Case 11: The Melancholy of the Planet (2)

I was in a shrine in the mountains, where the air was cold, and where the creepy sounds of mountain birds or whatever echoed.

Soon after that, Sako made some arrangements, and a bunch of weird people gathered around us, and I was put in a car with the earthenware pot and brought to this place. It was an old shrine with only a small altar at the back, located on a path next to the main shrine.

『Tomorrow morning, I will ring the bell here, alright?』Sako spoke as he closed the lattice door and stuck some kind of talisman on it. 『Until that time, no matter who comes or what happens, you must not peek inside the earthenware pot or leave this shrine – understood?』

And then, the people beyond the grate left.

Soon afterwards, the sun began to set, my surroundings became dark and eventually fell into complete darkness.

If I were to sleep, it would end soon, I thought, as I lay down on the bed, but the hardness of the floor made my back ache, and on top of that, the cold air seeped in from outside, not letting me sleep at all. I had no choice but to light the candle that had been arranged, and checked my surroundings once more.

It was a space around 24 sqm in size, with a draft blowing in. In the corner of the room was some simple food, a pot of hot water and a sleeping bag with a blanket. The only other things present were the earthenware pot and me.

The last signal bar on my cell phone kept blinking in and out; The antenna was almost completely out of range. Well, that was to be expected given I was in a shrine in the back of the mountains. In short, a life of complete confinement. Together with the ‘earth’ or something created in the Edo period. When confronted with such a surreal situation, anyone would ask themselves why they were doing such a thing.

However, I wasn’t that upset, perhaps because this was a holy sanctuary? Or perhaps because the earthenware pot was not filled with the dead or some cursed objects. I only felt boredom due to the slow passage of time. Even if this were daytime and I could look out of the grate, I would still be in a corner of the forest surrounded by a grove. It wasn’t like the scenery was anything special. Not to mention it was totally dark right now, and people who have experienced the forest on a night with no moon can attest to it being truly dark. A darkness so profound you can’t even see your own hands. In that darkness, you can hear the rustling of branches in the wind and the cries of wild animals here and there.

I took out my mobile phone again, because even though I had a candle, I was afraid that if I stayed idle, I would create a demon in my head anyway. I tried connecting to the internet, but the signals were too weak for a stable connection. I tried fiddling around with some apps, but stopped when I got anxious about the remaining battery. In the end, I laid out the blanket, and crawled inside the sleeping bag on top of it. As I stared at empty space, I whispered to myself, “I should have brought a book or something”. My voice faintly echoed in the draft and soon disappeared. I wanted to stimulate my eardrums with sound, be it through my own voice. Because there was no one else besides me who would speak.

That’s right – besides the sounds of the nocturnal birds and the rustling tree branches, there was nothing.

And this was the first time I had been alone for any extended period of time since Yoishi started living with me. For a sloppy individual like myself, living with someone always by your side was somewhat exhausting. Even in this strange space, I breathed a sigh of relief. I mean, I think everyone feels calm when they’re alone in the toilet. In the same way, I breathed in and out deeply as I savored my first private moment in a long time. Then, to pass the time, I thought about all sorts of things.

For example, why does an environment away from the eyes of others give people a sense of peace? Was it because they could re-examine themselves? Or was it because they can get away from the waves of overwhelming information? Or perhaps it’s because people are always conscious of other people’s gaze and are freed from them, even if they don’t realize it.

But if that was the case, how do married couples in the world get by? Was it relaxing to have someone one day suddenly intrude into your space? I asked myself that if that was the case, how was I feeling living together with Yoishi? But in Yoishi’s case, the situation was a little different. You didn’t really feel like she was there. So, when I'm dancing and forget that Yoishi was there, I’d suddenly realize that she was silently staring at me, and I’d blush, and say, "If you have something to say, just say it,” as if taking it out on her. I'm not sure if I'm dumb or if Yoishi has no presence, but at any rate, the fact that she's parasitizing in my loft in itself isn't that much of a problem. I just think it’s a problem socially speaking.

No -- perhaps Yoishi was purposefully holding her breath. Maybe she was quietly trying to keep a low profile, aware to some extent that she was a freeloader in my apartment. Come to think of it, the reason she didn’t buy any clothes or food was because she was trying not to put any of her possessions in my place? When she came to my apartment, the possessions she brought were next to nothing, it left me stunned and I asked her, “Is that all the things you have?” She just had her school uniform, a bag and a laptop. She might have brought a spare pair of socks or underwear (Or at least I hoped), but those possessions were so few for a girl her age it was hard to believe. I couldn’t bear seeing her sleep on the hard floor of the loft in the beginning and had to buy her a futon. In the first place, Yoishi was extremely patient. And even if there was something around her she was hopeful for, she would never say it out loud. She didn’t feel comfortable in this world, and she never even thought she could make it comfortable. It would have been better if I were a little more thoughtful, but I was unsure about those kinds of things. I had no idea what girls wished for.

I breathed a deep sigh.

I told Yoishi that I’d be working my part-time job today and that I wouldn’t be back until dawn, and to lock the doors tight, but—

“I wonder if she’s alright.”

It happened right then.

Suddenly, a strange smell caught my nose. Then I heard some kind of noise close by, causing me to jerk myself up. I held my breath, and focused all my attention on my ears. It wasn’t the wind. *Crunch* *crack*, it sounded like something was stepping over dead branches. Little by little, it slowly came closer to this shrine from the depths of the forest.

“…W-who is it?”

I lifted the candle stick with the candle, and peeked outside, but as expected with that level of light, it didn’t reach outside the grate. Only darkness spread out of the shrine as if it had just been painted over.

Suddenly, I blew out the candle. I realized that with the candle lit in total darkness, I’d be visible from the other side. When the candle went out, a dense darkness instantly enveloped the area. At the same time, the noise of the wind and insects which I had forgotten up until now came deafeningly close.

In the midst of that, the crackle and crunching sounds slowly drew closer.

And as it came a few steps outside of the lattice door – it stopped.

My teeth began to clatter. I was only a few meters apart from the source of the sounds.

It was without a doubt, peeking at me. And there was already a foul smell in the vicinity that was enough to make me cough. Was it a stray dog? Or a wild boar? Bear? I mean, despite it being in Tokyo, were there bears in Okutama?

No—

This was not an ordinary animal. I could feel a faint sense of consciousness. Moreover, it was something distorted, something rotten, something that resembled negative human emotions. And this nauseating smell was –

Could it be… the putrid smell of a corpse?

As soon as I realized that, sweat slowly began dripping my back.

At the same time, my body stiffened as I recalled countless creepy images I had seen on occult sites that should never come to mind. My throat became parched as I felt something pale and discolored staring at me from right across the grating.

『Never enter the mountains at night.』

I suddenly recalled the words of my late grandmother.

『Gods roam the mountain at night. You must not look at them; If you do, you will end up blind.』

Grandmother, who was always kind to me, always repeated that with a scary look on her face.

Well, of course I thought it was superstition. I thought that my family's respect for the mountains and the nature of the lumber business gave birth to such superstition. But now, alone and secluded in the mountains on a moonless night, faced with something unfathomable, things like science and common sense were easily swept away.

--Should I try and light the candle?

Such a desire arose inside me. The thing I was afraid of might simply be a plastic bag of trash that flew in from the wind. That might be why it smelled like that. I was about to move my hand, thinking that If I lit the candle, and held it up towards it, everything would be fine.

…Yes. That’s what Krishna-san always said. Ninety-nine percent of the paranormal in this world are lies, delusions, and misunderstandings. In short, ninety-nine percent of the fear that now occupied my consciousness was my misunderstanding. I mustered my courage and reached my hand for the matchbox. My fingers trembled and I ended up breaking a few matchsticks, but I managed to light the candle once more. And then held up the light to the grate. The flickering flame illuminated the other side of the grating–

However, there was nothing there.

Before I knew it, the unpleasant odor had dissipated as if scattered by the wind.

As I let out a deep breath, my cell phone, which was still in my back pocket, began to vibrate and I jumped up. I rushed to take it out and found it was my university classmate, Kanta Moriyama, who belonged to the newspaper club.

〈Yo Yamida. I’ve been trying to call you for so long. Are you working now or what? 〉

“Ooh, Moriyama, is it?”

I was thankful to the point of tears to hear Moriyama’s easygoing and cheerful voice right now. I gripped my phone with both hands as if clinging to it.

“Well, my job is umm… but more importantly, I’m glad you called.”

Moriyama was a guy who was a clear-cut, eloquent speaker whose appearance was like that of an actor from the golden period of cinema in the early Showa period. However, he was a bit of a celebrity in the western club building due to his Michael Jackson impersonations and his bad habit of making dad jokes that were unbefitting of a teenager, and which caused him great disrepute among the female students.

〈Huh…? It seems like the connection is bad. I can’t hear you properly.〉

“Ah, sorry about that. Umm, what happened? Is there something you wanted?”

〈Oh yeah. Your second foreign language was Spanish, right?〉

“Yeah.”

〈Please, if you have a notebook, lend it to me!〉

“………….”

The fear inside me was instantly erased thanks to his real life problems.

I nodded and said yes in response.

〈Ohh!! Thanks man! You’re a lifesaver! You’ll bring it tomorrow, right? I’m counting on you!〉

Moriyama was about to cut the line; I panicked and drew out the conversation for a little longer.

“Aah…. Wait a minute. Is there anything else you wanted?”

〈Anything else? Um, not really.〉

“No, well, I’m sure there’s something. Umm… Like is there a girl you like?”

〈*Eeek* Don’t ask me that out of the blue, it’s embarrassing!〉

I could vividly imagine Moriyama writhing and twisting his body on the other end of the phone as he shouted in a crazy voice,

〈There’s no one right now. I mean, those who do are lucky, aren’t they? I have an overflowing feeling of wanting to fall in love, but there are no girls around me to accept that feeling. And it’s painful when you see the world being painted in Christmas colors. Well then... 〉

“…Oooh, wait a minute.”

Moriyama and I weren’t close enough to have long conversations on the phone, but it was a different story right now. I was stuck here alone with the creepy earthenware pot in the middle of the dark until morning. If possible, I wanted him to stay on the phone with me until then.

〈Huh? You want to talk more? I guess it can’t be helped. So should I come over there right now? 〉

“No, I’m outside right now. In Okutama.”

〈Okutama?〉

Moriyama, who was also a struggling student, was about to hang up the phone, saying, “Are you kidding me? I don’t wanna make long-distance phone calls,” but I somehow managed to calm him down and pleaded with him to give me five more minutes.

〈What are you doing in Okutama in the first place? What’s your job there?〉

Having no other choice, I explained it to him. The fact that I was with an earthenware pot from the Edo period in a shrine that was like a hut detached from an old temple. And the fact that I had to watch over the earthenware pot until tomorrow morning.

〈Watching over an earthenware pot? Why are you doing something weird again?〉

“…No, this thing is supposed to talk sometime today or tomorrow.”

〈Talk? Uhyahyahyahya!〉

Being laughed at in a high-pitched voice, I again felt embarrassed at the ridiculousness of what I was doing.

〈Come to think of it, you were pretty knowledgeable about ghosts and yōkai, right? Did you read some strange book again? There’s no way an earthenware pot will talk.〉

“I-I don’t believe in it myself; I’m simply doing it for the money.”

〈Hmm.〉

After making some amused grunts, Moriyama said, ‘All right.’

〈Try and open it for now.〉

“…What?”

〈The lid of that earthenware pot. If you see what’s inside, you’ll know whether or not you’re being made a fool.〉

…He was right. I then nervously stretched out my hand and touched the rough surface of the earthenware pot. Sako had said it was from the Edo period, and it did seem old. The lid of the earthenware pot was closed shut with some kind of iron, but it looked worn with cracks in various places. If one were to thrust something sharp in it, it would somehow break.

〈In the first place, how could someone from the Edo period build something like an earth simulator? I’m sure there’s something else inside.〉

“Something else?”

〈Who knows – It could be a corpse or something.〉

He let out a strange chuckle as he said that – but it’s no joke.

Suddenly, I felt a voice from somewhere, and a shiver went down my back.

“…No.”

I shook my head.

“No way. I can’t open it.”

〈Why? Aren’t you talking to me because you’re afraid of that earthenware pot? You’re afraid because you’re not sure of what’s inside. It’s like you’re having a silent staring contest with a stranger until sunrise.〉

…That’s right. The more I looked at it, the more this earthenware pot seemed to look like it was around the size of a person. It felt like something was crouched inside, clutching its knees. Come to think of it, Moriyama was right, didn’t I read something similar before – that earthenware pots were originally made to hold corpses?

〈Try opening it and see for yourself. It’ll be a weight off your shoulders. Come on, come on.〉

Urged on by his cheerful voice, I timidly took out my apartment key from my jean pocket, when somewhere inside of my head, something rang out. A tiny, tiny warning sound for an uncomfortable feeling I had almost missed.

“…Say, Moriyama.”

〈What is it?〉

“How… do you know this is an earth simulator?”

〈…….…〉

“…I…didn’t tell you that, did I?”

〈…….…〉

I took a gulp, and asked the silent caller on the other end of the line.

“Who…are you…?”

The moment I asked the question, the call was cut off.