I buried my face in my hands and trembled.
“Your grandmother didn’t tell you because it seems she thought you’d be mad… But I think you should know about it…”
The door closed—and I got out of bed and headed to our classroom, my bare feet making a flopping sound against the floor.
For some reason, the classroom door was open.
And the room was lit by the light of the moon.
The smiles we drew were beautiful and radiant.
And at the center of them all was a smile that was shining particularly brightly.
I had always been curt with Ai, but it was the one time that I thanked her and smiled.
The smile was sparkling—and the name Ai Kinoshita came to mind.
Luri, I recalled her saying as she beamed and I dug my fingernails into the wall.
“Aaah… Aaah… Aaah…!”
Crying, I clawed at the wall I clung to and fell weakly to the floor.
“Oh… Aaah… Aaahhh… Ai… Ai… I-I’m sorry… I’m sorry… Oh, God… Aaahhh… Sorry…!”
I cried and cried as if begging for mercy from the drawing, and Ati put her jacket over my shoulders.
Atiifa…Ati…couldn’t cure us of our illnesses.
The ancestral magic handler was neither a magician who came up in fairy tales nor a phony. But although she couldn’t cure us, she improved our conditions, eliminating the despair in our hearts like a magician on a count of one to three.
“Okay, class, today, we’re going to do cosplay as guardians who save earth—oh. Oh. Ohhh! N-Nagisa, give me back my face mask!”
It was tough to accept that she was an ancestral magic handler.
You didn’t have to be an ancestral magic handler to do the work that she did. It seemed to me that there was no reason for her to be working as a hospital magician in a remote place like this.
But that didn’t matter now.
She saved my heart. That fact was all I needed.
“I’m sorry.”
I bowed my head and apologized to Ruby from the bottom of my heart.
“Why don’t you at least take off your hat if you’re going to apologize?”
“Oh…that…that was… I’m really sorry—whoa!!!”
Ruby pulled my hat down to my eyes and pulled it back up again. I saw that she was smiling.
“Let’s be friends.”
I clutched my hat and nodded.
“…Yeah.”
Riina had been gripping her portable game console and watching us. A smile bloomed on her face, and she ran over to us.
“M-me too… I’ll be friends with you guys, too…!”
We wrapped our arms around each other, cuddled up cheek to cheek, laughed, and made up.
Ati watched us with a gentle smile on her face.
Then days went by.
I talked with Ru-chan and Rii-chan a lot. We shared many events, had many memories together, and shared many smiles.
It wasn’t because we would someday die.
It was so we could remember that we’d been alive.
So we could smile at our deathbed.
“Luri, what kind of girls do you go for?”
We particularly talked a lot about love and relationships—like regular girls.
We lay under the covers of a bed and whispered to each other after the lights went out.
“H-huh…? S-someone like Braun…cool… Someone I could risk my life for… Even if I can’t be like Braun…I’d like to be around someone like that…and help many people.”
“What about you, Riina?”
“Hee-hee-hee-hee… Someone who plays games better than I do…”
“Give it up.”
“Huh? Huh?! Wh-why…?”
Rii-chan’s a gamer to the core… Not only that, she’s a gaming addict who once got discharged from the hospital to participate in a world tournament and was scolded like crazy for trying to bring a gaming PC and three monitor screens to her hospital room.
“How about you, Ru-chan? Maybe you like engineers?”
Ru-chan cracked big companies that everyone knew. She’d also disassembled and then reassembled the teacher’s motorcycle, installing an engine system the owner was completely unaware of. Squinting, she said, “Someone who doesn’t raise their eyebrows at what I do.”
“Give it up.”
“Huh?! Why should I?!”
We chuckled as we continued to talk about the future that awaited us.
I would have insisted in the past that no girl would fall in love with me when I had a bluish-purple IV and injection marks on my arms and couldn’t even leave my hospital room.
But I wasn’t going to say that anymore.
“Hey, why don’t we draw pictures of Ati and put them up on the wall?”
“Oh, that’s a good idea! Brilliant, Luri!”
“L-let’s all…draw pictures of her and put them up… Hee-hee-hee, I wonder if it will make her happy…?”
Someday.
Someday, a miracle would happen. A miracle that was so wonderful that God would be jealous.
I kept praying for a future where we could live happily together…where we’d all laugh and casually tell each other stories about our lovers.
And as I prayed, one day—Ru-chan’s condition got worse.
She spent the majority of the day vomiting into a sick bowl.
Her medications were strong enough to make an adult beg to be killed, and the situation was so hard on her parents that they collapsed from the mental strain.
“R-Ru-chan… She’s studying in bed again today…”
“……”
From the in-hospital classroom to her bed, then to the ICU.
I was scared.
I was terrified.
What if Ru-chan died…? What if a space was created on that wall…? I wouldn’t be able to find a replacement picture anymore… I covered my ears with my hands to escape the footsteps of death that I’d been dreading, curled up in bed as I continued to pray.
I couldn’t bear the fear.
Using the picking tools I borrowed from Ru-chan, I opened the classroom door and snuck in under the round moon.
I folded my knees, crossed my arms, and prayed before the altar of smiles.
“Please help Ru-chan… It’s too soon… Way too soon… Please give her time… She’s a very sweet girl… I don’t care what happens to me…but not Ru-chan… Please don’t kill her… Please don’t take more away from me… I… I don’t want to see any more people die…”
My teeth chattered as I prayed with all my heart.
“Please… Please save us… Save Mii-chan, Yua, Ai, Braun…everyone…”
“Is that your wish?” an unfamiliar voice said.
I shot my head up—and saw a smiling woman glowing bluish white in the moonlight.
“Then I shall give it to you.”
She had black hair with golden rings.
Jade-green eyes fitted into her skull.
An eerily even and symmetrical form.
Fluttering her brown trench coat, she landed from her toenails, put a hand against her chest, and bowed.
“Hello, sweetheart. The sky is moon-drunk tonight.”
“…Who are you?”
“Can’t you see?”
She opened her arms—and laughed.
“I’m an angel.”
“An angel…”
“Yes, precisely. I heard your wish up in the sky. It’s wonderful. I love humans, but I particularly love humans like you who fear death. You made me cry. Look, my favorite handkerchief is soaking wet with my tears.”
She waved the dry handkerchief in the air.
“By the way, Ruby Oliet died a while ago.”
“…Huh?”
“Oh, you don’t have to look at me like that. I’ll resurrect her one of these days. I’m the one who killed her, but she wasn’t a very stimulating subject. A mentally immature child isn’t a good subject to toy with, so I made things easier for her.”
What was this woman talking about…?
I was stunned as the woman acted dramatically with theatrical gestures.
“I also killed Riina Shiina while I was at it. Actually, I killed the majority of patients at this hospital. I also killed the doctors, nurses, and security guards, but that was an unavoidable tragedy. In any case, there’s no need to weep since I intend to bring them back to life eventually. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is—”
The self-proclaimed angel winked mischievously.
“You’re the last one.”
Whoosh.
I thought I heard a whirring sound, and then I saw a mist-covered knife in her hand.
“Don’t worry. It’s okay. I’ll gouge out your heart in an instant. I’m running a time attack event now. The rule is to use a knife, and I’m competing with myself to see how quickly I can gouge out a human heart. I’m probably the world’s best cardiac decapitator.”
Her crescent moon-shaped mouth revealed her reddish-black oral cavity.
“Now what color is your heart…?”
My throat, stiff with fear, hissed.
Sneering, she held her knife in an underhand grip and came beneath me—and then the wall by the window blew out. As rubble came flying at me, a human shadow appeared.
“Alsuhariyaaaaaaaaaa!!!”
“Ati?!”
Launch trigger.
Covered in blood, Ati stabbed her triple walking stick into the body of the woman she called Alsuhariya and slammed her into the wall.
A radial crack appeared, and Alsuhariya’s body blew apart from the inside out.
Ati used her hands and her feet to kick, punch, and toss every fragment of debris away, sealing the pieces of flesh that had scattered and were attempting to escape inside the wall.