Izumi rushed over to him and showed him the picture. Kenji was a whole year older, so she knew she could count on him. He was always there to listen whenever she ran into trouble.
“What’s this?” Kenji tilted his head to the side as he looked at the picture.
“There’s something weird about this woman, right?”
“Are you sure that’s even a person?”
“What?”
Now that he’d mentioned it, she wasn’t sure. Whatever was in the photo was very tall and thin, and it also didn’t seem to have a face that she could make out. It couldn’t have been a person by that description.
“Then what’s in the picture?!” Izumi asked, scared out of her wits.
“Dunno. I have no idea…”
“You can’t tell, either?!”
Izumi was becoming more and more afraid, but Kenji seemed to have remembered something. His face brightened.
“I’ve got it! He might know!”
“He…?”
“I know somebody who’s all about this sorta stuff,” Kenji said, and he immediately got in touch with his friend.
Monday, the next day.
It was the anniversary of their school’s founding, so they had the day off.
That morning, Kenji led Izumi to a fast-food place in front of a train station. They were meeting someone who might be able to tell them about the woman in the picture.
“I met him recently at the park. He seems to know a ton about urban legends and scary stories.”
Kenji liked those kinds of things and had gotten along with the boy right away.
“Urban legends?”
Was the woman in the picture one of those?
Izumi had thought urban legends and spooky stories were just make-believe on the internet and in books.
“Oh, there he is. Him,” Kenji said as he stared at the entrance to the restaurant.
Izumi followed his gaze. She saw a boy wearing red clothes and a red hood standing there.
He looked kind of cool.
When he noticed them, he immediately walked over.
“This is Fushigi Senno. He said he’s new in town. Fushigi, this is my younger sister, Izumi.”
Izumi stood up to greet him, but Fushigi ignored her and looked at Kenji.
“So where’s the picture?”
“Huh?”
“I heard you got a picture of a woman without eyes, a nose, or a mouth.”
“Oh, right.” Kenji signaled Izumi with his eyes to show Fushigi the photo.
“Oh, um. It’s this!” Izumi quickly pulled out her phone and showed it to the boy.
He just stared at the picture and didn’t reply.
“So, um…,” Izumi nervously said, but Fushigi didn’t even spare her a glance.
What’s with him?
He seemed to not have any interest in Izumi at all. His focus was entirely on the photo. Just as that thought crossed Izumi’s mind, she saw his lips twitch.
“I see… So that’s all it was.”
He seemed to be muttering to himself—and also seemed put out for some reason.
“What’s wrong?” Izumi asked.
“Oh, nothing,” Fushigi said. “It just wasn’t what I thought it’d be.”
“What did you think it was?”
“That’s personal.” He finally looked away from the picture and sighed softly.
“So does that mean you don’t know who the woman in the photo is, either?” Kenji asked, appearing a bit disappointed by Fushigi’s reaction.
Fushigi shook his head slightly. “No, I do.”
“Then what is she?”
“You have a picture of Little Nanoka.”
“Little Nanoka?”
Izumi had never heard that name before. She tilted her head.
Fushigi started to explain who the woman in the picture was.
“She’s an urban legend. Basically, a monster that shows up only in photos of kids. Anyone who appears in a picture with Little Nanoka suffers a terrible fate, which is”—Fushigi gave Izumi a solemn look—“that they’ll be killed by Little Nanoka within seven days of the picture being taken.”
“What?!” Izumi was so shocked that she shouted without meaning to.
“Why would that happen?” Kenji asked Fushigi. He also didn’t understand what it all meant.
Fushigi, on the other hand, remained calm as he looked at Izumi.
“You need to be very careful, especially around any reflections.”
“Reflections?!” Izumi parroted, but Fushigi didn’t elaborate.
He headed toward the exit and left the restaurant without another word.
“Hey! Wait!” Izumi tried to get him to stop, but Fushigi didn’t even turn around on his way out. “Kenji, who was that guy?!”
“Yeah… He really didn’t seem like he was joking.”
Even Kenji was bewildered by the conversation.
After leaving Kenji, Izumi decided to go see Sayuri and Rio, since they were in the photo, too. She didn’t believe what Fushigi had said, but she decided she should at least let the other two know.
Fushigi’s explanation had been strangely persuasive.
Little Nanoka…
Izumi felt even more frightened by the woman in the picture.
After she heard back from her friends and they met at Sayuri’s house, Izumi told the other two about Little Nanoka.
But the two girls just laughed.
“We’ll die in seven days? That’s obviously a sick joke!”
“Yeah, there’s no way!”
Sayuri and Rio were both completely unconvinced.
“I don’t want to believe it, either, but there’s something weird about this picture!” Izumi said, and she showed her friends the woman again, but neither of them seemed afraid.
“We probably just caught someone behind us at a weird moment. Come to think of it, wasn’t there a tall woman walking her dog in the park? Maybe it was her?”
“That’s right. I mean, you only just got your phone, Izumi. Maybe you haven’t learned how to use the camera properly yet?” Sayuri nodded, agreeing with Rio.
“Well, I did, but…”
Izumi didn’t know what else to say.
She remembered she really had taken some pictures by mistake that day when she tapped the button accidentally.
Maybe I got a blurry photo of someone in the background like they’re saying, then?
“Fushigi Senno or whatever was probably just making stuff up.”
“That’s right. You shouldn’t worry about it.”
She started to believe her friends over Fushigi.
“Yeah, maybe you’re right… Actually, I think you two are!”
Izumi was beginning to think that maybe Little Nanoka didn’t really exist.
But later on that night…
…Izumi was convinced Fushigi was right.
It was dark. Izumi finished her homework and was about to go to bed when she got a call on her phone. She looked at the screen and saw it said Sayuri.
I wonder what happened.
Since it was so odd for Sayuri to call her at a time like this, she picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Izumi, I’m sorry for calling so late.”
“It’s okay. What’s wrong?”
“So, um…” Sayuri’s voice was shaking for some reason.
Izumi noticed that, and then she heard Sayuri gulp from the other end of the line. Then her friend said slowly:
“So, um…one of my pictures has Little Nanoka in it, too…”
“What?!”
Izumi was so shocked that she almost dropped her phone.
“Explain everything!”
“Okay…” Sayuri’s voice quivered as she explained.
That evening after Rio and Izumi had returned home, Sayuri had gone to the grocery store for her mom to pick something up. Because the setting sun had looked so nice on top of a hill, she’d taken a photo of herself with the sun in the background.
“I just looked at the picture. Little Nanoka was behind me, too…”
“Send me that picture right now!” Izumi yelled, and Sayuri sent it to her immediately.
Izumi rushed to open it. Just like Sayuri had said, a tall woman thin as a twig and wearing black clothes was standing behind her.
The picture wasn’t blurry at all, but she couldn’t make out the woman’s features.
“It’s Little Nanoka…”
So she really did exist.
She was in another picture.
Izumi remembered what Fushigi had said.
“Anyone who appears in a picture with Little Nanoka suffers a terrible fate.”
“That terrible fate is being killed by Little Nanoka in seven days after being in a picture with her…”
In that moment, Izumi truly believed the three of them would be killed by Little Nanoka.
It was Tuesday.
Once school was over, she’d invited Sayuri and Rio over to the park, so they were headed there now. She’d asked Kenji to call Fushigi for her in order to ask him more about Little Nanoka.
“Izumi, this is kind of scaring me…,” Rio said.
“Me too. I didn’t think it’d show up in your picture, too, Sayuri…”
Now Rio was also scared after hearing about what had happened. She’d realized Little Nanoka wasn’t just a random person who happened to be caught in their photo.
They met with Kenji at an intersection, then continued toward the park. That was when they spotted Fushigi near the swings. He was staring at something—at a red notebook. When Kenji called out to him, Fushigi carefully put the notebook into his pocket and approached Izumi and the others.
“Did you need something from me?”
Like yesterday, Fushigi was calm.
“Um, please look at this!” Izumi showed him the picture on Sayuri’s phone.
“Looks like Little Nanoka,” he said.
“That’s right. She’s in a photo Sayuri took, too!” Izumi said.
“Right,” Fushigi murmured as he stared at the picture. “She’s closer than in the one you took…”
“What?”
When Fushigi said that, they all looked at Sayuri’s photo and Little Nanoka in it.
“Wait, now that you mention it…”
Little Nanoka really was closer compared with their first picture at the park.
“Why is she closer?!”
“She’s trying to attack you. That’s why,” Fushigi said indifferently.
A bad feeling crept over Izumi as she looked at Sayuri and the others, who also appeared more scared than before—they were even starting to tear up.
“Fushigi, is that all true?” asked Kenji, who had been listening the entire time. “How do we stop her?”
He looked serious. Kenji also believed in Little Nanoka now and seemed upset.
“C’mon! If you know how to save them, then tell me! I need to save my little sister!” Kenji firmly said.
“You want to save…your little sister?”
For a second, Fushigi’s cold expression shifted. His eyes narrowed, and he seemed to be thinking about something. After staring at Kenji, Fushigi finally said, “There is one way to save them…”
“There is?!”
Izumi and the others perked up.
“Yeah. Little Nanoka only lives in the reflected world.”
“The reflected world? You said something about reflections in the fast-food place, too, didn’t you?” Izumi said. Fushigi nodded slightly and pointed at a corner of the park, at a bench where a woman was fixing her hair in a mirror.
“That mirror, for example. A mirror reflects a person, right?”
“Yeah…”
“And those pictures you took are also ‘reflections’ of what you look like, right?”
“Yeah…”