Case 14: In the Mirror (9)

At the end of the path in the back of the corridor, Ryouichi Mamiya--- no, the old man whose name no one knew anymore, had breathed his last.

Together with Yoishi, I slipped past the servants and entered the path. It was the path where that strange guy had been that night. As I tried not to look at the creepy darkness in the back, I crouched down next to the corpse. And, when I looked at his face—I shuddered.

The face did not belong to the old man we had seen so much of over the past few days. It was not the handsome face of the man we had surmised from the picture of his youth, but that of an old man who was a complete stranger to me.

“….Th, this person is, that proprietor?”

I asked, and Krishna-san nodded in silence.

No, that was indeed the case. The gown he was wearing, the socks, and his gray hair, they all belonged to the owner of this mansion. But his face alone was different. It was not the face of the old man we had met and talked with up until now.

“…What does it mean?”

Krishna-san spoke in a daze.

“When someone dies, their face can change to some extent—but, I’ve never seen the skeletal structure change enough to alter the facial appearance entirely.”

“I wonder if that's so.”

Thereupon, Yoishi turned to look behind her.

“There’s a mirror installed at the back of the door at the entrance to this path. I believe because that old man had an interest in Venetian glass, it was probably elaborately made to pair with the mirror on the front.”

“Eh…….?”

Krishna-san asked in return, and I too cocked my head in puzzlement.

“What do you mean by the mirror on the front?”

“It’s that.”

Yoishi then moved towards the darkness at the end of the path.

There was where I saw the man with one arm, and where Krishna-san saw the woman with long hair.

“H….Hey.”

“It’s alright.”

Yoishi’s voice rang out beyond the darkness even as her figure had already become dim.

“As long as the entrance door is kept open, this will not become a spiritual path.”

Beyond the darkness, a *clink* sounded, and a penlight was turned on. Then it swung symmetrically in two. That’s right, as if to reflect off a mirror.

“…….I see.”

Krishna-san walked ahead, and I, too, followed.

The path came to a dead end around ten meters further ahead, and there was a mirror the full width of the passage.

“If you were to close that entrance, then this path becomes a ‘Corridor of Mirrors’. It becomes a perfect space of opposing mirrors, and it then becomes a perfect spiritual path.”

“Why did Mamiya—no, why did that old man make something like this? Wasn’t he afraid of mirrors?”

“In all likelihood, Ryouichi Mamiya switched places with that friend shortly after the war in the aforementioned cave. There were three warnings: those who continue further from here will 『have no guarantee of their ‘life’』『have no guarantee of their ‘friend’』『have no guarantee of their ‘name’』-- The life meant that one of them would lose their lives. Friend meant the death of their friendship. And the name referred to the fate of the man who must live for the rest of his life in the name of the friend he killed.”

“The proprietor of this mansion…really admired Ryouichi Mamiya.”

With her head cast down, Krishna-san spoke.

“He cared so much about him down to the thickness of his arms. ….Ah, so that's why. He cut off his friend’s arm because he was jealous.”

Yoishi nodded in agreement,

“However, to bear that darkness alone was far too heavy a burden to bear.”

I began to get a bad feeling from her somewhat joyful, peculiar tone of voice.

“This closed corridor, instead of being a space created by the conscience of the man who became Ryouichi Mamiya--”

“Instead of?”

I ended up asking unconsciously but regretted it the moment I saw that the depths of Yoishi’s large eyes were beginning to glow with a dark color.

With a chill, the overwhelming sense of helplessness I felt in that hospital room came to the fore once more.

“Aaah, wait, Yoishi, Let’s....”

Stop, I was about to say, when I suddenly made eye contact with Krishna-san. The former occult site manager who would always butt in between me and Yoishi and make a scene and panic and say something like, ‘You can’t, you can’t! Don’t get involved!’, was for some reason, looking at me with a confident look on her face.

--Huh?

My thoughts stopping was the end of my luck.

“That’s right— he built this mansion.”

“He happily had dinner with both of you.”

“He haughtily spoke of fools with you.”

Yoishi Mitsurugi was enthralled, her eyes enlivened, and she ended up mouthing the words in a whisper:

“What clung to the face of this mansion’s owner for a long time was the ghost of Ryouichi Mamiya.”

In the end, it seemed that the direct bloodline of Ryouichi Mamiya had been cut off.

Later, a DNA test was conducted albeit far too late, and it was established that the man was indeed not Ryouichi Mamiya.

Should the vast wealth and fortune built up using the land and connections of ‘Ryouichi Mamiya’ by the man who was not ‘Ryouichi Mamiya’ be inherited by the family of the real ‘Ryouichi Mamiya’? Or should it be inherited by the descendants of the man who falsified his name as ‘Ryouichi Mamiya’? There seemed to be a big uproar in the Mamiya family over that even now—but I didn’t care about any of that. It was a matter of no consequence to us.

One more important thing happened that day, which I will now narrate.

Krishna-san, Yoishi and I all arrived in the same taxi back to Musashino, Tokyo, but when we got out of the taxi, I recalled something important.

After taking out the luggage, I asked Yoishi, “Give me your phone for a second.”

She made an unwilling expression, so I clarified, “I don’t have any battery left, it’s something important”, and borrowed her unappealing black phone. I then took out that business card from my pocket and dialed the number that was written on there.

As Krishna-san and Yoishi looked at me suspiciously—

I heard a woman’s voice on the other end of the line after the second ringback tone.

<Cabinet Information Research Office, how may I help you?>

“…..Huh?”

I reflexively compared the number displayed on screen to the number on the business card, thinking I had made a mistake. It was not a mistake.

“C, cabinet…..Information research office?”

<Yes.>

“N, Nagi-kun….. who are you calling…..?”

Krishna-san started panicking, but shhhh, I put my index finger to my lips, and asked.

“I’m Yamada. I’d like to speak with Mitsurugi-san.”

<…And your business is?>

“I’d like to tell him directly.”

<My apologies, but there is no one here by the name of Mitsurugi.>

‘If that is all, then’, as the other party was about to cut the line, I spoke.

“Wait a second. He's supposed to be there, isn't he? He gave me a card with this number on it. That guy who has a face like a Noh mask. He’s emotionless, expressionless, with his hair swept back, an incredibly creepy guy. I have something very important to talk to him about. Put me through!”

In response—

<…………….Noh mask…..Creepy…..>

It felt as if the woman on the other end of the line snickered a laugh.

<Please wait a moment.>

I exhaled once, and looked at Yoishi.

She had an anxious expression I had never seen up until now, so I nodded and said, “It’s alright”, and I naturally grabbed her hand. I tightly clasped her soft hand.

<Hello.>

Eventually, the voice of that Noh faced man I had met in front of the university that time came from the other end of the line.

“Ah, it’s me, Nagito Yamada.”

<….I know.>

Something inside me was dislodged in reaction to his usual expressionless, unsympathetic manner of speaking.

After taking another deep breath, I stated my business in one fell swoop.

“Your daughter is in a terrible place.”

<…………………..>

“She’s in the worst possible place imaginable—no, she’s stepped into a place that’s a level above the worst. Do you know that?”

<……………………….>

“No, I’m sure you know a lot, but I’m sure you don’t understand properly. Maybe I'm the only person in the world who fully understands it, so....”

<….I’m busy. Please get to the point.>

“Give Yoishi to me.”

<……………………….>

“Even If you refuse, I’ll still take her. I’ll put my life on the line to make her happy.”

At that moment, Yoishi’s hand in the palm of my hand suddenly shuddered.

I clasped her hand once more as if to gently envelop it.

The man on the other end of the line went silent for a while, before eventually grumbling indifferently.

<You’ll end up dead.>

“I don’t care.”

I answered instantly.

I really didn’t care if I died. I came this far after experiencing countless scary life-and-death situations. And I realized. That there were things in this world far more horrifying than death. That there were still horrifying things even after death. If that was so, then wasn’t it all the same? I say that, but it was the conclusion I had come to after walking this far through many deep and grotesque abysses of the world beyond. To lose oneself. To deceive oneself. If you live with a tiny but painful thorn in your side, it will slowly kill your heart. And you would have to face it once more somewhere along the way. But I came this far by running from that. Even though the root of the problem was right there, I ran because I was afraid. I came this far by running from the fusuma, running from ghosts, and running from the emotion called fear. 

However, right now, there was a problem right here by my side I needed to resolve. The hand in my hand, was actually shaking. Even though it’s unbearably scary, she killed the emotion known as fear, and she was shaking. Even though she was a really good person, even though she has a cute smile, she always has her back hunched over, living life away from the bright light. But that was exactly why she alone understood my disposition. Back then, she stood by my side in the burning dream mansion. And— now it was my turn. It was my turn to confront her and the root of the darkness inside her.

<--You’ve been...>

The man spoke.

<Possessed by my daughter, haven’t you?>

The man who kept calling her ‘it’, called her ‘daughter’ for the first time.

<…Fine, do as you wish.>

Saying that, the man cut the line.

In a daze, I looked at the phone display after he cut the line, ‘Call time: 2 minutes and 47 seconds’ displayed on the screen, when I heard a sob from somewhere.

“I’ve never—this kind of ridiculous situation---it’s the first time.”

I turned around to see Krishna-san’s shoulders were shaking, and her nose was bright red.

“W-Why are you crying?”

I asked her and at the same time, I realized I was still holding hands with Yoishi, and hurriedly let go.

“It’s fine--- just keep it that way.”

Krishna-san once again took my hand and the hand of Yoishi, and spoke after firmly joining the two together.

“You have my blessing.”

With a smile on her snotty, tear-stained face—

The former manager of ‘Ikaigabuchi’, whom I respected from the bottom of my heart, loudly declared high up to the sky like a priest.

“You two have my blessing. I’ll pray for your happiness.”