The Dead Sleep in the Wilderness

by Yukako Kabeif

  “Yo, Joachim. I hear you took real good care of Kieli.”

  “Ephraim! Why you…how…!?”

  Over his shoulder, he saw those loathsome copper-colored eyes. He thought he’d killed him, but the bastard went and came back to life, as if he didn’t know when to quit. Joachim didn’t even bother to hide his annoyance.

  “What were you planning to do with her?”

  “Heh. You sure are attached to her. That little girl’s just gonna die soon, anyway,” he retorted, spitting; the other man narrowed his eyes in displeasure. It was a strangely pleasant feeling to make someone he despised feel miserable, and Joachim cackled.

  “I feel so sorry for you when you’re disappointed, so I took her for you. You should be grateful. But I don’t need her anymore. She’s not as much fun as I thought she’d be. What will I do? Should I catch her and kill her? Or sell her to slave traders…?” He only intended to string together whatever offensive things came to mind, but as he talked, he started to mean it more and more. He was about to say as many more things as he could come up with when a voice interrupted.

  “That’s enough. Stop talking.”

  The other man suddenly did something he never would have expected. He reached over Joachim’s shoulder, grabbed his gun, turned it 180 degrees, and pulled the trigger — it was like he was ignoring the possibility that the shot would go right through and hit him, too.

  “You bastard . . !”

  The shock blasted through the center of Joachim’s body, and he flew backward. He took the enemy behind with him, and they were both thrown off the deck, tangled together, into the rushing darkness.

  “Guh…”

  In the pitch darkness, the cold sensation of the ground under Harvey’s cheek confirmed to him that, somehow, he was still living on this earth.

  After being tossed out like a scrap of paper blown around in the wind and then rammed into the ground, he somersaulted quite a distance until his whole body crashed thoroughly into the face of a rock. He had exhausted the willpower to block the pain, but, perhaps fortunately, he didn’t have many nerves left with which to feel it; his whole body was heavy as if paralyzed, and all he felt was a throbbing in the core of his brain.

  He gritted his teeth and pulled himself up. He tried to support himself with his right arm, but couldn’t find it and collapsed to the earth, shoulder-first. He had taken the shot that pierced Joachim, and his right arm had been cut off partway through the upper arm and had gone off somewhere. And he thought he had just barely dodged it.

  Harvey managed to pick himself up with his left arm and looked out over the darkness around him. He could vaguely make out the shadow of someone lying a few meters ahead, and he dragged his body close to it. The priestly man lay there, his head and limbs bent in what were originally impossible directions. Smoke rose from the middle of his chest, and the smell of burning wafted around him.

  He took another step, and the tip of his shoe kicked something.

  When he dropped his gaze and strained his eyes, he saw a black stone on the ground, the size of a fist. Half of its surface smoldered after turning to carbon, and inside, an amber light blinked feebly. He stooped and reached out his hand to pick it up —

  That instant, Joachim’s arm flashed in the corner of his vision, and the hand that reached from it grabbed his wrist with an abnormally strong grip.

  “— !”

  He started and froze in place, but the next instant, there was a small fizzle, and the light inside the core disappeared before his eyes.

  Just past his outstretched fingertips, the stone was reduced to cinders and crumbled.

  He raised his eyes and saw that Joachim had stopped moving, his one remaining blue-gray eye wide open, glaring at him.

  “Moron…” he murmured, and peeled Joachim’s fingers off his wrist. His finger marks left a distinct bruise, and for no good reason he was firmly convinced it wouldn’t disappear for a while.

  After that, he tried with a grunt to raise his upper body, but his energy drained away instantaneously, and he crumpled on the spot.

  Once he had lowered his hips, there was no getting them back up. There was a heavy, hot mass of something in the center of his head, and he felt that if he closed his eyes, this time he really would be able to sleep, and, lured by the whisper of, “You can sleep now,” he started to close his eyelids.

  Suddenly, he remembered something important.

  “Oh yeah, I made a promise…”

  He staggered to his feet. He couldn’t see the train track. And he’d lost sight of which direction to go. He didn’t even know if he could make it there. Even so, he started to walk in the direction where he thought he might see a light somewhere. It was no more than a hunch, but he could clearly see in his brain the sand-colored light of the sky that shone through the ceiling of the abandoned mine, and he got the feeling that if he went to it, she would take his hand and pull him out of the long, long flow of time that he had drifted through alone.

  GOD, IF YOU’RE HERE

  The train bound for the Sand Ocean arrived from the west, and the transfer station suddenly filled with noise.

  Travelers passed busily through, carrying big bags, a bit of fatigue, and more than anything, high hopes for their journeys. No one paid any attention to the lone girl leaning against a wall in the waiting area near the ticket barrier, watching the train.

  To be more precise, she wasn’t alone; she had someone to talk to hanging from her neck.

  “Maybe it’s about time we better be giving up, too. Those guys’ve already stopped searching.”

  “Yeah…” Kieli answered absently, casually casting her gaze at the flow of people coming and going on the platform.

  It had been about two weeks. The Church Soldiers held an investigation for the first few days, but they had abandoned that, too, and the station regained the bright everyday conversations of its citizens.

  From the beginning, no one suspected Kieli very much. She had already stopped wearing the boarding school uniform she had grown so accustomed to. She wore very unfeminine clothing — a light down jacket and jeans — and she had shortened her long hair. She had cut it herself using a knife, so it wasn’t very attractive, but it made her feel much better.

  Upbeat music flowed from the radio’s speaker at a faint volume that only Kieli could hear. The radio had been broken countless times, so the sound quality really was terrible, but to Kieli, the static was actually rather pleasant. And she liked the Corporal’s voice, too, as it rode the melody and spoke to her.

  “Are you sure it’s okay, Corporal? I could take you back to the abandoned mine again, you know.”

  “You guys are nothing but trouble; I couldn’t disappear in peace. I’ve just about given up and started thinking of this radio as my original body.”

  “I’ll be careful with you so you don’t break anymore.”

  The radio’s grumpy, but slightly bashful, voice was so funny Kieli couldn’t suppress a small laugh, but the people around her increased as departing passengers blended with arriving ones, so she shut her mouth.

  She nodded when the radio suggested giving up, but once the day was over, she would most likely come back tomorrow and see the trains off as they headed the east. And when tomorrow was over, the day after, too. No, she was thinking she would take the radio and head out the day after tomorrow. There was no use waiting around here, doing nothing, forever.

  She wanted to be someone who could travel on her own. So that someday, when she met him again, she would be a little stronger.

  “Let’s go home.”

  “Had enough today?”

  “Yeah. I’ll come again tomorrow, and after that I’ll give up.”

  Kieli didn’t wait for the train to go. She left the wall and started to walk with the current of arriving passengers heading for the station’s exit. There was a wide stairway at the front of the passage, and a girl wearing a hat ran up the stairs, jumping up and down in excitement. Her mother came afte
r her, carrying their bags.

  “What do you think was wrong with that man, Mama?”

  “He’s dead. Someone will call for help; it’s okay.”

  Kieli happened to pass by the conversation, then stopped and turned around. The girl skipped around her mother and said cheerfully, “Eehh? He’s not dead. He’s alive.”

  “……!” The second Kieli heard that, she started running to the exit. She dashed through the hall, pushing aside people who scowled at her in annoyance. When she got to the top of the staircase, she could see a square cutout of outside light under her eyes. Passersby buried the stairway, but at the very bottom, for some reason, there was an empty space in just one corner by the wall; people avoided it as they walked by.

  She impatiently ran down the steps two at a time. The radio bounced against her belly.

  Please, God. She prayed inside her heart. You don’t have to be the Church’s God. But if there is a God on this planet, please take off that completely flawless, impartial mask, just for now, and grant my wish. I’ll never ask for anything again. Please, God…

  There was a break in the wave of people. The silhouette of a man sat on the bottom step, leaning against the wall. He was missing an arm, and one of his legs didn’t look like it would function; he had thrown that leg in front of him, and slumped over as if dead.

  Kieli stopped a few steps above him.

  His closed eyelashes twitched slightly, and Harvey opened his eyes. He raised his copper-colored head slowly, looked up at her, and smiled wryly, an exhausted look on his face. “I couldn’t climb the stairs. Give me a hand,” he said, as if nothing was wrong.

  “You’re late, darn it. I got tired of waiting…” Kieli murmured in a trembling voice, bending over and offering her hand. Harvey laboriously lifted his one remaining arm, took Kieli’s hand, then closed his eyes and pressed the back of her hand to his forehead.

  “Harvey?”

  “It’s nothing.” He muttered something shortly under his breath. She got the feeling he had said, “Thank you.”

  In the distance, a bell started to ring, signaling the departure of the eastbound train.

  AFTERWORD

  The complex I’ve lived in for five years is an iron-enforced five-story building three buildings away from the railroad, so even with my window closed, I constantly hear the muffled sounds of the railroad crossing alarm and the trains passing by. When I started living here, the noise drove me crazy, but now it’s completely become a part of my life, and I let the sounds go by like background music. (But I can’t get used to the dreadful singing that comes from the Japanese ballad karaoke at the snack bar diagonally across from me every night, as if it’s cursing the world; I wish they would spare me that.)

  Pleased to meet you. I’m Yukako Kabei.

  This work received acclaim I couldn’t have even hoped for in the form of the grand prize in the ninth Dengeki Game Novel Awards, and, maybe because I wrote it while listening to the sounds of the first morning train after staying up all night in an eight-tatami one-room apartment, it’s a story with a decayed sort of tone, that mainly takes place on a train trip. It’s also a story about a girl with a complicated personality and a man who hates doing anything, getting together and being separated, and about a man who’s tired of living regaining purpose in life.

  Wasted planets, steampunk, old-fashioned radios, rusty machines, old oil. It would make me as happy as I could be if all of you who like dilapidated things and react to that kind of vocabulary like this book. Of course, I would be so much more happy if all of you who aren’t like that like it, too.

  Now then, for this to become a book as it has, I really did receive a lot of assistance from many people. I would like to use this space to express my gratitude.

  To everyone who supported me, from the time the work was selected to its completion as a book, starting with the honorable people on the selection committee who gave me this chance. I was honestly surprised to find out how many people worked directly and indirectly in order to make this one book, especially the following:

  Taue-san, my contemporary, who drew such wonderful illustrations that the story can’t hold a candle to them. (It’s true. I’m in trouble.) When he showed me the roughs, I would always okay Kieli right away, but I would give him hard-to-understand requests about Harvey, like “He’s too clean-cut; make him dirtier and more sloppy, slovenly, and scruffy,” but he never complained and met my requests.

  Everyone around me who supported me in my dangerous mental state while I was working on writing my submission, and Reiko-neesan from Mexico who always helps me out. I’ve really made you worry, but since I’ve started being able to write novels as a legitimate form of work, I’ve started legitimately neglecting my health, and I’m the same failure at life as always. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’ll be careful.

  The people at the coffee shop three stations away where I do most of my writing. I’ve troubled you unreasonably by coming in every weekend and sitting there with my laptop for five, six hours. I still do.

  And finally, of course, to you, who are holding this book, I give you my highest thanks. I hope I get a chance to see you again.

  Yukako Kabei

  Thank you for buying this ebook, published by Yen On.

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