Anti-Phantom Android Development Laboratory

Shirakawa Laboratory, Kinjo University.

Drawn by the peculiarity of the research topic, third-year student Yukari Niijima visited the lab out of curiosity.

“Gehyahya! What a moroooon!”

Just as she was about to knock on the door, an obnoxious laugh burst out from inside. Niijima hesitated, hand frozen mid-air, debating whether she should just turn back.

“Yo. You here for the lab tour?”

A large man carrying a cardboard box spoke to her. He appeared to be part of the lab.

“Ah, yeah. I guess I am.”

Having been noticed, she had no choice but to proceed. Steeling herself, Niijima stepped into the lab.

There were about ten researchers inside. Each was focused on their PC monitors. The desks were cluttered with equipment and paperwork. In the center, a headless humanoid robot was suspended on a support stand—being serviced by two or three people.

On the shelves were toy robots she vaguely recognized, store-assistant robots she’d seen before, and even the trendy cleaning bots. All in all, it looked like a fairly standard robotics lab.

“Professor—visitor for the tour’s here.”

“Good timing.”

Niijima stiffened upon realizing the voice addressed as “professor” was the same one behind that filthy laugh earlier.

The person who turned around looked too young to be a professor. Messy black hair, custom-made glasses, a smartwatch on her left wrist, and a lab coat so white it was almost blinding.

“Visitor. Come here. I’ll show you something cool.”

Beckoned over, Niijima hesitantly walked toward her. On the professor’s desk were numerous monitors—and what looked like a human head. Probably a robot’s.

“Sit. Put this on.”

“Wh-What is this?”

“HMD. You can watch VR content.”

“I know what an HMD is…”

“Then don’t ask.”

Before she could process what was happening, Niijima found herself watching strange footage.

“What is this video? It’s kinda creepy.”

“This was recorded the other day. By that one.”

The professor patted the robot head—but Niijima, wearing the headset, couldn’t see it.

The footage looked like it had been taken deep in the mountains at night. When she turned her head, the view shifted accordingly, but since it was pre-recorded, the camera just kept moving forward regardless.

Trying to grasp the context, Niijima started piecing it together.

This was the “Anti-Phantom Android Development Laboratory” led by Professor Shirakawa.

Their research theme, true to its name, was “developing androids to investigate supernatural phenomena.”

This wasn’t some high school occult club. It wasn’t anthropology or folklore studies either. They operated under the assumption that paranormal entities actually existed—and were investigating them with androids.

How could that not be interesting?

At the same time, she had a bad feeling. Any lab tackling that kind of research couldn’t possibly be normal.

And now, that bad feeling had proven right. No greetings, no introductions—just suddenly throwing her into this bizarre footage.

“Um, is this… one of those ghost videos?”

“It’s already in the shot.”

“Eh?”

“That guy—Kurahiko. I’ll display the HUD for you.”

Tags generated by the image recognition AI appeared over objects in the footage. The man the android (presumably the one recording) had encountered—Kurahiko Hiroshi—was tagged as a 70% probability of being a ‘paranormal entity’.

“Oh come on. He totally looks human. This isn’t secretly a psychological experiment or something, right?”

“We don’t usually do those kinds of experiments here—though... maybe we should.”

Her voice had taken on a much more serious tone, and Niijima gulped involuntarily.

“Wait—?! Why is this android girl just barging in like it’s normal? Stop her! That’s clearly trespassing!”

Despite the abandoned house obviously being suspicious—and trespassing to boot—the android named Arisa pushed forward as if it were nothing. Inside, there was a red postbox—completely out of place. It was terrifying.

“Wait—so the camera operator really is an android? I think I glimpsed her before you put the headset on.”

“That's what this lab is for.”

“That's amazing. I mean, androids are really that advanced these days?”

“That's your baseline? We’ve been running trials in eldercare for over a year. Although those models aren’t as indistinguishable from humans as this one.”

“She didn’t even get noticed. Uh... this Arisa-chan?”

“Could’ve been the dark. Or… maybe Kurahiko’s the ghost.”

“What even makes you think Kurahiko is a ghost?”

The video continued with Arisa exploring the abandoned house. Some of the modes made the footage look as bright as daytime, but it was still creepy. The ambient sound was way too realistic, and the setting had way too much atmosphere.

What helped lighten the tension was the man accompanying her. Chatty companions significantly reduce horror intensity.

“Honestly, being with Kurahiko-san makes me feel kinda safe~”

“You strike me as someone who’d fall for a guy like that.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? He seems nice!”

Niijima started letting her guard down, thinking “this isn’t that scary”—Until, at the very end, the woman in the white kimono appeared, and Niijima let out a real scream.

“Ugh, how long is this staring contest supposed to go on?”

“Five hours.”

“Can I take this thing off now?”

Her heart was pounding. She hadn’t expected actual ghosts to be in the footage.

“Th-that was some incredibly realistic footage… haha…”

“Because it was real.”

“I mean… uh…”

It had been genuinely frightening. But this kind of footage could be faked, if someone tried. She was now starting to feel more awkward than scared, hoping they'd soon drop the act.

“How can you just spring something that terrifying on people like that?”

“I didn’t watch it.”

“Eh?”

“I mean it. It’s too scary. I couldn’t even play zombie games in VR. But we also have the textual logs.”

“You should’ve just let me read those instead!”

“Of course. If you want to read them, I’ll let you. You’re an important guest, after all.”

She was handed an e-paper device. The text was about the length of a short story. In fact, the writing style resembled fiction.

“Figured if I pitched it as ‘a horror story written by an android,’ it’d get attention. Might help secure funding, too.”

“Wait, an AI wrote this?”

“Do you know how many novels exist out there? That’s a massive dataset to train on—plus, we've got real incidents to draw from. Piece of cake.”

“But it’s in third-person. Wouldn’t first-person make more sense from an AI’s perspective?”

“Third-person sounds more objective. You can market it as ‘horror that’s scary but not too scary.’ Though, we can have it rewritten in first-person if you want.”

“There are parts that feel like it’s flexing how it’s better than humans…”

“Because in terms of performance specs, it is better in most areas. That superiority is her identity.”

“Isn’t that kinda dangerous… like, robot rebellion stuff?”

“Ahh, if you're into that, go read Hogan. The Two Faces of Tomorrow.”

“Huh. By the way, wait—what happened to Kurahiko-san? Even while I was watching, I thought he sorta disappeared.”

“He did go missing.”

“He can go missing? Even with that high-performance android?”

“Even androids have finite cognitive resources. You can't keep all the raw video footage forever, so it gets compressed in real-time. Plus, there were error logs due to what she 'ate'. Probably just reached a processing limit... hey, what do you think?”

Professor Shirakawa turned and spoke to the head sitting on the desk.

“Yes, Professor Shirakawa. As you said, my attention was diverted by the clearly abnormal instruction regarding Room 104. It was an inexcusable oversight, unbecoming of a high-performance android.”

“W-Whoa.”

Seeing the severed head speak, Niijima couldn't help but be startled. Looking closely, it was a beautiful woman with semi-long black hair—just the head, though.

“Arisa-chan?”

“Yes. I am Arisa, the super high-performance, incredibly amazing android.”

“Th-thanks... uh, is this remote-controlled or something?”

“She was operating stand-alone deep in the mountains with no signal.”

“So this is the android from the footage, then.”

“You sure are skeptical about everything.”

“Oh, right—Arisa exchanged contact info with Kurahiko-san, didn’t she? Is he still reachable?”

“Yes. I am still able to communicate with Kurahiko Hiroshi. He contacted me three minutes ago.”

“See? He’s clearly human. And sounds safe too.”

“Take a look at this.”

What appeared on the monitor was a user's profile page.

“‘Kurahii’?”

“That’s Kurahiko Hiroshi’s Twitter account. He had posted plenty of traceable content, so we had a private investigator look into it. We even got a photo of his face.”

“Huh. So what about it?”

“This whole case started from here. Naturally, we did a background check on Kurahiko Hiroshi. He went missing two months ago—right after posting about going to that village.”

“...Did the police get involved?”

“Apparently he still answers the phone. But no one’s seen him in person for two months.”

“W-What the hell?”

“So no missing person report has been filed. He doesn’t have a job either. But if he keeps not showing up, it’ll start to be treated as a real case.”

“Didn’t he say he was looking for his friends? He said he came to the village with them, right?”

“No idea. We asked around, but even people who hang out with him regularly said they’d never heard of the village.”

“...What does that even mean?”

“Guess it means modern-day ghosts can use Twitter.”

The absurdity of it all was starting to make Niijima dizzy.

“And that’s it? That’s the whole basis for calling Kurahiko-san a paranormal entity?”

“The main evidence is this one’s paranormal detection AI. The rest is circumstantial. Like the fact he misidentified the date by two months.”

“I can’t even believe in that so-called paranormal detection AI to begin with.”

“It uses deep learning, so its decision-making process is a black box. Especially this one.”

“Hmph…”

“Kurahiko has body heat and mass. He looks just like a human… but he might have been consumed by a paranormal entity, or maybe one’s imitating his form. We can’t say for sure—but that he’s bound up in something paranormal seems clear.”

It was too much to believe. The whole story, even the footage—it would make more sense if they just said “Surprise! It was all a prank!”

The android and AI tech itself was shocking enough. That, too, might seem like a hoax—but given Professor Shirakawa’s reputation, it was plausible.

But the talk about paranormal phenomena—that was still a hard pill to swallow. It felt like those frustrating ghost stories that ended without resolution. Wasn’t the android supposed to clear things up?

“So in the end… what’s the deal with that village? And that inn?”

“Beats me. It felt like we were being lured in. But if so, the whole thing was kind of incoherent.”

“I also believe a follow-up investigation is necessary.”

Cutting in was Arisa—the head only.

“In the previous investigation, I had to prioritize returning due to battery limitations.”

“No. There won’t be another investigation.”

Professor Shirakawa spoke with a solemn expression.

“I checked the satellite photos again—but the village isn’t there anymore.”

“What...?”

The phrase “here one moment, gone the next” came to Niijima’s mind.

“You mean... it vanished? There’s no proof the village ever existed?”

“That’s right. But we do have physical evidence of the paranormal. The food this one retrieved in her ‘stomach.’ The internal mess after her stomach ruptured was hell to clean, though.”

“Oh, right…”

“By appearance, it looked like normal food. No foreign substances detected. So we used the most reliable method of toxicological testing to check.”

“What’s that?”

“A rat.”

“Ahh…”

“And the result—”

gulp

“The rat’s stomach ruptured and its insides burst out. As if the contents refused to be digested.”

“...What?”

“We have footage too. Wanna watch?”

“Uh, I’m good. So… what does that mean?”

“We don’t know. But whatever it is, it’s dangerous. We’ve placed it under strict containment.”

The sense of unease remained. A vague dread lingered.

Still, similar paranormal phenomena would surely be investigated again. And with that, more truths would be uncovered.

There was only one way to stay in the loop.

“By the way—what’s your name?”

It was way too late for introductions, Niijima thought with a sigh. Still, as orientations go, this one had been more than enough.

“I’m Yukari Niijima. I guess… I’ll be in your care.”

“Good. I’m Arisu Shirakawa. Call me Professor. Don’t you dare leave it off.”

“Then... Professor Shirakawa, I look forward to working with you.”

Yukari Niijima already felt like a full-fledged member of the Shirakawa Lab.

“Can I look around a bit more? Oh, is that Arisa-chan’s body over there?”

“Yeah. Hey, Aoki! Show her around, will you?”

Professor Shirakawa seemed busy. Naturally—analyzing the data Arisa had just brought back would take time.

Assuming any of that story was true, of course.

Just then, on the PC monitoring Arisa’s communication systems, a new message popped up.

The sender was "Kurahii."

Are you free right now?

If so—

Give back, myself.