Clockwork Planet: Volume 1

by Yuu Kamiya

  It was the wailing of his soul. Letting out a heartbroken cry that seemed like it would drag those who heard it to the realm of the dead Naoto collapsed onto the ground.

  He cried. Without any regard to how he looked, he punched the step beneath him as he wailed and wailed. The deep, bitter sorrow caused by the endless Stygian abyss in front of him tortured the sixteen-year-old boy’s heart.

  He didn’t care if his lungs gave out. A useless person like him who couldn’t save RyuZU’s younger sister should just be blown to pieces. The boy who had saved twenty million lives was disappointed in himself for failing to save a single automaton. Unable to bear that shame, he bawled and bawled.

  Seeing him so sad, Marie muttered, “You don’t have to cry and shout that much...”

  “Shut up, leave me alone! I just lost a supreme treasure of humanity that no number of measly human lives, be it hundreds of millions, can match—!”

  “Well, the yammering about her being the supreme treasure of humanity aside—” Marie pressed her fingers against her temple.

  “If there’s something beyond this point, wouldn’t it have been retrieved long ago?”

  “—Eh?” Naoto stopped crying and lifted his head.

  While looking up at what was above the spiral staircase, Marie said, “Kyoto’s purge was decided in advance. If there was an Initial-Y Series automaton here, the military should know how precious it is as well... It’s hard to think that they would leave it here.”

  RyuZU nodded in agreement. “—Yes, they may be a beyond worthless bunch who reached for the easy solution of purging the city to cover up their blunder, who even imbeciles would be outraged to be compared to, and who could never hope to be worthy of owning AnchoR, but if they cannot even understand how precious she is, then I would really have to question whether they actually have brains. As such, I believe it is likely that they moved her.”

  Noticing an incongruence from her words, Naoto asked, “...Wait a second, RyuZU. If you say that, then wouldn’t you have expected this from the beginning?”

  “Ahh, I apologize, Master Naoto. I assumed that them lacking brains at all was precisely the case, so...”

  Seeing RyuZU bow to him with a nonchalant look on her face, Naoto slumped his shoulders.

  “...What am I doing... trying so desperately, even putting RyuZU in harm’s way.”

  “It’s fine, isn’t it? At the very least, you saved twenty million lives.”

  “It isn’t fine at all!” Naoto yelled while glaring at Marie resentfully. He reflected on what had happened today.

  Things were great during the day. I had a date with RyuZU where I saw her wearing cute clothes and was verbally abused just the right amount—it was truly a period of supreme bliss. A heartwarming experience worth commemorating.

  Yet, the moment I met this cursed, shitty, walking landmine, I fell from heaven to hell. I was wheedled into doing this and that, dragged into the maelstrom of a storm, forced to overcome countless, desperate situations, and ended up being left in this sorry state.

  “All my blood, sweat, and tears were in vain... Damn it.”

  “Stop sulking. If nothing else, you altered the fate of this planet today. And on top of that,” Marie said cheerfully, “You forced me to resolve myself.”

  “...Haah?” Naoto sounded puzzled.

  However, Marie didn’t answer him, instead turning her gaze towards the big man besides her.

  “Halter.”

  “Hm?”

  She announced with a tender smile, “I’m going.”

  Halter sighed.

  “...I won’t stop you. I guess I’ll ask just in case, though—Are you fine with that?” Halter asked solemnly.

  However, Marie’s expression was refreshingly clear.

  With a firm step, she widened her stance, stuck her chest out proudly, put her hands on her hips, and straightened that small back of hers with all her might as she faced Halter. Her emerald eyes were brimming with hope and confidence.

  It was a dream of hers. A foolish yet dear one that only children would be allowed to dream—a noble intent.

  While feeling so much as envy of the unwavering radiance of those eyes, Halter put on a bitter smile as he nodded. “...Alright, I’ll be taking the liberty of accompanying you then, Dr. Marie.”

  “Very well.” Marie nodded.

  By her feet, Naoto tilted his head. “What are you guys even talking about...?”

  “Something that only concerns the two of us—no, perhaps it does concern all of us.” Marie laughed impishly as she gazed at Naoto. “Sorry Naoto, but could you forget what I said about recommending you to the Academy?”

  “...Wuh?” Unable to follow this conversation in the slightest, Naoto did nothing but make a stupid sound.

  Seeing the boy like that, Marie smirked and she turned on her heels.

  Her summer coat fluttered, and she began walking gracefully away. Halter followed behind her small, yet somehow large figure.

  “Hey, Marie?”

  “It’s okay.”

  Without turning around, Marie waved her hand, tracing a small arc.

  With a happy looking face, she said, “—See you soon, Naoto.”

  ●

  “Master Naoto, this is the part where you say ‘ahhh’?”

  ...Now then, how should I explain this situation?

  Naoto was at a loss.

  It was something that happened at lunchtime on weekdays in Tadasunomori High School.

  The students who preferred boxed lunches over what they served in the school cafeteria ate lunch huddled in groups wherever they liked. Naoto and RyuZU were two of them. They had taken up seats in the middle of the classroom.

  It was a week after the purge.

  The purge, the conspiracy between the military and Meister Guild, the crisis RyuZU had faced, and what had happened to her younger sister. In just one week, everything had returned to how it was before, like it had all been a bad dream. Indeed, everything was the same as before.

  Naoto was used to his classmates looking at him with cold eyes and clicking their tongues. It was just his everyday life. Everything had been rewound like to how it had been back before he met Marie.

  If anything...

  “Master Naoto, is it your ears, eyes, or brain that is in poor condition right now?

  Naoto cast his eyes downward.

  RyuZU had pushed their tables next to each other, laid out her homemade boxed lunch, and glued herself unnecessarily close to Naoto. Brewing up a saccharine mood simply oozing with sweetness, she picked up a piece of broccoli with her chopsticks and said, “Now, say ‘ahh,’ Master Naoto.”

  —Go blow yourselves to smithereens.

  That’s what the gazes of his classmates were silently telling him in a secondary audio feed. Unable to bear it, Naoto hastily stuffed the broccoli into his mouth.

  Indeed; if there were two things that were different, it would be that RyuZU was attending school with Naoto like it was natural, and the around-the-clock reporting on the great scandal that had been for days now.

  —The attempted, premeditated purge of Kyoto.

  The fact that the government, military, and Meister Guild had all conspired to destroy an entire city and massacre its twenty million residents had come to light, turning society upside-down in a state of turmoil.

  The disclosure included not only information directly relating to the incident, but even authentic spy documents and reports of shady dealings, and in large numbers at that.

  The truth behind a historical assassination, records of conversations between the government and private industries, a list of spies that were sleeping in a certain country, secret bases of the military that weren’t marked on any maps, the possession of weapons that were banned by the international arms treaty, the top-secret human experiments done by one section of Meister Guild, and so on...

  While the incumbent Japanese prime minister did acknowledge responsibility for the military’s premeditated purge
that had failed...

  “This is undoubtedly terrorism,” he’d said, his voice trembling with anger...

  ...A famous commentator on a certain talk show had remarked, “It’s true that trying to purge a city is horrible, but no matter how you look at it, isn’t the one who disclosed all that top-secret information even worse?”

  He had received a grand bashing for that comment.

  And one news program had played a recording of a conversation in which a public relations representative of Meister Guild by the name of Limmons ordered the murder and cover-up of the young genius clocksmith, Marie Bell Breguet (sixteen years old). In wake of this revelation, Limmons had fainted and been taken to a hospital, and the Vacheron Corporation, considered his sponsor, had begun to face a fervent uprising in the form of a boycott. Their finances went into the red for a long slump.

  The tragic daughter of the Breguet family had been premeditatedly murdered for endeavoring to save the city to the very end in the midst of this tempestuous scandal that swept the entire world—and because of this moving narrative, the Breguet Corporation came out unscathed.

  Naoto inadvertently recalled the smug face of the blond-haired girl who had smiled ferociously behind the scenes of this chain of events.

  “...Well, it’s fine, I guess.”

  To Naoto, who was distant from others to begin with, what had happened to her didn’t particularly interest him. When all was said and done, everything had returned to the way it was before, except for RyuZU.

  ...However, that was the biggest problem.

  “Master Naoto, if you are not learning, then as I suspected, it must be your brain that is in poor—”

  Seeing RyuZU hold out another piece of broccoli in front of him, Naoto’s face twitched and he smiled lopsidedly before unloading, “Look here now! Would you be so kind as to pay a little attention to the looks we’re getting?! If I’m going to die from stress like this, then I’d rather—”

  He swallowed the words he was about to say.

  RyuZU was the same as usual. She was smiling with a face full of refinement and composure.

  However, back then, he had come to understand that her free will—the subtle signs of the automaton’s “heart”—read like this: “I made this for you, yet you won’t eat it?”

  “I apologize. I’ll eat everything without leaving a single grain of rice behind.”

  “You should have just said that from the beginning. Were you teasing me to gratify yourself?”

  “No! Our classmates look like they want to kill me right now, you know. Geez—”

  Just then...

  Naoto saw something that absolutely shouldn’t have been there, and he froze.

  A bald, middle-aged man had been standing by the front entrance of the classroom for who knew how long. He had eyes that were a little too fierce to belong in a high school. He was glowering at the students.

  ...Who is he?

  His silent, intimidating aura caused the chatter in the classroom to immediately cease.

  Eventually, he walked in and lumbered his way onto the podium.

  He wasn’t a teacher.

  Furthermore, he wasn’t even Japanese.

  Actually, further-furthermore, one could say that half of him wasn’t even human.

  The man wore dark sunglasses and a gray suit over his well-built body. His lips, which were pushed together cynically, exuded the sexiness of a man who was dangerous, like a wild beast.

  And furthermore, the operating sound of a reinforced cyborg body that only Naoto’s ears could hear came from him.

  The man spoke. “Ahh—My name is Vainney Halter. I know this is sudden, but starting now, I’m your new homeroom teacher. I’m not into brats, so spare me the love letters and date invitations. Any questions?”

  “......Whatterya doin’?” Naoto asked, inadvertently slipping into his native dialect.

  Getting a vague sense of déjà vu, Naoto held his head, but the scary thing was that the joke didn’t end there.

  Accepting the silence of the overwhelmed students, Halter nodded once. In a manner that was somehow reminiscent of a soldier, he said, “Well then, without further ado, I’ll be introducing a transfer student to you guys. —Come in.”

  “Okay.”

  The sun has arrived, Naoto thought.

  The one who entered the classroom was a blond-haired, Caucasian girl.

  Her skin was like velvet, her bright, golden hair tied up in twintails fell to her shoulders, and her big, vibrant, emerald-jade eyes were shining with vigor.

  The girl looked graceful wearing the school’s uniform as she stood on the podium majestically. She was about as petite as Naoto, but her confident, imposing air made her look much, much larger than she actually was. Even now, her charismatic aura seemed like it would materialize as a halo around her entire body, and the students’ jaws dropped as they stared in amazement. Naoto was speechless as well.

  The girl smiled sweetly as she spoke in a brisk, lively manner.

  “I’m Maëribell Halter. I often get told that I look like a certain celebrity, but I’m not her, so please feel free to just call me Marie for short. I look forward to learning with everyone.”

  She bowed gracefully. In doing so, she snuck a glance at Naoto. Her emerald eyes were gleaming as she looked at him like a predator eyeing its prey.

  Of course—no matter how one looked at it, the girl was none other than Marie Bell Breguet.

  Naoto gazed at her figure, dumbfounded and unable to move even a single finger.

  “......No, really, whatterya doin’?” he blurted out in his native dialect.

  —The rest of this scene shall be omitted.

  ●

  After school, the four had gathered on the desolate rooftop of Tadasunomori High School. The Equatorial Spring was traversing the red sky, and the Core Tower, illuminated by the setting sun, produced a dark silhouette.

  The girl who had claimed to be Maëribell Halter was gazing down at the streets of Kyoto from the rooftop fence. Facing her back, Naoto called out to her with a sigh. “...So, I’m wondering if I could get an explanation.”

  “Oh, didn’t I say that I would see you soon?”

  “Expecting me to understand that to mean that you would transfer to my school is beyond unreasonable.”

  Marie turned around and grinned. “Did I surprise you? I surprised you, didn’t I.”

  “Wow, you’re super annoying.”

  Frowning slightly, Naoto squinted his eyes and looked away.

  “If you don’t know, then I guess I’ll tell you: the world thinks you were killed.”

  “Of course I know that. After all, I’m the source of those leaks.” Spreading out her hands, Marie smiled deviously with her entire face. “The world is in uproar thanks to those leaks, isn’t it! Seeing those imbeciles who can’t do anything but sabotage others trip left and right as they try to lay the blame on each other, what joy! It’s euphoric! Kuhehe♪.”

  “Oy, lower your voice,” Halter muttered as he slapped his bald head. “...I knew that you would divulge everything about the incident this time to the media, but I never thought you’d breach your NDA with Meister Guild and dump all the classified information. What are you, a devil?”

  “Are you stupid? There aren’t any NDAs that bind the dead.”

  “You know that politicians and military officers throughout the world were furiously forced to resign?”

  “Like I care what happens to those scum. I’m doing these things for the sake of what I want to accomplish.

  “...So just what is your objective?” RyuZU said to Marie, looking suspicious. “I do not have even the slightest interest in the things you choose to do, but if you try to use Master Naoto for something suspicious, then I shall respond with physical retribution.”

  “My, treating me like I’m a monster. I’m just looking for a little cooperation.”

  “Cooperation...?” Naoto muttered. It was clear from his voice that he thought Marie’s w
ords were fishy.

  Marie raised her index finger and smiled.

  “It’s simple,” she announced, “—I just want you to come save the world with me for a bit.”

  “............Haah?” After a lengthy pause, Naoto knit his eyebrows sharply.

  Marie continued cheerfully, “I dumped all the dark secrets I knew this time, but that was just the tip of the iceberg. There are countless more vile conspiracies in the world. In their wake lie people who are being trampled on and city malfunctions that are being neglected.”

  “...And...?”

  “Charging into situations like that freely, tearing both politics and conspiracies into shreds, repairing mechanisms as we please, and stopping attempts to sacrifice people just like the one this time. We probably wouldn’t be praised or thanked by anyone, but it would definitely feel great, right?!”

  “What’s up with you? Have you been hit with Middle School Syndrome two years late?”

  “More like I’ve reached my rebellious stage. I’m going to revolt against this rotten world. Rock’n’roll, baby.”

  Marie took a pose twanging an air guitar.

  Naoto asked, “...That’s fine and all, but why did you transfer to my school?”

  “Well, there’re several reasons, but the main one is to camouflage myself.”

  “Camouflage...?”

  Naoto tilted his head, and Marie grinned. “Do you know what the most convenient position to pursue an ideal from is?”

  Naoto shook his head. “Nope.”

  “You see—It’s as a terrorist,” Marie stated. She was smiling sweetly, yet her face looked menacing. “Terrorists have no responsibilities or restraints whatsoever. They can just make a big racket as they hoist up their absolutely nonsensical ideals.”

  “...Isn’t that reasoning a bit much?”

  “It’s fine. After all, being allowed to say things like this is a privilege reserved for children.”

  —Marie Bell Breguet didn’t speak her heart. There was no way she could.

  It was a vision that was so far-fetched that she hadn’t even dreamed about it until now.

  I might be able to save this Clockwork Planet.