For a moment, Yukiko thought she was looking into a mirror. When she moved her arm, she almost thought she saw the figure raising its arm to match. A chill ran up her spine as her forgotten apprehension came back to life.
As the coordinator had said, the figure was incredibly realistic, with none of a waxwork figure’s typical artifice. The effect was uncanny. When she thought of the countless people who would come to gaze at her replica, she felt uncomfortable, like she was being spied upon in a private moment.
The figure seemed to radiate an aura of its creator’s repulsive devotion.
Yukiko asked herself, Can I do anything about this? As she looked at her own smiling face, vibrant and lifelike, she bit her lip in irritation. The rest of the exhibit is fine, but maybe I can ask them just to leave this figure out of it.
She decided that she would do exactly that. Even with that figure back in storage, the exhibit would still be able to stand on its own.
Having seen enough, she started heading back to the entrance, where her manager and the coordinator were waiting. Then, just as she was about to turn the first corner, she felt a presence behind her.
Something had stirred the air at her back.
What could that be? she wondered. She thought that she might have imagined it. Or at least, that’s what she tried to make herself believe.
She sensed one thing above all: Whatever she did, she mustn’t turn to look behind her. Her sixth sense warned her she would see something that could not be unseen.
Wherever that feeling came from, she didn’t want to look. She couldn’t look—but the more she told herself not to, the more her body rebelled against her instincts. Gradually, she began to turn to glance over her shoulder.
Before long, her upper body had turned so far around that her spine began to creak. Her eyes peered directly behind her.
Her life-size figure was still standing there—but now, something about it was even more unsettling.
Wait. What’s that?
Yukiko’s wide eyes opened wider. Something was entwined around her duplicate. She noticed it immediately, but in her already unsettled state, it took her mind a moment to accept what she was seeing.
The thing stroked her replica’s face with a furry hand. Its entire body was covered with thick, fuzzy hair.
Yukiko stared in transfixed terror.
It was oddly tall. The thing teased its fingers across the figure’s face, hugged its arms around the figure’s chest, and lovingly caressed the figure’s body.
Yukiko felt the sting of stomach juices rising up her gullet. A raw, unpleasant odor prickled at her nose; her throat made a reflexive, guttural coughing sound.
The thing’s hands froze. Slowly, it turned its giant head to face Yukiko. Their eyes met.
The thing had a big, round face and two long, standing ears.
Softly, Yukiko blurted out, “It’s…a rabbit?”
It was indeed a rabbit—or rather, someone in a rabbit mascot suit, a mainstay of the typical department store’s rooftop play area.
Her initial reaction was almost disappointment. She felt like a fool to have felt such terror because of a rabbit. This was an event space in a department store, after all. An animal mascot was nothing out of the ordinary.
Yukiko let out a deep sigh of relief and began to observe the rabbit in more detail. The first thing she noticed was how dirty the costume was. The face, which must have once been white, was now brown with dust and grime. Its arms and legs, where they stuck out from the denim jumpsuit, were similarly filthy and knotted in patches.
I can’t believe how dirty that costume is, Yukiko thought. Not long after, she wondered, And why was it rubbing my replica all over?
The terror began to build inside her once again and made its presence known. The right side of the rabbit’s face seemed melted, a burn-victim mess. The eye on that side was not its cheerfully oversized self. Instead it drooped, like a piece of round candy held over an open flame.
That eye stared back at Yukiko, boring into her. The rabbit’s mouth curved up in the shape of a crescent moon. Out of its center jutted two buck teeth.
“Yu…ki…ko,” the rabbit said. It was a man’s voice, hoarse yet strangely shrill. The combined effect was something Yukiko wished immediately to never hear again.
“Yu…ki…ko,” the rabbit repeated. It pushed itself away from the figure in a slow, exaggerated motion. He took one step toward her, then another.
As if violently repelled, Yukiko turned on her heels and ran.
When Yoriko saw her come running from the exhibit space, her face pale, the manager spread her arms wide. Yukiko collapsed into her waiting arms and clung to her.
“Yukiko-chan, what’s wrong?” Yoriko said. “What happened?” She took Yukiko by the shoulders and gave her a firm shake.
Yukiko’s lips trembled. Her voice wavered as she muttered, “A rabbit… a rabbit…”
“What?” Yoriko shouted impatiently. “What are you talking about? What rabbit?”
Yukiko’s shoulders shuddered as she pointed a weak finger toward the exhibit.
“Yukiko-chan, please get a hold of yourself! Is someone behind you? Did you see something?”
Yukiko pushed herself free from her manager and slumped down to the floor with her hands and head on her knees.
“There was,” she said, pausing to gather herself, “there was a rabbit. Someone in a mascot costume. It was putting its hands all over that figure of me—that life-size figure of me.”
The exhibit’s coordinator was beside them, listening in. “A rabbit costume?” he said with doubt in his voice. “As far as I know, we don’t have any animal costumes here.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t something else you saw?” Yoriko asked. “Like he said, they don’t have any animal costumes here.”
Yukiko shook her head from side to side. “I’m not making this up,” she said, her sentences running together. “It was really there. It was really a rabbit—and it wasn’t a normal animal costume. It was dirty, and its face was burned. It was like some kind of monster. And it was coming toward me.”
Yoriko looked at her face for a moment, then turned to the coordinator and said, “Well, let’s go take a look. Whatever it was, she must have seen something.” The manager put her hands on Yukiko’s arms. “You stay here, Yukiko-chan. We’ll go have a look. Just wait right here.”
Yukiko bobbed her head once. As Yoriko and the middle-aged man disappeared down the exhibit’s corridor, she thought, What if that sinister rabbit is trying to bring some terrible disaster upon us?