Starting a Night Shift Part-time Job at a Convenience Store.

Withithat said, Iigot my face near to it too and utilized the light to illuminate it. Due to the darkness, I hadn’t noticed it until now, but as Yakumo had mentioned, wild letters were engraved there that looked like they might have been carved with a carving knife orisomething.

[Marchi7, 2010

NishikawaiToshio

Kawachi

SatoNot shared on aggregator websites

UematsuTranslator:MadHatter

You all shall be cursed to death.]

“Hie―”

Rightiaway at the realization that it was a curse, I movediaway from the spot vigorously and fell on my buttocks.

“Whatithe hell is this…”

It wasiweird―it wasn’t likeiany ordinary thing. The shapeiof the letters andithe content conveyed aisense of appalling madness. This… was not graffiti…

Shiveringiand trembling, I found something evenimore horrendous there.

A largeinumber of cigarette buttsiand soiled coffeeicans were scattered across the groundinear the base of the moss-covered tree. Onlyiat this spot, bizarrely…

Here…ihere. This was… I knew it. I was right. The meaning was… that, right…

I mean―wasn’t I right?

Nobody would deliberately come here to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes, right?

[I’ll curse you to death.]―I was prepared for that, but it was too vivid.

Whatever transpired to them before their deaths, they carved such words in such a place. They must have been harboring an extraordinary resentment.

No way… It couldn’t be that a rope with a looped poke on it was fastened to a nearby branch or something around there…

“―I am, ah…”

I would get out of here at once. When I thought that…

“Not… bad.”

…a low voice from right above me brought my feet to a halt.

“…I am, ah… not bad, I am not bad, ah…”

An anguished man’s moaning voice was descending from above my head. He spoke in what seemed like a faint, muffled voice, yet I could make it out perfectly in my ears.

“…It’s――all their fault… I am not to be blamed for anything…”

It wasn’t curiosity that I turned around. This was the same phenomenon as being tapped on the shoulder and turning around. I looked at him unconsciously and my mouth naturally opened.

What initially flashed into my vision was a pair of feet, one in a leather shoe and the other in a sock only―

Slacks with gray vertical lines, a shabby suit―

“They are the ones who framed me… and screwed everything up…”

My eyes slowly rose.

“Regret… I will absolutely make them… Unforgivable…”

The crumpled shirt reflected up to the white neck. Then, like a doll without joints, the neck was unnaturally snapped. His skin had an eerie color that could not be described as human.

He cast out his limbs in line with gravity while maintaining a visage that could not be characterized as living. The man, who was suspended by his neck from a tie fastened to a branch, engulfed my entire being—my senses, my thoughts, everything.

Both of his eyes were wide open and his mouth was half open. His spectacles were wedged between his ears and slanted diagonally, and his nose was dripping a dark liquid.

Nothing more could be conveyed by words. Only those who have witnessed this could recognize it.

This wasn’t a human being. This was no longer a human face.

A corpse―

At the same time my brain was hammering out that answer, the man hanging in midair from a branch moved his mouth and muttered, “…I will kill…”

Ah, ah, ah.

“Aaaaaaah, aaaaaaah～”

My legs went limp, and I couldn’t feel that I could stand up. The curse was etched on the tree by this man.

Trapped by the sensation that my heart was being seized and dragged out, I repeatedly drew in ragged breaths like I was hyperventilating.

Directly above me was a suspended man, swaying slightly under the weight of his body.

I had never witnessed anything like this, not even in horror movies. This―This kind of thing. It wasn’t a feeling of fear or anything like that; it was beyond terror, and I couldn’t think of anything else.

“Agagagaga.”

Those incoherent words that erupted from my mouth by themselves would eventually be replaced by screaming. The back of my head jerked.

Not good, my consciousness was going to fly away.

“Sonny! Pull yourself together!!”

Yakumo brought me back to consciousness as my consciousness was about to fly away again. His words jarred me back to reality, and I twisted my neck with all the strength I could muster, shifting my vision away dramatically. Even now, I was on the edge of screaming but I restrained myself desperately.

“Don’t think any more about it!”

At his unreasonable insistence, my mouth clenched and I vehemently shook my head. As if there was a huge Japanese drum inside my body, my heart was rumbling and I felt like it was going to burst out of my chest.

“Listen. The power of the talisman has kept him from noticing you yet. But if you scream, he’ll undoubtedly notice.”

“Ugh…”

“Run by the count of three.”

I gritted my teeth and nodded at the excessively composed Yakumo.

“One, two…”

Before he could even say three, I was off running.

The man’s moaning voice that emitted like a muffled scream was perpetually haunting my ears, and I couldn’t shrug off my fear as the man’s tragic expression seared itself into my brain. I struggled to use my legs, which were as unsteady as a newborn fawn’s, and ran as if I were going to tumble down.

I fled from that spot, bumping into the trees over and over again. Running in the darkness, I crouched down on the ground when I couldn’t run any longer.

If I made it this far, I was sure… I would be fine.

With that thought in mind, I cast my face down to the ground―only to be confronted with a floral pouch and a light pink compact lying right in front of me.

“Gyahhh!?”

Under my right hand was a stick of lipstick. And many more… A folding brush with hair and other… things that were evidently left behind by someone else.

On top of that, this one―it was still new.

One that was not heavily soiled. Perhaps it was a few days old.

“Ugh.”

Holding my head with a tearful voice, I suppressed the nausea. The things left behind on the ground suggested the last act of the suicidal person. Imagining it subconsciously was repulsive.

Perspiration dripped from my shoulders as I breathed heavily. Yakumo looked down at me anxiously, but in contrast to me, he was neither breathing erratically nor breaking out in perspiration.

“Are you okay, Sonny?”

“Of course not…”

“Yeah, I’m sorry.”

A transparent palm was held out in front of me but it was immediately retracted.

“Oops… I forgot.”

He may have been trying to offer me a hand but I couldn’t touch him in his astral form.

“I can hardly do anything in such a state… Damn.”

Yakumo’s face was distorted in frustration, his impatience apparent.

In spite of traveling a considerable distance over the course of more than an hour, I was unable to make out anything in the sea of trees that spread out beyond my field of vision. As the hour of the Ox deepened, my sixth sense was responding to it, and faint moans could be heard from all over the place, which was pushing my restless heart to the edge.

“Ugh… cough―oe.”

The impact of what I had seen earlier, and the uncertainty that grew as I went on, finally forced me to puke on the spot.

“Hey…!”

“Hah, I think it’s going to appear in my dreams at…”

Anything like that was a first for me. I had seen plenty of things in the past that I found repulsive. That was nothing, though, in comparison to what I had caught sight of earlier. It was the worst thing I had ever witnessed.

That man died there… and kept on hanging himself until then. Never was he liberated, nor did he die in peace.

It was exactly as Takenaka and Ayame said.

For those who died here, no salvation existed―

This was the negative circle of the sea of trees with no salvation. Not only that man, but many others who perished in such a miserable way were here. How many more times would I have to see them?

“Sonny, this is no good. You need to take a break.”

“It’s fine, we don’t have time for that.”

“Yeah but…”

“Don’t be so self-conscious when you are the one who brought me here. Like I said, it’s useless… but you know, I’m the type of person who has a hard time abandoning a decision once I’ve set my mind to it. Come on, let’s move on…”

“Why do you insist on exerting yourself so hard? You must feel sick already. Normally, people would cry and try to run away.”

“Yeah. Theidiscomfort is too much.”

“Then why?”

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m not doing it for you, I’m doing it for me.”

A small laugh broke out.

“I don’t like the aftertaste. I want to be relieved of everything… and I don’t like it when things are in disarray. Like specters, I don’t like people who are half in belief and half in doubt about such things. I need it to be black and white. I want to live a refreshing life, that’s why I’m doing this…”

Right, I was always self-centered. I hated crookedness, and I was a pain to deal with. Though I was extremely proficient at drawing animosity.

Even so, I refused to live a life of regret.

Onlyirecently did I finally realize that I had been living my life by sticking to such unbendable pride and hurting many people. Perhaps it was because I went through such egotism that I hurt Hyuga which led to an outcome like that.

This time, nobody would get hurt, right?

Again, I was only doing this for myself, but I didn’t want to suffer the regret and terrible aftertaste of that time. I was doing it for myself but it was fine since no one else was hurt.

“Don’t worry, it will heal in time.”

When I insisted that, Yakumo seemed to understand reluctantly and stopped saying anything after that.

The nausea thatiwas threatening to rise up inside me was once again smothered by the mineral water in my bag, and I clutched the talisman in my pocket with sweaty hands to compose myself.

“Are you okay with this?”

The silent walk was unbearable, and after a few moments, I was the one who initiated the conversation.

“Your complexionididn’t change a bit after seeing that.”

“Yeah…”

“You’re the same kind as the people who can see specters, and yet you’re different.”

Furthermore, I wasiolder than you. Was it due to your condition that you didn’t feel any fear?

“No, I don’t lack emotion. I am only accustomed to it. I have been to a lot of places and observed all sorts of things. You’re a guy who’s been seeing these things for less than a month, aren’t you?”

Oh, he got it right…

“Did I hit the mark?”

“Anyone would have fainted if they saw that, no matter if it has been six months or a year.”

“Hmm, well, that’s for sure.”

The fact that he could see that and not be perturbed by it made me wonder how many terrific evil spirits he had encountered in his life.

“I have been able to see for more than a decade now, and I’m not astonished by what I see now.”

“More than a decade…!?”

“If I trace my family ancestry back to its beginnings, it was, I believe, a branch of the Yin-Yang sect. But for some reason, I was born with a strong bloodline from that family, even though the bloodline eventually fell extinct and was utterly forgotten.”

With a troubled look on his face, Yakumo recounted his past.

“Wasn’t it… hard for you sinceiyou were such a child?”

“Of courseiit was hard. Oneiday, out of the blue, I started seeing old men with holes in their stomachs and women with no legs, and I had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that my reality was so distinct from everyone else’s. People called me a liar, and my parentsithought I was nuts and brought me to a psychiatrist. Nobody believed me… That made those days a lot more unbearable…”

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