K - Lost Small World-

Period One Part 10

It was six year since he last had come to this building. Despite the tenant’s sign sticking out of the wall and the worn out posters that were plastered over the windows’ glass the building itself had not changed much. For Yata six years was half of his life but for the city’s history six years probably did not amount to much.

That Shizume City was a peaceful city was hard to say. Especially the place near the station had been maintained well and gaudy shopping malls strung together there but entering just one back street would bring you to the poor neighborhood of crime organizations and delinquent groups that even now still existed. It seemed like fights between those organizations had not stopped either. It had not seemed like Shizume City was an area to suddenly get a playground, so the kids living in Shizume City had become good at creating playgrounds in the middle of the city themselves. The rooftop of this building had been one of those playgrounds.

"Back then this building might’ve been an office for the yakuza. Maybe they had a gunfight with the cops! For example, this bump in the railing, doesn’t it look like it was caused by a bullet?"

While Yata talked lively he had gone ahead and walked up the outdoor stairs. Yata had wanted to scare them a bit, but the footsteps of the two people following him did not change at all.

"Didn’t your parents get, like, angry that you entered a place like this?"

"Well, I did get a good scolding for it. When I was a little kid my mom would always bare my butt and give me a spanking. But because I was born as a man there’s no way I’d stop exploring just because my parents got mad, right?"

"Hmm. So that’s what boys are like?"

"That’s what we are like! Right, Fushimi?"

Yata hoped for Fushimi to have the same opinion but when he turned around, Fushimi on the very end had stopped and was staring at the lower part of the stairs. He was listening carefully and because of this suspicious behavior Yata strained his ears too.

"Can you hear something?", Yata asked Fushimi but he himself could only hear the faint noise of the cars passing by on the street.

"There was a story floating around online."

Fushimi started to talk while keeping his eyes on the stairs. Although it was uncertain where this story was going, Yata and Aya were drawn in by Fushimi’s calm tone of voice and listened focusedly.

"There was a woman who committed suicide by jumping down the roof of a building, and even though she became a ghost she did not remember her own death, so she climbed up the rooftop again and jumped down once more. But the woman’s ghost still thought that she had not died and while uttering a curse ‘I can’t die, I can’t die…’ she climbed up the rooftop and jumped down over and over again. The building had been closed down but despite that if you climb up the outdoor stairs of that building you will hear one pair of footsteps coming……."

Fushimi’s voice carried an unpleasant dampness. The wind blew and the railing clattered.

"Is how the story goes."

Fushimi ended his telling calmly, with a face as if he had just talked about the weather.

What the hell made him suddenly talk about something like that!? Yata regretted deeply that he had listened attentively until the very end.

"Wha-wha-what the hell is up with you, thinking of suddenly telling a story like this!? Tha-tha-that’s of poor taste, Fushimi hahahaha-eek."

"Footsteps", muttered Fushimi and tilted his head carefully listening again. "Just now I thought I had heard a fourth pair of footsteps."