual. Makarovs, rifles, and nail bags. We were leaving AP-1 behind this time, so we’d be going on foot. I got my things together, put on my backpack, and slung the M4 over my shoulder.

“You good to go, Toriko?”

“Yeah...” Toriko responded, but she seemed to be looking around the first floor for something as she did.

“What’s up?”

“Whenever we come here, I end up looking to see if anything’s changed. Because this was our base back when Satsuki brought me here. I know in my head that she’s not coming back, but I can’t help myself.”

“...”

When I didn’t respond, Toriko looked at me and blinked. Her long, blonde hair sparkled in the sun. “Are you mad?”

“Not really.”

“Are you jealous?”

“Huh?”

I frowned at her, then turned to go. When I walked out of the first floor of the skeletal building, Toriko chased after me.

“Sorry.”

“What for?”

“I said I’m sorry.” She sounded pretty chipper for someone who was apologizing.

“I don’t think it’s anything you need to apologize for,” I replied without turning to face her, and Toriko grabbed me by the arm.

“Whoa?! Hold on!”

I’m carrying a rifle here! That’s dangerous! I glared at Toriko, but faltered in the face of her beaming smile.

“Wh-What?”

“You get jealous over me, huh, Sorawo?”

“N-No... It’s not like that,” I reflexively denied it, which only made Toriko happier.

“Well, why did you get so upset then?”

“Urk...” I had no response.

“Well, why?”

“J-Just drop it, okay? Let go of me. This place is full of glitches. It’s dangerous.”

“Okaaay.”

Toriko let go of my arm like I asked her to, but she kept on smiling. What a goofy grin.

Well, maybe I am upset. Why is that? Well...

I started making excuses to myself for a second, then stopped.

Well... Well, what? Well... To be honest, it’s because I don’t like it when Toriko gets sentimental about Satsuki Uruma. Now, as for why I don’t like that...

Because Satsuki Uruma’s turned into a monster, but Toriko still has lingering feelings for her?

Because Satsuki Uruma was always a no-good bitch who was manipulating her from the get-go?

That’s part of it, but there’s a more fundamental reason...

It’s because Toriko really loved Satsuki Uruma.

Even more than she does me...?

When my train of thought reached that point, I felt this intense tightening feeling in my chest.

There was nausea, unease, loneliness...

Anger.

I stopped, still looking at the glitches that were dotted around up ahead, as I was unable to move for a moment. It felt like something that had been bubbling away inside me all this time had suddenly boiled over when I looked at it.

I wanted to scream.

Was this sensation what people usually called jealousy or envy? But I’d been feeling it for a long time now. Since right after I met Toriko. Yeah, by the time we had encountered Hasshaku-sama, I was already feeling it...

Did that mean I was already jealous then? I was jealous all this time and never realized?

“Having trouble?” Toriko walked up beside me, squinting to see what I was looking at. “I can’t see them. Are there a lot of glitches? You want to take a different route?”

When I stood there not saying anything, it must have looked to Toriko like I was agonizing over what course to take. I shook my head vigorously.

“No, it’s fine. We can go.”

“Okay. I’m counting on you.” Toriko touched me on the back with her right hand. That slight physical contact gave me the push I needed to get walking.

I don’t have time to dwell on things. If I don’t focus, I’m gonna step into a glitch and wind up dead.

As I tried to convince myself of that, Toriko called out from behind me, her voice full of cheer. “Remember the last time we came through here?”

“Well, yeah, of course I do.”

“You were in a bad mood then too.”

“...”

“I had so much going on at the time that I didn’t notice it, but thinking back now, Sorawo, I’ll bet you were jealous—”

“Huh?! There’s no way!” I cut Toriko off, my voice sounding so shrill it surprised me. Then, clearing my throat to try and cover it, I tried again. “There’s no way I would be. We’d only just met. I couldn’t possibly have been jealous.”

“Well, why were you in a bad mood then?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Aww, that makes me so sad. I remember. Everything.”

She’s getting carried away...!

“Oh, shut up! Let’s hurry up and—”

“Whoa there.”

As I tried to angrily stride off, Toriko suddenly grabbed my shoulders hard from behind.

“What?!”

“It’s dangerous to rush. Look.”

She pointed over my shoulder to a mound of ash on the ground. It was a gently sloping pile, about one meter across.

A toaster. The same glitch that almost cooked me to death once before.

“You’re just as good at getting yourself into danger now as you were back then, huh?” Toriko said in the most innocent of tones.

I managed to force out the words, “This place is full of glitches. Let me focus.”

“Okaaay,” Toriko said as she released my shoulders.

I took deep breaths, trying to calm myself down, then began moving forward again.

Looking around, Toriko hesitantly asked, “This is where we met Abarato too, isn’t it? It was a good thing he called out to us.”

“Yeah.”

“He said he’d been on this side for weeks, so do you think he had a campsite near here, maybe?

“Now that you mention it, he wasn’t carrying a tent, huh?” I asked.

“You want to take a look? There could be clues.”

“Hmm. Well, it seemed like the first time he’d gone into that building, so maybe he traveled from somewhere far away,” I said, looking towards the white building poking out of the copse of trees that was up ahead on our right. If Abarato’s base had been somewhere around here, it was hard to imagine he wouldn’t have visited a building that stood out so badly.

“If he did, then it really was a coincidence he found us.”

“I think it was only half coincidence.”

“What do you mean?” Toriko asked.

“Abarato talked about some kind of pseudo-humans, remember?”

“He said there are things that imitate humans lurking around, yeah. You think he meant something like the moss men and the Horned Man at Kisaragi Station?”

“He could’ve. So, anyway, he had a gun, right?” I said.

“Yeah.”

“And he mistook me and you for his wife, right?”

“Yeah...”

“Maybe he’d already found us before then, and he’d been approaching without us realizing it. To see if we were his wife, or if we were pseudo-humans. One wrong step and he might’ve shot us.”

Toriko was silent for a moment. “Never thought of that,” she said, sounding surprised.

“Well, it could just be me being cynical.”

“Why’d it never occur to me? I mean, he was a dodgy guy with a gun. I was wary of him at first too.”

“It’s because you sympathized with his story.”

“What’s wrong with me? I need to keep it together...” Toriko’s almost annoyingly chipper attitude took on a shadow as her voice clearly fell with disappointment. When I turned back to look at her, Toriko had stopped walking and was staring down at her rifle.

“I always thought I’d have to give Abarato his AK back if we found him, but...” Toriko raised her face, her voice resolute. “Nuh-uh, he’s not getting it back after all.”

“Uh, you don’t have to boldly declare your intention to steal it.” I didn’t know whether I should laugh or not. “Listen, what I said just now was just something that I came up with on my own. Sure, he was acting a bit weird, but I could be tarring him unjustly. It’s entirely possible that he was just acting out of benevolence.”

“Still, I can’t believe myself. Dropping my guard like that just because his situation was similar to mine. If that had gotten you killed, I—”

She still seemed torn up over this, so I let out an exasperated sigh. “It’s in the past. Time to move on. We both survived in the end.”

“...”

“If you really want to reflect on what you think you did wrong, save it for the afterparty. I’ll even pretend to listen to you.”

“At least listen!” The shocked look on her face was so hilarious I burst out laughing. She pursed her lips, as if hurt.

“Let’s just chalk it up to both of us being prone to getting ourselves into trouble back then,” I said.

“Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

“Though, maybe that hasn’t changed that much.”

“I don’t think it has.”

“Well, I’d say it’s changed at least a little.”

“How so...?”

When she asked that, Toriko’s voice had regained some of the teasing tone from earlier. I sensed she was about to get annoying, so I turned around without answering her. “Come on, let’s hurry. No point in wasting time here.”

“Okaaay.”

4

After throwing a lot of bolts, we made it out of the grasslands and stopped to rest at an opening in the trees. There was about twenty meters or so of bare earth between us and our destination: the white coral building. Its outer face had a number of round holes in it, making it look even more like dead coral than the last time we came here.

There were no glitches between here and the building. Last time, Hasshaku-sama’s strange “footsteps” had left marks in the dirt, but I didn’t see any sign of them now. We spent some time watching the area, but there didn’t seem to be anything unusual going on.

“Okay... I guess we should head in, then.”

“Ah! Hold on.” Toriko urgently grabbed me by the left arm just as I was about to step out of the trees.

“Something up?”

“Let’s hold hands.”

Why’s she suggesting a silly thing like that now? I thought, but the look on Toriko’s face was serious.

“Remember last time? You got tricked like Abarato and started wandering towards Hasshaku-sama, Sorawo.”

I didn’t know what to say to that.

“That was, uh...well, I didn’t know as much back then. Besides, Hasshaku-sama’s probably already gone, right? I mean, we sorta dispatched her last time.”

I felt so childish arguing like this.

“Yeah, but we were just talking about how Abarato’s postcard could be a trap to lure us here, right? We should be cautious. I don’t want to lose you like that, and I want you to stop me if I’m the one who gets tricked.”

“Urgh...”

She was being more direct than I’d expected, so I relented. What Toriko was saying did make sense.

“Okay...” I agreed.

“Good.”

With a smug nod, Toriko wrapped her fingers around mine. We were both wearing gloves, so all I felt was fabric, but she seemed pretty satisfied.

“We’ll be fine if we stay like this. Right?” Toriko said.

I didn’t want to drag this out any longer, so I just sort of vaguely agreed with her.

Maybe it would have been better if I’d let her stay depressed earlier...

We approached the white coral building, hand-in-hand.

It was a long, three-story building reminiscent of a school. Maybe it was a little like the residential building on the Farm too.

“Was it this full of holes last time we came?” Toriko asked as she looked up at the building. I shook my head. There weren’t all these round holes gouged out of the outer wall last time we were here.

“The place may be more prone to collapsing now, so watch your head,” I cautioned her.

“I wish we had helmets.”

“Let’s add them to the shopping list.”

I peered in through the open front door. There was no floor, just the bare ground, and rubble scattered across it, the same as before. What was new was that there were now a large number of thin logs lying around.

I held my Makarov in one hand, remaining alert as I walked in. The building was an open space, with no walls or support pillars. Since all the floors above already collapsed away, I could see all the way up to the third floor’s ceiling. This was an empty concrete husk. I remembered there being some kind of wooden scaffolding last time, but that was gone too. The logs I was seeing scattered around must have been what was left of it.

Sunshine shone in through the broken windows and through all the holes in the walls and ceiling.

“Those holes... They look too clean for them to have formed from natural decay, don’t you think?” Toriko said, her voice echoing through the wide open space.

One possibility occurred to me. “Remember how all those black orbs erupted out of Hasshaku-sama when we shot her?”

“Huh? Did that happen?”

“Maybe I was the only one who could see them. I didn’t feel anything when they touched my body, but maybe they did this when they hit the building.”

“Then do you think that’s when all this wood collapsed too?”

Toriko rolled a nearby log with her foot, revealing a sharp, round cut in the end of it. The curved edge was as smooth as if it had been polished.

When we defeated Hasshaku-sama, we suddenly found ourselves back in the surface world, but maybe here in the Otherside things had gotten really hectic with scaffolding collapsing and the building getting shot full of holes. If we hadn’t gone back right then, we could have been caught in the collapse...

Toriko seemed to be thinking the same thing I was, saying, in a low voice, “We were in real danger.”

“Yeah.”

I unconsciously held her hand tighter. I’d looked back on dangerous situations and shuddered plenty of times before now, but when I thought about how an accident here could have taken either one of us from the other, I felt a chill in the bottom of my stomach.

Walking carefully across the unstable rubble, I stopped to look down at the ground. There were a number of marks that looked like it had been repeatedly struck with wooden mallets.

“You think this is it? The spot where Hasshaku-sama was?” I asked.

“Looks like.”

There had been too much going on at the time to get a good look around the place back then, but this was probably it. These were the footsteps of Hasshaku-sama’s other form, the pseudo-torii.

I focused my consciousness on my right eye. I’d assumed that I would see the silver haze that indicated the location of a gate, but there was nothing.

“Well?” Toriko asked.

“I’m not seeing anything.”

“I’ll try searching too.”

Toriko removed her glove, revealing her transformed left hand. She moved her hand as if stroking the air, and the sunlight bounced around inside it making it sparkle and shine. If you looked at the bright spots, you could see crystal-like patterns inside her transparent limb. So beautiful...

Toriko had her eyes closed, maybe so she could focus on her sense of touch. I held her hand as she moved around like she was dancing underwater and slowly moved with her.

“I kind of feel something tugging on my fingers...” Toriko said, furrowing her brow. “But if you told me it was my imagination, I might have to agree with you. It’s like I’m feeling the last dregs of a gate floating around.”

“The last dregs...”

It was such an odd turn of phrase that I smiled.

“Hm?” Suddenly, Toriko stopped moving. “There’s something over this way...”

“A gate? Is it here?”

“No, not here. But I feel something from this direction,” Toriko said, eyes still closed. The furrows in her brow deepened. “It’s like wind pressure...and...it’s gradually getting stronger. Is it coming closer?”

The palm of her translucent hand was turned towards the entrance that we had come in through. I looked over there, my eyes suddenly narrowing. Something was wrong with the door. The shape of the door frame, with the light behind it, looked off somehow. Was that roundish mass sticking out from the left-hand side always there?

“Eagh...”

Realizing what the mass was, I let out a choking sound.

That’s a person’s head.

The head, bent at a ninety degree angle, was sticking out from the door frame. Its long, wild hair reached all the way to the ground. The face was shadowed, so I couldn’t make out its expression.

The head moved sideways, and the body appeared.

It was a woman: her arms, legs, and torso were twisted and smashed. She was long and thin, as if she’d been stretched out. If she weren’t all twisted up, she’d have easily been over three meters tall.

“Urgh...” Toriko groaned next to me. She must have opened her eyes when she realized the sound I’d made indicated that something had gone wrong.

The bent woman came in through the door, stumbling into the building. The reason I hadn’t been able to see her face wasn’t because of the backlighting, or because it was hidden by her hair. It was because her head was twisted around backwards.

The soiled clothes that she wore had once been a long one-piece dress, but it had been ripped and torn when her body was twisted and broken. She wore just one high-heeled shoe, and her other bare foot had a broken ankle. It was causing her to lurch with each step. She let out po, po, sounds, like bubbles popping, at irregular intervals. That was her voice, apparently.

My chest constricted with an intense feeling of nostalgia, and my eyes grew wet with tears.

I always wanted to come here. To see you again.

Why did I forget?

Why...?

I shook my head.

There was no reason for this. This whole feeling of nostalgia was a lie. A ruse with no substance to it at all.

“You okay, Sorawo?”

“How about you, Toriko?”

“I’m managing. Hey, do you think this could be...?”

“Yeah. It’s Hasshaku-sama!”

She was in a sorry state, but it was probably her. Our last encounter must have done a number on her appearance. Grotesque as she looked now, I don’t think even Abarato would be fooled by her.

And yet, in contrast to her horrific appearance, the feeling of nostalgia assaulting us was actually stronger than before. It carried no information, only an intense longing for home, bearing down on us with an almost physical pressure.

“I’m amazed you managed to resist back then, Toriko.”

“It was partially because I was worried about you, but...I also noticed pretty fast that she was acting weird for Satsuki.”

“How so?”

“I’ve never seen Satsuki wear white.”

There was a tone of certainty, and of pride, in Toriko’s voice that made me unreasonably angry.

“Sorawo?” she called out to me, voice full of concern, and I looked up.

“I’m fine. Let’s hurry up and take her down. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again the same way.”

I chased off the unpleasant feelings, gripping Toriko’s hand tighter to resist the fake nostalgia. She squeezed back. It felt so reassuring.

“I won’t let go,” Toriko said.

“Yeah.” I nodded, focusing on my right eye.

The image of Hasshaku-sama lumbering towards us with irregular motions blurred, then changed.

What I saw there looked like a smashed jungle gym. It had been like a torii gate when I’d seen it before, but this was totally different. The structure was more complicated now, bent, broken, and wrapped around itself.

That disfiguration came with an increase in size. The irregular shape had grown to more than three meters high and three meters across. There was a strange amount of depth too. It felt like it stretched on forever.

The frame of the jungle gym changed every time I blinked. There was also a thin, translucent film spread out inside it, like the surface of a bubble, sparkling with silver phosphorescence. I could see other scenes projected in that membrane.

A ruined shrine... An abandoned camp site... Kozakura’s front door... Old city streets... Running mannequins... A torii gate in the mountains... A mound with a large stone... A bridge over a valley... A mountain road blocked off with chains...

The film would occasionally rupture, bursting with a little po noise.

In all these changing scenes, I would occasionally spot a small figure. Petite, childlike. The figure’s hair was long, so maybe she was a girl...

The girl turned around. When I saw her wide eyes, it shocked me.

Our eyes met! I was sure of it. We’d just seen each other across the thin film.

The girl turned and ran off. Or so I thought, but then she crossed another membrane. Wondering where she’d go next, I searched for her figure, my eyes racing around the structure.

There! She was running through some tall grass, her legs getting trapped in the water. She turned to look in my direction, her face filled with terror.

“Toriko. I see a child inside Hasshaku-sama,” I said.

After a moment of silence, Toriko asked, “A real human?”

“She looks real. And she seems scared. She may have wandered into the Otherside.”

“Can we save her?”

I figured you were going to say that.

Not that I had any objection. I’d have trouble sleeping at night if I just decided to pretend I hadn’t seen anything. Besides, child or not, I didn’t need any unwanted humans wandering around in the other world.

To be completely honest, the thought of “we’ve gotta help her” came almost reflexively. It felt weird and not typical of me at all, though.

“I dunno...but we’re gonna give it a shot,” I said.

“If you need my left hand, just say the word.”

“Okay. Keep holding on to me until then.”

“Okay.”

We already knew how to dispatch Hasshaku-sama. I just had to have Toriko stick her hand inside while I was watching and destroy the gate, the same as last time. Its shape had changed a lot, but the same method would probably still work.

But is that really okay? What if the girl I found is on the other side of the gate? Wouldn’t wrecking the gate make it impossible to find her again?

As my eyes raced, desperately not to lose the girl, there was an odd thought in one corner of my mind. Why do I find it so hard to leave her alone? In the middle of all the silver sparkles, I couldn’t make out her face that well. And yet, from the first moment I saw her, I sensed I needed to help this little girl.

Even though I hate kids...

As the fleeing child traveled from membrane to membrane, my eyes were pulled deeper into the warped jungle gym. With my attention focused into my right eye, I gradually lost track of where I was. Feeling uneasy, I called out to Toriko.

“You still holding on to me?” I asked without looking back. I felt a hand on my right. Its large, soft palm felt reassuring.

“I won’t let go.”

“Yeah,” I responded, then suddenly noticed something was off.

My right hand...?

But wasn’t Toriko holding my left hand?

“Sorawo, get away!” Toriko’s shout came from behind me.

I reflexively looked up, and the back of Hasshaku-sama’s head was right in front of my eyes. The way her neck was twisted left strange, unsettling wrinkles in her skin.

“I won’t let go.”

Hasshaku-sama’s fingers wrapped around my right wrist.

“I won’t let go,” she repeated in Toriko’s voice.

My face flushed red with anger.

She got me! I’d been tricked again! And after I’d been so careful!

Disgust and anger won out over fear. Almost reflexively, I pointed the Makarov in my right hand at Hasshaku-sama.

The hand on my wrist did not let go. Her twisted neck turned around. The wrinkles deepened. The black hair swished, revealing her hidden face.

Hasshaku-sama’s face was flat, as if it had been sliced off. What I had my Makarov pointed at was a completely flat, shining blue surface. The egg-shaped outline of her face was the edge of a gate membrane, drawn taut.

That thin film trembled, then burst.

Po!

Then, there was an even louder bang.

5

My vision suddenly flashed red. It was so blindingly bright that I reflexively shut my eyes.

I tried to cover my face, but my arm wasn’t moving the way I wanted it to. My right hand felt heavy. My left did too. Someone’s fingers were wrapped around mine. I’m caught?! I panicked for a moment, screaming as I swung my arms around.

“Sorawo! It’s dangerous! Don’t move!” came a shout from right next to me.

It’s Toriko! My eyes snapped open. I looked at my right hand. No one was holding it. The weight in that hand was my Makarov. Noticing my finger still on the trigger, I hurriedly removed it.

I looked to my left. Toriko was looking at me, her eyes wide.

“Tori...ko.”

As I said her name, Toriko nodded repeatedly, her eyes never breaking contact with mine. She was holding my hand, clutching it so tight it hurt.

I was still feeling numb in the aftermath of my panic, but I turned my head around slowly. Finally, I could see what was going on around us.

We weren’t in the white coral building. We were outside. There was a well-trodden dirt road at our feet, and an old-fashioned town spread out to either side. The setting sun dyed everything in tones of crimson.

Hasshaku-sama was nowhere to be seen. It was just me and Toriko, alone, our ragged breaths echoing across the quiet street.

“My hand...hurts,” I said, and Toriko loosened her grip just a little. She wasn’t about to let go, though.

“What happened? Did we get sucked into the gate...?” Toriko asked. I bit my lip, letting out an irritated sigh.

“Sorry. I was stupid. She totally tricked me.”

“You saw a child, right?”

I shook my head hard. “There was no child. It was a trap to draw me in. No wonder it seemed strange. The moment I saw her, I thought, ‘We’ve gotta help her.’ There’s no way I’d ever think that.”

“You...think so?” Toriko cocked her head to the side. I felt crushed under the weight of my own guilt.

“I screwed up. I’m so sorry. I got you caught up in my mistake too.”

“That’s what you’re going to say?” Toriko’s voice was low. Despite holding my hand all this time, she suddenly let go. My sweaty palm felt clammy when exposed to the air.

Yeah, she’s mad. Of course she is. What do I do now?

“Sorry... It was all my fault...” I was saying, eyes downturned, when she suddenly pinched my cheeks.

“Ow?!”

Toriko forced me to raise my face and look at her. While I was getting flustered over how close she was, Toriko, brow still deeply furrowed, said, “Hey. Don’t you think it’s a little late for that?”

“Ow...”

“Talking about how either of us got the other caught up in anything? We’re well past that point, Sorawo. We’re in the closest kind of relationship in the world, aren’t we?”

I felt like she put a lot of extra emotion into that last sentence.

“I’m glad we were holding hands,” she continued. “Because it meant you didn’t get sent to a scary place alone. If you’d vanished, leaving me behind, I don’t think I’d have been able to forgive you.”

“Phew.”

“You understand? If you do, then never apologize again. I’ll get mad.”

Toriko kept stretching my cheeks as she spoke. Her words were strong, but her fingers were playful.

I tried to tear my face free, but my resistance may have looked weaker than usual to her. Toriko stared down at me coldly.

“If you feel that bad about it...”

Toriko’s face suddenly got a lot closer.

“Mmph?!” With no time for me to close my eyes, our lips touched...then parted again.

Freed from her hands, I stumbled backwards. As I covered my mouth and stared at her, Toriko said, “Let’s call it even with that.”

Throwing me a smug look as I quivered, Toriko spun around and began surveying the area.

“Now then... Where are we?” she asked.

“How should I know?!”

“Don’t get mad.”

“Wh-What gives you the right to...” The lingering sensation on my lips was maddening.

She did that so easily... Like it was nothing... Damn it...!

I could glare at her all I wanted, but Toriko wasn’t looking at me. It took me some time before I was able to change gears and start looking around the area again too.

The old-fashioned street stretching out to either side of us hit me with a heavy dose of nostalgia. The tiled and corrugated metal roofs, the wooden telephone poles, the simple, metal-framed sliding glass doors and lacquered walls, and the wooden fences with their paint peeling in places... It all felt very “Showa,” you might say. But that was before my time, so I wouldn’t really know. I couldn’t read any of the rusty enamel signs bearing the names of the stores.

I looked down the road and gulped. There was a bright red sun visible above the rooftops. It looked massive. I know the sun always looks bigger when it’s closer to the horizon, but this went well beyond that. It was too big to fit it in my field of vision, filling nearly the entire sky.

“Wow...” Toriko mumbled. The sight was impressive enough to make us forget our earlier exchange, and I nodded in agreement.

“So this is where Hasshaku-sama’s gate led...” I said.

We stood there awhile, basking in the evening sun. It was a sunset like none I’d seen before, and yet, at the same time, I felt like I had seen it, sometime, someplace.

I remembered running through the field together at dusk, laughing, after we’d gone hunting for Kunekunes. Our laughter back then had carried in it a fear of the unknown. We had been laughing in spite of our fear of the impending darkness of night. But in this brilliant evening scene, even that fear seemed to melt away. The sunset was so marvelous that I just wanted to keep walking into it forever. I’ll bet anyone would have felt the same.

This place must have been deep in the Otherside, like the Beach of the End, or the bottom of the Kotoribako. I knew that intellectually, but I felt no fear whatsoever. There was a painful loneliness in my heart that tried to convince me this was a place we were meant to come to.

“Let’s hold hands,” I suggested, and Toriko took my left hand with a nod. The peaceful expression I saw on the profile of her face told me she felt the same as I did.

“Whenever we hold hands, you always use your right hand, huh, Toriko?” I pointed out.

“Oh, yeah?”

“You’ve been trying not to touch me with your left.”

“Have I?”

“You thought I hadn’t noticed?”

“Because you’re dense, Sorawo.”

“No, I’m...okay, yeah, maybe I am.”

She must have thought it was funny that I was owning up to it, because Toriko let out a child-like laugh. Whenever Toriko touched me, it was pretty much always with her right hand. If she used her left, it was always gloved.

That was largely because we still didn’t understand the nature of her left hand. Considering that she had driven out the Yamanoke by slapping me on the back, and used it to damage one of Runa Urumi’s Fourth Kind followers, there was no questioning that it had some effect on Otherside beings.

Though she acted like the changes to her body didn’t bother her, I had noticed a long time ago that she was being careful that her left hand didn’t hurt me.

Although she totally used both hands when she was squeezing my face just now...

“You don’t need to worry so much. I mean, I’m always looking at you like normal.”

“I know. You’re looking at my face all the time, Sorawo.”

When she said that so nonchalantly, I had no response.

Oh. So the feelings that I thought I was keeping hidden were actually super obvious...

Toriko cast a sideward glance at me as I remained silent. “If I haven’t gotten messed up after all that staring, it’s probably fine, right?” she asked.

“Or you could already be messed up...” I replied, struggling to find an out.

“Maybe,” Toriko replied with a gentle smile.

How can anyone be so pretty?

I stared absently at Toriko’s face, dyed crimson. If nothing had happened, we might have stayed standing there like that for all eternity. Or perhaps we would have walked into the sunset forever, hand-in-hand.

How badly did I want that? But, suddenly, there was a bang as something collapsed, and we both snapped back to our senses.

“Did you hear that...just now?” I asked.

“Yeah. Something’s here.”

I returned my Makarov to its holster and pulled the rifle off my shoulder. Toriko was doing the same. We tried waiting a while, but there was no sign of anything showing itself. Holding our rifles ready, we carefully headed in the direction of the noise.

We moved three doors in the direction of the sunset before spotting a fallen metal sign in front of the building on our right. Behind the sign was a dark alleyway. We kept our distance, trying to peer down it from the opposite side of the street, but there was nobody there. The ground near the entrance had been disturbed. Like someone who had been hiding behind the sign accidentally knocked it over, then decided to high-tail it out of there...

“I’ll go look,” Toriko said, approaching the alley.

“Be careful...” I said as I watched her go. Toriko crouched down at the entrance to the alleyway, then turned back to look at me.

“You said there was no child, right? That it was all just Hasshaku-sama’s trap.”

“Uh, yeah.”

“Looks like you were wrong.”

Look—she pointed, and I approached from behind her to peer down the alley. Little footprints had been left in the slightly moist dirt. One foot wearing a shoe, the other bare. The footprints were small, not even twenty centimeters long.

They were kid-sized.

“Huh...?” I said in confusion.

“See? There was a child after all.”

The footprints continued deeper into the alley. The toe portions of the steps printed in the road with scattered puddles were dug in deep, and skewed a bit to the left or right.

“You think we can leave her?” Toriko asked, and I reluctantly shook my head.

“Well...it’s not like we’re going anywhere else. Let’s take a look, at the very least,” I responded. Toriko nodded as if she’d expected I would say that and started walking. I hurried after her.

“Hold on. I’ll take point,” I said.

“Okay. Please do.”

The alley was too narrow for us to stand side-by-side. It was impossible to tell if something was amiss without my eye, so I had to be the one in front. I always felt uneasy in this situation, but it wasn’t so bad knowing Toriko was there behind me. If things got dicey, I could count on her to push me aside and save me if she had to.

We cautiously advanced down the roughly one-meter-wide gap between houses. Weeds grew near the walls, and rotten boards and rusty metal pipes lay on the ground. The footprints got messy again near a puddle on the other end of the alleyway, perhaps indicating the person who made them had nearly tripped. I saw a handprint in the mud.

We came out onto the corner of another street where there was a red post box. It was the old cylindrical type, one I hadn’t ever seen in the surface world. Its paint was peeling, and there was a muddy handprint on it in a low position.

“How do you think the picture postcards got sent?” Toriko asked, looking at the post box.

“What do you mean?”

“Even if we assume that they were a trap to lure us in, they had to enter the postal system somewhere in order to get to Michiko Abarato’s place, right? Like, if someone prepared the postcards, and then put them in the post box here...it’s kind of weird imagining how they would end up at a post office in the surface world. If there’s a monster from the Otherside delivering them, that’s like something out of a fable, and if they just teleport to the post office, that’s way too convenient.”

“You’ve got a point. When you start analyzing scary stories, it’s pretty common for them to just stop making sense,” I said as I searched for more footprints. “There’s that one common story where you find a black hair in your room, and you have no idea how it got there, right?”

“There is?”

“There is. The point of the story is to make you go, ‘Ew, hair from people you don’t know is gross. I’m scaaared,’ but I always wondered what’d happen if you took a good look at those hairs. Like, if you examine them under the microscope, do they have cuticles like they’re supposed to? And if you extract the DNA, would you be able find out who they came from?”

“Hee hee. Sounds like forensics.”

“But I’m right, aren’t I? Having physical evidence like that means you should be able to investigate it in detail.”

“Aren’t there any stories where people investigated?”

“Yeah, but most of the time they don’t find out anything. The samples suddenly disappear from storage in some cases, oh, and there’s a lot of times where the people investigating go crazy, vanish, or commit suicide.”

“Maybe that sort of deeper investigation is dangerous?”

“But in true ghost stories, it’s surprisingly common for the person telling the story to be left with physical evidence. I started reading all these scary stories because I was hoping there might be another unknown world out there, somewhere. That’s why it was always frustrating when people didn’t investigate the physical evidence they had. I was like, ‘Tell me more!’”

“Hee hee, y’know, that’s kind of cute.”

That wasn’t the reaction I expected, and I didn’t know how to respond. “No, it’s not cute. I’m deadly serious. I was constantly raging at my monitor.”

“I wish I could’ve met you back then.”

“I’m glad you didn’t. I was a nasty piece of work.”

“That’s fine. When we first met, you still kind of were.”

“Harsh much...?” I turned to look back at her despite myself, and Toriko smiled.

“I’m happy for you. You finally found some physical evidence of your own, Sorawo.”

“What do you mean?”

“The Otherside. It’s exactly the kind of physical evidence you’ve been talking about, isn’t it? Or am I wrong?”

Toriko was right.

I had encountered precisely the “other place” that I had been dreaming of as I read true ghost stories. This world was such a super massive piece of physical evidence that, even if I investigated as hard as I could, I would never be able to examine it all.

And on top of that, Toriko and I became physical evidence ourselves.

Her left hand, and my right eye. The reason we had been able to continue our exploration instead of ending up like the other victims had to be that we’d been integrated into the Otherside.

“What’s up?” Toriko called out to me and I realized I’d been standing there, staring at her left hand.

I shook my head. “You know, if we were to send a letter from here using that hand of yours, it might just arrive.”

Toriko chuckled and touched the post box.

“You want to give it a go? It’ll be like sending a postcard while we’re away on a trip.”

“To Kozakura? She’d definitely think we’re harassing her.”

We both had a good laugh and then started walking again.

The child’s footprints continued intermittently through the sunset town, leading us further and further along. From street to street, through alleyways and houses, jumping over drainage ditches... There were times we nearly lost the trail, but it wasn’t too difficult to find it again with a little searching. The kid didn’t seem to be trying to shake off pursuers, just running around willy-nilly.

The further we went, the stranger the streets became. At first the buildings were one or two stories tall, but before I knew it there were five-story buildings towering over us. The upper levels of the houses seemed to be bending towards us from both sides of the street, and they were connected by skyways.

Toriko looked up to the sky through the gaps in the buildings. “That sun’s sure not setting, huh?”

“Sure isn’t,” I agreed.

The massive evening sun showed no sign of moving. It just hung there, shining so very red. It lent the scenery around us the impression of also being stopped in time, never having changed from the past.

“That could be the kind of place this is...a world of perpetual sunset,” I suggested.

“Are there any ghost stories like that?”

“Occasionally. There’s this one story about going to the Otherside in an elevator. When they arrive on the top floor, the sky is bright red even though it should still be afternoon.”

“How about this sort of old-timey town?”

“Feels like I’ve read stories about wandering into an antiquated town here and there. Walking through town, and wandering down a street that shouldn’t have been there. Sometimes the story involves being tricked by a fox or tanuki.”

When I told her that, Toriko made an amused expression as she looked down at the footprints. “You think this kid is a fox?” she asked.

“She could be a tanuki, you know?”

“When we find her, how about we take her to Kozakura’s place? She seems to like tanuki.”

“If the kid’s a fox, you’d better not touch her. You’ll die of Echinococcosis.”

“What’s that?”

“An infection caused by some nasty parasites.”

The rows of buildings suddenly came to an end, and our field of view opened up. A wooden bridge crossed a stream outside town, and a field of red spider lilies were blooming on the other side. The trash scattered all over the place meant it didn’t make for a particularly picturesque scene, though. With no obstructions, the sunset shone down over all of it.

“There,” Toriko said.

I looked where Toriko was pointing and saw a figure tiny enough to almost disappear in the tall grass running towards an especially large mountain of trash. Even at a distance, I could tell she was the girl I’d seen on the thin film inside the jungle gym. There was something familiar about her running style—desperate, as if she was about to fall over.

“Doesn’t look like a fox...” I said.

“Or a tanuki,” Toriko agreed. “What do we do?”

For a moment, I didn’t know how to answer. I mean, up until this point I had been questioning the very existence of the person leaving behind the footprints. But now that the kid was right here in front of me, that same sensation welled up inside me. I can’t leave her like this. I’ve got to save her, it said.

Toriko took one look at my face and then nodded without a word. Our legs picked up speed on their own as we followed the kid. We had to watch out for glitches as we went, though, so we couldn’t run with all our might the way she could.

“Toriko, there may be something wrong with me.”

“Like what?”

“When I see that kid, I reflexively think I need to save her. That’s gotta be weird. I feel like something’s happened to me.”

Toriko stared at me, dumbfounded, then blinked. “Sorawo... Uh, I don’t think there’s anything weird about that at all,” she hesitantly informed me.

“Huh?”

“If someone’s wandered in here, it’s only natural to want to help them, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, you would say that, Toriko, but...”

I know I’m not that good of a person.

Considering this was the other side of Hasshaku-sama’s gate, this had to be her influencing our minds too. Toriko was already the type to help people, so she wouldn’t notice any difference, but I did. Even if we managed to catch up to that kid, I was sure she’d just turn out to be some sort of disgusting monster. I knew how these Otherside types operated. Well, that was fine by me. I’d blow her away, the same as we always did.

Toriko probably wasn’t going to be able to react immediately. Turning her gun on something that looked like a kid wasn’t something a gentle soul like Toriko could handle. I’d have to be the one to take the shot. I didn’t like it either, and Toriko was probably gonna be really weirded out by me doing it, but...if something tries to kill you, you need to kill it first.

We were getting closer to the mound of trash that floated like an island in a sea of red spider lilies. Between a junked three-wheel automobile, a CRT television with a wooden body, and a steel-reinforced paulownia dresser, even the garbage here was retro. The child crawled through a gap in the randomly piled trash.

Running out of breath at the foot of the mountain, we peered through the gap in the garbage. A pitch-black tunnel underneath a wooden table led deep inside.

We turned on our lights and shone them into the hole; the tunnel was less than a meter tall. The garbage piled on top of it looked stable, but I wasn’t about to start shaking any of it to find out for sure.

“Hey!” Toriko shouted down the tunnel. “Are you okay? It’s dangerous to go in there!”

We waited a while, but there was no response.

Toriko looked at me with a frown. “What do we do?”

“Hmm...”

I didn’t know what to do either. Going in after the kid seemed way too reckless...but, just as I was thinking that, I got startled by something that I hadn’t expected to see.

I was there—my doppelganger was. Not far away, just standing around like she was in a daze.

She raised her right hand, pointing towards the tunnel.

Still not looking in my direction.

“Sorawo, what’s up?”

“Uh...nothing.”

When I looked away, the doppelganger vanished.

You want me to go in there? Is that it...?

It reminded me of the time that my doppelganger led me to Toriko. I was looking for someone else now, but maybe I could still trust her...?

“Sorawo?”

I sighed and crouched down at the entrance. “Oh, fine. I’ll go take a look.”

“I’ll go too.”

“No. If we’re together and it collapses, that’d be the worst. Hold on for a bit. I’ll scope it out and then call for you.”

“Okay... Be careful.” Toriko’s voice was full of concern as she placed a hand on my back.

I resolved myself before entering the tunnel on all-fours. Needing to use one of my hands to hold the light was cumbersome. I added a headlamp to my mental shopping list, then proceeded to crawl further into the darkness. Thankfully, despite all the trash, it didn’t stink.

I think the tunnel was five meters long, if that, though it sure felt like a lot more. Then it opened up, becoming tall enough for me to stand. I was careful not to hit my head as I rose, then shone my light around the area. This was a sort of semi-cylindrical space that had formed inside the trash heap. It was maybe nine square meters, if that.

“You okay in there, Sorawo?”

“Just fine. It’s opened up a bit here.”

“Can I join you?”

“Hold on a bit longer. I’ll check it out...”

Drawing my Makarov, I looked around again. There was no sign of the kid who’d supposedly fled in here. Were there other tunnels, maybe?

As I shone my light on the walls, I caught sight of a human-sized mass lying on the ground and nearly jumped up into the air. On closer inspection, it was a sleeping bag. I hesitantly took a peek inside. It was already unzipped and empty. It looked like someone had deserted it in a hurry. There was a silver mat laid out on the ground underneath it. The kind used to conserve heat when camping.

I hadn’t noticed it in all the garbage, but there was a backpack sitting at the head of the sleeping bag. I approached, and...it stank. Of human body odor...the kind that a person who hadn’t bathed in a long time tended to have. As I was wavering between wanting to investigate and not wanting to touch it, I noticed a single photo inside the sleeping bag.

I turned my light on it, then gulped.

It was a photo of Michiko Abarato.

A picture of his wife—did that mean that Abarato was here...?

That’s when I sensed something behind me and turned around.

The kid, who had apparently been hiding under a blanket, poked her head out halfway to look at me. When our eyes met, she darted out of her hiding place with all the speed of a cornered animal, her eyes glinting in the darkness.

I reflexively focused my right eye on the kid. She cried out and looked away. It was like she’d been bathed in fire. Before I could turn my gun on her, she’d turned around and fled down the tunnel.

“Sorawo, what was that?!”

“Heading your way! Be careful!”

“What’s heading my—Whoa!”

There was shouting and the sounds of a scuffle. I gave chase, hurrying back down the tunnel.

When I got outside, Toriko had captured the kid. Toriko was holding her from behind as the child thrashed around trying to escape.

“Ahhh! Gahhh!” The child screamed like a wild animal as Toriko held her down, making sure she couldn’t get away.

“Shh! It’s okay. It’s okay. Calm down,” Toriko said in a relaxed voice as she desperately tried to restrain the kid. I couldn’t help but stare in awe. I feel like she’d calmed me down before that way too. When was it...?

“S-Sorawo! Lend me a hand here!”

That snapped me back to my senses. I rushed over, getting the child’s flailing arms under control.

“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay. We’re not going to do anything to you, so settle—Ow!” I cried out loud when she kicked me as hard as she could. “Stop struggling already! Ow! That hurts!”

Between the punching and the hair pulling, the kid gradually wore herself out and quieted down. Her breathing was ragged, and her eyes wide. She really was like a captured beast.

Toriko, her hair disheveled, panted. “She’s not a fox or a tanuki, right?!” she asked.

I took another look at the kid she was holding. It was a girl. Her long, black hair was uneven, having been allowed to grow freely, and the black one-piece she wore was dirty and tattered. The one shoe she had still been wearing had fallen off somewhere, leaving her barefoot. Her whole body was filthy, and she looked emaciated. She was still young—five or six at the oldest.

“No doubt about it—she’s human.”

The girl’s eyes followed me closely as I answered. Exhausted as she was, she was still searching for her chance to get away. I could tell, because I’d have been doing the same thing in her position.

“Ah...!”

Suddenly, the pieces fell into place for me.

Is that it? Is that why I felt I had to help this girl...?

I looked at the girl in front of me with new eyes.

From the look of her, she must have been through a number of scary experiences since wandering into the other world. But this kid wasn’t just quivering in terror, she was desperately trying to survive.

Just like I’d done.

It was almost as if she’d read my thoughts. The child blinked, then furrowed her brow. She stopped acting like a cat with its hackles raised. Her tense arms and legs visibly relaxed.

Even Toriko, who was holding her from behind, could tell. Toriko set her down gently. The girl stood up on her own and looked up at me. Even without Toriko restraining her, she didn’t try to escape immediately.

Toriko crouched down, and spoke in a gentle voice. “Sorry for frightening you. I’m Toriko. And this is Sorawo. Who are you?”

The child said nothing.

“Were you alone all this time? You must have been scared. But it’s going to be okay now. You can go home.”

The kid looked at Toriko, bewildered. She seemed not to understand what was being said.

“Oh! Maybe you’re not Japanese. Hello? Bonjour? Ni hao? Annyeonghaseyo?”

None of those greetings got a response. As Toriko and I looked at one another, the child slowly opened her mouth and said, “In short, this may be Sorawo’s ‘cognitive interface’ in physical form.”

“...?!”

“Something like the skin that forms over milk if you—”

The kid stopped mid-word, surprised by the looks of shock on our faces.

“What’d you just say?” I asked, but the kid seemed scared, and said no more.

Then, it came back to me. That had been a fragment of a conversation we’d had with Kozakura.

I think something similar to this had happened before. When beings from the Otherside tried to make contact with us, they imitated our words...

Driven by some implacable feeling of concern, I asked, “Hey, kid, where did you come from...?”

The girl looked away as if she hadn’t heard me, gazing in the direction of the evening sun that wouldn’t set. When we turned to look too, there was a resonating noise, like that of a bell tolling somewhere.

Dong... Before that heavy tone had completely faded, the scene before us turned blue as we watched.

The world that had been dyed red until moments before was painted blue in the blink of an eye. The massive sun was now an ultrablue disc.

No, that was no sun—it was a massive hole in the sky. We were illuminated by the light that shone from the Otherside’s abyss.

Dong... The bell tolled once more, shaking the air.

“Sorawo, that thing... Was that there before?”

I looked to see what Toriko was talking about, and there was a black, steel tower that looked like Tokyo Tower towering over the streets on the other side of the field.

The top of the tower seemed to have faded streamers clinging to it, blowing in the wind. The moment I saw them, for some reason, I imagined long, black hair—a woman’s black hair, stubbornly wrapped around my fingers...

“Hasshaku-sama?” The name slipped from my lips without conscious thought.

“That’s her? How do you figure?” Toriko said keeping her voice low, her brow furrowed. “It looks more like it’s eight hundred feet tall than eight...”

I stared up at the tower vacantly, unable to reply, until suddenly there was a tug on my hand. I looked down and there was a girl holding my hand and frowning.

“What...?” I asked.

The girl turned her back on me, like she was irritated by my vague question. She started walking towards the evening sun quickly, still holding onto my arm.

“Wh-Whoa, hold on,” I called after her, but she didn’t turn to look back at me, just kept walking urgently.

“Don’t you think she’s trying to tell us to come with her...?” Toriko sounded a little out of it too.

It looked like her guess was right, though. The girl glanced at my other hand, entwined with Toriko’s and hurried her pace.

For a moment, I thought I saw a flash of silver phosphorescence, and then we were in a long hallway.

Toriko raised her voice in surprise.

“Something touched my hand just now.”

The hallway had wood flooring that creaked under our shoes. There were latticed windows along either side, and nothing but blue light on the other side of them. It was a deep blue reminiscent of the sea, and the moment I thought I had caught sight of something there was another silver flash that changed the scene.

This time, we were outside. On the roof. There were similar blocky buildings all around us, concrete bridges running from one to the next. The sky was completely blue, reminding me of the sky we’d seen on the beach at the end of the world. Just as I crossed the building and put my foot on one of the bridges, my vision went silver again.

We were in a wasteland. There wasn’t so much as a blade of grass in the ashen landscape that stretched out to the horizon. Nothing but round boulders and thorny, dead trees obstructed our line of sight. Up ahead, I could see a black tower much like the one from before. There were others of the same shape all over the wasteland. The tips of them shone, as if they had noticed us, and then released blue waves. It was a bizarre sight, like paint floating in midair.

Just before rapidly spreading waves could reach us, the scene changed again. It was a gloomy forest, and I could sense massive creatures crawling around above the treetops. I could spot bright blue scales through the thick foliage...

Each time we walked forward, the scenery changed. I’d had a similar experience at the rotating observational platform where we’d encountered the Yamanoke and with the Time-space Man, but this was my first time we were so vividly aware of it. Toriko and I were both dumbfounded. I don’t know how she did it, but the girl holding my hand seemed to be moving through aspects of the other world.

In every one of them, something blue was waiting for us. Was it gradually closing in? Or getting further away? I couldn’t tell right away. But as we traveled through a phantasmagoria of disjointed scenes, the pressure I felt from the ultrablue gradually shrank.

Simultaneously, the shifting scenes got more similar to the real world that I knew. A classroom with a blue chalkboard, a rice paddy with a blue scarecrow, a pachinko parlor in the countryside with a blue neon sign. The deserted scenes gradually got louder, until I started catching glimpses of vague figures of people, like they were on the other side of frosted glass. The signs were getting more legible too.

“Wait, are we getting further from the Otherside?”

“You think so too, Toriko?”

“Yeah. If this keeps up, we’re going to end up somewhere in the surface world...”

Toriko and I looked at one another, sudden realization on our faces.

“Sorawo... Isn’t that bad?”

“Wh-What should we do? We’re heading back!”

It would be absolutely terrible if we got tossed out into a place full of people while we were toting guns. The girl kept on going, paying no mind to us as we panicked.

“Can’t you control where we emerge?” Toriko asked.

“How?!”

“Can you use your eye to see where we’re going?!”

I looked around with my right eye like she suggested, but the whole area was wrapped in silver fog. With fog in all directions, I couldn’t tell which way we should go. Occasionally, the fog thinned, and I could see the other side. Whenever I did, the girl went that way.

If I could find a place that seemed devoid of people, I might be able to guide her there. I stared into the fog. As I did, the figures we passed by grew more distinct. There were even indications of them moving to avoid us, on turning to look once we passed. As my eyes darted around, I started to notice familiar places out of the corners of my eyes.

Suzuran Street in Jinbouchou, the park in front of the Alta in Shinjuku, the front of the Junkudo in Ikebukuro... Was I seeing where my mind was directing us? Well, these were all no good. There were too many people. I needed somewhere less populated, somewhere it would be okay for us to have guns...

“Oh, I know!” I shouted without meaning to, and the little girl looked up at me reproachfully. Not caring much about appearances now, I pointed in the direction I wanted to go.

“Let’s go this way! This way!”

The girl gave me a dubious look, but changed course. The fog cleared, and a familiar scene spread out before our eyes. My relief lasted only a moment. The girl made no attempt to stop, so I hurriedly said, “Toriko, open the gate!”

“O-On it!”

The moment after Toriko’s left hand swept away the space in front of us, we were abruptly thrown out into the surface world.

We were standing in front of Kozakura’s front door.

Just as the girl stopped, dumbstruck, the door in front of us opened, and Kozakura came out of the house wearing blue clogs. Her eyes bugged out when she saw us on her doorstep.

Looking from me, to Toriko, to the filthy girl, Kozakura furrowed her brow. “Did you kidnap her...?”

“No, we didn’t.”

“Uh, then...” Seemingly unsatisfied with my answer, Kozakura looked the girl up and down again. The girl backed away, obviously wary, and hid behind us.

“Did you give birth?”

Yeah, right.

6

“What do you think that was, ultimately?”

It was a few days later. We’d chosen to meet up at Mickey D’s, and were picking away at a box of chicken nuggets while idly talking about what had happened.

When we got back, the unidentified girl had been given a thorough washing in Kozakura’s bathroom before being taken to DS Research. We went along and tried to communicate with her, but it ultimately proved fruitless. It was decided that DS Research would look after her while they were checking missing persons reports.

“Think the girl could be Abarato’s daughter?” Toriko asked.

“I’m gonna guess no... I mean, Abarato only ever talked about his wife, and the wife never said anything about a missing child.”

“Abarato had camped out in the mountain of trash, right?”

“It’s not like I had the chance to thoroughly investigate, but that was the impression I got.”

“Was it a coincidence she was there, you think?”

“I wonder.”

“If something about the Otherside lured us in...and then Hasshaku-sama sent us to an even deeper place...maybe they wanted us to do something there? Did they just want us to find Abarato’s camp?” Toriko asked.

“If we’re going with the hypothesis that they were acting with some purpose...maybe they wanted us to find that girl?”

“What for?”

“Dunno...”

I licked the mustard sauce from my fingers and reached for my Coke. As I put the straw in my mouth and leaned back in my chair, my eyes met with Toriko’s, which were fixated on me.

“Hm?”

“No, it’s nothing.” Toriko shook her head, leaning back in her chair too as she let out a sigh. “We never did figure out what happened to Abarato... What should we tell his wife?”

“Yeah, about that... I don’t think we need to say anything.”

“Huh?”

I pulled a single postcard out of my bag and laid it on the table. It was addressed to me. No sender.

“Found it in my mailbox when I was heading out today.”

“Can I look?”

When Toriko turned the postcard over she got a dubious look on her face. “What is this?” she asked.

The back of the postcard had a photo on it. Under the words, “We got married,” in a cheap-looking font was a print of a photo that looked like it had been taken with a dirty camera lens. In the front of the picture was Michiko Abarato, her lipstick an aggressively deep red. Behind her was a white building at an odd angle. There was a man in the second floor window, and he was facing the camera, but the image was compressed, making him look like a figure made out of gray clay. The black trees behind the house might have actually been steel towers in the distance.

“Can you think of any reason to send a photo like this?” I asked, and Toriko shook her head silently.

“It makes no sense, right?” I continued. “I thought she was sane at first, but no, she really was nuts. That probably wasn’t the real Michiko Abarato.”

“Who was it, then? An impostor?”

“Nobody, I guess. An MIB, like the three middle-aged ladies...”

“She looked human, but was part of a phenomenon?”

“Yeah. So we’re better off not contacting her again, and there’s no point in trying. If you want the postcard, it’s all yours.”

“I don’t.”

“Yeah, me neither. Let’s junk it.”

We grabbed our trays and stood up. I opened the lid to the garbage, tilted the tray into it...then, just before it fell in, I changed my mind and rescued the postcard.

“You’re not gonna throw it out?”

“Nah... On second thought, we should sell it to DS Research.”

Toriko’s eyes widened with exasperation. “You think they’ll buy it?”

“We need to head out there anyway, and it doesn’t hurt to ask.”

“I haven’t been to their building in ages.”

“Yeah, you haven’t. Last time I went would’ve been...was it because Runa Urumi woke up? No, I guess not. It was to discuss doing construction on the Farm.”

“Huh? What? Runa Urumi? She got better?”

“Didn’t I tell you?” I asked.

“This is the first I’m hearing of it.”

Waving the creepy postcard around as I went outside, we headed down to the subway station.