The three of them stood on the broad bridge adjacent to Yotsuya station, at the boundary between Demon City and the outside world. The borderline itself was a fissure in the earth over sixty feet wide and a thousand feet deep.
Kyoya had the wound in his side again treated at Mephisto’s hospital and then got a ride back in a linear motorcar.
“See you around,” said Kyoya, extending his hand.
Mephisto didn’t move. “No need to make affectations you never would have otherwise.”
“Yeah, there is that.” Kyoya grinned and stepped back. “I don’t care to see you or this city again either.”
A wry smile creased Mephisto’s features. “As long as this city exists, as long as people continue to live here, that will surely appear again.”
Kyoya couldn’t help starting a bit. He knew about the thing?
The giant arm had disappeared back into the earth, the lid of the box still sealed, the hand still clenched around it. But Kyoya had grasped something of its true nature—behind the Sorcerer, the repulsive aura wafting from the slightly open gap. Fear and despair and malice and hate—every evil emotion hiding in the depths of the human heart.
The Sorcerer had said as much, that human beings had once opened it before—Pandora’s Box.
An ancient legend whose origins were lost in the mists of time. The gods, enraged by human pride, created a foolish girl named Pandora, and tricked her into opening a box filled with evil. Ever since that time, human beings have envied and lusted after each other, and taught themselves to curse and to kill.
We have led an accursed existence from long, long ago, Kyoya thought, gazing at the streets slumbering beneath the morning sun. Little different than the citizens of Demon City. Or rather, entirely suited to them.
The other pair of clear eyes looking intently at his shadowed profile belonged to Sayaka. Her shadow—restored upon the Sorcerer’s destruction—fell distinctly at her feet.
Kyoya thought of the people of Demon City that he and the girl had chanced upon—the espers who had died defending them; the taxi driver who’d taken them to the DMZ; the ghost rider grateful to be sent to his eternal rest by Sayaka’s tears; and Doctor Mephisto — the mystery man healing the helpless and the wounded with his cold smile and ironic attitude and undivided attention.
The power of good that toppled the Sorcerer dwelt inside all of them. Even the worst among them were capable of doing the right thing. As long as one good man remained, the world was worth preserving. The next time somebody arrived on the scene to destroy it, he’d be back.
“Well, we’re off. I’m sure you have patients waiting.”
Mephisto turned around.
“Wait.” Kyoya again held out his hand.
For whatever reason, Mephisto shook it firmly and then disappeared into the car without even the flicker of an eyebrow.
They watched the car until it had become another dot on Shinjuku Avenue. Then crossed the bridge. Ahead of them awaited the resumption of the same old high school lives they had left three days before.
Kyoya said in a teasing voice, but looking ahead with a straight face, “Mephisto told me—you took out Suiki all by yourself. You’re one scary woman.”
“Well—no—it was nothing like that.” Sayaka blushed.
“Nothing you have to apologize about.”
Kyoya grinned, but he couldn’t see into her heart. What rose into her thoughts at that moment—the face of the man she loved—was not her father alone. But Kyoya as well.
Now it was his eyes that sparkled, a knowing smile coming to his lips.
“And what pleasant thing are you thinking about?” Sayaka asked coyly.
“Oh no, nothing at all,” he protested—though probably a bit too much.
He recalled the end of the famous fable, and the last thing to emerge from Pandora’s Box.
It was called hope.