| Author: SS Samurai | Original Source: Syosetu |
| Translator: rm31439 | English Source: Re:Library |
It was the season of fall.
A lone Buddhist priest was on a scooter on his way home from giving a memorial service at a house. Along the way, he noticed a group of six people, all middle-aged men and women, who had linked their hands at a statue of Lord Jizou. Moreover, said statue was quite well-known around here.
Due to the nature of his work, the priest got curious about these people at the statue and called out to them. He thought he might be able to help them, if only in a small way.
“Excuse me. I am a priest… Might there be something I can assist you with?”
When he addressed them, all six turned to the priest. They all looked sad, but that didn’t seem to be the whole extent of their emotions, their expressions were indescribably complex.
“No… uhm. It’s strange, you see,” one of the women, who looked quite beautiful, replied.
To begin with, four among those six people had well-proportioned faces, while the remaining two also had above average looks. No one would have believed them to be in the latter half of their forties, unless being explicitly told.
“Strange… you say?”
“Yes.”
Strange things often happened in the vicinity of this Jizou statue. The monk wondered, if these people had fallen victim to said occurrences. As a matter of fact, he was right.
Originally, this statue had been placed here to offer prayers for lost children to return home. The story went that several hundred years ago, the sole son of a certain famous and competent samurai came here, only 12 years old at the time, to train in the sword together with his father.
When said samurai went to relieve himself1, his son ended up disappearing in the span of the few minutes the father was gone. Other people who’d been there knew nothing. The kid had vanished without a trace. The son wasn’t one to wander around on his own without notifying his father. Therefore, he thought it to be an abduction, but this couldn’t be the case, either.
The samurai had taken his eyes off his son for a mere moment, and in the first place, said son was known in the area as a prodigy in both sword arts and academics, so the father didn’t expect him to be caught this easily.
The samurai’s search for his son turned desperate. Still, he proved unable to locate him. He searched for year after year, but never found him.
So, he placed the statue here to entreat Lord Jizou to have his son return home. It was not known who had crafted it (the craftsmanship being too good for the supposed era it was from).
Thus went the legend of this Jizou statue.
Furthermore, strange events happened close to it. For example, 30 years after it had been placed here, a ferocious rabbit monster, larger than a normal rabbit, appeared near the statue, attacking people. Then, 12 years later, a beautiful ball of fire was shot out from near the statue, which ended up burning down a tree that stood close by.
Since then, many more mysterious phenomena occurred here.
“So, what exactly is ‘strange’?” the priest asked.
“One month ago, our son died in an accident on his way to school,” a woman, who looked as if she was on the verge of crying, replied.
“Oh… that accident…”
It was a well-known story. The accident when a flowerpot2 had fallen from to top floor of a multistoried apartment building, and hit the head of a male student who’d been walking underneath, which ended up killing him.
Just from this, you’d think it was an accident caused by the carelessness of the tenant, but… due to said apartments not having balconies, window-screens being installed, and the air conditioning removing the need to keep windows open, there should have been no way for something to fall, unless it was dropped on purpose.
Consequently, the police were still investigating it as an intentional act.
It also proved impossible to find out where the flowerpot had been produced, and repeated examinations only yielded the result that it seemed to be unknown in this world.
What made this accident even more well-known, was the fact that, in quick succession, a female student, who’d been good friends with the male student, was run over by a truck, causing her death. This incident happened two weeks ago.
At the beginning, the police assumed that she had committed suicide. This was due to several testimonies about her being in a relationship with the male student, who died from the falling flowerpot, or at least being close friends, while having romantic feelings for him. However, this also proved false.
From the surveillance cameras, they learned that the truck had charged into the girl who was walking normally on a sidewalk.
This was also strange. They had not the slightest idea where said truck was, it couldn’t be found. The camera showed that there had been no one in the driver’s seat. Its license plate didn’t exist. Furthermore, surveillance cameras further from the place where it happened didn’t record said truck, and there wasn’t a single eyewitness.
“They currently report about it often…” the priest mused.
“No, the factors that led to the death of our son are clearly full of strange events, but…”
“But what…?”
“It’s weird. Even though we clearly have no other kids, no matter what, it feels like we should have another son. Somehow, it suddenly popped into my mind…”
After that, the priest listened to all of them and learned that four of them were the parents of the victims of these incidents.
The deaths were way too strange… But while they were sad, all six of them spoke up. They said that even though they had no kids… or that their kids had ended up dying, they couldn’t help but feel like they should have other kids. For that reason, they had come to this Jizou statue, to pray for those children to return home…
TL notes:
It’s another Japan chapter, and, once more, it’s super dark. The probability of the supposed otherworld influence, with the demon’s prophecy and the information from chapter 181, seems to get higher, now also with Mika’s death being full of unexplainable details.
Again, the parents seem to be the worst off here, with their children taken from them and left with just the feeling that something should be there. I wonder just how powerful Loukis’ summoning skill has to be, for it to be able to wipe out any memories, recordings, pictures, etc. of the ones being summoned.
