“Wh-What?!”
“Do it!”
I was already enough of a mess. Hearing her tell me that made me start to think I’d be better off passing out and waking up in a holding cell at the police station.
“Wh-What the hell are you talking about? How is pulling a tooth out from a dead body supposed to help me get out of here safely?”
“You want the gold tooth on the far left! Got it? Don’t pull out the wrong one!”
“Listen to me—”
“I told you to shut up and listen to me! Do you still not understand the situation you’re in? You already touched one of the murder weapons!”
I’d... touched one of the murder weapons? Did she mean the pliers? No, wait!
“That knife!” The knife with the red blade on the desk. Thinking back, it was obvious what that red was now.
That was the murder weapon that killed the professor. And I was stupid enough to grab it and play with it.
“I’m so stupid!” I hated myself. I wanted to punch myself to death, right now.
“Stop wasting time! Somebody will be here soon!” The voice on the radio started to get more tense.
“But... But... I can’t pull out his tooth! I can’t!” I was also curious to know how she knew that someone was coming, but I didn’t have the energy left to disobey her anymore.
“Waah... Damn it! Why is this happening?!” I was crying. But I grit my teeth and gripped the pliers hard, then moved toward Dr. Hashigami’s body.
“There’s a gold tooth on the back left. Just pull it out. There’s no time!”
“H-How much time do I have left?”
“About thirty seconds.”
“Thirty seconds?!” That was barely any time at all. They were almost here!
“But who—”
“If you’ve got time to talk, then get started!”
I grabbed the professor’s jaw and shivered. It was cold and hard. I didn’t realize bodies got so cold and stiff.
I wanted to run away. I didn’t want to touch it.
My vision blurred with tears.
“Twenty seconds!” I forced the professor’s mouth open. It was harder than I thought, and it took me a little time.
I looked in his mouth. There was a gold tooth shining in the back left.
I forced in the pliers.
I was defiling a corpse.
It felt like the professor’s empty eyes were staring at me. I begged him to close his eyes, but it wasn’t happening.
My hands were shaking.
It was hard to get the pliers lined up against the right tooth.
“Hurry!” “I know! Don’t hurry me so much!” I finally grabbed the tooth with the pliers.
I pulled, hard. But it didn’t budge at all.
“Ten seconds!”
Shit! Shit! Shit! I couldn’t do this! This was crazy! I couldn’t do something this gruesome! Somebody make it stop! I want to cry—
“Five seconds!”
DAMN IT ALL! JUST COME OUT!
I crouched down and stepped on the professor’s forehead. With the head pressed firmly against the ground, I pulled on the pliers as hard as I could.
I felt the sensation of ripping flesh in my hands. More blood than I expected came out of the professor’s mouth.
I looked down at the end of the pliers, and saw something covered in blood, about five centimeters long.
I wasn’t sure what I was looking at.
I didn’t realize teeth were so...
“They’re here—” Just as the voice spoke, I could hear someone enter the next room.
I shivered and held my breath. Who was it? Who was there? It was obvious it wasn’t the girl on the radio.
Then was it the police? One of his students? Or... maybe the murderer? As best I could tell, there was only one person.
“You can escape if you go now. Go out by the hallway,” the radio said.
Whoever they were, the person was still in the seminar room.
I put the bloodstained pliers and the tooth in my bag, not caring about the mess the blood would make. Then I picked up the radio and closed the lid.
And then, my knees trembling, I silently opened the door to the hallway.
The hallway was even darker than when I’d arrived. No one else was here.
I crouched down and headed to the elevators as silently as I could.
I looked back behind me a bunch of times.
What if someone was following me? I was scared. My heart had been pounding hard since I’d found the professor’s body. It was so loud I worried the sound would echo down the hall and alert the person in the seminar room.
I made it to the elevators.
There were two elevators. One of them was stopped on the 6th floor. Maybe whoever was in the room now had used it to come here.
I went to press the button for the elevator, and then changed my mind and went for the stairs.
The lights in the stairwell were off, and it was dark. But now, the darkness made me feel better.
I ran down the stairs to the first floor, as fast and as silently as possible.
I made it outside. I was inside the courtyard of Seimei University.
No one had followed me.
I wanted to get out of here as soon as possible, so instead of heading for the university’s main entrance, I ran toward the high school. I passed two university students on the way, but it was dark now, and they didn’t seem to realize that I was covered in blood.
“Hahh... hahh... hahh...” I’d been in the bathroom for about twenty minutes, washing the blood off. I’d deliberately kept the lights off.
“It’s a curse... All the bad deeds I’ve ever done... I’ve been punished for them.”
Maybe it was because the black magic agency had cursed me, I thought to myself. I should never have sent Ryotasu there.
But hiding in Seimei High was the right move. Most of the clubs were done for the day, and the only room with a light on was the teachers’ office.
I ran into the furthest bathroom on the third floor of the special classrooms building, where no one was likely to go, and started to wash off my hands.
“I can’t... get the stink off...” The blood was gone, but it felt like I could still smell a metallic stench.
I kept rubbing with soap, again and again and again.
There were spots of blood on my uniform. I couldn’t get it totally clean here, but I should at least clean it with water. I’d have to wash it carefully once I got home, or my mom would find out. I had to be careful.
There was a stain on the knees of my pants that was too big for me to come up with an excuse. If I got anywhere near Kichijoji station like this, the cops were sure to stop me.
I had no choice but to strip down to my underwear and wash my pants in the sink.
It was just a school sink, and so there wasn’t any hot water. I kept washing them with cold water until my fingers went numb. I could barely feel my fingertips anymore. But I kept washing.
All kinds of questions filled my mind, but I refused to think about them. If I did, my brain would burst.
What happened? What did I just get caught up in? Who killed the professor, and why? Who had come into the room after me?
And more than anything... who was the voice that I’d heard from the radio?
The Skysensor had been dead silent since I’d left the university. I’d been too busy washing my hands and clothes to look, but I’m sure if I did I’d find that the power switch was off, just like it was when I’d heard “Gloomy Sunday.”
Was that voice real? If it was, maybe I was hearing things. That would make me like a psychic.
I’d managed to make it out of there because of the voice, after all. But there were a lot of things the voice said that didn’t make sense.
“Oh, right... What do I do with this gold tooth?”
I’d been so desperate to get out of there that I’d thrown the pliers and the tooth in my bag. The bag was lying on the grou
nd at my feet. It was covered in blood, too.
“I have to wash it off. I have to wash off all the blood...” I rummaged through my bag.
The blood on the pliers and the tooth had stained some of my textbooks.
That alone was enough to make me regret doing it, and I felt sick thinking about the fact that I had even more cleanup to do.
I took the tooth and the pliers out my bag.
“Grrr...” The tooth was still stuck to the pliers. I removed it. Just touching it made me feel sick.
This was obvious, but it had been inside Dr. Hashigami’s mouth. Just the thought of touching it disgusted me.
I couldn’t carry it around when it was covered in blood, though. I forced myself to bring it over to the sink and wash off the blood.
I rubbed the blood off with my fingers. There were little chunks of flesh stuck to it in parts, and it made me want to throw up.
I felt guilty for doing this. This was desecration of a corpse. I was desecrating Dr. Hashigami’s very dignity as a human being.
“What’s going on? What the hell is going on?” I kept washing the tooth, trying not to throw up.
The root of the tooth had little depressions in it, and those depressions in particular were filled with little pieces of flesh. I bit my lip and carefully cleaned each one.
The dark red blood and chunks of flesh went down the drain. Little by little, the surface of the tooth became visible.
And eventually, I saw it. When I did, I turned on the lights, not caring who saw me.
It was so bright that for a moment, I couldn’t see. My vision came back quickly, and I looked down at the tooth.
“No way. Is this...”
Gold teeth were normally just put over the top of your real tooth. My mom had some teeth made of silver, so I knew that.
But this tooth was different. It wasn’t a real tooth. It was an implant.
So the root of the tooth that had been inside the professor’s gums was also made of metal.
It had a weird shape. Just looking at it was enough for me to tell what it was. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
“This... This is a key, isn’t it?”
There was a tiny key, about 5 centimeters long, buried in the professor’s mouth.
I felt cold sweat run down my back, and I shivered inside the cold bathroom.
Occultic;Nine: Tips
≫Kirikiri Basara
Official Name: “Paranormal Science Kirikiri Basara.” An occult aggregator blog run by Yuta Gamon. Every day he picks occult-related news stories for his readers to disprove scientifically.
≫Eggs
Throwaway accounts made on Twitter for the sole purpose of attacking and slandering others. Their owners never reveal who they are, and when things turn bad, they’ll quickly abandon the account and flee. For this reason, it’s extremely common for them to not set a picture for their icon, which means they use the default picture— an egg.
≫Café☆Blue Moon
A café and bar tucked away five minutes from Kichijoji Station. During the day it’s a café, and at night, it’s a bar. The place is decorated in an extremely Oriental fashion that suits its owner’s tastes, and it can be difficult for first-timers to enter. Yuta brings his laptop here to update Kirikiri Basara.
≫Woodberrys
A frozen yogurt shop that opened in Kichijoji in 1997. It offers homemade yogurt and farm-fresh fruits. In addition to frozen yogurt, there’s also yogurt drinks, yogurt scones, and yogurt soap available as well.
≫Suta-Don
A pork bowl that’s the most popular item at the rice bowl chain called “The Legendary Suta-Don Store.” Suta-Don bowls are known for being far larger than the bowls offered by competing chains. Suta-Don is, therefore, short for “stamina bowl.”
≫Simulacra Phenomenon
The phenomenon where any three points in an upside-down triangle shape will tend to be seen as a human face. Patterns in animal fur, wood knots on ceilings, and shadows cast by rocks in satellite imagery are all common examples of this.
≫Kokkuri-san
A form of fortune-telling that uses, or appears to use, a supernatural phenomenon very similar to the Western ouija board. Many people believe that it is a form of spiritual summoning that involves summoning the spirit of a fox. In kanji, it’s written Ko (Fox), Ku (Dog) Ri (Raccoon). It’s always done with two or more people. A paper with the words “yes,” “no,” “torii” (An arch at the entrance to a shinto shrine), “man,” “woman,” the numbers one through nine, and every letter of the Japanese alphabet is put on a desk. Then a ten yen coin is placed on the paper, and all participants put their index fingers on the coin. After an incantation, a question is asked of Kokkuri-san, and the coin is said to move on its own to answer the question.
≫One-Man Hide And Seek
An urban legend that became popular in the 2000s. It’s considered another form of spiritual summoning, like Kokkuri-san. The ritual is done in the dead of night, and involves repeatedly playing hide-and-seek (or rather, performing a ritual that seems similar to it) with a stuffed animal whose stuffing has been removed and replaced with white rice and your own fingernails. This ritual is repeated again and again for an hour or two. It’s said that there was a rumor that strange paranormal events would happen during this ritual, and many people started to do it for fun.
≫Nico Livestreamer
A regular user of the Niconico Livestreaming service. Some livestreamers can be extremely popular.
≫Skysensor
A portable radio sold to the general population in the 1970s. In addition to AM and FM, it can also receive shortwave broadcasts. It has a lot of other functionality as well, and was a big hit.
≫QSL Card
Also known as a verification card. A card issued by a TV or radio station as proof that you received a broadcast. Listeners can receive a broadcast, and submit a report to the station, which will reply with this card. Each station has its own card design, so some dedicated collectors exist. However, since there’s no legal requirement to send a QSL card, some stations don’t.
≫Niconico Livestreaming
A livestreaming service offered by the Niconico Video site. In addition to official programs run by the site staff, there are also livestreams broadcast by regular users. Since anyone can easily upload a user livestream, there are many of them held every day, and their contents range from simple small talk to coverage of very niche hobbies.
≫SPR
The Society for Psychical Research. Founded in 1882 at Trinity College in London. An academic society founded to promote scientific research into spiritualism and the paranormal. It researches six subjects of study: telepathy, hypnosis, poltergeists and other spiritual manifestations, ghosts, spirit-summoning, and the history of the paranormal. At the end of the 20th century, advances in science greatly accelerated scientific research into the paranormal, and the SPR, which had been in decline for some time, returned to the public eye.
≫Ahriman
One of the dolls Aria uses in her rituals. It has a green striped body and bug eyes. Its name comes from the god who rules over evil itself in the Zoroastran religion.
≫Gorgon
One of the dolls Aria uses in her rituals. It has a yellow and black pattern like a honeybee, and the face of a dog. Its name comes from the three ugly sisters of Greek mythology, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa.
≫Coven
One of the dolls Aria uses in her rituals. It has five eyeballs and its body is covered with stars. Its name comes from a word used to describe a group of witches since the latter half of the sixteenth century.
≫Peter
One of the dolls Aria uses in her rituals. It has a bright purple body and multicolored fabric teeth. Its name comes from one of the twelve apostles of Jesus Christ, who later became a saint.
≫Lilith XII
One of the dolls Aria uses in her rituals. Its head is covered with a paper bag. A prince of black cats who lost its t
ail. Its name comes from a woman in the Book of Genesis who was Adam’s first wife, and who later became the wife of the fallen angel Lucifer.
≫Amenity Dream
A chain of trading card stores with 14 stores around the country. They often hold tournaments in their stores.
≫Vanguard
Full name: Card Fight Vanguard. A trading card game made by Bushiroad. “Lead knights, dragons, mecha and angels, dinosaurs and mermaids! Stand at the Vanguard and fight in this one-on-one card game!” (From the official site.)
≫ICPO
International Criminal Police Organization. Also called Interpol. An international organization which counts police from 190 countries among its members. The organization’s primary function is to facilitate cooperation between police in different countries by helping them exchange information and issue international warrants. It has no police officers of its own, and most of its staff are office workers.
≫Super Ultra Lucky Tea
An original drink created by the owner of Café☆Blue Moon. It was so awful that Yuta was in serious pain after drinking it, but the owner himself says he likes it.
≫Kyam-Kyam
A fashion magazine for women in their 20s. It primarily deals with work, femininity, and girly fashions, and its articles on tips for dressing for work and attracting men are loved by readers.
≫Don’t Miss It POM!
A news and information variety program broadcast Monday through Friday.
≫Hot Reading
A technique used by self-proclaimed fortune-tellers and psychics when they perform “readings” of a target. “Hot reading” is the act of gaining information on a target in advance. By giving out information that only the target and those close to him should know during the reading, the fake psychic can gain the target’s trust.
≫Ramen Saburo
A ramen shop in front of Seimei University. It was originally named something else, but someone drew graffiti on their sign, and that’s how it got its present name.
≫Mumuu
A monthly occult magazine. Founded in 1979, it has over thirty years of history.
≫666
The number of the beast, found in the Revelation of John in the New Testament. The number has also come to be associated with devils and devil worship.
Occultic;Nine: Volume 1 Page 22