Otherside Picnic, Volume 1, page 1
Table of Contents
Cover
File 1: Kunekune Hunting
File 2: Hasshaku-sama Survival
File 3: Station February
File 4: Time, Space, and a Middle-aged Man
Works Referenced
About J-Novel Club
Copyright
File 1: Kunekune Hunting
1
Beneath the clear May sky, I lay in a grassy field, drowning.
Plankton-like shapes were jumping around across the backdrop of the blue sky. It was what it looked like when you could see the white blood cells in your eyes—or so I had read somewhere.
The wind caressing my upturned face carried the stench of raw fish. I had no idea if it really was fish or not. Since coming to the Otherside, I hadn’t seen a single fish, after all.
I had fallen flat on my back in the middle of grass taller than me. The roots of the grass were submerged in water, so my back was soaked, too. It was what you might call a half-bath.
No, that’s wrong. Completely wrong. You wouldn’t call it that.
If anything, it was like one of the lie-down baths at the super bathhouse. Although, the water was a bit over 20 centimeters deep, so if I didn’t make an effort to keep my face above the water, it would pour in through my nose and mouth. There was no lie-down bath like that, and if there was it’d be torture. The lie-down bath of death.
In fact, I was getting closer to death by the second. My Uniqlo fleece and my camo pants were heavy with water. It had been... how many minutes since I ended up like this? There wasn’t a clock in sight, so I didn’t know how long it had been, but I wasn’t going to be able to keep my face above water for much longer. My neck was cramped and hurt, and my abs had refused to stop quivering for a while now. I just didn’t have the strength. You know when you try to run in a dream, and your legs flop around, not moving at all like you want them to? That’s exactly what it was like. My limbs were practically paralyzed. They had been ever since I saw that thing.
I never saw this coming—I was naive. I’d found this world, got excited, headed in to explore, then ultimately ran into something dangerous and ended up close to drowning.
What would happen if I died here? In the surface world, were they going to talk about the mysterious disappearance of a twenty-year-old female university student? Eagh, they were bound to write all sorts of things about me that weren’t true.
That’d suck. I’m sorry, Mom.
...No. If I was being honest, even if I up and vanished, no one was really going to care much. I had no friends, so the only ones I’d be troubling were the people in the university office who would notice I hadn’t paid my school fees, and the people at the student support organization who noticed I was behind on my student loan repayment.
Thinking about that only made it hurt more.
Even if I did make it to graduation, it was basically guaranteed I would be inundated by student loan debt. With my future looking as dark as it was, maybe dying here in the Otherside wasn’t so bad after all...?
...Still, I don’t want it to be painful or excruciating. Just how much were you supposed to suffer when drowning, again? I started to think, then I heard something nearby.
The sound of grass parting. Footsteps in the water... approaching. An animal? From the sound of the footsteps, whatever it was was reasonably large.
What could it be? It wasn’t just fish... I hadn’t seen any animal fit to be called one here in the Otherside. Not being able to see what it was through the grass was only making me feel more uneasy.
I considered laying low, but it was no use. They must have heard me gasping as I tried to come up for air, because a voice came from the other side of the grass.
“Is someone there?”
They’re human!
Caught by surprise, I couldn’t speak.
It was a young woman’s voice with an out-of-place sound of cheer in her tone, like she was going on a stroll through the park on a fine day. Meanwhile, here I was, inching ever closer to death.
“...Could it be, Satsuki?” the voice asked. Who was that? Not me, that was for sure.
While I was confused, the voice became worried, and spoke up again. “Hey, should I come help? Or are you dead already?”
“Ah! Ah! I’m not de—”
I opened my mouth, despite not having meant to, and water rushed in. The liquid that filled my mouth had no taste. None at all. Bwah. I hurriedly spat it out, and tried again.
“I’m alive! Help!”
While I was screaming shamelessly, I remembered... The reason I’d ended up like this in the first place was still around here somewhere.
“W-Watch out. There’s a dangerous one nearby,” I stammered.
“Dangerous? What’s it like?”
“W-White, and wiggling...”
When I tried to explain it, the image of that thing came back into my mind. Instantly, I was engulfed by an intensely sickening feeling, and I groaned.
I shut my eyes tight, trying to endure, but the white image in my brain grew more and more vivid, my mind being pulled towards it even as I knew that was a bad idea, and my head felt like it was being twisted around.
“Urgh...”
“What’s wrong?”
“When you see it, it messes with your head... You can’t look...” That was all I managed to say, and then my willpower and stamina both gave out.
My mind fell into an eddy of unceasing dizziness. My face sank into the tasteless water. Bubbles poured out of my mouth.
The sky I was looking up to swayed in the water. The bubbles rose to the sky, and the clouds burst.
Then...
Into that empty sky, devoid of birds, divided into nothing but white and blue, a bright golden color descended.
I felt a hand behind my neck, my body being lifted. It was almost too easy, the way I was saved from the water.
While I was soaked and blinking, the owner of the voice smiled at me.
“I thought you were Ophelia,” she said.
“Huh?” I replied.
No, I got it. I knew who Ophelia was, at least. There’s that famous painting of her, like she’s in the lie-down bath of death, drowning. I saw it on Wikipedia.
That wasn’t it. When I looked up at her, I was taken aback.
She was ridiculously beautiful.
Her slightly wavy blonde hair. Her straight nose. Her pale, smooth skin. Her long arms and legs, and a figure I could tell was impressive even through her clothes. She wore an olive colored jacket zipped up to her neck, along with jeans and lace-up boots.
I think she was my age, or maybe a little younger. Looking down at me with her sparkling indigo eyes, she asked, “Is it already messed up?”
“I-Is what?”
“Your head.”
“I-I think I’m still fine.”
Or so I replied—But was I?
Maybe my head was already messed up. A beauty like this saving me on the verge of death? If you thought about it, it really was too convenient. What was this? A middle-schooler’s delusion, or a hallucination I was seeing on the brink of death?
While my mind was still spinning, she said, “So, where is it? The thing that messes you up if you see it?”
She asked in such an easy-going tone, I pointed despite myself. Before I’d realized it, sensation had returned to my limbs. They were still numb, but I could move them somehow.
“That way... Uh, hold on, what are you planning to do?”
Once she had sat me up in the water, she stood up in the middle of the grass.
“No, I’m telling you. It’s dangerous!”
“Blech, you’re right,” she said, squinting and sticking out her tongue at something unpleasant. “That’s it, huh? Gross.”
“No, not ‘gross.’ I’m telling you, you can’t look.”
When I grabbed her arm and tried to pull her to a crouching position, I ended up looking directly at it again.
The faded sea of grass spread out as far as the eye could see. In the fields of the Otherside, dotted with dark groves of trees and ruins, there was just one thing that stood out, moving.
It was shaped like a person, if you stretched them vertically.
It was an inscrutable shape, like a long shadow cast on the ground by the setting sun had been peeled from the ground and then stood up.
It was white in color. A dirty white, reminiscent of smoke.
That white, lanky figure stood in the middle of the waterlogged, grassy field, twisting its body around. Was it dancing, or was it in pain? Kunekune, kunekune. It wriggled.
While watching those movements, my mind gradually went blank, and I started to feel sick. Despite that, I still had the feeling that I had to see more.
It felt similar to trying to remember a half-forgotten dream when you wake up in the morning. That niggling sense that you should remember it, and you almost can. It torments your brain.
“Urgh...” I groaned, letting go of her arm. With a lurch, my body began to fall over, and I leaned on her jeans-covered leg for support.
While I was taking shallow, repeated breaths, she plopped a hand down on my head.
“Hey, looking at that thing makes you feel super weird, huh?”
“Urgh.”
“What happens if you keep looking?”
“I-I dunno...”
“Yeah, I guess you wouldn’t.”
Her tone made it sound like it was no big deal for her, but there was no way she was fine. Huff, huf
“Ahh, this is rough. Whew... But I think I’m starting to get it... I wonder what’s waiting at the end of this feeling...?”
“Eagh...” I couldn’t even respond properly anymore. Her breathing was getting more and more ragged, too. It felt like her body was swaying just a little, but I couldn’t be sure whether it was her or me doing it.
“It—It’s closer... than before... we’ve gotta... run.” I just barely managed to get those words out.
The white shadow had surprisingly little depth, so it was hard to grasp how far away it was, but I felt like it was closer than when I’d first encountered it.
My vision wobbled. The scenery in front of me looked unreal, as if it were being projected on smoke floating in the air. My head felt heavy, and I was about to lose consciousness, when the blonde-haired woman did a big windup and threw something.
The shining, sparkling, angular rock-like thing traced a parabola as it flew towards the white shadow.
The next instant, the white shadow twisted in place—then it vanished.
“Huh?” I said despite myself.
“What?! I... did it?”
From the way the blonde woman spoke, I wasn’t the only one who was shocked here. Letting out a sigh, she looked down at me as I clung to her leg, and cocked her head to the side.
“That just hit it, right?”
I nodded. You could say it hit it, or more like it dispelled the smoke-like stuff that white figure had been projected on entirely.
“Wh... what did you throw?”
“A lump of rock salt. Rumor is, it works on things like that, so I gave it a try. It really had an effect, huh. Color me surprised.”
Was that like spreading salt to exorcise spirits? It seemed too commonplace, so I wasn’t sure that it made sense to me...
“Whoa, oh, oh,” she stumbled, nearly falling over backwards.
If I hadn’t supported her, she’d have ended up on her back in the water. Having regained her balance, she turned back to me and grinned.
“Thanks. You okay? That sure felt gross, huh?”
“Y-Yeah.” The sickening feeling, the dizziness, and the numbness still lingering in my limbs rapidly dissipated. That feeling like I could almost remember something was gone, too.
“Can you stand?”
“Oh, yeah.”
When I realized I was still clinging to her leg, I hurriedly moved away from her. I was a little unsteady on my feet when I stood, but it looked like I’d be fine. My soaked clothes were clinging to my skin and it felt gross.
“Um, thanks for saving me.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said, waving it off generously, and then introduced herself. “I’m Toriko Nishina. You?”
“Uh, erm. My name is Sorawo Kamikoshi.”
“So, listen, Sorawo. The place you came to this side from, is it close?”
Woah. She was suddenly addressing me with no honorific. Though I was put off by how forward she was being, I nodded.
“Yeah. Real close.”
“Nice. Can you take me there? I was a bit lost, you know?”
“Sure... T-Toriko.”
When I addressed her with the same lack of honorific, her face broke into a beaming smile.
“Hold on a moment. I’m going to go pick that thing up.”
With that said, “Toriko” went rooting through the grass near where the rock salt fell.
2
When I opened the door and passed through it, the air around me changed in an instant.
“Wah, it’s dark,” Toriko mumbled behind me.
The scene spread out before us was of an abandoned building in the evening. The roof and wallpaper inside were falling apart, and the gas stove and sink were blackened with dirt. Spread out on top of the dust-covered table were electric bills, water bills, and other bills, all browned to the point of illegibility.
When I turned around, the door behind us was already closed. It was the entrance/exit to the small living space behind a closed-out shop facing onto the shopping arcade. Normally, the door would have led into a narrow alley.
This was the passage to the Otherside I’d found.
Toriko looked around the room. “Where is this place?”
“Oomiya. East of the station—”
“Wha, in Saitama?! I didn’t think I’d walked that far.”
“Where did you enter from, Toriko?”
“Jinbouchou—in Tokyo. There must be something weird going on with space in there.”
I could hear noise from the shopping arcade outside: passing footsteps and the irritated ringing of bicycle bells. Each time the door to the pachinko parlor a few buildings down opened, I could hear the rattling of balls. Right—this was what was missing on the Otherside. The voices, the sound of cars, the slight hum of electrical apparatus, there was none of it over there. Only the sound of wind making the trees sway, or the occasional cry of a bird or insect; no sound indicating human activity.
That mind-numbing silence was something I had truly taken a liking to.
It was a quiet, peaceful world, one I had felt like I’d made all my own... but...
Suddenly, there was the sound of something scraping the ground, and I cringed despite myself. It was the sound of Toriko pulling back one of the chairs beside the table. Plopping herself down on the dusty seat, she let out a breath. After some hesitation, I likewise pulled back a chair and carefully took a seat, too. Across from me was Toriko’s face in profile. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but she had her elbow on the table, and she was gazing at the gas stove.
“How many times have you been?”
When I spoke, Toriko blinked as if waking from a dream, then turned to face me.
“About ten times, I guess?”
Seriously? This was only my third time.
“That often... So that’s why you were so knowledgeable,” I said.
“Nah, I’m not particularly knowledgeable.”
“I mean, you took out the Kunekune. I didn’t know it was possible to do something like that.”
“The Kunekune? That disgusting thing had a name like that?”
“I dunno if that’s its name, but... There’s rumors like that, I guess.”
“Looks like you’re the knowledgeable one here, now aren’t you, Sorawo?”
“I just had some background knowledge. I never thought anything like that actually existed.” When I said that, it finally sunk in just how abnormal of an experience I’d just gone through.
The reason I had known about it was I was majoring in cultural anthropology at university; I was interested in modern day true ghost stories as a research topic. Kunekune was a ghost story that had started to be told—primarily on the internet—around 2003 or so. The narrator encounters a white shadow that wriggles unnaturally, and looking at it messes with their head—That was more or less how the story went. I felt like the entity I had just encountered closely resembled that ghost story.
But it wasn’t as though I had thought the Kunekune existed. Cultural anthropology viewed monsters and curses as a theme for study, but it didn’t believe in their existence, only saw them as an aspect of human culture.
“Well, look at this, then. Do you know what it is?”
Toriko fished through her pockets, pulling out something squarish. What she laid down on the table was a silver hexahedron with a length of about five centimeters on each side. Each face was smooth like a mirror and reflected the room around us. The stripped wallpaper, the fallen ceiling, and the scattered garbage were all reflected clearly. However, the only thing not reflected in it were the two of us.
“Huhhhh...?”
Even when I tried looking at a different angle, or bringing my hand up close to it, nothing changed.
“...What is this?”
“It was on the ground where that thing from before vanished,” Toriko said, picking up the hexahedron and scrutinizing it. “How much do you think I could sell it for?”
“No, wait. What even is that thing?”
“I don’t know. I wonder. I never found the rock salt I threw, so maybe it turned into this.”
This was absurd. A mirror that didn’t reflect humans? Was that even possible?
Was it really okay bringing it back here...?
Though I felt uneasy, I couldn’t take my eyes off the object in Toriko’s hand. I thought I’d understood that the Otherside was an abnormal place, but the little hexahedron in front of me was an undeniable piece of physical evidence that shook my sense of what was real all over again.
