The Biter

by Reki Kawahara

  Of course, to a certain extent, it was pointless to run if it wasn’t a challenge, but his priorities needed fixing if he was willing to end up sleeping at school and angering the teacher. Minoru ran to reset his memories, but if he earned his teacher’s ire in the process, it would take him any number of weeks to forget it.

  The last time he’d been reprimanded by a teacher was two years ago in the second semester of eighth grade. His homeroom teacher had announced that the homemade cherry pie from Norie in Minoru’s lunch box fell into the “sweets” category, which was banned by the school. Once he’d received a thorough scolding, his pie was confiscated.

  At the time, his teacher had gone so far as to speak ill of Minoru’s adoptive sister. As he desperately suppressed the urge to talk back, he ended up letting just a few tears slip out. An unkind classmate saw and jeered at him; that time, he couldn’t hold back…

  “…!!”

  He gritted his teeth and picked up his pace. Blasting through the course at almost the same speed as a sprint, he spat out the fragments of a sentence.

  “Why…did I…remember that…?!”

  Forget. He needed to forget. He had to forget all the memories, including the ones of his stupidity.

  That’s because they would surely connect everything together. With that day eight years ago. The memory of that day when Minoru’s world was completely destroyed—that day when he counted with all his might in a dark hole.

  He kicked the asphalt as hard as he could. His breathing became ragged and his pulse quickened. But still, it wasn’t enough. He needed to struggle much more or he wouldn’t be able to reset his mind, which was immersed in memories like black water.

  Run. Run.

  If only he could go on running like this until his heart or his lungs were ragged. If he could do that, he could leave behind all those memories and go to someplace other than here…

  But a few seconds later, silver poles emerged from the morning fog. They blocked cars from entering the trail, and he used them as markers for the start and finish line of his jogging route.

  He suppressed his reckless urges and slowed his pace a little at a time. Once the passing breeze that had cooled his chest died down, sweat came pouring out from the bottom of his Windbreaker. His breathing and his pulse returned to normal immediately.

  After wiping the sweat from his brow with his wristband, he pressed the stop button of the sports watch on his left wrist. Once he heard an electronic beep, beep, he peered down at the LCD screen apprehensively. Looking at the digital numbers that were displayed, he frowned without realizing it. He had anticipated this, but today he really was still—

  “…Too fast…,” he whispered, the words spilling out of his mouth. He blew them away with a deep sigh.

  Because he’d been doing his early morning ten-kilometer run for five years straight, he’d developed confidence in his long-distance running skills, humble though they were. But that’s exactly why he could declare his time to be too fast. A person’s time wasn’t something that could be so easily improved. While times can rise and fall daily depending on conditions like physical state and weather, people get faster little by little over a span of months—no, they realize they got faster after the fact. At least that’s how it had been up until now.

  Despite that, the number now displayed on Minoru’s watch had gotten almost three minutes shorter compared to just three months ago.

  Even though he had sprinted a little at the end, he’d actually intended to hold back overall during the run.

  His right hand was still on his watch, and he brought it back down to chest level. He lightly pressed the center of his sternum with a fingertip. It didn’t feel painful or strange. But still, he could definitely feel it. A faint hint of something quietly breathing directly above his heart.

  “…Is it because of you?” he whispered to it, receiving no answer.

  But at this point, that was the only explanation.

  What happened three months ago wasn’t a dream. Something had come down from the sky, slipped inside his body through his chest, and disappeared. No, it had assimilated with his tissue.

  Because of that something, his running time had improved abnormally. That wasn’t all. He also had the feeling that his hearing and his eyesight were better than before.

  There’s no way. It’s just nonsense.

  In his heart he denied it, but at the same time another version of himself whispered to him, Common sense is nothing but an illusion.

  Every event that can possibly happen will happen, no matter how abnormal or frightening or sad it may be.

  Take what had happened to his family. The four of them had lived a happy life together, but on that day, everything was suddenly destroyed without a trace of it left.

  “…What does it even matter?” he spat in a low voice, lowering his right hand.

  What did it matter what the thing was that had entered his body, and what did it matter if it increased or decreased the time it took him to run ten kilometers? It wasn’t like he was running to prepare for a competition.

  What he wanted was for the days to pass him by, clear and colorless. He wanted to live a quiet life just like a ghost, not creating extra memories and not sticking in the memories of anyone else.

  Yeah, I’m just like a ghost now. The truth is, I was supposed to die on that day with my father, my mother, and…my sister.

  Talking to himself silently, Minoru turned to face in a different direction. A little way ahead, he could see the stairs leading down from the embankment. From there, it was about a kilometer to his house.

  He switched his watch from stopwatch mode back to time display mode, confirming that he still had enough time until school began. Raising his head, he took in the sight of the reddening sky. Another day was beginning now, no different from the day before it.

  As he turned to head to the stairs while going over his schedule in his head…

  …He heard rhythmic footsteps coming from behind him. He was being overtaken by another jogger running the same course.

  Minoru moved down to the left edge of the trail for a moment. In that area people could only run in the center of the path because of the poles that kept out cars, and if he blocked that part, he’d be in the way of a runner trying to pass. A runner might click his tongue at him in irritation, and then Minoru would already be stuck with a bunch of those nasty memories that he’d worked hard to clear from his head.

  As he waited for the runner to pass by, he gazed at the block of skyscrapers in Saitama’s new urban center, which glinted in the distance as they were hit by the midwinter morning sun. Then—

  The footsteps slowed little by little, coming to a stop right behind Minoru. He heard roughly panting breaths and smelled a faint scent. He couldn’t see her, but it was probably a female runner. It seemed that, like Minoru, she also used this point as her finish line.

  If so, there was no reason for him to go on standing here until who knows when. Keeping his face averted, Minoru set off for the stairs, but he couldn’t help coming to a halt again. From diagonally behind him on his right, she had suddenly called out to him.

  “Oh, wait… You’re…Utsugi, right?” she said between breaths.

  At this, he stopped with a start. Her voice didn’t sound familiar. He didn’t have any memory of an acquaintance running this course at this time, either. If he had, he would’ve changed to a different location or time.

  For just a moment, he considered saying she was wrong and running off, but through several previous failures, he had learned that this impulsive, escapist response was not the optimal choice. He gave up on breaking away and turned around in an awkward motion.

  About two meters away from him, a petite woman—no, a girl—was standing with both hands on her knees, exhaling big white breaths. She seemed to be the same age as him or a little younger and was small-framed with short hair. She seemed delicate at first glance, but the arms and legs that stuck out of her pastel green running
outfit were solidly muscled, and it was obvious that she ran regularly.

  And yeah, he had an inkling that he might remember that face, which was looking up at him.

  “…Uh…so…”

  He trailed off, unable to say, “Who are you again?” Her slight smile disappeared and her mouth bent into a tremendous frown. Inhaling deeply as if she had finally caught her breath, she righted herself, planted both hands near the back of her hips, and—

  “Minowa.”

  “Wh-what?”

  “Tomomi Minowa. I’m a sophomore at Yoshiki High in Class Eight.”

  “…O-oh…”

  He couldn’t decide how to respond, so for the moment he just nodded with his head inclined slightly.

  Minoru did go to Yoshiki High, a public high school in Saitama Prefecture, and he was in the same year, but their classes were different. Minoru was in Class One, which was on the opposite side of the school grounds, and having only been at that school for eight months, it was understandable that he wouldn’t remember the face of some girl named Tomomi Minowa.

  He had only thought things through that far when Tomomi opened her mouth again.

  “…And I was in Class Two at Hachi Middle in eighth grade.”

  “…O-oh…”

  This time, he nodded a little more deeply than before.

  Hachiou Middle School was another school Minoru had attended. He also remembered being in Class Two when he was an eighth grader. That meant that just two years ago—no, technically one year and nine months ago—the girl Minoru saw before him had been his classmate.

  Remembering people’s faces was not his strong point. He didn’t look at them properly during conversation, so one could say it was to be expected. Even so, he should have spoken to her at least once or twice if they had studied in the same class for a year. Did his inability to remember this mean that his daily memory-reset run was more effective than he thought…?

  As he considered these things, the faint memory of a face overlapped with the sullen one before him. Brow furrowed, he worked to pull up the far-off memory.

  “Um… Minowa… Minowa… Oh…I feel like you used to have longer hair…,” Minoru muttered.

  In a flash, the smile returned to Tomomi’s sullen face. She nodded, her short hair swinging around vigorously.

  “That’s right! I chopped it off before I moved up to high school.”

  “…Huh…”

  Was this the point where he was supposed to ask why she chopped it off or not?

  Luckily, there was no need to worry about that; Tomomi came right out with the answer as she grabbed the ends of her hair, which was cut about three centimeters above her shoulders.

  “Long hair isn’t allowed for new members on our track team. In middle school it was okay as long as you put it up, though.”

  “Oh, so that’s why,” Minoru said, giving the most neutral response.

  Minoru ended up thinking that, if she found the team rules unreasonable, she should just push to get them fixed or quit the team, but he didn’t say so. He heard that clubs, and sports teams in particular, weren’t that easy to quit, and if new members complained about old rules, that would create other annoyances in and of itself.

  No, that’s beside the point.

  Simply put, this girl Tomomi Minowa probably liked track…liked running. For that, she was probably willing to at least chop off her hair.

  Those thoughts called back another flash of memory: a girl onstage at the school-wide morning assembly doing a quick bow as the principal passed her a certificate of achievement, her ponytail swinging happily on the back of her head.

  “Oh…Minowa, did you by chance compete in nationals in the last year of middle school…?”

  “It took you long enough to remember!” Tomomi shouted with a displeased expression before popping right back into a smile. “But that’s how things always go when you’re talking about someone else’s extracurriculars, right? And even though I went to nationals for middle school, I was only tenth place… And this year, I didn’t make it past the prefectural qualifiers…”

  “W-well, I think that’s great. It’s not that easy to be tenth in the country.”

  A flustered Minoru had been trying to smooth things over, but for some reason Tomomi’s mouth once again turned to a pout.

  “…You say that, but Utsugi, I couldn’t come close to catching up with you.”

  “Huh?”

  “I took off after you when I saw you at Hanekura Bridge, but until I got here, I couldn’t come close to catching up with you!”

  “…I-I didn’t realize…”

  “From what I can see, you’re not even that sweaty.”

  “…I-it’s really cold today…,” he said, making excuses as he panicked internally.

  He hadn’t at all realized that a student at the same school as him had discovered him running or that she’d been following him. Worse, his pace had been so— He had never dreamed that he would rise to the same level as a member of the girls’ track team who’d gone to nationals.

  Tomomi’s big brown eyes fixed Minoru with a stare when he lapsed into silence.

  “Utsugi, you didn’t run track in middle school or high school, did you?”

  “…No.”

  “Do you run here every day? Since when? How far?”

  “Um…”

  He didn’t know what he should exaggerate or what he should downplay to fool her, so he answered honestly.

  “About ten kilometers for five years.”

  “Whoa—! That’s amazing! There aren’t many people who practice every morning independently like that, even on our team,” Tomomi said loudly, giving her interpretation of Minoru’s response with another smile on her face. Then she came right out and said the words that Minoru had been fearing. “You’re so fast you should just join the track team!”

  “Um… Uh…”

  It wasn’t like he could just answer “uh-huh” to all these things.

  He’d probably build up many times more useless memories than he did now if he belonged to any club, not just track. Besides, the speed that had piqued Tomomi’s interest in the first place wasn’t something he’d gained from five years of running. He could only think it was caused by that something that had entered his body three months ago.

  There was no way he could compete with the members of the track team—who were sincerely putting in the work—with what could be called a borrowed ability. There was also the possibility that he could suddenly lose his speed in the same way he’d gained it. If he joined the track team on her invitation and then suddenly got slower… Just thinking about it made him break out in a cold sweat.

  “…Well…”

  It’s not like I’m running to get faster.

  Minoru kept racking his brain for a nice way to say that, but before he could put the words together…

  “…!”

  His ears—which he felt had gotten incredibly sensitive lately—picked up on something like a light whirring sound. Looking reflexively to his right, he saw a shadow speeding toward them through the dense morning fog.

  A bicycle—a racing bike. It was going to plunge through the gap in the poles without slowing down. And on top of that path stood Tomomi Minowa. It wasn’t clear if the rider was aware of the figures in front of him, but Tomomi had obviously not noticed.

  At this rate, they would touch—no, collide—in less than three seconds. If they were hit by a bike that looked to be going thirty kilometers per hour, they wouldn’t get away with just scratches.

  Finally seeming to spot Tomomi, the rider yelled, “Hey!”

  At his shout, Minoru finally moved. Taking a step forward, reaching out his right hand, and wrapping it around Tomomi’s back, he wrenched her over to the left. The thin tires of the racing bike locked up as the rider slammed on the brakes, sliding across the road dampened by the morning fog.

  Minoru had pushed Tomomi out of the bike’s path, and as a reaction, he fell forward. The bike clos
ed in from the right, unable to stop.

  It would hit him.

  Minoru held his breath. His heart pounded.

  Then—

  Something happened.

  All sound died away. His whole field of vision took on a slightly blue cast.

  The soles of his shoes left the ground, his body rising a few centimeters.

  The brake levers, sticking out like horns from the racing bike’s handles, made contact with Minoru’s right arm. Or that’s what should have happened.

  But Minoru didn’t feel anything. There was no pain, no impact, not even the sensation of touching something.

  Although the bike veered right like it had been deflected and then swayed around, the rider just barely regained his balance and returned to the center of the trail. At about the same time, the something that had visited Minoru left him.

  The color of the world went back to normal, and his floating feet touched the ground. The peculiar silence vanished and ambient sound rushed in.

  “Watch out!” the rider roared.

  He turned to glower at them through his sunglasses as he rode on slowly, then sped up to ride away to the north.

  Minoru had no time to be thankful that it hadn’t been a huge accident.

  What was that just now?!

  Still in an unstable position, he drew in a sharp breath. He moved his rigid right hand up in front of his eyes.

  The bike definitely should have connected with his hand. This wasn’t a graze. The impact had been enough to change the bike’s course, so it was strange that he, too, hadn’t been sent flying or at least been given a bruise.

  But no matter how much he scrutinized his right hand, he couldn’t find any bruises or cuts. Of course, he wasn’t in any pain, either.

  “U…Utsugi! Are you okay?!”

  At her hoarse voice, he dropped his right hand and turned his face to the left.