Chapter 115

CHILDREN RECORD SIDE -NO. 8- The moment “focusing” was banished, I could feel the warmth fade from both of my eyes. The vision I had, of that gloomy laboratory, switched to the sight of dark, bare concrete, as if it were slapped against my head. It was such an unusual experience for my body that, until my own vision returned to me, I didn’t even realize I was on my hands and knees. My ability was shut off now, but the tragedy that had just unfolded in that room encompassed my mind, so realistic that I could practically smell it. Soon, I could no longer contain the nausea I had held back. I heaved out the contents of my stomach multiple times. Just a few seconds ago, I had been using my ability to watch Shintaro’s team storm the enemy hideout to stop the evil plot being carried out by the “clearing eyes.” They went by the ridiculous name of the Mekakushi-dan, but at the very least, they treated me well. Now, they had been trampled, cruelly and mercilessly, and lay on the floor unmoving, like dolls. The sight of these lifeless piles, fresh blood pooling around them, remained vivid in my mind. This was death, something shown to me countless times back in the Kagerou Daze. But those faint memories that darted through my head—memories of living together with them—refused to allow me to accept this death. The dark colors of the afterlife began to infect my heart. I gritted my teeth, as if chewing away at this reality thrust before me. No. Don’t think about it. Don’t swallow it. For now, at least, I can’t let this despair take me. I’ve got to stand up to it and figure out what I can do about it. That’s our job. The job of the living. I frantically ruminated over these soundless words in my heart—only to realize it was calming me. The fast beat, ready to make my chest explode; my own heart, deeply disturbed and chaotic—it was all becoming tranquil, like a fever passing from my body. I wasn’t getting used to it. I wasn’t forgetting about it. I was just withstanding it. And for now, that was fine. The one thing I couldn’t do was let the sadness and regret shut my eyes to this. As my ragged breathing soothed my esophagus, burned by all the stomach acid that had just coursed through it, I began to hear shouting from a throng of people. I was on the roof of an abandoned building a few hundred yards away from the school, and it made the noise from the ground sound completely different. The sounds of people talking, if they made it up here at all, arrived only in small fragments. Most people would hear only white noise. Still, I could tell that the great throngs that covered the ground outside were probably talking to each other about Momo Kisaragi. It was easy to imagine what it sounded like. I took a deep breath and picked myself up. Then I rested my back against the metal fence that ringed the roof and looked down at where the noise was coming from. It was the middle of the night, yet the large path that extended from my vantage point was buried in a sea of people. It was like the source of a mighty river, the school serving as its mouth. It spilled out into the roadway beyond, snarling traffic. It was a huge event, one that required little explanation—the fruits of Momo’s diversionary tactics, carried out as part of the gang’s infiltration. It was meant to grab the eyes and ears of the general public, and on that front, it was a massive success. “Momo Kisaragi is there.” That vague piece of information, all by itself, was enough to make all these people take action. Was this her ability at work, or was she engineering something else entirely? I couldn’t tell, but no matter how you looked at it, it was far beyond the realm of common sense. There’s nothing like a departure from common sense to grab people’s curiosity. No matter how it turned out, there was no doubting that the day’s events would be a climactic chapter in the history of Momo’s life. Even if she quit her pop-idol career—no matter how she tried to explain the current situation—this event would be burned into everyone’s memory. But Momo was fine with that. No matter what kind of sin she had to bear as a result. Today, at this moment, she stood strong, so we could blaze a future for all of us. Come to think of it, she was always like that. Ever since I met her. I was a total stranger to her, but she worried for me like she was personally involved. She unwaveringly swore she would help me, even. She was a gullible idiot who recklessly dove into things. Hanging out with her was guaranteed to put you in danger. But she was the best. And because Momo was like that, I was able to fight for myself like this. She taught me what being a friend was like. So there had to be something I could do for her. I looked up at the starless night sky, which looked like someone had applied black paint to the space above me, and juxtaposed my own future with it in my mind. Is there anything left I can do? And if there is, can I pull it off? “…Ughhh, this sucks.” The voice was a small, reluctant groan. Looking to my side, I saw Takane Enomoto lying there, fighting with a hoodie that was much too big for her as she struggled to get up. She and I were providing rear support, and thanks to the nature of our abilities, we were dangerously defenseless. Our similarities meant we were huddled together here, on the roof of this derelict building, not too far away from where the operation was unfolding. Thanks to her “opening eyes,” her spirit had apparently been separated from her body for the past two years. It was a crazy story, one right out of movies or comic books, but I’d gotten used to things like that over the past few days. Ene, her spirit, had returned to Enomoto, her body, just yesterday…meaning that she was back in the physical world for the first time in two years. I couldn’t even imagine how excruciating that must feel to her. If I overdid it with my own skill, taking my vision and essentially tossing it away from my body for too long, it would exhaust me. But Enomoto must have felt a thousand times worse. Just thinking about it made me want to express my gratitude a little. “…What? What’re you looking at?” …She scares me. I mean, look at her. Her eyes are scary. Back when she was Ene, she was always—you know—peppy. Not a word you hear much anymore, but it perfectly matched the insane, sugar-fueled impression she made. Now, back in her physical body, she looked like a drained middle-aged woman on the way home from work. I guess my dad was right. If a salesman smiles at you, it never means anything good. “Whewww,” she muttered as she managed to get herself seated, looking at me with her eyes. “That wraps that up… So how’s it going down there?” My heart, calm up to now, began to weakly limp forward. Ene’s job in this mission was to undo the security in the enemy hideout, use the Internet to spread the word about Momo’s impromptu live concert, harness the school’s audio equipment to support her performance, and so on. A lot of stuff on her plate. Thinking about that, she probably didn’t grasp what the invasion force—in other words, Shintaro—was up to right now. My role was to support the infiltration team, keep tabs on its situation, and report on it to the team members on the outside. If I wanted to carry that out, I’d have to tell Takane Enomoto everything about the disaster I had just witnessed. I was careful not to let the emotion overcome my voice as I told her. “…It’s getting pretty bad.” Enomoto paused at the frank appraisal, then let out a soft, but still kind of long, sigh. Her eyes went up, toward the night sky. “…Are they hurt?” she asked quietly. I could easily tell what she meant by the question: “Are they just hurt? Did anything worse happen to them?” That kind of thing. Struggling to find words to respond, I simply shook my head. I was hoping that’d be enough to get the message across to her. Kido was one thing, but Ene had spent hours upon hours hanging with Shintaro. I’m sure he was a vital friend to her. And if that friend was now dead, even if she would find out about it sooner or later, I just found it too difficult to say it with my own lips. But Enomoto kept staring at the sky, all but begging me to make it official. I found myself less and less able to stand the silence as it dragged on. “…Shintaro and Kido are dead. I didn’t see what happened after that.” More silence. The chaos down below seemed far away as my own pulse bubbled up to my ears. After another pause, Enomoto spoke, her voice unaffected. “…Did he keep himself together?” The sight of Shintaro’s last moments flashed back into my mind. There had been nothing “strong” about his personality. I was sure about that. But right there, at the very end, he didn’t whine about his fate one bit. He was a really nice guy. He didn’t deserve to die. And the thought of that made it beyond what I could stand. “He did. He had a gun pointed at him, but he didn’t run away.” Large tears welled up in my eyes as I spoke. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t do a thing. It was all so soul crushing, so cheerless, so hopeless. “…Oh. He sure held out, didn’t he?” Enomoto let out a weak laugh. It must have been even more soul crushing and sad and hopeless for her, but she didn’t shed a tear. I knew full well, almost painfully well, that it wasn’t because of any heartlessness on her part. The two of them were dead, and we were alive. And if we were alive, that meant we had to do something. But our powers weren’t anything that could pummel our enemies into a pulp. If we mindlessly rushed them, we’d be killed before we could lay a finger upon them. Enomoto and I understood that well enough. We understood it, but we still had to fight it out. Marie and Kano were still in that room. I could only hope they made it out okay, but that might be a tall order. What was going on with Momo right now? She must have planned to regroup with Kido later, so she could hide herself after attracting all that attention. But Kido’s gone now. Hopefully Seto can find a way to get her out of there. Our plan was falling apart, and as time wore on, it increasingly began to look like a lost cause. No—there was no chance this plan would work out; there hadn’t been from the very start. It just wasn’t that kind of battle. If we can’t even reach our goals, it’s fair to say this can’t get any worse. So…what? What can I do right now, at this moment? Think. What should I do…? “…Hey, um, do you play any video games?” The question from Enomoto snapped my mind out of the swirl of self-doubt it had fallen into, dragging it back into reality. …Video games? I mean, about as much as anyone else, I suppose. But why did she ask that? When every second counts? Thinking about it didn’t generate any answers, so I just shrugged and said “A little.” She knew Shintaro was dead, but if anything, to my side, Enomoto looked refreshed. There wasn’t a single trace of fear in her voice. “Well, I’m totally addicted to them. Mainly because I couldn’t make too many friends, I guess…but up until high school, I pretty much did nothing but play games.” She put her hands in the air and began batting her thumbs around, working an invisible controller. I still wasn’t grasping the point. She was starting to irritate me, but I just nodded at her, prompting her to continue. “So my teachers and my grandma kept getting pissed off at me about that, you know? They were all like, ‘You only live once, y’know! You can’t let those games hook ya! Back in my day,’ blah blah blah.” I gave her a look. It sounded like either her teachers or her grandmother were straight out of the mid-twentieth century. “Oh,” she bashfully added, “I kind of exaggerated that. But you know.” “Ah,” I replied, unsure how to respond. “But I was always thinking: Games are a lot more fun than real life, you know? You’ve only got one life to live, but with video games, you can continue as many times as you want after you die. Like, if you think about how you’ve only got this one chance, it paralyzes you, right? You’re too scared to do anything. And even when you lose or die in a game, it still makes you a better player, the more you do it. It’s like that ‘ooh, just one more game’ feeling. That’s what makes them fun. It makes you stronger at them.” Enomoto turned to me. The smile she constructed on her face had the unmistakable look of grief upon it. “You know, you remind me a lot of him, way back when. You’re just smart enough that you keep moping around, worrying too much about the future. Like, you’re carrying all this weight you don’t have to carry.” She must have been talking about Shintaro. This appraisal didn’t ring true to me at first, but—as much as I hated to admit it—she was right. Thinking about our future right now made my mind numb. “…If you mess it up, then just try it one more time. That’s the way you gotta approach this, or else you won’t get anywhere. Besides… “…I died once, and I’m still here.” She reached over to tousle my hair. I could have yelled “Quit it” and pushed her aside, but I guess I didn’t want her to get a look at my face. She was admonishing me, but I was sure she was just trying to tell herself the same thing. “If you mess it up, then just try it one more time”? It was so stupidly optimistic, so uncaring of the consequences, so irresponsible. But somehow, the words wriggled themselves deeply into my heart. Satisfied with the job she had done on my hairdo, Enomoto pulled her hand back and stretched out. “Well,” she almost whispered, “I think I’ll go give it a shot, too.” Something in me had figured she would say that. I took a deep breath, eyes turned downward, preparing for the worst, then turned back toward Enomoto. “I’ll go, too”…is what I meant to say, of course. But before I could find the words, the events unfolding before me took me wholly aback. Before my eyes, there was a huge screen in the darkness, shining in a dazzling array of colors. Looking to my side, I saw Enomoto sprawled out unconscious, her cell phone thrust toward me. And before I could even marvel at all this, a boundlessly bright voice boomed from the phone’s tiny speaker. Its tone was completely different from the sluggish one of a moment ago, but it was definitely the same voice that had just spurred me into action. “All riiiight! So now that we got that sor! ted! out! it’s time for me! Ene! your ever-humble servant! to go sallying forth into enemy territory! I’ll have to leave you for a little bit… Yeah, I’m sure the thought makes you wanna cryyyy and stuff! But you know, kid, this is a little thing I like to call star crossed love…! A forbidden fruit that will never have the chance to grow! For now, you’ll just have to bottle up those feelings in your heart and save them for the day true romance comes hopping along. Yes, I am positive you’ll find someone who’s just perfect for you before— Ahhhh! Wait! Hear me out to the end! Don’t throw me away!” I grabbed the phone from Enomoto and was just about to throw it out into the nightscape before I snapped out of it. I must have been brainwashed into the idea or something. She might be a pain in the neck, but—for better or for worse—this Ene was one of us. As hard as it was to believe, she really was the spirit, or something, of Enomoto, who was sleeping before me. Repressing my feelings of irritation, I reluctantly focused back down on the phone. Ene’s cheeks were puffed way out in rage. “Ugh! I was just trying to take your mind off the heavy stuff for a few moments! Get with the program! You’re never gonna hit it off with the opposite sex if you act like that all the time!” This is awful. She’d laugh at a funeral. “So listen! I got some serious stuff to say now!” You weren’t being serious before? Ene brought her face right up to the screen, one index finger stretching out from her floppy sleeve. She didn’t look all that serious to me, but I decided to take her at her word. “I want you to take this phone with you! And don’t you daaaare leave it anywhere!” Leave it? This is Momo’s phone. What gives you the right to say what happens to it? “And,” she continued at breakneck speed, “if you can make it out of ‘today’…I want you to hold down the bottom button and say ‘Big Bro!’ as loud as you can. All right? That’s your mission.” “…Huh?” Ene still had that same kind of jokey attitude as she spoke, but something told me she wasn’t screwing around with me. What kind of crazy “mission” is that, though? Why’s she springing this on me now, of all times? If there were something I needed to do right now, Shintaro would have told me about it in advance. “All right,” Ene whispered to herself as I pondered her words. Then she turned around on her heels, or whatever she had in her cyber-world. “That,” she said, her back turned to me, “was all he asked me to tell you. But if you want to know my own personal take…you two are really exactly the same. I know there’s been a lot of stuff, with our abilities and trust issues and so on…but I think my master chose you because you reminded him of himself a lot.” “Wha…? That doesn’t make any sense! I-I’m going, too! Okay?!” Ene didn’t answer me, simply turning around a little to show me a smile. Then she whizzed away into the horizon on the far end of the screen. Left alone, I was soon greeted by the loud droning of a helicopter passing above my head. If it’s the media, they’re a little late covering all this furor. I mean, Momo’s not even here anymore. The phone now showed the picture of the Mekakushi-dan that Momo was using for her lock screen. It wasn’t really a flattering pic, but we were all looking right at the camera, enjoying ourselves. And then I realized something all over again. We were probably all friends. People who were irreplaceable to each other. And now I probably wouldn’t get to see them again. So I just stood there, battered by waves of frustration, of loneliness, and of a kindness that was far too large for me to withstand.