Phenomeno Read online

  “My height grew!” “I got a girlfriend!” “My hernia got better” “I got a job” “I won a lottery!”

  Every forum had those types of posts.

  “Hey, hey, are you serious?”

  I'd stood up and kept reading.

  It seemed those words written on the notebook and the wall – “Please fix my sickness” “I'll do whatever you ask if you fix me” had caused such rumors to spread. There was even a wiki with information, so I took a look.

  There's a resources room in the basement of the abandoned hospital

  There's writing on the wall saying “I'll do whatever you ask if you fix me”

  Say “〇〇〇〇 will fix you” three times at the wall, using your real name

  Say your wish, “In return, give me △△”

  Afterwards, return something in the hospital back to its original position

  Say to the wall again, “〇〇〇〇 fixed it”

  Your wish gets granted

  Was how it was summarized.

  “Pathetic.”

  I groaned.

  And as I read other related sites, I slowly became depressed.

  I found someone screwing around inside that hospital. Someone burning medical records. Someone peeing next to that, and another making a peace sign with a beer can.

  “I see. No wonder Krishna would be enraged.”

  She always said.

  – Recently, Japanese people have been rapidly losing their sense of ethics.

  Traditionally, the Japanese were a race that paid the unseen quite a lot of respect. That probably lead to Shinto, and in any case, Japan had a lot of gods. As with the phrase “if you die, you become a saint,” no matter how much you may hate it, there are lots of festivals for gods during life. For contemporary people like us, our devotion to such festivals may have thinned, but I didn't dislike the Japanese way of respecting the unseen. Of course, at my rural place, we believed in the mountain god quite fervently, and so it may just have been more normal for us to believe in the sun god and such.

  And then I looked at the bag I'd left near the living room door.

  I crawled over and took out the notebook. It was the journal filled to the brim with the clean writing of the eight year old who had departed from this world. I opened the yellowed, worn pages and read it from the start.

  The boy had apparently first come to the hospital for a check-up. He was eager to go back home. But his stay lasted longer, he underwent more examinations, and his words lost their energy. After that, he began writing mostly about what he'd do when he left. Ride a bike. Play soccer with friends. Go out with his family. Go fishing for crayfish. Play video games. Run hard. He began wanting things that children normally do. When I got to the half-way mark of the notebook, he began just wanting to go home. He wrote that the examinations were tough. He wrote often about his seizures. I held my breath at the heavy expressions used by this patient.

  And then I realized.

  Why I'd clutched at the notebook in the darkness.

  And why I brought the notebook out and never let it leave my side.

  I couldn't stand it. That this boy who had died young would be left in that dark room.

  He was – me.

  I had infant asthma when I was child.

  It went away as I grew up, but at the time I panicked just from the onset of symptoms. It felt like air was being sucked away from my surroundings, that I'd been smashed into a bottomless, deep ocean alone, as I was beset by a severe inability to breathe. That blinding despair – it still remained soaked into me. When I was sleeping and felt an onset, I'd run crying to my parents. And when that happened, I found one thing more comforting than any doctor or medicine – my mother's palm. That warm palm petting my back gave me a mysterious sense of comfort, and my seizure would stop.

  I dropped my hand on the last page of the notebook.

  “Please fix my sickness.”

  I had a mother, but I wondered if this boy had someone to ward off the suffering.

  Did he have a safe place to run to?

  That was probably the reason why I brought this notebook with me.

  Suffering until death and continuing to suffer in a haunted spot, I couldn't forgive that.

  However, I sighed.

  I still didn't know what to do with this notebook. If I were to take care of it to the end, it would probably be best to wipe away the letters on the wall, but I didn't have the courage to return.

  “Sheesh… I'm such a worthless wuss.”

  I scratched my head. And then.

  Suddenly, my cell phone vibrated.

  I jumped a bit and answered without checking who the caller was.

  “Yo! Little Nagi!”

  The bright, carefree voice echoing from the receiver froze me.

  “It's me, me. How ya doin'?”

  “H… Hi, sis.”

  – Yes.

  It was Yamada Akira, genetically my bigger sister.

  “Whaddaya mean, 'hi, sis'? I toldja to lemme know when you're coming home for summer.”

  Incidentally, my big sis was a bit of a gangster back in the day, so she still talks like that.

  “Ahh, sorry, um, about going home. Umm, how about around the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bon_Festival Bon festival? Like, around July.”

  “Hey.”

  Her voice dropped an octave across the phone line, and I shivered.

  “Said tell me an exact date. I work, y'know, I need ta ask for paid leave. Yessir?”

  Akira, four years older than me, graduated with a two-year degree at a university near our home in Shizuoka and worked at a company near home. I'd never won against her in a verbal spat, and I don't think I could win against her in a physical brawl either. I'd also become indebted to her because of the previous incident. Basically, I was in the worst position in terms of leverage.

  “Mum and dad are waiting for their useless son, and you're all grown up now. Learn to pay your elders respect.”

  ”… I know.”

  “Hmm? What's with that crappy answer?”

  “I'm sorry. I understand.”

  “So, when? Around July?”

  “Umm. They should post the exam dates next week, so I'll call you immediately after that.”

  “Mm. Next week. If y'don't call me by next weekend I'ma beat you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ahh, also.”

  “Yes?”

  “The bonfire this year, we're takin' care'a it. Get home before Bon festival.”

  And she hung up. I stared at the time displayed on the cell phone LCD reading 1 minute 37 seconds and sighed.

  My sister Akira, who changed the atmosphere of the room in a mere 1 minute 37 seconds – terrifying.

  I looked up at the ceiling again.

  – I had my hands full. I was carelessly sticking my hands into lots of things and then leaving them be once I'd gotten in over my head. I'd try living at a cheap place and run away, becoming indebted to my sister in the process, and it wasn't even like I was paying much attention in school, nor was I intending to spend my life studying the occult like Krishna. And now I didn't even know what to do with a notebook I'd taken from a haunted spot.

  Briefly, I thought of Yoishi's white, sullen face.

  She was incredibly beautiful, but her emotionless, machine-line face was like that of a doll.

  There was no way I'd be able to handle her.

  I rolled over and fell asleep at some point.

  I was in a white, foggy place.

  There, Yoishi was laughing, an expression I'd never seen before.

  – Hey, you can laugh, after all.

  I said, but she didn't seem to hear. Not noticing me, she happily mucked about. She was playing about with something that was slithering about below. I thought it might have been a dog or something, but when I looked toward her feet, I was aghast. There was a snake.

  Or – could I call it a snake, as only its torso was incredibly long. At the end of the tors
o was a face. And, it looked like Yoishi. Yoishi's normal, melancholic, darkened face was stuck there. And then human Yoishi just kept kicking it, laughing to her heart's content. And both of them said at once. Why. Why – it shouldn't feel good kicking a person. I said, but the human Yoishi just laughed. The snake Yoishi went silent, as if saying pathetic. It's alright, this child is a bad child. So said human Yoishi as she resumed kicking. It's alright, I'm bad. The snake Yoishi said that and continued suffering while being kicked. I kept shouting and shouting to stop. But the more I shouted, the more they invested themselves in kicking and being kicked.

  Eventually, snake Yoishi's stomach was kicked open, and reddish-black blood began seeping out–

  I opened my eyes.

  … What sort of dream am I watching?

  The room's light remained on. I looked at the cell phone for the time in a daze, and it said 1AM. I'd been sleeping for just about six hours. My throat felt thirsty, so I stood up and was about to get some water from the kitchen.

  I heard a bizarre sound from the apartment hall. Something that sounded like dragging. Was it my neighbor? I thought of leaving it be, but eventually that something went thud and bumped into something. And then silence.

  ”…Now what?”

  I fearfully crept to the door, looked through the peeping hole, and was shocked.

  There was a revenant.

  No–

  Mitsurugi Yoishi, who looked like a revenant, was standing there in her school uniform.

  “H… hey, what're you doing?”

  I asked through the door, but she didn't respond.

  I had no choice but to unlock the door, and open the door, and there was Yoishi wobbling in place.

  “I'm asking what you're doing there.”

  When I said that again, Yoishi seemed to have finally recognized me. Her glass bead-like eyes turned to me, and she mumbled, “Oh, you.”

  “What do you mean 'oh, you.' Don't act like you've coincidentally met me when you're standing in front of my house. Since when were you th-”

  -ere I was about to finish, and then I realized.

  Yoishi was drenched from the top of her head down. Her drenched blouse became transparent and I could see her undergarments, which made me want to turn away, but I could see brown water dripping from her skirt.

  And – putrid. It was the most putrid she'd ever been.

  “Were you cleaning mud or something?”

  I asked, pinching my nose.

  “I have never done such work.”

  She answered with a serious look. Good god, it was impossible to have a conversation with her. In any case, shouting at each other in the hallway this late at night would bother others, so I let her in. And when I closed the door her odor was even more painful. I immediately decided that there was nothing I could do about the contamination of the hallway. But henceforth, I needed to protect this. I decided to eliminate the rotting odor before it reached the living room.

  Come, I grabbed her sleeve, and then dragged her into the unit bath. On the way, her hair, her uniforms dripped brown droplets and I rolled my eyes.

  “I'll find a jersey or something so take a bath.”

  I said and pushed her in and shut the door.

  I heard “I hate baths” from inside, but.

  “I don't care, get in. Wash your body at least three times.”

  I shouted, and then I started going through the cardboard boxes I'd left unopened since moving in.

  Even if it were the cusp of summer, she'd catch a cold like that. And the biggest problem was this sewer stench. I'd just moved into an apartment with new wallpaper, so this was too much. From the back of a cardboard box, I found a pair of jersey clothes that had been sent from home, and went back to the bathroom. But I knew the moment I went closer. The sharp odor wafted in the air, and the bath door was open.

  “I said wash-”

  “I figured out the identity of that abandoned hospital.”

  Said Yoishi, whose eyes were tired but twinkling.

  – Ah, why.

  I'd forced Yoishi to sit in front of the bath tub in the unit bath, and was washing her hair with a shower. I'd been spraying her with hot water for some time, but the brown water kept leaking out like a sewage drain.

  It seemed Yoishi had gone back to that hospital alone. She'd returned the moment she woke up at noon, but after doing some investigation it took her until six to leave, and everything was dark by then. Her penlight battery had died, and after wandering the night mountain for a bit she fell into the river.

  “Use a taxi or something.”

  I said, and she fell silent.

  ”… Don't tell me, they turned you down?”

  ”……”

  … I guess it couldn't be helped with her this drenched.

  Probably, she'd walked to the train station like this, and ignored all the shocked looks as she came here. I sighed, imagining Yoishi sitting soaked, with her immediate vicinity vacated.

  “Alright, Yoishi.”

  I said as I kept spraying her hair with hot water, as a senior.

  “In this world, taking care of your looks is important. They say people aren't what they look like, but the first impression is quite important. You can get a good start just from that. So at the very least, take a bath every day. If you're going to someone's house, go at a normal hour. I'll tell you now because you look like you don't care about the time, but it's 1:30AM. Normal people are asleep.”

  But Yoishi wasn't listening.

  She'd clasped her long eyelashes together and looked like she was comfortable staring somewhere else.

  This was starting to become silly, but the brown water had finally returned to being clear, so I put shampoo all over her head and forcefully rubbed. Bubbles rose, and the unit bath was filled with the scent of shampoo.

  “So what'd you find out about that hospital?”

  When I asked that, Yoishi answered, eyes still shut.

  “I have nothing to do with the incident that happened there.”

  “You mean – about Zippo's friend?”

  Yoishi nodded slightly.

  “Then, what about you disappearing?”

  “I don't want to talk about that.”

  … don't want to talk about that?

  Then why'd you come here?

  I thought, as I kept washing her hair.

  “There's a ghost online.”

  She said, words that made no sense.

  “Have you read self-responsibility-type horror stories?”

  “You mean those ones that say 'it's your own responsibility if you read past this'?”

  Those were famous online, horror stories that were said to curse you just by reading them. There were several patterns, like becoming possessed by knowing the story, or being possessed if you understood it, those types. But I didn't really believe them.”

  “Those are make-believe, right?”

  I said, but she began explaining, “not all of them.”

  “Ghosts are very sensitive to things that notice them.”

  The way she said it gave me goosebumps.

  “If you talk about ghosts, ghosts gather. If they know you can see, they come. All of those stories involve that concept. I said amusing stories always have some sort of oddity to them – but that's why. If something says the truth about ghosts, they begin having strange wordings. After all, they depict the truth of the other side, that humans can't understand. That's why when a story has some incompleteness, it's actually complete.”

  She always spoke at length whenever it came to ghost stories.

  “I don't get it, but –”

  I asked anyways.

  “What do self-responsibility-type horror stories have to do with that abandoned hospital?”

  “It's the same type, when it comes to being possessed once you know the truth.”

  At those words, my goosebumps crept from my neck to the bottom of my feet.

  In other words, she wanted to say that I shouldn
't ask anymore. Krishna always said, if you peer into the other side, they would also see you. They were saying the same thing, but they had different effects.

  “Basically,”

  Yoishi added.

  “The person who became hospitalized had nothing to do with me. I'm fine with just figuring that out.”

  She closed her eyes again and went silent.

  After that, she wouldn't answer me anymore.

  … So to summarize.

  She felt some level of responsibility for what had happened in the past. That someone who'd gone to the horror spot with her had become hospitalized. And that she knew the place was dangerous. Even if she couldn't stop them, she wanted to know the answer, and had visited the hospital and learned enough to satisfy herself.

  I didn't understand the identity of the hospital, but, for better or for worse, I was busy. I was enjoying washing Yoishi's hair as the shampoo bubbled like a summer cumulonimbus cloud.

  No shame in admitting it, I enjoyed cleaning. I enjoyed the feeling of watching something dirty becoming clean. People around me said I was weird, but I liked cleaning ventilators, which are considered tough to clean. Using a toothbrush to remove the oil stains: I felt a lot of excitement whenever I could see the original metal. Look, this thing is actually this pretty, that sort of feeling. I didn't really get it, but like the last scene of the ugly duckling: when the duckling is actually a swan, I like that sort of thing. The old European story, about bear hide, and such. In that sense, Yoishi's dirty, dirty head was a fun challenge to me.

  In the end, I ended up shampooing her hair three times. Afterwards, I rinsed it too, and almost felt regretful that my house had no treatment, because Yoishi's hair had become so polished and smooth. I placed a tower on her head and wiped.

  “See, look. If you clean it properly, it becomes this pretty.”

  I wiped the fogged mirror in front of us with the towel to show Yoishi her face.

  As our eyes met in the mirror, my heart skipped a beat.

  Yoishi, with her clean, wet hair, was incredibly beautiful. Her smooth skin, her thin shoulders were incredible, and her clear, black eyes were as beautiful was the night sky. She was probably just dazed, but her half-opened lips had a seductive curve.