“So the question then becomes, why did you oversleep this morning? By the way, when I saw you yesterday, it wasn’t on campus, it was in front of Kichijoji Station. You were heading with a group of friends into Harmonica Alley. This was at 9:19 PM.”
The students were murmuring to themselves.
I shrugged my shoulders a little. “I have no particular interest in your drinking habits. It wasn’t like you were drinking during lecture, after all. It’s not a problem. But because you drank too much, you overslept, and you were almost late for lecture. I’m very nearly certain of this.”
The professor had a bitter look on his face, but he didn’t say anything. It was safe to assume that I was right.
“But why take your frustration out on me, then? During the sixty-four minutes before you called on me, our eyes met sixteen times. The first time, you made two glances at me, for a full total of seventeen times, but we can disregard that. Averaged out, our eyes met once every four minutes. There are around fifty students in this lecture hall. I represent only one-fiftieth of the total number of students, but you looked at me no fewer than sixteen times. I haven’t done the exact math, but the odds of that seem far too low for it to be a coincidence.”
“It’s a coincidence. A meaningless number.” The professor was mumbling in a tiny voice as he looked away from me.
“You just put your left hand into your pocket, didn’t you?”
“Wh-What?” It seemed he’d only realized that after I’d pointed it out to him.
“When a person is caught off-guard, they’ll try to protect their left side, where their heart is. You may think that’s meaningless, but from a psychological perspective, it’s not. I wouldn’t consider myself an expert at psychology, but I’m told that when someone tries to hide the fact that they’re lying, they attempt to protect their left side, where their heart is found. Of course, that’s just one theory among many.” But what was important here wasn’t the psychological reasoning. “More importantly, did you realize that during the entire lecture, you’ve been putting your left hand into your pocket to touch something inside of it?”
The professor said nothing.
“There’s no bulge in your pocket, so I’m sure it’s paper. A memo or something. Did you see the list of seminars for the next year that was handed out yesterday? Most of the popular teachers’ seminars are already full. But what about yours?”
I could see the color draining from his face. It was probably due to his mental state.
“If you’re concerned about your popularity, try not to get so frustrated. And certainly don’t attempt to take your frustration out on a student. It’s embarrassing.”
“I... I don’t understand what you’re getting at. And I don’t think it’s appropriate for you to speak this way to your elder. Students these days... Enough.” The professor shrugged and turned away from me, then began writing more text on the blackboard.
I guess in the end, he never admitted to it. But there was no way it was a coincidence that he’d come after me. He hadn’t said it, but I knew.
It was because I was Isayuki Hashigami’s son, wasn’t it? He didn’t have it out for me, personally. When he looked at me, he didn’t see me, he saw Isayuki Hashigami.
The reason was the memo in his left pocket. It was a list of next year’s seminar classes. The popular seminars were already flooded with requests, and in some cases you couldn’t get in at all.
That didn’t seem to be the case for Takaoka’s seminar, but it certainly was for Hashigami’s. All the students, not just me, knew that Takaoka had it out for Isayuki Hashigami.
Isayuki Hashigami was on TV all the time, and everyone knew who he was. It was easy to think of him as a bit of a playboy. Professor Takaoka, by contrast, was a very dull man. He probably didn’t like that. But it was a mistake to try and take his frustrations out on me.
The silence of the classroom and the stares of the other students were starting to annoy me. The lecture wasn’t over, but I got my things together and left. I may not get credit for the class, but I didn’t care. One single lost credit wasn’t going to hurt me.
I left Building #3, where the lecture hall was located. Outside, it was drizzling, and the air was so cold that I shivered. The rain had started late last night, and showed no signs of letting up today.
I put up my umbrella and ran across the courtyard called the Atrio. The area was filled with greenery centered around a big keyaki tree, and it was typical on sunny days to see students sitting here and talking.
But thanks to the weather, there was nobody here today, and the deserted atmosphere made it feel hard to breathe. I headed for the bulletin board at the side of the courtyard.
Seimei University, the school I attended, was about fifteen minutes’ walk from Kichijoji Station. There were fourteen classroom buildings, a cutting-edge information library, a gym, a track, a student building, a café, and other buildings scattered about the campus. In addition to the four departments and ten specialties in Seimei University’s School of Science and Engineering, there were also attached elementary, middle, and high schools. The name “Seimei Academy” encompassed all of these schools together.
Exams started next week at the university. The bulletin boards were filled with notices about the exams and next year’s seminars. I went through each of them to see if they had anything to do with me.
“Oh...” My eyes stopped when I saw a paper with a certain name on it.
It was a notice that Professor Hashigami’s seminar for the day was canceled. Jeez... Talk about irony.
I wasn’t in that seminar myself.
Isayuki Hashigami...
The country’s leading occult researcher, and a man who was on TV all the time. A professor at the Seimei University School of Science and Engineering. And... my dad.
How long had it been since I’d last talked to him? We lived in the same house, but I barely even saw him anymore. He was busy with work— TV work, not his university job— and was spending less and less time at home.
He’d always been something of a show-off, and he was a good conversationalist. You could tell how popular he was from the sheer number of students that wanted to take his classes.
There were so many that even the middle school kids at Seimei were talking about it. I’d actually heard the rumors when I was in middle school myself, so I knew that for a fact.
So when I’d heard he’d declared his belief in the occult, at first, I’d thought he was just doing it to show off. I was annoyed, but didn’t really think much else of it. But once I’d understood that he was going on TV and really trying to prove that the occult was real, I became disgusted with him as a scientist.
Prove the existence of the occult scientifically? That was impossible. You’d have to be an idiot to try.
Did he know how many people had tried it in the past? Every one of them had failed and become a laughingstock in the scientific community. I didn’t want to admit that my dad could be so stupid.
Not that I had any idea what brought this on. I’d respected my dad as a scientist. I’d come this far because I wanted to do the same research he did. That’s why I’d felt betrayed.
—Please, Sarai. You need to talk to your dad. Now.
I remembered the sorrow in Myu Aikawa’s words. I gripped the handle of my umbrella tighter.
Just standing here, it felt like the cold from the asphalt was climbing up my legs. My wet toes were starting to go numb. I should just go home. I didn’t even want to think about my dad. I wasn’t scheduled to work at my part-time job today, so I could get some hot menchi-katsu at Meat Satou before I got home.
Suddenly, I heard the faint sound of clinking metal. And then I realized that there was a brilliant blue covering the right side of my field of vision.
A woman carrying an umbrella was standing right next to me. The blue was her umbrella and I couldn’t see her face because of it.
I hadn’t noticed her at all, so my heart rate accelerated in
shock. I was just barely able to keep from flinching away.
I didn’t want to embarrass myself like I did on the stream. I adjusted my glasses and calmed myself down as I took a look at her.
She was looking at the bulletin board like I was... maybe. But I couldn’t understand why she would stand so close. Did she realize that the water was dripping off her umbrella and onto my shoulder?
I couldn’t see her face, but it was obvious enough from the shape of her body, and the fluffy coat and muffler she was wearing, that she was a woman. She stood tall, like a statue.
Did I know her? I’d been going to this academy since elementary school, so I knew a lot of the other students. I didn’t consider any of them my friends, but if I passed by them on campus, I could at least say hello.
I heard the clinking sound again. There was a distinctive golden necklace shining on her chest. Three small bars hung down from an upside-down triangle shape, and whenever they struck each other, they made a small, pleasant noise.
A triangle and three bars.
Three was recognized as an important number worldwide. For instance, there was the concept of the Christian Trinity. Some people said it was a holy number.
And hers was upside-down... There was a mark like an eyeball on the upside-down triangle. It was one I’d seen somewhere before. But I couldn’t immediately remember where. It seemed like something that was really famous, though.
As I was thinking about it, the woman shifted her umbrella’s position. Suddenly, I couldn’t look away from her. She was a very beautiful woman.
Her long black hair was just the slightest bit curly, and her eyes were sad beneath her long eyelashes. Her lips seemed soft. Everything about her looked glossy, as if she were wet.
I thought that she might have been standing in the rain without an umbrella for a long time, but since her clothes weren’t wet, maybe I was just imagining it. Either way, I’d never been so struck by a girl like this in my life. I was shocked to see how much I was freaking out.
My heart rate refused to slow down. My sympathetic nerves were on fire. It was clear that this woman was the cause.
She seemed older than me, but I didn’t recognize her face. When I realized that, I suddenly felt extremely embarrassed. It was like I was a tiny little child next to her.
I quickly turned to go, and my eyes met with hers. I almost forgot to breathe.
“Looks like it’s canceled, huh?” she whispered in a calm voice, totally unlike the idiot girls my age.
I wasn’t sure if she was talking to me, or to herself, so I wasn’t sure if I should respond.
“Did the devil eat him? Or—” She sounded just the slightest bit excited, and just the slightest bit mischievous.
And just the slightest bit teasing.
“Or is it about to eat him?” I thought I heard her whisper in my ear.
Her voice was so soft that it seemed like it would be drowned out by the tiny drizzle of rain. But I could hear it clearly.
She winked at me as I stood there in shock, and walked away, spinning her umbrella. All I could do was watch.
“Eaten by a devil? What does that mean?” By the time I was finally able to speak, the blue umbrella was gone.
site 16: Ririka Nishizono
Thursday, February 18th
There’s no such thing as a devil, right? If anything in the world deserved the name “devil,” it would be the human heart.
The darkness within the human heart ran deep. Everyone possessed that darkness, and everyone loved that darkness.
That sounded a little poetic, so I laughed to myself as I spun my favorite blue umbrella. I was feeling a little happy, probably because of the cute young man in glasses I’d just run into at the university. I should have asked for his name.
I thought these things to myself as I walked through Inokashira Park in the rain. It was a weekday afternoon in the middle of winter, so the place would’ve been pretty empty otherwise. With the rain, almost no one was here.
I walked through the silent park with my blue umbrella, feeling at peace, like I’d wandered into a fantasy world. The Natural Culture Gardens, a zoo inside the park grounds, was a particular favorite spot of mine. It had an aquarium, too, and the fact that it was surrounded by trees made it feel isolated from the rest of the world.
Sometimes you could hear the cries of the ducks and cranes in their cages. Just watching the waterfowl round themselves up into little balls in the rain was enough to make me want to stand there for hours.
It had been almost a year since they’d told me that my mind was broken. Of course, I liked to think I could tell the difference between real and unreal, but I had nothing to prove that what I was seeing was actually real at all.
Since there was no way to prove that life was anything but a dream, that was only natural. Still, if that was the case, I wanted the things I saw to at least seem a little fantastic. Maybe that’s why I came here whenever it rained.
“Um...” My enjoyment was unexpectedly interrupted.
It was a girl I didn’t know, about my age, who had spoken to me.
“Are you Ririka Nishizono?”
“Yes.” I was able to smile back in a very natural manner.
If someone had spoken to me outside this park, I would’ve ignored them or spat at them. But this was a place where I could be calm. I could treasure my meeting with this person.
“I knew it! The rumors were true!” The woman got excited when she saw me nod.
“I saw it on Twitter! That you go to Inokashira Park when it’s raining.” I’d been spoken to several times before when walking through the park. I wondered how they realized who I was when I wasn’t anyone famous. That must have been why. Of course, if someone had to speak to me in town, I’d much rather they did it here.
“I also heard that if I asked for a sketch, you’d give me one. Is that true?”
“I don’t have my sketchbook with me.”
“No, um... I brought one.” She hesitated a little as she took a sketchbook out of her bag.
Oh my. She was certainly prepared.
“Certainly.” I was something of a manga artist, after all.
I hadn’t gone pro yet, but I’d published several amateur doujinshi that had sold quite well. If nothing else, they were popular enough that people talked about me on the internet.
It was a little disappointing that it was always girls who approached me, however. I would’ve preferred a cute, younger man. If that ever happened, I would seduce him into coming home with me, and then show him a world that he never dreamed existed.
I imagined that and shuddered.
“What kind of picture would you like?”
“Um... I’d like something from your book at last year’s Winter Comiket, The Bottom of the Deep Water. When the albino boy is doing, um... naughty things... to the twins at the shrine, and they’re liking it.”
“Heheh. You know exactly what you want, don’t you?” She must have dreamed of the day she’d meet me, and spent a lot of time fantasizing about the sketch she wanted.
When I asked her if she had, she looked at the ground in embarrassment.
In the rain, holding my umbrella, I was drawing BL sketches in an empty zoo. It was a romantic and erotic act.
I didn’t labor under the delusion that my art was very good. My failure to go pro had proven its inadequacy.
But whenever I met a fan, they always told me that my art excited them. That must have been what made my drawings special.
Not that I really understood, myself. My own sexual proclivities were relatively normal. I only ever thought about sweet love between men when I was working. There were many female artists out there who imagined things far more extreme than I ever did.
That’s why I was surprised to find that I had so many fans.
I was a fast artist. I always drew these pictures very quickly, without expending any real effort. I wanted to make it so the person who asked me to draw for them could fill in the
blanks with their own minds.
I finished quickly, relying on the first image that came into my head. After only three minutes or so I handed the girl back her finished picture.
And then I realized...
There was someone else, standing some distance away. He was looking right at me.
“Wow, this is wonderful! I love it! I’ll treasure it forever!”
“Thank you very much.” I’d forgotten all about my happy fan.
My mind, my senses, my self... My everything had been captured by the person staring at me.
He was a young boy, about middle school age, like a character from the sketch I’d just drawn. But his expression was far too empty for someone of that age. He had a different air about him than the boy with glasses I’d seen at the school.
You could say... Yes, he was identical. He was identical to the albino boy in my books.
“Has God made my dream come true, perhaps?” I whispered in a tiny voice.
The rumors I’d heard said that God appeared in Inokashira Park.
Even after my fan had finished saying her thanks and left, the young boy didn’t move. He was standing still in the rain, without even an umbrella.
I walked over to him and put my umbrella over his wet head. I could smell a strong sweat coming from him. It made me feel warm in the center of my body.
“You’ll catch cold.” The boy didn’t look away from me, even when I was right in front of him.
No one had ever stared at me like this before.
“The story you wrote was pretty good.” He took off his backpack and took out one of my books.
“That’s a naughty book for girls. Why do you have it?” I asked, wanting to tease him.
Normally, a boy his age would’ve blushed or gotten embarrassed. But there was no particular change to the boy’s expression. Instead, he kept looking directly into my eyes. His eyes were so clear, like a doll’s, that I...
“Your eyes are so pretty.” I imagined that they were drawing me in. “Did you know that the eyes don’t feel pain? That’s why it’s okay to lick them.”
Occultic;Nine: Volume 1 Page 14