Chapter 3.3

"You two, where do you think you're going?"

Kaori started as her mother asked her that. She quickly hid her purse behind herself.

"Just out." The one to answer was Akira.

Their mother Sachiko looked suspiciously between the two.

"You'd better come right back. Mom has to go out for the Mourning Crew. You'll need to house-sit."

"Mourning Crew?"

Sachiko gave a more than mildly fed up sigh. "They say another one's died. The Motohashi's Obaa-chan. ---Really, I'm not liking being called out for these kinds of tasks all the time."

Akira exchanged looks with Kaori. Kaori seemed strangely tense at what there was no need to say between she and Akira. He meant to say that Motohashi Tsuruko's death was also because of "that."

"....Have a safe trip."

"Be around the house as much as you can. I'm counting on you."

With a vague nod, Kaori and Akira left the house. If the work was for the Mourning Crew she would return late, and even their mother didn't know if she would be back by dinner time.

Akira rushed towards the hokora at the base of the mountain at a hurried pace. It was at the base of the mountain that pinned down a southern corner of the village, Sumi Mountain. While Akira seemed strangely triumphant, as he approached the hokora at the mountain base his expression darkened. At last looking outright unease, he looked to Kaori.

"Hey, Kaori. That person, do you think he'll come?"

"Yuuki-san? He'll come, won't he? This was his idea."

That's true, Akira murmured. "....He won't run out on us, will he."

"Akira, are you scared?"

Asked that by Kaori, Akira's lips tapered to a point. "Like hell I would be. But you know, adults get ahead of themselves all the time. They promise they'll go, they'll do something, then they go back on it."

"Yuuki-san is still only a first year high school student."

"People that age are the worst about it. They just go with the flow and say whatever sounds good."

"That may be true," Kaori answered. "He was serious then, but when he went home he might have started feeling stupid and changed his thinking."

If he did so much the better, she thought. Last night Kaori didn't sleep. Time lapsed and lapsed but the more time that did, the more she thought that what they were doing was stupid. They weren't kids like Akira, and this was about The Risen and Vampires. Just taking anything like that seriously in itself made her feel incredibly childish and foolish, and yet more doing something like that to Megumi's grave was too serious an affair.

"It'll be disappointing if he does. I thought he seemed promising. ---But, he won't come, will he? Since that's how it goes."

Following behind Akira who murmured to himself, Kaori walked on quietly. She had a hand held scoop and a min-rake in her hand bag but they let out a scraping noise within.

The hokora was just at the side of the canal where the end Mountain in the south crossed with the western mountains. It was called a hokora but it really was only a tiny three walled structure with a roof. There had used to be a stone pillar there but that had been broken that summer. Crossing over the harvested fields the hokora came into view but there was no sight of anybody nearby. Coming closer still, the stone fragments were visible. It was a half standing lopsided sight. What was left over was tended to but it was still crooked.

"It figures..." Akira said with a lonely sigh. "Kaori, what should we do?"

"What should we do? If Yuuki-san isn't here, there's nothing to do."

"That's not true at all. We've got to do something even if it's just us."

Just as she was about to voice a 'but' as they came near the hokora, from behind it Natsuno's tall and thin body appeared. Akira let out a small cry.

Natsuno gave them a look to hurry them, gesturing behind the hokora. Akira hurried in that direction.

"Heeh. You really came."

Akira said that as he came around into the shadow of the hokora, earning a look from Natsuno as if asking what he was talking about.

"Nii-chan, you're a promising guy, huh!"

"Take these."

Natsuno held out one of two shovels to Akira. He had one more tool, a hoe prepared.

"We're bringing them with us? We can't hide these things at all."

"Just act confident. If we look like we're going to help dig a hole, nobody'll notice."

"There is that, I guess."

Akira said that as he looked gratefully at the shovel. Kaori found herself hiding the hand tools she had brought behind herself. Indeed, if they were serious about digging up a grave, a small scoop like that wouldn't be any use. They were more like childrens' toys. They weren't the least bit pragmatic. She was terribly embarrassed with herself for thinking so much of bringing them with her.

"But where did you get these?"

"Borrowed them from a neighbor."

"What did you say?"

"Nothing. If you give a weird reason you end up more suspicious in cases like this. You just have to ask them to loan it to you without saying anything. If you do that then they'll do you the favor of assuming the reason for you."

"Nii-chan, that's bold..."

"Let's go." Natsuno spoke to Akira then looked at Kaori. "Which way?"

Kaori denoted a small path through the woods near the hokora.

"We go up that a little ways and it comes out there."

Natsuno nodded, taking the hoe and the shovel nonchalantly in hand as he lead the way. Without any signs of being worked up in the slightest he climbed up the path. Akira seemed entirely too happy as he followed suit.

There were no signs of anybody on the forest path. The birds sang, the wind blew, all on a peaceful fall day. When she thought of what they were doing, it was an all too unfitting feeling. Halfway along the forest path it became obscured. At some point underbrush had grown over it but with no branches in the way, the way was clear to see.

It was the road they had toted Megumi's coffin along. The adults solemnly carried the coffin and buried Megumi in the black hole. Megumi was buried---and there she should have returned to the earth.

Kaori's body trembled with fear. It may have been due to a chill caught beneath the grove of the trees or it might have been because of what came to mind when she thought on the meaning of returning to the earth. That meant to decay. Megumi's body was decaying, lingering, those parts left being torn apart by bugs underground, returning to the earth.

(What if Megumi is in her coffin like she's supposed to be?)

She had a feeling that would be something more terrifying than if she weren't. She didn't want to see a rotting Megumi. She didn't want to believe that people became such repulsive, filthy things once they died. That was so many times scarier than "The Risen."

While thinking that, the opening of the pathway approached. There was an opening the size of a parking space and there two sotoba stood. One was old, another was new. The older one was Megumi's grandmother, the new was Megumi's own. The dirt which should have been a thickly packed mound had become a gentle slope.

"Mm," Natsuno said to nobody in particular, rolling up his sleeves. Donning his work gloves, without a hint of hesitation he started towards the new sotoba.

"We're really gonna do it?"

The one to ask was Akira. Natsuno took the sotoba in hand and turned to look to Akira. "You're going back?"

"It's not like I'm exactly afraid, but still. It's one thing to dig up the grave but, I mean, knocking down a sotoba's kind of, you know..."

"This thing is just a wooden plank. There isn't really anything sacred about it," Natsuno declared, striking the sotoba. Too quickly, the sotoba fell and tumbled on the ground.

"Uwa....! Nii-chan, you're overdoing it." Akira sounded like he was half shocked and half impressed but Natsuno's expression was stern. He leaned over the fallen sotoba.

"I didn't put that much strength into it."

"Like I said!"

"The soil was already loosened. It was barely holding it up."

That couldn't, Kaori had started to say. When Megumi was buried she saw how the Sotoba was stood in place. The mound was beat down solidly countless times, the sotoba stood deeply within it, standing quite firmly, she remembered the adults checking to confirm as much.

"Look," Natsuno said pointing to the sotoba's base. "Here and here, that's two different dirt marks."

Kaori fearfilly inched closer. The pure white sotoba was dirtied by the wind and the rains. The color of the ink was washing away, the thing already displaying signs of quite a bit of wear and tear. Megumi herself would, just like this, in time be soiled, transofrming into something unsightly. That was the feeling she had. The base of the sotoba soaked in the color of the earth and took on its color. And---indeed, in two places, there was a difference in those colors.

"...There really are." Akira murmured. The difference was scarcely three centimeters in level. The earthy color was thick at the base and above that fairly pale.

"Somebody put it back up."

At Natsuno's voice, Akira looked up.

"....Who?"

"Like I know?"

"Someone besides us messed with Megumi's grave, didn't they!"

Looks like it, Natsuno murmured, moving the sotoba aside. He handled that rather solemnly. And then he took the shovel in hand to dig up the dirt. ---He really planned to dig it up.

Kaori had just been about to say let's stop when suddenly she shut her mouth. Just a ways away, amid the dry leaves she caught sight of something white. It looked to be a four cornered package. A small, box. A dirty, untied ribbon. Kaori drifted away to pick that up.

"What's up?"

"This..." Kaori motioned to it. Without a doubt. The white doily, a light blue ribbon. It was Megumi's present.

"What's that?"

Kaori looked up at Akira and Natsuno who peered at what was in her hand.

"This... is the present I prepared for Megumi's birthday. But, I, I put this in Megumi's grave..."

Natsuno's brows furrowed.

"I had them wait to bury her and placed it on top of the coffin when it was buried. I'm sure it was in the hole."

Natsuno looked back at the toppled sotoba.

"It can't be." Kaori felt her legs tremble. Could it really not be?

But Kaori had definitely put this in Megumi's grave. She didn't remember to put it in the coffin, remembering it only when they'd arrived here, having to hurry back to the house. She remembered the Junior Monk from the temple saying to her that they would wait for her. And it was put into the burial hole. It was on top of the coffin. It was covered in dirt, and the mound was formed---.

Unless somebody had dug the dirt up, this shouldn't be able to be out here. The grave was disturbed. Somebody dug up Megumi's grave, then reburied it, standing the sotoba up again.

Natsuno thrust the shovel into the ground with determination. Akira followed suit though less determined. While trembling, Kaori watched over their work, and then took on the hoe herself.

They met a thunk of resistance, against the hoe after about half an hour of digging. Without thinking Kaori threw down the hoe. Natsuno dug up the dirt around it. Soon he cast aside the shovel and began digging with his hands, and soon even that stopped.

Kaori let out an unvoiced scream. Akira came to cling to her. Natsuno had been about to say something when he looked at them.

From within the dirt a filthy coffin lid became visible. ---That lid was unfastened.

What Kaori felt before, that strange sensation of resistance when the tip of the hoe hit the lid, was that what had displaced it or was it already off before that? In either case, at the bottom of the hole, before Kaori and the other's eyes, a triangular gap about five centimeters wide between the lid and the coffin was visible.

Kaori shook hard enough to feel it in her teeth, gazing into that dark crevice.

"The lid... was knocked off, right?" Spoken to by Natsuno, Kaori nodded. Of course the lid had been knocked off. Kaori was near enough to be sure of it.

"It's open..."

Natsuno put his hand to the gap.

"Ni, Nii-chan!"

"Stop it!"

Paying no mind to Kaori's scream, he put his hand to the lid and lifted, but still unable to see it, he put the shovel end between it. He forcefully wrenched the lid open and off of the coffin. Dirt avalanched down into the coffin---and inside there, Megumi was not.

As the lid was wrenched off and the coffin opened, clods of earth tumbled within.Beneath those black flecks, putting off a rotting smell were the flowers Kaori and others had put in with her. But there was no sign of Megumi herself. Not anywhere.

"---Megumi!" Kaori screamed, crouching down with her face between her knees.

There was no mistaking it. Megumi had risen.