“Paint the walls. It has to look nice for the next person to move in.”
“Hmm,” muttered Anzai, but then, “Huh?”
He was overcome by a strange feeling. He had a feeling something about that quickly given premise did not add up.
However, Harumi and the section manager were already heading into the empty room.
And they did not even take off their shoes.
“Here it is. On the roof.”
“Wow.”
“Okay, just paint it over. Hurry. Hurry up now.”
Wondering what they were talking about, Anzai timidly entered the room.
What he found was an eerie stain that he felt should get the room nominated for the top 100 haunted spots in Japan.
“Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!?”
“Anzai-kun has an over-the-top reaction to everything, doesn’t he?”
“He keeps things lively,” replied Harumi.
“To hell with this!! What is that!? It’s clearly a person!! That stain looks just like a life-sized person with their limbs spread out!! What the hell happened in this apartment!?”
“C’mon, hurry up and paint it over.”
“We are paid by the hour, so we do not want to be too quick.”
“No, wait!! Explain this!!!!!! In fact, I don’t think even having the victim of a fatal stabbing on the other side of the ceiling would cause a stain like this! What the hell happened to create such a horrifying stain!?”
(Come to think of it, a strange girl lived next door up until about 2 weeks ago! She had white hair, was about 12, referred to herself with the first person pronoun “konata”, and lived alone!! How did things end up so this absurd stain got here!?)
Anzai’s brain seemed to be overheating.
Meanwhile…
“Don’t ask me. I was just told to have you do something about the stain.”
“…So you’re just going to seal it away without knowing what it is?”
“The request wasn’t to figure out what it is.”
As he spoke, the middle-aged section manager removed the lid from the paint can and poured white paint into the bucket. He then took the tool that looked like an adhesive tape roller used to remove stains from carpet and stuck it into the paint.
“Now, get this over with. You shouldn’t need a stepladder for this. C’mon, get to it. You may get paid the same per hour no matter how much work you do, but try not to slack off in front of me.”
“Wahh! The paint drips down on me when I hold up the roller!!” shouted Harumi.
“Isn’t there something else to be surprised by!? And what kind of secrets does this cheap apartment I live in have!?”
However, the other two did not seem to care about anything other than the money.
The section manager spoke to Anzai who was still complaining.
“This kind of thing is to be expected.”
“Eh!? Are you about to tell me this place is haunted because of some horrible incident form the past!?”
“No. People can hire us to do anything, remember? Well, you made the ridiculous request of a three-days-a-week job that pays 1000 yen an hour. You shouldn’t be surprised to get jobs like this.”
“…So you don’t do jobs like this year-round?”
“No. We will do anything requested of us, so we get a lot of different types of jobs. If you are fine with low wages can choose the safe, easy jobs. With the amount of money you wanted, it’s only natural to get something a little more difficult. So quit complaining.”
“Right!! Right, right!!”
“I’m beginning to worry about Harumi’s IQ…”
As much as Anzai disliked it, a job was a job. He could always ask the landlord about that stain later. Of course, he did not actually live in that room, so it was possible the landlord would have no obligation to tell him about the room next door.
He stuck his paint roller into the bucket to gather some paint. When he stretched up, he could just reach the ceiling. When he thought about it, the whole thing seemed suspicious from the point that they were going straight to painting without removing the wallpaper first, but it was the apartment’s landlord that was plotting something suspicious not the group Anzai was working for.
“…That reasoning gets pretty dangerous if it goes as far as killing someone, though.”
“Did you say something?”
Anzai did not want to cause any trouble, so he switched his mindset over to trying to finish the job.
He pressed some white paint against the ceiling.
Just by moving the roller back and forth, the human-shaped stain would disappear. But then…
“Mm…mm…?”
“It just spoke!! This stain just mumbled somethiiiinnnngggg!?”
“Ah!? Don’t wave your roller around!!”
“You’re getting it everywhere. Well, we’re going to be painting it all, so I guess it doesn’t matter.”
They both seemed unconcerned.
That in itself was a problem, but a certain word caught Anzai’s attention.
“All of it?”
“All of it.”
“So we’re not just painting the ceiling, but the walls and floor as well? Wait, is there some reason why we have to do that?”
“That’s what we were asked to do.”
Anzai quickly looked around the walls and floor. One of those walls was shared with his apartment, so he had a serious reason to be concerned.
“W-well, I don’t see any human-shaped stains… Do you?”
“Nope,” said Harumi.
However, a bad feeling oozed up in the back of Anzai’s mind.
“…So there’s something other than a stain there?”
“Probably. Oh, more importantly, hurry up and paint over the stain on the ceiling. It’ll get away.”
“What do you mean the stain will get away!? Does that mean it isn’t actually a stain!? Don’t tell me it’s actually a collection of small, black bugs that just looks like a stain!!”
“Either way, you still need to paint over it. C’mon, hurry, hurry. It’ll escape into the room next door.”
“Gwooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
Despite still not knowing what was going on, Anzai swung the roller around like a sacred sword and sealed the (thing that looked like a) black stain behind the paint.
“Well done!!”
“Wow, I wouldn’t think an amateur could do that.”
“Wait!! Did that actually solve this!? I get the feeling it’s still very much alive and we just can’t see it!!”
“The stain is ‘very much alive’? You certainly say some strange things.”
“How poetic!” commented Harumi.
“No fair!! Don’t take normal views of things only when it’s convenient to you!!”
“Okay, that may be done, but we still need to paint the rest. Anzai-kun, you cover up the hair sticking out from the cracks in the floor. It seems to be slowly but forcefully heading this way.”
“Nooooooo!! This time it’s something clearly physical!?”
“Ha ha ha! How can you call this obviously unnatural hair a physical phenomenon!?” said Harumi.
“Oh, so you’re admitting that these things aren’t normal now!?”
Afterwards, the three were faced with “a large quantity of mold that clearly looked like a baby’s handprints”, “a wall covered in breast-shaped protrusions discovered when they removed the installed bathtub”, “feminine writing saying ‘delicious’ that looked like it had been scratched there by someone’s fingernails”, and other similar phenomena. They sent them all back to the darkness.
In the evening after they had finished, Anzai’s face was completely pale.
“…I-I need to go check if there are any paint trails in my room!!”
“Wow, getting 1000 yen an hour just to paint is great!” said Harumi.
“Yes, but be glad you kept it at the 1000 yen line. Yo
u would have gotten even worse jobs if you had asked for the 1200 yen line. Those jobs are at the Ab. Buster level.”
“Things worse than this!?”
(And what that term he used? Ab. Buster!?)
“Yes.” The section manager who was experienced in such darker things nodded. “There’s a national university nearby, right? We recently had a job to pretend to be students there. That survey is definitely something I want nothing to do with.”
Return to Contents Forward to Afterwords
Hotaru’s Case
Part 1
“What a coincidence. That’s the same as me,” said Hotaru.
She was tall and had long, black hair. She was beautiful, but it was the type of beauty that brought words like “shudder” or “scary” to mind. To be blunt, Anzai felt she would be the hardest to find anything to speak about with.
“You would probably like the same movies,” said Harumi.
“It is not like anyone is wrong, but it would be annoying for everyone else if you talk about it. Well, it is still better than talking about baseball.”
“Aisu, you need to do something about your habit of grabbing strange guys with one arm in the diner while watching TV and holding a beer mug in the other hand…Oh?”
Kozue trailed off.
As they left the auditorium, she looked up into the night sky and held up her palms as if to catch something.
Hotaru frowned.
“Is it raining?”
As soon as she muttered that, Anzai felt a large drop fall on the top of his nose. That drop was followed by what seemed like buckets of rain. The school building was a good distance from the coffee shop and none of them had an umbrella. The five of them frantically ran back into the auditorium.
They had turned off the lights when they left, so it was pitch black. However, it was not locked. Or rather, it had been left unlocked.
“Hyaahh!! The rain is really coming down!”
“With rain this heavy, it probably will not last all night.”
“I’m soaking wet.”
“Unfortunately for you, boy, it is pitch black. If the lights were on, you would have gotten a fanservice scene out of all four of us.”
Anzai ignored Hotaru and instead checked on his things. He did not carry much in the way of school supplies in his bag, but it seemed the water resistant spray the department store clerk had talked him into buying had been effective. He unzipped it and stuck his hand inside, but nothing felt wet.
Next, he checked the cell phone he had in his pants pocket.
Anzai pulled out the phone and turned it on. Luckily, the usual passcode screen came up. It did not seem to be broken.
As Anzai focused on his cell phone, the cabaret club-looking girl named Aisu screamed.
“Gyaaahhhh!! Just as I thought our wet and see-through clothes had been protected by the defense of darkness, he brings out that backlight!?”
“?”
“As requested, I shall perform the safety blindfold security!” shouted Harumi from behind Anzai who had instinctually turned in the direction of Aisu when she had screamed.
In the next instant, his eyes were covered by two wet hands. His vision was suddenly cut off and at the same time he felt something soft press against his back.
Something like an electric current shot through the core of Anzai’s body.
It went beyond simply seeming like her guard was too low.
“Aisu, you tried to make it look like you were embarrassed while letting out that shout to draw all the attention to yourself, didn’t you?”
“No, that was my real response! And with the way she is clinging to him, I think Harumi has won the most points here!!”
“She is just smiling and keeping that same position!?”
“What? What? What are you getting so worked up about?” asked Harumi.
“Honestly, what are you people doing?” said Hotaru in exasperation.
Anzai then felt someone take the cell phone from his hand. When Harumi removed her “blindfold” from him, all light sources were gone. Someone returned his cell phone to him in the darkness.
“The cell phone is off limits. Got it?”
“I was just checking to see if it still worked, so that’s fine by me.”
“Aisu, you failed to draw enough attention to yourself. Harumi overshadowed you,” commented Kozue.
“We’re always like this, aren’t we?”
Anzai could hear them speaking in the darkness, but he did not try to join in. The best he could manage was nodding in the direction he thought Hotaru was in.
“This rain is lasting longer than I expected,” said Hotaru’s voice. “With how strong it was, I assumed it would end quickly.”
“If it’s going to last until morning, we’re going to have to prepare ourselves,” replied Anzai offhandedly.
He of course was not talking about staying there overnight. He was talking about running home through the rain.
Aisu continued, “This auditorium is pretty big, so there might be an umbrella stand with an umbrella left in it.”
“Taking things that are not yours is wrong, Aisu.”
“We can return it tomorrow. It is at least worth looking into.”
But they could find nothing of the sort near the entrance of the auditorium. They were forced to search by feeling around with their hands, but the umbrella stand appeared to be empty.
“Just like car demolitions, the teachers might periodically remove any left behind.”
“But this means we have no way of leaving.”
“I know!” said Harumi. “This is an auditorium, so they must have lots of trash cans. If we can find the office, maybe they will have new trash bags.”
“If you put one of those over your head, walk through the metropolitan shopping district, and ride the bus or the train, I say they should make a statue honoring your bravery to put at the school gate.”
“Huh?” said Anzai.
Because of the small bit of illumination from the outside lights, the path was faintly lit just outside the entrance to the auditorium. He spotted something shiny there. The girls seemed unwilling to let him see them with their wet clothes making their underwear visible, so they were not approaching the light. However, Anzai was in a different position. He approached the glass door to check and he figured out what it was.
“There’s a plastic umbrella on the ground there.”
Two or three pieces of the metal framework were broken, so the plastic sheet was fluttering. A strong gust of wind or something else must have broken it, so its owner had thrown it away. However, it would likely still keep the rain off of them.
Anzai laid his bag and phone down on the ground, opened the glass door, and headed back outside. He picked up the broken plastic umbrella and hurried back.
“To the victor go the spoils. It looks like we can move on to the next step. …Wait, what is it?”
The area within the auditorium was even darker than the area right next to the glass door where Anzai stood, so he could not see them. However, he sensed a tenseness in the atmosphere.
Hotaru broke the silence.
“For future reference, girls do get embarrassed when they see the underwear of a member of the opposite sex.”
“? More importantly, I got us an umbrella…”
“No, not more importantly! Argh, just come here!!”
“Aisu, are you going to embrace him because you are unable to restrain yourself?”
“What!? I’m saying guys need the defense of darkness as well!!”
At their urging, Anzai headed back into the darkness.
“Anyway, I found an umbrella.”
“Yes, yes. An umbrella.”
“…It is physically impossible for all five of us to fit under this half-broken umbrella.”
“Kozue, did you just gulp in anticipation?”
“No, I would think that was Aisu.”
They were ignoring Anzai as they continued the conversation.
“Anyway, can’t we just have one person use this to head to the convenience store and buy some more umbrellas?” he suggested.
“Oh! Nice one! Nice idea!”
“Well, that is at least realistic.”
“Wait, young ones! You are suggesting one of us heads out into those lights while soaking wet!!”
“This could become a night to remember.”
Anzai decided it would be a bit harsh to force that on a girl when her underwear was clearly visible.
“Well, I suggested it, so I’ll go.”
“Wait, boy!! Personally, I think you would be the most dangerous option!!”
“?”
“If one of us must have embarrassment brought upon us, I think we should decide it using rock paper scissors.”
“I suppose, but I’m the guy. I might as well…”
“No, that is the very reason! It is because you are a guy that you must not, you idiot!!”
Anzai was stopped by logic he could not comprehend. It might have been some kind of special rule of groups of girls.
Even so…
“But we have to head through the shopping district to get home. And you mentioned using the train or bus. We’re all going to have to head out into the light eventually.”
“…!?”
“!”
“!!”
“…!!”
His casual comment received four gasps in response. It seemed to be a matter of life or death for the girls.
“H-how long does it take for clothes to dry?”
“It would take all night for them to air dry. We might need a hair dryer or something.”
“No, that won’t cut it. We need a proper clothes dryer.”
“Give this proper thought,” said Kozue. “Are you suggesting we use a laundromat without a change of clothes? What are we supposed to do while our clothes tumble around in the dryer?”
“You say that, Kozue, but you actually think this might be your chance, don’t you!?”
“C-could you stop projecting your own thoughts onto me, Aisu?”
As the conversation started derailing in a strange direction, Hotaru tried to correct its course.
“Anyway, we first end to acquire enough umbrellas for all of us to have mobility. We must decide who will head to the convenience store using rock paper scissors.”
A Simple Survey - Volume 01 - A Simple Survey Page 15
