The Strongest Little Brother’s Commonplace Encounters with the Bizarre?!

by Tsuyoshi Fujitaka

  “Huh?” Mariko looked at Aiko in confusion.

  “Uh?” Aiko tilted her head. She had a bad feeling about this.

  “Um... well, I ran out of things to throw away, so I thought I might throw out things you didn’t seem to need anymore, either...” her mother said.

  “Mom! Don’t do stuff like that without asking me!” Aiko flew out of her mother’s room, and ran to her own in a panic.

  It was safe.

  Now that she thought about it, it was locked, so it wouldn’t have been possible for her mother to just barge in and start throwing things away.

  Next, Aiko hurried to the basement. That was usually where the family put things they weren’t using. Aiko’s possessions were among them.

  She normally found the basement creepy and tried to avoid it, but this was no time for such reticence. She arrived at the basement door just as the cleaning men were about to move in.

  “Um, excuse me. Please let me through,” she said as she went deeper in.

  Once she arrived, she found herself surrounded by her old toys and dolls from childhood.

  “Um, we were told to throw out everything in the storage room here. Is that not all right?” the worker man asked.

  “Huh? Was this all that was in there?” Aiko had come down in a flurry, but now that she had arrived, what she found there didn’t seem to be anything much. It was just the toys she and her brother had played with, long ago.

  Hm, well, I guess I don’t really need them anymore... Aiko thought, as she glanced around at all the weathered old toys. She’d never given these a second thought since they’d been placed here, and she probably never would again. Maybe there really was no point in just keeping them around.

  “Okay, you can take them away,” she said at last. If it would make her mother feel better, it was a small price to pay.

  Aiko started to turn back, but stopped. She had a feeling that someone was watching her.

  But that can’t be the case... she thought.

  The basement was full of boxes, with lots of dark places where the light didn’t reach. But she could see just at a glance that there was no one around. There was nothing there but toys she never played with anymore.

  Soon after that, Aiko began receiving phone calls.

  At first she thought it was a prank, but they just wouldn’t stop. Even when she blocked the number, they continued, as if mocking her. It was clear they were no ordinary phone calls.

  It got bad enough that she couldn’t even get a full night’s sleep. The calls would continue all through the night.

  It was just like that old ghost story. The place they were calling from kept getting closer and closer. It wouldn’t be long now until they reached Aiko’s house.

  “Hmm... and you say this Dannoura person abruptly began seeing numbers over people’s heads?” Makina asked.

  “Yeah,” said Yuichi. “She said it started during summer vacation, but she didn’t get them from anyone. You really think it has nothing to do with Outers?”

  They were in the student guidance room. Makina and Yuichi were talking, and Aiko was listening, half asleep.

  It seemed the one who had sent him the love letter recently was Chiharu Dannoura. Chiharu also had special eyes, like Yuichi’s, that let her see things most people couldn’t. Yuichi had come to ask Makina if it had anything to do with the Evil God War.

  “If there was no contact — assuming Dannoura isn’t lying — then it’s probably not connected to Outers,” said Makina. “Outers are dramatic. We like our flashy appearances. If an Outer bestowed a Divine Vessel on someone, they’d do it in a way that would leave an impression.”

  “So it’s not a Divine Vessel?” Yuichi asked.

  “Well, there’s nothing inherent connecting Divine Vessels and Outers,” she said. “Divine Vessels choose their hosts randomly, or at least, that’s how it was originally. So there’s a chance that Dannoura is a carrier.”

  “If she is a carrier, could she detect the resonance?” Yuichi asked.

  “Yes. So you may want to enlist her aid, if you can.”

  The conversation seemed to be drifting further and further away from Aiko. The next thing Aiko knew, she was slumped against Yuichi. She must have fallen asleep.

  “Hey, what’s wrong, Noro?” Yuichi was looking at her in concern. “Are you okay?”

  “Ah? Um, sorry. I just...” Aiko’s words were groggy. She wondered if it would be appropriate to tell him that she was worried about something as trivial as crank phone calls. Besides, they were only phone calls. It wasn’t as if Yuichi could do anything to stop them.

  “Have you been having trouble sleeping lately?” Yuichi asked. “I wasn’t sure if I should say something, but if there’s something bothering you, you can let me know, okay?”

  “No, it’s really nothing...”

  “You’re lying,” Makina shot back. “I may not be Sakaki, but I can identify a lie or two. There’s something deeply bothering you, isn’t there?”

  “Well...” Aiko hesitated.

  “Just tell us. Whatever it is, I’m sure my sister can handle it,” Yuichi said, partly joking.

  That did make Aiko feel better.

  She decided to confide in them.

  Half mumbling, Aiko began do describe the strange thing that was happening to her.

  ✽✽✽✽✽

  An urban legend: the Mika Doll Phone Call.

  Perhaps it would be fastest to start with the Mary Doll Phone Call, since the Mika doll was just one variation on that.

  One day, a girl who had thrown away her doll began receiving phone calls.

  “I’m Mary, and I’m in the junkyard.”

  Then, the next day:

  “I’m Mary, and I’m in the park on the corner.”

  Over the course of a few days, the calls would start to get closer and closer. Eventually...

  “I’m Mary, and I’m right behind you.”

  And then she appeared behind her. It was that kind of ghost story.

  The Mika Doll Phone Call was more or less the same thing, except the doll was Mika, instead of Mary.

  The main difference was that the Mika doll had an official voice chosen by the manufacturers, so you immediately knew that Mika was the one making the calls.

  In other words, unbelievable as it might seem, it was obvious from the start that you were being called by a doll.

  In the old days, people used to believe that dolls had souls. Even now, doll funerals were a regular occurrence.

  For the Japanese, it was a ghost story that hit close to home.

  ✽✽✽✽✽

  It was another siblings-only family conference.

  It was just around 8:00 PM. Mutsuko and Yoriko sat around the table in Yuichi’s room.

  The girl who had been sent flying was there, too, with an annoyed scowl on her face.

  Mika’s official backstory was that she was in fourth grade. The girl did look to be about that age, and besides that, she looked exactly like Mika.

  “Yu, even if she is an urban legend, she’s still a little girl, you know,” said Mutsuko. “Maybe you should have held back a little more?”

  “I did hold back... but I had to make contact, so...” Yuichi had sensed something amiss, so despite not looking back, he had still restrained his power.

  Yuichi could grasp a person’s sex and age more or less by touch, another fact which Natsuki would probably label “creepy” if she heard about it.

  “How was that holding back?!” Mika, the one who’d taken the hit, objected angrily.

  “You managed to get off with just a few bruises, right?” Yuichi asked.

  “Oh, I guess that’s true! You’re lucky,” Mutsuko said. “If Yu had been serious, you might have lost your eyes, your nose, and your ears!”

  “I get to lose most of my five senses just for standing behind a person?! Look at my face! It’s really swelled up!” Mika pointed to her cheek as she leaned forward, her tone almost boasting.

&
nbsp; “You brought it on yourself, didn’t you?” Yoriko replied frostily.

  Yori can be pretty cold from time to time... Yuichi thought. He was starting to get a little worried about her.

  “Anyway, isn’t she a pretty dangerous yokai?” Yuichi asked. “They keep calling you and coming closer, and in the end, they attack you, right?” The ability to appear behind someone certainly felt like an ideal assassin’s power.

  “W-Wait a minute! I’m not dangerous!” the girl cried. “I was just playing the role to scare her a little bit! Come on, don’t you know how the story ends?!”

  “How it ends? Actually, yeah, what does happen after Mika arrives?” Yuichi knew the story, more or less, but was pretty vague on the ending.

  “Good question,” said Mutsuko. “There are a lot of variations, but generally, the story ends right after she appears behind the person. The rest is left up to your imagination, to play upon your own fears.” Mutsuko was quite well-educated on urban legends, ghost stories, and other tales of mystery.

  “R-Right! It’s just to scare them!” the girl cried. “I wasn’t planning on hurting anyone! It’s just a warning against throwing your dolls in the trash!”

  “You say, ‘It’s just to scare them!’ but you’re still breaking and entering, so...” Yuichi said. Explaining the law to a yokai might be a little pointless, but breaking into someone’s house just to offer a warning felt extremely unacceptable.

  “That reminds me, Yu,” said Mutsuko. “Why did Mika come after you?”

  “Oh, I was holding Noro’s smartphone.” Yuichi said, showing the smartphone in his hand. “She said she’d been receiving strange phone calls and it was freaking her out, so I decided to help her.”

  “So you were answering the calls in her place. But what if she had still come to Noro, and not you? It’s not like you to leave her all alone!”

  “Well, uh, actually...” Yuichi said.

  “G-Good evening...” The closet opened, and Aiko peeked out, looking rather awkward about it all.

  “Oh! Noro, you’re so compact and cute! I can’t believe you were in the closet!” Mutsuko cried.

  “So, that’s that,” Yuichi said. He’d had Aiko wait in the closet, under the assumption that she couldn’t be attacked from behind in there.

  “Good show, Yu! Sneaking Noro into your room without us knowing!” Mutsuko approved.

  “I’m impressed you got that past me while I was in the living room, Big Brother,” said Yoriko.

  Embarrassed, Aiko walked from the closet to take a seat at the table.

  “But you really should have consulted with me!” Mutsuko added. She looked unhappy, but also faintly amused.

  “I like to avoid relying on you when I can,” said Yuichi. “Besides, I thought it was just a crank call. Of course, I wanted to be safe, too, just in case.”

  Yuichi was getting fairly used to strange phenomena like these, which was why he hadn’t just dismissed the phone calls as a prank offhand. But even though he didn’t want to rely on her, he had brought the phone into their house just in case he might have to.

  “Which means that Noro is the reason Mika came out,” Mutsuko mused.

  “That’s right,” said Yoriko. “These things always start when someone throws out a doll.”

  It was exactly that, Yuichi thought. Noro’s own expression suggested that that was true.

  “Yes! It’s outrageous to just throw a doll in the trash! That’s why people like me punish people like her!” Mika banged a fist on the table as she spoke.

  “I think it’s okay to put dolls you don’t want anymore in the combustibles, personally,” said Yuichi. There was nothing wrong with throwing out toys that were broken or unwanted, as far as he could see. Yuichi couldn’t understand why dolls deserved special treatment.

  “I see,” said Mutsuko. From what you’re saying, it’s less like the urban legend and more like a ghost of wastefulness. A type of tsukumo-gami, perhaps?”

  Tsukumo-gami were a class of yokai: objects that took on spirits as they aged.

  “But why does this only happen with Noro’s dolls? It surely can’t happen to everyone who’s ever thrown out a doll...” Mutsuko tilted her head.

  “Maybe because I’m a vampire?” Aiko asked. She didn’t seem to have any other ideas, but it was hard to imagine that your doll would take on a spirit just because you were a vampire.

  It seemed much more likely that Yuichi was the cause. Worlds were getting mixed together because of Soul Reader, and it was causing more and more strange things to start happening in his vicinity.

  “You know, too much is too much!” Mika declared. “Your house threw out so many dolls, of course they’re going to start haunting you! It’s a lesson, you know? You’re rich, so I thought if I threatened you, you might hold a big funeral! Why didn’t you hold a doll funeral? Then we could have struck a deal!”

  Mika got up in Aiko’s face as she spoke. She did seem to have a fourth grader’s mentality.

  “Aren’t those doll funeral things kind of a pain to deal with?” Yuichi asked. He wondered if there was even a temple nearby that would take them in. It seemed like an awful lot of effort to find a temple that would hold a doll funeral and then pay for it.

  “Doesn’t throwing away a doll you played with as a child make you feel even slightly guilty?” Mika thrust a finger at Aiko.

  “Actually, I never played with Mika very much, so I don’t have many memories of her... I was more of a Sylvanian Families person...”

  “Wh-What did you say?!” Mika’s eyes burst open.

  “Oh yeah, you’ve got the Sylvanian Families displayed in your room,” said Yuichi.

  “What?! This is doll discrimination! What do you like so much about rabbit-people holding a kappa prisoner?!” cried Mika.

  “Ah! Those ones weren’t for sale,” said Aiko. “I did want them, though.”

  It seemed there had been a line of kappa in the Sylvanian Families. Yuichi remembered her describing it to him once, very happily.

  “But if you don’t even remember being played with, why would you take on a spirit?” Yuichi asked. If that was the case, it seemed to Yuichi that this had nothing to do with Aiko.

  “Besides, it was my mother’s idea to throw out the dolls,” said Aiko. “I don’t see why I’m getting blamed for it. Why didn’t you go after my mother?”

  “Everyone always blames the mother! It’s ridiculous! It’s still the child who played with the doll!” Mika cried.

  “It was my brother who played mama to Mika, so why didn’t you go to him?” Aiko asked, rather cruelly. Kyoya probably wouldn’t want to have his doll-playing past revealed in a place like this, nor to have an urban legend yokai sicced on him.

  “I wonder if she’s not the real Mika doll,” Yuichi commented. She did seem Mika-like, but she was a real little girl. She wasn’t a doll at all.

  “Right,” the girl said. “I’m more like the guardian of Mika dolls. Their avatar? I’m the representative of all the poor sad Mika dolls who got thrown away!”

  “So where’s the actual Mika doll that Noro threw away?” Yuichi asked.

  “It’s being burned up somewhere, obviously!”

  “Um, if you’re the guardian of Mika dolls, shouldn’t you be saving that one first?” In this situation, Yuichi thought, most people would want to save the person on fire before anything else.

  “Wh-Whatever! Just stop being so careless with your dolls! Now, I’m busy with my doll preservation awareness program, so I’ll be going now!” With that, Mika disappeared, just as abruptly as when she had first arrived.

  “Is it... resolved, then?” Aiko asked uncertainly.

  “I have no idea...” Yuichi said.

  He seemed to be dealing with a lot more yokai lately. The idea that this might keep happening was a wearying thought.

  “I’m Mary, and I’m right behind you!”

  “I’m Jessie, and I’m right behind you!”

  “Ruff, ruff! I’m Yosh
iko, and I’m right behind you!”

  “I. Am. Robot. R1845A952. Standard. Time. 215678. Sixty-eight. Centimeters. Behind. Your. Present. Coordinates!”

  “I’m Sgt. Drake! Right behind you, soldier!”

  Holding the smartphone in one hand, Yuichi kicked back at each new arrival. He had grown very accustomed to it by now. He felt like he’d been doing nothing else these last few days.

  And today, once more, Yuichi’s room was filling up with personifications of arriving dolls.

  “Hey, Noro?” he asked. “Tell your mother to stop throwing away dolls. This is starting to feel less like a ghost story, and more like Toy Story.”

  Aiko sat on the bottom bunk — Yuichi’s bed — watching. “I know. I’m really sorry... Mom’s gotten really into decluttering lately, and we’ve got dolls lying around all over the place...”

  Upon hearing the commotion, Mutsuko came to Yuichi’s room. “Yu... did you bring Noro here for more personal time together?”

  “It’s not personal time! And Yori’s here, too!” he shouted.

  Yoriko, having grown accustomed to the commotion of the past few days, was sleeping soundly in the top bunk. She was surprisingly tough.

  “Oh! Well, if Yori weren’t here, you’d probably be doing it, right?” Mutsuko asked.

  “Doing what? And of course not!” he shot back.

  Just as he was saying that, the smartphone rang again.

  “I’m Booh! I love honey in my tummy!”

  Yuichi kicked the yellow bear across the room with an air of annoyance. “Can’t these things come here without calling first?!”

  “Monsters like them are governed by rules,” said Mutsuko. “They have to follow them!”

  “Sakaki, I’m really sorry,” said Aiko. “I didn’t know it would turn out like this...”

  “It’s not your fault, Noro,” he said. “But how many of these things did you throw out?!”

  “Um... about two trucks’ worth...” Aiko said apologetically.

  “And it was all toys?! Rich people, I swear!” Yuichi was honestly kind of impressed.