“The Child Broiler?” When Tabuki had come to, he was already sitting on the floor, with no recollection of coming to this place.
“Yep. It’s where unwanted children are discarded. We stay here for a long, long time. Then our existence begins to fade, and finally we vanish from the world.”
Tabuki immediately understood. In the end, he really couldn’t do anything right. It was his destiny to be cast aside by his mother. He was an unwanted child in his mother’s eyes. That was why he was here, and why he would one day fade away and vanish.
“I’m sorry,” Tabuki muttered to the little bird. He tried to open the door of the cage, hoping to at least let the bird escape, but the door had at some point rusted shut. “It won’t open.”
Just then, a girl called out to Tabuki. “Let’s go home!”
He had seen her face before. It was Momoka, one of his classmates. She spotted him right away within the sea of children, and was looking straight at him. Her eyes, peeking out from beneath her thick, straight cut bangs, were strong and willful.
“C’mon!” She walked right up to him and offered her hand.
“Where to? I don’t have a home to go back to anymore,” Tabuki quietly replied.
“You’re coming home to someone who needs you.”
“There’s no one who needs me.” His self-deprecating tone sounded hideous even to him. But there was no other way for him to say it.
“I do. I need you,” Momoka said, looking him straight on.
Tabuki lifted his head, peering at her. She has to be lying, he thought.
“You played piano in the music room after school every day. You probably didn’t know it, but I was always listening.”
“What? In that case, you’re just gonna throw me away too. I can’t play the piano anymore,” Tabuki spat, lifting up his still-bandaged left hand.
“That’s got nothing to do with it. What I was listening to was your heart.” Momoka shook her head, frowning sadly.
Tabuki was stunned by this grandiose declaration, but he just wrapped his arms back around his knees. Momoka kept talking.
“Whenever you played the piano, I could see the music overflowing from the windows of the music room, falling down in sparkles into the hallway, and onto the flower beds. It was so beautiful.” Momoka grinned. “It seemed like you were having so much fun.”
“Enough of this. You sound stupid,” he said, not caring if it made Momoka sad. “What do you even know? There’s no point in doing something if it isn’t perfect. If you aren’t number one, or the most talented, or a genius.”
Momoka was taken aback, retreating as Tabuki babbled on, half-crazed.
“All right, everyone, have you prepared yourselves? It’s time for all of you to fade away!” There was a sudden loud, lively announcement from the adults, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere.
The adults wore bright blue and pink, long-sleeved coveralls with caps of the same color worn down low over their eyes, leaving only the lower halves of their faces visible. Their mouths were twisted into eerily wide grins.
“No need to be afraid. You just won’t be able to tell who is who anymore. You’ll just be worthless nothings!” they shouted.
Everyone, including Tabuki, fell silent looking at them. Not a single one of the children panicked or tried to run.
“No,” Momoka muttered quietly.
By the time Tabuki noticed Momoka’s voice, the floor had already begun to move, heading toward a great cliff. They were being carried toward it as though they were on a conveyer belt.
“Oh.” The children closest to the cliff were dropped over the edge in the blink of an eye. Then a flame erupted with a roaring sound, burning the children up completely.
The sounds of the fire and the hot wind were growing closer.
Still sitting on the conveyer belt-like floor, Tabuki looked at the birdcage at his feet. He gripped the edge of the cage and quietly began to slide off the precipice.
Without a sound, Momoka grabbed his left arm. He looked up in surprise to see her desperately reaching out from the edge of the floor with her right arm. As he swung, he somehow managed to keep his grip on the birdcage with his right hand. When he looked down, everything below him was enveloped in flame, and his legs were growing hot. To his side, countless other children were falling in, burning up to nothing in an instant.
“You can’t go!” Momoka forced out the words.
“Let me go. When I fade away, I’ll be free.” Tabuki meant to shout this, but the hot air burned his lungs, and he could not speak very loudly.
“You can’t! You have to stay yourself, Tabuki-kun!”
“Why? I’m already…” Unwanted. By everyone.
“I…I love you!”
Her words were softer, more assuring than any other sound he had ever heard before.
“Now you don’t have to fade away. You can come back home with me.” She smiled, narrowing her eyes to shield them from the embers.
“You’re lying.” His mother always said that she only loved people with talent. Even though she stroked his head as she said this, she still threw him aside. No one could ever love or want him.
The strength of Momoka’s small body was not enough to lift Tabuki up. Little by little he slipped downward, until only the palm of his bandaged hand was still connected.
“Tabuki-kun!” Momoka leaned in, putting all of her strength into her hand. If she were to grab hold of the bandaged portion, it might slip and come undone.