Occultic;Nine: Volume 1

by Chiyomaru Shikura

  I was aroused. I wanted to take this innocent young boy with me, and teach him to be exactly what I wanted.

  I softly ran my thumb down his lips, which had turned blue from the chill. They were so cold. My heart shivered.

  “I’m a minor. If I buy one of your books, is that a crime? I’m fine, right? Maybe I’m not supposed to do it, but they won’t arrest me, right?” The boy offered me his book. “Draw me a box, please.”

  For a moment, I didn’t know what he meant. “A box?” That was a strange request.

  He didn’t want a character or an autograph. He wanted a box. How cute.

  “Will you tell me your name, too?” I asked, intending to dedicate the picture to him.

  The boy answered, still expressionless. “Sagami.”

  “That’s a good name. I could just eat it up.” The pendant on my chest clinked.

  But young Sagami looked straight at me, still expressionless. I wasn’t hoping for an expression, either.

  That sounded a little poetic, so I laughed to myself as I spun my favorite blue umbrella. This was the most erotic expression he could have made in this scene.

  “So what kind of box shall I draw?” The boy moved his mouth and nothing else, like a ventriloquist’s doll.

  —A kotoribako.

  A child-stealing box.

  site 17: Yuta Gamon

  Thursday, February 18th

  It happened on a summer day half a year ago. I was sitting alone on a bench in Kichijoji Park like always, playing with my Skysensor. I didn’t expect to hear more than the usual white noise, but I was spinning the tuner anyway, mostly out of habit. But that day, I heard a noise that was just a little different.

  —PYUUUIJJJZZ... CHA...TA...

  I was so excited to hear something new. I thought that, just maybe, I’d picked up my dad’s voice.

  Of course, I knew in my head that was impossible. But I think somewhere in my heart, I was still hoping. Part of me still didn’t want to give up. That was why I was never able to get rid of the Skysensor.

  I leaned forward and put my ear up to the radio’s speaker to hear this new noise. I listened carefully as I made small adjustments to the left and right.

  “—rate...”

  My ears picked up a sound buried in the white noise that was clearly different. I raised the volume, and adjusted the dial at micrometer increments. Well, not literally, of course.

  But the feeling I had when I spent the whole day listening to the radio after Dad died came back to me, and I concentrated my whole mind on my ears and fingertips.

  “—rate... the world will be...”

  This time I could understand it. It was a voice. Words. Japanese. I held my breath to try and understand what it was saying, when... Suddenly, the voice stopped.

  “That was a girl’s voice, wasn’t it?” If nothing else, I knew it wasn’t my dad, which was a little disappointing.

  But that meant the radio must have picked up a signal from somewhere. I decided that I wanted to hear the girl’s voice again. It felt like she wanted to tell me something.

  “I think she was saying something like, ‘At this rate, the world will be...’” Maybe I’d picked up a radio drama that was being broadcast from some station somewhere.

  But that was impossible. I’d had the Skysensor set to only pick up shortwave signals. And these days, nobody was broadcasting radio dramas via shortwave.

  “Maybe Dad would’ve known what it was.” I knelt down over the Skysensor again.

  After that, I tried fiddling with the dials, and even turning it off and back on again, but I never heard that voice a second time. The next thing I knew I was soaked with sweat from the heat, and very thirsty.

  I leaned back against the bench, exhausted, and looked up at the twilight summer sky. The sun was setting behind the ten-story condo building in front of me. It felt really bright. I put my hand up to block it out.

  At that moment, the world was divided into the colors of twilight, and the black of elongated shadows. Thanks to the condo building in front of me, the whole park was inside the shadow.

  The shadows seemed somehow especially black. I don’t know why it seemed that way to me. Normally, you never think about how dark a shadow is.

  Suddenly something moved in the corner of my vision. It was in the center of the park, on top of a colorful piece of playground equipment.

  I looked over, not sure what I was expecting to find... Just in time to see her “land” on top of the slide.

  —How long had she been there?

  I could see the whole bench from where I was sitting. If you wanted to get from the entrance to the slide in the center of the park, you needed to walk at least five meters. When did she enter the park? When did she get up on the playground equipment? When did she jump onto the slide? I couldn’t figure it out.

  And then her voluptuous body began to slip. She slid down the slide like a surfer, and pitched forward at the bottom. She almost fell on her face, but managed to spread out her arms to keep her balance on one foot. Then, staggering from left to right, she made her way over to the bench I was sitting on.

  I was... in love. It was hard to believe she was human. I really thought that she was an angel from heaven.

  That’s why I couldn’t move. I just sat on the bench like an idiot, watching as she lurched towards me.

  Just when I flinched, ready for a collision, she finally stopped right in front of my face. “Ponya!” She shouted a word I didn’t understand, before stretching upwards and raising her arms out in a Y shape. “Ultra-C!”

  Before I saw her face, I saw her massive, amazing breasts wobbling in front of me. “Uwah?!” I lurched back without thinking, and only then did our eyes meet.

  She was a girl about my age, with big eyes. There was something very strange about the way she was looking at me.

  “Good Mornighternoon!” That was the first thing she said to me. It was a little different than what Arale used to say in that old anime.

  “G-Good mornighternoon...” I wasn’t quite sure how to respond.

  The next thing I felt was a strong sensation of guilt and shame. My face went red from embarrassment, since I’d been staring at her giant breasts when she was so close. But if I moved even a little, I’d touch them, so I couldn’t even run.

  “I-shi-shu! Hands to the sky, pardner!” Then suddenly, something was pointing at the side of my head. Out of the corner of my eye, I could just barely make out a silver... was that a handgun?

  —Was she holding that a second ago? I couldn’t tell. I hadn’t noticed it at all. And since I couldn’t move, I couldn’t even tell if the gun was real or not.

  “Hands up, or I’ll shoot! ☆” I was even more confused by the lack of tension in her voice. I slowly raised my hands up, being careful not to touch her breasts.

  “What is your name, milord?”

  “I... I didn’t look at your boobs! So please don’t kill me...”

  “Ididntlook Atyourboobs?”

  “Oh, my name? My name is, uh... Yuta Gamon.”

  “Gamotan!”

  No one had ever called me that before.

  “Ryotasu’s name is Ryotasu!” That was her way of introducing herself, evidently. But I had no idea what she meant. I got even more confused.

  “Who are you?” I whispered.

  “I-shi-shu! ☆” Suddenly a shock ran through my whole body.

  “Ababababababah!” A rainbow-colored flash of light filled my vision. My whole body spasmed like it was struck with lightning, and it wouldn’t move. It felt like I was going crazy. My body felt like it was being poked with pins and needles all over. I realized that Ryotasu had actually shot me.

  “Stop it... Agigigigigh!” I realized that at some point my head had become buried in Ryotasu’s breasts, and I reacted to this emergency by swiftly pulling away.

  Then, the pain suddenly stopped. All the strength left my body, and I collapsed to the ground.

  How could she just shoot
me like that? This girl was crazy. Even if she was cute, that didn’t make it okay.

  I looked up, panting, just in time to see Ryotasu wink and bring the gun to her lips. It was a toy ray gun, with a retro design and a ball at the end of the barrel.

  Then she put her face right up against mine. And right next to my face she blew a sharp breath out over the top of the gun. Her breath had a sweet scent, like peaches, that made me feel excited.

  Her clear eyes were looking down on me, so close that I could touch them. With the setting sun behind her, they should’ve been surrounded in shadow, but to me they looked like they were shining. They were so beautiful that I felt like I was being drawn inside, and I forgot to breathe. The next thing I knew, the pain and sweating were gone.

  As I sat there, trying to remind myself of how her breasts felt before I forgot—

  “I am—!” She smiled happily, and gently rubbed my cheek, and this is what she said. “—your servant familiar, Gamotan!”

  That was my first meeting with the strange girl named Ryoka Narusawa, also known as Ryotasu.

  Ever since then, I saw Ryotasu almost every day. But I still didn’t know where Ryotasu came from, or what exactly her Poyaya Gun was.

  The biggest mystery was why she was friends with a NEET God like me, though. She was a very mysterious girl. The kind you’d find in an H-game, honestly. But none of that mattered, as long as she was cute. Ryotasu was my angel.

  When I went to the roof of the school to meet my angel, the freezing wind brushed past my cheek. The only place at Seimei High where you could go out onto the roof was the four-story central building where the middle and high school students held class. Choosing the roof for a meeting on a cold day like this was a mistake.

  If it were me, I would’ve used the cold as an excuse to give up and go home. But my mysterious Ryotasu was standing at the edge of the empty roof, pointing her PYG through the chain-link fence and pulling the trigger. I could hear her cries of “I-shi-shu!” being carried on the wind.

  “Ryotasu!” There was no answer. She was too busy shooting the PYG. Of course, she was probably just pretending. That thing actually did fire beams, so it was probably illegal. I really wished she’d stop shooting me with it.

  And... Wait, I hadn’t brought her up here to randomly shoot her PYG. I sighed and started to walk across the uncovered rooftop.

  I stood next to Ryotasu and looked down. I could see the whole of Seimei Academy. There was everything from an elementary school to a university concentrated on the grounds. How big was it, again? I’d heard it was about the size of three Tokyo Domes, I think. Not that I was sure whether that was big or small.

  Below us was a row of cherry trees. But of course, there were no pink flowers. I’d have to wait another month for that. Beneath the trees, the other students were walking home from school.

  I could see the sports teams practicing at the big track and baseball stadium near the back. I wasn’t sure how they could do that when it was so cold.

  I looked to my right and I could see the Seimei University campus. Past that was Kichijoji Station, but the campus buildings blocked my view of it.

  “I-shi! ☆” Ryotasu was pulling the trigger of the PYG, which she pointed at the baseball team as they practiced. Did she have it out for the baseball team for some reason? But at this distance, it looks liked the stinging effect that always hit me wasn’t affecting them.

  “Ryotasu? How long are you going to keep doing that?” I could see that Ryotasu’s cheeks were turning a little red. She must have been cold, after all. She wasn’t even wearing a coat. She was willing to endure the freezing cold, just to keep shooting her PYG.

  The wind was tossing her shoulder-length, chestnut-colored hair about. The hem of her skirt was blowing up, and if the wind blew just a little harder I’d be able to see her panties. Ryotasu didn’t seem to notice at all.

  “Hmm. Rare. Extremely rare. Not only is any chance to see Ryotasu in her uniform super-ultra-rare...” I took a glance at her chest. It was bursting forth in a way that none of the other girls’ did. “Melons! She’s got melons in there! Sweet, ripe melons! Gotta love those boob bags!”

  It was really rare for me to see Ryotasu at school. We were in different grades, and I had no idea where she lived. I wasn’t a normie, so it was far beyond my capabilities to ask her where she lived. Even when we got together at Café☆Blue Moon for Kirikiri Basara, we mostly just showed up on our own. We never set a time.

  Whenever Ryotasu came to Blue Moon, she was always wearing her street clothes. She never wore her uniform. Maybe her house was close, and she went home to change first.

  Ryotasu’s taste in clothing wasn’t what you’d call modern. If you wanted to be nice, you could say it was grown-up. If you didn’t, you could say it was old-fashioned.

  Either way, it was a little... no, a lot different from what your average teenage girl wore. So when I saw her wearing the same uniform as the other girls, it felt like a nice change of pace. And it reminded me of something very important.

  “Every middle and high school in the country should make boob bags mandatory for the girls’ uniforms!”

  “Gamota~n?” Ryotasu slowly and deliberately turned the PYG toward me.

  “You were thinking something naughty, weren’t you?”

  “Uh...”

  “I-shi-shu!” Ryotasu showed no mercy at times like these.

  “Ow! Poyaya Gun! No!” I screamed, and Ryotasu stopped.

  “Not only were you late, you were thinking naughty things. If you don’t hurry, the AV room’s gonna escape!”

  “Th-The AV room... isn’t going to escape. I mean, it’s an AV room.” I was crawling along the ground and gasping for breath as I spoke.

  “I-If there ever were a room that grew legs, I’d want to see it.”

  “Not the AV room! It’s Myu, in the room, that’s going to run!”

  Then you should’ve said that instead.

  But Ryotasu was right. There was no guarantee that Myu-Pom would be in the classroom. She might go home while we stood here talking. And so I slowly staggered to my feet, and went back inside the school with Ryotasu.

  The AV room was on the fourth story of the central building. It was right down the stairs from the roof.

  “You know, though, I never considered that Myu-Pom might be a student at our school. That was pretty sharp of you, Ryotasu.”

  “Eh-hem! ☆ I may not look like it, but my nose reaches into all the tiny spots.”

  “...?”

  “Poya? My nose? My nose... hmm... mm...” Ryotasu scratched the tip of her tiny nose for a moment, and then broke into a big smile. “Nose! The nose knows!”

  “Yeah, right. Well, anyway, you did great.” I’d gone and looked after we’d last talked, and our high school actually had a club called the Fortune-Telling Research Club. They were based out of the central building’s AV room. There was a good chance that was where “Myu’s Nicco-Nico Live Fortune-Telling” was filmed.

  The plan was to bust in there and find out if I was right. If I was lucky, I might even get to see Myu-Pom.

  “Wow, my heart’s going to ker-thud! Ker-heart! My ker-thud’s going heart-heart!” I took a bunch of deep breaths as I went down the stairs. Ryotasu didn’t even bother waiting for me. She went down the stairs and turned the corner. I followed her into the hallway, and then—

  “GAH,” I yelled.

  There was a crowd of about ten students in front of the AV room.

  It wasn’t just high school students, too. Some of them were in middle school. I guess that was natural, though, since the middle school and high school students used the same building here. There were five boys and six girls. They didn’t seem to know each other, too.

  They seemed to be split up into four groups: three middle school girls, two high school boys, another group of three high school boys, and then three high school girls. All of them were whispering in low voices as they tried to see what was going on in the A
V room.

  What were they all doing here? Were they all part of the fortune-telling club? But then why didn’t they go inside? Or was this just the line for people to have their fortunes told by Myu-Pom?

  The door to the AV room was closed. If the stream had already started, I was too late.

  “Oh, there she is! She’s so cute! Come on, Samurai Gamonosuke! Get over here! ☆” Ryotasu was clinging to the door of the AV room and shouting excitedly.

  Grrh... That’s not fair, Ryotasu! It’s not fair that you didn’t wait for me! And I’m not a samurai, too!

  I could feel the other students staring at me, but I followed Ryotasu’s lead and looked through the window on the door into the AV room.

  “Nnnuuhhh! That’s definitely our idol, Myu Aikawa!” I had been sure that she was live, but she wasn’t.

  The curtain to the AV room was still open. Inside, four girls were sitting around the table, having what looked like a meeting. There were snacks and candy on the table, and three of the four girls had relaxed expression on their faces. It felt like a bunch of high school girls having a chat. But one of the four girls was looking glum as she stared down at the cards in her hand.

  That was Myu Aikawa. The last two times she’d been on “Myu’s Nicco-Nico Livestream,” she’d broken down in tears. Maybe that’s why she wasn’t looking so good. I was a little worried about her, but more importantly...

  “Ryotasu! She’s really there! Wow! It’s really her! Tens of thousands of people have seen her streaming from here, huh?” It was clear now that Myu Aikawa was a student at our school.

  What was her real name? What grade was she in? And wait, how had I been at this school for two years without noticing a perfectly pretty girl like her?

  I guess I couldn’t help it. I couldn’t even remember the names of my classmates. I was the NEET God, after all. I bet the rest of the school was already talking about her all the time. I hated myself for being such a wrong-sider.

  Myu-Pom showed no signs of noticing us on the other side of the door. The other girls looked worried as they talked to her. She let her frown drop and tried her best to smile.