But, reflecting on the fact that Tsukihiko would have to live in that wretched place for years and decades to come, I felt heartrendingly helpless.
…Is he really fine with this?
Surrounded by his hate-filled neighbors, treated as an idiot and a fool down to the core, exposed to violence on a passing whim?
“Never go back to the village.”
The words naturally flowed out of my mouth.
That’s right. He never has to go back. He can just stay here, forever.
Then he wouldn’t have to face this constant tragedy.
But I received no response to my suggestion.
Looking up, I saw Tsukihiko standing solemnly, fists clenched.
It made me remember the promise I made him accept.
When I told him to build a home for me, I commanded him to do something else as well: Leave once he was done.
Our entire relationship had a built-in time limit. The moment the house was complete.
I knew that. So why was I saying this?
Tsukihiko must be making that face for the same reason. I knew he was the sort of man who dutifully kept a promise. He proved that, over and over, for the past three years.
“…Sorry. Forget about it.”
The moment I said it, the tears came back.
It felt lonely.
So lonely. I was lost for a solution. I didn’t want him away from me.
Oh, why did I have to say that back then? I am such a fool. A stupid, useless fool.
“…I’m sorry.”
The word squeezed itself out from Tsukihiko.
I knew it. There was nothing strange about it. The most obvious thing in the world.
…But still, the part of me that was expecting something else felt horribly ashamed, beyond all hope.
Well, I’d best make him wrap up work on the house soon.
Once he’s out of my life, I’ll be all alone and…
“Will you be my wife?”
“…Yes.”
I was embraced by him.
It was the first time I felt the warmth of Tsukihiko—of a human.
The troubles in my mind disappeared without a trace, as if quelled by some supreme answer.
Tears are something you shed when you’re sad. When you’re in pain.
Not at times like this.
“I’m sorry. I guess I broke my promise.”
The same old, dutiful, guileless Tsukihiko. “You fool,” I said, berating him as I always had.
Day 1072.
The dead of summer.
The clear sky seemed to drain me of any desire to move.
It was a pure, transparent shade of blue, the flowing breeze keeping the clouds from forming.
“It took you long enough. I was about to die of boredom.”
“Yeah, sorry about that,” Tsukihiko said, bowing his head to me.
My home, finally complete, was a tad ungainly but still satisfying enough to me.
It wouldn’t crumble to pieces that easily, I presumed.
After all, it was built under my own personal direction. If this house fell apart, it was absolutely, completely Tsukihiko’s fault.
“I could complain about this and that, but…Well, at least it’s here. I have to compliment you for that.”
“Ha-ha-ha! Well, thank you. I don’t know, though, this feels…amazing. Profound, if you will. If you put your mind to it, you really can make anything.”
Tsukihiko looked over the home’s exterior walls, face flush with emotion.
His magnum opus, completed after three years. I’m sure it’s more than enough to make that simpleton beam with joy.
Speaking of “magnum,” however, something did bother me slightly.
“…Say, Tsukihiko?”
“Hmm? What is it?”
Tsukihiko smiled contentedly at me.
“This house is quite a bit larger than what I originally asked for, isn’t it?”
He twitched a little, face blanching even as the smile remained.
“Well, um…I’m—I’m sorry. I was just…anticipating things, so I made a few adjustments…”
He couldn’t have sounded more awkward.
That bastard. He never had any intention of leaving at all, did he?
It pained me, realizing that I was all but doing his bidding the whole time, but it also made me feel a touch ashamed.
“…I wasn’t complaining about it.”
Tsukihiko’s face brightened considerably.
“Oh! Well, great! Whew…I thought you’d ask me to build another house for a moment there.”
“Wh-who do you think I am?! …Well, forget about it. Let’s go inside.”
I left Tsukihiko behind as I headed for the front door. Before I reached it, I noticed something under the outer wall, a single flower blooming amid the freshly cut grass.
I approached it, wondering why it was blooming all to itself here. “Oh, that?” Tsukihiko explained. “I thought it looked kind of cute, so I kept it there.”
It took a certain type of male brain to describe a flower as “cute.” I wished he acted a bit more macho sometimes…but then, that’s him, in full bloom itself. It was complicated.
Just a single flower, deep pink in color, blooming proud and strong.
“…What’s this flower called?”
I knelt down for a closer look. Tsukihiko crouched next to me.
“You don’t know? Wow. You sure don’t get stumped all that often.”
“D-don’t be stupid! I just can’t recall it presently…Just tell me! Stop hiding things from me!”
Tsukihiko giggled at my urgent command and gave the flower a light tap.
“Well, it’s called an azami. A thistle.”
CHILDREN RECORD V
“Why did you have to say that?!”
Marie screamed at us, protesting furiously.
Her hair began to undulate on both sides of her head, as if symbolizing her emotions.
Her pink-colored eyes began to pulsate, turning a deep shade of red in time with her ragged breathing.
“Wh-whoa, Marie. Shintaro didn’t mean anything bad by it. He’s just making a guess. A what-if kind of thing. It’s nothing to get that angry about…”
Kido’s explanation was about half-right. Which meant it was half-wrong, too.
There was no what-if in my mind when I said it.
I was convinced it was God’s own truth.
“Nnnnhhh…!”
Marie groaned at Kido, wanting to say something but failing as the tears began to fall.
The exhibition clearly unnerved Konoha. He exchanged glances with Marie and me.
“I…I-I’m going outside…!”
“Hey! Marie…!”
Marie shot up to her feet, ignoring Kido’s plea as she flew out the door.
“I-I’ll chase her down!”
Konoha followed right behind her. With his speed, it likely wouldn’t be much of an ordeal for him.
Thus, Kido and I were left alone inside the room. Kido huffed out a frustrated sigh and sank into her chair.
“So…what do you think, Kido?”
Kido distractedly scratched the back of her head.
“I completely agree with you.”
“Feels like I did something bad to Marie just now, though. I guess in her mind, I pretty much said that her grandmother’s the cause of all this trouble.”
“Yeah, well, the truth hurts. She’ll be fine. We can just explain things to her in a way she’d understand.”
I settled into the chair Marie had been seated in, allowing me to face Kido directly.
I thought I had my theory pretty well settled inside my mind. To be honest, though, there was still far too much I couldn’t quite swallow about it all.
“Well, at least we know what Marie is now, pretty much.”
“Yeah. All written there in black-and-white, too. One way or the other, she’s gonna have to come to terms with it.”
Kido thumbed through t
he open diary as she spoke.
“A ‘monster,’ huh…? No matter the era, people never change, huh?”
There was something melancholy to her voice.
Everyone in the gang was probably familiar with being treated in the same way that the journal depicted.
They had all inherited the same factors influencing their lives, at least. It couldn’t have been pleasant, encountering the truth out there.
“So I guess the main cause is this ‘clearing eyes’ ability, huh?”
“Yeah. That’s got to be the one…although I don’t know if you’d really call it an ability.”
Kido’s take made sense. Out of the ten abilities that appeared in the diary, the ‘clearing’ one in particular was in a league of its own.
“Who knows…? It’s not like she was using it, exactly, I guess…”
As far as we could tell from the book, the woman herself didn’t recognize it as an “ability.”
But if these abilities came together to form…that world, and “clearing” is counted as one of them, that’s probably the best way to think about it.
“So, right now, not counting Marie, there are five people we know of carrying these ‘abilities.’”
“Yeah. Don’t really know which one Hibiya picked up yet, though. You think Konoha’s one of them, too, don’t you?”
“No doubt in my mind, yeah. Normal people don’t go jumping hundreds of feet in the air like that.”
Nothing like Konoha’s abilities showed up in the diary.
Which meant that it was one of the two skills touched upon but never fully explained inside: “stirring eyes” or “awakening eyes.”
“Okay. So, six, counting Konoha. And we don’t know where the other four carriers are yet…”
“If we can track down whoever has the ‘clearing’ skill, we might be able to get some more info on that world.”
“Yeah. Assuming the skill’s made it to this world, that is. If not, we’re pretty well screwed.”
In the end, the diary was a vast trove of information.
The “abilities,” and the other world we knew nothing about, were now firmly linked with each other. This would serve as a new guidepost for us, leading ever closer to the truth.
We were at the point where the final answers were tantalizingly near.
If things keep going this well, we might be able to storm that world and get back everyone who disappeared inside.
“That world, huh…?”
“That world.”
Kido and I fell silent. I imagined we were thinking the same thing.
“…We should probably come up with a name for it, huh? ‘That world’ is kind of getting old.”
“Funny. I was just thinking that, too.”
Not that I was ever much good at naming things. There’s no need to come up with anything too contrived. Just something easy to remember and—
“How about ‘Kagerou Daze’?”
I could see the sparkle in Kido’s eyes.
Great, she must be really proud of that one, I thought dryly.
As expected, Kido’s expression took on an “Oh, no, what have I done” nuance as she gauged my reaction.
“The kagerou refers to the haze you see on hot days. You know? Appearing as a shimmer, then disappearing right away. And the ‘daze’ describes how it puts you in a daze and stuff, so…”
Oh, and she has a whole explanation for it, too. Woo. It was like taking a bad joke and running it into the ground, and it irritated me. I wish she’d stop.
“Uh, sure. Great. That’s just fine…”
“No, wait, listen to me. The ‘daze’ part has another meaning, too…”
Somebody get me out of here.
Didn’t we just close this topic? How much meaning did she put in there?
I just told her that I didn’t give two craps about that.
“O-okay! Perfect! I think we’re pretty much done here, right? We should probably head home. It’s gonna be rough if we gotta hike in the dark.”
“Hm? Oh. Yeah, true. I’ll tell you the rest of the meaning once we’re back in the hideout.”
Cut me a break already. It’s not even that amazing a name anyway.
She’ll probably forget all about it by the time we reach the hideout.
Having to listen to this topic on end for so long was physically painful to me. Let’s just head for the hideout and have her talk Momo’s ear off about it instead.
I stood up and headed for the door.
Opening it, I felt my body’s temperature noticeably rise when exposed to the direct sunlight.
The thought of having to hike back across that trail was enough in itself to weigh me down with fatigue.
Maybe I could have Konoha carry me on his back…? Oh, nope. Can’t. He had the backpack.
In his arms, then…? Oh, right. He was carrying Marie that way. Nothing doing, either way.
Kido followed me out the door, shutting it behind her.
“So, where’s Marie?”
Marie said she was going outside, but she couldn’t have gone very far…
Kido and I gave the area around us a quick scan. Behind some of the brush facing the rear of the house, we caught a glimpse of a white, fluffy silhouette.
“There she is. Hello? Marie? I’m sorry about before, okay? Go ahead and come on back!”
Marie shouted something or other in response to me. It was too far away to make out.
“What’d she say…?”
Faced with no other choice, I proceeded through the brush, to a point where I could now clearly see her.
She was still screaming something. But what, though? I couldn’t figure it out.
I ventured on, up to a point where the brush in front of me abruptly ended.
I stopped, agape.
As I did, a miserable, sobbing plea for help rang sharply in my ears.
I edged a little closer, carefully, only to find that the fifteen feet or so from the place where the brush stopped to where Marie was standing was empty space, a deep ravine running below it.
“M-Marie?! Why’re you over there?!”
Scanning the area for any possible explanation, I spotted a log spanning the ravine a short way away, functioning as a crude bridge.
“I-I wub chesed buh a bee…,” Marie replied, still loudly sobbing.
I assumed she meant “I was chased by a bee,” which implied that, in her mad dash to escape this attacker, she shimmied her away across the log and to the other side.
“But what made you…?”
“Marie?!” exclaimed Kido, running in from behind me.
“What do you think we should do?”
“What do I think? I think we gotta help her, is what I think. Hey, where did Konoha go?”
Yeah, he wouldn’t have any problem crossing this span.
He could just hop on over, pick Marie up, and hop right on back. It probably wouldn’t even make him break a sweat.
“Oh, yeah, he went off at the same time she did, didn’t he…?”
“Is he lost?”
Kido and I drooped our shoulders.
If he wasn’t here, that was likely the cause. Where did he run off to, anyway?
Without him around, though, we were getting nowhere fast.
Judging by her current emotional state, it’d probably be too much to ask Marie to make her way across the log again.
But the idea of me going across and bringing her back was even more implausible. The reason was simple: I didn’t have anywhere near the guts to attempt a crossing.
“Well, I guess we just have to wait for…”
Before I could finish the thought, something small and yellow entered my field of vision.
It was proceeding toward my head at high speed, wings buzzing incessantly.
A bee.
“Gaaahhhh!!”
My body twitched in horror at this sudden turn of events.
I needed to get out of there as soon as possible. As soon as possible
…
I planted a foot down to start running…and hit air instead.
Whoops. Messed that up.
Kido, surprised, entered my vision, only to shrink rapidly.
My body, pulled by an irresistible force, plunged down toward the bottom of the ravine.
…Well, this is it. No saving me now.
Seeing the now-tiny Kido far away, I realized this was the end.
This was probably going to hurt something terrible. As it should, though. I knew how high up I was.
And that reminded me: I had pretty much the same thought the moment Ayano died. I was on the roof then, just watching, but…hmm. So this was how it felt.
“Must’ve been scary for her…”
Right after I whispered it and closed my eyes, I felt a dull impact across my body and lost consciousness.
The moment my eyes opened, I found a shivering Konoha, copious amounts of blood pouring out of his stomach.
I realized, instinctively, that he must have saved me.
Nothing physically hurt on my body, but the sight before me made my heart feel like it was being crushed.
Next to Konoha, there was a tree branch, about the diameter of your arm, sticking up from the ground.
It was dead, barren, the edge honed and dripping with blood.
It must have stabbed right through him.
I heard some shouting from the edge of the cliff above, but instead of listening to it, my mind was preoccupied with finding a way to rescue the man in front of me.
I was out of cell-phone range.
If we carried him, we’d never make it to help in time.
What else can we do?
First aid? No. This wasn’t something you could just bandage up and forget.
Something. There has to be something. Some way to save him…
“Why’d you have to save someone like me…?”
That was all I could say to Konoha, even as his shivering grew less violent.
He weakly whispered something in response.
He was coughing blood at the same time, so most of what he said was snuffed out by a bubbling whimper, but there was no doubting my ears. He said “because we’re friends.”
My body shook as tears began to well in my eyes.
Did I even do anything for him?
The Missing Children Page 9