“Umm… I don’t think it worked.”
“Did it eat the words?” Karamori asked.
“Yep. They’re gone.”
“Damn.”
Karamori sighed quietly, feeling a mixture of disappointment that the town hadn’t vanished and relief that Untitled wasn’t as dangerous as he’d feared. It looked like the book was incapable of erasing something by consuming a randomly assigned name.
“Looks like it failed.”
“Yes,” agreed Archive. “And in the worst possible way.”
“Really? How?”
“Not only did Yokohama No. 2 not disappear, my late-night snack did.”
Archive’s hands were cupped around thin air where her instant ramen used to be. The sight of her chopsticks held aloft in her left hand was tragic.
Fujinaka had once again failed to completely control Untitled.
“Whoa, it really did disappear… Oh, hang on!!” Karamori said, noticing something that stunned him. He looked around. “Notice anything weird?”
“Yes. Very peculiar.” Archive was also observing their surroundings. The other two investigators also seemed to have noticed something was off.
“Uh, what do you mean?” Fujinaka asked.
“You don’t see it, Fujinaka? Untitled didn’t listen to you, but none of the writing on the street disappeared.”
“Huh?”
Fujinaka’s eyes darted about the street. Just as Karamori said, the Chinese restaurant signs and road signs had kept the text on them.
“It makes little sense that the book would decide to consume only the writing on my Biggie Bowl Hakata Ramen… Ms. Fujinaka, please order Untitled to eat all the writing on this street,” Archive said, pulling a note out of her pocket and writing a few random words on it.
“O-okay… Untitled, consume all of the writing on this street.”
The order was clear as could be. Yet when the green book reopened, it sucked up only the text on Archive’s note and quietly shut itself again, leaving the rest of the street’s writing untouched.
“It is possible this street has a special concept barrier,” Archive said. “However, prior investigation confirmed nothing of the sort.”
“Which means the most likely explanation is that this street has no writing,” Karamori added.
“A reasonable assumption.”
“Huh? What do you mean?” Fujinaka asked Archive.
“We should confirm this. That means it is my turn. Ms. Fujinaka, please order Untitled not to consume anything.”
“Okay.”
Fujinaka put a hand on Untitled’s cover and communicated the order with her mind. Archive wrote something on her piece of paper as a test, and Untitled did nothing. After receiving that confirmation, the other two investigators walked up to her with an imposing metal box.
“Ms. Archive’s Compilation ability uses writing. We will seal Untitled in here until the job is done to prevent it from interfering. Please place it in here,” said one of the investigators.
Fujinaka put Untitled in the box as she’d been asked, and the investigators shut it tight. They then walked to the edge of the street and put their hands on the box, which glowed blue, then transformed into a dull black sphere.
“It is sealed. Please proceed, Ms. Archive.”
“Understood. Now then…”
Archive twisted her red string into a rectangle, causing her red book—The Archive—to appear above her hands. She calmly closed her eyes, her eyelashes brushing her cheeks.
“Step back, Fujinaka,” Karamori said, taking Fujinaka’s hand and leading her five meters away from Archive.
“What’s she doing?” Fujinaka asked.
“You know how Tyrfing can slice through anything with a physical form? Archive has a power, too, which is to Compile formless things along with their very concepts… She gets this ability from her book.”
“I Compile information and concepts. That is the essence of the task I have been fated to perform,” Archive said, clearly having heard them. She opened her eyes. “Now, bind this street.”
The red book in her hands glowed and sent streams of text flooding out of its pages. The words fell to the ground and raced through the street as if they were alive.
Archive spoke as she watched the writing cover the street. “The fact that Compilation has begun likely confirms the theory that this street has no substance.”
The red book could only bind concepts and information that Archive captured—and she had to understood whatever was written in it.
The words crept outward, causing the dark street’s form to waver, fade, and restore itself over and over again.
“That’s crazy,” Fujinaka said as she watched. “There are so many words… I see now why we needed to seal Untitled.”
“Exactly. Not only would it interfere with Archive’s Compilation, it would probably consume all the writing in her red book, which is essentially her real body.”
“Oh yeah. What would happen if Untitled ate Ms. Archive’s book?”
“Who knows? The Archive doesn’t have an actual title. You could feed your book the word ‘Untitled’ to try to erase it from existence, but I’m not sure that would actually do anything… Definitely don’t try it, though.”
“Why would I?!” Fujinaka puffed out her cheeks indignantly. “You still think I’m some kind of airhead, don’t you? Have I done anything close to that stupid since we met?”
“What am I supposed to think when you ask a question like that?”
“I’m not going to try it! And you’re supposed to deny that you think I’m an airhead!”
“I’m joking, I’m joking. Though to be honest, most people tied to a vanit are weighed down by gloom. The combination of your cheery personality and your dangerous power makes you feel a little unpredictable.”
“Huh? There have to be other people with vanits who aren’t total downers.”
“There are, but most of them understand our world.”
“Ah, I guess that makes sense. But I won’t do anything stupid! I swear!”
“Sounds like famous last words to me…”
Archive sighed quietly. “Compiling something of this scale is exhausting.” She sounded more annoyed than tired.
Characters continued to pour out of the book, destabilizing the town’s shape. About five minutes after Compilation began, the area around Archive warped, transforming completely.
White tree roots now ran across the ground around her. They were made of the same material as the Duplicator Tree and extended out in all directions. The buildings had also disappeared to reveal massive Duplicator Trees standing in their place.
Within a few minutes, Karamori and the others were standing in a forest of vanits. Being surrounded by pure-white trees shaped like human hands in the dead of night was eerie to say the least. The branches’ countless fingers pointed to the sky and swayed in the wind. The trees that imitated buildings were big and blocky and terribly misshapen.
The forest was empty except for the Duplicator Trees and the survey equipment Karamori and the others brought. Their lamps amplified the already unsettling white of the trees.
“So this is the vanit’s true form.” The revelation that he was surrounded by thousands of hand-shaped trees sent a chill down Karamori’s spine.
“It seems the entire forest that is distorted,” said Archive. “That explains why destroying the tree in the center of the street did nothing.”
“So these trees have the ability to create an illusion of a different place?”
“Apparently so. I am almost ready to Compile the trees’ distorted concepts. After that, all that will be left is to dispose of the forest.”
“It’d save us a lot of time if you could Compile the trees themselves.”
“All I can bind is concepts. Once I have stolen their abnormal nature, these will be nothing more than oddly shaped trees.”
That doesn’t stop them from being insanely creepy, Karamori thought. He knew the trees were harmless, but they were so unsettling that his every instinct made him want to run for his life.
“Could we burn them all down with a napalm bomb?” he suggested.
“Why not fell them with that sword of yours, which if it were smaller, looks like it would sell for three hundred yen at a souvenir shop?”
“Why are you so convinced it looks like a giant keychain? And don’t you realize how long that would take?”
Karamori looked at Tyrfing. The sword had been taking a verbal beating the last couple of days. The golden decoration and embedded gems of the chained sword shined brightly under the lamps.
The chains served an important purpose—they were actually a separate vanit installed by Noary to prevent Tyrfing from being drawn accidentally. They had the exceptionally useful nature of turning intangible upon collisions that happened above a certain speed, meaning they didn’t get in the way when Karamori swung Tyrfing in its sheath.
“This sword is sick, and anyone who can’t see that needs to get their head examined,” Karamori retorted. “Also, it would sell for way more than three hundred yen if it was smaller. Those are real gemstones.”
“Gemstones are like people: They only have value when they are in a suitable place,” Archive said casually.
“Oh, now you think you’re some kind of wise sage, do you? You can compare anything to people to make yourself sound smart.”
“Instant noodles are like people: All you need is a few minutes of boiling water to soften them up.”
“That’s just horrifying.”
It turned out that trick had its limits, after all.
Archive’s Compilation took around ten minutes. When she was finished, the mass of text that had spread through the forest turned red and reversed direction to flow quickly back into the book. Fujinaka barely had time to gasp with surprise before the words all returned to the pages and the red cover slammed shut.
“Compilation complete,” Archive said.
Karamori sighed with relief. “Great. Nice work. You too, Fujinaka.”
“I didn’t do anything,” Fujinaka protested.
“Still, this was your first time trying something like this, so I’m sure you’re tired. Let’s head back. We can let the other investigators clean up the trees.”
“There will be no need for that, son. I’ll take care of it.”
A voice Karamori didn’t recognize echoed through the white forest. It came from the direction of the black sphere that Untitled had been sealed inside. But before he could look toward it, Karamori heard a large crack that sounded like a boulder being shattered, followed by a series of dull thuds. He reflexively grabbed Fujinaka’s hand and pulled her behind his back.
It was over as quickly as it had begun. By the time Karamori looked toward Untitled, the two researchers who’d sealed the book had been slammed against a wall and killed. Two strangers had taken their place.
One was a white-haired girl. Her pigtails were long enough to reach the ground despite being tied high on the top of her head, and her eyes blazed with confidence.
And the other person…
“What…?” Fujinaka muttered, her voice trembling.
Karamori was more shocked by the sight of him than was by the sudden attack.
He’d never met this person before. But he knew him.
The tall man was wearing a pitch-black suit. His lined face and gray-streaked hair placed him at around fifty years old, and he had an eyepatch marked with a wing over his right eye.