Chapter 10: Why can the Ichimatsu doll move?
Slurping up the overflowing black mist, the silver-haired, red-eyed high school boy devoured the female ghost with relish.
He severed a thin dead branch-like arm from the body and took it into his mouth, gnarled fingertips first.
Holding down the woman’s raging legs and cutting off her head as she resisted, her hair disheveled, he consumed the black mist that dripped from the severed part with great relish, slurping it up as if it were soup or something.
Juru~, jururu, juru. (TN: slurp)
Jurujuru, jururu.
Gorigori, gori~.
Gokin~, gori~.
By now Houzuki was used to this strange meal scene, and her eyes were fixed on the Ichimatsu doll left abandoned in the kitchen.
The real master of this swamp house.
A tattered old doll that the female ghost had wished to stay with even after her death.
It was unclear what it was about this doll that made it so attractive, but she couldn’t take her eyes off it.
“Houzuki.”
Putting the messy hair in his mouth, Yuiru turns to look at Houzuki, who is staring at the Ichimatsu doll.
“Give that to me.”
“By ‘that’, you mean?”
“The Ichimatsu doll. I’m eating that too.”
“Can it be eaten?”
“Oh~ho?”
Yuiru, with black hair hanging down the corners of his mouth like curly noodles, narrows his eyes.
“Do you not see it?”
“See it?”
“It’s over there, right next to the Ichimatsu doll.”
Houzuki takes another look at the Ichimatsu doll.
“Hiih.”
She looked at it again, and then a high-pitched scream escaped her mouth.
For just a moment, the image of a small child with a pale face was reflected in the glass box that contained the Ichimatsu doll. Small child-like hands were placed on the side of the box, as if she was holding it.
The ghost of a young girl was so faint that Houzuki didn’t understand why she hadn’t perceived her. She was casting her vacant black eyes through the glass, just like the Ichimatsu doll, and seemed to be glaring at Houzuki with resentment.
When Houzuki reached out to the class box containing the Ichimatsu doll,
Gatan.
It shook so much as if telling her not to touch it.
“I’m sorry.”
Houzuki guiltily apologized and said,
“This will also be Yuiru’s meal.”
She picked up the glass box as if snatching it from the child.
As the glass box rattled and shook violently in her arms, Houzuki repeatedly apologized, “I’m sorry.”
She was truly sorry. To have ended up eating the ghost of such a young child, that high school boy’s stomach really is bottomless.
Houzuki moved the glass box from the kitchen and placed it right next to Yuiru, who was straddling the female ghost.
“Here it is, Yuiru. I’ve brought it.”
“Oh, thank you, Houzuki.”
Having consumed about half the female ghost, Yuiru reached for the glass box which contained the Ichimatsu doll in a messy fashion.
He grabbed the arm of a child, which was barely visible. The child glared at Yuiru through the glass and pulled her own hand in defiance. The glass box containing the Ichimatsu doll shook violently, as if it did not want to be removed from the glass box.
Yuiru stabbed a silver knife into the child’s hand clinging to the glass box,
“You’re so noisy.”
Yuiru spat into the violently shaking glass box,
“As long as you’re possessing the Ichimatsu doll, you’re my food. If you’re going to blame someone, blame yourself for attaching yourself into the doll.”
Yuiru carefully cuts off the child’s arm, which was clinging to the glass box, with a silver knife, and then swallows the small hand whole. Perhaps because he’s used to eating adult ghosts, he’s able to swallow a child ghost whole so easily.
After that, the glass box became docile. The Ichimatsu doll that was sitting in the box was no longer something that she couldn’t take her eyes off of.
Ah, so it was because the child had possessed it that she couldn’t take her eyes off it. It seemed like they still had some attachment to the Ichimatsu doll.
“Maybe it was the original owner,”
Towako said, tugging on the hem of Houzuki’s clothes.
“The owner of the Ichimatsu doll who died of an illness.”
“That may be so,”
Houzuki looked out the window.
Although they had come to swamp house during the day, it was already dusk.
Checking the time on her cell phone, it was almost four-thirty. It was almost time for the chimes announcing the sunset to ring out across the crimson sky.
–The sun was setting with a slight glow,
and the slightly cracked chimes of the sunset echoed across the burning red sky.
“The lonely sunset chimes never change.”
Towako, who was looking out the window at the same scenery as Houzuki said,
“Shall we go home, Houzuki? I’m hungry.”
“What? Do you want some too?”
“I don’t want Yuiru’s half-eaten food. Besides, I don’t have any interest in eating ghosts.”
“Eating ghosts isn’t really a hobby or anything.”
Yuiru finished eating the child ghost that was possessing the Ichimatsu doll so easily, then he shoved the piece of the female ghost that he had offered to Towako into his mouth. Half of the female ghost had been consumed, leaving only a small amount.
It’s unclear whether she no longer had the strength to resist, or whether that strength had been taken from her after more than half of her had been eaten, but she no longer moved a muscle. It was unbearable to watch her being eaten like a splinter.
Houzuki prayed in her heart for the female ghost. It was a pitiful way to be eaten.
“Yuiru, how does it taste this time?”
“It’s jam bread. It’s really sweet.”
“Oh……”
Houzuki looked towards the kitchen.
In the corner of the kitchen, an old, empty jam bread bag was lying around.
Was it her last supper? It has now been buried in the darkness.
“Hmm, it was delicious this time too.”
Yuiru clasped his hands together and said,
“Go chi sou sa ma de shita.”
