Under the Soil

This is a story I heard from my mentor. It was the spring of my first year in university, and I was spending my days in entirely unexpected outdoor pursuits. That was simply because the person who dragged me along was constitutionally incapable of sitting still at home. We ventured into the mountains often. Infuriatingly often. That person, whom I looked up to as my master in all things occult, for some inexplicable reason made it her life’s work to wander blindly deep into the mountains and pay her respects at old graves buried beneath animal trails.

She called it "The One Thousand Buddha Memorial," though I remember feeling a strange, nervous itch the first time I heard the phrase, purely from the sound of it. In reality, there was nothing glamorous about it. Dressed in work clothes that made her look like a forestry worker and wiping sweat with a towel wrapped around her neck, she would methodically search for decaying graves. I carried incense, *rakugan* sweets, and *shikimi* branches in my knapsack, accompanying her as a willing packhorse. Since my mentor carried only a bare-minimum map and chose her routes entirely by intuition, we came close to getting lost on multiple occasions.

I believe it was our third memorial tour. We had ventured a bit further out, entering a mountain with an unfamiliar name. Finding the remains of an abandoned settlement clinging to the mountainside, my mentor became suddenly energized. "There has to be a graveyard," she declared. With animated gestures, she imagined the daily lives of the former residents of the settlement, carefully checking the terrain and muttering, "It smells like this way," before plunging into the mountain path. By the side of a certain stream, she finally discovered a pair of gravestones. She poured water over the graves of these people with whom we had no connection, lit incense, inserted *shikimi* branches into a plastic tube she’d brought, and offered rice and *rakugan*. "Tenpo year three. That makes it the late Edo period." After offering a prayer, my mentor examined the characters carved into the stone. Moss covered the entire surface, and she had to scrape away a considerable amount of the green stuff before the characters became legible. "Look. At the edge. It's chipped." Sure enough, the four top corners of the gravestone looked as though they had been smashed off.

"They say that if you chip off and keep pieces of a gravestone belonging to a wealthy and powerful person, it brings good luck in gambling." My mentor took a small hammer from her pouch and began tapping further at the chipped edges. "The foundation here is solid, and the stone looks good, too. They must have been an influential person in this area." "Is that really okay?" I asked. Striking the grave of a complete stranger without permission felt wrong. "It's just like a luxury tax. You can only take six mon into the next world anyway, so things of this world stay in this world. Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's." Uttering such nonsense, my mentor boldly swung her hammer and handed me the largest fragment among the chipped-off pieces, saying, "Here." Curiosity won out over unease, and I tucked it into my wallet. I had no idea back then that by the time summer arrived, my wallet would be bulging with stones like that.

"There might be even older ones." Based on her observation of those two graves, my mentor deduced that the predecessors were likely just as influential, and that their graves might remain nearby, prompting her to resume the search. However, this attempt was cut short. As dusk approached, it ended with us merely finding traces of what seemed to have been an ancient landslide facing the stream. Whether there had been a grave there was uncertain. My mentor wore a frustrated expression as she stared intently at the landslide scars. That was right then. The fallen leaves on the ground, precisely midway between where my mentor and I were standing, danced into the air with a dull thud. Startled, I looked over, and the exact same phenomenon occurred at my own feet. "Ouch." My mentor pressed a hand to her right temple. A stone. A stone had been thrown from somewhere. The moment I realized it, I scanned our surroundings, and sure enough, the culprit was there. A single monkey was sitting on the slope across the stream. Noticing our gaze, it bared its gums and snarled. It looked less angry and more like it was sneering at us. Then, grabbing a suitable stone or piece of wood from the ground, it hurled it at us with all its might. This was far too powerful to be called play. Even if it was just a small Japanese macaque, it possessed the arm strength to travel from tree to tree using only its arms.

I felt a sense of personal danger and tried to run away. However, my mentor simply muttered, "That actually hurt," and the next second, she bolted toward the stream. Shouting, "What do you think you're doing, you bastard?" she slid down the slope, and without caring if her trousers got wet, began splashing across the stream. There was no time to stop her. It was an incredible spectacle of a mentor, furious at a monkey's prank, launching a counterattack. Perhaps realizing the tables had turned and sensing mortal danger after assuming they were safe on the opposite bank, the monkey dropped the stone it was holding, let out a threatening screech, and fled up the slope and into the trees. Refusing to be outdone, my mentor let out a matching screech, crossed the stream, scrambled up the slope, and leaped into the trees. I instinctively looked up at the slope, but the dense, overgrown trees stretched upward into the heights without end. Chasing a monkey deep into pathless mountains was sheer insanity. I realized I should have stopped her, but it was too late. Calling out my mentor's name, I had no choice but to wait for her return. It's a monkey. A monkey. I blankly reiterated the fact to myself. The idea of an unarmed human chasing a monkey in the mountains was absurd. Besides, running through pathless depths like that in the mountains—falling off a cliff or stepping on a sharpened bamboo spike—was surely fraught with terrifying dangers just to contemplate.

After crossing the stream myself and wandering restlessly around in a state of agitation, about an hour finally passed before the bushes across the slope rustled, and my mentor reappeared. Twigs and leaves were tangled all over her body. The moment I saw her sliding down the slope while trying to keep her balance, I hurried over, calling out, "Are you alright?" My mentor grimaced and said, "It got away." Her clothes were dirtied from falling a few times, and there were scrapes on her face as well. However, when I saw her right arm, I involuntarily ran up to her, scolding her with words I hadn't even planned to say: "I told you so!" My mentor had rolled up her sleeves because of the heat, and from the elbow down on her bare right arm, a considerable amount of blood was dripping. I immediately pulled a clean towel from my knapsack and wiped the blood away. Acting as if she hadn't even noticed the blood, my mentor rudely brushed away the hand that had grabbed her.

"What is it, hey? I'm fine." "You obviously aren't fine." Determined to check the condition of the wound, I forcibly grabbed her arm again. Huh? There... is no wound. Just the kind of minor scrapes visible on her face. I stood there dumbfounded. Then whose blood was this? The towel I used to wipe it was soaked in blood. I hadn't misseen it. "I told you I'm fine." My mentor roughly shook off my arm, pulled her rolled-up sleeves back down, and began crossing the stream. For a while, I compared the blood on the towel with my mentor's back, before eventually concluding, *Let's just pretend I didn't see that*, and tossing the towel in my hand away. Because thinking about it was simply too terrifying. Then, calling out, "Wait for me," I hurried after her back.

My mentor was still full of enthusiasm, and by the time the sun had completely set, she had discovered two more graves. Just following a person accustomed to mountain walking left me gasping for breath, and I repeatedly pleaded, "Let's go back already." Those words were ignored, and when she strode unhesitatingly through pathless terrain saying, "This way," I had no choice but to sigh and chase after her. The final grave we found by the mountain path had no name, formed merely by stacking two smaller stones on top of each other; I surely would have missed it if it hadn't been pointed out. My mentor pressed her hands together and muttered, "Looking at a small, miserable grave like this somehow makes me feel glad." "Why is that?" It felt unexpected. "Maybe they had no money, or no connections... Perhaps it was a child who died before it could even be given a name." "Why would you feel glad about someone who couldn't even get a proper grave?" My mentor quietly raised her head.

"Even so, this small grave remains as proof that that person existed." Two sticks of incense stood in the moss-covered stone base. Smoke was rising lazily. My mentor reached out and poured water over the incense. "And people like us who press our hands together come by on a whim." Shall we head back? she said, standing up. I hurriedly packed away what I had taken out of my knapsack.

The return journey was pitch black, and we each held up the flashlights we had brought. It was a different path from the one we had taken coming. My mentor claimed it should be a shortcut. While watching my footing and making sure not to lose sight of my mentor's back, I carefully walked down the low-visibility descent, but my mind remained tethered to that small grave from earlier. Proof that that person existed... The phrase *Death makes deathly* suddenly floated into my mind. Was it a poem someone had chanted? I believe it meant that the death of a person implies that the memories of close people who had once died and remained in that person's heart are volatilized once more, and forever. The owner of the grave we saw earlier was surely no longer recorded anywhere, nor left in anyone's memory. Yet the stone remained. I was pondering the meaning of that.

As I walked in a daze, my mentor's voice reached me from ahead. "Hey." Coming to my senses, I saw my mentor had stopped along the path and was shining her flashlight toward a side path where the bushes cleared. "What is it?" Her profile looked strained, if only slightly. "A suicide." "What?" Surprised, I hurried over. In a place overgrown with grass—somewhere you wouldn't even recognize as a path at first glance—there were unmistakable signs that someone had passed through. I aimed my flashlight past the grass that had been trampled flat. At the intersection of the two beams of light from my mentor and myself, a human figure floated in midair. A hanging. I involuntarily swallowed hard. Beneath a tree in a depression, a person was dangling.

A rustling sound came as my mentor beside me moved toward it. There was no time to stop her. I shrank back for a second. That a human-shaped object, illuminated by artificial light in a deserted night mountain, could be this terrifying. I felt as though seeing a hazy, ghostly apparition would have been preferable by far. Even so, following my mentor's back, I took a step forward. The path sloped gently downward. The sight of a bluish polo shirt and jeans appeared almost directly ahead. I felt a slight sense of relief that the figure was facing away. As I walked further down the slope and drew closer, I noticed the feet were positioned quite high up. Even on tiptoe, I couldn't reach the shoes. A single thick branch protruded near the level of the corpse's belt. They must have climbed the tree up to that point and dropped off from a position with their feet hooked over the branch. There was no foul odor that I had feared. Given how warm it was, spring though it was, putrefaction should have set in if two or three days had passed. Perhaps not much time had elapsed since the hanging. Yet the hands protruding from the shirt were unnaturally pale, lacking any flush of blood. My mentor walked around to the front and shone her flashlight near the face of the hanging corpse. Then, uttering a short "Oh," she backed away with an expression of disgust. I couldn't bring myself to do the same and simply watched her reaction. Presently, as if satisfied after observing the corpse for a while, my mentor began to pace around it with an oddly buoyant gait. "Shouldn't we cut it down?" Even as I said this, I thought it would be quite difficult to bring it down from that height. We would have to cut the rope with pole pruners or something similar. "Well, hold on." Speaking in a tone that suggested she was plotting something mischievous, my mentor began rummaging through the pouch tied around her waist. Her attitude made it hard to believe she was the same person who had been praying at a stranger's small grave just moments earlier. Though this dual nature was typical of her, if anything. "Oh, good job, me. I brought it." A small, toy-like shovel emerged. Holding it in her right hand, my mentor squatted right beneath the hanging corpse. Then, with the shovel raised in her right hand, she turned only her neck sharply toward me. "I'll show you something interesting."

Those words gave me a chill. It felt like the surface of my stomach was being stroked. *Thwack.* The shovel was swung down onto the soil. The ground was gouged out along with the fallen leaves, and its tip successively plowed through the dirt. "You know what *konpaku* means, right?" My mentor asked while keeping her hands moving. *Konpaku*? The soul? If I recall correctly, *kon* refers to the spiritual soul, or mind, while *haku* is supposed to be the soul that dwells within the physical body. When I said as much, my mentor nodded, "Well, something like that." "In Chinese Taoist thought, the 'kon' of *konpaku* is the *yang* breath of yin and yang, bestowed by the heaven. And the 'haku' is the *yin* breath, bestowed by the earth. After a person dies, both leave the physical body. But their destinations differ." Even while talking, she kept silently digging up the earth. From a short distance away, I watched her closely, illuminating her with my flashlight. Above my mentor's head lay the deep darkness of the mountain hollow, and from the bottom of that darkness, human feet dangled like a bad joke. It was a chilling sight. "The 'kon' bestowed by heaven returns to heaven. And the 'haku' bestowed by the earth is said to return to the earth. Modern Japanese people all share a template image that after someone dies, the soul slips out and ascends to heaven. How impoverished. Truly." What was she trying to say? My heart began to pound. "It's not like I want to talk about 'what happens after a human dies.' It's just from experience. I've encountered hanging corpses like this a few times. On those occasions, a certain phenomenon always occurs. I've been wondering what on earth it is." The arm swinging the shovel grew more forceful. "Even with hanging, it doesn't work indoors, or on asphalt or concrete. But places like this... out on the soil, it usually shows up. Right beneath the corpse." A sharp gasp escaped my lips. It took me a moment to realize it had come from my own mouth. As if the sweat from earlier was a lie, I now felt an indescribable chill. "Ah. It came out. Come and see." My mentor tossed the shovel aside and brought her face close to the ground.

What is it? What on earth is under the soil? To me, unable to move, my mentor scooped something up from beneath the dirt, placed it in the palm of her right hand, and the moment she turned to face me, shoved it right up against my nose. Brownish. Something thick and viscous. It dripped down in thin threads from between her fingers. "Do you have any idea what this is?" Unable to speak, I could only shake my head back and forth in small increments. "I don't know either. But in the ground beneath a hanging corpse, you usually find this. If this is a phenomenon that occurs universally across locations, ethnicities, and races, then observed instances of this would surely have been rationalized with some kind of meaning. ...For instance, that 'haku' returns to the earth." Viscous and thick, it dripped down between her fingers. As if escaping from her palm with a will of its own. "There are stories about this in Japan, too. Was it in *Anzai Suihitsu* or *Koshi Yawa*...? If you dig under a hanging corpse, something you can't quite make out comes up." My mentor scratched beneath her left eye with the fingers of her other hand. She looked pleased. It was not a normal look in her eyes. I had experienced bizarre things myself many times over and fancied I had collected a fair share of ghost stories. Yet I had never heard of this at all. I had never even imagined it. Digging up the ground beneath a hanging corpse. Why did this person know such a thing? A fathomless impression washed over me, swirling with a mixture of fear and awe. "Ah, it's vanishing." The brownish substance remaining on her palm all slipped away as if fleeing. Even when I looked at the ground beneath her hand, no trace of what should have fallen remained. Where had it disappeared to? "Once you dig it out of the ground, it vanishes in the blink of an eye. Looks like everything under the soil is gone now, too." My mentor picked up the shovel once more and drove it two or three times into the exact same spot in the hole she had made in the dirt, but eventually shook her head. "Well, isn't it interesting?" The moment my mentor said that and raised her head— A strong wind blew, rustling the trees surrounding the hollow all at once. I instinctively shrank back and looked up at the sky.

I jolted. It was the sensation of a wedge being driven into my heart. Dimly illuminated by the flashlight beam pointed at the ground, I saw the tips of the hanging corpse's feet floating in midair. Decayed jeans and worn-out sneakers beneath them were now pointing toward me. Just a moment ago, the corpse's back should have been facing us. As I slowly raised the flashlight upward, the corpse's unnaturally bent neck and downward-drooping head turned toward me. Its hair had grown shaggy and unkempt, and its face was invisible unless peered at from directly underneath. The wind? Did the wind flip it around? A chill ran down my spine. The body, still hanging, had its limbs rigidly extended in a bizarre fashion, entirely stiff straight down except for the head. If the wind had twisted the rope, it should have twisted back in the opposite direction just as easily. I held my breath and watched, but the hanging corpse remained rigidly vertical with no sign of movement. That absolute lack of movement was more terrifying than anything else. Whether aware of the terror I was feeling or not, my mentor turned toward me and let out a gleeful voice. "Which one is it?" With that, she smiled. Which one? What on earth was she talking about? I slowly turned my face, which had been looking up at the sky, toward my mentor. The joints in my neck creaked dryly like an ungreased axle. "Does someone hang themselves and die, causing that strange thing to appear under the soil? Or is it..." As she spoke, my mentor looked up directly above herself. And toward the face of the corpse hanging overhead—