In this world, some oni may greet you with a mocking smile.
✦ ✦ ✦
Seiji Tohno’s life was one long disgrace.
As far as he was concerned, it was no exaggeration to say that all of his twenty-two years had been lived in shame. After all, while he came from a family of fishermen, he hadn’t even managed to conquer his seasickness yet, and he was such a lousy swimmer that he could drown in a twenty-five-meter pool. It felt as if he’d gotten something wrong just by being born.
On top of that, he was currently a full-fledged NEET with a triple handicap: no job, no money, and no permanent address.
Even worse, he hadn’t chosen his parents’ house in their Kanagawa port town to become a shut-in or the low-income, bath-not-included Tokyo apartment he’d rented as a student. No—instead, he was living out of a series of net cafés.
Most of the world used net cafés for just a few hours a day, to rest or kill some time. Not Seiji. He was traveling from one to the next and spending his nights there.
Today marked the second week of his life as a net café nomad.
The going rate in this area was 1,980 yen for a twelve-hour package. That meant if he got in late at night, he could stay until almost noon. But was it comfortable? Hardly. Those recliners were fine if you were just reading manga and sipping a drink, but after a mere five days of trying to sleep in one, his lower back had started screaming.
Thanks to that, Seiji was chronically sleep-deprived, and his mind—which had never worked all that well—had closed up shop and gone on vacation. He’d always been a pretty light sleeper, and if there was a middle-aged guy snoring away somewhere nearby, he’d have to strangle him in order to get any decent rest.
On the worst days, he only started to doze off around five in the morning. He couldn’t even count the number of times he’d accidentally overslept and ended up crying over having to pay to extend his time.
What did he do during the day, then? An astonishing amount of nothing.
He just let time go by; he hung out in convenience stores and used bookstores, reading for free, or he checked out street buskers and graded them in his head. By the time night fell, his legs were sore from walking. He hadn’t been sweating away at a job, part-time or otherwise, though, so if he’d complained about being tired after bumming around all day, he definitely would have found himself on the receiving end of a lecture.
Up until last year, he’d technically been able to call himself a college student. That said, he’d skipped all the parts most people associated with college, like mixers and club activities, and finally the high-pressure interviews had broken him. He’d stopped leaving his apartment, and even the very last event—job hunting—had sailed right past him.
Apparently, it was possible to be a “roaming job seeker” and remain a respectable adult, but unfortunately, Seiji’s parents weren’t tolerant or wealthy enough to give him that kind of grace period. As a matter of fact, if they’d known about his current situation, they would have cut him up and fed him to the fish.
“Haaah.” He let out a long sigh that was heard only by the porcelain throne.
Seiji was in the single-occupant bathroom of a convenience store in front of the station. He’d done his business, gargled, and was just reaching for his toothbrush case when a reflection slid into view. He flinched, freezing up.
A man with a face like death gazed hollowly back at him from the mirror.
“—!”
He’d managed to choke back his scream, but his heart was still hammering in his chest.
Vacant, unfocused black eyes rimmed with deep, dark circles, their whites clouded and yellow—that haggard face was branded into his memory.
He’d always been very uncomfortable around mirrors.
Shop windows on the street were basically the same thing, so he’d developed the habit of hunching and glaring at his feet as he walked. At this point, mirrors held such terror for him that he couldn’t bear to look into one for even a second, and that fear was constricting his daily life.
“Haaaah, not again.”
Seiji brushed his teeth around an exasperated sigh, careful to keep his focus on the sink, then left the bathroom.
He could feel his stomach growling, so he grabbed a discount rice ball and headed for the registers. He’d paid and was shoving his few remaining coins into his jacket pocket when the clerk held an unfamiliar box out over the counter.
“Heeere you gooo. Draw a fooortune, pleeeease,” the man drawled.
Seiji drew a slip of paper.
“Huh?” When the cashier took it and opened it, a look of startled confusion spread across his face. Hastily refolding the paper, he shoved it back into Seiji’s palm as if it were a dead cockroach. “Thank yooou for your buuusiness.”
Seiji walked through the automatic door, puzzling over the weird reaction. When he looked up, the sunset seemed to be burning down the sky from its western edge. It was twilight, the time of day when light and dark bled into one another.
Getting curious, he opened the fortune slip and saw a word he hadn’t expected:
HELL
Understandably, he was dumbstruck. Is this even worse than “Terrible Luck” on a fortune? Rock bottom?
Maybe somebody had slipped it into the box as a prank. So out of all the options, Seiji had just happened to draw that particular fortune? What awful luck… Still, it really was going to be hell from here on out.
His money was just about gone. He’d been spending what he had and earning nothing, so that was no surprise. He didn’t even have enough left to stay at a net café tonight. He could brave the critical looks from the staff and doze the night away at a McDonald’s like a student napping in class, but he wouldn’t be able to do that for long. Was he finally about to end up on the street? Lately, certain phrases kept flickering at the edges of his mind: all washed up, checkmate, nowhere left to go, fading to black…
Come to think of it, he’d heard that some organization served meals to the homeless at a park just down this street during the winter. He didn’t know whether they were there every day, but you couldn’t beat free food.
Lost in thought without really thinking about anything, Seiji was just starting to wander off when it happened.
Clack.
He heard the sound of a wooden geta sandal on pavement.
“…Huh?”
Turning to look at the source of the sound, he saw a Buddhist monk with one eye in the middle of its forehead. The monster’s robe—Is that the right word for it?—was dyed blue. In the next moment, that rolling eye had focused on Seiji.
Ya wanna hang yerself?
He read its lips with an ease that seemed unnatural. Then the monster reached out and made a grab for his head.
Shrieking, Seiji scrambled backward. His feet tangled, sending him stumbling into a passerby. “Watch it, moron!” a middle-aged man in a work coverall snarled at him. Seiji hastily gathered his things back up off the ground. He didn’t have much—just a shoulder bag packed with spare clothes and a plastic umbrella for when it rained.
Then he saw her.
A neat, well-put-together woman was right there in front of him. She wore a fancy-looking long coat and carried a designer bag. Standing there, completely at ease in her slim-heeled pumps, she looked like a young socialite. As she looked down at Seiji, her eyes seemed vaguely wary. Maybe she thought he was drunk.
A moment later, Seiji realized that she was the true form of the one-eyed monster, and he took to his heels in a panic.
They’re back.
His symptoms had started up again.
As far as Seiji was concerned, this was a chronic disease that never got better.
Ever since he was little, he’d sometimes see people around him as monsters.
Like back when he was in grade school, a guy they’d called “the Candy Man” had lived on his school route. When kids stopped by on their way home, he’d beam and give them candy.