Case 03: The Case of Natsuya Semikawa

Introduction

It is now a mere historical footnote, but when the isolated archipelago on the eastern edge of the Eurasian Continent was governed by the absolute theocratic state known as the Empire of Japan, railways served as the primary means of transporting mail between the major metropolitan areas.

The Osaka Central Post Office, on the order of the Building and Maintenance Office of the Ministry of Communications, was connected to the Osaka Station of the National Railway (now-JR West Japan) north of the office via subterranean tunnel, the construction of which was being contracted to the Shimizu Construction Company.

This was the origin of the famous “Umeda Dungeon.”

When a connection to an Isekai was made during the tunnel-boring process, the area affected by this connection to another world began expanding rapidly. At the time, it appeared that it would grow to include the entirety of the Osaka metropolitan area, however, the Kamiori Agency managed to contain this expansion and quickly reduced the size of the connection to an area of similar size to its modern extent, limited roughly to the Umeda neighborhood of Osaka’s Chuo Ward.

(It was once thought that the origin of the neighborhood’s name of “Umeda” stems from the fact that the Regent Toyotomi Hideyoshi discovered the connection when building Osaka Castle in the late 16th history, forcing him to bury the area. However, modern historians consider this to be an apocryphal account.)

Osaka’s Umeda Dungeon is the largest isekai portal in the Far East, serving as a rail hub for journeys into numerous isekais.

Every day, countless people ranging from vacationing families to office ladies going on shopping trips to light novel authors avoiding looming deadlines come to the station to travel to an isekai.

This case is a simple report detailing an example of one such journey.

It is a fact universally acknowledged, that a light novel author threatened by deadlines, feels the compulsion to travel. Still, ordinarily, “travel” in my case means a day trip to a local sauna or super sento bathhouse to enjoy a little escape from my everyday routine.

Why? Poverty.

The reasons for Natsuya Semikawa’s poverty have been extensively elaborated upon in other media, and the details would fill the space available here many times over. Yet, if all my journeys involve a trip to a bathhouse, I’m afraid I’ll end up better known as a sodden middle-aged man than a light novel author. Hence my decision to travel to an isekai this time around. It’s certainly not motivated by the fact that however tenacious my editor may be, she would hardly believe I would head to an isekai.

No, this is a trip driven by professional curiosity.

Only a half-wit needs to commit actual murder to write a murder mystery, but there’s no reason an isekai light novelist can’t visit the subject of his writing. Surely if a novelist can write about isekai they’ve never seen, they’d write even better after having visited the real thing.

That’s why I’ve committed to this isekai jaunt.

Umeda is the starting point for the H-shin Iandborough Line. One could also say it’s the end point of the line; however, that is a matter of perspective. It’s a three-day rail journey each way from start to end on the Osaka Umeda—Iandborough Line.

This, of course, means sleeping inside the train. However, only the first-class private cabins come equipped with sleeping berths. The other two types of passenger car classes, the soft- and hard-seat cars, are only equipped with rows of upright seating and have no sleeping berths for the passengers.

However, it’s worth noting that only an amateur traveler would choose a first-class cabin.

To truly enjoy a rail journey in safety and comfort, the train of choice is to travel by express trains. Such trains come equipped with security attendants, and their tickets include travel insurance.

The reason first-class cabins are a poor choice in ordinary local trains is because those cabins are enclosed spaces. The least of your concerns among such cabins is having an illegal speakeasy or gambling den next door. Worse are the more unsavory sorts of illegal activity that such cabins play host to.

There are some thrill-seekers who deliberately book first-class cabins on ordinary local trains for this very reason, but my recommendation is to travel in the hard-seat cars.

Opening the door to the hard-seat car, I find most of the seats occupied despite the fact that there’s time to spare before departure.

There is, of course, no reserved seating in these cars. The ticket only provides the bearer with the right to ride in the hard-seat car. It goes without saying that no one bothers counting the number of tickets sold versus the available seating on the train.

Once the benches fill up, people spill onto the floor.

Once the floor is full, then people begin slinging hammocks across the aisles. That’s right, hammocks. There are hammocks hung up in the hard-seat cars.

Now, these hammocks are not provided by the rail company, of course. The passengers put them up on their own.

Some time ago, when passengers first began hanging hammocks without proper anchors, there were several incidents where the hammocks came loose, resulting in injuries among the passengers. To prevent a repeat, the rail company began equipping the cars with hammock hooks. The rail company doesn’t officially describe these hooks as hammock hooks. Their official literature simply describes them as “unknown hooks” without a stated purpose. The hooks just happen to be perfectly designed and positioned for hanging hammocks.

Fortunately, I find a spot that looks comfortable and claim a spot for myself on the middle hammock.

If you have the misfortune to travel during Iandboroughan holidays, passengers in the hard-seat cars are crammed in, standing like sardines with some even spilling out onto the roof of the car.

After a spate of lawsuits from passengers against the rail company regarding train availability, the Iandborough Superior Court ruled that a passenger in possession of a hard-seat ticket need only be located somewhere between the floor of the railcar and the stratosphere. As for the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the matter, I’m afraid I must profess ignorance and say I simply don’t know.

Laying down in my hammock, I open a paperback purchased at Kinokuniya Bookstore. It’s a book that a recently fashionable light novelist has published under a famous old sci-fi publisher. As I flip the pages while skimming through the book, an impatient mecasoli dealer peers into my hammock and speaks out to me in faintly accented Japanese:

“Got some mecasoli, cheap.”

They try to pass me some short lengths of rolled-up paper. Mecasoli is a drug similar to marijuana. It’s completely different in chemical composition from the various alkaloids and cannabinoids widely used on Earth, but it functions in a similar way. It’s a luxury item as popular in the isekais as cigarettes were in 1970s Japan, and it’s highly addictive.

It is, of course, banned in Japan.

“Gae,” I answer, and return my attention to the world within the pages of my paperback.

“Gae” means “no,” and is the isekai word I use most.

A poor isekai light novelist repeating the word “winne” (“yes”) during an isekai vacation is virtually guaranteed to be penniless within a short span of time.

When I’m about a third of the way through my book, I start hearing announcements ring through the car. The car starts filling with activity, and I begin getting jostled about in my hammock.

This isn’t because someone is trying to shake me out of my hammock, it’s simply because many of the passengers have waited until the last minute to board and are rushing to secure a place. In fact, many of these passengers haven’t even purchased a ticket.

Or perhaps it’s more accurate to say they haven’t “yet” purchased a ticket.

These people are vendors of one sort or another.

It’s not that they’ve been granted permission by the rail company to sell their wares inside the train, they’ve just come aboard carrying goods for sale. Their goals are to use the three-day journey to sell various things, like food and consumable luxury goods (both legal and illegal), to make enough money to pay the hard-seat car ticket fare by the time they have to get off at the other end of the line.

When a young man comes around to sell a makliya (a sour little fruit similar to a melon), I ask in my halting isekian: “Howdy. What doth ya plan ta do if ya ain’t got thy ticket fare by the time we go ta Iandborough?”

The boy, about fifteen years old by Earth reckoning, stares at me for a moment before answering, as though my question was one of the dumbest things he’s ever heard. “Then I just stay on for the trip back to Umeda.”

Oh, I see. I suppose that was obvious.

As a token of appreciation for answering my question, I buy a makliya from him for 32 nahs.

The regions around Iandborough, in a bothersome twist for Earth natives, have only recently converted from a base-8 counting system to a base-10 system. This means most of the paper notes and coins are still in multiples of 8.

Furthermore, they have a habit of producing limited edition coins for various anniversaries and celebrations. In the past I’ve emptied my wallet and counted 17 different types of 8-nahs coins, 5 types of 16-nahs coins, and 3 separate types of 16-and-a-half nahs coins. I could only shake my head in quiet bemusement.

Because of this situation, there aren’t any useful objects like vending machines in the areas surrounding Iandborough. When you’re thirsty, your only option is to buy lukewarm juice or alcohol from a random old man on a bike, where the drinks are kept a little below the ambient temperature in a water-filled bucket.

Which brings me to another word of warning: first time travelers to Iandborough should never, ever make the mistake of ordering Iandborough beer. It may be called “beer,” and it may contain some alcohol, but the mysterious liquid sold as beer tastes primarily of bitterness, astringency, and bitterness, with a touch of nihilism mixed in for effect.

If I had to describe it, it tastes as though you boiled a muscle-relaxing medical pad in the extract of whole bitter gourd and water pepper.

(However, if you do end up drinking Iandborough beer, you’ll likely end up developing the occasional craving to drink it. I suspect there’s some sort of unknown addictiveness to the stuff, but since my doctor has forbidden me from imbibing any more of it, I haven’t been able to confirm this theory.)

Once clear of the familiar underground tunnel, the landscape becomes significantly more beautiful. Iandborough and the surrounding lands of Larks Province are Gomanleigh’s temperate-to-subtropical regions with a lush landscape.

The railroad that stitches the countryside between the lush great evergreen woods and the coastline has a great view of the landscape, and the green of the great woods is a particularly impressive sight that one never grows tired of watching. The bright colors of the flowers growing among the trees are something you can never find in Japan.

It’s not particularly crowded in the car, so the sea breeze blowing in from the opposite side’s windows is rather refreshing.

After a short run through the country, we stop for a while at the first station, where they also handle immigration procedures. The gendarmes check each car while chewing on a gum-like sap called icha.

“Winne.”

As I produce my passport and hand it over, the pair of gendarmes snap their fingers. It’s body language similar to a shrug on Earth.

“Thy book is a restricted volume,” The younger of the two gendarmes says in faintly accented but easily understandable Japanese.

I’m briefly puzzled, but quickly understand what he’s getting at.

“My apologies. I was a bit careless.”

With that, I quietly pass two 8-nahs pieces into his palm.

The younger gendarme looks into his hand to confirm its contents, then looks to his older partner.

That’s some second-rate acting. Who the hell confirms the bribe amount with their partner?

The older gendarme replies with a simple “Gae.”

I’m forced to add another 8-nahs piece for each of them.

One of the coins among them is a Crown Prince Leonpat’s Third Accession Anniversary coin, but I’m not particularly bothered by that.

The gendarmes, pleased with their haul, turn their backs on me. I turn my gaze outside my window.

I take the time to think about what I want to do after this three-day journey is over. I may not have money, but I have plenty of time.

One thing I can’t leave off my list of activities is to eat some coal-roasted hyoleger. It’s no exaggeration to say that I chose to head to Iandborough in this season just to have a taste of hyoleger. Hyolegers are a bivalve native to Iandborough, and they’re currently at the peak of their season. When roasted over coals, they open with perfect timing, releasing an indescribably delicious aroma.

As you drip just a touch of a condiment similar to soy sauce atop it and slide the meat onto your tongue, sensations of pure bliss travel from your mouth to your throat to your esophagus to rest in your stomach.

Hyolegers are also known as the Winne Winne Clam, because when asked “Another round?” the only answer that comes to mind is to say “Winne winne.”

And, even better, unlike oysters there’s no fear of food poisoning, which means you can eat as many as you can handle.

They’re also wonderful fried or sauteed in oil.

I’m drooling just thinking about it.

I really hope I’m off saying “winne winne” soon.

As I stare at the station building, visions of hyolegers dancing in my head, I notice something odd.

It’s a human.

Well, there’s humans everywhere, of course. In Iandborough, there are Japanese, Americans, Chinese, Puerto Ricans, and even Karakalpaks and Transnistrians.

However...I know this face.

“Mr. Semikawa?”

The familiar face sticks her head in through the open window and smiles serenely at me.

“Wh-What a coincidence, Ms. Editor!”

“Yes, quite a coincidence. And right before your deadline, too.”

She places a faint but noticeable emphasis on the word “deadline.”

“And just what brings you here today?”

“Uh, um, well, I was taking a little vacation...”

“And is that something you should be doing right now...?”

“Ah...ahm...gae.”

Sadly, it is here that Semikawa’s adventure comes to a premature end.