When I opened the door and passed through it, the air around me changed in an instant.
“Wah, it’s dark,” Toriko mumbled behind me.
The scene spread out before us was of an abandoned building in the evening. The roof and wallpaper inside were falling apart, and the gas stove and sink were blackened with dirt. Spread out on top of the dust-covered table were electric bills, water bills, and other bills, all browned to the point of illegibility.
When I turned around, the door behind us was already closed. It was the entrance/exit to the small living space behind a closed-out shop facing onto the shopping arcade. Normally, the door would have led into a narrow alley.
This was the passage to the Otherside I’d found.
Toriko looked around the room. “Where is this place?”
“Oomiya. East of the station—”
“Wha, in Saitama?! I didn’t think I’d walked that far.”
“Where did you enter from, Toriko?”
“Jinbouchou—in Tokyo. There must be something weird going on with space in there.”
I could hear noise from the shopping arcade outside: passing footsteps and the irritated ringing of bicycle bells. Each time the door to the pachinko parlor a few buildings down opened, I could hear the rattling of balls. Right—this was what was missing on the Otherside. The voices, the sound of cars, the slight hum of electrical apparatus, there was none of it over there. Only the sound of wind making the trees sway, or the occasional cry of a bird or insect; no sound indicating human activity.
That mind-numbing silence was something I had truly taken a liking to.
It was a quiet, peaceful world, one I had felt like I’d made all my own... but...
Suddenly, there was the sound of something scraping the ground, and I cringed despite myself. It was the sound of Toriko pulling back one of the chairs beside the table. Plopping herself down on the dusty seat, she let out a breath. After some hesitation, I likewise pulled back a chair and carefully took a seat, too. Across from me was Toriko’s face in profile. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but she had her elbow on the table, and she was gazing at the gas stove.
“How many times have you been?”
When I spoke, Toriko blinked as if waking from a dream, then turned to face me.
“About ten times, I guess?”
Seriously? This was only my third time.
“That often... So that’s why you were so knowledgeable,” I said.
“Nah, I’m not particularly knowledgeable.”
“I mean, you took out the Kunekune. I didn’t know it was possible to do something like that.”
“The Kunekune? That disgusting thing had a name like that?”
“I dunno if that’s its name, but... There’s rumors like that, I guess.”
“Looks like you’re the knowledgeable one here, now aren’t you, Sorawo?”
“I just had some background knowledge. I never thought anything like that actually existed.” When I said that, it finally sunk in just how abnormal of an experience I’d just gone through.
The reason I had known about it was I was majoring in cultural anthropology at university; I was interested in modern day true ghost stories as a research topic. Kunekune was a ghost story that had started to be told—primarily on the internet—around 2003 or so. The narrator encounters a white shadow that wriggles unnaturally, and looking at it messes with their head—That was more or less how the story went. I felt like the entity I had just encountered closely resembled that ghost story.
But it wasn’t as though I had thought the Kunekune existed. Cultural anthropology viewed monsters and curses as a theme for study, but it didn’t believe in their existence, only saw them as an aspect of human culture.
“Well, look at this, then. Do you know what it is?”
Toriko fished through her pockets, pulling out something squarish. What she laid down on the table was a silver hexahedron with a length of about five centimeters on each side. Each face was smooth like a mirror and reflected the room around us. The stripped wallpaper, the fallen ceiling, and the scattered garbage were all reflected clearly. However, the only thing not reflected in it were the two of us.
“Huhhhh...?”
Even when I tried looking at a different angle, or bringing my hand up close to it, nothing changed.
“...What is this?”
“It was on the ground where that thing from before vanished,” Toriko said, picking up the hexahedron and scrutinizing it. “How much do you think I could sell it for?”
“No, wait. What even is that thing?”
“I don’t know. I wonder. I never found the rock salt I threw, so maybe it turned into this.”
This was absurd. A mirror that didn’t reflect humans? Was that even possible?
Was it really okay bringing it back here...?
Though I felt uneasy, I couldn’t take my eyes off the object in Toriko’s hand. I thought I’d understood that the Otherside was an abnormal place, but the little hexahedron in front of me was an undeniable piece of physical evidence that shook my sense of what was real all over again.
It was about a month ago that I first found the Otherside.
Chasing the site of a real ghost story, I was investigating places people would have called haunted. I’d enjoyed playing at ruin exploration since my high school days, calling it fieldwork as I dove into all sorts of suspicious locations. Now, if we’re being literal about it, I was illegally trespassing, but... Anyway, while I was doing that, I found something inside this abandoned building. A door that led to an impossible meadow.
First, I propped the door open so it couldn’t shut, then I took two, then three steps in, and rushed back out. With just that, I returned home in a daze, unable to believe what I’d seen.
When I recovered and made a second go at it, I tried a bit harder, and I went five meters inside. My foot caught in the mud, I tripped, got covered in gunk, and then beat a hasty retreat.
The third time, today, I came dressed in proper outdoor clothes before going to the Otherside. Making use of my experience in ruin exploration, I wore warm clothes and shoes that were easy to move in. I was carrying too little equipment to be engaged in sports, and was dressed too lightly to be going mountain climbing, so I stood out pretty bad on the train. If I were seen walking around at night, I might have been mistaken for a burglar. Regardless, that was how I mustered the courage to make a serious exploration of the Otherside.
To which I encountered the Kunekune, and I nearly died.
“Hey.”
While I was deep in thought, Toriko suddenly leaned over the table and peered closely at me.