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Story I – Part 05

“She couldn’t buy a can of drink. Not even one, despite all the choices available. Personally, I would have chosen cocoa. I wonder what she was going to buy.” She pondered over the matter. Her eyes reflected the light from the vending machine, making them glow like a cat’s. “People tend to get bound by simple reasons. And simple reasons are the ones that get you killed.”

“Pardon?” I asked back.

Mayuzumi flashed a wicked grin. I regretted asking her, but it was too late.

“It’s the reason why she’s here.”

Mayuzumi brandished her folded parasol. With a snap, a red flower bloomed. The scene in front of me shifted, as though the stage had been changed, and a woman with long, black hair appeared in front of the vending machine. Her face was familiar, but unlike in the photos, the outline of her whole body was wavering weakly. She bent down, grabbed the hundred-yen coin from the change slot, and pushed it into the vending machine. But the coin came back. She bent down again and repeated the same action… over and over.

“What is this?” I asked.

“How rude,” Mayuzumi replied. “This has a name, and it’s Yamashita Yukiko. She’s become an earthbound spirit. She was here when we first came. You didn’t seem to notice, though. Do you understand now, Odagiri-kun? She’s here for a very simple and obvious reason.”

I finally understood what Mayuzumi was saying.

People are bound by simple reasons. She couldn’t leave the vending machine because she couldn’t buy a can of drink.

It made sense, logically. She stood in front of the vending machine to buy a drink, but because she hadn’t fulfilled her objective yet, she couldn’t leave.

Yet at the same time, it sounded too absurd.

“Wait a minute. She’s bound here for that reason alone? No, before that, if the real Yamashita Yukiko is here, what are those internal organs? If she’s here, whose organs are those?”

“They belong to Yamashita Yukiko as well,” she answered flatly, and jerked her chin toward Yukiko. “This is her soul, and that is her flesh.”

Yukiko bent down to the change slot again. Without warning, Mayuzumi folded her parasol and swung it down on her back. A red trail hit the back of Yukiko’s head. But the parasol slipped through her body and hit the vending machine hard instead.

“She was hit like this and dropped the hundred-yen coin. The blow ejected her soul and sent her into a state of suspended animation. Her soulless body was then taken to the roof of a building and pushed off. Her body was mortally wounded, but her soul remained here.”

She pointed the tip of her red parasol at the sky again. When I looked up, I thought I saw a black silhouette against the blue sky for a moment. Someone was peering down, but their figure soon became blurry and vanished.

Could that be the body we were asked to find?

“Exactly,” Mayuzumi said. “Her body is wandering a realm located between this world and the otherside. Her soulless body left the hospital to return to its soul. However, it failed. As a result, her body is coming back bit by bit.”

The missing body was returning bit by bit. It was falling one body part at a time to return to its soul.

“How is that even possible?”

“A normal human wouldn’t be able to do this. Her empty body would cease to function, and her soul would be left here forever. But someone assisted her body, lending it power to do what it desired.”

A distinct chill crawled down my spine. Using a person’s desire to cause an impossible phenomenon. It rang a bell. But before I could ask, Mayuzumi continued on.

“But since it was forced to do something that was supposed to be impossible, her body couldn’t return to its soul properly. That’s why it’s coming back in parts. What should’ve been an ordinary suicide turned into this mess. Now, here’s the problem, Odagiri-kun. What was she trying to do before she lost her soul? Take a guess,” she urged.

But there was no way I would know. I raised my hands to express my surrender.

Mayuzumi smiled. “Yamashita Yukiko wanted to commit suicide.”

“Huh?”

She was killed, but returned to kill herself anyway?

“That must be the reason why the client wants to kill her again. She knew that her sister shunned her. The more parasitic someone is, the more perceptive they become, fearing the moment their host would leave them. During that time, her sister made a mistake at work. Naturally, rumors about her sister reached her. That’s when she came to a realization. This was the only and perfect opportunity she had to kill her sister and make it look like a suicide.”

The image of Kazue popped in my mind. She was hiding something behind her innocent facade—a barbaric side to her, a savage that sneered at others with bared teeth.

“Our client followed Yamashita Yukiko and struck her on the head the moment she bent down to retrieve a hundred-yen coin from the vending machine. She then threw her off the roof of an abandoned building and made it look like a suicide. It went unexpectedly well. Too well, in fact.”

Indeed. By all rights, it shouldn’t have worked. Had it not been for the circumstances surrounding Yukiko’s death, it wouldn’t have been ruled a suicide.

“Sorting out her personal affairs. Breaking up with his boyfriend. An unsent suicide email. And the decisive factor: what was Yamashita Yukiko doing in an abandoned building?”

Why did she come all the way to this place when she had no business here?

“She was going to kill herself by jumping off the roof,” Mayuzumi added.

The coin fell with a clink. Yukiko, her eyes empty, bent down again.

“Her sister only expedited her death. But now she can’t die. It’s because she can’t accept her death that such a bizarre phenomenon is happening. Yamashita Yukiko’s body disappeared from the hospital and tried to return to the abandoned building. However, her soul had not yet realized that it had been separated from its body. Having lost its compass, the body could not return successfully. In other words, it failed.” Mayuzumi shook her head with regret.

“On a related note, this must be his work,” she continued. “He’s the kind of creature who’ll give people what they want if he thinks it’s amusing. Unfortunately, it’s impossible to check for any trace of him anymore. It’s the same case as yours. Do you remember?”

I gulped. Suddenly my stomach began to ache. I crouched down, holding back the nausea. My heart started beating faster. The sound of rain rang loud in my ears. I punched myself in the stomach to calm down, but the hallucination would not go away.

In my blurry vision, Mayuzumi said, “No, forget I asked. There’s no way you would have forgotten.”

She waved her hand. Watching her pale hand fluttering like a butterfly, I rose to my feet. Silence descended.

“May I ask you a question?” I asked, trying to gloss over the discomfort I felt just now. I didn’t want her to see any weakness from me.

“By all means. You can ask me as many questions as you want. Questions are valuable. No matter how silly they are, I will never tell you they’re meaningless.”

“Why couldn’t she pass on? Sure, she suffered an unexpected death, but it’s hard to believe that a person who wanted to commit suicide would be so tenacious.”

Whether she willingly jumped or she was thrown off a building, the end result was the same—her death.

Mayuzumi smiled. “Let me ask you then, Odagiri-kun. Do you wish to die thirsty? Personally, I want to eat some chocolate before I die.”

I racked my brains. What if I were in her shoes? I’d like to die in my safe, if not comfortable, cheap apartment after taking a smoke. Screw chocolate. What’s more, if I see a red parasol in the corner of my eye, I would not be able to pass on.

In any case, I found it hard to believe.

She walked down a road in the summer. Early afternoon, when the temperature was at its highest, she stood in front of the vending machine, feeling thirsty. She inserted twenty yen first, and then a hundred yen, which came back. Frustrated at not being able to buy a drink, she picked up the coin, and suddenly lost consciousness.

“Yes. She had not drank her last drink,” Mayuzumi said.

For that reason alone?

The parasol twirled. Mayuzumi took out a chocolate from her pouch and tore off the wrapper with her teeth.

“She wanted to kill herself, but her plan was tragically ruined,” she said as she put the candy in her mouth. “And at the worst possible time. How could she pass on? She could not accept her untimely demise, murdered by someone. That’s why she keeps coming back, trying to kill herself again and again.”