“Listen... You’re right, I’m not interested in others’ opinions of me. But that’s because my interest is taken up by things I care about more. It may seem unpleasant to you, but in my case, it’s just that I’m just lacking in the ability to take an interest in others.”
“You’re trying to say it’s not your fault because of that?”
“I’m just saying I’m looking at other things. If you’re sad that people aren’t interested in you, then what else can you do but chase after the things that interest you instead? Who are you interested in, Runa?”
“...”
“Don’t you have anyone like that?”
Runa looked at me like she had no idea what to say. Her gaze went past me, to something over my shoulder. There was a pleading look in her eyes.
I heard a sigh behind me, and Toriko knelt down next to us.
“I get you,” Toriko said to Runa. “It feels awful when the person who you want to notice you won’t even take you seriously, right?”
Runa hung her head in silence. It kind of looked like she’d nodded.
Huh...? Are people communicating without me being able to pick up on it again?
I thought Toriko would be steaming mad after she’d just been controlled, so her unexpected sympathy for Runa confused me.
Behind us, Tsuji spoke. “Urumi-kun, we’re not nearly so uninterested in you as you seem to think. We’re all adults here, so we’re still searching for the appropriate way to interact with a minor. Everyone is more concerned for you than you realize.”
“And what about you, Tsuji-san?”
“I wouldn’t go to all the trouble of being your guarantor if I wasn’t interested.”
“What about me interested you?”
“I thought you were a neat kid. Do I need any more reason than that?”
“...”
Hopefully this will get her to settle down...
“See? There’s no need to be so down on yourself. There’s more people who care about you than you think. It may not feel real to you, but everyone wants to help you get your life back bit by bit. So...”
“Even if that’s true...!” Runa tore herself away from me. “If what you’re saying is true, that’s even worse. Because I haven’t solved the problem with me.”
“The problem with you?”
Runa looked around. There was fear in her eyes as she surveyed the vast whiteness.
“Where is this place? I came here on my own, started making the layout of a house I don’t know, and only came back to my senses when you called my name. That’s weird, right? It’s gotta be. If it happens again, I might betray you all without even knowing it, and that scares me.”
“Did you really come here without realizing it? Just going with some sort of flow?”
“It pisses me off how much it sounds like a lie now that I say it, but yes.”
As I thought about it in silence, Runa gave me a dubious look. Because I was crouching next to her, our eyes were at the same level. Yeah, just like you’d do when dealing with a kid. I had taken this action naturally. Just sort of going with the flow of things.
Was it something I had truly done of my own will?
“What...?” Runa asked, unable to bear the silence any longer.
I looked her in the eye and said, “You know, I don’t like kids.”
“Huh?”
“But when there’s a kid in front of me, I sort of switch into kid-handling mode. I crouch down, meet them at eye level, and talk softly so as not to scare them. Even though that’s not what I want to do. It never sat right with me. Why should I have to act so artificially kind to kids when I don’t even like them?”
“Uh... Right.”
“Toriko, I want you to think back... Remember how you showed me that movie from your past? The one from the shooting competition.”
“What’re you bringing that up for now?!”
Her voice was shrill, reminding me of the exact circumstances of that situation. Well, it wasn’t like anyone else would know, as long as we didn’t say anything...
“Neither of us had a sense of self. Yet we both kept on talking in a way that seemed right. We woke up in the middle of it, and realized we’d been talking automatically the whole time.”
“Ohhh... Yeah.”
“Even thinking about it after the fact, the conversation that we were having at that time still stands up as a proper conversation. Our sense of self was just absent from it. I think my attitude towards children is the same way. When there’s a kid in front of me, some sort of switch gets flipped, and I automatically shift into that sort of mode. It’s probably the same for Runa too. She was conscious, but had no sense of self, and was just proceeding automatically.”
“I don’t get it,” said Runa. “Huh? I was conscious? But had no...”
“No sense of self.”
“You’re saying that’s the kind of state I was in?”
“Yeah. That’s when you were influenced by the Otherside, and you ‘didn’t really think much about it’ as they used you to create a foothold for them. I think when you were trying to summon ‘Satsuki-sama,’ there was more of your own will in play, so they were more able to get you into doing it.”
The more I talked, the more excited I got about it. I could feel all these disparate thoughts I’d been having coming together inside my head.
“That’s how ghost stories are. Things are scary, and the people involved should understand that the events going on are abnormal, but for some reason they are unable to pull themselves away before it’s too late. Once we’re set on a course, it’s incredibly hard to escape. Our thoughts and actions become automatic.”
“Uh-huh...”
“Romance is the same way too.”
The words slipped out of my mouth. My understanding only caught up to them once they had. A shudder ran down my back. I felt like I had finally gotten to the core of the matter.
“That’s how it is... I’m sure romance is the same way!”
I continued my rant, ignoring the confused look on Runa’s face.
“Romance is scary, like a planet with immense gravity. It tries to pull any human that gets close to it into the context of ‘romance.’ If you get pulled in, everyone can only interpret everything you do in the context of romance, and the way you talk and act ends up that way too. That’s always bothered and scared me... Yeah, that’s one point where romance and ghost stories are the same. People try to force things into their context! And just like the context of romance takes people over, the Otherside tries to get humans into the context of ghost stories! How’s that? Do you get it?”
“I’m scared.”
“I know. It’s scary, right?”
“You scare me, Kamikoshi-san.”
“Huh? Why?!”
“I get it, Kamikoshi-kun,” Tsuji said out of nowhere. I turned to see her looking down at me with a peaceful smile. “What you’re talking about is something that any magician has to realize during her training. Because the sort of intervention into our thoughts that you’re talking about is something that disrupts magical consciousness.”