Balloons

The movie continued.

Hezi went to the nearest police station to report what had happened.

Facing the police officer, Hezi anxiously described what she had seen:

"It's true! At that temple... a head hanged my friend."

"And that head looked like my friend!"

"Then it... it kissed Fujino Terumi's face! If you don't hurry and save her..."

The officer tried to calm Hezi down. "Could you... calm down and explain?"

"What about the head?"

"It's...!"

For a moment, Hezi didn't know how to explain:

"I thought my friend had hanged herself, but a giant head really did hang her! Hurry!"

"Just come with me!"

Hezi led the officer to the scene.

"Right here! This is where I saw it."

"Then where's your friend?"

"Over there!"

Hezi recalled what she had just seen and led the officer to the spot where she had been standing.

Now, the dark sky was empty. Only the cold wind rustled through the leaves.

Hezi continued explaining to the officer. "It was floating right there just now!"

"It must have flown off somewhere!"

The officer looked helpless. "Hey, miss... I really can't understand what you're saying.

You weren't dreaming, were you?"

The officer didn't believe Hezi.

The next day, on their way to school.

Hezi told the other high school girls what she had seen.

Still, no one believed her.

Hezi was both hurt and angry.

"Even you don't believe me?"

One girl replied, "It's not that I think you'd lie, Hezi..."

Hezi quickly cut her off. "But Shiraishi really is missing!"

Her classmate hesitated. "That's true...

But a face just like Shiraishi's, hanging Shiraishi herself...

That's just too bizarre..."

Hezi began to guess what had really happened to Terumi:

"Terumi must have been hanged the same way..."

"What?"

The high school girls looked astonished.

Hezi spoke with certainty. "I think the wire Terumi was hanged from must have originally been attached to that ghost...

And it must have gotten tangled in the power lines and snapped... so it looked like a suicide."

Many viewers remembered the scene at the very beginning.

The hanged girl, her hair hanging down—it had certainly been shocking.

After hearing Hezi's analysis, many viewers were already convinced she was right.

The question now was how Hezi could get the police to believe her.

Maybe the four high school girls could report it together. There was strength in numbers, right?

Hezi continued her analysis. "And that 'head' that caused such a stir as a ghost must still be floating around somewhere...

Shiraishi's face...

And Shiraishi's body must be hanging and swaying somewhere, too..."

One of the girls stopped her. "Hezi, don't say that... It's so gross."

Hezi still wanted to say something. "B-but..."

One of the girls suddenly looked up at the sky:

"..."

After watching for a moment, she pointed upward.

"Ah... look at that.

What do you think it is?"

"Huh? What?" Hezi asked, confused.

"That!"

The girl pointed at four balloons floating toward them.

"I don't know... They're too far away. I can't see clearly..."

"...They look like balloons..."

"There are four of them!"

"I wonder if some GG balloons broke loose and flew away?"

"But if they're GG balloons, their shapes are really weird..."

Hezi was the first to realize something was wrong.

"Wait... that's...

Could that be..."

Hezi hurriedly checked with her friends. "Hey, do you see? There's a string hanging down!"

Her friend was confused.

"Huh?"

Hezi continued. "And... that's... a human head!..."

A girl wearing glasses studied them. "There really is a string hanging down... and something round at the bottom.

Hmm... its shape kind of looks like a face, too..."

The girl beside her looked frightened. "Come on, Chiharu, don't say things like that too."

Hearing that, Chiharu hesitated. "Ah... maybe I'm seeing things?"

"That thing looks like it's coming this way!"

"What... No way!..."

"It's true, it's getting closer!"

"Why? Why is it coming toward us?"

"Look!

That!... It's so gross..."

Four head-shaped balloons, each bearing a face identical to one of the girls, grinned viciously.

They hurtled toward the four of them.

"Those are..."

"Those are our heads!"

The girls stood frozen like frightened quails. One of them murmured:

"W-why are our heads..."

The strings hanging beneath the head balloons drew closer.

"Aaaah!"

The girls panicked. Two of them were caught around the neck by balloons that looked exactly like them.

The balloons slowly carried them into the sky.

Chiharu watched the girls being carried away and shouted their names from the ground:

"Taeko! Miyuki!"

Hezi grabbed Chiharu by the shoulder and pulled her into a narrow alley.

Above the cramped alley, head balloons with faces identical to Hezi and Chiharu's stared down at them with keen interest.

The hunters were watching their prey.

Panicking, Chiharu asked Hezi:

"Hezi, what are those things?"

"They're our faces!

...Those things want to hang us!"

"W-why?"

Chiharu couldn't bring herself to accept it.

"How the hell should I know!" Hezi snapped.

She pointed to Taeko and Miyuki's bodies, hanging beneath the balloons.

"But the truth... is right in front of us. Taeko and Miyuki have both been hanged."

Tears streamed uncontrollably down Chiharu's face as she cried:

"Why? Why are we being hanged!

We haven't done anything wrong!"

"Aaah!"

The head balloon that looked just like Chiharu had finally found the "entrance" to the alley. It stared at the two girls with keen interest.

The next moment.

The head balloon flung out its string and shot toward Chiharu.

Chiharu helplessly cried out, "H-help... help... someone help!"

Just then, a man opened a window. Seeing the two high school girls clinging to each other and trembling, he frowned.

"Hey! What's wrong?"

"W-well..."

Chiharu pointed a trembling finger at the sky.

The man followed her gaze and jumped in fright, too.

"Whoa!"

Two head balloons with faces identical to the beautiful girls in front of him wore eerie smiles.

"M-monsters..."

His legs trembling, the man headed for a drawer.

"Wait here... I'll drive that... monster away!"

The man pulled out a crossbow, aimed at the balloon that looked like Chiharu, and pulled the trigger!

Pfft!

The crossbow bolt struck the head balloon right in the face. Air escaped through the hole, and its eerie grin turned to shock.

A few seconds later, the head balloon deflated. Hezi smiled.

"That's great! That thing's out of air. It's filled with gas!

Right, Chiharu?"

Hezi turned to look at Chiharu.

Chiharu, whose skin had been rosy and elastic, was rapidly deflating. Her eyes were vacant; she was clearly dead with her eyes still open.

At last, Hezi made it out of the alley.

She looked up and saw that the sky was already filled with head balloons.

Heads drifted through the sky with the wind.

"Aaah!"

On the big screen, Hezi screamed in terror.

Panic spread throughout the theater.

The fear that had been lurking in the theater erupted all at once, and the crowd began to panic.

Couples supported each other as they left the cinema.

The female host's face was drained of color. She shut her eyes and kept muttering:

"I can't see! I can't see! I can't see!"

A girl wearing a black cloak and holding a spoon was so frightened that tears streamed down her face.

"Well, I'll be damned. Even the Spoon Killer Demon got scared to tears!"

In an instant, a third of the people in the theater had left.

Of the remaining two-thirds, half were too weak-kneed to move.

The other half had eyes shining with excitement.