novelVolume 3, Chapter?: Welcome to Zenmetsu Village (3)
| ← Ch.19 | Ch.21 → |
Secretly making wine or brandy or growing hallucinogenic mushrooms was common in prisons where few pleasures were to be found. It was well known enough to appear in mafia movies. I was not surprised to hear something similar had occurred in this corporate prison.
"Alcohol is not something that can simply be left in place. The temperature and humidity need to be carefully managed. To adjust for that, wouldn't someone need to use this free pass to periodically check on the barrel?"
"Perhaps. By the way, have you ever found the secret distillery itself?"
I had meant it as a casual question, but Itou Takeru's shoulders drooped. Cowardly Yamada-kun and gaudy Sakai looked awkwardly away from the old man.
I sighed and said, "If they were able to hide that, they could have hidden other things as well, right?"
"Alcohol can be used to make money. We had feared one of the delivery workers that brings parts in from outside might be involved. Then again, the system we have created is not one that allows a jailbreak with only a shovel."
"Yet that security was completely useless when a Youkai was involved."
Instead of Itou the head jailer, all of the subordinate jailers glared at me.
It seemed none of them wanted me to give him a reason to grow angry.
I continued regardless.
"Then maybe we should start there. Where was this occasional supply of alcohol made? If we know where it was hidden, we might find signs of some other trick."
"We checked, " said cowardly Yamada-kun in annoyance."We checked every inch within the walls! Our only achievement was finding some termites. We didn't find any barrels. And I've never seen any suspicious Youkai or anything."
"U-um, we could check over everything again now, but it might take more than a day with the number of people we have, " added Kurumaya-chan, the nervous female jailer.
I simply replied, "Then maybe there isn't anything within the walls."
"You're the one that brought it up! You keep jumping from topic to topic!"
"I only said it isn't within the walls. Could the distillery be hidden outside the walls?"
After all, the Four Mountains area was a clean water jug for the semiconductor factory.
It contained nothing but overly untouched nature and an abandoned village that had been submerged in bloodshed several decades ago.
There were more than enough places to hide a distillery, acquire a Youkai, or put together a Package.
"It's possible, " agreed Itou while sounding annoyed."But that leaves the crucial question of how they periodically left the walls."
"That would be the free pass. It seems to have been even more convenient than we thought."
The jailer group turned toward Suzukawa Izumi and Gogan Sakura.
The high school aged Suzukawa shrank back.
"H-how should we know!?"
"That's right. And if this free pass really exists, why would they come and go? Why not leave once and then run off?"
That was exactly right.
However...
"If the person using the free pass was planning a large scale jailbreak, escaping alone would not be their ultimate goal."
"Wha-... !?"
"That means the prisoners really are the most suspicious!!"
Cowardly Yamada seemed to mistakenly think his IQ would go up every time he grew violent because he tried to lash out at Suzukawa-chan again. I spoke up to stop him.
"However, nothing says only the prisoner group could use the free pass. If there is a way to get a heavily guarded prisoner outside the prison walls, one of the jailers could easily sneak out as well."
"Wait, wait, wait!! This is no time to be joking around. Why the hell would we need to do that!?"
"Maybe you were dissatisfied with the prison's power structure or you were following some idea of justice. There were several thousand jailers, after all. It wouldn't be surprising if one or two felt sorry for the prisoners and tried to destroy the system here."
Was it one of the jailers, one of the prisoners, or some newly-formed group spanning both sides that wished to destroy the corporate prison?
Itou Takeru, the head jailer and supervisor, could not have liked the sound of any the possibilities.
Or was he intentionally giving off such a nervous aura to turn suspicion elsewhere?
"By the way, do you have any ideas concerning this free pass?"
"I doubt there is a hole through the walls and your security is not foolish enough to allow a tunnel to be made, right?"
"Of course not!? Are you fucking with us!?"
"In that case, " I said while winking and resisting the urge to cover my ears."Keep in mind that this facility functions as a semiconductor factory, so it is not a completely isolated and closed off place. Materials are brought in and products and waste are brought out. Would it be easy to hide in one of those trucks?"
A few of the jailers turned toward Sakai Haruka's gaudy face.
Come to think of it, she managed the main gate.
"Wait, wait, please wait! We check through every single truck! Anyone would think of that!!"
"I thought as much. But there is a corporate prison truck that has to be kept secret mixed in with the official semiconductor factory trucks. That one goes without an inspection, right?"
"?"
"A truck is needed to dispose of the dead. I hear prisoners die here quite frequently, but you don't just bury them around here, do you? You must have a corpse disposal infrastructure. There has to be some cycle set up to quickly and surely dispose of them. Am I wrong?"
Itou Takeru, the head jailer, clicked his tongue.
The look on his face plainly said he did not want to explain this.
"Any corpses in an unusual state for suicide are left to another division in Kuroyama. We freeze them and load them aboard a refrigerated truck."
"Do you know what happens after that?"
"I have had it explained to me, but I have never been involved in it myself. They completely freeze them with liquid nitrogen or something and smash them to pieces. Supposedly, they are turned into a sherbet, bones and all. This is made into fish food. Kuroyama makes electronics, so it runs tons of freighters. In the middle of international waters, the fish food is scattered into the ocean, so no one is aware of it."
The two prisoners, Suzukawa Izumi and Gogan Sakura, both paled.
I looked down at the Sunekosuri who looked oddly irritated.
"So someone could hide inside the corpse-filled truck and not be found. I don't know how often the trucks come and go, but someone could make it back the same day if it's more than twice a day. Right?"
However...
If that thinking was accurate, the situation was very bad.
Even the corporate prison grounds were too large for us to search through in a day. Now it was possible the area had expanded to the entirety of the Four Mountains area.
We would of course eventually find the answer if we performed a thorough search.
But would the culprit wait that long? They could cause mysterious phenomena as much they wanted, so wouldn't they block us from reaching their mysterious hiding spot and cleverly work to achieve their goal?
"What the hell?" muttered cowardly Yamada in annoyance."Outside the prison? Is some ghost of Zenmetsu Village wandering around?"
"Now that you mention it." Inspired by cowardly Yamada's comment, the prisoner Gogan Sakura spoke up."I heard something about a ghost of Zenmetsu Village."
"?"
"The semiconductor factory – or rather, the corporate prison – is made up of people who came from outside Four Mountains. Eight thousand people work and live here, but they are all outsiders."
"And?"
"But I hear there is one mixed in, " said Gogan Sakura while stroking the girl's back."I do not know if it is a jailer or prisoner, but there is a survivor of the slaughter in Zenmetsu Village somewhere in here."
The atmosphere suddenly froze over.
It seemed the incident at Zenmetsu Village was a taboo topic here.
I was curious what these people had to be afraid of when they had created this corporate prison that systematically mass produced suicides by giving people nothing to do.
"That's just a ridiculous rumor and desire, " spat out Itou Takeru the supervisor."Let me guess. Does the story claim this survivor is waiting for a chance to take revenge against those living comfortably in the factory? It's just a dream of someone doing to the jailers what the prisoners cannot."
"Th-that's right. And the incident at Zenmetsu Village happened 30 years ago during the conflict between the villagers and the corporation over who could use the underground water. To have been around back then, they would need to be-..."
The nervous jailer Kurumaya Nozomi trailed off and her face paled in shock.
That's right.
Itou Takeru is a dandy in his fifties.
"Ridiculous."
"Well, that would make me a suspect, too, " laughed the middle-aged Gogan Sakura self-deprecatingly."And the term 'survivor' is pretty vague in the first place. I've also heard versions of the rumor that say a survivor sent a descendent to the factory, so age might not be much help. The rumors are clear about one thing though: this person is definitely here."
I see.
So is the murderer taking a U-turn?
No, Itou mentioned taking revenge against those in the factory, so maybe Zenmetsu Village was systematically wiped out by an assassination group hired by the corporation.
If that's the case, it might be time to add a subtitle saying "the true murderer has arrived!"
"Heh! That's just a dream of you losers!! That's just you pathetic prisoners coming up with a convenient hero in your heads because you can't do anything yourselves!!"
"It does not sound convenient to me, " replied the prisoner Suzukawa Izumi as if spitting out the words. She averted her gaze from cowardly Yamada."After all, some of the rumors say the survivor of Zenmetsu Village will indiscriminately slaughter both jailers and prisoners."
Now, everything had warmed up nicely.
There were three things we needed to look into for the moment.
1. What Youkai had carried out this bizarre phenomenon?
2. Was the rumor of a free pass true?
3. Was there really a survivor of Zenmetsu Village within the factory?
Of course, the biggest question was the following:
Who was the culprit behind all this?
Part 19 (Jinnai Shinobu)
Sounds similar to people walking through the dead grass continued through the run-down shacks in the remains of the village.
Madoka tugged on arm to get me to run, but I could not move.
This was partly due to my hips feeling like they were going to give out.
But this intense fear also made me want to see what this was. I wanted to sweep it away. I could not stand any more, so I wanted to settle everything here. That pessimistic courage led me to focus on what lay beyond the thick fog.
And...
I saw something glitter at a very, very low position through the fog. It was as low as someone's shoelaces.
... Metallic luster?
The identity of what was approaching showed itself.
It was not troops from the Kuroyama Electronics Group as Yokoeda Tadashi had suggested.
"Sn-snakes?" said Madoka in confusion."Shinobu-kun, it's a swarm of snakes!! They're everywhere!!"
She was exactly right. They were black snakes about 30 centimeters long and about as thick as a little finger. They spread out enough to cover one entire compass direction.
Humans tended to view something in large enough numbers as a single whole and give it special meaning. For example, a city nightscape. This was the same. The writhing mass of snakes had become something different from simple reptiles. They were a single monster. A sense of disgust rushed from the tips of my fingers and up the thick nerves of my spine.
Madoka's face paled and she shouted out.
"We need to go, Shinobu-kun. We don't know what kind of snakes these are. They might be venomous! If we're bit here, we have no way of being treated!"
"No, wait a second..."
The snakes had something like a gold ring around their heads.
Every single one of the snakes had this artificial sign that would never be seen on a wild snake.
Where have I seen something like this... ?
"That's right! Below the floor in Zenmetsu Village! A broken jar had held a bunch of gold rings. Are those the same as what's on these snakes!?"
If so, did that mean these snakes had been raised in the houses of Zenmetsu Village?
A large number of snakes, a jar, and gold rings.
What is this? I feel like I've heard something similar to this before.
Dammit. It's right on the tip of my tongue...
"Shinobu-kun!!"
When Madoka shouted at me from close by once more, I finally realized the swarm of snakes was about to reach my feet.
"Wah!"
I frantically jumped back and left with Madoka. We ran. We fled.
We did not know where Yokoeda Tadashi had gone, but we did not have time to search for him. We ran through the thick fog in a random direction.
"Y-you've got to be kidding me. We've been doing nothing but running around! And without any chance for warm up exercises. I had better not get a leg cramp and hurt my Achilles tendon."
"Hey, where are we?"
We ran and ran and ran and ran.
By the time I suddenly came to a stop, the run-down shacks were nowhere to be found. Only the rotten dead grass continued on ahead of us. The fog did not help, but the lack of any visible landmarks was more frightening than I would have thought. It felt like being abandoned in the middle of a desert.
"I don't know. We haven't run all the way to Mars, have we?"
"I think I see something up ahead."
After catching our breath, Madoka and I headed deeper into the fog.
Something was neatly lined up like desks in a classroom.
They were giant stones.
"... Another graveyard? We already saw one."
"But this isn't the same place as before. The surface of these gravestones looks a lot more carefully carved.
Did they have some reason for splitting their graveyard into two places?
If Yokoeda Tadashi was with us, we might have been able to ask him, but he was nowhere to be seen.
Also, these gravestones did not really matter at the moment.
We had no idea when that swarm of snakes would arrive and there could easily be more than one swarm. In the worst case, the entire Four Mountains area could be the snakes' habitat and they could fill the entire area.
I was worried about our classmates, but this was no situation in which to begin a random search.
We had to ensure our own safety first.
We walked past the graveyards and the feel of the area changed. Everything was still falling apart, but a wall made of piled up stones cut across. It did not match my impression of the people who had lived in storage shed sized houses made of plywood and galvanized sheet iron. It felt like the basic standard had suddenly shot up.
"It looks like we can get in here, " said Madoka.
Instead of a gate, she had found a crumbled area of the wall.
We stepped over it and continued on.
Two thick wooden pillars stood side by side. Madoka commented that they looked like a torii. This was not an explosion of deductive reasoning on her part. Beyond it, we found a wooden shrine that had been crushed into nothing but a pile of wood.
Compared to the plywood and iron from before, the building had likely had a fair bit of style.
If it had not been smashed into pieces, that is.
The shrine had been smashed down to its foundation and the pile of wooden material had plenty of parts that had been scorched black. It would take quite a bit of persistence to destroy a building to this extent.
"Why would you destroy a shrine? What happened?"
"Was there a coup d'etat by the people?"
"What do you mean?"
"Well, the grade of the shrine was clearly greater than those dilapidated shacks. There must have been a pretty big class divide. If you cannot resolve your dissatisfaction, it simply builds up. Once it passed a certain level, it can explode out in the form of physical violence."
We circled around the destroyed shrine and realized a few houses existed beyond it.
That's right. Houses.
These large rural houses were a lot like my own thatch-roof house. They were quite different from the plywood and iron shacks. It seemed the people belonging to a special class had been gathered within that stone wall.
But unlike the shrine, these houses had not been destroyed.
The thatch roofs had rotted away from neglect and about half of the roofs had crumbled into the buildings, but that was simply due to the passage of time. There was no sign of blunt weapons breaking pillars or fires being set like there was with the shrine.
"It looks like that shrine received special treatment."
"These are a lot different from the plywood and iron shacks from before. These buildings make me think the owners had some money."
Really?
I had lived in an Intellectual Village's thatch-roof house all my life, so I did not actually know how much a house like this was worth.
How much would one of these cost?
"But these houses are falling apart as much as the others, so I doubt they can protect us from those snakes."
I stepped inside one of the houses with my shoes on.
The wood floor of the hallway creaked so much I was worried about breaking through. I could see old dressers and hanging scrolls, so it had a very different atmosphere to the plywood houses where people had seemed barely able to survive.
"They look wealthy enough, but they still didn't have gas or running water."
"There's something that looks like a hastily written account book again."
I touched a bundle of Japanese paper placed on the wall. I used my phone to photograph a few of the pages that looked like they were about to crumble from the moisture.
I stepped into the kitchen that had a furnace and a giant water jug. That was a sight you did not even see in an Intellectual Village. I crouched down and tapped on the floor.
"What are you doing?"
"I thought there might be one here too."
After I checked around a bit, I found a spot that made a different noise. I slid my hand across and found a rusty latch. It was a door to a storage area under the floor. I pulled it open and found a small rectangular space. And inside...
"Look at that jar. It's on its side, but it isn't broken yet."
"Are those things spilling out of the jar the gold rings that were on those snakes' heads?"
I had a feeling those snakes were some kind of Youkai.
I scooped up the jar from the storage area. It must have held quite a few gold rings because it made a jangling noise when I shook it slightly.
A piece of Japanese paper that had yellowed with age was attached to the side of the jar.
The characters were written too sloppily to read, but they appeared to be the same as the ones from that plywood shack.
The paper had two kanji on it.
"... Tou? I think that first kanji is Tou."
"But the second one is way too complex to read. I'm not even sure if that's a kanji we use anymore."
These jars existed in both the wealthy houses and the plywood shacks.
The jars contained gold rings identical to the ones on that swarm of snakes.
Are those snakes a Youkai that sticks with a house like a Zashiki Warashi?
However...
I had never heard of a Zashiki Warashi that continued protecting a house even after its residents were gone. From what I had seen of Zenmetsu Village, a house Youkai would have no reason to remain here for decades afterwards.
The only exception was Yokoeda Tadashi who had lived here the entire time.
But he had mistaken the swarm of snakes for human assassins, so it seemed unlikely that he was those snakes' family and that they were all under his control.
Thirty years before, the villagers of Zenmetsu Village had been slaughtered. If those were normal snakes, those gold rings would have to be placed on any new snakes as they were born, but Yokoeda Tadashi, the only person here, did not seem to know about them.
That left no one to put those gold rings on them.
Yet all of those countless snakes had the gold rings.
Were they always like that?
Are they Youkai that never age and never change form?
"What should we do now?" asked Madoka."This is probably the most extravagant and sturdiest part of the village.... Even this wealthy district is falling apart. If those snakes arrive again, they will be able to get in through all the gaps."
"True. Just hiding isn't going to cut it."
"Where should we go?"
"If those snakes are a type of Youkai, there might be some kind of text explaining how to use them. And conveniently enough, this is the home of some of the most influential people of the village."
"But it's all written so sloppily we cannot read it."
"It's better than not trying at all."
After all, Youkai could not be killed by any normal means. Making a Molotov cocktail from the fuel in the generator outside would not be enough to protect us. There was only one way to deal with Youkai: investigate the characteristics of that type and remove yourself from the conditions causing them to attack you.
And so Madoka and I began a thorough search of the mansion.
We passed by a pillar that was bent like a bow, crouched below a rotting ceiling that looked like it could collapse at any moment, watched it actually collapse behind us, and walked across rotten straw from the thatch roof. A few documents stored in an old bookshelf were still intact, but everything else was much more difficult to deal with. Most of them had fused into a single mass like a bundle of wet toilet paper.
"But we can't read any of this..."
"I told you."
Madoka tossed a bundle of Japanese paper aside and leaned up against a nearby wall.
And then she disappeared.
Or so it seemed.
She had actually broken through the rotten mud wall and fallen backwards out of the building.
"Gyah!!"
"Try for a cute 'kyahn!' next time, Madoka!"
I ran out the square hole that had once held a sliding door and ran over to where she had fallen out into the backyard. Madoka was lying on her back while covered in rotten building material. For better or for worse, the squishy material seemed to have cushioned her head. Her uniform's skirt was flipped up by quite a bit, revealing gray boxer shorts that were so disappointing I wanted to cry.
The world grew dark before my eyes.
"You idiot!! Do you think you're a guy!?"
"But this is more comfortable! And it matches the sports bra!! And why are you the one getting angry when my underwear is on full display!?... Wait."
Madoka then seemed to spot something.
She pointed through the fog.
"Shinobu-kun, look at that."
"Hm? What is it?"
I had not noticed it before, but it seemed a sharp upward slope began right behind the house. It was either a cliff or one of the mountains around Four Mountains.
But Madoka had not been referring to it.
"No, that over there." She pointed at the same spot once more."There is a cave."
Part 20 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)
We had decided to drive to a service area where we could use our cell phones to gather data. But that plan quickly failed.
It happened once we had arrived near the interchange.
"Dammit, what is going on?"
Our speed dropped and then the engine suddenly died.
"You're kidding! Did the battery give out!?"
"The light wasn't on, though."
Sitting around in the driver's seat was not going to fix anything, so I left the mystery freak in the car and stepped outside. I wanted to know if this was something I could fix with the tools in the rental car, so I opened the hood to check the engine.
As soon as the metal hood lifted up...
I spotted a ton of strange snakes filling the engine area.
"Wah! Ah!?"
I instinctually jerked my hands away from the hood. The metal hood fell down with a loud bang. Enbi's eyes opened wide because she did not know what was happening, but I did not have time to worry about that.
The hood had not fully closed.
Black snakes as thick as a little finger came crawling out as if overflowing through the remaining gap.
It was such a repulsive sight that I tripped and fell onto my butt as I tried to back away.
Is this what caused the engine to stall? No wild animal would want to get inside there! And how were they not fried from being in there!?
As if in opposition to my sensible question, black snake after black snake plopped down on the road with no visible sign of burns. None of the rules I knew applied here. This gave me an intensely bad feeling. My eyes met with the eyes of one of those black snakes that all had something like a gold ring around their heads.
These were creatures that could not be killed with normal means.
It can't be...
Are these...
"Youkai... ?"
As soon as I uttered that word, the dozens of snakes vanished as if they had dissolved into the fog. They had not simply fled. They had clearly vanished on the spot like dry ice.
The mystery freak must have realized something was wrong because she got out of the passenger seat.
"Detective, what's the matter?"
"Well..."
I was unsure I could accurately explain what had happened.
I was half ready to decide it was a hallucination caused by exhaustion.
However...
"Huh? Something's stuck in the hood."
I gave a start because I thought one of those snakes might still be there, but it seemed that was not the case.
"It's a sneaker."
"A sneaker?"
I stood up with a puzzled look.
The mystery freak opened the hood a bit to pull out a white sneaker. It was only the right sneaker. Its design was plain, but I recognized it.
"That goes with a prisoner uniform."
"So does it belong to Hasebe Michio?"
Enbi and I exchanged a glance.
I undid the button on the sneaker's clasp, removed the lining, and checked through it. My fingertips came across a small folded scrap of paper.
"Detective..."
"Don't look at me. If you have any complaints, take them to the prison guard in charge of checking over him."
Once unfolded, the paper was the size of a business card. It looked like a piece torn from notebook or memo pad paper.
A simple map was drawn on it.
It looked like the Four Mountains area, but it did not have the semiconductor factory marked despite that being the biggest landmark.
Instead...
"What's this X?"
"It certainly looks suspicious."
I got back in the car and turned the key, but the engine still refused to start. It seemed best to put off the trip to the service area until later.
I did not like how it seemed we were being guided by those snake Youkai, but I decided to check the X on the map hidden in Hasebe's sneaker.
Part 21 (Hishigami Mai)
I think it's just about time for Mai-chan to take her turn.
As we all monitored each other in the large employee cafeteria, I embraced the Sunekosuri that had been rubbing up against my legs.
I whispered, "(The power is going to go out soon and I will kill one of them. )"
"Bh!?" The Sunekosuri almost spat out in surprise."(What!? Wh-wh-wh-wh-what!?")"
"(I sabotaged a breaker on the way here. This cafeteria has no windows, so it will be pitch black in here. The factory block will keep running, but the living areas will have a normal blackout. )"
This was like a game where a Kitsune and a Tanuki were trying to trick each other.
Unless I shook things up a bit, no one would make any mistakes.
My interpretation was that most of those here had no real connection to the incident. They were filler characters meant to make the real culprit harder to find. Killing them would not make this any better or worse. And so I had decided to kill the most powerful of those I had decided were definitely unrelated to the incident.
My choice was Itou Takeru.
He was the supervisor in charge of the entire corporate prison, so he had no reason to rely on a supernatural Youkai. He could freely kill a few people whether they were prisoners or jailers and he had a perfect method of disposing of the corpses using the system put in place by the Kuroyama Electronics Group.
He was a top rank candidate for the culprit's target, but I was not trying to help the culprit. If I killed Itou before they could, that was not my problem.
The prisoners were one thing, but the jailers would definitely be shaken if the fellow jailer with the most authority suddenly died. And if you ignored the Sunekosuri and me, there were five jailers versus two prisoners. The jailers were in the majority, so if they panicked, the fear and shock would be transferred to the prisoners. That was the scary thing about groups.
And so I was going to kill Itou Takeru-san for a variety of reasons.
I hope you can forgive me.
"(B-before you said you couldn't kill them!)"
"(Not if it isn't absolutely necessary. I am doing this to reveal the truth of this bizarre phenomenon related to a Youkai, not to reveal the secrets of the corporate prison. That means I can have Hyakki Yakou clean up after me. )"
"(What happened to figuring out who the culprit is!? You even had everyone gather here!)"
"(What? Who ever said that was my plan? I was only pretending to handle this with logic in preparation for my real plan. Remember, my standard method is to handle everything with violence. )"
"(B-but you're an outsider. You aren't a prisoner or a jailer. If something goes wrong, they will blame you first. )"
"(True. )" I grinned."(But what if that most suspicious person was killed? The group that was keeping calm by thinking of me as the villain would fall apart. And if one of those people is in control of the occult here, they will panic. And so they will use the occult that protects them even if they do not want to. )"
"(Wh-what do you mean killed?)"
"(The parking lot out front is filled with cars. I will board one and try to escape, but the car will explode spectacularly. )"
Cowardly Yamada must have grown irritated by our whispering because he clicked his tongue loudly.
Of course, I was whispering in front of everyone because I wanted to look as suspicious as possible.
"Hey, what're you talking about over there?"
"You will see soon enough."
I shrugged while still holding the Sunekosuri.
Immediately afterwards, the area was filled with darkness thanks to the sabotage to the breaker.
Okay, time to go.
Having to prove to the masses that your enemy had done something wrong before you attacked was only a rule in the territory my sister and that detective worked in.
For those that worked in secret like me, it was often the case that nothing else mattered as long as you uncovered the culprit in the very, very end.
Part 22 (Jinnai Shinobu)
A cave.
When I heard that, my expression must have been one of great displeasure.
It was dangerous enough searching through the half-crumbled, half-collapsed house that was not up to earthquake standards or any other standards for that matter, but a natural cave was something else entirely.
If you are imagining a limestone cave at a tourist spot that has a cool and mysterious mood year round, you are quite mistaken.
A cave that has not been maintained by human hands would be filled with hundreds of bugs. There would be spiders, centipedes, pill bugs, slugs, snails, mosquitos, flies, and every type of roach you're used to seeing. No one would want to go into a gathering spot for so many grotesque creatures.
On top of that, the ceiling could collapse at any time, the floor could collapse without warning, and overlooking a large crack could send you dropping upside down for several meters if not several dozen meters, scraping your body against a file-like wall all the while. There was also a danger of running out of oxygen or being exposed to poisonous volcanic gases.
The scariest part was that these extremely dangerous areas often looked completely normal from the outside. Even if I grew trapped inside, how likely do you think it is someone would come and rescue me? The odds seemed slimmer than those of a tights-wearing American comic book superhero gallantly showing up to rescue me from a mugging.
"Listen, Madoka-san. A city-raised bourgeois like you might not be aware, but entering a cave is just as dangerous as crossing a crumbling suspension bridge that you can't even imagine how long ago it last underwent maintenance. You can't just walk into one as easily as taking shelter from the rain... Wait, Madoka? Madoka-san!?"
She's gone!?
Madoka, who had just broken out through the fragile wall of the house and rolled into the backyard, had disappeared at some point.
As an unpleasant feeling raced up my back, I heard a girl's voice in the distance.
"Oh, it really is cool in here. But it kind of stinks. A bear doesn't sleep here, does it?"
"Get out of the cave!!"
She went in on her own!?
I peered into the two to three meter tall opening to the cave, but I could not see anything through the darkness. I doubted I would have been able to see anything even without the fog.
"Madoka! Madoka-saaan!! Leaving me alone in an abandoned village overflowing with the sense that it's cursed has about a 100% chance of making me piss myself, so could you come on back now!?"
"Eh? But this cave looks meaningful. It might lead us to a secret of Zenmetsu Village."
Meaningful?
I frowned at what Madoka had said.
As far as I could tell, this cave had not been maintained by human hands like some limestone cave. There was no torii, shimenawa, or stone monument with the cave's name. I could not see any evidence that this cave was viewed as special.
"Madoka, what are you talking about? Do you have any evidence?"
"..."
"What do you mean it looks meaningful? This may be a confusing situation, but it didn't sound like you were using the word wrong."
"..."
"Um, Madoka-san?"
"..."
"You're remaining silent to force me to come in after you, aren't you!?"
Dammit. This devil of a classmate knows how to manipulate guys too well!!
I was also saddened by how I had fallen for it and my heart had started to beat faster.
At any rate, it seemed I needed to enter the cave, but I was too afraid to grope around in that pitch black cave. I wanted a source of light.
"That thing used diesel, right?"
I circled around the outer wall of the house. There, I found a generator. It was rusted and falling apart, but a distinctive smell wafted out when I opened the fuel tank cover. I was exceedingly dubious whether it was of high enough quality to work in an engine, but it would likely still burn if you soaked it into a cloth and ignited it.
If I just had a stick of wood and an old rag, I could make a torch.
I acquire both items from the half-crumbled house and cautiously entered the cave with the light in hand.
Wait, I just thought of something... Torches don't cause carbon monoxide poisoning like charcoal grills, do they?
"Damn this place is cramped."
The cave did not look like a river had worn it down bit by bit. That said, it did not look like people had dug it out either. Overall, the cave was shaped like a warped triangle. The ground below must have shifted during an earthquake and it got caught on something that was now supporting this space. In other words, it could easily all come crashing down at any moment.
As I felt my balls shrivel up in fear, the orange light illuminated Madoka's body.
It seemed she had been quite close by.
She had only been about 15 meters from the entrance.
"Oh, Shinobu-kun. A torch is quite the wild option. I was doing my best with the backlight of my cell phone."
Madoka was grinning as if she had no fear in her heart at all.
It may have been because she had no balls to shrivel up in fear.
"How could you light up your phone in a place that could be filled with hundreds of disgusting bugs, rats, and bats? Animals tend to move toward light. What would you have done if they all rushed toward you at once? You would be transformed into some kind of frightening insect human."
"Ugeh. That can happen? But what about your torch, Shinobu-kun?"
"The danger is still there, but the fire can be used as a weapon. I can at least wave it around and run for the exit."
"Wow, what an outdoorsman. To be honest, my opinion of you just went up. Can you cook a meal over a campfire?"
Is that so? Maybe I should be honored to have a financial monster like you say that.
However...
"But it looks like there was nothing to worry about. I've lit up all the walls around here, but I haven't seen an insect or any other creature."
"Isn't that odd, though?"
After all, if there were not hundreds of insects here, there had to be a reason for the insects to not be here. I grew a bit concerned the dangers of low oxygen or volcanic gases were about to make themselves known.
My torch consumed oxygen, so the flame weakening considerably would warn us if the oxygen levels were dropping. The volcanic gases were the worst option. By the time we realized something was wrong, it would probably already be too late.
"Madoka, this seems pretty dangerous. There has to be something keeping away those disgusting bugs that not even insecticides can kill. We need to get out of here."
"I think we should be fine."
"?"
"Look, there's light over there. That means there's an exit."
Madoka suddenly pointed to the side.
She was standing at a T-shaped intersection.
"With where we came in and that exit right over there, air has plenty of paths to blow through. Gas wouldn't build up in here."
It seemed the cave was not all that large.
I held out the torch to wipe away the darkness before me and found it reached a dead end after only about 10 meters. Even if you added in the distance to where we had entered, that was only about 25 meters.
"This place is surprisingly small."
"Yes."
"Hmm. And I was sure this place was meaningful."
"Are you disappointed you didn't find a legendary dragon or some thieves' hidden treasure?"
"No, not that." Madoka raised her index finger."This cave may be natural, but it was located right next to a house that probably belonged to one of the village's ruling class. If it was only an eyesore, they could have had the villagers fill in the entrance."
"Hm? Well, I suppose... But you saw that village. They didn't have the leeway in their lifestyle for designing an aesthetic garden."
"Perhaps, but the ruling class would be able to build their house wherever they wanted in Four Mountains. It's odd for their choice of the optimum land to be near a cave."
"I see. That does sound meaningful."
I would never want to live near a cave. They had so many insects sleeping inside and all of those insects would come swarming out once it grew warm.
"Hey, Shinobu-kun. Something is glittering over there."
"What?"
With the torch in hand, I approached in the direction she was pointing. Near the dead end when continuing straight into the cave were some needle-shaped depressions. I initially thought something like a large puddle existed in the middle of them, but I was wrong. The water was very clear yet I could not see the bottom. It was quite deep. The light of the torch did not reach all the way down. There seemed to be a pit here and only here.
"It looks like someone dug this."
"Is it a well?"
"It looks like the same technique, but the water level is completely wrong. It could overflow at any time."
There was no need to dig deep into the ground. The cave was already underground, so it was possible an underground stream passed by at a higher level than us. This well with an oddly high water level (or was it a spring?) may have struck an underground stream running through the mountain.
... If there's an underground stream nearby, doesn't that mean the ground here is even less reliable?
Also...
If they had the ability to dig a well, why did everyone in the village use water filters made from metal drums?
"Oh?"
Madoka crouched down and began poking at a stone the size of a pickling stone.
"There is something carved on here, but the kanji is too hard to read."
"I'll take a photo."
I snapped a photo with my cell phone camera.
As far as trip memories went, this collection of photos was about the worst. I thought about creating an exorcism folder.
Nothing else inside caught our attention. Madoka and I walked back down the way we had come and stopped at the T-shaped intersection. We had yet to check the other exit.
The presence of the light told us the exit was nearby. That meant the tunnel did not cut through to the other side of the mountain.
"Shinobu-kun, let's go check it out."
As I walked forward with the torch in one hand, the path quickly narrowed. It was so narrow I had to turn to the side to fit. The path also sloped sharply upwards and spiraled around.
However, this path from hell quickly came to an end.
"This is... ?"
"We've come out at a higher point."
We were probably three or four meters up, but the thick fog made it hard to tell for sure. We had taken a T-shaped intersection in the cave, but the two exits likely came out on the same slope. In fact, there was nowhere else an exit could be.
"Shinobu-kun, what should we do now?" Madoka must have been tired because she sat down without worrying about getting dirty."Do you think we could climb the mountain and cross over out of Four Mountains?"
"Trying to climb a mountain of unknown height without food or water and while wearing leather shoes is pure insanity. Don't forget the fog and that we don't have a map or GPS."
"Eh? If we just head straight, won't we make it eventually?"
"If we come across a vertical cliff, are you fine with doing some free climbing? In leather shoes? I would at least want a lifeline."
If you looked into what routes bullet trains and highways took, it became obvious how much land routes hated mountains.
"Boo, boo, " said Madoka as she pouted her lips.
Either her exhaustion and hopelessness had reached their limit or the lack of any useful information combined with the lack of anything more to investigate had irritated her. It must have been nice being a beautiful girl. Everything they did looked great. If she wasn't so cute, I might have punched her for being so stubborn.
"We put in all this work, but we haven't managed to get away. This is a lot like the Shokei Island serial murders case Enbi told me about a long time ago."
"... Could you not bring up such ominous things?"
"Apparently, there was a closed room murder case in the remains of a coal mine on a remote island to the northeast. I think the trick had to do with using a wire to throw the key in through a tiny window."
Suddenly, an incredibly light electronic tone broke through the unpleasant atmosphere of hopelessness.
Madoka and I exchanged a glance before frowning.
It was the sound of the cell phone in my pocket receiving an email. I had received several messages from the large-breasted Zashiki Warashi saying "I'm bored. Buy me a souvenir."
"... I have a signal. But why!?"
"Look, Shinobu-kun. There's an abandoned car over there!" said Madoka as she tapped on my shoulder.
I looked over and spotted a mass of brown rust sitting on the grassy mountain slope. She had called it a car, but it was a compact one-person vehicle that looked like a scooter with four wheels. It was an extra small electric car that automobile companies had made to ensure the elderly could go shopping.
"It must still work. The car navigation and the automatic break system need an internet connection. The electric car itself can function as a mobile Wi-Fi and 3G wireless hotspot, so it must have picked up on our phones' signals!"
"Wait, wait, wait!!"
Humans tended not to doubt information that was convenient for them.
But this was too much.
"That's way too modern! Zenmetsu Village's civilization was on the level of using water filters and diesel generators. They didn't even have any phone lines. Why are we suddenly finding an electric car with a perfect net environment?"
"Eh? Well..."
"And the battery doesn't last forever. If this has been left here since the slaughter 30 years ago, who has been recharging it? And what about the OS and firmware? Has it been auto-updating itself all this time? If so, who has been paying the internet contract fees? If it was just left here, the contract would expire and it would stop functioning!"
"Shinobu-kun, we were attacked by someone in a run-down shack of Zenmetsu Village. Maybe this is his."
"I can't deny that 100%, but if he was hard up for food, wouldn't this be the first thing he sold? And how has he been paying the monthly contract fees?"
He had somehow obtained that portable gas stove and gas cylinder, so he may have had some kind of income. He might have collected magazines and sold them or captured rare rhinoceros beetles and sold them. But whatever he did, it would be for a tiny amount. I doubted he had a stable income to pay the thousands of yen he would need for this.
"Someone left it here to make periodic contact. They bought the lightest variety of electric car so they could leave it here on the slope where no one would notice it. But I doubt it was that man wandering around Zenmetsu Village who did it. In fact, don't you think it was put here on the slope specifically so he wouldn't find it?"
"If so, who did it?"
"I don't know..."
The car had to have had a license plate, but I could not see one. It was possible it had naturally rusted away, but it looked more like someone was intentionally hiding their personal information.
But thinking about this anymore was not going to help.
I looked back down at my cell phone.
"At any rate, our cell phones have a signal now. We can get the word out that we vanished from the tour bus and call for help from professional rescuers."
"Don't forget this, " said Madoka as she poked at the back of my cell phone."You took all those photos. Those sloppy kanji may be illegible to us, but don't you think a Zashiki Warashi who has lived for a long, long time could read them?"
Part 23 (Hishigami Mai)
The story so far!!
Eight thousand people had vanished from a large scale factory and corporate prison, leaving only a few jailers and prisoners behind. But in reality those eight thousand had not disappeared and it was us who had been caught up in "something". It was possible we were being treated as missing in the real world.
Now, that meant one of those few people was likely the culprit.
However, I had no intention of gathering small pieces of evidence like my sister or that detective. Physical evidence was only any use when things could be resolved in the courtroom.
I decided to kill one person I could rule out and then fake my own death when I seemed the most likely suspect. The remaining members would panic and begin suspecting each other. Basically, I was creating a situation where killing everyone but yourself would bring you peace of mind.
Would the mastermind behind all this take direct action or would they take defensive action to stop the others from growing violent? They possessed some kind of hidden occult power, so either way, they would use some strange ability.
I could resolve the situation by determining who it was and defeating them.
Anyway, after I killed the one person in the factory's employee cafeteria, I headed for the parking lot and made it look like the stolen car I tried to flee in had exploded.
In reality, I was hiding behind a line of parked trucks, watching the burning car from a short distance.
I could see a few silhouettes through the thick fog.
"What is... going on?" muttered someone.
Whose voice is that? Oh, right. That's the violent jailer Yamada-kun.
"She's dead? But that woman had to be the killer! Then who killed her!? I thought she was the one who killed the head jailer!"
The situation was not ideal.
I could see the light of the flames through the fog, but I could not grasp the details of the silhouettes. I would be unable to pick up on any small mannerisms or changes in expression like this. And I was supposed to be dead, so I could not carelessly approach either.
That meant it was time for my radio that could pierce the jamming.
"(Sunekosuri. Hey, Sunekosuri. Are you in position?)"
"I am in the factory's guard room. There are so many surveillance monitors I am starting to feel dizzy."
This facility was known as a corporate prison, so it would have more cameras installed than a normal factory. I had sent the Sunekosuri there to closely monitor the area I could not approach.
Meanwhile, the silhouettes in the fog continued sending stabbing words back and forth.
I heard a voice I was fairly sure belonged to the female jailer named Sakai Haruka.
"Wait a second! We decided that woman did it!"
"But her car's burning!"
"Did she kill herself after killing the head jailer? Or maybe there isn't a body inside.... At any rate, she's the one behind this! It's a real problem if she isn't!!"
Shit, she has some sense.
But that last comment might have been a mistake.
"What? What do you mean it's a real problem? You make it sound like you have some secret you want to hide by making her look like the murderer."
"N-no..."
"Shut up!!"
I heard a loud crashing sound. I stared closely and it looked like Yamada Ken had broken a random car window. He would not have done that barehanded, so he had likely found some kind of blunt weapon on his way here.
"Heh. You were probably the one that did it, " said Yamada."I know about the head jailer's 'preferences'. Once he has his eye on you, it doesn't matter if you're a man or a woman. This was a good opportunity for you. In a situation like this, anyone could do it without getting arrested."
"Don't mock me! I made sure to stay out of any of that!!" protested Sakai."And speaking of that, what about you!?"
"Shut the hell up! If I say that's the truth, then that's the truth! Did you think we were gonna take a vote? If I break the knees of everyone who's suspicious, they won't be able to move!! In that case... !!"
Oh, is Yamada-kun going to give this a real effort?
But the situation suddenly changed.
"Shut! Up!!"
The shy female jailer named Kurumaya Nozomi suddenly stabbed Yamada's head with a blade.
The action took place beyond the thick fog, so the details were not entirely clear. However, she had likely grabbed one of the shards of the car window and swung it down at Yamada's head. As Kurumaya Nozomi swung down her clenched fist, something glittered below it.
She swung it down.
Again and again and again.
It was as if she were using some strange stamp.
"Shut up! You've done nothing but talk and talk and talk and talk! You're probably working with that woman to kill us all!! You knew how she was going to escape, so you set up a bomb there!!"
"Gyah!!"
Yamada held his head with both hands, but did not yet collapse. It was not like he was being stabbed with a military knife. But even if he had not yet collapsed, there was probably no saving him. He had been stabbed quite a bit.
She must have had a lot of anger built up from her everyday life because Kurumaya-chan continued swinging the glass shard down toward Yamada as if she was digging up dirt with a garden spade.
"And!! And!! I've never liked you! That annoying voice sounds just like that fucking dog that bit my arm when I was a kid!!"
"Wait, Kurumaya-san!?"
"Shut up!!"
I heard something slice through the air. She had likely swung the shard to keep Sakai Haruka back when the fellow woman tried to approach.
And then...
"Okay, that's enough, " announced the male jailer named Tanishita Hajime in a decisive tone.
He was answered with a shout of anger from Kurumaya who had likely had the expression of some kind of monster at this point.
"Ah!?"
"No one move. I am with the police. I came here undercover as a jailer to investigate the corporate prison running behind the semiconductor factory.... And by the way, this is no toy."
Silence fell as the atmosphere froze over.
I could guess that "this" was something one did not often see in Japan.
The effect it brought lasted only a few seconds.
Another voice cut in.
"You're the one that needs to quiet down, you terrible actor, " spat out a female voice.
It likely belonged to Gogan Sakura, the prisoner in her fifties.
"You're an industrial spy from Pallax Precision Machinery, aren't you? Your name is Hayama Jouji. You tried to steal the plans for the semiconductor printing equipment, but were shocked to find yourself sent to work as a jailer here. You were wondering whether this was a simple reassignment or if your cover had been blown and they were preparing to imprison you here. You had to have been scared."
"Wh-wh-who the hell are you!? What are you talking about!?"
"You're not going to scare me by waving around a model gun. And it doesn't look like you've modified it to shoot real bullets either. A real gun looks like this. Get it now, boy?"
Hm.
There are a lot of interesting people here.
"Thank you for going along with this PSIA undercover investigation. But this is my limit. I was hoping to get a reading on the general intentions of the entire Kuroyama Electronics Group instead of just this out-of-control corporate prison, but I have no choice now that someone has died."
"Y-you're kidding..." said Kurumaya Nozomi in a trembling voice. She had killed someone right in front of a police officer, it was only natural she wanted to deny it."Th-they said on a drama I watched that the Japanese police aren't allowed to perform undercover investigations! And if they do it's an independent investigative department with a different jurisdiction than the normal police like the Narcotics Control Department!!"
"Officially, yes. But a lot of the PSIA's work does not leave any official records. I've gotten this old while eating food earned from undercover investigations. Shouldn't you assume your ideas about all this were wrong?"
"But..." At this point, the other female prisoner, the high school aged Suzukawa Izumi, spoke up for the first time."If you're a police officer who leaves no records behind, that means you can have as many illegal side businesses as you like, doesn't it? You leave no trace of anything behind, after all. Are you really an ally of justice here to expose the evils of this corporate prison? Or do you have some other objective more in line with your own desires?"
... Hm.
"Ah wah wah wah wah wah!!" shouted the Sunekosuri over the radio."I-is it just me or is no one here a normal person!? D-don't tell me all of them play some role in the underground world Hyakki Yakou deals with..."
"(No, I doubt this is that convenient. A few of them live their lives in the light. But my role is to kill anyone necessary regardless of what kind of aftertaste it will leave in my mouth. )"
However, it would be problematic if this (self-proclaimed) PSIA undercover agent took control of the situation.
I could not allow the situation to calm down.
They had to be killing each other until the person behind all this made a mistake.
"Y-you're lying. That has to be a model gun!"
"Do you think that because yours is just a toy?"
"Freeze!! This is real! So... !!"
"Then how about you prove it?"
This is my chance!!
I brought the radio closer to my lips.
"(Sunekosuri! Who is Gogan Sakura aiming her gun at!?)"
"Eh? Ehh? The Tanishita Hajime guy who might be a police officer or an industrial spy."
"(Where is he? The thick fog makes it too hard to see from here. )"
"Wh-why do you want to know?"
"Isn't that obvious?" I pulled out my handgun that had a suppressor equipped."(I'll shoot Tanishita Hajime as Gogan Sakura fires her warning shot. An amateur won't notice the difference in caliber. With one gunshot and one wound, they will suspect Gogan Sakura who had been so well-behaved up until now. The others will fall straight into a panic when they're betrayed by the person they thought they could trust. )"
"E-eeee!?"
It wasn't clear whether Tanishita Hajime was guilty or not, so I decided it would be best to not make a deadly shot. As long as it caused a panic and they began trying to kill each other, it didn't matter.
"(Sunekosuri, what is Tanishita Hajime's precise location?)"
"Ah, ah wah, ah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah wah!"
"(Sunekosuri, this is a Hyakki Yakou job! You were sent to support me because the young lady trusts you. If you aren't going to live up to that trust, just quit the organization already!)"
"T-Tanishita is..." began the Sunekosuri. Even over the radio I could tell he was about to cry."He is to the right from your perspective. He is directly next to the burning car. That is about 10 meters away."
"... ?"
"He is standing alongside the side mirror. If you aim based on the reflected light, you should hit his upper body."
This was no time to think.
I followed the Sunekosuri's instructions and aimed my small, suppressor-equipped handgun with both hands.
And then I waited.
"Will a gunshot be enough to prove it? Or do you need the crushed bullet afterwards? I guess you won't believe me until I shoot over there somewhere, will you?"
"Hey, wait..."
I waited.
And waited.
And waited some more.
"This is an emergency situation. Waving my gun around like this would normally require more than a written apology, but there aren't going to be any records of this. We use these pretty lightly in our world. Make sure you remember that."
Now!!
I focused on my trigger finger.
And...
A high-pitched gunshot rang out beyond the fog.
Silence followed.
I was hiding a short distance away, but even my ears had a sharp pain in them.
Gogan Sakura had fired a warning shot.
However...
My suppressor-equipped handgun was pointed upwards.
I had held back from firing at the last second.
"(Sunekosuriii... )" I said bitterly.
"Ee!? Wh-what is it? I have no idea what is going on..."
"(You have two options. Either I make an official report to the young lady that you gave me false information to save a suspect, or you will receive a full-body massage by me after all this is over. )"
"I will take the massage! Please, anything but telling Hafuri-sama!! Anything but having those sorrowful eyes turned in my direction!!"
You idiot.
If I had fired in the wrong place, one of them might have noticed the sound or sparks when it hit! That would have ruined everything! This is the sort of "kind noise" that gets professionals killed!!
"(But... )"
What was I to do now?
The warning shot had silenced everyone else. I would have no opportunity to fire randomly into them and it would not cause as much panic this way. For better or for worse, the center of their group mentality was now located in the undercover investigator Gogan Sakura. As their mental dependence on her grew, I would have to kill someone else to bring in more doubt before it would all come crumbling down.
Gnn! This is a huge detour!!
The undercover investigator seemed to be reestablishing communications beyond the fog.
"There is no hope for this guy... Yamada Ken was it?"
"A-ahh. I... I didn't... I... wait..."
Kurumaya Nozomi finally began to grow nervous, but Gogan was not going to listen.
"To find the culprit more smoothly, let's go over each of our situations one by one. We need to find why the head jailer and that female jailer died as well as what is causing the bizarre phenomenon behind it all."
And then...
Just as I almost began seriously wondering if Gogan Sakura would solve everything for me...
Something even more abnormal came from an unexpected place.
Part 24 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)
"Ugh, " groaned the mystery freak after stepping out of the rental car.
What lay before her eyes was an unmaintained forest where the rotting branches of the trees covered the sky and the tall undergrowth left the color of the ground a complete mystery. Nature here was destroying itself like a bedridden old man with bedsores.
"Are you sure we should follow the map? We aren't going to get stranded are we?"
"The rental car refuses to run, so we can only investigate in the areas we can walk to."
To be honest, with the almost complete lack of clues, I was beginning to doubt Hasebe Michio was even in Four Mountains.
Finding them after those snake Youkai made me incredibly uneasy, but we had a prisoner's shoe and an old map of Four Mountains with an X marked on it. It might lead us to nothing, but it was worth trying.
"More importantly, mystery freak, are you sure you're okay in that swimsuit-like outfit?"
"I can't exactly take off anything else! B-but if you beg me enough, I might consider stripping further."
"I mean the opposite, you idiot." I pointed into the thick greenery we were about to head into."Do you really want to walk through there with exposed skin? The small branches will scratch at your skin and who knows how many mosquitos and centipedes there are. This is no place for a nice picnic."
"That's what the bug spray is for!"
"How much do you think that will really help? And you have moisture all over your body from this fog."
"Th-then what am I supposed to do?" she asked.
I pointed toward the unmoving rental car.
"The most sensible answer is for you to wait here."
"No! I can't send you off alone into a forest that might be filled with Youkai. You'd definitely get your butt kicked and never come back!"
Dammit! I can't say she's wrong!!
At the very least, it's true there were some snake Youkai!!
I rubbed at my bangs with one hand, and half-resignedly stuck my upper body into the rental car's driver's seat to unlock the trunk. I checked inside the trunk, but only found a spare tire and a tool set.
Damn. No good.
I had no choice but to toss my jacket over the mystery freak's head while she wore what basically amounted to a swimsuit.
"Cover yourself with that. It's better than nothing."
"U-um, wouldn't spraying on tons of bug spray help?"
"Using too much will lead to chemical irritation. Remember: this is a chemical that sets off the bugs' danger sense so they will keep away."
With that said, I pulled out the largest wrench from the rental car's tool set. I took the lead, used the tool to sweep aside the underbrush that was over a meter tall, and stomped on through.
Dammit. Making a path is such a pain. I'm obviously wasting three times the energy I would be otherwise.
The mystery freak took advantage of the human bulldozer ahead of her and simply walked through the path I had made.
"Detective, why are you trying to make me fall for you even harder?"
"Would you rather take the lead?"
"There are a lot fewer bugs than you said there would be."
"The fewer the better."
... But that does bother me a bit, too.
The thick and extremely grassy smell of greenery filled my lungs, but I could not sense much of an animal smell. I could not spot any animal droppings or remains. It was as if there were no living creatures besides us.
It was as if all of them had suddenly disappeared just like Hasebe Michio and the police officers from the prisoner transport vehicle.
After we walked through the forest a while, the green wall came to an end. A clear area covered in rotting dead grass spread out ahead of us. As we continued on following the map, we found a number of structures made from sharpened logs. They were likely meant to stop cars from entering the area. We passed by them and came across an area with a few run-down shacks made of plywood and galvanized sheet iron and an area with a few large thatch-roof houses with crumbling roofs.
The largest of the houses looked like it would cost between 20 and 30 million yen for the house alone. It would have cost 15 times that had it had been made with Intellectual Village brand name materials and by Intellectual Village craftsmen.
These larger houses seemed out of place with the rest of the abandoned village.
"It doesn't look like anyone is living in them. It must have been decades since they were abandoned."
"So this is the rumored Zenmetsu Village, " said the mystery freak as she walked up next to me."But I see some new footprints here. Look."
"Whose are those?"
I was suspicious. One set of footprints was large and the other small, but their shape was quite similar. They looked like ready-made leather shoes.
"Maybe it was a couple like us."
"Okay, no more comments from you."
The footprints continued in a different direction than the mark on the map. I was curious about both, but I decided to deal with the mark on the map first since we knew we could reach it. Hasebe had not been wearing leather shoes and I doubted he had a woman with him.
"Uuh... Not having internet access makes me even more worried. We only have this hand-drawn map to rely on, " complained the mystery freak.
"We have no choice."
"Dammit. If only I could contact my usual information broker."
"I'll ignore that for now since we're in the middle of a crisis, but I'm going to keep it in the back of my mind for later."
I looked down at the map and the mystery freak grabbed onto my shirt with one hand.
"It looks like there's something around here. A few lines are drawn in."
"Do you think they represent roads?"
"I don't know. They don't travel from the center of the village and outwards, so they might be something else."
"Like ravines?"
The fog was too thick to see even a few meters ahead. I wanted to avoid making an accidental misstep, so I decided to continue on with caution.
"Where's the mark on the map?"
"Not far ahead... Oh, is that it?"
The mystery freak pointed toward a vague shadow in the fog.
But...
"It looks like a shrine."
"You might want to call it a former shrine."
There was a building, but it had been reduced to nothing but a pile of rubble. Amid the large amount of broken wooden material, pieces that had been scorched black as if in a fire were common. The destruction could not have been natural. This looked like the aftermath of a group swept away by violence rather than the work of a single person. The way the shimenawa and... nusa did you call them? Anyway, that paper folded in zigzags. The way they were blowing in the wind was a bit depressing.
I can tell a shrine was destroyed here, but what does it mean?
There was a mark here on the map in Hasebe's boot, so there has to be some kind of meaning.
The mystery freak tilted her head.
"Did Hasebe destroy it?"
"If so, why would he mark down its location to remember it?"
"So the shrine was already destroyed."
"But what does the mark mean?"
"Maybe he had something convenient hidden in the rubble."
We exchanged a glance.
We moved the rubble as much as we could and finally discovered a clear plastic bag.
It contained some old bundles of money and a rusted blade.
"This looks suspicious."
"There's three million yen here, " I muttered."Huh? But wait. Doesn't that mean this wasn't the first time Hasebe Michio has been in Four Mountains?"
That belated thought came to me.
And in the next moment, something heavy struck the back of my head after a full swing.
"Bh... gh... !?"
Pain instantaneously exploded in my head before vanishing as the sense exceeded its limits. Instead, the pain from my neck bending so suddenly stabbed into my mind.
I had been attacked from behind.
By the time I realized that, my vision had been greatly shaken and I had fallen to the side.
Who?
As I lay collapsed on the ground, I desperately tried to focus my shaking vision. My gaze landed on a man of about fifty. He wore a jumpsuit. However, it was a bright neon orange and the back had a prison identification number printed in large letters, so it was not something one saw every day.
It was a prison uniform.
There was only one possible identity for this man swinging up a branch as thick as a human arm.
"Hasebe!?"
The wrench I had used to brush aside the undergrowth had fallen from my grasp during that attack. I kicked at Hasebe Michio's leg while lying on the ground. He lost his balance but still managed to swing down his blunt weapon. His aim was off, so he only tore up the ground right next to my face.
"Dch!!" groaned Hasebe.
Standing it up and knocking it down once more must have been too troublesome because he placed the thick branch horizontally across my neck and pressed his weight down on it. I frantically grabbed at the thick branch as well, but I was still at a disadvantage. I heard a creaking sound as that branch as thick as an arm crushed my Adam's apple.
"... Wait. Why... are you... doing this... !?"
I moved my mouth, seeking air.
And then I spotted something that left me in shock.
It was even further above than Hasebe Michio who was leaning down on me. There I saw the mystery freak's face which had become completely expressionless. She held the large wrench I had dropped.
Not good.
Not good! Not good!!
Mystery freak, why are you unhesitatingly coming forward to split Hasebe's head open!?
"Damn... it... !!"
I tried to cry out, but had difficulty producing a voice. I tried to escape from beneath Hasebe, but it did not work well with his weight pressing down on me. I still managed to move bit by bit as if sliding along the ground.
And then gravity seemed to suddenly disappear.
I felt as if I were sliding backwards down a playground slide.
... Didn't the mystery freak mention some lines on the map that might be ravines!?
"Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?"
I rolled down to the bottom of the ravine along with Hasebe.
Instead of falling from a vertical wall, it felt more like sliding down a steep slope for three or four meters.
Rather than ground made of earth, a cold, highly-transparent river waited at the bottom.
With a loud splash, I sank into the water headfirst.
Seeking oxygen, I sought the surface almost on instinct alone.
"Buhahh!!"
My head broke the surface. I greedily sucked in oxygen. The river was only about a meter deep and three meters wide.
Hasebe was...
Where is Hasebe?
As soon as that thought came to mind, someone grabbed the collar of my dress shirt from behind.
I was tugged back by a powerful force and my head sank back under the cold water.
"Gbh! Gbagbhh!!"
Why is Hasebe Michio attacking me?
I had thought the odds were high his request for a retrial would go through and he would be found not guilty of murdering the president of Kuroyama Electronics Group, but it was looking like the charges might not have been false after all.
Or perhaps he had mistaken me for an assassin from the regional police or the corporation.
"Ha... sebe... !!"
I somehow got my head out of the water before it was submerged once more. This repeated a few times.
The situation looked hopeless, but I had been able to manage something during that time.
I had learned where his feet were.
I frantically moved my arm in an attempt to sweep those feet out from under him.
As if our bodies had switched places, our positions suddenly changed. Hasebe fell and his body sank into the cold water.
"Hasebe! Do you understand what you are doing!?"
I grabbed the collar of his prison jumpsuit with both hands and lifted him up.
He was gasping for breath as he dangled down from my arms, but he was smiling.
He looked nothing like a decent citizen who had been wrongly imprisoned for a crime he had not committed.
"To be honest, I had already given up, " said Hasebe as if spitting out the words."But by some coincidence, I made my way out of the transport bus. And of all places, in Four Mountains where I had hidden some stolen money 30 years ago. I figured there was no harm in trying. Betting on a coincidence isn't bad at all!!"
"What are you-... ?"
"I don't know if the driver suddenly disappeared or what, but the bus flipped over. The police officers who came running out of their cars also vanished. It was exhilarating. I don't know who did this or how, but only an idiot wouldn't take advantage of it!!"
"What are you talking about!?"
As I asked that, I suddenly lost my balance.
Hasebe's hand was on the end of my necktie.
... Dammit! He kept talking about meaningful things to draw my attention away!!
I frantically tried to remove Hasebe's hand, but he tugged on my tie before I could. My head sank into the water like a dog on a chain. Even worse, the water was clear enough that I could see Hasebe was stepping on my tie.
He got me...
Now I can't get my head above water!!
"Gbh... gbhbgh!!"
I struck Hasebe's leg with my fist and dug my fingers into his shin, but it was no good. I instead began to think about undoing my tie.
Shit, shit, shit!! The knot has soaked up so much water it's tightened up!!
"Gbh... bghbgh... If you... splash... not... gh."
Hasebe seemed to be announcing something in triumph above, but I could not hear it well through the water.
It seemed he had more to say.
The air in my lungs tried to force its way out of my mouth in pursuit of an exit. I grew dizzy. My fingers dug into my tie's knot with enough force to almost break my fingernails. I tried to force it looser.
Hurry up.
Hurry up!!
"Gbah!!"
I finally escaped the bonds of my tie and broke the water's surface in search of air.
But two hands pushed my head back down.
Hasebe's face had an odd smile on his dripping wet face. That moisture was more than just the fog.
"Hase... agh... Hasebe!!"
"They should have left it alone. I annihilated everyone like I was supposed to. No one was left. So what does it matter if one last thing hadn't been dealt with!? It wouldn't have caused anyone any problems that I ran away!!"
It sounded more like he was making excuses to himself than he was talking to me.
And then it hit me. An unpleasant feeling ran down my spine.
Zenmetsu Village. That village of annihilation.
The legend concerning that empty village we had seen on the way here.
The psycho killer of the sort that delighted the mystery freak.
"Was it... you? Were you the one that killed this entire village!?"
"Shit! Shit!! Yes, it was. That was under the old system!!" replied Hasebe Michio with a mocking smile as he tried to force my head underwater. He was what you could call the "true culprit"."Calling me a client of the Kuroyama Electronics Group sounds nice, but I was always forced into just barely scraping by. The entire run-down downtown area was a step away from starvation. Kuroyama wanted to keep a set level of disposable troops to force their inconvenient dirty work onto."
"Kh... !!"
I grabbed the back of Hasebe's hands as he tried to force my head down. I dug my nails deep into them.
Hasebe's expression twisted in pain, but he maintained his position.
Dammit. I can tell my mind is falling toward pessimistic thoughts. By the time I start considering DNA tests and dying messages, it's all over!!
"Are... cough... Are you saying... cough... you attacked the village so the company could profit!?"
Did he think he could win?
Did he think he could silence me?
As Hasebe breathed heavily, he spoke as if encouraging himself.
"I was part of a group. That village was opposed to the construction of the semiconductor factory. I don't know why, but they were strongly opposed to the factory using the underground water. It was a nuisance, so we were ordered to eliminate them and make it look like the work of a crazy killer."
... How could this be?
But it was not over yet.
The nightmarish reality continued.
"We were rewarded nicely after finishing the job. For insurance, I hid that in the remains of the village along with what I plundered during the attack.... But I let my guard down. My name had not been removed from the list of disposables! Someone had killed Kuroyama's president during some internal struggle and my name was used. Most likely, some executive who had changed the 'inside' of the semiconductor factory had taken measures before the president could criticise them!!"
"Even if you were innocent of killing the president, you still faced a fate worse than death if the truth came out about Zenmetsu Village during the investigation. Is that why you had to run away before the retrial!? Because it would look too suspicious if you withdrew the request for a retrial that the victim group was asking for!?"
"Yes... that's right!!"
Hasebe poured even more strength into his arms and my head sank beneath the water.
Gbh!! Dammit... Water is... getting into... some odd places.
I somehow brought my head back above water, but I could not breathe properly due to coughing too much.
"Cough!! Cough cough!!"
"I was cut off in every direction! Kuroyama was too clever. After being kicked out of the United Hive, my factory was completely under their control, but it was only a client on paper. Even if I claimed they ordered me to crush the village after cutting off all ties, no one would believe me. They would think it was a bluff meant aiming for a plea of insanity!! It would never reach Kuroyama! Whether my conviction was found to be wrong or not, I would still be sent down to the very bottom!!"
My fingertips were trembling.
The lack of oxygen must have been finally having direct effects because I could feel my strength fading. The situation was only going to grow worse from here.
Am I really going to be silenced like Hasebe wants?
Dammit.
Isn't there something?
Isn't there anything I can fight back with?
"Running away is the only way I can survive, so of course I'm gonna run! I'll run to the ends of the earth!! I was a victim from the beginning. I was trapped in the system of poverty Kuroyama had created, so I could not escape by any normal means. And now I can't escape without being willing to kill again!!"
Suddenly, I heard something slice through the air. The sound came from directly above me. I did not have time to look toward it because it dropped down in an instant.
A heavy metal wrench thrown from above the ravine struck Hasebe Michio in the head.
That stupid mystery freak!! Do you have any idea how hard I've been working to keep you from dirtying your hands!? And there's no way you could aim properly in this fog. What if you had hit me!?
"Cough cough cough!! Shit!"
But I did not have time to give into my anger.
As strength left Hasebe's arms, I quickly moved away. If I could escape his grasp, I could get out of the water.
As I tried to adjust my position, I saw something unpleasant.
Hasebe Michio had received quite a shock from the blow to the head, but he moved as accurately as an automated factory's robot arm to reach out and grab the wrench that had bounced off his head.
Not good.
Not good!! If he starts beating me with that, I'll have no way of fighting back! If I try to block the blow with my arms, it'll just break my arms. I know various disarming methods based on aikido to aid in arrests, but I don't think any of them will work when I'm in the water and have no footing!!
"Stop, Hasebe."
"I'm sick of hearing about how people are supposed to be good deep down."
"You're well known. You're more than just a criminal. The press is treating you like a hero who was falsely convicted. Your face and name are all over the internet and the talk shows. 150 million people know you! You can never escape. If you kill me here, you will be reported the instant you approach civilization!!"
"When in a flaming building, you head to the roof where the flames have yet to reach despite the danger. If I head back to prison, only the death penalty awaits no matter how the trial goes. Even if I know it's a dead end, I can only continue running away from the wall of flames behind me!! There is no other path left for me!!"
| ← Ch. 19 | Ch. 21 → |