Our next stop was in South America. After transferring planes twice, we reached the country our destination was in, then headed deeper into the mountains.
According to Siesta, there were several locations in the world that acted as “observation points”—places where it was possible to check the Earth’s balance. One was the desert in northern Africa with those enormous stone pyramids and another the great waterfall in North America that acted as a border between two countries.
A little while ago, when Siesta had gone off by herself just after the Ritual of Sacred Return, she’d been trekking around those places. This time, we were bound for a certain salt lake that lay on a high plateau in South America. It was known as the flattest place on Earth, and when rainwater accumulated on the surface and spread in an endlessly thin layer, it looked like a gigantic mirror.
It was night when we reached our accommodations near the salt plain. The hotel was clearly geared toward tourists, with the walls and even the furniture made of salt blocks. It could practically be called an entire salt town. We ate dinner at the hotel restaurant, then bathed in the spa.
“I’m exhausted.”
I toppled over onto the bed, face down. Twenty wasn’t old enough to be losing my stamina, but constantly being on the move had wiped me out.
On top of that, a lot of the past year had been peaceful. I’d spent weekday afternoons at university and the rest of my time doing stuff like investigating cheating spouses and finding lost pets at Siesta’s detective agency. It had been a while since I’d flown around the world like this.
“I bet you’re tired too, huh, Siesta?” I asked, rolling onto my back. Then I remembered. “…It’s just me in here, huh?”
Siesta wasn’t in the room with me.
We’d been together up until dinner at the restaurant, but Siesta had ended up taking a different room since the hotel had a vacancy.
“Not that it matters or anything. It’s fine.”
Just being in the same room didn’t mean we were going to do anything special.
We’d usually stayed together when we traveled together in the past, but now we had more money. Being able to spend our time separately without having to be considerate of each other was nice in its own way.
I didn’t have anything else to do and I did have a lot of fatigue built up, so I wasted no time in getting ready for bed.
It was early spring in Japan, but it was still really cold here. I turned on the heat and pulled the covers up to my shoulders. Come to think of it, I’d often been hit with the unreasonable request “Tell me a funny story” just before we went to sleep way back when. I closed my eyes, thinking back to those distant days.
How much time had passed?
Feeling a heavy weight on my lower abdomen, I opened my eyes. The room was dark, and the world around was sketched in vague outlines. But something…no, someone was definitely on top of me.
“Morning.”
It was Siesta.
She was looking down at me, wearing her usual winter dress.
“…Does this even count as ‘morning’?”
What time was it? It was still dark outside the window. It wasn’t even dawn yet.
“…What happened to your habit of sleeping in?”
“Are you stupid, Kimi?”
Not fair, I thought, but I yawned before I could actually complain. I was way too sleepy.
“This is work. Hurry up—get dressed.” Siesta played with the drawstrings of the hoodie I was wearing as she spoke, tightening it and loosening it.
“You’ve got to be kidding. Can’t it wait till the sun’s up?”
“There are things we can only investigate at this hour. Come on, get up.” Still sitting on me, Siesta pulled on my arms, trying to make me get up.
“…Sleepy. Can’t move. Dress me.”
“This is the opposite to how it always is. All right, hands up.” Sighing, Siesta pulled my hoodie off. “Hey, you’re still training properly. Good job, good for you.” Siesta touched my body all over, nodding with satisfaction.
“Your hands are cold.”
“It means my heart is that much warmer.”
“Really? Yeah, it does seem like that. It’s hard to tell through your clothes, though.”
“…Okay, you change your bottoms. I’ll be waiting in the lobby.” Siesta hurriedly got down off the bed for some reason and left the room. Had I done something? I was so sleepy I couldn’t really tell.
Ten minutes later, I met up with Siesta in the lobby and we headed for the lake.
“It sure is cold.”
I was wearing a coat, gloves, and a scarf, but even fully kitted out for winter, the cold wind made me shiver. The world around us was still dim. Working by the light of a flashlight, Siesta collected water from the shallow lake in a test tube.
Apparently, it was possible to measure the way the world was leaning by looking at the moisture content and salt concentration, specific elements in the atmosphere, and changes in the ecosystem at observation points like these—but that was just how I interpreted it. It had been explained to me in far more difficult language, but the conversation had been so technical that I hadn’t been able to understand all of it.
Siesta had probably been doing this sort of job for ages, though. Since before I’d even come to know the real meaning of the term “Ace Detective.”
“Siesta, how much did you know back then?”
Had she known the secret of the Akashic records? The true identity of the Phantom Thief? About the power of wills and the Singularity? Siesta hadn’t told me a thing about any of them.
Had she done that to protect me, the Singularity? Just how much had Siesta actually known about the secrets of this world?
“You’re giving me too much credit, Kimi,” Siesta said with a wry smile. She shook the test tube, which she’d added some sort of chemical to.
“So you didn’t know all about it, like Bruno?”
“At the time, SPES was my only enemy. I didn’t have the bandwidth to deal with anything else. Even with both hands, I couldn’t hold all that much.”
Back then, I’d put Siesta on too high a pedestal.
She was really just a human being. She had the same emotions as anyone else; she’d just been hiding them. I’d leaned on that strength of hers more than I should have, and I hadn’t noticed that her hands were full. Holding a gun in her right hand and my hand in her left had been all she could manage. And yet…
“Did I help you at all?” I asked Siesta to her back. I hadn’t known a thing then. How much had I been able to support her? Had I managed to walk beside her as an equal?
“It’s pretty late to be getting anxious, isn’t it?”
“I’m just making small talk,” I said, trying to save face.
Siesta broke into a smile. “I didn’t let go of your hand for those three years, Kimi. How you interpret that is up to you.”
“You mean…?”
“Now then.” Siesta stood back up without waiting for my response. “This is still just a quick result, but at this point, it doesn’t seem like there are any disasters.”
“…For better or worse, huh?”
Siesta had said the same thing after her earlier solo investigation. Apparently, retaking the world’s records hadn’t changed anything here.
“But Yggdrasil’s seeds have begun to overrun the planet. The world must be behaving strangely…right?”
“Yes. In which case this, too, may be the will of the Earth itself.” Siesta was gazing out at the lake before us. “The Tuners’ mission was to balance the world, but we’ve probably been dismissed from our roles. I don’t know whether that’s the cause or the effect, but it feels as if the world is trying to end of its own accord.”
“That’s… That’s ridiculous.”
Did the Federation Government know about this, and were they giving up on the world? Were they doing it because they knew the Akashic records weren’t functioning properly, so the Tuners no longer had the power to save the planet? If so—
“It’s because I let Abel steal them.”
Back then, in order to retake Siesta’s will, I’d handed the mechanism behind the world over to Abel.
“It’s my fault the world’s…”
The wind blew around us.
For a little while, it was the only sound.
“It’s almost morning.”
The world had been dyed a deep blue, but orange light was gradually stealing in.
The lake stretched far into the distance with nothing to interrupt it. The water was just a few centimeters deep, and as the rumors said, its surface reflected the colors of the sky like a mirror.
“It’s all right.”
I heard someone running over the water.
A white-haired angel leaped on that heavenly mirror reflecting the dawn, looking as if she was dancing.
“I’ll prove you didn’t make the wrong choice, Kimi.”
No one else was here. No one else was listening.
It was a vow made in a world that was ours alone.
“The neighbor you saved is going to save the world. That way, I’ll prove you were right.”
The sky moved across the mirrored surface of the lake. Deep blue clouds and sunlight slowly flowed beneath our feet, and I set off through that sky toward the angel.
“Was this why we woke up so early?”
This time, I’d really, truly stand beside her.
Smiling at each other, Siesta and I gazed at the distant horizon together.