Volume 5, Notice//(8/9)
“I might have figured out how.”
They all tried to look at the (victim’s) cellphone. Although, it seemed too much to ask for the fox and tanuki to stand up that tall.
“The sandals are probably a metaphor for the person’s footsteps. You follow their footsteps, reach them, and kill them. In that case, they need those ‘footsteps’ to identify the target, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be actual tracks on the ground.”
The Zashiki Warashi seemed to catch on first.
“Shinobu, are you saying their internet history counts as their footsteps?”
“Close but not quite.” I lightly waved the cellphone. “The answer is probably big data.”
“Big data?” asked the fox. “Enough of those Western words!!”
“Isn’t that a method of gathering lots of information without specifying the individuals?” suggested the tanuki. “I heard on the news that they can automatically tell what people are buying at train station vending machines and stuff like that.”
“This phone’s GPS was on. Or rather, they didn’t check over their contract very well and it can’t even be turned off. I think there was a notice about this in the inn’s entranceway. In addition to the normal casinos, this island has an online VR casino called Heavy Cruiser Island. But to make sure you can only use the gambling app on the island, you have to agree to give them your location.”
“But.” The Zashiki Warashi shrugged. “Isn’t big data set up so they can’t tell who it came from? If everyone was identified with a number, I think everyone would be too creeped out to go anywhere near Goldmine Island.”
“With only one kind of data, sure.”
I tossed aside the dead man’s phone and pulled out my own.
“But they just have to gather several different kinds. For example, just knowing where a taxi picked up and dropped off a customer doesn’t tell you who that customer was, but if you add in vending machine surveillance cameras, a store’s point card usage history, and other types of data, you can figure out who used the taxi when and where. You can bring the data back to its original form.”
“But that would mean...”
“I don’t know if they’re actually using different kinds of big data to find an individual, but I bet the enemy has rigged a huge server or base station so they can pull out all its data. ...Hey, Zashiki Warashi. Turn off my smartphone right now. I don’t know how exactly they’re locating people, but a phone is a collection of personal information. Sealing that should buy some time.”
“No, not that.”
Just as I hurriedly started to turn off my cellphone, the Zashiki Warashi cut me off.
I looked confused.
“What is it?”
“Doesn’t that make this Kechibi Package pretty inconsistent and unreliable as a way of killing people?”
“?”
I didn’t know what she getting at.
Even if the target did nothing, they could gather different kinds of data, select their target out of the 150 million people in the country, and kill them. Once they fished out an individual from the great sea of big data, they were ready to go. It didn’t matter if the person fled to the other side of the world and holed up in a nuclear shelter, so how much more reliable could it be?
But the Zashiki Warashi gave a simple answer.
“This wouldn’t do anything against the oddities that don’t have a cellphone.”
The situation did not even wait for the chill to run down my back.
Suddenly, I heard several dry gunshots ring from a building to the side.
Part 30 (Day 10/04 11:03 - 11:17)
Someone was still alive.
The repeated gunshots were enough to tell me that.
“...Ah...”
I truly thought I had died as the deafening sound reached my ears and my vision grew white. The world seemed to fade into the distance and I felt pain squeezing at my heart.
But then someone grabbed my right shoulder.
I was pulled back with the great force of heavy machinery and the white world around me shattered. In its place, the red of the Zashiki Warashi’s yukata stepped in front of me.
I heard several blasts like small explosives had gone off under her skin, but she did not cry out.
Her yukata tore in places, but she did not shed a drop of blood.
That was what it meant to be a Youkai.
Her body was shaped the same as a human’s, but its structure was entirely different.
The tanuki supported my unsteady body as I watched the Zashiki Warashi move toward the source of the gunfire. She did not think about defending or evading. She simply walked forward.
“Eek!?”
I heard a panicked shriek. I couldn’t see past the Zashiki Warashi, but it sounded a lot like the voice I had heard on the phone.
The Zashiki Warashi did not speak a word.
Without even running, she walked forward and grabbed the collar of the person holding a handgun in his hands. She then threw him. It looked a lot like someone tossing a trash bag with one arm, but the adult man flew five meters through the air, slammed back-first into a dirty concrete wall, and fell to the floor. The tremendous sound it caused may have been even more violent than the gunshots.
“Gh...ghe...g-gh...ah...! D-damn...damn you!!”
It was a young man.
He groaned and struggled to breathe while reaching a hand across the concrete floor.
Don’t tell me.
He spoke like he knew who I was and I recognized his voice despite never having met him before.
But before I could think, he grabbed the gun he had dropped and exchanged the magazine for one marked with a different fluorescent color.
The dry gunshots were met by bursts of red liquid.
It was fresh blood.
That Youkai could stand tall as a bomb went off nearby, but this had injured her.
Most likely, these bullets had been made with the glass fiber created from crushing a stone mill which was deeply linked to the legends of the Zashiki Warashi. Dark red holes had appeared from her right thigh to her stomach as if someone had taken a giant sewing machine to her.
But...
“...”
Her expression did not change in the slightest.
She continued to walk forward, crouched down, and grabbed the fallen man’s shoulders.
She then swung him around in a horizontal circle and let go to throw him.
This time, he flew from one end of the building to the other. And fast enough that the Doppler effect was noticeable in his scream. After the disturbing sound of something soft being crushed, the young man fell to the floor again and his gun flew far away from him. He wasn’t even screaming anymore. Still, his hand squirmed. He had given up on the gun and instead pulled something like a large barber’s razor from his pants.
And that meant the Zashiki Warashi could not stop either.
She threw him.
And threw him.
And threw him.
“Hey, fox. Or the tanuki.”
The next thing I knew, I was speaking.
“Just hold that man down. Restrain him! If you don’t that Good-for-Nothing Youkai will kill him!! Hurry!!”
I knew I was just about screaming and the two animals finally reacted. They were caught in the Zashiki Warashi’s violence on the way and were sent bouncing around, but they still managed to hop onto the collapsed man’s back. That kept him from moving.
“It’s over!” I shouted. “It’s over now, Zashiki Warashi!! So you can stop!!”
“...”
“It” turned toward me with the movements of an automaton that needed oil.
The inhuman look in her eyes threatened to instantly destroy a relationship of over ten years.
“Ah...gh...”
I heard a gurgling sound as the man on the floor opened his mouth.
His mouth was dyed red and most of his teeth seemed to have broken, but he did something other than complain about the pain.
“Hand it...over.”
At first, I didn’t know what he meant, but it soon came to me like I was gradually solving a puzzle.
“Hand it over. Hand over the final piece you have!! Gbgh!? That isn’t something you should have!!”
“Why not?”
I pulled the translucent red USB memory stick from my pocket, stared at it, and asked again.
“Why do you want this so badly!? Is it really worth trying to kill someone or almost getting killed yourself!?”
“You...don’t...don’t understand...anything...”
The bloody man might have even broken his back, but the look on his face changed as soon as he saw the USB memory stick. He was still pinned down, but he stretched his hand and its broken nails out toward me. Not only that, he began dragging himself along the ground despite having the fox and tanuki on top of him.
His persistence made me back away.
I knew he really cared about the device, but so what? I didn’t know how it affected their Package, but it had to just be a way of making easy money. A fortune was only useful when you were alive. Not only had his partners in crime and subordinates lost their lives, but he was wearing away his own life. Why did he want it that badly? How could he go this far?
However, it turned out I was looking at it all wrong.
“If we don’t do something soon, unrelated people will be dragged into this!!”
.....................................................................................................................................................................Eh?
My assumptions were falling apart.
I stared down at the object in my hands.
“What you...what you all unknowingly carried to this island was the final safety needed to stop the destruction that is already underway!! I...We knew the secret, so we had to stop it!! And yet...!!”
After abducting the Zashiki Warashi, the villains had ordered me to bring them the suitcase.
Yet when I threatened to destroy the USB memory stick I found, they didn’t provide much of a reaction.
But...
They weren’t the end of this? There’s some other, larger plan and they were in a position to stop it?
Wasn’t that something we had concluded not long before?
There were two sets of villains on Goldmine Island. One was the group that had kidnapped the Good-for-Nothing Zashiki Warashi and used the Usuhiki Warashi, a Zashiki Warashi subspecies. The other was a different group that used the Kechibi’s Ikiryou assassination Package.
In that case, which group had hidden the strange USB memory stick on my suitcase so I would carry it onto the island?
Which of the two plans would it benefit?
“What?” I asked without thinking. “What did I bring onto this island? What is this thing!?”
“Hurry up...and use it.”
The collapsed man reached out with his bloody hand and spoke quietly.
“That is a method of inducing national suicide. We happened to stumble onto the system. We tried to use it for ourselves, but someone interfered. Hurry, hurry! If you don’t drive that wedge into the gears of destruction and stop them from turning, the entire nation of Japan will be wiped from the map!!”
The man seemed very confused and I had trouble following what he was saying.
Plus, I wasn’t given time to think about it.
A moment later, some overwhelming violence interrupted us.
Part 31 (Day 10/04 11:17 - 11:40)
What...happened?
It took me quite a long time to catch on.
“...”
Everything looked turned on its side, but that was because I had collapsed onto my side. Also, a nearby concrete wall had been destroyed to the point I thought a dump truck had crashed into it. The wet feeling in my hair told me a basketball-sized chunk had hit me.
There was nothing we could do.
The fox couldn’t do anything, the tanuki couldn’t either, and not even the Zashiki Warashi could despite how ferocious she had grown.
Someone had stepped in through the crumbling wall and knocked those three down just by swinging his arm. The rules said Youkai couldn’t be harmed by normal means, but that no longer applied. They were punched, they were kicked, and they were thrown away. That was the kind of primitive violence that ruled the world here.
“Hm. Is that all?”
After seeing a growing pool of blood approaching the USB memory stick that had fallen to the floor, the person silently crouched down and picked it up.
The person was a gray-haired man who appeared to be in his fifties.
He was not Japanese. He was clearly white and his graying hair had likely been a lovely blond originally. Even on the subtropical island, he wore a thick military-style coat that fit him perfectly. He also wore leather gloves.
“Who...are you...?”
“Now, then. Where should I begin? Would the term Kechibi be enough to tell you I’m not with them?”
The gray-haired man dutifully answered my question as I remained on all fours.
Shortly thereafter, I heard a roar. The altogether bloody young man (from the Usuhiki Warashi group) stood up wielding a handgun and did not hesitate to pull the trigger. Sharp gunshots quickly filled the enclosed space.
But the gray-haired man did not seem to mind.
He took a casual action much like a child jokingly performing a lariat, but that was all it took to smash the building’s thick loadbearing column. A gray deluge poured down with tremendous force and swept outside the building, taking the bullets and the bloody pulp with it.
It was hard to believe a normal human had done that.
The gray-haired man’s shadow wavered and the number of arms on the shadow grew to four.
“So this is the Obou-Jikara. It sounded like a musty old legend, but ‘when in Rome’ as they say.”
You’re...kidding.
That was related to the story of a Youkai called the Ubume.
An Ubume looked like a young woman holding a baby on the roadside. She would ask passersby to hold the baby, but then the baby would grow heavier and heavier and eventually crush whoever had agreed. The Ubume was a deadly Youkai.
However, anyone who managed to continue holding the baby to the end was said to obtain superhuman strength known as Obou-Jikara. It had looked like his shadow had grown four arms, but did that mean what I thought it did?
Humans could not kill Youkai, but what if the power they used relied on a Youkai? Did that mean he could take down even the Zashiki Warashi on her rampage?
“You are right to feel fear. Humans have a bad habit of glorifying those who struggle against fear to the point of numbing themselves to it, but fear is a biological signal telling you to avoid some kind of danger. It is best to obey it.”
As he spoke, the gray-haired man raised the translucent red USB memory stick and checked to see if any blood had gotten on it.
Not good.
This cannot be good.
“It all began with a certain turning point for this nation. Once your precision machinery industry suffered a decisive loss, you entered a period of chaos as you shifted to the ultra-high precision primary industries...aka running Intellectual Villages.”
“...”
“At the time, fear filled the nation of Japan. You had lost your economic superiority and the economic foundation began shifting to China, Korea, and other southeastern Asian nations. Investors lost faith in the yen and moved their money elsewhere and the foreign companies fled the Tokyo Stock Exchange for fear of being caught in the middle when the nation went bankrupt. Japan knew it would be abandoned, which would be fatal for a nation with less than 30% self-sufficiency for food. That was why those in power reversed their thinking. If they created a system that did not allow anyone to abandon them, they could continue to prosper. That was the way they saw it.”
This was so sudden that I honestly couldn’t keep up.
However, that wasn’t due to the gray-haired man. The scale of the issue had just grown so large. And I felt like a fool for not realizing it.
“Oh, the system itself was simple enough. The basic traits of an Usuhiki Warashi aren’t that different from those of a Zashiki Warashi. The main point is that they bring fortune and prosperity to the house they live in. Boy, do you know the currency used during the Edo period when the story of the Usuhiki Warashi and Zashiki Warashi spread?”
“Wait...a second.”
“The Oban and the Koban, both of which are symbolized by gold. And where else is gold used besides for decorations and currency?”
“Are you talking about integrated circuits and cable ports?”
“The Usuhiki Warashi can control pure gold. And by moving a piece of gold thinner than a hair only half a millimeter, one can prevent hardware from making contact and destroy the data passing through that hardware. And if copper coins are included too, the range of effects grows considerably. But regardless, this applies to hard disks, flash memory, and even the magnetic tape reels that big data companies have been returning to. After that, it is no different from ballistic missile defense. They need only say the following to the world’s investors who were protecting their assets with the Japanese yen: ‘During the next few years while Japan gets back on its feet, if we detect anyone transferring a significant amount of money out of Japan, we will destroy the Tokyo Stock Exchange hardware corresponding to the cluster of data belonging to that individual. Those deals are carried out in less than a millisecond and intentionally slowing them could put you hundreds of millions of dollars in the red, so it would be best to cooperate with us.’ ...I suppose you could call it a new form of intimidation diplomacy.”
That was the original form of an old system.
But in modern times, that relic was no longer needed. The country had already recovered using the ultra-high quality brand-name vegetables of the Intellectual Villages.
“The islanders who attacked you had likely unearthed that old system somehow or another. And they were thinking of a way to use it. The automatic detection of large sums of money being transferred was likely what they wanted. Maybe they wanted to copy the movements of big-name investors and win big in the stock market or maybe they wanted to sabotage the trading data of the VIPs enjoying the casinos. To be honest, that would hinge on whether their goal was profit or revenge.”
“Then...”
Still on the floor, I desperately moved my lips and spoke in a groan.
If I didn’t do that and keep my focus on the outside world, I probably would have passed out.
“What are you trying to do by slaughtering them?”
“That is simple!! Just think of it as upping the scale a little.” The gray-haired man spread his arms. “Japan was in such a pitiful state back then, but you got back on your feet thanks to your hard work. It may look like your economy is focused on the agriculture of the Intellectual Villages, but it is high-quality industrial technology that supports those villages. Once Japan’s computer technology won back the world’s trust, many nations adopted it for their financial trading systems. Which means?”
“...”
My mind went blank.
It wasn’t that I couldn’t come up with an answer. It was that the idea in my head was just too ridiculous.
But the nightmarish answer still came.
“The Package for small-scale hardware damage using an Usuhiki Warashi was limited to Japan, but it can now spread through the high-speed circuits and around the globe. Billions of dollars change hands each millisecond and all of that stock trading will be cut off for about seven days. That would be a fatal blow to the world. The former bursting of the bubble will seem like nothing in comparison.”
He wasn’t trying to spread chaos.
He wasn’t trying to make someone lose something.
“You mean...you’re trying to...?”
“It would be one thing if it was a true accident, but if a system built by Japan destroys Japan’s own devices, responsibility will naturally fall on Japan. Unlike data or software, it is easy to add up a sum of damages with physical hardware. Now, what will happen to Japan then? I predict it will be put on a very good sale indeed.”
He was talking about the sale of Japan, the hijacking of an entire nation.
“This device itself is quite simple.”
He sounded amused as he waved the USB memory stick.
That was the key to it all and the source of it all.
“Would a high school boy know what a hardware key is? Instead of using a password, an exceedingly complex formula is stored on flash memory and used as the key to prevent illegal access. They are fairly common for online banking or stock trading.”
“What...about it? What does that hardware key give you access to? What does it have to do with what you were talking about!?”
“Ha ha. It’s simple. Goldmine Island has constructed a giant virtual city around their VR casino. Avatars can move freely about, buy land or buildings, and open up stores to sell ‘used clothing’ for the avatars. It is nothing but a form of entertainment, but this is an access key for one portion of it. It gives you free access to a room not accessible any other way. It is a child’s room filled with toys and candy.”
An avatar shop in the virtual city.
A virtual children’s room filled with candy and toys.
Don’t tell me...
“It would seem you have figured it out.” The gray-haired man seemed to be enjoying himself. “Just like the Zashiki Warashi, the Usuhiki Warashi is a Spirit composed of the children killed to conserve food during a famine. And in the mountain villages of Tohoku, it is said people would intentionally create children’s rooms for them so they would stay longer and protect that family. That idea was virtually recreated and the Usuhiki Warashi is controlled by rearranging the zeroes and ones composing the room’s layout as well as the arrangement and numbers of toys and candy. And this is the controller key that provides administrator access. No key is needed to enjoy an online game like normal, but it is needed to correct a bug or add additional features. Now do you understand the link between their Package, the Usuhiki Warashi, and this USB hardware key?”
The man added that there was of course a “delete” command that would cause the entire system built around the Usuhiki Warashi to fail and fall apart.
“To put it simply, this USB hardware key provides complete control of the Usuhiki Warashi. Long ago, this Usuhiki Warashi was closely related to that national suicide system, so it can do quite a bit. It truly can destroy Japan, but it can also crush the entire national suicide system at the flip of a switch.”
“So it can be used as a self-destruct switch for that extremely dangerous Package?”
“Ha ha. What a lovely comparison! Perhaps I should use it in the future. The islanders who unearthed the system while imagining they were some secret organization seemed to have moved just this hardware key elsewhere. It was likely to prevent one of their own from betraying them and hijacking the Usuhiki Warashi, but they eventually began to wonder what would happen if a foreign force like us happened to steal the hardware key.”
“...”
“That was why they snuck it back onto the island to ensure its safety. They didn’t want anyone else to get their hands on it and they wanted to maintain stable control of the Usuhiki Warashi at the core of the national suicide system that they had started to lose control of. Of course, this is only a nuisance to someone like me who actually wants the suicide to occur. It is fortunate I managed to retrieve it before it was used. ...If I destroy it, nothing can stop the system from running out of control. This is all I needed to declare checkmate.”
“.............................................................................................................................................You’re...kidding.”
“Of course not. This is what I was after.”
As he spoke, the man broke the USB memory stick in two, dropped it to the floor, poured a can of lighter fluid over it, and set it ablaze.
I had been wrong.
I doubted this gray-haired man was right about the dead group’s reason for abducting the Zashiki Warashi to get the hardware key.
It may have begun with that kind of greed or desire for revenge, but they had eventually noticed a greater evil and they had tried to put a stop to it. They had wanted to get that USB memory stick even if that meant destroying the Package they had built.
And...
I...got in their way?
“No, that can’t be true.”
My shaky voice rejected the man’s words.
Or rather, I wanted to reject them any way I could.
“No matter how much I threatened to destroy the hardware key over the phone, they didn’t react! If it really was the safety they needed to stop that national suicide system, they would have...”
“Ha ha ha!! That was obviously just an act so you wouldn’t realize what they were after. They were probably sweating bullets every time you shouted at them over the phone.”
There was nothing more.
My pathetic denial just wasn’t enough.
“Now, nothing remains to stop me,” said the man. “There is no spare hardware key, so it shouldn’t take long before the national suicide is complete.”
With that said, he turned around and made his way outside.
He was escaping out through the giant hole he himself had made.
“Wait!! Who even are you!?”
“You will know before long. You are a student, aren’t you? Then just look up at the flag flying in front of your school. Before long, you will see something other than a red circle there.”
“You...”
I tried to draw his attention.
It may have been meaningless. We had already lost the hardware key needed to access the virtual children’s room that controlled the Usuhiki Warashi. Even if I tore out the gray-haired man’s windpipe with my teeth, there was no stopping the national suicide.
But for some reason, I desperately called out to him.
Yes, that’s right.
I didn’t have an actual idea in mind.
I was simply afraid of being left behind.
“Why are you letting me live?”
“Ha ha!!”
The man laughed loudly, but he did not stop walking or even look back.
He kept his back to me as he answered with laughter in his voice.
“Why would I kill you? The more slaves the better.”
That was all.
There was nothing I could do.
I could not even get up from the floor as the gray-haired man vanished from the abandoned building.
Part 32 (Day 10/04 12:00 – 12:30)
Some kind of conclusion was reached without my knowledge.
Part 33 (Day 10/04 12:30 – 13:09)
“We will be interrupting this program for some breaking news. Today at noon, accidental explosions occurred in chemical complexes in Kitakyushu, Hiroshima, Fukui, Kobe, Yokkaichi, Kawasaki, coastal Chiba, Kashima, Sendai, and Hakodate. Police have announced that they are investigating it as a possible large-scale cyber attack rather than si-->>