by Shouji Gatou
“Oh, is that what this is about?” Seiya turneWhat’lld his face upward, squinting against the light streaming in through the skylight. “Our first priority is improving the park’s appearance. There’s litter everywhere, dust on everything... it looks awful. It’s an important job that’s going to take a whole day to do.”
“That’s all well and good,” Moffle argued, “but we can’t just close the park without warning, fumo! you say to the guests who came a long way to be here, assuming we’d be open?”
Seiya scowled. “Today’s Tuesday. We’re not going to get many people, anyway.”
“But we’ll still get some!” Moffle wailed. “Even if it’s just one family, leaving the gate open and welcoming the guests in is basic courtesy for any park!”
It was a given that any facility in the entertainment business must operate year-round outside of its pre-established closing days. This park had kept that promise for 29 years; to break it now would be to shatter all the trust that they had built up in that time.
The boy just didn’t know anything. There were quite a few businesses that only closed on Tuesday; beauticians, for instance, and a selection of bars. For children with parents in those professions, Tuesday was the only day they had for family fun.
“When your amusement park is this lousy,” Seiya commented, “I’m not sure that ‘basic courtesy’ applies...”
“How dare you!” Moffle snarled.
“But... I do see what you’re saying. I’ve been looking around this attraction of yours, and—” Seiya stopped walking abruptly. “It doesn’t appear to need any cleaning. It’s as if some strange, obsessive person has been cleaning it every day.”
“...?”
“In other words, rat... after the morning meeting, you’ll have a lot of free time. I’ll open the front plaza, and you can entertain our unlucky guests there.”
“What the... fumo?”
“Do some juggling, some dancing—whatever you like. Show the guests a good time, and send them home happy,” Seiya told him helpfully. “Then, we’ll at least be able to say that we opened for business. That’ll be your job for today.”
It was incomprehensible, Moffle thought. In that empty plaza just inside the gate, what was he supposed to do for the dozens of people—no doubt unhappy people—that they could expect for the day?
“You can do it, can’t you?” Seiya goaded him. “You’re a veteran, aren’t you?”
“Moffu. Well...”
“You can’t, then?”
“I... I can, fumo!” Moffle managed to blurt out at last.
“Good. I’ll send other cast members to help you as they finish their own cleaning. Anyway, I’ll leave you to that.”
Seiya walked away from Moffle’s Sweets House and the deflated, dumbfounded Moffle he’d left there. He really is keeping it up well, though... he thought. He hadn’t been lying when he said the house didn’t need cleaning.
It was a rather large attraction, yet it seemed like it was going through daily cleanings, with all the mechanical parts kept in good repair. Since the park had only the bare minimum of funds dedicated to maintenance, Moffle must have been keeping it up personally. According to the time card records, Moffle was logging overtime past midnight several times a week. He was probably staying after closing to do the cleaning and repair work.
Given his behavior when they’d first met, Seiya had assumed Moffle was a slacker type, but it appeared he actually took his job quite seriously.
The trouble is his stubbornness, and his complete inability to just trust me... Well, I can’t blame him. I don’t trust that rat yet, either... If parks could trade cast the way baseball traded players, Moffle would be my first choice for the chopping block. Anyway, what will Moffle do with the order I gave him? Time to see what he’s got...
(Now, the next item on the agenda...) Seiya stifled a yawn, and got on one of the park-use bikes he had stored backstage. He had scheduled a meeting with the department heads for 9:00 am, but there was a facility he wanted to check out in person first.
He had ridden to the east side of the backstage area and was looking over the employee guide map when he found himself addressed by an employee on her way to work.
“Ah... Kanie-san! Good morning!”
She hadn’t checked in yet, so she was still wearing her street clothes: a down jacket and denim pants, with a fur hat pulled over her silver hair. She was a beautiful girl, and appeared to be a foreigner at a glance, but there was something indescribably Japanese about the way she bowed to him and smiled.
Who is she again? Seiya wondered. There was something familiar about her, but he couldn’t place the face.
“Ah... excuse me! My name is Muse,” she introduced herself. “I’m in the cast of ‘Aquario’...”
“Ah.” He remembered now. She was the ‘fairy’ who had asked him the question he needed during his grandstanding at the meeting last night. She had been wearing a revealing dress with large wings at the time, so he hadn’t made the connection to her more mundane appearance until just now.
This Muse girl must be a resident of a magical realm, too— Seiya realized, even if, at the moment, she looked like a prep school student on her way to a mock exam.
“Just the person I wanted to see, then,” he said. “How do I get to this southern area?” He pointed to the location in question—a large space on the guide map that seemed nearly empty.
“Oh. The southern area is across the highway,” she told him after looking at the map. “You’d have to use the pedestrian bridge or the underground walkway... though we’re using the underground walkway for storage right now, so it might be hard to get through with a bike...”
“The pedestrian bridge, then? All right.” Seiya was about to ride off on his bike when Muse stopped him.
“Wait, I’ll show you the way!” she exclaimed. “It’s easy to get lost.”
“I’d appreciate that,” he told her, “but... weren’t you on your way to work?”
“Oh, I still have time. This way!”
He ended up letting Muse serve as his guide. Despite her mundane appearance, she seemed exceptionally articulate. “Aquario” was a musical, so perhaps it came naturally to her as a stage performer?
On the way there, he asked a question. “Been here long?”
“What?” she asked, not understanding his question.
“I mean, working here,” Seiya clarified.
“Oh... well, only about a year! Before that, I was a background dancer at Highlander Fujimi!”
Highlander Fujimi was an amusement park on the edge of Kanagawa. He’d heard it was more about over-the-top thrill rides than song and dance routines.
You know... he thought. For all this talk of magical lands, they still have workplace transfers and cast hierarchies. Not much of a fantasy, when you get right down to it.
“Um, Kanie-san. Could I ask you a question?” Muse asked.
“What is it?”
“Um... can you really bring in all those guests?” she asked doubtfully. “A hundred thousand... in just two weeks?”
“Of course I can,” Seiya replied immediately. It was a lie, of course, but he couldn’t let any doubt exist in her mind. “This is part of the groundwork I’m laying for it. It will take a lot of preparation, after all.”
“R-Really!” Muse’s tone was that of a person unable to fully believe, yet still happy to cling to invisible hope.
“So, what happened last night?” Seiya asked, redirecting their conversation to a safer subject. “Did you all get together to badmouth me afterwards?”
“Oh, of course not...” she replied immediately. “Well, it’s true that a lot of them aren’t happy with you, but we all know that we’re up against a wall. And a lot of them say they’re willing to give you a chance...”
“I see.”
This Muse girl seemed incapable of strategic omission, or really, of doing anything other than speaking her mind. He’d never need to use his magic to tell what s
he was thinking.
...As a matter of fact, Seiya hadn’t used his magic much at all since yesterday. He’d even deferred using it with Kurisu Takaya from Amagi Development; knowing he could only use it once per person meant he had to choose his timing carefully.
Ah, but even then—
Call it a part of his nature, or just his personal style... but it was a problem he had. Seiya was the type of person who, when playing an FPS, never used the most powerful weapons at his disposal. He held tight to his grenades and his rockets, and even with normal ammo, he tried to conserve as much as possible by sticking to careful shots to vital points. Automatic weapons were right out. As a result, he always beat the final boss with huge stockpiles of ammo left over and a vague feeling like he’d missed out, somehow.
—the way I use my magic feels a lot like that.
“This way.” Muse had been right about the pedestrian bridge being difficult to locate. He walked his bike up the wheelchair ramp, then crossed the highway, heading for the southern area.
Even with the vantage point of the pedestrian bridge, he still couldn’t get a good grasp of what the southern area contained, thanks to the rampant, towering pine growth that covered the land like a shroud. Beyond the pines, he could just make out some kind of large, squat structure—a massive silhouette that seemed out of place with the untouched greenery of the surrounding hills.
“This southern area... it’s barely used, I understand?”
“Yes, that’s what I’ve heard,” Muse agreed. “They say it had a campground and an adventure play area, but they’re closed now... so hardly anyone ever goes there.”
There was a paved path, but it had been left to the elements, with limp grass growing through the cracks here and there. Declarations of “This way to Excitement Campground!” and “Join us at Mischief Plaza!” remained barely readable on the rotting signs, which were covered in ivy. There was something profoundly lonely about seeing phrases like those in such a desolate place.
“I don’t really know why it’s been abandoned for so long, but...”
“Apparently they were going to use the land for an expansion,” Seiya said, remembering one of the documents Isuzu had handed him last night.
“Expansion?” Muse questioned.
“Once upon a time, this park did great business,” Seiya explained. “This was during the bubble economy in the 80s and early 90s, when they were swimming in money. Before the bubble popped and finances became strained, they had plans to build a second park in this southern area.”
“Oh? —Wait, do you mean, um...”
“......?” Seiya waited for her to finish the question.
“Are you planning to build that second park now?!”
“Huh? In just two weeks?” Seiya stared at her, bewildered. Muse waved her hands hastily.
“S-Sorry. You said you were going to make a miracle happen, so I guess I thought it could be something that huge...”
“I don’t know about you people, but I, for one, am not magic,” Seiya told her dryly. “Don’t get the wrong idea.”
Muse hung her head. “You’re right... You’re a mortal, after all, Kanie-san. I’m very sorry.”
“......? Anyway, the plans for a second park seem to have gone up in smoke after the bubble burst. They used what money they had left to create a rather pathetic little campground, and when that failed to catch on, they closed it. The southern area has been abandoned ever since.”
That was the extent of what Seiya knew. The documents he’d read last night had been rather limited in their information, which was why he had come here in person; to find out more about the southern area.
At the moment, he wasn’t seeing anything that might help him accomplish what he needed to. But—as they came to a clearing in the trees, they found themselves standing in front of an enormous structure.
At first, he thought it was a shipwrecked oil tanker that someone had left here for some reason. It had a towering, gently curved outer wall that extended far into the distance, and an intricate steel framework that was covered in ivy.
“What is...” Muse whispered.
“I think it’s a stadium,” Seiya responded, looking up at the large building. “That’s the one facility they completed in the lead-up to the second park project.”
“I’d always seen it from far away,” Muse commented. “I didn’t know it was a stadium. I didn’t even realize it was part of our park...”
“Apparently it barely saw any use, but it is complete. What I couldn’t figure out, from what I read, was why my predecessor would have built a stadium like this.”
“The theme of the second park was going to be sports,” said a new voice from behind him. It was Sento Isuzu, walking towards them, dressed in a bright red uniform.
After putting up the notice at the employee gate, she had said “I’m going to take a shower,” and wandered off. She must have just finished; her skin was oddly lustrous.
“What, did you follow me here?”
“You may not know this, but...” Isuzu said as she passed them by, “...Muse is a very popular member of our cast. When a young man, fresh off receiving his new authority, leads her into a deserted region of the park... As the acting manager’s assistant, it is my duty to protect her from the threat of sexual harassment.”
“Stop making it sound so sleazy,” Seiya scoffed. “...And put that gun away! Stop trying to hurt me!”
Isuzu was pointing her usual musket at him. While Seiya shouted at her, Muse turned bright red, and began swinging her arms, floundering.
“Um, um, Isuzu-san! I-It’s not like that... I was just trying to be nice... I mean, I do think Kanie-san is handsome, I guess... but I was just showing him the way, um, and I was curious...”
“I appreciate you trying to cover for me, but you don’t need to say I’m handsome; everybody knows it.”
“Ahh?”
Seiya watched with a sidelong glance, and folded his arms as Muse deflated. “...Anyway, Isuzu, she’s just showing me around. Put that bizarre gun of yours away already.”
Isuzu obediently stored her musket. “It’s a shame... It would have been a good chance to try out ‘Paradise Lost.’”
“What is that?” he asked.
“It’s a bullet that makes you lose your reproductive functions forever,” she answered him.
“Don’t try that out on me!”
“Um... back to the subject...” Muse interrupted, timidly. “I believe you were telling us the concept for a second park...?”
That’s right; they were talking about how the stadium had come to be here.
“Yes, that’s right,” Seiya acknowledged. “You said it was going to have a ‘sports theme.’ What does that actually mean?”
“I don’t know any more than that,” Isuzu admitted. “All I know is that they were planning to go in a very different direction than the current park, and the stadium was built to be a sign of that.”
“Hmm...” Seiya looked up at the stadium again. It didn’t have an all-weather roof, but it was quite large—possibly one of the biggest in the Kanto region. Even as a remnant of the bubble economy, the extravagance of it all was enough to give him a headache.
“Why hasn’t it been used in over twenty years?”
“Apparently, Amagi City and Amagi Development wouldn’t give permission. They cited a variety of reasons... notices from the fire department, issues with the health services... It’s just like with the bus stop.”
“Ah.” He remembered his own confusion about the names of the stops when he’d taken the bus here with Isuzu on Sunday. The stop by the old entrance remained “Amagi Brilliant Park,” which made it easy to confuse a local love hotel for the park itself. At the time, Isuzu had told him that they had petitioned Amagi City to change it, but that they wouldn’t give permission.
It was probably this same roundabout resistance from the local government and stockholders that was keeping the stadium’s full potential from being realized.
“I will grant that the location is inconvenient,” Isuzu conceded. “The closest station is Amagi Station, and that’s ten minutes by bus... It would be difficult to carry in enough people to fill it.”
“...True,” Seiya agreed. “If I’d been in charge here at the time, I would have scrapped the stadium idea in the planning stage.”
“I heard that Amagi Development wanted to turn the southern area into a golf course or a residential complex,” said Isuzu. “So the building of a stadium was like an act of resistance against that.”
Seiya had acquired a more-or-less firm grasp on the intentions that various companies and the local government had for this park. It was a troublesome situation.
Amagi Brilliant Park operated with funding from a number of entities. Latifah’s allies consisted of a company called Maple Real Estate and a few other sponsors. The “enemy” that Isuzu had referred to was Amagi Development, which was in turn funded by Amagi City and Toto Railways.
Maple Real Estate itself was funded by the magical realm Maple Land. Getting your funding from a fantasy land seemed like a fairly dubious prospect, but the money from it was thoroughly laundered through foreign banks and companies, and by the time it reached Maple Real Estate, it was clean. At any rate, Maple Real Estate was a proxy for Maple Land, which meant it had an interest in keeping the park going.
Their enemy, Amagi Development, was a third sector organization run by humans from the mortal realm. It was a pragmatic management company, funded by investments from Toto Railways (a company with great power in western Tokyo) and other corporations, as well as the Amagi City government.
In a way, the history of Amagi Brilliant Park was a history of the rivalry between Maple Real Estate and Amagi Development. In the twenty years since the bubble burst and funding had become more scarce, the partisanship on both sides had only deepened.