“Suzume, you don’t have to come any farther!” Souta suddenly says, pushing off my body into the air. Like a dog freed from its leash, he bolts ahead at full speed.
“Souta, wait!”
“It’s too dangerous! Go back to the girl with the scooter!”
“Souta!”
Looking like some three-legged beast, he disappears into the dim rubble. Don’t do this, Souta! I call his name again, but he doesn’t answer.
“—!”
I stop, suddenly out of breath. My lungs need air, and they suck it in of their own accord. The fetid sweet smell comes in with it, and I cough violently. I desperately try to catch my breath and forget about the smell; then I try to pretend it doesn’t exist and tell my nose not to sense it. I take my time expelling all the polluted air from my chest. Finally, my breath calms, and I look around, making sure to breathe shallowly. Roofs and telephone poles still buried in dirt are scattered around chaotically like black lumps. Past them, a rushing red river falls upward toward the sky, growing ever brighter. The earth below my feet is rumbling uncannily, on and on, as if something is moving all at once toward the red river.
I’m alone in this place. For some reason, I’m standing here alone. Again. Unbearable anxiety and fear well up in me, like someone has made a mistake and I can’t wake up from a nightmare—and I need to wake up. I feel like an abandoned child. I’m hemmed in by tilted roofs buried in mud and bizarrely upright walls and black windows that don’t reflect anything. Suddenly, the tears gathered in my eyes overflow, and the red of the worm bleeds over everything. Souta told me to go home. He told me to go back to the girl with the scooter.
“…You’re telling me to go back to Chika?” I say out loud. “You’re telling me to go home, to go back to Kyushu?”
The nauseating sweet smell is still surrounding me. It is already, inescapably, inside me. It is here, a distinct foreign presence, impossible to ignore. Suddenly, a feeling like anger boils up inside my ribs. Why is this happening again? After coming all this way. Despite everything we’ve done. Why?
“What’s the point in that?!” I scream, wringing the words out of my body. I start running after Souta into the darkness, hurtling forward with all my strength. My loafers crush mud and glass and something made of plastic. With each stride, the fear and anxiety dissipate. Yes, this is the way. If I run toward Souta, the anxiety will disappear. If I run the opposite direction, it will build and build. That’s why I need to go this way.
When I get to the top of the dark road, I have a clear view of the area ahead. Beyond layers of abandoned houses, a school stands by itself. The worm is erupting from the school building. I descend toward it, weaving between empty houses. I see the school gate ahead of me. There’s a hill to the right of the building, and dirt from it has buried the right half of the schoolyard. I run through the gate into the yard. Sandbags are piled next to the dirt, extending a hundred meters or so to the school building.
“…The school has turned into a Gate?!”
The worm is pouring out in a violent, muddy river from the wide student entrance. Under its glow, to the left, I can see something. A small kiddie chair, pushing with all its might against one of the large aluminum double doors.
“Souta?!”
“Suzume?!”
The foul red river is flowing right over my head. The sludge under my feet is a slimy reflection of its glow.
“The key…!” Souta shouts, still pushing the door. The glow of the worm glints off something halfway between me and the entrance. It’s the old key that should have been hanging around his neck, now half buried in the mud. I run over and scoop it up in my right hand. I keep running to where Souta is. My feet slip, and I fall sideways into the mud, but I stand up right away and arch my body over him, pushing the edge of the aluminum door with my free hand.
“Suzume!” He looks up angrily as he, too, pushes the edge of the door with the chair’s seat. “Aren’t you afraid of dying?!”
“No!”
He gasps. But I’m really not. I haven’t been afraid of death for a long time. Beneath my left hand, the door rattles uncannily, like someone on the other side who doesn’t understand words is pushing back for no good reason. My right hand is on the ground, gripping the key tight, mud and all.
“The key—,” Souta says, pushing with all his might. “The current pushed me back, and it flew off. I couldn’t reach it. I’m so grateful you came—”
He plants his three legs firmly and pushes. I pour my energy into my left arm, and little by little, we push the door closed. The eruption narrows. Just a little more. I look up at the worm and keep pushing.
“Oh no!”
The worm has become a reddish-bronze flower blossoming across the sky. I glance at the schoolyard. Countless golden threads are stretching up and up toward it. It’s sucking energy from the ground. The flower grows heavy and begins to drift slowly toward the earth.
“Suzume, you lock it!” Souta screams from below my chest.
“Me?!”
“We’re out of time! Close your eyes and think of the people who lived here!”
“What?!”
“That will make the lock appear!”
“Easy for you to say—”
I look at him. Still staring at the door, he says earnestly, “I’m begging you! I can’t do anything—I couldn’t do anything in this body…! Please close your eyes!”
The desperation in his words is like a punch to the gut. I shut my eyes. Now what? Think about the people who lived here? How?
“Imagine what this place used to look like. The people who must have lived here. Their feelings. If you imagine it, you’ll hear their voices!”
What this place used to look like. I try to imagine it. The school surrounded by mountains. The big schoolyard bright with sun. Two faucets for drinking water on either side of the entrance, like at my school. In this place now buried under dirt, students in tracksuits must have drunk water from those faucets. Chika. Her openhearted smile. The water from the faucets is sweet and cold. “Get rid of that sunburn for good!” she says, laughing with a friend. “Good morning.” This place must have been full of energy at the start of the day. “Good morning, good morning, good morning.” I can hear the voices. Students dragging their feet on test days, spreading rumors about teachers, planning to ask out their crush. I can see the colors. A different color tracksuit for each of the three grades. White sailor uniforms that reflect the morning sun. Navy-blue skirts hiked up above the knees. Bright-white shirts with the first and second buttons undone, secretly dyed hair.
“O Divine Gods who dwell beneath this land.”
Souta is intoning that same mysterious, melodic string of words.
“You have long protected us for generations. Your mountains and rivers that we have long called our own—”
“…!”
The key in my right hand is growing warm. It takes on a blue glow. A bundle of blue light rises from the key and gathers on the aluminum door. A glowing keyhole opens immediately next to my left hand, which is still pushing the edge of the door.
“Now!” Souta screams, and I thrust the key into the light.
“We respectfully return them to you!”
As he cries out the words, I instinctively turn the key and feel something click into place. The window in the door shatters and falls onto our backs. There’s a sound like a bubble swelling and bursting, and above our heads, the worm recoils and breaks apart. The air feels suddenly light, like a leaden rain cloud has been blown away.
A few seconds later, rain sheets down, refracting the light in complex patterns and washing the ruins around us in a quick shower.
“Haah, haah, haah…”
I sit in the mud, catching my breath and looking up at the sky. A scattering of stars has come out. Night insects are singing. The lush smell of summer foliage fills the air. The school entrance is quiet once again. Abandoned and silently decaying. Next to me, Souta lets out two puffs of breath.
“Huh?”
“Ha-ha…ha-ha-ha-ha!”
He’s laughing, a full-bellied, raucous laugh. With a clatter, he turns toward me.
“You did it, Suzume. You stopped the earthquake!”
“I did…?”
I stopped an earthquake? Me?
“Really…?”
A hot wave of emotion washes up from my stomach, rising into a smile on my face.
“…I can’t believe it! We did it, we did it!”
Souta is smiling, too. He’s completely covered in mud. So are my clothes, and probably my face. It’s like proof of what we’ve just done, and I’m proud, excited, and happy to be as dirty as I am.
“Aren’t we amazing?” I ask, bringing my face right up to Souta’s. I can see his expression in the two carved eyes on his backrest. I can sense the kindness in it.
“Suzume amazing!” a childish voice says nearby.
“Huh?”
I glance reflexively toward it. A short distance away in the dim schoolyard, I make out a small white form. Its round yellow eyes are looking at me. Slowly swishing its long tail, the white kitten opens its mouth.
“More Gates will open,” it says.
“The Keystone!”
Souta lunges toward it, but Daijin has already vanished into the darkness.
“…Did the cat open that door?” I whisper with a shaky breath. Souta keeps staring into the darkness after it.