Volume 5, Notice//(5/9)
After turning a few corners, she crouched down behind a large metal dumpster.
Footsteps rushed away in the wrong direction.
I still couldn’t move very well, but I just barely managed to move my mouth.
“Wh-what is going on?”
“I don’t know. Any idea who might want to attack you?”
“Kodama Ryou? Although I’m pretty sure I could take care of him myself.”
“I doubt that fallen warrior has any forces leftover.”
“What about the casino? He had bribed a few of the guards in black, right? Y’know, the ones with enough of a spiritual sense to detect occult cheating.”
“Oh, the perverts who put that turtle shell bondage on me. I remember that verrrrry well.”
“Cough, cough!”
“But the special casino district keeps out large criminal organizations, remember?”
“Dangerous people don’t have to come from outside. The casinos have a ton of money and they’ll gather military might to protect it. And as their influence grows, they’ll end up no different from some kind of mafia.”
“Even if the casinos can be dangerous, they didn’t lose anything this time. You played directly against Kodama Ryou, so they have no reason to get back that money.”
“Perhaps not.” I slowly sighed. “Then let’s think about this differently. We won a direct game against Kodama Ryou and took well over ten billion yen from him. What if someone who saw that decided they could swipe that money from the amateur who took it?”
For one thing, it was a miracle I was still alive after a car bomb went off so close by. What if that hadn’t been meant to kill me? What if they were actually trying to abduct me to get my bank account number? Explaining it with malice seemed to make more sense than by calling it a coincidence or a miracle.
“That increases the number of suspects quite a bit. The staff and gallery who were in the casino itself are of course suspect, but who knows how far the rumor has spread in the hours since.”
“In the worst case, we might need to suspect every single person on Goldmine Island.”
I really didn’t want to think about the possibility, but the fox, tanuki, and badger weren’t completely above suspicion. Any one of them could have betrayed us and we had no way of proving that the entire story about the old master and sick granddaughter was true.
Fortunately, the money itself had been left with an accountant Madoka knew, so no one could steal the money even if these mystery attackers tried to get it out of me.
However, that did not guarantee I would survive.
I was completely helpless here.
“Shinobu, what are you going to do now?”
“Is it safe to use my cellphone? At any rate, I need to call my parents and meet up with them. This could cause them trouble, too.”
“We can’t trust the casinos on the front side of the island or the goldmine city on the back side. If you take a limousine taxi, it could easily take you somewhere up in the mountain and walking will take you through a lot of isolated places. It’s going to be dangerous no matter what you do.”
“There’s one way.”
When would strength return to my body?
I tried my best to move my limbs, but they would only tremble a bit.
“Goldmine Island is divided between the central mountain and the coastal areas and the coast is divided between the casino city and the goldmine city that contains the inns. There are only so many routes going around the mountain and it would be easy to lie in wait there. Whether by car or on foot, we’d probably be attacked.”
“And?”
“We just have to make our way through the center. That huge mountain contains a goldmine, so there has to be a labyrinth of passageways through it. If we take a shortcut through those tunnels, we might be able to slip past their ambush and reach the inn.”
Mysterious footsteps moved by surprisingly nearby.
It was frightening, but staying in one place would only get us caught eventually. They had to know our general location.
“Hey, Zashiki Warashi. Do you think you can carry me through the mountain?”
“I’m really thinking about leaving you here and escaping on my own.”
“I really will come back to haunt you, dammit.”
As the footsteps grew more distant, the Zashiki Warashi started to move out from behind the dumpster with me over her shoulder again, but we immediately gave up.
“It’s no use. They’ll definitely find us.
“We need to figure something out. This spot won’t be safe forever.”
“Wait a second.”
For some reason, she reached for the lid of the metal dumpster we were hiding behind.
Did she just grab something?
All of a sudden, the Glamorous Youkai loosened her obi and began removing her yukata.
“Wait! What are- gweh!?”
Her bright white skin stabbed into my eyes and I almost cried out, but that damn Zashiki Warashi stepped on my face to cover my mouth!
“In a casino city, a red yukata and a school uniform stand out, but these fake firefighters will be looking for that stronger impression. If we alter our hairstyles and change clothes, we can leave without even trying to hide. If they see us head-on, we’ll still be in trouble, but they won’t know it’s us from behind.”
“Mghmgh...cough! Wh-what do you mean change clothes?”
The nude Zashiki Warashi swung a few small scraps of cloth around.
“A couple must have slipped back here for some sex last night because there was an abandoned bikini here.”
“Wow! Why would you want to pick up something like- bgh!?”
She must have had no choice given the situation because she put on the skimpy bikini despite normally only ever wearing the kimono.
She tied bows in the side strings and I somehow managed to speak again.
“Hey, that solves it for you, but what am I supposed to do?”
“Oh? Nothing to worry about.”
For some reason, a bewitching smile appeared on her face.
“I said a couple had used this spot for sex, remember? There’s a men’s swimsuit here too.”
“...Wait.”
“Sorry, but I don’t think the situation leaves you with much choice.”
“Wait! Wait just a- mgh!? Don’t step on my face, you idiot! That discarded swimsuit scares me! It’s unsanitary!! And stop that! Quit pulling off my clothes!!”
“C’mon, Shinobu. Your big sis will help you get changed, okay?”
After a humiliating five minutes, we were ready for battle.
Instead of carrying me over her shoulder, the Zashiki Warashi supported me with that shoulder like I was simply drunk.
As soon as we slowly stood up from behind the metal dumpster, I felt several gazes stabbing into my back.
“Honey, I think you drank too much.”
“I want to forget everything. Where’s the booze!?”
“Shout like that and it’ll all come back up. C’mon, let’s get back to the inn.”
Even so, we couldn’t stay still and we couldn’t run away either. We had to slowly make our way unsteadily forward.
Fortunately, no one demanded we stop.
The Zashiki Warashi headed behind the casinos and into the mountain forest.
While the city was filled with bright lights, it had been quickly constructed for the special casino district project and the city wasn’t all that wide. If one left the main road that passed through the center, it wasn’t far to reach a dense forest. The forest was mostly made up of pineapple-like tropical trees that one could use to make a leaf swimsuit, but there were a few maple and gingko trees here and there. I couldn’t help but notice the spots of red or yellow amid the green.
I was still supported by the Zashiki Warashi’s shoulder, but I could move my fingers enough to operate my cellphone.
“It’s no use. Neither of my parents is answering.”
I was concerned, but worrying about it wouldn’t help.
I refocused my mind and contacted someone else.
“Madoka!”
“You need help again?”
Morning or night, this eccentric beauty was always tons of help.
Or so I thought.
“Shinobu-kun, let me ask you one thing first: what have you gotten yourself into now?”
“Eh? What? Well, as I said before, I took on the con artist named Kodama Ryou and...”
“Not that.” She cut me off with an awfully, awfully cold voice. “I’m sorry, Shinobu-kun, but you need to back out of this. What you’ve gotten yourself involved in will heavily influence my territory. This will actually affect me, so if you insist on doing anything more...”
Was this really Madoka I was speaking with?
Was it possible someone had transformed into her like that one time?
I couldn’t help but suspect that given her tone of voice.
“Then I will use my money and soldiers to crush you.”
She hung up.
I knew this was hardly the time, but I simply stared blankly at the phone for a while. What was going on? How had Madoka ended up as my enemy?
“Shinobu.”
“R-right. I can’t hope for any advice from Madoka, so we’ll have to get through this on our own.”
“Sigh. Was there enough money involved to turn her against you?”
“Honestly, I don’t even know what kind of world she lives in.”
My nervous homeroom teacher had asked me to look after her, but if someone had asked me if I had made my way deep into her mind over the past few months, I would have had to answer “no”. She was someone whose thought patterns I simply couldn’t read. I may have done something to anger her, but there was no point in figuring out what it was now.
“What are we going to do?”
“Head for the inn using the tunnels through the mountain. Then we can meet up with my parents.”
“And after that?”
The second question silenced me as I leaned on her shoulder, but I finally answered honestly.
“Do you really think I have any idea?”
Part 18 (Day 10/04 07:20 - 07:25)
By the time we set foot in the goldmine’s tunnel, feeling had returned to my arms and legs. I of course decided to remove the mystery swimsuit and put back on my school uniform, but...
“Look the other way, Zashiki Warashi!”
“I have no interest in your body, so what does it matter?”
“And stop stripping right in front of me! You’re not a much-older sister that only sees me as a kid!”
“I pretty much am. How many times do you think we’ve bathed together?”
“...I still think you should at least hide behind the rocks over there!!”
After changing, we threw away the swimsuits and finally moved deeper into the tunnel. I just hoped it would take us all the way to the opposite side of the mountain.
We continued walking through the manmade cave that was smelled strongly of dirt.
My cellphone’s backlight was our only source of light. There was a row of covered lightbulbs near the tunnel ceiling, but we couldn’t find a switch and we were afraid using the electricity would reveal our location.
“This isn’t good. The battery’s only going to last for about an hour. After that, we’ll be stuck in the dark.”
“Yeah, and the smartphone is nearly dead.”
“If only we could find a flashlight or materials for a torch somewhere.”
It was hard to believe I had been playing poker in a dazzling casino not long before.
The miners must have set up a communications antenna because my phone just barely still had a connection, so if I had wanted to, I could have played the slots in the VR Casino City or sold my avatar’s old clothes in my own virtual shop.
The manmade tunnel was fairly narrow and I could touch both walls if I stretched my arms out to either side. I was also nearly hitting my head on the ceiling. There were two small rails running along the ground which I assumed were for a mine cart. The sides of the narrow hole were only reinforced by some carelessly placed logs, so I would never have wanted to go in there normally.
“It branches off all over the place.”
“They probably just dug wherever they wanted without much planning. Anyway, let’s follow the track on through. That should at least avoid wandering around in circles.”
An Intellectual Village was a system that achieved massive profits by turning the rural into a brand name.
The value of pure gold was determined internationally, so I didn’t see much point in making a brand name out of its source. Still, there were exceptions even there.
In addition to weight and percentage, it seemed some extra value could be added to a ring based on where the gold had come from. As could be seen in legends from around the world, it wasn’t unusual to find the idea of “special gold” (although it tended to take the form of harmful cursed gold), so this was less about creating a new way of thinking and more about recalling an older way of thinking. If it caught on, it could easily spread around the world in no time.
Even so-called “pure” gold was technically only 99.99...9% pure and 100% pure gold didn’t exist, so it seemed research was being done to determine the source of the gold based on a detailed examination of the remaining components.
I remembered Madoka actually sounding pretty shaken because creating different grades of gold would throw the financial markets into chaos.
Madoka...
“What is it, Shinobu?”
“Nothing. Let’s just get out of here and meet up with my parents at the inn. I’m sure they have some work to do here, but safeguarding our lives comes first. If we can’t trust anyone on the island, it would be best to escape outside the island.”
As I spoke, we walked deeper and deeper down the tunnel.
The cellphone’s backlight only dimly illuminated the area around my hand, so I couldn’t even see the ground clearly. I naturally ended up keeping a hand on the wall as I walked, but the damp stone and dirt was not a pleasant sensation. My fingers sometimes felt something similar to rubber or plastic, so I looked over and saw thick cables running along the rugged stone.
I thought nothing of it at first, but then I looked back.
“What is this? Why’s there a cable here?”
As I had said, the cellphone was the only source of light. The cable didn’t seem connected to the tunnel’s lightbulbs or fluorescent lights and I hadn’t seen a fan blowing fresh air into the stale tunnel.
In that case, what was the cable powering?
Unpleasant questions floated up in the back of my mind like bubbles in a rotten swamp. The sticky bubbles slowly grew, stuck together, and filled my entire head.
I felt like this was something I could not afford to overlook.
It seemed to lead to some fatal conclusion.
Yes.
That’s right.
How were we attacked after our victory in the casino? An unmanned car packed with explosives. ...But who could easily bring something so dangerous into the casino city?
“This is bad, Zashiki Warashi.”
“?”
“Really bad!! The bomb came from this mine!! That means we didn’t escape here of our own free will. We were attacked by a blatant car bomb and then the firefighters approached so slowly. They intentionally guided us to the goldmine where there are no witnesses so they could finish us off on their own turf. In that case, this cable must be-...!!”
I never finished my explanation.
Before I could, a deafening explosion filled my vision with dirt and dust.
Part 19 (Day 10/04 07:29 - 07:50)
“...Ugh...”
I opened my eyes to find nothing but darkness.
I couldn’t tell whether I had simply had my eyes closed or if I had been knocked unconscious for a long period of time.
This wasn’t like the earlier car bomb. A strange sense of pressure assaulted me from every direction.
I patted across my upper body with both hands. I could move my limbs and I could breathe. As I gradually gathered information, I could feel the uneasy pressure gradually soften. At the very least, I didn’t seem to have been buried alive. However, the scent of dirt was even stronger than before and it felt a little difficult to breathe, although I couldn’t tell whether that was an issue of oxygen levels or my own mental state.
Light.
Where’s the light? Where’s my cellphone???
I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, so I felt up ahead while crawling. I quickly ran into the wall and the limited space just about made me cry. My heart was about to break, so I scolded myself and continued working. Finally, I felt some plastic.
“There it is.”
My trembling fingers felt across the slight bumps to operate the buttons.
The faint backlight seemed quite bright now.
“This is awful,” I muttered without thinking.
Just a few meters ahead, the tunnel had collapsed. A wall of stone and dirt completely filled the tunnel and there was obviously no chance of digging through by hand.
Then again, when I looked the other way, I only found more dirt. The overwhelming amounts got my legs trembling. There was less than ten meters of free space left. I could not continue on or turn back and I doubted there were any ways out along the walls.
The dirt hadn’t come down on my head, but this was no different from being closed in a large coffin.
I didn’t know how long the air would last.
What was I supposed to do?
I was at a loss, so I meaninglessly pointed the backlight here and there. But in all three hundred and sixty degrees, I found nothing but wet dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, and a figure in a yukata.
“...!!!???”
As soon as she entered my field of vision, I thought my mind was going to explode.
She was crouched down with her back to the wall and her long hair hid her face.
For an instant, I thought she was a cursed doll, but it was actually the glamorous Zashiki Warashi.
However...
I could only hear one person breathing inside this small, sealed space. Her hair, clothing, and fingertips were stained with unpleasant dirt, but she did not so much as twitch.
She didn’t look like a living being.
She seemed as unreal as an eerie shadow caught in the corner of a photograph.
It was as if...
As if...
“Hey.”
I sank down to the ground and opened my mouth without thinking.
“Please stop that. ...Please just stop it.”
Mine was the only voice. There was no response.
It truly felt like I was the only one there. Was that figure really composed of matter? Her presence was so faint, I doubted even that.
Finally, her white fingertip moved ever so slightly as she sat with her back to the wall.
She wrote something in the dirt: try not to waste the air.
Oh, so that’s why.
She technically didn’t need water or food and this explained why she seemed so inanimate.
I scratched at my head, realized my hand was covered in dirt, and clicked my tongue.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s hopeless either way. Whether we die here or someone shows up to rescue us, we still lost. For one thing, I think this situation is exactly what they had planned.”
I heard the woman in a yukata move her head a little.
She had likely tilted it to indicate confusion.
“If someone does come to save us, who do you think will show up first? Firefighters or a rescue team, right? And that’s how they were dressed. After burying us alive, they’ll be the ones to dig us up. They set it all up themselves, but it gives them the perfect opportunity to abduct someone while the public watches on. So we’re beat. Even if we know it’s coming, we can’t escape it.”
The mine was likely rigged with explosives at set intervals. No matter what path we had taken, they would have detonated the tunnel ahead of and behind us to trap us in a cage of dirt.
“We’ve lost, but at least that means they’ll dig us out. So don’t worry about the air, Zashiki Warashi. Discussing what’s to come is more important.”
At that point, a clear change entered the darkness: I heard someone exhale.
It looked like a switch had been thrown as the creepy woman returned to being a good-for-nothing indoor Youkai. Saying her heart resumed beating or breath returned to her lungs seemed to fit perfectly. And now that she was “back”, the cold dirt cell gained the life and familiarity of a school classroom.
“Honestly, why do I have to get caught up in this nonsense?”
“Don’t ask me.”
“Just to be sure, Shinobu, they’ll let me go if I hand you over, right?”
“This really might be the last time we see each other, so how about we have a nice intimate goodbye?”
But realistically, was there anything we could do?
The car bomb and the explosives set up inside the tunnel had probably come from this goldmine, so the miners were the most likely suspects.
But that was all we knew.
What would they do after digging us out? It seemed likely they wanted the billions of yen we’d taken from Kodama Ryou, but that had been left with Madoka’s accountant and we couldn’t withdraw a single yen of it ourselves. But would they accept that? And if not, what would they do with us?
If they took us somewhere, we would probably be bound, so was there any chance of turning this around, any way to escape, or any way to contact the authorities?
“Shinobu.”
As I explained my thinking, the Zashiki Warashi cut in.
“Doesn’t that seem odd, though?”
“What? How exactly is it odd?”
“Your premise is that someone heard about your win in the casino and attacked to take that money.”
What was she talking about?
What other possible reason could someone have to attack?
“That may be a perfectly good reason to attack, but doesn’t this seem too elaborate? Unlike blades or blunt weapons, it takes a lot of effort to handle explosives safely. Where did they get the car? What about the firefighters’ special fire-resistant suits? How many hours must it have taken to place explosives at set intervals through the mine?”
“...”
“And it’s only been a few hours since you won in the casino. You would have a hard time simply finding tightlipped accomplices in that time, so they couldn’t have put together an actual plan yet.”
Could you look at it that way?
It was true that it seemed rather intricate for a sudden and impulsive attack. After all, they couldn’t have known exactly where we would run. They would have needed to seal off our other options to ensure checkmate even if we hadn’t escaped into the mine.
How much preparation, manpower, and time would it have taken to accomplish all of that?
If they had just decided to attack as soon as they caught scent of the money, they would only have had to put on a mask and attack with a metal pipe in one hand.
“Wait a minute. Then who attacked us?”
“Do you really think I know that?”
“They at least went to the effort of burying us alive to get us to do something, but I can’t think of anything else worth all that other than the casino money!”
“We probably can’t even come up with a countermeasure unless we figure out what they’re after. Holding a shield up in the wrong direction will just get you stabbed in the side.”
I heard a dull thud and instinctually looked over. I could tell the thick wall of dirt was crumbling a little. I heard something like giant gears turning and it gradually grew louder.
“Dammit.”
I instinctually looked to the Zashiki Warashi.
What if? What if they truly weren’t attacking because of the casino incident? What if my very first assumption had been wrong?
Then it was possible I wasn’t their target at all.
There was someone else here.
It was entirely possible they had been after the Zashiki Warashi all along!
With a dull sound, something like a metal stake covered in lots of spikes broke through.
The dirt wall was being removed, but I didn’t feel the slightest happiness at being rescued and allowed out.
Hands reached in. All I saw were hands, hands, hands.
I’m sure I shouted something then, but the men in shiny fire-resistant suits didn’t react in the slightest. The shields protecting their faces hid their expressions from view and they threatened me by pushing forward a rotating blade that measured over a meter long.
And the hands were reaching for someone else.
I saw the Zashiki Warashi grabbed by the many hands and forced to her feet. Youkai were much stronger than humans. While she looked slender, she could probably literally kick them around despite how outnumbered she was.
But it was obvious why she obeyed them: the blade drill pushed up against my chest!
She glanced over at me just once, but she said nothing, faced forward again, and was tugged out through the hole.
She was taken away.
She disappeared from view.
“Dammit...”
As the Zashiki Warashi was dragged on ahead, the men dressed as firefighters left the tunnel, one by one. Once only the one pressing the weapon to my chest remained, he tossed a small memo my way.
It contained eleven numbers.
It was a cellphone number.
After I was finally left alone and still covered in dirt, I made my way back the way I had come. I didn’t run across anyone all the way to the bright entrance. They may have already taken the Zashiki Warashi out or they may have taken a different path through the spider web of tunnels to head to the other side of the island.
I was out of hints.
I had no idea whatsoever where the Zashiki Warashi was.
“Goddammiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiittttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt!!!!!!”
It was a sunny day and I shouted into the clear blue sky at the top of my lungs.
There was of course no answer.
Part 20 (Day 10/04 08:00 - 08:15)
I had always thought that Youkai did nothing of value.
I had always thought she shirked her duties as a Zashiki Warashi.
But she would never have been captured if she had not tried to save my life. She should have been able to escape on her own, but she had obeyed them to let me get away.
“...”
I slapped my cheeks and focused myself.
Moping around wasn’t going to help. I was the only one that knew what had happened and I was the only one who could do anything, so if I did nothing, no one could save that Zashiki Warashi.
They had given me a phone number before leaving.
They wouldn’t have done that for no reason, so I dialed my cellphone with my muddy fingers.
“That was surprisingly quick.”
It was a male voice...I thought.
It had clearly been mechanically altered, so I couldn’t rely on how it sounded.
“I thought your panic would last a little longer or you would go crying to your parents or the police.”
A strange scraping noise accompan-->>