"Disappearance" (Book Edition) http://www.pixiv.net/novel/show.php?id=3707053 A remake of "Disappearance." April 21, 2014, 20:11
I intend to tell you the stories about my Shisho from now on, but they cannot be told in a single night. It will be long—very long. That is why I want to write first about Shisho's disappearance, which is one of the ultimate outcomes of this entire series of events.
The wise Scheherazade told strange and beautiful stories night after night to a cruel king who executed the women he slept with at dawn. She added that the rest would be told tomorrow, just to survive a thousand nights.
My tales of Shisho are nothing so grand, and I do not know when you might grow tired, close the page, and bring this modest story to an end. When that happens, what will stop your hand from closing the page and make you lend your ear once more? Will it be the craving to know the destination to which this story leads?
As I said before, his disappearance is merely one outcome. What I truly want to tell you is everything about him: what he loved, what angered him, what he dreamed of, what he lamented, what he laughed at, what he was disappointed by, what he yearned for, and what he was defeated by. It is all of that, and the people surrounding those things.
This story begins in the spring of my first year in university, when I met him. Eventually, the stage should return to the nostalgic past. And after passing through the ruin and despair of that dazzling era, the hands of the clock will begin to move toward the future once again.
I am starting to feel a bit embarrassed, so I will stop here, but there is one thing I want to add. In these pages, many stories related to ghosts and specters will appear—not all of them, but many. If you happen to be reading this before going to sleep at night and find yourself truly terrified, I want you to close your eyes quietly. And I want you to remember a certain phrase...
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When I was a third-year university student, Shisho worked as a librarian at the university library. Around the summer of that year, Shisho's mental state was quite broken. He would often say things like, "There's a woman right there!", trembling in fear at empty spaces. I couldn't feel anything myself, but assuming I just lacked Shisho's strong spiritual awareness and couldn't see them, I shook in fear right along with him.
It was autumn. By then, I rarely saw Shisho, but we happened to run into each other at the university cafeteria and sat at the same table. "How many people can you see in the back row?" Shisho suddenly asked. It was a little before 9:00 PM, and the cafeteria was nearly empty. No one was sitting at the tables behind us. When I asked, "Can you see something?", he began to tremble violently, saying, "They're right there, aren't they? How many are there?" Yet, I saw nothing. There was no ringing in my ears, nor the chill specific to supernatural presences. I was baffled. After thinking for a moment, I said, "It's fine. There's no one here." Upon hearing that, Shisho looked relieved and said, "Is that so? Thank you." At that moment, I was certain. The spirits weren't in the back seats. They were residing inside Shisho's head.
As if his earlier panic had never happened, Shisho calmly picked up his chopsticks to eat his *oyakodon*. I was struck by a helpless, sorrowful feeling, and the food in front of me felt impossible to swallow.
Three days later, Shisho disappeared. He said nothing to the library where he worked, leaving behind only a letter of resignation. There was also a farewell note saying not to look for him. Even when I learned of that, I couldn't move. I don't even know why myself. Why was that? Even looking back now, no reason comes to mind for why I didn't search for him. Yet, the thought of what I would even do if I did find him also failed to appear. In the end, our master-apprentice relationship must have already ended at that time.
Shisho's family situation seemed complicated; an aunt came to clear out his apartment. She was an extremely unpleasant person, and even though I told her I was his best friend, she threw me out immediately. Normally, you would at least ask a friend about what he was like before he disappeared. In the end, the apartment was cleared out in a flash and left empty. And perhaps having made a reservation, the next tenant moved in almost immediately. I happened to see him coming out of the room—a flashy-looking young man. He was undoubtedly someone living in a world entirely unrelated to the things Shisho and I had been involved with. And just like that, the space where Shisho had been was filled one after another by other things.
When I first entered university, there was a rumor quietly circulating within the club I belonged to. A rumor concerning Shisho. "That guy kills people." Upperclassmen said it half-jokingly. I suspect it was probably the truth.
Shisho used to say this often when he was drunk: "In the end, where you bury the body. That's everything." It was obvious he was playing along with the rumors about himself and deliberately giving people something to talk about, but I remember the look in his eyes when he talked like that was terribly frightening.
It brings back memories of the numerous haunted spots we visited in Shisho's car. When we went to a famous spot in a certain mountain called "The House of Mass Murder," he said this: "An unspecified number of people act under the cover of night, in the middle of the night. Plus, spooky rumors. Unless it's a personal grudge, the individual can't be identified." When I heard it, it was just deeply unsettling, and I didn't really understand what he meant. But Shisho was probably talking about where it was best to bury the body of "someone he had simply killed, without any grudge or reason." It's best to bury them in a haunted spot. Sneering as he said this, he was blatantly trying to terrify me in the passenger seat. He added a thick, murky layer of suspicion and awe to those late-night tours of haunted locations. It was truly in terrible taste. But I feel like even that was some sort of camouflage.
Once, Shisho took me in his car to a mountain town over an hour's trip to the north. There was a bizarre place there called "Modori-numa" (The Returning Swamp). A legend says that a *tengu* once fell from the sky there. As we drove, he told me grotesque stories about the *tengu* eventually enshrined at a local shrine, and I started to feel sick. The name "Modori-numa" also seemed to be tied to the legend of the *tengu* falling from the sky. "I searched forever and finally found it." It was the middle of the night. We got out of the car, parted the mountain foliage, and forged a path where there was none. Ahead, illuminated by the weak beam of a flashlight, I thought I saw a dim light. Then, a foul, watery, fishy odor drifted over. "Is this it?" It was a swamp. A small swamp in the deserted mountains, reflecting the moonlight. "Yes. Modori-numa. Even among the locals, very few people know about this ominous place. There's a shrine enshrining the *tengu* a little ways off, and its origins and anecdotes are recorded there in old documents."
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It is said that at the bottom of the swamp, a glowing jewel dropped by the *tengu* in ancient times rests in slumber. The land, which once held a beautiful spring, turned into a swamp due to the leaking curse power of the jewel, becoming a terrifying place filled with miasma. One day, a man whose wife had preceded him in death due to an epidemic came to this swamp, which even villagers avoided. Despairing of this world, he decided to follow her in death. As the man was about to step into the swamp—filled with a sinister miasma lethal enough just to approach its edge—he threw a lock of his late wife's hair into the water as a memento. What do you suppose happened? The center of the swamp churned and bubbled, and a terrifying sound, like the scream of an infant, could be heard from nowhere in particular. Startled, the man hid behind a nearby bush. When the churning swamp finally grew calm, a human face had somehow surfaced on the flat water. It was his wife's face. Realizing this, the man jumped into the water and dragged his wife out from the swamp. It must have been the power of the jewel dropped by the *tengu*. His wife, who should have been dead, had returned from the other side.
However, the wife did not respond to the man's calls. Though her appearance was precisely that of his wife, her soul did not dwell within her. Before long, without uttering a word, the human-shaped entity crumbled away and returned to the mud. Only the lock of hair was left behind. Running down the mountain in absolute terror, the man gave up on dying. And eventually, he took a new wife. Their life together was modest, but fulfilling. His new wife was not blessed with good looks, but she was a diligent worker who respected her husband and revered his aging parents—a truly fine woman. Several years passed. One day, the man invited his new wife and came to that swamp. He threw the lock of his dead first wife's hair—which he had kept hidden—into the swamp, and then pushed his new wife into the water. His new wife, who should have been a good swimmer, sank to the bottom of the swamp while struggling. It was as if someone had grabbed her ankles and dragged her down. Just like before, the swamp churned and rippled, and when it finally grew still, the face of his old wife appeared on the water's surface. When the man pulled her from the swamp, his wife looked dazed, but after a moment, she began to respond to his calls. It was truly his wife. The one who should have been dead. This time, the dead really had returned from the other world. The man embraced his wife's body and sobbed.
"What a terrible story." Shisho did not nod at my comment. Instead, he muttered, "Just an old legend." With that, he slowly approached the swamp, which still emitted a rotten stench. "The legend has a continuation. The village headman of this region, having heard the man's tale, tried to do the same thing to call back his only daughter who had died young from the other world. But it didn't work. An entity taking the form of his daughter appeared, but her soul did not dwell within it. And it instantly turned back into mud. He tricked a maidservant and sank her into the swamp, but it was the same. The local magistrate heard the story and did the same thing, trying to bring his son back to life. It still didn't work. No matter how many people were drowned in the swamp. However, apart from the first man, there were others who succeeded in resurrecting the dead."
Shisho squatted at the edge of the swamp and spoke calmly. "What was different? Between the people who succeeded in resurrecting the dead and those who failed?" When I voiced my question, Shisho flashed a faint smile and said, "It's a question of where human souls come from." Then, without giving a straight answer, he fell silent. The sound of the wind rustling the trees swirled around us. I stood frozen in a spot far from the swamp. Shisho glanced back while squatting at the edge of the swamp and said, "Aren't you coming?" I shook my head left and right and backed away. What on earth was I afraid of? Such a ridiculous tale about the dead being resurrected? "Well, time to head back." Standing up, Shisho forced a strangely cheerful voice. But thinking I saw a dark light swirling deep within his eyes, I backed away once more. I once secretly opened the trunk of Shisho's car. However, there was only dirt packed into bags, and nothing interesting was hidden inside. I couldn't help remembering that moment.
Shisho had a girlfriend, but when I was becoming a third-year university student, she secured a job outside the prefecture and left. She was a perceptive person, and perhaps she had fled from Shisho, who was going mad around that time. However, among the upperclassmen who similarly graduated and left, strangely enough, she was the only one who subsequently became uncontactable. Her cell phone number must have changed as well, because it wouldn't go through. Shisho also said he couldn't get in touch with her and was worried. I hope that worry was genuine, but you cannot peer into a person's heart. Wandering through the night, continuing to visit haunted spots and places deeply stained with the color of human death—what on earth was he searching for? At the destination of his disappearance, was there something he sought? I no longer know.
There are words of Shisho's I cannot forget. When I was taken to my first serious haunted spot and was utterly terrified, Shisho said this: *“What is so scary about this kind of darkness? Close your eyes. That is the deepest darkness in this world.”*
On sleepless nights, I still remember those words.
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