Book Girl and the Undine Who Bore a Moonflower Page 4

  “What about Nanase? What about Akutagawa? You’ve been spending a lot of time with him lately. And there’s little Chia, too.”

  “You’re getting something for Takeda. Akutagawa and I aren’t that kind of friends, and I think Kotobuki hates me.”

  Tohko’s eyes went wide with surprise.

  “What? But Konoha, didn’t you get a postcard from Nanase over the summer?”

  “Nope.”

  Why would I get a postcard?

  Tohko folded her arms over her chest and hemmed, then soon lifted her head with a grin.

  “Let’s buy something for Nanase anyway. And for Akutagawa and Chia! It’s important to build up a lot of little things for the people you talk to every day. There are romances and friendships that begin with souvenirs. Look, doesn’t that dried persimmon look yummy?”

  “What kind of romance starts with a dried persimmon?”

  Even though I told her that all I needed was stuff for my family, she wasn’t the type to back down. In the end, she burst out with her usual line, “It’s an order from your president,” and I was forced to buy a ballpoint pen with a weird crab character on top of it for Akutagawa, a paperweight shaped like a baby bird for Takeda, and a traditional-looking phone strap with a small peach-colored woven ball on it for Kotobuki.

  Akutagawa and Takeda were one thing, but when would I ever get the chance to give Kotobuki her souvenir?

  The round-faced older man at the register had his lips curved in amusement, as if he’d overheard our discussion. I thought my face would catch fire while he was totaling everything up.

  Tohko didn’t even notice and struck up a conversation with the man.

  “Excuse me, are there any sightseeing spots you would recommend around here?”

  “In this area, there’s nothing to see but the scenery. Though the leaves are wonderful in the fall. Where are you two kids staying?”

  “We know someone who has a villa on the mountain. We’re staying there.”

  The man reeled back suddenly and shouted, “A villa?! You don’t mean the Himekura place!”

  “Uh, th-that’s right,” Tohko answered with some confusion.

  Instantly, eyes in the shop and on the street turned toward us and a fearful murmur began.

  “She said she’s staying at the Himekura villa!”

  “What?! That evil house?! Isn’t that where the oracle fought a ghoul and got devoured long ago?”

  An oracle? A ghoul? What in the world?!

  As I stood dumbfounded, even more unsettling words came crashing in on me.

  “The Himekura estate where all those murders happened and turned it into a sea of blood?!”

  “The place is still crawling with goblins and ghosts and whatever else, no? How terrifying! Those kids are gonna get cursed.”

  Tohko couldn’t handle ghosts, and she started to look as if she might faint.

  People were gathering on the street, and the sound of them talking grew louder and louder, and the reserve in their looks eroded until we were being treated exactly as if we were exotic animals in a freak show.

  Gripping the plastic bag with our souvenirs inside and cutting through the crowd of people, we fled the scene.

  Running beside me, Tohko was shaking her head weakly, half in tears, and shouting, “No! I hate ghooooooosts!”

  Chapter 2—The Oracle Who Read from Books

  “What did they mean about ghosts?! Tell me!”

  Late that night, the moment Maki got home, Tohko chased after her, her braids flying.

  “Okay, okay. I know perfectly well that you’re afraid of ghosts, but don’t be so cute when you’re afraid. It makes me want to sweep you up in my arms.”

  “I-I’m not afraid! Only little kids get scared of ghosts.”

  Wearing a cardigan over her nightgown, Tohko planted her trembling feet and put on a show of bravery.

  Of course, she was transparent to Maki, who sat down and crossed her legs on the sofa. She plucked up the sandwich and olives that Uotani had brought for her dinner, grinning.

  “It’s nothing at all to worry about. The rumors simply got blown out of proportion and passed on with exaggerations as a cursed mansion or an evil house. The part about the deaths happened almost eighty years ago. The rituals and renovations have all been done.”

  Tohko sucked in her breath with a squeak. And even though I had turned away because I’d said I didn’t want to get involved, I leaned in closer.

  “Is it true there were deaths?!”

  Maki said simply, “Yes, six in all.”

  Six deaths!

  Tohko’s face stiffened and went rigid. I started to feel sick, too.

  Maki was the only one enjoying herself. She took another bite of her roast beef sandwich.

  “Well, that wasn’t unusual before the war. It happened all the time.”

  “I don’t think that’s true! It wasn’t the warring states, period—the democratic reforms at the turn of the century had already happened.”

  “Y-yeah. Konoha’s right. Six deaths is incredible. What would someone have to do to get that many deaths?”

  Maki sipped her tea elegantly, and after assuming an air of importance, she told us what had happened.

  Close to eighty years ago, a young lady of the Himekuras had been convalescing at this estate in the remote mountains.

  One day, a student called on the estate, and he fell in love with the young lady. The two spent their time together fondly, but one of the student’s friends came to retrieve him, and the student left the young lady behind and went home.

  It was said that she threw herself into a pond out of despair.

  “I called her a young noble lady, but actually she was an oracle. Plus, a ghoul had been sealed in the pond.”

  “Hold on. Is this a late-night cartoon show or something?”

  I interrupted Maki in her casual retelling.

  They’d talked about an oracle and a ghoul and whatever else in the town, too, but I’d been knocked so far off balance by it that my mind couldn’t keep up. Even though a goblin who munched on words was right in front of me.

  Tohko frowned uncomfortably.

  “You know there’s no such thing as ghouls. Stop messing around.”

  I battled back the desire to make a comment. Was she not aware that she herself was a goblin?

  Maki went on with a condescending look.

  “Oh, really? But the Himekuras were originally a line of oracles. A beautiful oracle descended from dragons exterminated a ghoul who was harassing the capital, and she was granted a courtier’s rank by the emperor of the time. That’s how the Himekuras began. Thereafter, the Himekuras were made to preside over the waterways, and they went on to great success in the imports business. They say that oracles have appeared throughout the generations and that they’ve had ghouls in their employ and brought prosperity to the family.”

  “That story sounds pretty suspect to me.”

  Definitely…Plus, the holy and immaculate image of a maiden consecrated to the spirits didn’t fit Maki at all. It would have been more believable if she’d told us her family line had satanic blood in it or something.

  Maki laughed brazenly.

  “In any case, the young lady who was staying at the estate had the powers of the oracle and kept the ghoul sealed in the pond and under her command. The seal broke with her death, and the ghoul went on a rampage and slaughtered the servants who were at the estate.”

  “So you’re saying it was the ghoul who caused the six deaths?”

  “That’s what they say in the village. And I suppose since the young lady committed suicide, it was actually only five.”

  Maki’s eyes narrowed in a tasteless smile, and her voice became suddenly obstinate.

  “At any rate, the mansion was covered in blood and not a single person in it was left alive, and nobody knew who had done it. Apparently it was incredible to see. There were these sprays of blood all over the walls, and one body that had been split
open the entire length of their face with a sickle, one that was impaled through the chest with a spade, one who’d been shot in the head with a gun, one who’d fallen down the stairs and broken their neck, and one who was lying there with foam coming out of its mouth.”

  “Urk!”

  All the color drained out of Tohko’s face. I knew she was picturing the scene in her mind with total realism. The image of the body with a sickle embedded in its throat came to my mind’s eye despite my better judgment, too, and I felt as if the contents of my stomach were coming back up.

  Unleashing the full force of her sadistic nature, Maki went on tenaciously.

  “There are villagers who say they saw the ghoul crawl up from the lake and eat the young lady. They say that in the light of the moon, its long white hair stuck to its body, it gripped a tattered arm in its hand, and bright red blood was dripping from its hair and face. Its eyes burned with malice, and would you believe, it was said to scream, ‘I will never forgive you!’ in a terrifying voice and call a man’s name.”

  “W-was the man the young lady’s lover?” Tohko asked nervously.

  “Yes. Perhaps her resentment had transferred to the ghoul.

  “The next morning several bodies were discovered at the mansion, and the villagers who’d witnessed the supernatural event ran around saying, ‘A ghoul came out of the lake!’ ‘The young Himekura lady was devoured by it!’ ‘There’s no question! The servants were killed by the ghoul, too! It’s a curse,’ and the entire village descended into terror.

  “They say the ghoul still haunts the mansion and pond.”

  “St-still?!”

  Tohko shuddered and Maki smiled cruelly.

  “That’s right… Swaying its long snow-white hair and wearing a white kimono, it whispers, ‘curse you…curse you…,’ in a low, rasping voice. There are a lot of people who say they’ve seen a woman with white hair at the windows of the estate when the gates are supposed to be locked. Just recently, in fact—”

  “T-t-t-t-trying to scare me isn’t gonna work. Your story doesn’t scare me at all.”

  As she said this, Tohko looked around jumpily.

  Maki shrugged her shoulders grandiosely.

  “I wasn’t trying to scare you. It’s giving us problems, too.

  “We want to bulldoze the mountain and build a factory, but the residents in the area say we’ll be cursed if we do something like that and they’re strongly opposed to it. We’ve been hashing it out for a long time now. When talk about development became more concrete, there were fires and injuries popped up, so now if anything even remotely bad happens, it’s all because of the ghoul. Even the fact that the construction supervisor’s great-grandmother passed away at ninety-nine years old or that his son’s wife cheated on him and left him or that the village head’s cat had nine kittens—it’s all because of a curse. I can’t stand it.”

  She spoke in an exasperated tone, and then the edges of her mouth pulled into a sly grin. Her sensual lips curved, and her powerful eyes shone with formidability.

  “And that is why I came here as my grandfather’s proxy. In order to prove there’s no such thing as this curse. If I, one of the Himekuras, have my friends come to the mansion where the violence played out and we have a great time without anyone getting sick or hurt, it should boost our image with the residents. It’s a more meaningful summer vacation than hobnobbing in Nice anyway. If all goes well, my grandfather will owe me one, too. Not too bad.”

  So that was the reason Maki had come to this remote mountain.

  Still frowning, Tohko furtively looked up at Maki.

  “Is that why the people in the house are scared?”

  Apparently Tohko had also noticed that the atmosphere in the mansion was strange, although it was so obvious that just about anyone would find it strange.

  Maki answered flippantly, “Yup. They’re probably thinking, If something does happen, this time the ghoul’s gonna eat meeee.”

  “Don’t blame everything on the ghoul! Besides, ghosts don’t even exist.”

  Tohko’s face flushed red with her resolute declaration.

  “Well! I don’t think it would be that strange if they did.”

  “They don’t! Nooo way!”

  Of course, that was because if ghosts did exist she’d be scared and then where would she be?

  Maki grinned with the look of a predator closing in on her quarry.

  My spine tingled with an awful premonition.

  “Oh no? Then would you like to see if you can decipher the truth behind this case, book girl?”

  Maki deftly held a diary out before Tohko’s widened eyes.

  “Are you really going to investigate an incident that’s almost eighty years old? She’s got you on a leash, I swear. It’s like you’re that ghoul under someone’s control.”

  “I’m not a ghoul!” Tohko grumbled, tightly hugging the old diary with its cover the color of dark tea to her chest. As we walked down the chilly hallway, she became petulant like a child.

  “I-I didn’t accept in order to restore the ghoul’s good name or because Maki fooled me, got it? If I refused the case, it would have looked like I was afraid of ghosts.”

  I considered telling her, That’s because Maki fooled you completely, but it was pointless, so I didn’t.

  “I see. Well, do your best without getting cursed by any ghosts. I’m going to bed.”

  I didn’t want to get involved, so I started bustling toward my room.

  A foot behind, Tohko followed me like a duckling.

  “Your room is over there.”

  “Er…”

  She took hold of a small bit of my short sleeve with tears in her eyes.

  “I’m not afraid of being alone, okay? Ghosts are a superstition so I’m totally fine…and I don’t think a ghoul is doing bad things. It doesn’t have the slightest effect on me, but…”

  After her cheeks had colored and she’d made her mumbling excuses, she smiled coaxingly and showed me the diary.

  “This diary by the young Himekura lady is written in a classical style that’s pretty hard to read, so I’ll translate it into modern words for you. Okay? You want to hear it, don’t you, Konoha? So it’s okay if I go to your room, right?”

  …I am a guy, y’know.

  Tohko had made her way into my room and was sitting on my bed with her legs thrown every which way.

  The canopied bed had a sprawling king-sized mattress so there was plenty of space, but that wasn’t the problem. I was already in my pajamas and had turned out the lights and snuggled into bed. Onto this scene came Tohko, sitting beside my pillow with a spare blanket she’d dug up somewhere draped around her shoulders, and she began reading the diary by the light on the nightstand.

  I wondered how it was that a girl her age could have so little caution.

  At this proximity, where I could hear her breathing, Tohko’s braids swayed right in front of me—they even smelled sweet like some kind of shampoo… What would I do if there was some kind of misunderstanding?!

  But then, it was like a mother reading a picture book to a child before bedtime. It was humiliating.

  My face burned. My ears tingled. My heart pounded ridiculously fast.

  From overhead, her sweetly clear voice came down alongside the gentle fragrance of flowers.

  “A volume arrived from father in Tokyo. Upon turning back the cover, I discovered a message from my father. Father’s hand is dignified and beautiful, and it possesses a gentlemanly power. I gazed at it, and my breast swelled with happiness and remembrances of home.

  “I wonder after the health of Father, Mother, and my younger siblings. Whenever a volume arrives, I feel happier and more excited than words can say, but this heightens my fondness for my family, and it feels as if I might break into tears. I want to go back to my home in Tokyo for two or three days only—no, for a day or half a day.

  “But I must persevere. Because I made a promise to Father.”

  “The volumes Father w
as kind enough to send me today are Koyo Ozaki’s The Golden Demon, Ichiyō Higuchi’s Growing Up, and Kyōka Izumi’s A Song by Lantern Light. Kyōka is one of my favorite authors, so I was overjoyed. I had heard that Kyōka was a disciple of Koyo’s.”

  “Reading all day, and Kyōka’s words are like jewels, every one. In the scene where Omie dances, I felt as if I, too, were enveloped in a rainbow of light and my spirit were dancing toward heaven.”

  “I want to experience a love like the women in Kyōka’s stories. Deep and gentle and sublime. A bittersweet but chaste and beautiful love without any impurities.”

  The young lady who’d written the diary was nothing as exalted as an oracle, but instead seemed like an ordinary girl who enjoyed reading, who yearned for a storybook sort of romance, and who thought of her distant family.

  She reminded me a little of Tohko, but that was probably because Tohko read with such passion the girl’s impressions of books she’d read.

  Since it came through in Tohko’s voice, her image overlapped more than it might have otherwise. In my drowsing mind, the young Himekura lady had taken on Tohko’s image rather than Maki’s.

  A willowy young girl with long black hair and white skin, tightly clutching a book she’d received from her father to her chest, so impatient to read it that she fidgeted even during meals.

  The whole day, she would page through her book dreamily and give a sweet sigh at the romances and adventures written in it. She would read aloud over and over the passages she liked best, as if rolling them over her tongue, and recite them from memory, then sigh rapturously again, a starry-eyed book girl—

  “I’ve received a volume which makes me sigh with its beauty. The volumes Father sends me are all wonderful, but this one is especially so. The cover has flowers embroidered on it in scarlet and pink and light blue and purple, in gold and silver thread, and the words are written in impeccably graceful brushstrokes on paper that feels so wonderfully smooth. What sort of person could have made this book?