The first response was...
〈Heheh...〉
It was an awful breath, like a snort. I could feel it on the back of my neck, and I shivered.
But there was no one behind me. There wasn’t room for anyone to stand. All that was behind me was a shelf, and my dolls.
〈I’ve had many new customers lately.〉 The next thing I heard was a man’s low voice, like a whisper.
No, it only felt to me like a man’s voice. Perhaps it wasn’t.
“It’s good to have a lot of customers.”
〈It’s a lousy economy. When you’re poor, you don’t have any free time, you know?〉 He was joking, but it was all I could do to hide my nervousness. I could feel sweat building up under my armpits.
That “voice” was not at all easy to hear.
It was muffled, somehow.
But it felt like it went right through your ears and directly into your brain.
There was no way to tell where it was coming from.
And it made you feel very uneasy.
I never could get used to it.
When you listened to the voice, you gradually started to lose your senses of direction and distance.
I yanked a doll off the shelf behind me to try and hide my nervousness. I ended up grabbing Coven. Its goofy-looking, five-eyed face was staring up at me. I held it gently against my stomach.
The thing I was speaking to didn’t show itself. But I knew what it was. It was a creature of darkness, feared by man since ancient times, and sometimes worshiped by those who would rebel against God.
It was a devil.
“Why does a devil need money?” This devil had said that it was poor. In that case, it was quite a worldly devil. Of course, that was appropriate enough for a devil.
〈Hmph. Why ask that now? Did you forget about our contract?〉
Of course, I hadn’t forgotten. Two years ago, the person I loved had died. I’d been left all alone. Just as I’d given in to despair, and was about to step in front of a train, I’d heard this voice in my head.
—Death is given to those chosen for it. You have no right to that yet.
And so I decided not to die.
Ever since then, this devil had been my partner. I didn’t do my work as a black magic agent alone. I heard the clients’ stories and researched the information, and then this devil carried out their requests.
I gave the devil half the money I earned. That was the contract.
〈In this place, even mercy can only be earned with money. You know that well, don’t you?〉
“So you have the concept of a bad economy too, then? But then why is it always the living who suffer?”
〈Hey, things aren’t exactly a picnic down here, you know? Like that last client... Um, what was it? The screaming package?〉
Dying Screams. The 42,420 yen package.
〈Bringing somebody absolute despair ain’t exactly easy, you know. When the client’s got a strong heart, you should pay me double, honestly.〉
“And when they’re weak, and the job is simple, may I pay you half?”
〈Heheh...〉 The devil snorted and fell silent, as if it was unsatisfied.
I’d tried to record this voice once. There was a small trace of this unnerving voice on the recording. It sounded mostly like white noise, but I was able to hear it.
In other words, this devil’s voice was neither some form of spiritual telepathy, nor evidence of my own delusion. It was a sound, made by vibrating the air. Even if I couldn’t pinpoint the source of the voice, it existed in this space as a vibration of the air.
“When humans are born, they realize their misery and cry. And from then on, their hearts keep getting weaker and weaker. You just give their weak heart a little push. For you, that’s an easy job, right?” Of course, I was suspicious as to whether or not this devil was actually doing his job.
I’d never gone and checked. And no one had ever come back to complain, or thank me. Whether that was a good thing, or a bad thing, it felt like if I dug any deeper, my relationship with this devil would come to an end.
〈Tell me about the new jobs.〉
Either way, I was a woman who’d sold her soul to a devil. Maybe the real reason I deposited the money in the account the devil gave me was just to make myself feel better. It was my way of making the devil shoulder half the guilt I felt for earning money off of other people’s misery. So from my perspective, it didn’t matter whether he did the jobs or not.
“Isayuki Hashigami.”
〈Heheh... Well, how about that?〉
In addition to the bloody mass of hair I’d found in my mailbox yesterday, there was also an envelope containing 66,600 yen. The payment had been made. I didn’t know who the client was, but I no longer had any reason to refuse.
“Please perform the Devil’s Ritual.” Since ancient times, it has always been those who turn their backs on God that choose who will be sacrificed to the Devil.
〈Put it in my usual account.〉
That’s when my conversation with the devil usually ended. The presence would disappear, and the air in the shop would return to normal. That’s what had always happened so far. I had no particular interest in making small talk with my devil.
But this time, for some reason, I asked him a question. “May I ask you something?”
〈Huh? Depends on what you ask. This is a business, you know. There’s some things I can’t tell you, some things I don’t want to tell you, and some things you don’t want to know. Right?〉 The devil spoke back to me. He always did like to talk. One word for him might be “frivolous.”
“If the target of a curse is already dead, is it possible for someone to get their money back?”
〈Heheh...〉 The devil didn’t answer.
I became even more anxious and kept talking. “All the black magic requires is a few strands of hair. But this client was different. They brought me a whole lump of his hair. It felt like they were obsessed.”
The hair was so creepy that I wanted to throw it away, but I couldn’t. So I’d put it in a trash bag and thrown it onto the back of the shelf.
“If they took that much of the target’s hair, isn’t it possible that they died before you can carry out the curse?”
〈So that’s why you asked about getting their money back? That’s funny.〉 Once again the devil didn’t answer. Instead the light bulb flashed again.
The awful presence seemed to subside, somewhat. Maybe.
〈Hold on a second. Someone’s outside.〉
Outside? Did he mean down the stairs?
〈It doesn’t look like a customer. It’s a short man in a beige trench coat.〉
I had no idea who it could be, so I wasn’t sure what to say.
〈He looks like a kid, but the way he moves makes me suspicious. Tch. He got away. Anyway, time for me to go, too. See you around.〉 This time, the evil presence disappeared. I thought I heard the front door shake a little, but it was probably just a draft.
I had not the slightest intention of going down the stairs to look for the man in the coat.
I never checked to see if the devil was doing his job. I never fully believed what he told me. That was how I kept myself sane.
“How ugly this must be...” I palmed Coven’s head as it rested on my lap, and crushed it with my hand. I suddenly realized I was very thirsty.
site 14: MMG
“So how’s the new plan going?”
Takasu displayed an email on the men’s tablets in answer to Hatoyama’s question. It was a picture of tiny numbers marked with explanatory diagrams.
“The spectrum diffusion experiments were a success, and we’ve succeeded in improving the accuracy of the communications.”
The sitting men responded positively.
“The Scandium project is proceeding nicely. We’re performing monitoring tests on all subjects from the first to third generations, and they’re all reporting normal values. All their thought patterns are normal.”
“How does it compare to the RFID microchips?”
“There’s no comparison. Input, output, and communication accuracy are around ten times greater than they were before.”
“I’ve received some reports of problems, however. Are they true?”
Takasu’s smile didn’t waver for an instant. “It’s true that there have been bugs.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Matoba began to rise from his chair. “Is everything okay? I don’t want a repeat of the problems with the microchips.”
“There are no problems whatsoever,” Takasu said. His glance froze Matoba in place. “None at all.”
site 15: Sarai Hashigami
Thursday, February 18th
There was a certain pitch and rhythm achievable by the human voice that could induce sleep in others.
Professor Takaoka, the man currently giving a lecture to fifty or so students, was most likely unaware of this. But still, he was better than anyone else at this school when it came to putting people to sleep.
I thought about that as I looked around the lecture hall. There were a lot of students lying face-down on their desks. About 60% of them were asleep.
It was the last lecture of the year, and next week finals began. Passing those finals was supposed to be every student’s top priority, so it was fair to call the whole lot of them slackers.
Professor Takaoka was ignoring them and continuing his lecture on economics. It was a boring class. I’d realized it when I’d heard his first lecture in the course about a year ago.
Right after the school year had started, I’d been annoyed that even after making it into the School of Science and Engineering, I still had to take classes on unrelated subjects. But that was the system, and there was no helping it.
Over the course of the last year, I’d taken a few more classes than I should, so I’d earned quite a few credits.
I’d heard that in your second and third years, you spent a lot of time doing experiments with your seminar class. So Dad had told me that even if it meant doing some extra work, I should take a lot of credits my first year.
It felt like the professor was occasionally glancing in my direction, which made it hard to relax. In the past hour, he’d looked at me no less than sixteen times. Over the past year of taking his lectures, I’d gotten the feeling that he wasn’t the type to look at people when he talked, so it felt strange.
I thought that perhaps there was something stuck on my face, but since the other students were all ignoring me, that didn’t seem to be the case. Either way, it was upsetting me, so I decided to pretend I wasn’t listening and look down at the smartphone in my hand.
I groaned a little without even realizing I was doing it. I tried to analyze my own mental state to see where this frustration was coming from.
Was it Professor Takaoka’s rude glances? Was it frustration at my own stupidity for asking Dad for advice on my class schedule a year ago? Or—
Was it because of the affiliate blog I was looking at on my smartphone?
The LCD screen was displaying a blog called Kirikiri Basara. I commented there often under the nickname “Sarai.” I could’ve used my full name, Sarai Hashigami, but there were idiots out there who knew nothing about internet decency, and who would try to show up in your real life. I didn’t want them showing up at my doorstep, so I just used a nickname.
All the stories on Kirikiri Basara were extremely stupid, but the sheer illogic of them all pissed me off, and I spent a lot of time giving the idiots there scientific lectures.
But now...
They were saying I’d lost. How could anyone be that stupid? But even the site admin was joining in. If I’d known this was going to happen, I never would’ve called into Myu Aikawa’s program. I hadn’t intended to in the first place. The people at Kirikiri Basara had provoked me.
I tapped my phone to open the comment entry box on Kirikiri Basara. I’d decided to write back at the people who were insulting me.
“Wow.” A male student next to me, whose name I didn’t know, watched the movements of my fingers with a stupid look on his face. I glared at him as I adjusted my glasses, and he grinned feebly before he looked away.
He was probably surprised at how fast I was typing, but I wasn’t here to show off.
I’d been using my smartphone for five or six years now. I’d gotten used to flick input. There was no way I could go back to the Japanese-style phones I’d used in elementary school. Not that I had any intention of trying.
I looked back at the screen and continued typing my response. If I walked them through this logically, step by step, it was probably going to take a long time. But I didn’t care.
I was trying to explain things to the kind of useless idiots who believed in occult things like fortune-telling. I couldn’t help but make it long.
But idiots wouldn’t read a long post. This was a dilemma. It was hard, dealing with idiots.
The only sound in the big lecture hall was Professor Takaoka’s voice.
I resisted the urge to shout, and instead I deleted the entire comment instead of uploading it. I’d been like this ever since my argument with Myu Aikawa two days ago. I’d write something, then delete it, then write something else and delete it again. I hadn’t managed to post a single comment.
It felt like no matter what I wrote now, it would come off like an excuse. No matter how right I was, it felt like they’d just make fun of me. If I could just meet them in person for a debate, I could shut them up within a minute—
“You there.” Professor Takaoka was talking to someone from his podium.
The boy next to me was still staring at me. The girl sitting in front turned backward to look at me. I could hear the other students chuckling, too.
I looked up and saw that Professor Takaoka was pointing at me. “Is my lecture so boring that you feel the need to play with your phone?”
That was strange. I’d come to the conclusion that Professor Takaoka was the kind of person who wouldn’t interrupt a lecture no matter how many students slept or did other things. Was I wrong? No, that was impossible.
So maybe he had it out for me for some reason? And this was his way of getting at me? “Let’s see if you were paying attention. Point out the central issues here.”
He motioned towards the blackboard. On the board was written a summary of Keynesian economic theory.
I sighed and stood up. “First, in a situation of underemployment where involuntary employment exists, national income and the level of employment are decided by effective demand, which is the sum of consumption and investment. Second, an increase in investment can result in a gain in income greater than the investment itself. Third, interest is the price one is paid for a loss of liquidity, and the interest rate is to be adjusted to achieve a balance between the demand for highly liquid cash assets and the supply of currency.”
“Mm... Mmmh?”
“The inevitable result of these three propositions is that the government should enact policies to stimulate investment and consumption demand—”
Professor Takaoka started to cough like there was something in his throat.
The answer I’d given was word-for-word out of an encyclopedia. I was only interested in science and engineering, and didn’t see much point in seriously studying economics. A copy-and-paste job was good enough for me.
But the professor seemed astonished at my answer. It was pretty funny. It was stupid, actually.
“What is it?”
“No, if you were listening, that’s fine.” He backed down a lot easier than I thought he would. Now it was my turn to be surprised.
“Even if you think it’s fine, I don’t.”
Professor Takaoka’s eyes went wide when I spoke. I could hear the other students’ laughter change to murmurs of confusion. They probably hadn’t thought I’d say anything back to him.
“Why only come after me? There are other students sleeping or playing with their phones who are being much more obvious
than I am.” For example, some were wearing flashier clothes, or sitting in more visible locations. I’d deliberately chosen to sit in the part of the room that made me least likely to be noticed.
“I just happened to see you playing with your phone. That’s all.” I didn’t miss the tone of annoyance in his voice.
“I don’t know why, but you seem slightly irritated. For example, there were signs of it when the lecture started. It’s safe to assume that it’s the result of a series of small irregularities that occurred before the lecture began.”
“What did you say?” He seemed confused as I pointed this out.
But I kept talking anyway. “You’re always very particular about your appearance, but today you’re wearing the same necktie as yesterday. This is likely because you were running short on time, and had no choice but to grab the closest one available. As for why I know what kind of necktie you were wearing yesterday, that’s not really a serious issue. I happened to see you then. And when I did, I remember I laughed at your terrible taste in neckties. I was actually astonished to see you wearing the same awful tie two days in a row.”
“Grr... Now listen, you...” His face was flush with anger, but he hesitated for a moment as he thought about whether it was right for a teacher to scream at one of his students.
I kept talking before he could finish making his decision. “The necktie indicates that you were almost late for the lecture. You even forgot the atomic watch you always wear, the one with the leather strap. Three times during the lecture you’ve looked at your left arm, expecting to find it.”
The professor looked at his left arm in shock. Of course, the watch wasn’t there.
“Since you were in such a hurry this morning, professor, you didn’t eat breakfast. That’s caused your blood sugar levels to drop. The effects of this are obvious. Sixty-four minutes into the lecture, your stress levels began to rapidly rise. That was just when you decided to relieve your stress by hassling me.” I could tell the other students were listening to me in shock.
I didn’t care about them, nor was I interested in making a speech like this, but whenever you wanted to explain something logically, it always ended up taking a long time. It wasn’t like any of them were paying attention to the lecture anyway. None of them would care if I wasted a few more minutes.
Occultic;Nine: Volume 1 Page 13