“Corp — damn it, it’s no use, he can’t hear me,” Harvey spat with a click of his tongue, and immediately afterward one of the benches found its target and came at them. “We’re getting out of here!” With his good right arm (though there must have been at least a crack in it after the bench fell on it), Harvey took Kieli’s hand and ran outside of the waiting area.
“Why do you have to have such bad timing!? He almost killed me with that temper once, you know!”
“I didn’t know — but…but how are you still alive?”
Kieli moved her feet forward almost as if they were falling as he dragged her along. She couldn’t understand even half of what was going on. No matter how she looked at it, someone in Harvey’s condition would be dead, or at least, they wouldn’t be able to move around normally with those injuries.
A bench flew past, grazing by the two as they ran from the waiting area, and Kieli’s feet became tangled as she drew back in surprise. “Wah!” She dragged Harvey down with her, and they both tumbled and rolled along the cold station floor.
“You’re in the way! Get outside! Why do I always —”
Thrust violently aside, Kieli had scrambled on all fours to a few steps away when she heard the dull thunk sound of something getting hit behind her; and Harvey’s caustic words were abruptly cut off.
“……?” As a reflex, she stopped moving and nervously looked back.
A flying bench had crashed into the “Employees Only” sign, causing the door to cave in — Harvey was between the bench and the door. The seat of the iron bench had run deeply into his throat, like the blade of a guillotine.
His copper-colored eyes open wide, Harvey, pinned to the door, had stopped moving completely.
Only half-standing and twisting her neck in an unnatural angle, Kieli stared blankly at the dead, pinned body. Her thought processes had short-circuited, and she couldn’t react immediately to the voice she suddenly heard in her head saying, “Kieli, look out!”
Immediately her body started moving on its own, like it was being pulled by strings, and made a very nice dive out of the way. The bench that had come at her hit the ground where she had just been and was smashed into a grotesque shape.
Thrown to the ground, for just a second, she could see another pair of legs overlapping her own, and a blond girl slid out of her. “I’m sorry, Kieli. I’m sorry.” Kneeling like a scolded child, Becca floated in front of Kieli, repeating her apology over and over.
“I didn’t think it would turn into this. I’m sorry, Kieli.”
“Becca, I —”
She was about to say, “I’m fine, but Harvey-san…” as a beastly roar thundered from inside the waiting area.
“You!” the one-legged soldier shouted upon seeing Becca, and a shock wave shot out of the speaker, accompanied by a grating dissonance.
“Kyaaaa!”
Becca took a direct hit and disappeared with a scream. “No, Becca!” Kieli automatically reached out in an effort to grab hold of Becca. But her hands only grabbed empty space, and the force of the shock wave sent her head over heels into the wall. Just before she hit it, Harvey, still pinned to the door, thrust his arm to the side and worked as a cushion.
“Har —” Kieli looked beside her in surprise, when the radio’s speaker strummed out a still more terrible, grating noise. She impulsively drew her head back and returned her gaze to the waiting area.
The soldier’s figure wavered for an instant and then disappeared suddenly, like when a video signal turns off.
A wisp of black smoke rose from the radio. Apparently it had shorted out.
Save for the small pattering sound of the dust settling back to the floor, silence returned to the station.
“Are you satisfied, Corporal?” Harvey grumbled beside a dazed Kieli, pulling the bench out of his throat. The bench fell to the ground with a clang, and Harvey kicked it with the bottom of his shoe, as if yelling at it to go away. Kieli gaped at the effortlessness of his actions, but panic set in after a while, and she cried, “Are, er, are you okay? We need a doctor!”
Unsure whether it would be better to take him with her or bring someone to him, she looked desperately back and forth from Harvey to the exit. But he ignored her frenzy and casually said, “It’s fine. Leave it alone; it’ll close up,” as if nothing was wrong (although he used a scratchy voice that made her wonder if the bench had torn his vocal cords, and coughed violently a few times as if he was in some pain).
“You’re…okay…?”
She sat down next to him and took a long, hard look at the wound. What she saw was a thick black liquid resembling coal tar oozing out of his blood and wrapping around the severed tissue like a living thing. She leaned forward to see what it was, but Harvey covered his throat with one hand.
“Um, are you really an Undying…?” she asked, looking at his face with upturned eyes.
Harvey, for his part, blinked in surprise. “Huh? I thought you already knew. Didn’t your buddy tell you?”
“Oh yeah, Becca!” His question reminded Kieli of Becca, and she passed her gaze hastily over her surroundings. “Becca, are you okay? Where are you?”
Her “buddy” didn’t answer.
“Becca…?”
When the terrifying thought hit her that Becca might actually have been completely erased, she heard a muttered, “That scared me.…” Becca floated into view in front of Kieli with a somewhat pale expression. “A little more and that would have killed me…”
“You’re already dead,” Kieli shot back, in shock. Then, feeling the situation was somehow funny, she let out a small laugh. Becca said, “Oh yeah. I am dead, aren’t I?” and laughed bashfully, and the two put their faces together and giggled.
“…You two seem to be enjoying yourselves. I feel like you’ve caused nothing but trouble for me, though.”
She didn’t really know why herself, but when Harvey leaned against the collapsed door and let out a sigh of complete exhaustion, her eyes filled with tears, perhaps from relief, and before she knew it she was crying and laughing at the same time.
A bell rang noisily, announcing the departure of the eastbound train.
“Kieli, Kieli, we’re leaving!” Becca announced excitedly, kneeling on her seat with her face against the window like a small child.
“I know. Wait a minute.” Kieli was reaching up and pushing her shoulder bag onto the overhead shelf. It only contained a few days’ worth of clothes and a reference book, but that reference book was insanely heavy. She shouldn’t have brought it.
She somehow managed to stow her luggage and, holding the coat she’d taken off, sat down next to Becca. After agonizing over which of her personal wardrobe — which wasn’t very large to begin with — to wear, in the end she wore the black school-designated coat and her uniform. She got a stern look from Becca, who appeared in her favorite red coat, asking, “What is with that drab outfit?” But ostensibly she was on a trip for a school assignment, so she felt like wearing her uniform was the right thing to do.
I’m going on a train trip to write my Church history report. I’ll be back before the Colonization holidays are over. She wrote her notice of leave, and, taking advantage of Miss Hanni, the teacher on duty, being away from her office, she left it on her desk without a word. Her grandmother had left her a little bit of money, and she planned to use that to pay for her trip. There was never a pressing need for it in her dull daily life at the boarding school, so this was the first time she ever wanted to use the money.
Her destination was the abandoned mines in eastern Easterbury, one of the War ruins. A full day had passed since the commotion at the old station yesterday, and it was already the third day of the Colonization Days break, but she should be able to make the round-trip within the remaining week.
The fact that the history of the War was part of Church history and therefore within the parameters of the assignment was just an excuse (of course, she did plan on writing the report, too), but the biggest factor in her
decision was that she had heard that they were heading for the abandoned mines.
Sitting in the boxed seat opposite her was the young man with copper-colored hair. He was sitting cross-legged on the seat with his shoes still on and had been fiddling with parts of the broken radio, but when he noticed Kieli’s gaze, he looked up and frowned in obvious annoyance. “Hey, would you stop following me?”
“We just happen to be going to the same place,” Kieli answered plainly.
“Jinx…” Harvey cursed to himself, returning his gaze to the radio.
Surprisingly, the wounds on the left side of his body that were so terrible yesterday had already healed to the point where, today, they were no more than inflamed scars on his skin. His neck apparently hadn’t recovered yet; he hid his wound by zipping his thick parka closed all the way to his chin. The coat he was wearing yesterday had been torn to shreds, and the parka was a spare he had stuffed in his backpack. Sometimes he stuck his fingers in his collar like it was bothering him.
Harvey was a legendary Undying — the first person Kieli had met who could see the spirits of the dead like she could. She wanted to follow him and talk to him a little more, even if it was only during the holidays. It was that thought that caused her to set out on a weeklong train trip — a very bold move considering her normal life.
It was kind of funny to think that she, the weirdest girl at the boarding school, was the most normal one in this group. Her ability to come up with such opinions was probably evidence that she wasn’t normal, but Kieli somehow felt comfortable in these circumstances. With these people, Kieli didn’t need to hide her weird power like she did at school.
The departure bell stopped. After a moment of silence and a slight jolt, the train started to move.
“Wow, it’s moving!” Kieli squealed automatically, leaning toward the window next to Becca. The scene on the platform, the white palms of people waving good-bye to family and lovers, slid quietly past.
“Having fun, Kieli?” Becca asked suddenly, gazing outside with her face lined up next to Kieli’s.
“Yes.” Kieli nodded half-consciously, still staring at the platform as it flowed away.
“Oh good, then I feel better,” Becca murmured, in a somehow resolved tone. “Um, you know? The truth is, I think I’ve known since the accident the day before yesterday. I died like that a long, long time ago. I stopped existing here before I even met you, Kieli. So I can’t stay here and play forever, you know? I might go crazy like that soldier’s spirit and hurt you one day.”
“What is this all of a sudden?” Kieli asked, pulling her gaze away from the platform, her eyes wide. Becca ignored her question and turned her ever-mischievous smile to Harvey in the opposite seat.
“Harvey, I’m leaving Kieli to you. Take responsibility and make sure to look after her. She’s very shy, and she’s never followed anyone on her own initiative like this before. I followed her around because she would have been hopeless without me. But only because she needed me! And I guess I should apologize. Sorry for causing you so much trouble.”
Harvey looked up in some surprise, and mumbled, “Oh, it was nothing.” He looked at Becca, and a complex expression showed on his face for a split second, but in the end, he turned back to the radio on his lap without a word. “Becca, what are you saying…?” Kieli cut in, panicking at having suddenly been entrusted to someone else, but “…Becca?”
Suddenly, sparkling white lights were surrounding Becca.
“You’ll be fine without me now, Kieli,” she said, smiling brightly. Her face turned into particles of soft light and gradually began to fade. Her gentle voice rang deep in Kieli’s ears. “Thank you. It was fun being with you. I want you to have lots more fun after this. Because you still have a long future ahead of you, Kieli.…”
The specks of light slowly melted into the air and disappeared; by the time the train left the platform, Becca was no longer on board.
Kieli stared blankly at the now-empty seat next to her for a long time. Her heart was empty, and she didn’t know what kind of face she should make. Her gaze slowly wandered to the opposite seat, and her eyes met with Harvey’s; he had stopped fixing the radio and was looking her way.
“Why…?” The instant she spoke, tears came to her eyes, and she couldn’t say any more.
“She came to terms with it. People who have died disappear. It’s only natural,” the legendary Undying told Kieli in a calm, quiet voice, his copper-colored eyes fixed in cold inexpression. Then he went right back to his work, but, perhaps feeling a need to say more, he added haltingly, “Why not see her off without crying? She said she had fun, didn’t she?”
Kieli looked wordlessly back out the car window, and pressed her lips firmly together, holding back her tears. If that was the path Becca had decided was best, the least Kieli could do as a farewell gift was to see her off without crying. Becca was selfish and annoying, but she was the best roommate Kieli had ever had, and her first good friend. It wasn’t true that she hadn’t existed anymore after her death. At the very least, to Kieli, Becca was more sure to be by her side than any classmate Kieli had ever had.
Under the sand-colored sky, the scenery outside the window changed to the streets of Easterbury and passed on by as if nothing had happened. A single tear slid down her cheek. She wiped it away with the palm of her hand, as she stared fixedly, almost in a glare, at the passing streets.
CHAPTER 2
MAY I SEE YOUR TICKET?
She felt the cool air inside a tunnel. Countless dead bodies lay in heaps around her; Kieli stood in their center. Some had their throats slashed, some had their abdomens blown away by gunshots, some had swords sticking out of their backs. Most of them were already corpses, but there were some who soon would be. Those who could move walked over the corpses, desperately carrying their injured, exhausted limbs forward before they succumbed to gravity, aiming for the tunnel’s exit.
Kieli had become one of the soldiers.
She lent a shoulder to a badly wounded comrade as she dragged her own body, now missing a leg. When they were only a few steps away from the exit, a sword was thrust violently into her companion’s back. Supporting the weight of her collapsing friend, she turned around; behind her stood the “enemy.” His face was blurry, and she couldn’t make it out, but the one thing that impressed her was his blank expression, showing no sign of emotion. Without the slightest change in that expression, the “enemy” pulled the sword out of her friend’s back, releasing a powerful spray of blood.
Kieli yelled something, and before she knew it, she had pointed the black gun in her hands toward the “enemy” and fired. The shot blew away the side of her opponent’s head and one of his eyes. But the opponent merely scowled slightly, shook his head in annoyance, and, turning his blood-soaked sword, slashed at her effortlessly, as if it was a conditioned response that had permeated his spinal cord.
“Wah —”
She opened her eyes, surprised at her own cry.
She looked around, unable to remember where she was for a second. She was in a rectangular space that stretched narrowly before and behind her. The dim morning light penetrated the windows, spaced evenly along both walls, and she kept feeling a slight, regular vibration under her rear as she sat on a seat that was not particularly soft.
Music played from an old-fashioned radio on the windowsill at a low volume, only loud enough to fill the boxed seats where Kieli sat with her company. The music was mixed with terrible static, as if it was coming from very far away, and it was a type of music Kieli had never heard before.
“This is a song from a long time ago. It’s called rock.”
She heard a low voice coming from the speaker over the music.
“The Church forbids it, saying it’s savage or something, but guerilla radio stations play it in secret.”
“So there used to be different kinds of music besides Church music before the War?” Kieli asked in a quiet voice to match the speaker’s volume, and the radio told he
r yes.
“There were lots of different kinds. And a lot of different value systems. Of all of them, I like rock the best. Those are songs that are about living through your own power.”
“Hmmm…”
Kieli put her head against the cold glass of the window and gazed absently outside, turning an ear to the up-tempo melody that played faintly. She wasn’t the best singer and didn’t have a pretty voice, so she hated singing in the choir, but she felt like she might learn to like this music.
She found herself thinking, “I wish Becca could have heard this.” Becca, with her bright, clear soprano voice and perfect pitch, was the most wonderful singer of hymns Kieli knew, but she actually seemed to have ten times more fun when she joked around singing parodies than when she was singing the boring hymns. She would be so happy to learn that the world had fun, free music like this and not just hymns.
Under the sky, dotted with thin, sand-colored clouds, the train continued its course along its track through the vast wilderness. Becca had said good-bye immediately after they left the Easterbury station, and for one reason or another, conversation was sparse as they passed the night on the train. Now it was the next morning.
Now that she thought of it, she had had a dream. Could it be that the soldier who refused to give up, who kept walking on his own even after losing a leg, was the Corporal…?
“Corporal” was what Harvey called him, and apparently it was the rank he had achieved before dying in the War. He had died on the Easterbury battlefield in the final stages of the War, and the radio he possessed had made its way to a town very far away, where Harvey happened to pick it up, and they were on their way to where his physical remains slept. Or, that was the gist of their journey that Kieli had been able to figure out from their bits of conversation on the train.
Still facing outside the window, Kieli cast a sidelong glance at Harvey as he sat diagonally across from her. He leaned deeply into his seat, resting his crossed legs on the one next to Kieli’s. Whether their conversation registered in his ears or not, his gaze was fixed diagonally downward, and he hadn’t moved an inch for a long time. It was no wonder Kieli had mistaken him for a corpse when she first saw him in front of Easterbury Station; when Harvey wasn’t doing anything, he stopped moving completely, as if he really was dead.
The Dead Sleep in the Wilderness Page 5