Heading out the Mayoiga’s gate, there was an empty lot paved with gravel. The hill road in question was on the other side. Verdant branches reached out from either side to cover the road, keeping the slope dark even in the middle of the day. I’d have been hesitant to go down a road like this even in the surface world.
“How’s it look?” asked Toriko.
“I looked with my right eye, and there doesn’t seem to be anything.”
“Okay. In that case...” Toriko said with an expression that was anything but okay, then flicked on the light that was attached to her AK. I did the same. Two powerful beams cut through the darkness...and were swallowed up by it.
It was dark even when we shone a flashlight into it? It was like we were dealing with some horror game lighting here. I almost said as much, but thought better of it. There was no need to go out of my way to make Toriko more uneasy.
We steeled ourselves, then stepped onto the hill.
Gravel crunched under our feet. Even if we turned our lights off, our presence would be blatantly obvious. The incline was a gentle one, but the poor visibility and footing made it feel much steeper. If we slipped, there was no telling how far we might tumble down.
The canopy of branches overhead rustled in the wind. We used our lights to alternately check the ground at our feet and the area around us as we descended into the darkness. Occasionally, I would get the feeling I’d seen something in the trees. But when I looked again, there was nothing there. I wasn’t picking anything up with my right eye either. Had it been a trick of the light, or had I spotted the shadows of animals that had adapted to the Otherside using my peripheral vision? We continued on without me figuring out the answer.
Toriko stopped suddenly. “You hear that?” she whispered. I stopped to listen as well.
“Water...?” I suggested.
“Right?” she agreed.
We could hear water, but we didn’t know where. When we went deer hunting with Todate, we’d seen a small river near here, so that wasn’t surprising. But the sounds that we were hearing now weren’t like the smooth flow of a river, but more rhythmic, like waves.
Waves? Here? As I was thinking how weird that was, the slope leveled out. The trees thinned, and our field of vision opened up. But despite that, it was still dark around us. It felt like a little sunshine wouldn’t be out of place here, and yet when we looked up towards the sky it was completely dark.
“It’s night already...?” Toriko wondered.
“That can’t be right. I mean...”
The hands on my wristwatch still said it was noon. We’d set out with time to spare, assuming it would take a while to find Todate and Hana, so I knew there ought to be plenty of time still before sundown.
“Couldn’t it actually be midnight instead?” Toriko expressed her concerns as she peered at my watch. We had experienced time weirdness while on the Otherside a number of times in the past, so her worry wasn’t exactly baseless.
“I dunno... There’s no stars in the sky, so maybe that rules out it being night.”
But if it’s not night, what is this darkness?
I turned to look back. The circle of light was able to just barely illuminate the hill road we’d come down.
“Hold on,” I said. “If we keep going, we may not be able to go back.”
Toriko came to a stop. “You’re right. What do you wanna do?”
“Look around a bit.”
I set my backpack down and stuck my hand inside, relying on my sense of touch to dig out some packages containing thin, sticklike objects. Checking them under the light, I saw they had loud colors like green, pink, yellow, and blue, which seemed totally out of place here. Although, I couldn’t read the brand name, there was no mistaking these were glow sticks. I had bought them thinking they would come in handy somewhere. They’re little sticks that use a chemical reaction to emit light for a while after you bend them, and you can find them in the party corner of any hundred-yen shop.
I know they were probably originally developed to be used at places like concert halls, but they fit the bill for what we needed here too. I immediately unwrapped one. When I held it with both hands and gave it a bend, I felt something snap, and the stick started to glow. Its fluorescent pink light lit up the area around us.
“Wow, so they’re this bright, huh!”
I could see Toriko’s shocked face clearly in the pink light. The light was more powerful than expected, so even though I was the one who had snapped it, I was surprised too. They were supposed to last around eight hours, and if they were this bright, they were more than good enough to be used as lights. I tossed the light I was holding down the hill road, then snapped another one. This one was yellow. I dropped it at my feet once it lit up.
“I wanna do it too!”
I gave one to Toriko, who was holding her hand out for it, eyes sparkling, and she tore the package off like she couldn’t wait any longer. Her excitement was palpable from her expression. When she snapped the stick, a blue light radiated out.
“This is fun,” she said.
“They’re useful,” I responded. “I’d heard they could be used as lights in an emergency, so I thought they would come in handy, but I’m really glad I bought them now.”
We started walking again. Toriko held up the glow stick in her hand like a child proud of her new toy. I wanted her to just drop it on the ground somewhere, but...whatever, it was fine.
Once we were all the way down the hill and things leveled out, the ground switched from gravel to bare dirt. It was a bit moist, but not to the point of being muddy.
This time, I was the one to spot the footprints.
“Toriko, look...”
When she saw what I was shining my light on, Toriko cried out in surprise. “Are they Hana’s...?”
“They could be.”
The small paw prints looked like a dog’s. They came from the direction of the hill, just like we had.
If these prints were Hana’s, then we might find Todate’s nearby. With that in mind, I raised my flashlight to look around the area, but froze solid when I saw something I hadn’t expected.
No, maybe I could have predicted it.
The area around us was totally covered in footprints.
Not just one or two kinds either. The moist earth bore the marks of dozens of people coming and going. But it wasn’t just footprints; there were tire tracks, hoof marks, and prints left by creatures I couldn’t even identify. It was a mess of footprints. Even if Todate’s were among them, we’d never be able to tell them apart.
“It’s like in my dream...” I murmured.
“Huh?”
“I’ve seen all sorts of things climbing that hill in my dreams.”
“This is the first I’m hearing about it.”
“I don’t think I mentioned it. I mean, they were dreams.”
When I said that, Toriko glared at me, upset. “Tell me these things.”
“Oh, come on, they were just dreams.”
Toriko dropped her glow stick to the ground, and held her AK with both hands. “What happens after that in the dreams?”
“I dunno. I woke up whenever something got to the top of the hill.”
“What about Todate-san and Hana?”
“I dunno.” I shook my head, then snapped another glow stick. “For now, let’s try following the footprints. If we find Hana, I’m sure Todate-san will be with her.”
“Okay.”
We continued onward. The tracks on the ground grew more distinct as we went. At first, it had only been slightly damp, but it was gradually getting wetter.
The sounds of water we’d been hearing all this time were getting closer. There was no mistaking it now. It was the sound of waves. But it didn’t feel like the loud sound of ocean waves crashing against the shore. These probably were ripples at most.
Eventually, our lights lit up the surface of the water, backing up my suspicion.
A flat pool of water spread out before us in the darkness. It was still, like a sheet of black glass, and if it weren’t for the fact that the faintest of waves were washing up against the shore, I might have thought it was frozen.
There was no sea breeze in the air. I wasn’t about to taste it to check, but it was probably fresh water. We’d seen the Otherside’s ocean when we’d gone to Okinawa. But this gave me a different impression. It was quiet, like an underground lake. Maybe it actually was a lake. Even with our flashlights, we couldn’t see the opposite shore, so it seemed possible that it might be that big.
I turned back to see the glow sticks we’d dropped lighting the way back. At the very least, there was nothing dangerous in the area their light reached. With that confirmed, I looked at the lake again.
“Sorawo, are those...”
I looked down at what Toriko was looking at. There were small boot prints next to what we assumed were Hana’s paw prints.
“You think they’re Todate-san’s?” I asked.
“It looks like a proper boot, so I’d say so.”
I couldn’t recall what kind of footwear Todate had been wearing, but as Toriko said, the imprints in the dirt here weren’t from the sort of flat-bottomed shoe that you’d wear in the city, but outdoor shoes that left clear marks. It made sense to me that they would have been left by Todate.
Two sets of tracks, one human, and one canine, continued on.
“No way...” Toriko murmured.
The footprints vanished into the water; straight in, with no sign of hesitation.