It was his second Hell.
The second one he’d drawn from a convenience store fortune box, anyway.
With a lazy voice saying, “Come on iiiiiin” on autopilot for background music, Seiji chose a pack of résumé forms from the stationery corner and headed for the register, where he found himself confronted with an ominously familiar box.
“Heeere you gooo, draw a fortune, pleeeease.”
He had a bad feeling about it, but he drew a slip. Sure enough, there was a familiar four-letter word on it.
Hell.
Between the nostalgia and the awful luck, Seiji was alternating between smiling faintly and fighting back tears, when—
“Huh? Whoa, that’s—! That fortune! No way—somebody actually pulled it?!”
“…Huh?”
He hadn’t asked for the full story, but he got it: The manager had said to make a box of fortunes back when the flu was going around and they were already shorthanded, and this particular clerk had, in his words, flipped his friggin’ lid and impulsively slipped two fortunes that said Hell in with the rest.
In other words, it had just been a harmless prank. On closer examination, there was nothing supernatural or karmic involved—although it was pretty creepy that the same person had drawn both those fortunes.
“All righty, shake it off and try again. Here you goooo.”
Immediately, Seiji shook his head. “Nah, it’s fine. Um…I don’t think Hell’s all that bad.”
He meant it.
“The heck? That’s hilarious,” the clerk said, laughing. “Okay, well, call this an apology, then.” He held two cans of coffee across the counter. Then he started right in with “Next in liiine, pleaaase,” so Seiji gratefully accepted the cans. He walked through the automatic doors with his plastic bag of résumé forms, ushered out by a voice saying, “Thaaanks for your businesss.”
Sitting down on a metal parking barrier, he took a slip from one of the coffee cans. Thankfully, it was black.
I’m glad it’s hot, too.
The wind was too strong, and it was still a little chilly. It was well past the season where he’d had to hunch his shoulders against biting wind, though, and this one had a vague aura of light to it.
If he listened closely, he could hear the leaves of the trees along the street rustling. The green of those leaves, the blue of the sky—everything he saw seemed a shade brighter.
Spring had come.
After that night on the Blue Magic Lantern…
He and Tosu had quietly exchanged contact info, and later on, Tosu had texted a report about what he’d been up to. He’d located Ms. Nomura a little while after that; she was in treatment for depression, but the two of them had started going out to eat together now and then.
I’m glad, Seiji thought.
That was the only good thing to come out of that nightmarish night.
No, actually, there was one more.
When they’d met up again the other day, Tosu had changed from his hoodie and jeans into a jacket that looked age appropriate. Even then, his appearance was basically fraudulent.
“That was how my brother dressed; I was imitating him,” Tosu confessed.
His mother had remarried, and the “brother” had been his new stepdad’s kid.
He was the man’s only son. He’d been his pride and joy once, but his face had been scarred up in a car accident, and he’d stayed holed up in his room on the second floor ever since. Tosu’s mother had gotten fed up with the perpetual gloom and run off; then, worn out by life, their stepfather had abandoned the brothers.
And then…
“Are you hungry?”
That was the last time Tosu’s brother had spoken to him, and then he’d killed himself. Just before he put the noose around his neck, he’d called the police and said, “I’m afraid my little brother’s going to starve to death.”
“After that, for some reason, I couldn’t relax unless I was imitating him. I went through all his school compositions and photo albums and social media, researching him. Even I didn’t know why. From what the phonograph said, I guess I basically stole his life.”
As always, Tosu’s voice was impassive, but it made Seiji feel as if he were suppressing pain and sadness. He racked his insufficient brain, desperately looking for something to say.
“Um…I think maybe you just didn’t want him to die.”
“What do you mean?”
“I—I think your brother was your only family, as far as you were concerned. Since he’d asked if you were hungry. Maybe you wanted to keep him alive somehow by becoming him.”
Tosu still wasn’t sure what his real reason had been.
But…
“…I hope that was it,” he said. He might have been smiling or crying—and, naturally, he seemed just like a living human being.
As an aside…
On closer inspection, the “letter” Kaganuma had left with Seiji had a brief note written in the corner: Stop by for a meal. Without knowing what it meant, Seiji had put a stamp on the envelope and dropped it in a mailbox, as he’d been told.
According to Tosu, Kaganuma’s little brother—the recipient of that letter—worked at the pub on the flyer.
Apparently, Kaganuma’s family had disowned him while he was in prison. The flyer meant that one of them had been trying to repair their relationship.
In the end, Kaganuma had never visited the pub, but he’d carried that flyer around with him until it was falling apart.
Meanwhile, Takamura and the Rindou brothers’ whereabouts were unknown.
That said, Ms. Toribeno had updated her scary stories blog the other day. The urban legend about “The Detective Who Summons Death” had apparently undergone a change, revealing that the “detective” was actually a pair of twin brothers. Also, for some reason, their base of operations had changed from Japan to England. Well, that was probably what had happened.
And so winter had come to an end.
It had also been four months since Seiji moved away from Shiroshi. Even Seiji couldn’t tell whether that was a long time or not much time at all.
After that night, Shiroshi had assumed the throne, but he hadn’t released the soul of Demon King Sanmoto Gorouzaemon.
“Because of a certain someone, I’ve been locked up in various mansions since birth, so I believe I’ll repay him in kind for a while,” he’d said. Apparently, he was planning to hit him with about a century’s worth of abandonment play.
“…Are you going to be okay?”
Earlier, he’d heard Shiroshi say he wasn’t strong enough to survive without his father’s support. Conversely, if he put himself under his protection again, he could keep living peacefully in that house by the sacred anise tree. He, Beniko, and Seiji: all three of them together, just like before.
“Well, I am technically the demon king, so there’s no one blatantly opposing me at the moment. No doubt it’s only a matter of time, however—so I’d better do something about it soon.”
With that, Shiroshi had handed Seiji a slip of paper. It was the address he’d ripped up the other day. This time, though, Shiroshi had promised he’d be back.