Tokoyami's Short-Shorts Ep 10: The Message

“It’s hot… it’s just too hot…”

The air conditioner broke. Of all times, it had to happen during this extreme heatwave.

The repair service said they couldn't come for at least three days, and the office had turned into a steam bath. Megumi said, sipping barley tea with ice cubes floating in it,

“Hey, isn't this the perfect time for a ghost story? If your spine freezes, you'll feel a little cooler, right?”

“Is there any basis for that?”
Moeka replied skeptically.

“No, but let’s do it.”
Megumi said with a laugh.

At that, Kirisame, who had been silently fanning herself with a folding fan, suddenly raised the corners of her mouth.

“Actually, I have a story like that.”

Her voice was calm, as always for a folklorist. Everyone’s gaze gathered on her.

“It’s a story about an acquaintance of mine who does dialect research.”
Kirisame began to speak.

Her acquaintance’s job was to record dying dialects, and she said that last year, she had stayed for a long time in a small mountain village. The population was already just over a dozen. The young people had long since left, and the only ones remaining were villagers in their eighties and nineties.

“That’s where she found one word she couldn't quite understand.”

In the village, it is said that whenever someone is on the verge of death, they are invariably told a certain word. It’s not so much a dialect as an older, unique village expression.

She tried to hear the word somehow, but the dialect’s intonation was complex, and no matter how hard she strained her ears, she couldn't make it out properly.

“One old woman laughed and said that the meaning of the word could never be taught to anyone. Because it was a word that should never be spoken aloud. There was only one situation where it could be used. Only when someone was on the verge of death, and a family member whispered it softly into their ear.”

She couldn't catch it with her own ears no matter what. So, she decided to secretly hide a recorder. Of course, without the villagers knowing.

She kept attending village gatherings, and one night, a ninety-two-year-old man quietly breathed his last. At his bedside, the man’s daughter leaned over and brought her mouth close to his ear.
She gently pressed the button on the recorder hidden in her jacket pocket.

“She played it back after she returned to Tokyo. At night, in her room where she lived alone, she put on her earphones and opened the file.”

Amidst the noise, a small voice was recorded. A short phrase consisting of three words in the dialect’s intonation that she couldn't understand.

“She said she listened to it over and over again. It was for her research, but… a few days later, she couldn't be reached.”

When a concerned fellow researcher visited her room, she was lying in her futon with her eyes open, not moving a muscle. They said that even when they called out to her, there was no response, though she was still breathing.

“They say she still hasn't regained consciousness. On her computer, only the log of how many times that recording file had been played remained. It said forty-seven times.”
Sakamoto gulped.

Outside the window, the sky had turned black and hung low before anyone noticed. In the distance, low thunder rumbled.

“So… what was that word, in the end?”
Kirisame closed her fan.

“You’re curious, aren't you, everyone? About that word.”
I felt the room temperature drop a notch.

“Well then, I shall tell you now—”

At that moment, the sky outside the window flashed pure white.

“AAAAAAHHHHHH!!!”

Almost simultaneously, with an ear-splitting crack of thunder, the room’s lights went out.
Screams overlapped in the pitch-black room. Everyone shouted at once, chairs toppled over, and there was the sound of someone bumping into the table.

A few seconds later, in the dim room lit only by the emergency light, Megumi took out her smartphone and checked the power company’s outage information.

“...It seems there was a lightning strike nearby. The whole area is experiencing a power outage.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me, at a time like this?”
Sakamoto said, sounding exasperated.

“It has… become cooler, though.”
Moeka gave a wry smile.

“It didn't just cool my body temperature, it shortened my lifespan.”
I said, shrugging my shoulders.

In the end, Kirisame never spoke the meaning of that word.

And no one ever wanted to hear the rest of that story again.

The End