Occultic;Nine Volume 2

by Chiyomaru Shikura

  Ryotasu and Master Izumin were both idiots, so they didn’t matter, but... Maybe Myu-Pom suspected something was up.

  Had Ryotasu told them that I’d gone to see Dr. Hashigami the day he was killed? She hadn’t mentioned it at all today.

  Even if she was a little stupid, and... unique... that didn’t mean she wouldn’t at least be thinking about it.

  “But I don’t want to think about it anymore...” There was no good to come from being paranoid. I’d just not be able to believe anything.

  I gave up on thinking, took off my coat, and collapsed into bed. I was so tired. Lately I hadn’t been sleeping well, and I was exhausted. And last night, Zonko had kept me up all night.

  I wanted to get some sleep today.

  I closed my eyes.

  But the second I did, Dr. Hashigami’s face, the feeling when I’d ripped out his tooth, and the awful smell of the blood came back to me, and it hurt to breathe.

  I pulled my blanket over my head. My body started to shake.

  “Calm down. Calm down...” I desperately told myself.

  “Hey! You! Hey! No sleeping! Gah, if only I could reach out of the radio! I’d tug hard on your sideburns!”

  “...” I heard loud, high-pitched yelling coming from the radio. I wasn’t sure if that was why, but the flashback to the incident suddenly disappeared.

  I sighed and got out of bed.

  “You just sighed, didn’t you? You do that. But I don’t know why you don’t like me. You’ve got a pretty girl like me talking to you. Normally a teenage boy would like that. Are you gay? Or just an idiot?”

  “...I don’t know how to tell if you’re pretty when I can’t even see you.”

  She was less trustworthy than the girls who took selfies on Twitter. In my mind, when she talked I was envisioning Zonko. But her personality and voice were different from the Zonko in the anime, so there was a little gap in my understanding.

  Was that why I felt a little dizzy when I talked to Zonko, or more precisely, the girl on the radio?

  “And you know, what were you thinking back there?”

  “Back there?”

  “At Blue Moon!”

  “Oh, I was going to ask you the same thing. You talk to me all the time, so why didn’t you say anything back there?”

  “Of course I wasn’t going to say anything!”

  “Why? Were you asleep? Or embarrassed?’

  “Why are you telling other people about me? Jeez! You should know better than that, dummy! Dummy-dummy Yuta!”

  “Wait, why was I not supposed to do that?”

  “For your own sake, Dummy-dummy Yuta.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If people really thought you could talk to a pretty girl who lived inside a radio, they’d call the cops on you.”

  “They’d believe me if you talked!”

  “No way. There’s no way I’m talking, ever.”

  W-Wait, really...?

  So Zonko didn’t want anybody but me knowing about her.

  Well, sure, a mysterious girl who you could talk to on the radio was definitely occult.

  “Then at least tell me, now that nobody’s around. Who are you?”

  Zonko didn’t answer.

  “How can I talk to you? This radio’s got a speaker, but it doesn’t have a microphone. It can do output but not input. How are you hearing what I’m saying? And how can you talk when the power’s off?”

  Zonko said nothing. The Skysensor was silent.

  “Hello?” She was ignoring me.

  I tried flipping the switch on and off. I even adjusted the volume. But it didn’t do any good.

  Crap, I must’ve pissed her off... There was only one thing I could do now.

  “Um, Zonko... I’m sorry for being a jerk.”

  “As long as you understand.”

  “You were there the whole time?!” I resisted the urge to fling the Skysensor out the window.

  If this temperamental and (self-proclaimed) pretty girl never talked to me again, I’d be in big trouble.

  To be honest, she’d given me someone to talk to over the past two days. That’s what had gotten me back on my feet this far.

  And...

  Without Zonko, by now I’d either be in jail for the murder of Dr. Hashigami, or maybe dead at the hands of the real killer. The only reason I was still safe was the orders she’d given me back in that lab.

  Zonko knew something. She knew why Dr. Hashigami was killed, or maybe even who the real killer was... probably.

  My hands gripped the gold tooth key in my coat pocket This key might be connected to the real killer.

  I’d be doomed without Zonko and this key if I wanted to prove my innocence and find the real murderer. I needed to find the connection somehow.

  I went to the kitchen and filled a cup with water. And then, for no real reason, I flipped on the TV in the living room.

  It was just past 7:00 PM. Most stations were showing variety programs at this hour, but the channel I had it on was playing a special on the 256 incident at Inokashira Park.

  A bunch of old men that were identified as “experts” were exchanging theories with serious looks on their faces. In the end, they weren’t much different than the aggregator sites. They were making their money off of irresponsibly scaring people.

  I was interested in the 256 incident, but not in the program. I could do a lot better for myself gathering information off the internet.

  I changed it to another channel. There were two other news programs on, and they were both running specials on the 256 incident. It was like the whole world had forgotten about Dr. Hashigami’s murder. That was a good thing for me, but somehow it seemed scary, and I shivered.

  I went back to my room and opened up my laptop.

  “Hey, Dummy-dummy Yuta. Your mom should be home soon, right? It’s your favorite tonight, curry rice. Man, I wish I could have some too!”

  I was mostly ignoring Zonko’s voice.

  I typed “Isayuki Hashigami” into the search engine. My fingers were shaking as I did.

  For the first week after the incident, I couldn’t bring myself to search for the name online. I was too scared. I was terrified that the top hit might be “Yuta Gamon Identified as Murderer,” and I just couldn’t do it.

  But now... I wanted as much evidence as I could get.

  I pushed down hard on the enter key. And then I saw a story dated several days ago.

  When I saw the video attached to the story, I gasped. It was a video of the funeral at Anyoji Temple, probably from that day’s news stories.

  I could see several funeral-goers on the temple grounds. A TV reporter was talking into the camera with a grave expression. Then the video changed to show a middle-aged woman and a young man, bowing to the visitors as they held a photo of the deceased. The subtitle read, “Dr. Isayuki Hashigami’s wife and eldest son.” They were covered in camera flashes.

  The son was my age, or a little older — maybe a college student. He was a professor’s son, so he must be really smart, too. But the impression I got from watching him was of an exhausted boy trying to act strong. I’d lost my dad too, so I knew how he felt.

  I felt another grinding pain deep in my heart.

  I should never have looked at this.

  I closed the video and looked at the other search results, but I didn’t see any new information about the suspect. That was natural, perhaps.

  What about Kirikiri Basara? I hadn’t actually posted any articles about Dr. Hashigami, but several months ago, when he’d made one of his “the occult is real” comments on TV, I’d put up a small article on it. Maybe somebody had put a new comment there.

  I opened the article I’d written, desperate for any kind of hint, and...

  398: The Occult is FAKE

  In Memory of Long-Haired Hashigami

  400: The Occult is FAKE

  If the occult’s real, come back as a Zombie, lolol

  415: The Occult is FAKE

/>   DDDDOOOCCTTORR HASHIGAAMMI!

  417: The Occult is FAKE

  So, was the occult real? Or not?

  420: The Occult is FAKE

  He kept dodging the point and changing the subject when he got called on something. It pissed me off.

  Glad he’s dead.

  422: The Occult is FAKE

  So turns out the occult wasn’t real, lol

  There had only been a few comments over the past few days, and they were all from assholes. I was disappointed to find out that the Basariters were like this. It was worse than scribblings on a bathroom wall.

  Annoyed, I smacked my hands on the keyboard.

  “Come on, debate! Analyze! You guys are useless! Totally useless!” But—

  Then I saw another comment.

  446: Hello there, I’m Zenigata.

  So about Hashigami. There was a BL doujin sold at last year’s winter Comiket that had a really similar situation to this, I remember. It was Ririka Nishizono’s At the Bottom of Dark Water.”

  Does that have anything to do with this?

  “A doujin...?” My first reaction was to wonder what the hell he was talking about.

  In fact, nobody had reacted to his comments, but it did bother me. Part of it was the fact that this was the only decent comment on the page.

  Maybe this Nishizono girl had a power like Myu-Pom’s, and she was able to foretell what had happened. I wanted to see this doujin for myself.

  After that, I acted fast. I skipped school the next morning, and caught the first train to Shinjuku. I went into Tora no Ana as soon as it opened, and searched desperately for At the Bottom of Dark Water. It was embarrassing, looking through the BL corner, but I found what I was after.

  I scanned through it as soon as I left the store.

  It was a doujinshi composed of five short stories by Ririka Nishizono. I’d never read any BL books before, but just like I expected, it wasn’t targeted towards boys.

  I started reading it thoroughly from the beginning.

  The scenes of men in bed together didn’t really bother me. Most of the bad stuff was painted out with white. It just looked like two naked, handsome men holding each other and saying creepy shit.

  The first story was about bodies at the bottom of the water becoming zombies and climbing back onto land. I thought the Cthulhu Mythos might be involved, but it wasn’t. One of the zombie men was called the Devil. First he had sex with a girl, but then the detective who was investigating the case stole the zombie man away and it turned into a BL thing. Mr. Zombie was a total manwhore.

  The second story was called “Kotoribako.” It was a tragic love story about an albino boy who carried a box to put little birds in. The boy was a smug asshole who pissed me off. He was having threesomes with twin priests called “Gods of Fortune.”

  The first two stories had really complicated backgrounds and weren’t that good. I started to think that whoever the commenter was on Basara, they were just messing with me. But when I got to the third story, I was shocked.

  The third story was another tale of men in love. The two of them were in love and never wanted to part, so (for some reason) one of the men stabbed the other to death with a knife. Then he had sex with the corpse, and—

  Ripped out the corpse’s tooth as a memento.

  That was how it ended.

  “It’s the same... No, wait, is it?”

  Think logically.

  The part about the tooth was the same. Even the media had reported that one of Dr. Hashigami’s teeth had been removed. If you just looked at the overall situation it was the same.

  But was it really? I hadn’t taken the professor’s tooth because I was in love with him. And I’d used pliers, not a knife, to get it out.

  Taking a tooth out of a corpse was a common theme in detective stories. I tried to tell myself that, but then I read the story again from the start.

  “Oh... This...!” And on the page where the man was killed. I saw it. “No... there’s no way...” My hands were shaking.

  Maybe the Ririka Nishizono girl who wrote this book really had seen the professor’s death over two months ago. Or more likely, she was the one who’d killed him.

  There was something about the case that the cops hadn’t announced yet. The only ones who knew it were people who’d seen the room where he’d died. Me, the real killer, the cops, and maybe the guy who’d found the body? And it was here in this doujinshi.

  It was one of the few pieces of information that would lead to the killer that hadn’t been publicly announced.

  There were four letters in the English alphabet written on a background object in an unobtrusive panel. It was the same as that dying message.

  “CODE.”

  site 39: Miyuu Aikawa

  “Did you go to the cops about your friend?”

  “Her family said they filed a missing person’s report,” I said as my gaze wandered outside the window.

  I was sitting on the second floor of the Excelsior near the entrance to Sun Road, and I could look down and see the people below me clearly. It was late afternoon, so there were lots of housewives doing evening shopping and students heading home from school.

  But inside the café, it was mostly female customers. I didn’t see anyone but me who was wearing a uniform. Teenage girls like me tended to prefer fast food places like McDonald’s.

  It was Toko, not me, who’d chosen this place.

  I dunno... I felt a little nervous.

  The heater was on inside the café, but I felt cold, and I wrapped my arms around myself.

  I told myself it wasn’t good to worry too much, and tried to take my mind off it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about Chi. My mind kept coming back to her.

  “Where did she go...?”

  Chi was my classmate and best friend. The only reason I’d started “Myu’s Nicco-Nico Live Fortune-Telling” was because she’d told me to. She’d always helped me with the broadcasts, too. She’d always been there to cheer me up. It was thanks to her that I had the courage to continue this project.

  “You okay?” Toko asked.

  She had shown up right on time for our meeting, and she’d been worried when she’d seen the look on my face.

  It was just like a grown-up woman to be able to be kind without being too obvious. She was really someone I could respect, so I couldn’t think of anybody to talk to about this except her.

  “So did you find anything?”

  “I’ve been peeking into all the places she used to go every day on the way home from school... But of course, she’s not there... I’m not sure what to do...”

  “A missing persons report isn’t enough to get the police to do anything, yeah...”

  I squeezed my hands into tight fists on top of my lap. It had been a week since Chi had vanished. Every day, I kept trying to stop myself from imagining the worst that could happen.

  Yesterday I’d finally seen Gamo, who’d been out of touch for a full week too, and so I’d been a little hopeful that maybe I’d see Chi as well.

  “When I think about what happened in Inokashira Park, I just get scared. I feel like maybe Chi was one of the people they found down there... I don’t really want to think about it, but...” Maybe I shouldn’t have listened to Gamo when he was coming up with all his ideas on the case. I started to freak out and ended up coming to Toko for help.

  “It’s true that they haven’t ID’d half the bodies from the lake,” Toko commented.

  I hadn’t looked to see if Chi’s name was among the ones they had found. When I thought about seeing her name on that list, I got so scared.

  Since I hadn’t heard anything from Chi’s mom, I’d been telling myself that she had nothing to do with that case.

  “Don’t think about it too much. Believe, and keep waiting. I know some people with the police, so I’ll ask them.”

  “Yeah... thanks.” She was so nice that I wanted to cry, but I bit my lip and stopped myself.

  I took a sip of th
e maple latte she’d bought for me. Its sweetness and warmth made me feel a little better. “I feel a little better, I think.”

  “I see. I’m glad to hear it.” Toko rested her chin on her hands and sighed. “I’ve been a little busy lately. Maybe I haven’t been paying enough attention to what’s been going on around me. Somebody I knew died recently, you see.”

  “...” I gazed out the window halfheartedly. I could see my own sad-looking reflection in the glass.

  It reminded me of the vision of the bottom of the water that I’d seen before. Maybe that vision had something to do with the Inokashira Park incident...? No way.

  “Hey, Toko. Do people really just... die like that?” I didn’t even realize what I’d said. “Do you think there’s life after death, Toko?”

  An editor at Mumuu would definitely say yes to that, so I thought it was a bit of an unfair question. I wanted someone to tell me what I wanted to hear, so I’d decided to ask her as opposed to someone else.

  “Yeah. Of course there is.”

  But even so, hearing Toko agree made me feel better.

  “I think without the afterlife, the world seems a lot more cramped.” Toko smiled a little as she kept talking. “You can replace afterlife with ‘heaven’ or ‘the spirit world,’ if you prefer. But I’ve always wanted to find real, unassailable proof that something like that existed. Something non-religious, I mean.”

  “I hope you find it someday, Toko.” If she ever did, maybe I wouldn’t be scared to die. Maybe I’d be able to really see my dad again.

  “Just leave it to me. But when I do find it, I’m charging an entrance fee for all humanity. There’ll be no exception for you, Miyuu.” Toko puffed out her chest and laughed.

  “Oh, I wanted your help with something, Toko.”

  “What is it? I’m not offering discounts on that entrance fee.”

  I opened the photo gallery on my phone and showed her a picture.

  “What do you think of this?”