One Year Earlier...

One Year Earlier...

 

Just before dawn, the coldest wind of the day swept across the world.

A girl was standing at the edge of the silent school roof.

“…………”

The wind whipped her long hair about roughly, as if trying to tear it out.

Unaffected, she stared back at the shadowy figure that stood with her on the roof.

“It’s a shame, really,” she said, a thoroughly groundless and unsettling smile on her face. She wasn’t smiling because she was happy, or was amused, or even because she was actually much too sad—there was no reason for it. She just smiled, but with her eyes alone—her mouth remained locked in a straight line.

“Ultimately, you are also unable to free yourself from the ‘here’ and ‘now.’ Such a shame.”

“…………” The other figure remained silent. It resembled a pipe more than a human with the shadow of the school building enveloping it, leaving it only partially visible.

“But no matter how long you wait, nothing will ever begin. Eventually, you will float mournfully away, just as your name suggests—vanish with a little pop.”

She put her hand to her mouth. Her shoulders shook slightly.

She was laughing.

The gesture was incredibly natural. How was it possible for anyone to laugh so unaffectedly? It was quite a mystery.

If her feet shifted a mere ten centimeters, they would find themselves heading swiftly towards a sharp impact with the ground below. But this precarious position had no influence on her laughter.

“………”

The shadow beside her didn’t move. It showed no signs of emotion. It was as if it didn’t even know what laughter was.

“Don’t you agree, Boogiepop?”

Addressed by name, the shadow stepped forward. “Say what you will,” it said. “Either way, you are finished here. There is nothing else for you.” The shadow’s voice was somewhere neutrally between that of both male and female genders.

“Hmmm… Finished? Really?” The girl failed to flinch before the advancing shadow. She stood her ground. “I think I’ve barely begun. I don’t even have a name yet…”

A cloud lit ever so slightly by the rays of the rising sun passed by in the darkened sky above. The wind was extremely strong.

“Then I shall name you now. Existences like yours were dubbed “Imaginator” by the father of the Fire Witch.”

The shadow continued towards the girl, feet never pausing.

The girl was unmoved. She nodded quietly, and said mockingly, “I read that book, too. But it’s an awfully prosaic name, isn’t it? It lacks romance. How unlike you.”

The wind was now pulling her long black hair at an almost perfect right angle to her head, as if pouring ink into the river of air around them.

“Romance…? I know of no such thing. Only normal humans do,” the shadow said, producing an arm from beneath the cloak that covered its body. There was a knife in its hand.

Faced with the blade’s sinister gleam, the girl’s lips at last curved upwards, into a look of pure confidence.

“‘Love is like snow that falls in April. Unexpected, yet not unforeseen…out of season, it chills you to the core.’ Who was it that said that?”

“……!” The shadow stopped in its tracks.

The girl had taken a step backwards, there was nothing behind her and nothing below her.

“The end of the beginning is also the beginning of the end, Boogiepop,” she said. “You stopped me here—but that is just the beginning of the next ending.”

With a broad smile on its face, the girl’s body plunged from the roof, toward the garden below.

There was an ugly, unpleasant sound. The sound of something splattering.

“…………”

The shadow stood where it was. It did not rush to the edge and look down. It did not need to.

A vision of the girl floated in thin air in front of the shadow.

“I have plenty of time before I actually hit the ground. Will you be able to find me before I do?”

The vision smiled—once again, only with its eyes.

Then it gradually faded away, melting into the air.

“…………”

Left behind, the shadow stood, knife in hand.

The wind stopped.

The sudden silence gave the impression that all movement had left the world.

On the ground below, a body lay, broken open like a flower in bloom. The stain it left behind would take a great deal of time to remove.

But that was all a year ago…