Close to eighty years ago, a young lady of the Himekuras had been convalescing at this estate in the remote mountains.

One day, a student called on the estate, and he fell in love with the young lady. The two spent their time together fondly, but one of the student's friends came to retrieve him, and the student left the young lady behind and went home.

It was said that she threw herself into a pond out of despair.

"I called her a young noble lady, but actually she was an oracle. Plus, a ghoul had been sealed in the pond."

"Hold on. Is this a late-night cartoon show or something?"

I interrupted Maki in her casual retelling.

They'd talked about an oracle and a ghoul and whatever else in the town, too, but I'd been knocked so far off balance by it that my mind couldn't keep up. Even though a goblin who munched on words was right in front of me.

Tohko frowned uncomfortably.

"You know there's no such thing as ghouls. Stop messing around."

I battled back the desire to make a comment. Was she not aware that she herself was a goblin?

Maki went on with a condescending look.

"Oh, really? But the Himekuras were originally a line of oracles. A beautiful oracle descended from dragons exterminated a ghoul who was harassing the capital, and she was granted a courtier's rank by the emperor of the time. That's how the Himekuras began. Thereafter, the Himekuras were made to preside over the waterways, and they went on to great success in the imports business. They say that oracles have appeared throughout the generations and that they've had ghouls in their employ and brought prosperity to the family."

"That story sounds pretty suspect to me."

Definitely...Plus, the holy and immaculate image of a maiden consecrated to the spirits didn't fit Maki at all. It would have been more believable if she'd told us her family line had satanic blood in it or something.

Maki laughed brazenly.

"In any case, the young lady who was staying at the estate had the powers of the oracle and kept the ghoul sealed in the pond and under her command. The seal broke with her death, and the ghoul went on a rampage and slaughtered the servants who were at the estate."

"So you're saying it was the ghoul who caused the six deaths?"

"That's what they say in the village. And I suppose since the young lady committed suicide, it was actually only five."

Maki's eyes narrowed in a tasteless smile, and her voice became suddenly obstinate.

"At any rate, the mansion was covered in blood and not a single person in it was left alive, and nobody knew who had done it. Apparently it was incredible to see. There were these sprays of blood all over the walls, and one body that had been split open the entire length of their face with a sickle, one that was impaled through the chest with a spade, one who'd been shot in the head with a gun, one who'd fallen down the stairs and broken their neck, and one who was lying there with foam coming out of its mouth."

"Urk!"

All the color drained out of Tohko's face. I knew she was picturing the scene in her mind with total realism. The image of the body with a sickle embedded in its throat came to my mind's eye despite my better judgment, too, and I felt as if the contents of my stomach were coming back up.

Unleashing the full force of her sadistic nature, Maki went on tenaciously.

"There are villagers who say they saw the ghoul crawl up from the lake and eat the young lady. They say that in the light of the moon, its long white hair stuck to its body, it gripped a tattered arm in its hand, and bright red blood was dripping from its hair and face. Its eyes burned with malice, and would you believe, it was said to scream, 'I will never forgive you!' in a terrifying voice and call a man's name."

"W-was the man the young lady's lover?" Tohko asked nervously.

"Yes. Perhaps her resentment had transferred to the ghoul.

"The next morning several bodies were discovered at the mansion, and the villagers who'd witnessed the supernatural event ran around saying, 'A ghoul came out of the lake!' 'The young Himekura lady was devoured by it!' 'There's no question! The servants were killed by the ghoul, too! It's a curse,' and the entire village descended into terror.

"They say the ghoul still haunts the mansion and pond."

"St-still?!"

Tohko shuddered and Maki smiled cruelly.

"That's right... Swaying its long snow-white hair and wearing a white kimono, it whispers, 'curse you...curse you...,' in a low, rasping voice. There are a lot of people who say they've seen a woman with white hair at the windows of the estate when the gates are supposed to be locked. Just recently, in fact-"

"T-t-t-t-trying to scare me isn't gonna work. Your story doesn't scare me at all."

As she said this, Tohko looked around jumpily.

Maki shrugged her shoulders grandiosely.

"I wasn't trying to scare you. It's giving us problems, too.

"We want to bulldoze the mountain and build a factory, but the residents in the area say we'll be cursed if we do something like that and they're strongly opposed to it. We've been hashing it out for a long time now. When talk about development became more concrete, there were fires and injuries popped up, so now if anything even remotely bad happens, it's all because of the ghoul. Even the fact that the construction supervisor's great-grandmother passed away at ninety-nine years old or that his son's wife cheated on him and left him or that the village head's cat had nine kittens-it's all because of a curse. I can't stand it."

She spoke in an exasperated tone, and then the edges of her mouth pulled into a sly grin. Her sensual lips curved, and her powerful eyes shone with formidability.

"And that is why I came here as my grandfather's proxy. In order to prove there's no such thing as this curse. If I, one of the Himekuras, have my friends come to the mansion where the violence played out and we have a great time without anyone getting sick or hurt, it should boost our image with the residents. It's a more meaningful summer vacation than hobnobbing in Nice anyway. If all goes well, my grandfather will owe me one, too. Not too bad."

So that was the reason Maki had come to this remote mountain.

Still frowning, Tohko furtively looked up at Maki.

"Is that why the people in the house are scared?"

Apparently Tohko had also noticed that the atmosphere in the mansion was strange, although it was so obvious that just about anyone would find it strange.

Maki answered flippantly, "Yup. They're probably thinking, If something does happen, this time the ghoul's gonna eat meeee."

"Don't blame everything on the ghoul! Besides, ghosts don't even exist."

Tohko's face flushed red with her resolute declaration.

"Well! I don't think it would be that strange if they did."

"They don't! Nooo way!"

Of course, that was because if ghosts did exist she'd be scared and then where would she be?

Maki grinned with the look of a predator closing in on her quarry.

My spine tingled with an awful premonition.

"Oh no? Then would you like to see if you can decipher the truth behind this case, book girl?"

Maki deftly held a diary out before Tohko's widened eyes.

"Are you really going to investigate an incident that's almost eighty years old? She's got you on a leash, I swear. It's like you're that ghoul under someone's control."

"I'm not a ghoul!" Tohko grumbled, tightly hugging the old diary with its cover the color of dark tea to her chest. As we walked down the chilly hallway, she became petulant like a child.

"I-I didn't accept in order to restore the ghoul's good name or because Maki fooled me, got it? If I refused the case, it would have looked like I was afraid of ghosts."

I considered telling her, That's because Maki fooled you completely, but it was pointless, so I didn't.

"I see. Well, do your best without getting cursed by any ghosts. I'm going to bed."

I didn't want to get involved, so I started bustling toward my room.

A foot behind, Tohko followed me like a duckling.

"Your room is over there."

"Er..."

She took hold of a small bit of my short sleeve with tears in her eyes.

"I'm not afraid of being alone, okay? Ghosts are a superstition so I'm totally fine...and I don't think a ghoul is doing bad things. It doesn't have the slightest effect on me, but..."

After her cheeks had colored and she'd made her mumbling excuses, she smiled coaxingly and showed me the diary.

"This diary by the young Himekura lady is written in a classical style that's pretty hard to read, so I'll translate it into modern words for you. Okay? You want to hear it, don't you, Konoha? So it's okay if I go to your room, right?"

...I am a guy, y'know.

Tohko had made her way into my room and was sitting on my bed with her legs thrown every which way.

The canopied bed had a sprawling king-sized mattress so there was plenty of space, but that wasn't the problem. I was already in my pajamas and had turned out the lights and snuggled into bed. Onto this scene came Tohko, sitting beside my pillow with a spare blanket she'd dug up somewhere draped around her shoulders, and she began reading the diary by the light on the nightstand.

I wondered how it was that a girl her age could have so little caution.

At this proximity, where I could hear her breathing, Tohko's braids swayed right in front of me-they even smelled sweet like some kind of shampoo... What would I do if there was some kind of misunderstanding?!

But then, it was like a mother reading a picture book to a child before bedtime. It was humiliating.

My face burned. My ears tingled. My heart pounded ridiculously fast.

From overhead, her sweetly clear voice came down alongside the gentle fragrance of flowers.

"A volume arrived from father in Tokyo. Upon turning back the cover, I discovered a message from my father. Father's hand is dignified and beautiful, and it possesses a gentlemanly power. I gazed at it, and my breast swelled with happiness and remembrances of home.

"I wonder after the health of Father, Mother, and my younger siblings. Whenever a volume arrives, I feel happier and more excited than words can say, but this heightens my fondness for my family, and it feels as if I might break into tears. I want to go back to my home in Tokyo for two or three days only-no, for a day or half a day.

"But I must persevere. Because I made a promise to Father."

"The volumes Father was kind enough to send me today are Koyo Ozaki's The Golden Demon, Ichiy Higuchi's Growing Up, and Kyka Izumi's A Song by Lantern Light. Kyka is one of my favorite authors, so I was overjoyed. I had heard that Kyka was a disciple of Koyo's."

"Reading all day, and Kyka's words are like jewels, every one. In the scene where Omie dances, I felt as if I, too, were enveloped in a rainbow of light and my spirit were dancing toward heaven."

"I want to experience a love like the women in Kyka's stories. Deep and gentle and sublime. A bittersweet but chaste and beautiful love without any impurities."

The young lady who'd written the diary was nothing as exalted as an oracle, but instead seemed like an ordinary girl who enjoyed reading, who yearned for a storybook sort of romance, and who thought of her distant family.

She reminded me a little of Tohko, but that was probably because Tohko read with such passion the girl's impressions of books she'd read.

Since it came through in Tohko's voice, her image overlapped more than it might have otherwise. In my drowsing mind, the young Himekura lady had taken on Tohko's image rather than Maki's.

A willowy young girl with long black hair and white skin, tightly clutching a book she'd received from her father to her chest, so impatient to read it that she fidgeted even during meals.

The whole day, she would page through her book dreamily and give a sweet sigh at the romances and adventures written in it. She would read aloud over and over the passages she liked best, as if rolling them over her tongue, and recite them from memory, then sigh rapturously again, a starry-eyed book girl- "I've received a volume which makes me sigh with its beauty. The volumes Father sends me are all wonderful, but this one is especially so. The cover has flowers embroidered on it in scarlet and pink and light blue and purple, in gold and silver thread, and the words are written in impeccably graceful brushstrokes on paper that feels so wonderfully smooth. What sort of person could have made this book?

"The fact that the story in it is Demon Pond by Kyka makes me even happier. I feel as if it was a special volume made just for me."

"I've read Demon Pond more than a dozen times already. It feels even sweeter and more beautiful than the times I've read it before. Out of Kyka's stories, now I adore Demon Pond more than A Song by Lantern Light, more than The Grass Labyrinth, more than A Play of Sunlight on Leaves. The woman in the story has the same name as me.

"I'm also called Yuri. So I wonder if perhaps the reason this volume is with me really is fate."

"I snuck out the back way with Chiro and took a stroll to the pond.

"The pond is scary at night because there's a ghoul, but during the day it's very pretty. Chiro was excited, too.

"I suddenly got the idea, why don't we name the ghoul Shirayuki? Because there's a ghoul named Shirayuki who lives in a pond in Demon Pond, too.

"Then maybe we wouldn't have to be so afraid of that pale creature.

"The Shirayuki in Demon Pond obediently keeps a promise for Yuri's sake. It listens to her singing to blunt its loneliness."

Shirayuki...a ghoul...was there really a ghoul? A humanized ghoul, like Tohko... A mysterious girl... A pond...were they sealed in it?

Enfolded in her gentle voice and the warm blanket, I gradually slipped into unconsciousness.

The pond I had yet to see floated up in my mind like a wisp and tiny lights bobbed around it like fireflies, and there was a mysterious song like a lullaby.

A snake is in the swamp there, in the swamp there.

A bead of water 'pon her neck, Golden shoes upon her feet, Call me this and call me that, call me that Pale light streamed in through a crack in the curtains. The room was still dark, and the outlines of everything were indistinct.

That point before night was entirely over, the border between dream and reality...

So maybe what I'd seen then was a dream.

Tohko, pale faced and with her eyes bent, looking down at me.