Case 06: Rororo (8)

I was standing there, pumping oxygen into my lungs as hard as I could. My knees hurt like hell, probably because I hit them hard on the corner of the table when I left. While rubbing my knee, I continued to repeat the process of filling my lungs with fresh oxygen and expelling it. I felt as if I had just completed an underwater dive, probably because I had been unconsciously holding my breath the whole time. I think that was because I felt like I was letting something nasty into my body just by breathing while in the library.

“…”

I thought I heard a muffled voice close to me, and when I slowly turned around, there was something there. At first, I thought it was a black garbage bag, but it was a human being. Sitting on the bare ground, looking miserable with their head dropped down.

“Y—Yoishi…?”

The figure looked up slightly at my voice.

Her long hair moved smoothly, and her pale face stood out under the moonlight.

Yoishi Mitsurugi looked absentminded, as she turned her beautiful, cold face like that of a western doll towards me. And then, moving her lips slightly, she said:

“It got taken.”

“…Huh?”

“That book. Even though I was the one who found it.”

Those words finally brought me back to my senses, and I looked around in a panic.

In the pitch-dark university courtyard, there was only silence; Not a single person in sight. Besides the sound of insects chirping from somewhere, it was intensely quiet.

“What happened to that kinagashi wearing bastard?”

Yoishi looked at me as if she were clicking her tongue.

“He vanished.”

“Vanished?”

“Like I told you, he stole the black book from me and left somewhere.”

…T-T-that foxy bastard.

He's the type of guy who scares people to death, and when he gets what he wants, he says goodbye with no explanation. Isn’t he an adult? Isn’t he supposed to be a fully-fledged member of society? Is he really worthy enough to be Krishna-san’s mentor? I was shaking my dizzy head and moaning bitterly out loud at the same time, “That’s right”, Yoishi said, agreeing with me.

“It's so deplorable to rob a girl of a book she hasn't read. He should have at least asked if he could borrow it after I’d finished reading it. It's really irritating when he said, ‘Adieu’, and left."

“No, about that...”

I interjected, being as fed up as I was.

“You’d die if you read it, okay? Even If you've already got one foot in the world beyond, you'd get dragged there in the blink of an eye.”

Yoishi silently turned her dark eyes to me. As expected, her expression seemed to be saying, ‘What's the problem with that?’ I sighed and asked her once again:

“Well anyway, you helped me out back there – but, why were you there in the first place?”

“Why, you ask? I was reading, of course.”

“No, it was dark. I mean, the library was already closed.”

Yoishi stood up unsteadily. She lightly brushed the dust off her skirt and walked feebly through the dimly lit courtyard toward the main gate.

“I was in there since lunchtime, trying to read a book.... When I finally opened the book, I couldn't concentrate. The thoughts that were stuck in my head were interfering with my thinking, and each letter in the book looked like nothing more than a pattern. I had no choice but to continue reading, and before I knew it - I fell asleep.”

“Y-you fell asleep?”

“It was quite a deep sleep, actually.”

“No…just wait a minute. You were asleep all that time? From noon till now -- in there?”

Yoishi nodded in silence.

…No, ughh. What’s up with the security in this library? You mean to tell me they just locked up the facility even when there was a person asleep on the reading chair? What about the entry record? What was the point of me going to all the trouble of sneaking in without leaving a trace? And having to endure the urge to urinate for so long in the locker?

“I woke up a few times, but I hadn't been sleeping well lately, so I figured it was fine. But then, just as I was getting the deepest sleep I'd had in a long time, you guys started making a racket.”

Yoishi muttered somewhat resentfully, but there was still something persistent that was bothering this girl. So that’s why she didn't notice anything when I was having such a scary time? Oh, that’s right. After all, ghosts being everywhere is normal for this girl’s world, and I don't know what it is, but her problems are probably all that matter to her in that world. Other problems are just trivial to her. I guess she just happened to wake up and saw me there, teary-eyed and upset.

I thought that as I glared at the back of Yoishi, who was walking ahead of me in a daze.

It’s a characteristic of the antisocial personality disorder Sako spoke of. I think it was about having excessive self-esteem, being self-centered and a lack of empathy, or something like that. It's a trait that fits perfectly with the psycho that went to the trouble of putting a book in the library that was made up of those taboo words, and it's a trait that’s terribly true of Sako himself -- But still, in some respects it reminds me of this black-haired girl walking right in front of me.

“That’s the definition espoused by Robert D. Hare, isn’t it?”

Yoishi suddenly stopped in her tracks and looked back.

Damn it. It seems I unconsciously muttered it out loud. Slightly embarrassed, I asked:

“You know about it?”

Yoishi nodded, and added:

“Indeed, every single aspect of that definition applies to me.”

I was at a loss for words when she easily admitted it to me.

“I’ve always felt constantly inconvenienced by the insular atmosphere of this school.”

“No…you see...”

I cleared my throat and tried to change the subject.

“I don't know if it was a sociopath or what, but is it true that there was such a dangerous person in this school after all? And did they put a strange book in our library? Why did they do that? What was their objective?”

Yoishi looked at me closely and then… asked me:

“Do you really want to know?”

Her pale face stood out under the pouring moonlight, and it terrified me—

Behind Yoishi, I watched the night sea spread out endlessly.

The boundary between the sky and the horizon is unclear, an infinite world spreads out in darkness.

And somewhere in that limitless expanse, an unfathomable presence lay hidden.

The incomprehensible - people sometimes call it the occult. I've always been thrilled by the transcendental atmosphere of ghosts, UMAs[16], and out of place artifacts[17], but this time, for the first time, I had terrible goosebumps at the very thought of human beings. It was fear of an act more twisted than what the word "prank" could even begin to cover: Mixing in a book that would kill you if you read it amongst ordinary books.

For example, digging a small pit on a snowy day to lure your friends in. I used to do that when I was a kid. It was fun, and I used to roar with laughter when my friends fell in. But that didn’t have an iota of murderous intent. It's because I wanted to see my fallen friend jump out with a smile on his face. I couldn’t possibly imagine it my heart pounding in excitement at the possibility of someone dying.

That's what I was thinking, when –

“Predator, serial killer, antisocial personality disorder. Those words are just labels.” 

Yoishi muttered in a whisper.

“It's easy to dismiss them as abnormal but, statistically speaking, in every age, there's always been at least one person in every class who has a desire to destroy the status quo. The fact that the probability of their appearance does not decrease in any era has even led to a belief among some who think it is a manifestation of population control genes. People who hold thoughts beyond comprehension are simply classified and tagged as such by those around them."

"No, I don't know about tags and labels, but that's still not normal. Laughing at other people's misery, doing all that just for the fun of it, that's--"

Suddenly, it hit me.

No...no. Isn't that the true nature of human beings?

Haven't humans always been irredeemable, self-righteous creatures filled with malice? I recalled the arrogance of the human species in removing the reproductive functions from their pets for their own convenience, something I had thought about during the Miiko incident. At the same time, my conscience began to denounce me for my own past mistake. The mistake of abandoning the proposal I had made after being broken hearten, 'Look who's talking', it mocked.

"That's right."

Yoishi nodded slightly.

"People are selfish, but they also have a hypocritical mental circuit known as a conscience, which subconsciously creates a sense of atonement for the things they have trampled upon. It can be said that this creates ghosts in the minds of people in every generation. And perhaps the taboo words embedded in the book 'Rororo' have the function of raising that negative circuit to the extreme. Those who read it would be caught unaware and endlessly be made to believe that their lives have no worth, and finally, their own conscience would kill them."

Yoishi kept muttering such things in a detached manner, but --

I realized, after all this time...

"Huh--Wait a second! What, what about me? Is that thing gone? You said I'd been possessed for a long time, right? It's gone already, right?"

Yoishi just stared at me with her emotionless eyes--

And abruptly turned away and started walking again.

"...Hey. Just wait a second. You're not going to deny it?"

As I stared at Yoishi's distant figure, I realized something even more important.

Come to think of it, I had, without warning, ended up seeing that girl in that coffee shop, and without being dragged into something by Yoishi. Even now, if I close my eyes, I can clearly imagine the entire shape of her face behind my eyelids. If she was a ghost, then that means... it can't be--

"It can't be…"

My feet stopped moving then and there. I desperately clapped my knees, which were about to collapse, but I couldn't take one more step. The dark sea of night behind Yoishi immersed my feet. The rough sound of the waves enveloped me from somewhere.

"It can't be, does that mean... that I've been able to see ghosts for some time now...?"

If you hang out with a psychic, your ability to sense the supernatural will strengthen. Krishna-san once said that the ill-natured feeling of 'knowing' makes people connect with the world beyond. So, does that mean that since I arrived to Tokyo and went to places with Yoishi Mitsurugi, that I've become tinged with her strong magnetism relating to ghosts, is that what it means?

"There's one thing I forgot to mention."

From the darkness beyond, came Yoishi's voice.

Looking up wearily, in the dim darkness up ahead, the unearthly shadow spoke in a voice that sounded like a wind chime.

"There's something I misunderstood."

"...Huh?"

"Their world always surpasses my imagination, and the more I peek into it, the more I realize the depth of its darkness. Their words are muffled and incoherent, and I couldn't understand them no matter how many times I heard them."

--So, what does that mean?

"Now that I know, it doesn't make things any better, but - the word that dead young man was muttering was not 'Rororo'."

--Stop it! Don't listen to her anymore! Cover your ears and get away from this girl right now! Before I could even react to the warning coming from the back of my mind, her voice filled with ecstasy reached my ears.

"It wasn't 'Rororo', it was --- 'Run away'."*

With those words spoken with joy—

Yoishi walked off into the darkness. My feet were stuck as if sewn to the ground, and I stared at her disappearing figure for what seemed like forever. For an instant, I caught a glimpse of what I thought was the emaciated dead clinging to Yoishi’s back with their thin hands -- I quickly rubbed my eyes.

Alone, I stood there, petrified, even as the darkened university building came back into view.

Suddenly, I felt a sense of relief as the strength drained from my body. I knew the truth behind this numbing feeling of pleasure, it was as if I had finally overcome a deadly threat to my life.

“How absurd…”

I whispered, my voice quivering.

The idea that she and I were war comrades was downright absurd.

Right now, from the bottom of my heart, I was... truly relieved that Yoishi had disappeared from my sight.

But the ground I was standing on was a gentle slope. And I knew was that if I made any mistakes from here on, the slope would become irreversibly steep.

“I can’t… do this anymore.”

I tell myself, wiping the tears from my eyes with both hands.

She and I were confronting completely different things. I selfishly believed I had finally understood her, but I had completely failed to grasp her true nature. After all is said and done, Yoishi and I were two beings who lived in worlds that could never intersect. I still had my feet firmly planted in this world, and even if I plant one foot in the other side, she already stands with both feet there.

It’s not… too late.

If I continue walking with her, the path ahead will surely lead to the world beyond. I'm not prepared for that yet. I still want to live in the warmth of this world.

I turned to face the direction opposite from where Yoishi had disappeared, and kept on running without looking back.