'What's this?!' I gasped out, pulling my hand away from the burn mark on the floor in a flinch.
I took two involuntary steps backward and broke into cold sweat, while I fixated the mark; thrilled.
'Shun, what can you see?' Hatsu demanded, anxiously.
We were at the Yoshihara's, more precisely in the bedroom of the young Yoshihara who has mysteriously gone missing.
Hatsu had suggested that I activate my Godai Shakujō to examine the burn mark on the floor. Even without the use of my ability, there had seemed to be something disturbing about the mark.
'There's no imprint of demon. But there's indeed the residual energy of something; something even more sinister, darker… I don't know what it is!'
I felt sick suddenly.
'Alright! De-activate your Godai Shakujō!'
What can this be?!
'Shun? SHUN!'
My head snapped up at Hatsu at that moment, breaking out of my trance-like state.
I swayed and the blond caught me by my shoulders, steadying me. I de-activated my ability on the spot.
'Are you alright?'
I nodded, but he didn't look convinced.
***
A short while later…
'It wasn't a good idea to use your ability. But at least now we're sure that the disappearances are connected to the paranormal.'
I agreed.
As we were walking through town, I pondered over the families of the youngsters who have disappeared; what they were going through. It had been heartbreaking to see Mr and Mrs Yoshihara in tears earlier.
Their eldest child has mysteriously vanished, in their own house, while they were all under the same roof. There had been no traces of a fight in the boy's bedroom or even that of an intrusion. They had no idea about what could have happened, if their kid was still alive somewhere or not.
I believed that it was impossible to live like this, with so many uncertainties.
'We absolutely need to put an end to this!' I declared and glancing at Hatsu, I found him staring at me.
'We will!' he said, in a promise.
'How do we proceed?'
'I suggest that we go back to the school and that we inspect it for some clues.'
At this hour, with the sun setting, the school must be empty, but I was sure that the headmaster would still let us in.
Kuroba High School seemed to be the only link between the disappearances.
With no one around, Hatsu and I would be free of our movements. We were expecting to find something that wasn't at its place or even a manifestation of an entity.
After a rapid jump at the hotel to take a bath and change our clothes, we went for the school.
'Let's split up!' said Hatsu, and we separated ways in the corridors of the main building, each of us taking a lamp torch.
I had to admit that I didn't feel reassured alone with Kōmori-san.
The school had nothing gay at night. It was too silent. I was beginning to have the jitters.
After having checked the classrooms on my side and finding nothing suspect, I decided to check the school labs, starting with the one for biology. I wondered if I was going to find real human bones replacing plastic ones from a silly student prank; the sordid idea making me even more nervous.
Swallowing hard, I slid the door open when, without any warning, a human skeleton jumped in front of my face, hanging from the ceiling with a rope around its neck.
Screaming my lungs out, I stumbled backward and fell onto my behind. In a reflex, my Godai Shakujō became activated and impaled the skeleton in an instantaneous attack, breaking it to pieces. I was about to scramble onto my feet to make an escape when I heard a booming laughter.
'Oh my gosh, Shun! That was so funny!'
I stared at Hatsu as he stepped out of the biology lab, holding his belly as he laughed like a jackal.
It was...
'You were so funny! You should have seen your face!'
He was laughing so hard that tears began to flow from his eyes. He wiped them off, bending down to examine the damage on the skeleton.
It was…
'My! My! The poor thing! You've massacred it!'
He picked up a piece of it to show it to me. 'It's made with plastic, silly! I was sure that you were having the jitters by yourself!'
It was just a prank!
I gave him an incredulous look and let myself fall backward, wishing that I could faint.
'Oh, come on, don't be like this! I'll refund the school for the skeleton, alright?! I guess that this will be my lesson!'
He walked up to where I was and held out his hand at me, grinning victoriously.
'It's only normal!' I grunted, taking his hand, letting him pull me to my feet. 'Did you find something?'
'Not yet,' he replied.
His cellphone rang suddenly and he moved slightly away to answer the call. When he hung up, he turned back to me, a deep worried frown creasing his forehead.
'Is there a problem?'
'This mission is getting complicated.' He explained, 'It's an old friend of mine who was on the phone with me just now. He's in the police force in this town. I've called him the moment we've reached, to know if there were information that has been kept from the media and public.'
I was beginning to have an ugly feeling. 'And?'
'There have been several other disappearances of students of other schools across the country recently and every time, there was the burn mark.'
My breath caught.
Kuroba High School had been our only link between the students who have disappeared. But now, we didn't even have this. This whole story was taking a disproportionate magnitude.
'The police haven't made the information public so as to keep themselves from creating general panic. They think that a satanic sect could be involved.'
The police haven't ignored the hypothesis of fugue after all. Did the authorities believed that the students could have been brainwashed and that they have ran away from home to join a sect?
The terrible idea was sickening. What would the parents think of this hypothesis? They'd be utterly revolted by the police forces.
'That's not all!'
My throat tightened.
'Apparently, it isn't the first time that something like this has happened. It happened a few times in the past too. Each time in a wave.'
I clasped my hand over my mouth, my mind in chaos.
What kind of creature are we dealing with?!
***
I wondered about it during our whole way back to the hotel and the whole night. I was still wondering the same thing the next day at Kuroba High School.
Hatsu and I couldn't be everywhere at the same time. And this school was where the first series of disappearances have begun. We ought to take some time investigating here some more.
As I came across of a group of students playing Kokkuri-san during osoji, something occurred to me in a flash.
It was obvious! It had been there, right in front of our eyes, since the very beginning!
'And what if it was Kokkuri-san?!' I declared, turning to Hatsu in the corridor.
'Kokkuri-san?!' His eyes went wide at me, before he stared at the floor, cupping his chin thoughtfully. 'It could explain many things. It is a game played by schoolchildren. And games are like fashion. They disappear and re-appear across time, which could explain that the phenomenon occurs in waves.'
He pointed out, 'Kokkuri-san is in fact a spirit who is summoned during the game to answer questions about the future; a spirit from the Shintō religion to be exact. There are some questions that we're better off not knowing the answer to and this could explain depressed or aggressive moods as outcome, not to forget that Kokkuri-san is a trickster spirit and it can easily lie to a person.'
He added, with emphasis, 'Above all, but not the least, it is well known that if the players do not finish the game correctly, the result is terrible. We don't know how the spirit actually works but we're gonna find this out!' He grinned twistedly then. 'Are you ready for Kokkuri-san?'
***
Later…
After extracurricular classes, all the students left the school for home. When were done ensuring ourselves that the whole compound was empty, Hatsu and I decided that it was time for some action.
Pulling a chair to himself, Hatsu sat opposite of me at the small desk by the open window. We had closed all the other windows and the door of the classroom.
To play Kokkuri-san, we needed to be at least two players.
Taking a blank sheet of paper, Hatsu drew a torii at the top of it with red ink, then he wrote "Yes" and "No" on either side of the torii and beneath this, a row of numbers from zero to nine and three rows of letters from A to Z.
We exchanged a look in anticipation before he placed the ten-yen coin on the torii and we both placed our forefinger onto it.
'Kokkuri-san, Kokkuri-san, are you here? Please, move this coin to answer!'
To our astonishment, the coin under our index fingers moved on it's own to stop on "Yes".
Hatsu and I exchanged another meaningful look.
A mischievous smile appeared on the blond male's lips suddenly.
'Kokkuri-san, tell me the name of the first guy who's kissed Shun!'
I blushed madly.
'T. S. U. N. A. N,' Hatsu spelled out loud as the coin slid across of the paper, before exclaiming, 'Hah! It's Tsunan!'
I flushed even deeper, if that was even possible.
I remembered the incident at the pool of the organization. Baffled, I stammered, 'It-It wasn't a real kiss! He did it to give me breath and keep me from drowning. It-It doesn't really count!'
Or does it?
Hatsu laughed in amusement.
'Ah, don't be so shy!'
I thought I would faint in embarrassment.
He cleared his throat then, becoming serious. 'Well, well, that's not all, but let's get back to our business!'
He slid the window shut in a flick and crumpled the sheet of paper into a ball, thus, preventing Kokkuri-san from leaving, trapping the spirit in the classroom.
We both jerked to our feet, our eyes traveling the room.
'Come on, Kokkuri-san, show yourself up!' called Hatsu, in a commanding tone.
The spirit appeared in front of us but, surely, I hadn't expected it to have the form of a kid. It was a young girl of Gakkuri's age, dressed in a white kimono with pale blue flower patterns on it and a large yellow obi and she was wearing traditional footwear. Her skin was pale, her red hair at chin-level and adorned with a green Kanzashi, her face devoid of expression.
There was something sinister about her.
'I was telling myself too since yesterday that you're not ordinary people!' she muttered. 'What do you want of me?'
'Don't you guess?!' retorted Hatsu. 'You like making people disappear, Kokkuri-san? All those students who have disappeared, you've killed them, haven't you?'
'It's not me,' she said, remaining composed.
'Yeah! As if, we're gonna believe you!' he scoffed and she repeated, very calmly, 'It's not me.'
'Try again!' snorted Hatsu, as he pulled out a gun and pointed it at her.
The blond male was a marksman. He used firearms and long-range snipper riffles for weapons. These were special for killing supernatural creatures, of course.
'I told you that it's not me!' snarled Kokkuri-san in sudden furry, and out of the blue, three canids- a fox, a dog and a raccoon- jumped out of her body.
They were spirits too.
What followed, went in a blur.
Hatsu pulled on the trigger. At the same time, the fox and the dog jumped at him in an attack, causing Hatsu to miss his aim- the bullet ending up in the back wall- and drop his gun as the first canid bit him at the wrist, while the dog bit him in-between his neck and left shoulder, knocking the blond down on the floor.
'Hatsu!' I cried out, alarmed.
The two canids jerked backward to join their mistress while I dashed at the severely wounded blond and got down by his side.
He had managed to sit up against the front wall, holding his neck, his face distorted with pain. He was losing a lot of blood very rapidly from the two bites, especially from the severe injury at the neck.
I looked around at Kokkuri-san and was about to activate my Godai Shakujō and attack her, when she threatened, 'Be still, or your little pet is going to die!'
At this, my eyes landed onto Kōmori-san which was on the floor, caught under the paw of the raccoon spirit, at the mercy of the canid. The latter was ready to bite the bat's head off if I tried anything.
'No, please, don't hurt it!' I pleaded, putting my hands up in front of me pacifically, my heart accelerating in my chest. I glanced at Hatsu who absolutely needed to be seen by a doctor. 'Please, let us go! I need to take my partner to the hospital immediately.'
'I find that you have a lot of nerve to ask me to let you go alive while you were about to kill me shamelessly only a minute ago!' stated Kokkuri-san, her expression composed again.
'Yes, it's true,' I acknowledged, not missing to point out though, 'We wanted to kill the monster which has snatched those kids from their families and caused them to suffer!'
She became silent for a minute before her eyes tightened at me, an evil glint in them.
'I'd accept to leave the three of you alive, if you pluck your eyes out with this!' She took out a kunai and slid it on the floor towards me, grinning wickedly. 'Your ability works via the eyes, isn't it? Let's say that it's a kind of insurance for me. It'll ensure me that at least I'll have you off my back afterwards!'
Hatsu looked as horrified as I was.
There was indeed something sinister about her.
Picking the kunai up, I stared at it for a minute, before I took a glance at Kōmori-san, then at Hatsu.
Their lives were in danger. I had to do it.
'Shun, wait, you're not going to do it, are you?!' said Hatsu. in a panicked tone.
I clamped the kunai with both hands, the tip pointing towards my face.
'Stop, don't do it!' shouted Hatsu hysterically, as I brought the kunai over my right eyes slowly. I was about to pluck my eye out with it when, at the last second, Kokkuri-san asked me to stop.
My hands froze and I looked up at her in astonishment.
She was watching me, incredulously.
'You're ready, not only to auto-mutilate yourself, but also, to go back to prison in order to save this winged animal and your comrade here?!'
The raccoon turned its head around to look at its mistress and silent conversation seemed to go on between the two, before the canid took its paw off of Kōmori-san, letting the small winged animal escape.
The latter crawled up to me, hiding behind my back.
'You're right to think that the students who've gone missing are no longer in this world,' muttered Kokkuri-san. 'But I'm going to be clear once and for all; I'm not responsible of those disappearances, alright? I'm a trickster spirit. I don't have the capacity to drag people down to hell.'
I stared at her, her words sinking in slowly in my head.
Out of the blue, Hatsu took out another gun and he was about to shoot her when I placed my hands on top of his weapon, stopping him. 'No, Hatsu, don't!'
'What's wrong with you, Shun?!' he shouted.
'She had the upper hand on us just now,' I said. 'I don't see the interest she'll have from lying! I believe her.' Looking back at the trickster spirit, I told her, 'I believe you.'
Her eyes widened at me in surprise.
'She was ready to leave you alive and this is how you thank her?!' the dog spirit growled, furiously in all of sudden.
All three canids' hairs were standing on ends and they seemed ready to pounce on us.
'Come on! Let's go!' ordered Kokkuri-san in a detached tone as she started towards the window.
'But, miss!' protested the fox spirit, but she ignored it.
Picking the ball of paper on the desk, she straightened it out and then, sliding the window open, she jumped out of it.
Reluctantly, the three canids followed suit.
I turned back to Hatsu instantaneously, anxious about his state.
'I'm going to take you to the hospital!'
Pulling him to his feet, I helped him walk.
Thank you for reading!
Glossary
Osoji - cleaning of the school
Obi - sash
Kanzashi - a hair ornament