4:41 P.M.

4:41 P.M.

 

As I climbed the giant staircase, I was struggling to remember.

 

***

 

“Oh…?” Saotome Masami said. Or at least, the King of Distortion, wearing his face. He raised an eyebrow. “So you figured it out, President?”

“Yes,” I said, glaring back at him. “I really should have noticed the moment you appeared, in that place, at that time. I mean, that’s when you said the thing that stuck with me.”

Everything around us was quiet.

The things on the floor, shaped like people, spoke no words. That stupid “Custard Pie” song had finally stopped blaring, too.

“Something Saotome Masami said?”

“That’s right. Just an off-handed comment. It went in one ear and out the other and I’d completely forgotten it until now. But—if we go with your way of thinking, that may well be because I wanted that to not be true, because I was trying to preserve my idea of who he was. Maybe I intentionally tried to forget about it.”

“I see,” The King of Distortion nodded. “You’ve put a lot of thought into this, and it’s very consistent. So far. But what, specifically, did he say?”

“You said, ‘Do you know how good that feels?’ Right after you’d killed Kirima Nagi. I didn’t want to understand, and I said as much. And when I challenged you, you said it.”

 

“Beautiful, president. I love your eyes. I love strong-willed, powerful eyes.”

 

I looked right at Saotome Masami’s face.

“I’ve never gone out with a guy. I don’t hate boys or anything. I just haven’t had the opportunity. So… so in a way, you were my first. The first to ever say anything like that to me. You were the first to say anything in the ballpark of ‘You’re cute!’ ‘I love you!’ Anything like that.”

“………”

“But your version was sickening. Given what you were up to, there was no way I could happily accept that. So I did my best not to think about it. But, deep down, I knew.”

“Knew what?”

“That you meant it. That you weren’t just mocking me. In that moment, you were definitely in love with me. But to me, that was just terrifying.”

I sighed.

“I never wanted to know how unsettling love could be. But…”

I looked up.

“But that’s the truth. I accept that your feelings were real, and I reject them completely.”

This man with Saotome Masami’s face glared at me.

But then he shrugged, and smiled.

“Are you talking about your own feelings? About your own feelings for Takeda Keiji?”

“I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “But…I don’t want to run from it any more. I want to be able to smile at Miyashita Touka when I run into her.”

Boogiepop had talked about us like we were the same.

Miyashita-san was no different from me. So I didn’t need to be ashamed of my feelings. But I did have to accept the pain that came with not having them reciprocated.

“You don’t know?”

“Not now. Not yet. I don’t have the perspective yet. It still hurts too much.”

“That’s honest.”

“Well, sure,” I smirked. “I am the Discipline Committee President.”

He grinned back. “Well done, Niitoki Kei. Saotome Masami was all kinds of wrong, but in this one thing, he may have been right. Right to have a high opinion of you.”

“…mm?”

I wasn’t a fan of that idea. Of putting it like that.

“Don’t say that with his face. You’re borrowing his appearance! You shouldn’t say bad things about him!”

He burst out laughing.

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha! I mean it! You’re something else!”

And he began to fade away, leaving…

 

***

 

Leaving me climbing the Moon Temple.

The people around me were no longer art projects. Of course not; they were real now.

There must be something up above. That “Kashmir” announcement had basically been telling us to go up, so I went up.

But I was already struggling to remember.

I was sure I’d faced the King of Distortion, and said something to him, and as a result, I’d returned to the real world, but what exactly had happened? I was no longer sure.

Whatever.

It hardly mattered now. Even if the air supply thing was a bluff, I wasn’t about to stay trapped in this place one second longer.

At last I reached the top, an open area all dressed up for the event. But there wasn’t really anything here.

“……?”

I looked around. There had to be something. There couldn’t just be…nothing.

“I’ll find it…!” I said, trying to beat back fear.

“Niitoki Kei. You again?” said someone behind me.

I let out a little shriek, and spun around.

It was Boogiepop, of course.

“Wh-wh-what are you doing here? N-never mind, I already know. Argh.”

I took a deep breath, trying to calm down.

He was so bad for the heart.

“What brings you here?” Boogiepop asked. “You climbed up here for a reason, I assume?”

“N-not a good one,” I said, flushing.

Boogiepop shook his head.

“I thought not. This is you, after all.”

“That’s just mean!” I snapped. But then I saw a dark line running along the edge of Boogiepop’s bangs.

Blood.

“…! Are you hurt?”

“It’s just a scratch. The bleeding has already stopped.”

I had to think about this one. Had he been fighting?

“A-are you sure you’re okay?” I asked.

He ignored the question, electing instead to stare silently at the ceiling.

“There’s more above us.”

“Hmm? Like, a hidden room?”

“So it seems.”

Boogiepop stalked over to a display case, and hopped up on it. Then he knocked on the ceiling.

“Definitely. It’s hollow.”

“I-Is that where the King of Distortion is?” I asked, clutching my fists to my chest.

“Hard to say. Probably best not to expect a dramatic arrival.”

Boogiepop moved around on top of the display, inspecting the ceiling.

“Here,” he said.

His arm snapped back, and before I could wonder what he’d done, there was a grinding sound, and something fell from the ceiling.

A folding staircase.

“Seems to be an emergency exit. Probably not something in Teratsuki’s design; I imagine it was added by someone after the place was built.”

“W-wow!” I said, getting excited. “Now we can move forward!”

Boogiepop sighed dramatically.

“So you’re coming, then?” he asked.

“Of course!” I said, nodding vigorously.

 

When we emerged above, we found ice cold air rushing past us.

“Wh-what the heck? Is this a fridge?”

“Well, a cooling system. Must be something generating heat.”

“Like a computer? Or a server farm?”

“Perhaps. Either way, seems unrelated to our problems.”

“Hmm…”

Boogiepop was looking the other way, so I followed his gaze.

There was a boy standing there.

“Oh! T-Tanaka-kun?!” I cried.

This was my kouhai, Tanaka Shiro-kun. He’d been on my side in the incident the King of Distortion and I had discussed.

“………”

He stared at us in silence.

“A-are you the real one? We’re not back in that illusion, are we?” I said.

“I see,” Boogiepop said, softly. “So that’s how you know me? We fought on the same side once. Naturally you remember, King of Distortion.”

…uh.

My mouth dropped. What? What did he just say?

“………”

Takana-kun did not respond. He just stood perfectly still, watching us with eagle eyes.

“Wh-what? What are you talking about?”

I looked from one to the other, unable to grasp the situation.

Both were clearly very serious. Deadly serious.

“What’s going on…?!”

“Niitoki-senpai,” Tanaka-kun said. “You should know by now.”

“Hunh?”

“You’ve already made it through. You should know this is necessary. Every heart has distortions, and those must be addressed.”

“………”

I gaped at him. I didn’t know exactly what he meant by this, but what I did know was that Tanaka-kun was the real deal.

The real King of Distortion had finally shown himself.

“B-but…but Tanaka-kun…”

“I’m not hurting anyone. They’re already hurt. I’m helping them see that pain. All I’m doing is showing the source of their pain to them. I’m not controlling anyone. I’ve no intention of trying to spread my influence like that.”

“T-Tanaka-kun…”

“This is nothing but an experiment. How can we ease the distortions in the hearts of man? And do so without force, but entirely of their own free will? I’m just trying to see if that’s possible. With all these people here, unconscious—it’s the ideal situation. If I tried this in the middle of a normal street, it would cause all kinds of accidents. But in the Moon Temple, with everyone already asleep, I’m not hurting anyone.”

“Tanaka-kun…”

I didn’t know what to say to him. But this was reality. Unlike those illusions, the scene couldn’t change at a whim.

“You’re ‘showing’ them?” Boogiepop muttered. “That is your power, then, King of Distortion? What should we call you? The ability to bring hidden distortions to light—to harmonize with people’s minds, and expand a portion of those minds. Hundreds of minds at once. For a sudden manifestation, the scale is unprecedented.”

Sudden…? What did that mean?

“I’m right, aren’t I? King of Distortion, you only emerged from Tanaka Shiro recently. You’ve only just been born. Perhaps even after Tanaka Shiro arrived at the Moon Temple this morning.”

“………”

“That’s why your control is still sloppy enough to allow Zoragi to manifest. That was rather dangerous, you know. Did you learn any lessons there?”

“………”

“What about Tanaka Shiro led to your birth? Are you aware of it yourself?”

“Yes, I am,” Tanaka-kun—the King of Distortion said. “Tanaka Shiro has a deep-seated guilt. Guilt because he never once understood what she was thinking.”

I gasped.

Did he mean Naoko-san? A victim of the previous incident. She’d been in love with Tanaka-kun, but he’d had no idea how to respond to that.

“That guilt called me forth. His desire to respond to her affection took this form, created this ability. She often told Tanaka Shiro he was meant for bigger things. And indeed he was.”

“I see.”

“Inexperienced or not, I can’t turn back here. That would mean betraying her wish. No matter how long this road I’m on will take.”

“I admire your gumption, at the least.”

“Well, Boogiepop? Must we fight?”

“………”

Now it was Boogepop’s turn to fall quiet.

But…

I’d heard about this. According to all the legends, once Boogiepop set his sights on someone, he would show them no mercy. Even if they were a girl.

“Unh…”

I was freezing, but there was a cold sweat running down my back.

I knew the King of Distortion could throw people’s minds into another world. But would that power work on Boogiepop?

And, like the legends said, Boogiepop was a killer.

If these two clashed, it was clear one of them wasn’t coming back.

“S-stop!” I said, stepping between them.

“Senpai…”

“Niitoki Kei, are you…”

I cut them both off.

“I said, stop!” I demanded, loudly. “Tanaka-kun… King of Distortion. Something about all this isn’t adding up. Something you said isn’t right.”

I glared at him, and he frowned.

“What do you mean?”

“You know! Naoko-san died. That’s super sad! I know that you suffered because of it. But what happened to that suffering? You keep talking about turning pain into gold, but what about Tanaka Shiro-kun’s pain?”

I paused for breath.

The King of Distortion frowned.

“Well…he…”

“I should know. Like you said, I ‘made it through’. Tanaka-kun, did you love Naoko-san? Did you have feelings for her?”

“………”

“You didn’t, did you? You never felt that strongly about her. Not even now that she’s dead. Naoko-san was in love with you, and you had no idea what to think of her, and before you could figure it out she was gone. If you’d stayed together maybe you would have fallen in love with her eventually. Maybe you wouldn’t. But you never figured out which, and that created all this, but that…”

I took a deep breath, and finished.

“That’s your distortion, King of Distortion. So I have only one thing to say to you. Fix your own shit before you worry about everyone else. Got it?”

My voice was hoarse by the end, but I’d said my piece.

“………”

The King of Distortion said nothing.

But Boogiepop whispered…

 

“Once, there was a boy.

“The boy himself did nothing wrong. He was just an ordinary human.

“But he was an enemy of the world.

“Why? Because he had a deep-seated loathing of life, one even he was unaware of. If he had gone on living, if nothing had happened… maybe he would have led a normal life.

“But by a quirk of fate, he met a man-eater, and came to know himself.

“He became a man-eater, too.

“The monster killed simply to survive, but he killed without any real reason. He had no idea when to end it.

“If he still lived, he would have sought out a point of no return, and destroyed the world.

“And there was also a girl.

“She could see people’s deaths.

“This was not an impressive power. If she’d become a doctor or an emergency worker, perhaps it would have been of some use to her.

“But she saw those ‘deaths’ as absolute.

“The idea of taking those deaths from people, gathering them together, and creating something larger possessed her.

“She thought it would help break past the limitations of mankind.

“Soon, she found herself in a position where she did not need to live, as long as she could get closer to what she aspired to. She had become an enemy of the world.

“She was planning to change the hearts of man so they would not fear death.

 

“Both of them became my enemies. I’m afraid there was no other path for either of them. All I could do was cut them off before they went any farther down those roads.”

 

Boogiepop’s sudden monologue, one that seemed to have no bearing on our current situation, caught me off guard. What was his point?

The King of Distortion looked puzzled, too. Like he had no more idea than I did what Boogiepop was trying to say.

But Boogiepop went on.

“There are those who have but one way forward, no other place or future available to them. Whether that absence of options is a blessing or a curse…I could not say. Perhaps it never mattered to them. Perhaps they are simply a particular possibility made manifest, an abstract concept with no free will borne unto this world. Much like myself. Yet…”

Boogiepop turned and looked right at the King of Distortion.

“Yet, is that you?”

The King of Distortion looked uncertain. “What do you mean?”

“You said, ‘no matter how long’ your path takes. That spoke volumes about your resolve. No matter what tries to stop you, you’re prepared to adapt to it, to handle the situation.”

Boogiepop took a step closer to him.

“…!”

Instantly, the King of Distortion’s glare turned toward me, and Boogiepop and I were standing on the edge of a sheer cliff, a straight drop away to nothing.

We’d been flung into another world.

“Wah…?!” I yelped, and took a step backwards. But Boogiepop remained perched on that edge.

The King of Distortion stood across the chasm on the other side.

It was night, and stars glittered in the sky above.

“I’m sure you know this, but if you’re injured here, your body in the real world is injured, too. If you fall, even you will not survive,” the King of Distortion said.

Boogiepop’s expression didn’t change.

He continued with his speech.

“Your adaptability shows both the depth of your conviction, and at the same time, that some uncertainty exists. Nothing in this world exists without some uncertainty. If one without uncertainty existed, that would be someone who had given up hope. And that is not you.”

Boogiepop’s hand moved quickly, and then he took a step forward, off the cliff…onto nothing.

I was sure he was going to fall, but his body dipped slightly, and then stayed put.

There were wires, stretching from one cliff to the other. Under his feet.

The King of Distortion tensed. But he seemed more concerned with Boogiepop’s speech.

“What’s your point?”

“This experiment—do you really have no intention of ending it? I know you don’t think this is your only chance at success, do you?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Then you’re just being stubborn. If you stopped for now, you wouldn’t actually mind that much.”

The King of Distortion thought about this.

“P…perhaps not.”

“You see, you have approached me from the start as if I was a threat, an enemy. Why would you think that?”

“Hunh?”

“Why did you convince yourself I was? You could have tried to persuade me to join you. Why did that idea never occur to you?”

The King of Distortion blinked at him.

I was just as surprised. What was he even saying?

“You…aren’t an enemy?”

“To be more accurate,” Boogiepop said. “Why is it you think you’re ‘evil’? Is what you’re doing all that bad? You yourself said you aren’t trying to hurt anyone. Were you the one who locked everyone in here? Who put them to sleep? That wasn’t you. So why assume you would have enemies?”

“………”

“Was the pain so great? Was Tanaka Shiro that convinced he was a bad guy? Then no matter how you look at it, I’m not the one you should be fighting.”

He spoke calmly, but each word hit home like a knife to the gut.

“………”

The King of Distortion was silenced, unable to respond.

Boogiepop stayed floating in the air, making no effort to get closer.

And all I could do was stand there, waiting to see how this played out. A helpless observer. That’s all I could see myself as. But…

“………”

I was sitting on the ground with my mouth hanging open.

The King of Distortion turned to me. “Niitoki-senpai,” he said.

“Y-yes?” I said, sounding like a total idiot.

“What do you think?”

“Hunh?”

“Do you think she bore a grudge against Tanaka Shiro? You were her friend, you should know. Would she have done that?”

“W-well…” I hesitated. But before I knew it, the words came tumbling out. “I have no way of knowing that. But…but Naoko-san always said…”

 

“Kei! Guess what?! I’m in love!”

“Like there was nothing that gave her more pleasure. Like she was having so much fun. I was always a little jealous of that. I don’t think she ever felt any fear about being in love, never felt guilty for having those feelings. She would definitely never have used that as a reason to hurt anyone else. I believe that to be true, anyway. That’s all I can say for sure.”

“………”

I finished, but the King of Distortion said nothing in reply.

At long last, he gave a sad little smile.

Then he held up his hand in front of his face.

For a moment, the hand clamped down around his face, and then his entire body crumpled to the ground.

“Ah…!”

I jumped forward to catch him. Whoops. The cliffs! But they were already gone, and we were back in the Moon Temple. So I just ran over to him like normal.

“A-are you okay?”

“Um…the code…” he groaned. Weakened, but there was a strength under it that made me gasp.

“T-Tanaka-kun? Is that actually you?”

He was back. He’d beaten the King of Distortion.

“Senpai, see that keyboard? Habara-san found the code…”

He told me a series of letters with a number in the middle. I was always good at remembering that stuff. He didn’t need to tell me twice.

“Got it!” I said.

I ran across the room to the computer in the corner. There was a boy sitting in the chair, unconscious. This must be Habara-san. I pushed him out of the way and sat down in front of the keyboard. There was some strange man chattering on-screen, but I ignored that.

I took a quick breath, glared down at the keyboard, and typed “STAIRWAY 2 HEAVEN”.

There was a hiss behind me.

I turned around and sparks were shooting out of the giant box-like computers. Smoke, too.

There was a whirr, and the air around us began to move.

“The ventilation’s working again!” I said, relieved.

There was a series of clangs, and the shutters on the windows lining the walls of this hidden room opened.

Outside, the rainclouds had cleared away, revealing a beautiful sunset that bathed the room in deep red light.

“Wow…!” I said.

Beside me, the screen changed, and a list appeared with the instructions, “Choose a song.”

“…?”

I didn’t get it, but I saw one piece on there that I just had to pick.

“What else could I choose, Boogie—”

I turned as I spoke.

But there was no sign of the cloaked figure.