Honoo no Mirage

Chapter 4: Omen

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Chapter 4: Omen

The next morning. Yuzuru had arrived at school earlier than usual to take care of some tasks for his club. He greeted Takaya, who had gotten there just barely in time, in their cla.s.sroom. “Good morning, Takaya! You’re safe by the skin of your teeth!”

“Mornin’.” Takaya’s brows were drawn, and he looked rather wan. Yuzuru peered at him dubiously.

“What’s the matter?”

“Just...a hangover. I should’ve known not to mix drinks.”

“You all right? You drank too much, didn’t you?”

“When I got home I got yelled at by Miya. Yesterday was not fun.”

He sat down and sprawled across his desk. He didn’t want to look weak, but for some reason he was really feeling it now. Takaya gave it some serious thought.

(... Maybe I’ve caught something.)

“Oh, Chiaki, good morning!”

“Chiaki?”

Takaya raised his head in reaction to that name and suddenly whacked his head against something hard.

“Ow! Who the h.e.l.l...”

“You shouldn’t drink like that when you’re underage!”

“Hmph...!”

He looked up sharply to see Chiaki Shuuhei’s handsome, bespectacled face.

“Good morning, Ougi-kun.”

“d.a.m.n you... How dare you so casually...”

“So has your amnesia been cured yet?”

Glaring at Chiaki sitting in the seat in front of him, he replied sullenly, “For your information, I don’t remember a d.a.m.ned thing.”

“Hmmm...I seeee...” Chiaki grinned. “You must really resent me or something if you forget your peerless best buddy like this, huh?”

“Why would I resent you if I’ve never met you before?”

“Eh, whatever. Anyway, you got a.s.signed Fundamental a.n.a.lysis for Second Period.”

“Ugh!” Takaya exclaimed. “When’d that happen?”

“Since you weren’t there for First Period yesterday.”

“Yoshikawa, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d! Stop a.s.signing me work when I’m not here...!”

So this was the truant teacher’s retaliation. Chiaki chuckled too familiarly and rested his chin on his hands on the desk.

“Wanna see my notes?”

“No thanks.”

“Stop being so high and mighty. The one you got is an applications problem, number three. It’s super-convoluted—you’d never be able to get it.”

Takaya glared at Chiaki, annoyed. This face with its air of maturity, fringed with soft hair, framed with eye gla.s.ses that lent him an intellectual look—and indeed, he seemed to have the brains to match, but—

(I totally do not know this guy.)

“I dunno what you want, but stop bothering me with every little thing. Just looking at your mug completely p.i.s.ses me off.”

“Woah. Completely...huh?” Smiling thinly, Chiaki added, “... Have you really forgotten me?”

“?”

Takaya gazed back at Chiaki, sensing some strange hidden meaning in his tone. Chiaki only looked at him, doubtful eyes narrowed behind his gla.s.ses. Takaya asked without thinking, “Just what the h.e.l.l are you?”

“Is that something you say to a friend?” Chiaki gave a low laugh. “At least, we’ve kept each other company for quite a while.”

“Quit joking! Quite a while? Like I remember any—” Takaya started to say, and stopped. He didn’t remember anything like that? No...

(No, that’s not...quite it.)

A strange sort of feeling brushed against his mind. It was not a sense of having been friends—no, that wasn’t quite it. Rather, it was the feeling that they had been together. It was not a clear memory, nothing concrete, but he felt like they had been together from a very long time before. It was...

(What is this?)

“Anyway, have you heard, Ougi?”

“? Heard what?”

“That they appeared again in the north school building.”

“Appeared? What did?”

Chiaki dangled his hands in front of him and replied, “You mean you haven’t? They say that ghosts caused a big uproar over there.”

“Ghosts? So, what’d they do?”

“What, you don’t know?”

Takaya’s reaction was probably a killjoy for Chiaki, who threw up his hands and leaned back in place against the wall.

“It was yesterday after cla.s.s, around 6:30. Looks like there was this big commotion because ghosts appeared in the north school building. They were violent here and there, too. It also happened four, five days ago. People are making a huge fuss about it right now.”

Takaya leaned forward. “Were there really ghosts?”

“Geez. Everybody’s been talking about it. There were people there from this cla.s.s, too. People who saw it.”

Now that he thought about it...

He actually did remember the girls clamoring about something like that two, three days ago. He’d thought it was just the usual thing, and hadn’t paid any attention to it. Some of the students who did club activities seemed to have gained some fame because of it.

“There’s a very strange air around that school.”

Naoe’s words came to mind. And now multiple ghost sightings had occurred in the school.

(Is that what he meant?)

“Well, a thickheaded guy like you probably wouldn’t’ve noticed even if it’d hit you on the back of the head.” Chiaki teased in a light, sarcastic tone with a sidelong glance at Takaya. “Anyway, why don’t you give the ghosts some thought too? Since you probably have some time to spare in that empty head of yours?”

“b.a.s.t.a.r.d...”

“Oops, there’s the bell. Seeya,” Chiaki said, and walked to the rear. He exchanged friendly greetings with Yuzuru on the way and sat down in a seat in the back row. A seat which had certainly not existed the day before yesterday.

(Just what the h.e.l.l is that b.a.s.t.a.r.d?)

A suspicious character, without a doubt. If Takaya’s unease around him was justified, then just what was this person who called himself Chiaki?

(“Zashikiwarashi”?)

Could he be called a phantom?

(Why is this happening?)

He had no idea at all.

And in any case, why was he the only one who could see through the pretense? Was it really because...

(Because I’m Kagetora?)

Though he didn’t know whether there was any connection. But if he thought about it another way, he did have the feeling that there had been a time in which he’d known Chiaki. Well, he’d been seeing a lot of strange things since he’d met Naoe, but what was the explanation for this?

(I don’t know!)

“Ougi. Is Ougi absent?”

“Ack...! No, I’m here,” he heard himself answering the roll-call. The teacher—middle-aged, with a receding hairline—had already come into the room and was standing on the platform.

He carried on down the attendance sheet disinterestedly: “Let’s see, Katou... Kogita...”

He continued reading the names intently in a monotone voice, giving no indication whether he’d heard any of the responses. Takaya began to lay his textbooks out on the desk with a feeling of listlessness. First period was Cla.s.sical Literature.

(Well, but it’s not like I’ll get slapped any worse...)

That was just fine; if he thought about it a bit more, Doronuma was the type who waited. He deliberately saw nothing but defiant intent.

“Tanaka. Taniguchi...”

(So is it a zashikiwarashi this time or what...?)

“Teduka.”

Surprised, Takaya’s hand paused in mid-air with his notes.

His eyes lifted. Taniguchi’s ‘ta’, Teduka’s ‘te’...

Chiaki.

(Chiaki’s name wasn’t there...)

The teacher continued unconcernedly. Takaya turned to look at Chiaki, who was sitting composedly with his arms folded, doing nothing to call attention to himself. None of the other students had noticed that Chiaki’s name had been skipped.

Takaya gazed at Chiaki’s expressionless face from across the room for a moment.

He’s the real thing, he thought.

(I guess that’s decisive enough...)

Takaya’s face was unreadable as he looked at the table for the volleyball teams in his hand. The names of all members of the cla.s.s were laid out on the team roster. Only Chiaki’s name was missing.

Takaya had come to the P.E. teachers’ office after Fourth Period. No attendance-type rosters had Chiaki’s name listed. (And of course Chiaki’s name was never called during attendance. None of the other students noticed this.) For verification, he had come to take a look at the volleyball team charts that had been drawn up just around two weeks ago.

He truly was not there.

(Chiaki really didn’t exist until yesterday.)

But sometime yesterday, when he’d been late, Chiaki had insinuated himself into his cla.s.s. And the other students sensed nothing out of place because they’d somehow had their memories altered or something?

(Actually, I’ve read about something like that.)

Something called ma.s.s hypnotism. A person one hadn’t known just a moment ago could in the next moment become an old friend with a suggestion. He’d heard that it was possible...

But if his cla.s.smates had been hypnotized en-ma.s.s, what was Chiaki’s intention in doing it? And if he wanted to give everyone that suggestion, then why couldn’t he have given Takaya the suggestion as well, even though he’d come late?

(Or did he try to hypnotize me, and I wasn’t affected?)

But if it was true Chiaki hadn’t been there until yesterday, then what was that feeling that he’d had earlier? Had it been because of a suggestion?

In any case, this character called Chiaki Shuuhei—

(Who is he?)

The door opened behind him, and a familiar voice asked, “Oh, Ougi-kun. What are you doing here?”

He turned. Saori and her friends from her club had come in together. Takaya grimaced, as if to say “Here comes the loudmouth.”

“Nothing important.”

“What? You’re still suspicious of Chiaki-kun, aren’t you? Have you gone to the hospital yet?”

“What are you doing here?”

“I have club stuff. Where’s Kawazoe-sensei?”

“Kawazoe went out earlier.”

“Whaaat?” she said, exchanging looks with her friends. Then she seemed to suddenly remember something. “Oh yeah, Ougi-kun, have you heard anything about the ghosts that keep appearing?”

“Huh?” Takaya blinked, and his eyes widened. Of course. Saori had club activities, so she would know about it.

“There were people in our club who saw them too. I didn’t actually see them myself, but I’ve heard about stuff like a desk rattling and collapsing in an empty room, or a faucet turning on by itself, or a florescent light in the corridor just suddenly going out. Oh, and Nakko saw it too!”

And Saori turned to look at her friend, who seemed more afraid of Takaya than of any ghosts. She nodded vigorously.

“What exactly did you see?”

“Ah...um, in the locker room.”

“What?” Takaya asked in a low tone, which nevertheless still seemed to intimidate the female student.

She answered awkwardly in a small voice, “Midway through Club I went back to the locker room for something I’d forgotten. ...Somehow, there was this strange shadow... When I cried out, thinking it was a thief, that person...turned towards me...and...”

“And?”

“It was a blood-stained old man.”

Takaya drew a startled breath.

“Then—...”

“And then he disappeared just like that, right?”

“...Yeah...”

Brows drawn, Takaya growled, “I never wanna meet a guy like that.”

“But there aren’t just male ghosts. In all the stories, there are woman ghosts and child ghosts and ghosts that look just like the common people.”

“The common people? How’s that?”

“I dunno. But in Mito Koumon they take the shape of common people...”

“Like I’d know anything about that.”

“I have a bad feeling, Ougi-kun. Can’t you do something about it?”

“Do something? Like what?”

“You know...” She clutched at him. “Do that extermination thing like you did the other day. The power that you used on those skeleton ghosts. That weird ‘bai’ thing. You can do it, right?”

“Look...”

“n.o.body believed me when I told them about it. It’s true, though. It’s true that you did it...”

And Saori looked at her friends pleadingly, but they only stared back at her with consternation. Takaya gained control of his expression and gave a heart-felt groan. ...Actually, it’d be strange if they did believe her.

“Naoe-san came too, didn’t he? So do it, okay, please? And then everyone will believe me, too...”

“How the heck could I do something like that?”

“Oooooh, Ougi-kuuuun!” Saori wailed miserably, just as the door opened and the members of the soccer club trooped in. One of them was their cla.s.smate, Yazaki.

Noticing them, Yazaki called out, “Oh, Ougi. So you were here.”

“You wanna make something of it?”

“No, I just haven’t seen you since the end of cla.s.ses. Um, I wanted to let you know that Yuzuru’s collapsed, and they’ve carried him to the infirmary.”

“What?!”

The loud shout had come from Saori. “What did you say?!” Her expression changing, Saori gripped Yazaki by the nape of his neck. “Narita-kun! Narita-kun! What’s happened to him?!”

“Ow ow ow! It looks like anemia. They say that Chiaki brought him to the infirmary.”

(Chiaki...?)

Before Takaya had a chance to react Saori had already flown like a shot out the door.

“Narita-kuuuuun! I’m coming noooooow!”

“...”

Takaya gazed after Saori, whose only remaining trace was the echo of her war-cry, and then exchanged weary looks with the others.

“I’m fine, I just felt kinda light-headed. Saying that I collapsed was a bit over the top,” Yuzuru said from the bed, and smiled. Saori, who had galloped to the infirmary, and Takaya, who had followed her, gazed at him worriedly. Speaking of which—Yuzuru had been feeling poorly since two, three days ago. And now, even while he was claiming to be fine, Yuzuru’s face was still white as paper.

“That’s why I told you not to overdo things. This is enough for today; you’re going home. Right?”

“Yeah. The teachers told me that, too. Chiaki’s getting my bag for me right now.”

Takaya crossed his arms and sighed, then took the opportunity to glare at the two people standing next to him. “Well? What’re you guys doing here?”

“We saw you at the entrance hall.”

It was Naoe and Ayako, who’d had the nerve to follow him here.

“That’s not it! I asked what you were doing here at my school!”

“I said that we would stop by today,” Naoe replied curtly, and peered at Yuzuru’s face. “Are you all right, Yuzuru-san?”

“Ahahah... Somehow you always catch me at my worst, Naoe-san,” Yuzuru laughed weakly.

Takaya said to Naoe in a hard voice, “Anyhow, you drove here, didn’t you? You’ll give Yuzuru a ride home in that Benz of yours, right?”

“I will. But it was nice timing, wasn’t it? If you are able to do some preparation, please accompany him to the entrance hall. I will bring the car.”

“Wait a minute, you’re going to drive to the entrance hall?”

“That will be all right, will it not?”

“You’ll totally stand out!”

“Will that be a problem?”

These two would stand out even at the best of times. Takaya had wanted as much as possible to keep people from knowing that he had anything to do with them, but he couldn’t really think up an excuse to stop Naoe. In the end he had to face defeat and stay silent.

“Sure, fine, do whatever you want.”

Naoe and Ayako left the infirmary first.

“What is with that att.i.tude? And you’re doing him a favor, too! Was Kagetora that overbearing too?”

“Show some respect and use ‘sama’.”

“Wasn’t Kagetora much more of a calm, rational, and sensible guy?”

“... Perhaps.” Naoe said in a low, quiet voice, “Though in his previous life (the life before he performed kanshou), he was certainly like this. This Kagetora-sama feels much like that one.”

“? What do you mean?”

“He has returned to his first form.” Naoe looked over his shoulder at the infirmary. “He has sealed the whole of his personality as the Uesugi Kagetora who has lived until this point. It probably isn’t much of an exaggeration to say that he has purified his own external personality. Haruie. This Kagetora-sama is not Uesugi Kagetora, but an ordinary high school student called Ougi Takaya. You must not seek Uesugi Kagetora’s personality in his.”

“... But...”

“In any case,” Naoe turned, cutting Ayako off. “The young man we met today. What have you sensed from him?”

Ayako frowned in concentration. “—If I’m not mistaken, he is no ordinary person, but...”

“You don’t know either?”

“Mm...mm.”

In actuality, it’d been one of the reasons he had come to Matsumoto on this visit. Within their group, Ayako—Kakizaki Haruie—particularly excelled at the spiritual sensing called reisa. In order to unravel the riddle that Kousaka Danjou Masan.o.bu had left him during the previous Takeda Shingen case, he had brought her here to see Narita Yuzuru for herself so that she could do an a.s.sessment in person.

“That ‘Narita Yuzuru’s existence is a threat to the Roku Dou Sekai,’ right? Those are not words to be spoken lightly. I wonder what he meant by them?”

“...I see. So even your powers are not enough...?”

Ayako pouted. “Anyway, it’s hardly surprising that only someone with such uncommonly strong reisa-nouryoku as Kousaka would know. That guy probably knows the previous lives of everyone in the world.”

“That’s an exaggeration, don’t you think?”

“...Well, I suppose not all.” Ayako’s tone took on a trace of seriousness. “But with his level of reisa-nouryoku, it’s not impossible that Kousaka would be able to discern a soul’s «nucleus». At least, he would probably be able to discern the pattern of the soul-nucleus of a person he had known previously even after purification and rebirth. Scary thought, isn’t it?”

Naoe narrowed grave, intense eyes. “So you’re saying that ‘Narita Yuzuru’ is the transfigured rebirth of someone Kousaka knew?”

“I don’t know, but I’m saying that the possibility exists.”

Naoe knuckled his chin thoughtfully.

At the time of a person’s rebirth, their soul underwent purification so that their personality and memories were removed, and the consciousness called ‘self’ was made consistent. The ‘self’, the portion of the soul that formed its «nucleus», alone remained eternally unchanged even through purification.

Ayako’s reisa-nouryoku could only recognize spirits who had not undergone purification, but it was said that there were individuals among those with higher spiritual sensing abilities for whom it was possible to recognize this «soul-nucleus». In any case, though it was not possible to obtain information about a person’s past lives from their «soul-nucleus», the pattern of a «soul-nucleus» could be used as a comparison for a person one knew in the past.

It could be said that though Kousaka Danjou, too, was a kanshousha, his reisa-nouryoku was on a completely different level. This was probably why he was able to see through to Yuzuru’s true self.

(Or could it even be something else entirely...?)

Ayako interrupted Naoe’s thoughts. “Besides that, Naoe...”

“?”

“What’s wrong with this school? This acc.u.mulation of spiritual energy is not ordinary. It’d probably make a sensitive kid feel like running away.”

“Yeah.” Naoe’s voice fell as he replied, “It wasn’t like this when I came here before. It seems that something happened after.”

“It’s because of this aura that that Yuzuru kid’s collapsed. Poor thing. If I had to stay here for a day, my body would probably go strange on me, too.”

“He’s very sensitive, isn’t he? But it is a very malevolent aura. What in the world...?”

Suddenly Naoe turned, and Ayako looked in the same direction. They gazed at the person walking towards them.

It was Chiaki Shuuhei.

The two parties stared at each other for a long moment.

“...”

Without a word, Chiaki looked away from them first and slipped into the infirmary. The expressions on Naoe and Ayako’s faces were equally cold as they gaze after him.

“...Naoe.”

“Yes.”

Naoe’s face was impregnable.

“Yuzuru, I’ve said this before, but there really is something weird going on with you and your body. There must be a connection with this ghost brouhaha somewhere. There just has to be.”

Takaya’s suspicions apparently also leaned in that direction. Chiaki had returned with Yuzuru’s bag, and Yuzuru began to prepare to leave with willing haste.

“That again? Maybe. But I also think that it could just be that I’m tired.”

“Stop being so obtuse. Jeez, this strong spiritual sensitivity thing is so much trouble.”

Chiaki interjected from one side, “Easy for you to say, when you walk around wearing dullness like a uniform.”

“What the h.e.l.l? So are you saying that you have strong spiritual sensitivity too?”

“...”

Suddenly looking innocent, Chiaki crossed out the infirmary’s registered name with a ballpoint pen. Saori, who’d been acting like a grown up until that point, shouted, “Oooougi-kun!”

“Woah, geez, you surprised me.”

Saori grabbed Takaya’s collar. “Wait wait wait! Who is that woman? That woman with Naoe, who is she?!”

“She was here yesterday, too...”

“Lover? Friend? I’m gonna go crazy if you say wife!”

“Look...”

“His cousin, right?” Yuzuru answered unexpectedly. Takaya goggled at him.

“Huh?”

“She gives me that feeling. If Takaya and Naoe-san are cousins, then she is too, right? Your auras feel alike.”

“Yuzuru...”

“Hmm. Speaking of which...”

Yuzuru turned to Chiaki, who was standing in front of the desk.

“Chiaki. Something about you...is like Naoe-san, too.”

“...”

Chiaki’s eyes raised for a moment to gaze at Yuzuru, before falling back to his notes.

“Must be your imagination.”

Takaya looked dubious.

“Anyway, we should go and wait for them, right? Let’s hurry?”

“Yeah, okay. Oh, Takaya,” Yuzuru said, and extended several sheets of paper he extracted from his bag. It was the score for a wind instrument. “Can you deliver this to Hatayama in First Year, Group Five? I was planning to give it to him at noon practice today, so I didn’t go earlier. I can take it to him now, but I don’t want to keep Naoe-san waiting.”

“Sure, it’s fine. Hatayama’s the one I met yesterday? That half-j.a.panese guy—...?”

“Yeah.” Yuzuru smiled a bit. “Can you get it to him by the end of the day?”

Just as Takaya reached out to take the score from Yuzuru—

The lone flower vase behind them fell.

“!”

They turned reflexively at the same time. The flower from the broken vase lay cruelly mangled upon the floor. For a moment the infirmary room was still as death.

“Ah...oh no. What was that just now?” Saori muttered, just as the large broom behind them crashed to the floor. A sudden rush of cold air enveloped them.

“...Takaya...” Yuzuru said hoa.r.s.ely. “Something...is here.”

“Huh?”

Crack! The light bulb in the mobile medical-use light stand next to Takaya shattered. The pens on the table stood on their ends before flying into the air. The framed oil painting hanging on the wall screeched as it tilted, and the shelves all simultaneously fell over.

Takaya concentrated on the surrounding aura cautiously. Saori was hiding behind his back. Yuzuru, still as a statue, was hardly breathing, and Chiaki stood rigid guard as well.

(Something’s here...?)

He reached a hand behind him to grab a book to throw.

(A spirit?)

“Takaya.”

He turned at Yuzuru’s sharp voice. In a corner of the room.

A woman stood there in a white kimono, her hair matted and disheveled.

“Aaaaah!” Saori started screaming b.l.o.o.d.y murder. “Ougi-kun, a ghost! It’s a ghost! Get her! Do that ‘bai’ thing! Come on!”

“Um... Yeah but...I forgot how...”

“No way...”

The woman’s pale face was framed by a mess of black hair that spilled down her kimono. Blood flowed from the area around her neck, and her chin was half-mutilated. She gazed over at them out of dark, bitter-seeming eyes. Takaya tensed and clutched his book more firmly.

“Ougi,” Chiaki said, his voice full of command. “Don’t move. I don’t think she will do any harm.”

“Huh...?”

Takaya’s gaze turned to Chiaki, and he put the book down. Saori, behind him, was earnestly chanting a Buddhist prayer. Takaya turned around to face the female ghost once more.

“What is it you want to say?”

The ghost looked at them out of lifeless eyes.

“If there’s something you want to say, then try to say it, lady.”

Though her mouth opened partly, the ghost did not respond. He asked carefully, with even more intensity, “What do you want to say?”

Without replying the ghost faded away with a soft rustling sound from her feet upward. Almost simultaneously the chatter of voices from the school returned, and the cold air disappeared.

“What...what was thaaaaat! That thing just now!”

“Takaya.”

“...yeah.”

At Yuzuru’s side, Takaya gazed at the place where the ghost had stood. Suddenly his eyes swung to Chiaki. Chiaki was also glaring at that spot with a terrible expression on his face.

Takaya slowly folded his arms.

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