Chapter 5: Kimura’s Ordeal (Part 1)
Itō Takuma, admittedly, was a gifted storyteller. But the members of the Folklore Research Club were even more adept listeners. Their experience had honed their ability to discern the embellishments, the parts of a story designed purely for dramatic effect.
For instance, when Itō Takuma claimed, "They wanted to get in," it was clearly a subjective assumption, a flourish meant to heighten the terror. Chilling to hear, perhaps, but ultimately, not a factual detail.
“And then what? Did anything else happen that night?” Ōgami Yōsuke pressed, his voice calm.
“Didn’t I tell you? It was an omen! Crows are symbols of bad luck, right? You guys should know that better than I do. They were hounding me from the moment I left school, followed me all the way home. Doesn’t that prove that misfortune was already brewing back then?”
“The crows repeatedly slamming into my window… that meant the misfortune was drawing closer, step by step, right? And then, Saturday morning… it finally struck.”
Itō Takuma seemed to have fully embraced a superstitious paranoia, unshakably convinced of his own interpretations.
“What exactly happened on Saturday?” Takada asked, his brow furrowed.
“Even though I went to bed late, I woke up really early on Saturday. You know how it is, right? It’s a day off, you want to sleep in, but you always end up waking up at the crack of dawn anyway.”
“I got up, planning to go for my usual morning run. It was overcast that day, but not cold. I just threw on a thin t-shirt, grabbed my phone, and headed out, music playing in my ears.”
“Actually, my nerves are pretty solid, don’t you think? After what happened the night before, all that creepy stuff, I could still go for a run like nothing happened.”
Itō Takuma rambled on for a while before finally circling back to the main point. “My running route is pretty fixed. From my house, straight towards Mitsuba Station, then I loop back through the park in the middle. It’s a quiet route, hardly any cars, rarely see any animals.”
“But that Saturday, as I was running past a six-story apartment building, something completely unexpected happened.”
“A black cat—it shot out from nowhere. I swear, it felt like it dropped from a height, it hit with so much force. Slammed right into my hand and sent my phone flying.”
“I rushed to pick up my phone. And just then, a passerby on the street yelled at me, screamed at me to get out of the way. Maybe it was some kind of divine intervention, a guardian angel, I don’t know. But I had this sudden, prickling feeling that something was terribly wrong. Instinctively, I dodged to the side.”
“And then, a shower of glass rained down from above. One piece, as big as my palm, razor sharp, was heading straight for me. Honestly, if I hadn’t moved when I did, that shard would have buried itself in my back.”
“My legs turned to jelly. I just collapsed on the ground, couldn’t even stand. I didn’t feel any pain at first, but then I saw the blood. My back was soaked, my shirt torn to shreds. Even now, I get chills walking near tall buildings. I can’t bring myself to walk directly underneath them.”
A thick layer of fear still coated Itō Takuma’s face. “First the crows, then the black cat… all bad omens! Damn it! If I’d just been a little more alert, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten hurt!”
The members of the Folklore Research Club exchanged uneasy glances.
Just moments ago, they’d suspected he might be exaggerating, spinning a tall tale from a minor incident. But putting themselves in his shoes… the situation he described was undeniably terrifying. To be walking down the street, and suddenly have sharp objects plummeting from above…
A shiver ran down Takada’s spine. “Who threw the glass down?” he demanded, his voice tight with indignation. “That’s a criminal act! Did you call the police?”
Itō Takuma gave a bitter laugh. “Of course, I called the police. Their investigation concluded that a window in one of the apartments had simply… shattered. Spontaneously. No foul play. Just a freak accident.”
“But… all those coincidences, piling up like that? How could it possibly be an accident!”
“Try telling that to the cops. They’d think you were crazy.”
“And the worst part is… I wasn’t the only one.”
Yomikawa Tsuko stood with her arms crossed, her long, dark hair swaying gently behind her. “You said earlier you were the second person to suffer misfortune because of this. Who was the first? And what happened to them?”
Itō Takuma nodded grimly. “Yes. Someone else went through something similar. And if you look at the timing, we were both injured on Saturday morning. His injuries were worse than mine. I heard he needed stitches at the hospital. But I was too scared to leave my house on Saturday or Sunday, so I didn’t get a chance to visit him.”
“That serious?!” Kana gasped. She’d never had an injury that required stitches in her entire life.
Yomikawa stood with her feet in a T-stance, a posture that made her new frame seem even more slender and elongated. “How was he injured?”
“He was hit by a falling chandelier. In his own house. As for whether he experienced all the other creepy stuff that happened to me, I don’t know. But our injuries happened so close together… that can’t be a coincidence, can it?”
At this point, Itō Takuma’s expression became deadly serious. “You’ve heard all this. Are you still determined to dig into what happened to Kimura? If this… bad luck… latches onto you, don’t say I didn’t warn you.” His gaze lingered on the three girls, as if he expected them to be the first to back down.
“I have absolutely no problem with it.” Ōgami Yōsuke raised his hand first, his voice firm. Junko, Takada, and the others quickly followed suit, their expressions resolute.
“Since everyone is in agreement,” Yomikawa Tsuko said, her voice carrying the weight of a final decision, “then we’ll trouble you further, Itō-kun.”
Itō Takuma took a deep, shaky breath. “Alright then. Here’s where it really begins.”
“Me, Kimura, and Fujita – oh, Fujita’s the guy who got hit by the chandelier – we’ve known each other since we were little kids. Elementary school, probably. We built this secret hideout up on Mount Karasu-Go. Only the three of us knew where it was. We still used to go there, even in middle school.”
To the west of the city lay a long, sprawling mountain range, its peaks falling short of a thousand meters. It formed a sort of ‘cross’ shape with the city layout – the ‘I’ of the cross being the mountains, and the ‘O’ being the city itself.
The ancient inhabitants had named the range ‘Ōkarasu’ – Great Crow Mountain. It had once been a single, unbroken massif. But centuries ago, an earthquake had fractured its lower-mid section, creating a deep, V-shaped chasm. Over time, erosion had widened this scar, eventually cleaving the mountain in two. The lower, separated part, as if newly born from the main range, was given the name ‘Karasu-Go’ – Child Crow Mountain.
“I stopped going to the hideout around the third year of middle school. I don’t know about Fujita, but Kimura said he still went up there by himself sometimes, on weekends. I used to tease him about it. Looking back now, I really shouldn’t have.”
Itō Takuma paused, taking another deep breath, the memory clearly painful. “This whole mess with Kimura… it started the weekend before last. He went up to the secret hideout on Mount Karasu-Go. Alone.”
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