How and when had he come to Grimgar?
Manato had no clue, but he was pretty hungry. That meant it had been some time since he’d last eaten. That was the only thing he could be certain of right now.
“Whoa, impressive!”
The two of them were back inside the tower. Haru led him up the spiral staircase to a wide, open room where the walls and ceiling were gray and the floor was a faded shade of deep blue.
“You think so?” Haru asked. He then walked over next to the wall, and opened a door on a large rectangular object that was apparently a cupboard, which had shelves full of jars inside. Haru removed two of them, and then closed the door.
“Sit down wherever.”
The center of the room was empty, but there were a table and four chairs close to the cupboard.
Manato ran over and sat in one of the chairs. Haru set the two jars down on the table and opened the lids on them. One jar had what Manato assumed were either fruits or roots in it. Some were a reddish color, while others were white or green, and they were pickled in some kind of liquid. Manato gave it a whiff and found that it had a sour odor. The other jar had what was probably the flesh of some sort of animal. It was packed full of chunks of meat that were dark in color and didn’t look particularly tender.
“I don’t have to eat very often, but not doing so gets boring, so I’ve been making preserves to snack on occasionally.”
Haru opened up another container and pulled out some kitchenware. A plate, a fork, and also a knife.
“Eat as much as you like.”
“You don’t mind?”
“They’re pickled melon and root vegetables, and the meat of a cowlike animal called a ganaro which I’ve salted and dried, and then smoked. I’ve also got roasted beans and a few different types of dried fruits. The dried beans would need to soak in water for a while before you’d be able to eat them, but if you want to try them, it wouldn’t be a problem for me to prepare them.”
“Wow. You’ve got a real selection here.”
“I’ve had a lot of time on my hands. I gathered whatever looked edible and did what I could to preserve it, but even then I end up having to throw stuff out because there’s more than I can eat.”
“That’s such a waste. You’ve got to eat it all.”
A faint chuckle came from behind Haru’s mask. “You’re right.”
Manato used the fork to move a few of the finely chopped pickles over to his plate. He’d had them before on the other side. The first ones he tried were the white kind. They might’ve been pickling too long, because their flavor had gone beyond sour to actually a little spicy, but it was very flavorful.
“This’s pretty good,” Manato said.
“Glad you like it,” Haru replied.
“Can I eat the meat?”
“Of course.”
“I love meat.”
Manato pulled a hunk of smoked meat out of the container, and carved off a thin slice with his knife.
“Ohh...”
As he chewed on it, he found that it was pretty salty, but the flavor of the meat eventually started to make itself known, and he could taste the fat too. Thanks to that, the saltiness gradually mellowed out.
“Tasty! What is this? It gets better with every bite. It almost feels like a waste to swallow it.”
By the time he was done, Manato had eaten three chunks of meat and about half a jar of pickled vegetables all by himself. At some point, Haru brought over a bizarrely light cup and a narrow-mouthed container with water in it, so Manato was able to rehydrate himself too.
“Uh-oh. I guess now that I’m stuffed, I’m starting to get a little drowsy. Mind if I sleep?”
“I don’t mind, but...the only bed here is the one that I sometimes use.”
“A bed? Nah, I’ll pass.”
“What do you mean...you’ll pass?”
“The floor is fine. I’m gonna lie down now, okay?”
“Uh, sure...”
“Just let me sleep for a bit.”
Manato lay down and closed his eyes.
He could tell Haru was confused. He didn’t seem like a bad guy, even if he was wearing a mask. Why was he hiding his face? Probably not for no reason. What did he look like under there?
Well, whatever he looks like, he’s safe. That’s the sense I get.
Manato drifted off to sleep, and then his eyes snapped open. As he sat up, Haru, who was doing something over by the wall, jumped a little before turning to look in his direction.
“You’re awake already? That was fast.”
“And refreshed too!”
He stood up and took a fresh look around the room. Was that some sort of work station Haru was standing at? No, a kitchen. It was a kitchen. There’d been one of those in the house at Kariza too. It was a fixture that had counters and all sorts of other stuff for preparing food. Oh, and were those books? There was a shelf that had a row of what he assumed were books on top of it, right next to a bed. Was that Haru’s bed? There was a little table beside the bed, and a single book was lying face down on it.
The room was well lit, despite the lack of windows, thanks to a number of lights on the ceiling. It was bright but not too bright.
“This is so strange,” Manato said to himself. Then took a deep breath.
The jars of pickles and smoked meat had been put away, and he didn’t see them. That was probably why there was no lingering smell of vinegar or meat. However, the room didn’t have any real smell to it at all. The only thing giving off an odor was probably Manato himself. Also, the air wasn’t warm or cool, moist or dry.
“What’s strange?” Haru asked him. Manato thought about that for a moment.
“Everything, I guess?”
“Oh, I see.” Haru walked over to the table where Manato had eaten earlier and put his hand on it. “Let me warn you in advance, you shouldn’t assume all of Grimgar is like this. The inside of the Ark is special. You could even call it a different world unto itself. The world outside is... How should I describe it? It’s no paradise, that much is for sure.”
“Is it like hell, then?”
“Hell...” Haru echoed the word, then let out a short sigh. “In some ways, that might be pretty close.”
“One of my comrades said that when people die they go to a place called hell. It’s an awful place, and terrible things happen there. I laughed out loud when I heard about it.”
“You...laughed?”
“Yeah. I mean, life’s already pretty awful, so if we go to an awful place after death, what’s the difference, really?”
“How is that funny?”
“Oh, I don’t know that it’s funny. Just something to laugh about. If you die in a terrible place and go to a terrible hell, then dying didn’t really change anything. Like, what was even the point? Even if you die, it’s all the same? What’s up with that?”
“Yeah... What is up with that, I wonder.”
“Right? So, when I said that, Juntza—ah, he’s the comrade who told me about hell, by the way—said that was one theory. One way of looking at it. Or something like that. So I laughed again.”
“You laughed again?”
“I mean, no one knows what happens when you die. How would they even check? If I could talk to my dead mom and dad, I could ask them. But that’s impossible, right?”
“Yeah, it probably is.”
“And I thought to myself, ‘There really are people who spend time thinking about things they’ll never know, huh?’ It’s that crazy. It’s so weird. Ah!”
“What?”
“I want to go outside. Can I still go out? Or is it better if I stay here?”
“Well... I don’t mind.”
“Will you come with me, Haru?”
“If you’d like me to.”
“I do. Why wouldn’t I?”
“You’re not suspicious of me?”
“Oh, I definitely am.”
“Of course you are.”
“Yeah. Just a little, though. I mean, I don’t know a thing about you, Haru.”
“I could say the same about you, though.”
“Ah. That’s true, huh? But somehow, I get the feeling it’ll be all right. I mean, I’m Manato, after all.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your friend.” Manato smiled a little without meaning to. “You said it earlier, remember? Your friend? Comrade? He was named Manato, right?”
“Oh... Yeah, he was.”
“Now, let’s say, for the sake of argument, you were scheming something, Haru.”
“I’d like to make clear that I’m not scheming to do anything.”
“Hypothetically, if you were. Even if you were going to do something bad, wouldn’t it be hard to do it to a Manato? Like, you’d think, ‘But this guy’s Manato.’”
Haru crossed his arms. But then he quickly uncrossed them. “I don’t mean you any harm. And that would be true even if you weren’t Manato. But coincidentally meeting someone with the same name as my friend...does make me feel a little happy, I think. I hope that comes across. It’s, uh, been a while since I talked to anyone.”
“Don’t worry.” Manato thumped his chest with one hand. “It comes across just fine. You’re a good guy, Haru. I can kind of tell that.”
Haru’s masked face turned downward slightly. “Wouldn’t it be nice if that were true.”
†
When they left the room, the spiral staircase had changed. Actually, it was completely different. The walls, floor, ceiling, and lights were now similar to the ones in Haru’s room. And it wasn’t even a staircase anymore. It was a corridor. It stretched out in a straight line, and there were doors here and there along both sides. The end of the hall looked like it had a door too.
Come to think of it, when they’d entered Haru’s room, they hadn’t opened a door. They had simply walked through a spot where the spiral staircase had no railing. Then they had emerged into his room right in front of a door.
“So...since we left by opening the door, we came out in another place? Huh.”
“It’s difficult to explain,” Haru said as he walked down the corridor. “This is the same space as the spiral staircase. It’s both the spiral staircase and the corridor. Or perhaps it’s neither of them...”
✦ ✦ ✦
