Occultic;Nine: Volume 1

by Chiyomaru Shikura

  “You’re right. But you know, it was definitely an old lady who answered the door.”

  Maybe a relative? But why couldn’t he or his wife come to the door themselves? His college-age son was there, too.

  It seemed very strange to have that woman answer the door.

  “There’s an ascension for you. Do you think that she might have been...”

  “Might have been...?”

  I looked around the room and lowered my voice. “A ghost?”

  The editor-in-chief furrowed his brow and thought for a second, before slapping his hands against his knees. “That’s just great! I’ve been working for Mumuu for thirty years, and I can’t even tell when an old woman’s a ghost! I guess we’ve still got a lot to learn, huh?” He cackled and walked back to his desk, scratching his back with a ruler.

  I wasn’t joking, though. Maybe it was best just to drop it. I didn’t have the right to inquire into his family matters, and as long as we had his article, that was all we needed.

  A better editor might have made the choice to dig deeper. But I didn’t want too many people finding out about my sixth sense. I’d learned over the twenty-three years of my life that it was better not to let people find out.

  So I put it aside, and went back to thinking about my own article.

  I took my reporter’s notebook out of my bag and opened it to the page of notes I’d taken today. I was looking at a case where an underage girl had spent a year living with a mummified man. Lately, people had even been talking about it on the internet. The editor-in-chief had thought there might be shamanistic or ritual elements involved, and told me to write an article about it.

  The incident itself had been discovered about two years ago. The police had gotten involved, and news articles were written, though they were brief.

  It happened at a big mansion on the outskirts of Kichijoji. That’s where the tragedy had taken place. I’d actually gone to the vicinity of the mansion to do some research, and learned quite a few things. The head editor had been right that this was worth looking into. There were a lot of things that couldn’t be easily explained.

  The basic outline of the case involved an older brother who died due to medical malpractice. His younger sister, who was fifteen at the time, spent roughly a year living with his corpse. The mummy man and the girl were siblings. That was fine. It made sense.

  What was strange was that the brother’s body had already been given a death certificate by a doctor. So after that, who got it to the mansion, and how? No hospital or funeral home would do such a thing.

  “If the mummy walked home on his own, that sounds pretty occult to me. Actually, he’d be closer to a zombie than a mummy then.” I’d been hoping I could write my article on that aspect of the case, but I’d eventually come to the conclusion that it was impossible. I’d decided to head back to the office for the day.

  This was just a criminal matter. It would be hard to find anything occult related to it. A girl living with a corpse was weak material for an article by itself. But that didn’t mean I could tell the head editor that this was a bad idea. My pride as a journalist wouldn’t let me.

  The reason he hadn’t asked me anything a moment ago was probably because he trusted me. That’s why I wasn’t ready to give up just yet. “Still, there’s not too much I can do...”

  I couldn’t go and make something up. The head editor had been quite clear about that when I joined the department. But without some type of occult content, there wasn’t any point in Mumuu writing about it. Personally, I was willing to write with another focus, but I couldn’t just ignore the magazine’s genre.

  “I wonder if there’s anything good online.” I just needed something to give me a place to start. The mummy incident had been discovered two years ago, but suddenly people online were talking about it. They might know something I didn’t.

  I started by searching the name of the little sister— Seria Mina. When the police had announced the case, they’d left her name out of it, so it might not be on the internet yet.

  “Hmm...” It was a rare name, so there weren’t many hits. The only perfect match was a certain Facebook page.

  Facebook was a social network that required the use of your real name. There was only one person on it who used the name “Seria Mina.” Was she the girl I was after? I’d just have to take a look and see.

  I was surprised to find a lot more posts than I expected. She’d been keeping a diary online for over five years. It would take time to read it all.

  “Maybe I should’ve stopped at Saburo after all...” I sighed and drooled a little. Then I popped a piece of milk candy that I kept at the side of my desk into my mouth to assuage my hunger. Time to get to work.

  I decided I’d start by reading the posts from three years ago. As soon as I started reading, I saw something strange. All of the posts were about her older brother. You could call the thing a “big brother diary” if you wanted.

  March 20th.

  Brother was nice enough to take me for a drive in his car this afternoon. He knows I don’t get out much, so he even took time off work. But my brother just got his license, so he’s not very good at driving. He’s not good with directions, and got lost several times. In the end, we didn’t make it to Shonan Beach.

  “I’m sorry. Next time I’ll memorize the map,” Brother said as he slumped his shoulders.

  You know, Brother, I’m very happy just to sit next to you. Just driving with you for hours was enough to make me want to cry. Perhaps God heard my wish that we never make it to the beach, and did that for me as a favor. Take me again, please, okay?

  She seemed to have some kind of weird thing for her older brother. Of course, maybe she couldn’t help it. If this Seria Mina was the same as the one from the mummy case, her parents would have already been dead. She and her brother would have been using the vast fortune they inherited to survive. If he was the only family she had, that might explain her dependence on him.

  It struck me as odd, though, that even though she would’ve been fourteen at the time, from reading her diary, I got the impression that psychologically she was much younger. I decided to throw away any preconceptions I had and proceed on the assumption that this Seria Mina was a different person.

  May 12th

  Let’s go to the sea, Brother. You love the sea, right?

  May 13th

  Brother asked me to make his favorite dish, French toast, today. I’m quite clumsy, and I’m always reliant on my older brother. But making French toast is the one thing that I’m better than him at. Mother taught me how to do it herself, after all. It’s the one thing I can do to make Brother happy. He was so happy when he ate it this morning. He even said he wanted to eat it every day for the rest of his life. Tee hee! Brother, that sounds like a marriage proposal. If I wasn’t his little sister, I might have accepted. No, I prefer being Brother’s little sister.

  May 14th

  Let’s go to the sea, Brother. You love the sea, right?

  May 15th

  The smell is so bad. I took many showers.

  May 16th

  Brother is so silly. He was watching a lowbrow comedy show on TV and laughing. I don’t like noisy programs like that. I just like to be alone with Brother, in the quiet, reading a book. That is my wish.

  May 17th

  Let’s go to the sea, Brother. You love the sea, right?

  May 18th

  It’s still May, but it’s hot, so I asked Brother for some ice cream. How could he bring me back red bean ice cream, though, of all things? Brother doesn’t understand at all. I would have been happier with chocolate.

  May 19th

  I don’t like the heat. That’s why I don’t really wear much.

  Do you know what Brother said when he saw me, though? “You look lewd.”

  He said that! He sounded so indecent when he said it, you see. I’ve never seen him so frantic in his life. Heheh. I look “lewd” to Brother, don’t I? For some reason, that makes me
very happy.

  May 20th

  Why doesn’t Brother drive his car very much these days? Does he no longer like driving, I wonder?

  May 21st

  So many bugs.

  May 22nd

  Let’s go to the sea, Brother. You love the sea, right?

  “What the hell?” I could feel a chill run down my spine as I read the diary.

  At first glance, it was normal, and kind of cute. That’s what made it so hard to look at.

  Because...

  When these entries were written, the brother that was buying her ice cream and watching TV shows was already dead.

  I took off my glasses and rubbed my eyes with my fingers.

  What most interested me was a phrase that kept showing up in the diary. “Let’s go to the sea, Brother. You love the sea, right?” Did that mean something?

  I copied it and pasted it into a Google search. I wasn’t even sure what I was expecting to find. But...

  “Oh.” I found something.

  There were two sites that matched the phrase in the diary exactly. One of them was the Facebook page I was reading right now. And the other was...

  “Kirikiri... Basara?” The exact same phrase was found in the comment section of this aggregator site. And not just once. It was on every article.

  I gasped when I saw the dates. The most recent entry was—

  “J-Just yesterday...”

  222. Anonymous Tells It Like It Is

  “Let’s go to the sea, Brother. You love the sea, right?”

  site 10: Miyuu Aikawa

  Tuesday, February 16th

  I was fine. Even in the cold, my hands weren’t shaking. I could see the visions, too.

  “You’re going with your mom. It’s already been decided.”

  When I said that, the voice on the other end of the phone was filled with hope. “If I go with mom, I can be happy, right?”

  “I don’t know if you’ll be happy, I guess. I’m just telling you what I’m seeing. But I did see you eating cake with your mother. I think it was a birthday cake. Your mom was smiling. She looked super happy, and I felt kind of happy looking at her, too.”

  That was the future of the girl I was talking to on the phone. “My parents are divorcing. I want you to tell me who I’ll be happier living with,” she’d said, and that was the vision I’d seen.

  “Thank you. Now... I can finally make my decision.” Evidently this particular lost puppy had taken my word as a positive. She hung up, sounding relieved.

  I let out a small sigh of relief myself, and looked at the window. The curtains were closed, so I couldn’t see what was happening outside, but the sun must have already set. It was about 6:20 PM.

  After the TV spot, my fortune-telling program was getting absolutely crazy numbers. Over 100,000 people were watching. I’d never had so many people come to watch me.

  TV was amazing.

  The response was so big it actually scared me. Thanks to that, I was more nervous than usual. But I’d managed to make it through my first call, and was starting to feel, like, just a little better.

  Last time... that guy made me cry. That made me super-frustrated. The video of me sobbing got spread everywhere. I was so embarrassed that I wanted to scream, “Stop it! Just please, stop!” When I was finally alone in my house, I did.

  Chi suggested we stop for a while, but I’d decided myself to do another episode today. The fact that I’d been on TV didn’t really matter. I was doing this stream for the same reason I’d done all the others: to prove that my power wasn’t wrong.

  So if I could, I wanted to meet the person who’d called me a liar, and see if I’d been wrong. I’d asked for him to contact me when the broadcast started, but... who knew if he would. He hadn’t so far.

  Chi made me some hot milk tea and set it right where I could reach it. I grabbed the cup and took a sip. It was warm, and helped me relax. The cold started to go away. This room only had a single gas stove, so it never got very warm.

  I winked a little to Chi in gratitude. Thank you. I could only keep doing this because she was here. That’s how super-important Chi was to me.

  “All right, let’s hear from our next little lost puppy!”

  The phone had started ringing before I started to talk, though.

  “Stop calling before I tell you to! I won’t pick it up!” I waved to the camera as I spoke.

  Was I smiling right? I didn’t look tense or anything, did I?

  I took a deep breath... and I picked up the ringing phone. I was fine. I was just fine—

  “Yes, hello. This is Nicco-Nico Live Fortune-Telling! Welcome, little lost puppy. Can you give me your name?”

  I could hear their breathing on the other side of the phone. It was probably a male caller. Were they not talking because they were nervous? Or...

  I gulped.

  “Sarai.” A calm voice came from the speaker.

  Suddenly the screen flooded with comments.

  “Sarai’s here!”

  “The battle we’ve all been waiting for!”

  “No time to eat!”

  “Myu-tan, run away!”

  “Sarai actually came? Lol”

  “Myu, just ignore this guy.”

  “Myu, hang up the phone!”

  “Huh?” Was this Sarai... that Sarai? I had a bad feeling about this. Did he call just to start a fight, like the last guy? Should I hang up? But then I wouldn’t be able to see if my power worked.

  “Do you know why the fortune-tellers you see on the street don’t make any money? Do you know how many of them are poor, Myu?”

  “Huh?” Sarai opened up by talking like a teacher at school. I almost began to panic. I had no idea what he was talking about.

  This was a fortune-telling stream. People called in, and I told their fortunes. That’s how it always worked. But Sarai started talking about something that had nothing to do with any of that.

  “It’s difficult for most fortune-tellers to make their money just by fortune-telling. I personally researched ten fortune-tellers. I’m not including those who use the I Ching here, by the way. And almost all of them said that they do something else in addition to fortune-telling. Do you know what this means?”

  “Huh? Wh-What?”

  A lot of commenters were telling me to just hang up on him. But Sarai wasn’t creepy or scary like the last guy, and he was talking in a normal tone of voice. He wasn’t just going to start yelling at me. Well, probably. So I decided to talk to him a little more.

  “Use of the I Ching is fundamentally unlike fortune-telling. It’s closer to a branch of statistics, actually. They use a vast amount of data to suggest a direction to follow. Fortune-telling is different.”

  “Umm... it is?”

  “Yes. Fortune-tellers don’t realize the contradiction inherent in their own existence. It’s actually quite jocular, isn’t it?”

  “Jocular...” What did that word mean again?

  “If fortune-tellers can see the future, why aren’t they able to make a living off that alone? If they needed to, they could just tell their own fortune and choose whatever path would make them successful. They have the power to see the future of others, and change their lives in a positive direction, several times a day. At least, that’s what they tell everyone. So it should be no problem, right?”

  At this point, I got what he was trying to say.

  “But the reason they don’t is that fortune-telling doesn’t actually reveal the future.”

  His voice was calm and steady. He was the exact opposite of the guy who called in last time. I looked down at my hands. I’m fine.

  “I’m... fine,” I whispered to myself. My hands balled into tight fists. I acted like I wasn’t scared.

  I looked at the screen and saw that the commenters were starting to get pissed off.

  “Sarai can suck it.”

  “Let somebody who actually wants their fortune told talk to Myu.”

  “Some people believe in fortune-
tellers, you know!”

  “Shut up, faggot.”

  “Don’t be mean to Myu!”

  “No one gives a shit.”

  “Go back to Kirikiri, shithead.”

  “Nobody wants to see a farce where you fight Myu. Leave!”

  I was glad they were on my side, but... maybe I should tell them not to fight? At this rate, they were just going to provoke each other, and things would only get worse.

  But before I could say something, Sarai responded to the comments from the other side of the phone. “Yes, that’s right. This is all a farce. I didn’t want to make a big deal out of this, but the commenters at Kirikiri Basara provoked me until I had no choice but to call. But what Myu’s doing is no better. Anybody who truly believes that fortune-telling is real should change their mind.”

  There was too much distracting noise. I bit my lip and gazed at what was going on in front of me. The screen was filled with comments attacking Sarai for his response. There were so many scrolling across that you could barely see my face on the stream.

  And Sarai was no better. He was still picking fights with individual commenters. What was going on? I couldn’t stop the comments from going out of control. It felt like this was out of my hands now.

  Several months ago, when I’d started this stream, there were barely any viewers. I loved that easygoing, relaxed atmosphere. There was nobody to tell me how great I was, or to insult me. People would just watch me, listen to my fortunes, and tell me what they thought.

  Was there no way to go back to that now?

  But...

  But, you know?

  “I’m sure—” I opened my mouth. I took off my hood. “I’m sure you’re a little lost puppy too, Sarai.”

  I started to line up my cards like usual. I wasn’t even sure what kind of fortune I was trying to tell.

  “Hmph. I’m... I’m not lost.” I could hear him laughing at me. That pissed me off!

  But... did his voice change a little? Is this the real you?

  I put the ten cards down in the shape of the Tree of Life.

  “Open, Yesod!” I flipped over the ninth card.