After hanging up on Shion, I searched for Rika-chan's phone number on my school's contact list.
...There it is!
My fingers trembled with urgency, and I failed multiple times to put in the simple 5-digit number.
"Keiichi...
Are you calling someone at this hour?
It's late, and it's being rude to the other person..."
"Th-That doesn't matter right now!!"
I shouted angrily at my mother, listening to the dial tone.
...Pick up... Come on, pick up...!!
The time... was 11 PM.
It certainly wasn't early.
It was essentially the middle of the night.
...Had Rika-chan already gone to bed...?
Her phone would be ringing constantly, though, so... would she get back up for me?!
Rika-chan... didn't pick up.
...She didn't pick up.
.........She didn't pick up!!
Maybe she just happened to miss it.
...Maybe her bed was just...
too far away from the phone...
...The sound of a phone ringing gets clearer and clearer the longer you go on sleeping.
...Then...
the bathroom...?
...Yeah, she must be taking a bath!
If that was the case, then even if she heard the phone, she wouldn't be able to pick up...
...It was a little late to be taking a bath... but it was possible she normally took baths right before going to bed.
............I'll wait thirty minutes, then try calling again...
Even as I was thinking that, I called her house over and over again.
I kept calling.
Over and over, again and again, I kept on calling her, but...
...she didn't pick up even once.
I think I kept trying for about thirty minutes.
...Yet, she wasn't picking up.
Were my phone calls so persistent that she had gotten scared of picking up the receiver?!
...No, that couldn't possibly be it......
............
There was no point in doing this any longer.
...The best thing to do would be to go there in person...!
Where was Rika-chan's house, though...?
Shit... I've never even asked her where she lived...!!
...Her residence was written there in the contact list, but it was an address with mostly numbers, so I couldn't tell where it was just by reading it.
...Isn't there a map or something in here?!
Rika Furude.
...Her last name was Furude.
It was a bit of an odd last name, so it might be easy to find...!!
Thinking that, I rummaged around the drawer with the phone book, but could only find things like takeout menus and phone numbers for public establishments...!
Shit, shit... shit...!!
I tore one thing after another out of the drawer... but I didn't come up with any clues as to where Rika-chan's house was.
Calm down, Keiichi Maebara...!
If you don't know... then just ask!
Ask someone who does know!
"...Ah, that's it.
...Rena's gotta know!"
I looked up Rena's phone number on the contact list.
...Rena Ryuugu.
...There she was.
"...Hello?
This is Ryuugu."
It was the voice of a grumpy-sounding man.
...It must have been Rena's father.
I am calling in the middle of the night—I need to be polite......
"I-I'm sorry for calling so late at night.
This is Maebara. Is there any chance Rena-san is around...?"
"Reina is taking a bath...
......Oh, she's done?
......Reina.
There's a friend of yours on the phone."
Oh, right. "Reina Ryuugu" was her real name, wasn't it?
...I'd gotten so used to calling her "Rena" that hearing her real name caught me a little off-guard.
"Hello?
This is Rena."
"Ah... i-it's me, Keiichi.
Sorry for calling so late...!"
"Huh?
Keiichi-kun?
What do you need at a time like this? Like this?"
"...Well, actually...... I wanted to know where Rika-chan's house is."
Rena seemed... a little appalled that I'd call her for something like that at this hour.
However, she spoke her next words seriously, as if she'd caught on to how urgent my need was.
"O-Okay.
Sure.
You know the assembly hall on the grounds of the Furude Shrine?
There's a two-story shack used for storage behind it.
That's where she lives."
...I couldn't immediately visualize the place, but as long as I knew she lived on the shrine grounds, I'd just have to take a look around.
"G-Got it!
Thanks.
Sorry again for calling so late.
Apologize to your dad for me too, would you?"
"Okay, but, Keiichi-kun...
why do you want to know where Rika-chan lives?"
Rena asked in an unusually sharp way, halting me before I could hang up the phone.
......I hesitated for a moment about whether to tell her.
He was killed because I told him.
"......Keiichi-kun?
If you're still listening, could you answer me?
Why are you asking where Rika-chan lives at a time like this?"
Rena affected her usual tone... but beneath her words lay a certain tension, like she'd intuitively sensed something was going on.
......What will you do, Keiichi?
If it's Rena... can't I tell her...?
He was killed because he found out.
I revealed everything...... so he was killed.
"...Keiichi-kun?!
Rena is being serious.
Please answer me!"
Rena asked me once again in a tone so forceful I couldn't imagine her ever using it normally.
...I was taken aback by her vigor.
......Rena was Rika-chan's friend, too.
...She had the right...
...to be concerned about Rika-chan disappearing.
...If I told Rena, then...
......even if only for a moment... I could drive away my horrifying fears!
"...Rena,
...well...
......I can't exactly tell you why, but......"
"Yes?"
Rena's tone was seriousness itself.
...Just from that tone, I could feel her saying...
No matter what you say, Keiichi-kun, I'll believe you.
......That subtle sense of security gave me the courage to reveal the truth...
"I have a feeling...
......that Rika-chan is in danger."
"...You mean like a premonition,
or do you have some reason to believe she's in danger...?"
...I really didn't have time to go back and forth with Rena about this.
...Still, I think listening to her calm voice soothed my pointless impatience.
"...I don't have much... reason, but......"
Yet, I still hesitated.
...I had told Rika-chan that we had snuck into the ritual storehouse.
The mayor, to whom Shion had confessed before that, had already disappeared.
So... it was possible that Rika-chan also...
...I didn't know how to explain it to Rena.
...While I was tongue-tied, Rena spoke up.
"Sorry for asking something so weird.
I thought about it, and it isn't like you need to be sure."
Rena laughed a little, seeming a bit absentminded.
...I wasn't exactly in the mood to laugh, so this time I was dumbfounded.
Rena continued in a cheerful, yet still purposeful voice.
"You're worried about a friend.
I don't think you need a reason to go and check on them.
...Even if Rika-chan was asleep and you ended up waking her up, if that was why you did it, then none of us would get mad."
......Rena...... Thank you...
"Okay then, Keiichi-kun, just one thing.
...You called Rika-chan's house, right?
Then you just couldn't get through, so that's why you asked me where her house is?"
"Yeah... that's right!
I must have called her for over ten minutes.
...She could just be sleeping and not have noticed..."
"Rika-chan's house is really small.
She would definitely hear the phone ringing even if she was asleep.
Satoko-chan is there too, so there's no way neither of them would notice."
"...Huh?
Satoko... you mean she's living with Rika-chan...?"
"Yeah.
You didn't know?
......Well, we can talk about that later!
...Anyway, if you called that much and no one answered, then something's definitely wrong."
Rena understood that the situation wasn't normal far faster than I could have ever imagined her to.
It made her seem dependable...
However, the fact that Rena had acknowledged this also meant that the best-case possibility of it all just being the result of my own needless fears went out the window.
"I'll go to Rika-chan's house right now.
Will you come with me?
I can show you the way."
"Sounds good.
Let's meet up at the same place as usual!
I'll be waiting for you!!"
"No, wait!
I'll come get you at your house.
You just wait there,
and tell your family you're coming with me to Rika-chan's house, okay?"
"...Will that be okay?
We might lose time if you come here..."
"Did you call Mii-chan too?
She's really dependable at times like these!
If you haven't, then I'll give her a call!!"
My thoughts froze for a moment.
...Shion had just told me to be careful around Mion during our phone conversation a little while ago.
...If the Sonozaki main house was... somehow lurking behind the surface of the annual freak deaths...
...then the current heir to the family, Mion, wouldn't be uninvolved...
So... wouldn't that mean she wasn't uninvolved in what happened this year to Takano-san and Tomitake-san, and also the mayor's disappearance...?
"Okay, bye!
I'll be right over!
Wait for me!!"
That's all Rena said before hurriedly hanging up.
...Now wasn't the time to be doubting Mion.
I needed to make sure Rika-chan was safe.
I got changed and grabbed the key to my bike.
I figured things would go more smoothly if we met up in the place we usually do before school.
...Rena wouldn't need to come all the way to my house.
My parents would probably have objected if I told them I was leaving, so I creeped out without a word.
The night was unusually warm... and disagreeably humid.
...She said that Rika-chan and Satoko live together, right?
......?!
Then it wasn't only Rika-chan...
Satoko wasn't there either?!
Realizing what them living together really meant caused my thoughts to immediately take a turn for the worse.
That can't be...... Satoko is...
......She's got nothing to do with any of this!
Even if there were a reason for Rika-chan to disappear...... there shouldn't be one for Satoko......!!
"Ke... Keiichi-kuun...!!!"
Rena was really fast.
She approached me on her bike at an amazing speed.
...Her breath was ragged, painting a clear picture of just how hurriedly she'd been going.
"Hey, Rena!
Let's get going!!"
"...Keiichi-kun.
I thought I told you to wait at your house."
Rena's expression was all business.
...Was she mad?
It came out of the blue, and I faltered for a moment...
"W-Well... I just figured it would be faster to meet up here..."
"...Keiichi-kun... Don't you get it?!"
Rena shouted, clearly angry.
...I'd never seen Rena like this before.
"D... Do I get it...? What's the problem...?"
Rena seemed to notice she was scaring me, took a couple of deep breaths... then continued as if admonishing me, but...
her expression didn't soften at all.
"Keiichi-kun.
...The whole village is in an uproar now that the elder disappeared, right?"
"Yeah......"
"Now you're telling me that Rika-chan and Satoko-chan aren't where they're supposed to be, right?"
"...Yeah...
Th-That about sums it up......"
"Then you need to be more careful!!!
Do you have any idea how dangerous it is to be standing out here alone in the middle of the night?!"
...I began to understand where Rena's anger was coming from...
"You told your family you'd be going to Rika-chan's house with me, didn't you?
...So that in the worst case scenario...
...If you and I were to disappear... people would know when and where we did."
......Rena was... perfectly level-headed in this emergency situation.
Ever since the night of Watanagashi...
Every night, someone had died or disappeared.
On the night itself, Takano-san and Tomitake-san met strange ends.
...On the next night, the elder vanished.
...Now, on the next night after that, Rika-chan and Satoko were nowhere to be found...
...I hadn't been thinking of anyone but myself, but...
It wasn't enough to say that Hinamizawa was a little weird at the moment—it was, in fact, extremely strange...
Rena had even anticipated our own disappearances, and had told me to tell my family where I was going.
...I was embarrassed at my own carelessness,
and the need to be embarrassed made me afraid of the night.
"...Sorry.
...I didn't tell them yet."
"Okay.
Then let's go tell them together!"
With Rena beside me, I wheeled back towards my house.
...The moon seemed strangely high in the sky.
...A sky that was uselessly vast and cold,
so that no matter what, it would never seem to me like a dream—this cruel fact had already confronted me.
On such a crazy night, Rena had been unimaginably dependable...
...Hinamizawa's metamorphosis, enough to make Rena caution me against carelessness...
...was, to me, the most fearsome thing of all...
The moon seemed... strangely high in the sky.
We met up with Mion on the way, and she, of course, was unsure whether to believe me about Rika-chan and Satoko's disappearance.
"...Kei-chan, are you serious?
I'm going to get really mad if this is a joke."
Mion was clearly displeased.
...If this were a joke, it wasn't very funny.
...I understood how indiscreet my words were.
Ever since the day before yesterday, someone had either died or vanished every night.
...Rika-chan and Satoko disappearing after all that was something you just couldn't say, even in jest.
"Mii-chan.
If it really is a joke, don't get mad, smile.
It would be a joke, after all.
...We need to go make sure whether it's a joke or not."
"......You're right.
...Sorry for getting upset."
However indiscreet a joke it may have been, if we learned that our friends were safe, it would end up as nothing more than a funny story...
Having been warned about that by Rena, Mion gave a dry smile, the tension she felt loosening a bit.
She mounted her bicycle as well.
Our three bicycles' lights flashed down the pitch-black roads—they were some of the only illumination outside.
"Kei-chan, why did you suddenly decide to call and ask about Rika-chan's house at a time like this?"
...Mion asked me the same thing that I had trouble explaining to Rena.
"...Would it be weird to call it... a premonition?"
I couldn't quite tell because it was dark, but I thought I could see Mion smiling very ambiguously.
...I definitely understood that she wasn't convinced, though, despite the darkness.
"Well, I had this bad dream while I was snoozing, and I couldn't get it out of my head."
"So... did Rika-chan get kidnapped in the dream...?"
"......Well, hmm...
...It was more of a vague feeling... sort of thing.
...If Rika-chan had answered the phone, I would have called you and Rena after that."
Lies smoothly babbled out of my mouth, makeshift though they were.
I was lying because I thought telling them I was connected to Shion... would be like silently admitting we'd stolen into the ritual storehouse together that night...
Mion didn't press me any further.
...I don't know whether that convinced her.
Or maybe she figured that making sure Rika-chan and Satoko were safe would be faster than making an issue out of it.
I felt relieved, and immediately a little guilty...
...Mion hadn't really been acting any differently these last few days... but I'm still trying to distance myself from her for some reason.
It was only because of what I heard from Shion and Ooishi-san: that she was the successor to some kind of super-extravagant gang family...
......No.
......Was I just trying to force myself to forget?
Don't do that, Keiichi Maebara.
...Wasn't it... wasn't it Mion who was the first to ask about the night of Watanagashi?
...In such a harsh tone, at that?
Have I already forgotten the terror I felt?
...At the time, Mion looked like... someone different from the Mion I knew.
...When I think about that Mion...... then Shion and Ooishi-san's descriptions of Mion made a tiny bit more sense...
That's it, isn't it?
...If it wasn't for how she acted that day... then I wouldn't be feeling this way towards her now.
...What on earth... was going on with her back then?
...I was conveniently thinking only of everything she had done after that...
while disregarding the very first thing—the thing I should have been looking at most, wasn't I...?
Mion was pedaling her bicycle in front of me, her long hair fluttering in the wind.
...No matter how long I looked at her back, it never gave me answers to any of my questions...
We went all the way to the stone steps leading up to the shrine grounds.
Of course, we weren't going to want to haul our bikes up there,
so we parked them beside the staircase instead.
"...So this is the Furude Shrine."
"Everybody comes and goes as they please, as if it were a park, but this place is actually a grand estate owned by the Furude family."
So the entire shrine is private property.
...It really makes you feel the passage of time.
...Ten or twenty years ago, it would have looked the exact same.
"...Then wouldn't that mean... that the Furude family is really old?
With a history going back for generations...?"
".........Yeah.
They're gone.
That's odd."
Rena said something clearly disquieting, so I ran over to her.
"What's wrong, Rena?"
"......Rika-chan and Satoko-chan always leave their bicycles here.
...See?
They're gone."
I took a look around.
...Indeed, there were no other bicycles aside from the ones we'd taken to get here.
"Couldn't they have parked them somewhere else?
......Could they have brought them up the stairs?"
"Those girls couldn't do that, Keiichi-kun."
Just as she said, I couldn't imagine Rika-chan and Satoko lugging their bikes all the way up there.
...We hadn't yet knocked on Rika-chan's door, but reality was already sparking some ideas that weren't what you'd call good.
...Maybe they were just parked under some trees and we hadn't noticed them.
I refused to believe that not being able to find their bikes here was proof that they'd disappeared...
"Let's go...!
The only way to be sure is to check their house!"
We all nodded and dashed up the stone steps.
We passed through the red arch and came out onto the shrine grounds, which was covered in neat gravel.
...It was so quiet here, as though the Watanagashi festival had never happened.
"...So, where's the house they live in?"
"Over here.
Come with me."
Rena took the lead and sprinted off.
...We went towards the assembly hall behind the shrine, then looped around behind it.
In the darkness of the night, we found a small, prefab two-story shack that looked like a warehouse.
"...The lights are off.
...Are they sleeping?"
"Let's knock."
Rena and Mion neared the shack, which didn't really look like a place people would live.
...They had such a beautiful shrine, so... I'd figured they'd live in an equally beautiful house.
......It was far from what I had expected.
"Rika-chaaaaan!!!
Satoko-chaaaan!!
Are you theeeeere?!"
Rena shouted up towards the second floor.
Her voice was restrained at first, but it steadily grew louder.
............No answer.
...In fact, there wasn't any sort of activity in the house at all.
"...They might be sleeping.
Let's wake them up."
Mion banged on the shutter with both hands, and the loud sounds echoed into our surroundings.
...They would have to notice this much noise.
...They would turn on the light in their room, fling open the windows, and yell "what time do you think it is?!"
......That, however, wasn't happening.
.........There was absolutely no response.
Mion stopped slamming her fists on the shutter, and a sudden silence fell over us.
...The silence... aroused terrible thoughts in us.
...I could feel the blood draining from my face...
"It's locked...
...I wonder if we can get into somehow..."
Rena showed no signs of stopping.
It didn't look like she would admit they weren't there until we went inside and saw for ourselves.
...That refusal to give in gave me strength.
"The second-story windows wouldn't be locked.
...I'll give them a try!"
"Kei-chan, a ladder."
Mion brought over a ladder that was standing against the house.
The footing was a little unstable for me to be climbing it, but Mion held the ladder firmly in place for me.
I hadn't climbed too many ladders.
...My inexperience with them exposed, I climbed up one step at a time... and tried to open each window on the second floor.
"Mii-chan, I'm going to go check the main house just to be sure, okay?
I'll be right back!"
Rena darted away.
...What? A main house?
"It's the Furude family's actual house.
After her parents passed away, I think it's been left like that."
"....Ah... right.
...Rika-chan's parents... they passed away, huh?"
At that point, I recalled something else.
...Wasn't Satoko living here too?
"Satoko's also an orphan.
...Her parents fell from a cliff because of Oyashiro-sama's curse.
...Then her older brother, Satoshi-kun... he disappeared..."
"...Satoshi... I've heard that name before."
I remembered.
...He was the one who disappeared last year because of the curse.
"Ever since then, Satoko and Rika-chan have been living in this shack.
Neither of them has any family, but at least they're together.
...They help each other out."
"......Rena said 'main house,' didn't she?
Wouldn't it be easier to live there...?"
The curtains were drawn, so I couldn't get a good look inside to see, but...
two young girls living together... seemed like a pretty tough life.
"I think she tried that at first.
...She said it was hard, though, because it reminded her of her parents."
"............"
...I had no idea... I feel really bad for them.
...They were normally so cheerful at school that I never even realized an atom of this...
"...Rika-chan...... and Satoko-chan... they have it hard, huh?"
"She's cursed."
"...Huh?"
Suddenly... Mion said something in such a low voice that it sounded like she was really cursing someone, and I didn't let it slide.
I turned around on the ladder to face her and asked again.
"...Mion... what... did you just say?"
"I said, she's cursed."
...Mion, still holding onto the ladder, brought her head up to look me in the eyes.
...As soon as our eyes met, an absolute zero jolt of electricity surged through my body.
Mion's eyes clouded over... and within them boiled and bubbled... a stew of chaos.
They whirled around and around like a raging sea... and bubbles floated to the surface...
...I had at some point... been trapped on this ladder... like being cornered on a dead-end street.
"......Mi... Mion, you... Why are you making that face...?"
I intended to follow that up with "you're going too far with this joke" and give her a forced smile.
...However... on such uneven footing as I was... the only thing that came out of my mouth was a hoarse groan as I desperately struggled to not let nausea overwhelm me.
"Satoko Houjou...
...She's been cursed by Oyashiro-sama."
...Mion answers... with a response to something I never asked... as if replying to somebody else's question.
"The only people who fell from the park observation platform were her parents.
Only her parents, who treated her like dirt, died that day.
She was the only one to survive.
...Then she was sent to live with her aunt, who treated her cruelly, and the aunt was killed on the night of Watanagashi by some deviant, who beat her to death so violently her brains were everywhere and her head an entirely different shape by the end of it.
...Then Satoshi-kun, who always protected her...
He suddenly disappeared on her birthday.
Someone made him disappear, even though he wasn't abusing her.
...The police judged him to have run away from home, but Satoshi-kun wasn't the kind of person who would do that.
He was always earnest.
He would never ask for anyone else's help—he would always drag himself through everything with hard work alone.
He worked so hard he nearly ground his bones into dust, all for his one and only little sister—and yet someone made him disappear.
She was the only thing he lived for, and yet someone made him disappear.
Poor, poor Satoshi-kun.
He was never rewarded, that Satoshi-kun.
How ungrateful that child is.
......She is cursed.
All who get near her suffer the same fate.
The curse kills them,
or the curse makes them disappear.
She cannot have any relief,
she cannot have any relief.
......It's probably Satoko's fault that Rika-chan disappeared, too.
It
has
to
be
it
has
to
be
it
has
to
be
it
has
to
be
it
has
to
be
it
has
to
be
it
has
to
be
it
has
to
has
to
has
to
has
to
..."
Mion was mumbling words over and over that were no longer coherent.
...Her shoulders were trembling so hard that I could feel it through the ladder.
I almost lost my footing... which made me realize just how far away the ground really was.
"C... Calm down, Mion...!!
I-I don't know what you're talking about!!"
I wasn't sure if she even heard me.
......Mion rocked back and forth, and that rocking and trembling was becoming even more violent...
H... Help me......
The ladder... i-it's falling......
Help me...
...Help...!!
Just then, I heard the sound of many people running towards us.
"Oh... oh, heeeyyyy!!
O-O-Over heeere!!!!"
I very nearly said "help me" outright.
Four or five adults, led by Rena, ran over here with flashlights.
"Keiichi-kun, Mii-chan, sorry I took so long!
I borrowed the key!"
"Oh, nice one.
Seems all the windows and doors are perfectly sealed.
I was getting worried."
...When I heard Mion talking like nothing had just happened... I again felt a chill run through me.
The person currently holding the ladder in place—it was definitely Mion.
It was the real Mion Sonozaki.
......Then...
......the person muttering to themselves...
...just a few seconds ago...
...who was that...?
The person who was mumbling about terrible things... like curses... who was that...?
...I jumped down from the ladder as if running away, before Mion turned into that person who wasn't Mion a second time.
The adults tried a few different keys on a keyring as they tried to open the big shutter on the first floor.
"Rika-chan's house used to be a disaster shelter for the town council.
So the key to the shutter is still kept in the mayor's house."
"It's Rika-chan and Satoko's private residence now, though.
...Well, this is on Rika-chan's property anyway.
Nobody complains about it."
Mion gave me a smile as she said that.
...I, however, could only return her gaze with an aghast expression.
...Mion was acting all-too-normal now, but that only contrasted all the more sharply with her earlier un-Mion-like creepiness.
Bang! ......Bam, clatter clatter clatter..... bang!!
The shutter opened up for the first time in a very long while.
Rena located the light switch and wasted no time going inside.
I followed her in.
"Rika-chaaaan!!
Satoko-chaaaan!!
If you're here, say something!!"
We climbed a narrow staircase.
...It had looked like nothing more than a warehouse, but now that I was inside, I could feel how lived-in it was—it was a person's home.
...Somehow, the scent of the two of them filled the place.
This was definitely where Rika-chan and Satoko lived.
The first floor doubled as a town assembly warehouse, but the second floor was a space entirely for living.
Just like a one-room apartment, past the kitchen was a living room taking up about 150 square feet.
Dressers, cupboards, and the like were packed into the space, and in the corner there was a huge pile of clothes that appeared to have just been taken in from drying outside.
In the center of the living room was a fold-up table, and on it were small containers for things like soy sauce and salad dressing... The sense of a frugal lifestyle drifted from all of it.
It was strange that they weren't here in the middle of the night like this.
...The adults, climbing the stairs one at a time, began to make a fuss and talk amongst themselves.
"......So?
Not here?!"
"Yeah.
......They're not here.
This is definitely weird."
The village had just been thrown into chaos yesterday because of the mayor's disappearance.
...Then today, even Rika-chan and Satoko had...
"...Were they out playing somewhere together?"
"That can't be."
"Their bicycles aren't here, though."
"Where would they have gone so late at night?!"
"Have they just not come back yet?
Where did they go?!"
The adults put forth various possibilities, and the house immediately devolved into a state of confusion.
...Eventually, Mion settled them down.
"...I don't want to believe it, but... the mayor, Kimiyoshi, disappeared yesterday.
...We can't say that this is unrelated."
...The adults' faces paled at Mion's declaration.
My and Rena's did as well...
"Let's see... They could have gone nearby for some tea or something, then accidentally fallen asleep.
Whoever invited them might just not be able to wake them up at all, too.
...Let's eliminate that possibility first.
Makino-san, please go around to the houses near the stream.
Keitarou-san, go look near Ojaga Lake.
Okamura-san, you..."
Mion promptly gave directions to the villagers.
...The adults followed them without hesitation, despite her age.
"We'll remain here and call up anyone we can think of on the phone.
Okay, everyone, you have your orders!"
"Got it!"
The adults all roared in reply and pounded back down the stairs below.
"...Wow, Mii-chan.
You're not only chairperson of the school, but Hinamizawa too!"
"No time for jokes!
Hey, step aside.
This old man is using the phone."
Mion grinned proudly, took the receiver, and got started.
Rena gave Mion a trusting look, considering her dependable for doing all of this.
My feelings, though, were... a little more complicated, since her leadership seemed to be affirming the 'Sonozaki family successor' impression that Shion and Ooishi-san had given me...
...Stop right there, Keiichi Maebara.
None of that matters right now.
The most important thing is to make sure Rika-chan and Satoko are safe!
Let's see... couldn't there be a clue hinting at where they might have gone somewhere in this room?
"...Still, though... I wouldn't know what to look for anyway."
If we tore the whole place apart and figured out what was different from before, we might be able to speculate, but...
there was nothing strange about this room, and there were no clues in sight.
In the first place... I had never been here before.
...There was no way for me to know what was different if I didn't know how the room usually looked...
...Hey, don't give up, Keiichi Maebara!
Stop thinking and start looking!
For something!
In search of something, I tried pulling open the dresser drawers and opened the windows.
...I didn't uncover anything meaningful, though.
Rena, also unable to stand around doing nothing, was looking around the room like I was.
"...Rena.
I don't think you'll find Rika-chan by opening the refrigerator or the cabinet underneath the sink."
"I just thought they might be hiding...
Ha... Hau~..."
As we were searching, it got noisy outside.
...Villagers were quickly assembling here, having heard the commotion.
Of course, a lot of them were probably people Mion had called.
"I'll go tell everyone what's going on.
...The police will be here sooner or later, too.
We'll need to explain the situation to Ooishi."
Mion began descending the stairs, and we followed her out to the front of the house.
There were already around ten adults there...
and all of them looked uneasy.
I suddenly noticed that the old people from the shrine were here as well, and they were praying for Rika-chan's safety, rubbing their prayer beads.
......This had gotten bad...
This wasn't just a problem between friends anymore.
"Mion-chan, is it true that Rika-chan and Satoko-chan aren't anywhere to be found?!"
The villagers all formed a ring around Mion, swarming her.
Mion raised her right hand, as if silently telling them to calm down.
"First, let's check every house according to the town council's notification division and see if they're visiting anyone.
...After all, they could be fast asleep at someone's house and totally unaware that we're looking for them."
...It would definitely be hard for someone to wake up Rika-chan if she had eaten a good, full meal and fallen asleep like a kitten afterwards.
...Oh, how nice it would be if that were the case.
"......I don't want to think about this, but it's also possible something bad has happened."
Mion's face grew remarkably more grim, and a wave of silence washed over the adults...
"We should divide up the work, too.
We'll go around to all the places we went last night while looking for the mayor."
"...We'll go look around the dam construction site as best we can.
You guys go search around the school."
"Right!
Let's get a move-on!!
Come on, let's go!!"
"...All of you were up all night looking for the mayor.
...I know you're all low on sleep, but please, do your best!"
"""Got it!!!"""
With that as their signal, the adults scattered in every direction.
I figured I should scatter somewhere as well... so I started walking unsteadily in a direction no one else had gone in.
I was getting farther and farther from people.
...I didn't feel scared or anything, though.
...If someone were made to disappear, Shion and I should be first.
It would have been perfectly normal for me to be scared of the dark.
...However, I didn't feel that way.
...Why was that?
It was because tonight...
someone had already disappeared.
...So, nobody else would disappear tonight...
It would take some time before I, exhausted as I was... would feel guilt at the cause of my own selfish sense of relief.........