After walking along the gravel road for a while, there were two houses on the right, a well and a tin-roofed barn on the left, and straight ahead was a set of stone steps.
“Is this… all of it?”
“All of what?”
“The village you all live in.”
“There’s a shrine up there.”
“Up these stone steps? So, all that’s here are two houses and one shrine?”
“That’s right.”
“And the road leading to the hot springs? Don’t tell me the path over the mountain starts past these steps?”
“Yep, that’s how it is.”
Good grief. It looked like nothing more than a beast trail lay ahead. “By the way… are there no adults here besides you kids?”
“Nope.”
“There’s no way there are none.”
“There aren’t.”
“Where did they go? They’re just out working and they’ll be back tonight, right?”
“No. They haven’t been here for years.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, ‘why’?”
“Did they used to be here, but then vanished out of the blue one day?”
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean, ‘maybe’? You lived in the same village and you don’t even know?”
“We don’t know. Because back then, we were much smaller kids than we are now.” Well, I suppose that would be true.
A chill ran down my spine. So what that man said was actually true? A village of only children? Impossible. There was no way a bunch of kids were living by themselves in a place like this that looked like abandoned ruins deep in the mountains.
“How do you kids even survive in a place like this all by yourselves?” They all just smirked and offered no answer.
“Do you go to school?”
“We have nothing to do with things like that.”
“Are you serious?” It seemed best to call the police, but my phone had no signal.
Did these kids have some kind of secret they couldn’t tell anyone? Maybe they were runaways? Or a gathering spot for truants? This was too abnormal. Something like this couldn’t happen in reality. There was no way a village like this could exist in Japan in this day and age.
Who on earth was that man? He brought me all the way out here only to suddenly vanish. Was I tricked by him into coming here? Were he and these kids in on it together? Were these kids putting on some bizarre act just to set me up?
Or… had I begun to lose my mind somewhere along the way? When did I go crazy? Up until when was I sane? Could it be that things started going wrong the moment I met that man? Sometimes I get anxious. Anxious that I might be the one who’s crazy. And that’s because there are so many crazy people in the world all around me. How could I believe that I’m the only one who isn’t insane? Madmen walk the streets completely unbothered. There are plenty of unhinged people on social media too. The person themselves has absolutely no awareness that they are crazy, but to anyone looking from the outside, it’s glaringly obvious. Maybe I had finally become one of those people. Or maybe I had become one a long time ago. Maybe I was no longer capable of understanding reality as it actually is. Or maybe, to begin with, there isn’t a single person who isn’t crazy. That’s it. Everyone is out of their minds.
Before I knew it, about ten children had swarmed around me. Boys and girls alike, they were all wearing cheap, flimsy summer clothes. Even the oldest among them probably wasn’t even fifteen.
I didn’t want anything to do with these creepy kids. I couldn’t stay in this awful, eerie place for even another second. Thinking I just wanted to get down the mountain quickly and forget all about this, I turned around and headed back down the gravel road.