Volume 5, Notice//(7/9)
By the time I got there, the fox and tanuki were already waiting.
“Where’s the badger?”
“I doubt he was captured. No human can outrace us once we reach the mountains.”
The normally-hesitant tanuki looked completely nonchalant as she said that, so it didn’t seem to be a bluff. I couldn’t sit still here and it looked like continuing on was my only option.
“What are we going to do now?” asked the fox.
“I found this.”
I pulled out the contents of my pocket. The object was a little larger than a cheap lighter and looked like a USB memory stick with a red translucent body, but the label was made of Japanese paper and covered with serpentine writing.
“This is what they hid in my suitcase to carry in safely. It’s also why they were attacking me and why they took the Zashiki Warashi hostage. It must be really important to them.”
“That says Usuhiki Warashi.”
“What?”
I frowned at what the tanuki said.
After all this, we were back to the Usuhiki Warashi? Wasn’t that just what Kodama Ryou had used to swap out the cards?
The fox wagged his tail back and forth.
“What is this?”
“How should I know? All I know is that some people are willing to kill humans and Youkai to get their hands on it. That means I can definitely use it in an exchange for the Zashiki Warashi. But that will definitely fail if I let them continue to control what happens.”
For one thing, I only had the one small USB memory stick. If I was told to pack it in a plastic bag and wash it down the river or to place it in an envelope and mail it, I’d be out of luck. If I refused, they’d kill the Zashiki Warashi, but obeying wouldn’t bring her back.
I needed for the “exchange ceremony” to occur at the same time, in the same place, and in person.
“Just to be sure,” I said slowly. “You all can transform into people but not objects, right?”
“Yes. We can’t turn leaves into coins, so we can’t turn that Yu-Ess-Bee thing into something else or create a thousand fakes.”
If they could do that, they would have been able to handle things better during the poker game. Transforming into people was certainly enough, but it wasn’t all powerful.
“Th-then what do we do?”
“Fox, tanuki, two Youkai who can transform into someone else is enough.”
“Are you going to duplicate yourself to confuse them?”
“That’s an option,” I agreed. “But you can also transform into the Zashiki Warashi. If they’re monitoring us, they might begin to question whether their hostage is real or-...”
I trailed off because my cellphone rang.
“...”
The fox and tanuki fell silent too, so I answered the call and heard a voice that had become familiar by this point.
“Have you managed to cool your head?”
“I want to hear about the trade. How exactly are we going to do it?”
“I doubt you would agree to attach it to a balloon and release it into the sky.”
“If you insisted on that, I’d use a fake. You can buy cheap USB memory sticks at any convenience store, so I’d just transfer the label over and send that one.”
“Come to the ruins of the old mining days at the center of the island. We will not specify a time. We will know if you show up.”
“No forgetting anything. If I don’t see the Zashiki Warashi there, I’ll snap this thing in two.”
“Do as you wish. But be prepared for what that will mean.”
Just like in the limousine taxi, something didn’t seem quite right.
Even when I threatened to damage the USB memory stick, they didn’t threaten me in the slightest. Did they have a way of restoring functionality even if I destroyed it?
I glanced down at the translucent red device.
Should I check it on a computer and make a few copies of the data? But that could cause problems if it keeps an access log or if carelessly trying to view the data will automatically delete it.
I couldn’t decide whether to rely on a trick or not.
But then I heard a small girl’s shrieking voice. Rather than an urgent scream, it sounded more like a teasing shout.
Confused, I looked down the alley and saw a kimono-wearing girl of about twelve or thirteen running my way. She wore a short mini-yukata with her shoulders exposed like a courtesan. Overall, it looked like a tube top mini-dress and I knew who she was.
“The Usuhiki Warashi?”
She did not reply.
She continued shrieking as she ran past me and disappeared down the opposite end of the alley.
And...
“Wh-why...are you...here...?”
A man’s voice seemed to rise from the depths of the earth and someone appeared with a rustling sound.
The man had been robbed of his regal appearance. The con artist’s prized snakeskin suit was stained here and there and his hair was a complete mess. He looked like he had been beaten all over and thrown out with the trash. His face was badly swollen and he barely resembled the man I had seen before, but I could tell when I looked in his eyes.
“Kodama...Ryou?”
“Where did she go? My...my Youkai! She’s supposed to bring me unlimited fortune!!”
Seeing the man shouting in confusion brought a weight to my chest.
This was the fate of those who were left behind.
He was one of those abandoned by a Zashiki Warashi or Usuhiki Warashi and thus forced to bear a fate of decline and ruin.
“I...”
He unsteadily approached.
Strangely, I found myself unable to move aside or back away. It was like having a snake looking you in the eye. He simply walked up to me as I held my cellphone and the USB memory stick.
“I wasn’t supposed to lose! I wasn’t supposed to lose here on Goldmine Island!! At the very least, I was never supposed to lose on this island!!”
“What...what are you talking about?”
I directly voiced my doubts, but he did not answer me.
He instead grabbed my shoulders using hands with filth crammed below the nails and he shook me violently.
“Was I abandoned? You’re with them, aren’t you? There’s no other way that system using the Usuhiki Warashi – a Zashiki Warashi subspecies – would fail! But that’s not possible. There’s no way that plan can succeed without me and my influence in so many different fields!! You’ve just chosen your own doom. But too bad. Now every last one of you will-...!!”
He never finished speaking.
His eyes suddenly rolled back in his head.
There was no time to say anything.
All strength left the hands grabbing my shoulders and the man fell limply toward me. Perhaps because his eyes had rolled back, I was no longer petrified like a snake was staring at me. And I felt no inclination to catch the con artist.
I stepped back.
With nothing supporting him, the snakeskin man collapsed to the dirty ground.
The tanuki gave a girlish scream, but I couldn’t even do that.
I simply stared blankly as Kodama Ryou’s limbs twitched. I was no longer looking at a human. This was merely an object.
Something like orange sparks scattered from his silenced mouth. I watched them rise toward the blue sky and seem to dissolve on the way.
“That was a Kechibi,” said the fox as he too looked up into the sky. “That was a Kechibi’s feedback.”
I wasn’t quite sure what he meant.
More importantly, the utterly unchanged voice coming from my cellphone seemed to squeeze at my heart.
“We will wait as long as it takes, but try to hurry.”
That cold voice seemed to be saying they would unilaterally and utterly eliminate anything that stood in their way.
The sound of his scratching fingernail sent my heart racing even faster.
“We can’t have you ruining everything with some amateur mistake.”
Part 27 (Day 10/04 10:00 – 10:15)
I called for the police and an ambulance, I didn’t have time to sit around answering questions. We left right away, leaving the con artist’s corpse behind.
“Does this mean the Usuhiki Warashi isn’t the only Youkai they’re using?” I asked while walking.
When Kodama Ryou had died, the fox had said it was a Kechibi’s feedback.
“A Kechibi is a difficult Youkai,” said the fox. “Unlike us, it has no actual body. According to witness accounts, it looks like...well, something like a Hitodama or Ikiryou.”
“An Ikiryou? Isn’t that like an out of body experience?”
“That is correct. They are souls of the living rather than of the dead. A living person’s powerful resentment or longing removes just their soul – generally while they sleep – which will then harm people. However, it should be impossible unless the person undergoes extensive training or experiences a mutation.”
“This Kechibi simply helps the process along. Maybe we should call it an invisible Youkai with the power to remove or release an Ikiryou from people’s bodies.”
I understood what they were trying to say.
This thing was off the charts when compared to the Zashiki Warashi or these animal Youkai. This one barely seemed like a living creature at all.
But...
“How does that let you kill people?”
“If a Kechibi is cut down with a sword, legend has it the person it belongs to will die a bizarre death, covered in blood. It’s a lot like a form of feedback. The same things are said about normal Ikiryou, so the Kechibi that removed the soul probably doesn’t matter. It must be the traits of the removed Ikiryou that matter.”
After the fox’s explanation, the wet nurse tanuki hesitantly opened her mouth.
“A-a Kechibi is supposed to appear when you rub the bottoms of your sandals together and call the person's name. If you could set up a system to summon the Youkai, call in the person’s Ikiryou, cut it down, and kill the person...”
“You’d have an Ikiryou assassination Package to kill anyone you wanted, huh?”
It sounded like cursing someone with a straw doll.
But here, you didn’t need one of their hairs and you didn’t have to wait seven days and seven nights for it to take effect.
If they had free use of something like that, our chances shrank considerably. It might not work on Youkai like the fox and tanuki, but a human like me had almost no chance.
However...
“Doesn’t that seem odd?”
“How so?”
“They took the Zashiki Warashi hostage to control me, but if they had an Ikiryou assassination Package using a Kechibi, they wouldn’t need that. They could have just held my own life in their hands. Just because you have a way of killing Youkai doesn’t mean you want to have one around. That’s like living in a cage with a lion or tiger while armed with a hunting rifle. The second you turned your back, the beast could easily chomp down on you.”
Maybe they couldn’t activate it without meeting some complex conditions. Maybe it was like a cheap cellphone and it didn’t work if you took even a step inside a building. Maybe it cost way too much each time it was used.
I thought of a number of possibilities, but I had too little information.
I couldn’t find an answer as thing were, but I knew it was my life on the line.
“Speaking of strange things, Kodama Ryou said something odd.”
I was never supposed to lose on this island.
There’s no other way that system using the Usuhiki Warashi – a Zashiki Warashi subspecies – would fail.
You’re with them, aren’t you?
But too bad.
There’s no way that plan can succeed without me.
“He was acting odd from the beginning. Although it’s possible he was just confused and it was all meaningless.”
“It’s possible, but it still bothers me.”
Still, we didn’t have time to slowly find answers one at a time.
I wouldn’t be suspected of killing Kodama Ryou after he died in such a bizarre way, but it was true I had fled the scene. If the police caught up to me now, I would be stuck going through a long questioning. That meant I was being pursued by the police as well as the criminal group using the Usuhiki Warashi and Kechibi. I was also limited to this small island and I probably didn’t have much time left.
“Wh-what are you going to do now?” asked the wet nurse tanuki.
“There’s a lot I have to do, but let’s take care of it one at a time.”
Someone had died before my eyes.
I was just a high schooler, so if I let that hit home, my legs were sure to tremble and refuse to move. So I tried not to think about it too much while I spoke quickly to move things along.
“First up is the Zashiki Warashi.
Part 28 (Day 10/04 10:22 - 10:35)
As I walked deep into the forest, I spotted a group of boxy concrete buildings. I could see twenty to thirty of them from where I was, they had all grown dark and discolored, and they were covered with countless slug trails. No glass remained in the windows, but I couldn’t tell if it had been removed or just thoroughly broken.
I meaninglessly bent down a little and looked around while unsure if I was actually hidden by the trees or not.
“I don’t see any obvious guards. No cameras or sensors either.”
Of course, they weren’t about to put their security devices out where anyone could see them.
Whether due to her wild instincts or her love of nature as a Youkai, the tanuki had been full of life from the moment we entered the forest.
“I wonder which building the Zashiki Warashi is in.”
“I can’t tell from the sounds or smells,” said the fox while his ears twitched and his nose sniffed.
I crouched all the way down and exchanged a glance with the two Youkai.
“Okay, I’ll go on alone. You two hide in the forest and keep watch. You’re good at that, right? Don’t let them spot you.”
“Hey, young one.”
“If anything happens and it gets dangerous, grab the Zashiki Warashi and get out of here. Don’t worry about me. We still don’t know what conditions are needed to activate the Kechibi’s Ikiryou assassination Package. If they actually use that, I won’t be able to escape on foot. Even if I abandoned the Zashiki Warashi and tried to escape, the Kechibi’s remote attack would still kill me. So...”
“You saved our master and her granddaughter. Do you really think we can leave you to die?”
“Please,” I said quietly.
The fox groaned and refused to answer, but the tanuki hesitantly spoke up.
“U-um, Youkai like us generally don’t die, so how about we take that USB memory stick and try to negotiate in your place?”
“They have a method of killing a Zashiki Warashi. I’m guessing it’s a glass fiber knife or bullet made from a stone mill. The method won’t work on a fox or tanuki, but that isn’t the point. You understand, don’t you? Unlike the casino guards who just borrowed the method, these people have the skills to analyze a Youkai and build a countermeasure. They might just dispose of you two without batting an eye.”
In other words, it was possible they were similar to Hyakki Yakou.
If so, a Youkai’s immortality wouldn’t last and we couldn’t rely on it.
But at the same time, their methods of killing Youkai had to be less convenient than the Kechibi’s Ikiryou assassination Package. After all, they had needed to abduct the Zashiki Warashi before killing her. It wasn’t like a cursed doll that could kill someone on the other side of the planet as easily as making an internet search.
In other words, if the fox and tanuki were killed right away, I would be killed too, no matter where I tried to run.
But if I was killed, those two still had some options open.
After explaining it all, I said the following:
“Let’s get started.”
“But...!!”
“I already explained this. Either way, they’re already locked onto me. Even if I run away now, they can kill me whenever they want. ...I just have to make sure this deal works out. You might be able to save me if you barge in partway through. The only situation that ensures my death is if I run away now. If we want even a 1% chance of victory, then we have to move forward.”
With that said, I stood partway up and started walking.
With each step I took, the con artist’s dying face flashed through my mind. This may have been what it felt like to enter a forest where a sniper lurked. However, I wasn’t being targeted by bullets that could only fire in a straight line. My enemy was armed with something far more convenient and deadly.
Filling my lungs with air wasn’t going to change anything, but I still lost control of my breathing.
I tried to calm it down and quiet it down, but the more I thought about it, the worse it got.
Someone in this forest and among the ruins was clearly after my life.
And as soon as that thought filled my mind...
“Dwahp!?”
My right leg caught on something and I tripped quite spectacularly. The fox and tanuki must have blended in with nature already because they didn’t come running out. Of course, I didn’t exactly want them causing a fuss just because I ahd tripped over a root.
But then I looked down at what I had tripped on and my throat immediately went dry.
It wasn’t a root.
It was the corpse of young woman with her eyes rolled back in her head and foam spilling from her mouth.
Part 29 (Day 10/04 10:35 - 11:03)
The silence was deafening.
Neither the fox nor the tanuki screamed. They were either focused on blending into the forest or they simply hadn’t noticed yet.
Either way, I was alone with the corpse.
That fact was incredibly disturbing.
“What...is this?”
I instinctually slid back along the ground while collapsed on my butt. I finally noticed the rustling of the leaves in the wind, but they sounded like eerie laughter to me. This sniper forest was so quiet and a mere high school boy had no way of knowing where the guards were posted, but that silence seemed to take on a whole new meaning.
I stood up in a crouch and ran to the nearest abandoned building.
With all of the furniture and equipment gone, it was nothing but an empty box and something seemed intensely wrong from the moment I set foot inside.
There were two more. A man and woman wearing janitor’s uniforms lay unmoving near the center of the room. Not a drop of blood had been spilled. I didn’t actually check their pulse, but I could tell. My mind automatically placed them in a category separate from a living human, so it was painfully obvious.
“What is this?”
I ran from the building and to another. On the way, I saw a few more corpses littering the ground. I didn’t know how large the group had been, but a disturbing thought gradually seeped through my mind: there wasn’t a single living human being here.
I checked a few other buildings, but all I found were more dead bodies: a man in a suit who seemed to have expired while climbing the stairs, a woman in a dress who seemed to have made a desperate attempt to leave through the window, etc., etc. Each time I found one, the weight of the silence seemed to double.
“What the hell is this!?”
Once I could no longer bear the weight, I cried out.
Who were they? Who had killed them? What had happened to the Zashiki Warashi? Weren’t the villains controlling the Usuhiki Warashi and the Kechibi and wasn’t I supposed to solve the mystery and rescue the Zashiki Warashi!?
My greatest enemy had already been destroyed, but I couldn’t exactly rejoice. I felt like I was only now realizing that something far worse was underway.
That was when I heard a footstep.
“!?”
It didn’t come from outside. Someone was descending the stairs inside the building. That meant it probably wasn’t the fox or tanuki and it was even less likely to be a survivor of this group. So who else could it be?
“The Zashiki...Warashi?” I muttered.
It was mostly wishful thinking, but it started to feel more realistic as soon as I said it.
I wasn’t being na?ve or overly hopeful.
A bunch of corpses. A Youkai as the sole survivor. A being that could not be killed by normal means. Even if she was categorized as harmless, bullets and blades were meaningless to her and she could not be easily stopped if she did grow violent.
The footsteps continued.
Something was definitely approaching me.
Was it possible she had done this? What if they had been bluffing about having a way to kill Youkai or what if it was difficult to activate in a hurry? How far would the Youkai’s counterattack spread? Once they thoughtlessly claimed to have a way of killing her, she wouldn’t have been able to calmly assume she would survive no matter what happened. She would have to put up a thorough fight to secure her safety.
What if that was what had happened?
“...”
Unpleasant sweat poured down my face.
My eyes were drawn toward the stairs and my body wouldn’t move.
These footsteps would mean a reunion, but I could also feel something changing inside me.
Step.
Step, step.
Step, step, step.
Step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step.
And finally, a familiar voice reached me from the stairs.
“Shinobu?”
I think I must have screamed some nonsense that clearly wasn’t Japanese.
To be honest, the color white exploded deep in my mind and I couldn’t remember anything afterwards. But I think I must have tried to run from the stairs with my eyes still glued to them. And as soon as I awkwardly started moving backwards, my heel caught on something and I landed on my butt. But instead of hard concrete, I felt something softer. When I realized it was another corpse, I screamed again.
I felt like a fish out of water that had finally made it back to the fish tank only to find the tank was filled with sulfuric acid. I have no idea how I moved my muscles, but I somehow managed to jump up and move away from the corpse.
Meanwhile, the Zashiki Warashi with black hair flowing across her red yukata tilted her head a little, shaking her hair a bit in the process.
“What are you doing? Don’t tell me you took a turn for the truly disturbed and were trying to kiss that dead body.”
“Eh? What?”
My mind went blank yet again.
I had assumed a crazed killer Youkai was approaching, but it was the same Good-for-Nothing Youkai as always.
“Wait. How...why...?”
“Oh, they had me tied up, but I got out on my own. The rope was made so a Zashiki Warashi couldn’t break it, but it didn’t have a curse that kept me from moving or anything.”
She rubbed together the rope marks on her wrists.
“Did you know that the standard way to slip free of a rope is to create a gap? For example, if you press your palms together and move your arms apart when they tie your wrists, you can make a gap between your wrists and the rope just by squeezing your arms back together. I didn’t really believe it when I heard it, but I tried it and it worked pretty well.”
Then I saw something like orange embers floating from the mouth of the corpse I had tripped on.
“Is this from the Kechibi’s Ikiryou assassination Package?”
“I don’t know. They just all started collapsing around me. Youkai can’t be killed by normal means, so I thought maybe some gas had leaked from the mine.”
“...”
What in the world is going on?
The Usuhiki Warashi and Kechibi were supposed to belong to the enemy, so was this infighting within the group that had kidnapped the Zashiki Warashi? Or had they lost control of the Package?
“Hey, Indoor Youkai.”
“I see you’re skipping right past the emotional reunion. What is it?”
“Do you know how many people were here?”
“Not exactly. About twenty maybe?”
That led to some depressing work.
I decided the threat had passed for the time being, so I called out to the forest. The fox and tanuki showed up immediately. They naturally freaked out when they saw the corpses, but I had no time to deal with that. From there, we split up and got to work. We dragged over all of the corpses and gathered them inside a single building.
We found even more than reported. There were twenty-four and there was no guarantee we had found them all. It was possible more victims existed in the forest somewhere.
By this point, my senses had numbed over.
I dug through their pockets and gathered their wallets and cellphones.
“Based on his license, he’s a local. Of course, this could be a fake.”
“Hm? Wait just a second. The ruffian at the airport was a local too, wasn’t he?”
“Shinobu, this one is too. I’m guessing they all are.”
The limousine taxi driver had mentioned friction between the locals and the outside companies that had turned Goldmine Island into a casino city. It was looking like that was the situation here.
“Anything concerning the Kechibi Package? It would be a bad idea to ignore that. While it looks pretty unlikely there are any survivors, someone else might pick it up. I’d like to destroy it if possible.”
“I don’t see anything like that.”
The fox was exactly right.
The corpses only had wallets, cellphones, and dangerous-looking knives or stun guns. We couldn’t find anything that might be a controller to or component of a Package. Of course, it might have been something that blended in so perfectly that an amateur couldn’t tell.
“Shinobu.”
The Zashiki Warashi cut in after the tanuki explained things.
“Have you considered the possibility that your initial assumption was wrong? In other words...”
“The Kechibi Package is used by someone else entirely and they’re just the victims?”
My vision very nearly went dark.
If that was true, what had we gotten ourselves caught up in? This was completely different from the plan to use the Zashiki Warashi as a way to get the USB memory stick from my suitcase. It would mean Kodama Ryou had been killed before my eyes for some other reason entirely. Would it now bare its fangs toward us? Or wouldn’t it? I had nothing to go on there, so I just had to give up.
I searched their phones, still hoping I would find something. Most of them were password locked and I couldn’t do anything with them, but a few of them had been more careless. I checked through those phones that had not been set up properly.
Oh.
“What is it, Shinobu?”
“Um...wait. Fox, a Kechibi is similar to an Ikiryou and it’s something like a human soul that leaves a living person, right? And if they cut it with a sword, the distant person will be injured in the same way and might even die?”
“Yes. What about it?”
“Tanuki, but didn’t you say you can call in a Kechibi by rubbing sandals together and calling the person’s name?”
“Y-yes. They m-->>