pped and then the engine suddenly died.

“You’re kidding! Did the battery give out!?”

“The light wasn’t on, though.”

Sitting around in the driver’s seat was not going to fix anything, so I left the mystery freak in the car and stepped outside. I wanted to know if this was something I could fix with the tools in the rental car, so I opened the hood to check the engine.

As soon as the metal hood lifted up...

I spotted a ton of strange snakes filling the engine area.

“Wah! Ah!?”

I instinctually jerked my hands away from the hood. The metal hood fell down with a loud bang. Enbi’s eyes opened wide because she did not know what was happening, but I did not have time to worry about that.

The hood had not fully closed.

Black snakes as thick as a little finger came crawling out as if overflowing through the remaining gap.

It was such a repulsive sight that I tripped and fell onto my butt as I tried to back away.

Is this what caused the engine to stall? No wild animal would want to get inside there! And how were they not fried from being in there!?

As if in opposition to my sensible question, black snake after black snake plopped down on the road with no visible sign of burns. None of the rules I knew applied here. This gave me an intensely bad feeling. My eyes met with the eyes of one of those black snakes that all had something like a gold ring around their heads.

These were creatures that could not be killed with normal means.

It can’t be...

Are these...

“Youkai...?”

As soon as I uttered that word, the dozens of snakes vanished as if they had dissolved into the fog. They had not simply fled. They had clearly vanished on the spot like dry ice.

The mystery freak must have realized something was wrong because she got out of the passenger seat.

“Detective, what’s the matter?”

“Well...”

I was unsure I could accurately explain what had happened.

I was half ready to decide it was a hallucination caused by exhaustion.

However...

“Huh? Something’s stuck in the hood.”

I gave a start because I thought one of those snakes might still be there, but it seemed that was not the case.

“It’s a sneaker.”

“A sneaker?”

I stood up with a puzzled look.

The mystery freak opened the hood a bit to pull out a white sneaker. It was only the right sneaker. Its design was plain, but I recognized it.

“That goes with a prisoner uniform.”

“So does it belong to Hasebe Michio?”

Enbi and I exchanged a glance.

I undid the button on the sneaker’s clasp, removed the lining, and checked through it. My fingertips came across a small folded scrap of paper.

“Detective...”

“Don’t look at me. If you have any complaints, take them to the prison guard in charge of checking over him.”

Once unfolded, the paper was the size of a business card. It looked like a piece torn from notebook or memo pad paper.

A simple map was drawn on it.

It looked like the Four Mountains area, but it did not have the semiconductor factory marked despite that being the biggest landmark.

Instead...

“What’s this X?”

“It certainly looks suspicious.”

I got back in the car and turned the key, but the engine still refused to start. It seemed best to put off the trip to the service area until later.

I did not like how it seemed we were being guided by those snake Youkai, but I decided to check the X on the map hidden in Hasebe’s sneaker.

Part 21 (Hishigami Mai)

I think it’s just about time for Mai-chan to take her turn.

As we all monitored each other in the large employee cafeteria, I embraced the Sunekosuri that had been rubbing up against my legs.

I whispered, “(The power is going to go out soon and I will kill one of them.)”

“Bh!?” The Sunekosuri almost spat out in surprise. “(What!? Wh-wh-wh-wh-what!?”)”

“(I sabotaged a breaker on the way here. This cafeteria has no windows, so it will be pitch black in here. The factory block will keep running, but the living areas will have a normal blackout.)”

This was like a game where a Kitsune and a Tanuki were trying to trick each other.

Unless I shook things up a bit, no one would make any mistakes.

My interpretation was that most of those here had no real connection to the incident. They were filler characters meant to make the real culprit harder to find. Killing them would not make this any better or worse. And so I had decided to kill the most powerful of those I had decided were definitely unrelated to the incident.

My choice was Itou Takeru.

He was the supervisor in charge of the entire corporate prison, so he had no reason to rely on a supernatural Youkai. He could freely kill a few people whether they were prisoners or jailers and he had a perfect method of disposing of the corpses using the system put in place by the Kuroyama Electronics Group.

He was a top rank candidate for the culprit’s target, but I was not trying to help the culprit. If I killed Itou before they could, that was not my problem.

The prisoners were one thing, but the jailers would definitely be shaken if the fellow jailer with the most authority suddenly died. And if you ignored the Sunekosuri and me, there were five jailers versus two prisoners. The jailers were in the majority, so if they panicked, the fear and shock would be transferred to the prisoners. That was the scary thing about groups.

And so I was going to kill Itou Takeru-san for a variety of reasons.

I hope you can forgive me.

“(B-before you said you couldn’t kill them!)”

“(Not if it isn’t absolutely necessary. I am doing this to reveal the truth of this bizarre phenomenon related to a Youkai, not to reveal the secrets of the corporate prison. That means I can have Hyakki Yakou clean up after me.)”

“(What happened to figuring out who the culprit is!? You even had everyone gather here!)”

“(What? Who ever said that was my plan? I was only pretending to handle this with logic in preparation for my real plan. Remember, my standard method is to handle everything with violence.)”

“(B-but you’re an outsider. You aren’t a prisoner or a jailer. If something goes wrong, they will blame you first.)”

“(True.)” I grinned. “(But what if that most suspicious person was killed? The group that was keeping calm by thinking of me as the villain would fall apart. And if one of those people is in control of the occult here, they will panic. And so they will use the occult that protects them even if they do not want to.)”

“(Wh-what do you mean killed?)”

“(The parking lot out front is filled with cars. I will board one and try to escape, but the car will explode spectacularly.)”

Cowardly Yamada must have grown irritated by our whispering because he clicked his tongue loudly.

Of course, I was whispering in front of everyone because I wanted to look as suspicious as possible.

“Hey, what’re you talking about over there?”

“You will see soon enough.”

I shrugged while still holding the Sunekosuri.

Immediately afterwards, the area was filled with darkness thanks to the sabotage to the breaker.

Okay, time to go.

Having to prove to the masses that your enemy had done something wrong before you attacked was only a rule in the territory my sister and that detective worked in.

For those that worked in secret like me, it was often the case that nothing else mattered as long as you uncovered the culprit in the very, very end.

Part 22 (Jinnai Shinobu)

A cave.

When I heard that, my expression must have been one of great displeasure.

It was dangerous enough searching through the half-crumbled, half-collapsed house that was not up to earthquake standards or any other standards for that matter, but a natural cave was something else entirely.

If you are imagining a limestone cave at a tourist spot that has a cool and mysterious mood year round, you are quite mistaken.

A cave that has not been maintained by human hands would be filled with hundreds of bugs. There would be spiders, centipedes, pill bugs, slugs, snails, mosquitos, flies, and every type of roach you’re used to seeing. No one would want to go into a gathering spot for so many grotesque creatures.

On top of that, the ceiling could collapse at any time, the floor could collapse without warning, and overlooking a large crack could send you dropping upside down for several meters if not several dozen meters, scraping your body against a file-like wall all the while. There was also a danger of running out of oxygen or being exposed to poisonous volcanic gases.

The scariest part was that these extremely dangerous areas often looked completely normal from the outside. Even if I grew trapped inside, how likely do you think it is someone would come and rescue me? The odds seemed slimmer than those of a tights-wearing American comic book superhero gallantly showing up to rescue me from a mugging.

“Listen, Madoka-san. A city-raised bourgeois like you might not be aware, but entering a cave is just as dangerous as crossing a crumbling suspension bridge that you can’t even imagine how long ago it last underwent maintenance. You can’t just walk into one as easily as taking shelter from the rain... Wait, Madoka? Madoka-san!?”

She’s gone!?

Madoka, who had just broken out through the fragile wall of the house and rolled into the backyard, had disappeared at some point.

As an unpleasant feeling raced up my back, I heard a girl’s voice in the distance.

“Oh, it really is cool in here. But it kind of stinks. A bear doesn’t sleep here, does it?”

“Get out of the cave!!”

She went in on her own!?

I peered into the two to three meter tall opening to the cave, but I could not see anything through the darkness. I doubted I would have been able to see anything even without the fog.

“Madoka! Madoka-saaan!! Leaving me alone in an abandoned village overflowing with the sense that it’s cursed has about a 100% chance of making me piss myself, so could you come on back now!?”

“Eh? But this cave looks meaningful. It might lead us to a secret of Zenmetsu Village.”

Meaningful?

I frowned at what Madoka had said.

As far as I could tell, this cave had not been maintained by human hands like some limestone cave. There was no torii, shimenawa, or stone monument with the cave’s name. I could not see any evidence that this cave was viewed as special.

“Madoka, what are you talking about? Do you have any evidence?”

“...”

“What do you mean it looks meaningful? This may be a confusing situation, but it didn’t sound like you were using the word wrong.”

“...”

“Um, Madoka-san?”

“...”

“You’re remaining silent to force me to come in after you, aren’t you!?”

Dammit. This devil of a classmate knows how to manipulate guys too well!!

I was also saddened by how I had fallen for it and my heart had started to beat faster.

At any rate, it seemed I needed to enter the cave, but I was too afraid to grope around in that pitch black cave. I wanted a source of light.

“That thing used diesel, right?”

I circled around the outer wall of the house. There, I found a generator. It was rusted and falling apart, but a distinctive smell wafted out when I opened the fuel tank cover. I was exceedingly dubious whether it was of high enough quality to work in an engine, but it would likely still burn if you soaked it into a cloth and ignited it.

If I just had a stick of wood and an old rag, I could make a torch.

I acquire both items from the half-crumbled house and cautiously entered the cave with the light in hand.

Wait, I just thought of something... Torches don’t cause carbon monoxide poisoning like charcoal grills, do they?

“Damn this place is cramped.”

The cave did not look like a river had worn it down bit by bit. That said, it did not look like people had dug it out either. Overall, the cave was shaped like a warped triangle. The ground below must have shifted during an earthquake and it got caught on something that was now supporting this space. In other words, it could easily all come crashing down at any moment.

As I felt my balls shrivel up in fear, the orange light illuminated Madoka’s body.

It seemed she had been quite close by.

She had only been about 15 meters from the entrance.

“Oh, Shinobu-kun. A torch is quite the wild option. I was doing my best with the backlight of my cell phone.”

Madoka was grinning as if she had no fear in her heart at all.

It may have been because she had no balls to shrivel up in fear.

“How could you light up your phone in a place that could be filled with hundreds of disgusting bugs, rats, and bats? Animals tend to move toward light. What would you have done if they all rushed toward you at once? You would be transformed into some kind of frightening insect human.”

“Ugeh. That can happen? But what about your torch, Shinobu-kun?”

“The danger is still there, but the fire can be used as a weapon. I can at least wave it around and run for the exit.”

“Wow, what an outdoorsman. To be honest, my opinion of you just went up. Can you cook a meal over a campfire?”

Is that so? Maybe I should be honored to have a financial monster like you say that.

However...

“But it looks like there was nothing to worry about. I’ve lit up all the walls around here, but I haven’t seen an insect or any other creature.”

“Isn’t that odd, though?”

After all, if there were not hundreds of insects here, there had to be a reason for the insects to not be here. I grew a bit concerned the dangers of low oxygen or volcanic gases were about to make themselves known.

My torch consumed oxygen, so the flame weakening considerably would warn us if the oxygen levels were dropping. The volcanic gases were the worst option. By the time we realized something was wrong, it would probably already be too late.

“Madoka, this seems pretty dangerous. There has to be something keeping away those disgusting bugs that not even insecticides can kill. We need to get out of here.”

“I think we should be fine.”

“?”

“Look, there’s light over there. That means there’s an exit.”

Madoka suddenly pointed to the side.

She was standing at a T-shaped intersection.

“With where we came in and that exit right over there, air has plenty of paths to blow through. Gas wouldn’t build up in here.”

It seemed the cave was not all that large.

I held out the torch to wipe away the darkness before me and found it reached a dead end after only about 10 meters. Even if you added in the distance to where we had entered, that was only about 25 meters.

“This place is surprisingly small.”

“Yes.”

“Hmm. And I was sure this place was meaningful.”

“Are you disappointed you didn’t find a legendary dragon or some thieves’ hidden treasure?”

“No, not that.” Madoka raised her index finger. “This cave may be natural, but it was located right next to a house that probably belonged to one of the village’s ruling class. If it was only an eyesore, they could have had the villagers fill in the entrance.”

“Hm? Well, I suppose... But you saw that village. They didn’t have the leeway in their lifestyle for designing an aesthetic garden.”

“Perhaps, but the ruling class would be able to build their house wherever they wanted in Four Mountains. It’s odd for their choice of the optimum land to be near a cave.”

“I see. That does sound meaningful.”

I would never want to live near a cave. They had so many insects sleeping inside and all of those insects would come swarming out once it grew warm.

“Hey, Shinobu-kun. Something is glittering over there.”

“What?”

With the torch in hand, I approached in the direction she was pointing. Near the dead end when continuing straight into the cave were some needle-shaped depressions. I initially thought something like a large puddle existed in the middle of them, but I was wrong. The water was very clear yet I could not see the bottom. It was quite deep. The light of the torch did not reach all the way down. There seemed to be a pit here and only here.

“It looks like someone dug this.”

“Is it a well?”

“It looks like the same technique, but the water level is completely wrong. It could overflow at any time.”

There was no need to dig deep into the ground. The cave was already underground, so it was possible an underground stream passed by at a higher level than us. This well with an oddly high water level (or was it a spring?) may have struck an underground stream running through the mountain.

...If there’s an underground stream nearby, doesn’t that mean the ground here is even less reliable?

Also...

If they had the ability to dig a well, why did everyone in the village use water filters made from metal drums?

“Oh?”

Madoka crouched down and began poking at a stone the size of a pickling stone.

“There is something carved on here, but the kanji is too hard to read.”

“I’ll take a photo.”

I snapped a photo with my cell phone camera.

As far as trip memories went, this collection of photos was about the worst. I thought about creating an exorcism folder.

Nothing else inside caught our attention. Madoka and I walked back down the way we had come and stopped at the T-shaped intersection. We had yet to check the other exit.

The presence of the light told us the exit was nearby. That meant the tunnel did not cut through to the other side of the mountain.

“Shinobu-kun, let’s go check it out.”

As I walked forward with the torch in one hand, the path quickly narrowed. It was so narrow I had to turn to the side to fit. The path also sloped sharply upwards and spiraled around.

However, this path from hell quickly came to an end.

“This is...?”

“We’ve come out at a higher point.”

We were probably three or four meters up, but the thick fog made it hard to tell for sure. We had taken a T-shaped intersection in the cave, but the two exits likely came out on the same slope. In fact, there was nowhere else an exit could be.

“Shinobu-kun, what should we do now?” Madoka must have been tired because she sat down without worrying about getting dirty. “Do you think we could climb the mountain and cross over out of Four Mountains?”

“Trying to climb a mountain of unknown height without food or water and while wearing leather shoes is pure insanity. Don’t forget the fog and that we don’t have a map or GPS.”

“Eh? If we just head straight, won’t we make it eventually?”

“If we come across a vertical cliff, are you fine with doing some free climbing? In leather shoes? I would at least want a lifeline.”

If you looked into what routes bullet trains and highways took, it became obvious how much land routes hated mountains.

“Boo, boo,” said Madoka as she pouted her lips.

Either her exhaustion and hopelessness had reached their limit or the lack of any useful information combined with the lack of anything more to investigate had irritated her. It must have been nice being a beautiful girl. Everything they did looked great. If she wasn’t so cute, I might have punched her for being so stubborn.

“We put in all this work, but we haven’t managed to get away. This is a lot like the Shokei Island serial murders case Enbi told me about a long time ago.”

“...Could you not bring up such ominous things?”

“Apparently, there was a closed room murder case in the remains of a coal mine on a remote island to the northeast. I think the trick had to do with using a wire to throw the key in through a tiny window.”

Suddenly, an incredibly light electronic tone broke through the unpleasant atmosphere of hopelessness.

Madoka and I exchanged a glance before frowning.

It was the sound of the cell phone in my pocket receiving an email. I had received several messages from the large-breasted Zashiki Warashi saying “I’m bored. Buy me a souvenir.”

“...I have a signal. But why!?”

“Look, Shinobu-kun. There’s an abandoned car over there!” said Madoka as she tapped on my shoulder.

I looked over and spotted a mass of brown rust sitting on the grassy mountain slope. She had called it a car, but it was a compact one-person vehicle that looked like a scooter with four wheels. It was an extra small electric car that automobile companies had made to ensure the elderly could go shopping.

“It must still work. The car navigation and the automatic break system need an internet connection. The electric car itself can function as a mobile Wi-Fi and 3G wireless hotspot, so it must have picked up on our phones’ signals!”

“Wait, wait, wait!!”

Humans tended not to doubt information that was convenient for them.

But this was too much.

“That’s way too modern! Zenmetsu Village’s civilization was on the level of using water filters and diesel generators. They didn’t even have any phone lines. Why are we suddenly finding an electric car with a perfect net environment?”

“Eh? Well...”

“And the battery doesn’t last forever. If this has been left here since the slaughter 30 years ago, who has been recharging it? And what about the OS and firmware? Has it been auto-updating itself all this time? If so, who has been paying the internet contract fees? If it was just left here, the contract would expire and it would stop functioning!”

“Shinobu-kun, we were attacked by someone in a run-down shack of Zenmetsu Village. Maybe this is his.”

“I can’t deny that 100%, but if he was hard up for food, wouldn’t this be the first thing he sold? And how has he been paying the monthly contract fees?”

He had somehow obtained that portable gas stove and gas cylinder, so he may have had some kind of income. He might have collected magazines and sold them or captured rare rhinoceros beetles and sold them. But whatever he did, it would be for a tiny amount. I doubted he had a stable income to pay the thousands of yen he would need for this.

“Someone left it here to make periodic contact. They bought the lightest variety of electric car so they could leave it here on the slope where no one would notice it. But I doubt it was that man wandering around Zenmetsu Village who did it. In fact, don’t you think it was put here on the slope specifically so he wouldn’t find it?”

“If so, who did it?”

“I don’t know...”

The car had to have had a license plate, but I could not see one. It was possible it had naturally rusted away, but it looked more like someone was intentionally hiding their personal information.

But thinking about this anymore was not going to help.

I looked back down at my cell phone.

“At any rate, our cell phones have a signal now. We can get the word out that we vanished from the tour bus and call for help from professional rescuers.”

“Don’t forget this,” said Madoka as she poked at the back of my cell phone. “You took all those photos. Those sloppy kanji may be illegible to us, but don’t you think a Zashiki Warashi who has lived for a long, long time could read them?”

Part 23 (Hishigami Mai)

The story so far!!

Eight thousand people had vanished from a large scale factory and corporate prison, leaving only a few jailers and prisoners behind. But in reality those eight thousand had not disappeared and it was us who had been caught up in “something”. It was possible we were being treated as missing in the real world.

Now, that meant one of those few people was likely the culprit.

However, I had no intention of gathering small pieces of evidence like my sister or that detective. Physical evidence was only any use when things could be resolved in the courtroom.

I decided to kill one person I could rule out and then fake my own death when I seemed the most likely suspect. The remaining members would panic and begin suspecting each other. Basically, I was creating a situation where killing everyone but yourself would bring you peace of mind.

Would the mastermind behind all this take direct action or would they take defensive action to stop the others from growing violent? They possessed some kind of hidden occult power, so either way, they would use some strange ability.

I could resolve the situation by determining who it was and defeating them.

Anyway, after I killed the one person in the factory’s employee cafeteria, I headed for the parking lot and made it look like the stolen car I tried to flee in had exploded.

In reality, I was hiding behind a line of parked trucks, watching the burning car from a short distance.

I could see a few silhouettes through the thick fog.

“What is...going on?” muttered someone.

Whose voice is that? Oh, right. That’s the violent jailer Yamada-kun.

“She’s dead? But that woman had to be the killer! Then who killed her!? I thought she was the one who killed the head jailer!”

The situation was not ideal.

I could see the light of the flames through the fog, but I could not grasp the details of the silhouettes. I would be unable to pick up on any small mannerisms or changes in expression like this. And I was supposed to be dead, so I could not carelessly approach either.

That meant it was time for my radio that could pierce the jamming.

“(Sunekosuri. Hey, Sunekosuri. Are you in position?)”

“I am in the factory’s guard room. There are so many surveillance monitors I am starting to feel dizzy.”

This facility was known as a corporate prison, so it would have more cameras installed than a normal factory. I had sent the Sunekosuri there to closely monitor the area I could not approach.

Meanwhile, the silhouettes in the fog continued sending stabbing words back and forth.

I heard a voice I was fairly sure belonged to the female jailer named Sakai Haruka.

“Wait a second! We decided that woman did it!”

“But her car’s burning!”

“Did she kill herself after killing the head jailer? Or maybe there isn’t a body inside. ...At any rate, she’s the one behind this! It’s a real problem if she isn’t!!”

Shit, she has some sense.

But that last comment might have been a mistake.

“What? What do you mean it’s a real problem? You make it sound like you have some secret you want to hide by making her look like the murderer.”

“N-no...”

“Shut up!!”

I heard a loud crashing sound. I stared closely and it looked like Yamada Ken had broken a random car window. He would not have done that barehanded, so he had likely found some kind of blunt weapon on his way here. <-->>

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