Case 12: The Gravestone of a Sixteen-Year-Old (3)

I didn’t remember how far or where we had run to.

Before I realized, I was in a dense covering of grass thick enough to make me choke.

The chirping of insects reverberated around me. There, I repeated breaths deep enough to monopolize all the oxygen around me. I inhaled oxygen as if it were such a delicious thing, and I spat out all the ominous things trapped inside my lungs. I was freed from the feeling of being trapped, of something hanging right above my head, and the feeling of pressure as if my body was being twisted into something, a hollow smile soon appeared on my face, and I even let out a laugh.

“We can leave from here.”

I raised my head to see Yoishi standing in front of me, staring off into a dark thicket. It seemed that barn had an exit, and instead of going back all the way through the house, we exited straight out.

“---Where…is this place?”

I looked around once more as I asked, but Yoishi began to walk without saying a word; Flustered, I followed her.

Yoishi Mitsurugi bravely straddled ahead through the thicket. Even though it was a moonlit night, we continued on a path so rough I could only find it by shining a light at my feet.

The path gently sloped down.

How far are we going? I was about to ask, when my vision abruptly widened.

For a moment, I thought I had come to the sea.

However, when I looked closely, there were countless gravestones silently lined up.

Ah, this place is…

it seemed to be the southern end of the K cemetery* managed by the Tokyo Metropolitan government, which had over 40,000 gravestones, and covered an area of around 650,000 sqm.

*TL/N: Kodaira cemetery

Yoishi and I stood motionlessly under the dark sky facing the gravestones that stretched to the horizon.

The clouds moved in the pitch-dark sky.

The moon and stars peeked out.

Only a cold wind blew through them.

A winter wind blew across, as if raining down from the clear starry sky.

And it was faintly permeated with the aroma of incense permeated into the ground.

Right now, in front of our eyes, was an ending of one side.

Someone’s life. Someone’s conclusion. A tiny trace of someone once having lived in this world.

And – why was it, I wonder? I was standing right in the midst of countless graves, and yet, strangely enough, I felt no fear. All the people here, were dead. I was comfortable with death, and to die was to finally be at rest.

Eventually Yoishi slowly began to walk again, and I followed.

On both sides of the path were tall, overgrown weeds that had been untouched for many years – Suddenly, I saw many stones lined up in one direction.

“Ah…”

“It’s the section for those who have no one to mourn their death.”

Yoishi’s whisper unintentionally startled me.

Right, those were certainly graves – or what used to be graves. Some of them had already toppled over. Some had already decayed to the point where the epitaph couldn’t be deciphered. There were withered flowers in vases that had already broken down since who knows how long, and muddy cups of sake also lay scattered about.

“—Say, Yoishi.”

Trying my best not to look at the mass of graves with no one left to tend to them, I asked.

“Did you figure out that what happened in that house? Who was sending Shizue Namikawa’s paintings to the competition and for what purpose? And why was the sixth portrait in a place like that?”

“If you were to ask me who it was, there’s no answer other than Shizue Namikawa herself.”

“No…but Shizue Namikawa died seven years ago, right? That’s why it became a ghost story, right?”

“That’s not it.”

Yoishi declared without looking back.

“That was… future mail.”

“…Eh?”

“A system where you can post something to someone many years in the future. If you were aware of a system like that, you could send a mail to a competition after your death. The question is, why would Shizue Namikawa do that – and why did the sixth self-portrait originally not exist? There were only five self-portraits in the beginning, as had been originally appraised.”

“Wai--”

With a cold feeling as if something rubbed my neck, I asked.

“Wa-- wait a second. Didn’t we see it? There was definitely a sixth painting. It was hidden in some obscure place like the barn. It was so creepy that the people who found it got scared and disappeared--”

As I said the words out loud, a terrible premonition quickly began to grow inside me. The hill road we were walking on became markedly steeper.

Yoishi broke the branches that extended to her face, flung them at her feet and spoke:

“We proceeded to the back of that house from the entrance. We thought that the style of the paintings changed from the entrance as we moved from the entrance to the interior. But that wasn’t the case. Everything was in reverse; the barn was the entrance.”

“…The barn was the entrance?”

“I didn’t call that painting we found in the barn a portrait. I only called it the sixth one. And that was not even a canvas. When I looked at it closely, I understood – it was merely a window frame designed to fit the same frame as the other five self-portraits.”

“…No, wait a second… then, what? Are you saying that when I was there… I was only looking outside the window?”

“Yes. The only thing we saw outside that frame-like window was the scenery we see here now. And, if you saw something else besides this scenery--”

I suddenly felt something rear its head from one of the graves in my surroundings.

The sixth self-portrait—no, the window frame made to look like a canvas I had seen earlier, was drawn in my mind once more. The moment I recalled the hollow depths of those eyes, that gaze that pierced through my back – the air rang in my earlobes.

Just as my legs were about to wobble, the path abruptly ended.

It was – the main street that ran through the center of the cemetery. We were thrown out on the paved road wide enough for large vehicles to pass each other. I saw a sidewalk lined with black cherry tree trunks.

Yoishi silently continued on that sidewalk. A little further away, I saw a tower that looked like a memorial monument. It seemed to be the center square of the cemetery, and we proceeded to it. Eventually, we reached a fountain without running water, and Yoishi sat down at a nearby bench.

From there, I looked back on the road we made our way from. I could barely make out the roof of that house beyond the dark copse we had just passed through. If you saw it from here, you could tell. That house was located on top of a hill, overlooking the cemetery.

“Why did Shizue Namikawa call that atelier ‘grave keeper’? It probably stemmed from her life.”

As Yoishi quietly began to narrate, I sat down beside her.

“She didn’t have single relative. She was married once, but death parted her from her husband. She lost the family she had finally gained. I don’t know where her husband is buried, but the possibility is high that he is here close to her home in the K cemetery. Although I heard that this cemetery was popular and booked several decades in advance. That means she might have waited for a vacancy in the community cemetery. No, Shizue Namikawa must have been waiting for a grave to open up day after day.”

“No… I mean, you’re just guessing, right…?”

When I asked her, Yoishi slowly turned to face me. Her face, illuminated by the moonlit night, was pure white, and her eyes were filled with emptiness. However, there was a definite sadness in them.

“She learned to draw by herself around that time – which proves everything. She continued to paint and wait day after day for a grave to become vacant. However, she finally realized. Having no relatives, if she were to die – she would not be able to protect her husband's grave, even if she got one. Even though they met through a fated encounter, they would end up sealed in tombs that no one would care for. The tombs with no one to care for them should have been infinitely filled must have been nothing but emptiness for her.

Infinitely… filled---?

Thereupon, I finally realized.

“I see… you said it in the apartment. Some story about some hotel…”

“That’s right, Hilbert’s infinite hotel paradox – the thought experiment that there is an infinity greater than any infinity - applies precisely to this cemetery. Every day, someone dies. And they go to their graves. However, the land is finite, and the number of graves will one day be insufficient. When a grave has no left to care for it, it indeed becomes empty, but even if you stop thinking of the person in that grave, it doesn’t erase the existence of those within. They've been relegated to a realm beyond the reach of thought, but they definitely exist. And – perhaps, in her mind, graves with no relatives to tend to them were not infinite, but merely infinite because they were displaced.”

“Then… why did she use a future postal service to get her paintings in the competition?”

I tried to ask –

But somehow, I had already realized it. Even so, I wanted to hear Yoishi confirm it with her words. Yoishi gazed at me with a sad look, exhaled a white breath up into the night sky, and spoke the words.

“She allowed the dead to soar back into the world of the living as paintings.”

“……..”

“She lived as a grave keeper, and continues to be one even after death.”

Those words—

Endlessly echoed inside my ears.

“I don’t know whether Shizue Namikawa decided to protect the grave as a painter or became a painter to protect the grave. However, if she continued to send her paintings through the future postal service to competitions, whether or not they won prizes, the existence of the sender would be sure to be noticed. If a painting were to gain a bit of recognition, someone would one day visit her house. And her thinking probably was – that If there were many paintings left inside, then they might be kept for safekeeping somewhere. If they were kept by an appropriate organization, then as long as society existed, the safety of the paintings would be assured. And the longer it took for the paintings to be discovered and stored, the better. After all, the more pictures of the dead that are transcribed, the better. Because that’s the only way to return someone without any relatives back to this world. To gain time – that’s why she used the future postal service.”

No—that was madness.

It was a concept and action outside the bounds of common sense.

But—

I don’t know why, but now, here in the middle of this vast cemetery late at night, I understood her feelings painfully well.

Right, she was just doing what she had to do as a ‘grave keeper’.

“The idea of transcribing infinitely increasing number of dead on a limited canvas would indeed fail. However, we as humans are doing it, we bury an ever-increasing number of dead into limited graves and have yet to fail.”

“……..”

…I didn’t know. I had no idea. I never thought about it before. I had a vague idea that I would obviously be buried after I passed away – but, if I never got married, if all my relatives passed away, and in the instance of not having even a single friend who cared for me… my life might be labelled as one with no connection whatsoever.

I suddenly felt a fear different from that of ghosts, and let out a deep breath.

And then looked up at the jet-black sky.

Tokyo’s skyline had few stars in it, but—

In them, it felt like me and Yoishi were alone right now.

In the endless darkness that was ahead and behind, it felt like we walked together hand-in-hand.

“When I go to an art museum, I sometimes see a painting I can’t help but be fascinated by.”

“…Eh?”

I looked to my side, to see Yoishi swinging her legs back and forth, as she looked up at the monument.

“From time to time, it would make anyone halt in their tracks, and it’s not a famous painting. The colors aren’t gaudy, and the composition isn’t extraordinary – but still, it’s a completely fascinating painting. I thought it was because the feelings of the artist and my feelings matched… but could it be that the painting was not drawn by human hands?”

“…Hey, stop it.”

In a large quiet art museum with no one around--

The image of Yoishi from behind, standing face to face with a single painting, drew itself in the back of my mind.

The painting, with the dead seared into it, merely stares at Yoishi, and Yoishi stares back at it with an entranced expression.

“But – even so, I’m still fascinated with the possibilities of the painting that can be created in such a way. A painting is a true representation of one’s humanity on a canvas.”

With those words—

What Yoishi was about to say inside the mansion finally sunk into me.

Buried flesh would one day return to dust. And Yoishi said that there should be a space left behind. I thought it was the job of the grave keeper to fill that space, but – that wasn’t it. They were already there. No matter what the physical condition may be, the dead are still lying there, just not visible.

『The grave keeper is an existence that is the antithesis of a grave robber.』

Those words vividly came back to me.

And those grave robbers were—

All of us living humans, wasn’t it?

Finally arriving at that answer, I sank down deep into the bench.

I looked up at the black sky, so wide and so black that I felt faint – and took a deep, deep breath. I realized how small the field of vision a human like me had in the face of a universe large enough to swallow me.

…That’s right. The night skyline of Tokyo that looked to be painted black at first glance, actually had a lot of stars if you looked closely. They were always there, just not immediately visible. And the story of that something hotel was surely applicable to this universe as well. As long as the end of the universe could not be confirmed, its mass could be said to be infinite – and as long as there were stars that humans didn’t know of, they too could be called infinite. That was the exact opposite of Schrodinger’s cat, there could be infinite possibilities in this world; ghosts exist, as do UFOs, there might be ancient earthlings still dwelling on the surface of the moon, Nessie might exist on Loch Ness, Ogopogo in Okanagan lake, even father time, and even Hitogata* might be real – Ahhh, to sum it all up.

“Well… it might be good if there’s one painting drawn by a dead person in this world.”

Yoishi nodded in response.

“Of course, everything is my guess, but…but if such a painting were to exist – no, if it were to exist for me, then…”

As I looked at her from the side – Yoishi spoke with an innocent face, as if an evil spirit had been removed from her.

“For the first time in my sixteen-year life, I have a feeling I would find meaning in this endless corridor-like world.”

“…Corridor?”

Her words were the final piece of the puzzle.

…Ah, so that’s why… you were using the name ‘Lost child’?”*

The moment I asked her that—

“…………………”

“…………………”

After a long silence, Yoishi finally said, “Eh?” and she looked at me.

And in response I too said, “Ah,” as I realized.

…Damn it.

“W, why do you know that name…?”

“Ah, sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. Umm, I heard it from Sako – no, I asked him, um, in short…”

I answered Incoherently, but Yoishi turned bright red for some reason.

“T, that handle was a mistake. Before I’d realized, I ended up with that handle, and started talking with it, and it would have been weird to change it after so long.”

“Well, if it’s a site like that, it’s not a particularly weird handle or anything.”

I consoled her for the time being, and then gently asked her.

As naturally as possible, trying my best not to sound reproachful.

“Say, Yoishi… Do you want to die?”

“…Eh?”

“I mean, that website – it’s for people looking to commit suicide, right?”

In response, Yoishi stared at me unblinkingly and said, “That’s not it,” and shook her head.

“No? Then what were you doing there?”

When I asked her that, Yoishi put her finger on her chin for a while as if lost in thought – and spoke:

“You could say -- it was for persuasion.”

“Persuasion? Who were you trying to persuade?”

“Someone who was already long dead, but didn’t realize it.”

“…Huh?”

After a while, when I understood the meaning of those words—

Thump**Thump**Thump* I got goosebumps all at once.

“I found that site by accident. I was browsing it somewhat for a while, but there were posts on there that were obviously strange. A person who had left the words ‘goodbye’ a few weeks ago and disappeared began to talk about death again. Their expressions were somewhat distorted and inconsistent. At first, I thought it was another person pretending to be them -- but I suddenly realized. Ah, this person already ended up killing themselves.”

“H..Hey hey hey!”

“But it seemed the person in question hadn’t realized it. They spoke of ‘that world’ with the same enthusiasm as always. That’s why I tried to talk to them. And I was leading them to realize that they were already dead.”

“…No, leading them? You…”

“That’s right, I shouldn’t have gotten involved. They kept gathering one after another. Most of the time, half of the replies I had were from the dead. As I thoroughly defeated their arguments, the gallery ended up getting bigger, and yet those in the gallery would have no idea of the fact that I was trying to drive the dead away, and the handle of ‘lost child’ I had intended to use as a throwaway ended up completely set in place…”

As I looked at Yoishi pouting with dissatisfaction—

I felt my insides churn. Unable to bear it, I ended up bursting into laughter.

Uhahahahaha, with my mouth wide open, I roared with laughter in the cemetery at night.

--That’s right. She was always like that. She would chase the paranormal, had her feet in the world beyond, peered into the abyss, and at the same time, she would help those who could be helped. If she met someone who was about to be swallowed by a world without hope, she would, in her own way, hold out a helping hand. Because she herself was a ‘lost child’. A ‘lost child’ who wandered this endless corridor, a ‘lost child’ that knew the pain of continuing to search for something to believe in.

And—

She wasn’t the type to use a handle name when talking seriously to someone.

She always spoke with her own name, even on the Internet.

And – Thereupon, I finally realized.

The reason Sako had told me about that site was… to inform me of Yoishi’s state as a bulwark on the site? That she had strangely taken on the burden on a site where suicidal people had made the decision to die?

Was he trying to tell me she wasn’t there because she wanted to die? And, that she herself was just a ‘Lost child’?

“Damn it… that bastard, making things hard to understand!”

Yoishi cocked her head in puzzlement, when--

I suddenly heard a gut-wrenching thud echo through the night sky.

When I looked up, I saw that the night sky was dyed with multicolored fireworks, as they scattered in a brilliant display.

I looked at the watch to see it was exactly midnight. In short -- this moment – was the birthday of Jesus of Nazareth, Christmas had begun.

From there, the sound of fireworks went off one after another, *Bang* *Boom*. The sky in the direction of the station twinkled brightly, as if there was a countdown event going on somewhere. I heard boisterous cheers as well. And the fireworks that shot up to the sky in succession dyed the night sky in a colorful way, and scattered. It was a breathtakingly beautiful sight.

“…Ugh, I can’t believe we’re in a cemetery late at night on Christmas.”

I muttered in disgust, but – well, I guess that was typical of us.

As I looked at the blazing petals spread out in the holy night – I thought I’d say ‘Merry Christmas’ for the time being, so I turned to face Yoishi besides me, however, I froze on the spot.

She was merely swinging her legs back and forth, as she stared up at the fireworks.

Her white, beautiful face, dyed in the light of the fireworks, still had the youthfulness of a sixteen-year-old. Her eyes under her long eyelashes began to show a faint glint of will, and her straggling hair blowing in the wind caught her small nose rather than her large eyes, and she brushed it off with her pinky finger.

As I looked at her in fascination—

Yoishi suddenly turned around to face me, and tilted her head curiously.

That surprisingly cute gesture made my heart skip a beat.

At that moment, an unknown passion boiled up inside me. Oh shit, I thought to myself, as I laughed in order to brush it off, scrambled my hair, and after hesitating for a moment – reached out towards Yoishi.

I wrapped my hands around her soft cheeks.

And, as I looked directly at Yoishi who had a blank expression as she gazed at me –

I pinched the flesh of both cheeks and pulled them to the left and right.

So soft.

“Un…”

The corner of Yoishi’s mouth opened.

Her white teeth peeked out. It was an artificial thing, but it was definitely her smile.

“….pu”

“T...this is humiliating.”

“…Ah, emm, sorry. I just wanted to know what kind of face you’d make when you smiled.”

She brushed off my hand in response, and complained about something or other, but—

That kind smile that appeared for a moment made me feel like I was rewarded for everything.

--Ah, that’s it. The ‘Yoishi Mitsurugi Rehabilitation Plan’ was a long way off, and it might not be possible for me alone to see through the goal, but – despite that, she was still only sixteen. If it took her sixteen years to become like this, it would be fine if it took her another sixteen years to get back on track. Life still goes on. There was no need whatsoever to be impatient.

Illuminated by the light of the fireworks in the middle of the cemetery –

I put these thoughts in my hand as I gently patted Yoishi on the head.