It started to shine in front of my eyes. The edges of my field of vision were eaten away at with blue, as if someone had spilled a bottle of ink. The world was distorted as if I was looking through water. Left, then right, it swayed. Though only vaguely, I realized something was changing in my body. And so, I learned that the strange translucent thing growing out of the corpse we’d just found, it was trying to grow out of my face.
I opened my mouth to scream, and the translucent protuberance twisted and grew out of it. My teeth jiggled, I sensed them going soft, and all at once I felt my sanity being carried away...
—Then, at last, I understood.
The Kunekune reflected in my swaying vision moved as if it were sliding along the surface of the foreign body growing out of my face. It was very similar to the plankton-like patterns that appeared in my eyes when I stared up into the blue sky. Basically, it looked like the Kunekune was standing there, but it wasn’t. Like how white blood cells in the eyeball appeared to be floating when they were projected on the blue sky. The Kunekune was, in fact, a completely different thing being projected on something that was between us and the world. This foreign body was connected to whatever that was.
I understood something else, too. The reason that, the first time I’d encountered the Kunekune, Toriko’s rock salt had been able to drive it off. That was because I recognized something the Kunekune was projected on. When I looked at that thing and recognized it, the rock salt hit it. If I didn’t recognize it, there was nothing there!
“I get it! I get it! I get it! I get it!!” I kept on shouting. I couldn’t have stopped if I tried. I just shouted “I get it!” over and over, as if I were screaming it.
Then, suddenly, pain rushed through my cheek as if I’d been slapped. Toriko was in front of me. The hand she was holding the gun with was stretched out towards me, trying to wipe away the foreign body that kept on growing. It infected the fingers that touched it, turning them translucent, and they were beginning to become disfigured, but she didn’t seem to care.
Oh, hey. She’s a better person than I thought.
While I was looking at her face, beautiful even as it was distorted by desperation, thinking about things like they had nothing to do with me, Toriko must have gotten impatient, because she grabbed my head with both hands, and shouted in my face.
“You’re getting too much, Sorawo! Come back!”
With those words, my mind was suddenly clear.
Oh, right—if I went any further, there was no coming back.
With my body moving slowly, as if I was in a dream, I pulled the gun from my bag, and I tried to take a stance... No dice. I couldn’t aim. My hands were limp. I should have practiced like Toriko said to. Inhaling, I shouted:
“Toriko! Shoot! Shoot the Kunekune!”
Toriko looked me in the eye, then gave a big nod. She let go of my face, readying the gun as she turned and faced the Kunekune.
She pulled the trigger.
With the dry echo of a gunshot, a hot bullet rushing forth from the muzzle, it struck something between me and the world, a membrane on which the Kunekune was projected, and shattered it.
The sound, the heat, they seemed to blossom like a flower, and then rapidly shriveled.
That thing folded up like origami, folding and folding... until it turned into a tiny lump, and then fell to the ground. Taking the Kunekune with it.
“Whew.” Letting out a huge sigh, I dropped the gun.
Instantly, I brought my hands to my face. That foreign body that had been growing voluminously out of my mouth and face was no more. With heaving breaths, I slumped to the ground in a daze, then turned my face to look at Toriko. When I saw her hands were back to normal, too, I was relieved.
Then we got super scared.
“Uwahhh!”
“Wahhhh?!”
We both screamed in unison, scrambling to our unsteady feet. While I was hurriedly picking up my gun, Toriko nearly tripped as she rushed over to where the Kunekune had been and got down on her hands and feet.
“Found it!” Jumping to her feet with a shout, Toriko had the mirror stone that was reflecting the sun in her hand. It was something, folded into a cube.
We hadn’t talked over what to do, but we both turned on our heels and high-tailed it out of there.
With the horizon being dyed purple at the edges, the darkness of evening was on its way.
We raced through the wind-rustled grass, out of breath. The further we got from the scene, the harder it was not to laugh.
“That was scary! Suuuuuper scary!”
Toriko shouted, “But we did it! We hunted a Kunekune! We did it, Sorawo!”
“That was so crazy! Seriously, give me a break!”
It reminded me of when I was still young and innocent, and how, after playing until I tuckered myself out, I would race across the gold-stained field towards home.
Toriko and I both laughed as we ran. Incoherently. Like we were insane. Like children.
The tears came.
Thank goodness we didn’t die. Thank goodness we didn’t go crazy.
“Sorawo, when we get back, let’s have a party!” Toriko suddenly said.
“Huh?!”
I reacted with surprise, and Toriko happily went on.
“There’ll be money coming in, so let’s celebrate! I’ve never had an after party before, you know!”
What, she hadn’t?
“...Well, I guess I don’t mind.”
“Yay!”
These plains were a place I had wanted to monopolize for myself. Even now that I knew they were more bizarre and dangerous than I had initially thought, I still felt the same.
But now, if it was with this strange woman, I was starting to think I wouldn’t mind playing together.