Sumikowa by Tara A Devlin

Author:Tara A Devlin [Devlin, Tara A]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orochi Press
Published: 2020-06-04T22:00:00+00:00

Apartment 807

“Kokkuri-san?”

“Yeah!”

“Are you special?”

“What?”

“Why on earth would you want to play Kokkuri-san?”

Hikari, Kenji, and Izumi sat around my square coffee table in the middle of the living room. A movie buzzed quietly in the background, but nobody was watching it.

“Because it’s summer! Come on!” Hikari, for some reason unknown to man, wanted to play Kokkuri-san. I got it, he was an aspiring writer, he liked trying all sorts of things he could include in his work, but Kokkuri-san? Really? Might as well stand on the veranda and scream, “Hey, this guy believes in ghosts, what a moron!”

“What, so the spirits only come out in summer, is that it?” I couldn’t hide the scepticism in my voice.

“Huh? No, I never said that. But summer is the season!”

I cast a glance at Kenji and then Izumi, sitting to my left and right. “And you guys?”

Kenji leaned back on his hands and shrugged. “Sure, why not? I don’t believe in any of that nonsense, and the quicker he sees nothing’s going to happen, the quicker he’ll shut up and we can finally move on.” See, I knew there was a reason I liked him so much.

“Izumi?”

She, on the other hand, scrunched her face up. “That’s kid’s stuff.”

“You’re afraid.” Hikari poked her. She grabbed his finger and twisted it back, unrelenting as he squealed in pain. Nobody jumped forward to help.

“Ow ow, let go, let go!”

“And you’re stupid. Do you really believe you can summon a spirit to answer your dumb questions?”

“It’s just for fun, geez. You don’t have to take everything so seriously.”

“You should maybe try taking something seriously once in a while. Might be a nice change of pace for you.”

The pair glared at each other, and I held my hands between them. “Alright, alright! Kenji’s right. He’s not gonna shut up until we do it, so let’s do it.”

It was a hot Friday night. The four of us, friends since childhood who all just happened to end up at various universities in Tokyo, had been having these weekly gatherings since I moved here. They had, to be fair, gotten a little stale.

“What could you possibly want to ask a spirit anyway?” I asked as Hikari smiled and grabbed some paper from his bag. He started drawing up the Kokkuri-san sheet, his messy letters quickly filling the page. He drew a crude shrine gate at the top between “yes” and “no” and plonked it on the table.

“Oh, you know. Stuff.”

“Stuff. Uh huh.”

“Anyone got a 10 yen coin?”

Kenji fished around in his pocket and flicked a coin towards Hikari. “Keep it. I don’t want no cursed coin back.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in this stuff.”

“I don’t. But I still don’t want no cursed coin.”

Hikari smiled. He and Kenji had been best friends since the first grade. Izumi and I had been best friends since the fifth grade. Now we were all thick as thieves, the four of us against the world. Or the big city. Whatever.

“It’ll only be cursed if we don’t end the game properly.

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