The winter of my first year in university. Early in the morning, I got trapped inside the kotatsu in our club room and couldn't bring myself to move, so I quickly decided to skip today's lectures. A few people trickled in and out, holding plastic convenience store bags, warming themselves at the kotatsu for a bit before leaving. Eventually, I was left all alone. I toyed with the idea of going to class after all, looked out the window, shrank back against the winter chill, and sank even deeper into the kotatsu. Realizing I had been dozing off, I gave a light stretch and flopped backward. Still in that position, I stretched my arms up, fumbling around the rack above my head until I pulled out an old club notebook and started reading it absorbedly. Suddenly, tucked away in the corner of the rack, I found a small booklet instead of a notebook. I dragged it out. The cover bore the title "Pursuit." Adorned with a paper-cut style illustration shaped like some kind of flower, it looked like a self-published fanzine bound with staples. It was about 60 pages thick, printed on recycled A4 paper. As I flipped through the pages, I saw they were filled entirely with text.
...In the middle of the night, a giant steps over my room. The giant has no weight, no scent, makes no sound, is transparent and completely invisible, and cannot be touched by hand. And from the woods behind, toward where the city lights glow faintly, it walks gravely, gravely onward....
It seemed to be a short story. It was titled "The Giant." I skipped ahead a few pages.
...The reason I kidnapped the little girl playing in the park was because I had lost my pet dog. Though I started keeping her in the basement, she wouldn't warm up to me at all, so I tried blinding her. After that, the girl became completely obedient and began showing an attitude fitting for a pet. Meals were twice a day. Given before leaving for work and after returning. There was only one entrance and exit. The locked door where I appear and disappear. The girl has no name. I do not give names to pets. Two years passed. On a whim, I hammered a fixed window into the basement wall. Of course, it's just decoration. There is nothing on the other side. I told the girl: "Beyond that window is the ocean."...
Feeling somewhat sickened, I closed the booklet face down. It seemed to be a different story from the previous one, but I doubted any pleasant developments awaited me here. I skipped pages again.
Today, I walk the streets searching for fake humans. The fake humans believe they are real humans. They eat like humans, work like humans, and laugh or cry like humans. Whenever I find a fake human on the street, in a park, in a tunnel, in a school building, inside a skyscraper, and sometimes inside someone's home, I whisper this into their ear: "You're not a human." Then the fake human melts away like dissolving sugar. Nothing is left behind.
My town has become quite deserted. How many more fake humans are out there? I want to be alone soon. Because then, no one will ever whisper a secret word into my ear again.
This one was short, so I read the whole thing. It was titled "Fake Humans." Every single story here was creepy. Whoever wanted to make a booklet like this on their own must have had a deeply gloomy soul. I opened the final page to check the colophon. The date was two years ago. The publisher was listed as "Kai=Roanark." It seemed to be a play on "The Mystery of Roanoke Island," but sure enough, it gave you a pretty good idea of the author's tastes.
I looked up at the ceiling, trying to picture an upperclassman who might make something like this. Only one person came to mind. She was a female member who rarely showed her face at the club, and even when she did occasionally drop by, she would just sit there typing endlessly on her laptop. Whenever I tried to peek to see what she was writing, she would call me a pervert and refuse to show me. Ah, so it was her, I thought, as I flipped through the pages once more. I stopped my hand upon finding what seemed to be the title story, "Pursuit," right in the middle of the booklet. The opening scene featured a guy goofing off and skipping class in the club room, finding an old booklet on the bookshelf and picking it up. The title of the booklet he picked up was "Pursuit." Oh. It's a meta-structure. I was thinking that as I read on. The date was two years ago. A specific part of the text sent a chill running straight down my spine. The matching title was one thing. The fact that it featured a guy in a situation similar to mine could also be chalked up to coincidence, given the nature of a club that bred stereotypical good-for-nothing students. But the colophon date being "two years ago"—what kind of coincidence was that? With a slight flutter in my chest, I read further. The story went on to describe how the protagonist discovers the footsteps of a missing senior club member within the story-within-a-story "Pursuit," and, feeling bewildered, sets out into the city to search for him based on those clues. There were no detailed descriptions of who the missing senior was. Nor did it touch upon the specific contents of the story-within-a-story, "Pursuit." Yet somehow, the protagonist simply knew that it pointed the way to the missing senior's whereabouts. Overall, it lacked explanation, reading as if the author hadn't considered the reader at all. It wasn't interesting in the slightest. And precisely because it wasn't interesting at all, it was eerie.
It's better not to turn to the next page until you're mentally prepared.
Such a sentence sat at the bottom of the left page. It was woven in unnaturally, completely unrelated to the preceding events. My hand instinctively stopped. Where was the protagonist heading first? I wouldn't know unless I turned the page. What does "mentally prepared" even mean? My hand froze on the page. I had a bad feeling. The next moment, I heard a knock on the club room door, startling me so much I nearly jumped out of my skin. The person who opened the door and slipped inside was none other than the woman I had suspected to be the author of this booklet. By no stretch of the imagination was this a coincidence. Glancing briefly at me—trapped halfway out of my shell like a snail—and the kotatsu, she asked, "Have you seen him?" "Him" could only refer to her boyfriend, who was also my mentor in the occult and an upperclassman in the club. When I replied that he hadn't come here, she simply said, "I see," and turned to leave. Panicking, I opened the booklet I was holding and asked, "Did you write this?" After widening her eyes for a split second, she said, "Now I remember why I couldn't remember," and walked back toward me. She possessed a strange, hard-to-explain power. It was an intuition far too powerful to be called mere keenness—almost like a form of clairvoyance. Moreover, much like Edgar Cayce, she seemed to witness things akin to prophetic dreams, only to forget them entirely upon waking up. And then, she would suddenly remember them triggered by random moments in daily life. To put it simply, she had a bizarre knack for "remembering the future."
I remember seeing her walking through town with an umbrella once. Even though the sky was clear. I hurriedly ran to a convenience store and bought a plastic umbrella, certain that the weather was about to take a sudden turn for the worse. Yet no matter how long I waited, it never rained, and the plastic umbrella ended up being a complete waste. The next day, I happened to run into her and brought it up in a somewhat reproachful tone, to which she simply replied, so casually: "Oh, that was a parasol." All the energy drained out of me. I couldn't help laughing at my own stupidity. However, I was shocked when that day's news reported that the previous day's UV radiation levels had broken the record for the highest maximum of the past year. She truly was a mysterious person.
"Where did that book come from?" When she asked, I pointed at the rack. She tilted her head, saying, "I had no idea it was up there," before adding, "I even forgot I wrote it." She claimed she hadn't been able to get in touch with her mentor over the last few days. "Huh?" I muttered back. She said that even though she was searching for him and couldn't find him, and even though she had a creepy premonition in her gut, she completely failed to "remember" what was about to happen. Come to think of it, I hadn't seen him around lately either. She mentioned that his phone wasn't going through, and though his car was there, he wasn't at home. She pointed at the book, claiming it was the cause of all this. I almost dropped it in surprise.
"If it's something happening on that day, I see it the night before." But, she continued: From experience, information concerning higher risks was revealed to her much further in advance, she said. If she was about to step in dog poop, she'd see it two days prior; if curry udon broth was going to splatter on her, she'd see it three days prior. If she was about to break a bone, it would be two weeks before... and so on. Though not always. These "early previews" usually happened when her physical condition was poor. If she "remembered" too far in advance, she would end up forgetting by the time it actually happened. "Pretty useless, right?" Useless or not, it was a world of talk far beyond the comprehension of an ordinary guy like me. "Half of that thing is just a memo," she said, pointing at the booklet once more. She was saying that because she had already foreseen this current situation—where her mentor's whereabouts were unknown—two years ago, her intuition wasn't working for her right now. "Though I forgot what kind of story I wrote." For the first time, she smiled faintly. Once again, I opened the booklet, feeling as though I were touching poison. "It's a story called 'Pursuit.'" When I told her it seemed to be a plot where I would go looking for my mentor from here on out, she insisted, "I'm coming with you." Naturally, I had no reason to refuse. I tried not to think too deeply about what it meant that she had known about this two years ago. I took the booklet and left the club room. Even the cold winter sky didn't bother me now.
It's better not to turn to the next page until you're mentally prepared.
After reading those words in my head three times, I turned the page. "...First, it seems to be an arcade." The name of a real, existing place appeared. The two of us hopped on our bicycles and headed there. It was a large arcade right in the middle of town.
We went inside and looked around, but there was no sign of my mentor. The story of "Pursuit" described the protagonist taking purikura photo stickers, so I went over to that corner just in case, but it was swarming with young women and I got cold feet. Besides, reading ahead, it turned out there were no clues to be found at the arcade anyway, so I told her it was pointless, but she insisted, "We should do what the book says." It was only then that I thought, wouldn't it be faster to just read the ending part first? When I voiced this, she replied, "Does it say you did that?", so I shook my head and gave up. Though my heart pounded with ominous premonitions, perhaps I was actually enjoying this situation in my own way. In the end, while feeling annoyed by high school girls hogging the purikura booth to take endless rounds of pictures with the same group of friends, we stood in line, and finally squeezed into a photo booth together. "Pursuit" didn't mention the protagonist having a female companion with him, but well, this much was probably fine. As I stared intently at the sticker sheet that popped out, I felt a lingering sense of unease. Without knowing what that unease was, I checked the next location. "Next is... the general store."
It was a bit of a distance from the arcade. The street was overflowing with young people, but since it was a weekday, the crowds weren't too overwhelming. We parked our bicycles and descended into a cozy underground shopping arcade spreading out around the casual clothing shops.
I had heard of it, but it was my first time coming here. I'm clueless about fashion so I couldn't quite tell, but it seemed to be a trendy general store anyway. Scanning for any sign of my mentor while catching glimpses of colorful items blending Japanese and Western styles in the corner of my eye. However, there was no trace of him. I casually asked a clerk just in case, but they only shook their head. Indeed, there were no clues at the general store either. Sighing, I closed "Pursuit." While I was looking for her because she had wandered out of sight, I found her standing by the wig section. She corrected me that they were called "wigs," though I couldn't tell the difference. After that, she seemed fascinated by a squeaky toy hammer designed to look like it was stained with fake blood, and after making me wait forever, she apparently bought something else entirely. As we left the shop, that nagging feeling I had experienced back at the arcade crossed my mind once more. "Next is... a coffee shop." We hopped back on our bicycles and rode off.
A suspicious-sounding name like "Earth Defense Force" came up, but neither of us knew it, so after wandering down the streets relying on the description in "Pursuit," we finally spotted the name on a building window. Entering an unfamiliar shop in a rundown-looking building always makes your heart race the higher the floor is. When we pushed open the entrance door, sure enough, an interior full of playful touches jumped into our field of vision. Figures, miniature cars, Space Invaders, and manga books lined the narrow shop interior.
Anyway, I looked around the shop, but among the few customers who looked like regulars, my mentor was nowhere to be found. I wasn't disappointed. We were bound to find a small clue here, after all. Feeling hungry, I ordered ramen. Having read in "Pursuit" that the protagonist ordered it, I asked without even looking at the menu, and apparently it really existed. I was a bit surprised when the master started opening a packet of instant ramen right in front of us, though. While waiting, we played a game of "Pop-up Pirate" she had dug up from somewhere, and as we argued over whether making the pirate pop out meant you won or lost, the master placed the bowls of ramen on the table, saying, "If it pops out, you win." As I started eating, a cat rubbed against my ankles. What kind of shop was this? When I finished eating, I refrained from pointing out that the bowl was undeniably a mortar, and called out to the master. "Ah, come to think of it, he was here three or four days ago." As expected, my mentor seemed to be a regular. He had good taste. "I think he had a companion with him." I latched onto that casual remark. "Nah, but I don't really remember." We had obtained a tiny hint. I checked "Pursuit," but it seemed that was the end of the line for this place. Giving up, we left the shop. As I closed the door, the sound of billiard balls cracking echoed from the back of the store. "Next is..." My foot stopped mid-step as I descended the stairs.
It's better not to turn to the next page until you're mentally prepared.
Flipping past this sentence for what must have been the umpteenth time, the next page contained developments that brought us considerably closer to the core. "Next is... the bowling alley." I straddled my bicycle once again. At this point, I hesitated whether to share my deduction with her, but seeing her pedal away without a change in expression made me hold back. I still found her intimidating. I never knew what she was thinking. We got off our bicycles and entered a bowling alley I had visited a few times before. "Are we playing?" "It seems we're just here to ask the staff some questions." She looked slightly disappointed. Ignoring that, I headed straight for the counter. "Ah, I think I can figure that out for you." When I gave my mentor's name, he looked it up without hesitation. It was a young clerk with dyed brown hair. He must have received training so slack that customer privacy didn't matter at all. Still, I was grateful for it right now.
After a short while, a score printout bearing my mentor's name popped out. The date was three days ago, at 2:00 PM. Just as I thought. I remembered that when we went bowling together before, he had registered under his real name. I didn't care about my mentor's dismal score littered with gutter balls. Both my eyes and hers were locked onto another name. It was the name of an animal. Sure enough, the name "Rabbit" was lined up right next to my mentor's.
The nagging feeling I'd had since the arcade began to unravel. Purikura, trendy general stores, novelty-themed coffee shops. Wasn't this a textbook date course? And registering under an animal's name practically guaranteed it was a young woman. I stole a fearful glance at her face, but I couldn't read her true feelings from her expression. Sensing something sleazy from "Rabbit's" score—which had even more gutter balls than my mentor's—I instinctively averted my eyes. Silently, the two of us left the bowling alley.
It's better not to turn to the next page until you're mentally prepared.
I genuinely needed mental preparation this time. And then I looked up at the heavens. Go? To a love hotel? With her in tow? It wasn't so much hesitation as outright irritation. Whether she knew of my confusion or not, she simply said, "Where's next? Let's go." Without speaking our destination, I pedaled with a gloomy heart. The moment we stepped into the love hotel district, she must have known what was happening, too. We parked our bicycles at a nearby lot and walked. She followed me in silence. The fact that the name on the sign wasn't too vulgar was no comfort at all. Coming to a halt in front of a sign I spotted with ease, I pointed my finger straight ahead.
"So, are we going in?" Her tone, completely unchanged from usual, only made me more nervous. Spreading out "Pursuit," which had gotten thoroughly crumpled tucked into the back of my jeans, I said, "We're going in." Before I could stammer, "But—", she pulled me inside with her. My heart pounded like crazy in this situation, but I followed along anyway. I made myself say "Room 205," and she accepted some kind of card from a person whose hands were all that was visible. We marched resolutely down the hallway and pushed open the door with the room number glowing above it. The moment we entered, she threw herself face down onto the bed with a thud. She let out a sigh, muttering something about her feet hurting. Overwhelmed by awkwardness, I started opening closets and drawers, calling out my mentor's name as a half-hearted joke. I didn't even want to touch the small box by the pillowside. When I opened the bathroom door, for a split second, I had the illusion of my mentor's pale face floating in the large bathtub, and I felt dizzy. Then, amidst the steam, I noticed that the hot water was literally left running, and with a shudder, I turned off the faucet. The rushing sound of the tub...
Comments (-)