Just like when we were little, I walked while carrying Kousuke on my back.
In the past, when Kousuke was too exhausted to move after we’d been playing around in the fields...I’d carry him, just like this, because I was taller than he was, back then.
But now, he’s already passed me in both height and weight. Our physiques are different, so I can’t carry him on my back properly. Kousuke’s feet are left dragging and scraping on the floor. It seems he can’t walk on his own anymore.
Kousuke was soaked in blood. After he summoned the last of his strength and beat Kurashima, who was trying to kill me, black and blue, he fell over. He didn’t move after that. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive right now.
Carrying Kousuke, I headed for the park’s exit: the gates. Every step is hard. My uselessly grown childhood friend. My movements are sluggish, and my thoughts paralyzed. If I lost focus, I don’t even think I’d be able to remember what I was trying to do.
That’s right. We need to escape from this bizarre amusement park— this dimension. I should have already set that as my goal. I walk. My breath hitches in my throat and I stop, before willing myself to walk again. Step by step, I move forward.
“Kousuke,” I called out to him, but there was no response. Turning all the breath in my lungs to energy, I said nothing more and moved forward. For the time being, I figured out where the gates were when I was riding the Ferris wheel. I should be going in the right direction.
My surroundings were crowded and unrelated to me: the horde of faces I can’t recognize; jaunty music; the many attractions, incessantly moving. A fun, but distant atmosphere— I can’t afford to care. It has nothing to do with me. Right now, I just want to return to my own life, which was boring and flat.
It might be because the monotonous work of walking had left my brain bored, but my thoughts were restored a little, and I started thinking of things unchecked. From the information I had gathered without actually trying to do so, I made conjectures: Kurashima was trying to kill us. He said it was revenge for someone who got their life messed up by Hanemori Joururi... His murderous intent was probably pointed towards that girl, Utena. A lot of things had already been taken care of before I got to ask for details, so I’m not too sure. He probably tried to kill Utena with a knife at an unpopular shrine; the blood soaked into his clothes under the riding suit was probably splatter from that.
As for Torii, I’m not sure of the details, but she must have stumbled onto the scene of the crime or something similar, and then got caught up in it. According to Kousuke, he saw Torii and Kurashima arguing, after all. Either she was trying to protect Utena from being killed, or she saw Utena wounded and, enraged, bit into Kurashima. It became an argument, and then a fight— but in terms of pure power, Torii would never be able to win against Kurashima. The tables were turned, and Torii fell under assault from Kurashima. I’m not sure if she was killed, wounded, or knocked unconscious, though.
And I’m not sure if Kurashima set the fires to take care of the bodies, or if something completely unrelated happened and the fire was natural, but the fact remains that there was a fire. Kousuke came along after that, and he stepped inside to try and save Torii and Utena, and possibly even Kurashima, because he’s a softie who wants to be a hero. He probably couldn’t just leave people caught in a fire to die, either.
And in the end he, too, was killed by the fire. What an idiot, Kousuke. Well, right next to the shrine that was on fire was...me, who dozed off while manning the store. Apparently I failed to escape, and as a result, was caught in the fire, too— I look like the bigger idiot, though.
In that way, all of us who were in that fire found ourselves here in this dimension, for some reason. Thinking simply, isn’t this alternate dimension probably some world after death, just like I had hypothesized at one point? As for what this place is, and why we found ourselves in this bizarre space... Of course, it’s outside of my ability to imagine.
Kurashima’s objective was probably the death of Utena. He looked for a chance, and then came after us. He gathered us all in the parliament-like building, and probably set fire to it to try to burn us all to death at once. And later he provoked the monsters, trying to get them to eat us. At the end, he tricked Utena into committing suicide. He even went after me. It’s not like I can confirm it, though. I didn’t have that kind of margin... But he had probably already killed Torii, who wasn’t able to ride the Ferris wheel with us. There were any number of ways to do it if he wanted to, after all.
And the biggest eyesore to Kurashima was probably Kousuke, who, for some reason, insisted on acting alone. I don’t know what he was thinking when he moved away from everybody else— this is all unknown to me. Maybe he simply wanted to have some adventure time without being bothered by girls? In order to finish him off, Kurashima set another fire over the underground control room he was in. I guess I was just an extra. But we managed to survive it safely.
However, Kurashima didn’t give up there. He probably tried to kill Kousuke again sometime over the course of the night. After Kousuke applied first aid to Torii, he was standing guard. Kurashima lured him out, somehow, and stabbed him with the knife. Kousuke’s a regular high schooler, too. If he gets ambushed, he probably wouldn’t be able to resist. Like that, he believed that Kousuke was dead— and in the morning, Kurashima had rejoined us. Although he’d said Kousuke told him to stand guard after they’d swapped places, Kurashima was just saying that; it wasn’t like Kousuke actually told him to do so. Both Torii and I had swallowed that lie whole.
Just like that, Kurashima probably planned to kill us all, but Kousuke had clung to life stubbornly. Stabbed, with damaged innards, leaking so much blood... In reality, he was very nearly dead. It was likely that Kurashima wasn’t a professional killer, or anything. He probably just left Kousuke somewhere, thinking him dead already. Kousuke applied emergency treatment to himself, and managed to preserve his life.
And just a while ago, while I was being attacked by Kurashima and the giant slug, I let the smartbug fly. He’d secretly slipped the smartbug into my pocket. On the screen, he wrote instructions to be careful of Kurashima.
Like he’s so great. I just talked at random to distract Kurashima, and I managed to trick him so he wouldn’t notice Kousuke— who was near death with his grave wounds— and could only move sluggishly as he approached.
It went well. Kousuke squeezed out the last of his power, and hit Kurashima with the TV. He saved me, but that was his limit. He’d lost too much blood. I knew that Kousuke was probably already dead. I can feel him growing colder on my back; both his heartbeats and breathing have already stopped. This is just meat that used to be my childhood friend. But, I couldn’t just throw it away.
Kurashima’s probably not dead. He was beaten up badly, but he might still recover; I can’t afford to take it easy, here. I should have finished him off. Putting that off was Kurashima’s last mistake, too. But, I feel like Kousuke would be sad if I killed a person.
That’s wrong. That’s just an excuse. I’m just stroking the surface, letting it pass; I don’t have the guts to stick my hand into the deep end. I just didn’t want to shoulder a sin as heavy as murder. Putting on a face as if it had nothing to do with me— I simply didn’t want to do what I didn’t want to do. I’m running again, trying to draw distance. I’m trying to escape this dimension, and make it all like it never happened.
But what else should I do? Someone like me is the only one left alive. What should I do, I wonder... Right now, I just want to hurry up and go back while still dragging Kousuke along, if possible. I don’t think we’d be in time for medical aid; he got stabbed in the guts, after all. It’s a fatal wound, but I want him to have a funeral, at least. If that’s the case, I’d want to bring along Utena and Torii, too, but carrying Kousuke alone is already this hard.
“Hey, Kousuke.” Without expecting a reply, I asked the corpse of my childhood friend. “The person you liked; who was it? You rejected Kagamimori-san’s confession, didn’t you? You said it was because you had someone else you liked—” I drew closer to the gates, and the noise of the crowd went far away. It’s just an entrance and an exit; there’s no attractions near here, and the faceless crowd is basically mute. It was awfully quiet, and the sounds of my heavy breathing echoed loudly. “It would’ve been nice if it was me. I liked you, just a bit, for a long time, now. But it’s probably not, right? I bet it’s someone I don’t know. I’ll go back and tell that person properly for you. She’ll probably just be confused, though.” My monologue echoed hollowly in this very strange alternate dimension.
“There was a stupid boy who admired heroes... He was my childhood friend, though. I wanted to tell him: ‘Your dream came true at the end, you were just a little bit cool, there.’” There are no tears, anymore. Just endlessly putting my feet forward, I headed outside, without looking back.