Cat Phantom II |
“You know how every now and then when a staff member walks by you stretch your neck and glance down the aisle, haha, did you see a cute girl?”
“Oh… well, something like that.”
“Cute? Which one!”
“I’ll let you know when she appears, Nishimura, sit down.”
While telling a lie, I reached for the grilled chicken. Had I spoken the truth, I would have undeniably received ridicule. Either that or they would become upset and accuse me of being obnoxious. In any event, I didn’t think they would take my story seriously.
“…”
…No.
No, but…
But if it was these guys, if it was these guys who had inseparable relations with me…
Half in doubt, I let my words out. My three friends drew in close to me as they regarded me, wondering what was up with my changed demeanor.
“What’s wrong?”
“Um, well, it’s just that recently… I.”
“What is it?”
“You finally got a girl!?”
“Actually… I―”
I started being able to see specters―
I dropped the bombshell and said it.
In front of everyone I had shared an unbreakable bond with, I disclosed the cause that had been swirling around my chest up until this point. A momentary pause reigned with silence. The ice in the mug melted and dropped.
“Aha.”
The silence was too unbearable to tolerate, and when I let out a half-smile…
“Ha―hah, hah, hah, hah, hah! Ahahahahaha!!!”
“H-Hahaha! Hahaha! Hahahahaha! Pfft, hahahahahahaha!!”
“Pfft, Masa… you, pfft!”
Like bombs triggered by time lag, all three of them blasted out in unison and torrentially.
Ah… here it came. I knew it. As expected…
“No way! Hahahaha!!”
“You’re joking over the top! Hakamada! Couldn’t you have told a better lie! Hahahaha!!”
“Bloop, ploop! Gofuh…. cough, hoh, oe!”
As if on fire, Tanaka slammed the table and laughed while his face turned to a brilliant red.
Nishimura was pressing his stomach and laughing with tears in his eyes.
As for Kinoshita, his attempt to restrain his laughter may have had the opposite effect, as he was sobbing so profusely that he was gagging.
While my three friends pointed at me, they were bursting out into hysterical laughter.
Ah, what was this blue feeling I was having…
“So you don’t believe me at all huh…”
My friends said one after another to me as my shoulders slumped, “I mean, this is about you, it’s absolutely impossible.”
Well… it was not unreasonable…
“I’m speaking the truth!! It’s been crazy lately!!”
“Heh, about what?”
“About what… well, you know… anyway, it’s just crazy!”
“I can’t believe you said that, Masa. You know, you don’t have to tell a joke like that, but it’s pretty amusing actually, haha.”
“Y-You’re wrong.”
“Like what Tanaka and Nishimura said. It’s rather obvious, but I’ll give you credit for the realistic performance.”
“Kinoshita!”
These guys hardly believed me more than I thought they would… They regarded it as a joke.
“I am not lying!”
“Hmm, even if that’s true, I find it awfully hard to believe that a man named Hakamada would say that.”
“What?”
Nishimura shook his head while suppressing a laugh.
“Here is a quiz. Tanaka, what did Hakamada do during his high school days when his class decided to conduct a ‘test of courage’ during the summer vacation?”
“He quickly left after saying it was foolish and went home.”
“Then, when it turned out a haunted house was planned for the school festival, what did he say to the girls who were afraid of it?”
“‘There’s no such thing as specters, your strange voices are much more frightening’.”
“At the old school building, where it was rumored to be haunted?”
“He was eating a cup noodle.”
“On the roof, which was closed off due to a suicide a long time ago?”
“He skipped class and then went for a nap.”
“What about those supernatural photographs the occult club was buzzing about?”
“He said, ‘What kind of software did you use to make this?’ and ripped them up.”
“How is it! These are your deeds of the past, all accumulated over time! Terrific, isn’t it?”
What did you mean by “deeds”? But I remembered doing it. I was mischievous at the time.
“Various times I got the chills…”
“Masa was funny, though.”
“I bet there are specters and spirits in the world, but when Hakamada says things like that, my heart is most reluctant to believe him!”
“Right, right, I remember you saying whoever saw specters must have been sleeping while standing up. How nostalgic.”
“…”
After being told to that point, I concluded that no matter what I said, they would not believe me, so I chose not to add another word.
Haha, I figured it wouldn’t have any impact at all if I said something like that, I laughed and tried to cover it up, but my friends were amused and chuckled again.
“Well, in a way, it did have an impact.”
I wasn’t that shocked. Right. Nobody would easily believe me about what a shocking experience I had been through the past few days. Had the former me from several days ago been the one to hear such a story, I would have laughed it off, just as Nishimura and the others had done.
“If it’s a story with impact, please listen to my heroic tale for a moment.”
Nishimura clapped his hands and raised his voice as if recollecting.
Most of the heroic tales that he recounted were mundane acts like hooking up with a girl and nearly getting her pregnant, cuckolding a girl, seducing a married woman, having a one-night stand, or setting a record for having seven hookups. All of these inconsequential stories were not worthy of being called heroic tales. I mean, the fact that he didn’t get stabbed was remarkable.
I was stunned that he had done something strange once more, but my earlier bombshell was going to be overshadowed by Nishimura’s foolish talk, so I decided to listen to him.
“Oi, you didn’t do something terrible again, did you?”
“You’re wrong, this is not about women, that’s for sure.”
Tanaka, a rough, young man, detested such conversation very much. He cast a dubious glance toward Nishimura, who seemed eager to discuss the subject with him.
“You know, when we have time off from work, my girlfriend and I like to go about and visit various places.”
What, so it was a love story, damn it.
“Heh, so?”
“But lately, it’s become a pattern, and she said that it was dull to watch the nighttime landscape. I thought it would be wonderful to have a little stimulation, so recently, we’ve been exploring several well-known haunted locations in the area.”
“Eek.”
“Wow, you.”
While Tanaka and I frowned in disbelief, Kinoshita seemed to be deeply intrigued and exclaimed, “You’re a real prick, you know that?”
“She was so terrified, and she was so cute, clinging to my arm the whole time.”
“Hmm, what kind of places have you been?”
When Kinoshita asked, Nishimura proudly listed the places he had been to so far. Tunnels I had heard of, an unknown ruin, a deserted house, an abandoned hospital ward, etc.
“Just how many places have you been, that kind of thing is only done on TV, your girlfriend must be pitiful.”
“Oh, what, are you jealous, Tanaka?”
“It’s not like that, idiot!”
“Brave of you, Nishimura. I wouldn’t dream of going to a place like that myself.”
“You’ll be cursed for sure.”
“Don’t worry, I have experienced no such thing before,” Nishimura said that it was a light test of courage, feeling relaxed. “Where is the newest one again… ah, yes! That one, the old mansion on the outskirts of town that was abandoned following a suicide. It was minor, but very realistic, especially when a chair and a rope were left in the room where the woman committed suicide! Even I had goosebumps!”
Nishimura laughed creepily, not concealing his excitement. Until the other day, I would have dismissed his story as absurd. But now I couldn’t say such a thing and cleared my throat.
“So what did you do after that?”
“Had sex on the front porch and came home, haha.”
“Perfectly dumb…”
In response to Nishimura, who laughed it off, saying, “I’m scared, but the specters didn’t actually come out, so it’s a bit of a fluke,” Tanaka put his hand on his forehead and emitted a dismayed voice.
Unless he got hurt in some way, Nishimura was the type of person who would never stop, and he had always been like that.
“…”
“What’s the matter, Hakamada, you’re getting all quiet?”
“You can slap him like you always do. Come on, come on.”
I was shaken on the shoulder by Kinoshita and was told I wasn’t being myself. My lips were tightly sealed, and I couldn’t say anything.
My head hurt―
It was as though the back of my head was bound with a rope or such.
An inexplicable sound pierced my eardrums. The fact that none of the three men seemed to be paying any attention to the sound apparently implied that I was the only one who could hear it.
Despite not drinking a drop of alcohol, a sudden feeling of queasiness and a gradual chill overtook me.
What was this… Hey.
What was that… thing.
As I suppressed the nausea that was building up within me, I forgot to blink and couldn’t pull my gaze away from what I was witnessing.
Right before my eyes, around Nishimura’s neck.
A thin, branch-like arm was wrapped around Nishimura’s neck. Like hugging him from behind, the arm was loosely constricting his neck.
Disgusting…
My face naturally grew tense.
The bony arm rested on Nishimura’s shoulder, occasionally wobbling like a living creature.
I immediately grasped it. That was something Nishimura had “brought” from the ruin.
It was a part of the woman who committed suicide in the ruin. What kind of a place did Nishimura step into when he was playing around…
“Ah, I wonder what it is.”
Nishimura casually began to rotate both shoulders in a circular motion.
“Lately, my shoulders have been feeling strangely heavy.”
Nishimura’s soliloquy made me want to tell him that this was not the case. Both Kinoshita and Tanaka asked me what was wrong as I remained motionless with my eyes wide open.
Nishimura, in front of me, was hitting his shoulder with his fist, and every time he did so, the white arm that was entangled in his shoulder would twirl tightly, trying to keep it from separating from his arm.
Even though I couldn’t see past the arm and couldn’t tell what sort of expression was on the face since there was no face to be seen, I could sense a quiet but sinister malevolence in that entwining white arm.
Hatred, killing.
It wasn’t something as simple and acute as that. Somehow―
It was something deep and vicious.
It was like… I am going to make you suffer the same thing…
For some reason, such an uncanny phrase floated through my mind.
Another grinding strange sound emerged. As if to dispel the sound, I chugged down my glass of juice and stood up.
The three of them naturally sent me a startled look since I stood up so abruptly.
“Nishimura! Get yourself exorcised somewhere in the near future…! Listen, you must absolutely do that!!”
Sputtering out in a tongue-lashing manner, I shoved Kinoshita, who was seated by the aisle, aside and proceeded directly to the toilet. My brow wrinkled as I bumped into passing customers and store staff. I repeated it over and over in my mind.
Damn it, damn it, damn it.
Damn it.
Again, again…
I caught sight of another strange thing again―