novelraw Chapter 21: Tragic Veneration!
Chapter 21: Tragic Veneration!
Tuesday early morning, 12:15 AM.
Shinjuku, Mizukami Sho's Midnight Diner.
Every seat at the L-shaped bar counter was taken, and there were even a few young people craning their necks at the entrance. This was a grand occasion that would absolutely never happen on an ordinary day.
"Boss, are there any seats left?"
"Sorry, it's full." Mizukami Sho replied without even lifting his head. The iron spatula in his hand flew rapidly over the iron griddle, and the aroma of tamagoyaki spread out.
Today's customers were somewhat strange.
Most of them were absent-minded, their gazes glancing from time to time toward that old television set in the corner, as if some peerless treasure was hidden inside it.
"Mr. Tanaka, you haven't been drinking today?" Akemi had changed into an elegantly simple dress today, and her makeup was also much lighter. She ate a piece of white radish from her oden in small bites, but her gaze similarly didn't leave the television.
Tanaka wore a bitter face, and placed in front of him was a cup of oolong tea: "Don't mention it. After watching that 'The Talisman Woman' yesterday, I went home and turned our place upside down. My wife thought I had gone crazy and almost called the police. Today, I'm not touching a drop of alcohol. I need to stay sober, otherwise, if my heart jumps out from being scared later, no one will be able to save me."
His words drew a burst of deeply resonating, bitter laughter."Who says it ain't so? When I went home last night, I forcibly dragged a sister from next door to bolster my courage before I dared enter my residential unit."
"I had it even worse. In the apartment building I live in, someone actually pasted a talisman on the first floor last night! Who knows which bastard played that prank. It scared me so much I hesitated for two or three minutes before I braced myself and walked past it!"
The university student at the other end of the bar pushed up his glasses and said in a feigned calm academic tone, "This is the memetic effect. A cultural symbol with enough impact will spread and replicate among a crowd like a virus. Last night's 'Yamishibai' was a perfect source of memetic pollution."
The crowd nodded, half understanding and half not, but the trepidation on their faces grew even heavier.
They were like a group of children who were both expectant and afraid. Knowing full well there were tigers on the mountain, they still headed toward the tiger mountain, just wanting to see the new tiger today... exactly how terrifying it was!
...
Meanwhile, in TV Tokyo's Suzuki Section, the atmosphere was a hundred times more solemn than in the Midnight Diner.
Everyone, including Suzuki Kiyoto, stared fixedly at the monitor screen, even breathing lightly.
Yesterday's 1.75% viewership rating was like a massive mountain pressing down on their hearts.
Nohara Hiroshi's words had given them hope, but whether that hope could become a reality depended entirely on tonight.
"Nohara-kun, are you... really not nervous?" Kitagawa Yao looked at Nohara Hiroshi beside her, who was still calm as water, and asked softly.
Her own palms were already covered in cold sweat.
Nohara Hiroshi turned his head and gave her a bright, sunny smile, completely out of place with the tense atmosphere of this late night. "Why should I be nervous? We're the challengers now, all the pressure is on those defending their title. We only need to show our weapons to the audience once again, and that will be enough."
That unhurried confidence of his seemed to possess a type of magic, making Kitagawa Yao's wildly jumping heart slowly calm down as well.
Including the others, their moods also settled down at this time.
"Phew!" Seeing all this, Suzuki Kiyoto also slowly relaxed his tightly clenched fists.
Thinking of the videotape they had watched in advance regarding the second episode, 'Tragic Veneration', that exquisite story combined with reality, he still settled down.
This truly was a very good story.
...
12:20 AM, time was up.
The familiar children's rhyme and the "clack, clack, clack" sound of the drum rang out punctually on countless illuminated screens in Tokyo.
That man wearing the bizarre smiley mask rode his old bicycle and appeared on the screen once again.
"Step right up, don't walk on by, the time for Yamishibai... has arrived once again."
In the Midnight Diner, it was instantly so silent that not a crow could be heard.
In the Suzuki Section, you could hear a pin drop.
The masked man pulled open the curtain, revealing the second episode's story.
[Yamishibai · Tragic Veneration]
The image still possessed that coarse, yellowed paper texture.
A young man in a suit and leather shoes was dispatched by his superior to a remote mountain village to apologize due to a mistake at work.
The beginning of the story was exceptionally plain, even somewhat boring.
But when the young man fell on the mountain road and woke up to find himself in an old hospital, the atmosphere abruptly changed.
The hospital was quiet, terrifyingly quiet.
The other patients in the ward were all turning their backs to him, discussing something in a whispering volume. Whenever he tried to lean in to listen, those voices would abruptly cease.
In the entire ward, he was the only "outsider."
That feeling of being isolated and peaked at was accurately transmitted through the screen to every audience member.
"This... what are this bunch of people talking about..." Inside the Midnight Diner, Tanaka subconsciously lowered his voice, as if afraid of disturbing the people on the screen.
The plot continued.
The young man was finally able to be discharged. When he walked out of the hospital gate and looked back, his heart contracted violently.
Standing by the windows on the second floor of the hospital and on the rooftop were all those patients who had had their backs to him previously. At this moment, they were actually all facing him, wearing bizarre smiles on their faces, and then... uniformly and neatly, they bowed deeply and venerated him.
That scene was less a farewell and more a bizarre sacrifice!
However, the young man was very confused, assuming they were seeing him off as he left the hospital, so he hailed a taxi by the roadside.
Seeing this, all the audience members let out a sigh of relief.
He had finally escaped.
However, when the taxi driver looked through the rearview mirror and saw a dense, dark mass of silhouettes bowing and seeing him off on the hospital building behind the young man, the driver's face instantly became paler than paper!
"Tragic veneration... this is tragic veneration!" The driver let out a heart-tearing shriek, forcefully slammed on the brakes, and tried frantically to chase the young man out of the car.
"Get out quickly! Get out right now! You can't possibly leave this village alive!!"
Right at the moment the driver and the young man were grappling, the camera cut to the rear of the taxi.
Beneath a blood-red background, those bowing dark silhouettes followed closely like maggots clinging to bones.
Following closely behind, a blindingly bright beam of light lit up!
A massive truck, like an out-of-control steel beast, emitted a deafening roar and directly smashed fiercely into the rear of the taxi!
"Ah—!"
Akemi could no longer control herself, letting out a shriek that pierced the night sky!
The scene abruptly cut away!
Black screen.
The two characters "The End" floated up coldly.
...
"Crash!"
In the Midnight Diner, the oolong tea cup in Tanaka's hand slipped out, smashing onto the ground and shattering into pieces. But he remained entirely oblivious, merely leaving his mouth wide open, his eyes glaring round, his pupils completely filled with extreme terror.
The entire diner was like the pause button had been pressed.
Dead silence! A more thorough dead silence than last night!
If the terror of "The Talisman Woman" was permeating, making you feel terrified upon closer thought after returning home.
Then the terror of "Tragic Veneration" was a heavy hammer smashing right into your face! It was directly pressing you to the ground and telling you what despair was!
Especially that final scene—that terrified driver, that despairing passenger, that truck crashing head-on... for city dwellers living in this steel jungle, the destructive impact brought about by this kind of everyday transportation method was far too immersive!