“Waah, I’m starving! How ’bout we stop for yoshigyuu 
on the way home?” a student called to his friend in the row diagonally in front of him before the bell signaling the end of classes had even stopped ringing.
Jouhoku High: Year Two Group Three. Their last class on Saturday was Modern Japanese. The male student ‘with a rough look in his eyes’ who had spoken at the same time as their teacher, Yoshikane, stepped off the platform was seated directly behind the window.
“You don’t have Club today, right? Let’s eat on the way home!”
“Fine with me, but don’t you have work?”
“At two. So I have time.”
“A gas station near the Matsumoto Interchange , you said, right? It doesn’t really matter to me, but have you reported it?”
“You didn’t let it leak, did you?”
“Stop being so careless. What if you got called in again?”
“It’s not gonna kill me,” Ougi Takaya said, grabbing his very light bag.
After school on a tranquil Saturday.
The weather had cleared in what might be called a break in the rainy season, and the sun shone down into the schoolyard. Students passed each other on their way home and to their afternoon club activities. Narita Yuzuru would normally have been in the latter group, but since the wind ensemble had performed a concert last week, he had today off.
“Hey Yazaki! Wanna come too?” Takaya called to Yazaki Tooru in the desk in front of him.
“Sorry, I gotta go home right after school today.”
“That’s pretty rare of you.”
“Oh, stuff it. I’m the manager for Aoyama-sama this year, so I gotta help out with this ’n that.”
“Aaaah, it’s already that time of year?”
Jouhoku High was a school located in Matsumoto, Nagano Prefecture, a scenic, history-rich city built at the foot of Matsumoto Castle.
Yazaki’s family ran a tofu shop with a pedigree as an upstanding merchant house stretching back to the Edo Period.
Aoyama-sama was the Lantern Festival held every year around this time. A tradition particular to this region was the Children’s Festival, where children carrying a shrine of cedar leaves paraded through the city.
“Aoyama-sama—that’s where you‘d chant ’wasshyoi korashyoi’...huh? I did that a long time ago—...”
Matsumoto had been much refined in recently years. The areas around Karuizawa were greatly changed in this same Shinshuu of old, but it had many more stylish shops and was a popular gathering place for the local young people. Even so, the old corrugated iron fences at its street corners were in good repair, perhaps because a balance had always existed in this castle town between the preservation of old traditions and the absorption of new ideas...at least, that was what their Social Studies teacher, who also taught Local History, claimed. Takaya didn’t know whether it was true or not, but well, from his end it certainly seemed that way.
“Yeah, that’s right. And besides, our neighborhood association’s gonna be one of the ‘lead’ groups putting together this year’s Bon-Bon.”
“No way, really? You’re leading?”
“Oh no, what should I do? It’s cleared up! I thought we were gonna suspend Club today!” A shrill voice suddenly crested over them from behind, and Takaya turned. It was Morino Saori, who was a member of the Tennis Team.
“Hey, Ooougi-kun, are you carrying any sunscreen? Sunscreen!”
“What? Why the hell would I be carrying sunscreen?”
“Augh! Matsumoto has strong ultraviolet rays, so I don’t want to get sunburned!”
“You sound like an old woman!”
Matsumoto, at the foot of the Northern Alps, was 600 meters above sea level, with accordingly stronger UV rays.
“Oh, sure. A crude guy like you wouldn’t care whether they’re ultraviolet or infrared rays, huh?”
“I don’t wanna hear that from you.”
“Whatever. So is your amnesia cured? Have you remembered Chiaki-kun yet?”
Takaya gave a long-suffering sigh. “Yeah, yeah, I remember.”
“What’s with that attitude? I don’t care either way, but you’re the teachers’ prime suspect for breaking the glass that other night.”
“What?!” Takaya gave her a cold glare.
“They’re saying it was retaliation for you being called into the principal’s office. I wouldn’t put it past you, Ougi-kun.”
Takaya groaned, forehead creasing. That put him in a bind; he hadn’t broken the glass, but he also couldn’t say that it had nothing at all to do with him.
“Don’t worry. I’ll vouch for your alibi.”
“Wh...what alibi, Yuzuru...”
“If they suspect you, then I’ll say that you were with me, and we were investigating the Kasuke Uprising together.”
“Oh...ah, yeah, that’s right. Hahahah.”
Yuzuru smiled effortlessly in response to Takaya’s spastic laughter.
“Yeesh, I guess it’s okay since I can’t really ride my bike during the rainy season anyway, but how much d’you think the repairs will cost?”
It was around noon, so the gyuudon shop was filled with truck drivers and a crowd from nearby Shinshuu University. Looking sideways at Takaya grumbling over his lunch, Yuzuru smiled with a mixture of sympathy and censure.
“Because you had to go and get into that weird stoplight race.”
“Dammit. My GSX...”
Trying to think of suitable condolences for Takaya, who was crying into his bowl of gyuudon, Yuzuru put up his chopsticks and rested his elbows on the counter.
“But I’m so glad that we were able to return Kasuke-san and the others to normal...”
It had happened just days before.
A strange onryou riot had occurred at Jouhoku High School. The spirits of the vanguard of an uprising that had occurred in Matsumoto more than two hundred years ago had appeared at Jouhoku High. They were the spirits of Tada Kasuke and twenty-seven others, called the Joukyou Selfless—so named because they led a protest around the middle of the Edo Period against higher annual taxes and were met with oppression from the government and executed. They had been spirits filled with bitterness.
Since the Kasuke had become a danger to the students, Takaya and company had reluctantly decided to exterminate the spirits. Accordingly, they had ventured into the school in the dead of night and in the end managed to resolve the situation and calm the Kasuke.
“They were never evil to begin with...” Takaya looked down with teacup in hand. “I’m not gonna let him get away with it.”
(Mori Ranmaru...)
Takaya’s blood still boiled at the thought. The courageous souls of the Kasuke had been used. In an attempt to kill him.
(Because I’m supposed to be Kagetora...)
“Hey Takaya, let’s pay a visit to the graves of the Kasuke at Nakagaya?”
Takaya lifted his head in surprise. “A grave visit?”
“Yeah. It looks like everybody’s heard about Kasuke-san, so I was thinking about volunteering to go on a grave visit after finals. It wouldn’t take that long to get to Nakagaya by electric rail.”
He had to work at his part-time job every day during the break after exams, but...
“Azumino, huh...?”
In elementary school, he had visited the landmarks of the Kasuke Uprising during a local history social studies field trip. A Shinto shrine and museum dedicated to the Joukyou Selfless were located at Nakagaya.
“Maybe I should see if I can go along too...”
“If you’re not going to eat your ginger, give it to me.”
“Huh?...Oh, sure.”
Yuzuru reached over with his chopsticks and picked the red-pickled ginger out of Takaya’s bowl. Takaya heaved a big sigh.
(I wonder if Naoe’s okay....)
In order to suppress the Kasuke, Takaya, Naoe, and Ayako had entered the school in the deep night. They’d been trapped in Mori Ranmaru’s kyuuryoku-kekkai, and Naoe had been seriously injured by a shower of glass shards lancing into his back.
(To protect me...) He had literally substituted his body for Takaya’s. (Because he...wanted to protect me or something...)
“Somebody die in your gyuudon or something?” Takaya, startled by a now-familiar sarcastic voice, turned to see a young man dressed in Jouhoku High’s uniform plopping down in the seat next to him.
He was a rather handsome young man with stylish glasses and longish hair tied into a ponytail.
“Ch-Chiaki, dammit—!”
“Gyuudon, large, with broth! Oh, and egg!”
“One large, with broth and egg!” One of the restaurant’s assistants repeated in a louder voice.
Takaya ground out, “Why the hell are you loitering around in our uniform?!”
“What kinda greeting is that? I have some free time, so I thought I’d go to school.”
“The Kasuke and Ranmaru are both gone!”
“But school’s fun.”
This was the zashikiwarashi who had slipped into Jouhoku High by some strange, murky method. Chiaki Shuuhei—Yasuda Nagahide—was now quite thoroughly settled in Matsumoto.
“Chiaki, you live by yourself, don’t you? Pretty comfy, aren’t you?” Yuzuru asked with unreserved frankness.
“Yeah, living alone is great. I can watch porn all I want, stay out all night and come home in the morning. Having a guardian is pretty painful, isn’t it, Ougi-kun.”
Takaya was just a bit envious of the porn.
“Come over for some fun tonight, Ougi.”
“I’m not going, idiot.”
“You can watch porn all you want.”
“No way. Really?”
“Nope!” was the immediate reply.
“Fine then.”
Chiaki’s large serving of gyuudon arrived, and he dug in.
“That was great. Oh, Haruie left this for you.”
Standing, Chiaki flipped a coin over to Takaya with his thumb. What fell into Takaya’s hand was a 500-yen coin.
“Consolation for breaking your bike. That’ll treat for the gyuudon. Incidentally, it’ll cover mine, too. I’ll come pick you up tonight.”
“Hey, wait! I’m not going! You don’t need to come pick...me...hey, Chiaki!”
Chiaki walked out of the restaurant airily with a toothpick in his mouth.
Next to the dumbfounded Takaya, Yuzuru said with some sarcasm, “I did not need to know that it’s because you have Miya-chan at home...”
Takaya became even more dejected.
The gasoline station on Saturday afternoon operated in a state of controlled chaos. Situated before the Matsumoto Interchange , it was a frequent stopping place for cars heading for the highway, among them many licenses from out of the prefecture.
“A bit more, a bit more...okay, right there! Thanks for visiting!”
Takaya liked his part-time job at the gasoline station. He didn’t mind the smell of gasoline and oil; in fact, he found it rather calming. Washing cars in the middle of winter was painful, but at least he didn’t have a cramp from a “professional smile” as he would from working somewhere like a fast food restaurant. Running around the busy station was work suited to his character. Most importantly, he could look at the various cars and motorcycles. Like when a corps of touring Harleys had descended on the station just a few days earlier—he’d gotten so involved in a conversation with them that he’d been scolded by his supervisor.
“Regular, full tank!”
“Can you check my air pressure too?”
“Thanks for waiting!” Takaya said, carrying the gas nozzle to a woman customer standing beside a red Legacy with a license number from outside the prefecture. “Here is your 5000 and 900-yen change. Where are you headed for?”
“I want to get to the train station from here—it is okay if I make a right turn, then go straight?”
"Hmm—... You should follow the right lane after the turn. At the Nagisa Str...er, let’s see, at the Number 19 intersection , the straight lane merges with the right-turn lane. It’s easy for people to make a wrong turn around there the first time.
For Takaya, his part-time jobs were much more fulfilling than school clubs or activities, though he couldn’t exactly call his school experience inspiring. (He had always looked older than his age, and people mistook him for a college student quite often.) He could already tell whether the gas tank door was positioned on the left or right side of the car by its make and model, and checking tire pressure and changing the oil were jobs he could now handle flawlessly. He was learning to maintain his own motorcycle, and getting a lot of information from the older car and motorcycle fans working at the station—it was killing two birds with one stone.
(If only schoolwork was like this...)
One of the more senior part-timer workers called out to Takaya as he saw the customer’s car out of the station.
“Ougi, you coming this Monday evening?”
“Evening? I wasn’t scheduled, but...”
“Sorry, but I was wondering if you could fill in for me? I have some urgent business...”
“That’s fine. I’m free from four.”
Another car had entered the station during their exchange. Takaya ran a bit to greet it.
“The first stall inside is free. ...you!”
“Well done, young man.”
The head which popped out of the driver’s seat window was...
Chiaki Shuuhei’s!
“Y-y-y-you, Chiaki! What’s with that superior look? And how come you’re driving that car!”
“What? What’s the fuss?”
“You’re a high school student, aren’t you?”
“Me? I’m nineteen.”
“Liar.”
“Sour grapes, huh? Fill ’er up with regular, okay? Oh, and can you wipe the windows with a new towel? I don’t want a dirty towel touching my Leopard-chan’s face.”
Though Takaya was annoyed, he couldn’t pay Chiaki back in kind while he was a customer (and other customers were watching), so he could only grudgingly begin working.
“Well? When do you finish?”
“Nine.”
“Hum. Then I’ll wait for you at the family restaurant over there.”
“What?! Did you really come to pick me up?”
“Of course, General.” He blew Takaya a kiss. “Hurry up and finish.”
Takaya suddenly felt completely drained.
He was a total idiot for being tempted by porn videos...
Takaya could only regret that fact with soul-deep remorse. Chiaki had brought Takaya to his apartment after work. Instead of porn, what awaited the exhausted Takaya was the glory of a Spartan training course...
“All right. Naoe told me that I have to push you hard until you regain your «powers». That means that I’m gonna give you some special training starting today. We’re starting out with a crash-course in nendouryoku!”
He had a bad feeling about this just looking at Chiaki’s gleeful face, but—
(Jackpot.)
It was the same ‘training’ he’d seen a long time ago in a children’s magazine he’d loved, which had a real-life ESP-development corner: moving a coin dangling from a chopstick without touching it with your hand.
“What the hell? This training’s totally dull.”
“Then let’s see you do it. Here.”
How the hell was he supposed to move it? Chiaki, with another gleeful grin, said, “Like this”—and immediately the coin began to revolve in large circles on its string. Takaya was impressed by this simple act.
“Woah, it’s really turning.”
“Now you do it.”
Clonk.
“Not like that. Picture it in your mind. Imagine it.”
Clonk.
“You can’t do it at all, huh?”
Clonk.
“Stop muttering.”
“Then move it!”
Irritation built in Takaya when he couldn’t even do this simple trick used to fool children. They got into a huge brawl which had the next-door neighbors complaining before he even managed to make any progress, and they were chased out of the building by the management.
“That’s why I told you that I’m not Kagetora!” Takaya spat out, sitting cross-legged in front of a convenience store.
Though he thought it quite natural that he couldn’t perform nendouryoku, it still pissed him off that Chiaki would show off like that in front of him. It added to his dejection and made him feel like running away.
“Everybody and his sister says Kagetora this, Kagetora that. But like I said, I’m not him. Just because I did «choubuku» a time or two—so what? It was just an accident. Under those circumstances anyone...”
“I don’t wanna believe an idiot like you turned out to be Kagetora either.”
“Feh. That’s a bit excessive.”
“Humph. If you’re gonna grumble, I can tell you a thing or two. I don’t see why I gotta trouble myself with you. And just when I got a comfortable life, too.”
“It’s not like you had to come. Besides, you were Kagetora’s enemy, weren’t you?”
“That was more than four hundred years ago.”
“... Whatever. I heard that Naoe and the others perform kanshou on babies, but that’s not true for you, is it? You snatched that body away from someone by force, didn’t you?”
“... And what if that’s true?”
“I won’t forgive you,” Takaya replied immediately, his profiled illuminated for a moment by the red break lights of a car entering the parking lot. “That’s how Shingen almost robbed Yuzuru of his body. So if that’s true, then I won’t forgive you.”
Chiaki, looking at Takaya’s fierce eyes, suddenly poked him in the forehead.
“Ow!”
“That’s a speech you should save for when you can use your «powers»,” Chiaki said, and stood. “Even if you’re not Kagetora, we’ll take anyone with the firepower. Well, it’d certainly make Naoe happy to have someone filling in for Kagetora.”
Takaya sighed. Naoe was a total smarty-pants too, but whether it be Chiaki or Ayako, anyone would probably develop something of an attitude after living for four hundred years.
(Yeah, yeah, I’m the cub here.)
He looked up at the night sky, feeling strangely abject. Scorpio’s red star twinkled directly above the castle hill.
Monday morning was the pits.
Still drained from working at his part-time job on Saturday and Sunday, Takaya was sleeping late as usual. In addition to his difficulty with getting up, he had detested Physics as the first period of the day today. There was nothing was more depressing than that. He rushed into the Physics classroom at the last minute, stomach rumbling—happily, the teacher had not yet arrived. However, the students seemed to be in a strange mood.
“Oh, Takaya! Over here!”
Yazaki and others were standing with Yuzuru near the heater by the window. They waved at him when they saw him come in.
“What’s everyone making a fuss about?”
“Nothing good. It appeared again.”
“Appeared? What?”
“A ghost.”
Takaya scowled. “A ghost...it couldn’t be...”
“It was seen last Saturday, too. It was in the girls’ locker room this time.”
“You were peeping?”
“No! Idiot. They said that it was a girl wearing a white kimono.”
“A white kimono?” Takaya asked, his brows knitting. The Kasuke had all been wearing white as well.
“It sounds like the students who went back to the locker room after their club activities saw it. For some reason, the clothes they left in there were all totally soaked.”
There had been considerable distress. At first they had suspected a malfunction in the sprinkler system, but they had found no trace of water on the floor.
“Woah, really? Sounds like the real thing.”
“Could there be a child of the Kasuke who still can’t rest in peace?”
“Couldn’t be. Because I’m sure we...” he trailed off, realizing that he had no proof that all of them had been there at the time. There certainly might be others.
“Yo.” Chiaki Shuuhei raised his hand from the door and walked in.
Greeting him with only a “good timing”, Takaya told Chiaki about what had happened.
“Here again? Those ingrates.” Chiaki wasn’t being quite serious. “There shouldn’t be anything left at this school. If one of them had remained, Haruie or I would’ve noticed a long time ago.”
“Then what’s going on?”
“Rise!”
Akasaka, the Physics teacher, entered. The ghost problem would have to wait until after class.
“Hmmmmm. So I was right,” Chiaki groaned softly as he opened a book in front of the Local History shelves. It was the noon break. Takaya and the others were, on this rare occasion, in the school library.
“Look. Here.”
The book Chiaki was holding had material concerning the Kasuke Uprising.
“This is about the people who were executed. As I thought, there were only boys, no girls.”
Only one female had been executed in the Kasuke Uprising—“Jun”, the daughter of Oana Zenbee. It had been an exception; apparently it was because she had served in the important post of a government messenger. They took a look at Dekawara, which had also been an execution ground, but there were no women listed there either.
“They would’ve executed the boys to extinguish the family line, so there wouldn’t’ve been any point in including baby girls.”
“Then what’s going on now?”
“Mmmm. It probably doesn’t have anything to do with the Kasuke Uprising.” Chiaki closed his book with a thud. “...Maybe they’re spirits who were here originally and became active after being stimulated by the Kasuke. Investigating the sightings at the actual site ASAP would be the best thing to do at this point.”
Unfortunately, the site in question was the girls’ locker room.
“Should we call that lady—Haruie or whatever?”
“It really hasn’t gotten to that point yet. And a suggestion would be a lot of trouble as well. We need someone who can go inside—maybe ask one of the girls for help?”
They pondered the question. Large eyes peered in at them through the gaps of the opposite bookshelf, and a voice said: “There he is, there he is! Ougi-kun!” Morino Saori stepped out from behind it.
“Perfect timing, Morino. Look...”
“I’ve been looking all over for you, Ougi-kun!”
“? What?”
“It appeared again!” Saori screamed, forgetting that they were in a library. “The ghost! We saw it again!”
“What!”
They galloped after Saori towards the girls’ locker room on the second floor of the gym.
When they arrived, the Fourth Period PE students were milling around outside, still in their uniforms. The PE teachers were clamoring about “somebody’s prank”.
“Sorry, ’scuse me.” Chiaki and the others, adopting the manner of detectives, pushed their way through the crowd of curious onlookers to the front. The female students were indeed holding uniforms which were drenched through. Strangely enough, only the uniforms were wet; neither the floor nor desks were even moist, and there were no signs of a dried leak on the ceiling.
“It’s weird! Because they got dripping wet when we started folding them!”
And it certainly didn’t seem as if someone had dipped the uniforms one by one into a tub of water.
“...What’d you think, Chiaki?”
Chiaki performed a spiritual sensing, eyes narrowing behind his glasses. Then he suddenly pushed his way into the crowd of excited young women.
“Ack, wai... Chiaki-kun!”
He looked around. The spirit was no longer there. He picked up the uniform lying on the nearest desk. Ah. Water dripped from the sodden cloth. It reeked faintly, as if the water were not fresh, but had come from a pond in which algae and other things grew...
Yuzuru seemed to sense something at the same time.
“...Takaya...! I hear singing.”
“What?”
Takaya strained to hear it. Though he didn’t believe that there was a ghost at all, he could certainly hear something mixed up in the general confusion: a child’s delicate voice.
(What kind of a song is...?)
It appeared that Chiaki also heard it: a girl’s voice singing a plaintive melody that Chiaki didn’t know. It, too, vanished not long after.
“Feh. I couldn’t catch it.”
Chiaki noticed the distant expressions on Takaya and Yuzuru’s faces when he returned. They apparently knew something of the song.
“Do you guys know what song that was?”
“... The Bon-Bon,” Takaya replied in surprise. “That’s a song of the Bon-Bon.”
The Bon-Bon? Chiaki tilted his head quizzically.