1.0 五月病 Gogatsubyō - May Sickness

Golden Week was ending and despite not being a student or someone with a nine to five job, Junna had developed a terrible case of May Sickness. After a big move and technically starting a new job, the burn out had hit hard. They’d moved back to Tokyo mid-April and immediately taken on whatever exorcisms they could get. Junna had even exorcized the ghost haunting their new apartment right after moving in, so while that was one less restless spirit, it resulted in an unnaturally quiet living space with a gloomy mood. It would be a great place to grow mushrooms.

A night owl like Junna was most active at the times the rest of the Yanaka neighborhood was asleep. When the trains stopped running around midnight, their range of travel reduced significantly, even if they were wide awake. They didn’t have any streaming services or game consoles; they’d never bothered holding on to books or DVDs because they’d moved so often in the past few years. It was easier to use an internet cafe or a library.

Cooking, sports, late night anime… the last time Junna checked the clock it was 01:56 or somewhere close to it. Junna wasn’t used to having a television or cable. When they checked the time again by giving their smartphone a shake, it was 01:59. The middle of the hour of the ox, the favorite time for occult rituals all over the country! They dropped it back into the wide sleeve of their black kimono. Only about an hour before half the channels would temporarily go off air for maintenance until later in the morning. They were running out of channels and sleep wasn’t happening any time soon.

A sudden blast of music playing double the volume of anything else on air and flashing colors scattering the darkness around the room came dangerously close to giving Junna a small heart attack, but they took a deep breath and regained composure.

“What B-grade, low budget garbage is this?” they muttered. “Making up for bad quality with volume level?”

“HELLO, MY CRAZY NIGHT WALKERS!”

“Hi, hiii, HIIIII! Welcome back to—”

“ITSUMADEMO MIDNIGHT SESSION!”

The figures on the screen were downright uncanny. First, there was the guy on the right, a sleazy-looking bastard with slicked back bleached hair, triangular black sunglasses, and a practically neon green suit. The mic was way too close to his grinning mouth full of short, sharp teeth. Second, there was the girl on the left who had busted out into laughter that didn’t just resemble a seagull’s cry—it was definitely a seagull cry. Her white and gray hair was cut into a feathery bob. The black mark across her nose brought to mind the outline of a beak.

One glance was enough to discern neither of them were human.

Junna instantly concluded this show was either haunted or cursed, maybe both.

“This is RYUUZAKI KENGO!” Was that guy even breathing?

“And this is your favorite idol, Nanami Minamiiii!” Could she sound any more desperate?

Ryuuzaki leaned close to the camera and winked over his sunglasses. His eyes were yellow with thin black vertical slits as pupils.

“Yōkai or shikigami.” Junna tilted their head and leaned closer to the screen. Shikigami would be a stretch if the two were human-sized, as they appeared on screen. There wasn’t a method that was worth making such a large, active familiar; it would take way too much time, spirit energy, and materials. It would also break several unwritten taboos, commanding a human as a spiritual servant. To say nothing about the fact that they looked human, although uncomfortably uncanny, as supernatural entities often did. Movements too stilted, no blinking, mouths stretching slightly wider than necessary on certain vowels or lip movements that didn’t line up with the sounds they were producing…

“This week’s episode is the return of a favorite from our early episodes, the Late Night Horror Fight Labyrinth! Contestants will have forty-four minutes—”

Ryuuzaki and Nanami babbled on about events from previous episodes, alluding cursed ritual-like games and the deaths of their participants. But by this point, Junna had decided that since they weren’t ghosts, this was best left to someone else. Junna’s specialty was spirits of the dead, not living spirits.

“I’ll ask Nana about that later.” They leaned back and changed the channel with disinterest, preparing to give up and try to sleep once their options ran out.

The screen went black. Not turned off: there was still that faint glow indicating the television was on, but the broadcast image was entirely black. The faded black of a blank screen grew darker, then textured, exactly like…

Long, black hair.

“Oh no,” Junna’s voice came out in a strained wheeze and they tried clicking off the TV with the remote about three times before giving up. “I forgot to put up a ward, dammit…”

They tossed the remote. It bounced off the top of the TV, missing the head that was pushing its way out of the screen like the glass didn’t exist at all. That was how ghosts operated. Junna had remembered to ward their mirrors and never left any standing water around, but they hadn’t owned a TV in such a long time, they’d forgotten it could also serve as a portal for the dead.

Long black hair spilled out of the TV’s frame and pooled out on the floor as two gray-white hands gripped the side.

Junna knew this visitor well, and was already scrambling back from the TV, about to clamor to their feet and run. In their panic, they had abandoned all coordination in favor of speed and it was not looking like a winning strategy. No going back now, though. In a heart-pounding, skin-crawling, ear-ringing state of fear humans in modern day developed nations were rarely exposed to, all they could think to do was escape. The need to run took over.

A curse that lasted seven days would have been merciful. Junna had been running for the past two years. Running and hiding in obscure shrines with powerful spiritual protections until they wore out their welcome, hunting every ghost but the one in their apartment right now.

“Junna,” said the quiet, raspy voice of the ghost hanging her lowered head out of the modestly sized flatscreen TV.

“Ibuki—Ibuki, please, just this once, please listen to me—”

Pleading in such a way was useless. Junna knew this, and yet they couldn’t help but speak to the ghost as if she had never died. Like Junna hadn’t tried to bring her back and hadn’t failed miserably.

The idea that Ibuki would grant them any request was laughable. Maybe that was why they asked: to make it out to be a joke. As if Ibuki would say “Tricked you! How was my Sadako impression?”

Ibuki’s neck snapped up at an angle not unnatural, but surely uncomfortable for a normal human and glared at Junna with glassy grayish-white eyes ringed in red.

I wish I had just closed your eyes and let you rest, Junna thought, though wishing it wouldn’t make it so.

“You’re the reason I’m like this.”

The spirits of the dead always moved in a manner that confused human perception. Junna sometimes wondered if the person who had suggested Yamamura Sadako or Saeki Kayako’s jerky, creeping movements had encountered a real ghost themselves at some point. Ibuki’s hands were both on the edge of the TV one second, and then one was around Junna’s ankle before another had passed, almost like stop motion animation with frames missing.

“This is your fault.”

She didn’t yell or scream or even raise her voice. Junna wished she would. She did, sometimes, when her rage at existing finally overflowed. The low, clear hiss was worse, the hoarseness a reminder of when Junna had discovered her, dangling from the ceiling of her own bedroom in her family home, dead like the rest of the Isshiki clan despite being the only one free of wounds or curses.

“I know, I know—” Junna resisted apologizing. It had never worked, and why would Ibuki even believe them? Because they’d done it for love? What did the reason matter when Ibuki’s current existence amounted to nothing but torment?

Ibuki’s skin felt like ice and her grip was so tight Junna felt like their ankle might snap. Panic stole their breath as they remembered the same grip around their throat. The marks on Ibuki’s neck were bruises and a hint of burn from the cloth or whatever she’d used to hang herself. The marks on Junna’s neck were from Ibuki’s hands.

They wanted to joke: “Can’t we call it even?”

Instead, they yanked their leg back as hard as they could and pulled Ibuki halfway out of the TV so that she lost her balance and was laid out across the low table. After rolling onto all fours, they sprinted to the front door, twisted the lock, shoved the door open, and escaped into the night. They flew down the stairs to their second floor apartment and dashed two blocks away before daring to look back.

Nothing. Just a dark street, lights on in distant windows, and a warm spring breeze. It was May, so the nights were still pleasant and not heavy with humidity.

Ghosts of almost all types could travel through reflective surfaces, but many times they weren’t strong enough to haul themselves all the way out. The modern flatscreen TVs were probably even worse doors than the older box models, especially with all the added interference: cable channels, wifi, radiation, and who knew what else? Junna had yet to see a ghost—an actual spirit of the dead—travel through a smartphone or laptop, although there were plenty of other nasty things that could.

Of course Ibuki would be an exceptional case…

For now, they were alone again. Safe. Ibuki would probably retreat back into the TV while they were out, but without a proper ward, she could easily return any time during the night. Or day, if she had grown powerful enough. Either way, it would be safer to return and set up some kind of ward in the morning, maybe with help. Alone, they were relying on the fact that the supernatural had not seemed to have meshed well with technology in the past few decades. In the morning, Junna could just ask Nana. Nana would understand. Nana wouldn’t ask annoying questions like “what are you going to do about your dead girlfriend” or “why haven’t you exorcized her” and “when are you going to move on, Junna?” That was probably why, out of all the people Junna could call friends or connections, Nana was the one they had messaged most often in the past two years.

“Well… can’t go back there for another few hours.”