Sorry for making excuses, but I think Yukari and I got unlucky with our timing of becoming closer. It came so soon after my run-in with the Tokyo Ripper. I think by then, I had recovered from the shock of both being attacked and of having my left hand repaired with a cell phone. Or maybe those events hadn’t sunk in yet, but at the very least, I was calm and didn’t fear the Yukari who had beaten the culprit, nor was I screaming and running away from her (though I hear Nanami was like that for a while). However, I deeply understood one thing: Yukari’s power went beyond seeing people as robots.
She’d completely restored my left arm after it was cut off. And the same day my severed hand was put back on, I was able to use it just fine. Can modern medicine do that? Wouldn’t you say—and who even cares what you say—that Yukari’s talent is obviously a precious gift?
Plus, Yukari had identified the true Tokyo Ripper just by looking at photos.
And…that thing, which definitely was there then, that Yukari called her friend…
You don’t get called a genius on smarts alone. You qualify for such a description once you’ve demonstrated a special something that can change the world. In science, in literature, painting, music, political theory, geniuses appeared and created whole new categories. Some people say it takes more than one person to change the world, but those people are nobodies. A genius is someone who can move the world by themselves: A person who provides the drive for the world to change. Of course, there are limits to the power of one single person, but it is the power of genius that can generate hordes of fans and turn them into patrons.
Just as Alice said, Yukari was a genius. It was true that there was no way to prove Yukari’s claim that people looked like robots to her. She’d lived normally other than being considered a little funny.
But what had happened to Nanami and me was unmistakably real. In contrast to Yukari’s claims about how things looked, it was reproducible and verifiable. If people found out about how we’d been fixed, about the details of those purple eyes, one could be sure the world would be thrown into a state of panic.
If her power could be explained, it would be a revolution in modern science.
My friend Marii Yukari could genuinely reshape the world.
Though I was Yukari’s friend, there was nothing I could do to nurture that talent. I couldn’t guide it, and I couldn’t hide what she had done. Yukari, for her part, seemed to feel responsible for the Tokyo Ripper’s attack on me and for my having been victimized because of her. Again, sorry for making excuses, but it was the timing.
At first, Alice unyieldingly kept trying to persuade Yukari. She told her, “You can’t stay among nobodies. They’ll betray you one day. You’ll get hurt. Even if they look friendly, deep down they’re afraid of us, they’re making fun of us behind our backs, that’s how nobodies are.” But once Alice realized that I really accepted Yukari, as well as what had happened to me, and that Yukari’s trust in me was unshakable, Alice changed her strategy. She approached me and said, “Hatou, if you truly accept Yukari, you should also be aware how fantastic and how precious her talent is. Do you not think that to leave it to dwell among nobodies is a betrayal of your duty to humankind?”
“But…that’s… That’s got nothing to do with Yukari. Let her live her own life!”
“Yes. I understand. However, those are the words of a spoiled child. People have obligations to society. To begin with, regardless of how you and Yukari feel, do you think you can hide forever? It is true that her talent is difficult to comprehend, but we found her nonetheless, you see.”
Apparently, Yukari’s father used to be a big shot at the National Police Agency. (Not the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department—The National Police Agency.) She wouldn’t tell me the details, but basically, he retired from his job, and they moved out here when they discovered Yukari saw things differently. Yukari told me she thought they did it for her sake, though the fact that her father had left his job because of her weighed heavily on Yukari. Maybe because of her guilt, she had helped her father’s successor with his job for a while on the condition that it stay off the record.
However, her efforts to hide her involvement backfired, drawing the attention of someone. Investigations were made, which revealed that she was saying that people looked like robots to her. These investigations also went into what happened with Nanami.
Then they found out what happened with me. It was the decisive blow.
Truth be told, it wasn’t as if no one had ever heard Yukari saying strange things. She’d even been bullied for it as a child and had lost friends over it. But those cases had usually ended in a “Yeah, so?” Whether her words were true or not, there was no way you could verify them with your own eyes, and they had no practical consequence anyway. That was what people thought, until what happened to me occurred.
Until the killer suddenly changed.
Leaving Nanami’s case aside, mine definitely resolved itself in a way that looked unnatural. A serial killer had held me hostage in a factory. Large bloodstains and a bloodied weapon had been found, and the blood was conclusively identified as mine. But I came out of it without a scratch or the slightest sign of hemorrhage, and Yukari, who had faced the criminal alone, was likewise unharmed. The killer had just turned herself in as if she’d had a change of heart out of nowhere. We had no idea who’d put what kind of pressure where, but there wasn’t a single page written on us in the police report. It was all off the record. It would be harder not to find anything weird about that.