I looked around the entire room, but apart from the tatami mats being completely rotted through, nothing in particular struck my eye.

  There was a picture hanging inside the main hall with a traditional thirty-one syllable tanka poem inscribed on it:

  With their purest hearts

  Steadfast as the ages pass

  All who walk the earth

  Blessed by the of gods of gods

  Shall be gods of gods themselves

  I stood for a moment in silence.

  “Looks like Wakasahiko is the deity enshrined here.”

  Wakasahiko was often worshipped among fishermen as a guardian of safe sea passage and abundant catches, and the highest-ranked shrine in the area was actually called the Wakasahiko Shrine. This place being dedicated to him as well wasn’t exactly a huge shock.

  The poem I had seen was said to be an oracle conveyed to Imperial Prince Atsumi by Wakasahiko himself. It was titled “Poem of the Four Gods,” no doubt due to the fact that the word “gods” is used four times, but I didn’t fully understand what it was supposed to be about.

  If the records I had seen were genuine, Tsubaki Shrine was clearly not the same shrine where the priest had supposedly sheltered Camulia. Which meant there was a possibility that this shrine was the one from the priest’s records.

  Without having found Mitsurugi or any definitive connection to the people from twenty-four years ago, in the end I decided to turn back and cut across to the main hall.

  Then, suddenly, my Life Detection skill started registering something. The signal had appeared in the room with the dilapidated tatami mat floor, but Life Detection didn’t give a very good sense of where something was in a three-dimensional space, so it was hard to tell how high up it was. That meant I wasn’t immediately sure whether the signal was coming from on top of the roof, inside the room, or beneath the floor.

  Judging by how quickly it had appeared, my first thought was that something had flown in and landed on the roof. However, I had already adjusted the signal to exclude small animals. If something had flown in, it would have to have been a huge bird, way bigger than a Steller’s sea eagle. Or maybe something else entirely...

  “A flying monster, maybe?” Something like a harpy would’ve fit the bill. Though it was always possible a human had dropped in from somewhere too...

  Stepping very lightly, I exited the building and took a look up on the roof, but saw nothing out of the ordinary. Quietly making my way over to the front of the room, I checked my skill, and the signal was still in the exact same spot.

  “Well, if it’s not up high...” I lowered my gaze. It has to be down low.

  That was when I thought I caught a glimpse of something beneath the floor. I wasn’t sure what it was—but I steeled myself, then dashed into the room and started ripping out the rotten tatami mats.

  “Imagine if there was an undiscovered dungeon hidden beneath the floor of an abandoned shrine... Hah. Yeah, right.”

  When I finished pulling out the last of the tatami, the only sight I was met with was plain old ground.

  It was a good thing my Life Detection skill was still going off—otherwise I definitely would’ve missed the cleverly hidden door beneath the dirt. If it had stopped, I would’ve been forced to conclude it had detected some kind of giant mole or something.

  When I pulled on the handle, which looked like your average fieldstone, a section of earth lifted up slightly. It turned out to be a lifting door—the type that you’d see in some kind of underground storage facility.

  It felt like the signal from Life Detection was starting to get a bit jumpy, so I slowly heaved the trapdoor open. A horrific grating sound filled my ears, but once the door was fully open, I saw a gaping hole leading into the darkness below. Using my Night Vision skill, I could see that there was a narrow set of stairs, terminating at a crude wooden door. Even though it was summer, a cool breeze was blowing lightly past me from beyond the door, suggesting that it was connected to some other location.

  “Well, let’s roll the dice and see where things go.”

  I slapped on my dungeon gear, pulled out a shield, and headed down the stairs. About halfway down, though, the Life Detection signal suddenly disappeared.

  “What the...?”

  Focusing harder, I searched for any hint of a remaining signal—but it was gone.

  “What is this, Carmilla Returns?” Vampires could get into and out of locked rooms by turning into mist. At least, if this had been a dungeon and I was up against the world’s firstborn vampire, I could probably have expected that kind of thing to happen. However, this place really didn’t seem like a dungeon to me—it just didn’t feel the same.

  I hurried over to the door, checked for signs of life one last time, then gave it a quick, firm push open. Inside was a room about six tatami mats in size, surrounded by stone walls. It had a desk, a crude wooden bed, and shelves filled with rows of strange tools. It seemed like some kind of makeshift laboratory or secret hideout—or perhaps even a room to lock someone or something away in.

  The breeze was coming from the back of the room, next to the shelves with the tools on them. When I took a closer look, I saw a hole in the wall that looked just about big enough for a dog, along with some marks in the dust on the floor, giving the impression that something had been dragged through.

  If something had been in the room, it had definitely left already. And if a human had escaped through that hole, it had to have been someone who could dislocate their joints at will.

  I was curious about where the hole led, but I was unlikely to find Mitsurugi on the other end of a passageway that no adult human could fit through, and I didn’t want to risk stirring up the hornet’s nest by using force to smash my way in.

  Making the decision to investigate the room and leave as quickly as possible, I pulled out two LED lanterns, placing one on top of the desk and the other on a lantern hook near the entrance.

  A lot of the tools on the shelf looked like parts for some kind of restraints.

  “Please, let this not be a torture chamber...” It didn’t make any sense to have a torture chamber in a Shinto shrine, and all I really saw were the restraints and some objects that looked like heavily rusted-over kitchen knives, so I figured that probably wasn’t the case after all.

  I picked up a few scattered pieces of paper off the floor and noticed some faded writing on them in English. They seemed to be some kind of patient observation records.

  “Was this a sickroom...?” Come to think of it, Saito did suggest that people might’ve been in isolation here...

  Judging by the fact that the writings went back and forth between using “you” and “thou,” though, they had to have been written quite a long time ago. For writing like that to be the natural style, I imagined the author must’ve been someone from around the sixteenth or seventeenth century. Not only that—the handwriting was actually familiar to me.

  “This is awfully similar to the English writing in the seventh volume of the shrine priest’s personal notes...” The flowing cursive script, drawn out with lines as thin as threads from a spider’s web, looked like a near perfect match to what I had seen in the book.

  I didn’t have time to just sit there poring over the hard-to-read cursive papers, though, so I gathered them all together and started snapping pictures of them. As I was picking up the last page from under what I assumed to be a bed, I noticed a container that had been hidden in a recess on the floor.

  It turned out to be a gorgeous five-colored porcelain piece. If it had belonged to Camulia, then it was probably a large jewel box that had been fired at Jingdezhen in China for the European market during the Ming dynasty. I kind of wanted to take the whole thing, but it was far too valuable to just sneak away with.

  I placed the box on the desk and carefully opened the lid. Inside was...absolutely nothing! Wait, no—at the very bottom, on top of some minor staining, there was a tiny white piece of...something.

  “The heck is this thing?”

  Picking up the object, which wasn’t even as big as a fingernail, I shined my LED lantern on it to get a better look. It felt moderately elastic, like a piece of gummy candy. If I had to compare it to something, the first thing that came to mind was a slice of cuttlefish, but nothing along those lines could’ve been in there for so long without starting to stink or shrivel up.

  Intrigued by this mysterious unidentified substance, I put it into a polypropylene container left over from the ones I had bought during the whole entrance exam kerfuffle, then put the container into Vault. As for the no doubt highly valuable five-color porcelain container, I replaced the lid and put it back exactly where I had found it.

  Finally, once I had placed the stack of papers I had gathered on top of the desk, I gave the place one last visual sweep, then exited the underground chamber.

  I got back to the surface and was immediately greeted by the oppressive summer air. The temperature underground must’ve been a lot lower than I’d realized. Shutting the door embedded in the ground, I put back as many of the tatami mat scraps as I could. Then, bombarded by the rain-like sounds of the cicadas, I took a seat on the shrine grounds, pulled out my phone, and brought up the pictures I had just taken of the papers underground.

  “Wait... ‘To whosoever reads this, please pay heed to my horrific deeds’? What the hell?”

  Someone had written out a series of lamentations and confessions.

  I rearranged the photos based on the dates written on the pages and started reading them in order. The flowing, threadlike wisps of cursive handwriting, written in Early Modern English, were more difficult to read than anything I had ever encountered, but if I took my time, I could actually manage to get through it.

  ***

  The first entry read as follows:

  We originally set off from our homeland with a fleet of five ships, boasting the most advanced galleon of our day as our flagship, in search of the so-called Land of Gold that lies far to the east.

  The subsequent journey, though, was fraught with constant misfortune, as if God were forcing us to endure some manner of trial. By the time we departed Macau, our flagship was the only vessel that remained. Yet even the fleet captained by the great Sir Francis Drake was reduced to a single ship by the time it returned to England. Glory is yet within our grasp.

  Then, the next entry:

  We felt a series of violent shocks in the night, and the ship let out a sudden groan. As best we could surmise, we had struck something. Perhaps we had encountered land without realizing it? It would have been a godsend if so, yet despite their best efforts, none of our seamen could locate anything of the sort. Eventually, dawn broke, yet we found ourselves surrounded by nothing but the vast ocean. What could we possibly have collided with in open waters? Rumors spread among our men that it might have been a kraken.

  After some time, it became apparent how much damage we had suffered. Alas, our rudder was broken, and the ship was drifting at the mercy of the tides. The crew were at their wits’ end trying to maneuver the ship using only the sails. We spotted a faint shore-like outline on the eastern horizon, but we could do nothing about it.

  Then, the entry after that:

  Days upon days have passed since our incident at sea. We had exhausted our food supplies, and some had already begun to perish from starvation, when something strange happened to drift against the ship—or perhaps a more accurate description would be that it got caught in our damaged rudder. When the crewmen found the object floating there and pulled it out, at first it appeared to be some sort of large fish carcass. However, they were shocked to see that it had what seemed to be an arm growing out of it. If one compared the carcass to a human body, the head portion and the other arm were missing. At first we wondered if it had been caught in the rudder when the accident occurred, but that had been many, many days ago, and there was no telltale smell of decay.

  Grotesque though it might have been, by all appearances it was still a giant fish. With its flesh still fresh, what else could our surviving crew do but consume it? Before long, I was served a plate with some sort of white fish meat atop it. That evening, though, my body felt as if it were aflame, and I could scarcely breathe. I thought for a moment that the sweet cross had come for me at last, and I prayed for God to show me mercy.

  Eventually, I sensed a queer, distorted noise, and I awakened with a start. I felt no pain whatsoever, and thought perhaps I had reached heaven’s gates, but soon observed that I still seemed to be in my quarters. The groaning of the ship brought me back to my senses, confirming that I was still in the realm of mortals. I realized that once again, it had not yet been time for the Lord to call me to His side.

  How much time had elapsed? It could not have been overlong, as I felt no particular pangs of hunger.

  I calmly rose to my feet, changed into my favorite red dress, then opened the door of my cabin and walked out onto the deck. My body, which had been horribly weakened previously, felt mystifyingly light.

  Not another soul was present on the deck. No one manned the crude fishing instruments fashioned from whatever materials had been on hand, nor did I see any lookout searching for land, despite the fact that said post was supposed to be manned at all hours, day and night. My only company was the ship itself, still creaking noisily, its mast seeming ready to topple over at any moment.

  Turning around, I peered into every room I could find, searching for the others. As I did so, I noticed black stains scattered here and there within various compartments—but saw no people whatsoever. It was as though some horrific event had occurred, sweeping away the living and the dead alike. What could possibly have happened during my slumber?

  A faint, unpleasant scent of decaying earth permeated the inside of the vessel, and the deeper I ventured inside, the more potent it became. The room it seemed to be coming from, well protected from any stray sunlight, was supposed to contain a cache of silk and porcelain from the Ming Dynasty, procured in Macau and destined for the Land of the Rising Sun.

  With a creak, I pushed open the door at the bottom of the stairs, and some sort of grotesque altar appeared in the darkness, illuminated by the candle I carried. Covered in putrid sludge, it seemed to be constructed from an amalgamation of mummified arms and legs—human ones.

  A queer noise escaped my lips. My breath quickening and growing more labored, I staggered closer, until I saw the nightmare wriggling beyond the altar. O Lord, take me into thy presence! For I may not approach thee of mine own accord.

  I shall never again willfully recall that horrible spectacle until the day I die, for it would be akin to inviting death upon myself.

  After fleeing the scene like a madwoman, the next thing I knew I was on a small boat. For some reason, in my arms I held a five-color porcelain piece that had been offered on the altar.

  I still do not know what befell our ship after that. The vessel had seemed ready to fall to pieces at any moment, so it may well have sunk and vanished into a watery grave—or perhaps it still wanders the ocean aimlessly even now, the hideous altar still festering in the ship’s hold.

  ***

  “Which pulp magazine did they pull this from...?”

  I stared blankly at the image on my phone, feeling like a kid who had just finished reading an issue of Weird Tales. It was almost four p.m. already. If the papers were real, they obviously had to be telling the story of how Camulia ended up drifting ashore. That meant the porcelain container hidden in the underground room would’ve been the same one mentioned in the diary.

  “So would that make the weird thing inside it—”

  —a piece of meat off the weird giant fish thing, I guess?

  “No, no, wait. There’s absolutely no way a chunk of protein from four hundred years ago could still be in a pristine state like that.” I had zero intention of even pulling it out again until I could get it appraised by Miyoshi.

  The ongoing chorus of the afternoon cicadas had dwindled to a faint buzz, and the evening cicadas were gradually starting to ramp up their own tunes. Figuring I might as well read through to the end at that point, I swiped over to the next image.

  The writer spent a while counting the nights she spent on the small vessel, but at some point she apparently gave up on keeping track of the date. It was doubtful the tiny boat had enough food and water to keep her going for long, but none of the subsequent entries had any complaints about being hungry or thirsty.

  Then, after who knows how many days, she finally drifted ashore at the place she herself ended up naming “Kuotogahama.”

  ***

  The man who took me in is apparently this country’s version of a priest. Our inability to understand each other’s languages proved a problem at first, but he brought in an interpreter—a missionary who had fled the persecution of his Franciscan order some years prior. Thus I slowly began to make sense of the native tongue. The days passed by peacefully; it was as if those horrible events out on the ocean had never occurred.

  My appetite had remained rather meager since the incident, which must have worried the priest. One morning he brought me a cup of plain water, and when I saw it, I murmured that a cup of xocolatl sounded good to me. He must have misunderstood, as every morning after that, he brought me another cup of plain water, calling it “xocolatl,” which I found to be a bit strange.

  And just like that, twenty years passed by. My benefactor grew frail and sickly, yet for some reason, my appearance remained as it had been the day I arrived. The others in the village seemed to find that greatly disconcerting. Yet the priest did not take their suspicions to heart, and he continued to show me the same kindness and concern he always had. Around that time, though, I began to believe that the object in the five-color ceramic vessel might be flesh from one of the legendary mermaids of Wakasa.