A pebble rolled across the ground toward Naomi.
He looked down at it curiously; it seemed to be moving all on its own. Before long, other little rocks began to follow its example.
After a moment, he figured out what was happening. The slope he was walking up was growing steeper.
A rock the size of a baseball came tumbling down as the road rose up in front of him. A moment ago, it had been no steeper than a wheelchair ramp; now it was more like the ramp up a pedestrian bridge. Before Naomi could even try to flee, it turned into an asphalt slide.
“Ah! Aaah!”
Naomi fell to his hands and knees, clutching at the ground, fighting against the growing force of gravity. But it proved pointless; the road just kept rising up and up.
The force of gravity overwhelmed that of friction, and his body began to slide downward along the slick, wet road. He couldn’t stop his fall, just slid faster and faster as the road grew steeper.
Throwing the weight of his body to one side, Naomi managed to change course slightly. Sliding diagonally toward the side of the road, he tried to grab hold of the guardrail, but his rain-slick hands slipped off. Still, he kept reaching out for it, trying to at least slow himself down a little. The road was as steep as a ski slope now; his arms and legs flapped desperately against it.
Naomi found himself approaching a curve in the road. The guardrail he’d been sliding alongside was now a metal bar directly in his path, and his shoulder slammed into it, sending a shock through his entire body. Ignoring the pain as best he could, he caught hold of a support post, finally pausing his descent. There was a streetlight standing right next to the post; Naomi reached out to grab it, then wriggled his way onto its thicker pole, finally regaining his balance.
This new perch made the situation terribly clear.
Naomi was balanced on the side of a light pole, his arms and legs wrapped around it. The ground was a vertical wall.
Stunned, he looked over at the sky.
It wasn’t above him anymore. It was straight off to the side—a great wall of dark clouds, stretching out vertically in the distance.
In the middle of that wall was a hole.
The dirty gray clouds had formed a kind of funnel around it, like an antlion’s trap. At the center was a small, black spot that Naomi couldn’t see inside—from here, it looked pure black.
Objects soared through the air toward it, and it sucked them in. First, Naomi saw it eat a car. Then a vending machine. Then a bus. Then a building. All sort of things flew off the surface of the city and disappeared into that hole.
The light pole he was sitting on, which had been horizontal, began to bend.
Everything finally clicked into place.
The world had been bent at a 90-degree angle. Soon, it would be bent to 180 degrees. The ground would be up and the sky would be down. Before long, everything in this world would fall into the sky.
They would be shaken down, bit by bit, like flour falling through a sifter. For a moment he wondered what they’d do about objects that were solidly attached to the ground; but then he remembered that the fox-masks had been rampaging through the city for some time now. They’d probably been cutting everything loose, ensuring everything could fall into that hole.
It felt horribly plausible, considering what he’d seen. This was how everything was going to end, with the entire city vanishing into that tiny dot. It was all going to go. The buildings, the trees, even the soil.
And, of course, him.
I’m going to disappear. I get it now. I’m…
“I’m going to die.”
Somehow, it felt more real when he spoke the words out loud.
As a kid, Naomi had once broken his favorite toy robot. He’d been trying to turn it back into a car, but it got stuck, and when he tried to force it one of the legs snapped right off. It was immediately clear that it couldn’t be repaired, no matter what.
What he’d felt in that moment was the closest comparison he could think of to what he felt now—that feeling of inevitability.
Naomi began to cry. He blubbered like a child at the overwhelming pain of it all. It was just too much to bear. And the more he cried, the more miserable he felt.
But what else was he supposed to do? It was over. It was all over. There wasn’t anything to be done.
That toy was broken.
And he was going to die.
“Ichigyou-san…” He called out to the girl he loved, who he knew he’d never see again. His pointless cries disappeared into the hole, along with everything else.
Then, as he stared at it through his tears, something occurred to him. He’d seen something like this before. But where? When?
Right…when Sensei took her away…
The crow’s claws had rained down from above, forming an octagonal cage. And that cage had flown up into the sky.
It had pierced the sky, opening a hole that looked just like the one he was staring at now. And if she’d gone into that hole…maybe she was waiting on the other side of it?
There was a low, loud crash as a large truck collided with a small building in midair, breaking both apart. A moment later, they were both sucked into the hole.
Naomi shook his head fiercely, the blood draining from his face.
“I can’t!”
The idea was ridiculous. Jumping into that hole would be suicide. And there wasn’t even any guarantee that it connected to wherever Ruri had gone. He had zero evidence—the thought was just a convenient fantasy.
He wasn’t living in a story. Things wouldn’t work out so neatly.
Katagaki Naomi avoided taking risks. He never threw himself at a challenge unless he knew the outcome in advance.
Those were the rules he’d lived by since the day he was born. He’d never changed. He couldn’t change. Even after meeting Sensei, he’d simply put his faith in the Ultimate Manual, letting it give him all the answers. He’d never broken his rules, not even once.
Oh. Wait.
The image of a book had flashed into his mind—a stained old novel with a nice illustration on the cover, frayed corners, and a library card in the back.