heavily, he spoke as if encouraging himself.

“I was part of a group. That village was opposed to the construction of the semiconductor factory. I don’t know why, but they were strongly opposed to the factory using the underground water. It was a nuisance, so we were ordered to eliminate them and make it look like the work of a crazy killer.”

...How could this be?

But it was not over yet.

The nightmarish reality continued.

“We were rewarded nicely after finishing the job. For insurance, I hid that in the remains of the village along with what I plundered during the attack. ...But I let my guard down. My name had not been removed from the list of disposables! Someone had killed Kuroyama’s president during some internal struggle and my name was used. Most likely, some executive who had changed the ‘inside’ of the semiconductor factory had taken measures before the president could criticise them!!”

“Even if you were innocent of killing the president, you still faced a fate worse than death if the truth came out about Zenmetsu Village during the investigation. Is that why you had to run away before the retrial!? Because it would look too suspicious if you withdrew the request for a retrial that the victim group was asking for!?”

“Yes...that’s right!!”

Hasebe poured even more strength into his arms and my head sank beneath the water.

Gbh!! Dammit... Water is...getting into...some odd places.

I somehow brought my head back above water, but I could not breathe properly due to coughing too much.

“Cough!! Cough cough!!”

“I was cut off in every direction! Kuroyama was too clever. After being kicked out of the United Hive, my factory was completely under their control, but it was only a client on paper. Even if I claimed they ordered me to crush the village after cutting off all ties, no one would believe me. They would think it was a bluff meant aiming for a plea of insanity!! It would never reach Kuroyama! Whether my conviction was found to be wrong or not, I would still be sent down to the very bottom!!”

My fingertips were trembling.

The lack of oxygen must have been finally having direct effects because I could feel my strength fading. The situation was only going to grow worse from here.

Am I really going to be silenced like Hasebe wants?

Dammit.

Isn’t there something?

Isn’t there anything I can fight back with?

“Running away is the only way I can survive, so of course I’m gonna run! I’ll run to the ends of the earth!! I was a victim from the beginning. I was trapped in the system of poverty Kuroyama had created, so I could not escape by any normal means. And now I can’t escape without being willing to kill again!!”

Suddenly, I heard something slice through the air. The sound came from directly above me. I did not have time to look toward it because it dropped down in an instant.

A heavy metal wrench thrown from above the ravine struck Hasebe Michio in the head.

That stupid mystery freak!! Do you have any idea how hard I’ve been working to keep you from dirtying your hands!? And there’s no way you could aim properly in this fog. What if you had hit me!?

“Cough cough cough!! Shit!”

But I did not have time to give into my anger.

As strength left Hasebe’s arms, I quickly moved away. If I could escape his grasp, I could get out of the water.

As I tried to adjust my position, I saw something unpleasant.

Hasebe Michio had received quite a shock from the blow to the head, but he moved as accurately as an automated factory’s robot arm to reach out and grab the wrench that had bounced off his head.

Not good.

Not good!! If he starts beating me with that, I’ll have no way of fighting back! If I try to block the blow with my arms, it’ll just break my arms. I know various disarming methods based on aikido to aid in arrests, but I don’t think any of them will work when I’m in the water and have no footing!!

“Stop, Hasebe.”

“I’m sick of hearing about how people are supposed to be good deep down.”

“You’re well known. You’re more than just a criminal. The press is treating you like a hero who was falsely convicted. Your face and name are all over the internet and the talk shows. 150 million people know you! You can never escape. If you kill me here, you will be reported the instant you approach civilization!!”

“When in a flaming building, you head to the roof where the flames have yet to reach despite the danger. If I head back to prison, only the death penalty awaits no matter how the trial goes. Even if I know it’s a dead end, I can only continue running away from the wall of flames behind me!! There is no other path left for me!!”

He shouted angrily back at me.

As I saw him raise that heavy wrench, I felt my throat dry up.

Is this it!?

But at that point, I finally realized something.

At some point, another elderly man had approached behind Hasebe Michio. He was horribly dirty and his clothes were nothing more than old rags.

“...I remember you.”

“!”

Hasebe turned around in surprise when he heard the other man mutter at him.

However...

“I remember you!!”

A dull sound rang out.

The dirty man held a stone the size of a baby’s head that he must have torn from the ravine wall. He swung it down toward Hasebe’s head as hard as he could. Blood sprayed out and a bundle of hair was torn off, scalp and all.

A scream burst out.

The dirty man ignored it and slammed the stone down a second and third time.

“Stop...”

I had stood in utter shock for a bit, but the growing color of red brought me back to my senses.

The victor had already been decided. There was no point in going any further.

“Stop!! If you go any further, Hasebe will die!!”

“He...”

The man’s arm was trembling.

He gripped the red dyed stone so hard I thought it was going to break.

Even so, he did not stop moving his arm.

He spat out his words while looking down at Hasebe Michio who had half sunken into the cold water.

“He yawned. He was bored. While slaughtering everyone in the village and stabbing a blade into each of the bodies to make sure no survivors were hiding below the corpses, he yawned from boredom!!”

It was a story from a world that defied imagination.

I wanted to believe this was nothing but the man’s delusion.

But I had seen it.

This was not some eerie labyrinth. The scenery around us was the completely normal scenery in which dozens of people had lived, eaten, napped, and let their kids run around.

And all of that had been destroyed in a single night.

That was the truth.

“...Who are you?” I asked.

“Someone who they framed for all those murders,” replied the rag-wearing man as he dropped the stone in the water and his shoulders moved up and down as he desperately tried to catch his breath. “All this time, I had been so sick of being unjustly called a murderer. But look at this? Now a part of me feels I should become a real murderer. I will become the monster they wanted me to be...”

“You really shouldn’t,” I said. “Surely you saw that Hasebe Michio’s fate will be a miserable one regardless.”

“...”

That comment caused the rag-wearing man to look away from Hasebe.

And immediately afterwards, something happened.

“Solved it.”

I heard a voice.

It was a voice with no obvious source. It was as if I were wearing headphones. It was not my voice, Hasebe’s voice, or the rag-wearing man’s voice. It sounded like a small boy’s voice.

“Solved it. Solved it. Solved the puzzle.”

The voice sounded somehow mocking and also like it was singing a creepy lullaby that had some story behind it.

What?

What was that?

Before I could come up with an answer, the decisive moment arrived.

“That means you are no longer needed.”

A soft and unpleasant noise burst out.

It came from Hasebe Michio who had halfway sunken into the cold water while only partially conscious.

His body grew darker.

No, that was not what had happened.

It was dozens if not hundreds of snakes as thick as a little finger. They slithered up from below the water and quickly covered Hasebe Michio’s entire body.

It seemed the man no longer held any will to resist.

He did not cry out or scream.

As that eerie sound continued, that pure black “mass” clearly shrank in volume. The arms and legs sticking out from it turned at odd angles.

Is he being eaten?

That was what my instincts told me, but it made no logical sense.

Snakes ate their prey by swallowing it whole. They had fangs, but they could not bite off flesh. No matter how many snakes as thick as a little finger you had, it should have been impossible for them to eat something the size of a human.

But then what was I watching?

The volume of the mass within was visibly decreasing. It was like watching butter on a frying pan.

“Wait...” muttered the other man. He walked unsteadily toward the mass of snakes. “Please wait! He is...That man is the one murderer who can prove my innocence! Please don’t get rid of him!!”

“Watch out!! I don’t think those are normal snakes! Stay back!!”

I tried to grab the rag-wearing man’s arm, but he jumped at the mass of hundreds of snakes before I could.

He grabbed snake after snake and tossed them away as if digging through dirt to rescue someone who had been buried alive. The snakes must have had some objective or condition because they showed no sign of biting at the rag-wearing man. They focused only on Hasebe.

However...

“Ah...ah...”

The man’s hands stopped moving.

His eyes were opened wide.

The next thing I knew, most of the snakes had vanished as if dissolving into thin air. And in the spot Hasebe Michio had been in were nothing but a single arm and a single leg floating at the water’s surface. A few snakes remained eating them. The limbs shrank and ultimately disappeared. The snakes had eliminated every last trace that the man named Hasebe Michio had been here.

And after Hasebe disappeared, every last snake disappeared as well.

These black snakes were the same as the ones that had appeared in the hood of the rental car. These strange snakes had something like a gold ring around their necks.

“What is going on...?” I muttered blankly while watching as the rag-wearing man’s back drooped.

What had just happened?

What was going on in this village?

Part 25 (Hishigami Mai)

Um, who did what here again?

Kurumaya Nozomi was the one who had repeatedly stabbed Yamada Ken in the head with a glass shard. Sakai Haruka was the one who had cried out to stop her. Tanishita Hajime was the industrial spy desperately bluffing while waving around a toy handgun. Suzukawa Izumi was the young female prisoner. Gogan Sakura was the investigator on an unofficial undercover mission who held a real handgun and was trying to keep the situation from falling into chaos.

The change started with Tanishita Hajime, the industrial spy.

“Uuh...bah...?”

I heard a muffled noise.

That questioning voice sound like it came from a mouth forcibly plugged by a gag.

“Gh..bh. Gfh!? Ghh!! Gbgbh!!”

He suddenly held a hand up to his mouth and he doubled over.

Initially, he looked like the victim of poison.

But that was not the case.

What spewed from his mouth was a large number of snakes.

Snakes as thick as a little finger fell to the ground as if a faucet had been opened. He held a hand to his mouth, but the snakes slipped through the gaps between his fingers.

“Gyah!? Wh-wh-what is that!?”

“What is going on...!?”

The change did not stop at his mouth.

I heard a popping noise. Some foreign substance was flowing out like tears. More than ten snakes came from his eye sockets as if forcing their way out of his eyeballs. They came from his nose and ears as well. At this point, anyone could imagine what had happened. It was like snakes or moles moving through the dirt. Tanishita Hajime’s head had to be filled with countless tunnels. There was no way he was still alive.

“Bh.”

I heard another odd noise.

Tanishita collapsed sideways.

This did not look like a living human collapsing. It was more like someone had stood a branch up on its side and then let go.

“Gy-gy-gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!?”

The female jailer named Sakai Haruka let out a high-pitched scream and tried to run away. Who had done this? What had they done? How had they done it? What were the conditions? She did not know the answer to any of those questions, so she was simply trying to run as far away from the dangerous oddity as she could.

Ew.

The stomach of her work uniform swelled up like a beach ball. After that...well, I don’t really want to explain it. There was a muffled sound and her entire lower stomach area became dyed a dark red. It was as if a water balloon hidden in her clothes had burst. Dozens of snakes wet with something red slithered out from the gaps in her clothes.

“E-ee!” groaned someone.

That was the limit of what they could do and it changed nothing.

Both the prisoners and the jailers collapsed as they were taken out by the snakes. Gogan Sakura may have held a real gun, but snakes even slithered out of the gun barrel. After her gun malfunctioned and blew her hand off...well, it wasn’t pretty.

Silence fell over the area.

The snakes continued to slither around.

I did not think these were some strange parasites or aliens.

They were most likely Youkai.

Snakes. A swarm. A sudden appearance.

There were several candidates, but I could not be sure of anything yet. When it came to snake Youkai, I suspected the rulers of water, the ones related to ironworking which were derived from them, or possessing spirits.

“A-ahh. Ahhhhhhh...”

I heard the Sunekosuri’s dumbfounded cry coming from the radio.

“Sunekosuri, I have no more need for you there, so come meet me here.”

With that arbitrary instruction, I walked through the fog and cautiously approached the corpses.

I was keeping the optimum level of tension and burden on my muscles so I could move at any moment, but there was no sign of the snakes attacking me. It seemed the attack condition was something other than distance.

...Hmm.

They were scattered around a bit, but there were six corpses lying in the parking lot. The snakes were even wriggling around in the stab wounds in Yamada Ken’s head. This spread the wounds by quite a bit, so the “contents” were spilling out.

I viewed each corpse in turn.

Yamada Ken.

The worst part was the stab wounds on his head. Instead of fresh blood, over ten snakes were slithering out. The pink contents of his head were spilling out, so it was blatantly obvious there was no saving him.

Sakai Haruka.

I did not want to take a peek inside her work uniform, but her disturbingly sunken-in silhouette told me she had ruptured within it. All of her insides must have been taken out as well because she smelled the worst of any of them. It was more than just the smell of blood. A lot of different things had mixed together inside her gut.

Kurumaya Nozomi.

I heard an occasional whistling sound escaping from her, so I initially thought she was alive. However, she was not. I could see snakes in her chest. Her lungs had burst from the inside. As the snakes came and went, they caused the remnants of her lungs to act as a pump. That was sending some air out.

I saw a beckoning cat bottle cap doll poking out from her pocket, so she must have been the one who had placed them in the employee cafeteria.

Tanishita Hajime.

They came from his mouth, eyes, nose, and ears. Snakes pushed open every single hole on his face. The structure of his face had been utterly destroyed. It looked like a swollen fugashi.

Suzukawa Izumi.

Large numbers of snakes were coming from her mouth and nose, and her eyes were rolled back into her head. The number of snakes coming from her mouth must have exceeded the limit because her jaw had completely dislocated.

Gogan Sakura.

The explosion of her handgun had blown off her hand and tons of snakes were passing from her right ear to her left. You can imagine what had to have happened to the space between.

“Ahh, how could this happen?” groaned the Sunekosuri as he approached after exiting the factory. “Annihilation...This is a complete annihilation! I thought Hyakki Yakou sent us here to keep this from happening!!”

“What? We were asked to investigate the phenomenon in the semiconductor factory and to eliminate it if necessary. Stop adding on extra objectives.”

“Then if you had been asked to save everyone in the corporate prison, you would have done so!? Are you saying you could have done that with your superhuman abilities!? You could have saved them from this horrible situation!? There had to have been completely normal people with no connection to our world here!!”

“Sorry, but I don’t accept jobs I know I can’t handle.”

You can get emotional if you want, but be careful because it’s only any good for motivation.

And this isn’t over yet.

“Sunekosuri, who do you think did this?”

“Eh...?”

“Is some as yet unseen mystery character hiding somewhere? I suppose it’s possible, but I doubt that’s the case. If someone who could have killed us at any time had been watching from a distance this entire time, they would not have killed them at this time. And since they did not attack you or me, the culprit must not be viewing us from a god’s-eye perspective,” I explained. “In other words, this went just as planned. The mental pillar of the group, the head jailer named Itou Takeru, was killed in the cafeteria and then the top suspect, me, was blown up in the parking lot. One of the suspects panicked and used their occult power.”

“Then one of them used theses snakes? But they were all annihilated!! Did they lose control of the Youkai!?”

“That would make this simpler, but I don’t think so,” I said offhandedly. “After all, one of them is still alive.”

I cracked the knuckles of my right hand.

My body had been modified to specialize in fighting Youkai, but I could still crush a corpse’s head or tear out its heart with a single hand. The human body held more potential for brutality than most people thought.

To put it bluntly, if I thoroughly destroyed each of the suspects’ vitals, the incident would be resolved.

“W-w-wait a second!! But...they were...just look...it was a complete slaughter! How...what!?”

“Don’t be led astray by the shock of the scene. Look at this rationally. Why did the culprit kill everyone? To keep the conditions equal so as to hide their identity. They wanted to be another victim just in case these irregularly released snake Youkai failed and left a survivor.”

“Th-then...”

“That is also why the snake Youkai are still here. Normally, you try to hide your trump card. If someone can determine the identity of the Youkai, they will learn their weakness. But the culprit is keeping these creepy Youkai on the corpses. That is meant to keep anyone from directly touching the victims’ bodies to check for a pulse or checking the pupils. When you see these grotesque corpses, of course you aren’t going to want to approach the Youkai that did it. Who knows what they’ll do to you.”

I pointed at each of the collapsed figures in the parking lot one at a time.

Yamada Ken.

Sakai Haruka.

Kurumaya Nozomi.

Tanishita Hajime.

Suzukawa Izumi.

Gogan Sakura.

“There. That’s the one.”

Part 26 (3rd person)

In the Intellectual Village of Noukotsu Village, today was not just another relaxing day in the Jinnai household.

The household ran a sake brewery, so mid-September, which was harvest time for new rice, was the most nerve-racking time. This was the earliest step of the production process, so it determined whether they could make the start dash or not. No matter how much technology they had, a mistake here would prevent them from making the best possible product.

And so Jinnai Shinobu’s father was constantly calling the city’s rice farmers while Jinnai Shinobu’s grandfather drove the electric light truck around to judge and select the rice. The grandfather had supposedly retired, so the importance of this time could be seen in the fact that he stood on the front lines.

However...

The financial issues of human society did not matter to the Youkai who lived for all eternity.

In the name of searching for what Shinobu had hidden in his room, the large-breasted and glamorous Zashiki Warashi found the high school boy’s secret savings and the flat-chested and somewhat yandere Yuki Onna checked through his hidden porn magazines. However, they then found something unexpected. (Incidentally, a Youkai that protects the house and a yandere both tend to lack a sense of privacy.)

They found an old album.

“This was made with a service that makes high quality prints of the photos in a digital picture frame. That was popular a while back. ...After all, digital data tends to get destroyed every few years.”

“Oh, oh, ohh!! S-so this is full of this kind of photo and that kind of photo of Jinnai Shinobu during his younger days? Pant...pant...!!”

“You’re starting to look a little damp overall. Are you sure you’re not going to melt yourself by getting so fired up over this?”

The Zashiki Warashi and the Yuki Onna brought the album into the living room and opened the thick cover as casually as if they were reading a manga volume they had found while cleaning the room.

“This is Shinobu back when he refused to let go of his baby bottle.”

“...What’s this!? His hair is a different color!!”

“And this is Shinobu when he became a wild animal and leapt toward my breasts even when I tried to tell him his bottle was over there.”

“That damn gigolo! He had that much talent that young!?”

A Nekomata muttered in shock a bit away from the two trembling Youkai.

“What are they doing...?”

She had been speaking to herself, but someone replied to her.

It was Jinnai Shinobu’s mother who preferred dealing with the accounting over actually making the sake. As she rapidly entered data into a spreadsheet program on the computer placed atop the low sitting room table, she spoke leisurely to the Nekomata.

“It can’t really be helped. Half of Shinobu’s problems with the Zashiki Warashi are his own fault.”

“What do you mean?”

“Her laziness and her love of video games come from Shinobu’s own actions.”

This woman was not a frugal person who was stingy with money. Instead, she was a math fanatic who grew utterly absorbed in the fluctuations of the parameters. She grinned at the spreadsheet on the screen as she spoke.

“In fact, when I married into the family, that Zashiki Warashi almost never appeared where anyone could see her.”

“...Really?”

“That’s the standard for a Zashiki Warashi, right? You would see her shadow on the sliding door but would find no one there if you circled around behind it. If you left food in the altar room, it would mysteriously disappear.” The Nekomata looked dubious as Jinnai Shinobu’s mother continued speaking. Her fingers raced across the keyboard all the while. “When Shinobu was born, she was still that elusive and eerie existence. However, Shinobu would excitedly go around searching for the Zashiki Warashi. When he was unable to find her he would grow tired and begin to cry. That’s when we began to see her face poking out from behind a pillar. After that continued long enough, she ended up like this.”

“It might be a bit too cruel to lay all the blame on that boy.”

“Probably. Shinobu also gained some habits from her. For example, he always embraces his pillow or something while sleeping.”

A smartphone then began ringing.

It was the phone (that actually belonged to Shinobu) which was placed in the chest of the glamorous Zashiki Warashi’s yukata.

“What? You left on your trip but ended up stranded with a girl from your class? Shinobu, why are you calling? Are you bragging about how great your life is?”

“A-a rendezvous!? Don’t tell me they’re trapped in a mountain cabin and have to strip down naked to warm each other with their bodies!! Th-that is the role that a Yuki Onna should play as mountains and coldness are our domain!”

“I thought seeing a Yuki Onna approaching in that situation led to being stranded and freezing to death,” pointed out Shinobu over the phone. “But that’s not the point. Anyway, we’ve already contacted the fire department, so we should be okay. In the meantime, I have a few photos to send you.”

“Are they erotic photos overflowing with youth?”

“M-making a fish print with the female body!? How twisted!!”

“Hey, could we try to get somewhere in this conversation?” asked Shinobu. “We found a bunch of old kanji and can’t read them. I thought maybe a Youkai who had lived a long life might be able to decipher them.”

“Shinobu, that sounds like a huge pain.”

“Once I hang up, I can call the card company and tell them I lost my credit card. If I do that, the smartphone, the game system’s network play, and the laptop’s internet will all be stopped. And what about the cable TV? I think the ones in my room and your room are both under my name.”

The Nekomata sighed in exasperation when she saw the glamorous Zashiki Warashi prostrate herself in front of the smart phone with tears in her eyes.

The Zashiki Warashi gave a teary sniff and looked through the photographs she had been sent.

“Um... I think this one carved into a stone in what looks like a cave says...‘arrival of the water god’.”

“Any idea what that means?”

“It means they are bringing a snake Youkai in from somewhere else.”

“...Snake?”

With the obvious example of Yamata no Orochi, snake or serpent Youkai were often related to twisting rivers and the water damages that came from them.

“Then those are...no wait. I didn’t get that feeling from them. It’s the huge serpents like Orochi or Uwabami that symbolize rivers. The ones I saw were different...”

Shinobu was muttering about something, but the Zashiki Warashi did not pay too much attention because she did not know the details.

She focused on deciphering the old writing in the photos so she could end the danger of an internet annihilation.

“These few account books on Japanese paper seem to be related to a village ritual. They explain the cav-->>

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