* * * …Eesh. It can be a bit socially awkward, hanging out with them like this, but they really do make a good brother and sister, don’t they? Kano certainly seemed apologetic enough about it, and I had no great desire to bring up the topic again. After all, we had a mountain of problems to solve that was starting to stack up to Everest-size proportions. And we really needed to get to the main issue soon, or else time was going to be tight… …As I was thinking this, from the corner of my eye I spotted a quivering shape with long black hair begin to stir. Whoa, whoa, what’s she standing up for? She’s not gonna run on us, is she? As expected, she edged her way toward the front door, robbing the room’s atmosphere of whatever family togetherness we had just created. “Hey, where, where’re you going?” I said to the girl’s back. She stopped just as she attempted to complete her ninja-like escape. She had her very long hair in a pair of casual ponytails, and the hoodie she had borrowed from Kido billowed around her stomach, apparently much too large a fit. “Oh, um…the bathroom,” she replied with an awkward smile as she tried to deflect our gazes. “You just went about ten minutes ago,” Kido countered. “Is your bladder that tiny or something?” The girl struggled for another excuse for a few more seconds but wordlessly gave up and threw herself back down on the sofa with a whump, facing me. She was Takane Enomoto, the second defendant of the day—presently turning away from me with the exact same attitude and surliness she had exhibited two years ago. “Okay,” she began, “so did we, like, have something else to talk about, or…?” It seemed like I could hear the blood vessels around my right temple explode at the get-me-out-of-here demeanor that oozed from every pore in her body. “Oh, okay. So you think that’s all the explanation you needed to give for the year of shame and self-loathing I experienced at your hands…?” “Pfft,” Enomoto replied at my resentful jab. “Shame? You’re always the one putting it on yourself, isn’t it? Bitching about ‘Oh, please don’t look at these porn vids that I’ve scattered around my hard drive like candy’ and stuff. Oh, which one did you watch a lot of lately? I think it was something like ‘Teen Foot-Fetish Frenzy, Part—’” Oh, look. Promptly going for the jugular again. The Fetish Protection Safety Valve in my brain immediately issued a warning. Sweat oozed out from my own pores. I needed to close the book on this, and fast. So I leaped off my seat. “What?! You…You’re one of those…Um…Privacy! Yes! All right? Privacy!” …Silence. I could tell without looking at them. Kido’s cold gaze was already gouging my right cheek. Kano, still regretful about our previous conversation, didn’t try to laugh it off like he usually did; instead he gave me an expressionless stare. He was totally using his ability, too. I could feel it. Enomoto, meanwhile, giggled. An evil, familiar-sounding giggle it was, at that. She plainly still loved pushing all my buttons as she tried hiding her smile with one of the hoodie’s large sleeves. Oh God, they totally looked alike…that little gesture both of them did. I had no idea how I went a year without noticing. If I could go back in time, I’d tell my past self to take a hammer to all my electronic devices and go camp out in a mountain shack instead. “Yeah,” she gleefully continued, “well, I’m not the one who tried to play this cool and sooo above-it-all character in school, with those fetishes you had. Like, I was seriously shocked! What a total piece of work you are…” “God damn it…!” There was something hideous about the way Enomoto wallowed in her malice. I gritted my teeth and tried to calm my mind—every synapse seemed ready to burst with rage. God damn it, indeed. I wasn’t expecting her to show up at this point. And with the absolute last outfit and appearance I wanted to see her in, too…! She had appeared several hours earlier, dropping in with a casual “Yo” as I was seated on the sofa, still tired from our earlier impromptu mountain hike. We had a “frenemies”-type thing going at the time—she was the only classmate of my friend Haruka—so we couldn’t help but see each other fairly often, because she was pretty much glued to him the entire year. They’d eat lunch together, and sometimes I saw them hanging out at the arcade during off days. There was no way either of us would describe ourselves as “friends,” but…All right, she wasn’t a terrible person. Back then. It was definitely her, after all, that gave the closest and most ready support to Haruka when he needed it. He needed it a lot, around that time. And sure, she was rude, crude, mean-looking, and always ready to shoot you down a peg for no reason apart from assuaging her demonic personal gratification—but with Haruka in the picture, I was willing enough to accept her presence. That was then, of course. Now it was vividly clear to me how easy I was being with her, how wrong I truly was. I thought she was some kind of devil-spawn at the time, but that didn’t go nearly far enough. No, this was an arch-demon, the kind that would make even the most gifted of the late-night infomercial psychics run screaming in their bare, anklet-laden feet. She was, after all, the woman hiding behind Ene, the evil spirit that had just wrapped up a year-long torment session with my mind. I mean, why did this have to happen? And why to me? What did I ever do? If there was some kind of election to vote for the last person in the world you wanted to share a secret with, I’d buy up every ballot so I could vote for Takane Enomoto. Maybe Kano, too, if I had some extras. But again, no point in dwelling on it or creating elaborate fantasy revenge scenarios. Enomoto already had a grasp of every possible weakness I boasted in life, and she wasn’t afraid to give them a little squeezy-squeeze whenever she wanted. I was helpless. But—no, seriously, why? Is God dead or something?!! Enomoto, for her part, looked extremely proud with that corrupt, despicable smirk still on her face. She had put me on the defensive so far, but I wasn’t about to go down without a fight. Even I had some tools to work with; after all, over that whole year when “Ene” was building up her war chest of material to use against me, I was right there on the other side of the screen. “Well, look,” I began, making the effort to enunciate every syllable in my declaration of war, “you can say whatever you want, Enomoto, but don’t you think you’re kinda forgetting something? Like how you introduced yourself as ‘Ene, your regular neighborhood computer girl’? Or how you kept on calling me ‘master’? ‘Ooh, master, master…’ You haven’t forgotten that, have you?” The reaction, as I thought it would be, was immediate. “Uh,” Enomoto groaned pathetically, before covering her face with both hands and crumpling to the ground. It was a ghastly sight to see. “That,” she continued to moan, “that…I was just, like, feeling out my abilities, seeing what I could do, and…and it got me all excited and stuff, and…uh…” She was having trouble breathing. I moved in for the kill. “Oh really? So all that time, you were picturing yourself as this darling little tomboy flying around in my computer? Is that really the mental picture you had in that dismal, gossip-obsessed brain of yours? Man, talk about degenerate.” “Aaaagghhh!!” Enomoto screamed as if I’d just cast a spirit-dispeller card on her forehead. The way she reared back, edging away from me, made me feel like I was running an exorcism—and why not? She was the devil herself! She deserved to be banished! Returned to the world she belonged in! As we engaged in this farce, the door flew open behind me. “You’re too loud!” Marie griped at us. “What time do you think it is right now?!” Everyone on the scene froze, staring in her direction. “At least turn out the lights when you go to bed,” she grumbled before closing the door. …I had been in this situation before. You stay overnight at a friend’s place, you screw around for too long past bedtime, and a mom comes storming up the stairs. You could never argue with a grown-up like that, and at somewhere well past a century old, Marie sure had us beat on age. Enomoto and I shared glances, grimaced, then extended a hand to each other in almost perfect synchronization. “…Let’s just forget about it, Shintaro.” “…Sure.” We shook hands, both of them still wet with sweat, and forged the armistice. …Wait. No, we didn’t. Her eyes aren’t smiling at all. She’s planning to kill me once I let my guard down. I’ll need to sleep with the door locked for a little while. Based on what she said, Enomoto apparently made contact with the Kagerou Daze on that day two years ago. The results turned her into Ene, and I guess she must’ve obtained either the “awakening eyes” or “focusing eyes” ability Azami mentioned in her diary. Turning invisible or shapeshifting or whatnot was easy enough to comprehend, but Enomoto’s skill was a little tougher to interpret. Basically, she removed her consciousness from her body and could take it pretty much wherever she wanted. She couldn’t manifest “Ene,” her spirit-self, in the real world, but otherwise it sounded a bit like an out-of-body experience. It was every bit like she was an evil spirit—which would’ve suited her perfectly. As Kano put it, “Each ability has its likes and dislikes when it comes to ‘vessels,’” and that was a perfect example if I ever saw one. Once Enomoto obtained that skill, she had been flitting around all the electronic networks of the world, in search of the physical body she lost when the Kagerou Daze got her. That, as she put it, led her to my computer. I lowered myself, sinking deeply into the sofa, and brought my voice back down a few notches. “But why did you come to me?” I asked. “You must’ve had someplace else you could’ve messed around in.” Enomoto frowned. “Well, not really. I mean, Haruka was dead, and Ayano wasn’t around, either.” She looked at me. “Plus, it kinda seemed like you were gonna die if I left you alone, so…” “Uh…” Now we were at the crux of the issue. I hated her for getting right at it like that. But I couldn’t just brush it off. “…Yeah, I’m not gonna deny that,” I replied. “What with Haruka and Ayano gone, I…You know, I was super-depressed.” It was a good point. By the time this girl showed up as Ene, I was deep in the depths of desperation. I was filled with sadness—having lost two classmates I knew really well—and then Kano disguised himself as Ayano and said…that to me. I could never let that go, and it was driving me nuts. The days after she appeared on my computer desktop were filled with humiliation and disgust, sure…but in a way, I think it saved me a bit. Thanks to her going around like a chicken with her head cut off, I managed to pull myself up and out from that abyss. If she wasn’t there, I might’ve actually gone through with something. As I remembered this, Enomoto began shaking one of her legs, a nervous tic I hadn’t seen before. I looked at her. “You just said ‘what with Haruka and Ayano gone,’” she blurted out. “But, uh, aren’t you kinda forgetting someone?” …Oh. That. Now I knew what was irritating her. I sighed, quietly enough that Enomoto wouldn’t notice. Hesitating here would make her snipe at me even more. I decided to just be out with it. “…Okay, yeah, it was a huge shock when you went away, too, all right? Of course it was. You don’t have to make me say it out loud.” “Well, good.” That was apparently enough to please her. She let out a big smile, one that didn’t look like it matched her face at all. I swear, the way she engineers every facial expression like that, calculating exactly the response she wants—that’s pure Ene. It was weird how much that struck me right then. “I just, you know…” She paused. “I’m glad I could actually hear that from you. Because it was kinda feeling like I was in some crazy dream state that whole time, in a way.” She put a hand up to her shoulder, bent her legs, and stretched out on the sofa. “What do you mean?” I asked, not really getting it. This turned Enomoto’s smile a bit downward. “I mean, I was poking around the net that whole time as Ene, but I didn’t find anything about me. About my disappearance.” Her face grayed. “And not just that, either. Haruka’s illness, Ayano’s suicide, me vanishing…That all happened on the same day, you know? Would people find that weird, usually?” I hated to admit it, but she was right, and I agreed with her. Like she said, two years ago—on August 15—there were a lot of events that took place in tandem without making much sense. Haruka finally succumbing to his illness was one thing, but Ayano’s death? Enomoto disappearing, and all on the same day? That wasn’t normal, no matter how you looked at it. People should have been looking for a link…or treating it as a crime, for that matter. And yet there was zilch about it on the news. That was weird. I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. “Were you watching the news back then?” Enomoto prodded. “You shut yourself in your room around then, right?” I wasn’t a fan of the way she phrased it, but I shook my head instead of bringing it up. “Yeah, but I didn’t do that,” I said. “I didn’t want to see my dead friends get talked about on TV and stuff. I was too depressed to turn it on, anyway.” “Oh no?” Enomoto responded, pulling back. Why wasn’t she gentle like that with me more often? “…Wait a sec,” Kano butted in. “I was watching it back then. Takane’s right—it was amazing how nobody ever touched on it at all. Like, it blew my mind while I was watching.” Now his own voice deepened, seeking to make an impression. “I think she might be right. Maybe this entire city was already taken over by then. By this…crazy power.” Then we fell silent for a while. Kano didn’t say it to scare us or anything, I don’t think, but it seemed to have that effect on Enomoto. That was unusual, but maybe she couldn’t be blamed. If some “crazy power” did actually exist, it meant that everything we took to be normal in our lives wasn’t anything of the sort at all. Since Enomoto showed no signs of wanting to talk, I decided to pick up the slack. “So you’re saying that ‘clearing eyes’ thing you were talking about is strong enough to wrap an entire city around its finger?” “I don’t mean that, like, it’s just really strong or whatever,” Kano warned as he reflected a bit. “I just mean that the ‘clearing eyes’ power that took over our dad had its own sense of will, and that will is what we should really be worried about. ’Cause it’s incredibly smart…or, like, it’s just got this huge amount of knowledge to it, sort of. I’m willing to bet that since it’s come to this world, it’s been using that ‘knowledge’ and my dad’s body to build up money and power for itself. That’s the kind of authority you’d need to take over an entire city.” He shifted the position of his legs under him. “I know it sounds like some kind of joke, but…” Some kind of joke, huh…? Definitely. There weren’t many stories out there as silly as this one. Kano was saying this super-brainy guy had taken control of every aspect of this city from behind the scenes. If a living encyclopedia like that—a full grasp of everything from the start of civilization up to modern science—actually existed, then maybe Kano’s theory had at least a little bit of merit. If this “clearing eyes” thing had the power to take over how everyone and everything worked and even control their hearts and minds, that might just be enough to run an entire city. But it just made no sense at all. All of us had certain mental borders within our minds that we referred to as “common sense.” Accepting anything that went beyond that as some kind of divine given was never going to be easy. But “common sense” was a concept. It wasn’t fact. And if the past three days had taught me anything, it was that the values I had associated with “common sense” throughout my life were beyond brittle and weak. These people with their fantastic “eyes”; this other world separate from our own; this tragedy being set up for us in such exquisite fashion…All these nonsensical events were connecting themselves together and slowly, silently, forming the unassailable “reality” that was now spread before us. No matter how much I doubted it in my mind, I couldn’t do anything about what was being presented. Things had already deviated far from the realm of believing or not believing in it. “It just makes you wanna laugh,” I blurted. Enomoto’s eyebrows arched. “What about that makes you want to laugh? You starting to lose your marbles or something?” “I’m not losing my marbles, Enomoto. I mean, you and Kano just shocked me, pretty much, and I think I get how much of a bad situation this is. It’s just…” I stopped. I wasn’t sure whether it’d be worth saying what came next. If it was the me of any time before yesterday, I probably would’ve shut down my mind and said never mind. But right then, for some reason, I didn’t feel any need to hide my true intentions. I thundered on, not bothering to choose my words carefully. “This is a lot better for me, you know? A lot better to hear all this, as opposed to when I was holed up in my room not knowing anything. Whether it makes any sense or not, the first step to standing up to something is being able to see it in the first place. I mean, this is a breath of fresh air and…stuff. That’s how I feel.” I kind of ran out of steam toward the end, but it seemed like my point had gotten across. “Wow,” said Kano, who had listened on silently and now looked slightly relieved. “I’m sure glad we can rely on the new guy here.” Enomoto, on the other hand, had trouble digesting it. “Mmm,” she intoned. “Well, I read in the text from Ayano that my teacher was getting all messed up. If it was some kind of ability doing that to him, then it would’ve happened before any of us even got admitted to that school, right? I guess Mr. Tateyama and Haruka have known each other for a while, and it wasn’t until my third year of middle school when my grandfather started suggesting I go to that high school out of nowhere…You think we were all gathered there for our abilities? Then killed off, one by one?” Her face scrunched up, as if about to cry. She hung her head low. “I tried not to think about it at all, but…I don’t even know what’s going on anymore. I don’t know what I should believe.” I opened my mouth. I wanted to say something instead of leaving her to dangle there alone. But I couldn’t find the words. Kano noticed, perhaps, because he turned to Enomoto in my place. “I don’t wanna sound like I’m defending my family or anything, but I’m pretty sure Dad never even realized he had that skill.” Enomoto tilted her face back up. Her eyes were glassy, like I thought they’d be. “This skill works by taking your will. Your sense of self, really. I don’t think you’d have any memories of when it took you over. So, I mean…I think it’s still safe to trust in him. At least, the one you knew in school. That we knew at home.” She bit her lip a little. “Yeah,” she whispered as she turned her head back down again. I knew she and Haruka liked and respected Mr. Tateyama as their homeroom teacher—and now the man was standing accused, an alleged murderer. I couldn’t even guess how much of a shock that was. But Enomoto nodded a few times as a sign of reassurance and brought her face up again. Her expression was back to its usual sneer. “Yeah. He’s still a really good guy, I think. I don’t mind believing in that. And I really don’t think someone like him could’ve engineered something like this, either. There’s nothing all that ‘clearing’ about how he acts and talks, at all. No…I think it’s all that ability’s fault.” Then she let out a defiant chuckle, as if releasing something that had festered inside for too long. I didn’t follow her logic all that much, but she seemed pretty convinced. I’d take that over depressed Enomoto any day—I could never stand dealing with that again, if I could help it. “But here’s the thing, though,” she added. “If this ‘clearing’ power’s carrying out some wild conspiracy like this, then what reason does it have to kill us? If it’s already capable of pulling off all this incredible stuff, why can’t it just leave us alone and do whatever it wants?” Kano shrugged and scowled. “Uh…I think I explained that a little bit ago.” “Oh? Well, maybe I heard it, but I didn’t really get it.” The two gave each other puzzled looks. “To create a Medusa,” I interjected. “That’s what it wants, Kano?” “Yeah. I am so glad you’re here right now, Shintaro. Things move along so much faster with you…” Yeah, thanks. I don’t want you to put me on the same intellectual level as Enomoto, if you can help it. “Yeah, I knew that, but that muh-doo-sa thing, like…,” she said, proving my point. According to Azami’s diary and everything else we knew, there was a grand total of ten different “eye” abilities. Bringing them all together would be enough to recreate the Medusa race in our modern era, and that, Kano thought, was the aim of our enemy. Apparently, this inevitably meant the death of all the other ability holders. So those are the stakes. Either we stop the enemy’s plans, or everybody in the Mekakushi-dan except me is dead. It was absolutely crazy, but… “…We’re gonna have to stop this,” I said. Enomoto and Kano nodded in unison. “Well, okay, first things first. We don’t have much time left, yeah? If we’re gonna stop this thing, we gotta get movin’ already.” “Yeah,” Kano agreed as he stretched out his body. He reminded me of a cat like that, in some ways. “Whether we like it or not, it’s all gonna end tomorrow night. I think if we’re gonna have a strategy in place, we better start thinking about it right now.” Looking back over the past few days, I didn’t recall him doing anything like stretching out in front of me like that—something that’d leave him defenseless. Letting go of his secret must’ve helped him relax a little. Once this is all over, maybe he’ll be willing to tell me a little more about the past. About Ayano, about Haruka…and about everything else I didn’t know about back then. Once this is all over, anyway. I exhaled a bit, attempting to tighten up my thought processes as I looked around the room and its members. “Okay,” I said. “…Whoa, don’t fall asleep. Boss, we need you here.” Kido was just about nodding off. I rubbed her shoulder, and she distractedly opened her eyes. Eesh. With her as our leader, we had every reason to fear for our lives…although with the rest of the team, the apples didn’t exactly fall far from the tree, either. Everyone in this hideout might have less than twenty-four hours to live, and yet they were barely able to remain conscious. I turned back to Kano. “Can we get started with our strategy session? If we screw this up, it’s game over, people.” Kano grinned at me. “Hey, you’re good at games, right, Shintaro? We’ve got a lot riding on you!” I took the bait. “Who do you think you’re talking to, man? I got the only perfect score in the game your dad made, remember?” It was, and still remained, a fond memory. Headphone Actor…Maybe it was just a sideshow to the rest of the school festival, but it was still pretty enjoyable. I’d give it at least three and a half stars. Kano snickered and sat up on his seat. “Right on, Shintaro!” he exclaimed, picking up on the newfound energy in the room. “I’m ready to keep this going ’til morning.” When it came to allies on this newfound quest of mine, he was probably the one I could count on the most. He had revealed everything about himself, after all. But I still questioned him somewhat. Looking around, I noticed Kido staring at Enomoto, looking kind of like she wanted to say something but couldn’t figure out what. “Wh-what?” Enomoto finally asked. “N-no,” Kido hurriedly replied, “I was just wondering what you wanted us to call you. ‘Enomoto’ by itself makes you sound kinda lame.” Lame? Come on. If we’re talking about nuances here, what does calling me Shintaro all the time sound like? That’s even lamer. Still, I kept myself from blurting it out as I gauged Enomoto, looking slightly bashful. “Ene’s fine,” she muttered. “It’d just be a pain in the ass to change it now.” It turns out—and this was news to me—“Ene” was her online handle. Given how her mind worked, it must’ve been tremendously embarrassing to be referred to as Ene in the real world. But now, it looked like being in the Mekakushi-dan could make anything feel a little bit better. And so, I took out a pen and began drawing a rough sketch. Our “enemy” was hiding out someplace that, uh, turned out to be a tad larger than we were expecting. But we didn’t think much of it. All these extraordinary events thrust before us had perhaps numbed our ability to feel the true weight of things. It was an exhausting day overall, but I felt terrific. My second wind must’ve been blowing in. It was shaping up to be a long night.
Chapter 102
23 min read