Case 05: The Cat Mystery (3)

As I picked her up and stroked her, I suddenly felt something strange about the room. What was it? I thought but couldn’t come up with anything. It seemed like nothing had changed, but something felt slightly different since the time I left. While Miiko was eating her cat food, I went close to the wall to change the sand in the litter box, when I finally noticed it. The peeled off poster on the wall which I had been neglecting due to my busy schedule had been fixed.

“Huh….? Err, the pin on the corner did fall off, and I picked it up, but I didn’t… stick it back in…right?”

I tilted my head in puzzlement, wondering if I had fixed it unconsciously. I had no clue.

For the time being I spent another thirty minutes with Miiko, and stood up again. One way or another, I want to finish the translation work by today. If I could finish that, I’d be able to free up a lot of time in my life.

Under the moonlight, I pedaled my bike towards the club building.

The lights were on in western club building as usual. I climbed the stairs up to my club room. I unlocked the door and turned on the lights inside, On the top of a neatly organized table, I found Krishna-san’s personal laptop, which could be called the data bank of ‘Ikaigabuchi’, and a bundle of manuscript copies on top of it.

“…Huh?”

I noticed. There were a lot less manuscript copies than when I had left the club room in the evening. There were only about five pages left. And, there was a small note there. {To Nagi-kun. There were only a few pages left but I couldn’t finish them! I’m really sorry, I’ll leave it up to you! --Shiina Kurimoto.”}

While reading that memo, I wondered…

Krishna-san had been undoubtedly working hard because she was worried about my health. Moreover, she translated the Fafrtoskies case from the 1600s, which was the hardest in terms of English literature used. What remained was a comparatively easy present-day document. If it’s just this much, I could finish it by the morning if I work hard enough.

“Didn’t she leave it to me on purpose, though?”

The thought occurred to me. To let me taste the feeling of completion, of having made it through all the way to the end, Krishna-san must have intentionally left me with the easy part - the most appetizing part of the work. She’s capable of doing anything, after all, the thought of that moved me to tears. But, well, it was still pretty hard with my English skills - though it was true that I felt pretty encouraged.

“Alright.”

Flexing my neck, I sat down on the desk and began to work on the last part. I opened the text editor on the computer, and with a dictionary in one hand, translated sentence by sentence, and typed it. English is not my forte or anything, but I have learned a lot from translating so far. Even in long, incomprehensible sentences, if you can find the subject and verb you can somehow manage it. I also learned that words that are not in the dictionary are often adjectives made up by the author. Morning is ‘Morning’, but when I saw it written as ‘morn’, it confused the heck out of me -- but apparently, it seemed to be used in the context of ‘Morning like’. I got the hang of it in this place as I diligently struggled with English. Maybe human beings really do make an effort when they can envision things. I didn’t even turn on the late-night radio which I usually listened to, and absorbed myself in work. I diligently identified the subjects and verbs, and then translated them as if I were expanding my world from there. And then finally, as the sun had begun to rise – I finished translating everything.

As I typed the last sentence and saved, I leaned back against the chair, extended my elbows and exclaimed:

“…I’m dooooooooone.”

The sunlight pouring in from the window, felt like heaven. Where was the feeling of sleepiness I had been feeling lately? My body, which had been as heavy as iron, was feeling so light that I could go out to play right away. I stood up and turned on the radio to hear an unfamiliar western song play. It was a country-style song with a guitar as the main instrument, and had a steady and distinctly cool bass sound. And in order to further savor my feeling of fulfillment, I headed outside to buy a canned coffee. Leaving the radio turned on, I locked the door and trotted down the hallway. The lights still shined through about half of the club rooms on both sides of the hallway. I would occasionally hear laughter from within. Some of them were playing instruments. Some of them were washing their faces in the bathroom, probably after an all-nighter. Seeing those kinds of sights absent-mindedly, I arrived at the lobby on the ground floor, I bought a canned coffee from the vending machine, and sat down on the bench.

Why is it that the air in the morning feels so clear? There’s a saying that it purges the darkness, but I once again keenly felt how great the strength of the sun’s light was. In an instant, the traces of yesterday are painted over. It washes away all the impurities and makes me feel like I can step into a new day.

“I guess this university isn’t so bad.”

I muttered to myself as I let the bitter sweetness of the coffee soak into my tired body.

A somewhat closed-off university for the elite. A place filled with the same kind of people. With a prejudiced attitude, I had labeled this university as such; now I saw a different side to it. But that’s not it. There are as many truths as there are people, and the world is always multifaceted, that’s why it’s supposed to be interesting. I’d been looking down on this place based on one aspect alone.

Maybe it was because I was from the countryside; I think I felt lonely in the city’s university, where it’s difficult to form a small and tight-knit community. Superficial associations, superficial smiles. I felt disgust at such things. But that's not the case. Nothing in university, nor in a city filled with good and bad people, is prepared from the start. Anything and everything has to be chosen by your own self. The place you belong, your job, your friends, your way of life.

And right now, I'm sure I'm feeling this way because of this western club room building. This concrete building, where you can devote yourself to something. People who are into painting, people striving to train their guitar skills, people devoting themselves to editing movies. People who are just drinking sake while debating art and their world views – and probably some couples flirting in a club room somewhere.

Still, there are only people here who do what they love.

Liable to themselves, they do what they like.

I was never even able to notice such things when I was just taking lectures, leaving the university immediately afterwards, and going to my part-time job. In that sense, it was all thanks to Krishna-san and the occult. I’ve been through a lot since I came to Tokyo, but thanks to ‘Ikaigabuchi’, I’ve been able to live without boredom. People everywhere, their futures broaden when they have things they like. Bonding over shared interests, it really gives people's lives something precious... Yeah, that already sounded like amateur philosophy drivel, so I just brought the canned coffee to my lips once more.

“…Huh?”

I suddenly felt as if I heard Miiko’s fawning voice from somewhere, and stood up.

No, that can’t be. Miiko is in the apartment. The sound just now must have been from a stray cat somewhere.

And, I heard it again.

This time it was screams, as if two cats were violently fighting each other.

Come to think of it, I've been hearing a lot of cats in heat, fighting with each other lately. I guess that’s how things are at the end of summer? Thinking that, I stood up. And then, was immediately startled.

--There is, no sound...

The silence was deafening around me. I went outside through the ground floor, and looked around the entire club building. All signs of human life had completely disappeared from the club building. As if someone had pressed the mute button on a TV remote, sound had disappeared from the world all together.

Shaking off the bad feeling, I walked back inside the club building. Immediately afterwards, I climbed up the stairs. Before reaching the Beatnik club room on the third floor, I was sure of it.

I was the only one in the building.

The club building, which had been so noisy a few moments ago, now just felt like an empty concrete box. Unknowingly, I began to run. I was running up the stairs to the third floor and then in the corridor. I tried to knock on the clubrooms with the lights still on. But there was no reply from anywhere.

My heart started to beat faster, and in the terrible silence, my ears were ringing.

“…Calm down, calm down and just breathe.” I told myself, catching my ragged breath.

And I continued forward in the corridor with no one present.

All the club rooms still had their lights turned on.

The only thing that remained was the feeling that people were making noise until just now, but there was no one in sight.

It was like – just like, the Mary Celeste incident. The mysterious incident that occurred in the Atlantic sea had been recreated in the western club building. Unbearable fear engulfed me, and I stopped in my tracks to think. Is this a dream? Night after night, I’d been fatigued doing translation work, and did I start dreaming in the club room unawares?

As someone who had once experienced an extremely realistic lucid dream, that was my first suspicion.

Once again, I’d lost sight of the boundary between dreams and reality—

No.

No, no, no--

I frantically brushed off the thought that popped in my head. Acknowledging that would be dangerous. The moment I would acknowledge that, everything would begin to collapse. I'd finally started to stand and walk on my own, but my life itself would no longer carry on. I'm supposed to be cured by now. I’m supposed to firmly stand tall on my own two feet. The childhood curse was lifted, and I was sure that I had already firmly grasped reality, a reality that I could walk towards. All my instability was born from that inconsistency in my memory, the thing that was messed up from the start, and which was supposed to have been fixed properly. But in the darkness inside my head, which was so dark that made me want to look away, that had begun to glow dimly. No matter where I looked, it was the only thing that seemed to be true, and its presence grew heavily.

That was, in short –

The doubt, that I had not yet been cured.

But to acknowledge that, would be unbearably scary. The fear of being uncertain about your own existence. An absolute fear of there being a domain inside me that I couldn’t control, of an unknown darkness squirming inside me.

That moment – I heard something.

It was a western song. It was coming from the club room. From the Beatnik research society – that’s right, it was the song from the radio I had left turned on. Suddenly, my spirit, which was on the verge of collapse, rapidly regained its strength.

Get yourself together, man. So what if everyone had disappeared? That’s a possibility that could always happen, right? It could just be that they all went back home at the same time.

Finally regaining my composure, I ran to the front of the club room. Then, at the door, I took the key out of my pocket, with my trembling hands, I was about to insert it into the keyhole, when I realized.

Behind the frosted glass of the yellow door, the shadow of a person flickered and swayed.

“…Krishna-san?”

I unconsciously muttered that, but my hand on the doorknob stopped as the alarm signal inside me reverberated loudly.

--No, it’s not her.

This figure does not belong to Krishna-san. It was someone a little taller, and thinner. Awfully thin. In the first place, Krishna-san doesn’t come to the club room at this time.

Then…who is it?

A gulp of saliva falls down my esophagus, and a nasty sweat runs down my armpit.

I felt helplessly afraid, but I couldn’t avert my eyes away from there.

My eyes naturally drew themselves to the figure behind the frosted glass.

I knew it was the figure of a woman. Her clothes were white. She stood in a very peculiar manner, leaning at a slight angle, swaying slowly. It felt as if she were a paper doll, flowing in the wind. Her eyes were unnaturally hollowed out, as if an empty hole stared at me.

---It’s her. ---She’s the one… who’s been watching me all this time.

I became convinced of this, as tears welled up in my eyes.

Only the sounds of the song from the club room, and my heartbeat, echoed in the corridor.

It’s slipping away. Something is noisily slipping away.

And I knew this feeling all too well.

In that house that made me anxious. In the abandoned hospital in Hachiouji. And – in that clock tower.

The feeling I felt in all of them, the feeling of the world slipping away, drifted from behind the door.

---The real thing makes you feel uncomfortable.

Yoishi’s Mitsurugi’s oft repeated words.

It felt like they were seeping in.

That’s right, I couldn’t feel any life from the one behind the frosted glass.

“…W-who is it…?”

It was the moment I whispered in a shaky voice. The shadow suddenly moved. It approached me, and then it put its hand on the frosted glass and peered intently at me through the glass. The area around her eyes were truly dark and hollow.

As I recoiled backwards, the girl spoke:

“Meow.”