Occultic;Nine Volume 2

by Chiyomaru Shikura

  Grr...

  There actually was another thing that the book and reality had in common. The man’s tooth had been torn out and carried off. But I couldn’t tell them that.

  My fingers suddenly moved to the gold tooth key in my pocket.

  If I told Sarai and the others about this, they’d lose even more faith in me as a person. But I didn’t have a choice. Otherwise, they wouldn’t believe that Ririka Nishizono was suspicious.

  Come on, tell them! Tell them everything! They’re the only allies you’ve got right now...!

  “A-Anyway, I think you should take a closer look at it. Y-You might understand a little of what I’m talking about... maybe. Hahaha.”

  Oops...

  In the end, regardless of what I wanted to do, I didn’t say it. I was a little shocked at my own wimpiness... Just trying to bring up the courage to talk about it made my heart beat like a drum.

  “I-I’m begging you, guys...”

  I couldn’t look Sarai in the eye. Sarai sighed and flipped through the doujinshi. I would’ve preferred he read it carefully, instead of just skimming it.

  “Are you trying to tell me this is synchronicity? But that hasn’t been explained in the scientific sense. Synchronicity is just the result of assuming several coincidences have meaning. The world is filled with coincidences. Trying to bring meaning to every coincidence is how conspiracy theories got started. It would be better to say that human curiosity and imagination make the world more complicated than it should be. Delusions amplify a person’s imagination. That’s exactly what’s going on with the sexual depictions in this book. They’re very different than reality.”

  God, shut up... I went to put my hands over my ears in annoyance.

  “Are you sure about that?” Master Izumin, who’d been quiet, interrupted. He’d heard our whole conversation from behind the counter, so it was strange that he hadn’t said anything until now. Evidently he’d finally run out of patience. “Sure you’re not just being cynical, Sarai? Conspiracy theories exist. It’s more fun to believe that.”

  I appreciate the support, Master Izumin, but Sarai’s not going to believe that...

  “I have no intention of denying the existence of every conspiracy theory, but you can’t deny that their proponents are constantly making impossible logical leaps in their arguments, can you? And simply ignoring anything that would go against their theory.”

  Sarai’s counterattack shut Master Izumin up completely. It didn’t seem like he had anything he could say. There was nothing I could say, either. Maybe I was wrong about Ririka Nishizono being the real killer...

  “...Hmm? Wait a second. This is—” Sarai suddenly stopped flipping through the pages. His eyes were on a certain page.

  ...What was it?

  “What’s wrong?”

  “This... number...”

  I peered over at the doujin. He had it open to the last page. Even when I tried to follow the story, the last page had nothing to do with what came before it. It was weird. Instead of the end of the story, there was just a picture of a car.

  Had Sarai... found something on this page?

  “Do you recognize that car?”

  “No, that’s not it. It’s not the car—”

  Sarai’s fingers were shaking.

  “What is it? Tell me! What did you find?!”

  His finger was pointing at—

  “The license plate?”

  Unlike a Japanese license plate, this one consisted of seven numbers.

  “3315728...?”

  “What’s wrong with the number?” Myu-Pom was looking at the doujin, too.

  Sarai, however, had closed his eyes and was mumbling to himself.

  “That’s right... That’s it... You can use Baudot code. So that was it...”

  “Come on, Sarai, tell me!”

  I grabbed his shoulders and shook him. He opened his eyes and slammed his fist down on the paper in front of him — the picture of the holes in the study ceiling.

  “It’s ‘EEQTUWI.’”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s the ‘EEQTUWI’ that I couldn’t decode! Baudot code can be used for numbers as well as the alphabet! ‘00001’ is the letter E, but if you look at the conversion chart... it’s also the number 3.”

  “You’re not saying...!”

  “EEQTUWI can be converted to numbers. And those numbers are...” Sarai adjusted his glasses in an attempt to calm down. “3315728. It’s the same as this license plate!”

  “...!”

  The number on the license plate... matched the one in the professor’s study!

  “Hey, Gamon! Who wrote this book?!” Sarai whacked me in the chest with the doujinshi. “Who is Ririka Nishizono?”

  “S-She’s an ero-doujin author! I’ve never met her!”

  “You’re not telling me she really prophesied the future, are you? That’s impossible! That’s too occult for me to believe. If there’s some explanation that doesn’t involve the occult, it’s—”

  “It’s that Ririka Nishizono is the killer. Right?”

  “...” Sarai’s expression was getting sterner. He’d finally realized how dangerous this doujinshi was.

  “There’s contact info in the afterward. Did you try contacting her?”

  “No...”

  There was an email address written there, but I hadn’t had the courage to contact her.

  “Gamon, I’m sorry for doubting you.” Sarai bowed. “Whether or not this is a prophecy, I’ve taken an interest in Ririka Nishizono. I’ll investigate this EEQTUWI matter myself. Was there anything else that you saw?”

  “Huh? Um...” I couldn’t tell him about the gold tooth key, but—

  “Are you hiding something?”

  “Huh? Huh?”

  “You’ve been refusing to look me in the eye. And you keep saying ‘Huh?’ That’s evidence that you understand my questions and are pretending not to. Is there something you’re feeling guilty about? Something else you haven’t told me? You keep putting your hand in your pocket. What’s in there? You just looked away again. If you’re hiding something, then my reaction is, ‘Knock it off, asshole.’ I showed you my dad’s study. You need to show me everything you’re hiding.”

  “Uh...”

  He was so observant! His super-powers felt even more real than Myu-Pom’s.

  He was glaring at me and I couldn’t even move a finger.

  It felt like even the smallest twitch would betray to him what I was hiding.

  site 49: MMG

  “What’s going on with the signals of the ‘dead’ who fell into the spirit world. Are they ‘alive’?”

  Takasu didn’t nod in answer to Manitoba’s question, but he didn’t shake his head, either.

  “The numbers are getting better.”

  “Once monitoring after death is possible, the plan will move forward immensely. Couldn’t we incorporate not just the second generation, but the third generation into our experiment as well?” Yamaha asked. Manitoba frowned.

  “Why are there 256 people per cage, anyway? Couldn’t you more finely tune that number?”

  “Due to issues with the system, that’s impossible. The system itself is very old, you see.”

  Manitoba still looked unsatisfied, but he didn’t say anything.

  “The disposal of the 256 into Inokashira Lake was unexpected, but as a result, we proved that ‘Odd Eye’ is ready for practical use. In that sense, the disposal of the first generation, as well as the cage, didn’t go to waste.” There was a subtle hint of reproach towards Takasu in Hatoyama’s words.

  But Takasu pretended not to notice, and nodded, satisfied.

  “If we can solve the problem of the prison of time, the new World System will finally be complete, and we will acquire the Spirit World.” He spread his arms and looked up to the sky in his usual over-dramatic fashion.

  “And that means we will control this world forever.”

  site 50: Yuta Gamon

  “Well, whatever.�
�� Sarai sighed and looked away from me.

  How long had passed since I’d fallen silent in answer to his questions? It felt like a long time, but maybe it wasn’t even thirty seconds.

  It looked like Sarai had thankfully given up on getting any answers out of me. Knowing him, maybe he’d decided it was a waste of time.

  “But I think we do need to look closer into what’s in this doujinshi.”

  “I-I agree with that.”

  “May I look at it too?” Myu-Pom, who’d been holding her breath as she watched the two of us talk, took the doujin. She flipped through the pages.

  “Um, Myu-Pom, what do you think about BL?”

  “What do you mean?’

  “D-Does it turn you on?”

  “Gamo, that doesn’t matter now—” And then she gasped. “Oh, look!” Her eyes went wide as she looked at one of the pages in the doujinshi.

  Something was wrong.

  “What is it?” Was there another secret hidden in this thing? Was it possible for all the stuff in this book to just line up with reality like that? How many prophecies could you fit in a single volume?

  Ririka Nishizono was terrifying...!

  “Th-This is...” She was pointing at a page from the second story in the book, where the keyhole of the Kotoribako was.

  I shuddered when I saw it.

  I’d been thinking about the Kotoribako as well.

  It felt like the lock on it matched the gold tooth key. I’d actually put the tip of the gold tooth key up against the page, and it had seemed to match. This didn’t feel like a coincidence to me, but I still couldn’t mention the key.

  “Kotoribako? What about it?”

  “...” Myu-Pom was going pale.

  The second story was this creepy thing about some smug, albino jackass who had a box called the Kotoribako to put birds in. In the story he had a threesome with two “Gods of Fortune.” The protagonist was this annoying jerk who always had a grin on his face, and was extremely cynical. And for some reason, these two Gods of Fortune fell in love with him, and they had sex.

  The Kotoribako ended up having very little to do with the story.

  Which only made its presence even more strange.

  It was like the box existed first, and then the author tried to force the BL story to go along with it.

  “What’s wrong with the Kotoribako?” I asked again, but Myu-Pom had wrapped her hands around herself and started to shake.

  “Kotori... Kotoriba... Kotoribako...” She was clearly panicking. I couldn’t explain why.

  It was kind of like when she’d burst into tears when she saw Sarai’s vision during the Nicco-Nico Live Fortune-Telling.

  “What is a Kotoribako?” Myu-Pom just barely managed to squeak out the words.

  “All I know is that it’s some kind of dangerous box you can see in a creepypasta online.” I’d looked it up myself, but even on 2chan it was treated as a word you weren’t supposed to search for. Nobody wanted to talk about it.

  Sarai and Master Izumin didn’t seem to know anything about it either. Neither did Ryotasu, obviously.

  Myu-Pom took her cell phone out and made a call.

  “I’ll ask Toko...”

  Wait, was that the Mumuu editor she just mentioned?

  “Um, hello! Toko?” Myu-Pom began to ask whoever she was talking to on the phone about the Kotoribako.

  Just like you’d expect from an editor at Mumuu, she evidently knew about the Kotoribako. Myu-Pom put the phone on speaker so that we could all hear.

  “So Toko, what exactly is the Kotoribako?”

  The woman on the phone began to speak in a clear, rapid voice.

  “Just from the name, you might think it’s some kind of birdcage. But it’s much more... brutal... than that.”

  “Brutal...?”

  Was it something from a ghost story or something? How did I not know this? As a guy running an occult aggregator, that might not be good — but that thought fled from my mind when I heard her next words.

  “The Kotoribako... is a child-taking box.”

  When I heard her say that, my hair stood up on end.

  “...No.” Myu-Pom was shocked, too.

  Child-taking? Just the name sounded bad.

  “What’s the story behind it...?”

  “It used to be a ghost story from the internet. The rumor is that it got its start in Shimane Prefecture, but there’s no real source on it, so it’s possible that someone just made it up.”

  So this was an occult thing, then?

  “The Kotoribako is made from lots of different wooden blocks. It’s not a normal box. It’s a series of complicated parts shaped like a square, and you have to open it in a special order.”

  “You see things like that sold as gifts, don’t you?” Sarai knew about something similar, evidently.

  “Yes. They’re a traditional craft in Hakone. But the Kotoribako is something totally different. One theory says that it was made around the 1860s. It’s supposed to be about twenty square centimeters, I think.”

  The one in Ririka Nishizono’s manga had been about that size.

  “That’s a lot bigger than the ones in Hakone.”

  “Yes. This is a ritual item. It’s intended to curse people, and kill them. The box has an effect on the area around where it’s laid. Anyone affected by the curse has all their organs ‘ripped apart,’ and they die as they cough up their own blood. And the curse’s effects are limited to women and children.”

  “A curse... do you mean like black magic?!”

  The name Aria Kurenaino came to mind.

  “No. This is a Japanese story. Western magic has nothing to do with it.”

  “Y-You’re right...”

  “Supposedly it was originally made by villagers who were suffering under the local ruler’s heavy taxes. You can bury it in the garden of the person you want to curse, and all their family’s women and children will die, until their family finally ceases to exist. That’s why it’s the ‘child-taking’ box.”

  That sounded like a very powerful ritual item... It was probably a rare item with an S-Rank curse status. Like if you used it, the target would die... and so would you.

  “The issue is how it’s made. It’s brutal.”

  All of us were totally focused on Toko’s story now. Even Ryotasu, who never focused on anything, was biting her lip and listening. For my part, my hands were soaking with sweat. I pressed them against my pants to wipe it off.

  “First, you fill the box with the blood of a female animal. Supposedly a fox or chicken was often used.”

  A female animal...

  “Then you would let it sit for a week, and then add a part from the body of a child who’d undergone mabiki.”

  Huh?

  “At the time, it was normal for people to do what they called mabiki, or culling, where they’d kill unneeded children. You’d put a part of that child’s body inside the box. What part it was depended on the age of the child. If it was a newborn baby, it was the umbilical cord, or the tip of the index finger. And their blood, drawn while they were alive. For a child younger than seven, it was their blood and the tip of their index finger. For a child younger than ten, just the first part of the index finger. Once that’s done, you seal the box and send it to the person you want to curse.”

  “That really is brutal...” I was starting to feel sick.

  “Gamon, you run an occult aggregator blog, don’t you? Aren’t you used to scary stories by now?”

  “I-I’m not scared...”

  Shut up, Sarai! Stop coolly analyzing my facial expression! Honestly, I felt like I was about to throw up.

  “The effects of the curse change depending on the number of sacrificed children.”

  “Huh? It’s not just one child?”

  “What you call the box changes depending on the number of sacrifices. One, and you call it an ippo. Two, a niho. Three, a sanpo. Four, and it’s a shippo. Five, a goho. Six, and it’s a roppo. Seven, a chippo. Eight, and
it’s a hakkai. More than eight, and the box becomes too strong, and it’s dangerous. In some cases its effects can last more than a hundred years.”

  Eight kids...

  So there was enough hate put into that box that whoever made it would be willing to kill eight children...

  Just imagining it made me shiver.

  “By the way, I really shouldn’t be telling you this, but I learned this from a source connected to Mumuu.” Toko lowered her voice.

  “One of the Kotoribako is somewhere in Kichijoji.”

  “What...?!”

  Kichijoji’s got way too many curses.

  “Listen, you guys. The Kotoribako is a really nasty thing. Don’t think about looking for it. Got it?”

  “Thanks, Toko.”

  “Huh? Wait, Miyuu?”

  Myu-Pom said thank you and hung up the phone.

  I wished I could’ve talked to the editor at Mumuu some more...

  “Wahhh... I’m not gonna be able to go to the bathroom tonight...” Ryotasu was crying. I thought she was unusually quiet. The crying must have been why.

  Just like Toko said, the Kotoribako was too dangerous. I was too scared to want to get close to it. Even if I did find a real one, I wouldn’t want to touch it.

  But maybe the Kotoribako had something to do with Dr. Hashigami’s murder. Since it was in Ririka Nishizono’s doujinshi, I couldn’t say that it didn’t.

  “So, Myu-Pom, what’s up with the Kotoribako? It looks like it’s bothering you somehow.”

  Myu-Pom had been acting weird ever since she’d seen it in the doujinshi. She looked scared and exhausted.

  “If... If I can, I want to try and find that Kotoribako right now...”

  “You want to search for it? Are you crazy?”

  And then Myu-Pom told me that her friend had been missing for a week, and that the last thing she’d said had been “Birdie Bo.”

  She flipped through the pages.

  Was that a coincidence, or was that part of Ririka Nishizono’s prophecy?

  And did the Kotoribako have something to do with Dr. Hashigami’s death?