Otherside Picnic: Volume 9 [Parts 1 to 2] by Iori Miyazawa

Author:Iori Miyazawa
Language: eng
Format: epub

3

We stood by the waterside, looking down into the lake in silence for some time.

“Jusui...?” I wondered aloud.

“Was that French?” Toriko gave me an inquisitive look.

“Huh?” I said, confused.

Bewildered, Toriko tried again. “Did you just say ‘Je suis’?”

“I said ‘jusui’... It’s written with the characters for ‘enter’ and ‘water.’”

“Ohh... Err, I assume it means to enter the water and drown?”

“More or less. It means to commit suicide by drowning yourself.”

As I explained this, I started to question the likelihood of it. Would those two really have thrown themselves in there? Not just the human, but the dog too?

“It doesn’t make sense, huh? No matter how strong the bond of trust between them was.”

Toriko nodded in agreement. “If Todate-san went in the water, I think Hana would have stopped her.”

There was no way a human and dog cast themselves in there together; there must have been some external factor. Were they being controlled? Were they hallucinating? Or was there no water here yet at the time when they came?

Was it because they encountered the master of the Mayoiga?

The last time I came, I was horrified by the thing that arrived in the parking area. It made me think of the concept of the master of the Mayoiga.

There was no such element in the original story. But wasn’t it something that anyone would imagine? Whether the empty house in the mountains was inhabited by a god, or a monster, it would be some being beyond human understanding. If a human entered that house and ran into the owner, what would become of them? Wouldn’t that fear cross most people’s minds?

If I thought of the Mayoiga standing on the hill not as an object of folklore from the Tono Monogatari, but as a structure created by the Otherside, then it might be a phenomenon that included those unspoken fears. It had been a fear of mine, at least, and Todate—and perhaps even Hana—might have feared it deep down too. I was pretty sure that any person squatting in a house worried that its owner might return. I was less confident about how dogs felt, though.

Well, what if they met it, then? What if the master returned and found them?

I dunno. Once they encountered it, that was it. Ghost stories could work that way. What they saw, and how scary it was, all of that could be left to the imagination. In fact, imagining the things left unsaid could actually be scarier. Todate and Hana went missing. The end.

But we had come along after; Toriko and I were peering into what came after the ghost story. If we stepped into the realm of the untold, the untellable, and encountered them, what would become of us? As that fear crossed my mind—

“Ah.” I lost my balance, and clung to Toriko.

“Sorawo?”

“Sorry, give me a moment...” I apologized, barely articulate, but my mind wouldn’t stop.

It was the same sensation as when we thought about what was on the other side of the Otherside. Whenever we thought about

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