“Hm?”
“Your room was fine besides the window?”
“Ah, yeah. It just shattered, so it was fine.”
“I see. Well then, I have no idea how these effects work. It’s gone.”
What was gone? Someone? Something? As I searched for a reply, before I could even ask, she clarified.
“My room…is gone.”
“…What?”
“There was…nothing left.”
“When you say ‘nothing’…”
She wasn’t exaggerating, was she? If so, I was stunned to hear that the damage had been so extreme—especially when so little had happened to my room.
I thought of a house I had once seen on TV that had burned to the ground in a fire, but I was sure that wasn’t the right way to picture this. What could have happened? Was it raining airplane debris, like in my room? Was it the war? Had it burned down? Been destroyed? Ransacked?
I was staring at the side of Chika’s face as I considered how to reply, so all of my shallow thoughts were washed away with the next surprise.
I knew now that Chika’s cheeks and chin were the same as a human’s were.
I had been picturing it all wrong: The lights were flowing. Her tears weren’t reflecting the lights of her eyes. Rather, the light was falling with the tears. With every drop, the lights in her eyes grew ever-so-slightly dimmer.
“Chika,” I said, though I had prepared no words of comfort or courage. I merely feared the silence. She turned her face to me. I had been the one to say something, so I had to take the initiative to speak. “Can I ask what happened?”
“…Sure.”
She had more than enough reason to refuse this, but she nodded and explained.
As expected, it was the war.
Lately, the wars had been spreading to the region Chika lived in, which was not normally used for skirmishes. This was why those career soldiers had died nearby around the same time that Allumi died, as she had mentioned. The fighting had suddenly made it to her house. Chika hadn’t been given any details and hadn’t been able to find much out. It was only a rumor, but from what she’d heard, the soldiers of her country had been using weapons that prioritized killing the enemy over protecting the livelihoods of their citizens, so they’d done extensive damages to the residences. When she exited the safe house she’d been in at the time, Chika returned home to find her room with the wall blown in, the interior destroyed.
“I wonder if someone might have used it as their hiding place during the fighting.”
I meant to say that perhaps it wasn’t on purpose, perhaps it had helped save someone’s life, that maybe she was just lucky that the fighting hadn’t made it to her home before, but still…
“Whatever.”
Her whisper sounded like a scream, like if she didn’t stifle it, she might rip herself apart in her grief.
“My whole world is gone.”
Another droplet of light spilled down from the weak light of her eyes and dripped from her chin.
I couldn’t say anything at first. I simply didn’t know what to say. I had never lost anything that important, never lost my whole world. Losing Allumi might have come close, but at least I had come back from that.
It broke my heart. I felt horrible pain in the face of such immeasurable grief. Still, there was no point in telling her that I was hurting along with her when there was no way I could possibly empathize, so I repressed it as best I could. Hopefully she wouldn’t be able to tell from my expression or tone.
What could I say to her? What could I do?
I thought about it, but no matter what I did, I couldn’t give Chika her room back, nor could I give her back the world that had existed inside it. I wished I knew even just one thing that Chika might want, but no matter what I gave her, it would do nothing to cover the stain of her grief.
I was utterly powerless.
“Still, I’m glad you’re safe.”
I thought I could be forgiven for saying that much, but I soon realized I was fundamentally mistaken. A war was not a natural disaster. It wasn’t the sort of thing that was unavoidable no matter what humans did. It was born of human stupidity. There was no reason for it to happen in the first place. It wasn’t the sort of thing where you could be happy as long as you were safe.
Moreover, for Chika, the only thing that truly counted as living was getting to enjoy the things she loved. Simply making it out alive meant nothing.
“Please don’t die, Chika.”
My fears burst through my chest, spilling out as words. Before I had a chance to regret them, Chika shook her head.
“I won’t die,” she said. Even without seeing her expression, I knew there was little resolve to that denial. “But now, I don’t know where I’m supposed to live.”
Neither did I. How could I, when I still didn’t even know where I could live or even what the point was?
“I’m sure you aren’t in the mood to think about it right now, but can your room be rebuilt?”
“I…I don’t really know the details, but it seems like repairs are going to be a problem for a while because of the war. I’m staying at the house of a nearby ×××× right now, but when you have somewhere to stay, the government tends to put off doing repairs. It’s stupid, right? This isn’t living.”
“What about your room at the place you’re staying now?”
“I don’t have one. They said we don’t need our own rooms just to live.”
The sadness of losing her world, the despair of seeing that world swept up in circumstances she could do nothing about…those emotions stained her words, deep and heavy.
I thought, and the thoughts struck my heart so hard I felt it might shatter.
How wonderful it would be if we were in the same world right now, if I could actually reach my hand out and save her. If only I were in her world and could stand beside her in the face of the destruction—even if I couldn’t rebuild her room, even if I couldn’t stop the wars.
Delusions, fantasies, and daydreams were worthless.
Delusions, fantasies, and daydreams could never bring Chika’s room back to life.
All we had was reality.
Right now, she and I were here, and living in our separate worlds. We couldn’t travel to each other’s worlds. Even if it were somehow possible, we still didn’t know how. All we did know right now was that there were two worlds and that they somehow affected each other.
That was all…
“Hey.”
A sound I’d never heard before started ringing in my head.
“If the war ended, could your house be fixed?”
“I mean…if there was an obvious victory, the next war probably wouldn’t start right away. Even if the war didn’t end, maybe it could happen if it kept raining. But I’ll be waiting a while for either the war to end or a monsoon to come.”
It was just a question that had popped into my mind, but it gave me strength.
“Are there no other times when they stop the war?”
I worried that I might make her mad. I figured she might tell me not to insult her, or not to make light of someone else’s problems, or not to try to sympathize when it had nothing to do with me.
“I guess when there’s some illness running rampant amongst the fighters. Or…”
Still, the thought that I would do anything for Chika was real. There wasn’t the slightest lie in my desire to repay Chika, the one who had saved me just by being there.
“Or when the siren hasn’t rung.”
“Right, you said it was basically sacred.”
“It is. It rarely happens, but there’ve been a few times when the siren hasn’t rung on time. Like you said, it’s sacred, so there’s no replacement for it, and when it’s in bad condition, it takes some time to restore it. They don’t have a war on those days.”
“And what if the siren was broken?”
“It’s protected, so breaking it would be impossible. But I read that it’s super old and mechanically complicated, so it’d be fairly impossible to make a new one now.”
“…I see.”
A thought suddenly occurred. That thought grew into an intention. That’s how people chose their actions.
“This might be it.”
“Huh?”
This might just be it. Perhaps it all boiled down to this singular purpose.
“Something I can do.”
“What are you…?”
“The reason our worlds are connected.”
“Uh…huh?”
I ignored her bewilderment, blinded by the brilliant light that was shining from within me.
I immediately apologized and tried to play it off. I don’t know if she was convinced, but she at least pretended to be. That was fine for now. I didn’t want to get her hopes up pointlessly. I’d tell her next time. If what I was thinking was correct, we could rejoice then. And if I was wrong, we could just try to figure out a different tactic.
I thought that was how I felt, but I was only fooling myself. In truth, I knew that I wasn’t wrong. I knew that this wasn’t a delusion, or fantasy, or even a mere daydream.
If only. If only I could stop the wars in her world.
That would give meaning to all of this.
That was how strong my will was at that moment.
An impact—Chika had saved me from my despair, so I believed I could rescue her from hers.
Though maybe that was just my hope.