Case 08: Does the Place Underground Exist, or not? (10)

The meaning of incarnation. A child of God is born as a human. If that was the case, does that mean Ayana Takamura became a God? No way. There’s no way that could be true. God was nothing but a man-made thing, and it existed only in the hearts of those who believe in it, and...and—

“And it’s a little more sane!”

I screamed out loud while still in pain from the gastric juices that kept rising up inside me...when suddenly—

A clear, bright voice resounds from amidst the darkness.

With a start, I swing around to see Ayana Takamura’s corpse. I focus the light of my cell phone to the body, wondering if she had come back to life. But a corpse is a corpse. It did not move. It only glowed in silence.

Hearing those words makes my stomach churn once again. I feel a violent, nauseating surge of gastric juices rising up inside me.

“W…Who’s there?”

I intended to strain out my voice, but what came out was a faint whimper.

*TL/N: Refers to Japan’s “Yutori Generation,” associated with a relaxed education policy and often stereotyped as sheltered or lacking resilience.

I couldn’t move at all.

Unable to argue back, I was simply overwhelmed by that voice. My entire body was drenched by those black words.

Dammit, this wasn’t good. Listening to this voice was not good at all. I don’t know about her being pure or not – but she was a taboo word user whose words were enough to incite the heart of the listener.

The next thing I knew – I was screaming.

I screamed recklessly, summoned my full strength, and grabbed Yoishi’s hand, who was right beside me.

“Yoishi, let’s go!”

I turned around and started running blindly back towards the path we came from. I had no idea where to run or how to escape from that voice and that mass in the darkness, but I kept running regardless, with Yoishi’s hand in mine.

However—

The voice chases me.

In total darkness, with no way to see in front, behind, above or below me, a cheerful voice closed in behind me. I felt a giggle so close to me as if it were right next to my ear – my heart started throbbing violently at the same time, and I felt a sickening premonition bubbling up from deep inside me.

Tears welled up in my eyes at hearing the voice right next to me.

“…H-hey?”

But the moment I started to look back—

“Don’t turn around.” I heard a cold voice.

“…Yoishi? It’s you, isn’t it?”

I scream as I grip her hand and continue running.

“It’s me. I’m right behind you. So don’t turn back. Just keep running.”

“O-okay.”

I didn’t know what was going on, but those words spurred me on as I kept running.

But the darkness grew even stronger. It was lukewarm, clinging to my entire body, it was as if I was engulfed in water and my body wasn’t moving as I commanded. But I still kicked the ground with as much strength as I could muster. I gripped Yoishi’s hand tightly and ran desperately in order to escape.

But—

The voice was still right behind me.

It was as if it was transmitting from my arm connected with Yoishi, reverberating in my bones, in my flesh.

“H-hey, Yoishi?”

“…”

I shouted out once more behind me.

The voice, which seemed to have echoed directly in my head up until now, was now clearly pouring into me as a real, physical voice that made the air tremble. It reached my ears as if the voice had truly gained a form, and it echoed in my surroundings – and that thought which had already taken root inside me, was difficult to shake off.

Was the person behind me right now, really Yoishi?

The cold hand I was clutching in desperation right now, did it really belong to Yoishi?

Those…were the last words Ayana Takamura left behind in the notebook. ‘Dictation -- or the research of texts or sequences of text whose meaning, when understood, can cause spiritual phenomena’. Don’t become aware of it, is what Krishna-san had said. Don’t become aware of the thing Ayana Takamura hopes for. If you become aware of it, it ends up becoming reality.

This was a trap.

The last and most important trap set up by Ayana Takamura.

But—if that was the case, then what should I do? What should I do from now on? Just looking back and seeing Yoishi’s face once should be enough to shake off this fear. However, if I look back and don’t see Yoishi there…. If I see Ayana Takamura’s waxed corpse laughing at me instead… then I surely wouldn’t be able to stand anymore.

Isn’t this—

Isn’t this just like some sort of legend?

That’s right, the story of Izanagi’s escape from the realm of the dead while being pursued by Izanami – or wait, was it the story of Sodom and Gomorrah’s destruction? Wasn’t there was also a similar story in Greek mythology? Which mythology was it from and in what form? Shit, I can’t remember. In any case, the common aspect in all of them was that you must never look back. Everyone who looks back ends up dead. That's a death flag.

Kekekekekekekeke, A voice that sounded like a creepy, monstrous bird roared in the darkness.

Even though I didn’t look back, I could feel someone behind me laughing so hard their red lips were split open.

But—But my knees were at their limits. It was impossible to keep running in this disturbed psychological state any longer. I had my feet planted firmly on the ground, but it felt like I could fall down at any moment. Without conviction in your actions, you can’t exert your true power. That’s what motivation is all about. Even for something like running away, motivation is necessary. In other words, no one can run away unless they are sure that they can escape. And besides that, if the hand I was holding right now didn’t belong to Yoishi, then all my actions would be meaningless. Having jumped off that rooftop with tears in my eyes would be completely meaningless.

Was I really holding Yoishi’s hand?

Was I on the right path in order take Yoishi back to the real world?

If not, then I had to go back. And this time, I would have to take the real Yoishi with me and run away again. And for that, I had to look back once… Look back firmly, and confirm who was behind me—

As I arrived at that thought, I started slowly tilting my head around, when—

“Let go of my hand.” I heard that voice. “That is the most rational and correct course of action.”

“…Yoishi?”

“As long as I’m with you, you’ll probably never get out of here.”

“S-stop messing around.” I yelled at her as I ran, and my tilted neck turned back to lock itself face-forward once again.

“Listen to me. I can’t deny that darkness isn’t comfortable for me.”

“Hey Yoishi! Stop bullshitting. Just run. No, it’s fine even if you walk. Just don’t stop!”

But there wasn’t any strength left in Yoishi’s arm. I couldn’t feel the strength in her grip anymore.

“You and I stand in different places. The scenery we view is different.”

Hearing that—

Unawares, I realized I had stopped in my tracks.

With our hands tied together as if they were bound, we stood there in the darkness of the endless world.

There was no color here. No sound. Not even hope. Yet there was a plethora of malice. It was so full of malice that there was no place to stand unless you surrendered yourself to it.

And this darkness was—

The world that Yoishi Mitsurugi had always been looking at.

I was trying to pull Yoishi up to the world I saw. To a brighter world. A world everyone could smile. Krishna-san always told me that it was impossible. And yet, I still somehow felt I could do it. But, in order to pull her up, I would have to go to the place she stood at. I had to be strong enough to stand in this darkness and bear the weight for both of us without being consumed by it. That—was something my entirety could not bear. And if I couldn’t do that, then I shouldn’t have gotten involved to begin with. It would have been better for me to have feigned ignorance along with the rest of my schoolmates and lived happily within the limits of what I could take responsibility for. That would have been the smart thing to do. Isn’t that how everyone should live? Becoming an adult is all about that, right? It’s about making compromises. It’s about making distinctions between what you can and can’t do. That was something a kid like me could never do. That’s why I felt so cut off in university. I couldn’t be one of them.

“I’m—”

A tear rolled down my cheek before I’d realized.

“I’m… such a brat...”

This was a step towards adulthood. And a hard fact of this world that you had to give up in order to move forward. I was cut off because I’d been stubbornly running away from that fact up until now. Because I’d been acting so childishly, I ended up getting involved in all sorts of paranormal events.

The path everyone takes. Giving up. Giving up on what you can't do, that’s what it meant to be an adult. I was enveloped in a myriad of regrets, the strength draining from my body. ‘Get yourself together,’ shouts a voice inside me, but it was quickly fading away. My fingers, which had been barely holding on to Yoishi’s fingers, were finally about to break away, when –

“That’s why – I couldn’t figure it out.”

Those faint, quivering words reached my ears.

“No matter how many days I thought, no matter how much sleep I missed, I couldn’t come up with an answer.”

“…To what?” I ask in a hoarse tone of voice, and—

“What in the world did I need to do, to be your friend?”

The moment the meaning of those words reached the bottom of my heart—

Countless fragments came rushing together all at once. I heard the scattered parts of something become whole again, with a clink. I realized I’d gotten something spectacularly wrong since the beginning.

No way, She—

No way, for so long, she’d been—

“It’s been twenty days, seven hours and forty-two minutes.”

I recalled the words Yoishi first said to me after I’d returned to Tokyo.

Twenty days, seven hours and forty-two minutes, you mean to tell me she had been thinking about it as the seconds ticked by? In front of the clock tower – when she was leaving school in the cat incident. And so incessantly that she stayed locked up in the library. She had been brooding on it with bloodshot eyes, earnestly and devotedly.

That—

In short, on that day at Tokyo station, those brief words she ended up saying to me—

Those brief words: I’ll become your friend.

She had been agonizing over how to make that small, trifling promise into a reality. She wasn’t agonizing over the fact that she could see ghosts, nor the fact that there was no salvation for those involved with ghosts – all her attention was simply devoted in searching for an answer to the existence known as ‘friend’.

But—Is such a foolish thing like that really possible?

No…no, if it’s Yoishi we’re talking about, then it’s possible. The world that Yoishi saw constantly must have been her answer. It was… this darkness. Without a doubt, she must have been unsure of herself. The pain of having a friend. That hopeless path. Friendship is an emotion that develops between equals. It’s a relationship of sharing the big and small things. That's why she was so obsessed over a world as trivial as ‘friend’. It was because she knew the pain of being alone, and the comfort of it. That’s why, she didn’t know if it was right to forcibly make the cold darkness she saw as her friend.

As I recall, in the cat incident, Yoishi pointed at me and said: ‘This person is a friend candidate of mine’. I wondered what the hell that meant at the time, but now, I finally understand. At the end of her hellish struggle, making me a ‘friend candidate’ was her point of compromise. She couldn’t have come up with that term without going through so many absurd and complicated ghost stories. At the edge of my rope, I finally realized something I shouldn’t have, and having realized it, I knew it was something I had to do, it was finally clear to me.

--She’s an idiot. She’s been such a big idiot.

“Hey, you goddamn idiot!”

I yelled – and with a sudden jerk, turned to look back.

I didn’t care if turning back in this case was a death flag or whatever. I didn’t care if the Grim Reaper was laughing right behind me. So what if the numerous gods had met with tragedy in all those legends. In the end, I was an idiot, just like her. Only a fool like me could confront the fool who had been so sincere in confronting something as trivial as becoming friends. I don't know what I don't know, and I am afraid of what I am afraid of. I want to see what I want to see, and I can't let go of what I can't let go of. However, if I lied to myself about that, then I’d stop being myself anymore, and I couldn't walk with my head held high. That was the thing that scared me above all else. That, Yoishi, is the scariest thing in this world.

I intended to say that as I turned around –

And aimed the light from my cell phone towards Yoishi.

The only thing that appeared there was Yoishi Mitsurugi's pale face. Without being enraptured by the darkness in the back – my vision was fixed on Yoishi's pitch dark eyes.

"A friend isn't such a profound thing!"

I spoke, facing the girl I couldn't feel any emotions from.

"Just having someone be there when you need them is enough."

However, despite that, she would respond in that way, right?

She would wear her depressed looking face, with a posture that suggested she was carrying something heavy, and she would say that, right?

That she stands in the bottomless darkness.

Then, I'll say it as well. I'll say it again and again.

–So what?

You’re crying there, aren't you? Aren't you in pain, crying there all by yourself? Even though you lost the feeling of fear, but didn’t it just stop reaching your brain? The truth is, you're scared, aren't you? You're so scared that you're shaking.

"In times like that, someone who stands by your side is what you call a ‘friend’."

The moment Yoishi’s eyes widened slightly at these words, I suddenly felt a strange sensation take hold over my body.

It was a wind.

A strong wind was blowing in from somewhere.

Taken aback, my eyes darted around here and there.

"A way out? Where is it blowing in from?"

With my face still messed up with tears, I gripped Yoishi's hand once more.

Suddenly, I thought I heard a sound in the wind

The voice blended in with the wind as it continued to echo.

It wasn’t the clear voice filled with confidence and arrogance from before. That voice was a quivering, frail and weak voice like a child pleading to its parent.

“Don't overlap your consciousness.”

Yoishi whispered.

“Right now, she embodies antisocial personality disorder in the truest sense of the word.”

Those words brought me back to my senses, as Yoishi continued:

“Having excessive self-esteem, and being self-centered. No remorse, no feelings of guilt, apathetic, and no empathy. They are talkative and friendly at first glance, but they cannot take responsibility for their actions – in that definition for antisocial personality disorder, there’s actually one more trait.”

“One more, you say?”

Nodding in affirmation, Yoishi added in a somewhat pained tone:

“They lie to an abnormal extent. Of course, that is just a scholar's label for an entity he doesn't understand. However, that label has taken a life of its own and become a Kotodama that has shaped Ayana Takamura's current existence. That is why we should question everything she says—”

“Then there’s no problem, is there?”

Yoishi, who was busy weaving a web of words, became bewildered at my sudden outburst.

“I mean, you said it before, didn’t you? That every single aspect of that definition applies to you.”

I spoke to the darkness - to the wind that was bursting in.

And I spoke to the dark eyed girl who stood close to me:

“if that’s the case, then I guarantee it. You, who are so bad at reading the room and so good at uncovering hidden truths, are so incapable of lying that it makes me want to tell you to at least lie a little - in other words, you're different from her.”

“Are you a genuine idiot? That’s not what I’m talking about at all--”

“That’s right, I’m an idiot. A goddamned idiot! But both you and me, and everyone else in this world is an idiot! Humans have always been foolish to a helpless degree, but we’ve managed to get this far because we accepted it and struggled with it, haven't we? Listen carefully: Me and you are both just idiots, and we’re not broken in any way. That’s why – That’s why…there’s no need for you to stay here in this dark place!”

That moment, the wind changed its direction.

And that sad voice reached my ears as if scattered by the wind.

I didn’t know why – but I was getting irritated.

An intense anger was welling up from the bottom of my stomach.

Not everyone who comes to this closed off space called school finds their purpose in life. The timing for finding it is different for each person. That is why, people lose their way. They are unsure about their actions and become lost. I can say it now: A university is a place to be lost at. I’m sure that me, Yoishi, the other students, and even Krishna-san are always lost. And probably will be for the rest of our lives, until we die. Being an adult isn’t about compromising. There are undoubtedly adults out there who don’t compromise. That’s why there’s no such thing as a boundary line between adults and children. Everyone has to struggle to the bitter end for the rest of their lives. They have to properly face up to each wall that comes their way.

That’s why, I said it.

In the wind, I yelled so loud I thought my throat would burst.

That wasn’t directed at Ayana Takamura.

It was directed at something that Ayana Takamura was trying to destroy – or rather, it was someone in this world who was trying to squeeze us into a mold. It was the society that called us carefree, the adults who fantasized about artificially creating a Mary, the intellectuals who labeled incomprehensible thoughts a personality disorder. I screamed at something solid, something firm that formed the world, something that I couldn’t move, no matter how much I struggled.

“Hey, listen to me, you goddamn idiot. I don’t know anything about religion. And I don’t have any sense of duty to some guy who died more than 2000 years ago. But I do have one thing to say in defense of that bearded carpenter. Being a messiah is definitely not an inherent trait, get it? And it’s not something that’s created by ganging up together. It’s definitely an acquired achievement! To be born in a hopeless world, to experience countless despair, and yet, to still be an idiot and somehow try to save everything while facing that infinite wall – isn’t that why he’s still called the messiah, even after 2000 years?!”

In an instant--

With a bang, the world cracked open.

Something began falling down. Something was falling down in a fierce downpour.

“…Ow.”

I picked up the thing that hit my head, and found it to be a small fish. There were frogs, nails, and even a turtle. There were countless other small animals, water, and hair frozen in ice.

“S…strange rain?”

“The darkness… is collapsing.”

Yoishi replied to me as I crouched trying to protect my head.

The falling objects soon turned into a rain of organic matter so furious that it was impossible to look up. It was melting in a way that was nothing compared to the collapse of the dream mansion that had once existed inside of me. And then I heard a twisting cry from somewhere -- this wind pressure. My balls, or rather my groin, felt like they were shrinking. I remember this one - but no, wait a minute. This is the sensation of a body plummeting somewhere. Oh crap. The ground beneath my feet was empty. There was no ground to stand on. Right now, without a doubt, I was falling down somewhere.

And at the same time, I felt the darkness slowly fading.

The cold air that seemed to reject life was changing into something warm and full of life, and various smells suddenly wafted through the air. A fierce gust of wind blew through my hair. My clothes were flapping about, and I finally remembered that I was wearing a blazer from Koumei Institute High School.

--Hey, this place is…it can’t be.

Now I was surrounded by countless neon lights shining in the darkness of the night. Lights where people live. Peaceful lights of people relaxing at home. I knew it -- that was it. Was it the place where I jumped off the school building? Was it a replay from that time? I mean, even though it was my fault for diving, wasn't this a bad ending no matter how you slice it?

That moment, I felt a slight warmth from the tip of my hand. I was gripping something. I look toward the tip of my hand – to see Yoishi Mitsurugi, whose hair was also blowing in the night sky.

“Are you alright?”

“For now.”

“Well, that’s to be expected.”

I share a nonsensical conversation with Yoishi as we both fall down.

“I mean, this is a helpless situation, right? We’re going to end up smashing the ground if we just keep going on like this.”

“Usually, a revolving lantern is the thing you see just before you die, so I guess so.”

I finally started panicking after hearing Yoishi’s calm retort.

“Oooh, Oi, stop messing around! I don’t wanna die! Do something!”

“That’s why I told you not to look for me.”

“This is not the time to complain about that! What are we supposed to do?”

“In Ayana Takamura’s case, her body disappeared because she was swallowed by the other side at this point of time. She became a rare case whose body and spirit transferred to the other side in its entirety.”

“And in our case?”

“Unless something convenient happens, we're both going to die.”

…Hey, you’re fucking kidding me.

I still have lingering attachments to this world. I haven’t even married yet, I wanted to ride a big motorcycle, and I was thinking of driving a classic American car someday. I wanted to visit the Inca ruins, I had a mountain of video games I wanted to play, movies I wanted to watch, manga I wanted to read, so many songs I wanted to listen to. All of these were my little dreams that were supposed to come true once I was out in the world and earning money. I'm a mass made up of unfulfilled, deep-seated delusions!

Teary eyed, I had intended to shout that out loud, but—

In reality, all I could do gape my mouth open.

However, in the blowing wind - Yoishi’s calm words reached my ears.

“I’m glad.”

“What the hell?”

“This way of dying -- it's too good for me.”

“—Glad? Are you fucking kidding me? I’m not glad at all!”

Wouldn’t this be a suicide? No wait, my body will be discovered together with Yoishi who disappeared two days ago. This will be a mystery that will endure to the end of time, right? The title ‘Mystery of the additional corpse: The bizarre Koumei Institute double suicide’ or something along those lines will surely delight occult fans all over the world. Ahh Dammit, how trivial: a lover of mystery stories becomes a mystery story himself in the end. This is what they mean by the phrase ‘The mummy hunter himself becomes a mummy’. Krishna-san, I’m sorry. Thank you for taking care of me. I really was an idiot for getting involved with Yoishi. But a hopeless guy like me would probably repeat the same thing again even if I were to be reborn. I can’t be the one to say that for Yoishi: I was the bigger idiot all along.

At that moment—

A crashing thud ran through my back.

My breathing stopped, and my spine crackled so much it felt like my body was falling apart.

I couldn't catch my breath fast enough and I started coughing violently

“*C…cough*”

But—wait?

I’m alive. I’m…alive?

Or, I’m dead and that’s why the pain isn’t so bad?

I was dumbfounded and thinking such thoughts, when—

“Are you an idiot?”

A nostalgic abuse fell down upon me.

My blurred vision slowly came into focus with the speaker of those words.

It was Krishna-san, dressed in the Koumei high school uniform. She looked down on me with tears welled up in her two large eyes lined up on her baby face.

“…K-Krishna-san?”

“Welcome back.”

Next to her wearing a smile of relief, was the handsome looking high school student, Yukihito Kurimoto-kun.

“…Eh? How, what happened…?”

I finally twisted my head and looked around—

Me and Yoishi were hand-in-hand, laying side-by-side on a giant gym mat.

“Thank goodness we made it in time.”

When I looked closely, I saw that Krishna-san was out of breath. It seemed that both Krishna-san and Kurimoto-kun had dragged this giant mat all the way over from the gym room.

“How…did you know we were going to fall right here?”

The tone of my voice had begun to tremble, Krishna-san smiled weakly in response.

“Hah, you have no idea – we barely made it! But it’s all thanks to you. I realized it at the last minute, all thanks to your hard work.”

“Uh…I have no idea what you mean.”

“It’s all thanks to the Fafrotskies phenomenon translation we both did together.”

“…Huh?”

“Only one type of thing rains down.”

…Ahh.

Is that so?

So that’s how it was.

That voluminous research material that got sent over from England. The strange and mysterious Fafrotskies phenomenon: On certain days, things such as frogs, fish, blood and stones would suddenly rain down from the sky, in Japan it was called ‘Strange rain’ since times immemorial.

After she went to the university, Krishna-san had gotten worried and came back to the high school together with Kurimoto-kun. There, she caught glimpse of me facing backwards as I staggered on top of the roof; She apparently called out to me in a panic but I didn’t respond to her voice – and that’s where the idea stuck her like a bolt out of the blue.

“Yoishi was there two days ago. The possibility was also high as she had left her hallway shoes there. And right now, you were standing there, Nagi-kun. You were standing on the edge of the water tower, facing backwards in the same way Yoishi had probably done just before she disappeared. That’s when I suddenly remembered. A single sentence that was written in the countless cases that we had worked so hard to translate. The commonality of what rains down is that it is of a single type. And then it came to me: What if the Fafrotskies phenomenon is a space-time shift that occurs in the psychological state between life and death, where a gap in space-time perception affects reality. That’s why I thought you had arrived at that hypothesis and were acting in that way. And I knew that in the next moment, you were going to jump down. But my intuition told me that what would fall down would be of a single type – You and Yoishi together.”

…Uhh, no. I wasn’t thinking about the Fafrotskies phenomenon at all at that time.

“That’s why I’m saying it’s all thanks to the work you did. The fact that you stayed up so many nights working on it even while you were busy with your part-time job left a strong impression on me. That's why I was so convinced. And this is the fruit of that.”

I grabbed the arm that was extended out to me and stood up, finally turning around to look in Yoishi’s direction.

Yoishi was lying down on top of the mat with her arms and legs stretched outwards. Her short skirt was turned up to an almost obscene extent, but she made no attempt to fix it. She was looking straight up at the sky, as if she were perplexed at having returned alive to this world.

“It’s forbidden...to look.”

“…Huh?”

--Look? At what?

But getting lured in, I also looked up.

A conspicuously bright star stood out in the night sky. Umm, if I remember correctly, it was Vega.

“Ah… you mean the constellation Lyra?”

Krishna-san, seemingly sapped of her strength, sat down and also looked up at the sky.

“She’s referring to the ancient legend of Izanagi and Izanami, in which it was forbidden to look back; Turning to look back or looking at forbidden things despite warning brought misfortune and sorrow. In psychology, it’s known as the Caligula effect.”

I listened to her words in a daze as Kurimoto-kun also sat down clasping his knees. By chance, we were all looking up at the night sky as if we were drawing a four-sided shape with Vega at the center.

“Similar stories are found all over the world. And there’s also one about that constellation. The constellation Lyra, which is named after the lyre given to Orpheus, the son of the sun god Apollo, who, after having lost his beloved wife, goes to Hades, the god of death, and asks him to bring her back to life.”

Ahh, I finally remember.

It was Orpheus. The guy I was trying to remember back then.

As if all the accumulated grime had been peeled off from the sky – in a rare event, a multitude of stars shone in the Tokyo night sky.

Under the starry sky, Krishna-san continued her story:

“The lyre Orpheus played in memory of his dear wife deeply moved Hades, who decided to break the rules and return his wife to him. But he warned Orpheus not to turn back until he had left the realm of the dead, and yet, Oprheus did end up looking back. He was worried whether or not his wife was really with him. And thus, his wife was returned to the realm of the dead once more, and Orpheus, drowned in sorrow, also died. It is said that Apollo, saddened by his demise, placed his lyre in the night sky.”

“The prohibition of ‘not looking’, is a portent of misfortune that is sure to come.”

Krishna-san nodded in response to Yoishi’s words.

“I see. So it's compassion from the gods that makes the shock of the inevitable unhappy ending a little easier to accept.”

I didn’t quite understand –in short, what was Yoishi trying to say would happen to me, having looked back when I wasn’t supposed to? I tilted my head in confusion, Yoishi let out a sigh and slowly got up. She gave me a glance and muttered:

“Even though I told you not to look for me...”

Sounding somewhat embarrassed this time.