accompanied by powerful recoil to the shoulder.

When the hunting rifle shot struck the detective in the thigh, he fell to the wet ground as if his feet had been swept out from under him. The man cried out as he collapsed on top of the rotting corpses that had turned green and gray.

Kurokawa, the president of the fishery cooperative and the man who led the islanders from the Intellectual Village of Zashou Island, had not shown mercy. He had seen that the detective was messing with his handgun, so he had immediately pulled the trigger. Instead of aiming for the man’s vitals, he had just tried to hit him wherever he could.

This had had the desired effect. The detective had dropped his handgun. The shot shell was meant for birds, so it had not torn his limb off even from that close range.

A group of about 15 gathered in the bamboo thicket with Kurokawa at their center.

“Contact Tasaki and Inoue’s groups. We don’t need to scatter ourselves any further.”

On Kurokawa’s instructions, two younger men spoke into their radios.

Kurokawa and the others had switched off the normal network for cell phones and the like.

Kurokawa heard someone’s breath whistling.

It was coming from the detective who had been shot.

The girl next to him was unharmed, but she seemed to have fallen into a state of shock at the fact that the detective had been shot. Also, if she charged at them, she would merely be forced back with the hunting rifles.

One of the young men speaking with their fellow islanders over the radio asked Kurokawa a question.

“What do we do now?”

“Just to be safe, we need to make sure there are no others left. Well, even if there are, I doubt they can leave the island. Still, we need to know exactly how many people we need to have leave.” Kurokawa looked around. “We only need one of them to ask about the situation. We need to get detailed information out of them, and this one already seems too weak for that. We will head back with just the one we need.”

Who was it that would be saved?

Who would be shot to death by dozens of bullets while surrounded by rotting corpses?

Who would be dragged off to some strange place and have their body torn apart while still alive until they satisfied the islanders with their answers?

“...”

While still collapsed on the ground, the detective’s right arm moved.

Kurokawa pulled the trigger without hesitation.

The shot stabbed into the area between the man’s wrist and elbow. Blood sprayed into the air.

“Gyaaaahhhhh!! Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”

Even as he screamed and writhed in pain, the detective continued crawling through the rotting flesh and toward his handgun. Kurokawa frowned. Normally, people would raise their hands in surrender at that point. Even with certain death approaching, human beings would give in as long as you gave them enough clear pain.

There was something more there.

The man’s movements were dull. With his leg shot, he could no longer run away from the hunting rifle’s barrel. Kurokawa could take his time and aim for the man’s head or chest.

The detective’s hand reached the handgun.

However, Kurokawa already had his hunting rifle aimed, so he was able to take action faster than the detective who was crawling along the ground and had only just grabbed his gun.

Kurokawa could kill him.

Just as he brought his finger to the trigger, something strange happened.

The detective did not try to shoot the handgun. He weakly tossed the mass of steel at Kurokawa.

At the same moment, Kurokawa wordlessly fired his hunting rifle.

With a tremendous blast, the shot struck the detective in the face.

“...What was that?” Kurokawa muttered as he looked down at the detective who had rolled over from the blast and finally stopped moving.

He seemed to have been attempting something, but it had ended in failure.

At any rate, the detective was dead.

Just as Kurokawa was about to order his comrades to bring the girl back with them, he realized something.

Something was odd.

Something was strange.

Something was missing.

He looked down at the girl whose arm he was grabbing.

That was it.

“Why are you not screaming?” he asked. “You fell into shock when that detective was only shot in the leg. He was just shot in the face. That completely settles this. So why do you seem calmer now!?”

It was not that the shock had been so great that her emotions had disappeared altogether.

The girl looking up at him had clear calm in her expression.

It was so eerie that Kurokawa was overcome with unease.

The girl’s pale lips opened to speak.

“Because he made it in time.”

Kurokawa was not able to ask what she meant.

The detective who Kurokawa had supposedly shot to death stood up from amid the pile of rotting corpses.

For an instant, Kurokawa’s emotions were overwhelmed by an extraordinary blankness. His mind could not keep up. It was not right for a man whose face had been utterly smashed to be getting up. And yet the detective’s face no longer had a scratch on it. It was not a simple case of having missed. Kurokawa had clearly seen the shot he fired strike the detective in the face. And yet...

“...That was close,” spat out the detective as he grimaced at the unpleasant stains covering his suit. “It wasn’t enough to have it simply leave my grasp. If I did not do so by my own volition, it wouldn’t have had the desired effect.”

“Wh-what...? What are you talking about!?”

“I am talking about the Funa Yuurei,” replied the detective.

However, Kurokawa had not actually been seeking an answer. The calm smile on the man’s face was so frightening, that Kurokawa pulled the trigger on his hunting rifle once more.

Something odd happened once more.

The gun should have had bullets remaining, but nothing happened when he pulled the trigger.

“Zashou Island corresponds to the boat, the islander to the Funa Yuurei, and the hunting rifles to the water ladle, right? With that much preparation, there was no way to win by any normal means. After all, you had already easily destroyed a large criminal organization and a group of police.”

“Fire, fire!! What are you doing!? Don’t let him talk!!”

Kurokawa shouted at his comrades, but he received no reply. Kurokawa was able to guess why that was. Most likely, the same change had occurred in their guns.

They would not fire.

It was such a simple yet effective change.

“But there is a way out.” The detective continued while ignoring Kurokawa who was shouting as if keeping the detective from speaking would stop what was happening. “According to the stories, you will be saved if you give a bottomless water ladle to the Funa Yuurei. On Zashou Island, the hunting rifles take the place of the water ladle, right? In that case, you can do this to take the place of that protective charm!!”

The detective reached into his suit pocket and pulled out the brass cartridges for his handgun.

He had five shots in his hand.

Kurokawa had no way of knowing, but that was every bullet that had been in his revolver.

“An empty handgun. A water ladle that cannot carry out its proper role. Giving one of those to the Funa Yuurei will save those aboard the boat!!”

That was why the islanders’ hunting rifles were no longer working.

Kurokawa cast aside his “water ladle”.

He did not care if he was unable to use any tools. As if to say he was going to settle things in a more primitive manner, he tried to grab at the detective who had been shot in two places.

historical

But he could not.

Kurokawa was knocked back partway to the detective as if there was an invisible wall in the way. He was knocked down to the rotting ground.

“You can’t do that,” said the girl quietly. “It would be one thing if you had tried to sink the boat with your bare hands from the beginning. However, we have already handed you the ‘bottomless water ladle’. Now that we have given you the ‘protective charm’ in the proper fashion, the lives of those aboard the boat are saved. That means we cannot be killed regardless of the presence of a power that can harm us. ...Once they have been handed the ‘bottomless water ladle’, the Funa Yuurei will forget that they have the power to sink the boat with their bare hands.”

The gamble for the detective and the girl had been whether they could give the handgun to Kurokawa and the others of their own volition.

And they had succeeded in that.

Now, the Funa Yuurei were nothing but shackles for the islanders.

But even knowing that, the islanders were unable to get rid of the Package.

Youkai were not tools.

Putting together a Package was nothing more than intentionally causing the power of the Youkai to work towards your own ends. The Funa Yuurei were not obedient to the islanders.

The islanders had prepared Funa Yuurei in a way that led to their own gain, but the detective and the girl had altered that.

It was the same as how an advantageous position in chess could be completely overturned in a single turn. But the islanders were unable to flip over the chess board in a fit of anger.

As he leaned on the girl’s shoulder, the detective whispered to her.

“...How about we escape?”

“Sounds good.”

“I only have so many handcuffs and I have no idea where to find rope or anything else to tie them up with. But the next time we come here, we’ll have a Package countermeasure and a warrant. Maybe a riot squad as well. We’ll have to swipe one of their fishing boats, but it’s better than staying on this island filled with rotting corpses.”

They could not be stopped.

They could not be stopped.

They could not be stopped.

A single order from Kurokawa was supposed to bring 400 to 500 people down on any enemy, but they could not stop just two people.

And...

If those two left, all of the islanders’ ill deeds would come to light and only ruin would await them.

And yet “getting them to leave” had been their goal the entire time.

Part 12 (3rd person)

And so the outsiders left.

Kurokawa and the others left behind had something they had to do. They could not allow themselves to be arrested. There was no saving them once that happened. After killing enough people to have bodies scattered all over the island, there was no way they would survive being judged in a court of law. They would not escape the death penalty.

That left them few choices to protect themselves.

A large number of people would soon be coming to Zashou Island.

The order of the island would be destroyed on a level never before seen. It would all be swept away. They could predict that much. A wave was coming large enough to eliminate not just the society of Zashou Island but the village itself.

In that case, Kurokawa and the others had no choice but to “have them all leave”.

This time, they would use everything available to them.

“Th-the Package! We need to reassemble the Package!! We need to make it stronger!!” Kurokawa shouted instructions to the islanders. “Whether it’s a large criminal organization or the police, they need to come to the island to attack us. In that case, we just have to destroy them the instant they set foot on the island. It doesn’t matter if we have to kill hundreds or even thousands!! We will crush all those who would get in our way!! That is the only way for Zashou Island to survive!!”

Most items used for everyday life in the Intellectual Village were ordered via the communications network and the internet, so the mainland would be able to apply external pressure to Zashou Island if it wanted to crush the island. However, Kurokawa and the others were so focused on the imminent threat that such thoughts did not enter their minds.

And something else did not enter their minds.

Namely, the possibility that something even more frightening awaited them before that “imminent threat” could arrive.

“Hello,” said a female voice.

The details of her appearance were unclear. Kurokawa could not even determine the exact shape of her face.

This was simply due to the fact that she was much too close to him. He was just barely able to tell it was a woman who was so close their noses were almost touching.

Kurokawa could not even imagine when she could have gotten that close to him.

The next thing he noticed was the utter silence.

The other islanders had been running around making plenty of noise just a moment before. He had been giving them instructions on how to reassemble the Funa Yuurei Package. All of that had disappeared. All that remained was a painful ringing in his ears.

If he just moved his head slightly to the side, he would be able to tell what was happening.

But he could not.

It was impossible.

He could not even attempt it.

He had no idea what horrible thing would happen if he let that woman out of his sight for even an instant. And so Kurokawa was unable to move a single eyeball, much less his head. It was as if he had been overcome with sleep paralysis.

“Maybe I went a little overboard here. Well, if this was an incident that the law could deal with, the penalties handed out by the law would have been enough. However, you went beyond that. So naturally the penalty must also go beyond what the law can provide.”

“Wh-what...?” Kurokawa felt his throat rapidly grow dry. “You’re not from the police... So are you from the large criminal-...?”

“Don’t put me on the same level as them.”

Her voice was neither especially loud nor especially high-pitched. Her words came gently and smoothly. Nevertheless, there was something to the woman’s voice that silenced Kurokawa in an instant.

“And to be honest it really doesn’t matter who I am. But if you want to waste your precious question time on that, that’s fine with me.”

The woman held up a slender index finger.

“Hint 1: I am someone who does not want the likes of you to increase in number. However, I am not completely opposed to Youkai powers.”

She raised her middle finger.

“Hint 2: There are some Youkai that are so dangerous you will die just from meeting them.”

She raised her ring finger.

“Hint 3: Have you ever heard of the Hyakki Yakou?”

A week later when the typhoon had passed by Zashou Island, members of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department arrived at the island along with a riot squad. They found innumerable rotting corpses, but they were unable to find the perpetrators.

They would have assumed they had fled, but the islanders’ fishing boats were still in the harbor.

And...

There was one thing the investigators could not know since the number of corpses was so great it would likely take months to identify them all.

Yes.

It was entirely possible the rotting flesh of the islanders was mixed in with all the other corpses.

Notes

1. ↑ While the term usually refers to exile, it can also be interpreted to mean something along the lines of "floating punishment".

2. ↑ Nure Onna literally means “wet woman”.

3. ↑ Zashou refers to a ship running aground.