Otherside Picnic, Volume 3, page 1
Table of Contents
Cover
File 9: Yamanoke Presence
File 10: Sannuki-san and Karateka-san
File 11: The Whispered Voice Requires Self-Responsibility
Works Referenced
About J-Novel Club
Copyright
File 9: Yamanoke Presence
1
Back when I was still just a victim...
During the time I left the house to get out from under the eyes of the cult, and was hiding out in the ruins of a love hotel, I can’t confidently say that I was sane. So, I’m not entirely sure why it is that I thought the big red person that embraced me from behind as I lay in the fetal position in a makeshift bed of dusty linens was my mom.
Still, for some reason, the experience was a warm memory for me.
That was why, when dawn broke, I immediately left the hotel and returned home. Then, I waited in the tatami room, alone with a tank of kerosene, for what felt like forever. I remember when night fell, and the house went dark, I felt awfully lonely.
At the time, I had a thought: I need fire.
—What would be a good thing to eat at the after-party when our innards were damaged by the Kotoribako?
We talked it over, and came to the conclusion that rice porridge might be good, so Toriko, Kozakura, and I had come to a Chinese rice porridge place inside the Ikebukuro Seibu department store.
We had come on the simple idea that you eat rice porridge when your stomach’s not doing so well, but this place had a food therapy menu managed by the traditional Chinese medicine pharmacy next door, so it felt like it might really work for us.
“The plum rice porridge set, or the two-color rice porridge set. The ladies’ set comes with kakuni pork, but maybe not enough... Have you made up your mind, Toriko?” I asked.
“The dandan noodles look good,” said Toriko, who had been looking down at the menu.
Oh, come on.
“Weren’t we going to have porridge?”
“Nothing’s meaty enough. This doesn’t feel like the sort of place where we can go, ‘Here’s to a job well done! Cheers!’ either.” Toriko pursed her lips.
It was afternoon on a weekday, the place was at maybe 40% of capacity, and everyone there but us were old ladies. Nearly every drink on the menu was some sort of healthy-sounding tea. The restaurant was selling itself as a place for rice porridge and tea, so that was to be expected.
“What are you complaining about when we came to eat at a Chinese food therapy restaurant?” Kozakura said, glaring at Toriko.
“For now, let’s just order tea,” I suggested. “It looks like refills are free.”
“Oh, they are? That’s a bargain.”
“That’s how tea is in China. You ask for hot water, and can drink it several times,” Kozakura explained.
That made Toriko’s eyes widen, as if an idea had occurred to her. “Ohh! I think I might have done that in Chinatown when I was little!”
“In Yokohama?”
“No, Vancouver. Mom brought me there.”
Her mom, huh?
Whenever she talked about her family, Toriko briefly looked away. Her voice lowered slightly, too, and it took on a calm tone. When people talk as they remember their past, I’ve heard that their eyes move on their own to look in a certain direction. For Toriko, it’s down and to the left... That was probably where the memories of her lost family were in her mental map.
Figuring I should take the opportunity to try a type of tea I hadn’t drank before, I ordered kantoucha. Toriko went for sanzacha, and Kozakura had maikacha.
“What is maikacha? I can’t even imagine.”
“I don’t know, either, but it said it was supposed to help suppress irritation.”
“That certainly does seem like a good fit for you, Kozakura.”
“Yeah, I’m feeling irritated at this very moment. I hope it comes soon.”
When her maikacha came, it turned out to be rose tea. Toriko took a sip of her sanzacha, which turned out to be bittersweet. As for my kantoucha, it had a thin flavor, and was surprisingly easy to drink.
While I was sipping at the warm Chinese medicinal tea, and chewing on the pumpkin seeds that came with it, Toriko started talking. “Hey, Kozakura. What happened to Satsuki’s notes after that?”
Kozakura hesitated a moment before answering. “They’re in the DS Lab’s storage. To keep anyone from reading them.”
The DS Lab—the Dark Science Research Encouragement Association. This organization with its shady-sounding name was apparently founded as a civilian organization in the ’90s in order to carry out research on the other world, which they called UBL, the Ultrablue Landscape. Though, disappointingly, despite their impressive name, their only current work was securing past victims of the UBL, and making (hopeless) attempts at treating them. It was harsh to say this, but their work resembled the cleanup after a losing battle.
The reduced scope of their work included gathering strange items from the other world—UB artifacts. It was the DS Lab that bought the mysterious objects, like the Mirror Stone and the Infinite Seashell that we brought back.
Because the notes of Satsuki Uruma, who had vanished while working for the DS Lab, were written in indecipherable characters, they had been left alone all this time. It turned out they were in the language of the other world, and we had learned firsthand that reading them aloud could cause terrifying phenomena to occur.
“We can’t read any more? But they’re a clue for chasing after Satsuki,” Toriko said.
“Are you an imbecile? They’re beyond dangerous. If Sorawo-chan hadn’t been there, you’d have died.”
“Well, yeah, but... The Kotoribako, was it? It came out of nowhere. I was surprised.”
“I’m surprised you can write it off as a surprise.”
I kept mum as Toriko and Kozakura went back and forth. The two of them thought all that appeared was the Kotoribako, but I knew otherwise. When I read out of the notebook, Satsuki Uruma had appeared.
The Satsuki Uruma who Toriko was searching for was tied to entities on the other side of the ultrablue. Though I had realized that when I dismantled the Kotoribako, I hadn’t told the two of them, or Migiwa of the DS Lab. I didn’t even know if I should. Kozakura seemed to have accepted that Satsuki Uruma was gone, but from what I had seen, Toriko wasn’t there yet. If I wasn’t careful, Toriko might feel pushed to go into the depths of the other world alone again.
Was that what they, the ones who lived in the other world, wanted to lure Toriko into doing? To take her away somewhere like Satsuki Uruma?
I kept drinking tea as I thought, and the meal came as I did. “Oh, it’s here.”
“It looks good! Time to eat!”
I was pretty hungry, so I jumped at the food as soon as it was put down on the table.
Mine was the two-color rice porridge set with crab rice porridge and chicken rice porridge. Mmm, it had a gentle flavor. The salt was used sparingly, so I was grateful that it came with ebi chili and pickled Sichuan vegetables on a separate plate.
Toriko, perhaps wanting something meatier, had gone for the kakuni pork rice porridge set. The big bowl of rice porridge with kakuni pork, bok choy, and goji berry came with a separate bowl of wonton soup. Kozakura had the yamucha set, which came in a bamboo basket, and the boiled gyoza and shumai were letting off steam.
Seeing how Toriko and I were chowing down, Kozakura looked at the two of us dubiously. “Hey, are you two really all right?”
“Yeah, we don’t seem to be having any trouble. Right, Sorawo?”
“It tastes good, and I have a normal appetite...” I responded, though I was perplexed. It had only been two days since then, but the food tasted good.
That, in and of itself, seemed weird somehow.
The heinous mass of curses which ate away at the innards of women and children—the Kotoribako. We had dismantled that box, which Satsuki Uruma threw at us from the other world like some sort of hand grenade, and then somehow returned from the other world alive, but Toriko and I had taken serious organ damage... or we should have.
Yet, when we were examined afterward, we were left confused—nothing out of the ordinary was detected.
The CT image of my innards had no shadows on it. No inflammation, and no bleeding, either. There was nothing wrong with my blood. The tissue sample from my mouth and the urine test both came back fine, too. Blood pressure, vision, and hearing, all good. In other words, I was the picture of health. If I were to pinpoint something wrong, the reading for my liver was a bit high for a twenty-year-old, and I had gained a kilo (Toriko had not), but, honestly, that was all within the margin of error.
This was done in the DS Lab’s expensive medical facility, so it was definitely all correct. It was a thorough physical examination, taking a full two days.
Since we had been hit by the infamous Kotoribako, I had been prepared for some aftereffects. Because of that, the result was unexpected, and it actually worried me more than it reassured me.
Okay, then what was that pain that felt like my organs were being pecked at inside of me? What was the red stuff that those red birds, which were like the embodiment of the curse, flew inside our bodies, and had come out carrying in their beaks...?
The fact was, Toriko had nearly died in front of me. I still shuddered when I remembered the moment I realized she wasn’t breathing, and had no pulse.
Had they torn something out of the two of us after all...? Something important that
Though I felt uneasy in a way that made it hard to be completely happy, if modern science said we were unharmed, there was nothing more to be done. We had been discharged from the medical center, so we left the DS Lab building in Tameike-Sannou and headed back to Ikebukuro. To celebrate our recovery and have an after-party. Without alcohol, of course. Maybe Toriko was right, and it did feel a bit insufficient.
“Hey, your phone’s been ringing for a while now. Is that okay?” Toriko asked, and I looked down to see my phone buzzing on the table.
“Nah, it’s fine. I’m sure it’s just Karateka.”
I picked up my phone, checking it just in case, and, as expected, the one shooting messages at me was Karateka—Akari Seto, a first-year student at my school. Akari Seto, who did karate. The only kouhai at my school I had any interaction with, who I had gotten to know when she was attacked by ninja cats.
During our two-day medical examination, we’d had a lot of free time, so we were whiling the time away watching Netflix, but my luck ran out when I carelessly responded to a message Karateka sent my way. Ever since, she may have let it go to her head, because she was talking to me an awful lot.
It tended to go like this:
“What are you up to now?”
“Who are you, my girlfriend?”
“Do you know this urban legend?”
“I know it, I don’t care, and your knowledge of it is shallow.”
“I found a place nearby where accidents are always happening. How about it?”
“How about what?”
They were all pointless conversations, and I tried to be as curt in my responses as I could, but she showed no sign of getting discouraged.
“One of my friends had something scary happen during a test of courage. Are you interested, Senpai?”
“Nope.”
“When I told her a bit about my experience, she seemed interested, so I was hoping you could talk to her with me some time.”
“What’re you doing? Don’t tell anyone about that.”
“It’s cool. I haven’t told anyone about THAT.”
That message was followed by a gun emoji stamp. I furrowed my brow unconsciously.
Ever since we saved her from the ninja cats, Karateka seemed to have mistaken Toriko and me for “experts on the supernatural,” and was always coming up with new excuses to get involved with us.
It seemed she had always been interested in scary stories, but I felt she was coming on a bit strong, even considering that. When I looked at Karateka using my right eye, there was clearly something wrong with the way she spoke and acted. Was it possible my personality had influenced her...? Whatever the case, it really wasn’t good to have a ghost story maniac who was so eager to act on things.
Going to spiritual spots for a test of courage to have frightening experiences, kicking over gravestones, bringing back items...
Many of the true ghost stories I had read featured people who had crossed the line like that, and they almost always met a miserable end. I wasn’t all that attached to Karateka, but I didn’t want it to be my fault if something unfortunate happened to her.
“I’m busy eating now.”
I sent that message to terminate the conversation, then set my phone to airplane mode.
“You don’t need to talk to Karateka-chan?” Toriko asked.
“Yeah. I’m already this close to blocking her, but if I did she’d just hassle me at university again.”
“She respects you, right? Give her a bit of your time.”
“Well, hey, I don’t want to drag her into anything. She already knows too much, to be honest.”
“Well, yeah, but...” Toriko pursed her lips in dissatisfaction.
Her attitude towards Karateka was wavering. The fact that they were both students of Satsuki Uruma must have come as quite a shock to her. She’d always believed she was Satsuki’s only “friend.”
Despite that, when I was brusque with Karateka, Toriko didn’t look all that happy about it. I’m sure she was just superimposing herself on someone who shared her own circumstances, but that was none of my business. If I played along with the sometimes completely unhidden adulation that Toriko and Kozakura had for Satsuki Uruma, I’d go batty.
“...So, you two are planning to go there again, huh?” Kozakura asked as she chewed on a sesame dumpling.
Toriko and I looked at one another, and then I nodded.
“Yes. Though, I’m not planning to travel far this time.”
“Yeah. Sorawo and I were talking about it, and we thought we’d start with a light trip from one gate to another.”
“You say ‘light,’ but they’re pretty far apart, aren’t they? I mean, sure, the distance is technically walkable, but...”
Having walked with me the time we were dealing with the Time-space Man, Kozakura had a sense of the distance between things in the other world. Toriko nodded. “We’ll be using the AP-1 this time. That’s why we’d like to use your house as our entry point this time. Do you mind?”
Toriko’s words made Kozakura frown. “If I told you I did, would you give up? Do what you want.”
“Thanks.”
Picking up where Toriko left off, I continued. “I’m thinking we’ll gradually expand our range like this. Up until now, we haven’t traveled that far from each gate, so even though we had multiple entry points, it never made much difference. That’s why I want to secure safe routes between the gates we already know of. For the future.”
“Is there any such thing as a ‘safe route’ in that world?” Kozakura asked.
“Well, that it’s free of glitches is all I really mean by that.”
“If we leave marks—like a trail of breadcrumbs—behind us as we go, it’ll make things easier in the future, right?”
“...Well, yeah.”
There had been an awkward pause before I responded to Toriko. It was true that if we posted signs along our route, it would make later operations in the other world easier. Because then, even if I didn’t use my right eye, we could act without having to worry about glitches.
In short, Toriko would be able to act without me again...
Then again, even if we secured relatively safe routes, the rest would still be just as dangerous as before. I didn’t think I’d need to worry too much.
“After all the horrifying things you two have been through, why don’t you stop? You saw the miserable state of the people who had encounters of the fourth kind, didn’t you? I can’t believe you still want to go after seeing that. Why?”
“Hmm... I really think that we’re in a different state of consciousness on that side compared to this one,” I said.
“Huh?”
“When you have a nightmare, it’s really scary when you’re asleep, but once you’ve been awake for a while, even if you vividly recall it, that state of fear is gone, right? You’re not going to say, ‘I’ll never go to sleep again.’” I explained it to Kozakura, who was looking at me dubiously. “I think the experiences of fear we find in true ghost stories have an element of that to them, too. The teller saw something unbelievable, was shocked, and was scared senseless, but they’re able to go back to their daily life. That’s similar to a scary dream, right? I thought it was simply a matter of the homeostasis of the psyche, but the other world clearly exerts some influence on our brains, so our state of mind over there must be different from over here. That’s why, once we return to the surface world, we’re naturally able to think about going there again.”
Kozakura clutched her head. “I didn’t ask so that you could start analyzing the mechanisms of cognition. What about you, Toriko?”
“I... Yeah, I really do have to go pick up Satsuki,” Toriko said, having finished her annin tofu and set her spoon to the side. “I don’t know what she’s doing now, or what’s happened to her—maybe Satsuki’s ended up like one of the patients you showed us at the DS Lab. But that’s all the more reason for me to go get her. I mean, there isn’t anyone else searching the other world.”
“I know how you feel. I really do. Even I want to...” Swallowing whatever it was she’d started to say, Kozakura trailed off. Then, after letting out a long sigh, she seemed to notice something and asked, “What’s wrong, Sorawo-chan? Not feeling well?”
When she called my name, I realized I had been staring vacantly at my now empty plate. “No... I’m fine.”
