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Azuringu Dai-O!
Azumanga Daioh! is owned by Azuma Kiyohiko, Media Works
Ringu is owned by Koji Suzuki.
Ringu/The Ring, Asmik Ace, Dreamworks SKG.
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---
Monday, September 15
Day 4
The train station was old; it looked older than this century, at least.
The stones of its walls and arches were cracked from years of pressure,
though little mold had grown into their crevices. Yellowed and
darkened, once-white tiles clicked under the soles of her shoes.
A blinding, dirty light flooded the entire place with a sickly tone of
yellow. But aside from her steps, the station was immersed in unnatural
silence, despite the great amounts of people milling to and fro... or
even those who, as if under a spell, stood silent and with their
heads bowed, frozen statues in the business of the station.
It was a group of four such people that caught Sakaki's eye, as she thought
she had spotted familiar faces among them. Relieved at her discovery,
she picked up her pace and headed towards them, long black hair
trailing behind her as she ran. Their backs were turned to her, and
remained so in spite of the loud echoing of her stride.
She approached the group. "Tomoko-san?" she called, placing a hand
on the short-haired girl's shoulder. But her addressee did not even move
under the contact. All four companions simply stood still, shoulders
slumped and faces downcast.
Worry etched on her face, Sakaki stepped around the group, trying to
face them. But as she did, she gasped. Regardless of previous length and
style, their hair had grown and shifted to completely cover their faces.
It sent shivers down Sakaki's spine.
More confused than afraid, she backed away. The sound of her steps
had grown unbearably loud, bouncing off the arched walls of the
station like surf within a cave. But Sakaki had not yet walked more
than a few yards away when, from amid the group, a fifth figure
emerged, just as if born out of thin air. However, unlike the eeriness of
her former classmates' look, the appearance of this creature sliced into
Sakaki like an icy blade.
Its face, like all the others, was hidden behind a wall of hair. But while
the four girls' hair had simply fallen forward or grown differently, the
mane of this entity had clearly been made that way. It was thick with
mud and slime, yet darker than the blackest pitch. It easily covered
down to the apparition's waist from the front, and Sakaki guessed that it
reached just as far down its back.
Shining almost in contrast to the soiled mop that cascaded from its
head, an immaculate white dress covered the being's body. It was
brutally plain and austere; just a thick camisole that reached down
almost to the ankles and whose sleeves covered only to mid-forearm. It
took a second glance to notice the dirt and caked mud that clung to the
edges of the cloth, which matched the grime on the entity's bare feet.
Sakaki backed away further. There were very few things she could be
genuinely afraid of, but just the mere sight of this phantom had caused
her heart to race like it never had before. It irradiated a level of menace
and hatred and such absolute *fear* that her mind simply could not
understand it.
It took a step towards her.
Not taking her eyes off the creature, Sakaki backed towards a wall and
followed it, her hand guiding her so she wouldn't run herself into a
corner. It was only with a broken, unnerving gait that the ghost
followed, as if it were confident in her inability to run away at all. More
unnerving was the fact that, although the station was filled with people,
none of them seemed to even notice this horrifying apparition as it
stumbled among them.
After shuffling back several yards, Sakaki came across an intersection
in the structure. Behind her, an ancient locomotive whistled,
announcing its future departure. The side passages were deserted, their
destinations hidden by the yellow light of the environment. Ahead, the
creature continued its relentless, terrifying advance. Sakaki began to
tense her legs to dash for one of the remaining corridors when she
heard a voice. A voice whose tone and timbre chilled her to the bone
from hearing them in this terrible place.
"Sakaki-san!"
Sakaki whirled to the side. "Ch-Chiyo!" The pigtailed girl smiled at her
from one of the sides of the crossing corridor. Stopping in its path, the
creature shifted, as if turning to face a new target.
Narrowing her eyes, Sakaki dashed towards Chiyo and stepped
between her and the monster, limbs akimbo in a shielding stance. It did
nothing to deter the approaching terror.
Then, without warning or the slightest fanfare, a round, cat-like being
just popped into existence next to Sakaki. It turned to her, lifted one of
its spindly arms and said, in plain English, "Hello everybody how are
you?"
"Oh, it's daddy!" Chiyo exclaimed, ever so innocent.
The creature at the end of the hall flinched ever so slightly. Sakaki
noticed, and quickly turned to Chiyo. "Go with him!" She pointed
down the corridor they were in. "I'll distract that thing!"
Chiyo nodded happily and took the... hand of the orange cat. They both
took to the air, one by turning into a shifting rainbow of glowing colors
and the other by flapping her pigtails energetically. "Do you like
tomatoes?" the cat asked, producing said vegetable with its free appendage.
"Go!" Sakaki shouted. The pair shot down the corridor at what Sakaki
thought was Mach 2. She then turned back to face the long-haired
phantom. "Stay with your father, Chiyo-chan," she thought, repeating
the phrase like a mantra in her head. The creature, which had been
standing more than a dozen feet away, was suddenly upon her as
though it had always been there. Sakaki felt a cold numbness begin to
cloud her thoughts.
"Aa!"
Again, a familiar voice! Sakaki looked around wildly, trying to find its
source, when she found herself lifted bodily off her feet and pulled far,
far away from the monstrosity. She saw the station's arches fly by one
by one, then a final passage marked the end of the structure and she
plunged into darkness.
- O? -
It was some time before she could come to her senses. When she
opened her eyes, she found she was sitting at her desk, back in her
high-school homeroom. The day was bright and clear, the cherry trees
in full bloom down in the courtyard. Yet there was nobody there, nor in
the classroom or the hall. Only Sakaki sat before the blackboard, a
breeze whistling softly through the open windows. A funny little scrawl,
resembling a well, had been drawn on the blackboard.
With a sigh, Sakaki let out the tension built up inside of her. She then
leaned back on her chair, but as she did she caught a glimpse of a
disturbing figure in the doorway --long and dark hair accompanied by a
pristine white dress. She gasped and stood up.
But, when she looked again, the person that stood at the door was no
other than Osaka, her eyes wide and innocent and her smile both
vacuous and knowing, just as it had always been.
"Ka... Kasuga-san," Sakaki said. Somehow, she had never really taken
to call her by her nickname.
"Sakaki-chan, Maya-chan, hi!" Osaka said happily. Sakaki blinked,
puzzled, then realized that Maya was sleeping soundly on her desk, and
she had been stroking the mountain cat's fur without knowing it.
"What is... this place?" Sakaki asked. "Who was that... thing?"
At that, Osaka's smiled faltered and she bowed. "Aaa... I'm sorry,
Sakaki-chan, but Sadako-san got to them before me..." She looked
down at a black VHS that had suddenly appeared in her hands. "It
needs a lot more work before it's ready..."
"Wh-what? Why do you have that?" Sakaki stared at the VHS,
frowning.
"A! But I'm almost done with everyone!" Osaka smiled happily.
"Thank you for adding Maya-chan and Chiyo-chan, Sakaki-chan!"
Sakaki had literally no idea what Osaka was talking about, other than
she was holding the tape and was utterly unafraid of it. Thus, she only
nodded once, "Uh, yes."
And now Osaka was standing right beside her, although she had never
seen her move. Osaka's expression took a turn for the odd, like a
malicious smile joined by swirling eyes. "Now it's time for you to..."
All of a sudden, the floor started to shake. Sakaki exclaimed, "Quake?"
"Up!" Osaka sprouted a rocket-pack and shot upwards.
And Sakaki woke up.
- A? -
"So yeah, it took a whole day, but we finally located Yukari-sensei,"
Yomi spoke into the phone. Kagura's, "That's great! Where is she?"
came through from the other end of the line.
"She's still in Osaka," Yomi replied, walking into the kitchen to pour
herself a glass of water. "And guess what? We're hitting two birds with
one stone with this one."
"Huh?"
"Yukari-sensei lost her hotel reservations, so she didn't have a place to
stay when she got there, and had to stay with a 'friend'..." Yomi
explained. "And guess who happened to be visiting her grandmother
two weeks ago?"
There was a brief moment of silence on the other end, during which
Yomi rolled her eyes and drank from her glass of water. "Ah!" Kagura
finally said. "She crashed with Osaka!"
"That's right. The house of the Kasuga family, where Osaka lived
before moving here."
"Whoa, that's really great," Kagura said, astounded. "So we'll finally
get in touch with her when you find Yukari-sensei."
"It's more than that, actually," Yomi frowned. Thinking to herself, she
added, "I could almost swear Yukari was with Osaka when the video
was made. And I'm sure that's both of them in that image with the
mirrors." Out loud, she continued, "In any case, we're heading for
Osaka tomorrow by train. I'm sure we'll--"
And her glass of water burst into flame.
"Gyaah!" Yomi tossed it away, also dropping the wireless handset.
Miraculously, the glass fell upright on the table, not a drop spilled. It
continued to flame away merrily, casting uneven shadows on the
kitchen surfaces as the fire danced the night away.
"What... the..." Yomi stared at the impossible event. Her eyes glued to
the glass, she knelt and felt around for the telephone, but jumped when
she felt something wet and slimy in her fingers. "Ah!" she exclaimed.
An annoyed sea slug quickly crawled away from her. Before she knew
it, it was several feet away, and it was gaining speed. "What the hell?!"
Yomi stared at it in a mix of annoyance and surprise. "Wait, come
here!"
She chased the sea slug down the corridor and up the stairs, all the way
up to Chiyo's room. Its door was ajar, and creaking slightly. It was also
late into the night, so all lights were off in the house, but Yomi noticed
that a strong glare, almost like sunlight, came through the opening in
the door. She inched cautiously towards it.
"Chiyo-chan?" she called, creaking open the door just further enough to
cross it. Her eyes widened upon entering, as what she saw inside caused
her breath to come still and her heart to skip a beat.
It was --or at least, that's who Yomi thought it was-- a teeny version of
Osaka, maybe five or six years old, bouncing back and forth on a
school chair as if it were a rocking horse. She was surrounded from all
sides by colorful plastic spheres, exactly the kind found in playgrounds
all over the world. Chiyo was nowhere in sight.
"O-Osaka...?" Yomi approached. Distracted, the little girl turned to face
her but lost her balance on the chair. "Ah!" she cried as she started to
fall. Startled, Yomi dove to the floor to catch her, but as soon as she
touched the child's shoulders her vision was filled by blinding light. In
an instant, a flurry of images coursed through Yomi's mind --an old and
decrepit cabin in the middle of the woods, with a flaming red maple
tree looming over it from a nearby hill -- a girl no older than six inside
the cabin, watching a bright Ring of light on a TV screen -- the same
girl standing right outside the infamous Cabin 12, clutching a familiar
videotape before disappearing in a hiss of static.
Yomi woke up screaming, clutching her chest and panting. A few
moments of taking in her environment reassured her that she was still
in bed, the previous having been just another strange dream. A clock on
the nightstand read eleven thirty, almost midnight.
She had just calmed down enough from the nightmare when she heard
a fearfully familiar children's song. But it wasn't coming from her head.
Puzzled, she rose from bed and followed the sound, noticing it was
coming from downstairs.
Then she noticed the glow coming from the game room.
Her breath died in her throat once more, and she rushed towards the
room. Flinging open the door, she froze in place when she saw Chiyo,
sitting before the giant wall-screen, just as the cursed video displayed
an image of a classroom with a stone well. And just before it cut to static,
a small ladder rose out from the depths of the well, followed by a feminine
hand grasping one of the bars.
"No!" Yomi screamed and raced for the VCR, ejecting the tape and
violently flinging it out the open door. She then grasped Chiyo by the
shoulders, seeing the girl's eyes wide and unmoving. "Chiyo-chan!" she
yelled, "Chiyo-chan, why did you watch that?!"
Chiyo blinked once, her voice monotone, "Sa... Sakaki-san told me to
stay with him..." She pointed to the side. Yomi followed the motion to
where a stuffed doll, the orange cat-like creature, lay on the floor. A
zipper on its back was open. Through her shock and confusion, Yomi
cursed herself for hiding the original in such an obvious place.
Again, Chiyo blinked, then her eyes gained focus and she stared at
Yomi. "Yomi-san?" She looked down at the cat, then at Yomi's face
and at the silent static that ran through the wall-screen. Tears welled up
in her eyes.
"Yomi-saaan!" Chiyo cried, hugging the older girl with all her strength.
Yomi held her back, clenching her teeth in anger at the videotape that
stared back at her from the darkness.
A phone in the room began to ring. Yomi gasped and swallowed,
remorsefully letting go of Chiyo before rising to answer. She nervously
approached the "Disconnect" button, her finger trembling, until she
noticed the ID on the display. She quickly picked up. "Tomo? Is that
you?"
"Yo, Yomi!" Tomo said cheerfully through the phone. "You wouldn't
believe what I just found out! There's no control track on the tape!"
"That's not important right now," Yomi grimaced. "Tomo... she saw the
video."
"Huh? Who did?"
"Chiyo... Chiyo-chan watched it."
There was a pause from the other end.
"Uoooooh! Did you tape it?"
Yomi flung the phone out the door.
---
Tuesday, September 16
Day 5
"Yooomi! Taxi's here!"
It was early Sunday morning, and Yomi was just about finished
packing her bag for the trip to Osaka. A thousand and one questions ran
through her mind, both for Yukari as well as Osaka herself. The strange
images that appeared on the tape were no longer an odd coincidence,
nor were they vague recollections from their high-school years. Yomi
was now absolutely certain that the video was made specifically for
them, and that the group's missing members had a direct participation
in the process.
She zipped shut her bag and hefted it, then walked over to the window
and saw Tomo, standing at the house's open gate with a taxi cab
waiting in the street. "I'll be right down!" she replied, and came out to
the hall to meet her friend outside.
The clock was quickly winding down now. She had just under three
days to figure out a way to stop this curse, but it wasn't just for herself
or Tomo anymore. The thought of Chiyo falling under its spell was too
terrible to comprehend. But, at least, the girl genius was not as deeply
affected by the video as she had initially thought --after the initial
reaction of shock, born more out of Yomi's own horror than actual fear,
Chiyo's worry was related more to her friends having seen the tape than
to her own fate.
This knowledge did little to set Yomi at ease, though. Four days had
come and gone with little progress on the actual creation of the tape. She
hoped there were answers to be had when they arrived at Osaka's home.
Kagura and Chiyo were waiting by the foyer; the former still didn't
know about last night, but she had been brought up to speed regarding
the rest of the investigation. She, along with Chiyo, had then decided to
accompany Yomi and Tomo to Osaka, to try and help locate their
missing friends. Yomi had initially opposed the idea, still believing that
there could be danger waiting at the end of the road, but Chiyo's
increasing worry about her closest friends would not let her wait idly
while the others did all the work.
"Ready?" Yomi asked. Chiyo and Kagura nodded, then followed her
out to the entryway. They were halfway to the gate when they heard the
phone ring; "Ah!" Chiyo exclaimed. "I'll get it!"
Yomi and Kagura saw her return to the house before continuing
towards the waiting taxi. Tomo was already sitting by the driver,
himself looking like one of the video's victims... possibly because of the
girl's incessant questions about mileage, driving on the other side of the
street, and, how, really, was it any different to drive at 180MPH on a
race track than on the streets, since they're both made of asphalt and any
pedestrian crossing the street without looking was looking for trouble
anyway so there, Yukari's driving wasn't THAT bad.
"Leave him alone, Tomo," Yomi said, passing her bag to Kagura as the
tanned girl loaded her and her friends' luggage inside the trunk. She
flinched slightly as two ominous rectangular shapes pressed out through
the side of her bag.
"Come on come on come on let's GOOOO! Shinkanseeeeen!" Tomo
cheered from her co-pilot seat. Yomi felt an ominous cold chill travel
down her back --she remembered how Tomo used to get when their
families took them on vacation on the famous bullet train.
"We're waiting for Chiyo-chan, dummy," Kagura said. Looking back to
the house, she said, "Ah, there she is."
"Guys! Guys! Waaaait!" Chiyo cried, running towards them. "We have
to go to the hospital, quick!"
"What? What is it?" Yomi asked. Chiyo reached them, panting, and
slowed down to catch her breath.
"Sakaki-san..." she breathed. "Sakaki-san woke up!"
- O! -
Sakaki sat silently on her bed, staring out the window at nothing in
particular. Every once in a while, a cloud shaped like a white cat and
kitten would drift by, eliciting a faint blush and a smile on her face, but
outside those reactions she remained almost perfectly still.
Then all of a sudden her quiet meditation was broken by three girls and
a huge fish with legs bursting into her room. The smallest one cried out,
"Sakaki-saaaan!" and threw herself upon her, hugging her at the waist.
"Chi-Chiyo-chan..." Sakaki said, surprised.
"Sakaki..." Yomi stared at her, glasses fogged. "You... you really woke
up." Beside her, Kagura and the fish faced each other, then happily
lifted arms and fins while exclaiming, "Yeah! She woke up!"
"Un," Sakaki replied. She stared at the fish, which was now dancing
from one foot to another and chanting, "Waaai, waaai, Sakaki-chan's
fiiine!"
"We were worried about you, Sakaki-san!" Chiyo said, her eyes still
tearing.
"Yeah," Yomi said, pausing a bit before continuing, "We heard you
watched some bizarre tape..."
"Un," Sakaki nodded again. The fish had turned to doing the Macarena.
"What's that?" she asked, pointing at it.
"Ah?" the fish stopped dancing and Tomo's head popped out of its
mouth. "Ehehe..." she grinned, then pointed a fin at Yomi, "See? I told
you! She's immune to cuteness now!"
Yomi looked at Tomo up and down. "That's not even remotely... ah,
forget it." She preferred not to think about why Tomo had packed the
fish suit in the first place, and the memory of her changing into it in the
taxi was one she was currently trying to wipe away.
"You okay now, Sakaki?" Kagura asked. "Chiyo-chan said you just got
back to normal?"
"Yes," Sakaki said. "I had... a dream last night."
"Oooh! Funky video-based dreams!" Tomo gasped. "Were you flying
above Tokyo and then there were a hundred chibi-Yomis flying with
you until you got to Tokyo Tower, only it wasn't Tokyo Tower but a
really huge Yomi that was sucking all souls on Earth because of a new
Tang diet and-- *oof*"
Yomi quickly retracted her fist with a faintly mechanical sound, a hiss
of steam releasing from her temples. "Was it about the tape?" she
asked, worried.
Sakaki frowned, but then looked down at Chiyo. "She didn't get you,"
she said, cryptically.
"Huh? Who didn't...?" the smaller girl asked.
"Sakaki, we've found out a lot about the video," Yomi said. She pursed
her lips, but then decided to tell her the truth about it. "It... it killed
the people you went to Okinawa with."
Sakaki turned to face her, but Yomi saw little surprise in her eyes.
She pressed the matter further, "What exactly does the video do?
What happens after the seven days?"
The question seemed to confuse the taller girl for a moment. She
looked down at Chiyo, who was staring back with wide and
questioning eyes as well. But in truth, Sakaki didn't remember much of
what had happened last Tuesday. The memory of the dream, however,
was vivid in her mind.
"She... she comes for you," she finally said. "But... she spoke to me."
"Who? Who are you talking about?" Yomi asked. Like Sakaki, her own
dream surged unbidden to her mind. "Osaka? Are you talking about
Osaka?"
"She... said it wasn't ready," Sakaki continued, not really listening.
"That she was almost done with everyone."
The others gulped. Kagura turned to look at Chiyo, but everyone else
turned to her. "Wh-what?" she asked, defensively.
"But if she comes to get you," Tomo started, "How come she didn't get
Sakaki-chan?"
Sakaki remained silent at that. Nothing from her dream or the tape itself
could tell her what was different about her, only... that the others had
died, while she had not. There was a name, though... a female name,
that began with a "Sa"... but it was too deeply hidden within the mists of
her mind.
A question rose to her lips at last, and she turned to face the others.
"Did it..." she started, "Did she get Tanizaki-sensei?"
"Yukari-chan?" Tomo asked. "She's in the video too. She's right before
that scene with the playground and all those Mayas on the screen."
Sakaki blinked. "No... There's no playground in the video..." she drifted
off. "Maya is in it?"
"Hooo?" Tomo and Yomi turned to each other, recalling their earlier
argument about the cat suit not being in the video.
"But Yukari really IS on the tape, right?" Kagura asked. The three older
viewers nodded.
Yomi frowned, "Sakaki, did Yukari-sensei watch the tape too?"
Sakaki looked at her in the eye. "She gave it to me."
- O! -
Yomi pushed her bag onto the overhead compartment, secured it, and
finally dropped onto her seat on the train with a heavy sigh. In
the seats ahead of her, Kagura and Chiyo turned to face her, with
the former asking, "So, what do we do now?"
"We now know who's been making the video," Yomi said, frowning.
"If Sakaki's right, Osaka has been making newer versions of it
somehow, and distributing them over the country." She grimaced,
noticing Chiyo's pleading look of disbelief. "I can't belive she'd be
running around killing people, though. She's weird, but not... that way.
There HAS to be something else behind this."
"Yeah, but Yukari gave Sakaki the video," Kagura said. "So it's gotta
be controlling her and Osaka."
"Right," Yomi agreed. "Either way, we have to stop her. Even Sakaki
can't figure out why she was saved, and she went through it all first-
hand. If Yukari-sensei can't tell us either..."
"I think Sakaki-san wanted to come with us..." Chiyo sighed, worried
about her friend relapsing while she was alone.
"Chiyo-chan, she just came out of a coma yesterday," Yomi explained.
"And Kaorin's family wanted to ask some questions about last Tuesday.
I wish she could have joined us too, but there was nothing we could do
about it." Chiyo sighed softly again.
Meanwhile, sounds of fighting, gnashing and biting came from the
front of the car. "Lemme go! I have my rights! I just wanna see the
Shinkansen guy drive! It's not my fault the sprinklers came on!" A pause,
some mumbled words, and an even shriller scream. "Who're you calling
stupid terrorist student?! Waah! Waah! Help! My youthful exuberance
is being repressed! Waah!"
The three girls winced visibly.
"I hope Osaka-san is okay..." Chiyo whispered to no one in particular.
- O! -
Sometimes, Sakaki had to admit, being ridiculously tall and athletic had
its moments.
Certainly no one in the medical staff batted an eye at the long-haired
"doctor" that roamed the hospital's halls, even in spite of the ill-fitting
shoes and coat that seemed to be one size too small. Then again, even if
they did, one look into her stern eyes (particularly when said eyes had
to look *down* on you) sent even the most suspicious nurse scurrying
off to at least look busy.
After all this time, a stern-looking Sakaki could still be quite
intimidating.
Why should she have to stay in bed, anyway, while her friends were off
risking themselves on a mad goose chase involving this strange video?
She was in perfect condition; enough to shrug off the few days of coma
and walk briskly through the corridors as if nothing had happened.
True, finding a lab coat and shoes had been quite a task, but once she
donned glasses and pulled her hair back into a ponytail she easily
became "Miss Supervisor" to everyone who crossed her path.
She hoped she could keep her coat completely buttoned down,
however. The flimsy blue robe underneath was quite... drafty. Worse,
the hospital lacked robes appropriate to her size.
Sakaki blushed heavily and pressed her stride forward.
After a few twists and turns, she came across the coveted green sign of
"Exit", and the lights and darkness of the city beyond. She was about to
escape into freedom when a quick, almost fortuitous glance to the side
showed a different sign, labeled "EAST B: Psychiatric."
She remembered Kaorin's parents coming up to her earlier, sick with
worry about their daughter. It was enough to make her steel herself and
turn smartly on her heel, heading straight into the ward.
Once again, she walked the halls unopposed. To her dismay, however,
the doors to the patients' rooms were safely guarded behind a security
door. Foiled for the moment, she fished a few discarded printouts from
a trash bin and smoothed them out, pretending to read and glare at them
disapprovingly as she paced in circles in the hall; there had to be a way
to get in, she thought.
Her answer came when one of the local doctors approached the door
from the other side. Visible through the window from Sakaki's point of
view, he swiped an ID badge through a slot near the door, then waited a
few seconds for it to open. Sakaki whispered to herself, "A chance!"
then approached the doctor as he came down the hall.
"Doctor... Kawajiri."
The psychiatrist looked up from his notes to stare at a couple of... well,
the good doctor wasn't a very tall man; and the speaker had been standing
rather close to him when he was called, so it was inevitable that his eyes
never quite reached the woman's face. Indeed, they remained quite level.
"Y-yes?" he said. Why, he had never realized that his very own hospital
had such... talented people working there!
The tall female doctor spoke extremely rapidly, not that he was paying
very much attention to her *words*. "Nekopapa is out of tomatoes, he
needs more. Go to the west wing and give him three hundred CC's of
chiyo-no-osage and four milligrams of nekokoneko."
The entranced doctor nodded slowly. He could almost swear that her
coat's buttons were about to fly in all directions... the ones on the chest,
anyway. He drooled a bit.
"And pengu-butler turned his mind off again. Clean up the spill in
corridor four, then tell Kamineko number four to pick up the cases of
Yamapikarya from the front desk. And give me your ID, I lost mine."
Kawajiri blankly handed her his badge. Seeing him just stand there,
Sakaki frowned and commanded, "Go!" This sent the doctor shrieking
in embarrassment and racing down the corridor, his head spinning.
Once he was out of sight, Sakaki quickly dashed for the security door,
opened it, then leaned against it as it closed. She sighed and smiled
happily to herself. Her brilliant play with words had worked!
Steeling herself once more, she walked down the corridor, looking for
Kaorin's room. It was then that her own previous words created an image
of Kamineko, standing on his hind legs and carrying boxes filled with
mountain kittens.
She had to sit against the wall for a few moments as her system dealt
with the cuteness overload.
Kaorin was being kept at the room farthest from the common room.
When she peeked inside, Sakaki saw the short-haired girl standing and
facing the far wall, drawing something on it with a small piece of
charcoal. Sakaki swiped her card through a slot on the door, waited for
it to open, and entered.
The light was turned off, so only the moonlight entered through the top
window. Kaorin stood sideways to Sakaki, a vacant but happy smile on
her face and a makeshift ribbon on top of her head. Sakaki blushed
slightly at the cuteness.
"Ah! Done!" Kaorin stepped back from her drawing and admired it. It
was a picture of a chibi-Sakaki, her hair done up like Chiyo's pigtails
and with ridiculously cute kittens and puppies drawn around it for good
measure. "So cute!" she cried, and turned to face her visitor.
The light from the window glinted off Sakaki's glasses, and a small
breeze from the ventilation picked up her ponytail as well as the lower
edge of her coat. The look of worry became, in Kaorin's eyes, an
expression equal parts pissed-off and disinterested, while the light
threw dramatic shadows across the stretched coat.
Kaorin's mind blew several fuses in a row.
"Cool..." she whispered. She turned slowly to gaze at the drawing.
"Cute." She turned to Sakaki again. "Cool..."
The overworked repairman in her head hastily replaced the damaged
fuses with fresh ones. Then, as an afterthought, picked up a cardboard
stand-in of Sakaki that had fallen down and set it upright. Kaorin's eyes
widened.
"Sa... Sakaki-saaaan!" Kaorin flung herself bodily into Sakaki's arms,
relieved beyond belief that she was all right. But... Kaorin wasn't a tall
person either. Sakaki blushed in embarrassment and stammered, "Uh,
yes."
As soon as Kaorin realized their position, she yelped and pulled back,
shaking Sakaki's hand enthusiastically while blushing up to her ears
and down to her knees. "Thththththththank you for coming for me,
Sakaki-san!"
"Y-yes..." Sakaki replied. She snuck a quick peek into the hallway,
making sure it was still empty. "Come on," she said, "I'll get you
out of here."
Kaorin blushed even deeper. "Aaaaaaaah!" she breathed, almost
choking herself from lack of air. "Sakaki-san!" she said, standing at
attention, and bowed from the waist. "Please take care of me!"
"Un," Sakaki nodded solemnly. She looked out the window for a
second; only for an instant, a trick of the light turned the full moon into
a bright, blinding ring. Osaka's words echoed loudly in her mind.
"A! But I'm almost done with everyone!"
"No... Kasuga-san..." Sakaki thought. "We have to stop you."
---
Wednesday, September 17
Day 6
Four girls exited the hotel, various degrees of surprise etched on their
faces. The youngest looked around incessantly, taking all of the new
city into her head and wishing they could stay a while longer after this
whole nasty business was over. The tallest looked on with mild
disinterest, as if she had been here once before; while the others gushed
loud enough to attract attention, she merely took out her notebook and
checked the address she had been given. The one with the shortest hair,
like any regular tourist, was already hoping she could get pictures of
temples and stadiums.
The last one, however, was about to bring the nice men in white coats
upon her head.
"Uoooh!" Tomo bellowed, her eyes as wide as they would go. "It's full
of Osakas!"
She quickly broke free from the group and stood on the curb, pointing
madly at random passerby. "Osaka Prime!" she called a girl with long
brown hair, who took a look at her before running away in terror.
"Osaka Number Two!" Tomo pointed at a little girl right on her face.
"Osaka-X!" it was the turn of an elderly lady who turned to her and
walked away, muttering loud expletives to herself.
"Quiet!" Yomi whapped Tomo. "This is where we have to go:
Takayama Road #15. That's the address she gave us over the phone."
"You think she'll be there?" Kagura asked, dubious.
"I hope so," Yomi said. "Her grandmother didn't say a thing about her.
At least, I hope we can clear up some facts about the tape."
Tomo pointed at yet another person, "Osaka Beta!" Both Yomi and
Kagura slapped her hard across the nape.
- O! -
The taxi dropped them off outside what seemed to be a refined bakery,
shining white in the daylight and proclaiming itself to be the "Kasuga
Pan-da!" The girls stared at it.
"You sure it's the right address?" Kagura asked.
"Does that answer your question?" Tomo pointed to the side of the
sign, which had a caricature of Osaka herself, disguised as a panda bear
and welcoming guests and customers. A speech bubble was painted beside
it: "It's bread!"
The group, even Chiyo, stared at it silently.
"Come on, we're on a schedule," said Yomi finally, and the four of
them entered the store. What they found inside, in direct opposition to
the sign on the building, was a rather elegant and fancy eatery. Waiters
and waitresses hurried to and fro among the tables, most of which were
taken by snobbish-looking twenty-somethings. At the far end of the
bakery, a haggled-looking woman was politely but firmly chewing the
heads off passing staff, almost as if completely unaware that she was
breaking them in half with a few choice words.
"I think that's her," Yomi noted. Despite the graying-hair and wrinkles,
the woman was a dead-ringer for Osaka. They navigated their way
through the restaurant and towards the back of the room.
"Aa, the customers at table 3 complained about service..." they
overheard the woman say as they approached. "Now they'll leave and
tell all their friends about how service here is a trip to the inner
circles of hell, and then they'll tell their friends too, and by
tomorrow we'll be out of business and who will provide for my grand-
daughter's wedding and fish store?" The abused waiter stammered and
scurried away, offering apologies all the way. "A, that's good service,"
the woman said.
"M-Mrs. Kasuga?" Yomi was the first to approach.
The older woman turned to them, eyes wide, "Oh, such fine and pretty
girls! Do you have a table? Is the green tea okay? Have you tried our
new melon bread?"
Yomi smiled nervously under the sudden flurry of questions. "Ah,
actually, we're the ones who called yesterday. We're Osss..." she paused
for a second as she almost stumbled over the "Osaka" nickname. "We're
Ayumu-san's friends."
Mrs. Kasuga smiled widely, "A! You're Umu-chan's classmates! I've
heard so much about..." her eyes wandered for a bit, then focused on
the smaller auburn-haired girl that stood nervously behind the one with
glasses. She stared at her as if in shock.
"A-Aaah!" Mrs. Kasuga slipped between Yomi and Kagura and stood
in front of Chiyo, the shocked expression never leaving her face. "Um,
good morning!" Chiyo offered, feeling strong deja vu about this. "I'm
Chiyo Mihama!"
"Wait, don't speak to me now," Mrs. Kasuga said in a serious tone, her
look turning to one of concentration. Then, out of nowhere, she took
one of Chiyo's pigtails in her hand and weighed it, bouncing it in her
palm. The other girls stood stock still and stared.
Then, seeing that the other pigtail did not respond to its brethren's
motions, she took it in her free hand and bounced it up and down as
well, trying to work out a rhythm between both pigtails. Chiyo began to
shake from standing still for so long.
As a final test, Mrs. Kasuga took the tip of each pigtail with her own
fingertips, then pulled them that way and that in perfect
synchronization. After a few seconds of this, she pulled them both to
the right, then the left, then started waltzing with them.
Chiyo would have fallen over if she had had the chance. Her friends,
fortunately, were not impeded from doing so.
"Aah, Kasuga-san..." Kagura said, "We're... in a bit of a hurry?"
Mrs. Kasuga stopped dancing with the pigtails, and turned to face them.
"A? Oh, right, right." She let go of Chiyo, who smoothed out her
pigtails, and asked, "You're here to see Umu-chan, aren't you?" The
girls nodded, and she bowed, "I'm sorry, she's out of town for a while.
She said she had a very important project to work on." She blinked at
the various winces that came from the girls. "Is something wrong?"
"Actually," Yomi said, trying to find the best way to put it, "We're
looking for her. We haven't been able to speak with her in about a
month."
"We think she might be missing," Kagura said.
Tomo then put in her part, "We think she's been running around killing
people with a videotape, Granny Osaka!"
As Yomi and Kagura used strangleholds on their tactless friend, Mrs.
Kasuga said, "Aa, that's not a good career goal. And videotapes must
leave such ugly bruises, too..." She turned to face them, "Well, if you're
looking for her, feel free to look around her old bedroom. You might
find something useful there."
"Ah, thank you," Yomi said, embarrassed. "We'll, uh, try not to make a
mess."
Mrs. Kasuga smiled that vacant yet knowing smile she shared with her
granddaughter. "My Umu-chan's friends are my friends too. Or was it
my friends are Umu-chan's friends? Aaa..." she rubbed the side of her
head, deep in concentration, as she idly led the girls into the house
behind the bakery.
Osaka's former room awaited at the end of a long corridor, flanked to
the sides by her grandmother's and what had been her parents'. There
was a crude wooden nameplate on the door, shaped roughly like a
galloping horse, which read "Umu-chan." Upon entering, they saw
what at first glance looked like a stereotypical girl's room: a Western-
style bed with frilly covers and bedspread, a vanity with several dozen
photographs obscuring the mirror completely, and even a little girl's
rocking horse. So far, so good.
But a second glance revealed things that did not go hand-in-hand with
the stereotype. Like the three small TV sets stacked on top of one
another in the far corner; or the bizarre-looking X-ray plates left
casually on the dresser, containing not pictures of bones but rather
of stone wells and horses; the rocking horse itself was incredibly
old and worn, and covered by a fine layer of dust.
Of course, the proverbial cake was taken by the monumental poster of
an eggplant right above the bed's headpiece.
"Weird," Tomo commented.
"It's not weird, it's... different," Chiyo defended, though the eggplant
looked like it was about to eat her whole.
"Hey, guys, look at this!" Kagura called urgently. She had in her hands
a wide but thin picture book, the kind filled with blank sheets of paper
for a child to draw on.
Mrs. Kasuga, who had been watching the raid with an amiable smile on
her face, said, "A! That's Umu-chan's picture diary. She never let it out
of her sight... not before she moved away."
"Huh..." Kagura flipped through the pages as the others looked over (or
under) her shoulder. The book was almost filled with drawings, their
style denoting the artist's age easily. It often had notes to the side,
written in very simple kana, but the bulk of the work was in elaborate
drawings that, presumably, represented the day's events in Osaka's
mind. It was rather sweet, really.
"Look, look!" Tomo pointed at one of the more recent entries, "She's
talking about us in that one! She's still using it!"
"'I like Chiyo-chan even if she can't fly yet, but she'll learn soon'?"
Chiyo read aloud, blushing. "Osaka-san..."
"'Tomo-chan is always full of energy and always has something to
say,'" Kagura read, "'I bet, if you cut her open, there'd be a thousand
hamsters with lots of little coffee cups in there.'" She laughed out loud,
particularly at the accompanying picture, while Tomo just fumed.
"Maybe it says something about the tape," Yomi said. "Look at the last
entry."
"OK," Kagura nodded, then flipped through the pages again. However,
she suddenly lost her grip on the book and it fell onto the carpet,
spreading itself open on a page relatively close to the beginning. All
four girls gasped. Since it seemed like the trendy thing to do, Mrs.
Kasuga gasped as well.
The book was open on a pair of pages that read, at the very top, "Umu-
chan age 6." The drawing on the left wasn't very remarkable, just an
image of a little girl riding a horse; the picture on the right however...
was a TV set, drawn almost with absolute perfection, with a ring of
light dominating the screen.
"That's... impossible," Yomi stammered. "That would mean she saw the
tape twelve years ago!"
"Ah, twelve years ago, you said?" Mrs. Kasuga asked. They turned to
face her, and she spoke, "She went on vacation with her mother and
father... to America, I think. Wah-sing-tunnel?"
"Washington," Chiyo corrected.
"Yes, yes..." Mrs. Kasuga's eyes glazed over for a second. "She
changed during that trip..." The girls looked at each other as if a great
veil had been lifted from their eyes, and they chorused, "Aaaaahhh..."
"Tell me," Osaka's grandmother continued, "Is she still afraid of trees
that burn for no reason and black garbage bags?"
Only Chiyo did not fall over at the question. "Eh, I think so," she said,
grinning nervously.
"Ah. Anyway, she made a friend during that trip," the woman
continued, "Some other little girl she called S-chan. I think there's a
picture of her here..." she took the picture book in her hands and flipped
forward one or two pages. She then said, "Here," and pointed at a little
girl, looking lonely and miserable inside what looked like the bottom of
a well. The girls swallowed hard when they recognized the picture of
long hair completely covering all but the left side of her face.
Yomi took the book from the woman's hands, looking over the pictures
in the following page. "'Mommy and Daddy watched S-chan's funny
cartoon too, and they were really scared,'" she read out-loud, "'But I
made friends with S-chan...'" she pointed at a picture that showed both
the long haired girl and Osaka, at the bottom of the well, cheering
happily at each other. "'So Mommy and Daddy were okay. And S-chan
taught me a new trick!'"
They saw a picture of a tiny Osaka holding a piece of paper with the
drawing of a horse on it. She was happily cheering the word, "Nensha!"
"Nensha?" Kagura and Tomo repeated. Even Yomi faltered for a
moment, then turned to Chiyo for answers.
"'Nensha' is when you project words or images onto something with
your mind," said Chiyo. "Like using your mind to draw something or to
show your thoughts to other people." Yomi seemed to understand, but
Kagura and Tomo just looked at each other and blinked. Chiyo was
about to explain the word further when her pigtails stood up and a look
of shock spread across her face. "Oh no! Osaka-san is using nensha to
make the video! She's making it with her mind!"
Tomo and Kagura looked at each other again, then burst out laughing.
"Right!" Tomo said, crying from laughter, "What does she do, swallow
the tape and then spit it back out?"
"Does she have a timer?" Kagura followed Tomo's lead. "Does she get
cable too?"
"Um, you two..." Yomi said, serious. The pair ceased laughing for a
moment, chuckles still shaking their bodies. Without a word, Yomi
took one of the X-Ray plates from the dresser --it showed a picture of a
flying Chiyo.
"You HAVE to be kidding!" Tomo pushed Yomi far away as she
snatched the X-Ray. It showed Chiyo flying in the middle of the image,
with hundreds of smaller Chiyos in the background. She shuddered.
"Uooooh! She really IS making the video with her head!"
"We have to find her!" Chiyo cried. "I've read that people who do
nensha all die very young!"
Yomi nodded. "And now we know how she's doing it. The original
video must have been made by this 'S-chan' here..." she glanced at the
drawing of the little girl. "And now she wants to make a new one!"
"Osaka's possessed by S-chan?" Kagura blurted out.
Yomi compared the rocking horse in the room with a picture of the girl,
happily riding the same toy in one of the pictures. But the picture was
still missing a piece...
"Kasuga-san," she said, "Do you know Yukari Tanizaki?"
"Oh, that funny lady with the banged-up car?" The girls nodded. "She
stayed with us for a couple of days. But she and Umu-chan left about
two weeks ago."
"Did they say where they were going?"
Mrs. Kasuga shook her head, "I'm sorry, they left in such a hurry...
They only said that they were going to a hotel called 'Yamamaya' or
something."
The girls looked at each other, grimacing. There were dozens of hotels
with that name just in the vicinity of Tokyo alone. Chiyo whimpered
softly, "They could be anywhere by now..."
- O! -
The group was once again at the hotel, poring over Osaka's picture
diary as well as Yomi's own notes. However, try as they might, they
couldn't find an answer to the two most vital questions in the
investigation: where was she making the video... and why.
Kagura had excused herself to the adjacent room she shared with
Chiyo, noticing the others were too focused on the work at hand --or, in
Tomo's case, focused on the free video games provided by the room.
Meanwhile, Chiyo was reading one of the diary's entries out loud.
"'I looked for S-chan a couple of days after we saw her cartoon. I found
her under the house, she was waiting in a well. She was really angry,
she said she could never sleep, and that her daddy hated her. She said
she made the cartoon because she wanted everybody to feel the same
way.'" Chiyo flipped a page. "'But I made friends with her, and she's
not angry anymore. She says the horses let her sleep now, and she
wanted to see her daddy.'"
"This must be where S-chan taught Osaka about nensha," Yomi said.
Chiyo nodded, "But the last entry doesn't say anything. It just says that
she was going on vacation with her parents, and it was a surprise." The
small girl sighed, "If only we knew where they went..."
"Right," Yomi said, "That's probably where the whole mess got
started."
"Maybe the video can tell us something?" Chiyo offered. Yomi nodded,
and stood up. "Hey, Tomo!" she said. "Leave that alone for a moment,
we're going to watch the tape."
"Just a second!" Tomo replied, twisting and squirming in front of the
TV. "Just one more level to-- AAAAGH!" She stared in shock at the
silent blue screen on the TV, then at Yomi, who was holding the
console's power cord in her hand. "AAAH! Stupid Yomi! Just when I
was rappin' awesome!"
Yomi sighed. "Whatever. Now hand me the tape." Grousing, Tomo
looked around for Yomi's bag, then took out a black box out and
forcefully handed it to her.
Yomi inserted the tape into the VCR. It ran its length just as in the
video rooms, with the odd cat suit appearing as a new addition. They
paused, rewound, fast-forwarded and replayed many times during its
course, but they found no answers to their conundrum. Most of the
images could be attributed to events and premonitions that had already
come true, or plain old Osaka weirdness.
"Ah! Wait!" Chiyo called. Yomi handed her the remote wordlessly,
allowing the genius to work.
"I bet she found out about the bread," Tomo teased, "Yoooomiiii...
eaaaat meeeee..."
"Silence, mortal!" Yomi backhanded her onto the bed.
"Actually, I was looking for this," Chiyo paused the tape precisely at
the scene with the landscape filled with Mayas. A human figure flashed
quickly through the screen, but they had a hard time identifying it.
"There!" Chiyo yelped, then rewound the tape again.
It took a couple of tries with the pause button, until, at last, they
scanned frame by frame through the video. Then, just as all of the
Mayas "lost" their faces, a man appeared. In his dress shirt and tie, and
creaseless trousers --not to mention the absurd Dad Hat on his head--
he was instantly recognizable as...
"Kimura-sensei!" Chiyo said, pigtails standing on end.
"Kimura-sensei?" Tomo crawled closer to the screen for a better look.
"You sure, Chiyo-chan?"
"Now that I think about it, he does look a lot like him," Yomi nodded.
"What is he pointing at?"
"Um..." Chiyo looked closely around the screen for clues, but aside
from the faceless cats there was nothing in particular that he could be
pointing at.
Then, by some miracle of weather, lightning struck nearby. All lights in
the room died for a fraction of a second, the TV among them. But
Kimura stayed, stretching eerily from the TV and still pointing
sideways. When the lights returned, the tape unpaused itself and went
on to the next image on the video. The three girls stared at Kimura's
after-image in stunned silence.
"He was... pointing at something *here*..." Yomi said, awestruck. As
one, the trio followed the line of Kimura's finger across the screen,
outside the TV, over the dresser, and finally onto Osaka's picture diary.
"Mine!" Tomo launched herself at the book, coming up short and
slamming herself on the floor... but her flailing hand just barely slapped
the corner of the book, sending it tumbling through the air until it
finally embedded itself on Yomi's head by one of the corners, spreading
itself open at the very last page.
"Huh?" Chiyo glanced at a photograph, which had been stuck between
the last page and the hard cover, as it slowly floated down straight into
her hands. But then she had to wait for Yomi to finish her daily
wrestling practice on Tomo.
"What is it, Chiyo-chan?" a more serious Yomi asked.
"I don't know, it looks like a photograph of a hotel..." the girl replied.
Yomi took it in her hand, and gasped.
"To-To-Tomo!" she said, twisting her friend's head around to face the
photo. "Look!"
"Ow! What?! It's just some stupid outdoors resort!"
"But look!" Yomi pointed at the picture. It showed a winding path
through a small forest, apparently leading to a group of cabins in the
distance. Osaka stood happily next to the hotel's sign --it was cat-
shaped, looked rather new, and read, "Yamamaya -- Kimura's Family
Inn."
"That's where they went!" Chiyo said. "Yomi-san, do you know this
hotel?"
"I..." Yomi stammered, "It couldn't..." She quickly rifled through her
bag, coming up with Sakaki's pictures of the trip to Iriomote. She
quickly arrived at the picture of the "Yamamura" hotel's sign.
"Ah! They're the same!" Chiyo exclaimed. Indeed, Sakaki's photo
showed the exact same sign --however, Yomi thought, it must have
been burnt or struck by lightning, as there was a deep scorched mark
right across the "neko" and "Ki" syllables of the name.
"Chiyo-chan, go get Kagura," Yomi said. The smaller girl nodded and
headed off for the adjacent room. "Now we know where we have to
go," Yomi thought, looking at the pictures in her hands.
"Maybe we shoulda stayed there the whole time!" Tomo offered.
Yomi growled and decided to ignore the comment. "Very funny, now
hand me the tape."
"Aw, no sense of humor at all..." Tomo groused. She crawled over to
the VCR, ejected the tape, and handed it to Yomi.
"Huh?" the taller girl stared at the tape. "This is the copy? Where's the
original?"
"I dunno," Tomo replied, then dug into Yomi's bag. After a few
moments of rummaging, she came up empty and said, "Not here."
"What do you mean, it's not there?" Yomi stomped over to her bag to
look for the tape herself. But sure enough, the original video was
missing.
Her mind was already racing through possibilities of the tape getting
lost somewhere along the way, possibly falling into innocent hands,
when the room's door opened, showing a dejected-looking Chiyo and
Kagura.
"Um, Yomi-san..." Chiyo started.
"Uh, hi guys," Kagura rubbed the back of her head. She lifted the
familiar black slab in her hand, and said, "I... I thought I could help out,
you know..."
*********************
Azuringu Dai-O!
End of Day 6
One day left
*********************
Jorge A. Pratt
00709382@academ01.ccm.itesm.mx
terbril@rocketmail.com
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