Case 08: Does the Place Underground Exist, or not? (3)

By the time I got out of the infirmary, I was exhausted as hell.

The infirmary doctor was a voluptuous glasses wearing young beauty with a large bust ---- As if, it was just a good-natured old man with white eyebrows so long they covered his eyes. His mumbling made me wonder if he could understand me, but I asked him anyway. On the day Yoishi disappeared – the day before yesterday, did any female students visit him? I asked him only that much, but it took thirty minutes to get an answer out of him. His answer was that no students had come for quite a while now.

Feeling I’d reached a dead end, I was sitting on a bench next to the sports ground.

I took out my phone and checked, but still hadn’t received any messages from Krishna-san or Yukihito-kun. I sighed, and put the phone back in my pocket.

Afterwards, I continued to gaze at the sports ground in a daze.

The grounds beyond the goalpost spread far and wide. Under the clear blue sky, a pleasant breeze blew past me. I stretch out my legs towards the wide-open space.

“Say, Yoishi…”

I muttered, as if asking the wind.

“Just where the hell did you disappear to? Everyone’s worried about you, so why don't you show up already?”

Of course, muttering such things wouldn’t make the situation any better.

There were a few students eating lunch on the distant benches, but maybe because it was still early in the lunch break, there was no one in the field. In a little while perhaps, it might be filled with people who liked playing soccer, basketball and other physical activities –

But… It really is vast.

Are sports grounds for a private school supposed to be this luxurious? I looked around once again, and noticed. Ahh, that’s right. This is the equivalent of two grounds. The sports ground reserved for the high school, and the number two sports ground shared with the university – This large, vast space is the view of both combined.

And speaking about sports ground number two, there’s that clock tower. I could barely see it from here, but just looking at the distant clock tower a.k.a gym equipment room, it sent a chill up my spine.

I recall the thing that peeked out of the hole of the clock tower dial back then. I recall that gaze I felt had followed me since then – that is to say, the gaze of that disappeared senpai – Ayana Takamura.

“Argh, just stop. Just stop thinking about it.”

That’s right, as I rubbed my knees in a panic –

All of a sudden, I felt a strange breeze. A lukewarm and unpleasant breeze. A stagnant air that blew from a closed place that hadn’t been ventilated for years. The moment it hit my cheeks, I felt an unpleasant sweat trickle down my back.

Ahh, this is...

This is a feeling that I'd already experienced more than enough times. In the house that made me anxious, in the abandoned hospital in Hachioji, in the clock tower, in the room at dawn and the library – it wasn’t so much of a feeling that something unworldly had mixed into the world I lived in, rather, it was more like I myself, had become mixed into another world, into something darker and extremely unsettling, into something that permeated from the world beyond.

“Say, did you know?”

All of a sudden, I hear a woman’s voice, causing me to recoil in fear.

“There is a hole.”

“…Huh?”

“Deep beneath the school. A large, vast, space exists. An immense cavern, said to be the remains of a wartime air-raid shelter, as well as serving as a weapons depot for the former military of the Japanese empire.”

A young voice – but rather than a clear young girl’s voice, it sounded like that of a dignified young man.

Before I realized, that voice belonged to someone who was sitting besides me, but—

For some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to turn their way.

Sweat continued to run down my cheeks. The hands on my knees remained frozen, unable to move. No, I could still feel the strength in my fingertips. If I were to force them, they would, but I felt an invisible pressure from right next to me that seemed to forcibly block them in place.

“Up until now, no one has confirmed its existence, nor do we know if it really exists. Regardless, the rumor of its existence has continued to be spoken of in every era, without fail. The rumored existence of that hidden underground space has taken on a life of its own, and even now, continues to spew miasma at the world up above.”

I didn’t know who those words were directed at, but as they continued to be spoken, I barely managed to move my eyes in that direction. From the corner of my eyes, I caught a glimpse of the Koumei high school uniform, and a black skirt. And her thighs were white – as white as the belly of a dead fish. Was she a student from the affiliated high school? But from there, I just couldn’t look up to see her face.

“Why is it hidden, I wonder? Where is the entrance? And, why is the entrance sealed? Is it because entry is forbidden, or--?”

I imagined the rest of those words, and a shiver ran down my spine. That --- reminded me of what Yoishi had said in the clock tower.

She asked me as we climbed the stairs of the clock tower.

『To keep people like you out, obviously.』I answered, and she shook her head in response, 『That’s not it.』

Her dark colored eyes shone, as she declared:

--There’s another purpose in keeping the entrance sealed.

--It’s to keep whatever is present inside from getting out.

“Does the underground place exist, or not?”

Disregarding my presence – the girl in the corner of my vision continued muttering.

“If you think it's not there, it's not. If you think it is, then it is.”

The wind turned cold. Even though the sun had been shining so brightly up until a while ago, it was now extremely cold. A penetrating cold enshrouds my feet.

“Did you see it, too?”

The girls’ sudden question reverberates directly inside my head.

“That thing in the clock tower.”

I shook my head vigorously in response to the cold, condescending voice.

--I didn’t see it. I didn’t see it at all.

I desperately whisper in my head, but I couldn’t speak it out loud.

“What…did you see?”

Her voice echoed as it made my stomach tighten.

Back then, in that clock tower – I definitely did feel something. When the door of the second floor opened, I felt some kind of slimy presence pass by me. But that moment, Yoishi told me:

With that, I shut down my mind as quickly as I could. I blocked everything out so that I wouldn’t perceive anything. I disconnected my conscious mind from everything. So, I didn't see it.

“…Hmm.”

The girls voice rang out from somewhere.

“Well, that was lucky for you.”

The ground was shaking – but I realized, that it was actually my own knees that were shaking.

And I finally became convinced.

The swallowing gaze pressing down on me from my right-hand side. A gaze with a seemingly voracious appetite, emanating from a parched presence akin to that of a summer haze. The owner of that gaze that gazed at me through the hole in the clock tower, through the cat, and the one that continued to gaze at me in recent times. That hole-like deep, dark void.

That was, at this moment, right next to me.

My body stiffened as my knees trembled with fear, I tried to hold them down with both hands, and meekly raised my voice, as if to escape the fear.

“W-who, are you….?”

The surrounding air trembled slightly. Did I hear laughter?

“T A K A M U R A.”

Hearing the name as it danced in the wind and reached my ears –

I realized where I was.

It was dark there. There was only an endless darkness, clinging over everything. And then, I felt the fragments of the mystery that had been slowly accumulating in my mind slowly coming together.

On that day in the club room, Yoishi had said it. She spoke of Krishna-san not being the subject of Ayana Takamura’s experiment. In contrast, I had continued to feel someone’s gaze since the clock tower incident. I was continually being gazed at from inside the cat, and I ended up being warned in the ‘Rororo’ incident by Kouhei Niijima, who had committed suicide. He had told me to run away, because I was being watched.

Ahh – I’m such an idiot, I finally realized it, after all this time.

I had been trying my best not to think about it because I was afraid -- but the ‘answer’ was suddenly right in front of me.

It was ‘me’ all along.

The subject of Ayana Takamura’s experiment – was me.

What kind of experiment was it? And why me? I had no idea. In any case, there was an overwhelming darkness beside me. A blackness that had been extracted and concentrated many times over was right there. There was no doubt about it. The girl who had supposedly disappeared from this world five years ago – Ayana Takamura, had appeared right beside me. There was no way she was still alive. If she was alive, there was no way she would still be wearing the same uniform she was wearing five years ago. She wouldn't be giving off this rotten smell like she was now. If that was the case – then…

Was she a ghost?

But, despite the warning alarms that were going off in my shaken and confused brain, I barely managed to grasp something. This girl – just now, didn’t she ask me, ‘Did you see it, too? By ‘too’, she meant someone else…Did she mean Yoishi??

“Y-you—”

With that, the strength finally returned to my body. Mustering all my courage, I succeeded in making my vocal cords tremble once more.

“Do you know about Yoishi? Where Is she right now—”

The moment I asked, the girl chuckled quietly, and stood up. Being drawn in to her movement, I ended up moving my face up. And I saw it. The tall girl in the wind with her hands in her skirt pockets, staring off somewhere.

It – really was the girl from back then. The one who continued to gaze at me in the coffee shop, the same first year high schooler who was smiling in the picture with Krishna-san. As if she had experienced a five-year time slip, her shoulder-length hair danced in the wind, and she smiled slightly, her distinct white face like that of a westerner.

“U….”

I looked directly into her eyes, right into her smile, and I froze. I felt some something broken in her smile. It was as if she was trying to make another expression, but the muscles in her face wouldn't listen, and it ended up twisting into a smile. It was as if she was looking at me, and yet, it was as if she was not. It was as if her gaze had an eeriness that penetrated straight through me, at something beyond me.

But -- but, was this a ghost?

Does a ghost have clear expressions like this?

She had legs. The folds on her skirt were lined up just right.

She was definitely pale, and her presence was like that of a summer haze, but the texture of her flesh-and-blood body was one that you could reach out and touch.

--Was this really a ghost?

Eventually, the girl turned away.

She started walking by herself towards the school building. I yelled out to her: ‘Hey!'

“Wait. What about Yoi—”

The girl stopped a few steps away, and slowly looked back.

She turned her pale white face towards me, and her dark, deep black eyes spoke as if to say.

“She… is no longer alive.”