Not for his sake, of course. For hers. He wanted her to be happy.
“I’ll make it up to you as best I can.” Sensei turned back to look at them with his old focused, intense gaze. Those were the eyes of a man with no more doubts.
Naomi smiled.
“Just tell me where you want to go, Naomi!”
Naomi nodded. The crow on his hand had told him where to go next. It was the one place where the two of them could return to their own world. The final station, quite literally, where their three-month journey would reach its conclusion.
“The Grand Staircase at Kyoto Station!”
5.
LIGHT SHINED IN THROUGH the lattice of metal beams and glass panels that made up the main concourse at Kyoto Station. The ceiling of the main concourse was extremely high, with a large open space at its center—and that space opened up into the towering, broad steps of the famous Grand Staircase.
This massive staircase took people from the concourse all the way to the Sky Garden on the fifteenth floor, but it seemed much taller and grander than that, like it led straight to heaven. It was sixteen meters wide and over thirty meters tall, with a total of 171 steps. Many people found climbing the whole thing too challenging, so an escalator ran alongside it. If you looked up as you stepped onto these stairs, you’d see a dramatically arched glass roof and a long, suspended Skyway tunnel that hung diagonally in the air above you. It looked more like a movie set than an ordinary train station.
A car skidded to a halt in the Sky Garden at its summit, seventy meters above the ground.
The sightseers in the main concourse stared up at it, wide-eyed in shock. The ramp this car had driven up, which appeared to be made of rainbow-colored crystal, melted before their eyes into particles of light.
The onlookers were still frozen in shock when the car’s doors swung open.
“We’re here!”
Katagaki Naomi leapt out of the back seat, followed closely by Sensei and Ruri. Ruri was moving slowly, even slower than Sensei despite his disability—the years she’d spent unconscious had weakened her body severely.
Sensei saw her struggling and started to reach out to her, but he made himself stop. He couldn’t let himself touch her. He needed to keep his distance.
He had no right to go anywhere near her.
“So, what are we doing here?” he asked, turning to Naomi, but the boy was busy talking to his glove. Sensei didn’t know what the deal was with this new crow—the one he’d created hadn’t been able to talk.
“We must make some preparations,” the glove said, its tone calm. “Please clear the area.”
“What?” Naomi said. “How am I supposed to do that?”
“Use your hand.”
A bit uncertainly, Naomi pressed his hand to the ground in front of the staircase.
There was a railing running down the center of the stairs—the top of it bulged up out of the floor, creating strange balloons that covered the stairs to either side in a wall that traveled downward. It grew slowly larger, forming a speckled yellow-black barrier that looked almost alive.
The people on the stairs scurried down in panic at the bizarre sight; those who didn’t escape in time were pushed along and deposited gently at the bottom.
When the staircase was completely covered in the odd, spotted balloons, they swelled up in unison and burst, then faded away into nothingness. In the aftermath of this magic trick, the Grand Staircase was left totally deserted.
“Converter,” Naomi’s glove chirped. A flash of light ran from his hand across the ground, and something new took shape on the first stair leading downward.
It wasn’t immediately clear what it was—a large, geometrical object slowly pieced itself together out of colored triangles that looked like stained glass. As it came together, the surreal spectacle arranged itself into the familiar shape of an arched doorway.
“We’ll make these at regular intervals on the entire staircase,” the glove explained helpfully. “With each one that Ichigyou Ruri passes through, her quantum conversion will progress slightly. When she reaches the bottom of the staircase, the quantization process will be complete, and she can return to her original world.”
Sensei listened closely, his mind running at full speed. The technique this thing was describing sounded much more advanced than the method he’d used to enter AllTale’s quantum-record world. He could barely follow it.
“We will convert Ichigyou Ruri first,” the glove continued, “then Katagaki Naomi.”
Sensei turned to look at Ruri. She was trembling, and not just because of her physical condition.
There were 171 steps on this staircase.
It was the equivalent of ten flights of stairs. Even a perfectly healthy person might hesitate at the sight of that descent; in her weakened state, she couldn’t possibly walk down these stairs alone. She needed someone to help her or she’d never make it, but Naomi would be busy creating the doorways.
Could he help her somehow?
“Don’t worry, Ichigyou-san,” said Naomi, his tone almost cheerful. “You can do this. Just take it nice and slow, one step at a time.”
Ruri nodded seriously. With visible effort of will, she stopped her hands from trembling. She took a deep breath and clutched them into fists.
“Let’s do this,” she said at last.
At that instant, Sensei finally understood. These two were different. Naomi wasn’t him, and this girl wasn’t the Ruri he had known.
His mind was pulled back to decade-old memories.
That fire had destroyed all the books they’d gathered. Ruri had been heartbroken, and he’d tried his best to comfort her. They’d learned, together, the pain of accepting failure. And in enduring it together, they’d grown closer.
But these two were different.
Their books had burned as well, but they’d seen that as a challenge. They’d thrown themselves at it, and they’d overcome it. They’d made the book sale a success. And that moment of triumph had changed them both.
Sensei chuckled softly, derisively, at himself. He’d intended to make it up to them as best he could, but he clearly wasn’t good for much. His only use so far was his driving skills.