Afterward, Hazuki went to their spot alone.
She folded her knees and sat down.
The vaporous ambitionless cityscape.
Buildings that looked like flash drives.
Hills that went on forever.
I was there, she thought.
I went over those hills.
But it was probably from a different angle. She knew that.
“Miss Makino,” a voice called.
Hazuki turned her face up and saw Shizue Fuwa standing by the handrail of the stairs.
“Miss…Fuwa.”
“Hello,” said Shizue and sat next to Hazuki.
Hazuki remembered that Miss Fuwa was not at the day’s session. A substitute counselor had come and said nothing important. Hazuki hadn’t listened to any of it, so she didn’t know what the substitute had said.
“Miss Fuwa…”
“I’m on break,” she answered before Hazuki could finish her question.
“I’m taking a short vacation. Sorry.”
“Um…”
“No one was punished. It was like nothing had happened.”
“Nothing?”
“It just makes you want to give up on humanity, doesn’t it?” Shizue said with a laugh.
Was this the kind of person she was?
Miss Fuwa?
Hazuki looked at her.
“According to the records, that man on the top floor was already dead. He was kept alive with those machines. The master of that body was the machine. Biologically speaking too, he was dead. So he couldn’t be killed. Even if he were, he wasn’t.”
“How about the others?”
“Terrorism.”
“And the serial killings?”
“It’s a huge maze. Some of those people…I mean the Kawabata and Nakamura cases were even broadcast on the public channel. But the person who killed those two and Yabe aren’t to be found anywhere.”
“But Ayumi confessed to it.”
“It’s a tremendous nuisance for the truth to be revealed. The man on the top floor of that building was a very important figure. The criminal had said that when he died, the whole world would turn upside down.”
“Criminal?”
“His name was Ishida,” Fuwa said. “But you know, it was just his delusion. That man was certainly important. He had the money and the power to run this country. But he died, and it’s not like the world fell apart. Nothing changed. You know that, right?”
“Yeah. Nothing changed.”
“Of course it didn’t. Humans aren’t that extraordinary. We’re small. The more humans tell themselves they are giant, the more I feel like I’m losing sight of myself. Humans are only as big as a human can be.”
“Ayumi said something similar.”
“Miss Kono…” Shizue said, looking far away.
“What’s going to happen to Ayumi?”
“Probably nothing.”
“But.”
“It was a lie. The police determined that she must be a pathological liar. That’s what they said in their data. I guess that really makes her a wolf girl,” said Shizue.
Hazuki didn’t know what that meant.
“It’s not very satisfying, is it, Miss Makino?”
“Not…not necessarily,” Hazuki said.
“Yes it is,” Shizue said. “Good, bad, weak, strong, holy, evil. The stories created around polar opposites are easiest to understand. But nothing’s that simple. I don’t think. I mean I don’t know,” Shizue said. She leaned on her side.
“Then there are those people who can murder people and then take a nap,” she said.
“Huh?”
A hand came out of the grass and waved.
“That was legitimate self-defense. He had a gun.”
“Who was the one with the gigantic gun, Tsuzuki?” Shizue said.
“M-Mio?”
Mio popped her dried-grass-covered head up from the lawn.
Ayumi was not there.
There was no scent of a beast.
“I wonder where she’s going to go,” Shizue said, looking high up into the sky.
“It must be hard. She can’t even repent for her crimes.”
Hazuki didn’t know.
She looked up at the sky.
The moon was not visible in the daytime.
But it wasn’t like it was gone.
Hazuki was here.
Mio was here.
Ayumi was nowhere.
It was in the past now.
There once was a beast called the wolf.
But.
The wolf went extinct.
That’s what they said.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
NATSUHIKO KYOGOKU: Born in Otaru, Hokkaido. Studied at Kuwasawa Design School. After working at advertising agencies, he established his own design studio. He still works as art director, designer, and bookbinder for various projects. He is also an expert in yokai (Japanese folklore of monsters and ghosts). His novel, The Summer of the Ubume, was published in English in 2009.
1996 | Mystery Writers of Japan Award for Moryo no Hako
(Grave of Goblins)
1997 | Izumi Kyoka Award for Warau Iuemon
(Laughing Iuemon)
2003 | Yamamoto Shugoro Prize for Nozoki Koheiji
(Inquisitive Koheiji)
2004 | Naoki Prize for Nochi no kosetsu Hyakumonogatari
(Going Around a Hundred Stories, the sequel)
HAIKASORU
The Future is Japanese
SLUM ONLINE by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Etsuro Sakagami is a college freshman who feels uncomfortable in reality, but when he logs onto the combat MMO Versus Town, he becomes “Tetsuo,” a karate champ on his way to becoming the most powerful martial artist around. While his relationship with new classmate Fumiko goes nowhere, Etsuro spends his days and nights online in search of the invincible fighter Ganker Jack. Drifting between the virtual and the real, will Etsuro ever be ready to face his most formidable opponent?
THE STORIES OF IBIS by Hiroshi Yamamoto
In a world where humans are a minority and androids have created their own civilization, a wandering storyteller meets the beautiful android Ibis. She tells him seven stories of human/android interaction in order to reveal the secret behind humanity’s fall. The tales Ibis tells describe the events surrounding the development of artificial intelligence (AI) in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. At a glance, these stories do not appear to have any sort of connection, but what is the true meaning behind them? What are Ibis’s real intentions?
LOUPS-GAROUS by Natsuhiko Kyogoku
In the near future, humans will communicate almost exclusively through online networks—face-to-face meetings are rare and the surveillance state nearly allpowerful. So when a serial killer starts slaughtering junior high students, the crackdown is harsh. The killer’s latest victim turns out to have been in contact with three young girls: Mio Tsuzuki, a certified prodigy; Hazuki Makino, a quiet but opinionated classmate; and Ayumi Kono, her best friend. And as the girls get caught up in trying to find the killer—who might just be a werewolf— Hazuki learns that there is much more to their monitored communications than meets the eye.
THE NEXT CONTINENT by Issui Ogawa
The year is 2025 and Gotoba Engineering & Construction—a firm that has built structures to survive the Antarctic and the Sahara—has received its most daunting challenge yet. Sennosuke Toenji, the chairman of one of the world’s largest leisure conglomerates, wants a moon base fit for civilian use, and he wants his granddaughter Tae to be his eyes and ears on the harsh lunar surface. Tae and Gotoba engineer Sohya Aomine head to the moon where adventure, trouble, and perhaps romance await.
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