Part 2 || 3 | Judy
A Tale of Anime Jump Scares
After the noonday sun declined through a lingering afternoon, Judy and Grace and Sakura joined the four Jacks for several hands of poker till the game got stale around 1:30 p.m. By then, Grace pointed her guests to her flat-screen TV atop the media console in front of two sofas and suggested watching some anime, to which Judy agreed. When Sakura and the four Jacks asked them what show they liked best, Judy and Grace suggested Ghost Hunt, which got them asking what that was. And so, while they all occupied both sofas in the family room, the four Jacks on the larger one and the three girls on the smaller one, Judy told them that it’s one of the more unique anime that has a lot of jump scares and intense moments.
While Grace was fishing out the DVD case from the console shelf and popping it open and placing the disc in the DVD player and handling the remote, Judy asked Sakura and the Jacks what anime they liked to watch. The Jacks said they have no preferences and watched whatever anime was on MeTube when they weren’t playing card games, while Sakura said she’s more of a console gamer than an anime otaku. Still, Sakura added, her favorite anime were the gun-toting ones like Gunsmith Cats, Mezzo Forte, and Kino's Journey.
“I’ve watched Kino’s Journey,” Judy said, “but not Gunsmith Cats or Mezzo Forte.”
“They’re old OVAs, that’s why,” Sakura said. “Mezzo Forte is really sexy, so it’s a bit obscure.”
“Is that one a hentai?”
“Yep,” Sakura said.
“You watch hentai?” Judy said.
Sakura winced, saying, “Only when I feel like it.”
Judy wanted to ask her if she could recommend any GL titles but stayed her tongue, eyeing Grace as the TV screen came on with the Ghost Hunt background and the remote control selection options. When Grace selected PLAY, the first episode of the anime started playing on screen.
The first three episodes formed the first case, in which a girl named Mai Taniyama accidentally injured Naru’s assistant and had to fill in for him on a case involving a haunting at the old school building next to her school. Of course, the four Jacks wanted ghosts and jump scares and said it was boring, but Sakura said she liked it a lot. So Grace said that these first episodes showcased more detective work than any actual ghost-hunting, but Judy added that the cases become supernatural and scarier with each new case.
As such, the next three episodes formed the second case, in which Mai Taniyama and those returning from the last case visited a house haunted by a spirit possessing a girl’s doll. Throughout the escalation of poltergeist activity and two failed exorcisms culminating in a third, Judy peered at Sakura next to her and the four Jacks on the other sofa. Sakura and the four Jacks had their eyes glued to the TV screen, their mouths parted open at the growing jump scares. And when a well appeared in the living room and the spirit arose from it on the screen, the four Jacks stood up as if they were about to make a break for it before fainting onto the sofa.
As for Sakura, she had her hands clapped over her mouth, her wide-eyed gaze fixed on the spirit’s appearance. Yet before long, when Naru successfully exorcized the spirit by using a hitogata doll to reunite the spirit with her lost child, she said, “Oh, my God!”
“I know, right?” Judy said.
“How have I not watched this before?” Sakura said.
“It’s better late than never, you know,” Grace added. “Wanna watch the next case?”
“Not yet. Let’s save it for later,” Sakura said and pointed at the four Jacks slumped motionless over the sofa. “They aren’t used to so many jump scares, but I wish this show was added to the curriculum.”
“Curriculum?” Judy said.
“What are you talking about?” Grace added.
Again Sakura winced, saying, “I can’t say too much about it. Just know that it’s my old school, Muse Bureau Academy, and I’m currently enrolled as a cadet there.”
Then Judy felt Grace tugging at her elbow, so she looked back, saying, “What is it?”
“Tell her about your dreams,” Grace whispered.
Judy grimaced at her suggestion, wondering if it was the right choice to let a stranger in on something she had only revealed to her best friend, but she nodded and faced Sakura, saying, “Have you heard of remote viewing?”
“I’ve heard of it, yeah,” Sakura said. “It used to be called telesthesia. It’s basically a traveling form of clairvoyance, but most people call it ESP.”
“What about dream spying?” Judy said.
“That’s another way of putting it,” Sakura said.
Judy then thought of another term often associated with remote viewing, one in which the viewer was in some way there at the time of viewing, and said, “Say, have you also heard of astral projection?”
Sakura just stared at her before saying, “I’ve heard of it, but what brought that up?”
Judy thought back to last night’s chat with Grace via Screen Chat, in which she’d talked about someone or something spying on her after catching sight of it in a recurring dream over the summer. Of course, Judy hadn’t told Grace about asking her out in that dream, choosing to keep silent on that, and said instead, “It’s kind of weird.”
“I promise I won’t judge,” Sakura said.
Yet Judy still bit her lip and said, “I hope not.”
“Trust me,” Sakura said, “I won’t say anything to make you feel uncomfortable, okay?”
Yet due to Grace’s presence, Judy hedged her bets, deciding not to bring up her and saying instead, “I had a dream where I would meet someone at a dessert shop, and that person agreed to go out with me.”
“Who?” Sakura said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Judy said.
“Are you sure?” Sakura said. “It might.”
“But I don’t think so,” Judy said. “I mean, it doesn’t really concern who I was meeting, anyway,” which was partially true: this was Judy’s problem, not Grace’s problem. “I’ve been having this dream over and over since the middle of June, and I’ve only told Grace about it, and that was last night. Most of the time, I’m already waiting at the dessert shop, but sometimes I’m still on my way there . . .”
A Tale of a Chance Encounter I
Judy found herself wide awake in her bedroom in the middle of a June night after asking Grace to go out with her to The Cake Fairy two days ago. Or at least, she thought she had asked Grace out as she stretched, got out of bed, and started making it in her sleep-walking state. As such, without knowing she was asleep, Judy thought about The Cake Fairy and felt the urge to go there and order something to eat to calm her nerves about asking out her best friend on a date. So she snatched her key ring from the credenza under the lampshade, slipped on her slippers, and descended the stairs, keeping at it for a time, till she realized what was happening. She stopped right then and there, looked back up the stairs, and noticed a door atop a landing that wasn’t there before.
Judy doubled back, and on reaching the landing and the door, she tried the doorknob, but it refused to turn. She then tried both of her keys on her key ring in the lock of the doorknob, yet neither key would fit. She then jimmied the knob to see if it would give, yet it remained in place.
Judy paused for a time, looking back down the stairs, and noticed a line of floating lamps going down the stairs to God-knows-where. If there’s no way back, Judy thought to herself, she might as well keep going down and continue down the stairs, and pretty soon she began to hear other people’s voices but failed to make out their words the further she descended into another realm—
At the end of an alleyway between two buildings, where she found herself amidst the gentle warmth of a summer night outside of her house. She looked back at where she came from but saw only the enclosure of a dead end there. She put her hand against the wall, wondering where she was and how she’ll go back to her house and whether or not she was dreaming.
That’s when it hit her.
So Judy pinched her own cheek, winced at the pain, and opened her eyes again, yet she was still there. Judy was about to repeat the action when she heard a woman’s voice—
“You’re lost, aren’t you?”
—right behind her, so she wheeled on her feet but saw nobody there in the alleyway.
“I’m up here, silly,” the voice said.
So she looked up and gaped at the cutest little nine-tailed fox she had ever seen atop a big bubble floating just above her head. In fact, Judy thought, if Kurama from Naruto had a little sister or even a daughter, she might have been this blonde thing looking down at her from her bubble.
“Dear God, you’re so cute,” she said before putting her hands to her mouth. “Sorry!”
“Teehee! I get that a lot,” the fox said.
But then Judy looked around her, saying, “Um, by any chance, do you know where we are?”
“We’re in the Ukiyo,” the fox said.
Judy blinked at the word, saying, “Which is?”
“The Floating World,” the fox said.
“And what’s that, exactly?”
“Why so many questions, silly?” the fox said. “You can just call this place the Dream World. Judging from your clothes, you’re fast asleep somewhere else.”
Her explanation made Judy think of Lewis Carroll’s first Alice book, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, yet ‘silly’ rubbed her the wrong way, so she said, “My name’s not ‘silly.’”
“Then what is your name?” the fox said.
Judy backed away a step, bumping against the enclosure of the dead end, and said, “Why should I tell you?”
“Ah, pardon me,” the fox said, bowing her head. “Call me Emma. What’s your name?”
Just remained silent for a time.
“Come on,” Emma said. “Don’t leave me hanging.”
“It’s Judy,” she said. “Do you know how to get out of here?”
So Emma said, “Are you looking for something?”
“And what if I am?” Judy said.
“Only visitors looking for something come here, even if they have no clue what they’re looking for, but I can help with that,” Emma the Fox said.
“How so?”
“Do you trust me?” Emma said.
“I don’t know,” Judy said. “Should I?”
“I can show you around these parts if you want,” Emma said. “What do you say?”
Moments passed in silence as Judy thought about it, but on hearing her stomach grumble, she looked up at the fox atop her floating bubble and nodded her head.
With that, the little nine-tailed fox disappeared from her bubble as the bubble itself expanded into a larger one twice Judy’s height. And before long, Emma manifested inside of her own bubble into a glowing humanoid form, popping the bubble in a flutter of purple foxgloves.
There before Judy stood a stunning beauty who seemed a year or two older than her. She was clad in a white kimono with a purple sash, blonde hair tied back in a long ponytail with a pair of fox ears atop her head and nine fluttering tails behind, looking back at Judy from a pair of piercing red eyes.
When Judy kept staring for several moments, Emma smiled and said, “Surprised, aren’t you?”
Only then did Judy say, “Who are you?”
“Just a lonely soul like you,” Emma said, reaching out her hand for Judy to take. “I’ll show you around. Is there anywhere you want to go right now?”
Judy looked at her lily-white hand.
“I assure you, I’m harmless,” Emma the Fox said.
Gulping down her qualms, Judy took her hand and set off down the alleyway, saying, “I was thinking of eating at the Cake Fairy. Do you know where that is?”
“I do,” Emma said, “but nobody goes there at this time, unless it’s to meet someone.”
Judy grimaced and avoided Emma’s glance.
“Is there someone you’re planning to meet?” Emma said.
Judy refrained from getting Grace involved, so she shook her head and said, “I just wanted to go eat there. I’ve heard they have some good selections.”
Emma smiled. “A midnight snack, eh?”
“Yeah,” Judy said. “I’ve got the midnight munchies.”
And so, hand in hand, they went out onto the sidewalk between a grocery store and a row of eateries and took the side lane towards a cobblestone street, where they passed the crowded tables of a corner cafe under its neon signage, The Green Dragon Cafe, its customers comprising of ghosts and yokai. From there, they passed beneath the gaze of a statue on a pedestal that stood under a grove of zelkova trees, passed another set of tables full of spectral patrons under its neon signage, The Lucky Quarter, and turned a corner into yet another cobblestone street, where Judy caught sight of more tables crowded with patrons beneath another neon signage, The Cake Fairy, where more phantom customers were having a grand old time chatting and eating cake with their significant others.
The cobblestoned street caught the light of the moon as Judy walked, hand in hand, with her strange companion towards The Cake Fairy. But then she wondered if her companion had money, because Judy hadn’t brought any with her, and said, “Um, say, do you have money, by any chance?”
“You don’t need money to eat here, silly,” Emma said. “At this time of night, there’s no monetary exchange.”
“Really?” Judy said, wondering if she could really take Grace out here one night for free cakes, beaming at her benefactor with sparkling eyes.
“Really, really,” Emma said.
“Awesome!” Judy said as they were both about to step onto the curb for one of the empty cafe tables . . .
When the vision faded from her waking eyes along with her strange companion, till Judy found herself back inside the darkness of her bedroom on that sultry June night. Her forehead was wet with perspiration, her breathing labored as if she had been taking a brisk walk, the fingers of her left hand curled over as if she was still holding onto Emma’s hand, her mind racing at the thought of eating cake.
She raised herself into a sitting position in bed, turned on the lamp atop the credenza, and saw her key ring lying there, undisturbed. Judy then looked at her palm, still tingling with the warmth of Emma’s touch lingering in her empty grasp like a parting gift, wondering if she had been sleep-walking or if she had just dreamed all of that.
