by Satoshi Hase
Shiori closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “No one in this world moves completely of their own will,” she said. “Even I can’t say that I went to the Chubu Airport one hundred percent of my own accord, without taking guidance from anyone else.”
“Yeah, but I could be completely dancing on Lacia’s strings and doing exactly what she wants me to,” Arato said, shaking his head. “I could end up causing the end of human society, just like Ryo is always saying.”
Despite being an hIE, Lacia had lied and hidden things. Thinking of her caused regret to well up inside Arato. He was nothing like this girl in front of him who, despite being younger than himself, kept her back straight with pride.
“Owning a tool has nothing to do with your personality, or your own abilities. Even if you can’t control it completely, it’s still a tool in your hands. That’s what it means to be an owner,” Shiori said. Her response was refreshingly resolute, and Arato could understand why adults like Mika Tsutsumi would be drawn to her..
“Just like that, huh?” Arato said, impressed by her lack of hesitation in calling for drastic measures. “I saw you all the time when I came over to hang out with Ryo, but I had no idea you’d gotten this tough.”
“Arato, you are now among what you might call the ‘haves’ in this society, so let me teach you one thing everyone in our position must know,” Shiori said bluntly. “To not use the resources that you have is akin to passing your turn at the gambling table—in other words, it’s taking an enormous risk.”
“So I’m gambling right now?” Arato asked. The word sent a shiver up his spine. Shiori’s analogy had reminded him that things were continuing to move and change outside, even without him there to see it happening.
“Whenever I would compare myself to my brother and lose confidence, my father would admonish me,” Shiori said. “He’d tell me to doubt most those who tried to have me act as though I had nothing. He said there are plenty of people who would try to tell me to stow my resources away, so they would never have to face me at the gambling table.”
It did seem like just the kind of thing Ryo and Shiori’s old man would say. Arato thought of Tsuyoshi Kaidai as he had seen him on the news earlier, and his lips quirked up a little in a smile. Shiori saw it and her own lips curved up, as well.
“That’s pretty harsh,” Arato remarked. “Almost sounds like he was telling you that even your family could be untrustworthy, and not to let your guard down around them.”
“Based on when he had this talk with me, I believe that is exactly what he meant,” Shiori said.
Arato remembered Lacia showing him the map data from the Antibody Network. He had learned that there were those in society who wanted to redirect people’s dissatisfaction with society from human conflicts at the ‘gambling table’, as Shiori called it, and instead have them take it all out by destroying hIEs. It certainly wasn’t a good solution, but Arato couldn’t think of it as being a particularly bad one, either. It was just human society continuing to push onward, despite Ryo’s insistence that it was about to end.
Everyone and everything was just trying to cling to life.
“If anyone should feel responsible for the current disaster, it’s my brother,” Shiori said. “Despite knowing that Snowdrop has appeared, he has chosen to focus his attention and resources on future concerns, instead of attempting to prevent the damage that is already occurring.”
Arato got the feeling that Shiori was just a bit too pure-hearted. It had been her, after all, who had informed him that Marina Saffron would be arriving soon at the airport before that whole thing had started. Still, gratitude filled his heart.
“Thank you,” he said sincerely. “Did you call me out here to tell me that?”
Shiori, always sitting tall despite her pain and scars, replied to Arato’s decision with a smile. Seeing her putting on a brave face, Arato thought about how even the strongest people in the world put a high value on places and people they could trust, as they continued to weather one conflict after another. Thinking this, he missed the days he had spent together with Ryo and Kengo.
Arato had a painful choice ahead of him. It wasn’t like he was going to be dramatically smarter than he had been before by the time he met up with Lacia again. On the other hand, anything was better than going back to being a hostage.
“I am Lacia’s owner,” Arato said, reaffirming it to himself.
“That you are,” Shiori agreed.
Outside the window, Arato could see the cloudy sky stretching off to the horizon. As children of the Kaidai family—the family that managed MemeFrame, a powerful player on the world stage—Ryo and Shiori were seeing reality from different angles. Ryo equated the danger of Lacia’s power to that of the switch on a nuclear bomb, but to Shiori, it was all just a matter of what was most dangerous at that moment in time.
“Is there anything you want me to do for you, Shiori?” Arato asked.
Shiori raised her elegant eyebrows in surprise.
“I’m the owner of a machine that’s going to change the world,” he explained. “So I figure I should do something to thank you for everything you’ve done.”
Though there was no escaping the immense pressure hanging over them at that moment, Shiori smiled at the little bit of levity Arato had managed to bring to their conversation. “In that case, I ask only that you fulfill your role as Lacia’s owner without changing who you are as a person,” she said.
“I don’t think I’ll change,” Arato said, doubting very much that he’d ever stop being the easily misled moron that he was at the moment. “Though I can’t say whether that’s a good thing or not.”
“I think it’ll always be easy for an ultra high-performance AI to lead me around by the nose,” he concluded. “I mean, they’re smarter than humans, after all. But I won’t let that change me. I promise.”
Shiori beckoned for him and, like a faithful dog called by its owner, Arato obediently went to her side. A sudden warmth enveloped him and, when he realized he was being held in her arms, he looked away from her face.
“Are you perhaps wondering if I, too, am being manipulated by Lacia to talk you into following this course?” she asked.
Arato’s nose was full of the strange hospital smell of disinfectant and body oils.
“If you have any doubts, please remember that I, unlike a machine, have a heart. I wanted to hold you at least once before I sent you away,” she said, and he could hear the hot tears in her voice.
As if resonating with the shivers he felt running through her body, Arato trembled in her arms. When I leave this room, Arato decided, I’m going straight to Mitaka Station. I’m going to where Snowdrop is. But Arato had betrayed Lacia. If she decided he was no longer worth dealing with, he would be completely powerless against Snowdrop, and would most certainly die.
If things turned out that way, Shiori would have sent him to his death. She didn’t know how things would go, either. Both of them clung to each other, each fighting with an immense dread inside.
“But it’s not impossible for you to have been guided to hold me like this, to take away my fears for going through with what comes next,” Arato said.
Shiori withdrew from him, but her face was still close. “Don’t underestimate humans,” she told him. Looking at her face from that close, he could still see the little girl he had known since childhood, only now she had grown into a mature, impressive young lady.
Both siblings had spoken the same words; Ryo while shedding the first tear Arato had seen him cry in a decade, and Shiori with a confident smile on her face.
She closed her eyes, and then their lips were pressed together in a kiss. When she drew her face back from his, a red blush was staining Shiori’s cheeks. “I believe you haven’t gotten around to doing that with Lacia, correct?” she asked.
Arato recalled when Lacia told him those functions were age-locked until he was eighteen years old, but he couldn’t bring himself to admit that to Shiori. His mind scrambled. He f
elt like he needed to say something, make some kind of comment on what had just happened, but he couldn’t get his tongue to cooperate.
Shiori flashed him a teasing smile. “This is what it feels like to be with someone who has a heart,” she said, always so much better at handling things than he was.
Then Shiori pulled her sheets up to hide her face, which was getting progressively redder. “Also, I’m begging you, please keep what just happened a secret from everyone,” she said.
As Arato walked out of the hospital, he recalled Shiori telling him that someone was waiting for him outside. And, indeed, a young girl he certainly knew was waiting for him at the hospital gates.
Yuka was dangling over the handlebars of her bike, dripping sweat and gasping for breath. Though her bicycle was equipped with power-assist, apparently it had been too hard a ride for Yuka, particularly considering how seldom she exercised.
“Did you seriously come all the way here from Shinkoiwa on your bike?” Arato asked, walking over to her.
As soon as he drew near, his little sister snapped her face up, red with anger. “The Sobu train line stopped, and none of the share service cars would take a minor to the west side of Tokyo! So yeah, I had to come here on my own two feet! Okay?” she shouted.
“Oh, okay,” Arato said, completely cowed by the power of his sweaty little sister.
Without another word, Yuka climbed off of her bike. It automatically extended its kickstand when she stepped away from it.
“Did you skip school?” Arato asked.
“What are you even talking about?” Yuka asked, still yelling. “School’s closed!” With her face scrunched up, and tears pooling in her eyes, she swung her tightly clenched fist wildly. It connected with Arato’s chin. The blow knocked his head back, and Arato crouched down. Normally Yuka got upset over the dumbest things, but this time, she was completely justified.
“Talk to me!” she shouted.
Yuka hadn’t just lived together with Lacia. She had been there when the zombie hIEs had gone crazy in the experimental city, as well. Still, it wasn’t the kind of conversation Arato wanted to have in a place with so many people. Plus, he didn’t have time to stand around anymore.
His eyes fell on Yuka’s bike. “Wanna ride together? I know it’s been a while since we doubled up,” he said.
All the normal means of transportation were shut down, so Arato would need to get to Mitaka on his own power. He kicked the stand up and settled onto the bike. “Get on,” he said. “Let’s talk while we ride.”
“Fine.” Yuka was still sulking, but she climbed onto the extra seat used for tandem riding.
The extra seat was not very comfortable. It would only soften up if the bike’s luggage area was charged. Still, Yuka sat on it without complaint and kicked her legs vigorously at the tandem pedals, ignoring the skirt of her school uniform as it flopped around.
“Hey, if you’re trying to be more like Shiori, the first thing you need to do is act a little more lady-like,” Arato said. As the words left his own lips, he suddenly remembered the feel of Shiori’s against them and blushed bright red. With all the blood rushing to his head, he couldn’t sit still anymore.
“What? I can’t hear you,” Yuka said.
Arato didn’t really want to get too deep into that conversation, so instead he focused on pedaling. The resistance touched off a sensor inside the bike, which brought its motor to life. With a light sound, the bike took off. They were headed in the opposite direction of home. Instead, they traveled toward Mitaka, where Snowdrop was running wild.
Arato looked up at the Chuo Line Overpass above as they passed through the city. There were cars parked on the road all around them. He had heard that things weren’t moving, but it was another thing altogether to see all the cars stopped dead with his own eyes.
“Do you remember that hospital we were just at?” he asked. “That’s where I got treated ten years ago.”
“I was too little then. I don’t remember,” Yuka said. That was fair, too, as she’d only been four years old when it happened.
“I sort of remember that time, since that was when dad was around the most,” she added.
Their dad had taken care of Yuka up until she went into kindergarten. He had been so busy looking after her that he hadn’t had time to visit Arato. Part of the reason Arato and Ryo had hit it off so well was that neither of their families had come to see them at the hospital.
“Do you remember Mom?” he asked.
Yuka pressed her head against his back before answering. “No,” she admitted. “I only know her from pictures.”
“Were you lonely?”
Again Yuka’s head struck his back, this time more like an actual headbutt. “You’re super insensitive Arato, you know that?” she asked.
With the power assist function helping, the bike sped through the streets, fast enough that the wind tugged at their clothes.
Heading toward Mitaka meant running face-first into danger. Arato had always been the type to rush headlong into things, and what with him also being head-over-heels for Lacia, he found it hard to think straight at all. No matter what he or anyone else said, it felt good to solve problems with Lacia. He felt special, owning such an amazing tool. His relationship with Lacia wasn’t just about love; being her owner and using her felt good, too. She had given him all sorts of great memories as his tool, but he had turned his back on her and run away as soon as he realized that he couldn’t fully control her.
“I’m too stupid to figure it out on my own,” he said, to no one in particular. “I need you to tell me the answer.”
Meanwhile, Yuka seemed to have noticed the lack of cars running on the street with them. “Arato, this place is dangerous,” she said. “I saw it on the news.”
“Lacia is here,” was Arato’s simple response.
Despite his intent to go on regardless of the danger, around Sendagaya, he noticed an odd change in the flow of cars around them. Since people were normally prohibited from operating vehicles manually, there were usually no traffic jams in the cities. However, once a certain number of drivers ignored the rules, traffic jams that should have been a thing of the past started popping up again, as they were at that moment.
“Shiori told me she had called you to the hospital,” Yuka said. “What’s wrong? Your clothes are all dirty.”
“I had a fight with Ryo,” Arato said. He felt Yuka’s grip on his clothes squeeze tighter. Still, putting it into words felt like shifting a weight off his chest. “I betrayed Lacia, too,” he added.
There was something exhilarating in having boiled all this complicated stuff about the end of humanity down into simple statements like that one. Even as Arato understood that he was being unbelievably selfish by making it all about him, a bittersweet feeling bubbled up inside him.
“So you’re lonely too, huh?” Yuka murmured.
Somewhere deep in his heart, a small flame flickered to life. On some level, their loneliness was drawing them together. “Don’t ever tell dad this,” he said. “But I only got caught up in that fire ten years ago because I slipped away from everyone else so that dad would have to find me and pay attention to me.”
It was as if those old hospital grounds had opened a window into his own past. On that day, now a decade ago, he had slipped away to stand near the test hIE right before the experiment had begun. He had been closer to the blast than anyone else, which had left him far more heavily wounded than Ryo.
“That’s right, her name was ‘Eliza’,” he said, suddenly remembering the name of the hIE who had exploded. As he said her name, a strange sense of nostalgia pricked at his heart.
“What? Her name is Lacia!” Yuka called, voice loud to be heard over the howling wind. “I really liked having Lacia at the house!” she added.
“That’s just ’cuz she spoiled you so much,” Arato teased.
“It was nice having someone there to come home to,” Yuka said. “When she was around, it felt less lonely.”
“You’re not afraid of Lacia at all? Even after you got grabbed by those guys when we went to visit dad at work?” Arato asked.
“Lacia was only there because you brought her,” Yuka pointed out. “Besides, she’s never done anything bad to us.”
Arato recalled the night he had brought Lacia home. When she had saved him from Snowdrop’s attack, he remembered thinking how beautiful she looked. “Listen, Yuka, the whole reason I picked up Lacia in the first place was that I thought she was pretty,” Arato admitted. If he was being really honest with himself, he had been glad to discover that Lacia was an hIE, because he had wanted her. If she hadn’t been an hIE, he would never have been able to make a contract with her and bring her home to live as part of his family.
“You’re horrible!” Yuka shouted.
“I don’t feel that way anymore!” Arato shot back. “I’m just saying that’s how it was at first! You weren’t much better. You thought she was pretty, so you signed her up for that modeling thing and cheered her on, remember? If she hadn’t become a model, humanity might not be in the danger it’s in now.”
He still feared this tool he would never be able to control, and the things she would get him dragged into, but his need to be by her side won out.
“I don’t really get what you’re saying, but it sounds crazy!” Yuka yelled. Then, suddenly, she started strangling him from behind. The bike began to weave dangerously underneath him. She was really throwing her all into it, to the extent where he was pretty sure part of his spine would pop out if they fell over just then.
“More importantly, Arato, you need to apologize to Shiori,” she said.
Even at a moment like that, just hearing Shiori’s name brought back memories of the feeling of her lips and the way she had blushed afterward. Excitement filled Arato’s being. Uncaring of who might be looking on, he let out a howl. He was running dangerously low on oxygen, but he still leaned his weight forward and threw his all into pedaling. If he and his sister were smarter things never would have turned out the way they had.