Pathway to Japanese Literature

The Boy Who Couldn't Sleep

Midnight in Great Tokyo!

A moon half-waned at its center hung in the midnight sky.

Now the buildings of Great Tokyo slept like a cemetery under that pale blue light.
It was an autumn night when the Earth seemed to be cooling gradually, filling one with a lonely unease.
There existed a single window where that moon had lodged itself.
That window glittered like a cat's eye near the rooftop of an old five-story building in Ginza's backstreets—its neon sign dark.

If there were a winged human here now—some curious soul who flew up to this window—and if they quietly peered through that glittering pane, they would discover a boy lying in bed, eyes fluttering open as he lay awake.
Keiji—that was his name.
That was the boy’s name.

While three million residents of Great Tokyo now snored soundly in their sleep, and while Great Tokyo's buildings, streets, tram tracks, and yellowed planetrees all slumbered too—why then was Keiji the only one lying awake with eyes wide open?

"There really might be such things after all—"

Keiji muttered to himself.
What exactly might really exist?

"There’s no way Mr. Haruba would tell a lie."
The boy, as if possessed, kept repeating words in his bed—words meant for no one in particular.

The reason the boy alone remained awake through this midnight was due to a strange tale Mr. Haruba had spun before the entire class that afternoon.

Now, what kind of story was this?—

“So you see, everyone,” said Mr. Haruba, squinting his eyes.
That was Mr. Haruba’s famous habit.
“If you think there’s nothing in this world greater than humans, that’s a grave mistake.
In this vast universe where tens of trillions of stars drift about, how could we humans living on Earth possibly claim to be the wisest?
There must certainly exist creatures far superior to humans.
Nothing prevents such beings from coming to the Earth we inhabit.
With their advanced intellects, they might conquer humankind where we stand.
It’s precisely like when an ant tribe dwelling deep in the mountains—believing nothing in creation rivals their might—suddenly finds a hunter appearing before them; before they can even gasp in shock, they’re crushed beneath human feet and perish en masse.
If humans grow complacent in their arrogance, they too shall soon face unexpected devastation—the same as these pitiful ants.
Everyone, do you understand?”

The students lined up in the classroom raised their hands and said, “Yes, Mr. Haruba, we understand.”
Keiji had indeed raised his hand along with the others, but he hadn’t truly grasped the teacher’s words.
Yet upon being told that there must exist beings far superior to humans, he had become terribly afraid.
And somehow Keiji remembered feeling that Mr. Haruba—not an Earth human at all, but rather superior beings from another celestial body—had secretly taken on Mr. Haruba’s form and were glaring down at him and the others from the lectern, until suddenly his body began rattling with tremors.

Could it really be possible for the kind of things Mr. Haruba spoke about to exist?

Mysterious Resonance

Keiji was now fully awake.
Since he thought staying in bed would be futile, he got up from the futon and approached the cold glass window.
The moon grew increasingly bright, shining at its zenith.
Why did the moon emit such an eerie blue light? No matter how he considered it—that color seemed like something escaped from a graveyard.
Otherwise—it could also have been seen as resembling a reptile’s egg.
To Keiji—tonight’s moon seemed different from usual—something profoundly eerie.

That was when.

Bzzzt!
A strange sound struck Keiji's ear.
It wasn’t a very loud sound, but an unnervingly sharp noise, like the slicing of flesh.

"What kind of sound is that at this hour?"

When he pressed his ear against the glass window, the pane buzzed sharply.

Why was the windowpane humming? He had never once heard this windowpane make such a sound before.
That was why it seemed so utterly mysterious.
But a windowpane couldn't buzz on its own.
There must be a force somewhere causing this windowpane to hum.
What could be the source of that force?

"Hmm, what could it be?"
Keiji looked through the window at the ground below in the dead of night.
The roofs, walls, and windows of every building appeared to be sound asleep.
The source of the mysterious force was nowhere to be found—or so he thought, when suddenly something caught Keiji's attention…….

"Oh, what could that be?"
It was a faintly red light glowing with prickly radiance.
A massive blaze illuminated the entire flank of Tokyo Building some two hundred meters ahead.
At first he thought it might be a fire.
If it were a fire, that would be dire.
The flames appeared to spread between the first and fourth floors—yet this was no fire.
Though red, the light remained faint and hazy.

The great blaze breathed intermittently.
With each *bzzzt*, *bzzzt* from the windowpane matching its respiratory rhythm, the blaze too pulsed—*pa-paah*, *pa-paah*—in synchrony.
Thus Keiji realized both the windowpane's eerie noise and Tokyo Building's illuminated flank shared one power source.
Now he burned to understand why this blaze became visible.

Keiji changed into his nightclothes and thought of rushing over to Tokyo Building's side immediately.
But there was no need to do so right away.
For a mysterious monster—one that seemed to reveal the source of that eerie blaze—had appeared within Keiji's field of vision.
It was precisely in the wide vacant lot enclosed by wooden planks beside Tokyo Building.
There grew thick yellowed weeds; this was normally where neighborhood children and adults played sponge-ball baseball.
The soil at what seemed like the center of that flat grassland—for unknown reasons—suddenly began swelling upward from below before Keiji's very eyes. What a disaster!
The great blaze that had been staining Tokyo Building's flank now abruptly projected from within that heaped mound of earth like a searchlight.
What on earth was this thing that had swollen up from beneath the ground, lifting its head?

Midnight Exploration

Keiji could no longer stay still.

"I wonder if this is what Mr. Haruba was talking about," he thought.
"Could it be some unknown creature humans have never encountered burrowing up from underground?"
"Yeah... That must be it."
"I'll go closer and see what comes out properly."
By now Keiji wasn't just trembling fearfully anymore.
Having sensed that some incomprehensible mystery had begun unfolding before him，his heart burned with urgency to uncover this monstrosity’s true nature—even one second sooner.

Keiji tore off his nightclothes and swiftly donned his gold-buttoned short-pants uniform—his server’s attire at Tokyo Building.
Hastily pulling on his lace-up boots, he tumbled down the stairs.
In his right hand—gripped tightly as a precaution—was the thick staff he had bought that summer as a souvenir from his Mount Fuji climb.
By the time Keiji, racing with all his might, reached the fence of the vacant lot, the monster that had been swelling up from beneath the grassland had already revealed more than half of its form above ground.
Keiji, gasping for breath, peered through a knothole in the fence and spotted it.

“Whoa!”
“What is that?—”
Kicking up dirt and bulging into view was what appeared to be a massive steel sphere resembling a mechanical mine.
The surface of the sphere glittered incessantly.
Upon closer inspection, the surface of the mysterious sphere wasn’t smooth like a rubber mat—instead, it was covered in small, scale-like iron fragments layered like overlapping scales. These fragments twitched rhythmically as if breathing, and when moonlight struck them, they glittered and flashed.
The mysterious sphere whirled around at considerable speed, and atop it was a drifting eye-like object.
It moved in whatever direction it willed, just like a human eye.
That same pale red blaze was also light emanating from that eye-like hole.

"What is it? Was that a machine? Or was it a living creature?"
The boy Keiji, who had been holding his breath, unconsciously muttered this.
It was a mysterious sphere of utterly unknowable nature.
The steel-like hardness of its surface gave it the appearance of machinery, while the undulating rhythm of its scales—resembling a snake’s belly breathing—suggested something disturbingly biological.

Now, was this mysterious sphere a machine or a living creature—which one on earth was it?

Two Mysterious Spheres

The mysterious sphere, paying no heed to Keiji's astonishment, steadily crawled up from beneath the soil. Bzzzt, bzzzt—that now-familiar high-pitched noise stabbed at his eardrums.

"Whoa! That mechanical mine monster's rolling sideways!"
Keiji's astonishment had peaked too soon.

From the hole that had opened with a poof in the grassland, something else—a black, round head—swelled up.

“Oh, something else is coming out!”
What swelled up through the soil was another massive sphere identical in shape and color to the first—a twin-like monstrosity.

“Gah! There are two now.”
The pair began spinning wildly.
“Ah...I’m not dreaming, am I?”

It wasn’t a dream.
Keiji pinched his own cheek hard—the pain he felt was enough to send tears rolling from his eyes.

The two pitch-black mysterious spheres began spinning rapidly while crossing two crimson beams of light through the air, entangled like writhing serpents.
Their speed kept increasing until, before Keiji could even register his bewilderment, the two great spheres vanished like smoke.
Simultaneously, the red light that had blazed like a searchlight disappeared without trace.
All that remained was an even higher-pitched electronic whine—bzzzt, bzzzt—faintly striking Keiji’s ears.

“Huh?!”
This was really strange.
Where had they disappeared to?
Keiji watched the two black great mysterious spheres vanish into thin air, his entire body drenched in sweat from the sheer uncanniness of it all.

Where did the twin mysterious spheres go?

Keiji, feeling as if he'd been bewitched by a fox, peered restlessly across every corner of the dug-up grassland in the vacant lot.

The mysterious spheres were nowhere to be seen.
But only the faint bzzzt of the mysterious spheres' groans could be heard.
They must be somewhere around here, but they didn't seem to be visible to my eyes.

It was then.
A grating, crunching sound—like wood being split—began to be heard.
It was a sharp, continuous sound.

“Here we go—something’s started!”
Keiji, wanting to quickly spot this anomaly, scanned his surroundings with eyes wide like saucers.
At last, he discovered it.

“Ah! That fence over there…”
In the wooden fence, a hole had just opened with a hollow thud.
It was about the size of a football.
The hole—what was happening?—rapidly expanded before his eyes.
Before long, it became a hole about the size of a manhole, then grew even larger into one as big as a car tire.
But what was creating the hole remained completely invisible.

The strange phenomena continued.
Just when he thought the hole in the wooden fence had stopped expanding, another tremendous noise began to reverberate.
A clattering sound—like hard objects being violently scattered.
The sound was now being heard much closer.
Keiji was startled and looked back.

But little did he know—something utterly terrifying had just begun right behind him.
Keiji’s face turned deathly pale.
And before he knew it, he plopped down right there on his backside.
Oh, what an astonishing—and terrifying—sight he must have seen there.

What was the true identity of the fiend responsible for these midnight terrors?

Collapsing Tokyo Building

Young Keiji saw the stone-stacked building dissolve away as though melting.
What a bizarre phenomenon.

“……”
Young Keiji was so shocked that even his scream caught in his throat.

To describe the scene he witnessed in greater detail, it unfolded as follows:――

He was standing with his back to the Tokyo Building.
But then, from behind him came a sharp clattering sound—like hard objects being struck violently—and when he turned to look, what a sight met his eyes.
One of the thick pillars standing at the entrance of the Tokyo Building was being gradually gouged from below.
The pillar was rapidly gouged away and, with a creaking sound, fell to the ground with a loud thud.
Having lost its center, it tilted sideways with a whoosh, collapsed to the ground with an earth-shaking rumble, and shattered into pieces with a crash.

Young Keiji had barely managed to dodge out of the way, narrowly escaping being crushed beneath the pillar.

Clatter-clatter-clack!
Another eerie sound rang out.

“Oh—” The boy turned toward the sound, and his eyes were met with yet another tremendous sight.

It was the entrance of the Tokyo Building being steadily gouged away from below.
It looked as though something were devouring it from below, as if it were a confection made of sugar.
The sturdy concrete walls rapidly vanished.
Then came a rattling sound, and they collapsed.

“Wh-what’s this…?”
The sleepy night watchman finally woke up and came rushing out.
He felt as if he were still dreaming and rubbed his eyes, overwhelmed by the situation.

A police officer arrived.

A passing drunkard, his face pale and completely sobered, watched in stunned silence as the Tokyo Building gradually collapsed.
Even the police couldn’t clearly grasp what was happening, but the only thing clear was the bizarre event unfolding before their eyes—the Tokyo Building collapsing right before their eyes.
The fire alarm was activated.
One of the bystanders who had been roused by the tremendous noise must have pressed the button, likely thinking they were being helpful.

Amid the chaos, the building crumbled away bit by bit until finally producing a thunderous roar as it collapsed in a cloud of sand so dense that for an instant, it plunged the moonlit night into total darkness.
It was a desolate spectacle, as though bombed.

“What on earth caused this?!” shouted the people who had rushed to the scene.

“It’s not like termites would eat cement—this makes no sense at all.”

No one knew the truth behind the Tokyo Building collapse incident.

It was a dreamlike, bizarre incident in the Ginza backstreets.

Dr. Kanishidera's Appraisal

The collapse of Tokyo Building took considerable time to fully fall apart, so fortunately there were no human casualties.
From the Metropolitan Police Department, Detective Chief Mizukubo was appointed as lead investigator to look into this cause-unknown building collapse incident.

“I can’t make heads or tails of this. Hunting down a murder suspect would be easier than this,” said Detective Chief Mizukubo—known as the God of Wisdom—as he threw in the towel with startling abruptness.

Superintendent Yamanouchi too made a displeased face upon hearing the "we don't know" report, yet there was nothing to be done about it.

“Mr. Mizukubo. Merely saying ‘we don’t know’ won’t suffice as an explanation to the three million citizens of the capital. Even if we don’t know, there must be some other approach. Don’t you have any ideas—something like ‘if we try it this way we might understand’?”

“You’re absolutely right,” Detective Chief Mizukubo replied, scratching his head repeatedly before suddenly clapping his hands as if struck by inspiration. “That’s it! How about requesting an appraisal from Dr. Kanishidera at Q University—the one they call the eccentric doctor?”

“Ah, Dr. Kanishidera!”
“Indeed, that’s an excellent idea.”
“Since Dr. Kanishidera is a walking encyclopedia, he’ll surely solve this mystery.”
“Then let’s call Dr. Kanishidera immediately and request his presence.”

Superintendent Yamanouchi, suddenly reinvigorated, voiced his agreement with Detective Chief Mizukubo’s proposal.

About an hour later, Dr. Kanishidera finally appeared before the collapsed remains of the Tokyo Building.
Dr. Kanishidera wore thick, round spectacles and sported a bushy, unkempt beard that stretched from beneath his nose down to his chin.

“Indeed, this is even more dreadful than I’d heard,” said Dr. Kanishidera, widening his eyes as he picked up a clump of debris from the collapsed building. “It appears this was destroyed with quite a powerful tool.”

“Doctor, even if you say it was a powerful tool, according to those who witnessed it, there wasn’t so much as a dog at the scene—let alone any tools.”

“What are you saying? There’s no mistake in what I say. It was definitely destroyed by a powerful tool—there’s no doubt. The time will undoubtedly come when that becomes clear.”

“Is that so… But something’s really off here. Everyone who saw it insists—as if they’d all agreed—that even though there was nothing visible nearby, just the building kept crumbling away…”

Detective Chief Mizukubo couldn’t quite grasp what Dr. Kanishidera was saying.

After a short while, Dr. Kanishidera stretched his back and,

“I’ve grasped enough about this scene.”
“Now, I want to see a location that’s actively collapsing—kindly guide me there.”

“The place that’s actively collapsing now?”
Detective Chief Mizukubo turned aside and asked the police squad whether there was any location currently undergoing collapse.

“Well, there’s no such place actively collapsing at present.”
“At present, it seems the collapses have ceased with only Tokyo Building affected.”
Dr. Kanishidera was listening to this exchange but soon began shaking his head vigorously from side to side.

“Unless we see it collapsing firsthand, I shan’t be able to explain why this phenomenon occurs. Should such an event recur, notify me at once.” Having declared this, Dr. Kanishidera departed in great haste.

Newspaper Articles

Keiji would shudder whenever he recalled that night’s bizarre events.

—A massive monstrosity like some mechanical sea mine had pushed upward through the vacant lot’s grassy field—bulging and swelling into existence! Not just one either—two had materialized! They whirred violently as they spun round each other before vanishing like smoke into nothingness! Those freakish spheres even bore red glowing ports like eyeballs—but those too blinked out of sight! Where could those two colossal monstrosities have gone?

――Tokyo Building began collapsing with a clatter-clatter-clatter not long after that.

Were the two red-eyed monstrous spheres and Tokyo Building's collapse separate phenomena?
Or did both emerge from the same source?

The next morning’s newspapers carried the Tokyo Building collapse incident as three-column banner headlines, sensationalizing it in bold lettering.

“Midnight Horror!
Tokyo Building Collapses!
Mystery Defies Explanation!” read one headline, while another proclaimed: “Science Fiction Horror! Dr. Kanishidera Admits Defeat—
Humanity’s Scientific Might Vanquished!”

Such grandiose phrases stood arrayed in massive type.

Keiji, the boy, voraciously read every article in front of the collapsed Tokyo Building.
Yet nowhere in those newspaper reports appeared any mention of the two monstrous spheres.
Keiji, the boy, felt profoundly unsettled.
Why hadn’t they written about that?

“Hey, server! You shouldn’t be reading newspapers in the middle of this commotion!”
“If you’ve got time for that, you might as well clear away even one broken wall.”

The loudmouth manager Adachi spotted Keiji, the boy, and let loose a blast of his signature thunder.

“Ha ha!” With that, Keiji fled like a rat and scrambled up the mound of debris from the collapsed building.

“Kei-boy—heh—got you good, didn’t they? Heh heh heh!”

“Oh—Donsuke? So this is where you were hiding?”

“Heh heh! Been workin’ here since earlier. Dug out quite a bit already.”
The speaker was Keiji’s friend Donsuke—Nagata Junsuke—who’d worked as a cook at the Tokyo Building. He was an alarmingly large man with a rotund frame.

“You’re workin’ awfully hard. Doesn’t seem like your usual self.”

“Hmph—this is a secret, but right under here’s a special apple pie I made.”
“I’m hungry, so I’m gonna dig it out and eat it.”
“If you help me out, I’ll give you a slice.”

The Mysterious Eavesdropper

“I don’t like mud-covered pies.”
“Hey, Donsuke.”
“More importantly—there’s something far more serious.”

"Important? Don't shock a weak-hearted guy like me by saying it's important."
"What's this 'important' thing you're talking about?"

"Well, that's—" began Keiji. Though last night's collapse of Tokyo Building was in the papers, he wondered why there were no articles about those two giant monstrosities he'd seen earlier. He described in detail to Donsuke the astonishing spectacle from the previous night.

"Ha! Now I get it."
"Those giant monstrosities spinning around playing tag—'giant monstrosities' is too clunky. Let's call 'em ○○ Beasts."
"—You're the only one who's seen those ○○ Beasts."
"Even newspaper hacks don't know."
"Course that so-called Dr. Beardy doesn't know either."
"This means it's a scoop!"
"Scoops sell!"
"Kei-boy—leave it to me."
"Let's sell this ○○ Beast scoop to some reporter and make bank!"

“Is a scoop really something that sells that well?”

“Yeah, I’ll sell it for sure and show you.”
It was just as he said this.

“I’ll take that scoop． I’ll give you plenty of money，” came a sudden voice from behind them．

With a start, Keiji and Donsuke looked up to find an unfamiliar young Western woman standing there.
She wasn’t particularly tall, had chestnut-brown curly hair, a face as red as an apple, and wore a grayish-white Burberry coat like a man would, with her chin buried deep in the collar.
Her eyes were covered by large black glasses, she appeared to have been digging through the collapsed debris until now, and her right hand gripped a long metal-tipped staff.

“Huh? You’re the one buying it?”

“I’ll buy it.
“I’ll give you this much money.
“Then I have purchased it.
“You must not speak of this to outsiders.
“You absolutely must not speak of this.”

With that, she swiftly pressed the bills into Donsuke’s hand—when he opened his palm, two 10-yen notes lay inside.

“Well, well—twenty yen—”

“Donsuke.
“Aren’t these counterfeit bills?”

When Donsuke heard “counterfeit bills,” he held one up to the sky to check, but eventually shook his head and twisted one of them into Keiji’s pocket.

Who could this mysterious foreign woman with black glasses be?

Will Dr. Kanishidera be able to successfully unravel this great secret?

And where have the ○○ Beasts hidden themselves now?
What exactly could the ○○ Beasts be?

Another Newspaper Article

Where in the world had those mysterious ○○ Beasts disappeared to?

And what of that strange malady afflicting buildings where concrete and iron pillars vanished with violent crashes—what had become of it?

The boy Keiji found himself in a daze after unexpectedly discovering a ten-yen note in his pocket. Even when he repeatedly took it out to inspect it, the bill stubbornly remained a ten-yen note.
Had this money come from a shape-shifting tanuki, it should have transformed into leaves by now. Since it hadn't, he finally understood this was genuine profit.

In that case, Keiji found himself having to ponder once more how he should use this ten yen.

After much consideration, he came up with a good idea.
That was to get a camera.
Even if he were to get a camera, buying a ten-yen camera would only get him a shabby piece of equipment.
Thinking that would be disappointing, after much deliberation, he decided to borrow a Leica, a camera renowned these days as a high-end model.
It was settled that he would borrow the Leica for one week at a rental fee of ten yen.
Since this was a store Keiji often frequented, they had gone out of their way to accommodate him, settling on a rental fee of just ten yen.

Keiji became utterly thrilled and hung the Leica in its quick-access case around his neck, refusing to let go of it.
When going out on errands, when eating, even when sleeping—he kept the camera hanging around his neck.
The only time he was separated from the camera was when he took a bath.
He fervently hoped that within this week, he would take some amazing photograph worth more than ten yen.

Donsuke had completely vanished without a trace.

It was the morning of the very next day after they had earned ten yen.
When he saw the delivered morning paper, Keiji widened his eyes in shock.

The story about the ○○ Beasts had been placed at the top of the society section, printed in three-column bold letters that screamed for attention.

—Was this the answer to the building’s collapse?
Tokyo Building Manager Mr. Nagata Junsuke, Who Saw the ○○ Beasts, Speaks—

Under the headline: “I saw the mysterious ○○ Beast with these very eyes last night. This was a terrifying monster with big, round eyes as large as ten snowmen rolled into one. It came floating down gently from the sky and glared at me. As a Japanese man, I bravely glared back at the ○○ Beast, but its body was as slender as a fox’s with a long tail, and its total length measured about fifty meters. But what was strange was its body. It was completely transparent like a jellyfish, and unless you got quite close, you couldn’t see it. In any case, it was a terrifying beast, and in my opinion, I thought it would taste best fried and eaten.” “...and so on.”

When Keiji read that far, he burst out laughing at Donsuke’s tall tale.
Donsuke, having nothing to say, must have resorted to such nonsense—but suggesting frying and eating it completely gave away his background as a cook, which was laughable.

Miss Laura’s Anger

That day, even though noon was approaching, Donsuke had not returned, so Manager Adachi was fuming and puffing with rage in a full-blown huff.

“Hey server! You know where Nagata is yet you’re hiding it from me.”
“Bring him here quick.”
“If you don’t fetch him within thirty minutes, I’ll have your head.”
“Gotta make that guy say ‘un’.”
“With me as manager here, that bastard had the gall to call himself Tokyo Building’s chief in the papers—outrageous!”

Fuming and puffing, Manager Adachi stormed off in a rage.
Though making anger part of his daily business, today he seemed truly furious from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head.

"Oh man, thanks to Donsuke, even I got scolded. What a drag."

Keiji aimed his camera at the retreating manager's back as he stomped away and snapped a photo.
Like firing a machine gun's rat-a-tat.
He felt satisfied.
If only it had captured the manager's gleaming bald head—then his chest would've felt even clearer.

Keiji sat down on a shattered stone block and began enumerating possible locations where Donsuke might have gone, one by one.

“Oh, it’s you. I remember quite well—”

Keiji, lost in thought, suddenly felt his arm grabbed with a shrill scream from a woman in yellow.

When he looked up, it was the foreign woman with russet curly hair who had given him the ten-yen note. She still wore oversized black glasses and dragged her pale coat as before.

“Thank you for the other day,” Keiji said.

“You’re awful.”
“Why did you break our promise?”

“Huh? What promi—”

“You broke it.”
“I bought the news for twenty yen.”
“You promised not to tell anyone else.”
“Yet today’s newspapers—they’re all writing about the ○○ Beasts.”
“Splashing it everywhere.”
“And you still deny being a liar?”

“W-wait, please.”
“I-I don’t know anything at all.”
“If anyone talked, it might’ve been Donsuke.”
“I didn’t talk.”

“Donsuke?”
“Ah, that fat man, right?”
“Where is Donsuke?”
“I will meet [him].”
“I have harsh words for him.”
“Bring him here at once.”

“Donsuke?”
“Gah! Donsuke again.”
Where on earth had Donsuke gone?
Keiji slipped past the foreign woman named Laura as if fleeing.
Laura came chasing after him, fist raised.
If caught now there’d be hell to pay—Keiji darted behind the building.

But Laura’s shrill voice kept pursuing him.

Now, with that, there was nowhere left to run.
If he got caught, who knew what might happen to him.
At that moment, Keiji found a good hiding spot.
It was a place where several empty boxes—the ones foreigners had brought to the hotel and unpacked their luggage from large packing crates—were stacked.
Keiji targeted the largest box among them and, heedless of scraping his arms, dove headlong into the empty crate.

At that moment, he bumped into something squishy deep inside the box and gasped.

Donsuke's Whereabouts

When he bumped into the squishy thing deep inside the empty crate, Keiji was so startled he thought his heart might burst.
When he wondered what it was and strained to see, a deep rumbling noise reached his ears.
A loud snore.

“What the—sleeping in a place like this, there’s no way anyone would’ve found him no matter where they looked.”
Cramped inside the empty crate, curled up and sleeping, was none other than the missing Donsuke.
The scent of alcohol hung thick inside the crate.

Keiji gently shook Donsuke awake.
Yet such efforts proved insufficient to rouse the man in question.
But making more noise risked alerting Laura to their hiding place.
So he hatched a plan—and gave Donsuke’s tensed thigh a vicious pinch.

“Ouch…!”
The swollen nose that had been puffing up suddenly deflated, and in its place, Donsuke sprang up like a jack-in-the-box.
It was a cramped, narrow crate.
He bumped his head repeatedly until he finally woke up properly.

“You?!
“You… What a rotten—”
As Donsuke lunged at him roaring, Keiji frantically shoved him back.
Donsuke collapsed like an infant with a heavy thud.

When Keiji rapidly informed him that Laura with the black glasses was chasing them right up to this spot, even Donsuke seemed greatly affected by this news—he immediately clutched his head and quieted down like a lamb.

“Oh,” he said. “Well, that’s a problem.”

Keiji briefly explained everything that had happened so far. Donsuke listened intently.

“Nah,” Donsuke said, “I messed up by getting too greedy. But since I told that foreign woman first, I think that’s worth twenty yen. For the second and subsequent ones, I lowered the price by two yen each and sold them the news items. After that, we all ended up making forty or fifty yen. That’s why I ended up drinking too much. Don’t hold it against me, okay?”

Upon hearing that those fabricated stories had been sold to so many newspapers, Keiji was astonished by Donsuke’s audacity.

“Heheh, so the manager said he’s gonna chew me out, huh?”
“That’s a problem.”
“That guy’s a judo fourth-dan thug—if he finds us now, we’ve gotta brace ourselves to have a rib or two snapped.”
“That’s gonna hurt like hell—” he folded his arms,

“I’m really in trouble.”
There was no helping it.
“Let’s stay hidden here until night comes.”
Donsuke lay down with a heavy thud.
Then, before long, a peaceful snore could be heard.
His body, now completely a captive of alcohol, still required more sleep.

The Return of the ○○ Beast

The terrifying building collapse began anew that very afternoon.

In what felt like mere moments, they began gnawing at the large automobile garage behind Tokyo Hotel with that eerie *kari kari kari* clattering noise.

By the time Keiji, the boy, rushed outside, they had already gnawed away the garage's side wall—flattened like a toppled Daruma doll—and were crunching apart the car under repair inside with a *gari gari* clatter.
As he stared, it appeared as though those walls and cars were simply vanishing naturally with a clattering noise.
Of course, just as Donsuke had told the newspaper reporters, not a trace of the monster's tail could be seen.

Keiji, now confronted with this event before his very eyes, felt a creeping unease, but an idea struck him—he took a single photo with the camera hanging around his neck.
The exposure was an extremely brief duration of merely one-thousandth of a second.

“Oh, so this is it.
“I see, I see,” came a sudden loud voice. When he turned toward it, there was Dr. Kanishidera—though who had informed him and when remained a mystery.
The doctor was intently staring at the disintegrating car, his thick nearsighted glasses glinting.

When the car too had vanished, the crowd that had gathered to watch suddenly erupted into panic.
There was no telling where might collapse next.
What if my own body started to collapse?

Clatter, clatter, clatter, clatter.

Suddenly, that eerie noise erupted again, striking the ears of the crowd.

The Camera’s Triumph

Keiji, the boy, had managed to photograph what appeared to be the ○○ Beast in motion using an exposure of just one-thousandth of a second—a feat previously mentioned. The boy couldn't stand waiting to see what kind of photo he had captured at the soonest possible moment. And so, leaving the matter of the rampaging ○○ Beasts currently wreaking havoc at Tokyo Hotel's back entrance to Dr. Kanishidera—who had just arrived at the scene and was fervently observing them through his signature thick glasses that gleamed—Keiji, camera still in hand, dashed off toward the photo shop run by his friend San-chan.

“Hey, San-chan! It’s terrible! Terrible!”

“Wh-what?”
“Oh! Kei-chan!”
“You’re pale as a ghost—what’s wrong?”
San-chan rushed out from the darkroom and looked at Keiji, the boy, with an exasperated expression.

“Yeah, it’s a total disaster.
“I took a photo of the ○○ Beast.”
“Sorry, but could you develop it right away?”

“What? You actually took a photo of that ○○ Beast?”
“No way.”
“Hahaha,” San-chan dismissed it without taking it seriously.
That was only natural.
Because there was no way the invisible ○○ Beast could appear in a photograph.
Keiji, the boy, then gave various explanations and finally managed to get San-chan to understand.

“Oh, so that’s how it was.”
“One-thousandth of a second...”
“Well, with this exposure time… we might actually see something here, don’t you think?”
“Then let’s develop it right away.”
With that, San-chan took Keiji’s film and ducked into the darkroom.

About twenty or thirty minutes later, San-chan emerged with the developed film—now blackened—floating in a developing tray.

“Hey, San-chan, how did it go?”

“Yeah. I don’t really know what’s going on, but there’s something strange faintly showing up here.”
“I’ll show you right now—wait here.”
With that, San-chan gently pulled the film floating in the water, demonstrating while it was still submerged.

“Look, take a look right here,” San-chan said. “You can faintly see something like a white ring here. This definitely looks like the ○○ Beast.”

With the film still in negative state—black and white reversed—Keiji couldn’t see it clearly without a developed print. San-chan skipped proper rinsing, hastily dried the film, and exposed it onto photographic paper. Then the same scene he had witnessed with his naked eye materialized on the photograph’s surface.

“Ah! This is it.”
“This ring is the ○○ Beast.”

It was a photograph of the collapsing garage wall, but next to the disintegrating plaster, two strangely peculiar rings were captured.
They were rather thick rings.
They were shaped exactly like interlocking rings.
Why do the ○○ Beasts have such a shape?

The Mystery of the ○○ Beasts

Keiji, the boy, had finally succeeded in photographing the ○○ Beast.

As he studied the photograph closely, he recalled how, at the very beginning of this incident, two spherical masses shaped like mechanical mines had heaved up the soil of the vacant lot behind [the building] and emerged.

The true identity of the ○○ Beasts was indeed this.

For some reason, those two spherical masses were spinning rapidly around each other.
When one moved horizontally in a circular motion, the other moved vertically in a circular motion.
In other words, their movement took on the form of two interlocking rings meshed together.
This meant that through mutually sustaining motion, the two spheres would continue spinning endlessly.
The terrifying power of the ○○ Beasts stemmed precisely from this perpetual movement.

Now, the form of the ○○ Beasts was no longer visible to people’s eyes at all—this was because they were rotating at tremendous speed.
It was the same reason why a car spinning at extreme speeds becomes invisible.
Keiji had been watching them from the very moment they first began to rotate.

“Truly mysterious… these ○○ Beasts,” he murmured while staring fixedly at the photograph he’d taken himself and letting out a long sigh.

It had become clear that they were two massive spherical masses spinning rapidly around each other—but what exactly those spheres were made of, or what lay inside them, remained entirely unknown.
Therein lay enormous questions and wonders—yet Keiji understood none of it.
No—it wasn’t only Keiji who didn’t understand.
No one in the world could possibly fathom the true nature of these mysterious ○○ Beasts.

When Keiji returned to the back entrance of Tokyo Hotel with the photograph of the ○○ Beast, the crowd of curious onlookers there had swelled to ten times its former size.
Pushing through the crowd and coming to the front, he saw that the hotel building was leaning dangerously, looking as though it might collapse at any moment.
In front of it, Dr. Kanishidera stood all alone, solemn and imposing like a surviving warrior.
The police and fire brigade kept their distance far away, forming a loose perimeter around it.

At that moment, Keiji felt as if his chest had been grabbed—a sudden, sharp sensation.
The cause was all too real.
The mountain of empty crates stacked at the hotel’s back entrance had collapsed, leaving the area as white as if snow had fallen, wood chips scattering everywhere.

“What’s happened to Donsuke?”
“He’d been sleeping here drunk inside these empty crates, but…”

He suddenly grew worried and, forgetting his terror, rushed forward.
He began frantically turning over every remaining empty crate one by one, but there was no sign of Donsuke anywhere.
A bone-chilling premonition crawled up Keiji’s spine.

Again, Donsuke’s Whereabouts

“Hey, hey, what are you doing here? It’s dangerous to stay in a place like this!”

With that, Dr. Kanishidera stomped over to where Keiji was.

“Ah, Doctor,” said Keiji. “I’m looking for Donsuke.”

“Donsuke? Hmm—and who might this ‘Donsuke’ be?”

“He’s my close friend,” said Keiji. “A cook. He was completely drunk and should’ve been sleeping inside those empty crates stacked here, but…”

“What? You mean he was sleeping in these empty crates?” The doctor blinked rapidly. “And has Donsuke been found?”

“That’s what I just said—I’m searching for him right now,” said Keiji. “But I can’t find him anywhere.”

“Hmm, I see,” said Dr. Kanishidera, crossing his arms and thinking.
“This might have turned into something terrible.”

“What? What do you mean by ‘terrible’? Hurry up and tell me!”

“The truth is, earlier, the ○○ Beasts devoured this mountain of empty crates with a crunching sound, you see. The empty crates kept collapsing downward one after another. Right there, crunch-crunch-crunch—the ○○ Beasts kept devouring them, you see. It’s possible that Donsuke was devoured by the ○○ Beasts at that time.”

“What?! Donsuke was devoured by the ○○ Beasts?”

When he heard that, Keiji’s head grew foggy.
Of all people—for Donsuke to be devoured by the ○○ Beasts—what a terrible thing.
Donsuke had been devoured—what had become of him?

“Doctor, if he was devoured by the ○○ Beasts, what’s become of him?”

“Well, that part still isn’t clear—I’m currently researching it, you see.”

Keiji hit upon an idea and showed Dr. Kanishidera the photograph of the ○○ Beasts.
This had excited Dr. Kanishidera immensely.

“Oh! This is it, this is it!”
“Just as I had imagined.”
“The two spheres rotating rapidly around each other can clearly be seen.”
“Hmm—if this is how things stand, it may not be impossible to capture the ○○ Beasts alive.”

“Are you going to capture the ○○ Beasts alive?”

Keiji leapt up, forgetting himself.
The idea of capturing the ○○ Beasts alive—it was something I'd never even considered until this very moment.
If we could capture them alive, the true nature behind the ○○ Beasts' mystery would become clear.

While the two were absorbed in discussing the live capture of the ○○ Beasts, there beside them—having appeared unnoticed from who-knows-when or where—crept that bob-haired foreign woman with black glasses, diligently sweeping up snow-white wood chips scattered about and packing them tightly into a flour sack.

Pitfall

“Hey!
“Fire Brigade!”

Dr. Kanishidera, in a state of extreme excitement, dashed toward the Fire Brigade that had taken position ahead.
He could be seen grabbing what appeared to be the captain and talking with animated gestures.
Then the Fire Brigade suddenly sprang into action.
A large number of additional personnel were summoned.

“What on earth is about to begin?”

Keiji couldn’t stand not knowing what that was.
So he approached closer.

Dr. Kanishidera was drawing a diagram on the ground and explaining it to the fire brigade captain.

“Now listen carefully.
Proceed exactly as shown.”

“That’s quite a large hole.
“We’ll need more men.”

said one of the captains.

“If you think they’re needed, proceed immediately to arrange for their gathering.”
“If the ○○ Beasts’ live capture doesn’t succeed, the damage from this incident will only grow more catastrophic.”
“Whether it’s well-digging machinery or whatever else—gather whatever you think is needed at once and proceed to dig holes exactly like this without delay.”

Dr. Kanishidera urged on the fire brigade in a manner that suggested acute anxiety.

Whether due to their efforts, numerous deep holes were soon dug around Tokyo Hotel as the central point.

“Doctor. What are you going to do by digging all these holes?”

“Oh, Keiji. This is a trap, you see. We’re going to drop the ○○ Beasts into these holes.”

“Oh, a trap? Ah, I see! If you dig lots of holes around the hotel, then the ○○ Beasts will fall into one of them—that’s the idea, right?”

“Exactly, exactly.”

“Doctor, won’t it be useless if they just fall into a hole? Because if the ○○ Beasts thrash around in there, won’t it just make the hole bigger until there’s a massive cavity under Tokyo City?”

“Hmm, well, just watch.”
“I’ve got a proper plan for capturing them alive right here in my mind.”
Dr. Kanishidera’s face bore an expression of utter confidence.

Before long, the holes were being dug deeper and deeper.
1,500 people worked, and 56 large holes were dug.
Now all that remained was for the ○○ Beasts to emerge and fall into the trap holes.
Dr. Kanishidera and a large crowd of onlookers eagerly awaited the emergence of the ○○ Beasts, wondering when it would all begin.

“Oh! The ○○ Beasts have emerged from over there!”
Keiji suddenly shouted in a loud voice and pointed at the south side of the hotel’s windows.

Female Reporter

The direction Keiji pointed—the crowd saw it and gasped in shock.

Now the south side of the hotel's windows was being frantically gnawed with grinding and crunching violence, and before their eyes, a massive hole began gaping open.

“Holy—! That’s the ○○ Beast!”
“It’s dangerous!”
“Everyone—get back! Get back!”
The spectators turned pale and recoiled backward.

The brave one was Dr. Kanishidera.

Dr. Kanishidera stood before it, leaning forward and staring intently.

At that moment, young Keiji grew concerned about Donsuke’s whereabouts and began frantically searching the area, but no matter where he looked, he couldn’t find him.
Dr. Kanishidera had said Donsuke—along with the wooden crate—had been bitten by the ○○ Beast, and though Keiji initially thought this was a joke, he gradually came to realize it was no laughing matter.

“Excuse me—why are you stuffing those wood chips so tightly into that flour sack?”

Keiji called out to the foreign woman with black glasses.

Then, the foreign woman turned an angry look toward Keiji and,

“You do not understand?
“In these wood chips, your friend’s body lies in pieces.”
“Oh, what a pitiable man he is.”
“I will leave this here and later give him a proper burial.”
“He was such a truly, truly pitiable man.”
“All of this is because of those ○○ Beasts.”

“So you’re saying Donsuke was killed by the ○○ Beast, and his body has been shattered into pieces along with these wood chips?”
“Is that true—”

“It’s true.”
“I don’t tell lies like you people.”

“I don’t tell any lies either!”

Young Keiji tried to act angry, but if this were true after all, then this foreign woman must be considered kind-hearted.

“What exactly is your position?”

With that, Keiji ventured to ask what he’d been wanting to ask her.

“I am Mary Chris, a British national.”
“I’m a special correspondent for The Times newspaper.”
“This ○○ Beast incident is rather intriguing—I’ve been dispatching reports about it to my home country one after another.”
“No, not just my home country—I’m sending them worldwide.”

“Ah, so you’re a female newspaper reporter?”

Keiji’s face finally showed comprehension.

○○ Beast Captured Alive

At that moment, the large crowd let out a triumphant roar.

“Quiet down! Quiet down!”

Dr. Kanishidera was desperately trying to restrain the crowd, but they showed no signs of calming down.

“Now, pour in the cement!”

The firefighters were pouring liquefied cement into the hole with their full force, working vigorously.
Of course, that was under Dr. Kanishidera’s direction.

“What’s happening?”

As Keiji asked the onlookers,

“Well, the ○○ Beast finally fell into the hole!”

“What? The ○○ Beast…?”

While Keiji stood stunned, cement was continuously poured in.
But each time, from the hole, something like pure white mist would swirl up.

Cement was poured rapidly into the hole.

Keiji grew worried and dashed over to Dr. Kanishidera’s side.

“Dr. Kanishidera! Is it true that the ○○ Beast fell in?”

“Oh, Keiji?
“It certainly is true.”

“What are you trying to accomplish by pouring cement into the hole?”

“This?
“This is to solidify the ○○ Beast with cement and render it immobile.”

“I see—”

For Keiji, everything finally clicked into place.
The ○○ Beast had originally been two massive spheres spinning at tremendous speed.
Left unchecked, they wouldn't settle even within human perception.
The reasoning went that immobilizing the ○○ Beasts with cement would halt their rotation.
Truly Dr. Kanishidera was a remarkable scholar, Keiji marveled, clicking his tongue in admiration.

Yet what suddenly gave him pause was how cement required considerable time to fully set.
If they delayed too long, wouldn't the ○○ Beast come bursting from the pit again?
With this worry gnawing at him, Keiji turned to question Dr. Kanishidera.

Then Dr. Kanishidera glared sharply from behind his glasses and said:

"Oh, it's perfectly safe.
"The cement we're pouring into the hole isn't ordinary cement.
"Even at maximum setting time, this type hardens completely within an hour.
"And since the ○○ Beast struggles inside it," he continued, eyes gleaming with scientific fervor, "the friction heat will solidify everything in under an hour!"

Ah—so that's how it worked—Keiji marveled anew.

“I didn't know such cement existed.”
“Is this also one of your inventions, Dr.Kanishidera?”

“No.”
“This quick-drying cement has existed for a long time.”
“Have you ever been to the dentist?”
“The cement dentists use to fill cavities dries in five or six minutes, doesn’t it?”
“Cement that dries in an hour is still on the slower side of drying.”

Oh, right! When it came to dental cement, Keiji was quite familiar with it. So the ○○ Beast must be getting encased in cement by now!

A Monumental Event

“Hoho, Keiji-kun.
“It seems the ○○ Beast has finally stopped moving in the cement.”
“You can see it now, can’t you?”
"Because the white cement powder that had been rising like smoke from the hole until just a moment ago is no longer visible."

“What? So the ○○ Beast has finally been captured?”

As Dr. Kanishidera had said, the white vapor that had been rising leisurely from the hole where the ○○ Beast had fallen was now gone.

Dr. Kanishidera dashed off toward the hole.

“Hey, everyone—gather over here!
“We’re digging out the ○○ Beast!”

At last, it was finally time to excavate the much-anticipated ○○ Beast.
The firefighters gathered around the hole with shovels and pickaxes.
A steam-powered hammer also came moving along the rails.

With clanging and heavy thudding, the area around the buried ○○ Beast was excavated further and further.
The cement had already hardened completely.

What was eventually excavated was a cement cylinder as tall as a water tank.

“Indeed, it worked perfectly.
“The ○○ Beast is inside here.
“Splendid, splendid.”

Dr. Kanishidera rubbed his hands together and paced in circles around it.

The security team and onlookers buzzed with restless murmurs, but even the long-awaited ○○ Beast, now separated by a cement wall and out of sight, seemed to leave them unsatisfied.

“Doctor—are we leaving the ○○ Beast solidified in cement like this?”

“Yeah, I know, Keiji-kun. If we don’t handle this one carefully, it’ll lead to disaster. Just watch what I’m about to do.”

Dr. Kanishidera had the cement-encased ○○ Beast loaded onto a truck. Then the truck, leaving the commotion behind, started off from Tokyo Hotel’s square. After that, dozens of cars trailed along in a disorderly procession.

Before long, this cement-encased ○○ Beast was moved into the grounds of Teito University.

Dr. Kanishidera stood at the forefront, giving instructions.
First, the door to the X-ray laboratory was opened, and the cement pillar containing the ○○ Beast was carried inside.
The room was immediately turned into a darkroom.
With a whirring buzz, X-rays radiated from the apparatus, and a beautiful fluorescence began to glow.

“Ah, I can see it!”

Dr. Kanishidera exclaimed.
In the fluorescent screen, two round spheres began to appear dimly.

Even those who had followed behind stared wide-eyed at the sight.

“Leaving things as they are is dangerous,” he said. “If we don’t keep these two ○○ Beasts separated from each other, there’s no telling when they might start spinning wildly again like before. Now then—starting from around here—have this cement pillar sawn into two. Proceed slowly and carefully; ensure the pillar isn’t damaged.”

The Dreadful Mystery

As the saw grated and groaned, Keiji went over to Dr. Kanishidera’s side and spoke up.

“Doctor, why is it dangerous not to keep the ○○ Beasts separated?”

“Hmm. This conclusion follows from observing the ○○ Beast’s motion patterns.”
“To put it plainly, the ○○ Beast consists of two spheres revolving around each other.”
“They spin precisely like two interlocking rings meshing together.”
“When rotating this way, each sphere imparts rotational force to its counterpart—this keeps both perpetually spinning.”
“Thus, halting them requires separating the spheres beyond interacting distance.”
“Observe closely.”
“We’ll soon split them into distinct ◯ Beast and ◯ Beast entities.”

The sawing was completed, and the cement pillar was cut in two.
Under Dr. Kanishidera’s direction, the firefighters took hold of one cement pillar and pulled with rhythmic heave-hos.

"This won't work."
"It won't budge an inch."

"Is it really that stubborn?"
"Then everyone—over here! Lend a hand!"

They increased their numbers and pulled with rhythmic heave-hos.
Then, the cement pillars finally began to move apart.

“That’s it!
Put more strength into it!
There! Heave-ho, heave-ho!”

With all their strength combined in pulling, the cement pillar rumbled down from the platform with a heavy roll.

Someone thought Ah! but it was too late—with a thunderous roar and a deafening boom, a cloud of pure white smoke billowed up inside the room.

People’s screams mingled with the sound of walls and ceiling collapsing.
They had caused an unforeseen catastrophe of tremendous scale.

The boy Keiji too had been rendered unconscious by the great explosion for some time.
When he finally came to his senses after a while, both walls and ceiling had been blown away to who-knows-where, leaving only the expanse of high sky visible above.
Looking around, he saw multitudes of people lying fallen where they were.
White cement fragments went flying through the air.

However, strangely enough, the figures of the ○○ Beasts were nowhere to be found.

Why the massive explosion had occurred, why the ○○ Beasts had vanished—none among those present could make sense of it. But much later, as Dr. Kanishidera, who had sustained grave injuries at the time, recounted in a thin voice from a face swathed in bandages upon his hospital bed:

“It was my failure.
“It was a mistake to separate the ○○ Beasts.
“While the ○○ Beasts were near each other, their mutual gravitational pull kept them small—but when we separated them completely through our intervention...

Dr. Kanishidera let out a deep sigh in his bed and spoke thus.