At exactly five o’clock, “The Hazy Moon” began playing over the emergency broadcasting system speakers. The choir members arrived at the old school in rapid succession and parked their cars. They climbed the stairs to the second floor and peeked through the door at the back of the classroom. On the large monitor, a video showed a white room. A faint sound resembling music was coming from the video. Kei was hunched over, stock-still, with his hands covering Tomo’s ears. Their father stood looking down on them for a few moments, then turned on his heel and disappeared into the hallway.
There was a loud bang, like a door slamming off screen.
“Is that guy really their dad…?” Kamishin muttered.
Ruka stood beside him, speechless. Shinobu watched with a harsh look in his eyes. Onscreen, Tomo was peering worriedly at Kei.
“Kei, are you all right? Kei…?”
Kei stayed where he was, folded limply in half.
I couldn’t believe this frail boy was the Dragon.
“Huh… Now it makes sense,” Hiro mumbled, half to herself. “Kei wanted to be a hero for Tomo to keep his spirit up. In that case…”
Kei finally lifted his head. Tomo spoke soothingly to him. Hiro watched intently.
“…maybe that’s why the Dragon is so strong. If U’s body-sharing technology reveals each person’s hidden self, then this awful situation must be connected to this boy’s strength. Just like how you became Belle, Suzu…”
I wanted to speak directly to Kei. I had to.
I reached for the mouse. There was a chat button in the livestream video—the same feature we’d used to talk with Jelinek and Swan. At the bottom left of the screen, there was a green button to call and a red one to hang up. Pressing the green button would let me talk to him. But I couldn’t bring myself to press it.
Would he be able to talk so soon after an experience like that?
The cursor wavered.
Finally, Kei sat up. Tomo stepped away, looking relieved, and sat down with his back against the wall.
It was now or never.
I impulsively gripped the mouse and pressed the green button.
“Now connected,” an automated voice said. My (that is, Belle’s) chat icon and name appeared on the screen. Kei and Tomo exchanged confused looks. Then they realized what was happening and stared at me. They seemed able to hear me as well.
My heart was pounding in my ears.
“…Can you see me?” I asked, my voice shaking. “Can you hear me? I…saw what happened. Everything…”
Kei gazed at me, then slowly stood. In my eyes, his form blended so perfectly with that of the Dragon. My consciousness shifted naturally to Belle’s.
“You’re okay now. Everything’s going to be fine.” I was now speaking as Belle. “I want to go see you. Can you tell me where you are? Because I—”
But Kei cut me off sharply.
“Who the hell are you?”
“……?!”
He doesn’t know…?
Hiro looked up at me in surprise.
“You’ve never met in person,” she said softly.
I went from confused to embarrassed to unsure, but finally stuttered, “I—I’m…Belle.”
“…Belle! ” Tomo said, craning his neck forward.
But Kei only spat, “You can’t be.”
He was right. Anyone could claim they were Belle. I couldn’t prove it. I had no evidence for him. Who would believe the claims of a total stranger?
“Now connected,” the automated voice suddenly repeated. Three more chat icons appeared on the screen.
“See? I told you,” one of them said.
“Holy crap, this is a crime scene!”
“We’ve gotta call the police!”
The voices sounded young. One was definitely the person who had entered the room earlier and then left. They’d returned with friends to see what was happening. They barged in, made an irresponsible fuss, then exited the chat, cackling.
The three icons disappeared with a series of clicks, leaving me alone on the screen. The viewer number went back to 1. Kei walked slowly toward the webcam, his expression blank.
“Are you another jerk who wants to laugh at other people’s secrets?”
“No, not at all…”
“Did you like what you saw? Was it fun to watch someone suffer?”
“Of course not!!”
He must have thought I was like the three people who had just laughed at him. But I wasn’t. Not at all! I desperately held back my tears and kept talking, praying I would somehow get through to him.
“…I want to help you guys. That’s why I called. Is there anything I can do to—?”
“Help? How could you help? ” he interrupted again.
“……!”
How? How could I…?
Kei glared at me.
“Help, help, help. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that before. ‘I’ll talk to your dad.’ ‘We spoke with your father. He understands everything now.’ But nothing ever changes. Help, help, help. What do you claim you can do?”
I was speechless. I stepped back like a wave of pressure was repelling me.
“Help, help, help. They don’t know anything. They say they’ll help, but talk is cheap. And they keep on promising to help, help, help. ‘We want to help you boys. We want to support you.’ Help, help, help. They cry because they pity us. They cry out of sympathy. But in the end, nothing changes.”
He kept glaring at me, like he was holding back bottomless anger. Anger at me, but not really at me. Anger at the half-assed ways of the world, at society, at everything. At irresponsible words, heartless attitudes, intolerant minds, unconscious condescension toward the weak, and the deceptions that cover it up. His gaze seemed like a sword aimed at all those things.
“Help, help, help, help, help, help, help, help, help, help, help! I’m sick of it!! ” he howled, his body shaking like he was spitting out all the anger bottled inside. “Just leave!! ”
The terrifying look in his eyes was exactly the same look in the Dragon’s eyes when he bared his sharp teeth and howled. Like Belle, all I could do was squeeze my eyes shut and shrink into myself.
Kei typed a command on the keyboard. The call ended.
Click.
There was the beeping of a disconnected line, then an error message: An error occurred. Please try again later.
“Kei, answer me!” I cried, pushing the call button frantically. But there was no response.
“He’s offline,” Hiro muttered. I kept shouting in desperation.
“Where are you?! Tell me!”
“He doesn’t trust you!!” Hiro was shouting, too. She looked down and lowered her voice. “He’ll never tell you where he is.”
“Now what…?” Ruka whispered.
“Yes, what do we do…?” Ms. Kita echoed.
No one had an answer.
Shinobu remained silent. He seemed to be thinking about something. Very deeply, and at great length.
After he was done, he slowly looked up and said, “Sing as your real self.”
I gasped like I’d been shot by an arrow.
A voice spoke in the dark.
“Make room for Belle!!”
The crowd of ASes surrounding me stepped back in unison. The space they left was like the inside of a huge egg. Their voices echoed across it.
“Sing for us!”
“Belle!”
“Sing something!”
“Belle!”
“Please!”
“Sing…”
In order to open the inner space, the mass of countless ASes had swelled its outer edge. As I watched, new ASes joined so the mass grew even more enormous. Justin and his fellow top-level Justices gazed on the spectacle from the buildings above.
“Watch closely. If she sings, the Beast will come. It happened before.”
He narrowed his eyes, as if training them on his target.