Case 00: Yoishi (2)

What was a demon in the first place? Umm, was it something with black wings, and horns? I think it was something with a sheep-like head, and wasn’t there something that was like a fly? At any rate, they were a representation of the evil in this world according to Christianity. However, the more I tried to draw the image of a demon in my head, the more I recalled the figure of that girl in the black dress. That day, on top of the guard rail of the rooftop, the image of that grinning girl holding the black umbrella who called herself Takamura vividly drew itself in my mind.

She seemed androgynous, with a boyish tone of voice – and there was a creepiness in her gaze, as if she was looking down on everything, and yet, she also had a divinity about her as if she had transcended anything and everything.

--The truly fearsome ‘evil’ is the one that appears wearing a mask of justice.

I felt I heard those words before from somewhere. She had purposefully told me I was weak radio signals peering into the past and told me what would happen at the end. But, was that really an act of good will? No… wasn’t it because it would be ‘entertaining’ that way?

Not understanding it well, I somehow made my way to the library the next day.

Knowledge was what I needed at any rate. I thought I’d read up on material related to demons. However, as expected, I couldn’t touch the books.

After idly wandering among the bookshelves for a while, I suddenly realized I was in front of the book search terminal next to the stairs. Weren’t touch panels meant to detect signals from the fingertips? The thought struck me, and from there, Ohhh, I realized. That’s right, didn’t both Sako and Takamura call me ‘weak signals’? Didn’t that mean I could fiddle with this terminal? No, that would only tell me where a specific type of book was located in this library. More so than that, couldn’t I go further out – couldn’t I access the internet itself?

I went inside the loaning counter and stood in front of a computer that seemed to be connected with the internet. I imagined the idea of possessing the computer, in the same knack I used when entering the stuffed frog. After experiencing several failures – that world suddenly appeared.

I was present in a vast, infinite darkness.

A darkness that spread out no matter where I looked, bottomless enough to make me lose my mind.

It was a success. It was great to yell out in delight, but it was completely dark and vast there. If I wasn’t self-conscious of the fact that I had thrown myself into the sea of the internet, it was a space infinite enough to make me forget who I was. In the dark space where I was unsure if I was looking up or down, my will was everything. A strong will could bestow direction to weak radio signals, and made my destination clear. I concentrated my thoughts on the information I was looking for, and somehow managed to reach the articles on ‘demons’. I was confused by the myriad of information that appeared in front of me, but I still read through them from cover to cover. Be it in English, Italian, or ancient Latin – strangely enough, I could understand them. Midway through, I unconsciously accessed top secret Vatican archives and looked through the ‘Dead sea scrolls’, and the Fatima prophecies, but emmm… What I saw there was irrelevant at this point, so I'll leave it out. At any rate, I was looking for demons. I racked my brain and single-mindedly read through everything about their true nature, their birth, their beginnings – however, in the end, there was nothing that seemed useful to me right now.

But that was to be expected. Most of the things that were called demons were things created by humans at some point in the past. Baal, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, Furfur, Azazel, Samael, Leviathan – they were fearsome in their illustrated appearances, almost all of them creations. It felt like the ‘pure malice’ M and the old man spoke of was something different altogether.

However, how much time had passed since then – suddenly, I felt a cold air.

It might have been because I was in a dark world surrounded by countless descriptions of demons. It felt as if something was staring at me from beyond the unfathomable darkness. I felt a fear as if the body of information that was me was being overwritten by something that called itself a demon.

So, in the end - I left the library without gaining any information.

And then, when did it start, I wonder--

That strange rumor began to spread.

A rumor that said that Kii-chan’s ghost appeared in the classroom of the elementary school late at night.