l was directly in front of her.

There was nowhere to run.

No one would come to save her.

“This is not a.38 issued by the police. This is a.45 I acquired for myself. Even the bullets are quite cool. The bullet will blow apart half of your soft brain as soon as it hits, so you will feel no pain. So there is nothing to fear. ...At the very least, it is a better fate than being attacked by a canine beast while walking along a mountain path.”

“...Ah...”

“Farewell, Tomoe-chan. You will probably go to heaven, so send my regards to your real father.”

And that was all.

He did not hesitate.

He pulled the trigger.

A dry gunshot rang out.

Flesh exploded out and the air filled with the stench of blood.

Hachikawa Tomoe limply fell to the ground.

Her wide-open eyes reflected the scene before her.

“...Gh...”

Someone groaned.

It was a male voice.

It was the voice of the man named Toujou.

“Ghh!! My...arm...! My...my arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrmmmmmmmmmm!!”

He was trying to use his left hand to hold the wound on his right arm, but that left hand was already dyed red.

This was not surprising.

Toujou’s right arm had been blown off at the wrist. The giant black handgun was gone. It had exploded from the inside and several shards had fallen to the cracked asphalt.

It was obvious what had happened.

The gun had malfunctioned.

But there had been no reason for that malfunction.

Normally, at least.

“...Ahh! Th-that bastard... It had to be him. He touched my gun in the archives room. He tampered with it!!”

The bestial growl from behind Hachikawa Tomoe grew. It seemed to be reacting to Toujou’s mental turmoil.

“U-Uchi-Uchima-Uchimaku!!! How dare you...how dare you take my haaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnndddddddddddddddddddddddddd!?”

Hachikawa Tomoe thought he was going to give into his anger and have whatever was behind her attack. She thought she was going to be torn apart and eaten as if by a lion or tiger.

But that did not happen.

As if in response to Toujou’s shout, two gunshots rang out somewhere else on the mountain. Sweat was pouring from Toujou’s face due to the intense pain, but the gunshots seemed to bring him back to his senses.

He looked at Hachikawa Tomoe and hesitated over something, but ultimately gave precedence to running away. While holding his mangled wrist, Toujou ran off into the deep darkness of the mountain.

Hachikawa Tomoe remained motionless for a while.

She could not grasp what was going on.

Part 22

When I fired those gunshots in the dark mountains of Okutama, I did not actually know exactly where Toujou and Hachikawa Tomoe-chan were. I had only entered the mountain the mystery freak had learned Tsumada Mio’s grandparents owned.

However, if my sabotage had been effective, there was a chance Tomoe-chan was still alive.

And if I let him hear those gunshots, it would tell Toujou I had come this far. He would assume I knew where he was that I was staring at him through my gun’s sight in order to keep him from killing Hachikawa Tomoe.

I had actually only fired randomly up into the night sky.

As I ran along the mountain road toward the sound of the initial gunshot, I finally spotted an abandoned car. The road had a small bloodstain on it, grotesque pieces of flesh and fingers were scattered about, and Hachikawa Tomoe-chan was sitting on the ground.

“Hachikawa-san!!” I ran over and grabbed her shoulders. “Are you hurt? It looks like the gun malfunctioned, but did any of the fragments hit you!?”

“...”

She seemed to be conscious, but she was slow to react. She may have experienced a great mental shock. She slowly moved just her eyes to look at me.

“He...tried to kill me...”

“Hachikawa-san?”

“He...he tried to...but he’s my father...he had a gun...and that growling...m-my father...tried to k-kill me...!!”

Hachikawa Tomoe-chan still thought that Toujou was her father.

It was only natural to be shocked when her “father” tried to kill her.

But...

“Hachikawa-san, this is going to be tough to hear, but please listen.”

“There’s more? What more could there be? I’ve had enough! I can’t deal with anything more!!”

“The real Toujou Miyabi-san was likely killed around the end of May. This man is someone else entirely.”

“...Eh?”

“Your father was not the kind of person who would kill his own daughter! He worked until the very, very end to fight against this kind of villain! That’s why I was able to make it here. The data your real father gathered led me here!! You do not need to think he betrayed you. Your father lived a life you can be proud of.”

Which truth was better?

Both being killed by one’s father and learning your father died months ago were too much to accept.

But once a case began, I focused on the living more than the dead.

I could not lie to a living civilian for the sake of a dead detective.

“...Who is he?”

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But whoever he is, I will arrest him. I will not let him hurt you, Tsumada Mio-san, or anyone else.”

Should I leave her here or take her with me?

I was unsure what to do, but this Toujou had clearly tried to kill her. It would be too dangerous to take her to the scene of a firefight.

“You follow this road down the mountain. The mystery frea-...Hishigami Enbi-san is heading here. You should cross paths.”

“Be careful,” said Tomoe-chan with a pale face. “His gun was not his only weapon. He controlled some sort of large beast. It seemed to go nuts when he started bleeding.”

I was not sure what she meant, but I nodded.

I wondered what she was thinking as she sat on the ground there. Her expression was twisted into something that none of the standard emotions adequately described.

“...Please save Mio.”

“That’s my job,” I said before running down the mountain road.

Toujou must have been bleeding quite a bit because drips of blood could be seen along the cracked asphalt. I could not trust that trail of blood too much because it could be a trap, but it would still function as a decent guide.

As I thought, I pulled out my cell phone.

Is this Toujou still using Toujou Miyabi’s number?

“Hey, Uchimaku...”

“It seems you made a huge mistake. You should hurry up and surrender. You won’t last 30 minutes with that much bleeding.”

“Don’t underestimate me. I already had the wound bitten closed. Do you really think you’ve won? I had to go to some extra effort in the archives room to make it look like a suicide, but if all I have to do is kill you...”

The conversation continued as I jogged along the mountain road.

I was not trying to trace his location.

I was fairly certain Toujou had lost a hand. Holding the cell phone would take up his other hand. I could tell whether he was using speaker phone from how much background noise was being picked up. In other words, as long as he was speaking on the phone, Toujou could not use his weapon. I was ensuring my safety.

“Uchimaku, how much do you know?”

“Enough to know that arresting you will bring this to an end.”

“Ha ha. Well, you’re right about that.” Toujou seemed to be laughing somewhere on the mountain. “Those idiots making that pathetic Package were causing too many problems, so I slaughtered them. That faux-intellectual insider group had gotten a bit carried away, so they had almost no military might. Houjou and Saijou tried to stop me, but Tsumada Mio is simply that valuable. If they had simply agreed to hand her over, none of this would have happened.”

“What do you hope to do with Tsumada Mio?”

“You will find out when you get here and see this. Personally, I can barely wait. This is greater than I expected. I bought bone marrow from an Inugami bloodline and changed my blood type with a transplant in order to fuse with the Inugami, but this is on an entirely different level. This goes even beyond the ultimate objective of our organization.”

“Ultimate objective? Organization?”

“Damn, this hurts... That’s right. Our objective is to remake the human body into that of a Youkai. I thought Houjou had beaten me to it, but it looks like I’ll be first.”

I heard an unpleasant sound over the phone.

Is he just coughing or is he actually coughing up blood? I wouldn’t think that would have caused any internal bleeding...

“Hey, Uchimaku. Think back to the Jinmensou incident. That group was attaching Jinmensou to girls passing through Shibuya, but how do you think they attached the Jinmensou to their target?”

I had not actually cleared up that aspect of the case. For one thing, a Jinmensou was a Youkai. Unless they had a good reason, they would not appear in the city.

“Jinmensou appear as a symbol of the lies someone has said or the sins they have committed. But those lies have a certain requirement. You could call this the starting point.”

“Are you saying Tsumada Mio was involved in something?” I asked.

“Yes, exactly. You did some research on Tsumada Mio, right? What sort of impression did you get of her?”

“She seemed like a sociable girl with a lot of friends before the Jinmensou appeared. Her social circle had spread even beyond her class.”

“Do you know that for sure?” cut in Toujou with a sneering voice.

Shit, his injuries should be slowing him down. Have I still not caught up to him?

“You only know that because of the notepad in her room. The one with all the photo stickers on it. But doesn’t it seem odd for it to still be there?”

“You don’t mean...”

“She took her schoolbag and tablet computer with her when she disappeared, so why did she leave behind that notepad with all its photo stickers? That should have been the symbol of her status. Why was it still there?”

“It was faked...?’

I felt like the ground was lurching beneath my feet.

But when I thought about it, it was not all that difficult a thing to do. Photo stickers could be found plastered all over the city. Even an amateur could retrieve some and reattach them somewhere else.

But why would she do it?

Perhaps she had not wanted to worry her family or her neighbor from another school, Hachikawa Tomoe-chan.

In that case...

“Some Jinmensou are said to spew toxins from their mouths. Those covered in the toxin will gain a face as ugly as the Jinmensou,” said Toujou. “A certain rumor has spread through Shibuya. It says Tsumada Mio, a poor girl with no friends, has been gathering photo stickers. In order to save this isolated girl, people are to claim to be Tsumada Mio’s friend if asked. Well, it seems even the real Toujou was fooled by this and assumed she was popular. ...That is a lie and a sin. Whenever she was lied about, Tsumada Mio’s Jinmensou spewed toxins that afflicted the bodies of the liars and caused the ugly faces to multiply.”

“How could this happen...?”

The original masterminds behind the Jinmensou had wanted to use them to threaten the children of corporate executives and shareholders, so they had likely approached the children who met the Jinmensou’s requirements and asked them that question. They may have pretended to be a teacher or from a private investigation company.

Their responses may indeed have been lies.

But were those lies really worth calling sins?

“Then why did the original Jinmensou appear on Tsumada Mio?” I asked. “She may have lied about having a lot of friends, but she was still in the city. I doubt a rural-loving Youkai would attach to her there.”

“I don’t know, but something about the Jinmensou’s nature was likely twisted in the Package. For example, what if a Jinmensou they acquired somewhere was attached to Tsumada Mio’s umbilical cord where it was stored in a corner of her grandparents’ rural house? Even if she was in a distant place, that would still qualify as the Jinmensou afflicting her body.”

And then that single Jinmensou patient had led to an explosive outbreak centered on Shibuya.

If that was the case...

“So you’re after the special case at the source of the infection?”

“I’m glad you finally understand. The fusion of a human and a Jinmensou might lead to something not human if taken to the next level. And it does not require fine-tuning for each individual human. As long as Tsumada Mio exists as the core, it will spread without end. This will greatly shorten the work and examination needed in the past methods such as transplanting bone marrow from an Inugami bloodline.”

“Do you really think I’ll let you do this?”

“And I will not let you stop me. Don’t think you will get off as easily as just losing a hand.”

The call suddenly ended.

At the same time, I spotted a wooden cabin through the gaps in the cedar trees. It was a small cabin, but it still looked larger than my apartment. It had a small water wheel that may have been used to generate power.

In the end, I had been unable to catch up to him partway there.

But Toujou’s goal was to capture Tsumada Mio, not kill her. I doubted he would harm her right away.

I pulled out my.38 caliber revolver and slowly approached the cabin.

The cabin’s lights did not appear to be on.

The trail of blood headed straight to the front door, so Toujou was likely already inside.

I pressed up against the wall next to the door and touched the doorknob.

And I turned it.

After making sure it was not locked, I kicked open the door.

The attack came immediately afterwards.

I suffered a fatal wound and was knocked to the floor.

Part 23

It seemed it had only been intended as a playful attack.

Nevertheless, I was knocked across the cabin as if I had been struck by a large truck. I could not breathe. I coughed up a great bit of blood. I tried to bring my hands to my mouth, but they only twitched slightly and would not move.

“Cough!? Cough cough!!”

“Didn’t I tell you, Uchimaku?” Toujou’s voice filled the darkness of the cabin. “Simply killing you is no problem for me. They are known as Inugami[2], but they are actually more like a formless curse. It does not matter if you dodge to the right or to the left, or if you charge forward all at once or cautiously approach. If I tell it to do it, it will do it. That is all there is to it.”

“Grr,” came the growling of a large beast.

What is going on?

Is there a lion or a tiger hiding in this darkness? Or is Toujou making that growling noise?

I had no way to know which it was.

Wait a second.

Toujou and this beast are here, but where is Tsumada Mio?

I could not sense her presence.

Was that third party really in the small cabin?

“No, I did not expect this either,” said Toujou.

I could hear someone feeling along the wall. However, I did not know where my handgun had gone after I dropped it. And even if I did know, I still could not move my body after that impact.

Finally, I heard a clicking noise.

It was the sound of a plastic switch being flipped.

At the same time, bright light filled the world and blinded me. It took me several seconds to realize this was nothing more than a fluorescent light.

Now that the cabin was illuminated, I could see it truly had nothing but a blanket. Not only did it have no items of entertainment such as books or a game system, but it had no refrigerator, washing machine, or anything else needed to live one’s life. That made sense for an emergency cabin in the mountains, but I could not see how a teenage girl could have lived here for months.

And in the center of the cabin was some dense mass.

“...Pant... You’re...kidding me...”

“It’s pretty horrible,” muttered Toujou with a thin smile on his face as he stood against the wall sweating and holding his injured arm. “I’ve heard of a man who survived for a month after his car was buried in snow. It seems the low temperature brought on a state similar to hibernation. ...But this goes beyond that. How do you think it’s possible for a human to survive for four months without eating or drinking anything?”

This mass was sitting in the seiza position.

This mass was wearing a long-sleeved sailor uniform.

I had once heard about the process of Sokushinbutsu from my old man back home. That was not actually a ghost story, but it had still scared me more than any other story I had ever heard.

A sealed room would be dug into the ground and a Buddhist monk would enter it. All the exits would be completely sealed, he would be given no food or oxygen, and he would simply continue praying until he was mummified. This was different from being forcibly buried alive or killed. They dried themselves up of their own free will. They cut off all the animalistic instincts that were natural for humans and took a certain path to its extreme.

This...

This was a lot like that.

But this was not an overly light corpse that looked like dried up twigs. All of the skin had become a bluish black, but the body still contained moisture and its surface was writhing slightly.

“She’s...alive...?”

“Seems that way. I’ve never heard of a Jinmensou attaching itself to a corpse. And that means Tsumada Mio is still alive even in this state. Her body has been remade so that she can remain alive.” True admiration could be heard in Toujou’s voice. “However, it does not seem that movement is based on her own will. That is just the Jinmensou covering every inch of her body moving around as they please.”

Those words sent a definite chill down my spine.

It can’t be....

It can’t be!!

“Are you saying all of that bluish-black stuff is made up of Jinmensou!?”

You’re kidding.

That can’t be true.

That’s too horrible to be true!!

Those girls had felt they would never be accepted with even one of those tumors that were a few centimeters across. And now Tsumada Mio was completely covered in them. To cover her entire body, it had to be more than just a dozen or two.

In my confusion, I pointlessly searched for some way of denying the truth before my eyes.

“But a Jinmensou is a tumor that looks like a large bug bite. They don’t turn that color!!”

“I don’t know why they’re like this. Maybe they were always like this and maybe this is a result of the Package. If my umbilical cord theory is correct, they might have made their way in through her stomach. At any rate, it seems the tumors may have moved inside her instead of staying on the surface. Once they filled her up, they caused a great change to the flow of her blood. This discoloration may be similar to a type of internal bleeding.”

But why were there so many Jinmensou?

The girl from the convenience store robbery had only had one.

“I had thought Tsumada Mio’s Jinmensou would simply spew toxins to assault the girls in Shibuya, but it seems each time those girls lied, a new Jinmensou would also be appear on Tsumada Mio as a sort of feedback. It’s like she’s bearing the burden of all the lies of the city. I wonder how many Jinmensou she even has attached. I doubt 100 or even 1000 would be enough to account for this. Ha ha!!”

“...”

I glared at Toujou from where I lay collapsed on the ground.

“What are you going to do with her?” I asked.

“Take her home with me, of course. Like I said, I’ll be the first. No one else in the organization has a specimen that has left humanity behind as much as this. I thought I could never catch up to Houjou, but with her, I might be able to surpass him. Not to mention Saijou and Nanjou.”[3]

My handgun was lying quite nearby.

If I could only muster up some strength, I could grab it right away.

“Stop that.” Toujou shook his head. “Surely you know a bullet will do nothing here. I was testing you before. I only had the Inugami lightly charge at you. If I snap my fingers and order it to bite you, you’re done for. Your upper body will have to say goodbye to your lower body.”

“Are you...someone like Hishigami Mai?”

“Hishigami?” Toujou frowned slightly before continuing. “Oh, yes. I had her right arm bitten off during a personal job a long time ago. I remember because her body had an interesting composition. But she altered her body while remaining human. That is too far removed from our principles.”

That went well beyond my expectations.

Both the fact that he had torn off that monster woman’s arm and that she had recovered from it with no scar were well outside my ideas of how the world worked.

“Now then, can we get this over with already? I will be taking Tsumada Mio with me. You will remain here. Okay?”

“...Don’t you need to kill me?”

“I intended to, but that would be too boring. Since you gained your freedom after the situation I left you in, I can only assume you escaped the interrogation room. I wonder what the police will decide happened when they find you at the site of Tsumada Mio’s disappearance? That sounds a lot funnier than just killing you.”

“Your blood is all over this place.”

“That doesn’t matter. It isn’t enough to identify me. I have no more use for the Toujou Miyabi identity. I just need to alter the electronic medical records on the cloud to make sure these bloodstains can’t be traced back to me. I will return to the world I came from. The likes of you can never reach that world.”

As he spoke, Toujou approached the bluish black Tsumada Mio sitting seiza-style in the center of the cabin. I tried to move my fingers.

Okay...I can just barely move them. I should be able to stand!!

That was when I heard the same bestial growling as before.

I was only a few meters from my handgun. However, that growl was an obvious threat keeping me from advancing those few meters.

Toujou picked up the unmoving Tsumada Mio and carried her over his shoulder.

My mind was filled with nothing but the distance between my fingertips and the handgun, but I could not avoid having a few words leak from my mouth.

“Wait, Toujou...”

“Stop it. The time to beg for your life has long since passed. I’ve already lost a hand, remember?”

“Leave Tsumada Mio here. She isn’t something you can just use like this!”

“Ha ha hahh.” It seemed Toujou could not help but laugh. “C’mon, Uchimaku. I had no real reason to explain everything to you like I did. I could have put on some act. And yet here I am speaking with you. Why do you think that is? I understand all too well how valuable information is, so why would I do that?”

“...What...?”

“Tsumada Mio has become a symbol of judging people for their lies, so it is best not to lie in front of her, Uchimaku. I don’t know if you thought it was the etiquette of adulthood or something, but it may have been a mistake to say something so idealistic in front of her. ...A fatal mistake.”

Almost at the exact moment Toujou finished speaking, pain exploded in my right thigh and left wrist.

I felt the same sort of heat combined with itching and pain as with a bug bite except much, much worse.

I knew perfectly well what was happening to me.

Before long, the itching passed along the major nerves of my body and took control of all my body’s senses.

“Gaahhh!? This is...a Jinmensou...!?”

“Just to be clear, this wasn’t me. Uchimaku, you did this to yourself. It’s quite ironic really. You are punished for your idealistic statements made for the sake of justice and I survive unscathed for honestly saying such horrible things.”

The itching was so bad I grew confused as to the size of my own body, but a question still remained in my head.

What did the Jinmensou react to just now?

I had come this far to save Tsumada Mio. My intentions there had not changed. So why had the Jinmensou reacted to a lie?

Had I lied without even realizing it?

Or did something qualify as a lie as long as Tsumada Mio thought it was one?

For one thing, it was still unclear what basis Tsumada Mio used to determine if something was a lie.

If it was simply anyone with any connection to her making any lie, everyone who had been around her would have been affected by a Jinmensou.

But that had not happened.

For example, her parents and her neighbor, Hachikawa Tomoe-chan.

None of them had shown any sign of being affected by a Jinmensou.

“It...can’t be...”

“What is it, Uchimaku? You have the look of someone who has finally solved a puzzle, but this is already over.”

Tsumada Mio was so utterly covered in Jinmensou that not even the color of her skin was visible.

The Jinmensou would spread without limit when a lie was spoken.

Could it have been that I...no, that we were mistaken about something? It was a crazy idea, but we had never actually checked or proven that it was not the case.

Yes.

Were the Tsumada Mio her parents and Hachikawa Tomoe-chan had told us about and the Tsumada Mio the Shibuya girls, Toujou, and I were talking about really the same person?

“...Are you really Tsumada Mio?” I muttered without thinking.

Toujou looked puzzled and then the girl – or rather, the object in the shape of a girl – burst into tiny pieces. What looked like pieces of flesh scattered across the four walls and floor of the cabin, but that was not what they were.

They were all shaped like human faces.

Hundreds or even thousands of them had condensed into the shape of a girl.

These were Jinmensou.

They were the core of the lie.

This was the punishment for all of those who had spoken as if they knew who Tsumada Mio was despite not knowing anything about her.

As soon as the girl-shaped object blew to pieces, the itching and pain eating into my body disappeared. The Jinmensou for telling lies were gone. Completely gone.

“Inugami!!”

I immediately jumped for my handgun, but Toujou managed to shout calmly despite having lost his greatest prize. My fingertips reached the.38 caliber revolver, but I did not have time to grab it and aim.

My upper body was assaulted by an impact so strong it felt like an invisible dump truck had hit me. My body slammed against the wall.

“Gh...gh!!”

I slid down to the ground and found Toujou was holding my gun. The Inugami must have retrieved it for him.

“What happened? Hey, Uchimaku. Where did Tsumada Mio go? Where did you hide her!?”

“Heh...”

Can you not see her?

It may have been because I had finally grasped the truth and it may have been because I had finally tried to face the real Tsumada Mio.

Either way, I could now clearly se-->>

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