Phenomeno Page 4

  “Wrong. My surname is Mitsurugi. Not that it matters.”

  – Mitsurugi, Yoishi.

  She continued being odd. She used her real name online, and then didn't care for her surname.

  ”'五' was on the wall of the toilet?”

  However, as if to say that it was a waste of time, she asked that, and so I pointed to the far end of the second floor. Yoishi silently went there. Without hesitating, she opened the door, turned on the light, and peered in.

  I quietly followed.

  “Right? It looks like the letter '五' right? It's not a schema, right?”

  I said to Yoishi's back.

  “You know of words such as schema?”

  She replied, as if being condescending.

  “Well I mean I am an occult maniac.”

  That was a lie. It was information I just received.

  “In a state where you've received a specific set of information, when you see a meaningless figure, your brain follows the information to create a suitable schematic– that is schema in cognitive science, but this is without a doubt '五.' Even I see it that way.”

  Yoishi said, not caring for my words, as she traced her fingers over the engraving.

  Well, it wasn't like determining that it wasn't schema solved anything. If anything it made things worse. If this was truly a deliberately-written '五', then someone wrote that in this house – or rather, something, and that was in the house.

  ”'六' was near the bath?”

  Having finished observing '五' Yoishi went across the hall to the bathroom with the toilet, turned on the light, and opened the door. She placed her face right next to the symbol engraved into the window sill. When I followed behind Yoishi, I smelled something odd.

  Truth be told, it'd been bothering me since I met Yoishi – but now that I was in an enclosed space with her it'd become clear.

  ”… are you wearing some sort of perfume?”

  Yoishi wordlessly shook her head.

  “No, but you, this smell…”

  And then I realized what that smell was.

  I'd smelled it in rooms during middle school.

  A sour, nose-curdling smell, as if something was rotting.

  ”… Um, I totally understand this is a rude thing to ask a girl.”

  I pinched my nose as I asked.

  “When did you last take a bath?”

  And then Yoishi turned around and looked at me quizzically. And then she looked at the ceiling. And when she seemed like she was searching through distant memories, I had a bad feeling.

  “W… you have to think about it?”

  “I don't quite remember, but maybe last month?”

  “W- what the hell! Take a bath! A bath!”

  “This is, a bathroom.”

  “That's not what I mean! Do you not take showers? Clean your hair?”

  “What does that have to do with this number going down?”

  Yoishi seemed completely bewildered as she asked me, but come on, I'd heard about dirty girls, and I know French royalty were famous for never taking a bath, but this is contemporary Japan. Do high school girls that don't take a bath for a month exist?

  “What you say lacks reason.”

  She said flatly, and then peered closely at the window sill again.

  “It is without a mistake, '七'.”

  And then she turned around and asked, how about '七'? She, really, had no interest in anything other than the paranormal. I sighed, and helplessly guided her.

  That was on the landing toward the third floor.

  That was where the middle-aged man I didn't know was standing during the suspected-association game Yoishi had made me play earlier. I didn't want to follow her there, so I just gestured “over there.” Yoishi wordlessly climbed the stairs, and then leaned toward the wall.

  “Hmm.”

  “That looks like '七' too, right?”

  However Yoishi didn't immediately answer, instead taking a mini-light from her pocket, shined it at the letter 'color_text_七_c_red', and looked all around it.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “This is certainly '七' but – odd.”

  What's odd, I was about to ask.

  Suddenly, Yoishi vomited. She didn't do anything cute like place a hand to her mouth in an effort to hold it back, but rather standing tall with her arms folded, she boldly vomited, which definitely made me take a step back. Used to vomiting. That's how it seemed, and I completely saw it through.

  Dripping vomit.

  Sparkling intestinal fluid, and the remnants of the orange juice she'd been drinking.

  – What was with her?

  Doesn't take baths, takes vomits out in the open.

  And loves the occult, and wears coats during the spring, a psychotic girl.

  However, I finally noticed that the psychotic girl did seem to be struggling a bit.

  “Hey, are you alright?”

  I ran to her and began rubbing her back, and she powerlessly nodded, then wiped her mouth.

  There was vomit on the landing, but she resumed conversing as if nothing had ever happened.

  “I thought it was strange since when you wrote your post. I wonder why the countdown began from 七.”

  “Huh?”

  “Normally countdowns should start from 十 (10) or 九 (9).”

  “How should I know?”

  I mean, ghosts are scary because you don't know what they're thinking. How would a human like me know why something like that began counting down from ”七”?

  “Wrong. The paranormal have no rules, but the other side has intentions as befitting of the other side.”

  Yoishi said as she climbed the stairs. I had no choice but to follow.

  As if to say there must be an ”八” and a ”九” somewhere, Yoishi turned on the lights to the third floor and began peering at the walls. Her posture, as she crawled about on all fours, scampering along the walls, was both creepy and comical. Afterwards, Yoishi began mumbling to herself and didn't respond to me, so I gave up and went back to the second floor. I poured water from the sink next to the toilet into a bucket, and threw a rag in. After all, this is my house, and while I couldn't forget the hollow face of the middle-aged man I saw at the family restaurant, I tried not to think about it, and cleaned up the vomit.

  Ugh, why does vomit smell so bad. Somehow it always entices you to vomit, too. And it was irritating that the one who vomited seemed to not care at all. As if it was obvious that it would be my job to clean after her.

  “Hey, do you not eat? There's only liquid in this.”

  I said with a bit of a nasty tone, but Yoishi, who'd come back down from the third floor, simply mumbled that there was no ”八” or ”九” anywhere. I snapped at her totally depressed reaction.

  “I said there was none!”

  But she ignored my comment and began looking at the walls on the second floor. Half-exasperated, I watched over her as I went down to the second floor with the rag and bucket. Then, I looked at the clock, and asked her, hey.

  “Are you alright being out at this hour?”

  Of course, that was pretty belated, given that it was almost 3AM.

  If I were her parents, I'd be beside myself with anger.

  “I hope you called home before coming out at this hour. I mean I know it's my fault this is happening, but parents are always worried. I always thought my parents were annoying when I was at home, but once you go away you feel gracious for it.”

  However, she wasn't listening to my lecture.

  I noticed that she was completely immobile, staring at a single point.

  “What is it?”

  I asked, but Yoishi didn't move. She stood still, frozen like a mannequin. I stood behind Yoishi and looked where she was looking.

  That was where Yoishi had vomited – and was exactly where the middle-aged man was standing, in my imagination that I only knew about.

  “W… wait a second. Who're you doing a staring match with.”


  When I placed a hand on her shoulder, she twitched, as if a curse had been lifted.

  And then she whispered, ever so softly, “I see.”

  When she turned around, her face was filled with joy. I could tell by the slight blush creeping into her pale face that she was excited.

  “Hey, did you notice?”

  “What?”

  But Yoishi didn't respond, instead turning on her heel and heading toward the foyer.

  “H… Hey, hey, wait.”

  “Let's get out.”

  She quickly put on her deep, black boots, and then walked straight out of the entrance. I hurriedly put on my sneakers and chased after her. I tried not to look inside as I turned off the light, closed the door, and remembered to lock it this time. I stuck close by Yoishi as she staggered down the stairs..

  When we walked near where the mama-cycle was parked inside the garage, Yoishi looked up at the building once more, and said,

  “This building is very interesting.”

  “What're you talking about?”

  “Under the stairs to the third floor. There's a meaningless space.”

  That moment, I felt a chill travel down my spine.

  I see–

  The eeriness that I'd felt all along about this house, I finally understood it. Indeed, it had always felt like something was odd about this house. And that was the area under the stairs which I could never reach. You couldn't enter the space under the stairs from either the outside or inside of the house. You hear about places that don't open sometimes. This was similar in that we didn't know what was inside.

  “And, look at this.”

  Yoishi pointed at the mailbox by the stairs in front of the first floor.

  My full name was written on a piece of paper the size of a business card, and three lines had been carved in, as if to overwrite my name.

  It was – unmistakable.

  ”三” (three).

  The countdown continued.

  Yoishi placed her face almost right onto the engravings and mumbled happily, “this place is real,” but I said with a hollow voice.

  “I'm at my limit.”

  ~fall

  4

  The new apartment was fantastic.

  The pretty, cleaned flooring. The new wallpaper. The sterilized unit bath.

  It wasn't right comparing it to that house, where the previous inhabitant's remnants drifted everywhere, but I definitely learned that it wasn't right to skimp on housing expenses. This was even further from the university, but houses were nearby. I could walk to a convenience store, and there were plenty of streetlights. This apartment, which was brightly lit even at night, was introduced to me by Karasu.

  From what I heard, one of Karasu's acquaintances was the landlord for this apartment, and she was renting a room here too. It annoyed me a bit that the room was simply a warehouse (a place to put paranormal cursing equipment apparently) for her, but I couldn't complain. Rent rocketed to 50000 yen, but it was six tatami 1K with a loft and a unit bath, so it was extremely cheap for the area.

  It had been one week since I looked at that paranormal house with Yoishi.

  Right after noon on a Sunday, on a rare day with no part-time work and no lectures–

  I opened the window and took in the comfortable breeze as I sprawled out in the empty room.

  The previous week had passed by quickly.

  First, I cried to my big sister and borrowed some money, and immediately moved here. I didn't want to enter that house ever again, and it was expensive having to hire people, but it was worth it. Furthermore, this apartment's walls were so thin that you would almost instinctively want to pick up your neighbors' ringing phones, which made it feel like you were among living people, and you could greet people in the hallways, and if you opened the windows you could hear the lackadaisical voice of the bamboo pole merchants. Basically, this place was overflowing with life. For me, that was extremely important. As I'd been drained of mental energy to the extremes, I required the comfort of living amidst people.

  I never met Yoishi again.

  That night, I gave her a lift to the family restaurant and parted ways. Everything about her was a mystery other than the fact that she was a high school student and that her real name was Mitsurugi Yoishi. I spoke with her a bit as I escaped to the train station, but I never found out what was going on with that house. She didn't try to explain, and I wasn't in any hurry to ask.

  However, I had a strange conviction that something bad was there. Every night, I heard something eerie, and I even ate a countdown, but mostly I believed it because of Yoishi's one phrase: “this place is real.” That this was not a place I could deal with. I immediately thought that. If you think about it that way, she was why I was able to make the decision to place myself in such a peaceful place, but–

  It was true what they say, that when the blade is no longer to your throat, you regain your curiosity.

  Now that it was all in the past, I was truthfully somewhat curious.

  What did she notice?

  What was the countdown?

  What is Yoishi anyways? It was hard to explain, but she seemed different from just an occult maniac. It wasn't like she was getting a thrill out of coming close to danger, but rather, she seemed to have no instinct telling her to avoid dangerous areas – in other words, it was hard to explain her as anything but someone wanting to die. Whenever she said something, I felt like the world I believed and lived in was about to crumble apart.

  Sometimes I would take a peek at “Ikaigabuchi,” but Yoishi never appeared in a thread.

  And of course, no one reacted to the thread I'd started, and it'd been buried deep to the point where I didn't want to revive it. Krishna descended upon various threads, but he never touched on my or Yoishi's case. That was real, I wanted to write, but I had no means of proving myself, and I myself felt fuzzy about it, so I kept myself to an ordinary life.

  Indeed – daily life continued.

  An increased living expense and an abundance of light and heat. My scholarship was insufficient, so I began working part-time at an Italian restaurant near the train station. I wanted to pay back the moving funds that I'd borrowed from my big sis too, so I started working whenever I had no lectures. My city survival began as I worked myself to exhaustion and flung a tired smile everywhere.

  A week flew by, and it was that sort of day.

  My first university lecture in a while had just ended, and I was stuffing my textbooks into my bag, when I realized a girl I recognized was staring at me.

  She was short, yet her breasts were big enough to notice through her clothing. Her hair was cut straight like a zashiki-warashi, and her face resembled that of a young middle-schooler, matching her red-framed glasses.

  “Who's that?”

  I stared right back at her, and she cleared her throat once and then came over.

  She started taking something out of her pocket, then put it back. I saw that it was some sort of paper. She walked to me, standing straight and still, and in the end, never took out that piece of paper. She had a bit of a vexed expression as she glared at me (although her babyish face made it lose its bite), and then clicked her tongue and then turned away.

  “H- hey, hey.”

  I couldn't stop myself from calling out to her.

  “What do you want, speak up.”

  The straight-haired girl turned back around and said, “Idiot.”

  “I- idiot?”

  Despite being mild-mannered, I wasn't one to stand being insulted by a girl I'd never met before.

  “Why are you being so rude? What's your name? What grade are you?”

  I asked, but she simply snapped back, “Shut up.”

  “It's your fault to begin with.”

  And then she pointed her small index finger at me.

  “It's because of scum like you that these things keep happening like this. Learn your place, fool.”

  “Fool? You…”

  After that, she
rapidly asked me.

  “Do your shoulders ache? Do your ears ring? Are you able to sleep at night?”

  Was she some sort of doctor's apprentice? Did this university even have a medical college?

  While I was bewildered, the girl finally pulled out the piece of paper from her pocket. She stuck it under my nose. I had no time to take it, as she ran off like a rabbit, and by the time I picked it up, she had already left the classroom.

  ”… the hell was that?”

  No one was left in the classroom by then, so I looked at the piece of paper I held.

  It was like a handmade business card.

  It just read–

  “Beatnik Research Club President - Kurimoto Shina”

  And had the location of the Beatnik Research Club situated on the western wing.

  That night, I saw a dream.

  In my dream, I was still living in that house.

  The old three-story mountain cottage by the river bank.

  There, I was looking at myself. It was like I'd spiritually departed from my body and was floating in space, and was gazing upon “me” living my life. The “me” down there showed no signs of noticing me, and continued living normally. It seemed I was watching a bit of the past. “I” was living carefree, as I hadn't learned of the fear of the noises at night. Hey, come on, stop with this house, I wanted to tell him, but as a person just drifting in a dream, there was nothing I could do. All I could do was observe.

  Eventually, I noticed that Yoishi was sitting next to “me.” The two of us were sitting together on the old sofa I'd picked up after moving. The two of us didn't speak to each other, instead just going on with our lives individually. “I” was yawning as I watched a TV, while she was just quietly reading an old book.

  It was just a dream so it was free to make up any situation it wanted, but I still thought it was odd. However, I also accepted that if I were to live together with her, neither of us would really interfere with the other.

  Eventually, the “me” down there got bored of the TV, and proceeded to stretch, wash his face, and brushed his teeth. “I” thought about studying a bit, but instead, “I” just immediately went to sleep. As I observed myself as an outsider, I realized that I was a pretty boring person. I boasted that I would turn the fortunes of my family's lumber business that was downtrodden, and had departed Shizuoka in opposition of my father and big sister, failed to get into the seminar I wanted, and wandered occult sites. Plus I hadn't even written a single letter to my mother, who I'd promised to send letters to after coming to Tokyo. Finally, I'd moved into a haunted house because of the low rent, and run into a psychotic girl. I wanted to slap myself.