Pathway to Japanese Literature

Kōno Yasusuke

“What the—”

And Kōno Yasusuke—the mystery novelist—shook his head suspiciously amidst the night market crowd.

In truth, though Kōno Yasusuke was registered as a mystery novelist, he remained a perpetual fledgling writer who never prospered.
Writing novels required material.
When it came to mystery novels, one couldn’t write them without material.
Yet he had been commissioned by a magazine for work—his meager brain contained not a single usable idea in stock at the time.
It had reached the point where shaking it upside down yielded nothing.
In desperation, he resorted to his usual method and wandered out into Shinjuku’s night market district.
There had been a time when he’d plucked a brilliant idea from that night market, so tonight he clung to the faint hope it might happen again.

“What the—who was that guy again? Hmm.”

Kōno Yasusuke turned up his coat collar against the cold night wind and muttered to himself again.

He had just brushed past a man in that crowd—someone he must have known from somewhere.
That man was an odd character indeed.
Exceptionally tall yet hunched over, he was emaciated to skin and bones.
Thick dark circles hung under his eyes, while three or four starkly visible wrinkles ran across his cheeks like those of a monkey.
On his head sat a brown hood like those worn by tea masters, yet below it draped a long silk-lined coat resembling Chinese attire.
In his right hand leaned a cane, and with each step he dragged his feet in a heavy limp.

“Oh—”

And at that moment, Kōno Yasusuke called out to this strange man.
Because he was by nature not one to back down from a confrontation…

“Yo—”

As even more numerous ugly wrinkles crowded around his mouth, the man bobbed his trembling head back and forth and compliantly responded.

Yasusuke was satisfied with that.
He had no desire to say anything more beyond that.
And just like that, he parted ways with this acquaintance and melted back into the same crowd, plunging steadily toward Yotsuya Mitsuke.

(Who was that guy again? Hmm.)

For Yasusuke, recalling the identity of the strange man he had just exchanged greetings with had somehow come to feel immensely enjoyable.
And so he slowly began this enjoyable solo game.

But no matter how long he pondered, the identity of the man he was trying to recall failed to surface in his mind.

“Who was it?”
“Come on, out with it—who the hell are you?!”

Yasusuke combed through every era of his life for traces of that strange man—starting from elementary school companions, through middle school days, university years, his romantic period, marriage era, then the dissolute days after his wife’s death, down to his current incarnation as a mystery novelist—yet he couldn’t reconstruct the memory.
It hovered at the edge of recall yet refused to crystallize.
A simmering irritation began creeping through him.

At that moment, he passed by a large display window.
And his gaze came to rest on one of the current event photographs displayed there.
“The Late General Ichinomiya,” it read—a solemn portrait of a general in full dress uniform, encased in a thick square black frame.
When he saw that black frame, he grasped the true identity of the strange man from earlier like a bolt of lightning.

“Yeah, that’s him!—”

The moment he shouted this, strangely enough, his face abruptly paled.
“Why? Why?”

Nezutani Senzaburō

“Yes, that’s him—that bastard!”
“That’s definitely him!”

An old memory of the Mantis Man flashed through his mind like lightning.
When he saw the black-bordered photo, why had he remembered that bastard?
That must have been what’s called the sixth sense—but curious as it was, the thought lingered.
However, when the day later came that unraveled this mystery, Yasusuke would experience a shock so profound it stopped his breath.

"Yes—that bastard’s appearance may be utterly changed, but it’s Nezutani Senzaburō without a doubt!"

As he repeated the name Nezutani Senzaburō under his breath, Yasusuke recalled that era brimming with new experiences when he had just entered elementary school.
When he first sat at the desk—its surface still fragrant with fresh wood and gleaming smooth—the timid boy seated beside him had been Nezutani Senzaburō.
Back then, Nezutani possessed a pallid complexion yet sported cool, round eyes and small lips of faint color that made him a beautiful youth.
Having chanced to share desks, the two boys swiftly became inseparable friends.
This bond intensified over years until their university graduation loomed—when their panic at losing daily contact sparked such extravagant commotion that even schoolgirls might have blushed at its excessiveness.

In the end, Yasusuke and Nezutani devised a clever plan.
At that time, both of them had secured jobs: Yasusuke was to commute to an insurance company in Marunouchi, and Nezutani to a cosmetics company in Tsukiji.
So they made an agreement: around five in the afternoon, as soon as they left their workplaces—which were roughly equidistant—they would meet at a coffee shop called Ginia behind Ginza, where they would sip black tea and share all the stories that had piled up.
This was a brilliant idea.
The two of them became thoroughly cheerful and couldn’t help finding the uproar they’d caused at graduation utterly ridiculous.

However, this brilliant plan—the so-called rendezvous at Ginia—was indeed brilliant, but that it brought an unexpected rupture to their relationship must have been fate’s cruel jest.
It was because at this coffee shop called Ginia, a young woman named Tsuyuko—delicate as a hydrangea blooming in a corner of a garden under rainy-season skies—had come between them.

“Mr. Nezutani is so kind and gentle—that’s why I like him.”

Tsuyuko would say to her companions; yet at other times—

“Mr. Kōno Yasusuke is such a cheerful young master, you know. Unlike me, you’ve never known hardship—aren’t you lucky?”

she added.

Yesterday's best friends became today's sworn enemies; the two rushed to claim Tsuyuko's love, but ultimately love's triumph belonged to Yasusuke.
Around the time Yasusuke and Tsuyuko were intoxicated by love's nectar, building their rose-hued new household, Nezutani Senzaburō—wallowing in despair's depths, gasping ceaselessly day and night—vanished without trace.
This did not go unnoticed by Yasusuke and Tsuyuko.
Even they grew concerned enough to hire detectives for a thorough search, but Nezutani's whereabouts remained utterly unknown.
The two had independently arrived at the same conclusion—that he must have committed suicide in some hidden place after his heartbreak.

However, three years later, Yasusuke heard a strange rumor.
It was news that Nezutani Senzaburō was alive.
Moreover, he had been living under the same Tokyo rooftops, breathing the same air.
His workplace was as a furnace operator at Hanayama Crematorium.

For a time, even when going to work, he found himself too preoccupied with thoughts of Nezutani to focus on his job. Yet Nezutani not only showed no signs of intending harm to the couple but even properly sent them a New Year's card the following year.
Through such circumstances, the Yasusuke couple gradually let go of their initial shock and wariness.
Years passed—one, two, three—and now, five years later, Nezutani Senzaburō had become no more than a stranger by the roadside to Yasusuke.
There was yet another reason for this.
This was because Tsuyuko, Yasusuke's beloved wife, had died quietly that spring from a minor illness, causing him to completely forget about the rival with whom he had once competed for his late wife.

Had Nezutani Senzaburō not appeared before him like this after so long, Yasusuke would never have recalled him for the rest of his life…

“Huh…”

And then—startled by something in that moment—Yasusuke froze rigid on the pavement.
He had just remembered something critical he’d forgotten up until this very moment.

“Wait… If it’s Nezutani Senzaburō, that guy was supposed to be dead…”

Dark imaginings surged.

“Nezutani Senzaburō can’t be alive!”

It was no wonder Yasusuke’s complexion had changed—he had just remembered receiving a postcard-printed death notice for Nezutani Senzaburō two or three months prior. Why had he forgotten such a crucial matter?

He recalled that the text had indeed contained the following words.

"...It is hereby humbly announced that Nezutani Senzaburō, despite undergoing treatment, has at last passed into eternal rest."

“...with a Buddhist funeral ceremony to be held at Hanayama Ceremony Hall on the forthcoming [specific date and time], after which cremation is to be respectfully conducted at said crematorium...”

Judging from this notice, he had indeed died of illness, and his corpse had unquestionably been cremated. Moreover, with cruel irony, he was supposed to have been burned to ashes in the very furnace of Hanayama Crematorium—the same furnace he had tended during his lifetime. Admittedly, there were rare cases where a dead person might revive during a funeral and cause an uproar, but such occurrences proved exceedingly uncommon. If such a thing had happened, eagle-eyed newspaper reporters scouring for sensational scoops would never have let it slip by unnoticed. However, judging from the absence of any such reports in recent newspaper articles, Nezutani’s corpse must have smoothly turned to smoke and scattered through the crematorium chimney. So…?

Then Kōno Yasusuke realized he had just seen the ghost of his old friend Nezutani Senzaburō in the crowd of that night market district.

“Ughh—”

He began to tremble violently.
And he frantically adjusted his coat collar before his throat.
In this state, he no longer had capacity to think about material for his novel or anything else.
He was seized by an uneasy feeling, as if about to be overcome by lightheadedness.

So he pushed forcefully on the door of a bar he happened upon and plunged inside.

“Brandy… Hurry with the brandy… Hurry up with the brandy…”

Shouting at the waitress, he demanded the bottle of Western liquor.
Even the brief moment before the liqueur glasses were lined up before him felt interminably long, as if several hours had passed.
Brushing aside the young waitress’s hand as she tried to uncork the brandy, he poured it into the glass himself.
The thick viscous liquid surged up—gulp gulp—he gulped down four or five cups in quick succession.
The intestines flared up with heat, and soon a searing flow like fire coursed through his entire body.

“Phew.”

He sighed.

*Ah, I’m saved!*

And he screamed inwardly.
Once again, he took up the glass.
As his nerves gradually began to calm, he noticed the quiet atmosphere around him for the first time.

Next to Yasusuke’s seat, two men were continuing a quiet conversation—he listened without meaning to.

“And that’s the situation, you see,” said the man in the crested haori.
“It’s all rather strange—for someone of General Ichinomiya’s stature, he’d hardly dabble in stocks, yet right before his death, he liquidated all his real estate into cash, made every bit of it vanish without a trace, leaving his family without a single yen to spare beyond basic living expenses—you see?”

“And another thing that’s strange—the General’s sudden death is suspicious.”
“No matter how you look at it, someone like him wouldn’t pass away that quickly, you see?”

“I’ve seen a strange man at the General’s residence before.”
“A tuberculosis-stricken, mantis-like man—lanky and dragging his feet.”
“He must be playing some part in this.”

“But wasn’t there talk that he died afterward…”

Having listened to the two men’s conversation up to this point, Yasusuke could no longer bear to hear what came next. The mantis-like man being discussed was undoubtedly that Nezutani Senzaburō. Weren’t these two also saying that that bastard had died? Yasusuke placed a few silver coins on the table and rushed out of the bar.

Ghost Man

When he exited the bar, he found himself at the edge of the bustling night market district. Beyond that point, the night stalls vanished, and it became a lonely street as if night had suddenly fallen. He quickened his pace aimlessly.

Just then.
Just then, a voice called out from behind him.

“Hello there, Yasusuke…”

Suddenly hearing his own name called, Yasusuke gasped and froze in place.
Do not look back—he felt as though someone were warning him.
But when called like that, could he possibly not turn around?

“Hello there… Isn’t that you, Yasusuke…?”

“Ah—”

Summoning every ounce of resolve, he turned around with all his might.

“Gah!”

There stood a lanky, mantis-like man with deep black shadows under his eyes—the ghost of Nezutani Senzaburō.

“Well now, Yasusuke.”

And the monster addressed him with a sly grin.

“Wh-who are you—?”

“Who am I? Now that’s a tricky one,” the monster said with a face that showed no sign of being troubled at all.
“I am Nezutani… the one who shared a desk with you in middle school…”

“If you’re really Senzaburō, you should already be dead!”

“If you know that, then telling what comes next will be easier.”
“Ha ha ha!” he said something strange.
“Why can dead people come back to meet you all? —I’ll set that aside for now. But if such a thing were possible, don’t you think it would be a brilliant idea?”

“Don’t talk nonsense. If you’re a ghost, why not act a bit more like one?”

Even as Yasusuke spoke these words, he was appalled at how he himself had just uttered something utterly ridiculous.

“Ah, never mind.”
“Whether I’m a ghost or still alive—I’ll leave that to your judgment—but there’s one question I want to ask you.”

For a ghost, he spoke with unsettling clarity, plunging Yasusuke into complete confusion.
And no response came to him.

“Listen. You lost your wife, you see?”
“Certainly, you two fell passionately in love and got together, you see?”
“You were the glorious victor in love...”

“Wh-what are you talking about now?”

“Well... You see, what I want to ask you is—do you want to meet your deceased wife? Tsuyuko, was it? That Tsuyuko—do you want to see her again, you know?”

“Tsuyuko?”

Even if asked whether he didn't want to see Tsuyuko, she was dead. After her cremation, he had retrieved a handful of bones and buried them in Tama Cemetery. Wanting to meet someone reduced to bones was even more impossible than pouring water from a basin onto the ground in one swift motion and trying to gather it back again. He thought this mantis bastard wasn't just a ghost—he was absurdly polite on top of it.

“Listen.
“I—who should be dead—am standing right here before you.”
“Take a look around. It’s rather desolate, but this is unmistakably Yotsuya’s street.”
“If you’ll just admit I’m alive, why not turn your head slightly and consider that your beloved wife Tsuyuko might still be breathing?”

"(Turn your head just a bit...)" Upon being told this, Yasusuke gasped and began scrutinizing both sides of the ghostly man.

“It seems you’re still curious after all, you know?”
“Fuh fuh fuh.”

The man who called himself Nezutani bared teeth stained pitch-black with tobacco residue and laughed.

Yasusuke turned red.
However，nothing resembling the ghost of his dead wife appeared before his eyes.

Bizarre Man, Bizarre Banter

“Heh heh... No matter how much you search, there’s no way she’d be here.”

Nezutani’s mood grew even brighter.
The more Nezutani’s mood brightened, the more Yasusuke seethed with unbearable fury.

“You’re just toying with me, aren’t you?”
“Cease your despicable tricks.”

“What? You’re saying *I’m* toying with *you*?”
Nezutani deliberately put on an exaggerated show of shock.
“That’s an outrageous false accusation!
Everything I’m saying is dead serious.
Aren’t *you* the rude one for refusing to believe it? …That said, I suppose it’s only natural you find even a sliver of faith impossible.
What I’m saying is just too outlandish, you see?”

Nezutani feigned anger, then immediately softened his expression to humor Yasusuke.
Yasusuke finally regained his composure, though he couldn’t shake the suspicion that it might all be a ploy…

“Anyway, you’re a damn liar,” Yasusuke hurled at Nezutani’s face.
“You’re alive and well yet issued a death notice—you know?”
“Had I not met you tonight, I’d still believe you’d been reduced to bones at the crematorium.”
“Why fake your death?”

“I never lied.”
“That death notice was authentic.”
“Now settle down and listen properly.”
“This tale’s strangeness defies reason...”

Nezutani grabbed Yasusuke’s arm and wouldn’t let go.
“We can’t talk here,” he said. “Let’s discuss this over drinks.”
And claiming he knew a familiar bar, he forcibly dragged along the hesitant Yasusuke.

It was indeed a bar in Shinjuku’s back alleys called Guillotine, but even Yasusuke, who was knowledgeable about the area, only learned of its existence that very night.
Upon pushing open the door and entering, the earthen floor stretched gloomily vast. Directly ahead, Western liquor bottles with red, blue, and yellow labels—spanning a staggering variety—were arranged on overlapping shelves. The stand before them stood unnaturally tall, and between these, the bartender facing the counter bore a silhouette like a wax figure.

“Welcome… Your seat has been properly prepared over there.”

The bartender, like a wind-up doll that had just started moving, quietly raised only their white-gowned arm and pointed to the corner seat. There, a vase arranged with white roses had been placed. The more he observed it, the stranger the bar became. Yasusuke recalled that once, in a Western book of ghost story illustrations, there had been a house that gave off this same kind of feeling.

Nezutani ordered a cocktail and immediately resumed his story.

“…Listen here, Yasusuke.”
“I died once and was indeed placed inside that Hanayama Crematorium’s furnace.”
“There are any number of witnesses who saw that.”
“For those people, believing I’m alive would be harder than accepting I’m dead, I imagine.”
“I really did die.”
“I went to the world of the dead once and then reappeared in this world.”
“Don’t go getting the wrong idea now.”
“To you, I may appear vividly clear, but I ceased being among the living long ago.”

“How absurd.”
“Enough of this nonsense!”
“Who would ever think you’re a man from the land of the dead?”
“But rather than that, let’s celebrate the fact that you’re alive and propose a toast, shall we?”

Yasusuke, thinking Nezutani had lost his mind and having had enough, proposed a toast to free himself from the man.

“What do you mean by offering a celebratory toast?”
“That’s delightful.”
“Then—”

With a clink of their Western-style glasses touching, the two men gulped down their drinks from separate cups.

“Ah, this seals my victory.”
“This time, I’ll be the one to propose a toast for you.”

With that, he signaled the bartender.

“Your victory? What the hell are you talking about—”

Yasusuke caught the man’s words.

“That’s my line.”
“You’ll understand soon enough.”
“In other words, you’ve begun believing my theory that I don’t belong to this world… Ah, here comes the drink.”
“A toast for you.”

“What did you say?”
“You’re…”

Yasusuke became acutely aware that the drunkenness had suddenly taken hold just as he spoke those words.
The world before him, the bar, and Nezutani all seemed to smoothly recede into the distance together.

(Gah!
I need to pull myself together...)

He tried to prop his hand on the table, but for some reason, at that very moment, his upper body lurched forward against his will and collapsed onto it with a thud.

*Goldfish Under the Flames*

Yasusuke was having a strange dream.—

Whir, whir, whir…

In a space filled with strange sounds, he found himself suspended in midair. He felt as though bathed in flickering neon lights that seemed red, then blue.

Whir, whir, whir…

Delicate brocade-like ripples would rush in with a lively tempo, only to pass over his body again and again. Then this time, from above and below, left and right, front and back (though it felt strange to later realize he could even see behind him), beautiful rainbows descended straight down like falling spears, grazing past his body again and again. They too soon vanished like water bubbles, and now soap bubbles of all sizes came swarming from every direction, gently wafting upward in clusters.

Whir, whir, whir…

The swarm of soap bubbles swayed upward gently, appearing to ascend endlessly, but before long—as if some command had been given—the leading bubble came to an abrupt halt. It was exactly as if it had collided with an invisible ceiling. Still more soap bubbles came wafting up from behind, overlapping one another in moments, their rounded bellies bouncing off each other with soft plopping sounds. Yasusuke felt a suffocating pain, as if his own chest were being constricted.

Then this time, those soap bubbles—stirred by the wind—gradually began to seethe until they were whirling round and round.
The rotation steadily gained speed until it finally resembled the Naruto whirlpools, at which point the soap bubbles lost their form, leaving only a dull grayish-white light visible.
The gradually darkening field of vision plunged Yasusuke’s heart into deepening unease.……

At that moment, something abruptly glinted within the swirling mud vortex.
Wondering what it could be, he stared intently—and from that churning whirlpool of earth rose a single round glass vessel.
Its form resembled the glass goldfish bowls sold at night stalls, yet its interior lay utterly void.

*(Is it a goldfish bowl?)*

As he stared in bewilderment, flames suddenly burst forth from the bottom of the bowl. From the hole atop the goldfish bowl, crimson tongues of flame rose fiercely, resembling the fireballs depicted in old paintings. Yasusuke, driven by an overwhelming sense of unease, could only stare in desperation.

Then suddenly, the flames began to move upward. Inside the goldfish bowl, only the flames surged upward relentlessly. In an instant, the base of the flames came into view. The flames climbed higher and higher without pause. At last, blazing fire engulfed the entire upper surface of the goldfish bowl. When he looked closely to see what lay beneath the flames, clear water lay pooled there.

The water, perhaps due to the glass, was tinged a pale blue and occasionally crackled with distortion.
Through those distortions, something red flickered into view, peeking in and out intermittently.

(What is that?!)

The flickering red specks gradually multiplied in number.
When he looked closely, he realized they formed a school of small goldfish.

(Goldfish are swimming!)

Adorable goldfish swam there, yet how utterly bizarre it all was.
The water's surface lay just above the goldfish heads, where accursed crimson flames raged fiercely.
He watched pitifully, certain they would be instantly scorched by those flames and float belly-up—but this concern proved wholly unnecessary.
For the goldfish had been swimming vigorously and joyfully beneath the flames in the water all along.

If the flames weren’t burning the goldfish in the water, he suddenly worried, then what exactly were they burning?
Then the crimson flames, as if living creatures, acknowledged Yasusuke’s presence. Their fiercely blazing fiery heads swiveled toward him before blasting a violent gust of scorching wind directly at his face.

“Gah!”

Yasusuke recoiled in terror and leapt backward.
The flames pursued him relentlessly.
He started running frantically.
Thudding onward, he kept running and running.

Because he had run so desperately, when he came to his senses, he found himself collapsed in a completely unexpected place.
He looked back, but the flames were no longer visible.
There was no fire anywhere.
An endless eternal darkness stretched around Yasusuke.
The threat of flames had receded, but in its place, the terror of darkness pressed in relentlessly.
The terror of an abyss of eternal torment where nothing could be seen at all…

He tried moving his neck.
Something hard touched beneath his head.
He realized he was lying on his back at the bottom of hell.
A sharp pain throbbed deep in his skull.
He reached his hand toward his throbbing forehead.
At that very moment, his outstretched hand unexpectedly struck something hard just above his chest, producing a resonant *thud*.

In the pitch-black darkness where even having his nose pinched would go unnoticed, what could it have been that struck the tip of his hand with a thud?

Thud, thud.

*(Hmm... This seems to be a plank!)*

Yasusuke felt the object he had touched with a thud as a plank.
If it was a plank, where could this plank be?
He straightened his wrist vertically and probed upward.
But he touched nothing.
This time, he attempted to lift his hips slightly.
And then he tried moving his wrist again.
Sure enough, his fingertips touched something.

Thud, thud.

(Ah—the top is a plank too.)

The sides were planks, the top was planks—the bottom seemed to be planks as well.
When he probed the lower part with his toes, this too was a plank; if that’s the case, the area above his head must also be a plank.
Then what on earth could this place he had come to be?
A place surrounded by planks on all sides—if that’s the case…

“Oh, that’s it!—”

Yasusuke’s heart began to pound like a rapid bell.

“This is inside a coffin.
“This must be inside a coffin!”

He felt as if a thousand-kan boulder had suddenly been dropped onto his chest.
He was inside a coffin.
When had he been put inside?
He had just regained consciousness and finally felt the joy of being alive—only for that joy to vanish in an instant.
No matter how long he lived, being confined within a coffin left him utterly powerless.
Even while knowing there was no hope, he thrashed his limbs and neck like a wind-up turtle.
Thud-thud—bang-bang—he pounded on the planks above.
As he pounded, he suddenly realized.

(If I keep pounding like this, someone might discover me.)

Yasusuke imagined a scene where the coffin he was in had been placed on some altar.
But judging by the absence of any commotion or tolling bells, that assumption had likely been incorrect.

*(Then—could it be a morgue?)*

If this were a morgue, the profound silence would make sense.
*Yes.*
He concluded it must be a morgue.
So he stopped thrashing for a moment and strained both ears.
It was to confirm no sounds were coming from outside.

“No— …I hear something!”
“…I hear something!”

He felt as if struck through the chest.
Something was audible.
Though not loud, a hissing sound—like that of a faucet being turned—reached him.

“What is that hissing sound?”

Before long, a booming sound joined in.
Amidst this, a high-pitched metallic clang rang out—the screech of metal striking metal.

"Oh—"

It was a sound he had heard somewhere before.
The low yet thunderous thudding reverberated through Yasusuke’s core like subterranean rumbling.
He held his breath, curled his body inward, and strained to absorb every nuance of the uncanny noise.

No sooner had a crackling sound begun to mingle with the others than Yasusuke’s body grew strangely hot.
When he thought about it—though it was something he should have noticed earlier—ever since he had become aware inside that pitch-black box, the interior had been as warm as spring.
That it was the midst of midwinter, yet the spring-like warmth felt utterly unnatural.
However, it was only now that it had suddenly grown hot that he became aware of this abnormal rise in temperature.

“What’s starting?”

As he thought this, the area before his eyes suddenly brightened.
Though even that was only as bright as the dim glow of dawn sunlight filtering in.
Oddly enough, he didn’t sense any particular odor—though it would later become clear that this was because a gas mask had been attached, preventing him from detecting any smell—but this sudden influx of light and the crackling sound of something burning and splitting apart might as well have been a declaration of despair for Yasusuke.
In his mind, everything about this strange place became clear for the first time.

Ugh…
This is inside a crematorium furnace!
The fire was already lit, and the coffin began to burn!
Ah, what will happen to me!

He gritted his teeth with a grinding noise.

A Disturbing Dream

Of all places, Yasusuke found himself inside the crematorium furnace at the cremation ground.

(Burned alive!)

Ah, how utterly terrifying.
He had barely rejoiced at realizing he was alive when, the next instant, what closed in on him was the scorching hell of being burned alive.
If being burned after death was one thing, to be burned alive—how could such cruelty exist?
Yasusuke imagined flames searing his limbs and crackling through his hair.—He muttered aimless curses.

“Heh heh heh…”

A sneering laugh could be heard from somewhere.
That voice—he recognized it all too well.
That bastard!
Nezutani Senzaburō was laughing.
As if that were a signal, the fire roared to life with renewed ferocity, its flames booming violently.

“You fiend!
“You fiend!”

He self-destructively jerked his immobilized body.
Because of this, the hemp ropes tightly binding his body dug cruelly into his flesh.
By this point, whether the ropes tore off his wrists or ripped through his thighs—such things were beyond consideration.
Even just a part of his body—he wanted to be free.
And he wanted to smash through the planks of this coffin that was about to catch fire…

“Grr... ngh!”

Covered in blood and sweat, Yasusuke roared like a beast and thrashed.

That was the moment.
Truly, that was the moment.

A single anomaly came flowing in from beside him.
It seemed like a miracle that should not have been possible.
A gust of cool wind swooshed in from nowhere.

“……?”

Yasusuke stopped thrashing for a moment.

(What's happening?)

Something seemed to have happened.

The surface of skin that had been about to burn suddenly turned cool.

And the searing pain seemed to gradually fade away.

(Did the furnace fire go out?!)

He thought—but through a gap in the coffin's lid, the furnace flames could now be seen burning even more fiercely.
The furnace was burning fiercely.
And yet, his body inside the coffin suddenly felt relief.

Plink.

At that moment, something cold fell onto the chest area.

“Oh?—”

He shouted.
Before his voice had even faded, cold droplets began falling from above, drop by drop.

“Ah, it’s water—water’s leaking in.”

His energy recovered in an instant.
He began to calm down.
It seemed he would survive.
Yasusuke darted his eyes around, searching for anything he could make out.
_Found it, found it._
Through a gap in the coffin, he could see a crimson curtain of flames. Just before that fiery veil—presumably right outside the coffin—he noticed a glass tube running diagonally through the space.
And inside that glass tube, a transparent liquid mixed with small bubbles was flowing with tremendous force.
It was undoubtedly water.
It was undoubtedly being supplied from the same source as the water that had fallen plink onto his chest earlier.

*Ah, what a bizarre mystery! There's a cooling system inside the crematorium furnace!*

Isn’t it utterly bizarre that there’s a cooling mechanism installed in a place meant to burn human bodies?
At that moment, he suddenly remembered that strange dream.

“In the water of a glass goldfish bowl, a goldfish was swimming—and on the water’s surface was a curtain of flames.—Ah, that’s it!”

Like a goldfish in water beneath a ceiling of flames, his body was now skillfully protected from the fire by the cooling system.

"What the hell are they trying to do with me?!"

Yasusuke grappled with how to solve this utterly perplexing mystery.

Just as a creaking sound began echoing through the space, the coffin he lay in started swaying gently before unexpectedly beginning its descent downward.

The coffin lurched.

Inside the cremation furnace, miraculously unburned, the coffin containing Yasusuke began steadily descending downward.

(What’s this?)

While he was still reeling from the shock, the coffin appeared to have finished its descent, coming to a halt with a heavy thud.
Then a rumbling sound echoed, and the coffin began sliding sideways.
It felt as though he had been placed on something like a trolley and was being pulled out.
All of this had been carried out in utter darkness, but before long, a faint light began to seep in.
That was apparently not sunlight, but rather electric light.
Had Yasusuke not been wearing a gas mask, he would have caught the pungent, intense smell of earth at that moment.
Like when passing through a newly dug deep underground tunnel.

Then, hushed human voices could be heard.
What they were saying to each other—he couldn’t make out a single word.
As this was happening, the coffin seemed to be hoisted onto human shoulders, but then was set down with a thud onto what appeared to be a platform.
And before long, a hissing sound reached his ears, and a blue radiance became visible through the coffin’s gap.

“Heh heh heh”

“Ha ha ha”

A derisive, high-pitched laughter reverberated from beyond the coffin.
Yasusuke flinched and recoiled, then instantly broke out in a clammy sweat.
They must have directed X-rays at the coffin from outside.
Under X-ray exposure, the coffin’s interior became fully transparent.
His frantic struggles—still very much alive—would have resembled a grotesque skeleton dance to the spectators outside.
No doubt that was why they’d burst into mocking laughter.

“Hey there... Yasusuke.”
“Can you hear me?”

Nezutani’s hoarse voice rang out.

Yasusuke remained silent like a stone turtle.
However, his pounding heart simply would not stop.
Yasusuke ultimately had no choice but to endure the mockery.

“Of course you can hear me.”
“Just endure a little longer.”
“Steady yourself!”

“What are you talking about—” he seethed.

(Do whatever you want!)

He abandoned all resistance and effort.
Now that things had come to this, he realized the more he struggled, the more he lost.
When he resigned himself like that, sudden fatigue washed over him.
The coffin swayed with a rumble once more before being transferred to another vehicle.
This time it roared with a violent mechanical clamor.
He used that din as a lullaby substitute and slept deeply.
It would lurch upward with a groan only to crash down into void.
Even those violent oscillations now served solely as a cradle rocking him to sleep.

Ten hours—no, it must have been dozens of hours later.
Yasusuke’s coffin had finally been moved to where it was meant to be moved.
Abruptly, the surroundings grew tumultuous.
A whistle sounded.
Music could be heard.
Fireworks shot up.
What in the world had begun?

Passing through a storm of what could only be called jubilant uproar, his coffin was finally placed into a perfectly quiet room.

At that moment, muffled voices approached the coffin.

“Well then—shall we finally take it out?”

“Proceed.”

“Then, General Ichinomiya, shall we begin?”

“Very well.”

“Begin…”

A rustling sound, as of ropes being untied, followed by metallic clangs resembling nails being pulled out, occurred in succession.
The time had finally come to emerge from the coffin.
Now then—what manner of place had he arrived at?
Even so, Yasusuke kept shaking his head inside the coffin, certain he'd heard the name General Ichinomiya somewhere before.

Cremation Country

Yasusuke thought he would never forget that peculiar sensation and shock when they opened the coffin lid—if it could still be called a coffin at all.
But surpassing even that strangeness was the scenery beyond the coffin.

There stood several men and women.
Among them were two men with familiar faces.
One of them was, needless to say, Nezutani Senzaburō.
He was the mantis-like grotesque who had brought him here.
And the other one?

(I’ve seen that face somewhere.)

Yasusuke tried desperately to think of it in that instant, but even though it was right on the tip of his tongue, he couldn’t recall it.
He was an extremely obese giant of a man with a ruddy face, sporting a magnificent white beard under his nose that must have been ten centimeters long.

For some reason, the entire room—the ceiling, the wallpaper, even the furnishings—had been painted a greenish-gray color reminiscent of a mouse.
And in the exact center of one wall, a large glass window was open.
The window appeared to be positioned quite high up, and through it, one could see an expansive sea stretching into the distance.
And the land was burnt fox-colored.
The section facing the sea rose in a sheer, cliff-like drop.
A section of a large building was visible on part of the land.
It was entirely different from what we were accustomed to seeing daily—not a perfectly square shape enclosed by straight lines, but something entirely bounded by curves.
Moreover, its shape was indescribably strange—so much so that a single glance sent a chill down one’s spine.
Moreover, the buildings’ color was also burnt fox-colored, and the tip of their tower-like shapes was tinged crimson as blood.
That too, with a strange power, imparted an eerie pulsation to Yasusuke’s heart.

(Where on earth have I come to?)

This didn’t seem like Japan at all.
Yet, he didn’t feel he’d traveled all that far.

“How now, have you noticed?”

The obese man with the white beard called out.

“Ha—”

Yasusuke looked at his face.
As he gazed at that sausage-like face with its healthy complexion, Yasusuke—for the first time—solved the mystery that had eluded him until now and let out a cry of astonishment.

“Ah—”

“Mr. Kōno, allow me to make an introduction.”

Nezutani Senzaburō promptly scurried forward.

“This is General Ichinomiya.”

“So it’s General Ichinomiya after all!”

Speaking of General Ichinomiya—wasn’t he the general whose eternal sleep had been mourned in a shop window framed in black within Shinjuku’s night market district?
Come to think of it, the General’s magnificent beard had been famous.
That magnificent beard was indeed upon the face of the old gentleman before his eyes.

“General Ichinomiya was supposed to have passed away, but…”

“Ha ha ha!” The General looked up at the ceiling and shook with laughter.
“I died and came here.”
“Mr. Nezutani here is the same, and you too have now come here.”

“I won’t die.”
“I have no memory of dying.”

“You may have memories of not dying, but you wouldn’t possess memories of having died.”
“Anyway, it’s precisely because you died that—look at that—weren’t you inside the coffin?”

When he looked in the direction the General pointed, the coffin that had until now contained Yasusuke lay thrown with violent abandon in the corner of the room.

“Ah, then—then this place really is the underworld?”
“Not quite so, you see.”

“Huh?”

The General, who had been staring at Yasusuke’s bewildered face for some time, quietly opened his mouth.

“This place, you see, is Cremation Country.”

A Bizarre Tale

“Cremation Country?”

Yasusuke made a baffled face and shouted back the words spoken by the man who had introduced himself as General Ichinomiya.

“That’s right.”
“You’ll grasp it quickly when I say Cremation Country,” said General Ichinomiya, turning aside. “Now then, Mr. Nezutani—would you care to explain the nature of this country? After all, you’re the one who knows it best.”

“Ha—well then,” said Nezutani Senzaburō, fixing him with a piercing look, “shall we give Yasusuke a little surprise?”
“But before that”—his tone sharpened—“there’s something I must make absolutely clear.”

(So you’ve come—) Yasusuke thought.

“Since we’ve brought you here, you must absolutely cease living in Japan.”
“First off, your funeral’s already been held—you’ve been struck clean from the family registry, see.”
“Return now and you’ll just be a ghost yourself, startling folks left and right without a shred of recourse—exactly like how you mistook me for one.”

“When you say my funeral was held…”

“Exactly.”
“You must remember.”
“When you collapsed while drinking at a bar in Shinjuku.”
“That was the effect of the magic potion I secretly slipped in.”
“With that, you entered a state of suspended animation.”
“Probably, even if a doctor examined it, they would have been unable to consider that anything but a real death.”
“You were taken into an apartment as someone who had collapsed on the street, and then all relatives held a funeral service.”
“Your parents and friends attended that funeral and believe you were cremated into bones at Hanayama Crematorium.”

“That’s absurd…”

“Your bereaved family received an urn full of bones and took it home without a shred of doubt.”

“And those bones…”

“Of course—they’re human bones of unknown origin. Could be some random nobody’s remains.”
“You probably don’t know this, but human bones? In today’s world—pull a few strings and you can get as many as you want.”

“Wh-what kind of man are you? You’re a terrifying fraud of a crematorium worker!”

“That’s right. The words of this fraudulent crematorium worker are spot-on. You must remember my boyhood days—I’m not the sort to live in a daze, lacking confidence in my abilities, no matter how unlucky I become. To put it another way, even my work as a crematorium worker was driven by one major purpose. Can you imagine what I was thinking when I took that job?”

“…”
It’s not that I couldn’t imagine what he was thinking now, but given that he was such an unreasonable man, I couldn’t state it clearly.
Keeping silent was the winning move.

“I wanted to make the seemingly impossible possible and build a magnificent, unhurried nation in this world.”
“Have you never felt it, Yasusuke—how everything slows down as New Year’s Eve approaches? That peculiar sense of leisure creeping in?”
“When only two or three days remain in the year—when no amount of rushing can change what’s done—that very resignation turns those final days into something strangely blissful.”
“Now imagine extending that principle to its ultimate conclusion.”
“Humanity would vanish from official registries entirely!”

Yasusuke snorted derisively.

“In other words, you submit your own death notice and get yourself registered among the dead.”
“Then you can sever all those irksome bonds of this world.”
“Debt collectors won’t come anymore. You won’t have to look after a horde of children. Grow old, and no one will scorn you as a senile wreck.”
“Once registered among the dead—if you spend what remains of your true life with utter freedom and purpose—could there be any joy greater than this?”
“That, in essence, is the origin of this Cremation Country.”

A flush of red rose to Nezutani Senzaburō’s grotesque cheeks.

Dissolved into white smoke.

Nezutani Senzaburō’s garrulousness continued.

“During my long tenure at Hanayama Crematorium, I conceived the idea of creating a special mechanism in the cremation furnaces.”
“To put it bluntly, it’s sham cremation.”
“Once they throw a coffin in and seal it shut, everyone feels reassured.”
“But they only seal the front entrance.”
“The unsealed parts are five walls—up, down, left, right, and back.”
“At first glance, they appear built up with firebricks like a dead end.”
“Not one person ever thought to inspect those five walls closely.”
“I pried into that space—sealed the front once—then extended a specially installed cooling system from the side wall to prevent coffins from burning.”
“Next I built a mechanism to lower coffins from the basement right under that furnace.”
“Then I’d scatter substitute human bones and ashes I’d prepared beforehand across that brick floor.”
“That’s all it took.”
“The bereaved families never suspected a thing.”

“Ah, you devil! You pulled out my wife’s corpse and set it free, didn’t you?”

“Now, now—once I succeeded with this mechanism, I achieved my first breakthrough in inducing suspended animation. This one’s remarkable too. A peculiar poison that becomes tasteless and odorless when dissolved—no one detects its presence. Drink it unknowingly, and you’ll slip into a coma before reaching suspended animation. So skillfully induced that doctors can’t help but declare it true death. These two inventions gave me power to build Cremation Country’s utopia. Since then, I’ve guided worthy individuals into suspended animation—shipped them by plane here—revived them through the same procedure you underwent. Whether exceptional men or bashful beauties—anyone I deem worthy gets brought here. That’s why I sought General Ichinomiya’s presence—most qualified to oversee Cremation Country’s construction. The General resonated deeply—invested his entire fortune into our Cremation Country.”

“So where on earth is this place?”
“It’s not Japan, then?”

“That’s right—it’s an uninhabited island located even further south of the Ogasawara Islands.”

“What about my Tsuyuko? Let me see her at once.”

“Ms. Tsuyuko?”

Nezutani made a slightly troubled face.

“I can let you meet Ms. Tsuyuko, but before that, I must hear a vow from you.”

“What vow?”

“I want you to become a resident of Cremation Country and take charge of the Ministry of Arts.”

“The Ministry of Arts?”

“That’s right.”
“With your literary talents, I want you to establish literature in this Cremation Country.”

“You want me to establish literature here?”

When Yasusuke heard the word “literature,” he jolted back to his senses.
That’s right—even if Yasusuke’s manuscripts never sold, his life had always been rooted in literature.
Yet that literature derived its passionate flavor precisely from being plucked from the clamor-filled streets.
Even if this was called a utopia, any literature harvested from such an uninhabited island could only strike him as being as insipid as chewing sand.
And detective novels of all things would never take root in such an ideal realm.
After all, he found himself fondly recalling—even taking pride in—being that third-rate writer who wandered through seedy backstreets.
The moment this thought crystallized, he was pierced by an arrow-like yearning to return.

“I refuse. I’m still going back to Tokyo.”

“What’s this about returning to Tokyo?”
“…Don’t you want to meet that Ms. Tsuyuko?”

“Yeah, I suddenly don’t want to meet her anymore.”
“I don’t want to get drunk on such outlandish happiness.”
“Lazing about in that cluttered Tokyo as a widowed novelist who lost his wife—that’s what suits my nature.”
“I’m going back!”

“So you insist on going back?” Nezutani asked regretfully.

“Yeah, I’m going back!”

“Very well—there’s no helping it.”

Nezutani gnashed his teeth and briskly descended two or three steps.

Boom—

A single gunshot.
Pure white billowing smoke spread before Yasusuke’s nose.
From that moment on, Yasusuke’s perception vanished completely. ……Therefore, as of now, the story of Cremation Country has no continuation from this point onward.