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-[The Mystery in Your Town]-
“Investigating the kofun? But why tonight?”
Maribel Hearn (Merry) quizzed her partner as they walked underneath Kyoto’s synthetic fall foliage. Usami Renko smiled, turning to explain. Rather than a routine outing for the club, Renko had suddenly urged Merry to come earlier in the day. With midterms coming up, Merry had originally planned to study—But the prospect of another adventure was just too much to pass up.
“The kofun has been on our radar since we started the club. It’d be a shame if we missed our chance to investigate it, so I figured now was as good a time as any.”
“What do you mean, ‘if we missed our chance’?”
“The city is finally going to demolish the site. If we don’t go now, we won’t have another chance to explore. If there’s anything noteworthy, then it’ll be gone forever. We can’t just abide that!”
Once regarded as a site of historic importance, the kofun had been protected from urban redevelopment—but, nowadays, it is simply considered an obstacle to the community. If one wanted to experience history, they could always visit Tokyo, or Hitachi Province. Kyoto was a city on the cutting edge of development.
-[The Lost Emotion]-
Approaching the tomb, they entered a visitor center. Information pamphlets and survey charts were strewn across various desks, seemingly at random. Even an umbrella basket lay overturned on its side, contents spilled across the floor and collecting dust.
“Seems like the door is stuck.”
Renko pulled on the exit door to no avail. Rusted closed, it barely moved under her force. Sighing, she moved a few paces back and lined up parallel to the doorway.
“What are you doing now?”
“We wanted to get inside, right? I’m going to force it open.”
With a slam, Renko shouldered the doorframe, kicking up a storm of dust, but still the door didn’t move. Undeterred, she continued.
“Five… Six… Seven…!”
With a bang, the rusted lock gave under the force of the impact, and the door opened. Satisfied, she looked back and grinned.
“Come on, let’s get moving.”
But Merry swore she heard a laugh when the door opened…
-[Joutoujin of Ceramics]-
Amid rampant overgrowth lay the tomb’s entrance, a passageway of piled stone. A tunnel led from the base of the hill to a circular burial mound at the other end. All the while, replica haniwa littered the entryway, chipped and broken by the wear of time. Merry and Renko stood by the entrance, gazing into darkness.
Lit only by the glow of their phones’ flashlights, Merry led their way. The passage was suffocatingly narrow, and covered in cobwebs, its air plagued by the damp smell of moss. They shuffled through the passage, avoiding the debris of fallen stone, and worked their way towards the burial chamber at the end…
But the passageway kept going, far beyond its length from the outside. A chill crept down Renko’s spine. A cold wind began to blow through the tunnel, howling a low groan like the very earth was crying out.
“Merry, don’t you think that we’ve been walking a long time?”
“You’re right, but I think I see an exit up ahead.”
“That’s impossible. We should be at the burial chamber…”
-[Night Sakura of Dead Spirits]-
Whether possible or not, the girls emerged from the tomb to an unfamiliar scene. Grassland stretched before them, marked only by gravestones and a settlement in the far distance. The sky was cloudy, and the ground was covered in a blanket of mist.
“Where are we? A cemetery?”
“It looks like it…”
Deciding to investigate, the two set off through the rows of graves. Headstones and sotoba dedicated in Japanese told them that they were still in the country, but the grounds were far too steeped in antiquity for that to be true. In a modern graveyard, space was untenable: high demand had forced the engineering of mausoleum complexes and catacombs to replace plot burial. For Renko and Merry, seeing such a vast cemetery bordered on fantasy.
They inspected the first row of headstones. Although weathered by time, some were still barely legible. Renko paced back and forth, contemplating their situation.
“…The dates are all wrong. Meiji 158? Even accounting for the fact that there’s no official extant community census, this can’t be right. It’s like they stopped experiencing history.”
“Maybe the tunnel was a boundary? If we’re on the other side, then let’s be careful.”
-[Mound of Life]-
The two continued to explore the grounds; the night was quiet, but not silent. They heard the occasional snap of twigs and crunch of leaves in the distance, but the shine of their phones’ flashlights couldn’t uncover anything lurking in the dark.
Eventually, they passed a row of tall graves parallel to the main gravel pathway. Renko caught sight of a figure in the periphery of her vision, but before she could react, it was gone. She turned to Merry.
“Did you see that?”
“No, I was looking at the torii. What’s wrong?”
“I thought I saw… N-Never mind. My eyes must be playing tricks on me.”
The two continued down the path. Ahead lay a torii gate, marking a larger burial plot. Flowers littered the ground, and burnt-out incense lined the grave. This had been tended to at least somewhat recently…
“Real spider lilies. You’re lucky they’re already withered, Merry.”
“…Unlike those synthetic blooms that last all year...”
The two investigated the grave. It was the resting place of a monk, who died in an epidemic about 200 years ago. The headstone detailed his dedication to the nearby village, and its people who he helped as disease spread through the population.
To see any grave tended for hundreds of years was extraordinary, especially that of a monk. Offerings to the dead were almost exclusively presented during Obon and were generally limited to familial plots. Even wealthy temples hardly upkept such old graves anymore.
As the two paid their respects, a howling gust of wind roared through the cemetery. The clouds overhead finally broke into a rainstorm, dousing the landscape. Dislodged by the wind, an antique-style paper umbrella rolled free from the shrubbery surrounding the grave. Merry grabbed it and shook off the debris of twigs and grass before opening it up.
Tattered with holes, it couldn’t block out all the rain, but it provided some semblance of cover.
-[Dullahan Under the Willows]-
With the storm came a thick fog, slowly reducing visibility to only a few meters away. Faced with the risk of losing track of where they were, Renko and Merry decided to head back towards the kofun. As they walked, they left a trail of muddy footprints and disturbed gravel pathways; in the storm, something stalked their trail.
An object swept through the fog, traveling low to the ground, passing just out of sight. Their umbrella jerked wildly in the wind, flailing around them. Merry fought for control.
“The wind is really picking up now…”
“We’re getting close. We can see if the rain lets up once we’re in cover.”
The wind seemed to calm for a moment as the two caught sight of the kofun’s entrance—but laughter echoed behind them. Renko and Merry turned, coming face to face with a human figure.
Hovering above the ground, the person swayed with the wind, but its head floated detached, with glowing, crimson eyes. It watched the two with curious intent.
“Is that…?”
“…A youkai!”
Renko balled her fists and stared back at the inhuman. Before she could try and act, Merry grabbed her by the arm.
“We need to get out of here!”
Renko nodded reluctantly. The two fled, pursued by the youkai. It moved lazily at first but grew in speed as they got further away from it. As they raced down the kofun’s narrow tunnel, the youkai’s head shot after them in a last-ditch effort!
Another gust of wind rushed through the passage, dislodging loose stone and dirt from its ceiling. Blinded, Renko stumbled after Merry, pushing them both forwards as the tunnel came to an end.
The light from surrounding apartment buildings lit the ground outside the kofun as Merry and Renko recovered. Turning back, the kofun entrance remained eerily quiet, with no trace of the youkai or its head following them…
-[Shrine at the Foot of the Mountain]-
“I’m coming, I’m coming!”
Renko answered the knock on her dorm room door. Merry entered, clutching a paper umbrella, sewn and patched together. A week had passed since their encounter in the otherworld, and with their midterms coming to an end, they were finally able to discuss what had happened.
Merry took a seat in Renko’s room as Renko dug through her desk. Under stacks of handwritten physics notes and digitized textbooks, Renko produced an ancient looking glossary concerning youkai and other folktales. Thumbing through, she stopped on a specific page and showed Merry.
“That youkai seemed like a rokurokubi. They can elongate their necks or detach their heads and fly around. A positive identification is a big step, especially when we’ve—”
“Renko, did you even study for your exams?”
“Huh? Of course I did! At least a little bit…”
Merry frowned.
“You could try and be a better liar… But, I’m glad we’re both safe. You nearly tried to fight a youkai!”
“It’s just what came naturally to me. Besides, we made it out okay, didn’t we?”
“Only because the boundary happened to close behind us!”
“…I wonder if you subconsciously affected it…”
That night, Renko crossed into the otherworld for the first time, but they didn’t know how. There was a chance that the boundary itself had a special property, but there was also the possibility that Merry influenced it with her powers. As they pushed to learn more about the otherworld, the limits of Merry’s ability were becoming increasingly unknown.
“…Do you think that world is part of our own?”
“It follows if they use Japanese and Meiji dates. Even the youkai could be explained…”
“…Folk stories that used to be true.”
Putting on a brave face, Renko smiled.
“There’s only one way to prove it. Let’s investigate the Meiji era!”