Bustling foot traffic dominated the street. The scenery was dazzlingly bright despite the cloudy sky, mostly due to the colorful signs hanging from the buildings. Each one displayed kanji that were uncommon in Japan, and standing menus for food stalls and Chinese restaurants were scattered throughout.
“Huh,” Fujinaka murmured. “I guess this is my first time in Yokohama Chinatown.”
“It’s a really fun spot,” Karamori said. “It’s like Japan’s take on China, giving it a completely different vibe from the real thing.”
“Have you been to China, Karamori?”
“Yeah, a few times for jobs. Canaries get sent abroad pretty often.”
“Oh, wow.”
Karamori, Fujinaka, and Archive were standing at the end of a Chinatown street, watching the foot traffic.
“You should definitely go there one day if you’re interested,” Karamori said. “To the real Yokohama Chinatown, I mean.”
A couple he was watching vanished as if passing through an invisible wall. Many more people appeared and disappeared at that same boundary, and buildings that crossed it were cut off. Two hundred meters down the street, the town abruptly ended in the exact same manner.
They were currently on a mountain in Shizuoka Prefecture. There was supposed to be nothing but forests and open fields in this area—yet right in the middle of a sparsely vegetated grove was an isolated strip of town. This was made even more bizarre by the fact that the street looked exactly like Yokohama Chinatown.
Karamori and Archive led the stunned Fujinaka onto the street.
“You said this is a vanit dangerous enough to destroy the world, right?” Fujinaka asked as she looked around fearfully. Ignoring the forest behind them, it looked entirely like they were in Yokohama.
“Apocalypse-class vanits are not always dangerous,” Archive explained. “Vanits are classified separately by their ability to impact the world and their danger level. This vanit was classified with a danger level of Blue…meaning the damage can be mitigated if we are careful.”
“But if it’s not dangerous, can it really destroy the world?” Fujinaka asked.
“Yes. A vanit’s particular characteristics can enable such a contradiction… Please follow me. Be careful not to bump into anybody.”
Archive walked down the street, staying unnaturally close to the buildings.
“When this street was discovered, it had a diameter of approximately thirty-two meters. It has doubled in size every two months since then, and now, six months later, it has a diameter of two hundred fifty-six meters.”
“It’s grown that much in half a year?” Fujinaka asked.
“It has, as it doubles each time. The extent to which the vanit will grow is currently under investigation, but if its growth rate remains consistent, it will eventually overwrite the world. That is how it was designated harmless yet capable of ending the world.”
“We don’t know if it’ll actually get that big, though,” commented Karamori. “There are a lot of other questions, too, like what’ll happen when it reaches the real Yokohama. But if it keeps doubling in size every two months, it will replace the world in three years.”
“Th-three years?!”
Fujinaka looked around. In its current state, the street didn’t extend beyond their field of view in either direction. It was hard to imagine that in three years, it would cover the entire world. Doubling in size every two months was a truly terrifying pace.
“The world being overwritten is certainly a concern, but there is another more immediate issue,” Archive said.
Fujinaka had been observing her surroundings, but just then, she bumped into someone who had suddenly changed direction and was knocked backward onto the street.
“Ah! S-sorry!”
The other person—a man wearing a beanie—fell backward as well, equally taken off guard. He looked around with bewilderment on his face, not seeing the apologizing Fujinaka.
“It’s no use,” Archive said. “He is unable to see us.”
“O-oh. I guess that makes sense, this being a duplication… But wait… Does that mean…?” Fujinaka trailed off.
“Yes. Any interference here will affect the real Yokohama. A violent storm passed through this area not long ago and damaged some buildings with its strong winds. The same damage occurred simultaneously in Yokohama.”
What happened in one Yokohama clearly happened in the other, as little sense as that made in the real location. If another storm came through and knocked a tree into the street, it would hit and injure pedestrians. That risk alone made this situation dangerous.
“That’s insane. Do you really think I…or rather, Untitled can fix this?” Fujinaka asked.
“Essentially, we consider it a possibility worth trying. This will also double as an experiment with Untitled,” Archive said, before adding, “…We have arrived.”
She pointed at a white tree. Actually, tree might not have been the right word. The ends of its branches were shaped like human hands, complete with nails on the fingers. That combined with the smoothness of its surface made it look like it was made entirely of interlaced white hands.
The tree was growing right in the middle of the busy street, but no one even looked at it.
“That tree is the only difference between this Yokohama and the real one and is likely responsible for this phenomenon. It has been named the Duplicator Tree.”
“If that tree is the cause, can’t Karamori just destroy it with his sword?” Fujinaka asked.
“It’s not gonna be that simple,” Karamori said.
He wove through the crowd of people and approached the tree, then drew Tyrfing halfway and swung it with tremendous speed. Somehow, the chains managed not to get in the way, and the blade sliced the Duplicator Tree in half.
However, the tree immediately reformed as if nothing had happened.
“I can cut it, but I can’t kill it. This sword has the power to slice through the distorted laws of any vanit, but this tree’s core must be elsewhere.”
“Multiple other methods of destroying this tree have been attempted, but nothing has worked so far,” Archive explained. “Hence, the proposal to use your Untitled. The theory is that it might be able to use its power to consume the tree’s name and erase it from existence.”
“I’m surprised we’re allowed to use it so freely…,” Fujinaka commented. “I thought Untitled would have to go through a bunch of procedures and investigations before you were given permission to use it in the field.”
“Normally, that would be the case,” Archive said. “But time is short, so we were given special permission to go ahead and make this attempt.”
“What do you mean by ‘time is short’?”
“In three days, it will have been two months since the town last expanded. If it doubles in size again, it will have a diameter of five hundred and twelve meters, which surpasses the range of Archive’s power.”
The size of the town wouldn’t matter if all they had to do was make the tree disappear, but on the off chance that the only way to destroy it was to make the entire town disappear, they only had three days left to accomplish that with Untitled.
“Th-that makes sense…”
Fujinaka looked down at Untitled in her bag. The book still scared her. Even if it only snapped open in the yakiniku restaurant because Archive had dispelled her barrier, she wasn’t confident she could actually control it.
Archive went on. “We will begin the operation late tonight, once people have been evacuated from the actual location in Yokohama.”
Time passed quickly as Karamori and Archive explained the vanit to Fujinaka, went over the plan, and tested Fujinaka’s control of Untitled. Before they knew it, the sun had begun to set.
“Shoot, it ate everything again,” Fujinaka said, running a hand through her ash-brown hair. A blank paper that had until a moment ago been a calendar sat on a simple desk before her.
She was testing Untitled and training for the mission on level ground over five hundred meters away from the second Yokohama. Noary investigators had set up a large tent closer to the street, but it would have been problematic if the writing within it was eaten, so they were performing the test a good distance away from it. Multiple employees in white coats had also joined Archive and Karamori to witness it.
So far, the results had been less than ideal. Untitled listened to Fujinaka but only to an extent.
This time she’d ordered it to eat only the numbers on the calendar, but it had ended up consuming every piece of text on it. It did not, however, take the random words written on a piece of paper set nearby, meaning it had obeyed part of her instructions, at least.
Fujinaka sighed. It had been like this ever since they started. She would try to get Untitled to eat only certain characters on a page only for it to eat them all or order it to eat the characters in a one-meter radius and have it expand to three. Precise commands didn’t seem to work. She clearly needed to practice if she was going to prevent any unnecessary damage during the mission later that night.
“The problem might not lie with Untitled but with Ms. Fujinaka’s use of it,” commented Archive. “Perhaps it is just like any tool, and improving her skill with it will enable more precise control.”
“You sure about that?” Karamori asked. “Honestly, I’ll be surprised if she ever does much better than this.”
“I believe the connection between Untitled and Ms. Fujinaka could make it possible. She was born from Untitled, and yet, she is also its operator. That makes Untitled both her parent and her servant. Their fates are strongly bound. With sufficient skill, I think she could control the book with relative freedom. She might even be able to control it from a distance.”
“That’d be handy…”
“Ms. Fujinaka and the book are already connected. The rest is up to her.”
Karamori looked at Archive with surprise. She was being unusually talkative.
Had fate dictated that as well?
Regardless, he suspected that Untitled and The Archive might be related, so her words seemed credible as a fellow owner of a mystical book.
“Next, how about trying to give Untitled an order without speaking aloud?” Archive directed. “It clearly does not have any auditory organs, so whether or not you need to speak likely depends on your mindset. Please try to direct your thoughts toward Untitled just like you do when you speak your commands aloud.”
“O-okay.” Fujinaka wrote some random words on a sheet of paper and silently put a hand on Untitled’s green cover.
A brief silence passed as she furrowed her brow in concentration. When her eyes flicked open, Untitled opened itself to a blank page and sucked in the characters she’d written.
“Whoa! It actually worked!” Fujinaka exclaimed.
“Just as I suspected,” Archive said.
Is it my imagination, Karamori thought, or did Archive actually smile?
“Now, let us increase the stakes of this training,” she said, taking something out of a bag next to her. It was a round penguin doll dressed like a knight—Sir Penny.
“Hey, that’s mine!” Fujinaka shouted.