Coping with Ghosts
Lammis falling technically means that I fell to the floor with her, and right now, she’s unconscious and lying on top of me.
I think it’s just my imagination, but I feel something damp where her bottom is touching me… It has nothing to do with this, but maybe I should give her a stylish pair of panties later.
My only consolation is that vending machines specializing in women’s underwear do exist.
“Whoa, boy. I didn’t think she’d have it this rough.”
“You’d be surprised. This is tame compared to when she was little. I’ll bring Lammis to the room. Boxxo, what will you do?”
With Lammis well and truly passed out, Captain Kerioyl takes the wooden rack’s leather straps off her and puts the apparatus on his back. At this rate, I’ll get in the way of the inn doing business, so I change into a cardboard vending machine for now.
“Anyone could carry you like this. Landlady, would you mind if I set Boxxo up in front of the inn?”
“Not at all… That is the one I’ve heard about… A magic item with a mind of its own… Fu-fu, how mysterious.”
This person is the inn’s proprietress? It would probably be fitting if she did something like fortune-telling as a side job.
Hulemy picks me up and places me gently outside the inn. My regular place is steadily becoming “right next to the door.” Of course, that’s pretty much where every vending machine goes anyway, so I have no problem with that.
“Man, she was really scared. She’s always been like that, you know. Soon as she hears a scary story, she covers her ears and starts making noises. It takes me back.”
Hulemy smiles with her eyes, her expression gentle as she remembers their childhood days. She may be complaining about her now, but they’re pretty good friends. Whenever I watch the two having a conversation, there are moments they look like sisters.
“Normally, she would have run away a long time ago, but it looks like she doesn’t want to give in this time.”
Yeah, if someone’s that scared, you’d think they’d start crying and run away.
Maybe she’s trying her best to endure it because if nobody is around to carry me, it will cause trouble for people. If that’s the case, I’d rather she not force herself too much.
“Boxxo, you’re not getting the wrong idea, are you? The reason Lammis is so gung ho about conquering her fear is… Er, actually, I shouldn’t be the one to say.”
“Get one free with a winner.”
What was that supposed to mean? Hulemy said something deep, but now she’s just giving me a sidelong glance. She doesn’t bother to say any more.
Think for myself, is it? A reason she’s so stubborn about overcoming this… For a girl who wants to get strong to take revenge, maybe she thinks that if she can’t overcome this level of fear, there’s no point.
“Well, give it some careful thought. I’m gonna go check on her.”
You’re not going to tell me the answer? I want to throw a question at her as she leaves, but I don’t have the words for it.
It’s an unsolved mystery, but I have time. I can think about it at my leisure.
“Oh, what’s this? There’s weird stuff lined up behind the glass. What is it?”
Whoops, it’s my first customer from the Dead’s Lament stratum. It’s a young hunter-looking man wearing metal armor. He brings his face so close his forehead almost hits the glass to look at the products.
I guess it’s time for me to do business.
“Welcome.”
“Whoa! Who was that?! Was it one of you?”
“Uh, no. Sounded to me like it came from that box,” points out one of his companions. And now all three stare hard at me.
“Insert coins.”
“Whoa! The box seriously just talked. What does it mean, insert coins?”
The three just make a flustered racket without understanding where to put coins into. Right—normally those two words wouldn’t be enough.
I always had a bulletin board placed next to me with a simple user’s manual hanging on it so that first-timers could use me, too. Today, I don’t have that, so I’ll need to do something else.
Until now, the only thing I could do was repeat those words over and over, but I’ve started to get the hang of my body and features. I’ve scoped out various methods, and my search led me to several answers. Yes—I am an ever-evolving vending machine.
First, though it covers the items, I set up my LCD panel. Then, I play a video I recorded ahead of time.
“Whoa, there’s a woman in the box. Hey, miss, do you know how to buy things from this?”
The young man talks to the woman displayed on the panel, but a prerecorded image is obviously not going to respond. Instead, the woman—Lammis—ignores them and holds out a coin.
Then she wonders aloud what she should buy as she raises her index finger and makes a pointing gesture to the viewer. After that, she stoops down, and when she stands up, her hand is holding a can of corn soup. She twists the lid to open it, then drinks it happily.
The video ends there, but I keep it playing on a loop.
“What in the world? Why is the woman doing the same thing?”
“Maybe this is an illusion? The woman there is too small to be real. And she’s moving exactly the same way.”
For a short while, the group discusses one thing or another, and then they appear to reach a conclusion.
“So this woman is teaching us how to use this magic item, right?”
“Welcome.”
It took some time, but they managed to arrive at the correct answer. This time, they watch the video closely, and one of them, understanding how it works, buys an item.
“Nice! I bought it!”
“Oh, so that’s what you do?”
“I get it.”
At some point, people had formed a crowd, and now they’re watching the hunters who safely bought items in admiration. They look like the ones who were interested but didn’t know what I was, so they were watching me.
“You have to twist this to open it, right? Guess I’ll drink it… Phew, this is great! It’s cold and refreshing. It’s melting into every fiber of my being!”
His reaction is the best advertisement I could hope for, and the others use the chance to buy one product after another. A lot of people are interested in both how unusual I am and the tastes they’ve never experienced before in this world.
I’m off to a great start. I’ll save up money for a while until Lammis comes crying to me that she wants to go home.
*****
After selling a certain amount of items, I learned that warm products sell well on this stratum. A lot of the residents wear layers, so I guess it’s pretty cold here, though maybe not as cold as winter.
The temperature on Clearflow Lake was similar to early summer, and this seems closer to the opposite. My customers’ breaths aren’t visible, so maybe it’s around fifty degrees out.
As I think about it, customer traffic drops off, and people start disappearing from the road, too. My dim surroundings are taken over by complete darkness. It seems night has arrived.
It was dark during the day, but there’s a huge difference in how much light there is between night and day. There are streetlights in the settlement, but it’s like the darkness is pushing their light back, letting only a tiny amount of it filter through. I couldn’t say it’s enough light to go by even if I was being generous.
I’ve experienced many nights after becoming a vending machine, but the darkness of this one feels strange. It’s unnaturally dark out. There’s light coming from nearby building windows, but those are the only bright places—the lights don’t illuminate one bit of their surroundings.
It’s just a bunch of points of light in a black world; everything else is darkness. I guess if it’s this dark out, nobody would be walking around. Nothing makes the slightest sound. The sight is enough to make me start to lose my grip on whether this is reality or fiction.
The name Dead’s Lament is well deserved. Maybe the dark around here is unique. If anyone is going to go hunting monsters, they should avoid the night and move during the day.
I won’t be doing any business without a soul around, so I go into energy-saver mode just as some kind of faint light approaches.
Are they holding a lantern in their hand? The closer the source gets, the bigger the light becomes, but I realize there’s something strange about it.
The light should be illuminating a person, but there’s nothing. The light is floating on its own. It sways back and forth, maintaining about the height of a human waist as it comes nearer.
I’ve got a bad feeling about this. If I had feet, I’d flee into the inn this second, but unfortunately, a vending machine has no escape methods.
I’d thought that after turning into this, my mind had gotten stronger, but obviously I was wrong. I can hear an odd noise come from inside me. Telling me, a vending machine, that I’m a little scared…
Caught between my fear and my curiosity, I focus attentively on it.
It’s a skull wrapped in flames. Wait, it’s a flame scoll! Geez, I don’t know why I was so scared. Normally it would fit right in with the horror aesthetic, but I know its weak point, and I’ve beaten many of them in the past. I don’t need to be scared now.
Now that I know what it is, I have more room to think. My fear is gone, but the issue is that a monster has appeared inside the settlement. If monsters normally roam the streets after dark, then we can’t walk around carelessly at night.
As I’m thinking, other skulls covered with flames appear. I count eight, and those are just the ones in sight. For some reason, they don’t try to go into the buildings. Instead, they just wander around, giving no hint whatsoever as to their objective.
Wait, this time a skeleton appeared along with the flame scoll. This is just a regular skeleton. And it’s moving in a normal way, isn’t it? Oh, and there’s a half-transparent human, too. Is that what ghosts are like in this world…? This is quite the outdoor haunted house.
With so many of them brazenly moving around, they’re not scary. Or rather, they’re weak on the horror aspect. The ghostly, half-transparent person is walking around with regular clothes on. If they wanted to scare people, I would have liked to see a little more work put into it. Like a person with their bottom half cut off, trailing their guts behind them as they crawl and moan hatefully. Something like that. They’ve got a lot to learn from Japan’s ghosts.
The reason I can observe them without concern is because none of the monsters is trying to get inside the buildings. Maybe the settlement residents have some countermeasure for them.
I have my Force Field up just to be safe, but the monsters don’t even come close to me. They don’t seem to have any interest in this vending machine.
We’ll be exploring this stratum in the future, so maybe it wouldn’t hurt to try out a few things. Did I have any items that could be used against the undead?
Hmm. If it’s your average malevolent spirit we’re talking about, then salt would do the trick, wouldn’t it? Salt, eh…? You’d think I’d have it, but regular salt is one of the products that is, oddly enough, not usually found in vending machines. I have bought rock salt before, though, so let’s try that out.
I drop some rock salt in a clear, cylindrical case into my compartment, then try erasing just the case and flinging the rock salt. I was aiming for a skeleton, but I miss, and it hits a ghost—and passes right through. I should have known physical attacks would never work against a ghost.
The monsters spare a cursory look at the rock salt rolling across the ground but don’t give any other real reaction. As if to say it had no effect whatsoever.
What else looks like it would work… Wh-what about these? I bought these in a town in Kyoto known for its movies, at a Buddha statue vending machine: a Buddha statue and Buddhist prayer beads.
As far as I know, these are in my top-ten list of out-there products. You may not believe me, but vending machines that sell these actually exist. They’re pretty small, about the size of your palm, but they’re true images of the Buddha.
If I’m up against ghosts, this might have an effect. I use Force Field to fling out two statues and some prayer beads that I bought back then and watch carefully.
The monsters seem to take an interest in the mysterious objects and come closer for a look, but they don’t affect them in any way. Well, maybe there’s just not enough of them. I’ll give them everything I’ve got.
“Yo, Boxxo. Man, I slept like a rock… Whoa, whoa, what’s all this?! Why are there weird-looking dolls and rocks all over the ground?”
It’s morning already? I was testing the effects of rock salt and Buddhist statues against the monsters yesterday. I can’t believe I was going all night.
I thought it was such a good idea, too, but different worlds must have different religions!
