Case 06: Rororo (2)

What the hell is that ghost with the striped shirt?

And what did he mean when he muttered the word ‘Rororo’?

All of this remained a mystery, and several days passed.

I haven’t met Yoishi since then. As always, she left me with nothing but cryptic and creepy information. And of course, she didn’t even say a word of thanks for the treat. No, that would have been fine, but what about this unconvinced, hazy feeling I'm left with? To keep that note with the strange words written on it, or to throw it away, either choice is terrifying.

However, that afternoon – this time, I ended up finding a notebook.

The place I discovered it was in a large common room on the second floor of the university's student hall. It was placed on a round table by the window, sitting there all by itself. I was helping with posting updates on "Ikaigabuchi" at the Beatnik lab during my lunch break, and missed lunch as a result. I had free time right around third period when class got cancelled, and was washing down some Anpan with milk – when that notebook strangely allured me.

I looked around in all directions. The common room was exceptionally large. It was so large that many of the clubs that didn’t have their own club rooms used it as a gathering spot. But at that time, perhaps because it was the middle of third period, there were only a few groups of students huddled together in sparse numbers. No one was near that table by the window side.

After thinking about it, I stood up and moved my chair next to the table. And I took the notebook in hand. It was an elegantly looking, dark-red colored notebook. It was sold for around 300 yen at the campus store. But when I opened it and saw the first page, I was horrified. It was written in the same meticulous handwriting.

“…Damn it, stop messing with me!”

Getting flustered, I threw away the notebook, and looked behind me.

Of course, there was no one there, that guy wearing the striped shirt Yoishi spoke of might have been there, but I couldn’t sense his presence. And yet, even if he keeps placing creepy things everywhere I go, there’s nothing I can do for him.

“Hey, if you have something to say, go to Yoishi. I can't hear or see what you're saying.”

I must have looked like some kind of lunatic to the other students, muttering such things by myself. But I couldn’t help it -- what scares you, scares you. I was about to get up and leave – when I caught a glimpse of it.

On the last page of the notebook I threw away, there was a name – ‘Kouhei Niijima’.

Yoishi was right.

After that I proceeded to the student affairs office, informed them about the notebook I had picked up and tried inquiring about the guy called ‘Kouhei Niijima’. The staff member who dealt with me was a man over forty, who gave me a strange look at first, then changed to a somber one, and informed me. That student is no longer with us, he spoke in a hushed tone of voice. “Because he passed away last month.”

Judging from his manner of speaking, Kouhei Niijima apparently committed suicide. Of course, he didn't give me any details as to why or where. I had no way to ask any more questions. I said a word of thanks and left the student affairs office at a loss.

That note really had been written by a person who had died.

There were signs that a few pages inside the notebook had been ripped out, and that matched with the first note I had found. The question was, why did it manifest in front of me in its entirety? And the words Yoishi had mentioned: ‘Rororo’, what did they mean?

In the early afternoon, I sat down on the bench in the courtyard. There, I opened the weathered, dark-red notebook. Rather than using it as a schedule notebook, Kouhei Niijima seemed to be have been using it more to write casual notes. Passing my eyes over the descriptions on the first page, I found out that he was a freshman like me, belonging to the Japanese Literature Department. His hometown was Hirosaki in Aomori, and on the first few pages, he laments endlessly about being homesick and how he couldn’t make any friends.

Before I realized, I had become absorbed in reading the notebook.

Kouhei Niijima was working part-time at a convenience store. He couldn’t hide his peculiar Aomori accent, which often made the customers laugh, but troubled him. He seemed to be somewhat introverted, and didn’t hang out with any of his colleagues from work. Even in the university’s linguistic class, he didn’t have any people he was close to, and was always hanging out at the library. The books he had read and his brief impressions on them were jotted down. I knew about Osamu Dazai and Shuji Terayama, but when it came to Yojiro Ishizaka, Ujaku Akita, and Zenzo Kasai, well, I wasn’t particularly a literary enthusiast so I didn’t know those names. According to the description, apparently all the authors were from Aomori. As if he were nostalgic for his hometown, Kouhei Niijima seemed to have collected and read their writings.

His day was almost entirely made up of waking up at the boarding house, going to university, and either going to his part-time job, or spending time in the library. There was no account of him going anywhere for fun, or talking with anyone. Just the things he ate, and the books he read, that was all. With the impressions I got from his meticulous handwriting, the loneliness of his life was vividly depicted in my mind. I myself felt anxious the first few weeks after I moved out of Shizuoka. There were so many people in the city, and I didn't know any of them. I was always threatened that Tokyo would be a scary place to live, and in fact, looking at the unending crowds in front of the station even at night, I felt that time passed differently than back home. However, I had ‘Ikaigabuchi’. A group of like-minded people who spent twenty-four hours gleefully discussing some paranormal thing or another. Even if I didn’t get along well with anyone in my class, and even if I didn’t belong to any club, as long as I could read the bizarre stories there, my loneliness would be alleviated. But Kouhei Niijima didn’t seem to use the internet, and although he had a cell phone, he hardly ever seemed to use it. I guess books were his only friend -- I sighed. Well, I guess there is meaningfulness in spending the first period of your life with nothing but solitude and literature as your friend, but I don’t think I could do it. If you kill yourself after all, that meaningfulness will never flourish.

As I continued flipping through the pages, feeling somewhat depressed, in the middle of the notebook, I found a page with a single line written.

『I met her today.』

There was just one line on that page.

In the dull accounts of the notebook, that line out stood out.

Hey, hey, hey, is it suddenly turning into a love story?

Even if that’s the case, these notes are from someone who committed suicide. I thought it would continue to get darker and increasingly depressing, but that line captivated my interest. However, mentions of the ‘girl’ didn’t increase from there on. There were only occasional mentions of greeting her, or making eye contact. I found myself rooting for Kouhei Niijima the more and more I read. Like, ‘Hey, hurry up and talk to her already!’ Even in his somewhat detached writings, I felt that Kouhei Niijima was taken in by that ‘girl’. Finally, after a few pages, I saw an account that said that the girl had an interesting way of thinking. Then it concludes by saying that she is indeed an extremely interesting girl. I was already skimming vigorously ahead, chasing mentions of the ‘girl’. At any rate, she seemed to be a slender, beautiful girl, and she seems to be intelligent -- but the whole picture is a bit vague. It was hard to infer whether Kouhei Niijima was indifferent or whether the girl had no distinctive features. Then, without any particular event happening with her, the accounts continued in a matter-of-fact manner, until I finally landed on a blank page. When I turned the page, I found that one had been torn out.

“…What the hell is this?”

I uttered, and then remembered: ‘Oh, right’, I took out the two scraps of paper from the notebook I had picked up earlier.

I matched the torn parts to the notebook, and it looked like that the latter scrap I picked up with 『I see, The book was the origin.』had been written first. But when I compared the contents of that scrap of paper to the contents of the previous page, it was quite incomprehensible. I mean, the notebook is like a bunch of random memos jotted down, so it’s filled with parts which don’t make much sense, but I felt that the appearance of that ‘book’, was too sudden. Continuing a few pages after that, the book didn’t make an appearance again, it just alternated between the girl, his part-time job, and the food he ate. And then, another ripped page appeared. I matched the remaining note, 『Am I the one reading the book?』It matched perfectly.

However, that too was incomprehensible. Neither the book’s title nor his impressions were written down. And that was Kouhei Niijima’s last entry. Only about a third of the notebook remained, the rest of which was blank.

“The book is the origin… the origin of what?”

I closed the notebook, and looked up.

Before I had realized, the palm of my hand had gotten sweaty, I wiped it on my jeans.

I was so immersed in the world of the notebook to the point where I had forgotten where I was for a moment.

Nearby, on the lawn of the campus courtyard, a group of students were laughing loudly. They had a lot of tennis bags next to them, so I surmised that they belonged to a tennis group. The bitterness etched in the notebook, and the cheerful laughter of the group members was in complete contrast to each other.

And -- that just made Kouhei Niijima's loneliness all the more apparent.

What lay in the palm of my hand, was the life of a man who was already dead. It was the fragment of a man who, until a month ago, was living, worrying, eating, and reading.

Kotodama – why did Yoishi say those things? But she was right. There was still a hint of him in here. If you’d open the notebook, his presence would linger in the air. But Kouhei Niijima, there might be something you want to say, but, It’s impossible for me. I’m a special kind of coward. I've had this happen to me before, and I suffered greatly for getting too emotionally involved.

“…I’m sorry.”

Apologizing, I softly put down the notebook on the bench.

Immediately, I stood up and walked away without looking back. I shoved my hands in my pockets, and took a few steps as I were running away, and then – a voice called out to me.

“Hey, you there.”

It was an overly-familiar voice, one I‘d heard somewhere before.

“You forgot your notebook.”

…Damn it. I was found out.

With those sorts of regrets, I turned around--

And there was a somewhat familiar figure of a tall and lanky man. He was dressed in a cool, indigo-dyed kinagashi, and with a smile on his white, smooth face, he was looking at me.

“Ah, you’re—”

“Yo, it’s been a while.”

The man approached me with a grin, picked up the dark-red notebook I'd intentionally left behind on the bench, and held it out to me.

“What a coincidence to see you again.”

His white face was set like a kabuki stage actors’, and he was stroking his thin, shallow beard. And his seemingly friendly smile reminded me of something akin to physiological disgust. I felt a chill, as if I had seen a fox in human form during broad daylight.

That’s right, it was the man who had once guided Yoishi and me to the world of dreams. He seemed to be Krishna-san’s teacher, a dweller of the world beyond.

“W-what are you doing in my university?”

The man in Japanese clothing replied with a grin as he kept his hands in his pockets.

“What? I'm just here looking for something.”

“Something?”

“A book.”

My heart thudded painfully at those words.

“I’m searching for a mysterious book in this school. It’s called ‘Rororo’ -- and it seems, if you read it, you’ll die.”

His words -- caused my vision to go blurry.