Case 10: The Invisible Friend (2)

“What kind of person had this in their possession, I wonder?”

Yoishi eyes lit up as she asked, and after we gulped down the fried rice that had already turned cold, we rode together on the mama bike and headed towards the rental shop.

We arrived at the rental shop, a complex attached to a video game and book department. It was crowded with customers on a Sunday. I stopped my mama bike at the entrance and locked it, while Yoishi quickly headed inside towards the reception. I entered the shop belatedly and watched from a short distance, the young male shop assistant was apologizing profusely and seemed to be asking if she would like to borrow it again.

“I don't have time for that anymore.”

Yoishi shook her head, and then pressed the apologetic-looking employee, “Instead, I'd like you to tell me who rented this film before me.”

However, despite it being a mistake on the employees’ part, he refused, saying “I’m afraid we can’t do that.” Well, that was obvious as it was personal information. Yoishi persistently nagged him for a while, saying, "Do something about that", but the shopkeeper just bowed his head and refused to do so.

Eventually, Yoishi left the reception area, and I followed her.

As I approached Yoishi, who seemed to hide behind a pillar, she spoke:

“We'll see what happens here for a while. That employee is bound to contact the previous borrower to retrieve the original disc.”

“I see.”

We killed time by pretended to see a trailer of a new film on display on the monitor there, while keeping an eye on the employee from earlier, he soon started making a phone call somewhere while looking at his computer screen. After staring intently at the fingertips of the employee pressing the buttons on the push-button phone, Yoishi took out her phone and inputted some numbers. She then pressed the call button after the employee had finished talking and hung up.

--This girl could actually be a detective in the future.

I watched her in amazement, but as Yoishi said “Hello”, I involuntarily held my breath.

“Sorry for disturbing you once more. I’m calling from the video rental store again.”

I drew closer to Yoishi and leaned my ear into the phone to catch the voice from the other side.

〈…I told you I can't come today.〉

The voice from the other side seemed to belong to a woman. She spoke in a somewhat muffled tone of voice.

“Yes, I understand. There was something we forgot to mention – actually, the film has been booked by another customer, and if it's all right with you, we'd like to come and retrieve it now, so may we come over to your house?”

〈………………..〉

The woman on the other side briefly went silent as if troubled by the request.

However, she eventually consented with a small, muffled〈…Understood〉, “Is this address alright?” Yoishi asked as she gave her a random address.

Thereupon, the other party must have said 'no', and Yoishi immediately apologized.

“We’re sorry, it seems the address has been entered incorrectly in the system. Can you please inform us of the correct one once more?”

After that, Yoishi quickly jotted down the correct address she managed to wring out of the woman on a piece of paper. All I could do was watch on nervously.

“You’re… amazing.”

I said that to Yoishi after she hung up,

“Let’s go.” said Yoishi, and we immediately set off.

The address led us to a residential area near Shakujii Park, far north of Kichijoji Station. The area was densely populated with rather small dwellings via several small alleys, making it difficult to get a sense of direction.

Yoishi checked the address on the telephone pole with the paper in one hand, and continued walking. I followed behind, pushing my mama bicycle.

“Say. It’s alright to visit that house, but, what are we going to do about that DVD the person mistakenly put in there instead of the film? Isn’t it still back at the shop?”

“You receive the film and return it to the shop as the shopkeeper doesn’t know your face, and you officially receive that DVD instead. You then return it to this person again.”

“Ah…. I see.”

“If you do that, we can talk to that person twice, and watch it once more.”

“If possible, I don’t wanna see that again.”

As I told her that.

“It’s here.”

Yoishi stopped in her tracks.

It was— one of the small developments in a residential area. Strangely enough, even though it was broad daylight, the house seemed dimly lit. The plot of about 83 square meters was surrounded by a wall, and along the inside of the wall was covered thick with many dogwood trees that had not been touched for quite some time now. The nameplate on the rusty iron gate read 'Iizuka'. Peering inside through the spider-webbed gateposts, I saw a doghouse by the front door. But there was nothing inside – or rather, the entrance to the kennel was boarded up and nailed shut, which felt creepy.

“Huh… what a creepy house.”

I turned back to see Yoishi had her lips pursed together, her pale face seemed to be even paler. She looked like she was trying very hard to endure.

“H...hey, are you gonna throw up? Is that it?”

--Shit. I had forgotten to bring along a plastic bag since we had left in a hurry.

As I fumbled around both my pockets:

“…It’s alright.”

Yoishi muttered as she staggered to the sooty intercom next to the gate and pressed the button. A chime rang out from inside the house, and eventually a quiet voice came through the intercom speaker, “…Yes.”

Yoishi had a deathly expression on her face and didn’t say anything, so I had no choice but to answer in her stead.

“W…we’re from the rental shop that called earlier! We’re here to pick up the film!”

The front door opened inaudibly – And a woman who looked to be in her thirties appeared.

“…Please come in.”

“S-sorry to disturb you.”

Leaving me aside, I thought that Yoishi, dressed in a high school uniform would be nothing but suspicious, but the woman didn’t seem to care about that at all.

We took off our shoes at the entrance, went past the creaking, dimly lit corridor and were shown into a 10 sqm living room, where we sat down in front of a wooden table as indicated by the woman.

“I’ll bring some tea.”

While the woman was in the kitchen, I managed to get a look around the room. The ceiling wasn't so high, and an old, worn-out carpet lay spread on the tatami. There were several stains on the carpet, probably from children spilling on it.

Come to think about it, there were a number of stains on the tatami in the living room of my parent's home. I guess that’s how it is in a house with small children. However, it was as silent as the grave inside the house, as if there wasn't anyone else present besides that woman.

Nonetheless, it was dark.

Despite the curtains of the sash leading to the small courtyard being open, a gloomy darkness clung to the room. Was the room just bad at receiving sunlight? The warm winter sunshine continued to fall outside in the courtyard, but the room received none of that blessing.

"Sorry to have kept you waiting."

The woman eventually brought two teas and an open DVD.

"...Here, I'm sorry. I ended up returning it with the wrong disc."

"Ah, yes, that seems to have been the case."

I said that while taking the disc from the woman, when "...Well then", she looked at me in the face.

Her emaciated face… shocked me. I checked her appearance carefully once more. Her face, without any makeup, was pale and had several deep wrinkles. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her lips looked parched. Even though she wasn't that old, there were many white streaks running through her shoulder-length hair.

--She was dead, while alive.

I shook my head in a panic as I suddenly thought such insolent things.

"Ah, ummm - - About the DVD you mistakenly put in. Hmm... that is..."

I looked to my side, puzzled as what to say.

"I have a question."

Yoishi, who had been quiet all this while, suddenly spoke up.

"Are you the one who shot that video?"

"…Which video are you referring to?"

"The video taken at that kindergarten."

In response, the woman's eyes opened slightly.

"…Did you see that one?"

"I'm sorry. We had to make sure of the contents."

"…How much of it did you watch...?"

"All of it."

Yoishi answered.

"We saw all of it, including the child who shouldn't have been there."

A chilling cold air rose at these words.

I gripped my knees as I sat in the formal position.

"...Is that so?"

The woman looked away from us, and her gaze focused downwards, as if she stared on the stains on the carpet. She stayed like that as Yoishi asked her.

"Who is that child, and what meaning does that video have? Actually, a lot of bad things have happened at our store since then. I believe you have an idea of the kind of things that are happening."

Yoishi had spoken that much, when--

"Mai!"

Suddenly, the woman turned and sent an ear-splitting scream my way, causing me to buckle reflexively.

"Go over there!"

After looking closely, I saw that her focus was behind us, and I turned back to see a paper sliding door closing behind me.

"…That was my daughter, I beg your pardon."

"....Ah, not at all."

Apparently, her child was in the next room.

"--Have you heard the rumor of the child known as 'Shōko-chan'?"

"Huh?"

I tilted my head in puzzlement at the unexpected question, as the woman continued.

"My daughter really loves that rumor in her kindergarten. She says it's a secret friend that the adults can't see and only the preschoolers know about."

"Is the child in that video that 'Shōko-chan'?"

Yoishi asked, but it seemed as if her question didn't reach that woman.

"One day, a lone frog was found stabbed to death at the end of the bamboo in the kindergarten's hedge."

The woman narrated the tale, letting her words fall to the floor.

"The teachers seemed to have been frightened and removed it, but after a few days, another frog stabbed to death was discovered. And then... they gathered all the children together and cautioned them not to do such poor things to living creatures. They didn't intend to go into who did it, but one of the children was brought to tears and said, 'I tried to stop it’. They then asked if he knew who did it, and after hesitating for a moment, he answered, ‘Shōko-chan’. However, there was no such child bearing that name in the kindergarten. The teachers thought it must have been someone’s nickname, but shortly afterwards, the child who told them the name had a traffic accident. The child survived, but the shock was so severe that he soon transferred to another school. After that, a strange rumor started spreading among the children: ‘Takuya-kun had an accident because he tattled to the teachers.’”

“Does that mean he got into an accident because ‘Shōko-chan’ held a grudge against him?’”

Yoishi interjected, and the woman nodded slightly.

“However, as I mentioned earlier, there were no children named ‘Shōko-chan’ enrolled in that kindergarten. Nevertheless, some of the old staff members knew the name, and there were stories from children of all generations: of children who were locked in the barn where entry was forbidden, or children who had burns on their stomachs, backs and other parts of their bodies that were not easily seen by adults.”

“That film—”

Yoishi asked her:

“Were you the one who made that video?”

“…Yes.”

“Were you trying to film your daughter?”

“…Yes.”

“Why did you turn the camera midway through to an irrelevant direction away from your daughter?”

“…That was… I somehow felt I had to point the camera in that direction… Yes, I unwittingly pointed my camera that way.”

“Do you think the child in the film present where they’re not supposed to be is ‘Shōko-chan’?”

“…I don’t know.”

“How many times did you see that film?”

However, the moment Yoishi mouthed those words.

I was horrified, as the woman suddenly grabbed her hair tightly and started to pull with enough force to tear it all off.

--Hey Yoishi. Stop it. Something's wrong with her.

I gently tapped Yoishi’s knee with the intention of telling her so, but she continued her interrogation without a care.

“Did you watch it until the child turned his head completely? Did you make eye contact wi—”

“A, …AAAGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

The woman started screaming, and I shrieked back in fear.

But - at the same time – Yoishi sitting right next to me started making a strange noise.

“…B, Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrgghhhh!”

The pale Yoishi suddenly began to vomit loudly on the spot.

“U-ooooooooooooo…”

Despite being screamed at from the front and the side, I still managed to catch Yoishi’s vomit in mid-air by holding out my hands thanks to my reaction speed, which was in a realm where it could be called that of a master or an expert. I somehow managed to protect the carpet in someone else's house from her vomit, but my hands were now filled with her warm puke.

“…I, I’m terribly sorry.”

I apologized to the woman, but I didn't know what to do from there. I had no idea what I was doing anymore, I was here in this creepy house, sandwiched between two denpas, with vomit in my hands. The woman who shouted for a while fell silent again, and Yoishi being Yoishi, didn’t care about the drool on her mouth, and continued to ask questions.

“You returned that film to the rental store on purpose, didn’t you?”

The woman looked up slightly at Yoishi’s question, but I looked at her, startled.

"--On purpose? What do you mean, on purpose?"

“You must have deliberately returned that film to the rental store. Was it because you were afraid of the footage of the schoolchild turning towards you every time it played? Because you felt something would happen if you looked at their face? No. Maybe you already made eye-contact with the child in the video -- and maybe, something already happened in this house. Perhaps something is happening to your daughter."

“…Please leave.”

The woman spoke in a frail voice.

“I think you’re better off not knowing any more than that. Besides -- you two are not from that store, correct?”

…Damn, we got caught.

I mean, wasn’t it obvious?

A high school girl school uniform who asks such sharp questions and then suddenly throws up in her companion's hands can't possibly be an employee from the rental store.

“Please excuse us.”

I apologized, stood up and kicked Yoishi on the knee with my toe.

It was an obvious signal that enough was enough, and that it was time to leave.