Chapter 4

“There is a fundamental difference between what you study in high school and what you learn in college.” Those were the words Naoya Fukamachi heard at his entrance ceremony to Seiwa University. He had already forgotten whether the person who said them was the university president, the dean, or a guest speaker. But out of all the things said during the ceremony, for some reason, those words stuck with him. “The education you’ve received thus far involved understanding what your teachers were saying in accordance with your textbooks, and then measuring the extent of your comprehension through testing. In short, you were ‘memorizing how to solve the problems that would appear on the exam.’ But now that you’ve overcome the major obstacle of the entrance exam, you will acquire a completely different method of learning in this place known as university. From now on, it won’t be enough for you to simply solve assigned problems. You will have to find the problems, explore how they can be solved, and arrive at the solutions by yourselves. Starting now, you will be engaging in ‘scholarship.’” Scholarship. Naoya honestly felt that the sentiment didn’t quite hit home. He expected most of the incoming students felt the same. Looking around at the students sat neatly in rows in the auditorium from their place onstage, the speaker continued in a calm voice. “College is a place where you can learn naturally. So find something—even one thing—that interests you. Anything is fine. Look for something you’re curious about, something you find intriguing. The subjects that capture your interest will surely lead you to the base of ‘scholarship.’ That base is extremely vast. You can learn freely and discover new horizons.” Naoya remembered thinking the speaker shouldn’t exaggerate so much. But he also thought it sounded kind of nice. The days of learning through rote memorization of textbook and reference book contents were over. In college, he could study what he liked, as he liked. That thought made him a bit happy. The question was whether he would actually be able to find such a subject. Or rather, how much would he be at liberty to choose something? It was “scholarship,” after all. The university wouldn’t allow someone to study a subject if its contents weren’t reasonably creditable. Properly speaking, it would have to be a subject that everyone recognized as truly academic. …Or so Naoya thought. “Now then, today’s lecture is on ‘bathroom ghost stories!’” With an indescribable feeling brewing inside, Naoya gazed through his glasses at the man on the podium, who had started talking in a merry tone. The man’s name was Akira Takatsuki. He was an associate professor at Seiwa University. He specialized in folklore studies. This lecture, Folklore Studies II, which took place on Wednesdays during third period, was a general education course in the Literature Department, but it was so popular that students from other departments also came to listen. Even in October, half a year since the course began in April, every seat in the spacious lecture hall was nearly full. That was due in large part to Takatsuki’s looks. He was an objectively attractive man. With his light brown hair shimmering in the window light, his kind, clean-cut features, and his tall, slender frame clad in a well-tailored three-piece suit, he looked like a model or an actor. He was young, too. He was in his mid-thirties but looked at least ten years younger, though it wasn’t as if he had a baby face. Thanks to his looks, the seats in the front row were filled entirely with female students. And yet, for some reason, that handsome man was talking about ghost stories that revolved around smelly places. “Today’s lecture will be the introduction, and next time we’ll discuss. So today, I would like to introduce you to as many bathroom ghost stories as possible! There are quite a lot of them, actually. The well-known ones are ‘Red Hanten,’ ‘Red Paper, Blue Paper,’ ‘The Hand Coming from the Toilet Bowl,’ ‘The Peering Face,’ and ‘Toilet-Bound Hanako-san.’ I’m handing out some materials summarizing those examples, but I’m sure you’re all familiar with many of them. Even modern flush toilets could not wash away the dark, smelly, dirty image of the era when outhouses were standard, which became a breeding ground for ghost stories. Not that I, myself, am particularly knowledgeable about that era, however. But even now, bathrooms are considered a common dwelling place for spirits.” As Takatsuki spoke, he gave a stack of handouts to a student sitting in the front row. Each student took a handout before passing the stack to the next person. As the materials made their way around, the students started to snicker and exchange glances with one another. The handouts had excerpts from ghost story collections and occult magazines on them—ones geared toward children. That was the kind of content Takatsuki discussed in every Folklore Studies II lecture—tsuchinoko, the slit-mouthed woman, taxi-cab ghost stories, kamikakushi. Naoya thought that, since such topics were the subject of Takatsuki’s study, the so-called base of scholarship must be quite vast, indeed. The words he had heard at the entrance ceremony were true. Nonetheless, though the materials they covered were silly, the class itself was no joke. The object of the course was to “take a broad approach to the field of folklore studies” using “school ghost stories, urban legends, and so on.” Modern folklore, one might say. “Have the handouts made it all the way to the back? Then let’s take a look at them in order—first, we have ‘Red Hanten’ and ‘Red Paper, Blue Paper.’ Their plot devices differ, but it can be said that these two ghost stories are quite similar. The first common feature: hearing disembodied voices after entering the bathroom. ‘Shall I cover you in a red hanten?’ ‘Would you like red paper, or perhaps blue?’ Common feature two: What happens next is dependent upon how those questions are answered. In the case of ‘Red Hanten,’ when someone answers, ‘Put it on me, if you think you can,’ they are killed, found covered in blood, and the blood spatter on the wall appears in the shape of a hanten jacket. In ‘Red Paper, Blue Paper,’ if you answer ‘red,’ you’ll die covered in blood. If you say ‘blue,’ you’ll be drained of blood or suffocated, turning a pale blue-ish color either way. Both stories have a lot of variants; sometimes instead of a red hanten, it’s a vest or a cloak. Sometimes there are additional paper colors—white and yellow—and choosing one of the colors will allow you to survive. There’s also a tale called ‘Red Cloak, Blue Cloak,’ which appears to be a combination of the other two stories. A version of ‘Red Cloak, Blue Cloak’ dates back as early as 1935, so it’s possible that ‘Red Hanten’ and ‘Red Paper, Blue Paper’ were split and derived from this story.” Chalk in hand, Takatsuki scrawled the titles of the story variants across the blackboard as he said them aloud. His voice was soft and pleasant to listen to even though he delivered his lecture with the aid of a microphone. His enthusiasm made his presentations a treat. Nearly all of the students who struggled to stay awake or pay attention in other classes listened attentively to Takatsuki’s lectures. It wasn’t just the professor’s looks or the comedic course content that made Folklore Studies II popular. Takatsuki’s lectures were—quite simply—fun to listen to. “Incidentally, ‘hanten’ is written in hiragana in the title of the story as a play on words, since both the type of jacket and the blood spatter can be pronounced that way. Often, the story starts with reports of ghostly activity in a school bathroom. Suspecting that the mysterious voice belongs to a deviant, the school calls in the police to investigate. Typically, it ends with a female police officer falling victim to the entity. Between the element of wordplay and the dash of realism added with the police being called, it makes for a well-crafted tale that is more than a mere ghost story. Personally, I think it’s one of the best of its kind—stories about people being killed in bathrooms, that is. Stories should evolve over the course of their existence, after all.” Takatsuki drew a star on the board over the words “Red Hanten,” dusted the chalk from his hands, then turned back around to face the class. He pointed to the titles he had written. “These stories have some other things in common, by the way. Does anyone know what they are?” The students looked at the chalkboard. Some heads tilted in thought. Red hanten. Red vest. Red paper, blue paper, white paper, yellow paper. Red cloak, blue cloak. Naoya had heard or read all of those words as story titles before. But when it came to another commonality between them— Ah, Naoya thought. Almost in unison, several of his classmates’ hands shot into the air. “Yes, you there. What is something these stories have in common?” Takatsuki pointed to a girl sitting in the third row from the front. “Um, is it…color? It’s an important element in all of them…?” Her tone was timid, perhaps from the anxiety of being called on. Takatsuki smiled broadly at her and nodded. “Yes, that’s correct! Colors are key in each story. Red is the most common among them.” Truly, the color red made an appearance in every tale. Since it was the color associated with blood, perhaps that was apt for ghost stories. “So common feature three: Color, particularly red, is a major device. There’s actually a theory that the basis for these stories is girls experiencing their first menstruation. Red is the color of blood. And the setting of the stories? The bathroom. Starting one’s period is a major event. Girls share these stories more often than boys, and we cannot ignore that factor when concluding why bathroom ghost stories are frequently very bloody. Now—has anyone noticed any other common features? Yes, you there.” Takatsuki pointed to a boy in the middle of the lecture hall who had his hand raised. “Um, I could be wrong, but… Is it that they’re school stories?” The student didn’t sound very confident in his answer. Again, Takatsuki grinned. “Exactly right. Well spotted! Yes, common feature four: The stories often circulate in schools. Especially elementary and middle school. School is also the setting for ‘The Hand Coming from the Toilet Bowl,’ ‘The Peering Face,’ and ‘Toilet-Bound Hanako-san.’ When studying these kinds of stories that spread through gossip—often categorized under the umbrella of ‘anecdotes’ by researchers—it’s extremely important to think about what kinds of places they are shared in and by whom. The setting and the storyteller. These factors frequently have a great impact on the background of the story and the course of its evolution.” The class wrote down what Takatsuki said in their notebooks or the margins of the handouts. Though it started with a list of children’s ghost stories, the lecture had thus slid neatly into the field of “scholarship.” Takatsuki had presented items for their attention and how the class should proceed with thinking about the topic. “Schools, particularly elementary schools, regularly become the backdrop for ghost stories. I plan to focus on the theme of ‘school ghost stories’ in the future, but I think the reason bathroom ghost stories are so plentiful as a subset is because of the unusual nature of bathrooms. Schools are, essentially, places with a lot of people. You spend your time in classrooms with dozens of other students. But everyone is alone in the privacy of a bathroom stall. On top of that, bathrooms tend to be in the corners of school buildings, and the time you spend in them is minimal compared to other places.” Takatsuki continued. “Mysteries are departures from everyday life. If the classroom is a regular place, then bathrooms are locations which deviate from that regularity. Therefore, bathrooms are places where mysteries are born and ghost stories dwell.” Takatsuki smiled again as he explained that was the kind of stuff he was researching. He looked genuinely happy. It seemed that nothing Naoya had heard at the entrance ceremony was wrong. Scholarship was freedom. All it took was the drive to pursue one’s passion. At the end of Takatsuki’s lecture, just as Naoya was about to leave his seat among the throng of his classmates, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket. He had a message from Takatsuki. “Please come to my office to talk if you’re free. It’s about work.” Naoya looked over at the podium, where Takatsuki was erasing the chalkboard. The professor glanced at him and waved. His smile was especially wide. He seemed really excited about whatever the work matter was. Naoya fired off a quick reply—“I’ll head there after I stop at the college co-op.”—before leaving the lecture hall. He made his way out of the school and headed for the building that housed the co-op. The “work” Takatsuki mentioned was an occasional, part-time gig Naoya had been helping with since June. Naoya wasn’t really sure if “work” was the right word for it. Takatsuki had a website called “Neighborhood Stories.” It was a collection of examples and categories of urban legends that Takatsuki had amassed to date, and he would often receive requests through the site from people who wanted him to solve the mysteries they had encountered. Somehow, Naoya ended up becoming Takatsuki’s assistant and accompanying him when he went to investigate mysteries. Every disturbance they had investigated so far had turned out to be man-made, though. Nevertheless, each time a request came in, Takatsuki leaped at the opportunity to check it out. There was always a chance it would be the real deal, after all. Takatsuki knew quite well that it was impossible to say with complete certainty that real monsters didn’t exist in the world. Naoya knew it, too. The university co-op was fairly crowded. Providing them with a place to buy food, daily necessities, stationery, books, and so on at slightly cheaper prices than other stores, the co-op was a college student’s best friend. Naoya grabbed a packet of loose-leaf paper and got in line at the register. Just then, the student in line ahead of him took out his cell phone. He seemed to be getting a phone call. “…Hey, Misa? …Yeah. No, I’m sorry about last night… What, now? Oh… Uh, I’m still at home.” Suddenly, the student’s voice distorted. “No, I’m going to my part-time job soon… Yeah. Um, I’m kinda busy with work right now, so. We might not be able to meet up for a while. Sorry, I’ll get ahold of you when I can.” His voice warped, the pitch vacillating wildly like some kind of filter was being applied to it. An unpleasant feeling like a chill ran down Naoya’s spine, and he instinctively covered his ears, frowning. Another nearby student looked at him curiously. Naoya retrieved his earphones from his bag, shoved them into both ears, and pressed PLAY on his MP3 player. The music flooding his ears drowned out the voice of the student in front of him, and Naoya finally let out a little sigh. The boy in front of him was still on the phone. Every single thing he said to the person on the other end of the call—a lover he was thinking of breaking up with, perhaps—was a lie. Disgusted, Naoya looked away from him. Naoya could tell when people were lying. Their voices always sounded distorted. The ability was much more of a curse than a blessing. Humans lied a lot, unfortunately. Consequently, to Naoya’s ears, the world was full of jarring, distorted voices. His portable MP3 player was essential. Listening to the distorted voices for any extended length of time truly made him feel ill. He paused the music just long enough to pay at the register, then left the co-op with music blaring in his ears again. He cut across the campus courtyard, making his way toward the faculty building. The courtyard was crowded at this time of day. In addition to people just walking through, there were dance clubs practicing their routines and the drama club roping passersby into impromptu plays. Juggling balls thrown aloft by the street performance society flew through the air, and cherry blossom petals fell to the ground in a storm of colors. Every day was like a festival in the lively, bustling space. But with his ears plugged up with his earphones, viewing the scene around him through the lenses of his glasses, Naoya felt like he was watching something projected onto a movie screen. Even though it was all real and right in front of him, Naoya felt like he was somehow removed from it all. Like there was a thin film wrapped around him alone as he slipped through the noisy crowd by himself. “You will be lonely.” Those were the words Naoya was told when his hearing changed. If you can hear lies, you’ll be lonely. Sure enough, Naoya went through life perpetually alone. Even when he entered college, he didn’t join any clubs or make any new friends. Although—ever since he’d met Takatsuki, things had begun to change. Naoya arrived at Takatsuki’s office. It was on the third floor of the faculty building. Confirming he was at the right place via the doorplate—number 304, “Literature Department, Historical Literature Faculty, Folklore and Antiquities, Akira Takatsuki”—Naoya put his earphones away. He knocked twice, and a voice from inside told him to come in. Naoya opened the door. “Welcome, Fukamachi. You’ll have some coffee, right? Just a minute.” Takatsuki, who had been sitting at his open laptop at the large desk in the center of the room, stood up as he spoke. Naoya took a seat on a folding chair, feeling relieved at the oddly transparent nature of the professor’s voice. The office, three walls of which were lined with bookshelves, always smelled like a secondhand bookstore. With niche interest books on urban legends and monthly issues of the occult magazine MÜ mixed in between old-looking Japanese-style bound books and hefty research papers, the room felt very Takatsuki-like. Occasionally, one could find graduate students sleeping on the floor, but it seemed only Takatsuki was present today. Takatsuki prepared their drinks on a small table in front of a window at the back of the room. Anyone was allowed to use the coffee maker and electric kettle on the table, but since Naoya wasn’t one of Takatsuki’s advisees, the professor always made coffee for him, treating him like a guest of sorts. Although recently, Naoya had started keeping his own cup for coffee in the office. That was how much of a regular he had become to this room. “So what kind of request is it this time?” Naoya addressed the question to Takatsuki, who was returning to the table carrying a tray with two mugs on it. Takatsuki smiled brightly as he placed the cup with the dog on it in front of Naoya. “It’s a really interesting one. And it happens to be similar to today’s lecture.” “So it’s a bathroom ghost story?” “Not a bathroom, but a school. Fukamachi—do you remember Tomoki?” “Tomoki?” “Last month, we met with Miss Hana, right? The high school girl from Chofu whose friend disappeared? Remember the boy I talked to at the park then? The grade schooler? That’s Tomoki Oogawara! He asked for my help!” As Takatsuki spoke, the memory came back to Naoya. Takatsuki usually liked to talk to the residents in the area around a place he was investigating. In Hana’s case, he had asked people about the abandoned house her friend disappeared from. Naoya clearly remembered one of the locals being a young boy. He recalled the boy taking quite a liking to Takatsuki. “The kid who seemed like he was the leader of the group, right? Didn’t he tell you he was going to make you his disciple…? Don’t tell me you went through with that.” “I didn’t. But I did give him my business card back then and told him to contact me if he heard of any other mysterious or unusual happenings. And then yesterday, I got a phone call.” Takatsuki sat down in the chair next to Naoya’s, bringing his own blue mug to his mouth. Naoya was having coffee, but Takatsuki’s mug was full of hot cocoa. Today he had even added adorable marshmallows in the shape of cats’ paws to his drink. Naoya always wondered if it was a good idea for Takatsuki to drink nothing but sickly-sweet beverages, but according to Takatsuki, the brain needed glucose to function, so having sweets was important. “It seems that a new ghost story has just been born at Chofu Municipal Fourth Elementary School, which Tomoki attends. They’re calling it ‘The Locker in Grade 5, Class 2.’ Tomoki himself is in Grade 5, Class 3, so it sounds like this is the classroom next to his.” “Are we talking about a locker that you put things like cleaning supplies or school bags in?” “Yes. Cleaning supplies, in this case.” The story, according to Tomoki, went like this: “The locker in Grade 5, Class 2 is cursed. After school, some girls in that class played Kokkuri-san. But Kokkuri-san wouldn’t leave after the end of the game, and it started living in the locker. Now the locker door sometimes opens on its own even when no one is touching it. If you accidentally go near the locker when the door is open, you’ll be dragged inside and transported to another world.” The children were so frightened by this story that, apparently, they sometimes wouldn’t come to class. The situation had turned into a bit of a minor uproar, with some members of the PTA even suggesting that an exorcism was called for. In the midst of that commotion, Tomoki had remembered Takatsuki. Apparently, he had shown the professor’s business card to his homeroom teacher and said, “This person might be able to help.” “My business card has the URL for ‘Neighborhood Stories’ on it. The teachers looked at the website, and some of them looked into my background as well. I also received an email from the Grade 5, Class 2 teacher through the contact form on the site. It seems the school wants to make a formal request of me… Well, they probably just decided it would be less likely to prolong the fuss if they called in a university professor instead of performing an exorcism.” Takatsuki smiled wryly. “Elementary schools are usually quite restrictive when it comes to allowing outsiders to enter. Even when it’s for research, when we’re talking about something that could have an impact on children, it’s not uncommon to only be allowed to distribute questionnaires at most. But the school is making the request in this case. We’ll be able to investigate freely. School ghost stories are the classic vehicle for anecdotal research, so this is an extremely valuable opportunity.” But that meant, in other words, that the school was in a rather difficult situation. Difficult enough that they had no choice but to allow outsiders to come investigate. Naoya sipped his coffee and tilted his head to the side. “But it’s just a ghost story, right? Why did it become such a big deal?” “Don’t underestimate the effect scary stories can have on children, Fukamachi. Didn’t you ever have that experience when you were little? Of hearing a scary story and being unable to sleep or go to the bathroom?” “…Well, I mean.” Naoya’s response was evasive. He remembered watching a horror movie called A Nightmare on Elm Street at a friend’s house when he was young. It was a movie about people who were brutally murdered in their dreams by a monstrous figure with a scarred face and knives in his hands. For a while after that, Naoya was unbearably afraid to go to sleep at night. Thinking back on it now, it seemed silly, but at the time, he had seriously believed, at least partly, that he would be killed if he fell asleep. “Even adults are afraid of scary stories. For elementary schoolers in particular, the line between reality and fiction is blurry. That enriches their imagination and sensitivity, so it’s not an inherently bad thing… But fear is a particularly powerful emotion on the human spectrum of feelings. Extreme fear can cause hyperventilation and convulsions, and it can make the body freeze up. This story about the locker in Class 2 probably started with that Kokkuri-san game. Games like that have caused several incidents in the past. Some of them even made it into the papers.” Takatsuki licked lightly at the melting marshmallows, his eyelids drooping slightly in satisfaction. Kokkuri-san. If Naoya was remembering correctly, the game had been popular with girls when he was in elementary school. Giggling to themselves in the classroom after school, bathed in the light of the setting sun, their fingers on a 10-yen coin, the girls had looked like they were performing some kind of secret ritual. “I think I’ve read something about Kokkuri-san before. Basically, it’s a kind of spiritualism, right? But because it summons low-level animal spirits, it’s not very good?” “Right. It’s common to use the characters for ‘fox,’ ‘dog,’ and ‘tanuki’ when writing the name in kanji. And in the past, there were many theories that it summoned fox spirits. These days, it’s not limited to just foxes, though.” Takatsuki wrote the kanji on the back of a paper that was sitting on the table. Naoya was starting to feel like he was attending a continuation of the lecture from earlier. “Kokkuri-san is a form of divination that has existed since the Meiji period. It was probably based on Western practices like table-turning and using spirit boards. In table-turning, people gathered around a circular table and placed their hands on it. They called out to the spirit with a chant, and the number of times the legs of the table hit the floor as it tipped and swayed would be interpreted as the spirit communicating. In Japan, instead of a table, people would arrange three bamboo stalks in a tripod shape, place a tray on top, cover it with a cloth, and observe how the tray tilted. According to Inoue Enryō, the device got the name ‘Kokkuri-san’ because of the way it nodded up and down, and that spread throughout the country. The kanji used for the name came after the fact.” “In the version I know, you draw a Shinto torii gate, the syllabary, and other things on a piece of paper.” “That’s the one that takes after spirit boards. That’s what people tend to picture when you talk about Kokkuri-san these days. In the past, people used disposable chopsticks, but now, a 10-yen coin is more common. There are various similar games, like ‘Dear Angel,’ which were popular among elementary and middle school students all over the country in the early 1970s. Some were popular even when I was a child.” “Why was it so popular? I get why you would want to talk to ghosts or deities, but what’s the point in listening to what a fox spirit has to say?” “Probably because, to a child, it doesn’t matter if it’s a fox spirit or a god—it all falls under the umbrella of the incorporeal. I suspect everyone is a little afraid of spiritualism. Deep down they feel like it’s something that shouldn’t be done. But there’s probably some thrill in violating that taboo. Kokkuri-san is a special game that combines innocent divination with the forbidden practice of spiritualism.” Thinking back, Naoya remembered that when the game was popular at his elementary school, there were some children who were extremely afraid of it. The school even banned the game because of that. But there was still a group of girls who continued to play it for a while even after the fact. To those girls, the mystique of Kokkuri-san must have been hard to resist. A mysterious spirit telling them who the boys they were crushing on had feelings for? There was probably no game more exciting than that to a child who was into divination. “But ultimately, the game has become taboo as well.” Takatsuki explained: “There were kids who were traumatized by Kokkuri-san telling them they were going to die, and ones who were distressed when Kokkuri-san wouldn’t leave after the game was done. There was a story in the paper in the 1980s about a girl who suddenly went limp in the middle of class. When the homeroom teacher picked her up, even though the rest of her body was listless, her right hand was stiff. She was taken to the school infirmary, laid down on a bed, and her hand was massaged, but she couldn’t even speak. Apparently, all the other girls in her class said she was ‘possessed by Sen-sama.’ There was a game similar to Kokkuri-san at that school called Sen-sama. There were many other reports, in addition to this one, of being possessed by Kokkuri-san or the Angel.” “But isn’t it just like you said before, Professor? Weren’t those people just having convulsions and such? They were simply interpreting that as ‘Kokkuri-san’s doing’ because it was popular at the time.” The unexplained was made up of “phenomenon” and “interpretation.” Takatsuki said so himself, often. People were afraid of what they didn’t understand. It was scary to let an unfamiliar phenomenon go unexplained. And so, people attached whatever explanations they could to those situations. They interpreted. It certainly would be frightening to have a friend suddenly start acting strangely right in front of one’s eyes. To cope with that fear, a reason for that phenomenon was crucial. “Sen-sama” was the reason for those kids. Their friend was like that because of Sen-sama—there was a legitimate reason for the unusual circumstance they were in. Even if their interpretation amounted to supernatural activity, it was better than having no explanation at all. “Yes, that’s probably true. And there’s a possibility that whatever is happening at Tomoki’s school right now will end up being just the same.” Takatsuki nodded and took another sip of cocoa. The sweet scent wafted gently toward the tip of Naoya’s nose. Naoya lifted his coffee mug to his own mouth. The smells of coffee and cocoa melded together, mixing into the faint, lingering odor of old books in the room. To Naoya, this was the smell of Takatsuki’s office. It was an oddly soothing scent. “Putting aside what happened in Grade 5, Class 2 for now, I think Tomoki’s school is probably in a state of mass hysteria at the moment. Fear is infectious, you know. In a contained space like a classroom, if some of the children start to panic, it’s quite likely that panic will quickly spread to the other children. In no time at all, they won’t even be able to have class,” Takatsuki said. “That’s why I think it’s a good idea to go investigate as soon as possible. The Class 2 homeroom teacher also asked me to come as soon as I could. Besides, there’s a possibility that a real ghost is haunting the locker in that class, right? If that’s the case, I definitely want to check it out immediately! And I absolutely want to open the locker door!” “…Don’t expect me to help if you get dragged to another world,” said Naoya to Takatsuki, whose eyes shone with excitement. That’s what the professor was thinking about, after everything they had just said? Takatsuki always wanted the monsters to be real. So whenever he received a request to investigate a mysterious incident, he went in hoping it would be genuine. “First off, I have to speak directly with the children who played Kokkuri-san! After all, with the information we have now, it’s difficult to see how the game and the locker are related. I suspect the kids saw something strange happen with the locker while they were playing Kokkuri-san. Ah, how exciting! I wonder what’s going on! I want to find out right away!” At times like this, Takatsuki truly looked like he was enjoying himself. Even though he had been behaving like a teacher just a moment ago, now he looked like a dog faced with its favorite toy. Naoya looked down at his own mug. It had a golden retriever pictured on it. He had bought the cup because it reminded him of Leo, his old family dog, but lately, there were many times when he looked at it and thought of Takatsuki. The way Leo had looked when he ran, barking up a storm, straight toward something he was interested in—Takatsuki was the spitting image of that. The school wanted to schedule the visit on a Saturday, when there were no classes. After exchanging emails with the homeroom teacher for Grade 5, Class 2, Takatsuki and Naoya decided to go to the elementary school that very weekend, on Saturday afternoon. Takatsuki’s request to speak directly to the children who had participated in the Kokkuri-san game was initially met with reluctance, but when he asked again, saying it was necessary to “get an accurate understanding of what happened at the time,” for some reason or another, the school agreed. They were told there were three girls involved. They took the bus from Chofu Station—which they had been to for a prior case—and got off at the designated stop to find their destination mere steps away. A white, single-story schoolhouse situated beyond a schoolyard. A young woman and a boy were standing in front of the building’s gate. Naoya recognized the boy. He had a cocky-looking face and a large frame—very much a “leader of the pack” sort of kid. Tomoki Oogawara. As soon as Tomoki saw Takatsuki getting off the bus, he started waving both hands and yelling. “Heeey! Akiraaa!! You maaade it!!” “Tomokiii! How are yoou?” Takatsuki waved back at Tomoki. Naoya thought the boy should probably be addressing the professor with a little more respect, but Takatsuki didn’t seem to mind. No wonder kids said things like “I’ll make you my disciple” to him. When Takatsuki and Naoya made it to the school gate, the woman beside Tomoki bowed her head toward Takatsuki. “Oh, um, my name is Marika Hirahara! I’m the homeroom teacher for Grade 5, Class 2, the one you were emailing with the other day! Thank you so much for coming today!” She was a petite, pretty woman with a bob haircut, wearing a pinafore dress. She looked young enough to be mistaken for a student. She was so youthful that it wouldn’t be a surprise if she hadn’t been teaching for very long… “I was worried about Miss Marika being alone, so I came too, even though I’m in a different class!” As Tomoki stood haughtily with his arms crossed at her side, the woman he referred to as “Miss Marika” gave a wry smile. That was enough to give Naoya a general idea of her relationship with the students. Because she was young, there was probably a sense of her being more of a friend than a teacher, but it was clear that the students adored her. “Hello, how do you do? I’m Takatsuki, from Seiwa University. I should be the one thanking you for today.” While Takatsuki was handing the teacher his business card, Tomoki looked up at Naoya with a dubious expression. “Hey, hey, Akira! Who’s this four-eyes? Your disciple?” “Ah, Fukamachi is my assistant. He helps me with various things.” “Hmm… He looks kinda boring.” “T-Tomoki!” Flustered, Miss Marika chided Tomoki for his casual assessment of Naoya. Used to being called a plain-looking four-eyes, Naoya gave a slight nod in her direction, not particularly bothered by it. They had met before, but if Tomoki didn’t remember him at all, it was probably because Naoya’s appearance was so forgettable that he had blended in with the scenery. For the time being, the group decided to start by going to the staff room, so they headed toward the faculty and staff entrance. Takatsuki and Naoya put on visitors’ slippers and went inside. Tomoki went around the building to the entrance where his own shoe locker was, changed into his indoor shoes, then rejoined the group. Perhaps because it was a Saturday, there were few teachers in the staff room. When Miss Marika entered the room with Takatsuki and Naoya in tow, a middle-aged male teacher stood up. His graying hair, large, prominent nose, and deeply wrinkled brow gave him a vaguely gloomy air. “Miss Hirahara. Is that the man you were speaking of…?” “Yes, this is Professor Takatsuki!” Miss Marika answered, standing up straighter like a student called on during class. The man approached them with a look of exasperation, inclining his head toward Takatsuki. “Hello, I’m Harada, the head teacher. Thank you for coming to help us at this time.” “I’m Takatsuki, an associate professor at Seiwa University. Thank you for having me.” Takatsuki gave his business card to Harada as well. Harada looked between the card and Takatsuki’s face, then glanced at his suit. Forcing a smile, he adjusted the sleeves of his own ill-fitting cardigan. “I saw your face in photos online, but wow, you really are young… An associate professor at your age—you must be quite brilliant.” “Oh, no, I’m just someone who happened to have good luck in life.” Takatsuki beamed as he spoke, and Harada answered him with a stiff formality: “No need to be humble.” Despite the praise in his words, the way Harada was looking at Takatsuki had an air of suspicion. Perhaps he doubted whether calling in a university professor would be helpful. Well, it wasn’t as if his feelings were incomprehensible, but nevertheless. Harada let out a dramatic sigh. “I’m really at a loss regarding this situation. I’m of the opinion that it’ll sort itself out in time, but I can’t just wait around and do nothing when even the PTA is in an uproar… Truly, Miss Hirahara, this is all your fault.” “I-I’m sorry.” Miss Marika shrunk back from Harada’s scowl. Giving another affected sigh, Harada looked back at Takatsuki. “I’m sure Miss Hirahara has already said as much to you, Professor, but I must ask you to keep this matter off the record. It’s already having quite a large impact on the children as it is. If the media were to catch wind of the situation, it would cause even greater commotion.” “Yes, I understand.” Takatsuki continued with a pleasant smile. “Rest assured, I will not discuss this matter with others. I might reference it as an example in my research, but if I do use it in a paper, the address and name of the school will be omitted, and the children’s privacy will be prioritized.” Since Takatsuki’s features and appearance were nice and tidy, all it took was him speaking in that elegant way for others to see him as a very gentlemanly, respectable person. In truth, he was the type of person kids wanted to make their subordinate. It seemed that Harada had no intention of being present for the investigation. He returned to his seat after telling Miss Marika, “I’ll leave the rest to you.” When Harada’s back was turned, Tomoki stuck his tongue out an obscene amount. Seeing that, Naoya remembered having teachers who were that unpleasant and scary when he was in elementary school. Apparently, Harada was just as unpopular as those teachers had been. Takatsuki turned to Miss Marika, who was still standing with her shoulders hunched. “Now then, I would like to speak to the children who participated in the Kokkuri-san game, if I could. I would also like to see the locker in question for myself.” “Ah, yes… The three of them are waiting in the classroom, so please follow me.” She guided them out of the staff room into the hallway. Grade 5, Class 2’s room was on the third floor of the same building. Tomoki, stepping ahead of the adults as if to lead the way, turned back to look at Takatsuki and started telling him about Chofu Municipal Fourth Elementary’s very own Seven School Mysteries: “Akira! Right over there is the nurse’s office I told you about! If you sleep in one of the beds, a burned soldier will appear!” and “In the science room on the second floor of that building over there, the skeleton model dances around at night!” Takatsuki had probably asked Tomoki about the Seven Mysteries before. The professor followed the boy’s words happily. Walking alongside Naoya, Miss Marika spoke in an admiring tone. “Professor Takatsuki really does study ghost stories, doesn’t he…? We were really lucky, finding an expert in the field.” “Yes, he certainly does conduct research on ghost stories. But he’s not a psychic or anything like that, you know.” Miss Marika gave a small chuckle at Naoya’s statement. “There were parents who told me to call a psychic. But Tomoki was kind enough to introduce me to Professor Takatsuki, and I thought he looked reliable, so I asked him to come.” “I think you can count on him. It’s just… Well, he’s a pretty strange person. But more importantly—um, can I ask you something?” “Yes, what is it?” Miss Marika cocked her head to the side. “Just now, the head teacher said something like ‘this is your fault.’ Is that because the ghost story originated in your classroom, Miss Hirahara?” Naoya had been a bit bothered by the way Harada had looked at Miss Marika, like she was bad news. Miss Marika’s face fell. “Ah, yes… That’s right. Also—I think it’s because I was with the children when they played Kokkuri-san.” “Huh? You were there?” “Yes. They came to me, saying, ‘We want to play Kokkuri-san after school, so you come too, Miss…’ It was after school, and it would be bad if something happened, so I was there to supervise. I should have put a stop to it from the beginning, but I played the game myself when I was a child, and I was feeling quite nostalgic.” Her voice didn’t distort at all as she spoke. She was telling the truth. Tomoki looked over his shoulder at them. “Miss Marika plays with us a lot. I wish I was in Class 2… My teacher is a scary old geezer… If I can’t be in her class, maybe you could be my teacher, Akira! I bet it would be fun! You’re a teacher, right? Why not come to our school?” “Hmm, unfortunately, I don’t have my elementary school teacher’s license.” Takatsuki smiled wryly as he answered. “You don’t have your license?! That’s lame, Akira!” “I’m sorry. Why don’t you come to my university when you’re grown up, instead? Hey, Tomoki… You’ve seen the locker in Class 2, haven’t you? What did you think? Was it scary?” In response to Takatsuki’s question, Tomoki folded his arms like he was thinking. “I dunno if it’s really cursed or not. But I guess it’s a little scary… Just a little, though!” His tone was pompous, but Naoya could hear a slight warping in his voice when he insisted he was “just a little” scared. In actuality, Tomoki was frightened, but he was putting on a brave face. Many of the other children were probably feeling the same. In a group setting—like a school—the fears they were harboring would be amplified. If the ghost story was based on the children’s preconceptions, how did Takatsuki plan to solve the problem? Or, if the locker really was haunted—in that case, Naoya thought it likely that Takatsuki would take the locker home. He seemed the type to happily carry the thing home on his back, though Naoya hoped he wouldn’t, since that would be embarrassing. They arrived at the Grade 5, Class 2 room to find three nervous-looking girls gathered by the windows. One with a ponytail, one with a fishtail braid, and one whose hair was long and straight. As soon as they saw the door at the front of the classroom open and Miss Marika step inside, they started speaking all at once: “Miss!” “You’re late, Miss Marika!” “We were getting tired of waiting!” But as Takatsuki stepped into the room following their teacher, the girls fell silent for a moment. They huddled together with their faces close, whispering back and forth—“Is that the college professor?” “Whoa, he’s kinda hot?” “He looks like that one idol!”—in what was probably supposed to be a private exchange. Naoya could hear everything they were saying, though. “Hello. You can call me Professor Akira! I was hoping to talk to you all for a little while. Is that okay?” The girls responded positively to Takatsuki’s cheery greeting, calling out “Yes!” as they approached. Takatsuki’s face seemed to work well on elementary school students. Handsome guys really came in handy with their ability to get other people to let their guard down in an instant. “Then could you start by telling me your names?” “I’m Riho Kamikura.” “Akari Ishii.” “I’m Anna Mitsumura.” The girls scrambled to reply to Takatsuki’s question. The one with the ponytail was Riho, the one with the braid was Akari, and the one with the long hair was Anna. Girls seemed to be quite precocious at this age. All three of them looked older, compared to Tomoki. There was no one else in the classroom. Looking around gave Naoya an odd feeling of nostalgia, even though this wasn’t his own school. Arranged in pairs, the chairs and desks looked surprisingly small and short from his current perspective as a college student. The graffiti etched into the surfaces of the desks told the story of their previous owners. In one corner of the blackboard were the names of the students presently on classroom cleanup duty. The word “aspiration,” written out in every student’s distinct handwriting, was hung all over the wall, accompanied by a large, pink sheet of paper with the monthly class goal on it: “Responding in a Loud, Clear Voice!” At the back of the room stood a shelf where students could store their bags and backpacks, with an unused corner section of the shelf reserved as a space for class library books. And—next to the shelf, right beside the room’s back door, there was an old, worn-out, steel locker. Its door was closed tight. Takatsuki looked at it. “Is that the locker in question?” “No, the children were so afraid of the locker that I moved it to an empty classroom. That one is its replacement,” Miss Marika answered. Takatsuki nodded in understanding before turning back to the girls. “Now then, I’d like you to tell me in detail about the circumstances of the day you played Kokkuri-san. Could you sit in the same seats you were in at the time?” The girls moved to sit in chairs near the windows at Takatsuki’s request. Riho, in the seat next to the window, second row from the front. Akari, next to her. Anna, in the window seat behind Riho, in the third row. Riho and Akari sat sideways in their chairs so they could turn to look back at Anna. “Those are the same seats? You’re sure?” “Yep, we’re sure. We played the game right here. And…” Anna looked at Miss Marika. The teacher nodded as if to say, “That’s enough,” then picked up the story where Anna had left off. “Kokkuri-san wasn’t particularly popular at our school. But it seems these girls heard about how the game is played from friends they made at cram school. They wanted to play it themselves, so that day, in those seats, they tried it out.” After the girls chanted “Kokkuri-san, Kokkuri-san, please come out and play” a few times, the 10-yen coin started moving. They asked Kokkuri-san a handful of silly questions, such as which girls the boys in class had crushes on, and what the names of their future spouses would be. Each time the coin slid smoothly across the desk, they would stare in amazement and giggle softly at each other. But eventually, they ran out of things to ask. The girls decided it was about time to wrap up the game, so as a group, they chanted, “Kokkuri-san, Kokkuri-san, please go back to where you came from.” But the 10-yen coin simply moved around and around in circles without stopping. Dismayed, the girls made their request again: “Please go back to where you came from.” But the coin still did not stop. And then, all at once, it slid over to the word “No.” The girls were shaken. Kokkuri-san wouldn’t leave. It didn’t want to. They went back and forth—“Please go back.” “No.” “Please go back.” “No.”—several times, before, unable to stand it anymore, Riho had shouted, “Who do you think you are?! Get out!” The coin moved then, toward the place where the syllabary was written out, and indicated three characters in order: “Chi.” “Na.” “Tsu.” Right then, something even stranger happened. A small clattering noise came from the back of the room. The girls and Miss Marika turned reflexively to look in that direction. It was the locker sitting in the corner of the classroom. As they watched, its door slowly started to open with a faint creaking sound. “When they saw that, the girls all screamed…and ran from the room.” “Even though there’s a rule that you can’t stop or interrupt the game if Kokkuri-san hasn’t left?” Takatsuki looked at the girls with his head cocked, and the three of them cast their gazes down in embarrassment. Anna opened her mouth to answer for the group. “I mean… We were really scared. We weren’t thinking about the rules.” “Well, it certainly would be frightening for the locker to open on its own. So what happened after that?” “The girls were running down the hallway, so I rushed after them.” Miss Marika picked the story back up. She caught up with the girls at the school entrance. All three of them were sitting in front of the shoe lockers crying loudly, and Miss Marika tried desperately to calm them down. “Because of the commotion, other students and teachers who were still inside the school gathered around… They asked what was going on, and we ended up telling them about playing Kokkuri-san and the locker opening on its own. And I guess that spread around the school as a ghost story.” Miss Marika looked like she was at a total loss. Lightly stroking his chin with one hand, Takatsuki asked, “And after that?” “I asked another teacher to look after the girls, and I went back to my classroom.” “By yourself? That was quite brave of you, after such a frightening experience!” “W-well, it was a little scary, but…I was too embarrassed to ask a colleague to come with me. And besides, the girls left their bags in the room. The paper they used for the game was still sitting on the desk too, and I couldn’t leave it there…” “How was the classroom when you returned?” “It was more or less the same. The locker door was open, the Kokkuri-san paper was on the desk… I tried approaching the locker, but there didn’t seem to be anything strange about it. Besides, the locker was quite old, and the fittings were loose, so it had opened on its own before. But I closed it, just to be safe, grabbed their bags, and left.” “What about the paper used for the game?” “I grabbed that as well and threw it in the incinerator later. I remembered that when I played Kokkuri-san as a child, there was a rule that you had to burn the paper you used…” “Ah, that’s quite standard. So then—were there any other strange occurrences after that? Did anyone who played Kokkuri-san fall ill, anything like that?” “No, not particularly… The girls calmed down after a while. There wasn’t anything I would describe as strange.” As soon as those words left Miss Marika’s mouth, the girls all started shaking their heads. “That’s not true! So many scary things happened!” “The locker kept opening on its own!” “During class and after school! And some kids heard a voice coming from inside the locker! They said it was Chinatsu’s voice, for sure!” Takatsuki leaned toward the girls. “Chinatsu’s voice? So you recognize the name Kokkuri-san spelled out?” Suddenly, the girls faltered. They looked at one another guiltily, then hung their heads. It was Miss Marika who spoke up in their place. “Chinatsu—Chinatsu Mizunuma was a student in Class 2 until the summer.” She spoke of the girl in the past tense. “Chinatsu was born with a weak heart, and she was hardly ever able to attend school. Even after making it into fifth grade, she was only able to make it to class twice. She had to be hospitalized at a facility far from here for surgery…so she moved away before summer vacation.” Miss Marika pointed to a chair in the very back of the room, just in front of the cleaning supplies locker, indicating where Chinatsu used to sit. And then— “—Splendid.” The word spilled from Takatsuki in a murmur. Confused, Miss Marika looked at him. Takatsuki held out his right hand as if asking for a handshake. With a somewhat bewildered expression, as if she was being lured, Miss Marika held out her own hand. Takatsuki grasped it, and in one elegant movement pulled Miss Marika toward himself as if inviting her to dance. Miss Marika looked up at him, startled, her face close to his, and Takatsuki gazed back down at her. “Truly splendid. It’s perfect, Miss Marika.” “Huh? What? U-um…?” Miss Marika’s voice was bemused, but Takatsuki continued, beaming at her. “It started with what should have been a silly game running amok, led to the strangeness with the locker, and now we have the death of a former classmate surfacing as support for the story! It’s a flawless framework for a ghost story! Culminating in the idea that you’ll be ‘transported to another world’ if you get close to the locker must be because the story originally had the shadow of death on it, right? I’m sure it’s due to the awareness that ‘another world’ is synonymous with ‘the afterlife.’ Ah, this is really superb!” This is bad, Naoya thought, drawing close to Takatsuki. Though he had made an effort to behave rather like a gentleman so far, reaching this point, Takatsuki’s logic had flown the coop. Mysteries were his favorite food, after all. When a ghost story he liked was served up in front of him, Takatsuki would naturally sink his teeth into it. He would keep going like this until someone stopped him. There was even a chance he would hold on tight to the person he was talking to, like a big dog jumping excitedly on a passerby during its walk. Half the reason Takatsuki employed Naoya as an assistant was so Naoya could be the Sensible One and intervene when the professor’s reason went missing. Putting a hand on Takatsuki’s shoulder, Naoya began to admonish him in a calm voice. “Professor Takatsuki. Why don’t you calm down a little? Start by letting go of her hand, quickly now.” “What on earth are you saying, Fukamachi! You heard her too, didn’t you? They basically said a dead classmate came back through spiritualism! Don’t you think it’s fascinating? There’s no way someone could be calm about this!” “And yet, the only one acting crazy is you!” Naoya was at his wit’s end, internally, thinking, How did this man make it to thirty-four? He genuinely wished he had a dog leash at times like these. Even at the best of times, Takatsuki had a habit of crowding into people’s personal space. Naoya couldn’t help but worry that sooner or later the professor was going to casually grab a woman’s hand and lean in close to her face and be arrested for molestation or sexual harassment. Glancing around, he saw that Tomoki and the girls were all gaping at Takatsuki. At this rate, his job and reputation would be at stake. “U-um…” In that moment, pressed against Takatsuki, Miss Marika interjected in a voice that sounded like it was being wrung out of her. “Sh-she’s not dead! Chinatsu isn’t dead!” “…Pardon?” “…What?” Takatsuki, who was trying to pull Miss Marika into an even more passionate embrace, and Naoya, who was trying to stop him by pulling on his arm, both stopped moving at the same time. All at once, Takatsuki stood up straight and let go of Miss Marika’s hand in a hurry. It seemed his reason had returned. He glanced nervously at Miss Marika, whose cheeks were flushed bright red, and drew his shoulders in, embarrassed. “I-I’m so sorry, truly… I was so excited about the story—I got so happy that I was about to hug you…” “Ah, no, I don’t really…mind…” Face still red, Miss Marika fixed her slightly disheveled hair. The children were muttering—“She doesn’t mind?” “She doesn’t.” “I guess not.” “It’s fine, isn’t it?”—but Miss Marika pretended not to hear them, and it looked like she really was going to overlook the incident. Naoya couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t fine, but it would be bad if she decided to complain about it, so he figured it was best to let it go. Miss Marika cleared her throat with a small ahem. “A-anyway, Chinatsu isn’t dead, she was hospitalized. The surgery was a success, and I heard she’s in recovery now. So it’s impossible that Kokkuri-san would have called her ghost out!” “…But it could have been a living spirit, right?” Riho objected. Akari and Anna nodded in agreement. “I mean, if that’s not what it is, then why would Kokkuri-san have spelled out Chinatsu’s name? It’s weird!” “Yeah, it must be that just her soul came back to haunt the school!” “I think so too! Otherwise, how do you explain it?!” Seeing the girls in a panic, Miss Marika looked troubled again. It really must have become difficult for her to teach with the students like this. It didn’t matter to the children whether Chinatsu was alive or dead. Because Kokkuri-san had spelled out her name, Chinatsu’s existence was at the heart of this ghost story. Takatsuki leaned in close to Naoya and spoke in a low voice. “Fukamachi—what do you think? Is anyone lying?” “No. No one,” Naoya answered, voice also lowered. Since they arrived at the school, not one person whose voice they had heard had lied about the locker story. In other words, the game of Kokkuri-san, the 10-yen coin spelling out “Chinatsu,” the locker door opening—it was all true. Furthermore, there was a student named “Chinatsu” who had been in Class 2, and she wasn’t dead. Turning his gaze back to Miss Marika and the still-flustered girls, Takatsuki murmured, “I see… That’s interesting.” The locker in question had been moved to an empty classroom on the second floor of the neighboring school building. It seemed it would still take some time for Miss Marika to calm down the anxious girls, so Takatsuki, Naoya, and Tomoki decided to go see it themselves. But as they made their way down to the second floor and across the connecting corridor to the other building, Tomoki’s behavior got stranger and stranger. He was oddly restless, unable to keep his composure, and kept fiddling with his hair and pockets. Takatsuki spoke up. “What’s wrong, Tomoki?” “No, uh… Um, it’s just, I…” Eventually, Tomoki stopped walking in the middle of the hallway and fumbled over his words. “Tomoki… Could it be? Are you…scared?” “A-as if!” Tomoki’s retort was intensely distorted. Naoya covered his ears instinctively, and Takatsuki looked between him and Tomoki, smiling as his eyes narrowed. “Oh? Then how come you’ve gotten all fidgety all of a sudden?” “I… I have to go home soon! I have practice today! If I don’t go soon, my mom will get mad at me!” “I see. If you have practice, it can’t be helped, then. What are you practicing?” “Violin! So even though I ain’t scared at all, I’m going home! See ya later, Akira!” His declaration made, Tomoki turned on his heel and ran back down the corridor in a hurry. Takatsuki watched him go with a small chuckle. “…Tomoki was lying just now, wasn’t he?” Frowning, hands pressed over his ears, Naoya nodded. “Yes. He lied about having lessons today. He’s actually really afraid.” “Ah-hah-hah. He was acting tough earlier because Miss Marika and the girls were there. That’s cute.” “But he really is learning to play violin.” “Oh? I definitely want to hear him play sometime. Now then—why don’t you and I go see this locker for ourselves?” The classroom they were looking for was at the very end of the hallway. Naoya walked alongside Takatsuki toward their destination. Their thin visitors’ slippers slapped against the floor as they went. There seemed to be a collection of specific-use classrooms on this level of the building. There were science labs, computer labs, and audio-visual rooms. The school was utterly deserted on a Saturday and terribly quiet. The hallway felt dark, somehow. Naoya remembered having to go back for something he’d forgotten when he was in elementary school. It had been in the evening, not on a day off, but with all the lights in the school building off except those around the staff rooms, the place had looked strangely empty. Even though Naoya knew the building well, it had felt unfamiliar, and oddly lonely. “—You know, we talked a little about school ghost stories in our last lecture, didn’t we?” Takatsuki spoke as if he were reading Naoya’s mind. “Schools are interesting places, aren’t they? Large groups of unrelated children in one place, forced to do the same things. There’s a theory that ghost stories tend to develop in schools because children, whose spirits are suppressed in places like these, are able to experience some form of release through them. The idea being that the chaos of the mysterious counters the order imposed by the school… It’s an interesting theory, but my own is a little different.” “What do you believe, Professor?” “I think that, for children, schools are places where ordinary and extraordinary coexist, constantly, as two sides of the same coin.” “Ordinary and extraordinary, at the same time…?” “Yes.” With a small snicker, Takatsuki looked at Naoya. His normally dark brown eyes were suddenly tinged with blue. They were a deep, dark indigo, the same color as the night sky. Takatsuki’s eyes changed color like this at times. While his smile shone as bright as the midday sun, the night stayed hidden in his eyes. “I mentioned in class that mysteries are a departure from the ordinary, yes? ‘Ordinary’ is anything familiar, things we’re used to, things we know and love. Things that, consequently, give us peace of mind. But in the crevices between ordinary things, where the extraordinary lies, that’s where the mysterious lurks.” Those night-sky eyes focused on the placard of a room right beside Takatsuki. The science lab. The place where, according to Tomoki, a skeleton model would dance around in the dark. “Don’t you think schools are built around various layers of the ordinary and extraordinary? For new first-years, they are entirely unfamiliar places. The students get used to them before long, and the spaces they frequent, like classrooms and shoe lockers, gradually become part of the ‘ordinary.’ Meanwhile, the ones they don’t use as much, like science and music rooms, remain ‘extraordinary.’ That’s why many schools have moving skeletons in science labs and portraits of Beethoven in music rooms whose eyes follow you around.” “So because the places are unfamiliar, we don’t understand them?” “Right. As I’ve said: People fear what they don’t understand.” That was a common refrain for Takatsuki. People fear what they don’t understand. They don’t like to leave things unexplained, so they create stories for the unknown. In doing so, they give names and concrete shapes to their fears and anxieties—and ghost stories are born. “That’s not the only way the ordinary and extraordinary are in conflict at school. I mentioned the relationship between classrooms and bathrooms in my lecture, but there’s also the contrast between school hours and after-school hours.” The building they were in, usually noisy with the presence of many, was still—devoid of life. The afternoon sun streaming through the windows had disappeared, and all that remained was the red glow of the fire alarm lamps and the green light emanating from the emergency exit signs. To elementary schooler Naoya, returning to retrieve his forgotten items, the empty school at night was just like another world. In that moment, the stories his classmates had told him about the Seven School Mysteries were entirely real. Without his noticing it, another step appeared in the staircase right as he approached it. A melancholy melody echoed from the music room, tapped out on the keys of the piano by blood dripping from the ceiling. A stark-white hand was snaking its way out of a toilet bowl in the bathroom. He was overwhelmed with those thoughts and fled the school building soon after. The most extraordinary things the school harbored came out after school hours. That was probably why so many of the Seven School Mysteries happened at the end of the school day or at night. “The girls in Grade 5, Class 2 who played Kokkuri-san did so after school. The perfect time for mysterious things to take place.” Takatsuki came to a stop as he spoke. They had reached the corridor’s end. In no time, they had arrived at the empty room where the problem locker was being kept. Nothing was written on the placard above the classroom door. That seemed to be another component of the extraordinary nature of this case. Takatsuki reached for the door. Then, just as he looked like he was going to open it, he paused. “Come to think of it, schools on days off—and empty classrooms, too—are both extraordinary. The locker we’re here to see is completely steeped in the unusual at the moment… Hey, Fukamachi.” Takatsuki stooped down slightly, peering into Naoya’s face. “Are you scared to go inside?” When it came to extraordinary, Naoya thought this indigo-eyed version of Takatsuki fit the bill. Seeing those eyes up close—midnight eyes that threatened to suck him up into their depths—nearly took his breath away, every time. The question that had plagued Naoya’s mind since the day they met reared its head again. What on earth is this man? Takatsuki himself probably didn’t know the answer. The professor didn’t know how his eyes had gotten like this. He had no memory of when it happened. All he knew was that he had become this way after being caught up in a situation that could only be called bizarre. It was why he was drawn to mysteries, why he sought them out. Naoya’s reply was awkward, arrested as he was in Takatsuki’s gaze. “Am I s-scared…? I mean, a little, but…” “But?” “…You’re too close.” Naoya pushed Takatsuki away with a hand under his chin. He thought he heard a cracking sound from around the professor’s neck but decided to pretend it was nothing. “F-Fukamachi, um, I think my neck just—” “You’re imagining things. Open up the door already.” Putting a hand over his nape, Takatsuki looked at Naoya. At some point in the last few moments, his eyes had gone back to being dark brown. “It’s scary because I don’t understand it, right?” Naoya continued, returning Takatsuki’s gaze. “So won’t it stop being scary if I actually see it?” “It might not be something that can be understood just by looking at it, you know. It could deepen the mystery.” “But at the very least, I’ll know one more thing than I did before seeing it. That’s better than continuing to be ignorant. I’m sure it is.” “…That’s a wonderful way of thinking about it.” A grin pulled at the corners of Takatsuki’s lips. He reached his hand out again and opened the classroom door. It opened silently, revealing a disused room that seemed to serve no purpose other than storage. No posters or bulletins hung on the walls, but thumbtack marks remained. There was no teacher’s podium, and the desks and chairs were all piled up near the windows. The desks and chairs that had been in the Grade 5, Class 2 room were evidently the bigger kind meant for the older children. The ones here—used by lower grades—were surprisingly small. And there, standing alone in front of the stacks of chairs and desks, was a single, gray, steel locker. A locker which would normally have sat in the corner of a room being placed in the dead center of the class struck Naoya as so terribly incongruous that, somehow or other, it looked to him like a Western-style coffin standing there. The kind a vampire would come out of in an old horror movie. The locker door was slightly ajar. Naturally, it was impossible to see inside the locker through such a gap. An unknowable darkness appeared to be the only thing showing through the opening. Once the ghost story about the locker had spread around the school, some of the children had surely come to this room to sneak a peek at the locker from the doorway. Then, trembling with fear, they must have run away. It wasn’t hard to understand why Tomoki had wanted to flee. Takatsuki walked over to the locker. He circled it once, looking at it carefully, and then—he put his hand on the door. Unflinching, he opened it. The locker was empty. Not a single broom nor bucket to be found inside, and of course, no entrance to another world. All the locker from Grade 5, Class 2 contained was the faint, lingering smell of old cleaning rags. Takatsuki, not yet ready to give up, stuck his hand in the locker and felt around the sides and the top of the interior. But there was no indication that he was about to be dragged to the afterlife. Finally, the professor examined the door’s metal fittings. Just as Miss Marika had said, they had gotten quite loose and hardly caught the way they should have. It wasn’t unthinkable that the door would open on its own, with the fittings like this. “…Right. It’s just a normal locker, after all.” Sounding bored, Takatsuki closed the door. “Kokkuri-san isn’t haunting it, and it isn’t the door to another world. The ghost story was just born from the children’s convictions, I suppose.” The likely truth was that the locker had just happened to pop open while the girls were playing the game. Because of the timing, they connected the door opening with Kokkuri-san. “But then why did Kokkuri-san spell out ‘Chinatsu’?” “The principle behind things like Kokkuri-san still isn’t thoroughly understood, but the general theory is that it works via the influence of the unconscious mind. One of the girls might have unintentionally called to mind their former classmate. Or…” Takatsuki stopped talking for a moment and looked lost in thought. He went back to closely inspecting the locker, one hand lightly stroking his chin. Even if the locker was nothing more than that, to the children, it was a source of fear, the place where Kokkuri-san was hiding. Judging from the earlier behavior of the girls and Tomoki, simply telling the students that there were no monsters inside wouldn’t do the trick. “So what are you going to do now, Professor?” “…Hm. That might be it.” Takatsuki looked over his shoulder at Naoya. “Hey, Fukamachi?” he said. “It might be unpleasant for you, but would be okay if I lied just a little?” His smile was bright and wide. Several days later, Takatsuki and Naoya paid another visit to Chofu Municipal Fourth Elementary. It was a weekday. It was the same time of day during which the girls had played Kokkuri-san. Classes were over, and almost all the students had left. The school building was growing quiet. They had asked Miss Marika in advance to keep all the students in Grade 5, Class 2 from going home. At the moment, those students were lined up along the wall, watching Takatsuki and Naoya with frightened faces. They weren’t in Class 2—they were in the empty classroom. In front of the locker that used to be in Class 2, they had set up one desk and two chairs. On top of the desk was a piece of white paper. Written on the paper were the Japanese syllabary in hiragana, the numbers zero through nine, the words “yes,” “no,” “male,” and “female,” and a torii gate. It was Takatsuki’s handmade Kokkuri-san paper. The locker door, sure enough, was slightly open. Takatsuki walked over and closed it carefully. The metal fittings clanged shut. Then Takatsuki looked around at the children who were cowering along the wall and greeted them. “Hello. I’m sure you’ve heard from Miss Marika, but my name is Akira Takatsuki. I teach at Seiwa University. Call me Professor Akira, okay? Starting now, I’d like to exorcise the Grade 5, Class 2 locker that is haunted by Kokkuri-san.” The children looked at one another, then started talking noisily all at once, voicing their doubts about Takatsuki’s capabilities: “Is he really going to do an exorcism?” “Can he do that?” “Won’t he just get cursed instead?” One of the students said, “Okay, but why is a guy from Class 3 here?” And when Naoya looked in that direction, he saw that Tomoki had snuck his way in amidst the children from Class 2. Folding his arms over his chest snobbishly, Tomoki declared to the kids around him that “Akira is my disciple! I’m the one who brought him here!” In Tomoki’s mind, it seemed, Takatsuki being his disciple was an established fact. Bowing her head to Takatsuki, Miss Marika entreated the professor to do something. Takatsuki gave her a reassuring nod, then looked back at the students. “Now, with Fukamachi here, I’m going to call on the same Kokkuri-san who was summoned here before. And I’m going to persuade it to leave. So, everyone, please sit tight over there and watch.” Naoya sat in one of the chairs by the locker at Takatsuki’s prompting. It was difficult to settle himself into a chair built for an elementary school student. It was probably harder for Takatsuki, who was even taller, but he managed to sit facing Naoya on the other side of the desk, with his long legs mostly hanging out. Takatsuki took out a 10-yen coin and placed it on the torii gate in the center of the paper. He and Naoya each pressed down gently on the coin with their index fingers. “Kokkuri-san, Kokkuri-san, please come out and play,” Takatsuki chanted, his voice soft. The coin didn’t move. The children standing along the wall watched them with bated breath. “Kokkuri-san, Kokkuri-san, please come out and play,” Takatsuki chanted a second time. Once again, the 10-yen coin stayed put. “Kokkuri-san, Kokkuri-san, please come out and play.” Takatsuki chanted once more, and it happened. The coin slid over the paper, circled the torii gate, then stopped. The children yelped in surprise. Miss Marika craned forward to see. “It really came…” someone murmured. This game of Kokkuri-san was, of course, staged. The other day, Takatsuki had proposed playing a fake game of Kokkuri-san to bring the commotion over the locker to an end. Among the children, it was an indisputable fact that Kokkuri-san had summoned a spirit that was living in the locker. It would be hard to dispel that idea just by having an adult reason with the students. “So it would be best to look at things from their point of view and solve the problem using their reasoning.” That had been Takatsuki’s opinion. The mystery that started with Kokkuri-san had to be finished with Kokkuri-san. “That said, I made a promise not to tell a lie in front of you. So I won’t lie with my voice. If I spell things out through the 10-yen coin, it won’t hurt you, right?” Takatsuki had said. It was a matter of semantics, but Naoya also couldn’t think of any other way to calm the children down. “Kokkuri-san, Kokkuri-san, where do you usually stay?” At Takatsuki’s question, the coin slid over to the syllabary. The professor was the one moving it. Naoya had been told to put his finger on the coin and pretend to concentrate. Dashing over to the desk, Tomoki followed the coin’s movement with his eyes, reading the characters it indicated aloud. “F-A-R!” Far. Kokkuri-san’s answer was a lie, but it was Tomoki giving it a voice. Naoya only heard lies as distorted when they were being spoken by their originator. Simply reading someone else’s words from the side, Tomoki’s voice didn’t warp at all. “Kokkuri-san, Kokkuri-san, please go back.” The coin slid back to the torii gate. It seemed to be necessary to have Kokkuri-san return to the gate temporarily after each question asked. Naoya thought that, perhaps, the purpose of that kind of tedious procedure was to add to the very ceremonial atmosphere. “Did you come to this school several days ago?” Yes. “Did you come when Miss Kamikura and the others played Kokkuri-san?” Yes. Takatsuki kept asking questions. At first, the only one standing nearby and reading the coin’s answers was Tomoki, but after a while, other children approached, and eventually everyone was gathered around the desk. “Is your name ‘Chinatsu’?” Yes. As soon as the 10-yen coin gave that reply, a strong shudder ran through the children. “I knew it,” Naoya could hear them whispering. “Why did you come to this school?” I wanted to see them. “Who did you want to see?” Everyone from class. “Is there anything you want to say to the class?” I didn’t mean to scare you. “Anything else?” I wish we could have played together more. As a group, the children read Kokkuri-san’s response out loud. In that way, the words they spoke would become a kind of suggestion. They would become a charm, certain to shatter the fear of ghost stories that had taken root in the children’s hearts. And—their impression of Chinatsu as a terrifying spirit would be rewritten to that of a former classmate who felt lonely. At that moment, there was a small clang. The children gasped. Some of the girls let out small screams. Naoya’s eyes looked toward the source of the sound. The door to the locker, which Takatsuki had shut earlier, was slightly ajar. With a faint creeeak, the door gradually opened wider. Naoya looked at Takatsuki reflexively, but the other man didn’t seem perturbed at all. He simply glanced at the locker before returning his gaze to the 10-yen coin and continuing his line of questioning. “Did you enjoy the time you spent with everyone in Grade 5, Class 2?” It was fun. “Do you like the children in Grade 5, Class 2?” I like them. Oh, Naoya thought. That’s right. This ghost story was made up of two components: Kokkuri-san and the locker. It wouldn’t be enough to just deal with Kokkuri-san. It would be meaningless if they didn’t also exorcize the ghost that was haunting the locker. Takatsuki had probably tampered with the locker beforehand—perhaps even when he had gone to close it—so that it would open again at the right time. Beneath their index fingers, the coin was moving. I want to play together again. “We get it! We understand, Chinatsu!” It was Riho who spoke. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry I was afraid of you! Even though we were classmates, you were lonely because you hardly ever got to hang out with us, right? Please come back to our class when you’re all better!” “Yeah, we’ll be waiting for you! All of us! So get well soon, okay?” “We’ll hang out again! I like you too, Chinatsu!” “We won’t be scared anymore, because you’re our friend!” Akari, Anna, and the other children as well—one by one they called out. We did it, Naoya thought, inwardly celebrating. Success. The children’s impressions of Chinatsu and the locker were probably changed now. They wouldn’t be afraid of either of them anymore. “Kokkuri-san, Kokkuri-san, please go back to where you came from.” At Takatsuki’s request, the 10-yen coin slid back to the torii gate. The creaking locker had stopped moving. Holding their breath, the students stared at the coin. “Thank you very much,” Takatsuki said. The magic words to bring the game to an end. Just as Takatsuki and Naoya removed their fingers from the utterly still coin, the locker door, which had opened nearly a full quarter of the way, quietly closed once more. “I truly can’t thank you enough.” After all the children had gone home, Miss Marika accompanied Takatsuki and Naoya to the school entrance to see them off. She bowed her head deeply toward them. “Thanks to you, Professor, the children seem to have calmed down. I think it’ll be all right now. Their expressions had all clearly changed from how they were before the ‘exorcism.’” “I’m just happy to have been able to help. This case was also extremely useful for my research.” Miss Marika had been informed ahead of time that the game of Kokkuri-san was going to be staged. She agreed with what Takatsuki was hoping to do and had allowed the whole thing to happen. “Chinatsu won’t be an object of fear for the children in Grade 5, Class 2 anymore. That’s good news, isn’t it, Miss Marika? You must be relieved.” “Yes, I am, really…” “Of course you are. After all, you’re the one who spelled out Chinatsu’s name that first time, aren’t you?” Miss Marika’s face suddenly stiffened at Takatsuki’s words. Surprised, Naoya looked back and forth between the two of them. Takatsuki was smiling as he always did. Her features hardened—Miss Marika returned his gaze. “It hit me the other day, when I asked the girls to describe the circumstances of their game. With the seats arranged like this, I thought, there would be another person sitting here,” Takatsuki said. “And when she was sitting in the seat she played Kokkuri-san in, Miss Mitsumura looked back at you and started to say something. But you interrupted her and started talking yourself. It sounded a little forced to me. I think, at that time, what Anna was trying to say was, ‘And Miss Marika was sitting next to me.’” “Wh… What are you talking about?” The smile Miss Marika showed him was wooden, forced. “I mean, that is—I didn’t participate in the Kokkuri-san game.” Her voice distorted. Naoya pressed a hand over one ear. Placing a hand on Naoya’s shoulder, Takatsuki shook his head at Miss Marika. “It’s wrong to lie, Miss Marika.” With those words stated so plainly to her face, Miss Marika looked like she would burst into tears at any moment. Takatsuki took a step toward her. Miss Marika shivered as if frightened of him. Ignoring that, Takatsuki stooped down so he could look into her face. “I don’t mean to blame you or anything. I expect you had your reasons. I’m simply interested in what those reasons were. Because it was your actions that resulted in the creation of this ghost story.” Takatsuki spoke with a smile on his model-like face and a melodic voice. Just as he said, his tone didn’t sound like one of condemnation. He only wanted to know the truth. The reason why this single ghost story was created. The context. “Please, Miss Marika, tell me. Why did you bring Chinatsu’s name into this?” Miss Marika looked down to escape Takatsuki’s gaze. Her shoulders trembled, and a moment later a faint voice spilled from her lips. “It’s…because…the kids…” Her voice shook as much as her frame, but it didn’t warp at all. In that quaking voice, fumbling over her words as they caught in her throat, Miss Marika finally spoke the truth. “I did it because, those children, they—they forgot about Chinatsu.” “Forgot about her?” Takatsuki tilted his head to the side. Miss Marika slowly lifted her head. She looked up at Takatsuki’s far-too-near face, and her eyes were filled with tears. “…Chinatsu was only able…to attend class…twice.” Takatsuki waited quietly for the stuttering tale to continue. “She didn’t even get to go on field trips, or educational outings. Her seat was always empty, and before I knew it, she was relegated to the corner in the back of the room. She couldn’t…attend her own good-bye party…either…” Miss Marika’s voice faltered, and her eyes returned to the floor. Tears streamed down her cheeks and off her chin, pattering onto the ground by her feet. And yet, when she raised her head again, Miss Marika looked like she was angry. “…But! But Chinatsu was still a member of Class 2!” With the back of her hand, she wiped roughly at the wetness on her face, then glared up at Takatsuki. “A little while after summer vacation, I made a suggestion to the class. ‘Why don’t we write letters to Chinatsu?’ It would be wrong to force them, so I decided it would be fine if it was only the ones who wanted to participate. I told them to bring the letters to me once they were done and I would put them in the mail all together…” When she continued, Miss Marika’s voice was just slightly hoarse. “…but not a single child turned in a letter.” “Well, that was inevitable. The children didn’t have enough time to become friends with Chinatsu,” Takatsuki replied. Miss Marika clasped her hands together. “I know… I know I shouldn’t have been upset with them. I’m the one at fault. I mean, when I heard Chinatsu was going to be in my class, I decided then and there—she might not be able to attend school very much, but we should still treat her like a valuable member of the class, and I would guide the other children in doing so… It was totally hopeless. But I even made whoever was on class duty take extra notes during lessons for Chinatsu’s sake.” Even with Chinatsu gone, Grade 5, Class 2 carried on as usual. It made sense, because she was practically a nonentity in the class to begin with, at least as far as the other children were concerned. But to Miss Marika, it was unbelievably sad. “I went to Chinatsu’s house to speak with her before she moved away. She told me, ‘Even though I hardly got to go, school was fun. Everyone was so nice. I really liked them.’ Doesn’t that break your heart? It made me think… Do the other kids even care about Chinatsu?” “That’s why you brought up her name when playing Kokkuri-san. You wanted everyone to remember her.” “But… I never thought it would cause such a panic…” All at once, the fire left Miss Marika’s eyes. She shrunk in on herself, as if overwhelmed by the weight of her surging regret. Tears started to rain down around her feet again. She had probably only meant to play a small prank—nothing serious. She had just wanted to make the children remember Chinatsu, even a little. Instead, Miss Marika’s attempt at mischief had effectively killed Chinatsu. The girl became an object of fear for her former classmates, a ghost summoned by Kokkuri-san. And that fear spread like wildfire, beyond the walls of Grade 5, Class 2 and throughout the school. Miss Marika really must have been at a loss when confronted with the magnitude of her own mistake—and with the reality that she had caused her students to be afraid of Chinatsu. “Miss Marika, thank you for telling me,” Takatsuki said. “I fully understand.” He looked down at the crying woman, his face a bit awkward. “I apologize. I had no intention of making you cry… I really do lack the sense for these kinds of things, and I was thoughtless. But, ah—it’s okay, Miss Marika.” Peering into her face again, Takatsuki spoke kindly. “It’s true that Chinatsu became a terrifying specter for a while, but that’s not the case now. At least, not in the hearts of your students, hm?” The children had called Chinatsu their friend, earlier. “We like you,” they had said. “Let’s play together again.” Of course, their words hadn’t been directed at the real Chinatsu. Hardly any of them had ever had the chance to actually play with her. There were probably students in the class who had never even exchanged a single word with her. By that measure, Chinatsu’s link to Grade 5, Class 2 was still tenuous. However, through this incident, the children were able to see Chinatsu’s existence in a new light. First as an evil spirit, and ultimately as a classmate. There was no denying that. “If an evil spirit is appeased, it becomes a guardian deity. That’s a part of our country’s culture. We’ve protected our communities this way since long ago.” “Professor Takatsuki…” Miss Marika looked at Takatsuki, tears spilling over her pale cheeks. The professor took out his handkerchief and dabbed gently at her wet face. “But you know, Miss Marika, all I did was a quick fix with that exorcism. From here on out, it’ll be up to the leader of this community—you, their teacher, that is—to give more meticulous care to the students. It’ll be fine; you can do it. If you can care that much about one child, I have no doubt you’ll manage.” Takatsuki pressed the handkerchief into Miss Marika’s hand and smiled. By the time they left the school, the sun was starting to set. It got dark early at that time of year. The school gate was directly west of the visitor’s entrance. Looking across the schoolyard toward the gate, Naoya had to squint at the red glow on the horizon. The students must have all left already; Naoya couldn’t see them anywhere, and everything was quiet. The wind blew through the empty grounds, and the meager playground equipment in the corner looked abandoned with no one playing on it. “Will the ‘Locker of Grade 5, Class 2’ ghost story really fade out of the school now, do you think?” Naoya posed the question as they set out toward the gate. Takatsuki smiled. “A story that’s spread around that much won’t disappear so easily. The ‘exorcism’ I did was only for Class 2. I think the story will continue to be shared at Chofu Municipal Fourth Elementary.” “…Is that okay?” The school had asked Takatsuki to put an end to the uproar caused by the ghost story. If the story persisted even now, wouldn’t that be cause for more chaos in the future? But Takatsuki looked at Naoya and replied, “It’s fine.” The professor looked over his shoulder at the school building and spoke in a contented voice. “Ghost stories are an unavoidable part of school, perhaps because the children themselves seek the stories out. School life is, essentially, an endlessly repeating routine. A little bit of the extraordinary is necessary to spice up the mundane. As long as the class at the center of the ruckus calms down, the rest of the classes will follow suit.” After Takatsuki’s game of Kokkuri-san earlier, a discussion was held among the children, and it was decided that the locker in question would be returned to Grade 5, Class 2. The decision was proof that the kids weren’t afraid of the locker anymore. There might be some children who were still a bit trepidatious, but Miss Marika would handle things from now on. How the students from other classes would interpret the locker’s return was another matter entirely. They hadn’t been present for the “exorcism.” Perhaps the locker’s ghost story would enter a new era, its development spurred on by the children’s rich imaginations making up for any missing context. “Ooh, maybe they’ll add a part to the story about a cool college professor being called in to break the curse!” “What are you doing inserting yourself as a character into the story? Besides, don’t you think it’s a bit shameless to call yourself ‘cool’?” “I make a point to take the public’s appraisal of me seriously. Oh, right—Fukamachi, take this.” Takatsuki pressed something into Naoya’s hand. A 10-yen coin. “…Professor, is this from earlier…?” “Yep. The one we used for the game. According to the rules of the game, it has to be spent within three days, so I’ll leave it to you, okay?” “Leave it to me? That game of Kokkuri-san was fake from the start, though.” “Well, about that… When we were playing, did you move the coin by yourself at all, Fukamachi?” “Pardon?” Naoya tilted his head in confusion at Takatsuki’s question. Takatsuki had been the one in charge of moving the coin, he thought. Naoya was just supposed to look serious and put a finger on it, that was all. Taking out the paper they had used for Kokkuri-san, Takatsuki stared at it intently while he spoke. “That last thing the coin spelled out, ‘I want to play together again.’ That…wasn’t me.” “—What?!” Naoya stared up at Takatsuki in shock. “Huh? But then… Then why did the coin move?” “You and I were the only ones touching it at the time. If it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t you…then who on earth was it?” As usual, Takatsuki’s soft, clear voice was completely undistorted. He wasn’t lying. He really hadn’t moved the 10-yen coin. “While we’re on the subject—the locker door. When it opened, the timing was almost too good, wasn’t it?” “Wait, what? …That wasn’t some trick of yours or something?!” “No, I didn’t have the time. Besides, some kind of opening mechanism wouldn’t be impossible, but it would be surprisingly difficult to make it close on its own.” “Huh…?” Instinctively, Naoya looked back at the school. From the schoolyard gate, the building sat full east. Sunlight still lingered in the western sky, but on the eastern horizon, night was already falling. A few twinkling stars had appeared, and the looming clouds were quickly turning indigo. The school was on the verge of being blanketed in darkness. A school building at night was the epitome of “extraordinary.” It was the place where every ghost story could become real. “For the time being, I’ll have to keep in touch with Tomoki and keep investigating whether anything strange is happening at this school.” Takatsuki grinned. His eyes were the same color as the night sky. Clutched in Naoya’s hand, the 10-yen coin suddenly seemed a little heavier.