The Five-Bedroom House With...
The Five-Bedroom House With... (5LDK○○つき, 5 LDK ￮￮-tsuki) is a short story that is part of an anthology of short stories based on the Thus Spoke Kishibe Rohan series. It was written by Ballad Kitaguni and published by Shueisha.
"The Five-Bedroom House With..." was included in a collection named Rohan Kishibe Does Not Fall with two other stories, which released on December 19, 2022. A Japanese audiobook of the story was released on November 12, 2024 on the audiobook.jp service, and on Amazon Audible, Google Play, and Apple Books the next day.[2]
Rohan's visit to a photographer's house turns into a life-or-death struggle when an "invader" threatens to show them "heaven."
Summary
Invited by Reisui Takashima, an eccentric photographer focused on houses where tragedies have occurred, Rohan visits Reisui's new five-bedroom house as a guest. On the way, Rohan notices that his destination overlooks a small and lonely shrine. Once Rohan arrives, Reisui reveals to him that every inhabitant who has ever lived in the house vanishes come June, calling it "a five-bedroom house with heaven attached." The newest victim, a young woman, had left a note stating simply that she had "found heaven's door," piquing Rohan's curiosity.
Reisui tries to hide a specific room of the house, but Rohan incapacitates him with Heaven's Door and inspects the room anyway. He comes across a photo album containing pictures of a hanging corpse within an empty house. Confronted by Rohan, Reisui explains that he has had a fascination with people's dying moments since he was a boy, when his distant parents hanging themselves at the dinner table allowed him to have a meal with them for the first time. By chance, he had happened to stumble across a neighbor's unlocked door, and was so inspired by the scene of her suicide that he had to photograph it. Rohan correctly deduces that Reisui was familiar with the house's last victim, and had found the note himself after breaking in to capture her suicide. However, respecting the photographer's brazen confession, Rohan drops the subject for the time being.
Later, as Reisui is cleaning up in the kitchen, Rohan suddenly realizes that the Seguin chestnut wood used in the window frames has swelled due to the June rainy season, causing the windows to stick shut. At that moment, the kitchen suddenly falls silent. When Rohan goes to check on Reisui, he finds a large slug-like creature made of light sucking on his head, causing him to foam at the mouth. Using Heaven's Door, Rohan manages to stop the creature temporarily, freeing Reisui. When Rohan reads the creature's pages, however, he finds a single ominous line: "You peeked, didn't you?"
After a brief struggle, Rohan and Reisui escape into a second-floor bedroom and use a dehumidifier to open a window. But before they can escape, Reisui is attacked by the "invader" again. Before falling under its influence, the photographer admits that while the creature was stuck to his head, he had seen a vision of his mother beckoning him to heaven. Reisui then walks out of the room and down to the first floor. Though he has the chance to escape, Rohan declares that the invader is the one who ought to be forced out. He starts his counterattack by turning Reisui into a book, forcing the invader to turn its focus toward him.
The "invader," proud of its divine mission to grant "heaven" to the house's inhabitants, attacks what it believes to be Rohan, but somehow misses him every time. Rohan realizes aloud that the creature exists only as an image; although it can travel at the speed of light, it is automatically forced to "attack" anyone who looks at it, and can only attack one being at a time. The creature appears to corner Rohan when it hides inside a rat and manipulates it into entering the workroom he is hiding in, forcing Rohan to unleash it with Heaven's Door. Yet its final attack serves only to complete Rohan's plan: by leading the "invader" with several Polaroids of his own eyes, Rohan is able to trap it inside a digital scanner. Converting the image of the "invader" into a digital one, Rohan emails the "invader" to his own inbox, with the intent to never open it.
Two months later, while preparing to go poaching at a seashore, Rohan calls Reisui to report on his follow-up investigation. He theorizes that Christian sects believed the creature to be a miracle, and that the creature must have mistaken Reisui's behavior for part of a ritual. For Rohan's part, he believes it to be nothing more than a yokai, from prior experience. He also claims that the real-estate company knew of the pattern of disappearances, and deliberately chose tenants that few people would miss. Reisui reveals that he has contacted the relatives of the house's last victim and turned himself in for trespassing. The photographer announces his intent to move out of the house once his sentence is over, and to find a new focus for his photography.
Appearances
Gallery
Trivia
- The Japanese title uses the abbreviation "LDK", which stands for "Living Room, Dining Room, and Kitchen" in Japan. It is a common term used to describe how many bedrooms are in a property by writing a number before the abbreviation.[3]
References
- ↑ Shueisha - Collection 3
- ↑ Vish (November 12, 2024), ""Rohan Kishibe Does Not Fall" Japanese Audiobook Released in November 2024", JoJo's Bizarre Encyclopedia.
- ↑ "Types of Japanese Property: What Does LDK Mean?", Sekai Property.
