As a result of the succession of strange phenomenon, that afternoon the second-floor gym locker rooms were made off-limits for the time being.
“What is the Bon-Bon?”
Takaya and Chiaki had slipped out of their afternoon classes and were seated on the concrete ledge jutting out of a section of the rooftop passageway.
Takaya answered, “The Bon-Bon is one of Matsumoto
’s old festivals. ...But actually, the Matsumoto Bon-Bon is something entirely different.”
“Matsumoto Bon-Bon? What’s that?”
“It’s more of a carnival held by the people of the city every year on the first Saturday in August.”
It had all begun around twenty years ago: a new festival called the “Matsumoto Bon-Bon”, a sing-and dance-along; the people of the city collected into “teams” and danced through the city in parades similar to the Awa Dance Festival or the Yosakoi Festival. Riding on the Yosakoi boom of recent years, various organizations formed teams and participated in an “everyone join in and work together” environment. Takaya, who disliked rules and was not very good at following them, was always bored when the day of the festival came around.
"It only borrows that name. The real ‘Bon-Bon’ is a more serious festival. The Lantern Festival has been called ‘Aoyama-sama’ and ‘Bon-Bon’ since the old days—it’s a children’s festival. The old neighborhood associations still hold it. The boys carry a shrine on their shoulders—the ‘Aoyama-sama’, and the girls wear yukatas and sing while walking in procession with red paper lanterns—the ‘Bon-Bon’.
Takaya had been born and raised in Matsumoto. Before moving into his current apartment, he had lived in an old part of the city with its own lineage and neighborhood association, so he was quite familiar with the ‘Aoyama-sama’ and ‘Bon-Bon’.
“And that was the Bon-Bon song. ‘Oh, the Bon-Bon is only today and tomorrow. The day after tomorrow—the bride’s dried grass’...”
‘Place the withered grass upon the scaffold
Seen from below, the peony blossom
The peony blossom blooms and scatters
The flower of compassion blooms only now
The flower of compassion, HOI HOI.’
The song Takaya hummed was unmistakably the plaintive melody that they had heard in the locker room earlier.
“The white yukata could be a white burial robe. But why would it be in a place like that?”
And why in the world had all the clothes become soaking wet?
They looked over the tops of the ginkgo trees in the courtyard toward the gym.
“...Want to try and call it out after class?”
“The spirit? Nah, I’ll pass. I’ve got work.”
“Feh. What’s more important: onryou choubuku or your part-time job?”
“My job.”
Chiaki groaned. The old Kagetora would immediately have answered, “Choubuku”.
He placed a hand on Takaya’s shoulder.
“I can’t believe you’ve changed this much...”
“What’s with that pitying tone?”
“All right, all right. You go and earn your pocket money. I’ll investigate the ghost.”
And so Chiaki and Takaya were drawn into another onryou outbreak at Jouhoku High.
Was he really Kagetora?
Chiaki had crept into the blocked-off girls’ locker room.
The ghost had only appeared in this one place, and probably had something to do with ‘female garments’. To make sure, Chiaki had come with some training-wear he‘d just borrowed from Saori. (He’d asked Takaya first, but the selfish lout had told him ’that’s disgusting’. So he’d asked Saori, and she had immediately agreed.) He placed the clothes on the desk and sat down in front of the lockers, cola in hand, to wait for the ghost to appear. Takaya had sure disappeared in a hurry. Well, not that it really mattered right now, since the ghost certainly hadn’t hurt anyone by making some clothes wet...
This Kagetora was so mind-bogglingly different, Chiaki half-sighed with amazement. Did people really change so much when they lost their memories?
(But then again, if he’d been this irresponsible, he probably wouldn’t have had to seal those memories in the first place...)
From Chiaki’s viewpoint, Takaya was full of weaknesses; his joy, his sorrow were so many chinks in his armor (though he did seem to be having fun...).
He could hear the sounds of practice from the Kendo Club from the first floor and the bouncing of basketballs reverberated above his head.
(Guess Naoe’s having a hard time, too,) he sympathized. It couldn’t be easy teaching everything over from scratch.
—Or not, Chiaki thought. Naoe might be thankful for those chinks in the armor.
(Forgetting was probably the only way that they could move past a relationship so far beyond mending. —...That’s what it is, I guess.)
Uesugi Kagetora, found after thirty years, was a high school student in Matsumoto, which became the ‘Candy City’ in January. Matsumoto had once been called ‘Salt City’; the origin of this name probably came from the story of how Kenshin came to Takeda’s relief when Imagawa withheld salt from him.
This city in which Shingen had suddenly been revived.
“Revived for good or ill, huh?”
(Takeda...hmm?)
He’d heard that Kagetora had been Shingen’s adopted son in his youth.
The reason for Kagetora’s defeat in the Otate no Ran had had much to do with the fact that Shingen’s son, Katsuyori, had turned on the Houjou, his allies, and changed over to Kagekatsu’s side. Perhaps he had betrayed the great Honjou in the end because he had feared being caught between its might and Kagetora as daimyo of Echigo. Thereafter, with his army decimated by the Houjou, master of the Kantou, his fate had been to be destroyed by Tokugawa.
If he had aided Kagetora instead, the allied clans of Takeda, Uesugi, and Houjou could possibly have overturned history itself.
(So Takeda’s out there somewhere too...huh?)
The Otate no Ran, then, could be called one of history’s crucial turning points. Had it been so fortunate for Uesugi, Houjou, and Takeda that Echigo had not become an outsider’s?
(If Shingen’s so bitter about Takeda’s ruin, he should curse that worthless son of his for not helping Kagetora.)
The revival of Takeda as an onryou meant that he had probably also entered the «Yami-Sengoku». And at the same time taken up a four-hundred-year-old fate with all its threads of obligation.
(Well, it’s none of my business anyway.)
He shifted mental gears back to the problem at hand: the true form of this spirit singing a Bon-Bon song. And it certainly wasn’t out of the question that this was a trap left behind by Ranmaru.
(If Kagetora isn’t here, would the danger just disappear?)
A chill suddenly ran down his back as he placed the empty cola can on the floor.
(It’s coming...!)
He could hear, mingled in with the sounds of physical activity from above and below, a soft singing voice. No mistake about it. It was the girl’s voice from earlier.
A stain appeared on Saori’s training-wear on the table. It gradually spread until the uniform was soaking wet.
The spirit had come.
A white silhouette misted into existence in a corner of the room. Chiaki focused on that spot. He saw something like a red paper lantern, growing gradually clearer.
That’s...?
A girl wearing a white kimono...
A girl who couldn’t be more than a year or two over ten. A cord held up the long sleeves of her kimono, and she was holding a red Chinese lantern flower. She looked—like someone from the Bon-Bon festival.
“Who are you?” Chiaki asked the dead girl. “Why do you make people’s clothes wet? Is there something you want to say? Can you tell me?”
The girl looked at Chiaki dreamily with her pale, blank face.
A closer look revealed that her kimono was soaked through as well, and water dripped from the hem.
The girl’s mouth opened with goldfish-like roundness.
(Huh...?)
Chiaki’s eyes widened at the girl’s words.
«The Lady Princess...is calling...»
Calling?
Who is?
«—The Lady Princess...is calling...from the castle...»
“Yo, Ougi—!”
A familiar face appeared at the gasoline station during Takaya’s shift. It was just past eight P.M. Yazaki slipped into the brilliantly-lit gas station on a silver motor scooter.
“Hey. You got a moped?”
“Eh. It’s easier than a bike. I’m collecting money right now. Gimme a full tank?”
Takaya opened the gas tank cover smoothly, pulled the gas nozzle toward him, and began pumping with familiar ease. Yazaki looked on in admiration.
“You know, about that ghost in the girls’ locker room. She was singing the Bon-Bon song, right?”
Apparently there were students besides Takaya and company who had heard it.
“You worrying about that?”
“Yeeeeah. Actually, I think the area around Jouhoku used to be marshland in the old days.”
“Marshland?” Takaya repeated, extracting the nozzle deftly without spilling a single drop.
"Yeah, a long time ago. They say that the Metoba River used to flow more to the north, and was diverted to the south to protect Matsumoto Castle.
“When’d that happen?”
“Probably in the Edo Period? You know that tiny river next to the school? Daimonzawa River? It used to flow around there.”
Now that he thought about it, the area was full of place names like ‘Fukashi’—‘Deep Aspiration’, and ‘Fukase’—‘Deep Torrents’, which Takaya had also once heard were vestiges of the swampland that used to be here.
“There were ponds here and there left over from the marsh, but it looks like they were filled in so this place could become a residential area. That’s what my granddad said anyway, so there’s no mistake,” Yazaki said. “So this is what I’m thinking: maybe that girl’s from the old school that was there before Jouhoku High was built, and she fell into the swamp and drowned. And she’s singing a Bon-Bon song because, um. Because she fell in right on the day of the festival or something?”
“Huh, so that’s why her clothes are wet?”
“Right?”
If she was a jibakurei who‘d been here from when the area had been a marsh, then perhaps the Kasuke spirits’ riot had given her the stimulus to become active...
Takaya was still busy conjecturing when a more senior co-worker called him loudly. A customer’s car had just entered. Takaya was about to go out and guide the car to a stall when he started. It was a Nissan with a Utsunomiya license that he recognized on sight. The car headed for Takaya on its own.
“High-octane, full tank.”
A man in a black business suit peered out at him from the driver’s seat, and Takaya did a double-take.
“Ack! Naoe!”
“Good evening, Takaya-san.”
“Y-y-y-you! The hell are you doing here again?”
The driver, a handsome man with an air of austere elegance, looked in the black suit as if he had just returned from a funeral or bodyguard duty. Yazaki blinked at Takaya’s language towards this large adult costumer.
“I went to Ueda to see if any sign of movement from Takeda could be detected in Sanada’s domain.”
“How’re your injuries?”
"The stitches have already been removed. Since I was already in Ueda, I thought I might drop in on you; Matsumoto is straight through the Misayama Tunnel .
“Don’t you live in Utsunomiya? An injured man shouldn’t be dropping in on anyone, so you just get on Highway 18 and go home.”
“Oh, but it would be a waste now that I’m already here.”
“Ougi, who is that?”
Takaya and Naoe chorused: ‘My/His cousin.’ Though Yazaki had never heard of someone giving their younger cousin the honorific of ‘san’.
“I have not yet had dinner. Perhaps I could ask you to join me after work? And your friend as well, if he would like?”
“All right!” Yazaki responded, raising his hand.
“Uuuurg,” Takaya groaned, holding his head.
It was forty minutes until the end of his shift. Naoe appeared to be talking with Yazaki in the family restaurant opposite. When Takaya came over after changing out of his gas station attendant uniform back into his school uniform, the two of them were having a frank discussion over after-dinner coffee.
“What evil rumors are you guys spreading?”
“That’s not a very nice thing to say. We were merely chatting.”
He appeared to have gotten quite a lot about Takaya’s school life out of Yazaki. Takaya pushed into Yazaki’s seat and sat down in a huff.
“You guys are the worst.”
“I also heard that you seem to have another ghost disturbance on your hands?”
“Chiaki could probably...” Takaya began, before biting off the rest: “...tell you more about that.”
“Oh? So Tachibana-san knows Chiaki, too?”
“So you heard the Bon-Bon song?”
Takaya noted the quiet expression on Naoe’s face darkening slightly.
“What, is it that?”
“No. I am simply somewhat concerned. Do you know the meaning of the words to the Bon-Bon song?”
“Uuuum. ‘Oh, the Bon-Bon is only today and tomorrow. The day after tomorrow—the bride’s...’ So in other words, because the Lantern Festival is until tomorrow—”
“Yes. I think perhaps it is a song expressing the thoughts of brides in the old days.”
The thoughts of women when they returned to visit their parents on the Bon-Bon. They would traditionally do so on such important dates as the Bon-Bon and the New Year, bearing gifts and food.
“People tend to think that women enter their husbands’ homes when they marry, but in the old days they would frequently return home to help with such things as rice planting and sericulture. I think that this song is probably talking about the relationship between the daughter-in-law and her husband’s mother.”
“So in short, it’s about a woman who stretches her wings in her parents’ home, but is depressed about having to return to her husband’s home where she’s bullied by her mother-in-law?”
“That’s probably right. It’s how I would read it.”
A waiter came by to take his order, and Takaya asked for a coarse-ground pepper steak. He drank from his glass.
“So what’s so significant about lyrics about a bride being bullied by her mother-in-law?”
“Actually, there is another interpretation to the song.”
“Oh,” Yazaki spoke up, pushing back against Takaya, “That? You mean the ghost story?”
“What’s the ghost story?”
“That maybe the song is about the woman who became the human pillar of Matsumoto Castle.”
Takaya stiffened.
“You’re kidding...!”
“No, it’s true! When I was a kid I heard about it from the old ladies in the neighborhood, too. That the Bon-Bon song is to console the woman who became the human pillar of the castle.”
“Liar. Anyway, where is it in the song?”
“The key word here is ‘scaffold’,” Naoe replied, sipping his second cup of coffee. “‘Place the withered grass upon the scaffold’. The scaffold is Matsumoto Castle’s tower. So the alternate meaning is that the human sacrifice is placed as a live offering on the tower’s balcony.”
“Human sacrifice?”
“Yes. A sacrifice to the dragon god. You know that the Metoba River originally flowed to the north of Matsumoto Castle? That’s right. Before the flow was artificially detoured, the castle sat at the delta of the Narai and Metoba rivers. The delta was a swamp, and since the rivers were still unstable, they easily flooded...”
Flood-control was essential for the construction of the castle.
“A human pillar for the construction of the castle and river banks. It may or may not have happened. However, it was said that a live offering was presented to the god of the waters as a prayer to calm the floods—by which I believe they meant the human pillar.”
“Did you see it too?”
“No, I did not see it with my own eyes, but human pillars are usually not put out on display.”
Yazaki gave them another strange look.
“I heard that Ishikawa Clan, who came after Takeda, built Matsumoto Castle’s towers. It couldn’t have been easy for a construction project of that size to take place on such uncertain swamp land. So there are rumors that a human pillar was made for the construction of the towers.”
“So that song isn’t about visiting the parents’ home?”
“That’s correct. It’s a song recalling the pathos of the one about to become the human pillar. The bride is the sacrifice—she is about to become the bride of the god of the waters.”
“You’re joking...”
“The god of the waters is the dragon god. Or possibly a serpent which represents the river. And the bride is the live offering.”
Takaya shivered slightly.
“Originally, the human pillar pointed to some kind of method for building or construction; people were apparently not buried or anything of the sort. Though I’ve never seen the actual thing.”
“So, so does that mean that the spirit of the girl singing the Bon-Bon song was the human pillar?” Yazaki asked, leaning forward.
Takaya declared, pushing him aside, “You guys are thinking too hard. I think it’s a kid who drowned there when that place was a swamp.”
“No! It’s gotta be the human pillar!”
“Oh, shut up!”
Naoe smiled sardonically as he sipped his coffee. “Before anything else, we must do a spiritual sensing. Let us visit that school again on the way back.”
Yazaki, who was supposed to be collecting money, said, “Uh-oh, I’m gonna get scolded” and went home. Takaya and Naoe went back to Jouhoku High.
“Well? Can you sense anything?”
“It’s not like what we had with the Kasuke. But there is certainly something here.”
Takaya, looking up at the dark school buildings, shot Naoe a glare. “It doesn’t matter that much to me, but because of that I’m being treated like I trashed the school.”
“Perhaps a fruit of your usual behavior?”
“You...”
A healthy dose of sarcasm.
“But there is something that concerns me,” Naoe said, and pointed at the street behind them. Takaya, following his indication, turned, and his eyes narrowed.
“That’s...”
A lantern procession.
No, they saw no human figures, only the bright spots of lantern lights lining up in the dark, deserted street and moving in the direction of Matsumoto Castle.
“They’re Bon-Bon lanterns... Could it be...”
Naoe’s face turned grim next to the frozen Takaya. “They are likely heading for Matsumoto Castle.”
The phantom lantern procession advancing toward the castle was endless.
“It’s that song...”
It drifted into Takaya’s hearing, a melancholy melody, the song of the Bon-Bon. There was no sign of the singers, only the voices of a great many people coming out of the darkness.
“It really is...”
“Lady Princess is calling.”
Takaya jumped at the unexpected voice from behind him. He spun around to see Chiaki standing there in casual clothes.
“What, Naoe, here again?”
“What do you mean, the Princess is calling?”
“Dunno. That’s what the little child jibakurei that appeared in the girls’ locker room said. That the Princess is calling from the castle.”
“Princess? Not Sanjou-no-Kata?”
Sanjou-no-Kata, Shingen’s principle wife, had been one of the perpetrators involved in the resurrection of Shingen’s spirit. She had possessed one of their descendants, Takeda Yuiko.
“But we performed «choubuku» on Madam Sanjou.”
"Whoever the heck is doing it, it looks like she’s at the castle. She’s summoning the phantom lanterns from all over Matsumoto.
The lantern procession meandered the wrong way onto one of the residential areas’ one-way streets and advanced toward Matsumoto Castle. Takaya, Naoe, and Chiaki walked along the line. They passed next to the Former Kaichi School , and as expected, were absorbed into Matsumoto Castle.
At this time of night the castle was closed, and even the spotlights had been turned off. The phantom lantern procession crossed over the moat via the “spanning bridge” with its vermillion handrails and was swallowed up into the entrance.
When they looked up, they could discern will-o’-the-wisps fluttering within the windows of the tower.
“Shall we go take a look?”
“Ah...hey!”
Naoe stepped onto the bridge unconcernedly and began to cross. A flick of nendouryoku easily opened the door, and disabled the security system as handily. Naoe and the others stepped inside.
“This is...”
Many pale phantom lanterns were gathered within the court of the Second Wing . It was a fairly impressive spectacle. Hundreds of lanterns fluttered above the vast lawn, as if the festival had already started. The line of lanterns continued to stream in from the Black Gate opposite them.
“Hey, Naoe! Over there!”
They looked up. The window of the uppermost floor of the tower, which should have been closed long ago, was open, and a shadow moved within.
“A woman...?”
It looked like a woman with long hair. But from the way that her pale, hazy form seemed to be floating above the ground, they could guess that she was not a living person. The uchikake she wore indicated that she was from the Sengoku Period.
“Hey, who the hell...!”
“Takaya-san!”
Perhaps they took fright at Takaya’s rough, menacing tone—
The silhouette at the window disappeared like a blown-out candle flame. At the same time, all the lanterns gathered in the court began to fade away.
Darkness descended in the blink of an eye.
“Looks like that shadow was the princess who’s calling.”
Takaya and the others’ expressions turned grim. What in the world was that?
(A ‘Princess’ who summons the Bon-Bon procession?’)
Yet more trouble seemed to have descended upon Matsumoto.