“I spent a long time thinking about what we could do to summon Satsuki Uruma, and I think this is the best way. Kokkuri-san is simple, and it’s easy to make use of our special qualities. I considered ‘one-person hide-and-seek’ as another candidate, but that gets a little noisy, you know?”

“I don’t understand a word that comes out of your mouth at this point, Sorawo-chan.”

“That’s okay. You’ll figure it out quick. Everyone get around the table.”

I crouched over the notebook with a thin pen in hand, quickly writing down the characters we’d need for the ritual. The Japanese syllabary and numbers, then the words “Yes” and “No” above that, and a mark like a torii gate at the very top.

As I finished writing, I looked up and my eyes met theirs.

“Here, ten yen... Is that good?” Kozakura asked.

“Thank you. Okay, now everyone rest your fingers on it.” The four of us put out index fingers on the ten yen coin that was placed over the torii gate.

“Oh, Toriko, you use your left hand.”

“Huh? Is that how it works?”

“Yeah. Take off your glove too.”

“Um... The ten yen coin’s a little crowded with four of us, right?” Runa objected.

“There’s no need to push down hard on it. You can just touch the edge lightly,” I said as our preparations were complete.

“Now, Runa,” I continued, “I’d like you to repeat after me...”

“Right...”

“I want you to use that Voice.”

“Huh? You want me to use it?”

“That’s what you’re here for. Ready? Here we go.” I took a deep breath, then spoke. “Satsuki Uruma, Satsuki Uruma, please come. If you are here, please move to the ‘Yes.’”

I looked at Runa.

“Say it.”

“Satsuki-sama, Satsuki-sama, please come.”

Here she was, mixing it up on me from the very start, but honestly her version sounded more appropriate to me. I didn’t call her on it, so Runa kept going.

“If you are here, please move to the ‘Yes.’”

I was watching Runa’s Voice with my right eye. It didn’t manifest the way I’d anticipated. Up until now, whenever I’d seen it, the Voice had been a silver stream rushing through the air towards her targets. What I was seeing now was more like phosphorescent fireworks launching out of her mouth. Was it because she had no specific target? Their trajectories and velocities were all over the place, and they melted away into the air.

“I’m not sensing anything,” Runa said.

“Keep going. Repeat it,” I told her, then added, “And try to find a place where you do feel something as you do. Search for Satsuki using your Voice.”

“Huh? Could you not make difficult requests all of a sudden?”

Despite her complaints, Runa repeated the words. “Satsuki-sama, Satsuki-sama, please come...”

Her tone was no different from before to my ears, but my right eye could see the Voice changing every second. Runa was searching the space around us, like I’d asked her to. It looked like my guess that she could do something similar to what I could do with my eye and Toriko could do with her hand was right.

Suddenly, Toriko twitched. “It’s cold.”

The moment after she murmured that, I felt a change at my fingertip. Without warning, the ten yen coin slid across the page, moving off of the torii gate.

“Kamikoshi-san. My voice, it touched something, just now,” Runa said, surprised. “It feels super weird... What is this? Or who? It’s something really big, really scary, and completely inhuman...”

I recognized that description. I’d heard the same words from Runa’s mouth before. When, and where, though...?

Kozakura realized something and said, “Hey, that’s the thing from the ASMR.”

I remembered it at the same time. When we got abducted before, Runa had talked about it. Something big and scary that appeared inside a mysterious video titled Blue World.

“It’s God...” Runa whispered, her expression enraptured.

That moment, my finger on the ten yen coin suddenly felt a lot heavier. As if something I couldn’t see had silently come down from Heaven.

“Wh-What the hell...?!” Kozakura murmured. It looked like we’d all felt the same thing. The coin beneath our fingers shook as if under incredible pressure.

“Runa, keep going,” I urged her, and Runa hurriedly complied.

“I-If this is Satsuki-sama, please move to the ‘Yes.’” The ten yen coin moved with a bizarre smoothness before coming to a sudden stop on top of the “Yes.” We were all speechless. Even me, who had planned this whole thing out hoping that this would happen.

“None of you are doing this, right?”

We all shook our heads in response to Runa’s question.

“Toriko, can you sense what’s going on?” I asked.

“My left hand feels like it’s immersed in a cool flow. Kinda like T-san’s blue path...”

I focused with my right eye once more. There was definitely some sort of flowing power that was overlapping with the handwritten characters on the paper. Was the reason I couldn’t see it clearly because it wasn’t permeating the layer of reality very well?

With this flow connected, was it possible for us to communicate without going through Runa now? I decided to open my mouth and test that.

“Tell us your name,” I said. The ten yen coin moved. It moved to the syllabary, choosing one character after another.

—I...KI...SU...TA...MA.

Then it stopped.

/What?/ I looked at the paper in confusion. Ikisutama? Was that a word that meant something? In a foreign language, maybe...? It took a moment, but I finally made the connection. Ikisudama! A living spirit!

“Cool...” I whispered without meaning to. The other three looked at me with expressions that said, “Huh?!” I ignored them and asked the question again.

“Tell us your name.”

—A...O...I...ME. (Blue eyes.)

“That’s not a name. Tell us your name.”

—U...RU...MA.

/Here it comes!/

—SA...TSU...KI.

“She gave her name...” Toriko murmured, in a daze. I was excited too. We had a conversation going. We were communicating with something the Otherside was calling Satsuki Uruma using Kokkuri-san.

“Where did you come from?”

—A...O...FU...CHI.

I didn’t get it. Aofuchi? Blue... Edge? Spot? Wisteria?

Before I could ask a follow-up question, Toriko spoke.

“Where are you now?”

The ten yen coin didn’t move. Toriko asked again, louder this time.

“Where is Satsuki now?”

—KO...KO. (Here.)

Something moved at the edge of my vision. I looked towards it to see one of the flowers that were spilling out of the coffin falling to the ground.

There was a soft rustling of petals, and then I saw a human figure rise up out of the coffin. In my right field of vision, it was pure blue, like a humanoid hole in space. The blue was the light leaking through that hole. I reflexively averted my eyes.

/No—We can’t look at it! That thing will drive us insane!/

“Don’t turn around!”

The other three jumped a little as I shouted.

“There’s someone there, but you absolutely must not look. Keep your eyes on the ten yen coin.”

There was the sound of hard soles on the ground. Whoever had emerged from the coffin was slowly walking towards us. When they were right next to the four of us, they began circling around behind us clockwise with steps like they were walking through water. I caught a glimpse of a black skirt in the corner of my lowered eyes. The offertory flowers smelled incredibly close.

“Satsuki...” Toriko said her name in a hoarse voice. There was no response.

“What’re we supposed to do about this?” Kozakura asked in a hushed voice. “You managed to call her up... Now how do we exorcise her?”

/Yeah, the important part’s just getting started./

I took a breath to calm myself before opening my mouth again. “Are you aware that you’re dead?”

No response. One more time.

“Are you aware that you’re already dead?”

—No.

“You were swallowed up by the Otherside, never to return. That’s right, isn’t it?”

—Yes.

Toriko was silent, shaking her head as if she didn’t want to accept it. Her breathing was ragged.

“Do you realize there’s no longer any place for you in the surface world?”

—No.

“Now that you’re no longer human, what do you think you are?”

—U...RU...MA...SA...TSU...KI.

“You’re not Satsuki Uruma anymore. I’m right, aren’t I?”

—No.

“You are not Satsuki Uruma anymore. Please say ‘Yes.’”

—No.

“Toriko, warp her answer.”

“Huh?!”

“Don’t let it go to ‘No.’ Make her say ‘Yes.’”

“Wh-What are you saying, Sorawo-chan? Can we do that?”

Without looking up, I responded to Kozakura. “We’re touching the flow of power that makes up the Otherside. I’m watching that flow, so Toriko’s hand should be able to rewrite it.”

I remembered the ghost town we entered during the incident with the Time-space Man. In that town full of glitches, I jumped between layers of reality, and was even able to turn Kozakura into a flower by rewriting my perception. If we did the same thing here, we could forcibly change the answers Kokkuri-san gave us.

“No way... I’ve never heard of anyone hacking Kokkuri-san,” Kozakura murmured in awe.

“I’m asking again. You are no longer Satsuki Uruma. Please say ‘Yes.’”

The ten yen coin began moving towards “No,” but then another power began acting on it. Toriko’s finger was trying to change the course of the coin, and the entangled flows of power on top of the paper with it.

“It’s heavy...!” Toriko said through gritted teeth. Still, the ten yen coin was slowly moving. I stared, unblinking, as the ten yen coin came to a dead stop between “Yes” and “No,” not moving a millimeter.

“Is it no good? You can’t move it anymore?”

“It’s heavier than before... Is someone pressing down?!”

/No way/, I was about to say, but Runa, who had been silent for a while now, opened her mouth before I could.

“I am.”

“Huh?! What’re you doing?!”

/Is she gonna betray us at the last second?/

I shuddered and prepared for the worst, but Runa continued without paying any attention to me.

“Satsuki-sama, I truly thank you for bestowing these stigmata on me. I had been longing to see you for so, so long, and it was such a huge, huge honor, so I was really happy.”

The words she was spewing made her sound like a fanatic, but her tone wasn’t filled with passion or excitement.

“But, I’m sorry, there’s just one thing, really, just one, that I’m gonna need you to explain. Please, tell me.”

Runa continued, her tone still inscrutable.

“Why’d you kill my mom?”

The ten yen coin slid across the page, as if the resistance before meant nothing.

—NO...SO...N...TA.

“Nozonda? Who wanted it?”

There was silence, then Runa murmured...

“Me?”

—MO...U...I...RA...NA...I. (Didn’t need her anymore.)

As soon as the ten yen coin finished spelling that out, Runa shouted.

“I didn’t want that! I never wanted that!!!”

Her finger on the coin trembled with anger.

“Screw you! Who’re you to go around, killing people’s moms?! I never asked you to do that! Not once!”

Runa’s voice was shrill with rage.

“The hell is your problem?! Showing up out of nowhere to wreck my life! You didn’t need her any more?! Oh, yeah?! I see how it is! I get it. Hey, Kamikoshi-san! I’ve got a good idea. Why don’t we see if this voice of mine, my gift, works on Satsuki-sama?!”

“Runa, sto—”

“Just watch me, I’m going to try...”


As Runa raised her face, spurred by violent emotions, her words caught in her throat with a choking sound.

She’d looked directly at Satsuki Uruma.

I could only catch a sideways glimpse of Runa as she fainted, eyes rolling into the back of her head and vomit spewing from her mouth.

For a time, the only sound was the ragged breathing of the three of us who remained.

“She dead...?” I asked, my eyes still lowered.

Toriko tilted her head towards Runa a little before she answered. “She’s still breathing.”

“Is she on her back? Or her face?” a thoroughly terrified Kozakura asked, her voice as tiny as a mosquito’s. I checked with the corner of my vision.

“She’s on her side.”

“That’s fine, then...”

We wouldn’t have to worry about her drowning in her own puke, at least. Chasing any thought of Runa out of my head for the moment, I got back to the original question. /You’re not Satsuki Uruma anymore. Right?/

“Well, Toriko? Can you move it?”

“It’s no good. Someone’s pressing down on it again.”

“That’d be me...” Kozakura said weakly.

“Don’t look up, okay?” I warned. “If you look at her, you’ll end up like Runa.”

“I don’t need you to tell me. I’m not looking. Satsuki has no right to look me in the face anyway.”

Kozakura let out a long sigh.

“Satsuki, just give it up already. There’s no place for you here anymore. And that’s your own fault, just so we’re clear. Maybe if you’d shown a little more sincerity to people, it’d have been different, but... Yeah, no point in saying that now, huh? You were an inhuman monster from the beginning. You know what the difference between someone who’s human and inhuman is? Humans still have a place after they’re dead. Inhuman monsters like you don’t even get that. If you don’t treat people like people while you’re alive, well, that’s what happens to you.”

Kozakura continued on, as if talking to herself.

“If you’d treated anyone, just one person, like a fellow human being, that’d have been enough. But you didn’t choose that path.
And it seriously could have been anyone. That’s why you ended up like this. After screwing around with so many people’s lives, you up and vanished without cleaning up after yourself. It’s pathetic. You’re such an idiot. That’s what you are.”

Kozakura let out a dry laugh.

“I thought I’d have loads more to say, but I guess not. I’ve got nothing left. No attachment to you, no regrets, nothing. I’m glad I could tell you that to your face. It felt good. See ya.”

Kozakura suddenly finished talking. I felt the weight of her finger leave the ten yen coin.

“Will it move?” I asked.

Toriko shook her head. “You’re not pressing down on it, are you, Sorawo?”

“Huh? Me?”

I only realized once she pointed it out. It was true—unconsciously, I had been pressing down too, holding the coin in place. I was bewildered by my own unexpected reaction. Did it mean I didn’t want Satsuki Uruma to cease being Satsuki Uruma?

“Yeah, no...” I tried to let the tension out of my finger as I said, “Go to the mountains by yourself, Uruma-san.”

I wasn’t sure what I’d have done if my hand refused to listen, but thankfully it did. Secretly relieved, I looked at Toriko.

“How about now?”

“It won’t budge. Which means, basically... That, huh?”

I didn’t say anything. Toriko needed to sort out her feelings on her own. She was quiet for a while before opening her mouth.

“Hey, Satsuki. I’m really grateful to you. You found me when I was all alone, and led me back out into the sun again. You took me all sorts of places. And taught me so many things.”

Her voice was peaceful, gentle. I was shocked. I never thought I’d hear Toriko use such a warm voice, so full of emotion, with someone other than me.

I felt something squeeze tight in my chest. There was a strange pressure below both my eyes, in the area around my cheekbones and upper jaw. When I realized it meant I was on the verge of tears, that really freaked me out.

/You’re kidding me, right? Have I gone crazy after all?/

“When you disappeared, I was really worried, and lonely, and I couldn’t just sit around and do nothing. I tried my best to save you from the Otherside...but it was no good. I’m sorry I couldn’t catch up to you. Really, I mean it.”

Toriko stopped talking. I thought she might cry, but she didn’t. When she opened her mouth again, her tone was a little low.

“But... You had other girls like me too, didn’t you? You were pretty, and cool, so it’s not that weird, but still. I was honestly shocked when I found out. I thought you were mine and mine alone. But it was never true. I was such a kid, huh?”

/Yeah, you tell her! The woman’s terrible./

Toriko continued, unaware that I was mentally cheering her on.

“But even knowing that, I still wanted to see you. I believed you were still alive, and I felt like I’d be able to accept it all once you came back. In fact, when we met again, I was so happy that nothing else mattered anymore. But... When we held hands, it was different.”

Toriko shuddered. I felt it through the ten yen coin.

“I never knew just one touch could tell you so many things. In that instant, I knew that the Satsuki I knew was gone. I don’t want to touch you now, and I don’t want you touching me either. So, yeah... It was over. I mean, if I don’t want to touch you, if that’s how I feel, then... We’re through, right?”

Toriko moved her finger’s position on the ten yen coin a little so hers was touching mine. It was unusual for her to try to touch me with her ungloved left hand.

“When I heard you’d gone after Sorawo, I was mad. I don’t want to touch you anymore, and I don’t want you touching the people I care about either. You and I are through. You’re gone now, Satsuki. Don’t show up around me anymore.”

Then, in a whisper, Toriko added:

“Bye-bye, Satsuki—I loved you.”

When I felt the strength leave her translucent finger, I immediately asked the question again. “You’re not Satsuki Uruma anymore. Right?”

This time, the ten yen coin moved. Smoothly, as if that was where it was going to go all along.

—YES.

/Yes! We got through!/

“Toriko, when I ask the next question, move it to say /Ushi no Kubi./”

Toriko silently nodded. I asked the next question.

“Tell us your name.”

The ten yen coin moved.

—U...SHI...

/Yes, it’s working/, or so I thought for the briefest of moments before the coin went on to spell something I didn’t expect.

—O...NI.

Ushi-oni?

For a moment, I thought it was a mistake, and looked up at Toriko. When our eyes met, she vigorously shook her head.

“It wasn’t me—It moved on its own!”

The moment after Toriko shouted, we both realized in unison that the Satsuki Uruma who had been circling us the entire time had come to a stop behind Toriko. The altar tilted, spilling the coffin onto the ground. The flowers, which had been arrayed up there without any gaps, slid off like water overflowing from a bathtub.

The exposed surface of the altar was completely covered in a rough textile like windmill palm hemp. The unknown mass moved slowly, as if waking from slumber.

It looked like a festival float in the shape of a beast so massive that you had to look up at it. The body that stretched out behind it was swollen, like a sake bottle laid on its side, and it held its head high like a waterbird as it looked around menacingly from behind a frightening oni mask. The gaping maw and two bull-like horns caught my attention. It was so big the tips of those horns were grazing the black and white striped curtain above our heads.

Obviously, this was no time for us to keep huddling around the table. We took our fingers off the ten yen coin. Kozakura had reached her limit, and collapsed without so much as a scream.

I searched my memory for any ghost stories involving a creature like this, but then realized it was something else. This was an Ushi-oni. If I was remembering correctly, there was a festival float like this somewhere in western Japan.

“The horned face has come,” another voice, not either of ours, suddenly said.

At some point, right next to Satsuki Uruma—I had appeared. It was my doppelganger. Hood low over her face, head hung so she couldn’t see Satsuki Uruma. And yet, not leaving her side.

“I made a promise, so I have to go.”

It was the first time the doppelganger had spoken to me. Her voice should have been the same as mine, but it sounded so young, so childish. The voice of someone who’d gone cynical, made all sorts of walls, and become totally unlikable. But at the same time, that dissatisfied version of me was incredibly scared, and she hated it.

Satsuki Uruma extended her hand. The doppelganger slowly raised her own hand to take it.

/No, I can’t. If I go with her, there’s no coming back./

Even as I thought that, for some reason, I couldn’t move. I was laid low by resignation to the idea that I’d made a promise then, so I had no choice now.

/Ohh, I’m going to take Satsuki Uruma’s hand. She’s going to take me away to the mountains.../

As I watched, powerlessly, Toriko moved into action.

She strode forward, grabbed my doppelganger from behind, and dragged her away as far as the table. The doppelganger and I stared at one another with Toriko between us.

“Stop it, Satsuki! I’m not gonna let you lay a hand on Sorawo!” Toriko shouted at Satsuki Uruma. “I said bye-bye, didn’t I?! You and I are through! I love Sorawo now!”

Toriko hugged me tight as she said that, pressing her lips hard against mine.

“Whoa, hold on...!”

I tried to get away, but I couldn’t. As Toriko’s lips made me go weak in the knees, I struggled to keep my wits about me. I could see my doppelganger watching from the other side of Toriko. For a moment, I wondered if the other me felt lonely, because I was the only one to get a kiss, but then I saw the smug sense of superiority on her face and all thought of that vanished.

/Why you... The night I met Satsuki Uruma in Oomiya, you went to Toriko’s room and got your kiss first, didn’t you?!/

I understood that in a second. I was dealing with myself here, after all.

“That... That’s enough, Toriko! Hey! Stop it!”

Struggling to breathe, I pushed Toriko away. I shot a glare at her, but I couldn’t stay mad when I saw the satisfied look on her face.

The sense of resignation I’d been struck by before was long gone now. That had to be thanks to the kiss, or my irritation at my doppelganger.

I looked towards Satsuki Uruma—no, the thing that had been Satsuki Uruma, carefully making sure not to look at it directly. There was the Ushi-oni, whipping its long neck around, and the woman in black, standing there. Come to think of it, I think I’d heard that in some of the legends of the Ushi-oni, it appeared together with another youkai, the Nure-onna. Maybe when we failed to turn Satsuki Uruma into the Cow Head story, she’d settled into something close to it.

I couldn’t help but associate this beast that danced wildly at the festival while wearing an oni mask with the lion dancers who’d crashed our love hotel girls’ party. When I made that connection, I realized the Barong dance I’d been too drunk to remember had been a premonition, a sign of things to come, or perhaps even a dress rehearsal for this. Why? Because I knew the exact words I needed to say, here and now, to completely exorcize Satsuki Uruma.

Runa, Kozakura, and Toriko each had something to say to her. As a fellow attendee of her funeral, it couldn’t end without me saying something too.

Still, I never saw myself having to say this...

With conflicting emotions, not sure I was wholly convinced, I opened my mouth and spoke to Satsuki Uruma.

“I’m gonna look after all the girls you messed with. So don’t show that face in front of me again.”

Now that we’d started this ritual, we had to finish it properly. I reached out over the table, placing my finger on the ten yen coin once more. Toriko did the same from the other side of the table. In some stories, they say you mustn’t take your finger off the coin while doing Kokkuri-san, but it was just as prone to local rules as a popular card game was, so I decided to ignore the ones that worked against me.

Toriko and I traded glances, then I said the words:

“Satsuki-san, Satsuki-san, please return.”

Toriko didn’t wait for a response before forcefully moving her finger. The ten yen coin went to the “Yes,” and then back to the torii gate. Then we said the last words.

“Thank you. Goodbye!”

Even though I hadn’t told her what to say, Toriko’s parting words matched mine perfectly.

One moment later, there was the loud sound of wind, and the curtain rolled up in the air. I covered my face as we were suddenly exposed to the wind outside blowing against us.

When I opened my eyes again, the scenery around us had changed entirely. We were standing on an embankment overlooking the sea, no sign of an abandoned village anywhere. It was the surface world. The ushi-oni and all the pipe chairs that had been at the funeral site had also vanished. There was a lone school desk, likely exposed to the elements for many years, in front of us, and a gust of wind blew the notebook that was sitting on top of it shut.

Looking down at the sandy beach below, I thought I saw a woman in black clothes standing there, but only for a moment. When I looked again, she was gone, as if she’d walked off into the sea.