“Shishinoke? What’s that mean? Lion’s hair?” Toriko asked, her tone doubtful. “It doesn’t look much like a lion, though... Is it because the hair’s like a mane?”
“I don’t think it has anything to do with lions.”
“It doesn’t?”
Long ago, the kanji for beast, deer, boar, and meat could all be read “shishi.” The word referred to any large creature that could be hunted in the mountains. If the name Shishinoke was rooted in Japanese legend, then that was probably where it came from. Its form, like a big hairy slug, was reminiscent of the Nozuchi, a snake youkai with only a mouth.
That said, this thing that had appeared in front of us wasn’t a traditional youkai, or the Shishinoke from those internet ghost stories. It was another Otherside “phenomenon” borrowing the image of something.
The Shishinoke thrashed about on the surface of the lake, getting closer and closer to the shore. Its three eyestalk-like appendages twisted around, facing towards us.
“If it’s okay for me to shoot, just say the word,” Toriko said, taking careful aim. I nodded.
“Got it. I’ll try looking with my right eye.”
If I recalled the original story correctly, the dog that bit this thing died of injuries inflicted by its needles. The person who reported their experience faced misfortune too. If this being was approaching us following the text of a dangerous ghost story like that, then there was just no way it was going to be harmless.
I focused on my right eye. The Shishinoke raised its body up above the surface of the water, almost as if it could sense I had. It looked ready to pounce towards us at any moment. I was nearly going to say “shoot it” when it happened.
Ring! There was the sound of bells, and the scene in front of me stopped still.
The Shishinoke froze in place with most of its body lifted up above the water. For a moment, it made me think time had stopped. Toriko and I exchanged glances. No, only the Shishinoke had stopped moving.
Ring! Ring! The bells rang again. The sound was like something out of a religious service. I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. If I had to guess, I’d have said it was being generated by the entire area around us. Toriko seemed to be hearing it too, so I probably wasn’t hallucinating.
The Shishinoke moved. It stayed where it was, shaking its body in time with the sound, then stopped still again. The bells rang. It wriggled again, then stopped moving. The stop-and-go movements were dynamic, resembling a kabuki actor striking a mie pose.
“Ah!”
In an instant, the Shishinoke transformed. It grew from the size of a sleeping bag to much larger, and taller. It was a form I recognized—the Ushioni which had made an appearance at Satsuki Uruma’s funeral. It had a body like a capsized boat, with a long neck that rose up high above it. Its overall shape was like that of a plesiosaurus...or rather, it was like Nessie. The needles covering its body had been replaced with light brown hair, like the fiber on a palm tree trunk.
After the funeral, I had looked it up out of interest. It closely resembled the Ushioni from festivals in Uwajima in Ehime Prefecture. The horned head that sat atop the long neck was somewhere between a bull and an oni, and it bore a fierce expression. It was apparently meant to swing that head around to exorcise demons.
The sound of bells was joined by that of flutes. The Shishinoke which had become an Ushioni swung its head around. If this had been at a festival, there would have been a bunch of men carrying it and causing it to move, but this Ushioni was moving on its own.
“This thing—it’s like the time with Satsuki.”
Toriko was looking pale, and that probably wasn’t just a trick of the glow stick’s light. I immediately moved in closer to her.
“It’s okay. It has nothing to do with Satsuki!”
I had no basis on which to assert that so forcefully, but Toriko looked at me, drew her lips tight, and then nodded.
Yeah, that’s right. It has nothing to do with her. And if it does, so what? You don’t need to think about a woman from your past, one we all buried together.
Even though it really wasn’t the time for it, I let out a strange chuckle. Now that my relationship with Toriko had grown so much stronger, I was properly jealous of Satsuki. Before, she had just been an obstacle to me, one that didn’t bear thinking about. Only once we held the funeral was I able to perceive her not as a human-shaped impediment, but as a fellow human being.
With its shape changed, the Ushioni had stopped advancing. It remained at a distance of ten meters from us, coming no closer. The way it spun around, splashing in the water, was like some sort of dance.
In my right field of vision, I saw it wreathed in a phosphorescent silver light. It was like how I saw a glitch or artifact. Should we open fire on it? Would shooting this kind of phenomenon have any effect?
“Sorawo, what do you think it’s doing?”
“Who knows? Maybe it’s waiting to see how we react.”
“I expected it to attack us, but... You were saying something before, about contact?”
I nodded. The ones on the other side of the Otherside had approached us several times before. If they were beings we could reason with, that would have been fine. Unfortunately, they weren’t.
“Toriko, do you remember what T-san the Templeborn said? ‘There’s nothing that isn’t communication.’”
“Ahhh...” Toriko’s eyes went vacant for a moment, but then she bobbed her head up and down, returning to sanity. “I remember.”
“Well, at a glance, that sounds like a declaration that they want to communicate. That’s what I thought at first.”
“It’s not?”
“I don’t think so. A little while ago, I went to DS Research on my own, and met a woman named Tsuji. She’s an acquaintance of Kozakura-san’s, and manages the warehouse of artifacts. You’ve never met her, right?”
“I haven’t.”
“There’s something she told me. Even if we call it all ‘contact,’ there are various kinds. Conversation, commerce, war, and so on... When it comes to us and those on the other side, it’s not a matter of talking. We aren’t even sure we’re standing on the same field, y’know?”
“Yeah.”
“So...”
Toriko’s eyes widened in realization. “Wait, so then T-san, and by extension those on the other side—they’d think that something like war is just a part of communication?”
“No, that’s oversimplifying it, and at the same time overstating how much they understand what communication is to us. I think they understand even less than that.”
“Even less...?”
“I think when he said ‘there’s nothing that isn’t communication,’ that was basically his way of telling us ‘we’re going to try all available channels,’ maybe. From their perspective, we’re like toys that squeak when you poke us...”
“So they’re gonna try every way they have of making us squeak?!”
“That would be one way of interpreting it, I think...”
Toriko looked back at the Ushioni, struck dumb with astonishment. “If that’s what he was saying, then it really was like a declaration of war, wasn’t it?” she finally said.
“Even if that wasn’t their intention, it might look that way from our end.”
If by saying “there’s nothing that isn’t communication,” that basically meant they were going to be testing every approach that they had of stimulating a response from humans, it was practically an attack on us. Because there were loads of things that would cause fear, pain, and bodily impairment. And that “communication” might not stop at things that we were capable of imagining.
“If this thinking is correct, there is a high probability that the other side’s attempts at contact may include many things that are harmful to humans.”
“Was that contact what got Todate-san and Hana?”
“Maybe. It’s possible that some types of contact we can endure might be too much for other people.”
From an objective perspective, the situation we were in now was pretty bizarre. If an ordinary person found themselves in it, they’d start panicking in no time. We were able to take it because of our past experience, and because we had the ability to fight back using our right eye and left hand.
There was one more decisive factor: we were together. I supported Toriko, and she supported me, helping us both stay sane. As proof of that, when I came to the Otherside alone, the mujina got me and drove me mad in an instant. My experience camping in this world and my abilities as a Fourth Kind hadn’t done anything to save me.
I looked at the Ushioni. The lacquered, wood-carved face of the monster dancing on the surface of the lake sneered down at us.
Fine. You want a reaction? We’ll give you one.
“Toriko, it’s okay,” I said.
I was about to add “shoot,” but then it happened. The Ushioni reacted as if it sensed my intention to attack. It spun in place, then transformed into yet another form. A gaudy four-legged beast wearing a crown, decked out white, gold, red, and black.
It was a lion dancer: the same Balinese lion dancer that had stormed our love hotel girls’ party. The holy beast Barong appeared in the Barong Dance, which depicted his defeat of the witch Rangda. Barong bounded through the water towards us as we were caught off guard. The bells and flutes were replaced with exotic percussion and heavier bells, rising to a cacophony.
Barong regarded us with his wide-open eyes, gnashing his fangs. The white hair covering his entire body whipped around as he danced, lowering himself to the ground, jumping, and striking his feet against the earth to intimidate us.
From a Shishinoke, to an Ushioni, and now Barong. What was this guy’s intention, taking on the forms of aberrations we’d encountered before? They used fear as a way of approaching humans, but while the Shishinoke was based on a horror story, I couldn’t see what was so scary about the Ushioni or Barong on their own. They might have inspired awe and worship of the supernatural originally, but that was something removed from our modern conception of fear.
Or was the intent to physically assault us this time? If so, it changed nothing about our reaction. We’d just pump it full of lead.
As I was thinking that, Barong changed form once again.
We both cried out in surprise.
“Todate-san?!”
“Hana...?!”
What was in front of us...was a beast. Yet at the same time, it was a person. It was a mixture of woman and beast.
A naked Todate and Hana, combined into one being—a chimera.