Well, so be it. That’s fine by me.
“Please hurry,” the talking glove chirped. “The system’s area of influence will reach this location shortly.”
With a quick nod, Naomi hurried down the stairs and began creating the second door, then a third and a fourth, each as colorful as the last. The path was growing, bit by bit.
As he worked, the first door opened invitingly.
“Go ahead,” the glove called from below.
Apparently this “conversion” process was already starting, even though the doors themselves were still a work in progress. Naomi had just finished off his sixth; it brought him past the first landing.
Ruri stood in front of the first door. Screwing up her courage, maybe?
“Get moving,” Sensei said as coldly as he could manage. “You need to hurry.” It felt cruel to speak to her that way, but they didn’t have much time to waste. Someone had to push her forward.
For some reason, though, she paused to look at him. There was a familiar strength in her eyes—it didn’t look like she was hesitating out of fear.
“What’s wrong?”
“Are you Katagaki-san?” she asked him quietly.
Sensei’s eyes went wide. It wasn’t a question he’d expected, but he could certainly understand why she might be confused. Unlike he and Naomi, there was a lot she didn’t understand yet. She didn’t know her world was a simulation, or how the two of them were connected.
But at this point, she didn’t need to know the whole truth. She understood the things that mattered.
“No,” Sensei replied.
He looked over at the stairs. Naomi was still hard at work, frantically creating one door after another.
“That’s Katagaki Naomi over there.”
And I…
“I’m just a minor character.”
I’m not Katagaki Naomi anymore. He’s the protagonist of this story.
“Go on, now.” He urged her on once again, reaching out to gently push her forward.
Instead, she turned around and embraced him.
It was so sudden. His mind went blank; all he could manage was staring stupidly down at the top of her head. Her arms were wrapped all the way around him, squeezing gently.
She said something, mumbling into his chest.
“You did love me, didn’t you?”
The words sank in slowly, permeating his empty mind. She didn’t know anything. She wasn’t supposed to know anything. She’d fallen unconscious at age sixteen, then woken up suddenly only a few days ago. There was no possible way she could know about the real nature of this world, or the events of the last decade, or the reasons he’d lied.
And yet, she’d cut right through it all and found the one essential truth under the countless lies.
Ruri separated her hands and pulled back slowly. She looked up at him with a smile on her face.
“Thank you.”
There was strength in her eyes. Turning, she took her first step forward.
“And goodbye!”
She passed through the first door. It interacted with her, and the boundary between her body and the world grew less distinct. The lines of her physical form seemed a little blurrier; a small part of her was reduced to particles of light, which faded quickly into the air.
She was leaving this world.
“Ichigyou-san…” Sensei replied, his words too quiet to reach her, “you’re right.”
She was going to disappear. He was never going to see her again.
The tears running down his face were the only thing that made it feel real.
“I…”
As she faded into the light, Sensei spoke his final words to her. For once, they were the whole, simple truth.
“I loved you so, so much.”
6.
“IT’S DONE!”
The final door pieced itself together. The moment it was complete, it swung open to accept a mysterious stream of light that flowed into it from above.
The glove had told him what it was—Ruri, now converted into quantum particles.
“Naomi!” Sensei shouted from above. “It’s your turn now! Get a move on!”
“Right!”
Naomi ran up the stairs as fast as he could. Ruri’s conversion had gone more quickly than he expected; at this rate, he might be able to follow her before the fox-masks showed up inside the station.
But just as he let himself think it could be an easy victory, something above him moved alarmingly.
“Wha…”
The Skyway, the large tunnel walkway suspended high above the Grand Staircase, creaked dangerously. A moment later, it started to fall—right on top of Naomi and his gateways.
Naomi swung his glove up on sheer reflex, summoning a crude crystal roof some distance above him. But the Skyway was just too massive; when it struck the roof, both were smashed to pieces, sending countless chunks of rubble right down at him.
He swung his glove again, as forcefully as he could. A long crystalline rod extended from his hand like the Monkey King’s staff, launching Naomi into the air as it hit the floor. He flew clear of the rubble a split second before it rained down on the staircase.
Naomi hit the ground of the Sky Garden hard, tumbling backward until Sensei stopped him.
Sensei stared down at the staircase and the clouds of dust rising from it with a grimace. Naomi turned to follow his gaze and made the same face.
The Grand Staircase had been crushed.
Most of its surface was buried under broken remnants of the Skyway and the glass roof above it. The steps that had been hit directly were completely destroyed, and the rest was buried under a huge mound of rubble.
The series of doors that Naomi had just created had disappeared under gray chunks of concrete.
“Oh no…”
Naomi stared down at the destruction, overwhelmed with anguish. He could see now just what had happened—there was a yawning hole in the north wall of the station, and a giant ball, several meters across, was embedded in the southern wall.
The surface of the ball was pulsing in a strange, nauseating way, and after a moment, Naomi realized it was entirely made up of fox-masked figures. Dozens of them had clumped together tightly to form an enormous bullet, which had struck the station and destroyed the Skyway.
As Naomi watched, another thought occurred to him—if that thing was a bullet, something must have fired it.
Naomi and Sensei both turned to the north. From their viewpoint on the Sky Garden, the two of them looked out at the city, past Kyoto Tower and beyond.