Case 12: The Gravestone of a Sixteen-Year-Old (2)

Soon after that, Ooki left with a dumbfounded look on his face. Well, if somethings impossible for you, then it's best to give it up right then and there. A normal person would shake their head when asked something like "Would you like to visit the rumored artist’s mansion when the streets are dead late at night?". So, the abnormal Yoishi and I, barged into the creepy mansion late at night on Christmas eve with pocket lights in hand. We were wandering around the large mansion with the smell of old wood and a lot of dust.

“Brr…it’s freezing.”

The house was strangely cold, maybe because of a draft coming in from somewhere, or maybe because it had the creepy characteristic of a haunted place. It’s true that temperatures in Tokyo had dropped dramatically at the end of December, but it was so cold that even the tips of my toes were painful and numb.

As I looked at Yoishi’s slender figure moving ahead of me without even a coat–

I breathed into my hands while the floor creaked as I went. However, I couldn’t really concentrate on the haunted spot investigation today. That was surely because the suicide applicant website I learnt of from Sako weighed heavily on my mind.

--Why was Yoishi on that site?

Was she, too, drawn to the other world? Did it mean that she was more interested in the world beyond rather than just the paranormal? However, up until this point, it felt like she had many chances to die. And in those chances, she wouldn’t have to physically stop any of her biological functions. For example, in that dream mansion of mine, or in the underground labyrinth of the Koumei institute – I had thought that far, when it suddenly occurred to me. Huh…wait a second? Was I the one who destroyed all those chances? She had wanted to fall into the world of the abyss, and yet, was I the one who ended up pulling her back into this world? Was she actually unhappy at my actions?

As I ruminated on such things—

I heard a crack ringing out beneath my feet, causing me to raise one foot with an eeek.

A broken flower vase lay there. It seemed I had trampled on it with my sneakers.

I felt ashamed about mindlessly barging into someone’s home every time, but that’s how it was with searching abandoned places. There may be broken glass scattered about in the dark, and if by some chance that you were discovered, you’d have to make a run for it. That’s why I always apologize internally, “I’m sorry, I’m really sorry,” as I move ahead while wearing my shoes. Krishna-san always told me to have respect for the deceased – and though it was true that no one had lived here for a long time, this was once a treasured place where someone lived and spent their days.

I gently moved the broken pieces of the vase to the corner and bowed.

And at that moment—

I suddenly felt someone’s gaze behind me.

I turned around and aimed my light, to see the swaying shadow of ornaments. I felt like the shadows were one too many when compared to the number of furnishings. Suddenly, I felt a dull pain in the back of my ears, and a cold chill ran through my back and transmitted through the rest of my body.

“—S, say, Yoishi.”

I took a gulp and called out to Yoishi, who had already moved further down the hallway.

“I know it’s too late to ask now. But do you know of the Youth Protection Ordinance?”

However, Yoishi neither stopped in her tracks nor looked back.

“In short, society isn’t so lenient as to let a high school girl live together with a university student. You living together with me makes me culpable to a crime, and I’d lose the trust of society which I could never regain. In the first place, that apartment is for bachelors only, and it’s forbidden for two people to live there together.”

I regularly said that kind of thing to Yoishi, to the point where it was something she was fed up of hearing. It had already been three months since we started living together, and even though it was forbidden to get used to this type of life, the simple reason I purposefully talked about it in this pitch-dark place was because I was afraid. If I kept talking for now, my fear would diminish.

“You’re trying to look for a new room, right? I don’t know if you’ve forgotten, but I’m only letting you stay at my place because you don’t have anywhere to go. You know we can’t continue living together forever, right?”

However, Yoishi continued walking without looking back, so I stomped past her down the creaking hallway, aimed the light at her face, and spoke:

“Hey, wait! Even if, hypothetically speaking, we must live together, there would still have to be manners and rules.”

“…..”

“You should properly dispose the bags of snacks and plastic bottles that you finish eating and drinking. Also, it's time to get those uniforms cleaned. I'm lending you my jersey to sleep in, so don't sleep in your uniform.”

“Ah, how annoying.”

“W-what did you just say?”

“Why must you always annoy me about it?”

Yoishi spoke as she focused her light at my face in opposition.

“Why…that’s, you….?”

I was about to say that it was a part of the ‘Yoishi Mitsurugi plan’ – before I held my tongue.

The plan was already in shambles, and now that I had seen that website, I didn’t see the point in what I was doing. That’s right – the reason I was feeling dissatisfied and irritated with that site was because of Yoishi’s handle, ‘Lost child’. She had used her real name, even on Ikaigabuchi up till now, yet why would she choose a handle name now? It was because she didn’t want the people she associated with in her daily life – being me in this case, to not know, and she wanted to be able to express her true feelings without reservation to anyone. Furthermore, did that mean that she didn’t want to tell me her true thoughts? That was too cold towards me, who had thought of her as a ‘war comrade’.

Even so, was there any meaning in me accompanying Yoishi to yet another haunted spot? And how much longer should I keep doing it for? Was I afraid that she would die? Was I afraid she would end up broken? Was it a sense of responsibility of not being able to abandon her after getting to know her?

Once I think I’ve abandoned something, it leaves an extremely bitter aftertaste. Even now, I was still worried about Akane Nanamori. Yoishi had said that the girl selling ghost photographs didn’t have long to live. It might be true because she said it, but Akane Nanamori was still just a young kid, who should enjoy a long, long life from now on. Even now, it weighed heavily on my mind, wondering if there was still a way to save her.

--As I thought such thoughts, Yoishi muttered.

“You’re surely the clingy type.”

“…Eh?”

“As soon as you become someone’s boyfriend, you’d be the type to spend twenty-four hours a day asking where did you go? Who did you meet? What are you doing tomorrow? What are you thinking? And so on. The clingy annoying type that interrogates and pries through each and every detail. As a result, the type who’d make things worse by depending too much on your girlfriend, who starts stalking her, and resorts to violence in the end.”

“….Y,y,y,you bitch.”

Without even knowing what others are thinking – that’s really all you have to say? You’d really say that to someone who’s in tears and accompanying you to a haunted spot? Without care for the place or the situation, I shouted:

“You! Don’t you think you’re a waste? You really are a fine person. Aren’t you really pretty? Isn’t the reason you stand out at school because you throw up and scatter a sour smell everywhere without care for your surroundings? If you took a bathed properly and acted normally – you’d be beautiful enough make ten out of ten heads turn in a crowd.”

“There’s no meaning to appearances. In the first place, isn’t the only reason you’re associating with me is because you think I’m so damn pretty? Isn’t the reason you go to haunted places with me is because you think I'm breathtakingly beautiful?”

…You, would go that far?

I was flabbergasted with my mouth open — when Yoishi suddenly stopped moving.

She looked my way, as her large eyes opened even wider.

“W-what’s wrong?”

I called out to her, when I realized. I noticed a shift in Yoishi’s gaze. I thought her large eyes were staring at me, but they were instead pointed at the side of my face – in short, they were looking right behind me.

“Wa—you, where are you looking….?”

I felt a chill down my spine as if I had been doused with cold water, and reflexively crouched, when—

“There it is.”

Yoishi aimed the penlight behind me. Having ended up crouching down, I timidly turned around –

That woman was there.

There, perhaps, was the self-portrait of Shizue Namikawa hanging on the corridor wall.

“This is the third one.”

After exhaling a deep breath, I too aimed my light there.

It was a framed self-portrait about 700 x 600 cm in size. Inside the wooden frame, that middle-aged woman was there. Her pale face was filled with what could be called a hollow expression, and both of her eyes were strangely slightly out of focus as she stared at me.

“The style of painting is changing.”

“…Style of painting?”

“The self-portrait in the drawing room right by the entrance had a somewhat realistic style. However, beginning with the second portrait, the emphasis was put on colors, and the primary colors are even more striking in this third one. The Fauvism-like uninhibitedness strongly permeates this work.”

As I cocked my head in puzzlement, Yoishi started walking ahead. Her footsteps creaked the floorboards of the dark, narrow corridor as she moved her feet towards the darker depths of the mansion.

Having no choice, I made to follow her, but the further I went, the less I understood the structure of this mansion. From the outside, it didn’t look like a large mansion, but instead seemed to be a long and narrow arrangement of rooms in the back. It was connected with the forest at the back of the cemetery, and the mansion was surrounded by thick and tall zelkova trees. That might have made it hard to get a full picture of the mansion. The ceiling was high, and it might have had an attic, but it was a single-story house in the style of a western mansion.

“This is the fourth.”

Eventually, Yoishi spoke at the center of the slightly open living room at the end of the hallway. At the end of her aimed pen light, was indeed a similar self-portrait in a frame. However, when I saw that picture, I gulped. This time, even as someone ignorant about art, I could tell. The style of painting was definitely different. The subject was drawn in a somewhat more distorted style, making it look like it was the work of a different artist altogether.

“I don’t understand it well, but it’s like that, right? The series of self-portraits are intentionally drawn in the same composition, but in different styles.”

“Right, intentionally done.”

Yoishi then repeated in whisper.

“And how much of it was intentionally done, I wonder?”

--How much? What did she mean?

Most of the things she spoke of were cryptic, but she then said something even stranger.

“Why did Shizue Namikawa name this place ‘Grave keeper’?”

“Huh?”

“To begin with, no one knows when and how the occupation of a grave keeper first arose. The most common theory is that it was created to protect the bodies buried in the ground from dogs and crows, but there are also other theories that it was created to protect the relics buried with the dead in the coffin - necklaces, rings, and other precious metal items. However, the commonality in those myriad theories is that the grave keeper is an existence that is the antithesis of a grave robber.”

Saying that, Yoishi turned back to me.

“Say, don’t you think it’s strange? In the age of burials, a hole was dug in the ground, and the body was buried in a wooden coffin. The wood would eventually rot and turn to dust. The same went for corpses. If that’s the case, a strange thing happens. Where did the space they had secured go when they disappeared with the earth?”

“No, where you ask – but the body and the coffin turned to dust, right? In short there’s no such thing as a space. It turned into dust as is, right? It all comes out even.”

“Maybe so.”

Yoishi answered somewhat happily, as if she had already guessed my answer.

“There must always have been a cavity between the corpse and the coffin so that precious metals and other relics could be placed in it. So, the total volume of the coffin crate and the body is definitely smaller than the total volume originally secured by the coffin's outer crate. In other words, after a certain amount of time has passed, the grave should be hollow underneath.”

No, but that’s…

Still, I thought. The grave might have indeed collapsed with the passage of time. It may have been the grave-keeper's job to pour earth over it again and stamp it back into place.

I was about to object with that argument – but stopped at the last moment when a thought struck me. Right now, I had that original thought inside me. I felt like it was the reason I stood her now. But what if I were to say it out loud and Yoishi would deny it all again completely with the theory of the world beyond? At that moment, the place I stood would surely collapse. Something would end up tumbling and flipping over. Not to mention the fact that this was a place the supposedly dead artist lived, and it was close to midnight. I should keep the last thoughts to myself and keep my mind safe—

That was the answer I had reached after wandering with Yoishi many times in the depths of the world beyond.

When I looked up, Yoishi wasn’t there anymore. I raised my light in a panic and moved ahead. She was standing in front of a door a little further ahead. She stopped while clutching the brass doorknob, which gave off a dull light.

“Is something wrong?”

I called out to her, and Yoishi turned her pale face towards me. And after that, she silently aimed the light at my back – at the path I had come from.

“…W,what is it? Was something there?”

Yoishi continued to stare at the darkness beyond with those dark eyes of hers, but—

“…It’s nothing.”

She shook her head in the end. And in a single breath, flung open the door.

--*Creaaaaak* -- An unpleasant wooden creaking sound rang out in the surroundings, and I involuntarily shut my eyes. It was because I sensed something oozing out together with the dust from behind the door. However, I sensed Yoishi had moved ahead, so I slowly opened my eyes and took deep breaths as I followed her.

The moment I entered the room, an acrid smell pricked at my nose.

This… was that. The smell of turpentine oil used in oil paintings.

“It seems this was the real atelier all along.”

As Yoishi said, it was a space around 24 square meters in size. Illuminated by the light, an easel and a wooden stool stood out at the center of the room. There was a single window on the right side of the room, covered with thick, sooty curtains. On the wall to the left were several works of art, some completed, others that were obviously abandoned. And on top of those large and small canvases laid out on the floor – the painting was in the center of the white, plaster wall.

“This is the fifth portrait.”

Yoishi stated indifferently – but I didn’t know anymore. It was blended with countless colors to the point where it was only consistent with previous paintings in Shizue Namikawa’s outline, her hairstyle, and the strange look in her eyes.

“…Say, Yoishi. Just what was Shizue Namikawa trying to do? Why did she go to the trouble of drawing these paintings in a different art style?”

Yoishi responded in a whisper:

“Just as writing has an aspect of organizing thoughts, so does painting. Shizue Namikawa might have been trying to extract something by repeating the same motif again and again. If I had to say, I’d say that this is an abstract painting, but they are far from the cubism and expressionism of Picasso and others.”

With that somewhat difficult reply, Yoishi focused her light elsewhere.

“And from here on, if we were to find a self-portrait, it would be the sixth one in question, but—”

Yoishi then spoke in a whisper, ‘It’s strange’.

“…W, what is?”

“There are no other doors in this room.”

“Huh?”

“The rooms end here.”

Hearing that, I, too, aimed my light at the surroundings to confirm.

Sure enough, I didn’t see any other door besides the one we entered through. Which meant that this canvas hanging on the wall right might have been the sixth painting. Saying that, I crouched down, aimed my light, and checked the discarded pictures one by one. Yoishi soon crouched down next to me, and we both checked all the paintings together, but in the end, none of them were portraits, but rather, landscapes and pointillism.

“…It’s not here. So, isn’t that all there is to it? The rooms end here, and the sixth painting never existed in the first place, right?”

I spoke praying somewhat that that was the case – however, Yoishi had her arms crossed, and her fingers on her lips as she thought about something.

“It's not like those two disappeared because they found the sixth painting, it might have just been coincidences piled together. Those kinds of countless misunderstandings often accumulate and circulate in the form of a ghost story--”

“Wind.”

However, Yoishi suddenly announced that as she began to survey her surroundings.

“The air in this room is moving.”

She muttered, and began to walk around the creaking floor, eventually she moved one easel out of the way and crouched before the wall. She then began to feel around the wall here and there.

“Here – these boards are different from the wall. They’ve been painted with the same color so it’s hard to tell, but this might be a sliding door.”

She declared, and without waiting for my answer, she quickly began to move the stuff on the other side of the easel.

“See, there are signs that the floor has been cleaned of dust. It means that someone other than us has opened it recently.”

“Was it the people who disappeared?”

I asked with a gulp, and Yoishi replied:

“Say, did you feel a sense of discomfort when you heard your friend’s story?”

“…Eh?”

“For example – the fact that the transporter was the one who discovered the sixth portrait before the appraiser.”

Her words sent a chill down my spine.

The words Yoishi Mitsurugi always spoke. 『The real ghost stories had a sense of discomfort about them.』『A sense of discomfort as if something important has been skipped over.』

“How could the transporter find the sixth portrait even though the appraiser only counted five? Perhaps that was because he was a specialist in transporting paintings, so he persistently checked that painting in comparison with the others. In short, he felt the need to check the other paintings to make sure there wasn’t another self-portrait among them. Was that all the paintings there were? Were there any other rooms? And that is when he found this – and entered. And, without a doubt, it was the same for the appraiser who learned of the existence of the sixth portrait.”

As her words reached my ears, a terrible sweat broke out all over my body.

The cold air was rising, and a chill ran through my back – Yoishi traced her hand along the wall, found a small hole, put her finger in it and dragged it sideways. A terrible *screech* sound rang out, and beyond the darkness, an even darker darkness appeared.

It reminded me of the black of the black sea I had once seen.

And, in front of that pitch black darkness that was seemed to pull me in, I suddenly remembered.

Come to think of it, that time we played ‘Dear Nostradamus-sama’ in the club room, I – That’s right.

Didn’t I inadvertently take my hand off the ten-yen coin? It’s far too late now, but that didn’t cause any problems, did it? If something terrible were to happen from here on – no, wasn’t I already in the ‘abyss’ as Yoishi put it…?

“Say…Let’s stop.” I spoke at last as my voice trembled.

The portraits, which looked like pictures at first were taking a bizarre turn. As I checked them one by one in this dark house, I began to be seized with strange thoughts. It was as if this house was inside the mind of the painter – no, it was as if I was engulfed in the whirlpool of thoughts left behind by the painter.

The fifth painting was strange in the first place. If I were to end up seeing the rumored sixth one, I felt like something would end up happening.

“Well, it’s fine if you want to stay here.”

“….”

“I’m not forcing you to do anything.”

Yoishi spoke in the same snide manner as earlier, stooped over somewhat happily and ventured deeper into the darkness.

--Ah, that’s right.

I muttered somewhat desperately to myself.

It’s just like you said, one’s life and wandering around haunted places are all one’s own responsibility. I wish I could do the same. It’s something I think about every time, I always want to turn back one step short of the breaking point of my limits. If I don’t do that, then one day, my mind will surely collapse. I would someday be swallowed by the darkness of the world beyond.

--And yet – why do I always fail to do that? Why do I keep following the girl who’s entranced with the world beyond, who searches for the true face of fear?

That was surely because I thought of her as a war comrade. She came to help me in that dream mansion, the source of my greatest fear. I’m still here thanks to that. And – I realized something there. Something had happened in Yoishi’s past. Something so terrifying that the feeling of ‘fear’ itself was snatched up from its roots. That’s why I had made the decision to stand by Yoishi’s side, just like how she had done for me. Even if I couldn’t help her solve the fundamental problem, I promised myself that I would at least share half the burden she carried. Even though my commitment wavered at times, I still wanted to protect that much somehow, for as long as I existed. That’s what I always thought.

However—that was dependent on a condition.

That she, herself, treated it as a problem to be solved.

That’s why I was irritated when I learned she was hanging around that suicide website as a ‘Lost child’. I had been working hard for her rehabilitation, and yet, if she herself yearned for death, it would all amount to nothing. My actions, my resolve, my determination, would be nothing more than tilting at windmills, and moreover, Krishna-san’s words would turn out to be true: 「Those who are entranced by the depths of the darkness cannot be saved.」

I suddenly recalled the negative thoughts plastered over a portion of the suicide website.

Of course… there had been many times when I wanted to throw my life away. But there were just as many times I was thankful to be alive. I am sure that both feelings would come alternately in equal proportions in the future. I live my life with the hopeful expectation that If I could get over the tough times now, then better times would surely be waiting ahead for me.

But, seeing the countless words posted on that site, I realized how naïve I was. On that site were endless stories of parental abuse, the cold betrayal of close friends, and the relentless abuse of teachers. A feeling of loneliness as if the world was telling you that you are nothing, and filled with an emptiness that took away the color of this world. I, too, might one day end up envisioning death as a sweet fantasy when thrown into that whirlpool of despair. I, too, might end up wanting to run away from everything.

There is an argument in this world that people who commit suicide are weak. Even I think that sometimes. But the basic premise that all humans should know is—

That no one chooses death by nature.

There is a harsh reality in which people are driven to the point where they can only choose ‘death’. They stand on the edge. The slightest push would be enough for them to choose death.

And strangely enough, 'Lost child' was the bulwark keeping them at bay. No, they themselves were acting as a bulwark against each other. That might look like licking each other's wounds to an outsider who has never thought of dying. But still, they're keeping a balance at the edge. And that balance is in no danger of collapsing. For them, the collapse of the balance might be the push on the back they need to change their fate to death.

That's right -- could it be that they are... Always giving it a try?

Aren't they constantly ‘testing’ their fate in some way?

They always want to ask someone whether they're better off alive or not, whether it was alright that they were born or not, isn’t that why suicide applicant websites keep popping up?

Come to think of it, Akane Nanamori also said it when I asked her about Yoishi. That "She might simply be giving it a try." And "Because I'm the same."

That means that, in short…

"I want to get to know you a little better from up close."

At that moment, I finally recalled the line Yoishi spoke when she came to my apartment.

Those were the words she spoke. Was she ‘testing’ me by stepping deeper into the abyss, where there is no help? How far could I follow her -- How much of her darkness I could be exposed to before I would let go? Was that the thing she was desperately ‘testing’ up until now?

"—Dammit!"

I took a gulp and then – I shouted, “Dammit,” out loud, once more.

“This…goddamn idiot was…”

I cursed out loud and plunged into the mouth of darkness that lay in front of me.

“Hey, Yoishi, wait. I’m coming.”

However, I stopped in my tracks the moment I jumped in.

I thought Yoishi might have moved further ahead already, but there she was. It really seemed as if she had melted into the darkness with her penlight turned off.

….Heeey, don’t scare me like that!

I was about to say out loud, when–

“--Why?”

With her head hung down, Yoishi asked me.

“Aren’t you afraid right now?”

“…Eh?”

“You’re scared out of your mind, aren't you? And being scared is something that should be quite painful for a normal human. Why do you move forward in the face of that pain?”

That was—

Because I couldn’t leave you alone, or because I didn’t want to end up hating myself, or maybe because I was really interested in the occult. I could think of countless reasons, but I felt none of them were appropriate, so I said, “Shut up.”

“Waiting alone in a place like that is way scarier. I mean, telling me you’re not forcing me to do anything -- so you're saying that your occupation of my loft is not forcing me to do anything? With the words you utter by calculating the endurance of my occult-loving nature, aren’t you the one who always forces me in tears at the end?”

Giving those absurd arguments, I aimed my light at the darkness.

“Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

I grabbed Yoishi’s hand, and continued forward.

To a somewhat hesitant Yoishi, I declared:

“Give up already.”

“…..”

“I might be annoying, and I might have the temperament of a stalker. But I’ll always be by your side.”

“…..”

“If you don’t want that, then work hard. The day you can smile cheerfully is the day I’ll stop being annoying.”

With those words, Yoishi gently gripped my hand in return.

And in the darkness-- we began to walk.

We began to walk towards the darkness, one that we might have to face in the near future.

“In all likelihood, I believe it leads to a barn.”

Yoishi eventually muttered and passed me by to lead the way into the darkness.

A moldy odor prickled my nostrils.

Something soft caught my face.

I realized it was a spider web and hurriedly brushed it off with my hand.

The darkness was immensely dense. A hole that seemed to lead to hell – no, it was the slope that connected this world to the next, Yomotsu Hirasaka.* I felt as if I was descending down that slope. Although I'm ashamed to say this so soon after speaking with such bravado, but I was already regretting it. …Ah. Just recently, I had managed to get through a situation like this. In the basement of the Koumei Institute, that infinite corridor where this world and the other world seemed to merge. Why was I wandering in such a place again after throwing snot everywhere and escaping death from the scruff of my neck? It was hard to believe that this place was in Musashino or Tokyo. I don’t think It was a place where people would live anymore.

“If there is a sixth portrait, it should be close by.”

As Yoishi finished speaking, the ceiling suddenly got taller. I felt the intimidating air around me suddenly decrease. When I aimed my light, I saw a space of around 13 sqm.

The floor was bare earth, and a worn-out spade leaned against the rough wooden planks that made up the wall. There was also a dirty stepladder. It was indeed a barn just like Yoishi had said, and I finally breathed a sigh of relief seeing traces of a place once inhabited by humans.

But--

I turned my face where Yoishi silently aimed her light, and my body froze.

There was a forehead there. A frame in the same shape as the previous five portraits.

And in the center of it – on a white canvas, was that woman.

Drawn in the same position, she looked at me with her distorted gaze. She looked at me, as if pleading something directly to my brain.

This was, in short—

“The sixth one.”

Yoishi declared with an ecstatic expression.

But – but, I didn’t know anymore. I don’t know if it could be called a painting. I never saw a painting in such a style. The outlines were so blotchy and crumbled that you couldn’t tell if it was a painting by Shizue Namikawa without prior knowledge. The area around her eyes was dark. It was so dark I didn’t know what kind of pigment was used to express such a black color, but her gaze was clearly directed at me. There was a passionate will pleading to me for something, with a darkness that was enough to pull me in.

“…How wonderful.”

Yoishi spoke with an ecstatic expression, however, I was, as expected, in tears.

The earth was shaking.

My knees were trembling to the point of making a sound.

--I didn’t want to be here anymore. Not for a second longer. That was the warning sound blaring inside me. I shouldn’t look at this picture anymore – and that it didn’t belong in this world.

Did she sense my body shivering relentlessly?

“Let’s leave.”

Saying that, Yoishi pulled my hand.

And then, as if to lead me above water from the deep ocean depths where I was about to drown, she pulled me, and ran.

And as if entrusting everything to the feeling of her cold, soft hand – I ran as well.