“Exactly. Quantum teleportation destroys the information on the source side. To the phonon beings, that resulted in the destruction of their genetic information. Just by sounding their voices, seiyuu bring death upon them!”
“And the voices we hear are the screams of those lives experiencing death. How long have you heard them?”
“Since I was born. Every day, every hour, every minute, I’ve listened to their shrieks of pain and fear of death. Heard voices begging for help, begging for someone to save them. I was receiving not only genetic information, but the phonon beings’ mental information. That’s how strong my seiyuu powers were. And then one day, I got a message from the world of voices. It was clearly a message from an intelligent life form. The phonon beings were as intelligent and cultured as human beings. Akane Yomokura, you know this as well as I do, right?”
Akane did. The source of those voices clearly had free will, clearly had emotions. A personality, just like herself.
“I made a contract with the civilization in the world of voices. A blessing, with shared suffering as collateral. Divine protection in return for the burden of original sin. I was granted seiyuu powers far beyond what I’d had, becoming the Dark Seiyuu. As an agent of dark matter, the world of voices, I became a seiyuu opposed to seiyuu. And I began killing my colleagues. Trying to reduce the number of seiyuu as much as possible, I killed and killed and killed. Feeling the deaths of the world of voices, I brought death to the world of things. But everything I did had no meaning. One day, I received a message from the world of voices. To escape the seiyuu overpopulation, they were going to abandon the Earth and scatter. That meant Earth’s gravity would disappear.”
The Dark Seiyuu pulled back her hood, wiping her eyes. Her face was that of a girl, traces of childhood lingering. Tears flowed from her deep, clear eyes.
“I can’t do it anymore. I can’t bear this suffering, this contradiction, this madness. I mean, think about it. Trusting I’d improve a tragic situation, I killed all those seiyuu, and for this. If this is all I get, I wish I’d been born a plant instead. I’m tired. I don’t want to go on. But I’m a coward. Too scared to just abandon it. So I went looking for a successor, some way to guarantee what I’d done wasn’t meaningless. Someone to take over my role before they scattered. And to do that, I had to find a seiyuu who could hear the voices. The only possibility I ever found was you, Akane Yomokura. And by escaping from the destruction of Earth, you proved your potential as a seiyuu. Armed with that knowledge, I led you to Jupiter, and here to the center of the Milky Way. Areas with higher gravity, where the phonon beings are unusually concentrated, their voices are easier to hear. By coming on this journey, you’ve learned to hear their voices. You’ve grown. I have nothing left to teach you.”
The Dark Seiyuu wiped her tears, looking Akane in the eye. “Akane Yomokura! Forgive my cowardice! And I ask of you, will you be my successor? Will you become the Dark Seiyuu, and save the world?”
Akane remembered why she had first set out to be the ultimate seiyuu. There was just one reason. She wanted to save the world.
“Very well. I accept that name, and the burden that comes with it.”
“You swear?”
“I do. But unlike you, I won’t go killing all the seiyuu. I’ll bring salvation to the world in the truest sense.”
At this, the Dark Seiyuu’s eyes widened. Suspicion mingled with hope. “Really? But... you can’t!”
“I can. The other world sent us a message. That means I can speak to them, as well.” Akane took the Dark Seiyuu’s hand, squeezing it tight. “If we communicate, we can find a way to live in harmony. Two worlds, linked by voices. That’s what seiyuu are.”
The Dark Seiyuu was silent for a while, then she smiled. It was the first time Akane had ever seen her smile.
“That’s so absurd... I never even thought of it.”
Her smile broadened, and she laughed out loud, as if all the stress tying her down had suddenly been released. She was laughing and crying at the same time.
Akane put her arms around her. “Don’t worry. Once I’m the ultimate seiyuu, there’s nothing I can’t do.”
“When you put it that way... I’m sure you can. I can rest now. Free from my nightmare.”
The Dark Seiyuu handed her knife to Akane, the tip pointed at her own laryngeal sac. “I give my sac to you. I will be part of you, and I will support you that way. Take my ship home. I’m sure you can fly it. The ship has a freezer, so you can preserve it after you cut it out.”
Her small hand patted Akane’s shoulder. “Go on! Become the ultimate seiyuu!”
Akane stuck the knife into the throat below the Dark Seiyuu’s laryngeal sac. She slid it sideways, making a long, smooth cut. As if it had been waiting for this, blood gushed out. With the beating of the heart, the blood flow waxed and waned rhythmically. Her body crumpled like a poorly balanced doll, convulsed for a few seconds like it was trying to tear open the heavens, and then went still. Big, beautiful, lake-like eyes dried up, turning white. Her jaw went slack, her mouth hanging open like a tunnel.
Akane had obtained the Dark Seiyuu’s laryngeal sac. Even severed from her body, it wriggled like octopus tentacles. Akane cupped its bulk tenderly in both hands.
The Black Swan’s hatch opened, and she placed the sac safely in the freezer within. Then Akane came back to the corpse. She took off her space suit, and in her underwear, set all her sacs vibrating.
Then she embraced the body.
“I will become the Dark Seiyuu and save the world. You can rest in peace,” she whispered.
The body was wrapped in light. Heat poured out of her, burning the body, turning it to charcoal.
A little while later, Sachii woke up. She looked around and found Akane sitting on top of The Black Swan.
“Woah! Good morning! That’s a hell of a ship! What happened while I was out!?”
“Oh, I became the ultimate seiyuu messiah.”
“I don’t know what that is, but it sounds amazing! Does that make me your apostle? Every messiah needs some apostles!”
Akane took Sachii’s hand and led her into The Black Swan. It was a single-seater, but Sachii was small enough that they could both fit. It had an automatic food maker on board, so they were lacking for nothing. With this ship, they had nothing to fear.
Akane sat in the cockpit with Sachii resting on her knees. Sachii rubbed her head against Akane’s neck, goofing around. She was always big on cuddling. It had surprised Akane when they first met, but now her warmth didn’t seem so bad after all.
“Now then, times a wasting! First, let’s head back to Suzuka’s place, and get that laryngeal sac transplanted! I’m sure she’s up to the task.”
“Totally! I didn’t get to talk to her nearly enough, anyway!”
The hatch closed, and The Black Swan was swallowed up by the sky.
After a long silence, six-legged black creatures came scuttling out, their sharp jaws tearing into the lump of coal that had once been human. They clustered around the Moby-Dick’s corpse, too, soon turning its flesh into swiss cheese. As the holes grew larger, the bones were exposed. Soon, they even gnawed upon the hard bones, sucking out the cerebrospinal fluid. When there were no more bodies, not even any blood stains, the creatures’ cooperation ended. With no other flesh left to eat, they began devouring each other. They formed two teams, three teams, four teams, eating each other alive.
At last, victors were decided. They went through several metamorphic processes until they became space whales. They used the disk of land’s centrifugal force to launch themselves to the outer regions of the galaxy. There they gathered nourishment before returning to the mating grounds.
This cycle of life continues to this day, unchanged for trillions of years.