Otherside Picnic, Volume 4, page 1
Table of Contents
Cover
File 12: The Matter of That Farm
File 13: Pandora in the Next Room
File 14: The Inviting Hot Springs
File 15: Overnight on the Otherside
Works Referenced
About J-Novel Club
Copyright
File 12: The Matter of That Farm
1
“Hey, look. It’s not that dirty, and we didn’t break much, right?”
What Toriko was saying didn’t make Kozakura stop frowning.
“You’re saying this isn’t dirty? Sure, it’s not broken, but—”
“I know, right?”
“...It stinks of violence.”
The three of us were in Kozakura’s house, looking at her bathtub. The house was pretty old—though it looked like the bathroom had been renovated a little—but dirt had been tracked in, and the shower head was lying on the ground. A towel hung from the bathtub’s cover, soaked with blood. Like Kozakura said, there was a foreboding sense that something not so peaceful had gone down in this room.
Footsteps approached from the hallway, and Migiwa of DS Research poked his head in.
“The cleaners will be arriving a little late. They were saying that they drove down a one-way street in front of the station and got lost. I apologize for the wait.”
“No, it’s fine.” Though Kozakura was acting a little short with him, Migiwa continued in a polite and respectful tone.
“I will handle the rest, so, please, Kozakura-san, and everyone else, sit down and relax... Though, I suppose it is a little odd for me to say that.”
“You’re damn right it is. This is my house.”
Kozakura turned and left the bathroom, still fuming. Toriko and I followed. When I walked past Migiwa, I looked up at him.
“You were playing with the water, right?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
“You said something about borrowing towels...” I said, and Migiwa’s smile deepened.
Three days prior, Kozakura and I were abducted off the street by the agents of a brainwashed cult. They worshiped Runa Urumi, a high school girl who was able to entrance people using a special Voice that had come from the other world. They had originally planned to abduct Toriko, but there was a mix up, and they grabbed Kozakura instead.
The cultists broke into Kozakura’s house, making a second attempt to capture Toriko. But that’s where Toriko and Migiwa—who had rushed to her side when she contacted him—were lying in wait.
Once they dispatched the attackers, Migiwa had interrogated them to learn where Kozakura and I had been taken. Though, obviously, extracting information from mad cultists wasn’t going to be easy. When I asked him how he did it, Migiwa had said that he “merely borrowed the bathroom and some towels,” and that they “played with the water for a bit.”
“Now, I cannot claim to be experienced, but from what people tell me, when you want to get a person to tell you something, the most effective way is to use water. It makes no mess, and leaves no wounds. It also does not require any special preparation,” Migiwa gently explained. He didn’t have to spell it out. Even I could tell he was talking about torture. The director of the DS Research Encouragement Association, Youichirou Migiwa, who looked like a butler in his three-piece suit, was more versed in violence than you would expect just looking at him. But I knew that his forearms, hidden by the long-sleeved shirt he was wearing, were covered in Mayan tattoos.
Scary!
Still, if Migiwa hadn’t efficiently extracted the information from the cultists and then rushed to our aid with Toriko, they would have shot me dead and brainwashed Kozakura. So, obviously, I was grateful, but I was still freaked out. I mean, I was just a university student, after all.
“Could you not talk about that dangerous stuff in my house?”
“Pardon me,” Migiwa apologized politely when Kozakura complained.
We walked down the hallway and headed back to the reception room. The hall was covered in footprints and littered with metal wire and plastic bottles which they must have used to make traps for the intruders. A number of nails had been hammered into the walls, too. We had wrapped green masking tape around them to make them stand out more as a temporary precaution.
Back in the reception room, we sat down on the sofa. Migiwa remained standing.
“Should I put on a pot of tea?”
“Oh, please do.”
“Again, why are you answering, Sorawo? This is my house. Got it?”
Though she said that, Kozakura didn’t actually object to it. Migiwa made enough for everyone.
In between sips of hot green tea, Kozakura grumbled. “You all just go around, doing whatever you want to my house.”
“I apologize. It was an emergency, so we had no choice... DS Research will pay for all of the necessary repairs.”
“Glad to hear it. Can you renovate the place, too?”
“Certainly. I would like to do it in a way that is in line with your desires, so if you could—”
“It was a joke... I only need you to tidy the place up.”
“Hey, Sorawo.” Toriko, who had been quiet for a while now, looked at me hesitantly.
“What?”
“So, for the after-party... What do you want to do?”
“...Huh?”
Me and Kozakura both stared at Toriko.
“Well, you know, we went to the other world and came back, didn’t we? So we’ve gotta have a party.”
Toriko was oddly fixated on going for an “after-party” where we would eat and drink each time we explored the other world. It confused me at first, but it helped me feel like we’d returned to normalcy, so I thought it was a good custom for when we changed sides from the Otherside to the surface.
Kozakura’s teacup clattered as she set it down and stood up. “Okay! I’ve got it! We’re going for meat!”
“Huh? But I don’t have that much money.”
Kozakura looked at me, and snorted. “It’s on me today—you did save me, after all.”
“You’re amazing, Kozakura.”
“You’re the best, Kozakura-san.”
Kozakura glared at us.
“Wow, you two are mercenaries... Well, whatever. Let’s go!”
“Huh? Right now? Aren’t the cleaners coming?”
“I will be here to watch the place while you are away, so please, go ahead.”
With Migiwa sending us off like that, the three of us headed out for an impromptu trip to eat meat.
It probably wouldn’t have been a good idea to leave her house completely in the hands of other people, so Kozakura needed to be able to head home in a hurry if any issues arose. That’s why we decided to look for a place in front of the nearest station, Shakujii-kouen.
“I want to eat some good meat.” That was Kozakura’s preference, and she was paying, so Toriko and I just nodded our heads and looked for a restaurant.
We entered a bar and grill that was conveniently open all day and started off with rosé wine, even though it was still bright out. I’d never thought of rosé as anything more than “that kinda pinkish sweet stuff,” but the taste of it was crisper than I had expected, and I liked it. Next, we ordered prosciutto, flame-seared meat sushi, and red wine. We had the staff cook us some expensive meat that cost 2,000 yen per hundred grams, and devoured the steaks after watching them sizzle on a hot iron grill. I think all three of us were big eaters, but even taking that into consideration, we had extra large appetites today. After fighting the cult, then surviving an encounter with a dangerous entity from the other world, our bodies were craving the nutrition they needed to bounce back from all of that.
A dangerous entity from the other world...
I watched Toriko and Kozakura as I cut my steak. What were they thinking about? The woman they had once known and been close with had appeared before them, now transformed into a horrible monster.
That woman, who I had been catching glimpses of for a long time now, had finally shown herself in a form Toriko and Kozakura could see, too. Even with all their lingering feelings they still harbored for her, those two had to understand that she wasn’t the person they once knew.
They must have given up now, right?
No... I’m not so sure.
If they were still hung up on her after seeing that monster, there was no helping them, but I couldn’t let my guard down. Even though I ignored everything Toriko and Kozakura said or did when they got sentimental, I could tell that their feelings for her still ran deep.
That woman. Satsuki Uruma.
The one who had murdered Runa Urumi’s mother in front of our eyes, then nearly killed Runa herself. We managed to escape back to the surface world, but neither Toriko nor Kozakura had said a word about Satsuki Uruma since.
Maybe they talked about her when I wasn’t around. Even if they did, I didn’t care.
Kozakura’s phone started vibrating on the table.
“It sounds like the cleanup’s done,” Kozakura said after looking at the screen.
“That sure was fast, huh?” I remarked.
“See, I told you so. We didn’t break much,” Toriko quipped.
“Yeah, I know. Don’t look so smug about it.” Kozakura sent a reply, then knocked back her third glass of wine.
“I guess I’ll head back once I finish this. I can’t make him watch the house forever.”
“Migiwa-san’s good at looking after people, huh?”
“He mak
“Hey, you could just act grateful. You’re such a contrarian, Kozakura.”
“I don’t want to hear that from you.”
Their alcohol-fueled bickering dragged on like that, so I decided to intervene.
“You were saying before that he gets a lot of money from the government and businesses, right?”
“His facility looks after the family of some wealthy people. He’s got to be making a hefty profit.”
DS Research had existed since the 1990s, and they secretly provided care to those whose bodies and minds had been warped by the influence of the Otherside. They apparently started out as a group of business executives, diet members, and researchers who were attempting to explore the other world. I was told that because they cared for victims who had been so thoroughly destroyed that there was no hope of recovery, they still received a significant amount of funding from the families. As the person in charge, Migiwa was able to live quite an elegant lifestyle.
Kozakura worked with DS Research, and arranged for them to purchase any artifacts we picked up in the other world. In a way, the reason we could eat this delicious meat right now was that some of that charity had come our way.
It was already evening outside. As I watched the people being spewed out of the station one after another, I caught myself unconsciously searching for that woman in the crowd.
Frowning, I looked down at the wine left in my glass. Because the phantom of Satsuki Uruma had been stalking me for a while now, I’d grown used to remaining alert. That made me upset.
“Something wrong?” Toriko asked. She must have noticed the change in my expression.
“I was thinking.”
“What about?”
“...About what happened yesterday.” Not wanting to give a straight answer, I dodged the question.
“Ohh... It was pretty awful, huh?” Toriko’s brow furrowed as she said that. It looked like she hadn’t picked up on my evasiveness this time.
Yesterday, we were at DS Research’s building in Tameike-Sannou. We had been called in for a job only Toriko and I could do—cleaning up after Runa’s cult.
Runa Urumi (this was apparently not her real name—Migiwa told me what it was, but I forgot it) was an obsessive fan of Satsuki Uruma, despite having never even met the woman. She used the hypnotic voice that she had gotten from the other world to brainwash people and turn them into her believers. While Runa Urumi was unconscious after being taken down by Satsuki Uruma, the cult formed by her followers still remained.
The ones that Migiwa and Toriko had captured were held prisoner in DS Research’s medical facility. When we entered their room, there were a bunch of men and women, all patched and bandaged up, glaring at us with unmasked hostility.
They needed Toriko and me there to undo their brainwashing. With my right eye, I could perceive the Voice coiled around the fanatics’ heads like some sort of living creature. While I looked at them, Toriko would grab that Voice with her left hand, and yank it out. When she pulled that thing out through their ears, the cultists stared vacantly at us, as if they had suddenly woken up. Then their expressions, without exception, slowly turned to ones of despair.
“We were lucky it wasn’t genuine mind control,” Kozakura commented as she stood back and watched us pull the Voice out of people one after another.
“Lucky? How is this lucky?” Toriko muttered dubiously.
The now ex-believers who had been de-Voiced all retained their memories of the time they had been brainwashed by Runa Urumi. Some wailed at the sudden sense of loss, or clutched their heads, realizing the abnormal mental state they had been in... I didn’t know this for sure, but some of them had probably done unspeakable things while under her influence, maybe even cast away their friends or families. The hospital room filled with cries of despair, only growing in number as we continued. It was a disheartening sight.
“Runa Urumi’s brainwashing was powerful and fast acting, but just pulling it out breaks it, so it’s easy to sort out. If this were a more mundane form of brainwashing, it would take a lot more time to deprogram them. I’m saying that this is better than that, at least.”
As Kozakura said that, perhaps unconsciously, she kept digging at her own ear. When she was abducted with me, Kozakura had been brainwashed with Runa Urumi’s Voice, too. She might have been even more disturbed by what she was seeing here than we were.
I had some thoughts about all of this, too. I wondered if my father and grandmother, who had been driven mad by a cult after Mom’s passing, could have gone back to normal if their brainwashing was broken like this. Or would the bonds of trust we lost stay severed, even after being freed from the brainwashing? Not that thinking about it would do me any good now.
By the time the Voice had been pulled out of all of them, we were completely exhausted. DS Research’s medical staff were busily running from one ex-fanatic to the next. The doctor with the shaved head, who had recently been wounded with a nail gun, was running the show, giving orders with one arm in a sling. They were clearly shorthanded, but according to Migiwa, they would be bringing in more people soon. In fact, there were already a number of people in the building, working to repair the damage done to the furnishings and equipment during the cultist attack. We were too tired to care, though, so we splurged on a taxi to take us back home. Maybe the reason Kozakura was so enthusiastic about eating some “good meat” today was that she wanted to burn off the stress from yesterday.
We finished eating, and headed outside while we waited for Kozakura to settle the bill.
“What are you two doing after this? Heading home?” Kozakura asked.
I looked at Toriko before answering. “We’ll stop by your place first. We still need to talk to Migiwa about what happens next.”
“Oh, yeah?” Kozakura replied curtly.
We started walking down the street, evening now having turned to night. Toriko was on my right, and Kozakura on my left. When I noticed we were all walking in a row, it felt a little weird. I wasn’t good at walking with more than two people. When there were so many of us, we blocked the road, and I worried we were getting in the way of the people behind us. That’s why I tended to walk in front of the other two.
Was it because I was walking slow? I guess I’ll go on ahead... I thought, then, Nah, no need, I reconsidered. The road wasn’t that crowded, so I didn’t need to worry about it. I was feeling a bit tipsy as I walked alongside them to the station.
It was autumn now, and there was a chill in the air. The moon floating in the still slightly blue sky shone brightly as it looked down on us.
2
Two days later, on a Saturday afternoon, Toriko and I got off the Seibu-Ikebukuro Line at Hannou Station.
When we exited through the ticket gate, a large van drove up to us. The passenger side window was open, and I could see Migiwa sitting there, so it was immediately apparent that this was our ride, here to pick us up. Remembering how my abduction had played out, though, I still tensed up a bit despite myself.
As I unconsciously backed away, the soft sensation of a palm on my arm brought me back to my senses. I looked down at it to find that, at some point, Toriko had taken my hand.
“You okay?”
“...Yeah. Thanks.”
Toriko looked closely at me as I answered, then nodded and let go of my hand.
“Please, get in,” Migiwa said, and the automatic door to the back seat slid open. There were two rows of seats that were off to the right-hand side of the car.
There was a woman sitting in the front row of seats, and she gave us a slight nod when our eyes met. She wore little makeup, a long-sleeved shirt stuffed into her loose-fitting pants, a waterproof jacket, and thick boots.
The driver’s seat was occupied by a white man who was dressed similarly. He wore a pair of thin sunglasses that looked like they were maybe designed to be used in sports, and his face was half-covered with a beard. In the passenger’s seat, Migiwa wore his usual three-piece suit. We had come in our exploration attire, since it was easier to do things outdoors that way, so Migiwa looked out of place next to the rest of us in the car.
Toriko and I took our seats in the rear row, the door shut, and we drove off. Migiwa turned to talk to us.
“I am grateful that you would come all of this way. Kamikoshi-san, Nishina-san, I look forward to working with the two of you today.”
