Otherside Picnic, Volume 2, page 1
Table of Contents
Cover
File 5: The Operation to Rescue the U.S. Forces at Kisaragi Station
File 6: Resort Night at the Beach of the End
File 7: Attack of the Ninja Cats
File 8: Little Bird in a Box
Works Referenced
About J-Novel Club
Copyright
File 5: The Operation to Rescue the U.S. Forces at Kisaragi Station
1
The smell of burning meat hung in a dark room.
Each time the red tongues of flame licked at the fat, the fire grew in intensity. The rising smoke stimulated the nose. This smell would adhere to clothing and hair alike, and it wouldn’t go away for some time...
July. With the rainy season over, Tokyo marched onward into summer.
New heat records were being set by the day, and I was pale with worry about the approaching final exam season. In a surprise twist, regardless of what I might be getting up to in my abnormal life exploring the other world, my university courses and papers continued to exist.
There was a time when I’d had my doubts. In true ghost stories, there were plenty of narrators who had these unbelievably bizarre experiences, yet they forgot them for a long time and went back to their daily lives as though nothing had happened. I’d always wondered if that was really possible, but now that I found myself in the same position, I understood.
No matter how bizarre the experience, it was possible to return to your regular life. If you didn’t think about it, it was fine—your body would move on its own.
That was how great the power of daily routine was. It was a sort of homeostasis, the same as the way the human body maintained a stable internal temperature. One mildly mysterious experience couldn’t break down that routine.
On the other hand, there were those who could never return to normal.
Those whose bodies were broken. Those who’d lost their minds. Those whose relationships with friends and family were messed up by the inability to make anyone believe in their experience.
Even if they didn’t do enough damage to utterly destroy a person’s life, there were times when encounters with the bizarre could penetrate the armor of homeostasis and leave scars. Someone might be left unable to sleep without the lights on, become afraid of the sea, or have memories from a certain stretch of time become vague.
In some, their fear might get reversed, turning into angry outbursts.
...Like with Kozakura, who was in front of Toriko and me right now.
We were seated at a table at a yakiniku restaurant, an oppressive silence hanging between us. Even with salted beef tongue sizzling away on the metal net in front of her, Kozakura’s expression remained harsh.
“Um, Kozakura-san. I think it’s fine now...” I hesitantly said, causing Kozakura to glare at me through the smoke.
“You think this is fine? Don’t expect me to forgive you so easily.”
“Uh, no, I meant the meat. I was thinking it looks like it’s ready to eat.”
Kozakura furrowed her brow, snorting indignantly, then slowly picked up her chopsticks and took some beef tongue from the net. Three whole pieces.
“Ohh, it smells good! Let’s hurry up and dig in, too, Sorawo!” Toriko said in an excited voice, letting her chopsticks hover over the edge of the net without permission.
“...Do you even understand what today is about?” Kozakura took a shot at her before I could. “This is a meeting for review and reflection. One where you two reflect on what you did, and apologize to me.”
“Okay. Sorry. You’re right—it is.” As she gave that meek response, Toriko grabbed a piece of beef tongue and stuck it in her mouth with a thoughtful look on her face.
“Mmm! That’s good!”
She’s not reflecting on anything, I thought as I reached out with my chopsticks.
...Ohh. This really is amazing. It tastes so good, even with just lemon and salt.
“What do you want to cook next? Any preferences on order?”
“Anything works, just cook whatever,” Kozakura said, not seeming to care, and took a sip of her beer. The medium-size mug she was using looked awfully big for her little body. It made me feel like I was giving alcohol to a minor. It seemed like she was aware of how it looked, and when we ordered, she produced her driver’s license before the staff said anything.
Toriko laid out some chuck on the net; she was probably better at doing this than I was. This was the first time in my life I’d ever come to a yakiniku place, so I decided to leave it to her.
The reason we were having our after-party at a yakiniku place was the result of a strong insistence by Kozakura. To be more precise, it was because, as Kozakura had said, this was a review and reflection party.
In our last expedition to the other world, I abandoned Kozakura alone in the dangerous night there to search for Toriko.
Inside a massive glitch that took the form of a town, I used the power of my right eye to turn Kozakura into a plant. With night having fallen, I thought she would be safest like that. Inside that glitch, my perception defined the environment around me. I made my decision based on the belief that, if I perceived Kozakura as a plant, she could escape from the gaze of the other world’s monsters.
Kozakura had told me herself that she was scared to death of the other world, so I thought being left alone would frighten her even more, and she’d get mad at Toriko and me for having dragged her into this. However, when I found Toriko, brought her back, and the three of us were together again, Kozakura was acting weird. She seemed dazed, and only gave non-responses to anything we said to her. Even after we returned to the surface world, she was still not talking much. When we escorted her home, she shut herself inside and locked the door without so much as a good-bye.
I was wondering, Is she okay? Then, before I knew it, a week had passed. I got a sudden call from Kozakura, and when I answered the phone, she told me this with a voice full of rage:
“Screw you! I’ve had enough of this bullshit from both of you!!”
It seemed that, after she’d been through such a frightening experience, her mind had wandered off somewhere else for a while.
“Meat...” Kozakura said as I was apologizing profusely over the phone.
“Feed me meat. My anger won’t subside until I’ve had yakiniku.”
“Erm...”
“Good meat. I want quality. If you take me to some cheap all-you-can-eat place, I’ll press your hands against the burning-hot net until it leaves a stylish checkered pattern.”
“Um, is this supposed to be my treat? I don’t have much money... Toriko’s the rich one...”
I got that far before I was cut off by a torrent of verbal abuse from Kozakura.
This was an adult who lived in a high-class residential area in Shakujii-kouen, and she was making an impoverished university student pay for her. That’s pretty awful.
The situation being what it was, I talked to Toriko, and we agreed we would have an after-party, or rather a review and reflection party, with the three of us together. Toriko chose the place, a short walk from the west exit of Ikebukuro Station, in an area where public order seemed a little dodgy. The cost hurt, but it certainly was tasty... I never knew there were so many kinds of meat. I was smiling despite myself.
“Sorawo-chan, what are you grinning for?”
I realized Kozakura was looking at me like I was weird, so I covered my mouth. “Sorry. The chuck was just so delicious.”
“Well, it’s fine. You’re the ones paying, after all,” she said in an exasperated tone. I snapped back to my senses. That was right! Toriko and I were footing the bill.
“Toriko! Don’t over-order like you always do.”
“Whaa, we’ll eat it all. It’ll be fine.”
“This isn’t about the amount of food! And hold on, I’m the one who always ends up having to finish it, right? Toriko, you always order everything you can, and then slow down towards the end.”
“I love watching you struggle to eat it all.”
What was that?
While I was still speechless at her unexpected response, the special kalbi spare ribs she had ordered at some point arrived, and I had to move on.
The three of us raced to snatch the meat cooking on the net. Then, as I was savoring the melt-in-your-mouth goodness of the soft fat, Toriko started speaking in an apologetic tone.
“Umm, so, about what happened this time... I think I was in the wrong. I didn’t think Sorawo would be coming with me anymore, and I’d never have expected Kozakura would come searching for me, too. I didn’t mean to get you involved. Sorry.”
Kozakura and I kept chewing, listening to Toriko in silence.
Kozakura swallowed, and then, sounding unamused, she said, “You say that like it was our fault for chasing after you, you know?”
“No, that’s not it.”
“Couldn’t you put a little more faith in me?” I said, expressing my dissatisfaction.
“I did have faith in you! It’s just... I’d have felt bad making you go along with any more of my selfishness.”
It sounded like Toriko was making excuses. What’s this? She’s more vulnerable than usual.
I felt like being a bit of a bully, so my tone of voice went cold. “You went there alone because you didn’t think you could rely on me, right? You never even thought I might come save you, did you? This, after all we’ve been through together. Isn’t that a little harsh?”
“I’m telling
I’d made a point of not looking at her when I spoke, but it was still readily apparent how troubled she was.
What do I do now?
This is kind of fun.
“Sorawo-chan.”
“Yes?”
“I’ll have you know, you’re even worse.”
I was about to get carried away, but then Kozakura spoke up in a barbed tone.
“I trusted you, Sorawo-chan. I mean, you were saying you’d leave me ‘in a safe state.’”
“Y-Yes?”
“What was that place...? You abandoned me in some kind of field of flowers.”
“Field of flowers?”
“The next thing I knew, you were gone. There was the sound of flowing water, and I heard people talking all around me, but no one was there. I knew I didn’t belong there, but I couldn’t convince myself to go anywhere else.”
Kozakura spoke in a dazed tone. Her eyes stared off into the distance, and even with the bright red charcoal fire of the grill in front of her, I could see goosebumps all over her arms.
“I was immobilized, like my feet had grown roots, and I was just standing there staring off into space. The voices around me got so noisy that I plugged my ears, but then the alignment of stars in the night sky gradually started to look like it had some meaning, and that scared me silly. The voices were getting angry, too. It was maddening, but I thought that, probably, I was a goner if I blacked out. So I crouched down, staring at the ground and saying, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ to someone standing near me... and the next thing I knew, you two were there.”
Kozakura shut her eyes tight, then let out a sigh.
“It turned out all right since you were able to come back, but I was in serious danger there, wasn’t I...? What were you going to do if I went insane, or died, Sorawo-chan?”
“At the time... I thought you’d be okay...”
“Oh, yeah?”
“But you... weren’t, huh? Haha... ha.”
Kozakura’s glare pierced right through me, and my awkward laughter trailed off.
“Kozakura, Sorawo did it to search for me. She had no—”
When Toriko tried to intercede, Kozakura’s eyes widened in anger. “Shut up! If you defend Sorawo-chan now, it makes me look like the bad guy for picking on her! I’m the victim! You were both in the wrong! Don’t make excuses!”
“I-I’m sorry.”
When I apologized and bowed my head, Kozakura got this unpleasantly smug look on her face. “Sorawo-chan, you know, I’ll bet you didn’t give one thought to what would happen to me.”
“N-No, that’s taking it a bit too far.”
“It’s not just me, it’s Satsuki, too. I heard from Toriko. You didn’t hesitate to shoot the thing with Satsuki’s face.”
“That one wasn’t even human...”
“We barely know anything about what kind of effects the other world has on people. Did that not occur to you in the slightest? You must have thought it could at least be related to the real Satsuki, right? You thought that, and then deliberately ignored it. Do you just not give a damn about other people? You don’t care about anyone but yourself, am I right?”
“Kozakura...”
“You shut up, Toriko.”
Toriko arched her eyebrows, immediately cut off. I felt bad about what happened, but this one-sided verbal beatdown was starting to piss me off. I didn’t like that Toriko and Kozakura were talking about Satsuki without me around, either.
I knocked back my beer for courage, then slammed the empty mug down on the table and leaned in hard.
“If you’re going to go that far, I have some questions of my own!”
“Oh? What, you think you have the right to be mad at me now?”
“I’ve wondered all this time, but what the hell are you, Kozakura? A cognitive scientist, was it? Really? What kind of work do you do, shut up inside your house all the time? You’re not old enough to be a professor, that’s for sure. Even I know that researcher positions don’t pay much. How do you put food on the table? Where did that million come from?”
“...The money I gave you, you mean?”
“That’s right! What, was it yakuza money? Is that why you have such easy access to guns?!”
When I turned a suspicious gaze on Kozakura, she gestured for Toriko to lean in a little closer, then asked her, “Toriko, is Sorawo-chan a bad drinker?”
“I don’t think she has a low tolerance. I think it’s that she gets worked up when she’s angry.”
“What’re you two whispering about?!”
“This? It’s called a stage whisper,” Kozakura said, sounding irritated, then grabbed a king oyster mushroom from the corner of the net and popped it in her mouth. “And when it comes to your prying questions, it’s none of your business... is what I’d like to say, but, well, I can understand your concern. No, it’s not yakuza money, so relax.”
“Well, what is it, then?”
Kozakura’s eyes wandered as if she were thinking. “There’s a private organization that trades in information on the other world. I’m a member, and they provide me with some amount of funding,” she said in a careful tone.
“Huh?! This is the first I’ve heard of it!” Toriko’s eyes went wide. So did mine.
“What’s with that? Why didn’t you say something sooner?”
“Did I need to? I’m simply engaged in specialist discourse with other researchers. Toriko is just searching for Satsuki, and you’re in it for the money, right?”
“Could you not say it in a way that makes me sound bad?”
“I think you should worry about more than just sounding bad.”
Like what? I thought, but then Toriko leaned over the table.
“Was Satsuki a member, too, maybe?”
“It was Satsuki who dragged me in. Frankly, I’m just filling in for her now that she up and vanished,” Kozakura said angrily, snatching a blackened sliver of kalbi from on top of the net. It looked like Toriko wanted to say something, but she gave up, casting her eyes down sullenly.
There was a bit of a downer mood going on here. Feeling less than satisfied with how that had gone, I sighed. “...Do you want more meat?” I asked Kozakura.
“I do.”
“I do.”
The two of them answered in unison.
I wasn’t asking you, Toriko.
Though I had been prepared for it, the bill came to a substantial sum, which sobered me up real fast. We split the bill, but Toriko was still happily swaying left and right as she walked. Oh, how I hated her.
I was taking the Saikyo Line home, Toriko was taking the Yamanote Line, and Kozakura was on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line. Toriko said she’d walk Kozakura to the ticket gate, and I just sort of ended up tagging along.
When we had passed through the hustle and bustle of Ikebukuro Station and reached the ground-level ticket gate of the Seibu Line, Kozakura suddenly spoke up. “Sorawo-chan, why don’t you come to my place tonight?”
“Huh? I’m not going to, but why?”
“I don’t want to go home alone.”
When she said that sullenly, looking at me with upturned eyes, I was bewildered.
“Can’t you stay the night in a manga cafe or something?”
“No, I’m saying I don’t want to be alone.”
“...?”
I tilted my head to the side questioningly, which made Kozakura get impatient. She raised her voice. “I’m scared! Of being alone!”
“Why are you getting mad?”
“I’m not mad! Take a hint! What am I supposed to do if those three middle-aged ladies come back?”
“Shoot them with a shotgun?”
“You are so heartless!” Kozakura thrust a finger at me in indignation.
I was getting a bit offended, but Toriko leaned in, looking concerned. “Want me to come with you?”
Even though Toriko was being quite nice, Kozakura shook her head. “You, I don’t need.”
“Why not?!”
I tried to mollify Kozakura, and spoke in the gentlest tone I could manage. “We just made plans, didn’t we? Toriko and I will be coming over tomorrow to discuss our next expedition. Please don’t shoot us by accident, okay?”
“If you get scared, you can call any time!”
“Sigh... There you go, treating me like a child,” Kozakura spat distastefully, and turned away. As she headed for the ticket gate, Toriko called after her.
