It wasn’t to hear her tale of toil that I’d asked my question. So there was an exhaust fan in the ceiling? Did I not notice thanks to the overwhelming impact of a suspended head? How careless of me. But more importantly.
“What about Aikawa? Is she with you?”
“Nnnh,” Hime-chan growled like an animal. “I woke Ms. Jun up after you left. She said, ‘People can do whatever the fuck they want,’ and refused to help. She wouldn’t even open the door for me. I had no choice, so I come alone.”
“Hime-chan, I come alone isn’t…”
“You’ve wrong, Master,” she declared patly.
Staring straight at me.
“Earlier you argued me down, but you were wrong. I can’t stick around because I don’t want to get in the way, that’s just cowardice.”
“Harsh. Though, I can’t argue with it. Being a cowardly chicken is A-OK with me. Way better than ending up at some unforeseen outcome, anyway. Way healthier. I’ve said this a million times, but running away is the only thing I think about. From my enemies, and from my friends.”
I guess it’s ironic. That I of all people should want a clear vision of the future more than anything, after how hostile I’d been to that unpleasant fortune-teller.
“That’s just proof that you have the leeway to think about ‘the future’!” For some reason, and I really have no idea what that reason was, but for some reason Hime-chan really laid into me. “If you were really living each day like it was your last, you wouldn’t have time to think about things like that! I’m going to come out and say it, Master: aren’t you just slacking off?”
“Thanks for that, Hime-chan.”
I was aware. That my voice. Was getting shrill.
“What─do you know about me? What do you know about someone who has no choice but to slack off?”
“If nothing else, I know that you’re a nonsense user who does nothing but make excuses. No matter what you say, Master, you’re just scared of being around Ms. Jun.” Here Hime-chan’s tone became especially confrontational. With a little nasty mockery thrown in. “It’s just that you feel uncomfortable, because being near a ‘massive’ presence like Ms. Jun makes you feel tiny.”
“Tha─hold it. Nobody talks to me like that. I─”
She’d hit the nail right on the head, and I almost lunged at her. It was totally unlike me. I barely managed to restrain myself, and I do mean barely. If Hime-chan hadn’t reminded me of “her,” nothing and no one could’ve stopped me.
Not the unchanging, unending, unyielding Thin Blue Line Between Life and Death. Not the Seven Fools, they who were closest to solving the riddle of the world. Not that painter who scattered discrimination and disdain in her wake. Not the transcendent one who saw only that which could not be seen.
Nor even─humanity’s strongest contractor.
“─What’s wrong with that?”
Being deemed useless.
My insignificance revealed.
And so being abandoned─what was wrong with being afraid of that?
What was wrong with being afraid of betrayal?
“Trust is sad. Trust is really sad. Everyone is alone. So the more trusting you are, the greater the shock of betrayal. Trust breaks, it crumbles, and it never goes back to the way it was.”
“But being alone is lonely.”
“Doesn’t change the fact that we’re alone. If you can’t live alone, you’d be better off dead. If you’re saying people group up out of loneliness, then the more people someone is able to trust, the lonelier he or she is. People who remain alone are sad, wretched, impoverished, ugly, piteous, isolated─and above all, noble.”
Like the girl who got strangled.
“Sullying that with the word ‘lonely’ is blasphemy.”
“Then you’re not lonely, Master?” asked Hime-chan. “You’re alone because you’re not lonely?”
“…”
“Hime-chan’s always been lonely.”
Ahh─come on.
Don’t look at me, not with those eyes.
Innocent. Pure. Simple. Generous. Affectionate. Honest.
Not now─not at me. Not how I am.
There’s no such thing as atonement, okay?
I want to run away. To run away. To run away.
To flee. To escape. To hightail it out of there. To scatter to the four winds.
Yeah, like that other time─
“How many times am I going to do this to myself.”
The strong dose of nonsense─gave me the urge to smile. When I don’t know a smile from a hole in the ground.
Yeah…that must be it.
Hime-chan doesn’t resemble her.
She resembles her the way she was back then.
That’s why I’m shaken up.
That’s why I wanted to get out of the Director’s office so badly.
“Nah…nonsense.”
But. I guess I was still human enough not to retread that path, at least.
“Uh… Master?”
“Forget it. What I meant is that you got me there. Yeah, you’re right, Hime-chan. This is no time for me to go being selfish, at any rate. My bad. You win… Is Aikawa still in the Director’s office?”
“Oh, y-yes!”
Seeing me give in, Hime-chan’s face lit up in the blink of an eye. Her smile radiated genuine happiness. A smile so vulnerable as to bewilder any who saw it. Dammit─my sense of guilt had gone bust ages ago, and I thought I’d gotten rid of it.
But if I had, then how come…
How come I couldn’t just let go? If I actually knew to reject everything, how happy I’d be.
If I could just kill myself, that’d be best of all.
“Oh, but knowing Ms. Jun, she may’ve gotten angry and left without us…”
“Yeah…that’s totally possible.”
“But more importantly, what do we do about her?”
Hime-chan cautiously approached the unconscious Tamamo.
“Good question. She was a serious handful. Oh, I haven’t said thanks yet, have I? I was only able to find an opening because you came after me.”
“No poblano,” she said, feeling around Tamamo’s uniform. What was she doing? As long as it wasn’t some pervy hobby of hers. “A-ha. Here it is, I figured she’d be carrying a walkie-talkie.”
It resembled a cell phone…but with way fewer buttons. Apparently it was a simple wireless radio for intra-group contact. Easy to use, and it fits in the palm of your hand…but so what?
“So, before she was knocked out, Saijo may have radioed someone…maybe Hagihara.”
“That’s bad news…”
In other words, this was no longer a safe place? Though if we were trying to go down, the stairs weren’t safe either. We might bump right into them. Shit. We were more or less cornered… Maybe not fish in a barrel, but still, this was no barrel of monkeys.
“Hmmm.” Hime-chan seemed deep in thought; then at length she opened the pouch she had dangling from her shoulder and said, “Guess I’ve got no choice. Last resort time.”
“I’ve been wondering about that for a while. What’s in there?”
“All kinds of thing. They call it the Hang ’Em High Swiss Army Knife. Not that it’s actually a knife. Or Swiss.”
With a flourish, she produced a number of spindles from the pouch. A bit big for sewing, but definitely not fishing reels either. The line was wound around them as full as it would go. Or no…maybe it wasn’t line?
“What is that?”
“Line works. You might also call it wire or string.” Hime-chan kept on pulling more spindles out of the pouch. “Silver and titanium wires. Both chemically treated to maximize their tensile strength. This ones are various types of fiber. Kevlar, aramids, carbon, lots of different kinds.”
Kevlar was the only one I’d heard of. Pretty sure it’s the material used in bulletproof vests. Line or not, nothing could hold a candle to it in terms of strength.
“It’s used all over the places, in space exploration, military production.” Hime-chan opened the window of the hallway, then opened the window of the classroom opposite, and began winding the various lines this way and that. While they were still on the spools they were visible, but only just. Unwound in individual filaments like that, the fibers were so thin that in the gloom of the hallway you couldn’t see them at all unless you squinted hard. They looked like cobwebs that could be severed by a touch. When I went to test this theory, though, Hime-chan stopped me. “Ah ah ah, no touching. If you’re not careful, you’ll get your finger cut off.”
Apparently I was the one who’d be severed.
“Hmmm…so this is piano wire, right? There really are all different kinds, huh… So, Hime-chan, what is all this? What’re you doing?”
“I’m making a rope. The window frame wouldn’t be able to supports both of us, so I’m doing some calculations to properly distributes our weight.”
“Hold on. You’re saying…” my words broke off for a moment. “You want us to rappel down?”
“You said what I’m saying, yes.”
“You’re kidding.”
“It’s fai-yai-yain!” Tripling the middle of the word like a rocker, Hime-chan puffed out her chest. “Master, please just give up and admit that you’ve been duped by Hime-chan!”
“That just means I’ve been duped…”
I said it once─
“That just means I’ve been duped!”
I said it twice.
Some part of me couldn’t help thinking─
I wish I’d just run away.