The Book

It was the winter of my fourth year in university. At that time, I was woefully short of the credits required for graduation, meaning my stay as a super-senior was already locked in. I was spending my days in the same leisurely manner as my classmates, whose job-hunting efforts were winding down and leaving them with plenty of free time. That was just on the surface, however. In reality, a vague anxiety about the future gripped me day in and day out, feeling as though I were being slowly tightened in a vise of raw cotton. After seeing off my close friends who had finished their early graduation trips and parted with parting words of "Now it's just time to bear down on the thesis," a gaping hole had opened up in my chest. A restless impatience and irritation at things remaining unchanged. And coupled with that was an emotion I could hardly explain, born from the fact—learned during that very trip—that a girl I used to like had a child now. If anyone had looked at me from the outside back then, "apathy" would have been the exact word to describe my state. Yet inside my body, a variety of conflicts and thoughts swirled into a vortex, failing to erupt outward and instead simply circulating endlessly within, steadily raising the concentration of carbon dioxide in my blood. "Let's go on a date." Even upon seeing that email, I couldn't break out of my lethargy. The reality of it was that I finally heaved myself up from the zabuton cushion I had left permanently laid out on the floor, feeling thoroughly put out. When I arrived at the designated curry restaurant, the sender of the email had arrived unusually early and was sitting quietly all by herself in a secluded booth. The girl was dressed head-to-toe in black, a gothic style. Today, she even had some kind of black ornament in her hair. The general atmosphere in the shop told me that the roaming gazes of the other patrons were restlessly drifting toward her. It was likely not just because of her unusual attire, but because it suited her so well and she possessed a genuinely cute appearance. With a girl like that sitting all by herself, it couldn't be helped. Feeling it was rather embarrassing for me to approach a place drawing such attention—a bespectacled guy in a frayed jacket worn all through the winter, sporting unkempt stubble—I trudged sluggishly toward her. "Yo." The girl in black looked up and gave a light wave. Still as casual as ever. Knowing that her "Let's go on a date" essentially translated to "Hello," I just muttered "Hey" and took the seat across from her. Feeling the collective gazes that had momentarily pinned to my back gradually scatter away once more, I asked, "What is it today?"

That girl went by the internet handle "Onkyo," a weird kid who hung out on online occult forums. Though, come to think of it, I used to frequent those kinds of places myself, but my interest and energy had long since died out, and I hardly ever stepped foot in them anymore. "Ruri-chan went home," Onkyo said after finishing her order for curry. "Home? To New York?" "Yeah." Is that so. That girl was no longer in this city, then. I recalled the girl who had dressed almost like a twin to Onkyo. That girl with the mysterious eyes had suddenly appeared in this city a year and a half ago, unintentionally summoning the terrifying calamity that had been lying in wait for her. Dragging various other things down with her in the process. Thinking back on that time gave me a chilling case of goosebumps. I thought of the invisible malice that had lurked silently in this city. Even now, it still felt unreal. The people who had left because they got involved. And the people who had died. Even counting them off on my fingers in my head, it all felt like something out of a dream. I could still picture what they were like, just as I had heard told. And for the ones I had actually met, I could picture their faces. Yet, it was as if all of it were scenery on the other side of a thick pane of glass. Everyone who had gathered on the night the monster was born was gone now. And not just them. The yakuza. The random killer. Even that vampire. One by one, in order. Sometimes quietly, as if entirely unrelated to one another. Yet without a doubt, that invisible malice had wiped every single hostile entity from this city. Every last one of those people had been far more impressive than a nobody like me. And yet. And yet, this happened. A shudder of dread racked my body unbidden. Against an opponent that terrifying, Onkyo and I had been left to desperately defend the final target: the girl named Ruri, all by ourselves. Thinking about it now, it was an unimaginable situation. My master, upon whom I should have been able to rely, was already in a completely useless state by that point. My palms grew damp and clammy. Just remembering it was enough to trigger this. "So what's happening with graduation?" Onkyo asked abruptly, setting down her spoon. I was snapped violently back to reality. Ah, right. I was just an ordinary, super-senior university student. "It's going to take me another two years," I replied, to which she retorted, "Lame." "What about you?" I shot back in retaliation. "You've got entrance exams this year, right? Do you really have time to be slacking off in a place like this?" "It's fine. I've got room to spare." "Where are you even applying?" "My master's university." "Don't call me your master." Lately, this brat had taken to calling me her master just to annoy me. Of course, she was doing it fully aware of everything that had happened, which made her all the worse. There was clearly zero component of respect in her tone. It was worse than when I used to call my own master that. "Besides, since when is our university a walk in the park? It's a national university, you know." If she had that much room to spare, wouldn't it make more sense to apply to an even higher-tier school? Just as I was about to say that, she cut me off. "My mom told me to stick to somewhere local." Oh, is that so. So it was the classic rule of thumb that a local female national university student was academically a rank above? Her goofy appearance almost made me forget, but she was a returnee from abroad and fluent in English, after all. It felt unfair that merely being able to read and write the language of a country she used to live in would grant her such a massive advantage in subjects with heavy point allocations. "Come on, though—did that Sunami person graduate?" "Yeah." I nodded, feeling sulky. *Normal university students graduate after four years, you know!* I thought, pouring water down a throat irritated by the harsh spices. "So, what do you actually want? Are we going on a real date after this or something?" Nine times out of ten, whenever this brat called me out, it was because she had stuck her nose into something bizarre and was asking me to clean up the mess. "Well, about that..." With that, Onkyo shoved her emptied curry plate to the corner of the table. Then, she pulled a book out of her fluffy black bag and placed it right in front of me. So it seemed this wasn't the remaining one out of ten. However, upon seeing the book she produced, I thought, *Oh?* It looked familiar.

"Isn't that *Soreman's Space Boat*?" It was a juvenile sci-fi novel I had read when I was a child. I remembered it because the title was so striking, though the contents didn't immediately come to mind. It was something about a Japanese kid boarding a spaceship and going on a grand adventure, wasn't it...? "Heh, I suppose so," Onkyo dismissed me entirely, showing zero interest as I struggled to recall. "You're the one who brought it, aren't you?" Annoyed, I fired back, to which Onkyo said something rather peculiar. "I'm talking about what's *inside* this book, not the book itself." For a fraction of a second, my eyes drifted upward in confusion. It sounded like something out of a Zen riddle. "A friend of mine asked me for advice. About her younger brother." With that, Onkyo began to explain her Zen-like statement. Her female classmate had an elementary school-aged younger brother. Lately, the boy's behavior had apparently been a bit strange—he was distant, and if anyone spoke to him, he would get angry. She had simply assumed it was a rebellious phase, but one day, as she tried to enter his room, he suddenly hid something and snapped, "Get out!" The thing he had hidden behind his back looked like a book. He must have gotten his hands on some dirty book from somewhere and was reading it. Thinking, *Ah, so that's what it is,* she decided not to pry any deeper into it at the time. However, a few days later, she woke up in the middle of the night and left her room to use the restroom. On her way, she passed by her younger brother's room, and noticed the door was slightly ajar. Normally, she wouldn't have bothered closing it and would have just walked right past, but feeling some sort of presence coming from inside, she stopped. Was her brother still awake? Thinking that, she noticed the light was off. The room was pitch black. She crept closer to the door and tried to peek through the gap. However, because of the light spilling from the hallway, standing right in front of the door would surely let anyone inside know someone was there. With that thought, she pressed her body flat against the wall right beside the door and strained her ears to listen.

At that moment, her ears picked up a strange sound. *Swish...* *Swish...* A familiar sound. Yet one that had no business being heard in this situation. A strange chill assaulted her. *Swish...* *Swish...* The sound of paper turning. The sound of the surface of a page rubbing against a fingertip. *Swish...* *Swish...* ——It was the sound of someone reading a book. Even though the room was pitch black? She shivered as a numbness raced down her spine. It wasn't as if her brother was huddled under his futon with a flashlight. If he had the futon pulled up tightly enough to block out every shred of light, such a delicate sound wouldn't leak out of the room, either. Her brother was reading a book in the pitch-darkness. Her heart pounded in her chest. She remembered a rumor whispered in secret among the elementary school her brother attended. It was about a book called *The Night Book*. It was one of the seven mysteries of the school. There was a single book in the library. During the day, it was just an ordinary book. But after everyone had gone to sleep at night, if you took it alone into a dark room and turned the pages, it would become an entirely different book. Even in pitch-darkness where nothing could be seen, the book could be read. Written inside that book were the rules for a game that was terrifying, yet thrillingly fun.

If you read it to the end, something unbelievable apparently happened. The details beyond that point were unclear due to various rumors. Some said a demon would appear, while others claimed a reaper would come out. There were even stories that if you followed the book's instructions, a UFO would appear outside your window. I've also heard rumors of children who went traveling to worlds in the past or future. It sounded like a thoroughly childish rumor. However, she herself was a graduate of that very elementary school. And there actually was a classmate of hers who had gone out of her mind from reading that book and jumped out of a second-floor classroom window, sustaining severe injuries. Of course, whether that happened because of the book was, in itself, just another rumor. Yet, the more the teachers tried to suppress such gossip, the more everyone believed the rumor. In the end, *The Night Book* her classmate had been holding was burned by the adults. But such a book hadn't existed to begin with. Even if it was burned, another book would transform into *The Night Book*, readable only in the dark, and patiently wait in the corner of the library for someone else to pick it up... Pressing a hand against her pounding chest, she steadied her breathing right beside the door. Then, calling out, "What are you doing?" she pushed the door open.

A waiter came by to refill our water glasses, and Onkyo paused her story there. I stared intently at *Soreman's Space Boat* resting on the table. "So, your classmate's little brother was reading this in a pitch-black room?" "Yeah." "How was he acting?" "When she turned the light on, his eyes were bloodshot and he was muttering some kind of nonsense, apparently. He calmed down once she took it away from him, though." "Huh." I reached out toward the book on the table, picked it up, and flipped through the pages. Being a rather old book, the cover and page edges were faded, but it didn't look like it had been read very much. The inside was relatively clean. Onkyo was looking at me with a slightly surprised expression. Noticing this, I asked, "What?" to which she replied, "This is a true story, you know." "I didn't say it was a lie."

Besides, I had built up a fair amount of tolerance for no matter how hard-to-believe a story might be. Moreover, every single bit of trouble Onkyo brought to me up until now had turned out to be tangible reality. Whether that was a good thing or not was another matter entirely. "You take things so casually," she said, sounding exasperated, which finally made me realize—ah, so that's what she meant. To an ordinary person's sensibilities, after hearing a story like that, it would feel too creepy to even touch. No matter how many times you were told it was just a normal book during the day. The fact that my brain—despite my lack of conscious effort—had been shifted toward the side of the absurd by those days steeped deep in the occult meant I really was no longer normal. Yet, for some reason, being told that by this brat still stung a bit. "So, what do you want to do about it?" I set the book down and tapped the cover lightly with my fingertip. "You heard that story and made some reckless promise that you'd 'do something about it,' didn't you?" In a sense, things like *The Night Book* only possessed reality within the darkness of night. Even if this copy of *Soreman's Space Boat* was merely serving as its temporary host, burning it or tearing it to shreds would likely just result in the thing parasitizing yet another book in the library. At least, that was how the structure of the rumor went. "So you heard that story and blurted out that you'd handle it?" *Ah, right.* "Well?" "Do something about it." "Do it yourself." "Please, Master." Ignoring her exaggerated pleading pose, I opened the pages of the book once more. "How is it even possible to read something when it's pitch black?" I asked Onkyo, "Did you read it?" In response, she laced her fingers together in front of her chest and shook her head left and right. "Because it's scary." "Don't lie." "Because I'm a test-taker." "Because you're a test-taker?" When I echoed her words, Onkyo smiled with just the corner of her mouth. "...If it turns out to be interesting, that'd be bad news, wouldn't it?"

*She really is hardcore to the core.* I thought that to myself all over again.