New Shin-Bagura ~Night 4~ "The Name of the Dead"
Right after I started university, there was a strange guy in my course named U. He didn't look particularly odd, but he would suddenly get angry or start running for no reason at all. Considered eccentric by everyone, he seemed to be avoided by his peers.
One day, right before a lecture, he came over to my seat and said: "Hey, Odagiri-kun. I'm actually really good at fortune-telling. I heard your birthday was recently—well, yours, I mean. So I went ahead and tried reading your fortune..." "You're already dead, aren't you?"
I was shocked. A chill ran down my spine. It wasn't because of this guy's creepiness. It was the tension, like a door that should have been locked had suddenly swung open. I was thrown into confusion.
"Well, anyway, leave that aside for a moment. This is a different matter, but I have a strong sixth sense. It's been bothering me ever since we first met—you've got you floating around you." "This is my first time experiencing something like this, so it's a bit scary even for me. But you, living yet dead, have a dead you drifting right around you. What's that about?"
Despite his curious tone, U's face was completely serious. Just then, the lecturer walked in, and U smoothly returned to his seat. When the lecturer started taking attendance and called my name, U stared right at me. I felt an abnormal kind of pressure as I answered, "Here."
"Have you ever seen a doppelgänger?" After the lecture, U latched onto me. "It means a double, you know? Like, have you ever suddenly run into someone who looks exactly like you?"
I gave vague, non-committal replies, caught in a hazy feeling of wanting to keep this guy away yet drawn to him at the same time. "Eh? You haven't? Oh, I see." "Well then, have you ever seen a ghost? No? Ah, I see." "When you're washing your shampoo out, the feeling of someone's presence behind you—ah, you've felt this one? Ah, I see." "Hey, I don't have any more classes today. Wanna come hang out at my place? Eh? You will? Oh."
U controlled the pace the whole time. And somehow, I was okay with that. I couldn't push away this strange man who was barging uninvited into my territory—at least, not yet.
U's apartment was a dump. "Come on in, come on in. I don't even have floor cushions, just sit anywhere around there. Sorry it's such a mess." "It's still a bit early for dinner, but you want something to eat? Oh, you don't? Well, sorry, I'm starving so I'm gonna eat this bread. By the way—who the hell are you?"
Pinned by U's gaze, I froze. "Shinichi Odagiri is dead. No mistake about it. My fortune-telling isn't some tarot-card toy. So who the hell are you?"
When I didn't answer, U continued, gnawing on a raisin bread. "Back in the lecture just now, when your name was called, the floating version of you reacted, too. Even faster than your own reply." "I don't really get this whole doppelgänger thing, but I don't think it's quite that. If anything, it's more old-fashioned. Feels like something possessed you and took your place."
Taking my place... Those words hit me like a blow to the head.
"Though it feels like ghosts like that shouldn't exist these days," U muttered, pulling a deck of playing cards from his pocket and writing something on several of them with a ballpoint pen. Then he threw the whole deck into the air. After fluttering down, every single card landed face-down. "See?" When U turned the cards over, every single one of them had "Shinichi Odagiri" written on it. Then U looked at me with a serious face and said: "A living person shouldn't be holding a dead person's name."
Before I knew it, I was telling U everything.
That I had an identical twin brother. That we were identical twins, so similar even our parents couldn't tell us apart. That sometimes we would swap clothes to trick our parents just for fun. And then, the summer before we entered elementary school, while we were secretly playing by swapping places, my brother fell from the jungle gym and hit his head hard. He was in a state of almost instant death from a brain contusion. When my mother came running, she looked at my brother and screamed my name. The events unfolding so frantically right in front of me terrified me so much that I couldn't say a word. Both of us had shaved heads. Neither of us had any cavities. The cicadas were loud. It was a stifling summer day. I thought that if she knew it was "Shinichi" who had died, my mother would be even sadder. And so, I became "Shinichi."
I forced the words out, as if vomiting pus. I was confessing the secret kept in the deepest part of me. U listened in silence. "Does Shinichi hold a grudge, I wonder?" I finally murmured at the end.
U said nothing. His eyes just drifted off somewhere into space. As for this strange man, I started thinking that if we ever became best friends, maybe I could even tell him my real name—the one nobody else knew.
To be continued in "The Amulet"
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