Pull of the Dark Nebula

by Reki Kawahara

  “’M-morning, Mom.”

  Saya glanced back. “’Morning,” she responded briefly before turning back to her newspaper. From her slightly exhausted appearance, she wasn’t about to leave for work but had actually just returned home.

  She worked at a foreign investment bank, in a department that was deeply involved with the financial market in the United States, and she often stayed at the office from eleven at night Japan time when the market over there opened until early morning. Even on days when she didn’t have to, she would occasionally go drinking—whether this was for business or pleasure was unclear—so it was fair to say that she basically never returned home before the date had changed. Even so, it was rare for her to be this late.

  “Guess you’re working late every day, huh?” Haruyuki casually called out to her as he headed for the kitchen.

  Saya stopped her hand once more and turned a penetrating gaze on him.

  “I-is something wrong?” he asked.

  “No…Nothing. Anyway, did you make this?”

  He realized that Saya was holding a spoon in one hand. The bowl before her apparently contained the leftover chilled tantan ramen broth that Haruyuki had put in the fridge.

  “Oh. Yeah. Last night with my friends…Um, that’s just the broth, if you’re going to eat it, the noodles—”

  “It’s fine like this. There’s lots in it already,” she said. “Friends? You mean, Takumu and Chiyuri?”

  “Uh-uh. A friend from school and…” He struggled for a second with what to call Niko and Pard. “A couple friends who live in Nerima.”

  “Hmm.” Saya looked surprised once more. “So you have friends other than Chiyuri who are good cooks, hmm? Boy? Girl?”

  “Eeah. Um, uh…I—I leave that to your imagination,” he mumbled, retreating into the kitchen. He put a slice of bread in the toaster and took a cup of yogurt and half a grapefruit before sitting down in front of his mother.

  Fortunately, she didn’t press him for an answer to her earlier question but kept moving her spoon from bowl to mouth and back as she read the paper. Eating his yogurt across from her, Haruyuki had the thought that it had been a long time since he’d seen her face properly in the light.

  Her slightly lightened hair in a short bob and the sharp eye makeup hadn’t changed from before. But he felt like her face had lost some of the sternness it used to have. Perhaps it was because of the morning light. Or a change in Haruyuki’s own perceptions. He had the abrupt desire to talk with her more, but it wasn’t like he had anything special to say. While he struggled with this, the black sesame tantan soup in front of her gradually disappeared.

  When there was about a spoonful left, Haruyuki finally opened his mouth. “Um, Mom?”

  “What?” Saya asked faintly, not taking her eyes off the newspaper holowindow.

  He took a deep breath and put into words the decision he’d only made yesterday. “I was asked to run in the second-term student council election…And I think I’m going to do it.”

  “Hmm,” Saya replied vaguely, only to lift her head slightly a moment later. “What? Student council elections?”

  “Y-yeah.”

  “You were asked?” She frowned. “Ohh, right. You run in teams at Umesato. Who’s the leader then?”

  “Ikuzawa. She’s the class C representative. It’d be Taku and me and one other person we don’t know yet.”

  “Hmm.” Saya cocked her head slightly to one side, and he couldn’t tell from her expression exactly what she thought about Haruyuki’s candidacy declaration.

  He took another deep breath. “And…you were on the student council when you were at school, too, right, Mom? I was thinking whenever you have some time, I could get you to teach me the trick to giving speeches.”

  Saya laughed out loud, unusually for her. “All that happened so long ago, I’ve forgotten now. You just say whatever it is that you want to say. I mean, it’s a speech for a junior high election.”

  “That’s— I can’t figure out what I want to say…”

  “Then what are you going to be a council member for?” his mother asked, abruptly serious, and he unconsciously lowered his eyes.

  Because Mayu Ikuzawa invited me.

  Because I want administrator privileges on the in-school net.

  Because I want Kuroyukihime to approve of me.

  None of these was a lie exactly, but he felt like none of them was the fundamental reason for his decision, either. He searched the depths of his heart and put into words what popped up there. “I just…I wanted to do something. Something I haven’t been able to do before.”

  A faint smile came across Saya’s lips. She brought the last of the tantan soup to her mouth and then finished the water in her glass before speaking. “Then you can just say that. The most important thing in a speech is how much of it reaches the hearts of the people listening. If you simply lay out some grand manifesto, it’ll go in one ear and out the other.”

  “How much…reaches…,” Haruyuki murmured.

  “Once you have a draft of your speech, show it to me.” His mother closed her newspaper and stood up with her bowl and glass. “I’m going to bed. Thanks for the soup.”

  “G-good night.”

  After putting away her dishes, Saya Arita deftly tapped at her virtual desktop and sent five hundred yen for lunch money to Haruyuki’s account before leaving the living room.

  Friday, July 19, was cloudy as though the seasonal rain front had returned. His weather widget showed a 40 percent chance of precipitation from the afternoon, but since it still wasn’t raining by the time lunch came, Haruyuki invited Takumu and the class rep Mayu Ikuzawa to the roof of the second school building with him.

  On the way, they each bought onigiri and sandwiches and things in the cafeteria, but before they started to eat, he bowed his head neatly at Mayu. “Ikuzawa, I’m sorry my answer’s so late.”

  “Uh-uh, it’s fine. It’s an important decision. So?” Mayu cocked her head to one side expectantly.

  Haruyuki caught Takumu’s eye for a moment before saying, “I’ll run together with you, Ikuzawa.” He was going to follow that up with “I don’t know how useful I’ll be, though”—but before he could, Mayu was shouting excitedly.

  “Really?! Aah, thanks!! We’re gonna do this!!” A grin spread across her entire face, and then she quickly looked around. Fortunately, there were no other students on the roof. “I get it. The reason you brought us up here instead of the cafeteria was to avoid an information leak, huh?” Mayu nodded as if satisfied.

  “Nah, it wasn’t that.” Takumu laughed cheerfully. “I think Haru was just embarrassed.”

  “H-hey!” he protested. “It’s not just that. I figured if we were going to talk about election strategies, then it would be better if no one was around.”

  “Getting ahead of yourself there. Well anyway, let’s eat lunch,” Takumu urged, and Haruyuki and Mayu turned their backs to the rooftop fence and sat down on the parapet, some forty centimeters high.

  “That reminds me, Ikuzawa,” Haruyuki said, after taking a bite of his mentaiko onigiri and washing it down with some genmai tea. “Who’s the fourth member of the team?”

  “Actually, I haven’t totally decided yet.” Mayu shrugged as she brought her tomato-and-cheese sandwich to her mouth. “It’s not that I don’t have some ideas, but I was thinking, like, how can I put it…? Someone with a sharpness like you and Mayuzumi’d be good.”

  He unconsciously exchanged a look with Takumu on the other side of Mayu. Takumu didn’t have too many angles to him, but there wasn’t another student in the entire Umesato student body who was less sharp both externally and internally than Haruyuki. He unconsciously looked down at his body and its ample cushioning; Mayu shook her head in a huff.

  “Uh-uh, I don’t mean ‘sharp’ like dangerous or hard. I mean someone with lots of parts other people don’t have.”

  “Still, Taku is one thing, but that doesn’t fit me at all,” he protested.

>   “That’s not true.” Mayu’s serious face cut him off, and he looked up at the cloudy sky, which threatened rain at any second.

  “The truth is, I think that everyone has something different from other people, something that’s just theirs. But it’s hard to express that to the outside world. When people think you’re different from everyone else, or you’re seeking attention, all kinds of bad things happen.”

  She looked and sounded as though she had actually experienced this herself, but then this momentary cloud vanished instantly, and Mayu looked at Haruyuki again as she continued.

  “But, Arita, you upgraded the exhibit for the school festival on your own; you made yourself a candidate for the Animal Care Club. You’re really working without trying to hide what you’re good at or what you like.”

  “Oh. But I’m not actually good at either of those things. In fact, it’s more like I had to do something, so I did it because I didn’t have a choice, basically,” he confessed.

  “What’s important is whether you actually do it. I think you’re someone who does things properly, Arita. That’s what I mean by sharp. In English, it wouldn’t be sharp, but maybe prominent.”

  “P-prominent?” Haruyuki cocked his head to one side at the English word he couldn’t remember studying.

  “Like this.” Mayu launched her memo app and smoothly spelled it out. “It means remarkable or foremost. As a noun, it’s prominence. Maybe you’ve heard that before?”

  “Oh,” he said. “Like with the Sun.”

  “Yeah. It means a solar flare, but also standing out and excellence.”

  “Huh. I didn’t know that.” What popped up in the back of his mind was, of course, the Red Legion, led by Niko. There was no way of knowing what meaning the first Red King intended when he named it Prominence. But the Prominence inherited and kept safe by the second King, Niko, was going to merge with Nega Nebulus the following day, and an era would end.

  And now, here was Mayu Ikuzawa teaching him the meaning of the word Prominence. Coincidental though it might have been, it felt like some kind of fate to him. He shot a glance at Takumu again, and they nodded to each other slightly before turning back to Mayu.

  “Um. I don’t have that kind of confidence in myself yet, but I’m going to try to live up to your expectations, Ikuzawa,” Haruyuki said. “Thanks for asking me to join you.”

  Mayu blinked in surprise once before nodding with force. “Yeah. Let’s try hard, Arita!”

  “Naturally, I’ll give it everything I have, too,” Takumu added from where he sat across from them.

  She turned back toward him and shouted, “Thanks, Mayuzumi!” Mayu thrust a hand out to each of them, and Haruyuki and Takumu grabbed hold.

  After that, they talked as they ate, and it was decided that they would each put forth a candidate for their fourth member in the middle of July. At the same time as Haruyuki finished his second onigiri—ume bonito flavor—a drop of water touched the tip of his nose.

  “Ah! It’s starting to rain.” Mayu put a hand to her forehead and looked up at the sky, sandwich wrapper crumpled in one hand.

  Haruyuki also tilted his head back and stared at the sun shining hazily on the other side of the gray clouds when a sudden thought struck him. “That reminds me, Ikuzawa. The group of four candidates, usually people give them something like a team name, right?”

  “Oh, right. Yes. Although you just use it during the campaign. It’s usually Blah Blah party or the Blah Blahs. Lots of names in the Team Blah Blah style. Registration starts in the second term, so I haven’t thought about it at all yet…Arita, you got any ideas?”

  “Not so much an idea as something that just occurred to me,” Haruyuki said, standing up from the parapet/bench. “Just like, maybe we could make it the ‘prominent’ you just taught me, Ikuzawa. Team Prominent.”

  “Team Prominent…” Mayu followed him to her feet and rolled the name around in her mouth a few times before breaking into a grin. “It sounds like we mean business. I like it! What d’you think, Mayuzumi?”

  “I think it’s good, too.” Takumu grinned along with her, the light reflecting off his glasses.

  Mayu bobbed her head up and down, setting her ponytail bouncing, and thrust her fist high up into the air, as though she were perhaps trying to push back the rain that had started to fall, and declared in a strident voice, “All right! Team Prominent starts now! Guys, let’s make this happen!”

  “Yeah!” Haruyuki and Takumu shouted in unison.

  8

  The long mail from Kuroyukihime was sent to all the Legion members immediately after the last homeroom of the first term had ended.

  I wonder if she wrote it during class…The report was so detailed and easy to read that it sent a powerful chill up Haruyuki’s spine. With a dual-part structure, the first half was about the proposal to merge with the Red Legion. The latter half was written on the topic of the Castle and the secrets of Brain Burst. It was all information that Haruyuki already knew, but even so, he read it in his seat as if in a trance.

  And then someone was standing in front of his desk. When he looked, he saw it was Chiyuri Kurashima, already finished getting ready to go home.

  “Haru.” She leaned over. “You read Kuroyukihime’s mail yet?”

  “I’m just in the middle of it now…You?”

  “Just the first half,” she said. “And I was so surprised— Ah! Maybe you…”

  “Wh-what?” he asked.

  “Since you’re not shouting ‘Automagetting!’ and falling out of your chair, I’m guessing you already knew.” She stared at him. “About the merger.”

  “Th-that’s, well…I mean, don’t you have to go to practice?” He tried to change the subject.

  “No practice today or tomorrow!” she yelled. “Now, come on! Come clean!”

  Suddenly, Takumu was standing at her side. He also looked surprised—

  Unsurprisingly—but given that they had the meet in two days, the kendo team would naturally have practice that day, so he didn’t have the time to talk.

  “Chii, make sure you ask Haru about everything for me, too.” He raised a thumb as if to say he was leaving it all to her. “All right. I’ll talk to you later.” Takumu waved a hand and then trotted off.

  Haruyuki watched him go before turning his face back to Chiyuri.

  “’Kay,” she said. “Let’s get this story out of you then, hmm?”

  “But basically everything I know’s in the mail…”

  “Then tell me about everything outside that ‘basically’!”

  With his childhood friend snapping this order at him, Haruyuki couldn’t very well say no.

  When they went outside, he found the rain had stopped at some point. After they walked around to the animal hutch in the rear courtyard, Haruyuki got out two bamboo brooms and pushed one at her.

  “…What?” Chiyuri said, looking doubtful, and he grinned at her.

  “In exchange for me telling you stuff, help me clean.”

  “…Well, fine. I guess.”

  Once they had finished cleaning up around the hutch, his Animal Care Club colleague Reina Izeki and the club super president Utai Shinomiya appeared.

  “Oh!” Reina cried, noticing Chiyuri. “Um. Kurashima, right? Are you a new member—I mean, of the club?”

  “No, just helping out today,” Haruyuki replied for her.

  “Oh yeah?” Reina looked disappointed.

  “I’m sorry, Izeki,” Chiyuri apologized. “I don’t have practice today, so this guy made me help him.”

  Haruyuki started to feel like he was in the wrong somehow. No, but it’s not my fault at all. He shook his head from side to side.

  UI> EVEN IF IT’S JUST FOR TODAY, I’M SO HAPPY YOU’RE HERE, CHIYURI! HOO IS ALSO VERY HAPPY! Utai announced in the chat app.

  The three looked over at the hutch, and the northern white-faced owl Hoo flapped his wings in a welcoming way—or so Haruyuki felt.

  “Ha-ha-ha! Thanks, Hoo! So what shoul
d I do next?” Chiyuri asked.

  Haruyuki thought for a second and then frowned. “Dig in the ground over there and gather worms for Hoo to eat.”

  “W—! W-w-w-w-worms?! N-no way! I’m not touching worms!!” Chiyuri inched backward.

  “Oh! Look!” Haruyuki suddenly pointed at her feet. “There’s one there!”

  “Eeeeyaaaah!!” Chiyuri leapt up in an impressive power of legs from her many hours of sports practice. But once she confirmed there was nothing on the ground, her face turned beet red and she charged forward to yank Haruyuki’s cheek. “You—! I’m going to rip this cheek off and feed it to Hoo!!”

  “H-how-ow-ow-ow?! Horry, horry! Horhibe me!!”

  Reina and Utai watched, dumbfounded, and then erupted into laugher, while Hoo called out loudly, “Hoo-hoooo!”

  When the hutch was clean and Hoo fed—the food was, of course, not worms nor Haruyuki’s cheek but the mouse meat Utai had prepared—Reina waved good-bye, and then the three Burst Linkers sat down next to one another on the bench near the hutch.

  The fingers of Utai’s hands flashed above her adorable kneecaps. UI> DID YOU BOTH READ THE MAIL FROM SACCHI?

  “Yeah, mostly,” Chiyuri said. “But like, Ui, listen to this! Haru here apparently already knew about the merger!”

  UI> IS THAT TRUE, ARITA?

  Chiyuri and Utai turned to stare at him, and Haruyuki hurriedly shook his head.

  “N-no. I mean, knew, like, I only heard about it twelve hours ago! Uh. Last night, Kuroyukihime and Niko and Pard came to my house, okay…”

  “Hmmmm.”

  UI> HMMMM, INDEED.

  “N-no. I mean, came, like they weren’t staying over. We made supper together and ate it, and then everyone went home.”

  “Hmmmmmm.”

  UI> HMMMMMM, INDEED.

  Their eyes were getting cold on him, so he decided it would be best to just get right to the point.

  “S-so that was the first time I heard anything about the merger, either. I guess it took Niko and Pard until yesterday to convince the two other members of the Triplex. And after that, it’s just like in Kuroyukihime’s mail. We won’t know the details until tomorrow.”