Case 08: Does the Place Underground Exist, or not? (8)

I yelled at the slender figure that continued ahead of me.

“W…where the hell are we?”

“To put it bluntly, we’re in the space that lies underneath the academy.” Yoishi answered, without looking back.

The surroundings were dark, as if they had been painted over and over again several times over. The darkness rapidly continued to swallow the light emanating from the cell phone. The ground beneath my feet was slushy, and sticky at the same time. And yet, I still couldn’t see it properly even after aiming the light from the cell phone at it. Only dim light reflected back, and it wasn’t clear if it was soil or concrete. If darkness had density, then this would be the strongest one I’d ever experienced. The depth of the darkness made it almost impossible to tell if my body was still there or not, so much so that it seemed to drag my consciousness elsewhere. That’s why, I continued to speak in desperation. I continued to speak, to make sure that I was still there.

“Are you alright? I mean, what are you doing in a place like this? How long have you been here? Two days? Ah, you called me, right? You called me from this place?”

“Could you ask me one question at a time?”

“…Ah, sorry.”

I spoke with my hands on Yoishi’s arm, so as to not be left behind.

“So there really—really was an underground space beneath the school?”

Yoishi kept walking in front of me, staying silent for a while before answering briefly:

“If you say it’s there, it’s there; if you say it’s not, it’s not.”

…What the heck did that mean?

“This is without a doubt the space underneath the Koumei institute; The individual that I am, and the individual you are, definitely exist here. And the two of us are conversing here in the darkness as we walk. That is neither a hallucination nor a dream. I’ve been safe here for two days, and then I called you. I told you not to look for me. And yet, you still ended up coming.”

“…Shut up about that. In short, you jumped off that place two days ago, didn’t you?”

“That’s right.”

Anyhow, I was slightly relieved at hearing that. Just knowing where I was, the fact that Yoishi was safe, and that we could meet again like this was enough of a relief to make me want to drop to my knees. But what was going to happen from now on was a different problem altogether. How far had we walked in this deep darkness? And how much further did that darkness continue? Could we still return to the place we originally belonged?

But above that, above all else, there was a much more fundamental question that needed to be answered. Why did falling down from the school building bring me—I mean… us, to the underground place? But—

But I was unbearably terrified of asking that directly. The words wouldn’t leave my mouth; if I asked, I might end up learning something I’d have been better off not knowing.

“This is a sealed off place.” Yoishi suddenly muttered. “It seems to have been originally built as a bomb shelter during the war to accommodate a large number of students. The entrance was said to have been sealed shortly after the war.”

“How do you know all that?”

“It’s what I heard.”

Without touching on who or where she heard it from, she continued speaking.

“It was around sixty years ago. A child apparently went missing here.”

“—Huh?”

“Shortly after the war, outdoor classes were held here, and at night, they would hold a test of courage. Most of the children would go in pairs, but one of them – the one who was always bullied by the rest – was sent in alone. He cried and cried, not wanting to go inside, yet regardless, they forced him inside and shut the door. That child continued to bang on the door and screamed, ‘There’s something in here, help me!’ But everyone was too amused to care, and kept him locked in. At last, when his voice disappeared, they opened the door… to find that the boy was gone. The only thing left behind was one of his shoes.”

“…T-that, can’t be…”

“That’s right, the memorial monument behind the library is for that child.”

Yoishi’s voice oozed through the darkness as it reached my ears.

In the slimy, mushy darkness, my breathing became ragged.

Why did Yoishi know something which everyone should have forgotten by now? No, was it really Yoishi I was talking to right now? Where were we headed? And were we on the right path?

The moment I started doubting things, an endless stream of questions gushed forth from inside me. But none of those questions reached the core of my greatest fear. The thing I wanted to know above all else was a far more basic question.

“Say, Yoishi. Just answer me straight on this one.”

In a world of ear-splitting silence, I finally asked it out loud:

“Are we…still alive?”

The moment those words passed my lips, I felt something heavy collapse inside me.

Yoishi and I… we were already dead.

Everything up until now would make sense with that assumption in mind.

If we weren’t dead, there was no way to explain how I could have reunited with Yoishi, who had jumped backwards from the rooftop two days earlier, in an underground space that may or may not exist. We had been walking in the dark for quite some time now, far beyond the range of the Koumei institute.

Moreover—

This darkness was unfathomable. The darkness that should have been driven away by the light of the cellphone, yet it was so dense that it swallowed the light. Seeing the powerlessness of the light, the words ‘futile resistance’ crossed my mind. As if to suggest that hope was meaningless in the face of despair.

“Yoishi, I don’t mind, so just tell it to me straight. We’re already dead, aren’t we?”

I asked once more, unable to control my trembling voice. Yoishi stopped.

“To be precise, we’re not dead yet.”

“…No, but.”

“It would be closer to say that we’re halfway there. But that holds true for all living creatures in this world, so you can’t differentiate precisely. I know that saying that isn’t enough to convince you, so – to put things in another way. This place is like a revolving lantern.”

“A revolving lantern…? Doesn’t that mean we’re really dead?!”

“No. Like I said, we’re halfway there. The underground we walk in definitely exists. But, it’s not a place the living can reach. This is a place where this world and the world beyond begin to melt into each other. Sensing death close by, the clock in the brain ticks away at full speed and merges with the incorporeal -- with the underground space that should not exist, a buried place that should have disappeared from this world, an illusion that only exists because of someone’s strong desire for it.”

“Someone’s strong desire – you mean her?”

Ayana Takamura, right?

Yoishi nodded instantly in response.

“Say, Yoishi. That’s the thing I wanted to ask the most. I met a pale faced girl in the sports ground who was muttering incomprehensible things. She called herself ‘Takamura’. She was the one in the picture with Krishna-san, and the one who I saw reading a book in the café. In short, was that Ayana Takamura, who died five years ago? Am I starting to see ghosts too?”

“That’s not it.”

“—Huh? I mean, that’s common sense, but what I saw was not a dream. It wasn’t a case of mistaken identity or an auditory hallucination. Then, in the end, just where did Ayana Takamura disappear to five years ago? Is she still alive somewhere?”

Then, Yoishi asked me a question in return.

“Tell me, what do you think it means to live?”

“Huh?”

“The word ‘live’ is often used in the biological sense of living, and in the philosophical sense of living one’s life -- in the former sense, she is dead, and in the latter sense, she is still alive. In short, you, who can’t see the dead, met a girl, and that girl was not Ayana Takamura.”

“W…what do you mean?”

“There’s a girl named Takako Takamura in class D of first year.”

“Takako… Takamura?”

“She’s likely to be the younger sister of Ayana Takamura. Five years, ago, after Ayana Takamura’s disappearance, there was a lot of conflict between the school and the Takamura household. I don’t know the details of what happened after that – but Takako enrolled in the school this year. I can’t think of a good reason why you would want to enroll in a school where your sister disappeared, except if she was trying to investigate the mystery behind her disappearance.”

“No, wait a minute. According to Krishna-san’s story, they were step-sisters, right? In that case, isn’t it strange for her step-sister to resemble Ayana Takamura, who as I recall, resembled her mother?”

Yoishi’s response was cold:

“The exterior can change as much as you want it to, depending on what lies inside.”

“…What?”

“Meaning that she too is already a vessel for Ayana Takamura.”

I shuddered as I heard Yoishi’s mumblings about things I didn’t understand -- and raised my voice in a shout as I asked:

“H-how the hell do you know so much? Where and when did you find out about all of this? I don’t think you’re the type who would know what’s happening on campus, and you’ve been here for two days straight. Just how--?”

“Like I told you, it’s what I heard.”

“…Heard from who?”

“From the one who is dead, Ayana Takamura.”

It’s an answer I had already predicted -- but hearing it spoken out loud was enough to make my feet violently tremble.

Yoishi then pointed towards the depth of the darkness.

“We’re on our way to meet her now.”