es?

Either way, I knew that Hasebe Michio really had disappeared.

I had the information I needed to report, so I pulled out my cell phone while still standing on top of the toppled prisoner transport vehicle.

But...

“...Why can’t I get through? I thought all trains and highways these days had a perfect net environment.”

“If you’re pulling out your phone, does that mean you saw something dangerous?”

Seeing those sparkling eyes turned toward me made me not want to explain it to her.

Part 9 (Jinnai Shinobu)

The eerie sight of so many obviously handmade gravestones caused me to stand still in shock. Madoka then spoke up from beside me.

“Shinobu-kun, is that a snake?”

“!”

That light sense of unknown disgust was overwritten by a possible direct threat. Living in a rural area had not turned me into an expert on snakes, but I did know it was best to not be bit by a strange snake. And that was especially true when an ambulance could not be called.

And so I turned cautiously in the direction Madoka was pointing.

“...That’s...a snake?”

My statement became a question.

It was true that something long and narrow was stretched along the dried grass, but a close inspection showed it was not moving.

However, it did not seem to be a shed skin or a dead snake.

“Isn’t it just a rope?”

“Oh?”

Madoka and I approached to check.

It may have grown wet in the thick fog because it was oddly dark, but it was indeed a rotted rope. It seemed to have been left here for a long time because it had thick green moss on its surface and had almost fused with the ground.

I did not want to touch it because it was dirty, but it looked rotten enough that it would tear apart if I tugged on it.

Also...

“Hey, Shinobu-kun. Is this one of those things you see at Shinto shrines?”

“What do you call those? ...I can’t remember the name.”

Those things with white paper folded in zigzags..[2]They’re attached to the ends of the staffs that priests wave around and decorate the shimenawa. ...Um, what do we call those things?

After thinking that far, my cheek twitched.

...Shimenawa?

“With these gravestone-like things and this strange rope... It feels like there are too many weird decorations here.”

“Do we really have to continue on through here?”

“Would you rather turn back?”

“That’s even worse.”

No matter what we said, we had to continue on. If we turned back or tried to circle around the place, we would be putting ourselves at greater risk of walking in circles.

Madoka and I continued forward while weaving between the gravestones.

It was not long before another odd object showed itself through the fog.

“...What is that?”

A sort of barricade cut across the path.

The front had a row of logs carved down like pencils and crossing each other. A horizontal log placed across them was tied in place with a rope. A line of those was placed to block our path. They appeared to be as old as the shimenawa we had seen before. The cuts on the logs had turned black and the initially sharp tips had rotted away. They also had moss and mushrooms growing on them.

Seeing them brought a few different thoughts to mind.

Madoka made a blunt comment from next to me.

“They must not have had a very high IQ.”

“I thought you would say that.”

“And these gaps are wide enough that they must have been keeping cars out instead of animals. They are violently displaying that their #1 rule is not welcoming outsiders. ...Hmm, this is looking more and more like one of those eccentric village legends Enbi likes.”

“So is this Zenmetsu Village? If that rumor was true, the villagers have all been gone for over 30 years.”

“Horror stories are often decorated with the idea of the dead villagers’ ghosts or the mass murderer’s descendants to scare off any groups that might try to stop by for a test of courage.”

“Why would the victims turn into crazy killers? The only one at fault was the crazy killer who ran around with farm tools in hand.”

The X portion of the log barricades had a fair-sized gap below them. The same was true for the log passing horizontally. As Madoka had said, it seemed to be meant for vehicles. If I crouched down, I could easily pass under it.

Madoka jokingly said, “Welcome to Zenmetsu Village.”

“This village disappeared 30 years ago, right? So why can’t I see any roads or telephone poles?”

“Wouldn’t the roads have been buried below the trees and underbrush?”

“Asphalt wouldn’t turn to dirt no matter how long you waited. And what about the telephone poles?”

“They might be buried underground.”

“Even though this wasn’t a carefully maintained Intellectual Village?”

We walked across the dead grass. A rotting clearing was visible where the trees had at one point been knocked over and pulled out by someone.

Even my leather shoes were beginning to grow damp at this point. My socks felt disgusting. The school uniform was an inconvenient outfit no matter what you were trying to do. It was not suited for any kind of physical activity and it was not all that comfortable. I didn’t particularly care for the design either. On top of all that, it was expensive. That was only because everyone was required to buy it. If a normal store tried to sell them, they would stop stocking them almost immediately.

After five or ten minutes, the scenery began to change.

It happened just as I was beginning to doubt whether we had actually been travelling as straight as I thought we had.

“...That’s a building, right?”

“It looks like nothing more than a shack. In fact, it’s really just a storage shed.”

There was something there.

It was about five meters square and only maybe two meters tall. It had been made of thin plywood and strengthened with corrugated galvanized iron or something. The thin metal roof was forcibly held down with heavy stones. Simply put, the overall quality was on a level that even the pig from the Three Little Pigs that built the house of straw would laugh at.

The metal surface had rusted brown and it looked like it would break apart if we so much as touched it. It had a small window the size of the side of a goldfish tank, but I could not tell if the glass was frosted or if it was simply so dirty it had lost all transparency.

I could not see inside, but it was so dirty I would have preferred to stay out in the rain than take cover inside.

In fact, a closer inspection showed it was slightly tilted diagonally like a parallelogram. The instant I peeked inside, I could end up buried alive.

“It doesn’t look like anyone is living inside.”

“There’s something over here.”

We circled around behind the dilapidated cabin and found two objects that had turned brown from rust.

One was a metal drum.

The upper lid had been fully opened like a can of food and something like gravel had been spread across inside. However, some strange weeds were growing all across its surface.

“That metal drum has a faucet at the bottom. What is it?”

“Is it a water filter?”

If they had one of those, they must not have had running water.

And the other rusted object was a diesel generator of the type seen at the stands for temple festival fairs. However, I could see a small pipe that had completely crumbled, so I did not even need to imagine what sort of disaster would occur if someone actually poured fuel into it.

“Both the electricity and water were produced at home. What era were they living in?”

“It is looking unlikely we will find a working phone line here.”

“I’m not even sure we’ll find a red mailbox.”

We had no reason to search inside the crumbling cabin. We simply needed to cut across the basin surrounded by the four mountains and make our way to the elevated highway. The water filter must have excited Madoka’s health fanatic blood because she was showing a lot of interest in it, but I called toward her and suggested leaving the cabin.

As we continued through the thick fog, we found four of five similar buildings that also looked more like old storage sheds than houses. Each of them had the remains of a generator and metal drum as if that was a decided practice.

“If water filters were so common, did they not even have a well? They would have to go gather water in their daily cycle this way.”

“I don’t see any compressed gas cylinders. It doesn’t look like they have pipes running underground for town gas.”

They must have lived by drinking river water and cooking over a fire.

Even if the village had been abandoned for 30 years, this was clearly strange. The level of their lifestyle seemed too isolated.

Some of the shed-like cabins had their window broken, some had their pillars broken, and one’s roof had even crumbled down.

And...

As I casually glanced over at the crushed cabin, I saw something unpleasant.

“Uuh...”

It was green moss covering the floor.

However, there was an odd pattern to how it had spread. As if it had grown only in the remains of an old puddle, the green color dyed only a limited area.

This reminded me of something.

It of course reminded me of the stories about Zenmetsu Village.

“By any chance...did that grow from dried blood and the moisture of this thick fog?”

“Shinobu-kun, it’s over here too.”

Madoka pointed toward a cabin with a broken window.

A glance inside that window showed green moss growing on the walls, ceiling, and floor as if it had splattered everywhere. But the moss had not made its way into that building quite as much, so stains colored an odd dark brown could be seen in places.

It was at least old enough that there was no raw smell of iron.

But the visual was enough.

“Wait, wait, wait. How did the blood get all the way up on the ceiling?”

“Zenmetsu Village really was the golden age of crazy killer legends.”

“I prefer to think someone who heard the rumors spread chicken blood around as a prank.”

Feeling fed up with it, I began to turn away from the window, but then I looked back.

...Oh?

“What is it, Shinobu-kun.”

“Nothing really...”

I circled around to the front of the cabin. The door was made to slide to the side, but the wooden rails had rotted away. I removed the door that was simply standing in place and leaned it against the wall. I then peered inside.

I saw dust, moisture, mildew, moss, and bloodstains.

Someone had apparently lived here, but I was not about to remove my shoes before going inside.

“I thought you weren’t going to check inside?”

“I wasn’t...but look.”

I pointed inside the small cabin and stepped inside to pick something up.

But then...

My right foot broke through the holey wooden panels and my leg sank down up to the calf.

“Ow!?”

“Shinobu-kun, be careful when you pull your leg out. If the edges dig into your skin, it will probably hurt a lot.”

I would have been careful whether she had warned me or not.

I slowly removed my leg. It seemed I had not really broken through the floor. It was the cover to a storage space under the kitchen that had broken. Naturally, no food was kept inside. Dirt had been swept inside the rectangular space which contained...the scattered remains of an old broken jar.

I initially thought I might have been the one to break it, but it seemed I was not. The edges of the pottery pieces had darkened after being left there for a long time.

“What are those?”

“It looks like a bunch of gold rings. Were they being stored in the jar?”

“They do not look like pure gold, though. They look quite cheap.”

“Of course they are. Someone who had a secret stash of pure gold wouldn’t be living in such a run-down shack.”

There was also some Japanese paper that was falling apart from the moisture. Ink had been used to write something in kanji on them, but...

“It’s written so quickly, I can’t read it.”

“Hmm...”

I pulled out my phone and took a photo.

The Zashiki Warashi might be able to decode that old writing. Nothing could be done at the moment though because my phone had no signal.

“Looking at this is not going to help us. Shinobu-kun, what were you pointing at before?”

“Oh, right. That over there.”

Madoka seemed to notice what was placed just outside the green moss zone.

“Oh? They have a gas range. The kind used for pots.”

“It doesn’t look all that rusted, does it?”

Is it simply for cooking or does it have some other purpose?

I thought about turning the knob to see if it produced a flame, but decided against it. If something was wrong with the compressed gas cylinder, it could explode.

Instead, I took off the protective cover and removed the gas cylinder.

The bottom of the cylinder had the manufacture date written on it.

“Shinobu-kun, what does this look like it says to you?”

“It looks like February of this year to me.”

“Same here. ...But why would this be here in Zenmetsu Village which was supposedly abandoned 30 years ago?”

Madoka and I exchanged a glance.

And then...

An unpleasant noise came from outside the cabin as if something had banged against the wall.

I lived in an Intellectual Village, but for the apartments I saw on TV, this may not have been that odd a noise. However, this was an abandoned village. This was Zenmetsu Village where the villagers had been slaughtered over 30 years ago. We should not have heard something hitting the wall. There should not have been anyone here but us.

“Maybe someone came here as a test of courage?”

“In the middle of the day?”

“Maybe one of our classmates is here?”

“Why would they not say anything?”

“Maybe it’s a bear or Youkai?”

“I do not see how that is any less dangerous.”

Than what?

Both Madoka and I knew the answer, but neither of us wanted to say it.

This was Zenmetsu Village.

The villagers had all been slaughtered using farm tools like hoes and pitchforks.

A crazy mass murderer lived here.

And in that case...

The worst possible answer was...

A scraping sound began to travel along the wall. This was not the sound of someone leaving the cabin. It sounded like they were following the wall around.

Around to where?

The answer was simple. All too simple.

This cabin was a shabby building that was really nothing but a storage shed. Its design was very simple. It had only one door and the window was too small to enter or exit through.

Which meant...

Whoever was outside was circling around to the single entrance

“Sh-Shinobu-kun...”

Madoka’s face had grown pale.

I looked around, but it was hopeless to look for a tool to cover the door now. For one thing, the rails were broken and the door had only been standing in place.

What did we need?

What could function as a weapon? The wood materials, the sliding screen, and everything else had absorbed so much moisture they were practically falling apart. If I hit something with them, I had a feeling the wood would fall apart like wet paper.

And as I thought, I could hear it.

The sound continued. I heard scraping, scraping, scraping, scraping, scraping.

I could hear an object being dragged along the wall and I could hear the footsteps of someone circling around to the sole entrance and exit.

We had no time.

The eerie legend of Zenmetsu Village was beginning to swallow us alive.

Part 10 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)

The mystery freak and I made our way back to the rental car parked on the shoulder of the highway.

“Are we headed for Zenmetsu Village down below?”

“Of course not,” I spat out as I brought the car up to speed. “We know Hasebe Michio really did disappear from the prisoner transport vehicle. Who knows if it was him or the police that did it, but whoever did it will want to ensure he remains ‘vanished’. They won’t be hiding near the vehicle.”

“I thought those who do not want Hasebe to be found not guilty just had to ensure he died before the retrial?”

“Yes, but it makes no sense to have him vanish like this if that’s the case. Mystery freak, what do you think the quickest way to kill Hasebe in that situation would have been?”

“To throw him out onto the highway. After all, this fog is too thick to see even a few meters ahead of you.”

“They could also sprain his ankle to make sure he can’t move. As long as they keep it at a level that looks natural,” I agreed. “But they didn’t do that. They went out of their way to have Hasebe ‘vanish’. In that case, they may want to do something that takes some time. I can’t say what they are after, but the odds are good Hasebe is still alive at this point.”

“They might shoot him and disguise it as him trying to escape and giving them trouble while they try to arrest him again.”

“If so, this is our last chance. We need to use our time effectively.”

We were on our way to the tollgate connected to the junction.

From what I had heard, it had been created as an exit for a semiconductor factory.

“If Hasebe himself ran off, he’ll need some means of transportation. I doubt he would try to escape on foot in these mountains. That means he would head where cars are parked. My guesses are the workers at the tollgate or the parking lot for the semiconductor factory.”

“If the police are involved, they might have had someone come by on the highway and stuffed Hasebe in their trunk.”

“But they need to camouflage it as if Hasebe escaped. Either way, a nearby car will have to be stolen. If we know the model and number of the car used for camouflage, it can help us pursue them.”

“I hope they thought it through that far.”

“You have a point. True idiots are the hardest to read.”

I drove down the junction that circled around like a spring or naruto. Eventually, the rental car made it to the surface. The tollgate had become mostly unmanned with electronic toll collection, but I chose the less efficient manned gate.

“Detective, I hope the tollgate worker hasn’t disappeared.”

“I don’t think I could stand it if everyone had disappeared.”

An extremely bored looking man in his forties tossed aside a sports newspaper and fed the ticket I handed him into a machine.

“3200 yen.”

“I’m not the best driver, so is this fog going to last? I’ve been so nervous that my grip on the steering wheel has been terribly stiff.”

“3200 yen.”

“Have there been any accidents? I’m just so nervous.”

“3200 yen.”

“...Answer my questions, goddammit.”

With a sigh, I showed him my police badge and tossed it toward the passenger seat. After all, a close look would have shown I was from the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department. With all the realistic police dramas in recent years, a lot of people were oddly familiar with the organization and structure of the police.

The middle-aged man turned a doubtful look toward the mystery freak in the passenger seat.

“Are you really a cop? Who’s that girl?”

“Oh, oh, oh!! My position is that of an observer and a future wife, so-...!!”

“She’s a runaway girl I picked up in the area. That’s why I’m asking about the situation. You check on the people going on and off the highway, right?”

I-I technically didn’t lie.

I was just using a realllllly broad definition of “in the area”. The entire Kinki region was “in the area”. I never said a word about finding her walking along this highway.

I had only shown him my badge because I felt like it.

If the man decided to talk to me because he mistook me for a member of the regional police, that was not my problem.

That was the excuse I had to make, or I would be in a lot of trouble! This is what it’s like to be a poor public servant!!

“Hmm. Well, I haven’t heard about any accidents. I haven’t been told to block off the highway, either. Are you sure that girl didn’t walk off from a service station on the other side of one of the mountains? She might have wandered off along the shoulder of the road while her parents were shopping.”

Oh, c’mon. Please do your job.

At the very least, a prisoner transport vehicle and some police cars had been abandoned on the highway leading toward Byakko Mountain.

“Any other questions? You didn’t just find a girl walking along the shoulder of the road while on a patrol. I’ve never heard of a traffic cop using a rental car while watching for speeding drivers.”

“Oh, right. Do you have a phone here?”

“No, I don’t. A long time ago, some idiot used an automated internet bank service while on the clock. It seems he ended up accidentally leaving the phone off the hook for several weeks. The higher ups got pissed at the huge bill and confiscated all the phones. They said to use our cell phones if we needed anything.”

“Eh? But our cell phones...”

“Yeah, the signal doesn’t reach out here at all. It’s terrible.”

That means you can’t call for help if a robber attacks. Do you not understand how dangerous it is being in such a remote location?

Well, if he can do this for so long, it just goes to show how peaceful this country is.

“Do you have something urgent to call someone about? What is it?”

“I have information a group of car thieves has moved into the area. Have you seen anyone suspicious recently?”

“Nope,” replied the middle-aged man right away. “In fact, isn’t this about the worst place for them? There’s nothing to steal here.”

“If you say so.”

“After all, there aren’t even any villages here. There are no cars to target.”

Enbi leaned over the driver’s seat much farther than was necessary.

She said, “Hey, hey, mister. I thought there was a huge semiconductor factory here.”

“Shut up, you damn brat. Get off of me. Ahem, what about that large factory and the cars of the workers?”

“I don’t think you need to worry about that.” The middle-aged man must have entered gossiping mode because he stuck his elbow up on the money counter as he replied. “It’s true almost all the people who get off at the exit are related to the factory in some way. After all, over 8000 people work at it. It’s almost a small town in and of itself. All our income down here comes from that one factory. With the employees and shipments of materials and products coming in, we get a few thousand people coming in and out each day. It makes us plenty happy.”

“Then aren’t there a lot of cars?”

“There are, but they’re all in the factory parking lot. The people running the factory understand that the workers would be in trouble if they lost their car in this area that’s practically an isolated island. The entire parking lot is kept in the factory grounds and is surrounded by a thick wall. There are also tons of cameras and sensors, and they even hire guards just for the parking lot. I don’t see how anyone could steal a car from there.”

I see.

We had to determine if a car had been stolen, so that information was worth keeping in mind.

“But do the workers live nearby? Their cars might be targeted at home.”

“No, no. That would never happen,” flatly denied the man. He laughed and continued, “Four Mountains...Oh, that’s the name of the basin between the mountains, by the way. Anyway, Four Mountains has no civilization aside from the factory.”

“What?”

“I hear there was a small village a few decades back, but it’s been abandoned. In fact, the factory would be in trouble otherwise.”

“What do you mean?” I asked while frantically trying to maintain the expression of a police officer while pushing back the mystery freak who was excitedly trying to raise her hand.

The man replied, “I don’t know the details myself, but it seems you need clean water and air to create the precision circuits that are thinner than a hair. The water is especially important. Apparently, it’s more profitable to give the most delicious water to machines rather than people. Any chaotic development would dirty the water.”

“So...”

“The Four Mountains area has been almost entirely bought up by a single corporation. It’s just a giant area of nothing though, so some kids come in as a test of courage sometimes. ...Even this elevated highway was built by ‘borrowing’ the corporation’s land. On paper, it’s a private road.”

“Eh? But it’s a highway. Is that even possible?”

“Highways don’t belong to the country. Even we’re becoming privatized, so we’re a normal corporation just like with trains. That means we can make business deals with other corporations. It might have just barely been allowed, but there was no other place to bring the tunnels through.”

In other words...

Whether they would ever do so or not, they had the option of cutting off one of the highways that acted as Japan’s arteries. All the factory had to do was make an announcement saying the road was closed for the next three days or something like that. And this was a junction that stretched in four different directions, leading to different areas across the country. That alone showed how much influence a corporation could have over the country.

“Mister, does that mean everyone who works in the factory drives over the mountains to get to work?”

“Hm? Hmm?”

The middle-aged man fell silent for a moment.

I thought he might have been confused by the supposed runaway girl asking him a question, but it seemed that was not the case.

He lowered his voice before speaking.

“No, it seems about half of the workers live in the dorms on the factory grounds.”

“Half? Didn’t you say there are more than 8000 in all?”

“It isn’t that surprising. Remember the government’s new...what was it? The business-oriented low income assistance and favorable treatment system? I think it had to do with providing support related to corporate taxes. Anyway, as I said, the Four Mountains area was bought up for the water and air. The dorms are probably kept as spotlessly clean as the factory. At any rate, there’s no chance of a car being stolen from there.”

Once the man finished, I politely thanked him and finally brought the rental car toward the exit.

Surprisingly, the sign had only one arrow and it pointed toward the semiconductor factory. Not only was there no other landmark, but it seemed there weren’t even any other roads.

I stopped the car in the space a-->>

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