“Y-You seriously think you’re dead because some people just ignored you? That’s stupid! It’s impossible!” Gamon ignored my warning—or no, maybe it was because of my warning—and started to get even more emotional. “I keep saying this, but we’re talking to each other right now, right? And Sarai, you said you talked to the police and the TV stations on the phone, right?” he yelled. “And look, if I was dead I couldn’t drink this tea!”
Gamon walked up to the counter and took a big gulp of iced tea from the glass there.
“Oh! ☆ That’s the one I ordered!”
“Ryotasu, stop! We’re talking about something important, so go dance over there!”
“Poyah?”
Gamon chased Narusawa away, then raised the glass so we could see it. “So let’s say we’re dead, and we don’t actually have bodies. That means that this glass is just floating up on its own, tipping over, and then the tea is disappearing to who-knows-where! So what, we’re like poltergeists? And disappearing tea is a hell of a lot scarier than ghosts! It violates the laws of the universe!” he screamed. “The tea disappears and the universe is in danger!”
Gamon then ruffled through the pockets of his duffel coat and pulled out a chocolate candy called a Black Thunder. He ripped off the wrapper and took a big bite.
“Mmm! It’s so good! This Black Thunder is so good! I can eat, not just drink!”
“Gamotan, Gamotan, give me a Black Thunder, too!” Ryotasu said.
“Too bad! I only had the one!”
“Poyah...” Narusawa looked depressed.
“I can even get on the internet from my smartphone! That alone is proof I’m alive!”
He was right. So we had circumstantial evidence that showed we were alive and we were dead.
I didn’t want to think that I was dead, either. That’s why I had to disprove all the pieces of circumstantial evidence that showed I was dead, one at a time. The biggest piece of evidence right now was the list of suicides from the 256 incident that had been broadcast on TV.
That, and the fact that we happened to have a list of several names that matched it. That was what had been bothering me the most.
“I—”
I thought for a moment about whether I should really talk to Gamon and Sumikaze about this. It felt to me like I might be getting too emotional. But I just couldn’t shake the feeling that the hint was an important one.
It was a total conspiracy theory, but still...
“I think the encoded list my father left might have something to do with this.”
“Huh? That list?” Gamon asked.
“I’m sorry, what list is this?”
I hadn’t told Miss Sumikaze yet, had I?
I cut Gamon off before he could try to stammer out an explanation.
“I’ll skip the details, but I have a list of encoded names that my father gave me.” The encoded message hidden on the ceiling of my dad’s study. When we’d decoded it, we’d found 256 names. “Right now, more than fifty names match the list of suicides from the 256 incident.”
I’d asked Gamon to do the decoding. I nodded at him to tell me what he’d learned.
He hesitated for a moment, before opening his mouth as if he’d simply resigned himself to it. “I decoded seventy total. My name... was on the list.”
So I was right...
That meant that my name was likely to be found, too. Did Dad... know this?
Either way, it was even less likely to be a coincidence now.
“Ascension...!” As for Miss Sumikaze, when she heard this, she got so excited her cheeks turned slightly flush. “Does this mean we might have been caught up in some kind of incredible conspiracy?”
I almost moaned. She was probably right. So she was a conspiracy theorist, too? I guess that was natural if she worked for Mumuu.
“...A conspiracy? Honestly, I’d rather not agree with you.” I barely managed to get the words out without my voice breaking.
“But there’s no way 256 people just decide to kill themselves at once,” she said. “Doesn’t it make more sense to assume that someone is behind this?”
“My father knew who was behind it, and that’s why he left the list. And the conspiracy killed him. Is that what you’re trying to say?”
The words came out more smoothly than I’d expected... probably because I’d been thinking the same thing. It was completely illogical, to the point where I almost hated myself for thinking it. But even so, I had to think it anyway.
It was, if nothing else, possible.
“Hey, Sarai. How many people know about Dr. Hashigami’s list?”
“I only learned about it very recently myself. But it’s clear that someone was looking for it. On the day my father was killed, someone ransacked the study in my house.”
“Ascension... I had no idea.” Miss Sumikaze shook her head a little in astonishment. “So at least we know whoever did that was real...”
“And we don’t know who killed my father yet, either.”
“They searched your house but didn’t find the list, right? Does that mean they haven’t found it yet?”
“There’s no way to know for sure. We don’t even know who did it.”
Past her glasses, suddenly I saw an intensity in Miss Sumikaze’s eyes. She leaned forward.
“Sarai, Dr. Hashigami changed his opinion on the occult fairly recently, didn’t he?”
“...Huh? Y-Yes, yes he did.” I saw the resolution in her eyes and tensed up.
“He was never a believer in the occult,” she said, “until he was. And that’s when he started to try to get on television. Did you ever hear why?”
“...No. But it was about five years ago when it became clear that he’d changed his mind. That was when my dad joined the SPR—the Society for Psychical Research.”
That’s when I’d started to despise him. I’d been so disappointed that a man who’d put so much emphasis on visible proof and hated airy, poorly developed theories had suddenly changed his mind.
“He once told me a theory that the soul normally lives within the brain, and when the heart stops, it’s ejected outwards. Do you know about it?”
“...Yes.”
“The body is just a vessel for the soul. The soul is the most important organ, and when the body dies it becomes defenseless... Maybe that’s the state we’re in right now.”
Suddenly Miss Sumikaze jumped topics.
I may have been the one to connect my dad and the 256 incident, but that was far too much of a leap of logic for me. I tried to tell her this, but...
“W-Wait!” Before I could, Gamon stood up and interrupted her. “Forget the conspiracy theory. If that’s true, then you’re saying we’re ghosts, right? I still haven’t accepted that!”
“Depending on your definition of ‘ghost,’ you could say that’s right, or you could say it’s wrong.”
“Huh?”
“Dr. Hashigami treated the soul as memories stored in magnetic fields. There are two layers of protection for those memories: the first is electricity, the second is the physical body. Like a Matryoshka doll.”
This was bad news. Miss Sumikaze was totally fired up. Since she was my dad’s editor, she knew all about his theories.
“Let’s say that memories stored in these magnetic fields somehow left the body, and instead moved, for some reason, to become an electromagnetic field attached to the subatomic particles in the air. These particles would now contain our memories and personality from life. They would be our soul...” she said. “What if that’s what happened to us?”
I needed to tell her she was wrong, I thought. But for some reason, I couldn’t.
My throat was so dry. I realized how dry it was, and forced myself to gulp.
What she was saying was impossible. Normally I would’ve been able to tell her, probably with a mocking look on my face. But... what was happening to us right now? Did I really have any evidence that could prove she was wrong?
“No, I don’t know...” Gamon seemed uncertain as well. “If we are these particles, then like I keep saying, how are we talking? How is a ghost supposed to do that?”
“I don’t know that either...” Miss Sumikaze’s shoulders slumped. “I guess all we have now is a theory that we were involved in some kind of conspiracy.”
She... didn’t seem that attached to her theories. Or perhaps she wasn’t a conspiracy theorist at all, simply an editor who was looking at things objectively. If that was the case, I’d feel very reassured...
“Sure, we don’t have any proof we’re dead,” I said, “but we don’t have any proof we’re alive, either.”
In the end, possibilities were just possibilities, and no amount of debate was going to prove anything.