novelVolume 5, Jinnai Shinobu's Apocalypse — Side A — OP_code"Personal_apocalypse" (3)
| ← Ch.34 | Ch.36 → |
I pulled out the contents of my pocket. The object was a little larger than a cheap lighter and looked like a USB memory stick with a red translucent body, but the label was made of Japanese paper and covered with serpentine writing.
"This is what they hid in my suitcase to carry in safely. It's also why they were attacking me and why they took the Zashiki Warashi hostage. It must be really important to them."
"That says Usuhiki Warashi."
"What?"
I frowned at what the tanuki said.
After all this, we were back to the Usuhiki Warashi? Wasn't that just what Kodama Ryou had used to swap out the cards?
The fox wagged his tail back and forth.
"What is this?"
"How should I know? All I know is that some people are willing to kill humans and Youkai to get their hands on it. That means I can definitely use it in an exchange for the Zashiki Warashi. But that will definitely fail if I let them continue to control what happens."
For one thing, I only had the one small USB memory stick. If I was told to pack it in a plastic bag and wash it down the river or to place it in an envelope and mail it, I'd be out of luck. If I refused, they'd kill the Zashiki Warashi, but obeying wouldn't bring her back.
I needed for the "exchange ceremony" to occur at the same time, in the same place, and in person.
"Just to be sure, " I said slowly."You all can transform into people but not objects, right?"
"Yes. We can't turn leaves into coins, so we can't turn that Yu-Ess-Bee thing into something else or create a thousand fakes."
If they could do that, they would have been able to handle things better during the poker game. Transforming into people was certainly enough, but it wasn't all powerful.
"Th-then what do we do?"
"Fox, tanuki, two Youkai who can transform into someone else is enough."
"Are you going to duplicate yourself to confuse them?"
"That's an option, " I agreed."But you can also transform into the Zashiki Warashi. If they're monitoring us, they might begin to question whether their hostage is real or-..."
I trailed off because my cellphone rang.
"..."
The fox and tanuki fell silent too, so I answered the call and heard a voice that had become familiar by this point.
"Have you managed to cool your head?"
"I want to hear about the trade. How exactly are we going to do it?"
"I doubt you would agree to attach it to a balloon and release it into the sky."
"If you insisted on that, I'd use a fake. You can buy cheap USB memory sticks at any convenience store, so I'd just transfer the label over and send that one."
"Come to the ruins of the old mining days at the center of the island. We will not specify a time. We will know if you show up."
"No forgetting anything. If I don't see the Zashiki Warashi there, I'll snap this thing in two."
"Do as you wish. But be prepared for what that will mean."
Just like in the limousine taxi, something didn't seem quite right.
Even when I threatened to damage the USB memory stick, they didn't threaten me in the slightest. Did they have a way of restoring functionality even if I destroyed it?
I glanced down at the translucent red device.
Should I check it on a computer and make a few copies of the data? But that could cause problems if it keeps an access log or if carelessly trying to view the data will automatically delete it.
I couldn't decide whether to rely on a trick or not.
But then I heard a small girl's shrieking voice. Rather than an urgent scream, it sounded more like a teasing shout.
Confused, I looked down the alley and saw a kimono-wearing girl of about twelve or thirteen running my way. She wore a short mini-yukata with her shoulders exposed like a courtesan. Overall, it looked like a tube top mini-dress and I knew who she was.
"The Usuhiki Warashi?"
She did not reply.
She continued shrieking as she ran past me and disappeared down the opposite end of the alley.
And...
"Wh-why... are you... here... ?"
A man's voice seemed to rise from the depths of the earth and someone appeared with a rustling sound.
The man had been robbed of his regal appearance. The con artist's prized snakeskin suit was stained here and there and his hair was a complete mess. He looked like he had been beaten all over and thrown out with the trash. His face was badly swollen and he barely resembled the man I had seen before, but I could tell when I looked in his eyes.
"Kodama... Ryou?"
"Where did she go? My... my Youkai! She's supposed to bring me unlimited fortune!!"
Seeing the man shouting in confusion brought a weight to my chest.
This was the fate of those who were left behind.
He was one of those abandoned by a Zashiki Warashi or Usuhiki Warashi and thus forced to bear a fate of decline and ruin.
"I..."
He unsteadily approached.
Strangely, I found myself unable to move aside or back away. It was like having a snake looking you in the eye. He simply walked up to me as I held my cellphone and the USB memory stick.
"I wasn't supposed to lose! I wasn't supposed to lose here on Goldmine Island!! At the very least, I was never supposed to lose on this island!!"
"What... what are you talking about?"
I directly voiced my doubts, but he did not answer me.
He instead grabbed my shoulders using hands with filth crammed below the nails and he shook me violently.
"Was I abandoned? You're with them, aren't you? There's no other way that system using the Usuhiki Warashi – a Zashiki Warashi subspecies – would fail! But that's not possible. There's no way that plan can succeed without me and my influence in so many different fields!! You've just chosen your own doom. But too bad. Now every last one of you will-... !!"
He never finished speaking.
His eyes suddenly rolled back in his head.
There was no time to say anything.
All strength left the hands grabbing my shoulders and the man fell limply toward me. Perhaps because his eyes had rolled back, I was no longer petrified like a snake was staring at me. And I felt no inclination to catch the con artist.
I stepped back.
With nothing supporting him, the snakeskin man collapsed to the dirty ground.
The tanuki gave a girlish scream, but I couldn't even do that.
I simply stared blankly as Kodama Ryou's limbs twitched. I was no longer looking at a human. This was merely an object.
Something like orange sparks scattered from his silenced mouth. I watched them rise toward the blue sky and seem to dissolve on the way.
"That was a Kechibi, " said the fox as he too looked up into the sky."That was a Kechibi's feedback."
I wasn't quite sure what he meant.
More importantly, the utterly unchanged voice coming from my cellphone seemed to squeeze at my heart.
"We will wait as long as it takes, but try to hurry."
That cold voice seemed to be saying they would unilaterally and utterly eliminate anything that stood in their way.
The sound of his scratching fingernail sent my heart racing even faster.
"We can't have you ruining everything with some amateur mistake."
Part 27 (Day 10/04 10:00 – 10:15)
I called for the police and an ambulance, I didn't have time to sit around answering questions. We left right away, leaving the con artist's corpse behind.
"Does this mean the Usuhiki Warashi isn't the only Youkai they're using?" I asked while walking.
When Kodama Ryou had died, the fox had said it was a Kechibi's feedback.
"A Kechibi is a difficult Youkai, " said the fox."Unlike us, it has no actual body. According to witness accounts, it looks like... well, something like a Hitodama or Ikiryou."
"An Ikiryou? Isn't that like an out of body experience?"
"That is correct. They are souls of the living rather than of the dead. A living person's powerful resentment or longing removes just their soul – generally while they sleep – which will then harm people. However, it should be impossible unless the person undergoes extensive training or experiences a mutation."
"This Kechibi simply helps the process along. Maybe we should call it an invisible Youkai with the power to remove or release an Ikiryou from people's bodies."
I understood what they were trying to say.
This thing was off the charts when compared to the Zashiki Warashi or these animal Youkai. This one barely seemed like a living creature at all.
But...
"How does that let you kill people?"
"If a Kechibi is cut down with a sword, legend has it the person it belongs to will die a bizarre death, covered in blood. It's a lot like a form of feedback. The same things are said about normal Ikiryou, so the Kechibi that removed the soul probably doesn't matter. It must be the traits of the removed Ikiryou that matter."
After the fox's explanation, the wet nurse tanuki hesitantly opened her mouth.
"A-a Kechibi is supposed to appear when you rub the bottoms of your sandals together and call the person's name. If you could set up a system to summon the Youkai, call in the person's Ikiryou, cut it down, and kill the person..."
"You'd have an Ikiryou assassination Package to kill anyone you wanted, huh?"
It sounded like cursing someone with a straw doll.
But here, you didn't need one of their hairs and you didn't have to wait seven days and seven nights for it to take effect.
If they had free use of something like that, our chances shrank considerably. It might not work on Youkai like the fox and tanuki, but a human like me had almost no chance.
However...
"Doesn't that seem odd?"
"How so?"
"They took the Zashiki Warashi hostage to control me, but if they had an Ikiryou assassination Package using a Kechibi, they wouldn't need that. They could have just held my own life in their hands. Just because you have a way of killing Youkai doesn't mean you want to have one around. That's like living in a cage with a lion or tiger while armed with a hunting rifle. The second you turned your back, the beast could easily chomp down on you."
Maybe they couldn't activate it without meeting some complex conditions. Maybe it was like a cheap cellphone and it didn't work if you took even a step inside a building. Maybe it cost way too much each time it was used.
I thought of a number of possibilities, but I had too little information.
I couldn't find an answer as thing were, but I knew it was my life on the line.
"Speaking of strange things, Kodama Ryou said something odd."
I was never supposed to lose on this island.
There's no other way that system using the Usuhiki Warashi – a Zashiki Warashi subspecies – would fail.
You're with them, aren't you?
But too bad.
There's no way that plan can succeed without me.
"He was acting odd from the beginning. Although it's possible he was just confused and it was all meaningless."
"It's possible, but it still bothers me."
Still, we didn't have time to slowly find answers one at a time.
I wouldn't be suspected of killing Kodama Ryou after he died in such a bizarre way, but it was true I had fled the scene. If the police caught up to me now, I would be stuck going through a long questioning. That meant I was being pursued by the police as well as the criminal group using the Usuhiki Warashi and Kechibi. I was also limited to this small island and I probably didn't have much time left.
"Wh-what are you going to do now?" asked the wet nurse tanuki.
"There's a lot I have to do, but let's take care of it one at a time."
Someone had died before my eyes.
I was just a high schooler, so if I let that hit home, my legs were sure to tremble and refuse to move. So I tried not to think about it too much while I spoke quickly to move things along.
"First up is the Zashiki Warashi.
Part 28 (Day 10/04 10:22 - 10:35)
As I walked deep into the forest, I spotted a group of boxy concrete buildings. I could see twenty to thirty of them from where I was, they had all grown dark and discolored, and they were covered with countless slug trails. No glass remained in the windows, but I couldn't tell if it had been removed or just thoroughly broken.
I meaninglessly bent down a little and looked around while unsure if I was actually hidden by the trees or not.
"I don't see any obvious guards. No cameras or sensors either."
Of course, they weren't about to put their security devices out where anyone could see them.
Whether due to her wild instincts or her love of nature as a Youkai, the tanuki had been full of life from the moment we entered the forest.
"I wonder which building the Zashiki Warashi is in."
"I can't tell from the sounds or smells, " said the fox while his ears twitched and his nose sniffed.
I crouched all the way down and exchanged a glance with the two Youkai.
"Okay, I'll go on alone. You two hide in the forest and keep watch. You're good at that, right? Don't let them spot you."
"Hey, young one."
"If anything happens and it gets dangerous, grab the Zashiki Warashi and get out of here. Don't worry about me. We still don't know what conditions are needed to activate the Kechibi's Ikiryou assassination Package. If they actually use that, I won't be able to escape on foot. Even if I abandoned the Zashiki Warashi and tried to escape, the Kechibi's remote attack would still kill me. So..."
"You saved our master and her granddaughter. Do you really think we can leave you to die?"
"Please, " I said quietly.
The fox groaned and refused to answer, but the tanuki hesitantly spoke up.
"U-um, Youkai like us generally don't die, so how about we take that USB memory stick and try to negotiate in your place?"
"They have a method of killing a Zashiki Warashi. I'm guessing it's a glass fiber knife or bullet made from a stone mill. The method won't work on a fox or tanuki, but that isn't the point. You understand, don't you? Unlike the casino guards who just borrowed the method, these people have the skills to analyze a Youkai and build a countermeasure. They might just dispose of you two without batting an eye."
In other words, it was possible they were similar to Hyakki Yakou.
If so, a Youkai's immortality wouldn't last and we couldn't rely on it.
But at the same time, their methods of killing Youkai had to be less convenient than the Kechibi's Ikiryou assassination Package. After all, they had needed to abduct the Zashiki Warashi before killing her. It wasn't like a cursed doll that could kill someone on the other side of the planet as easily as making an internet search.
In other words, if the fox and tanuki were killed right away, I would be killed too, no matter where I tried to run.
But if I was killed, those two still had some options open.
After explaining it all, I said the following:
"Let's get started."
"But... !!"
"I already explained this. Either way, they're already locked onto me. Even if I run away now, they can kill me whenever they want.... I just have to make sure this deal works out. You might be able to save me if you barge in partway through. The only situation that ensures my death is if I run away now. If we want even a 1% chance of victory, then we have to move forward."
With that said, I stood partway up and started walking.
With each step I took, the con artist's dying face flashed through my mind. This may have been what it felt like to enter a forest where a sniper lurked. However, I wasn't being targeted by bullets that could only fire in a straight line. My enemy was armed with something far more convenient and deadly.
Filling my lungs with air wasn't going to change anything, but I still lost control of my breathing.
I tried to calm it down and quiet it down, but the more I thought about it, the worse it got.
Someone in this forest and among the ruins was clearly after my life.
And as soon as that thought filled my mind...
"Dwahp!?"
My right leg caught on something and I tripped quite spectacularly. The fox and tanuki must have blended in with nature already because they didn't come running out. Of course, I didn't exactly want them causing a fuss just because I ahd tripped over a root.
But then I looked down at what I had tripped on and my throat immediately went dry.
It wasn't a root.
It was the corpse of young woman with her eyes rolled back in her head and foam spilling from her mouth.
Part 29 (Day 10/04 10:35 - 11:03)
The silence was deafening.
Neither the fox nor the tanuki screamed. They were either focused on blending into the forest or they simply hadn't noticed yet.
Either way, I was alone with the corpse.
That fact was incredibly disturbing.
"What... is this?"
I instinctually slid back along the ground while collapsed on my butt. I finally noticed the rustling of the leaves in the wind, but they sounded like eerie laughter to me. This sniper forest was so quiet and a mere high school boy had no way of knowing where the guards were posted, but that silence seemed to take on a whole new meaning.
I stood up in a crouch and ran to the nearest abandoned building.
With all of the furniture and equipment gone, it was nothing but an empty box and something seemed intensely wrong from the moment I set foot inside.
There were two more. A man and woman wearing janitor's uniforms lay unmoving near the center of the room. Not a drop of blood had been spilled. I didn't actually check their pulse, but I could tell. My mind automatically placed them in a category separate from a living human, so it was painfully obvious.
"What is this?"
I ran from the building and to another. On the way, I saw a few more corpses littering the ground. I didn't know how large the group had been, but a disturbing thought gradually seeped through my mind: there wasn't a single living human being here.
I checked a few other buildings, but all I found were more dead bodies: a man in a suit who seemed to have expired while climbing the stairs, a woman in a dress who seemed to have made a desperate attempt to leave through the window, etc. , etc. Each time I found one, the weight of the silence seemed to double.
"What the hell is this!?"
Once I could no longer bear the weight, I cried out.
Who were they? Who had killed them? What had happened to the Zashiki Warashi? Weren't the villains controlling the Usuhiki Warashi and the Kechibi and wasn't I supposed to solve the mystery and rescue the Zashiki Warashi!?
My greatest enemy had already been destroyed, but I couldn't exactly rejoice. I felt like I was only now realizing that something far worse was underway.
That was when I heard a footstep.
"!?"
It didn't come from outside. Someone was descending the stairs inside the building. That meant it probably wasn't the fox or tanuki and it was even less likely to be a survivor of this group. So who else could it be?
"The Zashiki... Warashi?" I muttered.
It was mostly wishful thinking, but it started to feel more realistic as soon as I said it.
I wasn't being naïve or overly hopeful.
A bunch of corpses. A Youkai as the sole survivor. A being that could not be killed by normal means. Even if she was categorized as harmless, bullets and blades were meaningless to her and she could not be easily stopped if she did grow violent.
The footsteps continued.
Something was definitely approaching me.
Was it possible she had done this? What if they had been bluffing about having a way to kill Youkai or what if it was difficult to activate in a hurry? How far would the Youkai's counterattack spread? Once they thoughtlessly claimed to have a way of killing her, she wouldn't have been able to calmly assume she would survive no matter what happened. She would have to put up a thorough fight to secure her safety.
What if that was what had happened?
"..."
Unpleasant sweat poured down my face.
My eyes were drawn toward the stairs and my body wouldn't move.
These footsteps would mean a reunion, but I could also feel something changing inside me.
Step.
Step, step.
Step, step, step.
Step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step, step.
And finally, a familiar voice reached me from the stairs.
"Shinobu?"
I think I must have screamed some nonsense that clearly wasn't Japanese.
To be honest, the color white exploded deep in my mind and I couldn't remember anything afterwards. But I think I must have tried to run from the stairs with my eyes still glued to them. And as soon as I awkwardly started moving backwards, my heel caught on something and I landed on my butt. But instead of hard concrete, I felt something softer. When I realized it was another corpse, I screamed again.
I felt like a fish out of water that had finally made it back to the fish tank only to find the tank was filled with sulfuric acid. I have no idea how I moved my muscles, but I somehow managed to jump up and move away from the corpse.
Meanwhile, the Zashiki Warashi with black hair flowing across her red yukata tilted her head a little, shaking her hair a bit in the process.
"What are you doing? Don't tell me you took a turn for the truly disturbed and were trying to kiss that dead body."
"Eh? What?"
My mind went blank yet again.
I had assumed a crazed killer Youkai was approaching, but it was the same Good-for-Nothing Youkai as always.
"Wait. How... why... ?"
"Oh, they had me tied up, but I got out on my own. The rope was made so a Zashiki Warashi couldn't break it, but it didn't have a curse that kept me from moving or anything."
She rubbed together the rope marks on her wrists.
"Did you know that the standard way to slip free of a rope is to create a gap? For example, if you press your palms together and move your arms apart when they tie your wrists, you can make a gap between your wrists and the rope just by squeezing your arms back together. I didn't really believe it when I heard it, but I tried it and it worked pretty well."
Then I saw something like orange embers floating from the mouth of the corpse I had tripped on.
"Is this from the Kechibi's Ikiryou assassination Package?"
"I don't know. They just all started collapsing around me. Youkai can't be killed by normal means, so I thought maybe some gas had leaked from the mine."
"..."
What in the world is going on?
The Usuhiki Warashi and Kechibi were supposed to belong to the enemy, so was this infighting within the group that had kidnapped the Zashiki Warashi? Or had they lost control of the Package?
"Hey, Indoor Youkai."
"I see you're skipping right past the emotional reunion. What is it?"
"Do you know how many people were here?"
"Not exactly. About twenty maybe?"
That led to some depressing work.
I decided the threat had passed for the time being, so I called out to the forest. The fox and tanuki showed up immediately. They naturally freaked out when they saw the corpses, but I had no time to deal with that. From there, we split up and got to work. We dragged over all of the corpses and gathered them inside a single building.
We found even more than reported. There were twenty-four and there was no guarantee we had found them all. It was possible more victims existed in the forest somewhere.
By this point, my senses had numbed over.
I dug through their pockets and gathered their wallets and cellphones.
"Based on his license, he's a local. Of course, this could be a fake."
"Hm? Wait just a second. The ruffian at the airport was a local too, wasn't he?"
"Shinobu, this one is too. I'm guessing they all are."
The limousine taxi driver had mentioned friction between the locals and the outside companies that had turned Goldmine Island into a casino city. It was looking like that was the situation here.
"Anything concerning the Kechibi Package? It would be a bad idea to ignore that. While it looks pretty unlikely there are any survivors, someone else might pick it up. I'd like to destroy it if possible."
"I don't see anything like that."
The fox was exactly right.
The corpses only had wallets, cellphones, and dangerous-looking knives or stun guns. We couldn't find anything that might be a controller to or component of a Package. Of course, it might have been something that blended in so perfectly that an amateur couldn't tell.
"Shinobu."
The Zashiki Warashi cut in after the tanuki explained things.
"Have you considered the possibility that your initial assumption was wrong? In other words..."
"The Kechibi Package is used by someone else entirely and they're just the victims?"
My vision very nearly went dark.
If that was true, what had we gotten ourselves caught up in? This was completely different from the plan to use the Zashiki Warashi as a way to get the USB memory stick from my suitcase. It would mean Kodama Ryou had been killed before my eyes for some other reason entirely. Would it now bare its fangs toward us? Or wouldn't it? I had nothing to go on there, so I just had to give up.
I searched their phones, still hoping I would find something. Most of them were password locked and I couldn't do anything with them, but a few of them had been more careless. I checked through those phones that had not been set up properly.
Oh.
"What is it, Shinobu?"
"Um... wait. Fox, a Kechibi is similar to an Ikiryou and it's something like a human soul that leaves a living person, right? And if they cut it with a sword, the distant person will be injured in the same way and might even die?"
"Yes. What about it?"
"Tanuki, but didn't you say you can call in a Kechibi by rubbing sandals together and calling the person's name?"
"Y-yes. They must use a Kechibi to remove an Ikiryou from a specified human, summon it, cut it, and kill them. And they would have an Ikiryou assassination Package that uses that process."
"I might have figured out how."
They all tried to look at the (victim's) cellphone. Although, it seemed too much to ask for the fox and tanuki to stand up that tall.
"The sandals are probably a metaphor for the person's footsteps. You follow their footsteps, reach them, and kill them. In that case, they need those 'footsteps' to identify the target, but it doesn't necessarily have to be actual tracks on the ground."
The Zashiki Warashi seemed to catch on first.
"Shinobu, are you saying their internet history counts as their footsteps?"
"Close but not quite." I lightly waved the cellphone."The answer is probably big data."
"Big data?" asked the fox."Enough of those Western words!!"
"Isn't that a method of gathering lots of information without specifying the individuals?" suggested the tanuki."I heard on the news that they can automatically tell what people are buying at train station vending machines and stuff like that."
"This phone's GPS was on. Or rather, they didn't check over their contract very well and it can't even be turned off. I think there was a notice about this in the inn's entranceway. In addition to the normal casinos, this island has an online VR casino called Heavy Cruiser Island. But to make sure you can only use the gambling app on the island, you have to agree to give them your location."
"But." The Zashiki Warashi shrugged."Isn't big data set up so they can't tell who it came from? If everyone was identified with a number, I think everyone would be too creeped out to go anywhere near Goldmine Island."
"With only one kind of data, sure."
I tossed aside the dead man's phone and pulled out my own.
"But they just have to gather several different kinds. For example, just knowing where a taxi picked up and dropped off a customer doesn't tell you who that customer was, but if you add in vending machine surveillance cameras, a store's point card usage history, and other types of data, you can figure out who used the taxi when and where. You can bring the data back to its original form."
"But that would mean..."
"I don't know if they're actually using different kinds of big data to find an individual, but I bet the enemy has rigged a huge server or base station so they can pull out all its data.... Hey, Zashiki Warashi. Turn off my smartphone right now. I don't know how exactly they're locating people, but a phone is a collection of personal information. Sealing that should buy some time."
"No, not that."
Just as I hurriedly started to turn off my cellphone, the Zashiki Warashi cut me off.
I looked confused.
"What is it?"
"Doesn't that make this Kechibi Package pretty inconsistent and unreliable as a way of killing people?"
"?"
I didn't know what she getting at.
Even if the target did nothing, they could gather different kinds of data, select their target out of the 150 million people in the country, and kill them. Once they fished out an individual from the great sea of big data, they were ready to go. It didn't matter if the person fled to the other side of the world and holed up in a nuclear shelter, so how much more reliable could it be?
But the Zashiki Warashi gave a simple answer.
"This wouldn't do anything against the oddities that don't have a cellphone."
The situation did not even wait for the chill to run down my back.
Suddenly, I heard several dry gunshots ring from a building to the side.
Part 30 (Day 10/04 11:03 - 11:17)
Someone was still alive.
The repeated gunshots were enough to tell me that.
"... Ah..."
I truly thought I had died as the deafening sound reached my ears and my vision grew white. The world seemed to fade into the distance and I felt pain squeezing at my heart.
But then someone grabbed my right shoulder.
I was pulled back with the great force of heavy machinery and the white world around me shattered. In its place, the red of the Zashiki Warashi's yukata stepped in front of me.
I heard several blasts like small explosives had gone off under her skin, but she did not cry out.
Her yukata tore in places, but she did not shed a drop of blood.
That was what it meant to be a Youkai.
Her body was shaped the same as a human's, but its structure was entirely different.
The tanuki supported my unsteady body as I watched the Zashiki Warashi move toward the source of the gunfire. She did not think about defending or evading. She simply walked forward.
"Eek!?"
I heard a panicked shriek. I couldn't see past the Zashiki Warashi, but it sounded a lot like the voice I had heard on the phone.
The Zashiki Warashi did not speak a word.
Without even running, she walked forward and grabbed the collar of the person holding a handgun in his hands. She then threw him. It looked a lot like someone tossing a trash bag with one arm, but the adult man flew five meters through the air, slammed back-first into a dirty concrete wall, and fell to the floor. The tremendous sound it caused may have been even more violent than the gunshots.
"Gh... ghe... g-gh... ah... ! D-damn... damn you!!"
It was a young man.
He groaned and struggled to breathe while reaching a hand across the concrete floor.
Don't tell me.
He spoke like he knew who I was and I recognized his voice despite never having met him before.
But before I could think, he grabbed the gun he had dropped and exchanged the magazine for one marked with a different fluorescent color.
The dry gunshots were met by bursts of red liquid.
It was fresh blood.
That Youkai could stand tall as a bomb went off nearby, but this had injured her.
Most likely, these bullets had been made with the glass fiber created from crushing a stone mill which was deeply linked to the legends of the Zashiki Warashi. Dark red holes had appeared from her right thigh to her stomach as if someone had taken a giant sewing machine to her.
But...
"..."
Her expression did not change in the slightest.
She continued to walk forward, crouched down, and grabbed the fallen man's shoulders.
She then swung him around in a horizontal circle and let go to throw him.
This time, he flew from one end of the building to the other. And fast enough that the Doppler effect was noticeable in his scream. After the disturbing sound of something soft being crushed, the young man fell to the floor again and his gun flew far away from him. He wasn't even screaming anymore. Still, his hand squirmed. He had given up on the gun and instead pulled something like a large barber's razor from his pants.
And that meant the Zashiki Warashi could not stop either.
She threw him.
And threw him.
And threw him.
"Hey, fox. Or the tanuki."
The next thing I knew, I was speaking.
"Just hold that man down. Restrain him! If you don't that Good-for-Nothing Youkai will kill him!! Hurry!!"
I knew I was just about screaming and the two animals finally reacted. They were caught in the Zashiki Warashi's violence on the way and were sent bouncing around, but they still managed to hop onto the collapsed man's back. That kept him from moving.
"It's over!" I shouted."It's over now, Zashiki Warashi!! So you can stop!!"
"..."
"It" turned toward me with the movements of an automaton that needed oil.
The inhuman look in her eyes threatened to instantly destroy a relationship of over ten years.
"Ah... gh..."
I heard a gurgling sound as the man on the floor opened his mouth.
His mouth was dyed red and most of his teeth seemed to have broken, but he did something other than complain about the pain.
"Hand it... over."
At first, I didn't know what he meant, but it soon came to me like I was gradually solving a puzzle.
"Hand it over. Hand over the final piece you have!! Gbgh!? That isn't something you should have!!"
"Why not?"
I pulled the translucent red USB memory stick from my pocket, stared at it, and asked again.
"Why do you want this so badly!? Is it really worth trying to kill someone or almost getting killed yourself!?"
"You... don't... don't understand... anything..."
The bloody man might have even broken his back, but the look on his face changed as soon as he saw the USB memory stick. He was still pinned down, but he stretched his hand and its broken nails out toward me. Not only that, he began dragging himself along the ground despite having the fox and tanuki on top of him.
His persistence made me back away.
I knew he really cared about the device, but so what? I didn't know how it affected their Package, but it had to just be a way of making easy money. A fortune was only useful when you were alive. Not only had his partners in crime and subordinates lost their lives, but he was wearing away his own life. Why did he want it that badly? How could he go this far?
However, it turned out I was looking at it all wrong.
"If we don't do something soon, unrelated people will be dragged into this!!"
..................................................................................................................................................................... Eh?
My assumptions were falling apart.
I stared down at the object in my hands.
"What you... what you all unknowingly carried to this island was the final safety needed to stop the destruction that is already underway!! I... We knew the secret, so we had to stop it!! And yet... !!"
After abducting the Zashiki Warashi, the villains had ordered me to bring them the suitcase.
Yet when I threatened to destroy the USB memory stick I found, they didn't provide much of a reaction.
But...
They weren't the end of this? There's some other, larger plan and they were in a position to stop it?
Wasn't that something we had concluded not long before?
There were two sets of villains on Goldmine Island. One was the group that had kidnapped the Good-for-Nothing Zashiki Warashi and used the Usuhiki Warashi, a Zashiki Warashi subspecies. The other was a different group that used the Kechibi's Ikiryou assassination Package.
In that case, which group had hidden the strange USB memory stick on my suitcase so I would carry it onto the island?
Which of the two plans would it benefit?
"What?" I asked without thinking."What did I bring onto this island? What is this thing!?"
"Hurry up... and use it."
The collapsed man reached out with his bloody hand and spoke quietly.
"That is a method of inducing national suicide. We happened to stumble onto the system. We tried to use it for ourselves, but someone interfered. Hurry, hurry! If you don't drive that wedge into the gears of destruction and stop them from turning, the entire nation of Japan will be wiped from the map!!"
The man seemed very confused and I had trouble following what he was saying.
Plus, I wasn't given time to think about it.
A moment later, some overwhelming violence interrupted us.
Part 31 (Day 10/04 11:17 - 11:40)
What... happened?
It took me quite a long time to catch on.
"..."
Everything looked turned on its side, but that was because I had collapsed onto my side. Also, a nearby concrete wall had been destroyed to the point I thought a dump truck had crashed into it. The wet feeling in my hair told me a basketball-sized chunk had hit me.
There was nothing we could do.
The fox couldn't do anything, the tanuki couldn't either, and not even the Zashiki Warashi could despite how ferocious she had grown.
Someone had stepped in through the crumbling wall and knocked those three down just by swinging his arm. The rules said Youkai couldn't be harmed by normal means, but that no longer applied. They were punched, they were kicked, and they were thrown away. That was the kind of primitive violence that ruled the world here.
"Hm. Is that all?"
After seeing a growing pool of blood approaching the USB memory stick that had fallen to the floor, the person silently crouched down and picked it up.
The person was a gray-haired man who appeared to be in his fifties.
He was not Japanese. He was clearly white and his graying hair had likely been a lovely blond originally. Even on the subtropical island, he wore a thick military-style coat that fit him perfectly. He also wore leather gloves.
"Who... are you... ?"
"Now, then. Where should I begin? Would the term Kechibi be enough to tell you I'm not with them?"
The gray-haired man dutifully answered my question as I remained on all fours.
Shortly thereafter, I heard a roar. The altogether bloody young man (from the Usuhiki Warashi group) stood up wielding a handgun and did not hesitate to pull the trigger. Sharp gunshots quickly filled the enclosed space.
But the gray-haired man did not seem to mind.
He took a casual action much like a child jokingly performing a lariat, but that was all it took to smash the building's thick loadbearing column. A gray deluge poured down with tremendous force and swept outside the building, taking the bullets and the bloody pulp with it.
It was hard to believe a normal human had done that.
The gray-haired man's shadow wavered and the number of arms on the shadow grew to four.
"So this is the Obou-Jikara. It sounded like a musty old legend, but 'when in Rome' as they say."
You're... kidding.
That was related to the story of a Youkai called the Ubume.
An Ubume looked like a young woman holding a baby on the roadside. She would ask passersby to hold the baby, but then the baby would grow heavier and heavier and eventually crush whoever had agreed. The Ubume was a deadly Youkai.
However, anyone who managed to continue holding the baby to the end was said to obtain superhuman strength known as Obou-Jikara. It had looked like his shadow had grown four arms, but did that mean what I thought it did?
Humans could not kill Youkai, but what if the power they used relied on a Youkai? Did that mean he could take down even the Zashiki Warashi on her rampage?
"You are right to feel fear. Humans have a bad habit of glorifying those who struggle against fear to the point of numbing themselves to it, but fear is a biological signal telling you to avoid some kind of danger. It is best to obey it."
As he spoke, the gray-haired man raised the translucent red USB memory stick and checked to see if any blood had gotten on it.
Not good.
This cannot be good.
"It all began with a certain turning point for this nation. Once your precision machinery industry suffered a decisive loss, you entered a period of chaos as you shifted to the ultra-high precision primary industries... aka running Intellectual Villages."
"..."
"At the time, fear filled the nation of Japan. You had lost your economic superiority and the economic foundation began shifting to China, Korea, and other southeastern Asian nations. Investors lost faith in the yen and moved their money elsewhere and the foreign companies fled the Tokyo Stock Exchange for fear of being caught in the middle when the nation went bankrupt. Japan knew it would be abandoned, which would be fatal for a nation with less than 30% self-sufficiency for food. That was why those in power reversed their thinking. If they created a system that did not allow anyone to abandon them, they could continue to prosper. That was the way they saw it."
This was so sudden that I honestly couldn't keep up.
However, that wasn't due to the gray-haired man. The scale of the issue had just grown so large. And I felt like a fool for not realizing it.
"Oh, the system itself was simple enough. The basic traits of an Usuhiki Warashi aren't that different from those of a Zashiki Warashi. The main point is that they bring fortune and prosperity to the house they live in. Boy, do you know the currency used during the Edo period when the story of the Usuhiki Warashi and Zashiki Warashi spread?"
"Wait... a second."
"The Oban and the Koban, both of which are symbolized by gold. And where else is gold used besides for decorations and currency?"
"Are you talking about integrated circuits and cable ports?"
"The Usuhiki Warashi can control pure gold. And by moving a piece of gold thinner than a hair only half a millimeter, one can prevent hardware from making contact and destroy the data passing through that hardware. And if copper coins are included too, the range of effects grows considerably. But regardless, this applies to hard disks, flash memory, and even the magnetic tape reels that big data companies have been returning to. After that, it is no different from ballistic missile defense. They need only say the following to the world's investors who were protecting their assets with the Japanese yen: 'During the next few years while Japan gets back on its feet, if we detect anyone transferring a significant amount of money out of Japan, we will destroy the Tokyo Stock Exchange hardware corresponding to the cluster of data belonging to that individual. Those deals are carried out in less than a millisecond and intentionally slowing them could put you hundreds of millions of dollars in the red, so it would be best to cooperate with us. '... I suppose you could call it a new form of intimidation diplomacy."
That was the original form of an old system.
But in modern times, that relic was no longer needed. The country had already recovered using the ultra-high quality brand-name vegetables of the Intellectual Villages.
"The islanders who attacked you had likely unearthed that old system somehow or another. And they were thinking of a way to use it. The automatic detection of large sums of money being transferred was likely what they wanted. Maybe they wanted to copy the movements of big-name investors and win big in the stock market or maybe they wanted to sabotage the trading data of the VIPs enjoying the casinos. To be honest, that would hinge on whether their goal was profit or revenge."
"Then..."
Still on the floor, I desperately moved my lips and spoke in a groan.
If I didn't do that and keep my focus on the outside world, I probably would have passed out.
"What are you trying to do by slaughtering them?"
"That is simple!! Just think of it as upping the scale a little." The gray-haired man spread his arms."Japan was in such a pitiful state back then, but you got back on your feet thanks to your hard work. It may look like your economy is focused on the agriculture of the Intellectual Villages, but it is high-quality industrial technology that supports those villages. Once Japan's computer technology won back the world's trust, many nations adopted it for their financial trading systems. Which means?"
"..."
My mind went blank.
It wasn't that I couldn't come up with an answer. It was that the idea in my head was just too ridiculous.
But the nightmarish answer still came.
"The Package for small-scale hardware damage using an Usuhiki Warashi was limited to Japan, but it can now spread through the high-speed circuits and around the globe. Billions of dollars change hands each millisecond and all of that stock trading will be cut off for about seven days. That would be a fatal blow to the world. The former bursting of the bubble will seem like nothing in comparison."
He wasn't trying to spread chaos.
He wasn't trying to make someone lose something.
"You mean... you're trying to... ?"
"It would be one thing if it was a true accident, but if a system built by Japan destroys Japan's own devices, responsibility will naturally fall on Japan. Unlike data or software, it is easy to add up a sum of damages with physical hardware. Now, what will happen to Japan then? I predict it will be put on a very good sale indeed."
He was talking about the sale of Japan, the hijacking of an entire nation.
"This device itself is quite simple."
He sounded amused as he waved the USB memory stick.
That was the key to it all and the source of it all.
"Would a high school boy know what a hardware key is? Instead of using a password, an exceedingly complex formula is stored on flash memory and used as the key to prevent illegal access. They are fairly common for online banking or stock trading."
"What... about it? What does that hardware key give you access to? What does it have to do with what you were talking about!?"
"Ha ha. It's simple. Goldmine Island has constructed a giant virtual city around their VR casino. Avatars can move freely about, buy land or buildings, and open up stores to sell 'used clothing' for the avatars. It is nothing but a form of entertainment, but this is an access key for one portion of it. It gives you free access to a room not accessible any other way. It is a child's room filled with toys and candy."
An avatar shop in the virtual city.
A virtual children's room filled with candy and toys.
Don't tell me...
"It would seem you have figured it out." The gray-haired man seemed to be enjoying himself."Just like the Zashiki Warashi, the Usuhiki Warashi is a Spirit composed of the children killed to conserve food during a famine. And in the mountain villages of Tohoku, it is said people would intentionally create children's rooms for them so they would stay longer and protect that family. That idea was virtually recreated and the Usuhiki Warashi is controlled by rearranging the zeroes and ones composing the room's layout as well as the arrangement and numbers of toys and candy. And this is the controller key that provides administrator access. No key is needed to enjoy an online game like normal, but it is needed to correct a bug or add additional features. Now do you understand the link between their Package, the Usuhiki Warashi, and this USB hardware key?"
The man added that there was of course a "delete" command that would cause the entire system built around the Usuhiki Warashi to fail and fall apart.
"To put it simply, this USB hardware key provides complete control of the Usuhiki Warashi. Long ago, this Usuhiki Warashi was closely related to that national suicide system, so it can do quite a bit. It truly can destroy Japan, but it can also crush the entire national suicide system at the flip of a switch."
"So it can be used as a self-destruct switch for that extremely dangerous Package?"
"Ha ha. What a lovely comparison! Perhaps I should use it in the future. The islanders who unearthed the system while imagining they were some secret organization seemed to have moved just this hardware key elsewhere. It was likely to prevent one of their own from betraying them and hijacking the Usuhiki Warashi, but they eventually began to wonder what would happen if a foreign force like us happened to steal the hardware key."
"..."
"That was why they snuck it back onto the island to ensure its safety. They didn't want anyone else to get their hands on it and they wanted to maintain stable control of the Usuhiki Warashi at the core of the national suicide system that they had started to lose control of. Of course, this is only a nuisance to someone like me who actually wants the suicide to occur. It is fortunate I managed to retrieve it before it was used.... If I destroy it, nothing can stop the system from running out of control. This is all I needed to declare checkmate."
"............................................................................................................................................. You're... kidding."
"Of course not. This is what I was after."
As he spoke, the man broke the USB memory stick in two, dropped it to the floor, poured a can of lighter fluid over it, and set it ablaze.
I had been wrong.
I doubted this gray-haired man was right about the dead group's reason for abducting the Zashiki Warashi to get the hardware key.
It may have begun with that kind of greed or desire for revenge, but they had eventually noticed a greater evil and they had tried to put a stop to it. They had wanted to get that USB memory stick even if that meant destroying the Package they had built.
And...
I... got in their way?
"No, that can't be true."
My shaky voice rejected the man's words.
Or rather, I wanted to reject them any way I could.
"No matter how much I threatened to destroy the hardware key over the phone, they didn't react! If it really was the safety they needed to stop that national suicide system, they would have..."
"Ha ha ha!! That was obviously just an act so you wouldn't realize what they were after. They were probably sweating bullets every time you shouted at them over the phone."
There was nothing more.
My pathetic denial just wasn't enough.
"Now, nothing remains to stop me, " said the man."There is no spare hardware key, so it shouldn't take long before the national suicide is complete."
With that said, he turned around and made his way outside.
He was escaping out through the giant hole he himself had made.
"Wait!! Who even are you!?"
"You will know before long. You are a student, aren't you? Then just look up at the flag flying in front of your school. Before long, you will see something other than a red circle there."
"You..."
I tried to draw his attention.
It may have been meaningless. We had already lost the hardware key needed to access the virtual children's room that controlled the Usuhiki Warashi. Even if I tore out the gray-haired man's windpipe with my teeth, there was no stopping the national suicide.
But for some reason, I desperately called out to him.
Yes, that's right.
I didn't have an actual idea in mind.
I was simply afraid of being left behind.
"Why are you letting me live?"
"Ha ha!!"
The man laughed loudly, but he did not stop walking or even look back.
He kept his back to me as he answered with laughter in his voice.
"Why would I kill you? The more slaves the better."
That was all.
There was nothing I could do.
I could not even get up from the floor as the gray-haired man vanished from the abandoned building.
Part 32 (Day 10/04 12:00 – 12:30)
Some kind of conclusion was reached without my knowledge.
Part 33 (Day 10/04 12:30 – 13:09)
"We will be interrupting this program for some breaking news. Today at noon, accidental explosions occurred in chemical complexes in Kitakyushu, Hiroshima, Fukui, Kobe, Yokkaichi, Kawasaki, coastal Chiba, Kashima, Sendai, and Hakodate. Police have announced that they are investigating it as a possible large-scale cyber attack rather than simple accidents. Currently, the firefighters are working valiantly to put out the fire, but the situation does not look good. Anyone living in the neighboring areas are urged not to go outside to view the disaster. Inhaling the chemical smoke would be very dangerous. And even those who live outside the specified areas should avoid going outside if at all possible. Many dangerous chemicals are continuing to escape and the Meteorological Agency says the winds will carry them across the entire country.... Oh, we have just received more information. Similar explosions and leaks have been confirmed at 192 of the country's chemical factories and storage facilities. The number of casualties is unknown at this time. We will announce the locations once a list of names has been confirmed. The government has begun an emergency meeting of the Cabinet and decided to create a countermeasures team. Chief Secretary Nakaue of the ruling party is strongly urging the nation to wait for a definite announcement and not to follow dangerous speculation.... I'm sorry. We have even more new information. We have just received word that heavy tankers cruising near Japan are bursting into flames one after another. No accurate number is known. We will provide more detailed information once it is available. The Ministry of the Environment made an announcement a moment ago. They are rapidly performing water quality tests around the country and will resume drawing water once its safety has been confirmed. Anyone who uses a well rather than the water service, please avoid drawing drinking water if at all possible. Foreign websites are already expressing their doubts about the brand-name image of Japanese agricultural produce, so the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries will soon make an announcement to sweep away such speculation. I repeat: please do not do anything until more accurate information has been announced. Large traffic jams covering more than fifty kilometers have been confirmed on Kitakyushu Expressway, Hanshin Expressway, Tomei Expressway, Shuto Expressway, Kan-Etsu Expressway, Joban Expressway, Tohoku Expressway, and other major roads. Attempting to flee the contaminated regions exposes you to the possibility of breathing in chemicals from the atmosphere, so please stay indoors. More new information? This time, large explosions have been confirmed in oil storage companies in Kitakyushu, the Seto Inland Sea, and Aomori. The number of casualties is not known at this time. Details will be provided when they are available. The Meteorological Agency just released a satellite image. The Japanese archipelago is almost entirely covered by black clouds, but it seems they are all some form of contaminating..."
Part 34 (Day 10/04 13:09 – 13:30)
I was in a complete daze.
The news coming from the inn's TV was all so insane that it didn't feel remotely real.
Almost the entire Japanese archipelago had been covered in pollutants like someone had filled in a coloring book picture.
Heavy footsteps had been stomping around behind me for a while. My parents were constantly trying to contact someone, but the phone lines were so overloaded they couldn't get through. Their voiceless impatience seemed to point to the enormity of the situation.
The country had struck a nice balance with the ultra-high quality agricultural produce supported by the Intellectual Villages, but that was all coming to an end.
I couldn't quite grasp what that meant.
"Now that the national suicide system has been used, the nation of Japan will be sold off to other countries before long. There was not a single thing we could do to stop it."
A young girl's voice reached my ear.
For some reason, I held a cellphone to that ear.
Odd. I thought the phones weren't getting through?
"The nation of Japan's value will drop to zero and anything remotely useful will be stripped away, so acquiring us will mean taking on a massive debt. Pointing that out was the only way we had to drive back the buyers."
I recognized the voice.
It was the girl who led the large organization named Hyakki Yakou.
"We have established that none of Japan's land or the nearby seas will be fully decontaminated until nearly fifty years from now. Advances in technology should shorten that somewhat, but for the time being, no one can set foot on this land. The environment will become unlivable without wearing a spacesuit. No matter how low the island nation's value may have dropped, no buyer will want to take on the cost of a fifty year decontamination. In that time, we must reconstruct the power needed to take back the nation we have lost."
That was when it all finally came into focus.
Oh, I get it.
This is what happens after we were put in checkmate and the game is already over.
"Jinnai Shinobu. You need to leave this country immediately. It does not matter where you go, but you need to lie low until the time comes to buy back the country."
I still held the phone to my ear, but her voice no longer reached me.
Instead, thoughts raced through my mind.
My eyes met those of the Zashiki Warashi in a red yukata. That Youkai shared a house's prosperity, silently watched it rise, and left as a sign of its decline. She simply stood there like always. Except this time, she was watching our ruin.
That told me that this was the end.
We would be leaving here. In the worst case, we would be unable to leave and we would die here, but if we were to survive, we needed to work toward leaving the country.
But Youkai were different. No matter how bad the environment got, they could live like normal. And I doubted a Japanese Youkai formed from Japan's environment would be able to cross the national borders.
"I will be back."
So this was the end.
So this was goodbye.
"I won't give up on you!! No matter how many years or decades it takes, I will be back!! So... !!"
There was nothing I could do.
On that day, our story came to a complete stop.
Part 35 (3rd person — Day??/????:?? -??:??)
Kotemitsu Madoka thought about how much time had passed since then.
The large meeting room of New York's UN Headquarters building was normally only seen on the news, so it was a strange sight for a normal person like her to be standing there. Regardless, she did not feel overwhelmed.
She knew that those with true influence did not attend meetings in places seen on television. She also knew that she herself had transformed into one of those with true influence.
It was currently two in the morning, so it was an extremely unusual time for a meeting.
Nevertheless, all of the seats for all of the member nations were filled. They all knew just how much they stood to lose by not being here.
Madoka stood in the center of the circular meeting and she spoke.
"How about we finally settle this?"
She challenged the world with a microphone in one hand.
"That was a message from 'him'. 'He' said it, so don't you think it is about time the world began to act?... I am sure you have already realized that, if we continue to stagnate by failing to think, we will shrivel up and die."
Despite her disrespectful way of speaking, the listeners immediately took it all in. I've gotten pretty good at giving speeches over the last ten years, noted Madoka.
"We have easily used up all of this planet's resources: oil, rare earths, water, and even food. Yes, we kept thinking the oil would continue to last a little longer, but we are truly seeing the bottom there. And unfortunately, we now know the moon contains far fewer resources than we had hoped and we are still a long way off from manned mining of Mars. So what are we to do?"
She looked around at them all.
The surrounding listeners all gave her distressed looks. These were their true faces that they could never show the TV cameras for fear of creating social unrest.
"Currently, unmanned robots are the foundation of our space development technology. That is how we designed it. And 'he' is the leading individual in that field. Without exaggeration, 'he' can be found at the source of almost every theory there. And 'he' has found an answer. This is undoubtedly the correct method."
The listeners were drawn in half by Madoka's eloquence and half by 'his' name.
"The moon is insufficient and we are a long way from manned mining within the gravity of Mars. That is why we have set our sights on the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Those countless asteroids are made of ice and minerals. First, we will fire missiles there with your cooperation. And when the many asteroids are swept toward the Earth, we will match their relative speed and perform the necessary mining with unmanned robots. That is a simple explanation of 'his' plan."
Some feared it was unrealistic, but she had of course expected that.
"This is entirely possible using ion engines that can provide weaker propulsion for longer periods of time and using the strategic weapons all of you have in excess. More importantly, this is not just a plan to delay the inevitable. 'He' said that making use of the asteroids and reusing the proper resources will provide a realistic solution to the problem of manned mining of Mars."
The distressed tension filling the room gradually ebbed. A realistic wall had been tormenting these people and they no longer had any way to think on their own, so they just wanted someone – anyone – to give them the answer.
But it was true that one of them was none too pleased with this answer.
A certain country had imprisoned 'him' and was using 'him' for itself. Not that they would have ever officially admitted it.
That was why Kotemitsu Madoka said what she did next.
"As I said, this is all what 'he' has said."
Part 36 (3rd person — Day??/????:?? -??:??)
The extreme east of Siberia in Russia was a white hell entirely covered in blizzards. A certain research facility was located at the center of a military facility that would never be found on any map.
Those involved called it the Robot Factory.
"He", Jinnai Shinobu, had long been imprisoned there.
Despite being a research institution for unmanned robots, it was almost entirely filled with a high power supercomputer. The collection of parallel processing devices was large enough to fill a soccer field and that was where his theories took form. Afterwards, they would actually be built in a different workplace located somewhere with an eight hour time difference.
During the past ten years, his days as a boy had ended.
He wore a lab coat over a cheap suit as well as thin glasses. His hair was still dyed blond, making it about the only thing unchanged, but it had gradually diverged from his overall atmosphere as he had aged.
The supercomputer cost as much as five or six large amusement parks, but he rudely rested his feet on the console while sipping bitter coffee from a mug. Suddenly, he looked up toward the ceiling.
He was creepily monitored twenty-four hours a day, but that eerie gaze had just vanished.
The reason was obvious.
The thick door was supposedly locked several times over, but some great strength knocked it inwards. Next came a few bloody soldiers. Lastly, a woman with a glamorous body stepped inside.
"Hishigami Mai, hm? You haven't changed, " he said."I mean it. Why haven't you aged?"
"My body allows for replacements."
"And why are you wearing a tank top and hot pants in arctic Siberia?"
"I was wearing a coat with the perfect insulation of a thermos, but I threw it away partway in because it was soaked with blood."
Despite this meeting with an old acquaintance, his expression remained unchanged.
All he did was lower his gaze from the ceiling to the mug.
"Why are you here?"
"Did you really think we wouldn't notice what you're trying to do?"
"Then I see no reason for you to stop me."
"It's too soon to start moving. The Japanese people were scattered around the world on that day, but a lot of them have grown accustomed to their new lives as they wait. Your actions could easily rob that of them."
"I see." Jinnai Shinobu took a sip from the mug."Then will you kill me?"
"That too would be a problem. It would change things too much. After all, all space development now comes from you. Or more accurately, you and Kotemitsu Madoka set it up that way. Sometimes you even buy out a rival research institute or hack in to alter their research data."
"Then what will you do?"
"How about I put you to sleep for a few years? Not letting you live but not letting you die would be best.... To be honest, getting it just right is tricky. That's why I was chosen instead of Mr. Illness Magic."
"I see."
He did not even turn toward her as he spoke.
"But you are not enough to defeat me."
With a sudden explosive sound, a nearby wall was destroyed by a tremendous force and an eight-legged crab-like weapon rushed in. The silver monster acted as a shield for Jinnai Shinobu.
Hishigami Mai whistled.
"Using space development tech for military purposes? You're like a villain from an American comic book."
"I was never interested in space. I needed the technology to efficiently decontaminate that country and the military might to push back any other countries that try to interfere. It just so happened that robots were the answer I arrived at."
"But a piece of junk like that can't kill me."
"Then how about I give it a power up?"
As soon as he spoke, a gust of wind surrounded him like a small tornado. Once the wind settled down, a woman leaned on his back with her slender arms embracing his neck. She was not human. She had horns on her head, wings on her back, and a tail on her hips.
Mai gave a ferocious smile.
"The Succubus, hm?"
"Yes, yes. Hello, everyone. The Japanese-made Youkai may not have been able to leave, but demons like me cover the entire world. My master has been quite loving to me☆"
"I see, I see. Hah hah!! So this is why Kotemitsu Madoka has been taking such obvious action over the past ten years. You've been using that demon's power to cheat, haven't you!?"
"It isn't just her. I dealt with Kotemitsu Madoka directly, which doubled as a test, but the illusion of making love can be transmitted over the internet as well. It is most effective against any woman without your level of resistance. I'm sure you would be shocked if you knew the number I had 'won over' to achieve my goal."
"Hm. So did you seal the Succubus's power in that piece of junk to create an unmanned weapon that uses supernatural and paranormal powers?"
Mai casually clapped twice.
"If so, that had the opposite effect. I specialize in that sort of thing, so I'm oh-so-thankful you felt the need to bring this into my territory. Now, it's about time I finished with you."
"She isn't what it uses. The Succubus is only the primer."
"?"
"Do you remember the Australian witch that showed up that one time? And do you remember how she was defeated using the Succubus's name and a certain postcard?"
"You don't mean..."
"The names of two different demons were used to trick that witch. One was the Succubus's and the other belonged to a much more powerful demon that almost ranks in as one of the Seven Deadly Sins."
"You don't mean... !!"
"Tselika Wien Alpha Chelydia Lumidrier, empress of the empty throne not part of the seven seats. Reveal your majesty in accordance with your master's will."
The world was compressed.
The mere manifestation was all it took to break one of the main parts of Hishigami Mai's utterly modified body.
A sound more disturbing than the breaking of every bone in her body rang out again and again with more regularity than the ticking of a clock. New life now resided in the silver crab-like weapon.
"Now, then."
Finally, Jinnai Shinobu removed his feet from the console and stood from his chair.
But he did not bother looking at what remained of Hishigami Mai.
With the Succubus clinging to his back and the unmanned weapon containing one of the strongest demons to his side, he gently shook his mug and spoke.
"I suppose it's about time to head out into the world once more."
Part 37 (3rd person — Day??/????:?? -??:??)
When word secretly reached them, some of the standing member nation representatives trembled.
Kotemitsu Madoka ignored them as she continued speaking.
"If everything has gone as planned, 'he' will already be free and travelling through the world as 'he' pleases."
She spoke slowly and skillfully.
"To put it another way, any nation could now become the leader in space development. Which nation will accept 'him'? This could influence your entire history for the next century."
Every one of them obviously wanted this.
Instead of going through the proper process and waging war over it, they were about ready to begin a scuffle in the meeting room right here.
"There is but one price, " said Madoka."Permission to decontaminate that country that we lost and the authority to directly manage the reclaimed land. That is all. If you support us on this, you will become the victor of this era."
Some nations did not want that.
Others still wanted that island nation for themselves.
But anyone who opposed this plan would become the loser of the next era. They would be thrown from the space development race and they would wither away as they tried to rely on this planet as its resources dried up.
They had only one option.
They could only hold each other in check while they grinned and supported that nation's revival.
"Then I will leave it at that."
Kotemitsu Madoka answered their silence.
As she slowly began to leave, someone asked a question that strayed from the main point.
That plan would cost a massive amount of money and she was funding it with the massive amount of assets she had gathered from around the world. So someone asked why she was willing to go this far.
She slowly looked back and soft words flowed from her mouth.
Part 38 (3rd person — Day??/????:?? -??:??)
And after making use of everything and making an enemy of everything, "he" returned to that place.
He saw that nostalgic rural scenery and he saw the kind of thatch-roof Japanese house one would see on an old postcard. With his entire body contained within a spacesuit, he could not breathe in the air or feel the ground beneath his feet, but he had returned all the same.
The fields and paddies were less disturbed than he had expected and the houses had also survived. The Youkai living there had likely continued to maintain them even after all of the humans had evacuated.
"Hi."
His muffled voice spoke.
A Zashiki Warashi in a red yukata sat on the porch like always.
She had likely been waiting there every single day for the last ten years. As she fanned herself with a Japanese-style fan, she looked up and smiled ever so thinly.
"Oh? I see you're the type to dutifully keep your promises."
"It's still going to take some time, but I've shortened it by quite a lot. The original environment should be back in about another ten years."
"I see. I had never thought you were stupid, but still..."
"This technology is technically meant to allow humans to live on the moon or Mars... or that's how I camouflaged it, at least. Well, this is still a lot closer to home than outer space."
"But it looks like you managed to spin the dial all the way around back to idiot. You didn't have to go this far to stick with us Youkai."
Still wearing the spacesuit, he sat next to her.
"Once it's all over, let's begin it all anew... Yukari."
He spoke a single name.
Instead of calling her an Indoor Youkai or a Good-for-Nothing Youkai, he used her name.
He was not just taking back the lost time; he was already thinking about what came after.
"Yes, " whispered the Zashiki Warashi as she slowly waved her fan."If it led to this, then maybe that ending wasn't so bad after all."
| ← Ch. 34 | Ch. 36 → |