Volume 5, Notice//(6/9)
Was it fingernails?
It wasn’t quite the sound of biting them, so the person may have had a habit of scratching the plastic body of the phone.
“Youkai have no rights,” I explained. “They can’t be accused of a crime even if they kill someone, but that also means they don’t benefit from any other social services. Even if they’re abducted in broad daylight, the police can’t do anything about it. After all, they aren’t human.”
And if the police couldn’t do anything, talking to my parents wouldn’t help either.
One’s parents were reliable, but they weren’t all powerful. Everyone knew that by the time they entered middle school.
“How wise of you. But it may be one of your strong points that you don’t make that sound coldhearted.”
“I know you didn’t just want to chat. What do you want me to do?”
“I’m glad you understand. That way I won’t have to explain or demonstrate that we have a method of killing Youkai.”
A squeezing ache filled my chest.
If he had been standing in front of me when he said that, I might have torn out his windpipe with my teeth.
Kodama Ryou and the casino had used a special rope to bind the Zashiki Warashi. They had crushed a stone mill to powder, placed it in a furnace, and created a special glass fiber rope. It had likely been made for the Usuhiki Warashi, a subspecies, but if they used it on her...
If they created a blade or bullet out of the stone mill glass fiber...
“Our instructions are simple. Obey them and we will release the Zashiki Warashi. And simple as they are, this is something only you can do. Can we count on you?”
If this is their true objective, does that mean they aren’t even after the Zashiki Warashi?
No, I need to assume something else might be underway at the same time.
“What do you want?”
“Your travel bag that ended up as lost baggage. Pick it up at the airport counter and bring it to us.”
“What?”
At first, I didn’t understand.
They didn’t want the money I’d won at the casino or the Zashiki Warashi that had supported our Intellectual Village house for so long. Why were they so fixated on a student’s luggage? They had even used explosives and firefighter suits, which weren’t easy to get your hands on.
“I won’t ask you again.”
“Wait, wait! What do you want with that suitcase? There’s nothing much in there. In fact, I think the suitcase itself might be the most valuable part. So...!!”
“We are not here to answer questions. Pick up your bag and call us again once you leave the airport.”
“But I’m covered in mud!! If I head to the reception counter like this, they’ll definitely be suspicious. If you want me to do this for you, then compromise at least a little!!”
“Then stop by your inn for a change of clothes.”
“So you’re fine with my parents stopping me after they see me like this? And how am I supposed to explain the Zashiki Warashi’s absence?”
“You can buy new clothes.”
“They don’t sell clothes in a casino city. Or do you think they wouldn’t suspect a thing if I showed up at the airport dressed as a bunny girl?”
I heard him click his tongue and the scratching on the cellphone’s body continued.
After some time to think, he replied.
“There are some coin lockers in Building A at the airport. Open #0934 and take what is inside.”
“A coin locker? So where do I get the key?”
“#0934 won’t be locked. It will contain the key to another locker. Use that to open the other locker, which will hold a change of clothes.”
“Understood.”
“Now, listen. We won’t give you anything more than that. If you don’t pick up your bag, you will never see your Zashiki Warashi again.”
“I get it!!”
I hung up and had some things to do.
The first of course was picking up my suitcase. They obviously wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble to steal some kid’s clothes and handheld game system, so there had to be some kind of secret. Without knowing what they were after, I couldn’t figure out what their Achilles’ heel was. I needed to find it, use it as a shield, and take back the Zashiki Warashi.
Secondly, someone would be putting some clothes in the airport coin locker soon. If I could capture them and get some information from them that they didn’t want me to know, then I could throw a wrench in their plans.
I was prepared to use any means necessary.
Part 21 (Day 10/04 08:23 - 08:37)
I was covered in dirt and only had a bit of change.
I couldn’t use a taxi like that and I didn’t care what people thought about me at this point, so I ran full speed toward the floating airport connected to the island. Fortunately, Goldmine Island was small. All of the facilities were packed in enough that you could get anywhere on foot so long you didn’t wear yourself out.
Or so it should have been.
“...Gh...”
My legs wobbled and tripped.
I couldn’t even run properly.
I had barely had any sleep since the previous day, I had consumed tons of food and drink with no thought about the consequences, my head had been shaken by an explosive blast (even if they had been holding back), I had been buried alive, and I had undergone the mental shock of having the Zashiki Warashi taken from me before my eyes.
It had all come together at once.
But that was no excuse. The situation was already underway. If I didn’t catch them putting the items in the lockers, I couldn’t get a step ahead of them. If I just did what they said and followed the rails they had laid out for me, I might not get the Zashiki Warashi back.
“Uuh...”
My vision blurred.
I felt dizzy, so I leaned up against a nearby streetlight and tried to catch my breath. The sweat on my brow felt oddly cold.
I was starting to feel anemic and my weakness started snowballing out of control.
Even if I did reach the airport, what could I even do? I was only a high school boy and I was alone. Could I really spot the suspicious person in a large cloud? How many people used the coin lockers? It was possible there would be more than one enemy there and they could have been monitoring my every move. What could I do? Was there anything I could do besides obeying them?
That wasn’t being logical. I was simply giving up.
I shook my head and gathered my strength to start moving again.
And as I almost collapsed forward, something soft supported my head.
It was a young woman’s breasts.
“U-um, what are you doing? You look awfully pale.”
“Wah!?”
I moved away so quickly I almost fell backwards, but the woman only looked confused.
A closer look showed she wore a maid uniform with a miniskirt and her short hair was dyed in a mesh of black and brown. The breasts I had buried my face in were quite large. I naturally didn’t know anyone on Goldmine Island, so I could only imagine she was some kind person who had called out to me because I didn’t look well. Her outfit was strange, but in a city where bunny girls roamed the streets, that didn’t seem to matter.
However, the woman gave me a troubled look.
“Oh, dear. It’s me.”
“?”
“I am the wet nurse tanuki.”
Part 22 (Day 10/074 08:45 - 08:55)
Based on what the tanuki told me, it seemed the fox, tanuki, and badger had snuck into Goldmine Island by stowing away aboard a luxury cruise ship. They had intended to leave the same way, but none of the ships left until past noon and they had nothing else to do until then.
“The best method is to sneak into the cargo hold in our small animal forms and then transform into humans. They check on the cargo hold from time to time, but after checking people’s tickets when they board, they don’t suspect anyone onboard. They assume there is no way to slip past the gate.”
There seemed to be different conditions for each one, but these three filled in the details of their transformations by walking through human civilization and blending in. They were apparently in the middle of doing that now.
“At any rate, this is great. I think luck has seriously turned my way.”
“Oh, um, what?”
“Can you contact the fox and badger? I could use some help right now, so could you do something for me?”
The other two arrived before long.
The fox looked like the kind of athletic young man who would be chosen as a world cup representative and the badger looked like a cool, perfectly-proportioned prince with silky blond hair and a dark suit.
I-I know it isn’t surprising Youkai all end up so attractive since they can freely take on any design they imagine, but could you please stop making visuals where I blend into the background! It’s depressing!!
After I explained the details, the soccer player, the maid, and the prince began ruining their attractive aura by speaking with their usual voices.
“H-how dastardly!! If they are going to kidnap that poor Zashiki Warashi for a mere travel bag, I must punish them!!”
“Leave it to wet nurse like me. We owe you for saving our family, so I am more than willing to help.”
“Fear not, boy. We were already feeling bad about leaving the island without doing anything to repay you.”
Oh, c’mon!! Everything they say sounds like it’s straight out of a puppet show, but I’m being overwhelmed by their sparkling good looks! I want to punch them so bad since I’d settled for the comedian route where I win girls over with my conversational skills instead of my looks!!
“So what are we supposed to do? I’m ready to tear apart those ruffians with my splendid claws!”
“No, no. The proper way to handle ruffians has always been to stuff them in a pot for dinner. Leave it all to a wet nurse like me.”
“Heh heh heh. I’m starting to remember the flavor of blood that the old lady banned.”
“Wait, wait, you idiots. Yeah, all three of you!! If you talk about stuffing people in a pot for dinner when you look like that, you sound like legit criminals! That’s not what I was asking. Can we start by thinking of a way to rescue the Zashiki Warashi?”
The perfectly-proportioned idiots gave me looks that asked what we were supposed to do, so I suggested an impromptu plan.
“For example, what about this?”
Yes.
I was no longer alone. With four people, my options were bound to grow.
Part 23 (3rd person — Day 10/04 09:00 - 09:10)
Several men and women were hidden within the crowd of people inside Goldmine Island’s floating airport.
They had wireless microphones on their sleeves and stun guns, knives, and handguns hidden in their pockets.
“Target confirmed. Just as mentioned in the ‘discussion’ that dirt stands out a little too much.”
After seeing a blond boy in dirty clothes enter the airport’s front entrance, a man spoke as he leaned against a pillar.
“There’s no sign of anyone else, so he appears to be alone as planned.”
After confirming that the boy disappeared into the corridor leading to Building A, the man stepped away from the pillar and slowly followed the boy while pulling a rolling suitcase behind him.
The outer wall was made of glass to allow the morning sun in, but an oddly dangerous atmosphere filled the building.
“He isn’t taking any detours on the way and he doesn’t seem to be contacting anyone by phone.”
The blond boy was on his way to the coin lockers in Building A.
After picking up some new clothes there, he was supposed to stop by the lost baggage management counter.
Since he showed no sign of trying anything, it seemed he was too exhausted and nervous to put together a plan. The man felt this was a good sign.
“The target has arrived at Building A’s coin lockers. He has picked up the clothes. He will probably stop by somewhere to change, presumably the restroom. I can only watch the exit from the outside for that.”
As he spoke under his breath, the man began pursuing the blond boy again.
And then...
“Hi, there.”
He suddenly heard a voice from behind.
It was the voice of the blond boy he was supposed to be monitoring.
“Wha-...!?”
He frantically turned around, but a hand grabbed his collar before he could do anything. The other hand reached toward his belt and he felt something being pulled out. His back was then slammed into the row of lockers with tremendous force.
As he gasped for breath, the man saw the familiar blond boy in front of him.
After fierce laughter, the boy spoke.
“Surprised?”
The boy held a knife and the man recognized it as the one he had carried.
The tip of the blade gently stroked the man’s stomach.
“What...is...?”
Cornered, the man looked back and forth between the boy right in front of him and the identical boy walking cluelessly away with his change of clothes.
Then the one holding his collar spoke.
“That’s the wet nurse tanuki.”
Part 24 (3rd person — Day 10/04 09:15 - 09:33)
Jinnai Shinobu walked down the airport corridor with his arm still around the shoulders of a man in a cheap suit. After a while, they reached a metal door. It was a janitor’s supply closet and it opened from the inside after Jinnai Shinobu knocked lightly. However, it was not a person who poked their head out; it was a fox walking on its hind legs.
“Get in,” said Shinobu.
He shoved on the man’s back, causing him to fall on the floor and knock over a pile of boxes filled with cleaning supplies, but the man was focused on the knife in the boy’s hand.
“I won’t talk.”
Jinnai Shinobu and the fox ignored him, searched through his suit and checked each pocket.
They spoke to each other while ignoring their hostage.
“Here’s his ID. His name is Emura Ryouichi. Looks like he’s a local.”
“He doesn’t have much in his wallet. Should we check the suitcase, too?”
Having one’s name found out created a certain type of fear.
That meant the danger could extend beyond this single incident. It opened up the possibility of revenge a year or even a decade later.
“I won’t talk!! Have you forgotten that we have a hostage!?”
The two continued ignoring him.
“I recorded his voice, so check over it. You can get by as long as you memorize his speech mannerisms, right?”
“A video would have been best. Well, if I check over his build, I can guess pretty well how he carries himself when he walks.”
To Emura Ryouichi, something seemed off about this conversation.
He had not been brought out of the public eye so they could take cruel revenge or to get him to tell them everything he knew.
They had other plans.
“In that case, fox, transform into him right away.”
“So I transform into the enemy and pretend to have captured you to infiltrate them further? Of course, it won’t be me that the organization ends up hunting down as a traitor.”
Part 25 (3rd person — Day 10/04 09:33 - 09:40)
Unsurprisingly, the other members noticed what had happened.
For one thing, they had been keeping close contact with Emura Ryouichi by radio, so all of the other members heard the entire conversation.
“Satou, Suzuki! They’re in Building A’s equipment storage room. Take care of this before airport security catches on!!”
They were panicked, but not because they cared about Emura.
If Jinnai Shinobu shut himself up in there, they would have no way to access the lost suitcase. And if he was taken into protective custody, his luggage would be recovered by the police. Either way, the “item” hidden in the suitcase would escape their grasp again.
“What do we do about the one who took the clothes? The one they called a wet nurse tanuki.”
“Leave her. I’m sure they’ll ask some questions to ensure his identity in addition to checking his ID. The questions will be random, so a tanuki pretending to be him won’t be able to answer them.”
They would settle this before anyone noticed, so three men and women arrived in front of the metal door to check.
“Threaten him with your guns and knives. While he’s focused on those, I’ll zap him with my stun gun. Listen. Don’t spill any blood. That could prevent him from picking up the bag.”
They did not think this would be a difficult fight.
Their only worry was going too far and killing their opponent.
The three of them prepared their weapons and then kicked down the metal door.
And when they looked inside, they could not believe their eyes.
They saw two blond boys.
“Kh.”
They could not immediately tell which was the real one, so they made a quick decision.
“Get both of them!!”
With that shout, a woman charged toward the Jinnai Shinobu on the right. She pressed her stun gun against his thigh and hit the switch with her thumb.
She heard a loud zap, but she did not feel the attack land.
White smoke spread out and the boy transformed into a fox with a comical sound effect. To escape the stun gun’s electrodes, the Youkai fled toward the open exit while occasionally tripping.
“Don’t worry about him!!” shouted the woman. “Capture the true-...!!”
She trailed off because she saw a round tanuki slipping between the arms of the men grabbing at the Jinnai Shinobu on the left.
Both of them had been wrong.
In which case, where was the real Jinnai Shinobu?
“Dammit!! Was the first one who took the clothes the real one!?”
Part 26 (Day 10/04 09:40 - 09:52)
“Now, just to be sure, can you tell me your blood type?”
“AB. Thanks.”
After going through the necessary steps, I was at long last reunited with my suitcase. It was plastered with stickers of countless sizes, so there was no mistaking it.
I had been worried about my ID, but opening my cell and showing them the page displaying the monthly details was enough. They wouldn’t have accepted that normally, but they were probably more flexible with lost baggage since it was their mistake.
“Now, then.”
At the very least, I had avoided a scenario where I was killed as soon as I took the suitcase.
I had made it to the next phase and I still had a chance to save the Zashiki Warashi, but this didn’t exactly guarantee my safety.
I had tried to throw them off my trail to a certain extent, but I didn’t know how many more were inside the airport. For the time begin, I dragged the suitcase out of the airport building.
Once I entered the roundabout, I saw a familiar face.
It was the middle-aged driver of that white limousine taxi.
“Oh, what’s this? You look a lot more confident than yesterday. Did you win some at the casinos? Then how about driving on out to a beach filled with girls?”
“This isn’t Hawaii and I’m not about to go swimming in the ocean during October.”
“Well, I don’t know if it’s due to rising sea levels or what, but I hear the beaches have been getting smaller recently. Still, the casino city has a fully-indoor artificial beach. It runs year round like a ski slope in a desert.”
“Oh, yeah. Someone had left some swimsuits lying around.”
As I spoke, I climbed into the crazy-luxurious vehicle.
“Wait just a sec,” said the driver while messing with his cellphone. “I’ve gotta log out.”
I frowned.
“Oh, are you on the VR casino? Do you play the slots when you’re bored?”
“Of course not. I’d be broke in no time if I did that. The VR Casino City lets you make an avatar and buy a house or a shop. Just by putting your avatar’s old clothing up for sale, you’ll automatically get some virtual money.”
He finally stuck the phone in his pocket and smiled as he answered.
The limousine worked for me since it gave me the space to open the suitcase and it prevented anyone from grabbing it.
“Where to today?
“Just drive me around.”
“Wow, you’ve gotta be rich to say that. Did you really hit it big?”
While wildly setting off in the limousine taxi, the driver spoke casually to me.
“But be careful. Winning too much in a casino city isn’t always a fun thing. It can also earn you a lot of resentment.”’
“You mean a loser will stab me in the back?”
I kept the conversation going while pulling a small key from my wallet. It was for the suitcase.
The driver occasionally glanced back at me through the rearview mirror.
“It’s not just that. The locals won’t like you either.”
“?”
“Wait, really? You hadn’t noticed? Just to be clear, I’m not a local. I came here looking for work.”
He gave a deep laugh.
“In a casino city, all the brightly-lit buildings are built by outside corporations. I hear the truly local people really lose out in the deal.”
“But the inns and mine on the other side of the island make a lot of money, right? And aren’t the tours of the ruins popular?”
“Are you serious? While the locals do own the mine, outsiders from big companies ended up taking the mining rights by offering to lend them younger workers to keep the burden off the older locals. They tried to turn a remote island into an Intellectual Village, but they failed to keep control from the very beginning. All of the people born and raised on Goldmine Island only get a tiny fraction of the profit.”
“...”
“For a while now, the locals have been saying they suddenly couldn’t mine any gold anymore. I’m not sure how much truth there is to that, though.”
“Hm?”
“It seems work ships have been stopping in the harbor quite a bit and that they’re always loaded with a bunch of dirt that must have come from somewhere. The island’s miners claim it’s illegal mining and they suspect the casinos are digging up the island without giving even the bare minimum of notification.”
“But they aren’t actually running across new tunnels while working, right? Even if the casinos are digging somewhere, I don’t think it would change what the locals find in their usual mining spots.”
“Yeah, but when you hate someone, you hate everything about them. I mentioned the beaches shrinking due to rising sea levels, remember?”
“What about it?”
“The locals are blaming the casinos for that too. They claim all the electricity the casinos use is creating a bunch of carbon dioxide and advancing global warming.”
Well, yeah...
“That isn’t exactly wrong...”
“Gather enough dust and you’ll have a mountain, it’s true. But this little island alone isn’t going to affect the beaches. Unfortunately, the locals don’t really care about that kind of consistency. They refuse to forgive the people running the casinos or the guests who win a ton of money there. If you don’t want to get caught up in some kind of trouble, you shouldn’t show off even if you do win.”
So there was friction between the outside companies and the locals.
It wasn’t necessarily directly related to the problem I was facing, but it couldn’t hurt to know about the local power games.
And as I thought about that, I inserted the small key in the suitcase’s keyhole and unlocked it.
I found my vacation funds in an envelope, a few days’ worth of clothes, a handheld game system, a few games, an electric razor, my cellphone’s charger, and my nice underwear. I checked through it all, but I didn’t see anything someone would want badly enough to break the law. In fact, there was nothing in there I didn’t recognize.
“...?”
I packed it all up again.
Even if they were planning to slip something suspicious into someone’s suitcase, would they really unlock it and throw whatever it was inside? That seemed like too much effort for getting it in and back out again.
But my suitcase didn’t have any external pockets.
I locked it again and felt across its outside surface.
“Wait.”
I checked more carefully. Specifically, I began peeling off the countless stickers plastered all over it.
They all ripped as I pulled them off, except for one that came off as smoothly as a brand new sticker from its backing.
And something was hidden on the underside.
To prevent it from being crushed, they had carved a perfectly-sized groove in the side of the suitcase and a device about the size of a cheap lighter had been hidden inside the groove.
It was a USB memory stick with a red, translucent body.
“Is this it?”
Instead of a label, it had a small scrap of Japanese paper attached and serpentine writing seemed to slither along the surface. The writing was so sloppy that I couldn’t tell what it said, but I knew someone wanted it so badly that they were willing to use explosives and threats.
It would clearly act as a trump card.
I held up the USB memory stick and glared at it for a while, but I couldn’t see what was on it with a simple cellphone. I ended up sticking it in my pocket.
That was when my cellphone rang.
I answered the call from an unfamiliar number and was immediately greeted with the following words:
“Have you forgotten we have a hostage?”
“Not at all, and that’s why I felt the need for a plan. But thanks to that, I now hold what you want.”
“Then I wonder what we should do. Perhaps we should sever one of the hostage’s arms to prove we really can kill a Youkai.”
“I think burning an electronic device would be much easier,” I said in an intentionally low voice. “I don’t know what this is, but it’s obviously important to you. If I melt it down, you can’t fix it just by cooling it in the fridge. If you don’t want it to go to waste, then I’d stop looking down on me like that.”
The man on the phone fell silent for a while.
The sound of a scratching fingernail continued the entire time.
It lasted a few seconds or maybe around a dozen.
Finally, he responded.
“Do as you wish.”
That was all. He even hung up.
As I stared at the cell phone screen, the driver’s voice reached me.
“Hey, we just entered the casino city, so where do you want to go now? Should I just take you around to the other side of the island?”
“No, let me off here,” I said. “I’ll pay you some extra, so take my suitcase to the Gold Crane.”
I added an extra banknote as I paid and left the limousine taxi. I was in the same spot as the earlier car bombing. It was definitely dangerous, but anywhere would be dangerous on such a small island.
My mind focused on the crinkling of the old Japanese paper in my pocket.
That USB memory stick was my only lifeline.
Depending on how I used it, all of my efforts would pay off or be for nothing. It was the deciding factor.
“Now, then.”
For a change of pace, I walked back behind a certain casino. The fox, ta-->>