“Hey,” said Kousuke, sounding alarmed.
Like sparks flashing and flickering in the back of my head, I felt something more like unease than the chills, causing me to shudder.
Seeing that, Kousuke had suddenly pulled on my apron. He used to do the same thing when we were kids. Kousuke, who was still sitting, had to look at me with upturned eyes because I was standing stock still.
I can’t go against those eyes. “What?” I asked him. “Sorry, I spaced out... Anyway, I’m not really sure about what you were talking about earlier. Or rather, I feel like there’s some info missing.”
“You’re the type to keep talking instead of listening to what other people say, aren’t you?” Kousuke said disagreeably, while gesturing at the countless monitors in front with his jaw.
Following his prompt, I looked at the monitors, and was struck dumb: there was something strange on the video feed.
These monitors were most likely displaying feeds from security cameras, which were placed all over this mysterious amusement park in an alternate dimension. One of those feeds had some slight noise running through it, its image showing something just slightly out of focus compared to the other feeds.
It was the face of a girl, but huge. No— the camera is just so close to her face that she’s breathing on it. It’s a hardcore close-up. I know that face; it’s Utena, who was asleep just a while ago.
Her face is so close, I can tell that she has cracked and dry skin that she must have been constantly hiding with makeup. It’s probably a problem with the angle of the shot, but her eyes looked like they were bulging out. Like this, it looks like Utena is trapped in the TV and she’s trying desperately to get out. Her palms were repeatedly slapping the TV screen.
“Utena-san.” Like a small child, I said the name of what I saw out loud, tilting my head slightly.
It looks like Utena is waving her hands at the camera. She’s noticed the security camera, well, probably a security camera, and is approaching it. That’s what I thought, but apparently I was wrong. She was looking off in a different direction, with a huge smile.
“So Kagamimori-san woke up. Do you know where she is?”
“I don’t know everything, Snail,” he said sullenly.
Putting my hand on the shoulder of this childhood friend of mine who won’t stop using that nickname I hate, I focus on the monitors. It’s so zoomed in that I can’t really tell what’s happening; this cameraman is awful. It looks like Utena is energetically shouting something, but there’s no audio. “Does this thing have sound?” I asked.
“Wait a minute,” he said. I was grinding the back of my hand into the whorl of hair on the back of his head, making it hard for Kousuke to refuse, just like how I can do nothing but surrender if I’m grabbed by the apron.
Those are our instincts, fostered since we were children, playing around every day until we were covered in mud. That fact that his still exists makes me extremely happy, somehow. I couldn’t stop myself from grinning broadly. Seeing this, Kousuke looked up at me, creeped out, before taking something out of his pocket. It was a red-copper colored rhinoceros beetle the size of his palm.
“Kya—!” I’m not really good with bugs. They’re filthy and creepy and you have no idea where they’ve been, or where they came from. No girl would be friends with bugs. I fell backwards onto my butt, and continued to try and scoot as far away from it as possible.
“Hahaha,” Kousuke laughed. The way I reacted must have been hilarious, but his laughter made me mad. And then, he showed off the bug in his hand— no it only looked like one.
The room was really dim, so I thought it was a bug, but apparently it was just a portable terminal. He had something that was a pretty rare sight in our declining town— a brand new smartphone.
Hmm. It really is like a bug, though. The smartphone had creepily moving jointed legs growing out the side of it. It moved creepily, like a centipede. On the back of it, there was also something clear— it had insect wings growing out of it. I don’t know how a smartphone is doing this; not just the screen, but the entire body is glowing blue-white, like a backlit screen.
“W-what the heck is that, Kousuke?” I demanded. “A smartphone? A bug?”
“You’re being way too scared. This thing is pretty handy, you know.” While pointing at me and poking fun, Kousuke also used the hand gripping the smartbug (or so I’ve named it) to stroke its belly. He was operating it.
Deriving a small amount of relief from this casual and familiar gesture, I scooted closer to him, across the floor. I peeked at the screen over his shoulder.
The stomach of the smartbug was a rounded, liquid crystal screen, and countless icons were lined up on it. It was like looking at a bug’s innards, and it made me feel a little sick.
Every time Kousuke tapped or flicked the smartbug, it cried out a really terrible bug sound that hurt my ears. As I thought, it looks like a machine but it’s a living thing. It’s a bug.
While I was watching him play with his smartbug, unable to speak, Kousuke talked about it proudly. “It was always flying around right next to me, this bug. And by always, I mean since I wandered into this alternate dimension. It was depressing me, so was thinking about smushing it dead. But look, doesn’t it seem like a smartphone?”
The smartbug is getting closer and closer to my face. I was so creeped out, I had to hold my mouth to stop from screaming. Seeing that, Kousuke made a laugh that sounded a lot like the sounds the smartbug was making.
Oh, when did his voice break? It’s a bit late, but I couldn’t help but notice. It’s a matter of course that he’s changed from the Kousuke I knew. Or wait, his throat might just be damaged from all of the tobacco.
“I was thinking it must have some sort of function,” Kousuke explained, “So I caught it and tried playing around with it. It’s got something like a map app, and that’s how I found this control room.”
“It’s amazing how you can touch something so gross,” I commented.
“I’ve gotten tired of seeing all the weird stuff in this amusement park,” Kousuke sighed. “I’m not gonna be surprised by every little thing, at this point. Look, if you connect this guy to the monitors—” Giving a reply that broke the flow of our conversation, Kousuke pressed strongly on the smartbug’s butt (I can’t actually tell which side is the head and which is the butt because of its shape, but for now it’s the end towards the bottom of the screen). When he did that, out stretched a cable that looked like braided spider silk. Pulling it out, Kousuke plugged the cable into the monitor, and he caressed the smartbug’s screen to operate it.
Somehow, he seems used to it. Alone, he had managed to explore the amusement park, and even obtain a convenient item(?) like the smartbug... This childhood friend of mine really is having his fill of this alternate dimension.
Sitting down again, I politely watched over him; it’s useless to try to say anything to a man who’s trying to mess with a machine. My dad’s the same way. I’d only get in the way and get yelled at. I have no idea what’s so fun about this stuff, though.
Just watching is boring, so I try chatting with him. “Hey, about earlier... Come to think of it,” I asked, “why is Torii-san in this amusement park?”
“Ahh, certainly Torii-san isn’t the type to come to an amusement park,” he agreed.
That’s not it. “No, I mean, I get that you and Utena-san went shopping in a distant town, but Torii-san wasn’t with you, right?” I clarified. “Although I kind of have the feeling that you three are always together. ”
“No, Torii-san only started getting involved with Kagamimori pretty recently, you know?” Kousuke was busy fiddling with the smartbug, so his attitude was rather blunt. “At best, it’d be a few months ago. After that though, sure, we were pretty much always together in school. But everyone’s in different grades, so it’s not like we’re stuck together the whole time.”
“Kagamimori doesn’t really get close to Torii-san outside of school, either,” he continued. “It’s like that when we go shopping, too— it’s usually just Kagamimori and I.”
“Then why and how did Torii-san also wander into this alternate dimension?” I wondered. “I know about you, Kagamimori, and Kurashima, too. He was probably nearby, after all. Distance-wise, we were basically in the same place. You guys in your meeting place at the shrine, and me in my electronics store right next door.” I kind of get the feeling that something’s not right.
“For instance,” I continued, “if there was some sort of space-time distortion or hole that appeared in our area and connected us to this space... If Torii-san was the only one in a different place, isn’t it weird that she’s here?”
“No, she was nearby, though.” Kousuke talked while looking back and forth between the monitor and his smartbug. “In front of the burning shrine, Torii-san and Kurashima-san were arguing for some reason. Torii-san, she was being grabbed by the hand, too. I was pretty surprised, you know?”
“Torii-san and Kurashima-san?” I wonder why. Those two didn’t seem to have a lot to do with each other, but I wonder if they’re acquaintances or something. Yet from what I saw earlier, Kurashima basically didn’t talk to Torii at all. No, it might just be because my impression of Utena being wrapped around Kurashima the entire time is too strong. But still, they seemed too distant to be acquaintances.
Kousuke must have found it strange, too, now that he thought about it, because he tilted his head. “I have no idea,” he said at last. “Why was Torii-san there... Was she fighting with Kurashima-san? The fire got worse before I could try to find out. It was all a huge mess.”
Untangling the mess of cable that came out of the smartbug, Kousuke tapped the liquid crystal screen with a ‘how’s this?’ face. In an instant, the countless monitors in front of us all turned off at once.
He probably did something unnecessary and broke all the monitors in this control room. I suspected.