Yori’s house was filled with junk. Newspapers. Picture frames. Broken-down appliances. Bicycle horns. Rusted tools. Stacks of old CDs and clear plastic bottles to keep away cats. Ceramic lawn ornaments. Piles of souvenirs collected from shrines. Folded paper decorations. Square pots for bonsai trees. His house hadn’t been properly cleaned for generations. Not years. Generations.
In Japan it’s not strange for several families to live under the same roof at the same time. Kids, mothers, fathers, grandparents, even great-grandparents, eating and sleeping and living together. Yori’s house was like that—except without the people. It was filled with the clutter of three, four, five generations, stacked up against the walls, lining the stairs, touching the ceiling. But even though all these things had been collected over the years, only Yori and his sister remained. An ex–bus driver and an old woman who grunted at television sets.
I walked up the stairs, careful to avoid the piles of anime figurines and manga comic books. Through his bedroom door I could hear Yori talking. Shouting, actually.
“Donna shigoto demo, Sunabōzu kanarazu dekiru yo!”
A couple of days after Ichiro died, Yori had stopped driving the bus to school. He didn’t say a word to any of us. He was sitting in the driver’s seat one day, and the next he was gone. Haru was right about one thing—Yori had told the school board that a river troll tricked Aiko and Ichiro into killing themselves. Some of the students said he got fired for that. One of them said Yori’s sister called in a few favors and got him an accounting job in the Kusaka town hall. That made sense. Numbers and spreadsheets and small marks in notebooks? That’s the kind of work only someone like Yori could enjoy.
“Ojama shimasu,” I said, pulling back the door to Yori’s room. From the worn tatami mats on his floor to the splintered rafters of the ceiling, from the dusty shelves on his walls to the stained windowsills, on every centimeter of free space I could see piles of souvenirs and figurines. Some had bright costumes or plastic accessories. Some were large. Some were old. Some were worn, and some were still in the original packaging from years before. But all of them, every single one of them, were kappa. Yori’s entire room was a collection shrine to the most famous river troll in Kusaka Town—Shibaten, part turtle, part freaky human child.
And in the midst of it all, like an emperor in his treasure house, stood the bus-driving accountant. Goggled. Caped. Holding out a military canteen with the word 水 painted across the front.
“Um, hi,” I said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t go to the door, Koda. You never know what creatures are lurking around out there. Come in. Sit down. Not there … or there. You know what? Let’s just stand.”
“Okay.”
“Let me turn this off.” Yori stepped carefully over to the desk and pushed a button on a small video camera.
“What were you recording?” I asked.
“Cosplay. I can’t post it to the Net if I don’t record it.”
“Makes sense, I guess.”
“My name is Kanta Mizuno,” Yori started, folding his arms dramatically across his chest.
“Okay.”
He stepped between the figurines and swept his cape toward the window. “I am Sunabōzu—the Desert Punk. I have joined forces with Kosuna to defeat Rain Spider in the wastelands of Tōkyō. Donna shigoto demo, Sunabōzu kanarazu dekiru yo! Whatever the feat, whatever the run, Desert Punk gets the job done!”
I just stood there. I mean, what are you supposed to say to that?
Yori turned back to me and held out the canteen. “Would you like a refreshment, weary traveler?”
“Um, is your camera still on or something?”
He lifted his hand to the sky. “There are no cameras in the deserts of Tōkyō, traveler! Drink this.” He poured me a small cup of water from his canteen. “Nothing is more important in the desert than clean, clear water.”
“Mmm,” I said, sipping gingerly. “Just a little sour, though.”
“That’s the chlorine. River water is not safe to drink without chlorine.”
I coughed water back into the cup.
Yori reached out and grabbed it from me. Before I could say anything, he poured the used water back into his canteen and screwed the lid on tight. Gross.
He walked over to his desk and pulled off the goggles and straw hat. “Fantastic, Koda, fantastic. Welcome to cosplay. Now to the business at hand. You are here because of Shibaten.”
“I’m sorry, the river troll?”
“Yes. Shibaten is killing the students of Kusaka High.”
Yori turned away from me, and for a moment I thought he might still be acting.
“Some people say Aiko and Ichiro committed suicide. But it isn’t true. They were murdered.”
He was not acting. He was serious. Well, as serious as a grown man in a cape can be.
“You’re telling me Aiko and Ichiro were killed by a kappa?” I asked.
He turned back to me. “That’s exactly what I’m telling you. He didn’t murder them with his own hands, but he tricked them into killing themselves. Which in my books still counts as murder.”
Maybe spending all day collecting and obsessing over one thing isn’t good for a person.
“Why would you think that, Yori?”
“Because I saw him. Lurking around the school. Watching us. Watching the children. I tried to tell them, the teachers and the headmaster. I tried to warn them, but they wouldn’t listen to me.”
“You actually saw a kappa sneaking around the high school?”
“Well, not with my regular eyes, Koda. I could feel his presence around the school. And that’s as good as seeing him.”
Such a shame. I’d always liked Yori.
He frowned at me like he’d heard that. “You don’t believe me, do you, Koda?”
“It’s not that I don’t believe you, Yori, it’s just that … the words you’re using are not, well, believable to me right now.”
“Stories have been told about kappa for hundreds of years,” he continued. “Countless people have been murdered by them for wandering too close to their rivers. Bodies have been found floating downstream all swollen and bloated, each one broken, with its life-energy sucked out. This isn’t anime, Koda. This isn’t manga. It’s real life. The school sits dangerously close to Kusaka River. If not kappa, then what? If Shibaten didn’t kill those kids, then who did? And why?”
“I … really couldn’t say.”
Yori untied the string at his neck and folded the cape over a used ramen box. “Shibaten is the only kappa in Kusaka. It had to be him.” He walked quickly to the window. “Something has changed in this town, Koda. I can feel it everywhere. There is a monster out there with murder in his heart. He’s obsessed with it. Driven to madness by it. I don’t know why he killed those children, but I know this—he isn’t finished yet.” Yori turned back to me. “We have to watch the river, Koda. Never take your eyes off the river. Shibaten is watching us.”