Previously:
"Yeah, sorry…" She said, with an apologetic smile, rubbing the back of her neck. "I don't think my blue eye is going to be much use on this case. Can I put my eye patch back on? This wonky vision is starting to give me a headache, and I nearly tripped earlier."
"I guess it can't be helped." Naru said, somewhat disappointed, although he did find this so-called 'interference' interesting. "Still, what great way to start our research case." The phenomena certainly didn't waste any time getting started, did it?
Case 6: Forbidden Pastime (Part 2)
"I was told that you didn't come to school because you saw a ghost. Can you tell me more about it?" Naru asked the group of girls in front of him. As soon as class had ended, they began taking interviews at base. Naru conducted the interviews while Hitomi and Bou-san took notes. Bou-san liked to have his own copy since the others' notes tended to be in English most of the time.
"Sure… umm…" A girl in a ponytail began nervously. "It happened in our classroom… actually, in the language lab… I was reviewing the tape I recorded during a lesson. But then… I started hearing a strange voice playing back… There was lots of static, but it sounded like a child… then, something touched my leg… I looked down and there was a really creepy looking little boy there!" She exclaimed, shivering at the memory, as she started to cry. "I told my teacher, about it, but she wouldn't believe me… but I really saw it!!"
"Did anyone else see it?" Naru asked.
"We've all seen it. And most of us have heard the voice…" A girl with short hair answered as she placed a comforting hand on the crying girl's shoulder. "The teachers wouldn't believe us even if we told them we were too scared to come class, so we just decided not to come to class."
"A child's spirit in the LL classroom… okay." Bou-san said as he and Hitomi finished writing that one down.
"Can you tell me about any other strange incidents that have happened at this school?" Naru asked. The girls exchanged a few nervous glances before speaking, but then once they started, they couldn't be stopped.
"Yes. There's the locker that can never be opened."
"An anatomy model that breaks itself apart."
"Strange noises in the music room."
"When you open the incinerator, an old man sticks his head out, and his head is on upside down..."
"A bed in the nurse's office! All of a sudden, someone appears lying down on the second bed from the back…"
"Woah, slow down!" Bou-san said, sweat-dropping, as he struggled to keep up.
"They're coming out rapid-fire, huh?" Mai said, also sweat-dropping. Hitomi was too focused on taking notes to even comment. If she wrote any faster the friction might start causing sparks…
"And someone said they've seen Sakauchi-kun… That they passed him in the hallway, or that he was standing in one of the classrooms." said the girl who had ben crying. That caught both Naru and Hitomi's attention.
"Sakauchi? Who is that?" Naru asked. Could it be the boy Hitomi saw earlier?
"He was a freshman that committed suicide last September." One of the other girls explained.
'September?' Hitomi thought. Then the reason that boy was still wearing a summer uniform could've been…
"Strange things started happening at our school around last fall…" the girl continued. "Which is to say, ever since Sakauchi-kun committed suicide… I was wondering if these incidents had anything to do with that.
"Then, that's why it says here you guys tried to get rid of the spirits on your own…" Naru said, referring to an article in his binder.
"That's right. But we're not totally convinced that this stuff is happening because of Sakauchi-kun's curse." She clarified. "We just couldn't stand not doing anything about it, but we didn't know what we could do to fix it…"
"Did you personally know him?"
"No, I didn't. I'd never even heard of him until after his death. But anyway… his suicide note became well known at one point…"
"Suicide note?"
"Yes. It said 'I am not a dog.'"
Hitomi and the others' eyes widened slightly upon hearing that. Naru tapped his finger against the desk.
"Do you know what he meant by that?" He asked.
"I think so…" She said. "Because even I feel that way sometimes when I'm at school. The school decides the length of our hair and what color our personal belongings should be… and we're constantly being disciplined for how we talk, and told how to behave… It's almost like obedience training for a dog. So I thought maybe Sakauchi-kun held a grudge against the school…"
'I'm not a dog, huh…?' Mai thought sadly as the girls left, pondering Sakauchi-kun's last words.
"Holding a grudge against the school, huh…? I think I can understand that." Bou-san said after they were gone.
"Yeah, this place makes me appreciate my old school so much more…" Hitomi agreed. "Right, Mai?"
"Huh? How?" Mai asked. What were they talking about?
"You're a female high school student, aren't you?" Bou-san asked, sweat-dropping. "You should have noticed. The school uniforms and the hairstyles?"
They're all a bit too regular, aren't they?" Hitomi pointed out. "None of them really stood out as individuals."
"You can't really compare normal classes to yours, Sempai…" Mai said with a wry smile, sweat-dropping.
"Well, we were basically just a gathering of a bunch of unique individuals who were tired of people trying to fit us into their cookie-cutter expectations, so we sort of reached a unanimous decision together to just do what we wanted, whatever the consequences." Hitomi explained with a shrug. "I think the teachers kind of gave up after awhile, since we made a pact to back each other up. The nail that sticks up gets hammered the most, right? But if you have a whole bunch of nails sticking up at once, then they're harder to put down than one nail on its own."
'Wow… So deep…" Bou-san thought. They might seem like a bunch of clowns, but maybe her class was actually really mature(?) for their age… "Anyway, like Hitomi said, surprisingly enough, everyone seems to be following the rules. Not a single student has bleached their hair, you know?"
"I see…" Mai said thoughtfully. "This isn't like going to school in the old days, like back in Bou-san's era…"
'Era…?' Bou-san thought, sweat-dropping. "Just how old you think I am?"
"Let's see…"
"No, wait, don't tell me!" He had a feeling he didn't want to know…
"Well, even if bleaching has sort of gone out of style… I think what Bou-san's trying to say is the rules must be enforced really strictly here." Hitomi said with a wry smile.
"Yes, exactly." Bou-san said. "Seeing how the principal and Matsuyama behaved around us, you can kind of guess, right?"
"Ah… right." Mai said as vein mark throbbed on her head just remembering it.
"When you're in school, school life takes up most of your time. So when you're oppressed that much, I imagine it's very stressful for the students, you know?"
"And stress can really mess with your mind." Hitomi added. "Even if psychic phenomena weren't involved, I wouldn't be surprised if these kinds of conditions really did generate some kind of group hysteria."
"Uhh…" Mai said, sweat-dropping. This was starting to sound complicated…
KNOCK. KNOCK.
"The next group of students is here. They experienced the food poisoning." Yasuhara announced, opening the door. Instead of leaving like before, he entered the room with the other students who had come to talk and took seat. "Okay, feel free to ask us any questions." He said.
"Huh?" Mai and Bou-san said, blinking in surprise.
"Are you a victim too, Yasuhara-san?" Hitomi asked.
"That's correct." He replied.
"All right, then." Naru said. "Can you tell me what happened?"
"Sure. It was during the second period on December 18th, last year." Yasuhara began. "I had been thinking all morning that the air in the classroom felt stale… When the first person complained of feeling sick, the teacher didn't believe them. He said they must be feeling sick because they 'lacked discipline', but soon more students were raising their hands, admitting they also felt sick, and had been feeling so for awhile. When one of them ran from the room because they couldn't take it anymore, the teacher told me to go after him, but the moment I stood up, an intense feeling of nausea hit me as well… It was so bad, it forced me to my knees. All in all… almost half of the students in class got sick that day… At that time, it smelled terrible in class. I guess… at first the air just felt stale, but then it rapidly worsened to the point where it smelled really bad."
"I see." Naru said.
"The heating system at school operates with steam instead of gas… and the symptoms were different from food poisoning." Yasuhara added.
"So then, the newspaper article was a lie!?" Mai exclaimed incredulously.
"Well, in the first place, a fault in the gas line would be more likely to result in carbon monoxide poisoning rather than food poisoning." Hitomi commented. And carbon monoxide was usually odorless…
"I think it was just an excuse the school made up to cover themselves." Yasuhara added with a wry smile.
"Do you still smell it?" Naru asked.
"Yes." Yasuhara answered. "It's been around for so long, I guess we've gotten used to it, but… when students from other classes come to visit, they always ask about it… The only thing is, sometimes the smell becomes extremely strong."
"A smell, huh?" Bou-san said thoughtfully. This was sounding serious…
"Yasuhara-san, when was the first time you realized something was unusual at school?" Naru asked.
"… I guess the first time I realized it was when students refused to come." He replied after thinking it over for a moment.
"But before that, weren't fires breaking out at school?"
"You must be talking about the small fires in the locker room. At first we thought someone was purposefully starting them. It happened exactly every twelve days, so we figured somebody was doing it as a prank."
"Every twelve days, huh…?"
"Yes. I believe it happened in the middle of October the first time. It happened again twelve days later, so several teachers took turns keeping a watch on the room, but…"
"The third fire, twelve days later?"
"Yes. At that point, they decided no one could use the locker room and locked it up."
"But another fire twelve days later?"
"That's correct. Right about that time, some of the students had stopped coming to school, and the school thought that maybe one of them was setting the fires as a prank…"
"Does the fire still continue to be set to this day?"
"Yes. Exactly twelve days apart, it happens early in the morning… The next fire should happen in a couple of days."
Naru was silent as he pondered everything he had just heard.
'It seems this case might be more complicated than anticipated…' Hitomi thought when she saw Naru's expression. She and Mai both had to suppress a blush.
"Naru, please don't make that serious face…' Both girls thought, sweat-dropping. It looked way too good on him…!
"May I inspect the classroom now?" Naru asked, standing up.
"Ah, sure." Yasuhara said.
–∞–
"This is it." Yasuhara said when they arrived at classroom 3–1. "I'm going to open the door." He told them, giving the four of them time to brace themselves.
SHOON.
"!" Mai and Hitomi flinched when the stench hit their noses.
"Do you smell it?" Yasuhara asked as he turned back to look at them, only to be greeted by the sight of Mai and Bou-san all pinching their noses shut, while Hitomi buried her face in her kimono's sleeve.
"How to describe it…?" Bou-san mused as their eyes began to tear up from the strength of the stench. "It smells like a fish you've forgotten about and left sitting out in the kitchen sink for three days straight during the summer…"
"A perfect harmony of the smell of something rotting and a drainage ditch that's starting to dry out…" Hitomi said.
"It also smells like a fish tank filled with frogs…" Mai added.
"Basically, it reeks in here." The three of them concluded unanimously.
"As I expected." Yasuhara said calmly. So, it really was that bad…
"There aren't any areas of the room that smell particularly stronger, are there…" Naru remarked as he calmly made his way through the room, searching for the cause. They didn't know how Naru could stand it! It was a real testament to his will power.
"Exactly. We've looked for the source of the smell for awhile, but the whole classroom smells." Yasuhara replied.
"So, it's probably not the case of something like a lost bento gone bad…" Hitomi commented through her kimono sleeve with watery eyes, trying to remain as professional as possible, while Bou-san and Mai made a run for the windows.
"Argh!" Bou-san exclaimed as he slammed one open, taking a deep breath.
"It doesn't make a difference even if you open a window…" Mai cried.
"Stick your head out the window and breath in!" Bou-san encouraged her, gasping for fresh air.
Naru stopped when his hand brushed against a particular desk.
"Did you do anything abnormal here?" He asked, though he looked like he already knew the answer to his own question.
"Something abnormal?" Yasuhara asked, wondering what he could meant by that.
'Did he just use psychometry...?' Hitomi wondered.
"For example, summoning a spirit?" Naru clarified. That got Mai and Bou-san's attention.
"Summoning…?" Yasuhara said, looking a bit stunned.
"Perhaps he's talking about Orikiri-sama?" One of the girls behind him asked a friend.
"Silly! That's different because…" Her friend started to say, trailing off, when they realized everyone was now staring at them.
"Orikiri-sama?" Hitomi asked curiously. She'd never heard of that before.
"What is that?" Bou-san and Mai asked with identical expressions of confusion.
"Just as I thought." Yasuhara commented upon seeing their reactions. It was, indeed, unique to their school. "Lately, or actually since the second semester, it's become popular. Orikiri-sama, Gongen-sama… It's basically…"
"Oh, I have one right here! We haven't used this one yet." The girl said helpfully, pulling a sheet of paper out of the pocket in her skirt. "Look, this is it! It's very popular at school right now." She held it up for them to see.
"Huh? This is…" Mai said as Bou-san took it to get a closer look."
"This is Kokkuri-san, isn't it!?" Bou-san said, furrowing his brow.
'Ah, so it is…' Hitomi thought as she took a look, sweat-dropping. A really weird version it too, based on appearances…
"That's not right!" The girl said. "Doesn't Kokkuri-san summon a fox spirit? Orikiri-sama summons kami-sama, and it can guide us in relationships! Gongen-sama is…" She gasped in dismay when Bou-san crumpled the paper in his hand.
"Gongen-sama, Hanako-san, Cupid-san, Angel-san… They're all just other names for Kokkuri-san!" He said sternly. Didn't these kids ever learn?
"Ehh!?" The two girls exclaimed. Mai was also surprised to learn this.
"Whatever name you give it, it's the same thing." Hitomi agreed with a sigh.
"It all amounts to toying around with spirits, just for the fun of it." Bou-san concluded firmly with a disapproving frown. This was serious stuff they were messing with, here.
"That's not true!" One of the girls protested. "I was told Orikiri-sama summons gods, so it's risk free."
'If you want to talk to a god, then just go pray at a shrine…' Hitomi thought, sweat-dropping.
"That's just misinformation." Bou-san told her, tossing the crumpled up paper into the trash can. "Even an amateur can summon a spirit, but it takes a trained professional to send it back. Don't ever try this by yourself!" The girls flinched at his scolding.
"You said it's really popular… about how popular?" Naru asked. The two girls exchanged a glance.
"Well… It's definitely all over school." One of them answered a little nervously. "I'd bet there are more students who've done it than those who haven't."