Phenomeno Page 16

  And, silently accepting the gaze that must have looked like they were prepared to take her breath away, the girl moved.

  She raised her small right arm, and pointed it.

  At – the top of the rooftop fence. There, where previously there were only a few, were enough ravens to cover the sky in black, gazing at me as if ready to carry me to the other side. They were probably looking at me the whole time. And rather than interject, they simply observed. What the blue-clothed is, who the girl is, and what is happening, they understood it all, yet they just watched. As they have always done – and will continue to always, they will keep watching countless thoughts being extinguished in the endless river of time.

  You shouldn't speak of it. If you speak of it, you become acquainted.

  – Then, then, what should I do?

  What should I do, having become acquainted so?

  Then, I feel like I heard the echo of a wind chime that might have been placed and forgotten.

  Whether that was the girl's voice – that was one thing I couldn't remember at all. But, those words that sounded like wind chimes suddenly descended into my head.

  “Throw away your name.”

  – Throw away my name? Why do I need to throw away my name?

  But oddly, I understood that it was correct, and that it was the only way to escape. Otherwise, I would be pursued relentlessly until I died. But – but, that's impossible. This name is mine, and only mine. It's proof that I was born into this world, and was engraved into me with hopes and prayers. To throw that away meant to throw away what I held dear. If I throw away that name – then I would cease being me. I would cut ties with the family and friends and dear people that I had made ties to all this time.

  I tearfully complained, but the girl with the ransel silently stared at me.

  The girl simply let the wind play with her long, strange, black hair. Even though we stood so far apart, I could tell how beautiful her face was. Extremely, extremely, beautiful – no, that didn't do it justice. The girl was like a masterpiece bisque doll that a famous craftsman placed heart and soul into as a final work. A bizarre dissonance, one that made you feel like it couldn't possibly exist in this world. Those were the girl's eyes. Her face, as if blessed by God, and her eyes, as if loved by the Devil, contrasted and horrifically sublimated her beauty.

  I felt like I was being swallowed by the dark eyes she stared at me with, and then the girl nodded slightly.

  ”………. Ah.”

  When I realized it, I felt cold air knife across my skin. That was not coming from the blue-clothed, but rather from the black eyes of the girl with the red ransel, and when I realized that, the tears I'd been holding back flowed forth. I'd been holding back because I felt like crying was an admission of defeat, but – I couldn't hold back anymore.

  – That girl already had no name. She'd long since thrown it away. Even… even though she was so young. She was still six or seven. But she'd already squeezed through something that had forced her to abandon her name, and had shown up just to tell me what to do.

  “My name?”

  And, then – the blue-clothed me asked, with a furious expression.

  I managed to steady my knees, as I was about to topple over, and I looked at the black-haired girl, pleading. She was still pointing. Pointing at the ravens.

  As I cried, I thought of my mom's smile.

  – If you die, it's over. As long as you're alive, you'll find happy things. You can just store the name within your soul. Give it to the person who wants it.

  I nodded–

  And then the name in my heart cut through, and that day, I declared.

  “I'm, Karasu.” [Karasu in Japanese can refer to crows and ravens – I previously thought he was referring to crows but I guess not!]

  “I know everything, yet I travel the darkness between this shore and that shore without telling, Karasu.”

  ◎

  It was my room.

  【Ahh – failed, again.】

  When I came too, he only left behind those words, which felt like they were accompanied by a bitter laugh, and disappeared from the internet. I wiped the huge amount of sweat off my hands – and then closed the browser. It closed without any issues. I tried opening the browser again and looked at the browsing history, and it contained the dating site, but nothing afterwards.

  I rubbed my eyes, and half-opened my mouth in exasperation. I took out a cigarette with my trembling fingers, and placed it in my mouth. Without lighting it, I sank back in my chair, and looked up at the ceiling.

  – Jeez, really. Just, jeez.

  I've lived since that day, having thrown my real name away. That's why I'd forgotten everything about that name.

  “A memorandum indeed – quite a memorandum.”

  ☆☆☆

  After I wrote that, I stopped my fingers.

  On the LCD display of my tablet terminal, were the words that I had engraved myself.

  I quickly scanned through it again, and suddenly felt odd. At the same time, I wondered why I decided to write a memorandum, and felt terrified. I'd never even kept a diary before, so I thought about deleting it – but in the end, I saved the text, and placed it in a private folder. And then I turned off the terminal, and placed it in my bag.

  I was alone in a taxi, going through the darkened city.

  I squinted at the oncoming headlights, gazed absent-mindedly at the illumination in front of the train station, and thought. If I hadn't thrown away my name then – would I have really died young like Haruka-chan and mom and Kimihiko?

  I didn't know. Did they die because the “blue-clothed” had appeared, or did the “blue-clothed” appear because their death was decided; I couldn't figure even that out. Speaking of not knowing – where I am, whether I'm alive, sometimes, I get confused. For instance, do the people outside of the window of this taxi actually exist? The countless bluish-white humanoid lights sometimes look like lighting for tropical fish, and the people feel like Neon Tetra swimming in an aquarium. An aquarium named an endless dream.

  No – come to think of it, I hadn't dreamed in a while. But that was because I couldn't sleep deeply, and even though I must have been seeing things like dreams, I also felt a sense of loss, as if that scene had fundamentally been ripped away as payment for waking up in this world.

  But, really, sometimes–

  When I wake up, I feel the vestiges of something.

  That was the sound of crying. I realized that it was like the voices of countless ravens crying somewhere.

  As if they were trying to tell me something important, yet those voices that could never be understood, may have been engraved in my pure white dream world, sharply and deeply. Maybe it's the grudge of a raven somewhere that had died for me.

  In the end, whether that blue-clothed was a demon, a grim reaper, or some wandering ghost, I never found out. Even so, I was sure that the true form of the blue-clothed was the time of death, and that it was like an unnamed stamp. I don't know why such an unfair existence wandered around this world, but it seemed that once you engrave your name, it functions.

  And, because I had engraved a false name–

  When that day comes, what sort of death will I face?

  Not that I would know, having already died, but for some reason, I thought it wouldn't be a pretty death. At my funeral, I wouldn't have a pretty face for people to look at, and people would say you shouldn't look – no, it might even be a funeral where my corpse doesn't even look like one. As if I were set upon by something that awaited my death for a long time, scattered about as if devouring my “death”–

  And then, I abruptly thought of a word.

  Lucifer Blue.

  Wasn't that blueish-white light used to light aquariums called that? (That took forever to find – I can't find any confirmation that this is true outside of Japan, but it does seem that a while ago those blue LEDs were called “Lucifer Blue”)

  “I see.”

  I smiled coldly, and po
inted my finger at the people on the other side of the window glass, meandering about like tropical fish. The tip of my finger touched the glass, and I found again that they cannot reach me.

  From their perspective, it may be me, across the glass window, that looks like a tropical fish.

  And then they must sometimes be stretching out their finger. The fingertips that I would never be able to see. Yet from their side, they can't find my place, either.

  ○

  “Welcome! Alone?”

  As soon as I entered the family restaurant for the offline meeting, I was greeted by a cute waitress.

  “Hmm, well…”

  I glanced around the store, with its bright pop music and – ahh, someone had arrived ahead of me.

  The newbie to the occult site Ikaigabuchi that everyone knew of as a wuss was sitting alone, and writing a letter rather fervently.

  I tried to creep up behind him, the host of today's offline meeting, when–

  Suddenly, cold wind swept through my soul.

  With that damp sense of death, the scene of that day suddenly reawakened.

  That time, appearing on the rooftop, that little girl with the red ransel.

  That inorganic beauty and lonesome bearing, was vividly drawn before me.

  ”– Ah, so that's how it is.”

  If that girl from then truly existed, and still lived somewhere.

  And maybe, if they were still struggling through the other side of the darkness alone.

  I swallowed my words there, and silently closed my eyes.

  The ravens always know everything. And they never speak of it.

  That's why they're misfortune, and beauty. Because they can see what their words would bring about. Because in the end, others can't change peoples' destinies. Because they know how sinful it is to speak of what they know.

  That became – starting over today – my principle.

  ….. What? Isn't fortune-telling a combination of cold reading and hot reading, an occult style of therapy? Yep, that's right, exactly.

  But, but I did say, didn't I? Generally?

  That means, of course, that there're exceptions–

  Because you know, this world is an abyss, and it's endlessly entertaining.