Phenomeno Read online

  The middle-aged man slowly let me down from his shoulder and laid me by the wall in a sitting posture, and I had nothing to do but listen to their conversation. My powerless body felt like it was being dragged about, and I could only feel an endless sense of helplessness. What happened here, what's happening here, and what's about to happen here, everything was off the rail my life had been following. I could do nothing here. All I could do was listen to the creepy conversation, and be an observer to a creepy act. However, more than the desire to learn the true, my desire to run away was stronger. As soon as possible, I wanted to go out into a bright place.

  “Krishna.”

  Just then, the monk stepped in between the two.

  “It's started.”

  Along with his words, that sound began.

  From somewhere in the building, that sound echoed.

  …. scratch

  Scratch scratch scratch

  Sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

  As if overpowering everything, only that sound echoed. Scratch scratch scritch scritch, something was grinding together. Something was carving together. The sound was the loudest I'd heard. It was almost as if something was trying to crush this place from outside, and I frantically looked around. I was completely in tears, and only the creepy sound filled the world.

  – Please, stop. Forgive me.

  As I started tearfully screaming, Yoishi said.

  “Wonderful.”

  Her happy voice entered my ears, and I became enraged.

  – Wonderful, are you seriously insane? It's beyond sanity to sneak into a house with a ghost milling about using a single candle and just sit there. Ahh, I get it, you're that. You're like a friend of ghosts. Then great. Can you tell your friend to stop scaring me? I'm sorry for barging in on your house. But I didn't know. I cleaned up after myself and left so stop bothering me and go away. I mean, tell the friend to stop following me to my new place and giving me a countdown. I don't know what sort of grudge they have against the world but I'm completely unrelated so stop, tell them.

  Of course, my body wouldn't move and neither would my mouth, but I begged Yoishi with my all.

  However, Yoishi didn't understand my feelings at all.

  “Hey, scared?”

  I heard an inexplicable, hopeful voice in my ear. It seemed Yoishi had come right next to me, but I couldn't open my eyes. So I screamed at her with my soul.

  – Of course I'm scared. I'm super scared. My body won't move and I don't get it and some sound is echoing through my head and only psychos and ghosts are around me. Right, this house only has psychos now. A psychotic administrator that gathers and edits creepy articles, a psychotic woman holding some bizarre weapon despite being of age, some psychotic baldy who seems to only have muscle-building as a hobby. And you. A covered-in-black straight-frontal-hair psychotic girl. And there's some douche ghost that never shows itself but does annoying pranks like carve numbers. Seriously, cut that shit out. Are you all just enjoying your emergency offline meeting right now? You're all just waiting for me to pee my pants aren't you. Hey, come on. Cut it out. I was wrong. I don't want to be here anymore. I don't want to see those numbers anymore. Next is ”color_text_一_c_red” (one), then what? What's next? I don't want to know. I mean if you're gonna kill me, just do it. Stop cornering me and shit.

  – However.

  At some point, the sound had stopped.

  My dark world, with my tightly shut eyes, had become filled with silence.

  What? What? What happened–

  I became worried that everyone had left, but I was also afraid that if I were to open my eyes something else would be there.

  Still, I couldn't just stay like this. I was tired. I'd begun to feel reckless. If you're gonna kill me, kill me. I don't want to get cornered and hunted like this. Just give me a bad end already.

  I opened my tearful eyes. But, I just saw a house, unchanged from before. And everyone was there.

  Krishna stood in front of the door to the bedroom.

  The white-clothed woman stood in the middle of the living room with her eyes closed.

  The monk lingered by my side, and only Yoishi was looking at me with no emotion.

  Everyone was standing at the same spot they were before I closed my eyes. I gazed with my teary eyes at Yoishi's eyes, and then she nodded. And then she looked down.

  I followed her sight.

  To my feet.

  As if cutting across the space between my feet, a thick wound had been carved into the floor.

  “U- uwaaaaah.”

  I screamed, and pulled my sluggish body away. But my hip wouldn't respond, and so all I could do was flail in place. However, I tried to scramble away anyways.

  You know what's coming.

  It was– ”一.” (one)

  “One. The end. I'm tired of this, I wanna go home. I wanna go back to Shizuoka.”

  “Calm down, Nagi.”

  Said Krishna. At some point she'd started calling me Nagi, but I didn't care as I tried to crawl away. I was too busy trying to flee from the number.

  “No. What's the point of staying here? What's going to happen next? What's going to happen to me?”

  “Get a grip, Nagi.”

  Krishna sounded again – goddamnit it must be the monk. Some heavy impact struck my back. And after that, the white-clothed woman said something I couldn't understand. It was filled with strange rhymes I'd never heard before, countless words that made me head go insane–

  But then as I frantically flailed about, a long, black skirt blocked my way.

  It was Yoishi, dressed in obsidian, as always.

  “Move.”

  I said with a trembling voice, but this time it was not glass beads, it was not glimmering, but rather, this time Yoishi had a fascinated look as she reached out with her hand.

  “Give me that.”

  ……… that?

  “What you're holding, that.”

  She said, and I looked at what I held in my hands.

  There was the key to the apartment. It was a key I'd left in my pocket. I was holding it backwards, and on the end of it was wood. For a while, I didn't know what it meant. And then the wood fell off, onto the ”一” that had been cut ominously at my feet.

  “Wha…”

  – No way.

  – No way, that.

  “Yes.”

  Yoishi said in a whisper.

  “The one that was carving numbers into this house, was always you.”

  With those words–

  My consciousness was filled with white.

  6

  “In other words, it was a schema.”

  It was an evening, roughly five days later.

  Krishna was talking to me in the Bea-club room at the university.

  “Or rather, a reverse schema. That house makes people uneasy.”

  Krishna and I were facing each other in the room, under the light from a pretty dawn.

  “The house… makes people uneasy?”

  I repeated like a fool, and Krishna nodded.

  “In the past, 'Ikaigabuchi' investigated similar places too – the structure of the building causes changes in the human psyche toward anxiety, there are actually a number of them around the world. Some of them turn into murder scenes, and others turn the people within into criminals. There's no actual scientific proof for the relation, but I'm of the opinion that they exist. People's minds, after all, are hazy things that you can easily manipulate into leaning one way or another.”

  “W- wait a second. What exactly do you mean?”

  “Basically, that building wasn't built for people.”

  I felt something like a cold hand gripping my heart.

  “I'll avoid saying the name here. But the architect of that building had actually received architecture awards during his time in university. People had high expectations of him.”

  Krishna was illuminated by the golden sunlight, and her straight, black hair glittered as she spoke in remembrance
.

  “He was supposedly a very serious person. Maybe too serious. He was the type of person that wondered what buildings are – and he would lose sleep pondering that. He loved the joyful faces of the landlords so much, and worked and worked. However, he realized the futility that arose when one person asked him for another design, as he saw the house he'd put blood and soul into be demolished in the name of 'renovation.' Families changed. Preferences changed. It's unavoidable, as long as you're living, but he couldn't take it.”

  – If you take care of it while living, it would last over a hundred years. – Sometimes, people should suit themselves to the house.

  “He left those words and is said to have vanished from his atelier one day. His family put out a search request, but no one could ever find him, and some years later he was effectively declared dead. That was over thirty years ago. That atelier was his final work, and had at some point been dubbed 'the house that grants wishes.'”

  Krishna pointed out the third-floor window, toward the residential district.

  “This country tossed aside countless traditions along with its Meiji-era cultural revolution. I'm of the opinion that one of those traditions was the house. Tiled roofs became scarcer of the years, and buildings that housed several generations became rarer. Mass production, mass consumption – that was the era we'd entered. We weren't inheriting treasures anymore, believing instead that you could reset life every few decades. After all, that sufficed for supply and demand. But I think things that were important to the people of this country faded away more and more.”

  After I heard her words, I thought.

  My father was saying the same.

  It takes thirty years to grow a single, sturdy tree. And yet, the Japanese lumber industry found itself in danger of going out of business in the face of cheap lumber being imported. It wasn't that he was worried over his job. He was afraid that the idea – that you could get an unlimited amount of cheap wood – would become ingrained in the minds of the people of this country. In the past, people would pray to the gods of forests, would cut trees while offering thanks, and carefully built houses with them. Whenever they were rebuilding, they carefully tried to reuse wood whenever possible. Even on this earthquake-riddled island, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C5%8Dry%C5%AB-ji Houryuuji had remained standing for a thousand years. The skill 0f the carpenters who understood the finest details and characteristics of wood in the day were, of course, amazing, but they also say that the graciousness toward the important offerings of nature was just as important.

  I always agonized over having been born into a family whose business dealt with lumber.

  Did I take care of buildings as I grew up? Did I ever think about the feelings of those who created the building? I was filled with emotions as I wondered if a day would ever arrive that “his” wish would come true, within this grand city where every day you could see the sites of reform or reconstruction?

  According to Krishna, everything originated from the design of that house, which contained the intent of the architect. When an architectural friend of Krishna took a look, they noted that while it looked simple, it used extremely high-level techniques. They said that the groaning of the house was to give it durability against hurricanes and earthquakes, along with a bit of playfulness to deliberately make it groan.

  “The meaningful space under the stair is the center-point of a sturdily built house. The kitchen, which gets abused the most, was deliberately omitted. The living quarters were deliberately designed to interfere with daily routine. It was certainly a house constructed for durability.”

  Krishna mumbled, as she pushed her red-framed glasses up.

  “Normally, houses should revolve around the inhabitants, but not in this case. People naturally begin to feel like the house was built for something other than themselves, and that was enough to psychologically rattle people. So what happens when a boy who'd just recently come to Tokyo, who has no friends decides to live there?”

  “So in other words, it had nothing to do with ghosts?”

  “Indeed, you're much more mentally fatigued than you probably realize, having moved to a city alone. You may have felt fear at first, but you probably tolerated it. But eventually you reach a limit, and then what do people do?”

  Krishna looked at me with her big eyes.

  “They create a reason for escaping from fear.”

  “Creating, a reason?”

  “Yes. They create a reason for the sounds. In other words, you were subconsciously carving numbers into the walls of the house at night.”

  “But–”

  I was speechless, and Krishna leaned closer.

  “Think about it, Nagi. Where does fear come from? It comes from the unknown. That's why people learn. They research inexplicable things to escape from fear. People's knowledge was born from effort devoted to escaping from fear. Cooking developed out of the fear of starvation, clothing developed out of fear of external temperature, and buildings and weapons developed out of fear of enemies. Everything began from human fears. You thought there was an inexplicable sound at night. However, no matter how much you searched the house, you couldn't find a reason for the sound. Of course. You'd have to know that the house was deliberately designed to make sounds, but you had no way of knowing. Then what do you do? You were cornered, so you created a reason for the sounds. In other words, a reverse schema.”

  Is that even possible?

  No – it had to be. Otherwise, how would the number ”四” have been carved into the back of a shoe I'd been wearing all along? I was wearing it, so it had to have been me.

  My lower body was trembling. It terrified me, the other self that acted irrespective of my will. Or rather, that I didn't understand myself.

  “Well–”

  Krishna sat back down and sighed.

  “It was partly my fault for leaving a building like that alone, even though I knew it existed right near me. Sorry.”

  She said, as she bowed her head, which flustered me.

  “No no no, stop that. It all started with me being greedy, because I wanted to skimp on living expenses and didn't immediately move out. Please raise your head.”

  I frantically said.

  “Mmhmm, it was your fault.”

  She nodded.

  “There are no shortcuts for granting wishes.”

  I could give no retort, and just groaned.

  However, I realized there was one question that hadn't been answered.

  “Hm, wait. Then why were the numbers counting down?”

  And then Krishna shook her head, saying “who knows?”

  “Huh? You don't know?”

  I asked, and for some reason her big eyes glimmered with amusement.

  “I don't know. I don't know, but I think you probably carved a cross on the wall.”

  “A cross? Not '七'?”

  “Right, the number '十' (10). It's possible that it might not have been meant to be a number to begin with. It probably didn't matter to you. Your fear was alleviated by carving anything into the wall, to act as the source of the sounds. However, this is why this incident came forth, a little bit of coincidence. On the place you carved, there was from the start, out of pure coincidence, a scratch. Subconsciously, you'd remembered where you carved '十'. Yet when you woke up, it combined with the original scratch to create '七.”' And that was what gave birth to something else inside you – a 'ghost.'”

  … Ahh.

  So that's why I felt an incredible amount of anxiety when I first saw that number. The feeling of having encountered something far beyond my threshold, that I could not reason out.

  “After that, you continued carving letters into the wall in accordance to the sound you heard after sleeping. The countdown was probably because of your subconscious desire. If the numbers went up, it would continue forever. You were probably hoping that it would eventually stop.”

  After that, Krishna had a bit of a mischievous look.

  “But you're quit
e simple. If the countdown ended, you may have ended your life. I'm glad we made it on time.”

  And with that, she showed me a soft smile for the first time.

  “Alright? If you've had enough of this, don't enter the world of ghosts out of curiosity. And as with living people, pay respect to all existences. That's the main motto of 'Ikaigabuchi,' after all.”

  And the Krishna who said that with complete seriousness matched the imagine I'd had of Krishna the person.

  Although–

  She had a more moe-character appearance than a big brother or father.

  And with that, the complex, tangled thread had been solved.

  According to Krishna, she'd realized that the building caused anxiety in the psyche of its inhabitants the moment I made my first post. In an effort to keep it under wraps, she had left it in Karasu's hands – but Karasu was pretty careless to begin with and then became drunk, so the important message had not gotten across to me, which is why things had escalated to this point.

  In any case, everything was solved, so that was good.

  “I'll give you a warning, though.”

  As I was leaving the house, Krishna had told me.

  “You don't seem to have much tolerance for this area. Maybe I shouldn't be saying it as an administrator for an occult site, but you shouldn't delve into the occult genre too much. Find friends in Tokyo with whom you can bond, get a girlfriend, and construct a proper, solid identity while you dabble in the occult as a hobby, that's the right way to do it. Especially – avoid that girl named Yoishi.”

  … Which sounded about right.

  As Krishna said, Yoishi was abnormal. She was, to put it frankly, like her feet were planted firmly on the other side. That was probably why those urban legends popped up over her odd level of concentration on the paranormal.

  The sunset was extremely beautiful as I stepped out of the west wing.

  The clear, orange color shone straight to my soul.

  Dang.

  I'd become easily moved by this incident, and almost came to tears just out of graciousness toward peacefulness. I hung on, willing myself against crying. There were a lot of students about, and a feeder high school was just on the other side of the gate to the west wing. There were a number of high school girls going home, too. I didn't want to embarrass myself as a university student.