Tohko chortled and puffed out her chest.
“At any rate, our original goal of reaming Maki out hasn’t changed. You’re going to be cutting your heart pretty deeply on that front, Konoha. You can’t go soft on her.”
“What are you talking about, ‘our’ goal? I never made any goal like that!”
“We should shower and come back to this. We’ll have another strategy meeting after we’re refreshed.”
She got off the chair with a lighthearted look and walked toward the door.
Ugh, am I going to be forced to stay with her tonight, too? The fact that she had been shaking over Shirayuki’s appearance last night seemed to be beyond forgotten.
“Right. In the suspense movies, they always get murdered when they go to take a shower,” I muttered, and Tohko leaped into the air.
“Ack! Th-that’s just a superstition!”
She was instantly blubbering and left the room trembling.
I knew that she would be worried beyond belief of what was behind her while she was showering. I wanted her to get scared good.
I imagined how it would be and was feeling a little gratified when a scream came from the hallway.
It was Tohko’s voice!
Had she run into a ghost right away?!
I opened the door and rushed down the hall.
“Tohko!”
I ran as I called her name.
I heard the sounds of other doors banging open and several footsteps approaching.
“Uggggh, wh-what is this?”
I heard Tohko’s voice again.
She was around that corner!
The instant I got there, my feet slipped out from under me—“Ack!”
“Konoha!”
A concussion hit my hips abruptly. I’d fallen unceremoniously to my butt. I felt a cool liquid on the palms of my hands. There was a big puddle in the hallway, and it was making a stain on the carpet.
What was it doing in a place like this? Was there a leak in the roof?
“Konoha, are you okay?!”
Crawling along the floor, Tohko peered into my face worriedly.
At that point, the people who staffed the mansion came in. The butler and the housekeeper and the gardener and the cook, plus the maid Uotani—all of them in a line.
They saw the stain spreading on the floor and apparently thought it was blood because a big commotion started.
“Eee! Th-there’s blood—”
“It’s the ghoul’s curse!”
A hint of madness colored the air and seized hold of normal thought. Tohko stood up and calmed everyone down.
“No, it’s not. This isn’t blood, it’s just water!”
I touched the liquid again, too. It was soaking into the carpet so it was hard to tell what color it was, but it was definitely not blood. It didn’t feel sticky.
Tohko was right. This was water…wait, what?
Looking closer, I saw something like grass was scattered around. When I realized what it was, all the heat was sucked out of my body in one pulse.
“Hey, are these rushes?”
The old gardener picked up a thin, limp weed with his fingertips and held it at the end of his nose to look hard at it, and then his expression turned horrified.
“It is!”
“You don’t think they’re from the pond, do you?!”
“Shirayuki really has been here!”
Tense shouts rose up all over. Uotani put her hands over her mouth, staring in horror at the rushes scattered like the corpses of insects over the dark stain.
Just then, the lights went out.
Darkness fell over us and several screams pierced my ears. People ran into each other, their voices mixed together, and my heart began to shudder with fear. Even when someone plugged in a lamp, it wouldn’t turn on, and the chaos intensified.
“Hey! Do you hear something?” someone shouted. Everyone gasped and there was utter silence for a moment.
In the taut, cool air, our ears pricked fearfully, and there came the sound of water flowing from a faucet.
“It’s in the kitchen,” the housekeeper murmured in a choked-off voice.
Who had turned the water on? Maki? No, she should have been on the second floor…Had someone else snuck into the house?
I recalled that eighty years ago there had been a mass murder over the course of one night, and a shudder ran up my spine.
And then we heard the sound of running water from another direction, as well.
“It’s the first-floor washroom!”
The cook’s voice was shaking. The bath on the first floor was next. And then the second-floor washroom, the second-floor bath…We heard the sound of raging water all over, as if there was a cascade besieging us.
Every faucet in the house was open probably. It was suffocating, just like being shut inside a cage of water. What would I do if I had an attack right now?
“W-we have to stop the water anyway. The water bill will be outrageous,” Tohko said pragmatically, pressed close up against my back. I didn’t mind, but I wished she would quit trying to nudge me forward. Was she telling me to go investigate?
A cold hand brushed along my ribs all of a sudden, and I was struck with terror. When I looked to the side, Uotani was gripping the hem of my shirt in one hand.
She was probably scared. She was shaking.
We all formed into a clump and held our breath as we headed toward the second-floor washroom. It felt as if something was lurking in the darkness, and we moved forward step-by-step, terrified.
Someone shouted, “Augh!”
“H-hey! Don’t make any weird noises!”
“Th-th-th-there’s another puddle.”
On the pitch-black floor, water shone slickly. This hadn’t overflowed from a faucet; there was a trail of water, as if someone soaking wet had passed through here.
Tohko whispered over my shoulder breathily.
“Let’s see where the water goes.”
Uotani, still holding my shirt, jumped.
Someone voiced the opinion that it might be dangerous, but Tohko said that it would be fine since we were all together, and we moved in the direction of the water trail.
If someone slipped now, all of us would fall down. That’s how closely packed we were. We walked on, stuck together, picking out our next step.
The air was filled with a clinging humidity, and a cold sweat broke out on my forehead.
Everyone had fallen silent along the way, so the sound of the water gushing out of the faucet felt even louder.
I wondered what Maki was doing. The atrocity she’d told us about before came to mind.
“…Not a single person…was left alive.”
“…There was one body that had been split open the entire length of their face with a sickle.”
“…One that was impaled through the chest with a spade.”
“…One who’d been shot in the head with a gun.”
“…One who’d fallen down the stairs and broken their neck, and one who was lying there with foam coming out of its mouth.”
The puddles led toward the book room in the western part of the first floor.
The door was partially open.
We held our breath and drew nearer and were instantly assaulted by an intense stench.
“Urk!”
“That stinks!”
Everyone covered their noses. On an impulse, I threw the door open.
Uotani gave a little cry—Ah!—as if to stop me.
The instant the door was fully open, the smell of blood turned rancid hit us like a wall.
Then there was a spsh-spsh of something flopping—
Behind me, I felt Tohko swallow a shriek. Still clinging to my shirt, Uotani stiffened.
Fear was mounting in the core of my brain and my entire body was cold.
This was a total nightmare—
On the floor, a huge number of fish lay scattered about.
There were some fish that were still alive, but
most didn’t move, their wet scales letting off an unsettling glow in the darkness.
But this was supposed to be Yuri and Akira’s holy sanctuary—
Darkness and confusion and fear had replaced the peaceful, gentle backdrop where the lovers had grown closer in their shared feelings. It spread like a bottomless bog before us, letting off a stench that sliced through our gray matter.
Beyond the door was an absolute hell!
Suddenly a light struck us from behind.
Every one of us probably felt as though our lives had been cut in half.
But it was Maki standing there, holding a pocket flashlight. In the face of our tension, she nonchalantly stated, “This is such a circus. I figured bodies would be everywhere like eighty years ago. Looks like everyone’s okay.”
Actually, her face seemed to suggest it was a shame that there hadn’t been any deaths. She slipped past us in our openmouthed shock and went into the room, then pointed her flashlight at the floor. When she did, we could make out the fishes’ mouths and fins flapping. We could even see that their clouded eyes were rolling in their sockets to look at us, and everyone hurriedly looked away.
But Maki walked around calmly, pointing her flashlight and staring around piercingly, seemingly unfazed by the fish scattered on the floor, the chaise lounge, and table or by the stench they were giving off.
Just as I felt a chill go down my spine since Maki acting like that was the scariest thing of all, the housekeeper shrieked.
On the other side of the chaise lounge, a translucent human figure bobbed up mistily.
The fear of planting your eyes on something alien seized us all.
The woman, clothed in a white kimono, stood with her back to us. Pure-white hair fell to her waist.
When Maki turned her flashlight on the figure, it spun around.
A chill stabbed through my heart.
Glittering golden eyes.
Fangs protruding from a sliced mouth.
It was exactly like—
“Ah…ah…”
Her eyes still wide open, Uotani shook her head from side to side. She was making a sound at the back of her throat that wouldn’t form into words.
Shirayuki’s face was covered in a Prajna ghost mask.
With a clank! the flashlight went out. It became pitch-dark again and there was a scream.
People crouching in the hall holding their heads, people fleeing, people raving steadily. Tohko was clinging to me, too.
Uotani stood frozen, trembling.
I thought I heard someone murmur, “Ah…the promise…it’s…,” and then I saw the white figure move with the speed of a bird across the floor and ceiling.
The glass in the window shattered, the curtains billowed in the wind, and the light of the moon shone in.
“K-Konoha…that was…that was…!”
Tohko’s voice quavered at my ear, and she pointed at the window.
Beyond the latticework fitted into the window, thin, bony hands reached toward us.
While one hand rattled the latticework, the other was moving, as if trying to catch hold of something.
Outside the latticework, the Prajna mask peered in. Sunken, gaping, golden eyes—
A string of unnatural things were happening, and it was too much—my senses might have been numbed. Without shouting or looking away, I stared at that bizarre spectacle.
Kicking aside the fish in soggy clumps, Maki ran toward the window.
Astoundingly, she grabbed the arm that was reaching through the lattice and tried to yank it in, but Shirayuki’s arm slipped through Maki’s hand and disappeared into the darkness.
Glaring at the broken window, Maki tsked.
The sound of water had stopped at some point, and the bone-chilling silence filled the room.
Still clinging to me, Tohko lifted her face timidly. Uotani’s eyes were still wide with terror and she was stiff. Maki was the one she was looking at.
Illuminated by the eerie moonlight shining through the window, Maki whispered significantly, “Konoha, if you toss me aside and leave like eighty years ago…next time Shirayuki might appear and turn this house into a sea of blood.”
I’m sure that Shirayuki exists.
How can I communicate the chill I felt when I laid eyes on her, bound by an old vow, shut away, and twisted?
As if the dark shadows lurking in that cursed mansion gathered together and condensed and transformed into the shape of a frightening girl—
In rare cases, such things certainly happen.
Beings that are human but have moments of being inhuman. Bizarre creatures that carry a brutal, primordial soul, somehow enigmatic, which our ordinary awareness cannot fathom.
It is quite simply unrealistic—but undeniably reality—and it left me helplessly astounded, and I could only tremble.
Shirayuki’s laughter rang out loudly, filled with joy, that day.
At the time, the reason behind it was an impenetrable mystery to me.
But now that I am long separated from that summer and people and time have all passed on, I am able to exercise my imagination on that laugh.
Yes, that could only have been—
Chapter 5—The Guest Who Was Too Early/The Lover
Who Disappeared
After all that, the bunch of us cleaned together that night.
Luckily the lights had only gone out because a breaker had tripped, and they were easily turned back on, but even when the room was brighter, it wasn’t as if that made the fish scattered all over the carpet disappear.
We all picked the fish up, removed the rugs, and intently scrubbed the exposed floor with a mop and rags.
“Miss, you and your friends should retire now,” the butler suggested, deeply grateful, but I was in no mood to sleep and joined Tohko in her work.
Maki was picking up fish and throwing them into a bucket with a blasé expression as she’d been doing the whole time.
Tohko had her braids pinned up on top of her head and the lower half of her face covered in a bandanna. With the rubber gloves she wore, she was in full war dress for sanitation. She tried to pick a fish up by its tail, but it looked as if it wasn’t working, and after trying several times, she gave up and focused all her efforts on polishing the floor with a rag. Occasionally she would shake her head rapidly from side to side, as if to clear away some bad thought.
The others were working silently, too, looking exhausted and hardly once opening their mouths.
Uotani also wore a tense, brooding look and didn’t say a word.
It was nearly midnight by the time the room became somehow tolerable. The smell of fish had seeped into my hands and clothes, and I waited my turn to get into the bath, then slathered my entire body with bubbles and scrubbed my skin until it practically split open.
Thus, after two o’clock, I finally managed to lie down in my bed.
Tohko climbed into my bed again, hugging a pillow. I had no energy to chase her off and reminded her before falling asleep, “Please don’t kick me.”
It was after noon when I woke up.
I had developed two beautiful lumps on my head.
“Tohkoooo.”
“I-I’m sorry!”
Tohko said she was going to wash her face and ran off.
Geez… Frowning, I got dressed and left the room.
As I walked down the hall, I thought about the supernatural events the night before and grew depressed.
Up until now I had been theorizing that Shirayuki was human. One person was fully capable of sending a threatening letter and of pouring water off the roof. But what had happened last night—
I recalled the demonic woman with the white hair who had floated before the bookcase and a shudder went down my neck. Was it possible that everyone could see the same hallucination?
And those fish and the puddles in the halls—that was impossible for one person to do. How had they managed to get into the house and do those things without being discovered by anyone?
The more I thought about it, the colder I felt.
Even though she had been exposed to such danger so far, Maki was still unfazed. And she didn’t act as if she was trying to catch the ones responsible for it, either. Was she…waiting for something? But what?
When I started to go downstairs, Uotani came up.
“Morning.”
I called to her, but she didn’t answer.
She wasn’t ignoring me; it was as though she couldn’t hear me. Her eyes were bloodshot and she looked as though she could barely breathe. Her face had gone beyond ashen to pure white, like a candle. Her steps were unsteady, too.
While I was caught up in my surprise at how haggard she looked, Tohko, who had finished getting dressed, ran up.
“Morning, Sayo. Wha…?”
It seemed Tohko sensed that Uotani’s manner was odd, too.
“Sayo, can you come over here?”
She took Uotani’s hand and pulled her down to the bottom of the stairs, then pressed their foreheads together.
“I knew it! You’ve got a fever! And your eyes are all red. You couldn’t sleep last night, could you? You should stay in your room and rest today.”
Uotani finally seemed to have noticed the presence of others. She looked up at Tohko with a trembling gaze and shook her head from side to side, as if frightened of something.
“I can’t…sleep. I can hear…the song.”
“Song? What song?”
Uotani’s voice grew even hoarser. Her face contorted, and her eyes filled with tears before she whispered with difficulty, “My grandmother…taught me…the rhyme…that comes from…the land…of dragons…”
“’The land of…dragons?’”
Tohko knit her brows and looked thoughtful.
My mind was also moving through what the land of dragons could possibly be.
“You know what, let’s go back to your room, Sayo. I’ll go talk to the butler for you.”
Tohko and I delivered Uotani to her room, her head still bent and trembling.
It was a bare room on the first floor about six feet on a side. I saw that a woven ball the crimson of a spider lily had been set on top of her chest of drawers, and a shiver went through me.
Book Girl and the Undine Who Bore a Moonflower Page 11