After leaving Siesta, I started searching the palace on my own.
I ran down long corridors, checking every room…but a lot of them were locked, so I didn’t feel like I was managing to do a very thorough search.
“…Nagisa, Charlie.”
Where were they? Were they locked up somewhere? I ran up one set of stairs after the next, and when I finally opened a door at the end of them, I found myself on a connecting passageway that led to the neighboring building.
“……! Brrr!”
It wasn’t really a covered walkway, though, so much as an actual bridge.
The bridge ran straight across to the next building, a few dozen meters away. It was night, and snow was falling quietly, piling into drifts. Visibility wasn’t great, but I had to cross. I started across the bridge, using my smartphone to illuminate the ground at my feet.
After a little while, I heard heavy, creaking footsteps from the other end of the bridge and looked up. A figure stood a few meters ahead of me. It was a masked man in a white robe—a Federation Government dignitary.
“Who are you?”
There was no real point asking for his code name, but I’d done it on reflex anyway. Maybe I’d had some sort of vague premonition.
“You can call me Lot.”
I’d heard that name once a while back. He was the government official who’d directed Charlie to the control tower where the Akashic records had slept. Putting that with what Ice Doll had said earlier, I managed to connect the dots.
“You’re Charlie’s father?”
The official stripped off his mask and tossed it aside. Emerald eyes gleamed in the darkness. There was no mistake: This was the missing soldier Charlotte Arisaka Anderson had been searching for.
“Could you move, please? I’m here to save your daughter.”
Lot narrowed his deep-set eyes, as if he were sizing me up, then finally spoke in a low voice. “That won’t be necessary. You don’t have to do anything for her to be saved. She’ll be on the Ark.”
So that really is where he stands on the matter, huh? Just as Ice Doll had said, Lot was trying to keep his daughter Charlie from being caught up in the Great Cataclysm.
“And what does Charlie say about that?”
“That she’ll board the Ark, of course. That’s why she severed all contact with you.”
“Yeah, that’s a lie.” I leveled my gun at him. “She’ll just save herself? That’s the sort of spoiled dream she hates the most.”
Charlotte Arisaka Anderson kept fighting in search of the light that shone on the other side of suffering. I knew that’s who she was as an agent.
“Try it,” the man said. “Go ahead and shoot.”
For a moment, it felt like Lot’s eyes had glowed with a black light.
Then a gunshot rang out—and I realized I’d pulled the trigger. I hadn’t meant to. Lot’s murderous hostility had gotten to me, and my body had moved on its own.
However—and I probably should’ve expected it—the bullet didn’t hit him. It was a narrow bridge, so Lot couldn’t retreat, but he’d still managed to evade the sudden gunshot with the least amount of effort required.
“I’m her father. I know her best.”
“You’re telling me not to put words in your daughter’s mouth? Frankly, I’d rather not be doing this, either.”
Charlie and I got along terribly. All we did when we were together was cuss each other out. I’d never imagined I’d pick up on what someone like that really wanted and use it as ammunition against her blood relative.
“Still, this is a good opportunity,” I said. “I want to hear your thoughts on the matter.”
This man had neglected all his family’s problems. He hadn’t done a thing to help Kozue Arisaka. Had Lot been watching Charlotte overcome that all by herself?
“What do you think your daughter…what children are?”
I gripped my gun tighter remembering the familiar face of a guy I missed, who’d once protected children even when it meant risking his own life. I knew I couldn’t get through to him. Even so, I kept my weapon trained on Lot, putting all the hostility I could manage into the gesture.
“I see. I suppose you wouldn’t know, since you have no family.”
My finger squeezed a couple of millimeters in on the trigger.
“Your life must have been filled with hardship. Though that’s just the fate of people like us.” Unexpectedly, Lot lowered his voice as if he genuinely sympathized with me. “Those like the Tuners and the Singularity, people involved with the core of the world, are born burdened by karma.”
“Karma?”
“Yes. People who bear special roles like those are born cut off from ties and fate. Either that, or when they decide to become heroes later on, the ties they originally possessed are severed.”
What was he saying? But Lot went on before I could ask.
“Haven’t you ever thought it was unusual? You’ve been alone in the world since birth, yet strangely enough, you’re now surrounded by heroes whose circumstances are similar.”
Those words brought to mind a number of faces:
Two detectives who’d been raised in an orphanage. A girl whose parents had died before she became the Oracle. An assassin whose father had fallen in the line of duty. A vampire whose tribe had been eradicated. An information broker who’d lived more than a hundred years but had no relatives. A magical girl who’d lost a friend that was closer to her than family…
“It’s no coincidence.”
It was snowing harder now, and I felt frozen all the way through.
Lot went on. “People whose mission is to save the world are fated to lose anything that might weigh them down, to prevent them from misreading the balance of the scales. To keep them from trying to save the wrong thing.”
“……! You’re saying that Tuners are fated to lose everything else, so they’ll save the world?”
“The same is true of those who are only candidates to become heroes. Those men and women are cut loose from any related fate, so that they’ll be able to offer themselves up for the sake of the world at any time. All of this is preordained by the System.”
—No way. Was that why Saikawa had lost her parents, too? Why Charlie’s little brother had died? Had it all been due to that oppressive force protecting the world? Because heroes had to continue to choose the world instead of their neighbor?