Ghost Stories (Part 2)

One of the hosts came into the room and announced, “Dinner will be served before we begin the hyakumonogatari.” The lights were turned on.

A large platter of hand towels was carried in. I took one, using it to wipe my sweaty, sticky face. More hosts came in with stacks of bento boxes, and at last a sense of liveliness filled the room. With how crowded the room was I decided to wait my turn, instead going out to the veranda. A cool breeze was blowing when F came along, carrying an extra bento for me.

“What would you do without me?” he said, though there was no malice in his voice.

He poured barley tea from the dull gold kettle he was carrying into a paper cup for me, then stood up cheerily and went around the room pouring tea for others as well. Once he was done he came back and started to eat his own bento.

“Who paid for dinner?” I asked.

“Now that you mention it, they’re not charging a cover fee,” said F, not sounding much concerned about it.

Meno and Serina came over and sat down beside us. Mutely they took off the lids of their bento. Serina carefully rubbed his chopsticks together to get rid of the splinters. “I saw Nagata earlier,” he said, staring at his hands. “I suppose he has an eccentric side as well, attending this sort of event.”

“Who’s Nagata?” said Meno.

“He was at the Ichijōji Cup last month, don’t you remember?”

“Ah, the mahjong Nagata. Where is he?”

Meno craned his neck as high as he could without getting up, his eyes darting around the room, and eventually called out, “Nagata!” On the other side of the room was a man holding a bento, looking for a place to sit. When he heard Meno’s voice he looked over, grinned, and motioned a couple next to him to follow him across the room.

“Hey, good to see you,” he said in a friendly tone. “It’s so crowded; mind if we sit here?”

He sat down, as did the couple. The woman was the kind of beauty who could suck the air out of a room; I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. Placing her bento in her lap, she leaned towards the man beside her, who was holding a small notebook in his hand, and whispered something in his ear, frowning. The man turned around and called out, “Saitō! Saitō!” Another man lounging in a corner holding a straw hat and a bento turned his head irritably, then came walking across the room. He didn’t even break stride to glance down when he kicked over a kettle, spilling tea all over the floor. Rudely brushing me aside on the veranda he sat down, grumbling, “This heat is quite intolerable.”

I quietly ate my dinner on the fringe of this haphazard group, feeling rather small and insignificant. At first everyone just quietly attended to their own bento, but in time F asked, “I wonder what Kashima is like?” The chopsticks paused, and we all glanced around at one another. I realized that not a single one of us had met Kashima before.

“For such a famous person, he doesn’t seem to make many appearances,” F said.

“I’ve seen his plays before, but I’ve never seen the man himself,” Serina interjected. “The actual running of the troupe is done by a guy called Shinen. He also takes lead roles. I hear he also co-founded the group with Kashima.”

Meno was the first to finish his bento, and as he fanned himself he said, “He must enjoy making plans and pulling strings from backstage. I certainly think things are more interesting that way.”

“I remember the guerrilla production he put on during my first year here,” Nagata added. “You remember it too, don’t you, Saitō?”

“I cannot say that I do. Such things are of no concern to me.”

“You didn’t go to the campus festival? Well, Kashima put on this guerilla theater performance during the campus festival. There wasn’t a fixed stage, they just started impromptu performances all over campus. I caught a few performances, it was all pretty quirky and interesting.”

“Some troupe members told me that Kashima only came up with the plan, and it was Shinen that led the troupe. Kashima apparently issued directions from somewhere off campus,” F chimed in.

“Committed to staying in the shadows, through and through,” Meno remarked in amazement.

There was silence after this.

I looked up from my bento, and gazed around at the people sitting on the veranda. Suddenly a man sitting cross-legged between Saitō and F swam into view. I hadn’t the faintest idea when he’d joined our party. He didn’t have a bento, nor was he conversing with Saitō or F. He was leaning forward slightly and staring into empty space. It almost seemed as if he was listening to our conversation. There was a ghost of a smile on his unremarkable face, but it was so faint that it could also just have been a wince. His eyes were bloodshot, like he hadn’t slept at all the previous night. It was the strange man who had so fascinated me at Shinnyo-dō.

“What’s Shinen like?” asked the woman sitting across from me in a mellifluous voice.

Her companion was looking down and scribbling in his notebook. He seemed to be writing about the mystery of Kashima.

“He’s the glue that holds the troupe together. One glance at him and you can tell that he’s the leader. Naturally he seems quite sharp. Perhaps Kashima is just a fiction created by Shinen. That’s what I believe, at any rate.”

“Surely that can’t be true, Serina,” argued F. “The troupe sees him during performances.”

“But if you think about it, there’s no proof whoever they see is actually Kashima, is there?” Nagata said. “It could be a double.”

“But why resort to such chicanery? What would he stand to gain?”

“I hear the troupe members all get flustered if you ask what Kashima is like,” Nagata said, looking round at all of us. “Is he cheerful and personable? Or is he aloof and intimidating? No one can say. That’s what I hear from more knowledgeable people, at any rate.”

The more I heard about Kashima, the more his mystery grew. This was not simply my knee-jerk reaction; everyone who had heard of this famed student impresario seemed to feel the same way. Though his name had spread far and wide as his theater troupe gained renown throughout Kansai, there was precious little that anyone could actually say with confidence about the man himself. The mental image of this masked man multiplying was quite unsettling.

I took a sip of tea and breathed in the scent of the mosquito coils. The sky was turning a deep indigo. Occasionally a cool breeze would blow, bringing with it the scent of the earth. My wandering eyes settled on the man with the bloodshot eyes again, still unmoving and staring into space.

“He’s a strange fellow, to be sure. And a complicated one.” Meno summed up, letting out a yawn.

　　　　　　　＊

“Oh!” A man standing in the corner holding a camera started heading our way. “If it isn’t Saitō!”

“Uyama,” Saitō sniffed. “Keep that camera pointed away from me.”

“Your help the other day was much appreciated. Ah, I see Nagata is here too.”

“Hey Uyama, I heard you were having a pretty rough time. What’s the camera for? Shooting a film?”

“This is just for fun.”

“You wouldn’t be trying to get footage of the ghost at the end, would you?”

“It’s nothing as silly as that.”

As I sat there drinking tea as inconspicuously as I could, F got up and came over to me.

“Still hiding in the corner, I see,” he remarked. “You must not be comfortable at this kind of gathering.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, you certainly don’t seem to be enjoying yourself. You’re always a little withdrawn. Sometimes at banquets, I’ll look over and see you staring blankly my way, like you feel you’re different from everyone else.”

“I’m not trying to be standoffish.”

“I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, I’m just saying you look a little lonely, that’s all.”

“It is what it is,” I replied. “But there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t help who I am.”

When I looked back on my life, I felt like I’d spent my college years just watching from the sidelines. While everyone else had been throwing themselves into clubs or academics, fooling around like typical college students, or running around trying to find love, I’d just stood there and watched. It always seemed like there was something going on that I wasn’t part of. The idea of participating in something out of obligation had always seemed unpalatable to me, but from time to time I questioned that attitude of mine. When did I start feeling that way? Or did everyone else actually feel that way too? Was it just the garden-variety fear of missing out? Was I just worrying that the grass was greener on the other side?

How shallow, I thought, to assume that someone who led a famous student theater troupe and put on something as elaborate as a hyakumonogatari for a bunch of bored college students would be an eccentric show-off. It seemed that Kashima couldn’t be pigeonholed so easily. I wasn’t quite convinced by Serina’s mystery novel deduction that Kashima didn’t exist, but the secrecy in which Kashima cloaked himself certainly was peculiar.

In my mind’s eye I pictured a man hidden in the stage wings, observing the giddy buffoonery that reigned on center stage. The man had no face—except for his bloodshot eyes.

Whereas I had merely stumbled into becoming a passive observer, Kashima had willingly chosen that position for himself. There was something fiendish about him. The theater productions, tonight’s hyakumonogatari—I suspected that Kashima engineered them merely so he could observe large numbers of people. All of these students who had gathered at the mansion with their vague expectations were simply playing right into his hands. It hardly mattered to Kashima whether they were enjoying themselves or not. He’d never intended to bask in the limelight in the first place.

He would never play the protagonist. He wasn’t even in a supporting role. He merely looked on from afar, observing the proceedings he’d put into motion with his bloodshot eyes, a cold smile on his face.

　　　　　　　＊

The sun was setting.

I was so wrapped up in my own thoughts that I was taken aback when Saitō started heatedly arguing about something. “That’s not acceptable,” the woman declared to Saitō. “Excuse me?” said Saitō, rising to his knees.

The woman’s companion seemed on the verge of tears as he tried to defuse the tension, but neither the woman nor Saitō were ready to back down. Saitō became more and more agitated, while the woman stared him down coolly and countered his every retort. The air crackled with tension, and people were looking curiously at us.

Saitō downed his cup of barley tea in one gulp, then angrily declared, “Farewell. I shall not debase myself with this ridiculous nonsense any further!”

“Come on, Saitō, let it go,” Nagata said placatingly.

But Saitō was beyond listening, and standing up with his straw hat in hand he stormed out of the room. His footsteps receded down the corridor. An uncomfortable silence descended, though the woman seemed quite indifferent. Her companion stared down into his notebook, a worried look on his face. Serina read a book, while Meno lay down on the tatami and fell asleep. Nagata pulled a mosquito coil closer to him and poked at the ashes. Meanwhile, I realized that the man with the bloodshot eyes who had been sitting next to Saitō had vanished.

A subdued buzz gradually returned to the room.

“When’s the hyakumonogatari going to get started?” I asked F.

“Judging by the commotion I heard earlier from the staff room, it should be any minute now.”

“Then I’ll pop the bathroom before it begins.”

The old blue-tiled bathroom was empty.

After washing my hands, I cracked open the frosted glass window. There were a few scattered bamboo stalks growing outside. The sun was nearly down, and a cool breeze flowed in.

As I listened to the chatter from the tatami room, a lonely, dejected feeling came over me. I couldn’t bear the idea of going back and mingling with a room full of strangers late into the night. And I already knew that what awaited at the end of those interminable stories was merely the mannequin hidden in the shed. Would it not be more amusing to imagine the proceedings, rather than force myself to remain and witness them? I envied Saitō, though he had stormed out by happenstance rather than design. The mere act of fantasizing sneaking out of the house and strolling down the Philosopher’s Walk back to my house was enough to fill me with longing.

I knew thoughts like that were what kept me where I was, but once the idea of going home was planted in my head, there was no resisting it. I decided to make like Saitō and get out of here. No sooner had I made the decision than my melancholy dissipated.

On my way back through the corridor I glanced into the room and saw the hosts busy clearing away bento. It appeared that the hyakumonogatari was finally about to begin. I decided not to say goodbye to F. I didn’t want him trying to persuade me to stay, and considering how many people he knew here he’d get along just fine without me.

In the corridor I walked past more people coming out of the staff room. Hurriedly I put on my shoes and walked out the front door. The sky was a deep indigo. Cicadas trilled out nearby. With the coming of evening, the looming shadows of the mountains to the east seemed to suffocate the surroundings.

As I walked down the stone path through the gate, I noticed someone standing in the street. The dim lights of the gate were just bright enough for me to see that it was the man with the bloodshot eyes.

I gave him a slight nod.

“Leaving so soon?” he asked.

“Something’s come up.” On the spur of the moment I added, “I’m sorry I didn’t at least give my compliments to Kashima.”

The man stared at me for a moment, his arms crossed. “That hardly matters,” he said, in a bored voice. “I am Kashima.”

“Oh, really.”

I stared at him for a moment. Kashima stared back with those bloodshot eyes of his, and then said, “Goodbye then.” He flapped his hands at me as if to say, go on.

I came back to my senses. “Yes, goodbye.”

I went down the narrow slope, heading for the canal.

At the end of the mansion fence I stopped.

I turned around to see Kashima for some reason still standing in front of the gate, his face floating in the darkness. He was bending forward and stretching out his neck, reaching out strangely as though he was trying to grab something in front of his chest. Light glowed in the windows of the house, and I could faintly hear the clamour of the many students inside.

I stood there at the bottom of the hill watching Kashima observe the house.

The hyakumonogatari must have begun at last, for the lights began to go out one by one, until the house was completely dark. It was so quiet that I almost doubted whether the commotion of a few minutes past had only been a dream. It was as though the students who had thronged that room had all vanished. When I looked back at the gate, Kashima was gone.

I followed the canal home, imagining what scenes must be playing out inside the darkened haunted house.

The stars began to twinkle in the velvet night sky.

　　　　　　　＊

I asked F what had happened when I met him a few days later. He wasn’t put out that I had left early.

“You missed a great show,” he told me. “The theater troupe pulled off the hyakumonogatari splendidly. As we listened to the ghost stories, it started to rain, and I could have sworn I heard wailing from somewhere. After the main event they held a test of courage. Their props crew was involved in setting it up, so it was all very elaborate. I wish you could have stayed a bit longer.”

“I suppose. I just found it all very tiresome.”

“The highlight of the night came at the end of the courage test.”

Here F grinned as he recalled the events of the night.

“Serina may try to play things cool, with his silver-rimmed glasses and such, but at heart he’s quite a scaredy cat. He pushed Meno and me and Nagata to do the courage test, yet he refused to go himself. We had to reassure him that it wasn’t so bad before he would go. “There was slimy _konnyaku _dangling on strings, spooky images projected onto sliding screens, little monster-like things shrinking and growing and scurrying underfoot, and every time Serina screamed all of us downstairs burst into laughter.”

“Poor fellow.”

“Maybe, but it was so funny we couldn’t help ourselves. At the end of the room in the alcove there was a funeral plaque and a skull, as well as a temple block which you had to beat. There was also a strange woman curled up in a futon inside a mosquito net, moaning. I’d never actually seen a mosquito net before, and the effect was pretty chilling. As Serina clenched his teeth and beat the temple block, the woman got up and came out of the tent, and she had the most ghastly makeup. Of course Serina frantically shoved her away and she tripped over a lantern with a real flame inside which went up in no time. The woman started screaming when she saw the fire, and Serina started screaming when he saw her face in the firelight, and the backup staff started screaming when they came in and saw the burning props, and everyone else started screaming when they ran upstairs and saw what was going on. It was hellish, passing water buckets back and forth in that inferno, and quite a few things were lost in the fire before we were able to put it out.”

I was shocked. “That’s incredible. It’s a good thing that you managed to put it out.”

“Indeed. It was all quite entertaining, but frightening, in a different sense.”

F laughed out loud, and then said, “Ah yes, one of my friends on the event staff told me that Kashima never showed up. He certainly lives up to his reputation, putting all this together and not even bothering to show up.”

“But he did show up.”

“You mean you met him, Morimi?”

“He was there when we were eating.”

“I don’t recall seeing him. Where was he?”

“He was sitting right between you and Saitō.”

I tried to describe him, but his appearance from his face to his clothes were so nondescript that the more desperately I tried to explain the falser my words rang. I couldn’t blame F for not believing me. He insisted that the entire time he had been eating Saitō had been on his right and Serina to his left.

“After the fire the staff were all discussing how to tell Kashima about the charred tatami mats. If he really was here, why would he hide himself? And surely if he was in the room with us, the staff would have noticed?”

He did have a point. If Kashima had been trying to make himself inconspicuous, it seemed odd that he would be sitting with all of the guests.

Then who was that man who had been at Shinnyo-dō, who had claimed to me in front of the gate, I am Kashima? What did he gain by lying to me?

And if that had been the real Kashima, had he gone back and hidden himself in a corner, observing the students amusing themselves with their ghost stories?

Once more I pictured in my mind the man standing at the end of the alley, staring keenly at the house as the lights went out one by one.