Chapter 06
IF DESTINY WAS TRULY A PART of every single human being’s life, then we must have shared our time together while trapped inside our individual cages. We didn’t know if we could ever leave, but even then, we never gave up. Most likely, we carried that memory with us from before we were born.
“Where am I? Why am I here?”
I was inside a wooden box with metal bars over the opening. But there was nothing beyond those bars—or at least, nothing that I could see. I didn’t know how long I was in there, nor did I know whether I would ever get to leave. But as I sat there, I found myself torn between a desire to leave and a strange sense of apathy.
The silence made my ears ring. Then I heard a faint sound in the distance. Perking up my ears, I grabbed the bars of the cage and squinted out at the darkness. Sure enough, there was another cage out there. And behind its bars was a young Kanba.
“Who are you?” I asked bluntly.
“Who are you?” he asked back.
That was the moment our lives intersected. Neither of us knew why we were forced to be here. But while we were both scared and vaguely frustrated, neither of us felt like there was anything we could do about it, and eventually it all stopped mattering. Here inside the cages, there was no food or water.
“Hey, Shoma, you alive in there?” Kanba called hoarsely.
“Yeah, I’m alive. You?” I was curled up on the floor of my cage, refusing to budge.
“Just barely. Ugh, I’m so dizzy… Y’know, I was having a dream where I was eating a big plate of curry.” He scratched his head.
“Wow, that sounds good. I should start eating in my dreams, too,” I mused.
“Don’t bother. Seriously, it only makes you hungrier when you wake up. Besides…”
“Besides, what?”
“We shouldn’t sleep anymore or else we might not wake up again.” His expression was cold and hard.
“You mean we’ll die?” If so, then that meant we were alive right now.
“Yeah. At this rate, at least.”
If we were fated to die here right from the start, then why were we alive at all?
As Kanba and I eyed each other across the train car, Watase Sanetoshi chuckled, and the penguin hat in my hand grew faintly warm. Just then, the subway lights all clicked off, and the crowds of passengers all disappeared from sight. In the darkness, I could see black teddy bears scattered all throughout the train car, their scarlet eyes glowing.
“Simply stunning.” Sanetoshi clapped his white-gloved hands. “Welcome aboard the train of fate.”
“Where’s Himari?! Give her back!” I thought I wasn’t scared anymore, but my voice was threatening to crack.
“She’s right here.” Kanba’s eyes were even more vacant than they were at the hospital, like glass marbles with an eerie sheen.
Sanetoshi smirked and twirled his cape-like white jacket. It stretched to fill the entire train car. Instinctively, I ducked, shielding my head. Then the scent of supple plants hit my nostrils.
“Himari!”
The pitch-black train car rolled sideways, and everything went white—the floor, the seats, the hanging straps, all of it. Unlike the darkness, it felt like a true void, and it was terrifying. Then, between where Kanba and I were standing, an entire four-poster bed appeared with Himari in it. Her long, soft hair spread out over the faint peach-pink sheets, framing her ghostly pale face. Her eyes were firmly closed, and she was so small, the bed practically engulfed her.
Kanba stared at me, his gaze unwavering. “The only way to save Himari’s life is to complete the mission.”
“How is that supposed to save her?! What will you get out of it, Kanba?! Are you seriously going to hurt even more people?!”
He narrowed his eyes slightly. “It’s our Survival Tactic.”
“Survival Tactic?” I’d heard the phrase a dozen times by now. Maybe Tabuki Keiju mentioned it in class at one point: biological survival strategies. But what did it mean?
“A pure biosphere is controlled by a framework of self-serving rules that exist beyond humanity’s capacity for good or evil. Morality has no meaning. In other words, there is no one in the world who can stop this destiny.” Sanetoshi spread his arms out wide. “Behold.”
The black teddy bears rose up, scattered around the bright white void. As they started to spin, the world slowly turned back into a pitch-black train car. Himari was still in bed asleep, swaying with the motions of the speeding train.
“Pure? This is your idea of pure?” If being a pure biological organism meant hurting everyone around us, then I would sooner be tainted. I would choose to be a sinful human with a functioning moral compass.
I could hear a ticking sound, like that of a timer. I looked down at the penguin hat clutched tightly in my hand. What was I supposed to do now? I could see Kanba and Himari right in front of me, both still very much in human form. But I couldn’t get through to Kanba at all, and it felt like there was nothing left.
“Watch closely, Momoka-chan. This time, you will witness the destruction of the world.” With a satisfied smirk, he glanced at the hat.
“Kanba, why…?” I mumbled.
But Kanba didn’t seem to hear me. He just stood there perfectly still, surrounded by black teddy bears, unblinking.
Inside the cages, we grew gaunt, sitting around for what felt like an eternity with our minds less than sharp. Our senses were growing numb, and our joints ached from all the time spent sitting still.
“Shoma, are you still alive?” asked Kanba in a feeble voice.
I didn’t even have the strength to look over at him. “Yeah, and I take it you are too.”
For some reason, it felt like a good thing. Even if we were going to die eventually, I was glad it hadn’t happened yet.
“Hey, why don’t we make a promise?”
“What kind of promise?”
“At this rate, one of us is gonna die. So we should make this promise while we still have time.” Groaning faintly, Kanba pushed himself up into a sitting position. “If one of us manages to get out alive, we have to do something the other one wanted to do. And there’s something I wanna say to the person I love.”
I knew nothing of the world outside my cage. I didn’t even know if it existed—did anyone? But at the same time, it seemed like a good idea. We needed the morale boost.
“So you want me to pass on a message? Maybe I should do that, too. But what would I even say?”
I attempted to picture the concept of “the person I love.” The image in my head was soft and scary, sweet and sour, painful and precious. Seems about right.
“What the heck? What’s this?” I could hear Kanba rustling around in his cage.
“What’s wrong?” I asked without moving.
“There’s something in here, in the corner of my cage.”
I just barely managed to raise my heavy head and look in Kanba’s direction. His little hand was holding a bright red apple.
“It’s an apple,” he muttered, dumbstruck. “There was an apple in here!”
That was the moment I knew that Kanba was chosen.