Over the past few days, the only food she’d had was some bread crusts handed out in front of a bakery (still delicious enough to be a rarity over in Ente Isla) and a bland paste of some sort made of what seemed like boiled, strained beans, passed out at a shop selling these white, soft-looking square lumps of something (it was filling, at least). And in the end, she was right back here, squatting in this empty room.
“I haven’t been too lucky here so far, have I…?”
The memories were more wretched than she’d thought. Emilia found herself lying facedown, holding back the tears. The apartment would’ve been a godsend even if she had been forced to sleep on the balcony, but she’d made it in here solely because someone accidentally forgot to lock a window. That allowed her to learn more about this nation, but it was strictly a series of lucky breaks strung together.
Back on Ente Isla, even if separated from her friends in an unfamiliar land, she would never be totally unable to communicate with them, not with the powers she enjoyed. They were generally welcome wherever they went as the noble band who’d struck down the Great Demon General Lucifer—and if not, the experience (or rank) of at least one of her friends would usually save Emilia from much pain.
She could see that now. On the Western Island, where the Church’s influence was its most powerful, you couldn’t find anyone who didn’t know Olba Meiyer, one of the six archbishops who held the most decision-making power in the whole Church infrastructure. And in lands without such cozy relationships with the Church, the name of Emeralda Etuva, the great sorcerer of the courts of Saint Aile, held massive sway. Beyond the Western Island, meanwhile, the extensive connections Albert Ende seemed to have worldwide had saved everyone’s hide at least a few times.
“Olba… Eme… Al…”
Emilia softly called the names of her companions—strong, gentle, worth relying on and leaving one’s life to. They were precious to her—but now, there was nobody.
“I miss you…”
With a light sigh and a single tear running down her cheek, she found herself asleep before she realized it.
“…Huh?”
When Emilia woke up, it was to sense something strange drawing near—a large number of people.
She sprang to her feet, opened the door, and looked down at the floors below from the corridor. She saw nearly ten men dressed in blue-and-gray outfits, hanging out in front of the building’s entrance. A vehicle was stopped on the road in front, carrying a large, metallic box of some sort.
“What’s that?”
And that woman was among them. Keiko Yusa.
Disturbed, Emilia returned to her room. Things were different from before. The men with her didn’t look like constables, but Keiko Yusa might’ve enlisted these reinforcements to defeat her.
“…I may not be able to stay here any longer.”
She had hoped to meet her and apologize directly, but that was no longer on the table. So she placed Keiko Yusa’s bag on the doorstep—having placed everything back inside the previous night—put her armor back on, gave one final, longing look at the apartment, and then opened the window and flew off.
“I’m not lying! I saw a ghost! I’m telling you, we need to hire a priest to purify every room in the place to make sure it doesn’t come back!”
“Don’t be ridiculous! I told you, stop spouting off about stuff like that in front of the furniture people!”
“But I saw it…”
“Enough! You know what kind of situation Urban Heights Eifukucho is in! It’s already do-or-die occupancy-wise, and now you’ve got the police involved over some spooky ghost or whatever? What if people start spreading weird rumors again?”
“B-but…we’ve gotten reports from other companies around here about strange sightings even before I showed up…”
“Ughh! Look, just open all the zero-one rooms up to the fifth floor!”
“All of them?! But it was in Room 501! I saw it there!”
“For real…?”
A man and a woman were bickering with each other in the front lobby of Urban Heights Eifukucho. One was Keiko Yusa, the woman Emilia ran into, and the other was her boss, Kazumura. In front of them, a team of workmen from the furniture company looked over assorted papers, checking on their upcoming work assignments.
“All right! Is it okay to get started?”
“See? They’re calling for us! Unlock those doors already! …Yeah, we’ll open them up now, guys! …All right? Come on!”
Her boss flashed a beaming smile to the workmen, then grimaced menacingly at Keiko.
“I have to get back to the office by three PM, and I better see some work done when I’m back, or else you’re gonna have to do all of it.”
“A-all right. I—I’ll do it…”
The half-tearful Keiko headed for the stairs, a unique-looking key in her hand. The workmen needed the elevator, so—in her new, heelless pumps—she climbed up the stairs as she griped to herself.
“Nnngh… Why did I ever have to be involved with this building…?”
Keiko worked for Ohmura Urban Community Real Estate, Ltd., and in the history of that company, they had never had to deal with a more cursed apartment building.
Even as the luxury-condo scene around greater Tokyo had fallen off in the past five years, Urban Community had been enjoying steady growth. The dizzying number of high-rise apartments built along the coast of Tokyo Bay was an indicator of just how intense the competition had become among real estate firms, but that competition had grown just as fierce in some of the budding new hubs of the city. In particular, the prices for properties and rentals along streets in metro Tokyo that allowed easy access to the big rail stations—Ikebukuro, Shinjuku, Shibuya, Meguro, Osaki, Shinagawa, Ueno, and Tokyo Station itself—were consistently on the rise. The key to success wasn’t being right next to these sites, but within maybe a few stations of them along the Japan Rail, private railway, or subway lines.
From the seventies to the turn of the millennium, developers had avoided the expensive downtown area and focused on satellite cities in the neighboring prefectures of Saitama, Chiba, and Kanagawa, creating what was called a “donut effect” in population growth, Now, however, with more people craving life in the city proper, a similar effect was being seen around the terminal stations of Tokyo’s busiest rail lines.
In the midst of all this, Urban Heights—built in Eifukucho, the perfect neighborhood to aim for this kind of customer demand—was a make-or-break project for the company, one that should’ve been a guaranteed success. The Eifukucho station on the Keio Inokashira line was an express stop, providing easy access to the big population centers around Shibuya, Kichijoji, and Shinjuku. Several bus lines also had their routes start and end at the Keio office in Eifukucho, making travel to other areas around Tokyo a snap. Eifukucho Station had a midsized shopping complex and a large street lined with stores nearby, but much of it was still quiet and filled with quaint old buildings. The region offered relaxation, convenience, and great views of the Tokyo skyline.
Urban Heights, however, was a zombie of a building. Three years old, and its occupancy rate was still zero percent. Not only was it not a success; it hadn’t even crossed the starting line yet—and the most aggravating thing was that there was absolutely no reason for it to be a failure.
“And that wasn’t even our fault, either. Ughh…”
Keiko gave a depressed look toward the ceiling as she opened up Room 401.
The brochures used the slogan “A Futuristic Lifestyle Space for Eifukucho Begins Now!” The project received a major push from Ohmura Group, Urban Community’s parent trading firm, and in the space of half a month, over 80 percent of the condos in the upper floors—including the top-floor penthouses—were under contract, with the rental lots in the low-to-mid floors also receiving constant foot traffic.
But just when everyone foresaw the project’s success, someone pulled the red carpet out from under them.
It all started with a tiny mistake.
Part of the land used to build it on had been declared “Land Containing Buried Cultural Property” by the government. Before any tall structure could be constructed, the spot had to be fully excavated for historical artifacts and the like. This was fairly normal around much of Tokyo, as old as the city was, but the company had filed the papers for this excavation fifty-nine days before the start of construction, rather than the required sixty days. This earned them a warning from the ward government that didn’t come until months later, by which time construction was almost complete. Urban Community couldn’t really do much about this at that point in the project, but an infraction was an infraction.
Thus, before the building was done, there was a movement within the company to conduct a full, firm-wide compliance check, out of anxiety for their future. That’s when the real hell began, because that compliance check started an avalanche of findings that went far beyond simple filing errors.
To put it succinctly, Urban Heights Eifukucho was a textbook case of cutting corners at all phases of construction. The construction materials differed from the norm, the numbers in the material estimates were padded to the point that the building didn’t have all the structural materials it should have—both serious, company-toppling issues. To that was added fraudulent claims about the building’s insulation and earthquake resistance…and to that was added several company managers making up nonexistent material orders in order to embezzle from the budget.
It was no longer a crisis that could be kept internally, and since four-fifths of the real estate lots were already signed for, this led to a storm of criticism and lawsuits claiming damages. Stocks for both Urban Community Real Estate and its Ohmura Group parent plummeted. The entire Urban Community board was dismissed. Ohmura Trading, the largest company in the group, even forced one of its company directors to resign, and Keiko Yusa—a freshly hired college graduate back then—couldn’t even imagine how many people below that guy got canned.
After weathering that storm in her first year at work, Keiko was now assigned to the Urban Heights Eifukucho Renewal Project, two years after that firestorm of a building was finally completed. Their task: to sell Urban Heights to homeowners and tenants all over again, from the ground up. It was the Ohmura Group’s decision not to sell the building or its land, but to give it a fresh start, restore the public’s trust, and drag the site back to what it should’ve been all along. All the fraudulent reporting was thoroughly investigated, and the company spent three years completely renovating the building.
Even if the project (and the company) had blown it, the neighborhood’s inherent attraction hadn’t gone away. Urban Community might be unlikely to reach the sales level they’d expected at first with this, but if they could snatch back at least some of the trust they lost, they’d have nothing to complain about.
“Which, I know spreading rumors about ghosts isn’t helpful…but I really saw it…”
Keiko walked along the corridor, brightly sunlit in the morning, and stopped at the door to Room 501. She nervously gulped. She had seen it. A person who disappeared before her eyes. A stench like none she had experienced before. A door that opened by itself. An eerie, halting voice out of nowhere that called for her. A weird ball of light floating in the air—and then the armored figure looming there.
“Ughhh, I don’t want to go in…”
She was already about to cry before anything even happened, but she couldn’t anger her boss any longer. That ghost was the rock; Kazumura was the hard place. Life couldn’t be more unfair for her.
That being said, though, Kazumura and the company were fighting for their lives. The fortunes of the whole outfit were riding on Urban Heights Eifukucho in a way they hadn’t before, and Keiko had worked hard to launch the building’s PR blast for potential clients, a project slated to begin today. She couldn’t freeze up here.
“There’s no such thing as ghosts, there’s no such thing as ghosts, ghosts go away!”
Recalling all that hard toil (and the fact it was morning), she finally managed to undo the lock and open the door to Room 501.
“………!”
Nothing was there. No weird smell, and certainly no wisps or armored samurai.
“Whewwww…”
Keiko huffed out all the breath she had been holding. All that pushing herself must’ve made her see things after all. She repeated that to herself as she carefully edged into the room.
“Ah! My bag!!”
Right in the middle of the room was her purse.
She hadn’t even noticed it was missing until she’d fled to the police station after freaking out over that ghostly voice. It was full of valuable work materials, and she knew it was in here, but there was no way she could’ve come back to fetch it last night.
Rushing into the room, she quickly investigated the bag’s contents.
“Oh, thank heavens! I knew it was in here. I think everything’s intact, too… Huh?”
Quickly, she noticed something unusual.
“…Huhh?”
She turned back toward the front door she had just unlocked, the one she’d fled through after that ghostly experience last night. She knew it was locked—but the bag had been left inside a locked room?
“Um… Wow. That’s…weird…?”
So was that not a ghost at all? Was it some criminal who had snuck inside? But if it was, that made no sense at all. How would any trespasser make it inside this room, and how would they lock the door from the inside before leaving? This was the fifth floor. There were no fire escapes or piping on the outer walls of the building, preventing anyone from shimmying up where they didn’t belong, and the emergency escape ladders were designed to be inaccessible from lower floors.
“…!”
Running over to the balcony, Keiko realized the window was unlocked—but Room 501’s emergency ladder hadn’t been deployed.
“Who…Who placed my purse in this room?”
If someone was here, how did they get in, and how did they get out?
“Are they still here, somewhere?”
Reassured by the presence of her boss and the workmen down below, Keiko looked around the place. There were no signs of activity in the toilet, the bathroom, or the closets. Perhaps the next balcony over…?
“Nothing.”
In case of evacuation, Urban Heights Eifukucho was structured so that people had access to the adjacent balcony, even if it belonged to someone else. Beyond that balcony was a flat, unscalable wall for a good ten feet or so, far too long to jump across.
“H-how…?”
She reached into a purse pocket to inform Kazumura down below that it was okay to open all the apartments.
“…Huh?”
Then she gasped, realizing that something which should’ve been there wasn’t.
“Nnnnnh!!”
Not far away, along an empty street, Emilia held her head in her hands. That mysterious light-up board was within them.
“I accidentally brought it with me…”
The evening sun made Urban Heights Eifukucho cast a long shadow over the city. Keiko made an odd face at it as she pointed her DSLR camera. Right now, she was the only one in the apartment. Her boss, and the workmen who brought in the furniture, had left long ago, but Keiko’s job was just beginning.
Her task here was to wait until the sun set, then take night pictures of the interiors of all the zero-one rooms between floors one and five. They’d use her best shots in the advertising materials the company was working on. This would normally be the job of a PR firm or a professional photographer, but the Urban Heights Eifukucho Renewal Project was strictly limited to handling almost all of its sales work with in-house staff, except for things that couldn’t be done without outsourcing. The bosses said they had to, in order to manage compliance, save money, and restore the public’s trust all at once, but to the staff it felt like juggling multiple jobs, making for an extremely inefficient operation.
Someone like Keiko, used to her job but still treat
ed as the “new girl” in her office, was perfect for handling something like this. Normally, she’d just shrug it off as an unfortunate side effect of her company’s situation, but tonight was different. Something was in this apartment—maybe a ghost, maybe a squatter, but either way, a specter that had made Keiko experience a lot of terror over the past couple days.
Already, she had found her purse in a room it should never have been in. That ghostly voice wasn’t around, but she had just bought a new smartphone and it was missing from her bag, which did nothing to comfort her. Two days had passed since she had lost it, but she had been so busy in the meantime that she hadn’t made it over to a shop to disable it. The company provided her a phone for work purposes, so she wasn’t particularly inconvenienced, but she wound up using her personal phone on the job fairly often as well, which only added to the stress.
Plus, when she tried calling it last night, it was answered by some weirdo mystery person. It could’ve been the same voice that she’d heard in the building…or maybe it wasn’t. It was so far away from the receiver that she couldn’t tell for sure, and either way, the terror of it all made her black out, so her memory wasn’t too clear on it.
“Once it’s dark, let’s just take these pics and get the heck out of here!”
With that statement—half-yelled in an attempt to banish those bad memories—Keiko reviewed the vantage points she’d scoped out beforehand and adjusted the camera for night shooting.
“Hmm… This light’s in the way. Maybe I should move it.”
Each of the apartments was now filled with a selection of well-coordinated furniture, picked out by the company Keiko and her boss worked with. Room 201 would be their model apartment for families, Room 501 the one for single dwellers, and they would remain open for public viewing after tonight.
“I definitely need to try to get some of the kitchen in these. The faucets are all from this year’s lineups.”
She was still the company newbie, but as someone with three years’ experience, she did have her pride and knowledge to work with. Once she threw the switch, her mind was firmly in work mode, forgetting everything else.
The Devil Is a Part-Timer!, Vol. 14 Page 17
