“…Not a single person…was left alive.”
“…There was one body that had been split open the entire length of their face with a sickle.”
“…One that was impaled through the chest with a spade.”
“…One who’d been shot in the head with a gun.”
“…One who’d fallen down the stairs and broken their neck, and one who was lying there with foam coming out of its mouth.”
The puddles led toward the book room in the western part of the first floor.
The door was partially open.
We held our breath and drew nearer and were instantly assaulted by an intense stench.
“Urk!”
“That stinks!”
Everyone covered their noses. On an impulse, I threw the door open.
Uotani gave a little cry—Ah!—as if to stop me.
The instant the door was fully open, the smell of blood turned rancid hit us like a wall.
Then there was a spsh-spsh of something flopping—
Behind me, I felt Tohko swallow a shriek. Still clinging to my shirt, Uotani stiffened.
Fear was mounting in the core of my brain and my entire body was cold.
This was a total nightmare—
On the floor, a huge number of fish lay scattered about.
There were some fish that were still alive, but most didn’t move, their wet scales letting off an unsettling glow in the darkness.
But this was supposed to be Yuri and Akira’s holy sanctuary—
Darkness and confusion and fear had replaced the peaceful, gentle backdrop where the lovers had grown closer in their shared feelings. It spread like a bottomless bog before us, letting off a stench that sliced through our gray matter.
Beyond the door was an absolute hell!
Suddenly a light struck us from behind.
Every one of us probably felt as though our lives had been cut in half.
But it was Maki standing there, holding a pocket flashlight. In the face of our tension, she nonchalantly stated, “This is such a circus. I figured bodies would be everywhere like eighty years ago. Looks like everyone’s okay.”
Actually, her face seemed to suggest it was a shame that there hadn’t been any deaths. She slipped past us in our openmouthed shock and went into the room, then pointed her flashlight at the floor. When she did, we could make out the fishes’ mouths and fins flapping. We could even see that their clouded eyes were rolling in their sockets to look at us, and everyone hurriedly looked away.
But Maki walked around calmly, pointing her flashlight and staring around piercingly, seemingly unfazed by the fish scattered on the floor, the chaise lounge, and table or by the stench they were giving off.
Just as I felt a chill go down my spine since Maki acting like that was the scariest thing of all, the housekeeper shrieked.
On the other side of the chaise lounge, a translucent human figure bobbed up mistily.
The fear of planting your eyes on something alien seized us all.
The woman, clothed in a white kimono, stood with her back to us. Pure-white hair fell to her waist.
When Maki turned her flashlight on the figure, it spun around.
A chill stabbed through my heart.
Glittering golden eyes.
Fangs protruding from a sliced mouth.
It was exactly like—
“Ah…ah…”
Her eyes still wide open, Uotani shook her head from side to side. She was making a sound at the back of her throat that wouldn’t form into words.
Shirayuki’s face was covered in a Prajna ghost mask.
With a clank! the flashlight went out. It became pitch-dark again and there was a scream.
People crouching in the hall holding their heads, people fleeing, people raving steadily. Tohko was clinging to me, too.
Uotani stood frozen, trembling.
I thought I heard someone murmur, “Ah…the promise…it’s…,” and then I saw the white figure move with the speed of a bird across the floor and ceiling.
The glass in the window shattered, the curtains billowed in the wind, and the light of the moon shone in.
“K-Konoha…that was…that was…!”
Tohko’s voice quavered at my ear, and she pointed at the window.
Beyond the latticework fitted into the window, thin, bony hands reached toward us.
While one hand rattled the latticework, the other was moving, as if trying to catch hold of something.
Outside the latticework, the Prajna mask peered in. Sunken, gaping, golden eyes—
A string of unnatural things were happening, and it was too much—my senses might have been numbed. Without shouting or looking away, I stared at that bizarre spectacle.
Kicking aside the fish in soggy clumps, Maki ran toward the window.
Astoundingly, she grabbed the arm that was reaching through the lattice and tried to yank it in, but Shirayuki’s arm slipped through Maki’s hand and disappeared into the darkness.
Glaring at the broken window, Maki tsked.
The sound of water had stopped at some point, and the bone-chilling silence filled the room.
Still clinging to me, Tohko lifted her face timidly. Uotani’s eyes were still wide with terror and she was stiff. Maki was the one she was looking at.
Illuminated by the eerie moonlight shining through the window, Maki whispered significantly, “Konoha, if you toss me aside and leave like eighty years ago…next time Shirayuki might appear and turn this house into a sea of blood.”
I’m sure that Shirayuki exists.
How can I communicate the chill I felt when I laid eyes on her, bound by an old vow, shut away, and twisted?
As if the dark shadows lurking in that cursed mansion gathered together and condensed and transformed into the shape of a frightening girl—
In rare cases, such things certainly happen.
Beings that are human but have moments of being inhuman. Bizarre creatures that carry a brutal, primordial soul, somehow enigmatic, which our ordinary awareness cannot fathom.
It is quite simply unrealistic—but undeniably reality—and it left me helplessly astounded, and I could only tremble.
Shirayuki’s laughter rang out loudly, filled with joy, that day.
At the time, the reason behind it was an impenetrable mystery to me.
But now that I am long separated from that summer and people and time have all passed on, I am able to exercise my imagination on that laugh.
Yes, that could only have been—