“I am,” Fushigi replied indifferently. “In the past, the entire village was murdered, and the villagers’ ghosts all gather to attack anyone who happened to pass through. Ghosts can’t escape the town, either, so anyone who enters it can never escape, either.”
“What…?”
The woman had become frightened, so the man spoke in her place. “But the first village you come across on the side road is Sugimoto Village, right?”
“That’s right,” Fushigi said. “It’s a small village where only the elderly live, and they have protective dolls and charms on all their walls and fences to quell the spirits in Sugisawa. They also apparently take the clothes of the people who have been attacked. They probably feel bad for them and hold a service for their clothes, if nothing else.”
“So Sugimoto Village is filled with good people, then?”
“Yeah, as long as you listen to their warning, you’ll make it home in one piece,” Fushigi said, which made the man tilt his head.
“But you’re on your way to Sugisawa right now? Are you sure you should be going there?”
Fushigi suddenly looked out the window.
“They only attack people at night. It’s not dangerous if you’re there in the daytime, but the road only appears at night, so you can’t really get there during the day. I wasn’t able to find it yesterday when I went.”
“So then you might not find it today, either?”
“Maybe not.”
“But why are you trying to go all the way to that village?”
“I need to collect something there.”
“What’s that?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Fushigi said as he grasped his red notebook. He planned to go to Sugisawa Village to collect the strange mark that would be carved somewhere there.
“Well, that’s a pretty scary story, in any case,” the woman said as she hugged herself.
After a while, they reached the side road, and Fushigi got out of the car.
“Are you sure we should drop you off here?”
“Yeah, thank you for taking me,” Fushigi said, then started walking down the road.
“Oh!” the woman shouted abruptly. “Come to think of it, I have a scary story, too.”
“What is it?”
“So someone I know heard this from one of my friends who lives really far away—apparently, they’ve seen someone without eyes, a nose, or mouth around town.”
“Huh?!” Fushigi ran back over to the woman and stared into her eyes. “Which town?!”
The boy had been quiet the whole ride, so the couple was taken aback by his sudden outburst.
Fushigi, on the other hand, looked entirely serious despite their surprise.
“I’ve finally found you…”
Fushigi gripped his notebook hard.
Fushigi was walking down the side road.
Then, in an out-of-the-way patch of overgrown grass by the roadside, he saw tire tracks. It looked almost as though the car had driven straight into the weeds.
“So this is it…”
He wondered whether it was the car of the family he’d warned just the other day, but his expression hardly changed.
“Soon. After I collect this one…,” Fushigi muttered to himself as he held back his excitement and wandered into the grass alone.