Volume 1, 2: Regarding Uchimaku Hayabusa(3/4)
The mystery freak looked down at her smartphone, and then clicked her tongue. The signal must still have been blocked. I doubted it was just a coincidence given the timing.
“Detective, do you have a handgun?”
“I had no plans to leave the island for a while, so yes. I only have 5 bullets, though. If they have gathered all of the hunting rifles from around the island, we’re done for.”
“And they may have stolen the guns from the police they already attacked.”
She did not say “killed”, but that may have been out of consideration for me. However, I was not taking action for the sake of my colleagues. I doubted they were still among the living.
That may sound coldhearted, but I had something more pressing to ask.
“Why would they take such a desperate measure? Killing 20 police officers is essentially adding the period to the end of their lives.”
“Not necessarily.”
“?”
“It was in this bamboo thicket that you ran across that Nure Onna, right?”
“What about it?”
“There was talk of Funa Yuurei at the docks. Do you know what the connection between those two is?”
“...There isn’t one. One’s an ocean Youkai and the other’s a river Youkai.”
The mystery freak brought her hand to her forehead at my immediate response.
“A Funa Yuurei is a scary Youkai that sinks ships if a set process is not carried out. A Nure Onna is a Youkai that drags people into the river if they meet certain conditions.”
“So you’re saying they’re both deadly?”
“They are both Youkai that make people go missing.”
I gasped when she said that.
It can’t be...
“I was looking around Zashou Island based on suspicions that a large criminal organization is involved. In other words, I was assuming this was a testing ground for assembling a Package.”
“And that’s what the Nure Onna and Funa Yuurei are for?”
“No. The Funa Yuurei is probably the main one. Maybe they failed with the Nure Onna and switched over the Funa Yuurei or maybe they got the Funa Yuurei version working and then started trying a different variation. I don’t know.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Just look at the name ‘Zashou Island’.[3] This area originally had a lot of shipwrecks. At some point, an extra bit was mixed into the story. Rumors began to spread that some of those shipwrecks were faked in order to fake people’s deaths and let them get a fresh start on life.”
“I see,” I groaned.
Normally, it took years before a missing person was legally considered dead. However, shipwrecks were an exception. Someone missing after an accident at sea was legally considered dead after only a few months.
That was convenient for people who wanted to be “dead” as soon as possible due to debts or some other reason.
“So Zashou Island runs a side business of counterfeiting documents to erase all traces of the identities of people who have messed up their lives beyond repair?”
If so, there was indeed a possibility that a large criminal organization was involved, but...
“...It goes beyond that.”
“What?”
“I viewed this Intellectual Village too lightly. That is not the true identity of Zashou Island. I only half believed it, but that attack clinched it. Their Package is much simpler.”
Then what is it?
Can it get any darker than that?
As I thought that, Enbi the mystery freak continued.
“The Package created on Zashou Island is most likely one that simply erases people.”
I understood what she meant.
I felt a chill run down my spine, but Enbi continued just to make sure.
“It doesn’t matter if the person is tossed into the sea or abandoned in the mountain. Their Package simply makes sure that the people are never found.”
That was something that a large criminal organization would love to get its hands on.
It was a standard concept in movies and dramas, but even a police officer like myself had no idea if it was possible. But if there was some island where a body could be buried or sunk and never found again, it would be incredibly valuable for certain types of people.
“So the people of this island really do have a connection to a large criminal organization!?”
“It would be more accurate to say they may have had a connection.”
“Why put it in the past tense?”
“What proof do you have that led you to use the present tense?” The mystery freak looked up at my face amid the pouring rain. “I have seen hints of a large criminal organization’s involvement, but I have yet to figure out what specific organization it might be. The same goes for you, right, detective?”
“W-well, yes...”
“Then I have a thought. What if the large criminal organization was already eliminated in the same way your 20 odd colleagues were?”
“It couldn’t be...” I groaned.
I couldn’t believe it.
The scope was simply too great.
We with the police would not allow any kind of criminal activity, so why had we not smashed those types of groups? The reason was simple. Those large criminal organizations were simply too large for us to do anything about.
If we crushed one piece of it, that piece would simply be replaced, and they would get revenge for the piece that was crushed.
At first glance, they seemed to be a disorderly collection of violence, but they were actually strictly managed in ways calculated to work to their interests.
Even the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department would only get burned by them if it seriously tried to attack them. There was no way some amateur islanders could deal with that kind of professional violence.
“Do you know how many people make up that type of large criminal organization?” I asked.
“An independent group may have a few hundred people. The entire organization is probably in the tens of thousands. We don’t actually know what size of group the islanders dealt with.”
“But that’s still at least a few hundred. A group that size could overpower the people on the island with numbers alone!”
“If they all came at once. What if, instead, a ship of a dozen or so would come to the island and those people would be eliminated? Then when the first group did not return, the next group of a dozen or so would go...and then it all repeats. That changes things, doesn’t it?”
I could not believe what the mystery freak was saying.
“The large criminal organization would not know why the first group never returned from the island. That is the power of the Package at work. They may have only viewed it as some personnel missing, so they had to send someone else in their place. It would not be difficult to wipe out people who are not even remotely suspicious.” The girl spoke while wrapping her arms around her own body that was soaking wet from the rain. “The core of this incident is not the large criminal organization; it is Zashou Island itself.”
“But at what stage? They eliminate people, catch tropical fish, and act as a relay point for plant hunters with brand name rice. They only get anything from that by having the large criminal organization involved, right? Zashou Island cannot complete the business on their own.”
“That is why I was primarily investigating the large criminal organization and let my guard down about the residents of Zashou Island. But I think you are wrong about this, detective. Those types of crimes that lead to obvious profit likely began after the large criminal organization came to Zashou Island. However, Zashou Island likely went bad much, much earlier than that.”
“?”
“If the people of Zashou Island do have a Package that can completely erase any traces of a murder, they would have no reason to wait until now,” said the mystery freak quietly. The pouring rain made it difficult to hear her, but that just made it all the more creepy. “They could have just done it the instant the police arrived on the island. Nothing was stopping them from simply waiting at the dock with hunting rifles in hand. And yet they waited for today. They did not come to silence you in fear of your investigation. I think it was some other trigger that set off the annihilation of the police here.”
“Some other trigger?”
“Something in this small society known as Zashou Island that rivals the law. Perhaps some custom or tradition that has continued on since before modern laws were created.”
...
What?
Something bothered me about what the mystery freak had just said. I felt like I had come across some kind of hint that filled a hole in her reasoning.
But where?
Where?
“...It was Kurokawa,” I realized.
“Their leader?”
“After I stopped by his house and asked him some questions, he asked me if I was planning to leave. When I said no, he muttered something about ‘I guess that’s that then’. Do you think that could have been the trigger?”
“He wanted you to leave?”
“Do you think there is some deeper meaning?”
“No, I think we can take this quite literally. He was basically saying things did not have to grow more serious if you had left then. But that just leads me back to the fact that they could simply have killed everyone the instant they stepped off of the boat. Maybe there is some meaning in remaining on the island for a certain amount of time.”
“What do you mean? We still don’t know exactly how they are related to this incident, but I doubt they wanted us looking around.”
Even the vast majority of completely innocent people looked less than pleased when they saw a police badge when answering the door. No one wanted to be caught up in some kind of trouble. That was a completely normal reaction.
“Is that really so?” The mystery freak seemed to have a different idea. “I am not talking about these recent murders. I am talking about the entire history of Zashou Island that spans hundreds of years.”
“?”
“It has a small population. It has few resources. It is a small world cut off from the flow of time. ...If the people of Zashou Island disliked feeling left behind by the rest of the world, what could they do to remedy that?”
“Well, they could let in the more advanced culture so that...”
...Huh?
Did I just say something important without realizing it?
“Exactly. In order to speed up the flow of culture on Zashou Island, it would be quickest to invite in people from outside. Just like how guns were introduced in Tanegashima. ...And remember this island’s name? It seems clear they have had unfortunate guests washing in for ages.”
“So the residents of the island see you and me as targets carrying the things they want?”
“The same could be said for the large criminal organization,” added the mystery freak.
But...
“That reasoning only works if you assume the people of Zashou Island wanted to modernize rather than retain a more leisurely flow of time. It doesn’t work if they wanted to live a leisurely life cut off from the flow of the ages.”
“That clearly is not the case.”
“How can you be sure?”
“An Intellectual Village that felt that way would not let in anything from outside.”
...I see.
Come to think of it, Kurokawa did say they wouldn’t have an inn if they hated outsiders.
“Zashou Island would show hospitality to outsiders to acquire their technological information, but that would not tie up all the loose ends. Just as the gun destroyed the society of the sword, some kinds of new technology are sure to destroy the order of the island. They needed a countermeasure for that.”
“And that is why Kurokawa wanted us to leave...?”
“It may not have been quite so dangerous a thing at first. They would only allow people a short stay and not let them participate in their government. As long as outsiders left, the order of the island could be preserved. But if someone stubbornly refused to leave and tried to gain a position of power on the island...”
“They would go as far as to kill them to get them on the boat home.”
Disturbing the order of Zashou Island.
Staying too long and employing a power that could destroy the chain of command on the island.
I gritted my teeth because I could think of too many things that fit that.
It made sense.
And not just for the police, but for the large criminal organization as well.
If the people of Zashou Island really were acting on that reasoning, they would have seen both organizations as targets that they had to “force to leave”.
“So would that make this something similar to Rokubu Goroshi...?”
But if we were going to act on this theory, there was one thing that bothered me.
“What about those drums?” I asked. “If the people of Zashou Island use a Package to make incidents and bodies disappear, would they really make such a fuss over those?”
“When the local police officer told you the incident had gotten too big to handle locally once a third drum was found, he was likely lying. He was likely one of the ones doing the killing on the island.”
The way she added that last sentence so casually made me feel a bit dizzy.
But it got worse.
“Those drums may have been an SOS sent out by the large criminal organization that got wrapped up in the attacks.”
“You mean they did that themselves?”
“It may be directly linked to a weakness in the Package or the scale of the incident may have grown so large it could no longer be completely hidden by the Package.”
By this point, simply saying I had decided to leave after all would not stop the people of Zashou Island from killing me.
I had already pulled the “trigger” the mystery freak had mentioned.
The people of Zashou Island had already killed hundreds of people, so 20 or so police officers were nothing to them. In fact, they might not even feel any guilt over shooting people with their hunting rifles. They may have come to kill us with the same feeling as preparing a futon for a guest who was spending the night.
They would not stop.
If we did nothing, we would end up being cornered.
“But this incident made it to the surface and we were called in,” I said. “That means the Funa Yuurei Package is not perfect. It has a hole somewhere.”
“Yes. But it is also possible you were not the first police officers to come to Zashou Island.”
It was possible that the police were doing the same thing as the large criminal organization. Groups of police may have come to the island a few times before and been slaughtered only for the entire process to repeat. I needed to find out as soon as possible what had happened at the police stations on the surrounding islands.
Some horrible images came to my mind, but running from reality would not solve the problem.
“If they don’t hear anything from us in three days, they will send a helicopter out.”
“But as long as the Funa Yuurei Package is functioning, you will have merely ‘disappeared’ and those outside the island will see no reason to fear. If anyone does happen to come here, they will be shot while they have their guard down.”
“Then we have to do something about that Package.”
I turned to face the largest problem.
Shit.
A police officer relied on the power of an organization, so you could not expect one to act like a protagonist.
However, I was the kind of person that worked for the sake of the living rather than the dead. And even if every single resident of the Intellectual Village known as Zashou Village was guilty, I still knew one living person I could save.
Enbi the mystery freak.
She was a horrible brat who had a way of preventing any kind of common knowledge from working in regards to her, but she was still a civilian and therefore someone I had to protect.
And to do that, I had no choice but to do something that was quite unlike me.
“If the Funa Yuurei Package is complete, there is likely no way we can win. However, if we can do something about that Package, we may be able to receive standard assistance from the outside and survive this.”
Part 10
A number of powerful lights danced about, cutting through the darkness as they went.
We were of course not the ones using flashlights. It was the islanders holding them. The mystery freak and I held our breath amid the pouring rain and waited for them to leave.
The bamboo thicket rustling above us was quite unnerving.
The inescapable darkness squeezed at my heart.
I was soaked down to my underwear and the feeling of the cold cloth sticking to my skin made it all the more uncomfortable.
They did not seem to have found us yet, but those powerful lights were intimidating enough regardless. If we entered that ring of light, we were dead. That clear truth relentlessly bound all of our physical abilities as human beings.
Nevertheless Enbi grabbed at my clothes and whispered.
“Let’s run away.”
“We can’t move now. They would notice.”
“They won’t see the movement in this darkness and the sound of the typhoon will drown out any rustling of underbrush. ...If we end up in that light, we’re goners, so at least we need to move someway”
What we needed was not to put physical distance between ourselves and our pursuers.
As long as the light did not catch us, we would survive even if we were back to back with the pursuers. That was the kind of safety we needed. The bamboo thicket sloped up toward the mountain, but the ground had smaller hills, too. We hid behind a small protrusion of ground.
I did not particularly care how, but I wanted some time to think.
The island was less than 10 kilometers across and there were...400 or 500 islanders. I had no idea how many of those were actually out searching, but they would eventually find us if they continued a thorough search.
We had to come up with a plan before that happened.
We needed some method of escaping Zashou Island.
“Luckily, this isn’t Hawaii or Guam. If we can borrow a small fishing boat...well, we might not be able to make it to the mainland, but we should be able to reach a larger island with an airport.”
“Even though this really looks like a Funa Yuurei Package? Seems to me that would be charging right into the enemy’s turf.”
“Funa Yuurei, hm?”
My specialty was crimes in which people were killed by other people. To be honest, I did not know that much about those who did not fall under the rule of the law. My nephew Shinobu probably knew more about Youkai.
What I knew with that amateur level of knowledge was...
“They’re Youkai that sink ships, right? Fishermen will get on a ship and head to sea. Then...wait, how do they appear?”
“That is actually rather vague. The standard theory is that small hands appear on the ocean surface at some point, but there are few writings explaining exactly ‘where’ they come from.”
“It sounds like they can target you no matter where on the ocean you are.”
Youkai, especially the deadly ones, had a tendency to be ridiculously overpowered.
“So what is it that makes them kill you? If I recall, you give them a water ladle and they sink the ship.”
“That’s skipping a step. The water ladle is like a protective charm. You will be killed because the Funa Yuurei have come to your ship, so you give them the water ladle to avoid that.”
“So they sink the ship if you do nothing?”
“The actual method of killing is not well defined. Since the story has a bunch of hands on the ocean surface, it’s possible those hands grab the ship and capsize it.”
The bright light of a flashlight cut by above our heads.
I was so nervous I felt a pain in my chest, but we remained in the shadows because of the protrusion in the ground.
“So Funa Yuurei are a deadly Youkai that kill people without question upon meeting them? And even when you give them the ‘protective charm’ that is the sole way of avoiding it, they kill you if you do it wrong?”
“The right way is to give them a water ladle with no bottom,” said Enbi. “It is impossible to defeat or obstruct a deadly Youkai using normal means. The most you can do is ensure their process of killing amounts to nothing so you can escape any danger.”
But there was one thing I found odd.
The Package the people of Zashou Island had created was constructed to make any inconvenient corpses completely disappear.
Yes, completely.
“Throwing a body in the ocean does not completely eliminate all evidence of a crime. Even if the body is not found, it can still be deemed a murder. If everything needed to objectively prove a murder took place is gathered, a judgment can be made.”
For example, a large blood stain could be found.
Or a metal drum could be found with evidence a human body had been completely burned within it.
A single piece of evidence was enough, so the Funa Yuurei was not enough for the Package.
After all...
“If they shoot us with hunting rifles here, at the very least, blood and pieces of flesh would be sent everywhere. There’s no way they can clean it all up. I don’t see how this method could cause a murder to ‘disappear’.”
“We are not dealing with an Edo period Youkai here.” The mystery freak gave a small sigh. “If the Funa Yuurei are being used for modern crime in a Package, I doubt they are no more than an existence that sinks ships with a water ladle. The symbols will have been broken down and rearranged into objects and conditions that suit the people of Zashou Island.”
“Come to think of it, my nephew Shinobu said he ran into a Yuki Onna whose conditions had been combined with some facility’s usage agreement.”
“My sister would know more about that kind of thing than me.”
“...I’d say she’s practically a Youkai herself.”
Don’t bring up a woman of whom the PSIA are too afraid to keep tabs on. Thinking about power that you don’t currently have is a sign that you’ve stopped thinking of an actual solution.
“So the modern arrangement of the Funa Yuurei involves those insane islanders who each have a hunting rifle.”
As I spoke, I pulled out my handgun.
It was a small model provided by the police. It was meant more as a threat than an actual means of injuring or killing others. The cylinder held 6 shots, but I only had 5 loaded.
Even so, it was the last weapon I had available.
Whether I was actually going to fire it or not, the mere act of pulling it out wore on the nerves of a policeman in the kind of dead-end position I had.
“...At any rate, we can’t escape without stealing one of their fishing boats.”
“The fishing harbor is basically the headquarters for the people of Zashou Island, right? Also...”
“You want to know if we would be fine heading out in a ship in the middle of this storm, right? To be honest, I doubt it. But it might be better than staying here on this insane island.”
Suddenly, I stopped talking.
This was because of the soft feeling I felt under my feet. Also, I caught a whiff of a sour, irritating odor that was a bit different from iron and stabbed at my nose.
I felt a powerful urge to not look down.
I felt like I had made some kind of misunderstanding.
It was a similar feeling to finding out what some food you ate truly was after praising it for being delicious.
“Wha-...”
The mystery freak started saying something, but stopped.
She was swallowed up.
That was how it felt to me. Enbi who was just a step away from me had been swallowed up by something. And in a few seconds, the same would happen to me. The one who had already been swallowed up and the one who was about to be swallowed up. That was the only difference between us.
And then I looked down.
I learned what it was I had stepped on.
I had found them.
The corpses.
This was not something as cheap as a single corpse.
These human corpses were thoroughly decomposed, discolored, and had lost all semblance of their original shape.
They were all mixed together to the point that it was impossible to tell how many people it had originally been.
I ignored the overall situation I was in and let out a scream. I tried to scrape the sticky, mud-like substance off of my foot, but I soon realized that was impossible. I had nowhere else to stand. A feeling like stepping through the bottom of a soaking wet cardboard box was all it took to tell me that.
I was surrounded by corpses.
I could not believe that I had not seen them until then.
Or perhaps they had been rendered invisible.
Perhaps we could only see them now because we were now the ones to be killed.
“Funa Yuurei are said to sink the ship and kill everyone aboard, but that is actually rather vague as well,” said the mystery freak with a pale face. “To be more accurate, the people ‘go missing’ while ‘on the boat’. It is only because they are never found again that they are deemed drowned and dead.”
They had not hidden the bodies.
They had made them invisible.
While on the island.
While on Zashou Island.
No.
If what the mystery freak said was correct...
“This is...the boat?”
I was completely dumbfounded, but I frantically moved my lips. I knew I could not let myself stop thinking, but I could feel my thoughts being ripped from my head.
“Did they have Zashou Island itself correspond to the Funa Yuurei boat!?”
Youkai that made people disappear from the boat.
If Zashou Island corresponded to that boat, they could almost automatically cause any murder that took place on the island to disappear.
Yes.
That was it.
“The Funa Yuurei are a large number of hands. That’s exactly what the islanders pursuing us are! And Funa Yuurei kill using a water ladle. They don’t do it unarmed. Since they use a tool made by humans...”
“Not good...Their hunting rifles!!”
Some unpleasant symbols were fitting together too well.
The light from multiple flashlights headed our way.
The sound of footsteps on the undergrowth could be heard clearly even through the torrential rain.
I wanted to run, but my legs refused to move.
We were surrounded.
It was just like we were surrounded by countless hands while on a tiny fishing boat in the dark sea.
As long as we were on the “boat” that was Zashou Island, we could not escape those people who corresponded to the Funa Yuurei.
I immediately moved my hand to operate my handgun.
That was all I could do.
In the next instant, the deep gunshot of a hunting rifle rang out.
Part 11 (3rd person)
The gunshot was-->>