“He’ll show up. I’m sure of it!!”
The crowd at the center of the park had grown even bigger. In its midst, I looked down, lost in thought.
Shinobu’s voice rang out quietly but firmly in the old classroom.
“Don’t talk to him as Belle. Talk to him as Suzu.”
I listened, speechless and unmoving.
“Are you crazy, Shinobu?!” Hiro said, glaring at him over her shoulder. “What are you saying?!”
Shinobu ignored her and kept talking, his eyes on me.
“I think that’s the only way you’ll be able to contact him again.”
Hiro leaned over the back of her chair and shouted angrily at him.
“What are you talking about?! Do you even know what that means?! Everything Suzu has worked so hard for will go up in smoke!”
“Argh!!” I moaned, planting both hands on the desk and slumping my shoulders. Hiro was right.
“But it’s the only way to gain his trust,” Shinobu said, not budging.
Hiro must have decided talking to him was pointless, because she grabbed my arm and started tugging like that would win me over.
“Suzu!! What have you been doing all this for up till now?! Do you want to go back to the unhappy old you?! Back to crying all the time?! Are you okay with that?!”
“Aaaaaaaaaaaargh!! Uuuuuuuuugh!!”
I couldn’t even put my agony into words. I just groaned and shook my head over and over.
Ruka and Kamishin had nothing to say.
Ms. Kita was watching the scene with a pained expression.
Ms. Okumoto was looking on tensely. So were Ms. Yoshitani and Ms. Hatanaka.
Ms. Nakai had her arms crossed, a sharp look in her eye.
“The fact is, Tomo and Kei revealed their identities,” Shinobu said calmly. “What can you do for them with your mask still on, Suzu? How can you get through to them if you’re still hiding your real face?”
I was at a crossroads. What to do?
What to do?
The me in the center of the crowd of ASes was also looking down and shaking my head. Justin seemed to be annoyed by my inaction.
“Rrgh, why won’t she sing?!” he barked.
“Hey—!”
Before the other Justices could stop him, he had taken off running.
Justin barged into the crowd and started fighting his way toward the center.
The large monitor in the middle of the classroom showed the scene at the center of the crowd. I stood in front of it, staring down at the floor, thinking.
The window playing the video took up the whole screen. I wavered for a long time. I didn’t know what to do.
Then all at once, everything became clear. I knew exactly what I had to do.
I (the real me) made up my mind and slowly lifted my head.
I (the virtual me) made up my mind and slowly lifted my head.
Something was approaching me.
“Sing!!”
It was Justin. He had forced his way through the crowd.
“Call that hideous Beast to you with your music!!”
I gradually raised my left hand, taking him in. Justin thrust out both hands and walked straight toward me.
“Sing!!”
I grabbed his right hand and twisted it.
“Ow!! What are you doing?!”
He looked shaken.
“Shine the light!” I screamed.
“Huh?!”
“Shine the light on me!!”
I stared intently at him. He gazed back at me, wide-eyed with surprise.
A blinding green light suddenly appeared at the center of the crowd. Several bands of light escaped from it, shining outward.
The gathered ASes peered at it curiously.
“What the…?” Justin murmured before howling in shock, “Idiot! Nobody unveils themself!!”
With a loud hum, metal wings shot out of the bracelet on Justin’s right arm and began flapping. At the same time, the cannon blasted out its green unveiling light at full strength.
The light engulfed my whole body.
Wind and bubbles and particles of light swirled around me like they were scrubbing me down. My hair, my legs, my arms, my fingers, my nails, my lips—every part of me was torn away.
I remembered what Justin had told me.
“Normally, the biometric information scanned by devices is converted into the registered AS using a special process. This light blocks the conversion. As a result, the AS’s origin is projected here in U. That’s how unveiling works.”
At that very moment, this exact process was unfolding in my own body.
Across U, ASes eager to witness the events that were about to take place flocked to the enormous egg-shaped crowd.
Suddenly, with a deafening bang, a crack appeared at the top of the mass. Starting from that point, countless ASes began tumbling downward. Their falls spurred more crumbling of the mass, the cracks spreading like spiderwebs. With a rumble, ASes were swept into the large park district of U’s Main Stream. Inside the crumbling mass, someone discovered the small figure emitting the green light. They gasped.
It was Belle. They were sure of it.
Then someone else saw her and screamed.
The screaming soon spread.
“What is that?!”
“What’s going on?!”
The ASes were in an uproar. Everyone was pointing and gaping.
As Belle’s form faded away inside the halo of green, another brightly sparkling human form slowly descended.
It was a girl in a high school uniform.
A pair of metal wings descended behind her at the same time. Perhaps they broke off after their unveiling duty was complete. The girl descending from the heavens alongside the broken wings looked just like a fallen angel whose wings had been torn off.
That girl was me.
“It’s Belle’s origin…”
Excitement electrified the crowd as they watched me descend, my identity exposed as the one and only freckled high school kid with her necktie flapping and her pleated skirt flying up in the wind.
“She looks totally different…”
“Except for the freckles.”
“Her biometric data is being projected as-is.”
Hiro couldn’t bear watching.
“Ohhh, I can’t take it!!” she cried, covering her face with her hands.
I landed in the egg-shaped space, and the green light blinked off. I could see the crowd of ASes stretching far into the distance. How many millions were there? Tens of millions? Hundreds? I had no idea. I had never seen such an enormous crowd in my life.
“……!!”
I couldn’t face them any longer. A powerful jolt of tension ran through my body, setting my arms, legs, fingers, and even my chin shaking.
The ASes were still in an uproar.
“Belle was unveiled?”
“Who unveiled her?”
“She did it herself.”
“Herself?!”
“Why?!”
“What for?!”
Peggie Sue was there in the crowd. She had come to watch the moment of Belle’s unveiling.
“So Belle’s just an ordinary girl…” She shuddered. “Like me.”
My real face might even be worse than Belle’s, she thought. In the real world, I’m a bottom-dweller without so much as a dream, but in U, I was reborn. What kind of person would throw away the dream they fought so hard to achieve?
If I was in her shoes, I doubt I could stand it. Having my origin exposed to the whole world would be worse than standing in front of them naked.
But they say Belle revealed her own origin.
Why?
Peggie Sue couldn’t make heads or tails of it.
Hiro gripped her face and shook her head.
“Now our big secret’s out…”
Shinobu walked to the front of the room.
“Is this the music app?” he asked, tapping on the keyboard of the laptop sitting on a desk.
“Hey, stop!!” Hiro yelled, gripping Shinobu’s arm.
He ignored her and looked up at the monitor.
“Suzu,” he said, and clicked.