Miyazawa Otherside Picnic: Volume 4

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-7183-6004-4
Verlag: J-Novel Club
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, Band 4, 325 Seiten

Reihe: Otherside Picnic

Winter is coming.
Having been attacked by a group that worshiped Satsuki Uruma, Sorawo and Toriko head to the cult's former base-the Farm in the Mountains. The other world is still chock full of all kinds of dangerous mysteries, but the allure of exploring the unknown is ever present. Sorawo prepares for more adventures with Toriko, but the most terrifying of threats is silently closing in on them. Not to mention the fact that it seems there's something Toriko needs to tell Sorawo...
There's no turning back now-a whirlwind of bizarre exploration and survival is upon them!

Autoren/Hrsg.

Miyazawa, Iori

Weitere Mitwirkende

Shirakaba

Mccann, Sean

Leseproben

File 12: The Matter of That Farm

1

“Hey, look. It’s not that dirty, and we didn’t break much, right?”

What Toriko was saying didn’t make Kozakura stop frowning.

“You’re saying isn’t dirty? Sure, it’s not broken, but—”

“I know, right?”

“...It stinks of violence.”

The three of us were in Kozakura’s house, looking at her bathtub. The house was pretty old—though it looked like the bathroom had been renovated a little—but dirt had been tracked in, and the shower head was lying on the ground. A towel hung from the bathtub’s cover, soaked with blood. Like Kozakura said, there was a foreboding sense that something not so peaceful had gone down in this room.

Footsteps approached from the hallway, and Migiwa of the DS Lab poked his head in.

“The cleaners will be arriving a little late. They were saying that they drove down a one-way street in front of the station and got lost. I apologize for the wait.”

“No, it’s fine.” Though Kozakura was acting a little short with him, Migiwa continued in a polite and respectful tone.

“I will handle the rest, so, please, Kozakura-san, and everyone else, sit down and relax... Though, I suppose it is a little odd for me to say that.”

“You’re damn right it is. This is house.”

Kozakura turned and left the bathroom, still fuming. Toriko and I followed. When I walked past Migiwa, I looked up at him.

“You were playing with the water, right?” I asked.

“Excuse me?”

“You said something about borrowing towels...” I said, and Migiwa’s smile deepened.

Three days prior, Kozakura and I were abducted off the street by the agents of a brainwashed cult. They worshiped Runa Urumi, a high school girl who was able to entrance people using the special Voice that had come from the other world. They had originally planned to abduct Toriko, but there was a mix up, and they grabbed Kozakura instead.

The cultists broke into Kozakura’s house, making a second attempt to capture Toriko. But that’s where Toriko and Migiwa—who had rushed to her side when she contacted him—were lying in wait.

Once they dispatched the attackers, Migiwa had interrogated them to learn where Kozakura and I had been taken. Though, obviously, extracting information from mad cultists wasn’t going to be easy. When I asked him how he did it, Migiwa had said that he “merely borrowed the bathroom and some towels,” and that they “played with the water for a bit.”

“Now, I cannot claim to be experienced, but from what people tell me, when you want to get a person to tell you something, the most effective way is to use water. It makes no mess, and leaves no wounds. It also does not require any special preparation,” Migiwa gently explained. He didn’t have to spell it out. Even I could tell he was talking about torture. The director of the DS Research Encouragement Association, Youichirou Migiwa, who looked like a butler in his three-piece suit, was more versed in violence than you would expect just looking at him. But I knew that his forearms, hidden by the long-sleeved shirt he was wearing, were covered in Mayan tattoos.

Scary!

Still, if Migiwa hadn’t efficiently extracted the information from the cultists and then rushed to our aid with Toriko, they would have shot me dead and brainwashed Kozakura. So, obviously, I was grateful, but I was still freaked out. I mean, I was just a university student, after all.

“Could you not talk about that dangerous stuff in my house?”

“Pardon me,” Migiwa apologized politely when Kozakura complained.

We walked down the hallway and headed back to the reception room. The hall was covered in footprints and littered with metal wire and plastic bottles which they must have used to make traps for the intruders. A number of nails had been hammered into the walls, too. We had wrapped green masking tape around them to make them stand out more as a temporary precaution.

Back in the reception room, we sat down on the sofa. Migiwa remained standing.

“Should I put on a pot of tea?”

“Oh, please do.”

“Again, why are answering, Sorawo? This is house. Got it?”

Though she said that, Kozakura didn’t actually object to it. Migiwa made enough for everyone.

In between sips of hot green tea, Kozakura grumbled. “You all just go around, doing whatever you want to my house.”

“I apologize. It was an emergency, so we had no choice... The DS Lab will pay for all of the necessary repairs.”

“Glad to hear it. Can you renovate the place, too?”

“Certainly. I would like to do it in a way that is in line with your desires, so if you could—”

“It was a joke... I only need you to tidy the place up.”

“Hey, Sorawo.” Toriko, who had been quiet for a while now, looked at me hesitantly.

“What?”

“So, for the after party... What do you want to do?”

“...Huh?”

Me and Kozakura both stared at Toriko.

“Well, you know, we went to the other world and came back, didn’t we? So we’ve gotta have a party.”

Toriko was oddly fixated on going for an “after party” where we would eat and drink each time we explored the other world. It confused me at first, but it helped me feel like we’d returned to normalcy, so I thought it was a good custom for when we changed sides from the Otherside to the surface.

Kozakura’s teacup clattered as she set it down and stood up. “Okay! I’ve got it! We’re going for meat!”

“Huh? But I don’t have that much money.”

Kozakura looked at me, and snorted. “It’s on me today—you did save me, after all.”

“You’re amazing, Kozakura.”

“You’re the best, Kozakura-san.”

Kozakura glared at us.

“Wow, you two are mercenaries... Well, whatever. Let’s go!”

“Huh? Right now? Aren’t the cleaners coming?”

“I will be here to watch the place while you are away, so please, go ahead.”

With Migiwa sending us off like that, the three of us headed out for an impromptu trip to eat meat.

It probably wouldn’t have been a good idea to leave her house completely in the hands of other people, so Kozakura needed to be able to head home in a hurry if any issues arose. That’s why we decided to look for a place in front of the nearest station, Shakujii-kouen.

“I want to eat some good meat.” That was Kozakura’s preference, and she was paying, so Toriko and I just nodded our heads and looked for a restaurant.

We entered a bar and grill that was conveniently open all day and started off with rosé wine, even though it was still bright out. I’d never thought of rosé as anything more than “that kinda pinkish sweet stuff,” but the taste of it was crisper than I had expected, and I liked it. Next, we ordered prosciutto, flame-seared meat sushi, and red wine. We had the staff cook us some expensive meat that cost 2,000 yen per hundred grams, and devoured the steaks after watching them sizzle on a hot iron grill. I think all three of us were big eaters, but even taking that into consideration, we had extra large appetites today. After fighting the cult, then surviving an encounter with a dangerous entity from the other world, our bodies were craving the nutrition they needed to bounce back from all of that.

I watched Toriko and Kozakura as I cut my steak. What were they thinking about? The woman they had once known and been close with had appeared before them, now transformed into a horrible monster.

That woman, who I had been catching glimpses of for a long time now, had finally shown herself in a form Toriko and Kozakura could see, too. Even with all their lingering feelings they still harbored for her, those two had to understand that she wasn’t the person they once knew.

If they were still hung up on her after seeing that monster, there was no helping them, but I couldn’t let my guard down. Even though I ignored everything Toriko and Kozakura said or did when they got sentimental, I could tell that their feelings for her still ran deep.

That woman. Satsuki Uruma.

The one who had murdered Runa Urumi’s mother in front of our eyes, then nearly killed Runa herself. We managed to escape back to the surface world, but neither Toriko nor Kozakura had said a word about Satsuki Uruma since.

Maybe they talked about her when I wasn’t around. Even if they did, I didn’t care.

Kozakura’s phone started vibrating on the table.

“It sounds like the cleanup’s done,” Kozakura said after looking at the screen.

“That sure was fast, huh?” I remarked.

“See, I told you so. We didn’t break much,” Toriko quipped.

“Yeah, I know. Don’t look so smug about it.” Kozakura sent a reply, then knocked back her third glass of wine.

“I guess I’ll head back once I finish this. I can’t make him watch the house forever.”

“Migiwa-san’s good at looking after...