“There were lots of books on fortune telling and improving your luck. She had always had an interest in that sort of thing. But once dad left, the number of books just kept growing. More strange people, like her, started coming to the house. I hated it, but couldn’t do anything.”
“This was Runa’s house...?” Toriko murmured.
No.
I shuddered as I looked down at the floor plan.
When Runa spoke, it probably was about her own house. But the miniature she was assembling was eerily familiar.
It was the floor plan of my house.
“I didn’t want to see her face, so I stayed in my room, streaming as much as possible. Then, one day, I noticed our Buddhist altar was gone. Mom said she’d donated all of our belongings, and I had to move out with her.”
In Runa’s hands, nondescript stones and twigs took on the form of my house. It was an abstract representation, but reproduced with unbelievable accuracy.
“So I told her I didn’t want to. I already had Satsuki-sama at that point, so mom would do what I said.”
Runa picked up a black stone, the size of a piece of chalk, off the floor.
“So, once I put this in my room, it will be all finished.”
I understood. The black stone was “Satsuki-sama.” Runa’s hand approached the miniature house. Heading right towards my room.
I reflexively kicked the house, sending all its carefully arranged parts scattering. In an instant, “my house” was reduced to a pile of rubble.
Despite having her work destroyed moments from completion, Runa didn’t react. Her hand kept moving, placing the black stone where “my room” had been. When she moved her hand away, the stone fell over.
There was a long pause.
“What’re you doing, Runa?”
That was the most I could manage. I felt like I had found her in the middle of doing something horribly sinister.
“Kamikoshi-san,” Runa said without looking up. “What do you think I’m doing?” Her voice was coherent enough, but she wasn’t making sense.
“I just asked you that,” I said.
“I don’t know why I’m here.”
“So...what? You’re saying you were in a daze, and just suddenly found yourself here?”
She didn’t answer the question. After staying silent for some time, Runa opened her mouth again.
“I feel like I’ve hit a dead end.”
“How so?”
“I mean, I have, right? Looking at it from any objective point of view, I did some really awful stuff. Getting all sorts of people caught up in it, making their lives worse. I have so many people with a grudge against me that I wouldn’t be surprised if one killed me.”
“Well... Yeah.”
“I can’t stream anymore. I sure as hell can’t show my face, and even if I went the VTuber route, I’m sure that they’d figure it out from my voice. My natural voice’s pretty cute, after all.”
“Sure...”
“I can’t stream, and I have to be careful not to brainwash anyone. I’ve been prevented from doing everything I wanted to do, so what am I even doing here?”
“...”
“You asked me during the day, right? Why did I make this place? I tried to remember. But I couldn’t. There was no clear reason. If I could think someone was controlling me, like Satsuki-sama, that might have made it easier, but I think the fact is, I just went with the flow, and at some point things went like they did. I never put forward the idea myself, but I also can’t blame anybody else for it...”
“Well, I guess you just have to take that for what it is, don’t you?”
“But it’s the same way now.”
“Now?”
“So, here I am. Sneaking off on my own in the middle of the night. Was I in a daze, maybe? I think I was awake, though. I mean, I remember the scenery I saw on my way here, crossing the yard, entering the Cattle Barn, climbing up the stairs. But why did I do it? All I can say is that I was just following some vague flow of things, and it brought me here somehow.”
Runa touched the wreckage of the “house” as she continued speaking.
“I’ve been trying not to use the Voice because of my promise with you, but then the next thing I know, I’m doing something like this. I know you complimented me on my skill at remodeling, but it just doesn’t feel real to me. I mean, it’s just something I’ve been doing all this time without really understanding it. If this continues, eventually I might just go with the flow and do something bad again, making people miserable without knowing why. Maybe it would be better if you just killed me.”
“I’m not killing you...”
“Yeah, I know. I mean, you never blame me for what I did, Kamikoshi-san.”
Runa raised her face and looked at me.
“You don’t get mad, and you don’t blame me. Then, on top of that, you take me outside, and you try to have me do things with you. If it was just Satsuki-sama’s funeral, I’d get it. But all of us camping together? What gives? It’s not like you haven’t considered that I might change my mind and stab you in the back, or try to take you down with a desperate suicide attack, right? But it’s like you...trust me, for some reason. I don’t get it. It’s not even just you. Nishina-san, and Tsuji-san, and Migiwa-san, and the Torchlight people, they’re all being nice to me for some reason. Although, Nishina-san scares me, and Tsuji-san’s annoying...”
“Am I really that scary?”
“Yeah, I get that a lot.”
Runa carried on, ignoring the comments from the two she’d just denigrated.
“I can’t understand why they’re being nice, so it’s creeped me out this whole time. It’d make more sense if you just killed me and buried my corpse in the mountains.”
“Already told you, we won’t be doing that.”
“But you don’t even tell me to reflect on what I did.”
“That’s not the kind of thing you do because someone told you to.”
When I said that, Runa sulkily replied, “I guess it just means that, in the end, no one’s that interested in me.”
“Huh?”
That was such a leap I couldn’t follow it. I was annoyed she could say that because she didn’t know just how many hours we, and the folks from DS Research and Torchlight, a large group of adults, had spent discussing how to handle her.
But I guess since she didn’t know, I couldn’t blame her. And I’d have felt like I was trying to force her to feel grateful if I came out and said it now.
“Is getting other people interested in you that important?” I asked, sighing.
“Of course it is!!!” Runa immediately shouted in response. “Is that wrong? Wanting people to be interested in me?!”
“Uh, no, I don’t think it’s wrong, just...”