“Time for our next piece of news, dish! ✩ Soccer balls are flying through the air all over Asakusa. Balls are our friends! ✩” Asakusa Sara TV was reporting on the bizarre events occurring around the city with its usual devil-may-care attitude.
Kazuki and the others arrived at the Kappa Plaza, searching for Keppi.
“Hey, Keppi! We brought you a gift!”
“It’s your favorite cucumber-flavored Shirohasu!”
But there was no answer when they called for him.
“Hey, look at this…” A cucumber lay at Toi’s feet with teeth marks on it.
“Keppi’s leftovers?” Enta questioned.
“He’s too greedy with his food. He wouldn’t leave his favorite snack behind like this,” said Toi.
Kazuki stared at it for a moment before his head jerked up with a start. “Don’t tell me something happened to him?!”
Suddenly, they heard a strange song drift behind them. “The two of us are a couple~!♪ The best couple~!♪” Keppi returned, clearly in good spirits.
“What the heck,” mumbled Enta. “He’s fine.”
As he stepped into the plaza, Keppi’s expression turned grave. “Hmph! I sense someone has infiltrated this place in my absence, ribbit…!”
“Huh?!”
“A burglar, ribbit!”
Keppi’s prediction proved to be true. They opened the lid to a small underground compartment in the plaza and found…
“The Wishing Plates! They’re gone!” Kazuki gasped. The four plates they gathered and left in Keppi’s safekeeping had disappeared.
“This might be the work of the Otter Empire, ribbit.”
“Seriously?! Isn’t that real bad?” Enta asked in a panicked tone.
The soccer ball they’d left sitting on the floor behind them suddenly lifted into the air and began to float away. “Hey, my ball!” Kazuki shouted.
“Looks like we have another Kappa Zombie, ribbit.”
“No,” snapped Toi. “At a time like this?!”
Now that he was finally able to play soccer with Kazuki again, Enta wasn’t about to let a Kappa Zombie get in his way. There was no hesitation in his voice as he said, “Let’s forego getting the plates back right now and focus on getting the ball back first!”
A familiar force slammed into Enta’s bottom.
A rickshaw flew past the familiar Shinto shrines and shop fronts of Orange Street.
“Today’s zombie is a Ball Zombie.”
“Why’d you hit me first?! I didn’t even say that word!”
Keppi glanced at Kappa-Enta before pointing at the words on the shutters of the storefronts they passed. Let’s forego getting the plates back right now.
FoRegO Getting = FROG
Frog = Most humiliating insult ever
The letters on the metal shutters spelled out Enta’s mistake for him.
“Grrr, that’s a real stretch!” Enta’s indignation earned him a sympathetic look from Toi.
“Anyway, we can search for the missing plates after we defeat this Zombie!” Kappa-Kazuki said. They needed five silver plates to have a wish granted. They had no real choice but to defeat this Zombie first.
“Y-yeah! You’ve got a point!”
A Ball Zombie loomed above the Azuma Bridge’s Desire Field, a collection of soccer balls dotting its massive body. A red ball gag was tucked into the creature’s mouth. Judging by its appearance, today’s Zombie had some crazy desires.
“I’m so jealous of all the balls!” it roared. It didn’t sound like love, but envy.
Kappa-Enta scrambled recklessly, wriggling inside the Zombie’s sphincter, and clamped onto its shirikodama.
“We kappatured it!”
Inside the shirikodama, Enta saw a man dressed in a peculiar costume. A woman in a similar getup kicked him right in the crotch.
“You wanted to become a ball so she could kick you…!”
“Now you know the secret I couldn’t share with anyone!” The Zombie—who was once Tamayori Shikeru, his name currently spelled out with the kanji for Please Kick Me Instead of Balls—let out a final cry of agony as his monstrous body burst. “A cry from the ball pit of my heaaaaart!”
Keppi’s voice echoed around them. “Time for Sarazanmai, ribbit!”
“Saraaa!”
“Saraaa!”
“Saraaa!”
And then all together, “Sarazanmai!”
Enta hadn’t forgotten what Keppi told them: Sarazanmai connected their bodies and their hearts, which consequently meant sharing secrets you’d rather keep hidden. It felt strangely good to release yourself to that shared ocean of consciousness, but he underestimated the strength of that connection. He thought his secrets would be safe as long as he wasn’t the one leading the pack.
Unfortunately, he was wrong.
“Leaking.”
The first leak started exactly where he expected.
Night fell over the Azuma Bridge, and their practice area was deserted. A long shadow crept over the faded concrete goalpost. The person who peered back through that curtain of darkness was the same one who protected the space for so long—Enta himself.
He carried a large garbage sack in his hand, indiscriminately scattering trash all over the place. Then he started defacing the wall with frenzied strokes of his paintbrush.
Toi, who took the shirikodama next, was utterly confused.
“Why? Wasn’t this place supposed to be precious to you?”
Even though they could see what was happening, Enta’s emotions were such a tangled mess that it was impossible to isolate a single one of them. They couldn’t even begin to comprehend what he was feeling. His emotions all wrapped up and knotted together in a snarl they couldn’t hope to unravel.
Although he questioned Enta’s reasoning, Toi suspected deep down that he was the reason Enta went to such extremes. It was conjecture on his part, impossible to confirm, but he felt terrified of how Kazuki would react once the shirikodama passed to him and he found out what Enta had done.
The leak continued, undisturbed by Toi’s thoughts and anxiety.
Midnight fell on the Kappa Plaza. Just as before, Enta had a handkerchief tied around his head as he tiptoed inside. He headed straight for the innermost part of the plaza, where he knelt and reached for the lid to the underground compartment. The four glimmering silver plates were still inside. He delicately lifted them free, a wicked expression on his face.
“Enta stole them…? Why?” Kazuki was shocked.
Enta, who could sense the other boy’s reaction, cried out, “Nooooooooo! This is all because you wouldn’t stop fussing over Kuji!”
Ahh, why do people hold such desire in their hearts? Desire led me astray until I wasn’t myself anymore. Until I hurt someone else. I only wanted to give you something beautiful, if I could. You should have thrown me out along with the trash.
Scene 5
THE WAR BETWEEN the otters and the kappa had always been about energy. Although the Otter Empire had won, the Kappa Kingdom’s resources would have run out sooner or later anyway. The otters revived Mabu under one condition: Reo had to work for them to find a new source of energy. In other words, Reo was to become their slave.
The otters had seen right through him—known Reo understood exactly what they were asking, and that that wouldn’t stop him from agreeing. And sure enough, Reo didn’t hesitate. He wanted to bring Mabu back to life.
Reo stood alone in a dark elevator. He’d finally been given approval to visit Mabu. Where was this elevator taking him, though? It seemed like an eternity passed before the doors finally opened. In the endless stretch between, he found himself wondering if there even was a top floor to this place.
He just wanted to bring this nightmare to an end.
Silvery white light stabbed into his eyes. It was almost as if he were standing among the clouds, here on the highest deck of the building. Before him was the very sight he’d seen over and over in his dreams. This was the moment he so longed for, and in his chest, a mass of conflicted emotions swelled like a storm.
I want him to glance back at me. No! Don’t! Yes, look over at me. No, I don’t want him to look! None of the words or feelings were less true than the others. Unable to shift his attention from the tempest within himself, Reo took each step one at a time.
“Reo.”
He froze when he heard his name. That voice—the one he longed for—was exactly as he remembered it. The well-loved sound of it made his heart tremble.
“I must have worried you. I’m back to normal now, though.”
The familiarity of that voice suddenly felt sharply, chokingly wrong. This man with the same body, the same voice, he—
“Who…are you?” Reo asked.
“I’m Mabu. Your partner.”
A strong gust of wind rushed between them.
“No! You’re not the Mabu I remember! Mabu never had that kind of look on his face!”
“The technological ingenuity of the Empire is awe-inspiring. Their recreation of my personality was flawless,” the man continued.
“No, something’s utterly wrong here! I don’t believe it!”
As if it was waiting for him to speak those very words, the otter appeared and said, “It’s otterly true. We’ve implanted a mechanical heart inside of him. We’ll need your help to keep it functioning.”
“What…?”
“If you don’t like it, then just stop his heart…with your own hand,” the otter goaded.
“Are you…telling me to kill Mabu a second time?!”
Mabu’s words replayed in his mind. Don’t let go of your desires. Now, as Reo struggled in anguish, the very person who’d spoken those words sat in front of him, regarding him coolly.
The otter’s voice rang out high and loud, almost like a birthday celebration. “An otter joke. As of today, you two will be sent to the human world. We’ll be sending along something else we swiped from the Kappa Kingdom. The embodiment of hope for the Empire’s future.”
A roar reverberated. Something began lifting itself out of the ground, as if it were rising up from the pits of hell.
“D-d-d-d-d-d-darkness!”