I spent the time until the gondola reached the ground slowly running out of patience. Ever since I’ve been thrown into this amusement park slash alternate dimension, it’s just been a series of bizarre things and scary events. This time spent in the gondola, which was probably only tens of minutes, has been the most nightmarish so far.
I bit down the urge to vomit. Or rather, it feels like I’ve been vomiting this entire time. I even wanted to jump after her, to chase and reach Utena even one second faster. At the same time, I wished that she would never reach the ground. Unable to calm down, I vomited several times, but I still couldn’t bring myself to check the ground through the window again.
If only this was all just a nightmare, all of it. So I wished, but it wasn’t granted. The gondola lowered itself steadily. Eventually, it reached a point where I could jump off safely, so I stood up, trembling. I couldn’t put power into my hips, so I couldn’t walk properly, and I ended up bumping my shoulders and knees into the gondola several times. I didn’t even feel pain; I was dulled to everything.
Somehow, I managed to tumble off of the gondola by moving in a crawl. If I stayed still, I’d be stuck in the gondola for a while again, and nothing would change. There’s no point in putting it off; I can’t just let time flow past me.
Something’s off, why did this happen? “Kagamimori-san,” I croaked, and got a few steps away from the gondola. I had fallen down, completely powerless, and couldn’t move even an inch. There was a meager fence around the Ferris wheel, to keep people from getting too close. Leaning on that, I somehow managed to get myself upright.
Completely unminding of me, the Ferris wheel’s gondola passed nearby, too close for comfort, along with a dull, heavy sound. Noticing the noise without listening to it, I gathered my courage and looked forward.
There, lay the squashed form of Utena. She had fallen from a considerable height; of course there was no way she had lived. It looked like she’d fallen on her head— from her head, to her neck, to around her shoulders, all of it had been pulped and smattered. The mess that had been her blood and meat and bones was mixed together, and spread about unnaturally. Her lower half had only slightly retained shape; I could just make out a bent and broken leg, as well as her bloodstained uniform. She resembled a bug that had hit the windshield of a moving car. Her humanity— the dreams and emotions she held in her chest— all of it had been lost.
At the very least, I couldn’t understand the situation. Once night falls, her remains would surely be cleaned up by the workers of this amusement park: those giant arms. I wouldn’t be able to even come close. Should I gather up her remains, and dig a hole somewhere to bury her? I didn’t even have the guts to hold a service for her.
Averting my eyes, I hung my head. “Why—” I repeated those words over and over. Why? Why? Why? Was there a reason for Utena to jump and commit suicide? Even though just a few seconds before she walked out, we were getting along pretty well and enjoying a chat? It was almost like she had been controlled by an evil magician. It didn’t feel real— She had been the princess of our town, a protagonist of a girl who could get anything she wanted. She loved and had dreams, she had been an enviable girl who sung the praises of life. Why did she have to die? “Kagamimori-san,” I called out her name again, but of course there was no reply.
Instead, there was someone who approached me, and called out, “Is...that, Utena-chan? Uumm, Hitomi-chan?” I sat there in blank amazement. It was Kurashima. While we were riding the Ferris wheel, he should have been preparing to leave, though. It appears that he heard the sounds, and came over from the gift shop where Torii was sleeping. He was acting awfully carefree for that, though.
Kurashima’s always, always late. He’s a dunce, and never here when it counts. He must not have seen her final moments, because he didn’t seem to recognize that the corpse splattered all over the ground was Utena. Unmoved, he was just bewildered.
He walked over to me, crouched, and worriedly put a hand on my shoulder, shaking me while asking questions. “What happened? Can you explain?” I raised my head, but like a toddler, I couldn’t speak well. I almost wanted to latch onto Kurashima and cry my eyes out. I wanted to assert my powerlessness, and have someone save me. But before that, Kurashima said something that I couldn’t ignore. “This might be Kousuke’s doing, too.”
Kousuke? I don’t know why that name popped out here. Reflexively, I gave Kurashima a serious look. His doing? What was? The cause of this awful scene was Kousuke, you say? I don’t know what kind of theory he has. Kurashima must have thought I was in shock and I couldn’t speak, or something, when I sat there absent-mindedly. Without waiting for a reply, he kept speaking, saying things that I didn’t understand at all. “I had my doubts from the beginning.” Kurashima patted my head, trying to calm me down. For some reason, it felt filthy. I couldn’t breathe properly, because the smell of blood wafting off of Utena’s remains was so awful.
“Right before we found ourselves in this alternate dimension, I saw it,” Kurashima explained. “I thought it might have been a misunderstanding, though. But I saw him trying to burn Utena-chan and Torii-chan, both of whom were unconscious.”
I have no idea what he means...at all, anymore. Kousuke was? To Utena, and Torii?
“I— did I say this before...? I am just a traveler,” Kurashima went on, “who got lost and found your town. I was traveling on my motorcycle, going from place to place. It was coincidence that I came to your town.” Before I realized it, I had started crying, and Kurashima wiped those tears away. I couldn’t tell if he was trying to comfort me or tease me— it was a creepy, disgusting feeling.
“There, I met Utena-chan, you see. Apparently she took a shine to me, and wouldn’t leave me alone, though... For me, I wanted to ask her where the exit to the town was, and if there was anywhere else interesting to visit. I had planned to set that as my destination and leave immediately.” Even though I was averting my eyes, Kurashima gazed at Utena’s corpse the whole time. Our eyes didn’t meet. Not one iota of his emotions came through to me. “Utena wouldn’t tell me anything about that. But I wanted to find out, no matter what... When we split, I ran away on my motorcycle, but there was something I forgot to ask her. What was it, I wonder; was it about where I could find a gas station?” Kurashima suddenly started grumbling fast with words like ‘I forgot,’ as if the conversation was suddenly more trouble than it was worth. “In the end, I went back to the shrine I’d left Utena at... There, I found Kousuke setting fires all around Utena-chan and Torii-chan, who were unconscious. As one would expect, I couldn’t let that pass. I hurried to get there. It was a shrine, so I couldn’t ride up the steps, and I had to run.”
I don’t care about that.
“I’m not sure if my luck was bad, or my timing was bad... It’s always the same with me,” Kurashima lamented. “Just when I was asking Kousuke what he was doing, we got caught by the fire. Breathing in the smoke, my consciousness went faint, and when I came to, I was here in this amusement park.” He looked around, like this whole thing was a bother. “Good grief, what a disaster to get involved in. Well, anyway, my guess is...that Kousuke tried to kill Utena-chan and Torii-chan for some reason. Maybe there was a fight, or difficulties with love. I’m not from here, I wouldn’t know.”
Kousuke did? He tried to kill Utena and Torii? I wanted to laugh it off and say ‘That’s stupid,’ but I couldn’t. I’ve been estranged from Kousuke for a long time, now. We go to the same school, but we’ve never even talked. I didn’t even look at him from far away, I just pretended that we didn’t know each other and kept my distance. I wouldn’t know about the circumstances of those three, of what kind of relationship they’d built.
But. What Kurashima talked about, and what Kousuke said in that control room— they both have their similarities, but they don’t mesh. One of them is lying. They’re trying to gloss over something inconvenient. They’re trying to convince me forcibly of something.