Occultic;Nine: Volume 1

by Chiyomaru Shikura

  Prologue: Tuesday, March 1st

  Leafless trees shook and shuddered, battered by the wind coming down from above.

  Several helicopters circled in the sky, their rotors loudly beating against the air.

  The motors of heavy equipment groaned.

  Dozens of men yelled to each other as they dredged the lake.

  In the distance, there were ambulance sirens.

  It all overlapped into a giant, obnoxious wall of sound.

  All the noise was coming from Inokashira Park.

  No, the whole town of Kichijoji had been noisy and on edge today. There was a strange sense of excitement and oppression that you could see on the faces of the people on the streets.

  Inokashira Park was normally a place for the locals to relax, but now it was blocked off by police tape and torn apart by construction equipment.

  A power shovel was parked as close as it could possibly get to the lake, its arm sticking into the water.

  There were dozens of men around it, all wearing work clothes.

  The lake itself was filled with men on rubber boats dredging the water.

  Even people who had lived here for years had never seen anything like this.

  Every year at about this time, the city of Musashino would dredge up all the trash from Inokashira Lake, but this year it was different.

  The power shovel slowly raised its scoop from the water’s depths.

  It pulled up what looked like lumpy bags of garbage and added them to the pile forming around the lake.

  Inokashira Lake was ringed with a mountain of garbage.

  There was far more garbage than usual this year.

  It was garbage thrown out by a small number arrogant, ill-mannered men.

  Garbage created by the unethical and selfish.

  Sad garbage.

  The garbage of society.

  Garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage, garbage...

  But it wasn’t just garbage. It was dead bodies.

  site 01: Yuta Gamon

  Thursday, February 11th

  “Can you see something that looks like a face? Then it’s a ghost picture.”

  From Modern Entertainment

  A photo uploaded by a certain Twitter user had the whole internet in an uproar.

  It was a photo taken somewhere in the city, and get this: They say it’s a ghost photo.

  The photographer himself noticed a few days after he’d taken the photo that indeed, it was possible to see a male face contorted in pain in the grass behind him.

  ■NEET God

  A MALE FACE lololol CONTORTED IN PAIN lolol

  You see something that looks like a face, and you figure it’s gotta be a ghost. Right. Got it. You know, how come ghosts always just show their faces? Why do they never show up stark naked? How come it’s never some hot ghost-slut with huge tits, spread legs, an o-face and a double peace sign? Anybody got any ghost photos like that? Lol

  If you do, I’m ready to start believing! Lolol

  Okay, Basariters, rip it apart.

  Oh, or if there’s any self-proclaimed spiritualists out there, your expert opinion is always welcome lol

  1: True Tales of Anonymous

  I’ve seen this photo. It’s famous. Oh and FIRST.

  2: True Tales of Anonymous

  Yeah, that sure looks like a face, I guess. And 2ch says the guy who took the picture still feels all heavy and he’s getting chills and stuff. Can’t these people ever come up with anything new? Somebody tell him how to do an exorcism! I’m half-srs.

  3: True Tales of Anonymous

  The hell is this? Scary. This is way more than just a coincidence.

  4: True Tales of Anonymous

  Admin you’re shit and this is old news. People were talking about this two months ago, dumbass.

  6: True Tales of Anonymous

  That’s true. There are some where you can see faces though.

  8: True Tales of Anonymous

  What are the odds it’s photoshopped?

  10: True Tales of Anonymous

  Mulder, you’re tired.

  13: True Tales of Anonymous

  >10

  I lol’d.

  20: True Tales of Anonymous

  I know this place. It’s where a killer murdered someone and chopped their body into tiny little pieces. I don’t want to say where exactly so I’ll block out some of the letters: Inoka**ira Park.

  23: True Tales of Anonymous

  >20

  Inoka**ira Park? Lol who the hell do you think you’re fooling.

  28: True Tales of Anonymous

  >23

  You mean you cracked my brilliant code?!

  30: True Tales of Anonymous

  Oh shit. That’s right next door.

  35: True Tales of Anonymous

  So what, the photo’s real then? If it’s real that’s scary as fuck. Tell me, NEET God!

  37: True Tales of Anonymous

  This is “Kirikiri Basara”, right?

  38: True Tales of Anonymous

  Of course it’s not real, lol. Any moron with a computer can make a ghost photo these days. How dumb do you have to be to get scared of this?

  40: True Tales of Anonymous

  Right, right. There’s no such thing as ghosts. Someone make the scary go away!

  My fingers came down hard on the laptop’s keyboard.

  I couldn’t get my thoughts out fast enough. It was aggravating that I couldn’t type faster. There were so many thoughts I wanted to get out there. Why did it have to take so much work? Life was hard.

  “You know what an affiliate blog is, right? There’s no better profession out there for my NEET friends. Basically, the more popular your blog, the more hits you get. And the more people who click on your affiliate links, and the more money you earn.”

  Oops, I was speaking aloud as I typed. Well, nothing wrong with that.

  “It’s the American dream, I guess you could say. Oh, you can google the forms you need to sign up for an affiliate program. It’s easy enough, so I’ll skip the explanation here. Sorry. But it’s simple enough that your average salaryman or housewife can do it as a second job.”

  I was on Twitter, a site that let you write short messages of 140 characters or less. There were a ton of eggs there who loved to give me a hard time. And the vast majority were idiots who would always take things out of context.

  “My name is the NEET God, and I run a site called Paranormal Science Kirikiri Basara, where I find interesting articles on news sites and individual blogs, then summarize them in my own unique, cool, and classy way.”

  Right now I was politely explaining to these idiots how the blog I ran worked.

  “But there’s really a trick to how you pick your articles. And unfortunately, 2ch doesn’t let you reproduce stuff from their site, so you can’t take anything from there.”

  From the perspective of me and the other aggregate site owners, Hiroyuki’s policy was a huge nuisance. I wanted to ride the big wave, too!

  I found myself getting a little irritated, so I took a big drink of water to calm down. The ice in the glass had almost melted, and a single drop fell onto my pants and left a mark. The heater was running, so even in the winter, cold water felt good.

  “Basically, I’m a normal 2nd-year NEET student in high school who wants to up his affiliate income and get rich, like others have done before me. But I’m not making enough money for you to be jealous over. I’m making so little that I want to kill myself. Maybe I was an idiot for picking a site like this just because occult stuff has been popular lately. There are so many other copycat sites like mine that my hit counter is basically frozen.”

  And then, even my followers who
weren’t eggs started to chime in. Most of their comments were along the lines of, “People who try to make pocket change off of affiliate links should be taken out into the street and shot,” and, “Don’t worry, I’m never clicking on anything on your site.” I was getting really tired of seeing that.

  What was so wrong about trying to make money off of affiliate links? It wasn’t like it was illegal or anything. These guys were just jealous because they couldn’t make a good site!

  But if I said that, it would only add fuel to the flame war, so I didn’t.

  People on the internet got mad whenever you were right and they weren’t. If starting a flame war was a good way to up my affiliate income, I wouldn’t mind. But honestly, it wasn’t.

  “Oh, but my top priority is always providing my Basariters with top-quality content! I look forward to seeing you guys rip some stuff apart today!”

  That was how I decided to end it.

  Of course, what I, Yuta Gamon, was actually trying to say was, “Visit my site more, and buy more stuff from my affiliate links.” Man, I couldn’t wait until I made enough off of affiliate links to survive. These days, only losers had real jobs.

  That was how I planned to end it, anyway, but then the eggs refused to shut up.

  “Creepy otaku virgins like you who refuse to get jobs don’t even have the right to breathe, let alone walk around outside.”

  “I’ll cop to being an otaku and a virgin, but I’m not creepy. If I try to blend in, my looks are above average. At least, that’s what I think.”

  I had no intentions of saying I was a good-looking guy, but I was better than your average NEET. At least, that’s what I wanted to believe.

  I heard a loud, instantly recognizable laugh from behind me. A solidly built, well-muscled man stood behind the counter, chortling.

  “You know, Gamota, you might have above-average looks, but they go to waste when you bury your face in a duffel coat and mumble to yourself, you know?”

  “Grrr...” I couldn’t let myself talk back to him.

  He was the owner of the café. If I ticked him off, I might lose my base of operations.

  The name of this place was Café☆Blue Moon. To get here, you would go out the north side of Kichijoji Station, take the street behind the Yodobashi store, then walk past a bunch of love hotels. It was only a five minute walk from the station, but it still had the feeling of a secret hideout. At night it was a bar, but during the day it was a café.

  The place had an exotic, Oriental atmosphere, due to all the items around the café that the owner had personally purchased on his travels around the world. Of course, an “exotic, Oriental atmosphere” sounded good in theory, but none of the tables and chairs matched at all, and it was a little bewildering to look at. Rococo-style chairs were lined up next to ones made from wicker, and there was a little Japanese-style room filled with cushions shaped like chocolate pies.

  What was he going for with all this?

  But there were two reasons I liked this place. First, other students almost never came here. And second, it had a grown-up atmosphere.

  Also, you could sit here for hours without ordering anything but water, and he wouldn’t get mad or kick you out. That was nice, too.

  I leaned back in the wicker sofa, then turned toward the owner and raised my empty glass.

  “Master Izumin, may I have some more water?”

  “Oh, jeez, you’re working me to the bone, honey.”

  His real name was Kohei Izumi, and he was 43 years old. His nickname was Izumin. That’s what he’d told me to call him. His high-pitched, effeminate manner of speaking, his soft bearing, and the fact that he always wore makeup might lead you to make certain assumptions, but according to him none of those assumptions were true.

  He mumbled some complaints to himself as he poured me a new glass of water. I took it and turned back to my laptop.

  “Wait, Gamota, shouldn’t you be at school?”

  “There’s no school today.”

  “Oh, is it? Oh dear. Oh my stars! I’ve lost track of what day it is!”

  My school, Seimei High, was about 20 minutes away on foot. For what it was worth, that was also about the same distance to my house. In other words, Kichijoji was my hometown. And on my days off, instead of staying at home, I always went outside to avoid living the traditional NEET lifestyle.

  I was more of an active NEET.

  “You know, Gamota, I saw that Kirikiri Barber site, or whatever it’s called. I have to say, if you keep making fun of ghosts, you’re going to regret it. The occult is real. And don’t come running to little old Izumin when you need somebody to save you! ‘Cause I won’t!”

  “I laugh at your curses! I lol at them! There are no such things as ghosts.”

  I didn’t believe in the occult at all. That was Kirikiri Basara’s official stance. Of course, in a horror movie, whoever said that was always the first to die.

  “You know, Master Izumin. Kirikiri Basara isn’t just your typical aggregator site. It’s a site where we take all the world’s occult phenomena and go, ‘Haha! I’ll prove you wrong!’”

  The name had come from the words “kiri” or “cut,” and “basara,” which meant “to not hold back.” It’s just a silly name I made up one day when I’d gotten mad at something, but I don’t regret it. The Basariters who commented on my site were even more brutal about this stuff than I was, after all. I actually think I was pretty lucky to come up with it.

  Of course, as an individual, I wasn’t sure how I thought about that. It put me in a bad position as site admin, after all. But whenever one of the Basariters commented, it always meant a lot of hits. Since my goal was to make a living off my affiliate links, I couldn’t chase them out.

  The door opened, and a girl I instantly recognized came spinning in like a ballet dancer.

  “Gamotan! ♪ Gamotan goes ♪♪ Ribbit-ribbit-ribbit like a frog! ♪”

  “I do not.”

  Her steps were beautiful and fluid, even if her song was out of tune. She hopped a few times, spun around, and then swayed. There was no logic to her movement. She was in thrall to the impulses that came from deep within her.

  And damned if her boobs weren’t bouncing! Her gigantic, watermelon-sized boobs!

  “Gamotan! ♪”

  YES! I wanted to make a video and watch it every night before bed. I didn’t even bother saying anything about her weird dance, opting instead to pump my fist in joy where no one could see it.

  But damn, if I watched any more, I was going to get a nosebleed.

  “Stop! Okay, okay! Stop dancing!” I turned toward the dancing boob-angel, clapping my hands and shouting, like a choreographer on one of those reality TV shows.

  “Poyaya?”

  “Don’t say ‘poyaya,’ Ryotasu.” Ryotasu was what I called her. More precisely, Ryotasu was what she called herself, and I simply took it from her.

  Of course, it was just a nickname. Her real name was Ryoka Narusawa. She was a year younger than me, and went to Seimei High, just like I did.

  She was one of my few friends in the real world, and also helped as an employee of Kirikiri Basara.

  I considered myself extremely lucky to be friends with a younger girl like her. At school, I was a weirdo who wasn’t part of anybody’s social group, and online I was so disliked that I got mocked by eggs on Twitter. But that didn’t matter, did it?

  Just the fact that Ryotasu was here made me far superior to my classmates who spent all their time in school clubs, or the unemployed thirty-somethings who spent all their time on the internet all day. I was practically normal.

  In other words, Ryotasu’s role within the party was to give me a major status buff. She was cute, she had huge tits, and—

  “You know, your real job isn’t dancing. It’s working for Kirikiri Basara. Help me deal with these stupid eggs...”

  “Cock-a-doodle-doo? If you want an egg, go to a hen! ♪ If you want a meal, go to a rooster! ♪ Cock-a-doodle-doo! ♪”<
br />
  —and she was also a little... odd.

  When she finished her song, she spun around toward Master Izumin and took a bow. The wonderful show had come to an end.

  Ryotasu did whatever Ryotasu wanted. There were times when she’d just burst into song for no reason other than that she felt like it. What she was doing a moment ago, or what she might be doing a moment later, didn’t matter in the slightest.

  Ryotasu spun around once more to face me, and then leaned her face in close. It was so close I almost flinched back.

  “You know, the whole point of Kirikiri Basara is to make you rich, right Gamotan? But I don’t get any money, right?”

  She stared straight into my eyes. She was staring too deeply! I was going to fall in love!

  “O-Okay, when I get the money from the affiliate links, I’ll buy you some suta-don. I recommend the soy-garlic flavor. Oh, or would you prefer salt and garlic?”

  That was my way of paying her. A bowl of suta-don was a cheap price to pay.

  “Hmm... I’d rather have some frozen yogurt from Woodberrys.”

  “W-Woodberrys?”

  “It’s a frozen yogurt shop near the station!”

  “H-Huh...”

  I’d lived in Kichijoji for years, but I’d never gone to any fancy places like that. I deliberately avoided them, in fact.

  “All right, that works.”

  “Yay! I’ll do my best, then!”

  Ryotasu leapt up to express her joy.

  I couldn’t stop my eyes from following the bouncing breasts in front of me.

  Up, then down.

  And then up again.

  An infinite loop.

  “Amazing.”

  “Hmm? What is?”

  “Never change!”

  “Aye-aye, sir!”

  Ryotasu raised her right hand, smiled, and saluted.

  You know, Ryotasu always wore clothes that emphasized her chest. I loved it. Those were totally boob-bags. I thought those things only existed in H-games. Not that I’d ever played one.

  And then there was another interruption from the counter.

  “Gamota, you’re staring.”

  “Hey! You’re a much bigger pervert than I am, Master Izumin!”

  “Yup, that’s right!” Ryotasu agreed. I was happy she understood.