Chapter 11
3. The God of the Dream of Immortality
The ambulance siren faded into the distance.
The onlookers followed the red lights sweeping across the street with their eyes, seeing off the college student being transported.
On the villagers' faces, there was neither sympathy for the victim nor disgust for the perpetrator—there wasn't even curiosity. Instead, they wore expressions of relief, completely out of place at an accident scene.
While pushing past the unmoving villagers who remained smiling, I searched for a gap in the crowd. It felt like swimming through a black sea without seeing the other shore. Just as I slipped between shoulders, I bumped into the back of a woman standing in front of me.
"Ah, sorry..."
The woman, probably in her mid-fifties, turned and gave a slight bow. The wrinkles at the corners of her eyes and mouth gathered toward the center of her face.
"It turned into something terrible, didn't it? But I'm glad. He was smiling properly..."
I forgot to apologize, staring down at the woman's vacant smile. My mouth was dry, and I couldn't form words.
"He's a good boy, so the mermaid must have shown him a dream. Now, even in the worst case, we can rest easy."
"Um, do you know the guy who was riding the motorcycle?"
The woman looked at me with a momentarily blank expression, then, for some reason, shyly wiped under her chin with the back of her hand and smiled again.
"Know him? He's my son. I'm his mother."
Blood soaked into the fabric of the woman's shoes from the asphalt, staining her white sneakers a rusty red.
Standing upright with feet soaked in her son's blood, the woman's smile never wavered.
As I began to step back, a cold hand grabbed my shoulder.
"Katagishi."
Miyaki shook her head with a tense expression.
"This place... could it be, you know..."
I lowered my voice to a whisper.
"Yeah, this village is one of the weirdest I've ever been to."
As the sun began to set along the coastal road, souvenir shops on both sides cast shadows onto the street, dyeing everything in a deep blue like the bottom of the sea.
Watching the villagers' gazes, I recounted what Susaki had told me back at the motel. Miyaki kept nodding and muttered, "I figured it might be something like that."
"If the mermaid was killed and eaten, there's no way she would give something as nice as immortality to the villagers, right?"
"Yeah. If I were the mermaid, I'd curse them even in death."
"But if the mermaid meat brings a curse instead of a blessing, then why do the villagers die with such happy smiles?"
I shut my mouth and thought it over. It felt like everything was starting to connect, but one crucial piece was missing. I couldn't pull the thoughts together.
"And if it was her grandfather's generation that ate the mermaid meat, then most of the people who actually ate it are probably gone, right? But that college student was smiling. Is it one of those generational curses?"
"Who knows. Maybe it just looks like they're smiling happily, but it's not really true. We can't know what they're actually feeling. Either way, whether it's a blessing or a curse, it's not real immortality."
Miyaki placed a hand on her chin and paused as if thinking deeply, then snapped her fingers and said, "Oh, right."
"I don't know if it's related, but apparently this village still practices burial, which is rare in modern Japan."
"Burial?"
"Yes. While you were at the motel, I chatted with a family visiting the graves. They said it used to be cremation like everywhere else, but they switched to burial so people could sleep happily while dreaming of the mermaid for as long as possible."
"So you were doing some investigating too, huh."
"I couldn't let you do all the work, Katagishi... I only talked to people at the motel, though."
"What else is there?"
Miyaki gave a knowing smirk. I grumbled, but it was far better than the villagers' smiles, which looked like they were staring at something beyond this world.
On the opposite side of the sea, past the rows of concrete steps and rooftops, there was a sunken area. Squinting, I could see a cluster of small stone rectangles. Grave markers.
"Shall we go?"
Miyaki nodded. The sea breeze had grown colder.
"By the way, have you ever heard the term 'fear smile'?"
Miyaki looked up as if recalling something.
"They say some people instinctively smile when they feel fear."
"Don't say creepy stuff like that."
The wind that crawled up from the sea and swept through the street carried the smell of fish and swelled with a stench reminiscent of rotting corpses.
As our sweat-dampened backs began to chill in the winter air while climbing the slope, Miyaki and I arrived at a small cemetery surrounded by a block wall.
There was no brightness like the port; the cemetery, covered by overlapping branches of withered trees like mummies, was no different from any other rural graveyard.
All the gravestones were stained with brown pine needles and water marks. Looking up at the cracked old block wall, I saw a bulldozer parked halfway up the gouged mountainside. Probably building a hotel for tourists.
The sky was layered in pale blue and orange. We started walking, weaving between the gravestones.
"There's nothing here, as expected. It's not like a zombie movie where arms shoot out of the ground."
Miyaki shrugged.
Amid rotting flowers tangled in water vessels, I thought I saw a still-firm flower, but it turned out to be artificial.
Beyond the rows of rectangles, I saw a curved shadow. Looking closer, there was a gravestone shaped like a mermaid sitting on a rocky outcrop.
A woman arching her back as if howling at the sky, with long, wavy hair spreading out and fins peeking through.
As I unconsciously turned my feet in that direction, I heard a clattering sound by my ear. The scent of dust.
The moment I turned around, fragments of the collapsed block wall rained down on me with gray smoke, like a wave crashing down.
There's nothing here, as expected. It's not like a zombie movie where arms shoot out of the ground.
Miyaki shrugged.
Amid rotting flowers tangled in water vessels, I thought I saw a still-firm flower, but it turned out to be artificial.
Beyond the rows of rectangles, I saw a curved shadow. Looking closer, there was a gravestone shaped like a mermaid sitting on a rocky outcrop. A woman arching her back as if howling at the sky, with long, wavy hair spreading out and fins peeking through.
I felt like I'd seen it somewhere before.
As I unconsciously turned my feet in that direction, I heard a clattering sound by my ear.
There's nothing here, as expected.
Miyaki shrugged. That voice and gesture felt familiar.
"Something wrong?"
I stopped walking. Amid the rotting flowers at the grave, one artificial flower was covered in dust.
"This is our first time here, right?"
Miyaki looked puzzled.
If I shifted my gaze slightly, I should see a single gravestone shaped like a mermaid beyond the square ones.
Over Miyaki's shoulder, I saw the wavy stone hair and triangular fins.
I didn't know why I recognized it.
Miyaki looked at me curiously, then started walking toward the mermaid gravestone. The scent of dust was in the air.
"Miyaki, don't go!"
I shouted unconsciously and reached out my hand, and a clattering sound rang in my ear.
Fingers gripped my wrist, which I had thrust into the air.
"Are you okay?"
Before me was a desolate cemetery with the cold wind blowing through—a scene you'd find in any rural town.
My whole body was stiff. I thought Miyaki's hand was shaking, but it was my own wrist that trembled.
"What...?"
I turned my stiff neck to look at Miyaki. I was reflected in her black eyes, backlit.
"Katagishi, you were smiling just now."
Overlapping Miyaki's voice was a high-pitched sound like thin metal being struck.
"Oh, so it wasn't the right one."
The moment I turned around, the farthest block wall of the cemetery collapsed like a crashing wave. The rising gray smoke drifted toward us.
One large fragment struck the mermaid-shaped gravestone, knocking off its head. The severed mermaid's head rolled and landed face-up on the pine-covered ground. It was smiling. Miyaki and I could only stare, frozen.
"It's dangerous... let's get out of here."
At my words, Miyaki nodded weakly.
Without even lifting our heads, Miyaki and I hurried down the slope.
The mountain's shadow stretched behind us as if chasing, painting over the sunset-dyed asphalt in black.
"The mermaid didn't withhold immortality. She gave it—not as a blessing, but as a curse."
I said, staring down at my toes.
"Not aging or dying isn't something humans should fantasize about. The immortality the mermaid gave is probably a nightmare that endlessly repeats the moment right before death."
"What is that...?"
"Remember how the villagers said they get a kind of sixth sense? Probably, when they're about to die, they're rewound a second or two to right before it happens. During that time, they don't age or die. If they notice the way out, they can escape. But if they don't, or if it's something inescapable like illness or old age, then probably forever..."
As I spoke, I felt a chill crawl up my spine. Immortality as a curse. Never released from the moment of death—either unaware of it or unable to escape even if aware, until the mind wears down and breaks. Either way, the nightmare likely continues until the body decays completely.
Miyaki looked up at me with concern, then lowered her gaze. She probably had a vague sense of what I had seen, but chose not to say anything.
"So people dreaming that dream might look like they're smiling from the outside?"
"Probably."
"If it continues until the body decays..."
Miyaki looked up and gazed toward the cemetery at the top of the slope.
"Isn't burial basically hell...?"
The way the mountain's shadow oozed down the slope looked like the mermaid's wet, long hair clinging to her skin.
When we reached the convenience store near the station, Susaki was in the parking lot.
"Heading home?"
She tilted her head with a childlike gesture that didn't match her age.
"Yes, thank you for your help..."
Miyaki forced an awkward, polite smile. Susaki didn't smile. That, for now, felt strangely like salvation.
"Susaki, your grandfather—"
A flag advertising the village's hidden charm ranking fluttered noisily in the wind. I forced the words out.
"Did he die smiling?"
Miyaki shot me a reproachful look.
Susaki fiddled with her sandal using the toes of her scarred bare foot, then shook her head.
"No, Grandpa didn't smile much even when he was alive. But he didn't suffer either. Grandma went to wake him for breakfast and found him dead in his sleep. He just looked a little tired."
"I see."
I remembered the voice I heard at the cemetery. A woman's voice had said, 'It was different.'
The mermaid's curse was cast on this village, but just like Susaki's grandfather, it didn't apply to everyone involved with the village.
It's just my speculation, but maybe the curse doesn't activate unless the villager possesses the trait the mermaid hated—exploiting others for selfish gain. My nightmare ended the moment I tried to save Miyaki.
We parted ways with Susaki and boarded the local train that had just arrived at the platform.
As I collapsed into the blue seat, a wave of exhaustion washed over me.
"I'm never doing that bastard's bidding again..."
The red sea blazed brilliantly in the window.
Once the train started moving, it would pass through Susaki's neighboring village too.
I suddenly remembered someone saying the mermaid legend originally came from Susaki's village. Why did the mermaid drift all the way to this one?
The friction between the villages runs deep. What if someone from the neighboring village, well aware of this village's nature, had sent the mermaid here as a cursed object from the start?
I turned my gaze away, as if to shake off the thought.
When I looked beside me, Miyaki had taken out a small box-like device from her bag.
"What's that?"
"A handheld game. You can build your own village."
On the screen she showed me, a garden full of scattered seasonal flowers and a red-roofed house were displayed.
"Cute, right? Sometimes wild dogs or bugs show up, but you can chase them away—or just reset if it goes badly."
"You really still want to go to a village even in a game, huh."
"It's the opposite. After a job like this, I want to escape into fiction."
Miyaki murmured as she tucked the game console back into her bag.
"That mermaid curse Katagishi was talking about is kind of like a game cheat, isn't it? If you think it's over, you just reset and go back."
"Maybe the player feels carefree, but the people inside the game probably have it rough."
Unlike the people in a game, there are ways to escape the loop. Be good. What the cursed mermaid demands is entirely reasonable—like a goddess sternly watching over the villagers.
The train began to move.
I didn't want to see the fishing village passing outside the window, so I looked to the opposite side and saw the parking lot from earlier. Susaki's silhouette, standing in the dazzling sunset, stretched out like a lone grave marker.