“As I suspected, it looks as if I’ll need you in order to get back into the System.” Smoothly, Abel extended his right arm.
“—Watch out, Kimizuka! He’s going to use a code to turn you into a key again!”
“No, I don’t think he can. Not right away.” For some reason, Kimizuka wasn’t flustered. “Abel, your abilities are limited.” He seemed sure of that. Abel’s code of loss didn’t frighten him at all. “If you were really capable of using codes to rewrite the world’s physical laws at will, you could have stolen much more from us much earlier. You could have killed us. The fact that you didn’t means that writing codes takes quite a bit of preparation.”
Abel didn’t move. No—he couldn’t.
That seemed to support Kimizuka’s theory.
“My Singularity nature activates unconsciously and instantly. You can consciously activate your codes, but in exchange, it takes time. Especially when the target is a pain like me, there are a lot of programs that need to be rewritten, and the code gets more complicated. Am I wrong?”
…I see. That was why Abel had taken the long way around, even though he’d wanted the Singularity: He’d had to. He couldn’t rewrite the Singularity’s programs out of nowhere. That was why he’d started by interfering with the characters around him.
“So it’s going to take a while for Abel to hit you with another code of loss…!”
“Right. Meaning it’s payback time.”
Just as Kimizuka spoke, an enormous gray cube appeared. It covered Abel, hiding him, then shrank and disappeared in the blink of an eye.
“—What was that?”
He’d dealt with Abel that fast? Impossible…
“It’s too soon to relax, though. He should break the program and come out before too long.”
“So you restrained him somewhere temporarily?”
“Yeah. Apparently the Singularity can lock things as well as unlock them,” Kimizuka said, as if it was no big deal. He looked up at the sky. “We’ve still got an enemy, though.”
The huge inverted pyramid, the System, was shining purple.
“—The defense program!”
“It’s decided we’re foreign bodies that are here to mess this place up.”
The System fired a light ray.
There was no time to evade. It was all I could do to protect my head.—But…
“Her word-soul really is incredible.”
Just before the light hit us, it was repelled by an invisible wall.
“Oh, I see.”
So that girl was nearby, too.
I was sure she’d keep on acting as a shield that protected the planet.
“Charlie, here.”
Even as the System kept attacking, Kimizuka held something up to show me.
It was the back of a photograph.
“On the day we went to see Kozue Arisaka, you got a key to the safe where the map was kept, remember? This was in there. The detective retrieved it after I collapsed.”
Nagisa had found this…? Oh, of course: Abel’s code had knocked me out before I could open the safe.
“But wasn’t the map supposed to be in that safe?”
She’d had this photograph in there instead? Thinking that was odd, I turned it over.
It was a family photo.
It showed me, Noah, and our parents, standing in front of the house where we used to live.
“I didn’t know this photo existed.”
Noah was still just one; my father was holding him, and my mother was holding my hand. I was looking up at her, and she was pointing ahead of us, telling me to face forward.
She was smiling.
“Aah…”
We’d had a photo like this.
“Aah, aah, aaaaaah…”
We’d had one. Even if it hadn’t lasted long, even we’d had a moment when we were a family.
“—Aaaaah, aaaaaaaaaaaah! Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah…!”
This was not okay. I was on a battlefield, and yet no matter what I did, the tears spilled over. The wrinkled photograph blurred.
“Charlie.”
I found myself resting my forehead against his chest.
“Charlie, we’re not close or anything. We don’t have any sort of special relationship. We’re not friends we’d rather not have, and we’re not rivals. I thought of lots of other labels, but I couldn’t find one that fit… That means we can have any sort of relationship we want, though. Once a year or so, we can forget we fight like cats and dogs. On that day, even just in that moment, it’s fine if we form a new relationship with each other. Charlotte,” he said, in a voice that was disgustingly gentle, “what can I do for you, right now?”
What did I want to do? What did I need to do? What did I want him to do?
Our relationship until now, the words we’d exchanged, the abuse we’d slung at each other all over the place… Just for now, I’d forget all of it.
No one was watching. No one would know. Only we would ever know about what we said here, and even we would forget by the next day.
In that case…
“I hate you! I completely can’t stand you!” They were words I’d said before, on another day.
Unlike that day, I was in his arms when I said them.
“I absolutely do not want to say stuff like this, and I never thought the day would come when I would.” I bet even I wouldn’t believe it the next day. I was definitely going to laugh off the fact that I’d said these things, as if I’d dreamed it.
—For now, though. Just for now…
“If I’m with you, it feels like I can do anything—so please. Take my hand—and fight with me.”
Warmth enveloped my hand.
Slowly lowering our linked hands, we gazed at the monument that floated in the distance.
“So that’s what was making Kozue suffer.”
There was just one thing I needed to do right now.
“Yeah. We’ll determine our tomorrow on our own. We’ll use our wills to do it. We won’t let any programs control us.”
Releasing each other’s hands, we leveled our weapons. Somehow, they were very familiar matching muskets. We’d apparently been thinking the same thing.