There was someone sitting just outside the JR Nijo Station, on a metal rail marked “No bicycles past this point.”
It was the hooded man.
“Why…” The word slipped out of his mouth. Why? Why was the man here?
Countless questions spiraled through Naomi’s mind. He’d taken the shortest possible route from Fushimi Inari to Nijo, right? Was there any possible way the man could have gotten ahead of his train?
Wouldn’t he need to know in advance where Naomi was going? Did he know where Naomi lived?
Terrible thoughts came in quick succession, one after another.
The man rose to his feet. Ignoring Naomi completely for the moment, he made a circle with his pointer finger and thumb, then peered into it. It was the same strange gesture he’d made on the mountain. Naomi had no earthly idea what it was supposed to mean.
After a moment, the man broke the circle and turned his hidden face to Naomi.
A cold tingle ran down Naomi’s spine. He couldn’t help but flinch. His courage was near its breaking point, but he forced himself to stand strong. He was all right. There was no danger here. There were lots of people around—they were in front of a train station, after all. Someone would come running if he yelled for help.
And so, mustering all the determination he could, Naomi shouted at the strange man.
“S-stop following me! I’ll call the cops!” His voice was forceful and loud.
An elementary-school boy wearing a yellow hat was staring at him with a look of terror on his face.
“Huh?”
Dumbfounded, Naomi looked down at the child. He could see his face just fine, but not the rest of his body.
The kid’s face was poking out of the hooded man’s torso. This didn’t make any sense at all. How could one person walk right through another?
The boy recovered from his shock before Naomi did and scampered off, clearly fleeing for his life.
At the same time, Naomi noticed a number of heads turning toward him. The nearest pedestrians stared at him suspiciously. They’d just seen a high schooler yelling at a little kid for no apparent reason, after all.
Not a single one of them, however, so much as glanced at the hooded man. It was like the strange phenomenon just now had never happened.
Slowly, Naomi looked up at the man. His mind flashed back to the words he’d heard him mutter at the shrine.
“Oh, right. He can’t see me…”
“Who…are you?” Naomi finally squeaked out.
“Don’t worry, I’ll tell you, whether you like it or not,” he replied with a strong, confident voice—the voice of a grown man. “I’ll tell you who I am. And while I’m at it…”
There was a smirk on his face.
“I’ll tell you all about yourself, Katagaki Naomi.”
9.
NAOMI OPENED HIS EYES.
The familiar wooden ceiling of his bedroom appeared before him.
The beams were faintly visible. His lights were off, but there was a bit of sunlight coming in through the curtains. The sounds of the outside world suggested that morning was well underway.
He rolled out of bed and looked around, not yet fully conscious.
Naomi’s bedroom was a Japanese-style room with tatami floors. It contained some shelves—stuffed with two layers of books—and a desk, built into his closet, that held a desktop PC. On the walls, there were a few posters and a periodic table of the elements.
It was the same old room he’d been living in for years, and it hadn’t changed a bit since yesterday. Naomi felt like he’d just awoken from some feverish nightmare.
Getting down from his bed onto the tatami floor, he savored the feeling of reality for a moment. And then, yawning, he headed over to the window and opened the curtains.
A three-legged bird was waiting for him, perched on the guardrail of his balcony. Naomi’s face twitched with fear as he was pulled violently back into that nightmare.
The bird slowly spread its wings and flapped up into the air. And then, abruptly, it began to attack his window.
Tak tak tak tak tak tak tak
The window glass shivered with each very real impact. The bird battered at it with its thick, sturdy beak.
“Gah! Stop! Stop it!”
The thing didn’t relent until Naomi finally gave up and let it inside.
A cool breeze was blowing. A big, beautiful blue sky stretched out above the large trees that lined the road.
Naomi was walking down Kamanza Street, around the midpoint between Nijo Castle and the Imperial Palace—in the center of Kyoto, in other words. He’d come straight here in his school uniform after the end of his half-length Saturday school session. It should have been a fifteen-minute walk from Nishiki High, but his reluctance had slowed him down so much that it had taken twice as long.
Naomi looked around as he trudged forward. This area was home to many public offices and official buildings, in particular the Kyoto Prefectural Office. It wasn’t the sort of place a typical teenager spent much time in. A wide thoroughfare ran between two lines of beautiful trees; to either side, there were local streets that you could actually park on. This was the main avenue that led directly to the gates of the prefectural government’s main building.
Naomi turned his attention to the sky for a moment.
That damn bird was still up there, circling above him endlessly. It was both a guide and an observer, here to make sure he went straight to his destination and didn’t try to run for it.
Naomi let his gaze fall back to street level and tried to focus on what was right ahead of him. There was an imposing Western-style mansion just across the road, the former main office of the Kyoto government. It was a historic building dating back to year 37 of the Meiji era, officially designated as a culturally significant structure, but even now, parts of it were occupied by certain sections of the government. It was the single oldest public office in Japan still in active use.
The hooded man was standing in front of its main gate.
Grimacing, Naomi forced himself to pick up the pace. He was too intimidated by the man to make it obvious how reluctant he was about all of this.
Making his way over the crosswalk, he approached his waiting tormentor.
“Well, I see you made it here, at least,” the man called out casually. He was dressed the same as yesterday—in his fashionable protective coat, with the hood pulled down over his face. Unfortunately, he hadn’t gotten any less sketchy looking overnight.
“It’s not like I had much choice,” Naomi muttered sulkily. It was all the defiance he could muster.
“Don’t be such a whiner, kid. It’s not like you had anything else to do.”
“How would you know?” Naomi said. “I’ve got all sorts of stuff to do on the weekends, actually.”
“Still working on those two hundred books, huh?”
Naomi jerked in surprise, but the man was already striding onto the grounds of the old government building. He had no choice but to hurry after him.
The floor inside the building shone like a mirror.
In between pieces of modern interior décor, there were Japanese-style wooden accents; the design was a striking mixture of traditional and futuristic. Naomi looked around the place with some interest. It was the first time he’d ever been in here.
A tag with the word Visitor printed on it in bold letters hung around his neck.
The hooded man had guided Naomi to a specific facility inside the spacious building—the Chronicle Kyoto Project Center. Naomi had heard the name mentioned before, but he had no idea what they actually did here. He hadn’t even known they gave tours to the public.
A huge decorative wooden lattice panel some ten meters in length caught Naomi’s eye for a long moment. It was probably supposed to represent traditional Kyoto-style design, but in all honesty, it seemed more like an attempt to show off how much money they had to throw around in here.
This facility was located in the basement of the old government building, so Naomi hadn’t been expecting anything quite this grand and showy. The name Chronicle Kyoto had evoked something like an old warehouse full of dusty ancient books. This place was nothing like what he’d pictured.
Glancing around, he spotted a large Pluura logo on one wall, and had to re-evaluate his assessment of this place once again. Apparently, this was the sort of project that could attract an investment from one of the biggest companies in the world.
There probably wasn’t a single person on the planet who hadn’t heard of Pluura, the biggest web services company in existence. Their search site was simply Pluura, their email service was P-Mail, their mapping service was Pluura Maps, and their game store was Pluura Play. If you spent any time on the internet at all, it was basically impossible to avoid interacting with their products.
Naomi didn’t have any personal connection to the company, but it was such a familiar part of his life that he felt a little more comfortable than he did before.
“Please gather over here, everyone!” called the woman who would be leading the tour.
Once the ten-odd people in their group had gathered around her, an explanatory video started playing on a huge monitor mounted on the wall.
Naomi glanced to his side. The hooded man was standing there next to him. Another visitor was right behind him, looking straight toward the monitor.