Chapter 13:
Yukari
LET ME TELL YOU about a girl named Marii Yukari.
She was in her second year of junior high. At a glance she appeared to be an ordinary girl, but she had purple eyes which, according to her, saw people—in fact, all living things—as robots. (To be clear, it was only her irises that were purple. Apart from that, her eyes were physically just like anyone else’s.)
As a result, from the time she was a child, she was isolated. Therefore, any friend she made she adored and cherished. Indeed, Marii wasn’t normal, but she did have friends. First of all, she had a friend named Tenjou Nanami, a girl who taught her how to smile.
At the present, Tenjou wasn’t as close to Marii as she had been, but Marii still considered her a friend.
Second, there was Hatou Manabu. Hatou easily accepted Marii’s purple eyes, and even Marii’s repair of her body. It was hard to find a friend like her, and it was thanks to her that Marii found the courage to seek another friend without holding back.
Third, there was Alice Foyle. She was a child genius with a different kind of unusual perspective than Marii. She pronounced Marii a kindred soul and a natural ally. That didn’t mean that she had the same eyes as Marii, but all the same, it was music to Marii’s ears to be accepted.
So Marii decided to change schools.
She was sad to leave Hatou and Tenjou, but they themselves reassured her that it was for the best.
There was more to it than that; Marii herself was conflicted. She wondered whether, by staying, she would create an undue imposition on Hatou and Tenjou. She wondered whether they would end up in trouble again because of her eyes, as they had before. She wondered whether it would be inexcusable for her to stay with them.
Maybe it’s no good like this. Maybe I need the strength to strive on my own.
Hatou said she would wait, which helped Marii make up her mind.
She summoned all her courage.
If I want friends, I have to reach out myself. I have to become stronger, the girl thought.
Marii trusted Alice Foyle and Alice Foyle’s friends, and she crossed the ocean to America, where Jaunt was.
Foyle and her friends were kind: Marii thought she could be friends with them. However, the adults were not as considerate. From the beginning, the adults wanted Marii’s eyes for themselves. They had always meant to exploit Marii’s eyes. That was why they had deceived Foyle and sent her to Japan, to scout Marii.
They told Marii, “We want you to use your purple eyes for the good of the world. We want you to look at Earth with those eyes. And if possible, we want you to rebuild Earth the way you must have rebuilt Tenjou Nanami and Hatou Manabu.”
Marii refused: she said she couldn’t do that to Earth when there was nothing wrong with it. Yet the adults tried to persuade Marii. They said Earth was an organism on the verge of demise (with which Marii disagreed). They said Earth needed humans to manage its mechanisms directly (with which Marii also disagreed).
Marii refused them so stubbornly that they isolated her in a separate building of the research facility. They cut her off from Foyle and the rest, threatening her they’d harm her. They never did follow through for some reason; they were serious, but somehow they didn’t hurt her.
When they threatened to kill her family, Marii began to lose her humanity. She behaved like the robots she saw, not responding when spoken to, and eventually, not even eating. The adults of Jaunt gave up and changed their plan. If Marii wouldn’t cooperate, they’d investigate the secret of her eyes themselves.
To tell the truth, they hadn’t expected all that much of Marii’s cooperation. They didn’t doubt the way she said she saw things, but the question was what could be done with her eyes. Unlike Tenjou and Hatou, they’d never had the chance to be impressed by it firsthand. (They still hadn’t dug up the details of what had happened to Tenjou and Hatou.) To them, the unknown potential of Marii’s eyes was less interesting than a possible biochemical explanation of qualia.
There was also another factor of which the children had no idea—to wit, that Jaunt was a money-guzzling machine that depended desperately on federal funding and budgets and other such vices of the real world. They needed immediate results, not some uncertain possibilities the eye couldn’t see.
They needed concrete bargaining chips in the here and now.
Physically, there was nothing odd about Marii’s eyes. Therefore, the secret of Marii’s power could only lie in that most mysterious of human organs: the brain. If they studied her brain, it might give a hint as to what qualia were, a field in which just about no ground had ever been broken. As of now, Marii was all but a vegetable and of no use whatsoever. Even worse, she was clogging up the system.
“Then why don’t we…?” began the suggestion. And so they decided to subject Marii to a battery of inhumane experiments.
That very day, the FBI burst in and arrested the adults of Jaunt.
A certain employee had leaked the plans. (To be precise, the employee had informed Foyle and her friends about what was happening to Marii, and they had reported it. But due to various circumstances, this is not part of the record. The identity of the employee likewise lies shrouded in mystery.)
In the end, Marii Yukari was rescued.
Now she is in the hospital on an IV. Her health had reached a critical state due to malnutrition she suffered. She is stable now, in life support terms, but she still hasn’t spoken a single word. However, there’s no need to worry. Her family and friends are on their way from Japan. Hatou Manabu is coming, and so is Tenjou Nanami, despite her intransigence.
Alice Foyle and friends are asleep in the next room, having worried endlessly over Marii. They refused to leave, and here they still are.