1

The cicadas in the village buzzed loudly.

They buzzed away all through the summer without a moment’s pause. Their cacophony was relentless, as if the cicadas didn’t even have time to catch their breath. Yoshiki Tsujinaka didn’t know what sounds they made in the city and other far-off places.

BZZH, BZZH, BZZH, BZZH, BZZH, BZZH, BZZH, BZZH.

In the summer, the town where Yoshiki was born and raised overflowed with this sound. It was enough to drive you crazy.

Hikaru vigorously pulled at the front of his school uniform’s white buttoned shirt to fan himself. He opened the lid of a chest freezer as he called out to the back of the store.

“Pardon, ma’am. Can we grab some ice cream?”

There was a brief silence, and then a voice replied, “Sure, go on ahead.”

Hikaru’s expression relaxed as he let the cold air from the freezer wash over his face.

“Ahhh, nice an’ cool.”

But not a moment later, he knitted his eyebrows with displeasure.

“Wait—there’s barely anythin’ in here! Dang. All they got is Papicco.”

“It’s always like that here,” said Yoshiki as he brushed his bangs aside. His sweat-damp bangs were long enough to cover not just his forehead but also his eyes.

Around the store were sun-faded capsule toy and vending machines, along with shelves cluttered with items that may or may not have been for sale. The only things that looked brand-new were the weekly manga magazines in the store’s magazine section. Even after years of coming here, Yoshiki couldn’t really discern if this store, which was called “Yamahisa,” was a penny candy shop or a general store.

The shopkeeper, Mrs. Yamahisa, was an older woman of indeterminate age. Her appearance hadn’t changed the slightest bit since Yoshiki’s childhood days, so he secretly believed that she must be some sort of supernatural creature.

“‘Ice cream avail.,’ my ass!” Hikaru grumbled. “An’ what the heck’s ‘frusty-cold’ ice cream anyway?”

The sign hanging in front of Yamahisa was supposed to say “Frosty-cold ice cream avail.,” but the owner’s poor spelling made it read “frusty.” This wasn’t anything new.

This “frusty” sign had always been hanging at Yamahisa, even in Yoshiki’s oldest memory of the store. In that same memory, Hikaru Indou was with him, snapping off one of the two bottle-shaped tubes of ice cream that came in a pack and handing it to Yoshiki, just like he was doing now. The cicadas were in that memory as well, buzzing away like always.

“Still, can’t believe that jerk Hara made us run long-distance in this blazin’ heat,” said Yoshiki.

He sat down on a bench in front of the store and tore off the top of his tube of ice cream. A moment later, Hikaru sat down, causing the old bench to clatter and sway from side to side.

When did it get like this? When exactly did this bench get so rickety?

“What it is, is tor-cher, ain’t it?”

“Hikaru. You said ‘torture’ all weird. You said it like you’d say ‘for sure.’ But it’s the same intonation as ‘scorcher.’”

The ice cream had already softened, and it didn’t take much effort to slurp up its contents.

That freezer just might be on its last legs.

As Yoshiki considered whether it would be a good idea to exchange their ice cream treats for a new set, the buzzing of the cicadas unexpectedly drew nearer.

“Gotcha,” said Hikaru. “Torture… It’s torture. I’ll be careful ’bout that.”

Hikaru slurped up his ice cream, wearing a grin. As Yoshiki looked at his childhood friend’s face in profile, the already overwhelming buzzing became even louder. Illuminated by the sunlight, Hikaru’s light-colored hair looked oddly bright, with an almost white glow to it.

Triggered by that sight, in the back of his mind, Yoshiki recalled the flash of lightning he saw on a certain, fateful day—and he ended up asking his friend a question.

“So you really don’t remember goin’ missin’ in the mountains for over a week?”

“Naw. Not at all.”

The village where Yoshiki lived was called Kubitachi. It used to be a real village, but because it had merged with the town of Kibogayama, it wasn’t an actual village in technical terms. Even so, the residents thought of it as “Kubitachi Village,” and that’s what they called it.

Kubitachi was surrounded by mountains on three sides, and each mountain had a name—Nisayama, Matsuyama, Kasayama, and Futakasayama. The village was desolate. Houses, sparsely scattered like dead leaves, dotted the banks of the river that flowed down from the mountains. Even the population was small; only about two hundred people lived in Kubitachi.

It had been about six months since Hikaru went missing on Nisayama—it happened at the end of January on a day with thunderous lightning and heavy rain.

The adults in the village came together to look for Hikaru and were unsuccessful, yet one week later, Hikaru suddenly returned home.

Moreover, he remembered nothing about the week when he’d gone missing.

And just like that, spring came, followed by summer. Yoshiki remembered how his breath turned white in the cold on the day he heard Hikaru had vanished, and naturally, a sigh escaped from his mouth.

“It’s been a whole six months since then. Guess y’ain’t gonna remember any more’n you already do,” he said to Hikaru.

“It’s all right, ain’t it? How much longer ya gonna keep askin’ me ’bout it?”

“It ain’t all right,” Yoshiki snapped back. He shoved Hikaru’s head down as if he were trying to make a dog lie on the ground. Hikaru protested and told Yoshiki to “quit it,” although he didn’t seriously mind.

“Everybody was worried sick ’bout ya,” Yoshiki told him.

“So ya missed me when I was gone?”

Hikaru smoothly squeezed his already narrow eyes into thin, needle-like slits and smiled. You could almost hear the snicker of the sly grin on his face.

“Not really…”

“You liar! You musta cried like a baby. Bet you were all like, ‘Don’t leave me all alone, Hikaruuu! Boo-hoo!’” Hikaru pulled down the corners of his eyes to make a crying face.

“Don’t get carried away,” Yoshiki warned, pushing Hikaru’s head down once more.

“Ya always do that, just ’cause yer bigger’n me…,” Hikaru mumbled.

Yoshiki agreed; that was why he always did that. Yoshiki was taller than Hikaru, so he always did things like this whenever Hikaru got carried away. It was only natural.

“Hey,” said Yoshiki. “Can I ask you somethin’ that might sound kinda weird?”

The buzzing drew near once again, and before Yoshiki knew it, the noise that had been screeching beside his ears was now echoing inside his head.

“What is it? Gonna confess yer feelings to me?” Hikaru teased.

“Naw.”

That’s right. That ain’t what this is. Not at all.

“…Listen, this ain’t somethin’ that came ta me just now—it’s been on my mind ever since you went missin’ an’ came back, so I’ve been wonderin’ ’bout it for a while…”

Yoshiki recalled the late January chill. He felt it in his upper arms. Even though sweat was running down his cheeks, goosebumps ran up his sides beneath his short-sleeved shirt.

Every temperature he had experienced since that day rushed along the surface of his skin—the cold of January, the deep chill of February, the thaw of March, the warmth of April, the sunshine of May, and even the muggy humidity of June.

“You ain’t the real Hikaru, are ya?”

He gradually began to see in Hikaru something that…wasn’t Hikaru. Despite Yoshiki’s bangs acting as personal blinds, he could clearly see the expression of the person in front of him.

With a face identical to Hikaru’s, the person let out a “Huh?” And in the unbearably long silence that followed, it felt as if time itself had stopped.

But the cicadas continued their incessant buzzing.

“Why…?”

As soon as the person mumbled that to himself, something long and slender slithered out of his left eye. Then there were more of them, and his skin melted and crumbled into a gooey mess that flowed out from his cheekbones and hairline.

“I’m s’posed to be a perfect copy of ’im…”

Yoshiki wanted to believe the bangs in his eyes were to blame.

But no matter how many times he blinked, it wouldn’t go away.

It appeared to be not quite black, or blue, or red, or even green. It looked something like the shriveled roadkill remains of a rat that he’d seen on the way to school that morning, or like the fishy-smelling scales that someone scraped off and discarded after fishing by the riverside, or even like rain-soaked mud and cold bamboo grass.

“Please…don’t tell anyone…,” the thing begged.

1

“Come on, Yoshiki. I’m beggin’ ya here!” Yuuta Maki pleaded, almost as if he was rebelling against the scratching sounds of the desks being dragged across the floor.

The characteristic dry and dusty smell of cleaning time swirled about the classroom as Maki, with his buzzcut—the kind you’d find next to the dictionary entry for high school baseball team—looked at Yoshiki with desperate eyes.

That’s why Yoshiki instinctively replied, “Naw, don’ wanna…”

Maki exclaimed, “Whaaaaa?!” and collapsed onto the desk he had just finished moving. “Come on! It’ll only take a little bit!”

“I already told you I don’t wanna deal with any creepy stuff.”

But that wasn’t enough to make Maki give up, so Yoshiki, with a broom still in his hand, turned his gaze away. This was the third time this exchange had happened since they began cleaning.

“Hey, what’s goin’ on? Yer bein’ awfully loud…,” said a girl.

With a slightly annoyed look on her face, Yuuki Tadokoro walked over toward them with a garbage bag in hand.

“What happened?” she asked.

From her shoulders, which were much lower than Yoshiki’s and Maki’s, the tips of her pigtails slunk down as if they had just let out an exasperated sigh.

“Well,” said Maki, “you know how I always take the mountain path from the eastern gate to get back to Ashidori?”

“Yeah, sure.”

Most of the students who attended Kibogayama High School were graduates of nearby middle schools. Their school was a typical, unremarkable prefectural high school in an out-of-the-way area, so barely anyone enrolled from far off.

Yoshiki, who was from Kubitachi, and Yuuki, who lived in Kibogayama, attended different elementary schools but went to Kibogayama Middle School together. Maki graduated from a middle school in the Ashidori area where he lived.

Kibogayama High was built halfway up the mountain overlooking the town, and as Maki had mentioned, the shortest route from the school to Ashidori was the mountain path that continued from the eastern gate.

“See, the tunnel there’s under construction, so now I gotta use another way through the forest. One I don’t normally use.” Maki paused and took a quick breath before continuing. “But that forest path is spooky as hell!”

“Huh?” Yuuki cocked her head in confusion.

“And that’s why he wants me to go with him,” Yoshiki clarified.

Yuuki heaved an exasperated sigh. “That’s stupid…”

“But bein’ scary ain’t the half of it… I can’t look into the forest. It’s like my eyes can’t move away from the path in front of me.”

While Yuuki remained puzzled by Maki’s incomprehensible explanation, a tall female student suddenly jumped into the conversation.

“Whoa! Freaky!! Really gotta wonder what that’s all about!”

Swaying her short, soft hair and speaking in a voice with the crisp brightness of a freshly fried croquette, the girl repeated her interest in their conversation.

“Sounds fascinatin’! Real fascinatin’!”

The girl, Asako Yamagishi, was Yuuki’s best friend who had gone to the same middle school as her. She was over five feet, six inches tall and was abnormally strong at arm wrestling.

“So, is it that you can’t look into the forest ’cause it’s so scary?” she asked, leaning forward eagerly.

Encouraged by her interest, Maki became more energetic. “Naw. Wasn’t scary at first, you know? But it’s like, even if I try to look into the forest, before I know it, my eyes are back on the road. That’s what really got me spooked. And that’s why I’m askin’ ya to come with me, Yoshiki!”

Here we go again, thought Yoshiki.

“Nope,” he said. “Sounds way too scary.”

“You can think of it as a test of courage!”

“A test of courage…? The only people who do that are stupid tourists who come through every now an’ then.”

Kibogayama Town had a surprisingly large number of haunted places. There were even tourists who came specifically to visit the town’s famous tunnel.

“But yer seriously good at tests of courage,” Maki said. “You were amazin’ the last time we went.”

“Naw. That was just—”

Yoshiki started to explain, but Asako cut in, laughing, and said, “You were movin’ like you were doin’ an RTA speedrun.”

In reality, Yoshiki had been rushing to get to a toilet and was scared out of his mind. Just as he was about to make that excuse, he heard light footsteps approaching, signaling the arrival of the very last person he wanted to get involved in their conversation.

“Sounds real interestin’ to me!” Hikaru remarked, entering their circle. “I wanna go, too!”

Surprised by this, Maki, Yuuki, and Asako widened their eyes and, in unison, said, “Huh?”

Confused by their response, Hikaru shot back with his own, “Huh?”

“Y-ya sure ’bout that? You’re the worst at handlin’ these things, Hikaru,” Maki cautiously pointed out.

Yuuki nodded. “Ya passed out for two hours when ya saw that horror movie.”

“Oh, yeah…” Hikaru scratched his cheek awkwardly and slowly turned his gaze toward Yoshiki. “Well, I’ve gotten better with that stuff lately. Ain’t that right, Yoshiki?!”

Hikaru sought Yoshiki’s agreement.

Asako glanced back and forth between the two boys before finally keeping her eyes on Yoshiki, who managed to squeeze out an “Oh. Yeah…”

Maki, taking that to mean the matter was settled, smiled. “All right, then. So it’ll be Yoshiki, Yuuki, Asako, and Hikaru. I’m so glad y’all are comin’. For real.”

Taking a quick glance around the room, Yoshiki noticed that the cleaning was mostly done. Pale sunlight seeped through the windows and reflected off the neatly arranged desks.

The red scarves on Asako’s and Yuuki’s sailor uniforms looked oddly vibrant.

“Okay. See ya at the eastern gate after school,” Maki said brightly.

Their homeroom teacher, Coach Hara, arrived shortly after cleaning time looking tired. He spoke in an equally tired and slightly lazy tone. Hikaru had always been good at impersonating him.

“All right, I’m startin’ homeroom now,” Coach Hara drawled before sharing some news. “So, there was a dead body found over by Kubitachi this mornin’. They’re sayin’ there was no foul play involved, but the whole thing’s causin’ a stir. And, well, don’t be too surprised if you see police cars around. All right, then.”

The school bell rang—and though they shouldn’t have sounded anything alike, the bell overlapped with the police sirens Yoshiki had heard earlier that morning.

The mountain path stretching out from the eastern gate was, as usual, filled with the incessant buzzing of cicadas. Since no one was saying anything, the noise seemed exceedingly loud.

“Ya scared, Yuu?”

The first person to break the silence was Asako.

“Huh? Not really. I ain’t scared…” Yuuki did seem a little tense. “Not ’bout this, at least. But that stuff Hara was talkin’ ’bout in homeroom before we left…”

She was about to say that was what was more concerning to her, but she cut herself off.

Maki, who was walking in front of everyone, turned back and said, “Pretty nasty way to go, right?” Then he quietly brought his hand to his mouth. “They say she stuffed her own hand down her throat, an’ that’s how she died.”

“We don’t know if that’s true or not, though…,” Yoshiki quickly added.

That morning, police cars had been out in front of a certain house in Kubitachi.

That house belonged to Old Lady Matsuura—the elderly woman who’d screamed “Nounuki” when she saw Hikaru the day before.

“That old lady’s been actin’ a little funny for a while now…,” said Yoshiki.

“Nothin’ we coulda done ’bout that,” Hikaru suddenly added. He didn’t even look at Yoshiki and said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

Yoshiki stared blankly at Hikaru’s back while Yuuki, behind him, spoke in a serious tone.

“But there were police cars in Kibogayama earlier. And there was a woman… She might’ve been the daughter of the old woman who died. I saw her break down crying. I feel bad for her.”

“There’s been an awful lot of scary things happenin’ in this village these days,” Asako murmured faintly. “It’s gettin’ ta be too much.”

Everyone naturally fell silent.

It was true that they had been hearing more and more “scary things,” as Asako put it—like how a police officer stationed in Kubitachi was injured while on their daily patrol, and how there had been a rash of traffic accidents around Kibogayama.

Each incident on its own could be dismissed as just “a bad thing that happened by chance,” but when you lined them all up like this, it started to feel eerie.

One bad thing after another kept happening, and each incident seemed to be getting more serious. This time, someone had died. The next bad thing could end up even worse.

Then, as if to shatter the heavy silence, Asako suddenly exclaimed, “Oh!” in her usual lively voice and pointed ahead. “That the forest path over there?”

Partway down the forest path lay a narrow pathway, appearing as if a hole had been opened in the guardrails. The path was covered in a dense tangle of trees, casting dark shadows that seemed to huddle together into a solid mass. There were also ominous signs that read POOR ROAD CONDITIONS and BEWARE OF FALLING ROCKS AND UNEVEN FOOTING, all of which were covered with dark green moss.

The sight of the forest path caused Yoshiki to blurt out, “Yeah… Guess that is creepy.”

It seemed like the air inside would smell rancid.

“Nnnh, it’s scary! Oh maaan! Let’s just get in there already! Don’t leave me behind, okay?! I might die, y’all! I might die!” Maki repeated over and over as he led the way to the forest path.

After entering, no one said a word—possibly because they were all slightly holding their breath.

And then they easily passed through.

Maki was the first to speak. “What?” he said. “…I guess…that went totally normal…”

“Nothin’ happened.”

The area beyond the dark path was so bright that Yoshiki couldn’t help but squint.

Next to him, Asako and Yuuki both remarked that they could look into the forest without issue and that it wasn’t scary at all. Hikaru yawned loudly. Even though it was late in the day, the temperature hadn’t dropped much, but the breeze was refreshingly cool for the time of year.

Yoshiki looked back the way they’d just come. From where he was standing, he saw golden sunlight flickering through the trees. It didn’t seem all that creepy.

“Thanks, y’all!” said Maki. “It was all in my head. Be careful on yer way back!”

Maki bowed deeply, even pressing his hands together in gratitude as Yoshiki and the others prepared to leave him and turn around. In the end, all they did was escort Maki on his way home in one big group.

“It’s a pain havin’ to get back through this forest path,” Yuuki grumbled.

“A real hassle is what it is!” Asako agreed.

“Ah, a bug bit me!”

“Least it’s cool in here.”

Yuuki and Asako were engaged in conversation, and Yoshiki fell behind. He glanced into the woods. The soles of his shoes scraped against the dirt and fallen leaves, making a damp, gritty sound.

The cicadas buzzed, and although the wind should have been rustling the leaves and branches of the trees, their sound was strangely absent.

Then, mixed among the deep, deep shadows that were like mud at the bottom of a river, he saw a white less-than sign.

“…What’s that doing there?” he said.

Without a doubt, it was a less-than sign—the type that you would use in a math equation. The symbol floated amid the gaps between the trees.

1

Their meeting place was the bicycle parking lot at Nozomi Supermarket in Kibogayama Town.

“Goodness! I’m so sorry for gettin’ here a little late…,” said Kurebayashi.

Even though she was wearing a neck cooler, Kurebayashi was drenched in sweat. Her T-shirt had “Dance Club Life” printed on it—perhaps it was an old shirt from one of her children’s afterschool clubs.

“It’s hot out, so why don’t we find somewhere we can sit inside and get a bite? Would America be all right with ya?”

Yoshiki wondered why all middle-aged women seemed to have such loud voices. It wasn’t just that they were loud, either—it was that they appeared to push out a lot of air with each word. As if being pushed along by such a force, Yoshiki followed Kurebayashi.

A few minutes’ walk from Nozomi was a restaurant named “America.” It looked like a casual diner, but it was (probably) not a chain, and despite its moniker, neither the menu nor its interior had much of an American vibe.

Still, there was a supermarket and a drugstore clustered in this area of Kibogayama, meaning there was a high chance of running into someone you knew if you weren’t careful. Even after being seated in a spacious booth, Yoshiki couldn’t bring himself to remove his baseball cap.

“Oh my, my, my! They have a new jumbo parfait! Order whatever you like, Tsujinaka. Do ya like sweets?”

“Um…,” Yoshiki began, cutting through Kurebayashi’s cheerful, lively voice as if taking a scalpel to it.

This caused Kurebayashi, who had been looking at the menu, to close her mouth. Her boisterous mood suddenly disappeared, almost as if the whole thing had been a farce.

“So what happened? Can ya tell me?” she asked him.

Yoshiki wondered where he should even start and worried that, no matter how much he explained, he might not be able to convey the crucial parts of his story. He had spent a long time in bed the previous night thinking about these things.

He talked about his childhood friend, about how that friend went missing in the off-limits area on Nisayama at the end of January, and about everything that had happened since his friend had returned.

Kurebayashi listened in silence to everything Yoshiki had to say. She occasionally nodded to let him know she was engaged, but she did not interrupt him.

When Yoshiki finally finished, she smiled.

“Thank you,” she said. “Yer really tryin’, huh?”

At some point, Yoshiki had hung his head deeply. He could feel his nose running, so he hurriedly wiped it with the back of his hand.

“Why…do ya say that?” he asked.

He realized he must have been looking at Kurebayashi with such desperation.

“Yer really tryin’, but…” With her gaze still fixed on Yoshiki, Kurebayashi slowly but clearly shook her head. “Ya shouldn’t be feelin’ like ya deserve to be punished. Ya gotta keep it together.”

Kurebayashi’s firmer tone made Yoshiki catch his breath.

“Beatin’ yerself up ’bout all this only serves to ease the guilt you put on yerself. The dead don’t care a lick. Fact of the matter is, we’re the ones who’re desperately clingin’ on to the dead.”

“We.” I’m pretty sure she said “we” just now.

Unsure if she realized her little slip of the tongue, Yoshiki suddenly raised his head, and Kurebayashi laughed out loud.

“Sorry,” she told him. “Just forget about all that! Brought the mood down more than I needed to there.”

Kurebayashi continued to laugh, and Yoshiki couldn’t bring himself to ask her what she meant when she said “we”—especially after she shifted the tone of her voice, lowering it to at least half volume.

“I’ll get to the point,” she began. “Have you noticed things’ve started gettin’ strange around the town an’ village? There’s some sorta distortion that’s formed all throughout this area, and there’s been an uptick in suspicious incidents, too. Things that shouldn’t be are showin’ up. The town and village are slowly startin’ to get all screwy.”

Kurebayashi paused for a moment and then trained her eyes on Yoshiki.

“I think…whatever ‘it’ is that’s become yer friend is havin’ an effect on things.”

“‘It’…?”

“It feels like…a huge mass of something… Like Hell itself… As soon as I felt its presence disappear from the mountains, the distortion in this area suddenly grew larger. This is just a guess, but it might’ve been keepin’ the distortion contained in the mountains all that time. That’s how huge that thing is.”

The way she spoke was so abstract, but strangely enough, it didn’t bother Yoshiki.

I know what you’re talking about. Whether I want to or not, I know.

A huge mass of something. Hell itself. He could feel a similar sensation lingering on his eyelids, nose, and skin.

“There’s that unnatural death that happened recently in Kubitachi to consider as well,” said Kurebayashi. “There’s somethin’ terribly eerie about that, too… I feel like it’s related.”

Yeah, it’s related. No doubt about that.

“To be honest, it’s all so scary it makes me wanna leave this town. But my mother-in-law and daughter are here. My oldest—my son—left this place long ago, though. And my husband…”

It seemed like she had more to say, but she stopped there. Then Yoshiki felt confident enough to speak.

“Um… So, before, you said ‘we’…,” he ventured.

“…My late husband. He came back once, a long time ago.”

Kurebayashi smiled as she stared at her hands on the table. Her eyes were calm, as if she were recalling something very dear from her past. Yet deep within those eyes stirred a cold and brooding vortex of emotions.

“But it didn’t work out. In the end, he left my son with a scar on his body that will never heal for the rest of his life. It didn’t matter what he was. I just wanted to be with him again.”

Even though the restaurant had the air conditioning on, Yoshiki could feel the sticky heat of the blazing hot sun on his cheeks. It made him think of the sign at Yamahisa that read “Frusty-cold ice cream avail.”

Yoshiki realized that when Hikaru’s ominous “insides” had been oozing down half his face, Yoshiki had felt the same way Kurebayashi had—it didn’t matter what Hikaru was. Yoshiki just wanted to be with him again.

“Some part of you must know it, too. That you can’t keep bein’ with yer friend like this,” Kurebayashi said.

Yeah. I know, but…what exactly am I supposed to do about it…?

“Before, you said that I’ll ‘mix,’ but what exactly did you mean by that?” Yoshiki asked.

“While yer still alive, yer insides will get closer to whatever that thing is. It’s like ya become a part of it, and you’ll never be able to be separated. And who knows what will happen then?” she said. “Also, it might attract things from the other side toward ya more easily.”

Based on the expression on Kurebayashi’s face as she pressed her fingers to her temples and furrowed her brow, she didn’t appear to be exaggerating just to scare Yoshiki.

“Mix.”

“Get closer to whatever that thing is.”

“Become a part of it.”

Each time he repeated her words in his mind, Yoshiki’s left arm—the one that had been connected to Hikaru—tensed.

“I’m sorry,” Kurebayashi told him. “I don’t want ya endin’ up like me. And…I figured ya oughtta know so ya can move forward.”

Raindrops began to patter against the window. The sound grew louder until it turned into a downpour that seemed like it could wash the town away. Then a server arrived with the giant parfait Kurebayashi had ordered.

The rain that started on Sunday hadn’t stopped by the next day. The classroom was sweltering even after everyone had left. A massive puddle had formed on the school’s sports field, and every inch of Kibogayama town looked hazy. At the foot of the mountain near the high school was a church; usually, the cross atop the church steeple stood out more clearly, too.

Yoshiki sat alone in the empty classroom, staring at the scenery he’d grown tired of seeing. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed before he heard footsteps approaching from the hallway. There were the squeaks of indoor shoes scraping against the linoleum in light, short strides—sounds that didn’t belong to Hikaru.

“Huh? Yer still here?” said Yuuki. She slid the classroom door open and looked confused. “There’s a faculty meetin’ this afternoon, so everyone can go home early… Ya didn’t know?”

“I forgot somethin’ here,” Yoshiki told her. “I’ll leave as soon as I find it.”

He remained seated at his desk, not giving any indication that he was searching for anything. This caused Yuuki to appear even more puzzled, but she didn’t press the issue.

“Hikaru’s been lookin’ for ya,” she said.

“If you see him, tell him ta go home without me.”

The door rattled as it closed, and Yuuki’s footsteps faded into the distance. Yoshiki dropped his head down onto his desk, making a thud as his forehead hit the wood.

The cold surface clung to his brow, and he remembered Hikaru’s voice, whispering, “I don’t want to kill you,” as he held Yoshiki.

He thought of Hikaru with his indescribably colored insides gushing out on the bench in front of Yamahisa.

Hikaru had said he didn’t want to kill Yoshiki—but that meant he could.

That Nounuki that Old Lady Matsuura mentioned. Somethin’ trapped in the mountains. Distortions.

“You can’t keep bein’ with yer friend like this.”

“I don’t want ya endin’ up like me.”

“So ya can move forward.”

Yoshiki wondered what Kurebayashi meant by “so ya can move forward.” He already knew the answer, but he still had to ask himself.

A Hikaru that isn’t Hikaru. A Hikaru that isn’t human. I should stay away from him. We shouldn’t be involved with each other anymore.

It should have been a simple thing to do, but just thinking about it caused a dull pain to course through the pit of Yoshiki’s stomach.

“Hikaru.”

Yoshiki found himself muttering that word almost unconsciously, as if he was squeezing it out.

“Just what the hell are you…?”

A moment later, the classroom door clattered loudly open.

“Ah! There ya are!” came a voice.

The sound of hurried, restless footsteps quickly reached Yoshiki’s side—as if being there was the most natural thing in the world.

“Ya didn’t know there was a faculty meetin’ today? Let’s hurry an’ head home,” Hikaru urged.

“…You mind goin’ home without me?”

Yoshiki was aware of how curt he was being. He was speaking coldly, almost as if he were brushing someone off.

“Huh? Ya in a bad mood or somethin’?” Hikaru asked.

“Yeah.”

Yoshiki glanced at Hikaru, who was silently making a funny face. His eyes were open wide, and his jaw jutted out—it was the same funny face Hikaru used to make.

“Yer not laughin’ at my funny face!” Hikaru griped.

But you’re not him. What used to make me laugh was Hikaru’s funny face. The funny face my childhood friend, Hikaru Indou, made.

“Hey, for real. What’s goin’ on? Yer lookin’ pretty pale,” Hikaru said, patting Yoshiki’s shoulder.

Instinctively, Yoshiki swatted Hikaru’s hand away. The slapping sound was dry, in complete contrast with the weather that day.

“Ya just don’t know when to give up. Leave me alone. Seriously.”

Yoshiki remembered that he had once told Hikaru, “If I make excuses for myself, I can’t very well come down on others.”

He didn’t want to be rejected by Hikaru, so he couldn’t bring himself to reject Hikaru. He pushed that selfish part of him—the part that had these thoughts—deep within himself and glared at Hikaru.

Hikaru just kept grinning. Then his eyes began nervously darting around. “Whoa. You for real? Ha-ha…,” he said. “…Is it ’cause of me?”

“What’re ya talkin’ ’bout?”

“Huh? Well, I mean, yer clearly actin’ weird with me. Ya mad at me?”

“I ain’t really mad or anythin’.”

“Naw, y’are mad, though.” Hikaru raised his voice slightly as to cast aside the lingering tone of Yoshiki’s words. “What’s been up with ya lately? Are ya hidin’ somethin’ from me?”

“What? The hell? Ya interrogatin’ me now? Yer bein’ creepy, man…”

Yoshiki was aware he was speaking quickly. He had been caught off guard and was desperately trying to evade the issue.

And Hikaru seemed to have picked up on that.

“Okay, then why didja go into town the other day? And what’s with ya exchangin’ messages with some stranger?”

Yoshiki opened his mouth, but his reply vanished from his lips.

He’d sent a message to Kurebayashi the day he brought a watermelon to Hikaru’s house. Her reply had come quickly, but in a case of unfortunate timing, Yoshiki had stepped away, and when he returned to the living room, Hikaru had pointed to Yoshiki’s phone and said, “Seems like ya got a message.”

At the time, Yoshiki had brushed it off, saying it was probably his mother, and Hikaru didn’t press any further. But now, Yoshiki’s uneasy hunch that Hikaru had actually seen the message was quickly making him nauseous.

“…Either way, do I have to tell ya everythin’?” Yoshiki said.

“I’m pretty sure we used to talk about almost everythin’ before! If there’s somethin’ ya wanna say to me, then—”

But that wasn’t—

“Before? Yer sayin’ that like it was you back then.”

Yoshiki couldn’t say any more. Because he heard Hikaru make a soft, nearly inaudible gasp.

He could imagine the expression on Hikaru’s face at that moment. He didn’t need to look up.

“So that’s what this is about?” said Hikaru.

He grabbed Yoshiki’s arm. Even though he was right-handed, he wore a watch on his right wrist—a watch that Yoshiki remembered almost certainly being a gift from Hikaru’s father.

Hikaru’s father had bought it without realizing that it was meant for left-handed people, and the real Hikaru had only started wearing it in high school. Now, neither Hikaru nor his father were in this world anymore.

“It’s ’cause I’m not the real Hikaru? So I’m not enough for ya? That’s it, ain’t it?”

“Of course yer not!” Yoshiki spat, much more sharply than he’d intended.

His throat became flush with heat, almost as if it was bleeding.

“Y-you! The way ya sound, the way ya look, the way ya talk—it’s all exactly like Hikaru…but yer not Hikaru…!”

The rain pounding against the windows sounded unusually loud. With each pitter-patter, raindrops delicately hit the glass and trailed down, forming long streams.

A similar stream was also flowing from Yoshiki’s left eye.

Hikaru kept his grip on Yoshiki’s arm but said nothing. Then, after an excruciatingly long silence filled only with the sound of the rain, Hikaru just barely opened his mouth.

“Sorry,” he said. “Yer right.”

He repeated himself quietly, in an almost matter-of-fact manner.

“That’s just how it is. Yeah. Yer right. Yer right.”

Then he gradually tightened his grip on Yoshiki’s arm, and just as the dull, heavy pain caused Yoshiki to turn up his hand, Hikaru spoke again.

“But I’m…useless without you, Yoshiki. ’Cause yer my first…” Hikaru covered his face with his left hand. “Ugh, I…just don’t know what’s really my feelings or his at this point.”

From the corner of his twisted grimace and through gritted teeth, Hikaru whispered, “This is so hard.” He wept silently. “What am I supposed to do?”

Then, still crying, he shouted, “I know it ain’t right…but I still like you! And I can’t stop my feelings!”

The stream of tears pouring from the corners of Hikaru’s eyes changed color.

It was not quite black, or blue, or red, or even green—it looked like the shriveled remains of rat roadkill, or like the fishy-smelling scales of a dead fish, or even something like rain-soaked mud and cold bamboo grass.

Hikaru’s insides spilled out, causing his face to collapse into a crumbled mess of flesh. It erupted toward the ceiling as if trying to break through it before raining down on Yoshiki.

In fact, it was trying to drag Yoshiki inside.

The combined smell of mildew, dust, and sweat from the gym storage room, where Yoshiki had first touched Hikaru’s insides, came flooding back to Yoshiki, along with Kurebayashi’s voice.

“You must know it, too. That you can’t keep bein’ with yer friend like this.”

Yeah, I know. I know it all too well.

Yoshiki couldn’t speak. Hikaru’s insides were covering his mouth, his eyes, and his nose, suffocating him.

Something was flowing from Hikaru into him. It felt gross. Frightening. Uncomfortable. Yet there was also an almost touching, faint sense of pleasure to it.

1

“C’mon now, Minceyyy!” Hikaru called out into the bushes while waving a sun-soaked, vibrantly green stalk of foxtail grass side to side.

From deep within the underbrush, Mincey scrunched up into a white ball of fur and watched warily, shifting his gaze over and staring intensely at Hikaru. The cat looked at him as if he was an unwelcome guest who had just darkened his doorstep, Mincey’s golden eyes seemed to say, “What’re you doin’? Hurry an’ get the heck outta here.”

“Dang it. He just won’t come to me,” Hikaru groaned.

Mincey had wandered onto the premises of Kibogayama High School, but instead of the usual group of girls who would treat him to different dishes from their boxed lunches, Hikaru had spotted him.

He had yet to warm up to Hikaru—in fact, he was clearly wary of him. Perhaps, in his own feline way, Mincey realized that Hikaru “wasn’t human to begin with.”

“He really hates ya, huh, Hikaru?” said Yoshiki.

When Yoshiki crouched and reached his hand out, Mincey immediately stepped into the sunlight. The cat rubbed his pure white fur against Yoshiki’s left shin and stretched, prompting Yoshiki to pet him affectionately.

Hikaru looked on, seemingly displeased. “Least he didn’t hiss at me.”

“That’s usually what he does.”

Mincey was friendly, especially toward anyone who offered him food. Swaying his plump body, he seemed to be saying “I’ll eat anything, so please don’t hold back” as he approached.

“He got along with the old Hikaru, huh?” said Hikaru.

“Naw. Didn’t get along with him at all.”

“Oh, s’that what happened?”

Yoshiki remembered a time when Mincey had scratched the back of Hikaru’s hand with all his might, causing Hikaru to yell out, “Dang devil cat!” But he couldn’t recall exactly when that was.

“I don’t really care how. I just wanna touch that cat.”

“Ah, all right, then.”

Yoshiki rummaged through his bag. Deep inside, there was one treat left for Mincey. He tore open the end of the stick-shaped packet, and Mincey perked up with alarming speed; his golden eyes gleamed as he fixed his gaze on Yoshiki’s right hand. Mincey very clearly knew the value of that treat.

“If this doesn’t work, then ya oughtta give up,” Yoshiki told Hikaru.

“Wow! Would ya lookit that!” After taking the treat from Yoshiki, Hikaru sniffed it with an expression similar to Mincey’s. He then held it out in front of the cat, saying, “Heya, Mincey! I got a squeeze treat for ya!”

At first, Mincey growled with a look that seemed to say, “Why you?!” But apparently, he couldn’t resist the flavor of tuna and bonito. His expression completely changed, and he went on to restlessly lap up the food at the end of the stick with his small tongue.

“Yoshiki! Check it out! He ate it! Maybe he’ll lemme touch him now?” Hikaru whispered, struggling to contain the excitement in his voice. Then he reached his hand out toward Mincey’s back.

Yoshiki figured that the cat would probably let Hikaru pet him as long as he was feeding him…but quite unexpectedly, Hikaru poked his index finger right into Mincey’s side.

Mincey’s eyes opened wide with shock; Hikaru had just touched him the same way a person would pick their nose.

The cat glared at Hikaru as if to say, “Just pet me normally, kid! The hell was that?!” Then, with a swiftness that was unimaginable for his pudgy body, Mincey disappeared deep into the bushes.

“Awww, man…”

Hikaru stood there, stunned, with his index finger still outstretched as he watched Mincey run off.

Yoshiki couldn’t help himself from muttering, “That’s some way to touch him…”

I don’t remember Hikaru ever petting a cat like that before. Maybe this is Hikaru’s way of expressing his interest or curiosity. Even so, what a crazy way to touch something.

Just as Yoshiki was about to laugh at the absurdity of it all, Hikaru sighed deeply.

“I’m really…”

He trailed off and fell into silence.

Yoshiki then cautiously asked him, “Really what?”

“I just feel like I’m so dumb on account of not knowin’ what’s going on around me. That’s how it was with what happened before. An’ I wish that creepy stuff would stop comin’ outta me when I get all shook up.”

The sight of Hikaru scratching the back of his neck and looking down reminded Yoshiki of when Hikaru was calling himself “creepy” and crying while wrapped up in a towel blanket.

Hikaru was undeniably childish, but even so, he had moments where he seemed ashamed of himself and showed that he wanted to change.

But Yoshiki wondered if that really was a good thing.

What would happen around him if he started to grow and change? The thought made the skin around Yoshiki’s upper arms tense and prickle.

“Lookit Mincey! He’s poopin’!”

As Hikaru pointed at the bushes and cracked up in the periphery of Yoshiki’s vision, Yoshiki softly stroked his own arm.

What do I do with a guy like him?

Yoshiki felt confused about how to deal with Hikaru. And, of course, he felt afraid.

But it seemed like living his everyday life with Hikaru would wash away those feelings. Yoshiki was hoping that’s what would happen, and he was aware that he was avoiding things he needed to confront.

From the kitchen, Yoshiki heard the voices of his mother and his younger sister, Kaoru.

Their conversation gradually grew louder, turning into what seemed like a minor argument. With his smartphone in one hand as he munched on rice crackers with the other, Yoshiki listened carefully.

After getting rejected by Mincey, Hikaru invited himself into Yoshiki’s room, claiming that he wanted to continue reading Master + Master, and he was now quietly flipping through the pages of a manga volume while lying on Yoshiki’s bed.

Naturally, Hikaru also lifted his head when he heard Yoshiki’s mother yell, “Would you give it a rest?!” from the first floor. This was followed by Kaoru whining, “But I wanna wear a yukata!”

“What’s up with Kaoru?” Hikaru asked Yoshiki.

“Ah, she wants to wear a yukata to this year’s summer festival.”

Kaoru had recently grown taller, so her yukata no longer fit her. If she really wanted to wear it that badly, someone would have to ask Mrs. Mikasa, who was skilled at sewing, to adjust the length. The argument between Yoshiki’s mother, who insisted that Kaoru ask Mrs. Mikasa herself, and Kaoru, who wanted her mother to fix it, had been going on since the night before.

Yoshiki thought the whole thing was getting tiresome and hoped they would settle the argument soon. Meanwhile, Hikaru had tossed aside the manga he was reading and exclaimed happily, “Oh! That’s right! The summer festival!” He then rolled around on Yoshiki’s bed with a grin. “I can hardly wait!”

It was like he was pulling out memories of past summer festivals from within himself and laying them out one by one to admire.

“I heard they’ll have shaved ice and all kinds of other food again this year,” said Yoshiki.

“I’m really lookin’ forward to it. Let’s you an’ me go with Kaoru—all three of us.”

A soft laugh escaped from the corner of Yoshiki’s mouth. It was a frail laugh that seemed to drop gently onto his chest. His sense that something was amiss, his anxiety, and his fear were all overwritten by the presence of Hikaru inside Hikaru’s memories. It was as if Hikaru Indou’s hands were covering Yoshiki’s eyes.

In the end, Yoshiki’s mother brought Kaoru’s yukata to Mrs. Mikasa’s house. Despite all her talk, their mother was still soft when it came to Kaoru.

The summer festival that Hikaru had eagerly been counting down the days for wasn’t a particularly grand affair. It was held at Nisa Shrine, a small shrine in Kubitachi, and it didn’t involve any special rituals. It was a run-of-the-mill festival in a village where the number of children had drastically decreased. It had some stalls and a Bon Odori dance but wasn’t at any sizable scale, making it nothing more than a modest annual summer festival.

However, because there were so few children, many of the stalls offered free food to kids.

“It’s the festival! The summer festival!”

Hikaru looked around in amazement while taking in the smells of all the food drifting about from the rows of stalls and the sights of lanterns glowing overhead. Occasionally, he let out a “Wow!” in awe, his cheeks flushed with excitement.

“Yer feet ain’t hurtin’, Kaoru?” he asked. His voice sounded cheerful and full of energy, almost as if it were colored pink or yellow.

“…I’m fine.”

Kaoru was dressed in a neatly hemmed floral yukata with a matching hair ornament—she even brought a drawstring bag with her—but she was wearing plain old sneakers. She had been forced into them right before leaving for the festival because if she came in traditional sandals, she would quickly start whining about her sore feet and might start crying.

As they went along, an older woman from the neighborhood called out to Kaoru.

“Oh my! Is that Kaoru?! That yukata looks darlin’ on ya!”

This made Kaoru hunch her shoulders in discomfort. Kaoru was a prime example of the kind of person who acted bold and confident at home but became shy and awkward in front of others.

“That’s nice, huh?” Yoshiki said, playfully nudging Kaoru, who was blushing.

Just then, a lively voice called out from a nearby stall.

“Heeey, you kids there!! Have some takoyaki!”

The person handing Kaoru a tray of takoyaki with a friendly smile was Mr. Kameyama, an older man Yoshiki knew well. Every year, he had some sort of stall at the summer festival, and this year, he was running a takoyaki stand.

“Wow! Thanks a lot!”

Hikaru grinned ear to ear, unlike Kaoru, who meekly accepted the takoyaki. Kaoru had her way of doing things, and Hikaru had his.

“Ya sure about this, Mr. Kameyama?” Yoshiki asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure! Kids eat for free! It’s hot, so be careful eatin’ it!”

“He’s really doin’ us a kindness here. You oughtta say thanks, too, Kaoru.”

Following Yoshiki’s encouragement, Kaoru finally managed to softly murmur, “Th-thanks…” Even though her gratitude didn’t come out very clearly, Mr. Kameyama didn’t seem bothered at all.

A cross pendant hanging around the man’s neck glinted in the light and shimmered from the heat rising off the takoyaki grill. His son, Masa, who was busily frying up takoyaki beside him, also wore a similar pendant.

Yoshiki felt like he’d also seen crosses on the father-son pair at last year’s summer festival where they’d complained to one another about how hot it was and how the temperature wasn’t getting any better, even at night. Back then, Yoshiki thought those crosses were just accessories, but now they somehow seemed to hold a different significance.

However, that odd feeling was quickly swept off somewhere by the bustling energy of the festival. From the throngs of people coming and going along the stall-lined path to the shrine, Yoshiki overheard someone pointing at his group and saying, “Oh, that’s Tsujinaka’s…”

“…Little sister,” said someone else. “What’s up with her? She still ain’t goin’ to school, right?”

“Ah, what’s that girl’s mother doin’?”

Even with the festival music playing and the fun and lively atmosphere, those people’s voices were strangely clear.

Yoshiki glanced at Kaoru. She had her head down and was holding the tray of takoyaki in both hands, staring down at the fine whisps of steam rising from her food.

It was unclear if Hikaru had noticed what just happened, but he looked over at Yoshiki and said, “Hey! Don’t you wanna get some shaved ice? Where can I get some again?”

“…It’s around the shrine grounds.”

Before Yoshiki even finished speaking, Hikaru said, “Right. Let’s go,” and started walking. Hikaru grabbed Kaoru’s hand to pull her along, and Kaoru pulled Yoshiki’s.

The whispers of gossip were gradually drowned out by the lively noises of the festival.

In contrast to the path that was crowded with stalls, the stone-paved path leading to the shrine’s courtyard was quiet.

The Nisa Shrine torii gate was illuminated by the red glow of lanterns. The stalls here were sparse, and the festival music was distant.

“What else do they have on the shrine grounds again?” Hikaru asked Yoshiki.

“I think yakisoba an’ stuff…?”

They chatted back and forth, but just as they were about to pass under the torii gate, they heard a distorted crack that sounded like shattering glass.

It was different from the festival music—different from the voices of people enjoying the event.

It was the sound of one thing rejecting something else.

“What…?”

Hikaru had stopped in his tracks just beyond the gate. Visibly confused, Kaoru asked, “What’s wrong?” but Hikaru only stared at his palm in silence.

His eyes then quietly shifted over to the gate.

Yoshiki wondered what the sound they just heard was and why Hikaru couldn’t pass through, but he didn’t need to think very hard about it—he instinctively knew what was happening.

“Ah…sorry. Gotta use the toilet,” Hikaru said. “Go ahead and buy some grub for me.”

He turned on his heel, and without looking back, he walked away from the torii gate with his right hand clenched tightly.

Yoshiki saw Hikaru’s mouth twist in irritation. He also noticed Hikaru’s thin lips mouth the words “What a pain in the ass…”

2

As lively as the festival music over by the path to the shrine was, it could be heard just faintly in the background before being drowned out by Hajime Takeda pounding the table and yelling, “That’s what I’m sayin’!”

Tetsu Mikasa was half expecting the teacup in front of Takeda to topple over, but it merely wobbled slightly.

“It’s all ’cause no one took care of things after Kouhei Indou died!!” Takeda shouted.

Mikasa had his arms folded and remained silent. He couldn’t help but be somewhat impressed by Takeda’s audacity to shout so loudly in someone else’s home.

As the head priest of Nisa Shrine, Mikasa was committed to the long-established traditions of their village, but Takeda, a landowner in Kubitachi, was even more entrenched in the village’s customs. To put it bluntly, he was trapped by them. Mikasa slumped his shoulders, realizing he felt a similar burden.

“Yeah, but even so…takin’ care of it fell under the Indous’ jurisdiction, so no one knows much about it,” said Mikasa. “Kouhei’s son went missin’ for over a week, and he came back, but he prob’ly didn’t complete the ritual.”

“Kouhei used to say this sorta thing couldn’t go on forever… So maybe that time’s finally come?”

Mikasa had no clear answer to offer.

The silence in the room only seemed to irritate Takeda further, who turned his gaze to the third man there, Yoshihiko Matsushima, who had been quietly drinking liquor the entire time.

“Hey! How can ya be drinkin’ at a time like this?! Yer a real jerk, ya know that?!”

“Ah, c’mon… Ha-ha! I’ll be drinkin’ highballs till the day I meet my maker!”

Matsushima, whose face was flushed and speech was slightly slurred, was the president of Matsushima Sawmill and a central figure in Kubitachi’s forestry industry. He had always been a laid-back and unhurried man, but once he got some alcohol in him—especially highballs—it only made things worse. He was the kind of guy who would bring a bottle of booze to a serious gathering like this one.

“And is that thing really gone from them mountains? Did that thing ever really exist in the first place?”

“Ya dang fool!” snapped Mikasa.

No longer able to hold his tongue, Mikasa glared at Matsushima before Takeda could.

“That thing…is Kubitachi’s burden that’s been passed down since ancient times. It’s the duty of the people of this land to keep it trapped here forever. If we don’t do anythin’, it won’t just be Matsuura, the entire village’s gonna be in a heap’a trouble…”

Mikasa didn’t know why Old Lady Matsuura died, nor did he know why she was the one to go, but if they left the situation unchecked, more deaths would follow. That was the one thing he was sure of. Now that Kouhei Indou was no longer around, it was up to Mikasa, Takeda, and Matsushima to prevent that from happening.

After taking a deep breath through his nose, Mikasa looked at Takeda. “Hajime, think we oughtta give Tanaka a call?”

Scowling, Takeda nodded and said, “…I already did. I really didn’t want to, but I had no other choice.” He deeply furrowed his brows as small beads of sweat—possibly a product of stress or just from the heat—trickled down his face.

The truth of the matter was that Mikasa didn’t want to see Tanaka so often, either. That man’s arrival basically meant that serious trouble was brewing in their area.

“That’s right. We had no other choice.”

3

“Huh? Where’d Kaoru go?” Hikaru asked.

Hikaru arrived not long after Yoshiki started waiting for him with a bowl of shaved ice in one hand. They met on a small embankment off the main path to the shrine.

They could hear the voices of the stall vendors, but perhaps due to the direction of the wind, the aroma of the sauces and the sweet smell of cotton candy didn’t reach them. Instead, they could smell the grassy odor of mud from the stream nearby.

“She went to get some money from our mom to buy pickled cucumbers,” Yoshiki replied.

He handed a bowl of shaved ice to Hikaru, who said, “Awesome! Thanks!” and then sat down next to Yoshiki. The Blue Hawaii syrup in the shaved ice glowed slightly dark blue under the outdoor lights, while Yoshiki’s lemon-flavored shaved ice had a dull green tint to it.

“I’ve been wonderin’ ’bout this for a while now, but what kinda flavor is Blue Hawaii s’posed to be?”

“I don’t think it’s a flavor at all. Apparently, all shaved ice flavors taste the same.”

As expected, Hikaru let out a “Wha—?” and nearly dropped his spoon.

“Just changin’ the color’s enough for people to feel like it tastes different,” Yoshiki added.

“For real?!”

Visibly disappointed, Hikaru dug his straw spoon into his shaved ice and scooped up an especially deep blue chunk drenched in syrup.

A wet, crunching sound followed, and though Yoshiki was expecting Hikaru to react on the spot, saying things like, “Dang, that’s good!” or “That’s so cold!,” Hikaru remained silent with his spoon still in his mouth.

Yoshiki slowly turned to look at him.

“Then…how about me?” Hikaru asked.

The bowl of shaved ice in Yoshiki’s hand felt painfully cold, and he tried to express his surprise, but his voice was strained and nothing came out of his throat.

“If somethin’ looks the same as another,” Hikaru went on, “can it feel the same, too?”

Yoshiki recalled what happened the other day—the look of desperation on Hikaru’s face—as he’d asked, “…Do ya hate me now?” while wrapped in a towel blanket.

The real Hikaru never made faces like that.

“…No way,” said Yoshiki.

He shook his head slightly, and Hikaru looked away for some reason. Hikaru gave an ambiguous response—something between a “Really?” or a “Hmm,” but not quite either—then shoveled more shaved ice into his mouth.

“Looks like yer happy to hear that,” he said.

“Huh? Do I?”

Yoshiki noticed that Hikaru was trying to brush things off, but then, unable to hold back, Hikaru exclaimed, “Ah, dang! I’m all embarrassed now,” as he tossed his empty shaved ice bowl back at Yoshiki. The few drops left in the bowl were still tinged with the artificial Blue Hawaii blue.

“Yer already done eatin’?” Yoshiki asked with a chuckle.

Almost as soon as he did, Hikaru said, “So, Yoshiki…”

“What’s up?”

“Did you figure out I wasn’t the real Hikaru because you could sense I wasn’t the same even though I looked jus’ like ’im?”

Yoshiki felt Hikaru’s piercing gaze on his brow. He also noticed that he couldn’t hear the frogs that usually croaked throughout the village on a summer night like this one. Even the river flowed silently, just as the trees’ branches and leaves swayed without a sound, only giving the impression of their movement.

Yoshiki slowly averted his eyes from Hikaru.

“Naw.”

A response escaped his lips before he even realized it.

“I…saw Hikaru’s body.”

“Don’t you dare even think about going out there to look for him! Please! Just stay home!”

That’s what Yoshiki’s mother told him on that day.

It was a terribly stormy day.

What at first seemed like an intense but short rain shower had turned into a downpour that showed no signs of ending, even as night fell. Thunder roared throughout the mountain village of Kubitachi. The ground shook with every rumble of the sky.

And despite such terrible weather, every adult in the village was out searching.

They were all looking for Hikaru Indou—the boy who had been by Yoshiki’s side for as long as Yoshiki could remember.

“Yoshiki…where ya goin’?” Kaoru asked after seeing Yoshiki putting on his raincoat at the entrance to their house. Even though the parlor was brightly lit, Yoshiki clearly remembered it being pitch-dark at the entrance to his house.

“I’m just gonna check something outside right quick,” he told her as he shoved his feet into his rain boots.

“Liar,” Kaoru snapped back while shooting him a suspicious look. “The grown-ups are out searching for him, so the kids should stay home. That’s what Mom said.”

“I’ll be right back.”

Yoshiki picked up a flashlight before opening the front door. As he left, he heard Kaoru say, “You better,” mixed in with the intense sounds of the rain and wind.

Hikaru had said he was going to the mountains. That was what Yoshiki told his own mother, and apparently, the adults in the village had spread out to search the mountains surrounding Kubitachi—Kasayama, Futakasayama, and Matsuyama.

Because Futakasayama was where Hikaru’s grandfather farmed shiitake mushrooms, much of the search effort was focused around there. Despite the considerable amount of time that had passed since the search began, Hikaru was nowhere to be found.

The pouring rain made it impossible to see even a few feet in front of Yoshiki, who headed not to Kasayama, Futakasayama, or Matsuyama, but to another location.

He went to Nisayama, the mountain behind Hikaru’s house—a mountain that was off-limits because the ground was unstable and frequented by bears and other wild beasts. Children in particular were warned to never go there, and the people of Kubitachi Village actively avoided it.

If Hikaru had said he was going to the mountains and still hadn’t been found, Yoshiki thought that he might have gone to Nisayama. Yoshiki didn’t care if this was a hasty decision or just a misunderstanding on his part. If all he discovered was that Hikaru wasn’t there, that would be good enough for him. It was far better than waiting around and doing nothing in his warm house.

The barely paved road turned to a gravel one, then to a muddy path, and soon enough, even that path disappeared.

“Hey! Did ya find him—?”

Yoshiki heard someone’s voice from beyond the sound of the rain. Several flashlight beams flickered in the darkness. It seemed that a search party had ventured into the off-limits area of Nisayama after all.

Still, Yoshiki didn’t stop walking.

Even in his raincoat, Yoshiki was soaked up to the nape of his neck, and he could no longer tell if the liquid dripping down his cheeks was rain or sweat. He dragged his mud-caked rainboots along, pushing his way through the thicket of trees and bushes.

He tried calling Hikaru’s name countless times, but the rain and thunder quickly drowned out his cries. The sound of his own feet firmly slogging through the mud made it feel as if something inside him was being scraped away with each step.

He could no longer hear the voices of the search party that previously echoed in the distance. All that remained now was the sound of his own breathing—a mix of long sighs interspersed with miserable whimpering. His throat trembled, producing a noise that sounded like a hungry cat or dog searching for its owner.

A droplet trickled down his forehead and into his eye, distorting his vision, which wouldn’t clear even after blinking. He repeatedly cursed under his breath and wiped his eyes.

That’s when the beam of his flashlight caught a dark shape.

“…Hikaru!” he called.

But his call was drowned out by the thunder.

And lying amid the pale glow of the bamboo grass was Hikaru Indou.

There was no mistaking it—it was Hikaru. Yoshiki couldn’t possibly forget his friend. Try as he might, Yoshiki could never distance himself from Hikaru; no matter how many precious people he lost, Hikaru was the one person he could never lose.

He touched Hikaru’s cheeks with both hands. They were cold, like stones. His lips were pale, and his chest did not rise or fall.

A large drop of water fell from the tip of a bamboo grass leaf and ran down Hikaru’s strangely beautiful forehead. When Yoshiki gently brushed it away with his fingertips, they were so cold that it felt as though they might split.

His body’s in surprisingly good condition. Somewhere deep in his mind, Yoshiki heard himself muttering that in a daze. I wonder why that is. Oh, right. ’Cause it’s winter.

As he calmly looked around, a voice inside him told him that he needed to tell someone about this right away.

But the next thing Yoshiki knew, he was home.

He found himself being hugged by his mother while still sopping wet. Kaoru had quietly peeked her head out to watch them from the parlor.

“The fire brigade… They’re doing their best to search for him,” Yoshiki’s mother said.

No, I found Hikaru, Yoshiki thought.

His mud-stained lips only trembled, unable to utter a single word.

“So it’ll be all right…!” his mother told him.

No, I know it won’t.

When he opened his mouth, all that escaped was a groan. His mother called Yoshiki’s name, shook his shoulders, and slapped his cheeks. Then, in a voice choked with panic, she cried, “You’re burning up…!”

For a few days after that, Yoshiki was bedridden and delirious with a fever. He lost track of how many days had passed as he drifted in and out of dreams and reality.

And when his fever finally broke, Hikaru was there.

Hikaru, who had been admitted to the hospital in Kibogayama for tests, was sitting up in his hospital bed with a healthy grin—one that seemed to tease Yoshiki, who rushed over to Hikaru, still in a state of shock.

“There were a buncha times when I thought it was a dream, but it was all real.”

There were many ways Yoshiki could have convinced himself that finding Hikaru’s body was just a dream. And there were just as many opportunities for him to mentally block it all out.

But he couldn’t do that.

“There were lots of other odd things about you, but normally…that wouldn’t be enough to think ya were someone else.”

Yoshiki still remembered how cold Hikaru’s lifeless cheeks were, and the feeling of blood caked onto his own fingertips. He remembered that far more clearly than the flavor of the shaved ice he had just eaten.

No matter how much he tried to wipe it away, he couldn’t erase the fact that Hikaru had died.

“Oh, wow…”

Hikaru covered his mouth with both hands and slumped his shoulders. Yoshiki heard him let out a sigh through the gaps between his fingers.

“That’s nuts…,” Hikaru continued. “I was prob’ly already like this when you found ’im. But I reckon it took a few days for me to repair his body, so you musta come in the middle of all that.”

If he’s saying that, then that must be what happened, Yoshiki thought.

“And you’ve been holdin’ onto this for six months?” Hikaru asked.

“It’s why I’ve been havin’ trouble sleepin’.”

A sharp pain shot through Yoshiki’s brow, and he lowered his head. He then hugged his knees and buried his face in his arms.

I wanna see Hikaru.

That desire drifted through his mind as naturally as sending a bamboo-leaf boat down a babbling brook.

Hikaru. Not anyone else—I want to see you.

“Ahhh, dang it.”

In this small village, there were memories of Hikaru everywhere.

In their homes and the narrow paths that connected them, the stone walls around the rice paddies, the dust-covered asphalt road leading to Kibogayama, the sun-bleached safety mirrors, the color-faded mailboxes, the river where they used to play—there was no place where Hikaru hadn’t been.

That’s why, no matter where he went, at any given moment, Hikaru would come pouring down into Yoshiki’s mind.

“Why’d he have to die?”

But his anger, after slipping through the gaps of his clenched teeth, inevitably turned into sobs.

“I seriously can’t wait to move out.”

Yoshiki had said that to Hikaru once when they were in middle school. He was pretty certain that it was when they were first-years.

They had gone to the upper reaches of the river that flowed from Futakasayama to catch freshwater crabs, and Yoshiki was sitting on a flat rock, watching Hikaru enter the river in his sandals.

The water Hikaru kicked up as he went into the water had gotten the hem of his T-shirt wet, but he paid no attention to it and intently peered into the stream. It was then, as Yoshiki was observing Hikaru in that state, that he let those words come tumbling out of his mouth.

“Whaaa? Why d’ya wanna go to the city so badly?” Hikaru asked.

“The country sucks.”

Hikaru’s carefree tone made the dark resentment in Yoshiki’s voice even more pronounced. Yoshiki wasn’t saying it out of some childish form of rebellion—the sound of his own voice made him realize that he seriously and completely hated that crappy rural village of his from the bottom of his heart.

“Why do people ’round here gotta pry into my family’s business so much?” said Yoshiki.

“Ohhh, so yer folks’re still fightin’?”

Hikaru laughed it off, but Yoshiki glared at the bottom of the river, watching small, pinky-sized fish swimming against the stream in frustratingly clear water.

“My parents…don’t get along, and they fight just about every day. But folks like Yasaburo’s granny’re always talkin’ about it like they want us to hear ’em…”

Yoshiki wondered if it was because his mother was from Tokyo. She had only a slight city accent, and he didn’t understand what people found so interesting about that. He wondered why people seemed to find so much joy in prying into other families’ business and criticizing others behind their backs.

“Speakin’ of,” Yoshiki continued, “there was a big fight at Yasaburo’s place not long ago. Somethin’ about his next-in-line, Yuusuke.”

“They were sayin’ he’s sick.”

“He ain’t sick,” Yoshiki cut in and then rushed to correct himself. “Yuusuke ain’t sick. He’s a homosexual.”

“Home-o-sex-you-all?”

“I dunno…”

Yoshiki felt half annoyed and half relieved by the carefree and clueless way Hikaru spoke. He didn’t want to discuss it with Hikaru anymore.

“This village is too small and cramped,” Yoshiki grumbled. “I can barely breathe with how cramped it is here.”

He was sure that Yasaburo’s son, Yuusuke, felt the same.

Hikaru kicked the river, splashing some water. The splash was light and melodic, and the surface of the river rippled and sparkled brightly, as if musical notes had been scattered across it.

“All right…then you can sleep over at my place tonight,” said Hikaru.

“Huh?”

“Even if the country sucks, you always have fun at my place. Whenever ya feel like you wanna go to the city, you should come to my place!”

It wasn’t that simple. Yoshiki’s resentment wasn’t something that could be treated so lightly. But the way that Hikaru seemed to punctuate his sentences with a cheery exclamation mark always managed to momentarily clear away the fog that swirled about in Yoshiki’s heart.

No matter how crappy the countryside was for him, he could breathe easily as long as Hikaru was there. It felt like there was more air around him—more oxygen to breathe.

He vaguely knew that would no longer be the case one day, and perhaps that was why he wanted to leave the countryside.

“Check it out, Yoshiki!”

Hikaru thrust his hands into the golden, glittering river, grabbed two freshwater crabs, and pulled them out of the water.

“Crabby crab!”

He pressed the fishy-smelling crabs into both of Yoshiki’s cheeks. Yoshiki acquiesced.

Apparently, the look on Yoshiki’s face was funny enough to make Hikaru burst into laughter until tears welled up in the corners of his eyes.

Those were the kinds of memories that came back to Yoshiki whenever he heard the sound of the flowing river.

Then Hikaru called Yoshiki’s name. They had the same voice, but no matter what, it wasn’t Hikaru. It was Hikaru.

Yoshiki could sense that Hikaru was reaching out to him amid his confusion. His warm hand went to touch Yoshiki’s shoulder but then quietly retreated.

1

Yoshiki wondered why, of all things, the menu for their cooking class had to be fried chicken.

As he mixed raw chicken and spices in a stainless-steel bowl, Yoshiki held back yet another sigh.

Even with his vinyl gloves on, a familiar sensation squirmed through his hands.

“Hurry up, Yoshiki!”

Yuuki, who was in his group, was rushing him. Then Yoshiki put his hands deep into the bottom of the bowl in resignation.

“Ugh!”

The more he thought about it, the more the texture reminded him of what Hikaru’s insides felt like.

Like raw chicken covered in marinade—an incredibly accurate comparison he came up with. It was so accurate that he almost wanted to pat himself on the back then and there.

He put up with the hairs standing on end at the nape of his neck and looked over at Maki, who was also in his group.

Maki had been instructed to cut their cabbage into thin slices but was cutting it into fairly thick chunks while exclaiming, “Yahoo! I love fried chicken!” Seeing him like that, Yoshiki felt jealous. He was genuinely envious of someone who could get that excited and say “Yahoo!” over something as simple as fried chicken.

Maki was wearing an apron with a dragon design on it. He had made it in his elementary school home economics class and wore it without an ounce of shame. Yoshiki also felt… No, actually, he wasn’t particularly jealous of that.

“Ya weren’t even helpin’ out none, and when you finally did, you didn’t shred the cabbage like ya were s’posed to! What the heck is this?!” Yuuki wailed.

She scowled and picked up a piece of the “shredded” cabbage that was about as thick as her thumb.

“Ah, shut up! You my mama or somethin’?!” Maki snapped back, and predictably, an argument ensued.

Yoshiki quietly pushed the entire bowl of seasoned chicken over to Yuuki and then washed his hands without saying a word. Despite the fact that he had been wearing gloves, he just had to scrub his hands clean.

“Yer bandana…,” came a voice.

Someone behind Yoshiki tugged on the bandana covering his hair, causing the top edge to flap about.

“They look like them triangle caps that ghosts wear.”

Hikaru had a grin on his face. There was a dragon on his apron, too, though it was slightly different from Maki’s. Yoshiki couldn’t understand how those two high schoolers were completely fine wearing dragon aprons.

“Why were ya starin’ at the chicken somethin’ fierce earlier?” Hikaru asked. He was pointing at a bowl with chicken in it.

What the heck? Was he watchin’ me?

Yoshiki should have avoided the question, but he hesitated instead.

“Well,” he said. “It’s just…”

“Just what?”

“It’s just…the way raw chicken feels… It’s kinda like how it felt that one time…”

Inside you.

Yoshiki was about to say that, but he realized that Hikaru was staring at him—and so was the dragon on Hikaru’s apron.

“Dang, man, you’ve been thinkin’ ’bout that stuff all this time? Havin’ them nasty thoughts while lookin’ at that raw chicken all on yer lonesome…”

Hikaru snorted, barely containing his laughter, and Yoshiki instantly glared at him. That was all he could do.

“The heck?! What’s with that reaction, man?! It’s not like that,” Yoshiki grumbled.

“Naw, it’s all right, though.”

But Hikaru’s shoulders continued to shake with laughter. Just when it seemed like he had finally stopped, a strangely calm smile spread across his face, and he started looking intently at Yoshiki.

“Wanna try feelin’ it again?” Hikaru asked.

It looked like Yuuki had started frying the chicken. Hikaru’s group started doing the same. Soon, the entire room was filled with the sizzles and cracks of popping oil.

To Yoshiki, it almost felt like he was being jeered at or warned of something yet to come.

“No way,” he told Hikaru. “It feels too freaky. That’s not the kinda thing I can get used to.”

“But ya know, you were like this back when we were on that forest path, too. You really can’t handle it when guys like me get all up in your space. Gets me nervous jus’ lookin’ at ya. That’s why it’s better if you get used to feelin’ it!”

Hikaru looked at Yoshiki to gauge his reaction, and something about what Hikaru said gave Yoshiki a bad feeling. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but it was almost as if there was some ulterior motive behind Hikaru’s words.

Before Yoshiki could respond, Yuuki, who was standing in front of their group’s stove, said, “Yoshikiii, put out a plate,” and pointed to a cabinet.

“That Maki’s totally useless,” Yoshiki grumbled.

When he glanced at Maki, Maki was busy showing off his “super awesome” apron to the guys in Hikaru’s group.

“All right. Fine.”

Yoshiki should’ve said that to Yuuki, but for some reason, he found himself directing his response at Hikaru instead.

“Great,” Hikaru replied. “Then let’s do it after school.”

Hikaru then went back to his group, looking pleased.

Thanks to Yuuki, Yoshiki’s group managed to fry their chicken to delicious perfection. Meanwhile, Hikaru’s group’s fried chicken was burnt beyond recognition, rendering it inedible. People had a lot of negative things to say about it, including how it looked like dark matter or how it tasted like the back end of a truck, but Hikaru seemed to enjoy it all the same.

Compared to years ago, Kibogayama High School had seen a steady decline in the student population, leaving the school with many empty classrooms. However, the classrooms still retained traces of their past, making it clear they had once been put to proper use.

At the farthest edge of the school was an unlocked classroom despite the DO NOT ENTER sign on its door. In the corner of this room, Hikaru undid two of the buttons on his short-sleeved shirt, just like he had done once before.

An incredibly thin slit ran along his suntanned skin from his throat down to his chest.

“Ah, c’mon already,” he urged.

Yoshiki reached out his hand more than once, only to withdraw it each time.

Hikaru shrugged impatiently. “Hurry up! Clubs’re ’bout to start.”

Yoshiki couldn’t bring himself to quip how that was rich coming from someone who never took club practice seriously.

“I gotta just…psych myself up for it,” Yoshiki said.

He took a deep breath, followed by another, as if that first one wasn’t enough.

Then, while holding his breath, he inserted his hand into Hikaru’s slit.

The sensation—like having a tongue lick his fingertips, and the chilling, damp feeling—were the same as before. The pressure he felt as it slowly tightened around his skin reminded him of the chicken that he had his hands all over in cooking class. The back of his throat tightened up. He felt like vomiting.

But the feeling didn’t last as long as the first time.

“…It’s not as bad as before.”

“Ha-ha! See? You’re gettin’ used to it.”

Getting used to it? No way I could get used to this.

Then Yoshiki remembered Kurebayashi telling him that he would “mix.”

Just as that thought crossed his mind, he felt something slither into him through his fingertips.

Something that wasn’t himself crept up inside Yoshiki, starting from his index finger and on to his hand, his wrist, and then up his arm.

Yoshiki screamed with Hikaru staring intently at him all the while. Hikaru’s eyes were filled with a twisted excitement, and his cheeks were flushed. He had an aggressive look on his face, like that of a child playing with a new toy for the first time.

“The hell?! It’s on me…?!” Yoshiki hollered.

He tried to pull his arm back, but something inside Hikaru had a strong grip on it.

Hikaru nodded, his expression unchanged. With every quick nod, every “yeah” he uttered, something hot seemed to bubble and pop around the nape of Yoshiki’s neck—like oil for frying chicken.

The same as that time. Like when Hikaru confronted Yoshiki about meeting Kurebayashi. Yoshiki was being attacked by Hikaru’s insides—just like before.

He was overcome by the ominous sensation of Hikaru trying to engulf him.

As that sensation brushed against his cheeks, he knew that it had reached the deepest parts of his mind—places that he didn’t want anyone to touch.

And in that moment, he finally spoke up.

“Stop it!”

Hikaru’s eyes widened, and in that instant, Yoshiki pulled his arm free. He then heard the sound of something dragging, and with it, the feeling of Hikaru inside him also disappeared.

The mark on his right arm from the last time Hikaru had tightly gripped him still remained. Yoshiki imagined that it wouldn’t fade away that easily, but it actually seemed to have grown darker.

“…What’d you do just now?” Yoshiki demanded, his shoulders heaving as he breathed in and out and in again. Then he glared at Hikaru.

Hikaru, however, looked around the room, acting as if he didn’t know what had just happened.

“I just thought I’d try touching you for a sec… Guess that won’t work if yer not used to it,” he said.

“Is that the truth?” Yoshiki interrogated Hikaru, recalling the look on his face when he asked if Yoshiki wanted to try feeling his insides again. “I ain’t too sure about this, but you weren’t just doin’ that ’cause it feels good for you, right?”

It appeared that having someone touch his insides or the act of absorbing someone into himself gave Hikaru some sort of pleasure or sense of satisfaction. Yoshiki had suspected as much before, but now it was crystal clear.

“So? What was that about?”

Apparently, Yoshiki had hit the nail on the head. Hikaru let out a small, choking sound but said nothing in defense and looked away from Yoshiki. Hikaru’s reaction was straightforward to the point of being anticlimactic.

“Ya know, ya shouldn’t be doin’ things people don’t really like. Ya got that?” Yoshiki said.

“Wh-what…? Yeah, I know. But…,” Hikaru added, as if hesitantly reaching his hand out toward Yoshiki. “I really wasn’t lyin’ to ya. I wouldn’t lie to ya…”

He sulked like a child who had been scolded by his parents, and seeing him like that, Yoshiki couldn’t help but believe him. He didn’t think Hikaru could lie to him in the first place.

Because if Hikaru did lie to Yoshiki, then Yoshiki was probably truly alone in the world.

“I believe you,” Yoshiki said. “For now.”

“…‘For now’?”

Hikaru’s shoulders slumped, and he scratched his cheek with his pinky finger. Yoshiki glanced away and nodded.

Yoshiki then softly touched his own right arm. The sensation of being inside Hikaru no longer lingered on his skin.

But beneath his skin, in some very deep place beyond his muscles, veins, and even deeper than his bones—within some part that could only be described as “Yoshiki’s core”—Hikaru still remained.

It felt gross. But that wasn’t all. There was also an undeniable, almost spine-chilling pleasure—a sensation so overwhelmingly clear to Yoshiki that it made him want to turn his eyes away.

He wondered if this is what Kurebayashi meant when she warned him about “mixing,” “getting close to whatever that thing is,” and “becoming a part of it.”

If this feeling continued to build up, would he mix with Hikaru and become inseparable from him?

I can never let that happen, he thought. Yoshiki was absolutely sure of that.

And yet, he couldn’t forget the look of ecstasy on Hikaru’s face. He even wondered if he’d been making the same face as he felt Hikaru crawl into his body.

“Also, it might attract things from the world toward ya more easily.”

That night, Yoshiki recalled that warning from Kurebayashi.

Kaoru had seen a “ghost” in their bathroom.

“A wig monster?! In the bathroom?!”

Maki spoke so loudly that other groups of customers in the food court turned their attention to Yoshiki’s table. It was a weekday, but since it was already evening, there were a number of students from Kibogayama High School scattered around the Mion Mall food court.

Yoshiki rushed to clear his throat. “That’s right. She was sayin’ she didn’t wanna take a bath ’cause there’s a wig monster in the tub. Been goin’ on about it since last night.”

“The heck is that?! It’s totally just loose hair.”

“Naw. It was, like, a stupid amount of hair. There’s no way it could be loose hair. And she said that thing was aggressive as all get out.”

The previous night, after dinner, Kaoru had been the first to take a bath. But within minutes, she’d come flying out of the bathroom, screaming.

She’d clung to their mother, who was washing dishes in the kitchen, and shouted, “There’s a monster in the bath! A wig monster!”

Yoshiki, who had been watching TV at the dining table, was the first to react by expressing his disbelief, but Kaoru glared at him and insisted that she wasn’t lying.

While she was washing her hair, she felt strands of hair clinging to her foot.

Everyone in their family had short hair, but this hair was long.

Then, just as she heard a splish from the water, she saw a large mass of hair peeking out from between the tub and the bath cover. According to Kaoru, there was definitely enough hair for a whole person. When she reached out to touch it, it slipped back into the bathtub and disappeared.

Kaoru promptly flew out of the bathroom and put on her clothes without drying herself off. Then, as she tried to leave the changing room, she heard a loud thump behind her.

She turned around and saw the shadow of a mass of hair clinging to the bathroom’s glass door.

“No way!” said Maki.

After hearing the details, all Maki did was laugh. Yoshiki didn’t blame him. Even Yoshiki himself was thinking, What the heck is a wig monster anyway?! as he told the story.

Before their group went to the food court, they had stopped at an arcade, where Yoshiki won a plush toy for Maki from a crane game. The plush was some kind of bizarre character. It was hard to tell what exactly—maybe a dog or a cat—but according to the description, its “hair had grown out because it worked too much at a factory for hair-growth formula,” which was how Yoshiki found himself bringing up the story about the wig monster.

“Another ghost, huh?!” said Maki, a soft drink in one hand.

He kept on laughing, having completely forgotten that Yoshiki had just won him a plush toy. And only recently, he had asked Yoshiki to walk with him through the forest path on his way home because it was too scary.

“One guy on the baseball team also said he spotted somethin’ not too long ago,” Maki mused. “Seems like this kinda thing’s been happenin’ more an’ more.”

Unlike Maki, Hikaru had been quiet the whole time. His only response was a nasal “hmm” as he stared down at the straw in his soda fountain cup—although earlier, after seeing how happy Maki looked to get the plush at the arcade, Hikaru had teased Maki, saying, “Ya givin’ it to a girl or somethin’?” (And he seemed to be right on the mark.)

Finally, Hikaru asked, “You still haven’t seen it yourself, have ya, Yoshiki?” with an uncharacteristically pensive look on his face.

“No… I haven’t seen nothin’.”

After Kaoru left the bathroom, Yoshiki had only taken a shower. He’d carefully checked inside the tub, behind the wash bucket, under the bath stool, and throughout the room but didn’t find anything. It was the same for his parents, who took their baths later that evening. In the end, nothing happened.

“Then we’ll go an’ check out your bathroom later today,” Hikaru announced. He chugged his soft drink, and as soon as he finished, he got out of his chair.

Maki, with the plush toy in one hand, said, “What? Yer goin’ already?” but Hikaru threw his empty cup into the trash, and Yoshiki followed him.

As soon as Yoshiki had opened the door to his house, Hikaru said, “Boy, it’s hot out today!” and wiped sweat from his forehead.

“Would ya like some barley tea?” Yoshiki asked him.

“Naw. Let’s get to the bathroom first,” Hikaru replied firmly before taking off his sneakers at the entrance and putting them away.

Hikaru’s hurried actions made Yoshiki realize that whatever it was that Kaoru had called a “wig monster” was no joke—it was the real deal.

It was one of those things from the other side that Kurebayashi had told him about.

“…Why’s a ghost showin’ up in my house? And what is that thing anyway?”

“I’m not exactly sure what ya’d call it. Somethin’ like a ‘stain’ or ‘impurity,’ maybe? They always collect in places where humans live. They don’t normally appear like that, though.”

“But why my place specifically?”

No one was home. Both of Yoshiki’s parents were at their jobs, and Kaoru had joined her mother at the beauty salon where she worked. Kaoru had been doing that occasionally ever since she stopped going to school, but perhaps the reason she went on this particular day was because she was afraid to stay home alone.

With no one in the house, everything was quiet, so when Hikaru muttered, “Well, that’s ’cause”—his voice echoed oddly throughout the residence—“there’s somethin’ appealing about ya to those things from the other side. Since yer nice.”

“I don’t really get it. I’m not nice at all.”

Yoshiki knew that mixing too much with Hikaru would make it easier to attract things from the other side, but he wondered if that was because he was, as Hikaru said, being “nice.”

The light of the setting sun shined weakly into the changing room. Standing in front of the glass door that dimly glowed white, Hikaru paused for a moment with his hand on his chin and strained his eyes to peer through the frosted glass. He appeared to be listening for something.

“…Nothin’ there?” Yoshiki asked him.

“Naw, it’s there.”

Hikaru’s instant reply caused Yoshiki to instinctively step back.

“Honestly, it’s fine if these things are drawn to me, but why are they comin’ to you?”

“What’re ya gonna do to it?” Yoshiki asked.

“I’ll smash it up and put it inside me like last time,” Hikaru replied as if it wasn’t a big deal.

He opened the door to the bathroom that Yoshiki used every day.

“Is that all right?” Yoshiki asked Hikaru.

“Yeah, it’s fine. ’Cause I’m protectin’ ya.”

Hikaru smiled and closed the door behind him.

Yoshiki waited and waited, but the bathroom remained silent. There weren’t even any signs of movement from Hikaru. Yoshiki considered calling out to him several times, but the incredibly heavy stillness made him hesitate to do even that.

Yoshiki wasn’t sure how long he waited, but just as the light of the setting sun streaming into the changing room began to turn a deeper orange, there was a loud thump from inside the bathroom.

When he looked up, he heard an unpleasant noise of something being hit, along with splashing.

It was a heavy sound—as if something…or someone, had fallen into some water.

“Hikaru?! What happened?!”

There was no response. Yoshiki reached for the door, hesitated, and then flung it open with all his might.

He immediately regretted his decision. The air in the bathroom was stagnant and filled with a suffocating, sour stench.

“…Hey!” he called.

Hikaru was in the bathtub. It should have been empty after Yoshiki’s mom drained it the night before, but it was now filled with water, and Hikaru was completely submerged. Only his hand had managed to pull out of the tub and was gripping its edge.

“What’re ya doin’…?!” Yoshiki cried.

Yoshiki plunged his hands into the water to pull Hikaru out, but as soon as his hands entered, something thin wrapped around one of his arms.

It was hair.

Countless strands of long hair crawled up Yoshiki’s arm.

It reminded him of when he had touched Hikaru’s insides. It was just like that time. Something nonhuman was entering Yoshiki.

Before he even had a chance to call Hikaru’s name, the hair dragged Yoshiki down into the water. It coiled around his legs, waist, chest, and neck, and all he could see before him were countless bubbles floating about.

In each murky bubble were reflections of scenes that appeared and quickly disappeared—memories of the food court he was in earlier, yesterday’s events, last week’s, last month’s, the day Hikaru disappeared, and then Hikaru, and Hikaru, and Hikaru again.

The next thing he knew, Yoshiki found himself standing in the middle of a rice field.

The landscape didn’t belong to Kubitachi. Instead of terraced rice fields built with stacked stones, there was an endless expanse of flat, eerily perfect square rice paddies.

Yoshiki stood motionless upon a footpath, one of the many between each paddy that appeared perfectly straight, as if drawn with a ruler.

“…The bath,” he said.

When he looked up, where the sky should have been, there was a blank space filled with a seemingly artificial whiteness. It was an inorganic, unsettling white—the kind that would have a plastic odor to it.

“Ah… This is a dream. Must be.”

As he began mumbling to himself, a shadow fell upon his face.

There was no sun, but something was casting its shadow.

Beside him, standing at attention like a dear friend of many years, was a brain. The brain wriggled its massive, slug-like body and squirmed its head back and forth to look down at Yoshiki.

It had no eyes, but it was staring at him.

“Here, have some radish,” it said. The voice belonged to an older man from Yoshiki’s neighborhood.

“That boy of theirs sure is slow,” came a different voice, this time from behind Yoshiki.

When he turned around, there was another brain that was just like the first one. The voice belonged to the middle-aged wife of Nishidaya’s shopkeeper—a woman he would sometimes encounter behind the register at Nozomi Supermarket.

Before he knew it, Yoshiki found himself surrounded by numerous gigantic brains. Something moist and hot brushed against his cheek.

“Yer smart, aren’t ya? What’re ya doin’ for college?”

“Hey! Ain’tcha gonna cut yer bangs?”

“Boy can’t even give a proper hello!”

“Those Tsujinakas were fightin’ again. I feel so bad for their son!”

He knew each and every voice, each word they spoke.

They were things Yoshiki had heard over and over again in his suffocatingly small village.

The brains slowly dragged their massive forms forward and closed in on Yoshiki.

Mio Nukaga

I believe that for many of you, this will be our first time meeting. My name is Mio Nukaga, and I’m the author responsible for adapting The Summer Hikaru Died into a novel.

The pronunciation of my name is “Mee-oh New-kah-gah.” Some find it surprisingly difficult to pronounce the Nukaga part, but it’s similar to how you say Utada, the surname of the famous singer Hikaru Utada. Usually, I write coming-of-age and sports-related novels.

I first read The Summer Hikaru Died in July of 2022.

I’m a novelist, but I sometimes teach at a university. My classes mostly consist of creative writing workshops aimed at students who want to write novels.

I often exchanged recommendations for prose, manga, and anime with a student named K, who was enrolled in my course at the time.

One day, just before summer break, K approached me, saying, “I’ve found this super interesting manga. The first volume just came out, but I’ve been following it online ever since it began its web serialization because of how interesting it is, and it’s just so good—I wish I could write a novel like that.”

The manga that K introduced to me with such enthusiasm was The Summer Hikaru Died.

“Please read it,” he’d said. “I’d like to hear your thoughts.”

With K’s strong recommendation, I went to a bookstore on my way home and bought the first volume of The Summer Hikaru Died.

K’s ability to both find interesting works and present their greatness in a way that resonates with others is second to none, so I clearly remember being really excited to read The Summer Hikaru Died as I made my way back home.

And when I did read it, I found The Summer Hikaru Died to be incredibly entertaining and felt truly happy to have been introduced to such a great work.

As it so happens, when I was writing this afterword, I messaged K, saying, “Sorry if this is sudden, but would it be okay to mention you? I won’t use your real name,” to which he immediately replied, “Please go with ‘K’!” That’s how I was able to write this anecdote.

After reading Volume 1, I eagerly awaited the release of Volume 2 as just another reader.

It was right around that time that I received a request from an editor at Kadokawa to write the novel adaptation. Writing a novel on my own from scratch and adapting a manga, anime, or movie by another creator into a novel are two very different processes, despite the fact that novels are the end product in both cases. With an adaptation, there are more things to be mindful of and cautious with, and it feels like I’m using my brain in a slightly different way compared to when I’m writing my own work.

The creature known as a novelist is one that wants to do everything it can to send the stories it’s conceived out into the world, so when it comes to adaptation work, I try to only accept projects that I find to be genuinely fascinating or ones from creators that I truly love.

I have to feel like I won’t regret using my time—time that should have been spent writing a volume of an original work—for that particular work or creator. If I can feel like that about a work, then it’s one that I can enjoy adapting into a novel.

So when I was asked to novelize The Summer Hikaru Died, I instantly replied, “I’ll do it. I’ll make the schedule work.”

Writing a lengthy review of The Summer Hikaru Died as just another reader would make me come off as some annoying fan, which would be a little embarrassing, so I’m happy to let you know it was that enjoyable to me.

And so, I somehow made the schedule work and successfully completed the novel version of The Summer Hikaru Died, but I’ll leave it to you, the readers, to judge whether or not I’ve stayed faithful to the original or have expanded on it uniquely through this novelization. I’ve also been asked by my editor to share my thoughts on the adaptation process, so I’ll go ahead and do so, but I’ll keep it brief.

Personally, I focused on capturing what The Summer Hikaru Died can evoke uniquely through the medium of a novel. I believe the appeal of novels lies in their ability to depict emotions through detailed descriptions of things like the scenes a character sees, the sounds they hear, and the temperatures and sensations they feel with their skin. I was particularly focused on those points when adapting this work.

The time I spent writing was mostly occupied by the protagonist, Yoshiki Tsujinaka (I used the kanji for his name in the Japanese version for better visual recognition and readability), so it was almost like my writing process was spent entirely in conversation with him.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the destination of his casual glances, picking up on the true intentions lurking within his subtle expressions, and exploring how he might perceive the world beyond the manga’s panels and story. It was a lot, but also very fun.

Also, one memory from this project that’s stayed with me is when I asked the original author, Mokumokuren, about the color of Hikaru’s “insides.” The reply I got was, “There’s no clear color, but it’s a hue that would wear away at your sanity just by looking at it,” and after that, I remember thinking, Oh, this is where a novelist can really show off their skills.

If you happen to be reading this afterword before starting the main story, I encourage you to pay attention to Hikaru’s “insides.”

I was debating with myself on how to close out this afterword, but it looks like the latest chapter of The Summer Hikaru Died just went up, so I think I’ll end things here.

This adaptation ends in the middle of the story, and there’s a lot more to go, so I hope to see you all again.