Rain falls like a torrent during this windless noon as gloom and coolness hang in the air, though more intently inside the abandoned inn where the rain falling upon the exterior creates a soft perpetual roar that is heard throughout the place. A roar momentarily drowned out by frequent claps of thunder after the frequent flashes of lightening.
Its doors open and Jason quickly enters. Water beads off his poncho and the demonic Noh mask covering his face. He steps in and closes the doors, then turns to walk further in while undoing the drawstring of his hood and pulls it back. He pulls the mask up and off, revealing his stubbly lean though more mature face with a hardness in his green eyes.
It has been five years since his sleepwalking out to here. That following morning Jason had decided to explore the road. He was not sure of where he should go, but had figured that this inn being here meant there had to be a community nearby. He was not disappointed as a several minute walk up the road in the direction he had been originally going rewarded him with a road sign with kanji lettering on it that also had English that read, 2 km, with an arrow pointing at the opposite side of the road from the inn, down a road. He took that route and discovered a village. At first, he was expecting people, but the place did not have anyone outside, and a search throughout the place yielded no people. He worked up the courage to break into houses and discovered that they were not truly abandoned insofar as they had corpses in them. Corpses of men and boys. Babies even. A search of the homes revealed men's clothing too small for him, but there were jackets that he could wear as shirts. It was in a house that he had found the poncho. The Noh mask he discovered in what must have been that village's community center.
It was actually at that abandoned village that he decided to live in. He found food in the houses, at least what was still edible for hopefully a long time such as canned and boxed food. Bottles of vitamins were found too. He found safety razors and shaving cream to use, but used them sparingly. His place of residency within that village was the community center where he had found the mask because the rest of the houses may as well be mausoleums.
Yet he did return to this inn on a frequent basis to pillage more stuff so that he could take it back to that village. He carried a large packsack whenever he did that, something he had found in that village.
Summers were the worse because of the mugginess, whether clear or overcast. The mosquitoes and blackflies were bad enough, but what seemed even worse were what looked like inchworms. He sometimes saw them on the leaves and whenever he got close to them, they instantly stretched themselves out toward him and managed to get onto him and crawl over him. At first, he never thought anything of them. That is until they settled in an area on him, mostly in a warmer hidden area, and felt a sharp burning itch that caused him to react by pulling them off to discover a small but bloody wound, revealing them to be a leech species. Other times, he noticed those leeches inching along the ground toward him. They got onto his feet and continued further upward, getting underneath a pant leg. Those sharp burning itchy sensations letting him know that they were biting into him. He had even felt them in his underwear and up as far as his shoulders. He discovered quite by accident, and in a fit of frustration after knocking a bottle of it onto himself, that they did not like alcohol. Wood alcohol was the best. Upon rubbing a bit of it onto his foot and testing it, they did not want to go near him. It always wore off and he had to apply some more of the stuff, forcing him to scavenge for more bottles of wood alcohol. The wood alcohol also discouraged the black flies and mosquitoes, though not for long. He did graduate to using cans of insect repellant once he figured out the images on the spray cans.
He only bathed and laundered his clothing during the autumn since it was when the troublesome invertebrates started dying off. Other times, he simply rubbed alcohol into his armpits and his groin to discourage body odor.
During the winters, he wore the jackets like over shirts. The community center does have a fireplace and he frequently burned whatever he found to burn. The first winter was rough. However, it turned out that the winters around these parts rarely resulted in temperatures dipping below the freezing point of water. Whenever that happened, it was during the middle of winter but never for long. That was also around the time when it snowed, which never piled higher than his ankles. A rare blizzard did blow through, though he was fortunate never to be away from that village whenever that happened. His sneakers and socks began wearing away and he was forced to make those sandals, but he did find socks to fit his feet since socks are practically one size fits all. He also wore plastic bags over his feet as extra socks.
And all during these past five years, Jason wondered if that disease had burned itself out and how many people it had kill. Whatever it was, it strangely seemed to have infected only males; yet he himself was not infected. So with all of the males dead, Jason wondered about the females. Where did they all go? That made him wonder why he had not encountered any of them when he sleepwalked all the way down to here.
In the beginning, he came to this inn every day with that packsack to search for and take whatever he needed, or wanted, and returned to that village with it. His visits became increasingly less frequent as he stripped more from this inn of whatever he came looking for. Eventually, he stopped coming here altogether after no longer being able to find anything he so much as fancied.
Today, however, he came here on a whim; hence the absence of the packsack. As he left the village, it started clouding over. He did not think anything of it until he neared the parking lot and lightening flashed to be answered by claps of thunder. Then it began raining, hard, and he hurried in here to wait out the storm.
With a sigh, he puts his mask back on and pulls his hood back up. Not to return, but merely to allevate the coming boredom of having to wait out that storm. He hopes not to have to spend the night here. Weird things sometimes happened in this place, making him believe it to be haunted. There were times when he thought he had heard someone talking, but it was too brief and too quiet for him to catch proper notice of. On hot days, cold spots like an icy wind were temporarily felt. At one point, he was twiddling with a thin stick between his fingers absent mindedly when it suddenly flew from his fingers and sailed across the room.
He takes another walk throughout the place. It does not make time speed up any sooner nor does it make the rain stop. If anything, the rain does not sound like it is lessening as that soft perpetual roar of rainfall continues to be heard, again frequently drowned out by crashes of thunder that sounded after the bright flickers of lightening. It looks like he will have to spend the night here. With the ghosts.
It is heading into evening and the rainstorm has still not let up any. Jason checks his smart band to see that the time is 6:30 PM. He feels fortunate that the battery had not drained in that he had a fresh battery placed into it shortly before he came to Japan. That, and he only used his smart band when he really wanted to know the time and date.
Jason heads into the dining room, sits at a table, and stares out the windows. The eaves prevent the rain from hitting them so he is able to watch the fat raindrops fall like out of a showerhead to create large splashes on the pavement. A band of trees are all that blocks this place from the highway, as seen through the turnoff. He thinks about his food situation. Before coming over here, he had eaten the last of the food he had scavenged over the years, vitamins included. He knows he will have to return to Tokyo. The only reason why he never attempted to do so in the first place was out of fear. Whatever that disease was, it must have upset Japanese society to the point of possibly creating chaos within its cities. A bad situation that could turn worse for him since he is a foreigner.
A reason why he has worn that mask, along with the poncho, so frequently for all those years; it was to create some sort of legend around these parts that would scare off any Japanese who happened to blunder upon him, given their superstitious tendencies. And also what made the summers so punishing on him.
Jason's thoughts are interrupted as he suddenly throws himself to the floor, knocking his chair over in the process, due to the arrival of a van turning inward. He quickly crawls toward the kitchen as fast as possible while hyperventilating and heart pounding like a jackhammer. Once in the kitchen, he stands next to the emergency door and struggles for calm so that he can listen intently, while also tensing to open that door and run out at a moment's notice. The problem is that door is in full view of the turnoff. He pulls one side of his hood back just far enough to expose an ear so as to concentrate on listening for the sounds of the front doors opening and those people speaking. Something that will be difficult to discern over the frequent and loud thunder.
There! Jason hears the faint sound of the handles clicking open. He next hears the doors opening. He braces . . . Tenses . . . Finally, a shout compels him into action and he is outside, closing the door with an unnervingly loud slam that causes him to hope those people mistake it for thunder.
Jason creeps up to the windows of the dining room while squatting with his back to the wall. He frequently glances back at the emergency door, expecting it to open and those people coming running out to confront him, or even around the corner from up ahead. But nobody does. He peeks in through the lower corner of the hindmost window to see a small statured person in the entrance of the dining room. He discerns that the person is a little girl.
And she is looking directly at him.
The little girl dashes away and Jason does the same. He dashes toward the back of the inn and into the forest. The loss of protection from the eaves causes the rain to feel like water out of a showerhead. Thankfully, there is no wind and the poncho does an adequate job of keeping him dry. The wet brush and branches crash and rustle against him, as if opposing his passage. It does not stop him from going further into the forest, out of sight if they should come running outside to search for him. Then again, with this deluge they will not want to bother coming after him. As for that little girl, he can only hope that she is disbelieved.
Jason stops between feeling out of breath and feeling confident that he is far enough into the forest. He thinks about this new situation. He always expected something like this to happen, but never took it seriously. But with his food source tapped out, he understands there is no way he can keep living out here in these parts and grimly concludes he will need to reveal himself to those people and return with them.
Though not just yet, not until tomorrow morning. For now, he will sleep out underneath the eave at the back. Something that can only be done once it gets dark enough.
So Jason waits . . . And waits . . . And waits . . . And waits still. Minutes seem like hours, especially when having to be out in this storm. The evening does not seem to grow dark fast enough. But darker it eventually does, and the storm less intense.
After what seems like an eternity, it is now dark enough for him to emerge. The problem now is that the surroundings are profoundly dark, lit momentarily by flashes of lightening.
Jason begins his return to the inn. The going is slow with all of the vegetation around seemingly more intense, due to the darkness periodically lit up by flashes of lightening to be inevitably answered by claps of thunder. After much groping and guessing the direction he should take, Jason finally notices the inn through a flash of lightening. He had been walking past it.
Jason quietly hurries up to the inn, wary about the sounds his footfalls make as they squish against the wet ground with each step. He at first takes a glance at the van they came in, seeing it parked directly alongside the entrance enabling its occupants to run inside the inn without getting wet.
Satisfied, Jason stalks alongside the inn underneath its eaves to stay out of the rain and toward the back. The rest of the windows are up high enough so that there is no chance that anyone in there might see him unless they were up against the window explicitly looking down. And he does not doubt that they are attempting to fall asleep in whatever rooms they have.
Jason arrives at the back and spots the bench that he would sit upon at times. He lies down and wraps himself in his poncho, trying to fall asleep. He keeps his mask on to prevent insects and whatnots from pitching or crawling on his face. He drifts in and out of sleep, taking note each time of the storm growing fainter.
Jason convulses on a reflex upon being startled awake after being grabbed by a pair of small but unusually strong hands. He manages to calm enough to notice that a little girl was the one who grabbed him.
Jason is next aware of lying upon his back somewhere else, staring up at the clear sky with his limbs spread wide. He struggles to get his bearings after his preception had gone all dreamy from the tumbling he had instantly endured. He hears excited talking and looks over to see a group of people standing to one side. He now knows that he had been taken to the entrance and now lies upon the parking lot near their van.
That little girl speaks to the others, then turns to look down at him and suddenly screeches as she jumps back to hide behind someone.
Jason sighs with resignation from the realization of having been caught. Slowly, he gets up and stands to his full height, causing one of them to say something.
Jason pulls his hood back while taking his mask off so that they can see him properly. Jason in turn sizes them up. Including the little girl, there are six of them, but the other five are adults; moreover, only one of them is male and one of those women does not look entirely Japanese but almost White.
The lone guy, of whom Jason is nearly a head taller than, looks to be either in his late teens or early twenties. The rest of the women are all attractive, with the tallest of them being buxom with her hair done up onto the top of her head and appears to be taller than the guy, but a quick glance at her feet shows that she is wearing high heeled shoes, meaning that she must be as tall as the guy in question. Another buxom woman has long straight hair with a neatly trimmed fringe and strangely fair eyebrows. Another woman has long hair parted in the middle and swept back and piled at the back of her head and seems to have an authorative demeanor. The last woman, the one who does not look entirely Japanese, has long tousled hair hanging loose with a fringe. Jason gives a slight start over the fact that she is wearing exposed panties underneath a labcoat.
The little girl continues hiding behind the man while glaring out at Jason with a fearful look mixed in to give her a comedic appearance. She looks to be no more than ten years old with long hair done into a French braid. Jason recognizes her as the little girl he saw last night after looking through the dining room window, and who in turn saw him as well.
A conversation starts amongst them, of which Jason cannot understand. The authorative woman gets a tablet to speak with someone, then shows him to whoever was on the other end.
"H-H-Hello," the quite Japanese woman said to Jason in a stutter. "My name is Kuroda Maria. What is your name?"
Jason gives a slight start at her fluency with English.
"J-Jason. Jason Welsh," he finally answered.
"H-H-How old are you?" Maria asked.
"Twenty-five."
"W-W-Where are you from?"
"Canada."
The authorative woman speaks to Maria and Maria turns to Jason. "J-J-Jason-san. You are to sit inside in the middle of either seat."
Jason takes a deep breath, sighs, and removes his poncho to reveal that he is still wearing the grungy grey sweat T-shirt, but with needle work done to sew up the holes that had appeared in it over the years. He wraps that demonic Noh mask up in the poncho. For a moment, he is confused over what to do with it, then walks over to place them onto the porch. He turns away and slowly gets into the vehicle with some hesitation but manages to make himself get inside and sit in the middle. The rest get in with the guy sitting directly across from Jason, the little girl sits on his left and the stoic girl sits on his right. The not quite Japanese woman sits on Jason's left, the statuesque woman sits on Jason's right. And the authorative woman does the driving.
The doors are closed, the engine started, and they are on their way.
"So, um," Jason began, "can anyone else speak English? Because I don't know enough Japanese to form a proper sentence."
The rest verify that they can. Back in 2011, the Japanese government made English classes compulsory throughout their country's school curriculum. Thirty-four years later, nearly all Japanese have at least a basic understanding of the English language.
"That's good," Jason answered. "So what are the rest of your names?"
The rest introduce themselves.
"Hey, Maria," Jason said to her. "You don't look Japanese."
"I-I-I am half-Japanese. The other half of me is German."
"Oh, well you speak English very well," Jason noted.
"Th-Th-Thank you."
"Maybe now you can answer a question that I have always been wondering about," Jason said with eagerness in his tone as he looks about the group. "What was that disease?! Has it ended?! And what's it like out there now?!"
The group exchange bewildered looks.
"What?" Jason asked as unease begins building within him. "Was it worse than that Covid-19 from a way back then?"
"Far worse," Mira answered.
"How much worse?" Jason asked deliberately.
There is a moment of silence as everyone exchanges concerned looks.
"Well?! Jason rasped with exasperation.
"It went like this," Mira began.
