Boogiepop At Dawn

by Kadono. Kouhei

  He also published a great number of dissertative essays and books that outlined history or classic literature, and these were the only books of his that sold. Even his biggest fans would admit to his face that they'd never touched one of his novels.

  As far as he was concerned, the essays and dissertations were just a byproduct of plotting his novels, and he was simply drawing up the ideas and the data for his own purposes, but people seemed to prefer the spinoffs to the core of his work.

  Why...?

  Seiichi did not feel excessively upset by this, but the complete rejection of the novels he poured his soul into was a little depressing.

  Yet on he wrote, almost never taking any time off.

  He didn't know why he worked so hard. It was possible he simply liked writing, and it was also possible that if he stopped writing all the failures in his life would come flooding back into his mind, crushing him. Of course, it could be said that most of those failures had been caused by none other than his obsession with writing. His divorce could certainly be traced to his constant need to work.

  He chose not to think about it.

  His ex-wife was no longer speaking to him, but she often met with their daughter, Nagi, whom he had custody of. She seemed well. She was remarrying soon, and he was glad. He hoped she would be happy this time. He really held no ill feelings toward her. And that very lack of resentment, he mused, was probably part of what led her to say,

  “You never needed me.”

  But he had really loved her. He still did.

  Even after the break-up, he had no inclination to marry anyone else. Since the divorce was caused by her affair, the court granted him the right to demand alimony, but he had no reason to do so. Really, he'd only gone through with the divorce because she had suggested it. If she had asked him to forgive her he absolutely would have.

  According to Nagi,

  “Being with you made Mommy tired.”

  She was talking about him, but all he could say was,

  “That's a shame,” like it had nothing to do with him. Nagi smiled at his response, but it must have bothered her.

  When she wasn't there, he made up for the loneliness by spending even more time writing. He hadn’t changed much since his wife had left.

  Then one day, Seiichi received a letter.

  A thin letter, in a perfectly ordinary envelope. It was hardly unusual for him to receive dozens of letters on any given day, so he was not surprised to see it. He opened it absently, and was astonished by what he read.

  Dear Kirima Seiichi,

  I have never written to you before, but I have been an avid reader of your books for some time. I have something I would like you to know.

  I will be dead soon. Murdered.

  Yes, I know. You are already assuming that I am a mental patient with a persecution complex. I understand. Honestly, I wish to God I was, but I believe I don't have long to live. This is an inescapable fact. I have noticed strange people tracking my movements. Assassins sent by the observers. How can I put this? I was born with a strange ability, and I knew from the beginning it was not a talent the world would accept. I knew that if anyone found out about it I would not live a very peaceful life.

  But then I discovered your books. In one of them you wrote as follows:

  “Loneliness can be your greatest gift. The more isolated you are early in life, the greater your ability to connect to a large number of people later on.”

  When I read that, l felt like I'd been struck by lightning. After that, I stopped hiding my ability and began letting it affect at least a small corner of the world.

  However, as I feared, my decision to expose my powers did not turn out well. Not that I regret what I did, but it seems the world is determined to eradicate foreign elements like myself. I have become the enemy of modern society. I knew that l would.

  So here at the end, I thought I should thank you. lf I had not read your books, l would have remained isolated, living my life with a strange sense of awareness. I never really cared for that.

  Why are we born?

  I prefer to borrow another writer's words to answer that question -- we are born for love and revolution.

  I have no idea if you would have approved of my actions. But it is an undeniable fact that your words supported me. For that reason alone I am deeply grateful, so grateful that I find myself writing this letter. Thank you.

  There seems little point in writing more than this. I shall take my leave now. Good-bye. I pray that you will be in good health and writing for many years to come.

  Sincerely yours.

  The content alone was odd enough, but even more surprising was that Seiichi had a good idea who this anonymous letter was from.

  Once before, when he had been writing a script for a manga (which had been canceled due to lack of popularity) he had received a fan letter from a boy, and he recognized the handwriting. But the earlier letter had had the boy's name and address.

  Seiichi quickly went through his file boxes until he found the boy's letter, making sure. It was clearly the same handwriting. There was nothing particularly odd about the first letter, just a few simple words of encouragement.

  What does it mean? He'll be murdered...?

  Seiichi found the letter fascinating. No matter how unusual his readers tried to make themselves sound in their letters, he could always determine the source of their ideas. But this one felt different. The writer simply wanted to send him this message -- nothing more.

  Deciding he had to know more about the writer, he called his consistently idle friend Sakakibara Gen.

  “Gen, are you free?”

  “Basically. I pretty much always am -- you know that. What, got something you need me to check up on?”

  “Yeah. Something strange. I need it as fast as possible.”

  “Okay, leave it to me.”

  Gen was a martial artist, but he had stopped teaching due to deteriorating relations around his dojo. It left him free to work part-time collecting information for Seiichi. He helped out often enough to earn credit in Seiichi's books, but he insisted he wasn't the type for publicity and refused to allow Seiichi to use his name.

  “Please,” Seiichi said, hanging up after filling Gen in on the details.

  For a while he sat in silence, thinking.

  An enemy of society...?

  Seiichi himself had used that phrase, somewhere in his writings. That's what bothered him most of all.

  ***

  “To start at the end...he really is dead,” Gen began, three days later, putting down a picture of a boy on Seiichi's table.

  “………!”

  Seiichi had feared as much, but it was still a shock.

  “He died a month ago. And the stamp on the letter is the day after.”

  “The day after...?”

  The letter had gone through the publisher, so this was a normal time lag. If it had come faster, he couldn't help but wonder if he could have done something.

  But Gen shook his head.

  “You'd never have made it in time. He'd been missing for three days before he mailed the letter.”

  “Missing? So he was up to something?”

  “Well...” Gen shrugged,

  “To tell the truth, I don't believe a word of it.”

  “Wh-what? What does that mean?”

  “No, it really might be nothing. He doesn't seem to have caused much of a fuss, and he doesn't seem to have hurt anyone.”

  From what Gen had uncovered, that boy's friends had all recently started getting very good grades.

  “And not because he'd been tutoring them or anything. They say all he did was give them a couple of pointers or rub their head. And it was more than just their grades that had improved. One of them was in an amateur band, and suddenly he started composing really distinctive songs -- they all displayed similar improvements in cognitive abilities.”

  “...really? So...if it were me, my novels could've gotten better?”

  �
�Yeah, basically. And if he'd come to me I might've learned how to get along with other people. Basically, it sounds like he had a knack for taking whatever skills people were struggling with and helping them make a breakthrough. The young kids I talked to were almost in tears over his loss. 'Why did he have to die?"'

  “That is hard to believe. He was still in his teens, right? What was he, some sort of wannabe miracle worker?”

  “Wannabe? Look, we have no way to prove it now, but it sounds like he was the real thing. And unlike most faith healers, he didn't ask for money. Also, he only helped out his friends.”

  “...how did he die?”

  “Fell down the stairs and hit his head, apparently. There were no witnesses -- he was dead when they found him.”

  “So he went missing...and then was found dead at the bottom of the stairs?” Seiichi frowned.

  “And nobody thought that was strange?”

  “Nope. His classmates and neighbors all say he was a creepy kid. Nobody knew what he was thinking most of the time, so they weren't particularly suspicious. Only his friends made a fuss. They were the ones who talked to me. His death didn't appear on anyone else's radar. And his family moved away somewhere. . .vanished without a trace.”

  Gen sighed.

  “No trouble at all. And yet, it was not enough trouble.. .which means trouble.”

  “…………”

  “Seiichi, this is just another hunch...but this is bad news. If you get mixed up in this, anything can happen.”

  “I can't write about it, then...” Seiichi sighed.

  They fell silent. Neither one of them could pursue this further. There was too little to work with.

  But one thing still bothered him.

  Why did that boy call himself an enemy of society?

  He still didn't know.

  ***

  Still bothered, Seiichi went back through the letters he'd received. He found quite a few rather similar samples.

  “I'm so thrilled. I think I can do now what I thought I never could.”

  “I've held back so long, but now I feel like I don't need to anymore.”

  “I have newfound power thanks to you. I have the courage to take that first step.”

  Until now, he had been content to know he made his readers happy, and he'd been grateful for their letters, but now he saw a common nuance lurking behind their writings.

  They're all talking about what they can do, skills they didn’t have before, things like that...

  But what did they actually mean?

  Belatedly, but with no better ideas, Seiichi sent letters back to them, asking how they were getting along.

  Almost all of them came back undelivered.

  Those that did elicit a response were always from the family.

  “...passed away two years ago. He was a big fan of your books...”

  “…………”

  By this point, it was rather obvious. People who loved Kirima Seiichi's books were either dying or going missing.

  What the hell is going on...?

  By this point he could not even talk to Gen, his best friend. Gen had such a powerful conscience that he would pay no heed to the danger involved. If there had been even a tiny clue about the first boy, he would definitely have followed up on it.

  But even he had said nothing good could come of getting involved in something like this.

  Seiichi could almost smell something major operating behind the scenes.

  “…………”

  Thinking about it was making his stomach hurt. His nerves were fraying. Nagi noticed and had started asking if he was okay, looking worried.

  “Nah, it's nothing.”

  “You're working too hard. You need to rest!” she wheedled, accusatively. Seiichi could feel himself calming down.

  “Nah, I'm fine. Really.”

  “You are not! I'm serious, Dad!”

  “Ha ha, sorry, sorry.”

  Every time Nagi got mad at him, he thought, No matter what happens, I have to keep her out of it.

  He had no way of knowing what the future held, and had no way of telling just what kind of destiny his daughter would eventually choose for herself.

  That she would become the Fire Witch was beyond the imagination of even a writer like Kirima Seiichi.

  ***

  But even with all that, his output never slowed.

  Obviously, part of his drive to write was so he'd earn money and be able to raise Nagi, but above and beyond that, he simply felt like he had to write. He didn't know why, but the way he wrote had changed.

  He stopped writing novels.

  He devoted all his efforts to the kind of Kirima Seiichi works that pleased people, books that had commercial value. Hardly anyone noticed the change. His novels had always been largely ignored, and their sudden disappearance did not make much difference. Since he was still publishing more than ten books a year, he could hardly be accused of slowing down.

  Then, one day at the dinner table, Nagi said something that made him look up in surprise.

  “Eh? What?”

  “I said, Mom wants to see you.”

  “...why?”

  “They've set a wedding date, and she wants to see you once before then. I don't know why,” Nagi shrugged.

  “But I have no hold over her. I wonder why...?”

  “You don't want to see her? I can tell her that.”

  It was hard to tell which of them was the parent.

  “N-no. It's fine. Tell her I'm willing to meet,” Seiichi said.

  Nagi started back at him.

  “Dad...you're still in love with her, aren't you? You'd do anything she said?”

  He flushed.

  “Th-that's not the kind of thing you should be asking!”

  “But...ah, never mind.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she said, turning away.

  “Now I have to know! Tell me,” he insisted.

  “Okay then,” Nagi said, sulking.

  “The man she's marrying...he's rich. A lot richer than we are.”

  “Huh. So?”

  “ So an extra child or two wouldn't matter at all.”

  “…………”

  Now Seiichi understood.

  I see...

  She wanted to take custody of Nagi. That's why she wanted to see him.

  “...so what do you think?”

  “. ..what do you think?” Nagi countered, sounding a little angry.

  “Oh...I...” He would be lonely without Nagi. But...if Nagi was taken away from him, her safety might be guaranteed.

  “I…” Nagi stared up at him earnestly.

  Then she suddenly burst out laughing.

  “Ah ha ha ha ha!”

  Seiichi looked back at her, surprised.

  “Wh-what's so funny?”

  “You looked like you were about to cry! Don't worry, I'll stay with you,” Nagi promised, grinning happily.

  Seiichi was taken aback.

  “I really looked like that?”

  “It was so obvious! You really are green,” she said, with a touch of childish bluntness. Had she learned the phrase watching samurai movies?

  “Green. . . ?” There were times when Nagi seemed to be much more of an adult than he was.

  “You're much more together than I am. Yikes.”

  “I am! Children are born later, and it is our destiny to out-evolve the adults!” she cackled. This time some sci-fi film was providing her ideas, in all probability.

  “Evolve...they do say the child is father to the man.”

  That was an English expression, and actually meant much the same thing as the Japanese expression,

  “A three year old's soul lasts a hundred years,” but he chose to translate it literally.

  “So, by out-evolve, are you saying you plan to trample the people that came before you?” he said, taking the joke to the next level.

  Nagi laughed again.

  “Of course! All the humans who hav
e ever lived were just stupid, and we kids will have to teach lessons to adults instead! Ha ha!” she laughed, waving a finger around.

  “So while you boast, we have to bow our heads to you? Sounds awful. I bet a lot of people would complain...”

  He trailed off, an idea striking him.

  Evolution...

  Of course! How had he not noticed?

  That was the reason.

  He had been thinking of little else. That boy with the ability to make other people's talent bloom, and all the others as well-they had all been ahead of the people around them.

  Until now he had been wondering why such amazing people had been targeted, but he'd been looking at it backwards. They had been eliminated because they were advanced.

  By what?

  He had just said it himself. Everything in the present would resist the appearance of the future. The scale of that made him dizzy just thinking about it. Such careful and knowledgeable targeting went far beyond the level of any natural organization.

  This was a war for survival. There could be no mercy. The new people would be killed the instant they showed even the slightest glimpse of themselves.

  And all those people who had read his books, and decided to use their powers...

  So now...

  They had not yet noticed, but it was only a matter of time. When the people disposing of these evolved children noticed that they were all reading his books, they would come after him.

  “…………”

  Nagi glared at him. He'd tuned her out abruptly.

  But she soon shrugged, and went back to eating. Seiichi often received flashes of inspiration and had a habit of ignoring the world around him.

  Yet another reason I can’t leave him alone...Nagi thought, giggling.

  They ate in orderly silence, with none of the bustle of the moment before.

  “…………”

  “…………”

  At length, Nagi heard Seiichi whisper, 'Nagi...do you like Gen?”

  “Eh? Sakakibara-sensei?” Nagi asked, not particularly bothered by the sudden question.