Chapter One: Romantic Warrior

1.

 

The story of Boogiepop is one that weighs heavily upon me. It’s a subject that I still haven’t finished sorting out my feelings about.

He’s no longer around, but I’m not really sure if I’m supposed to feel relieved about that fact or not.

He was…unusual, to say the least.

I’d never met anyone as strange as him in the seventeen years that I’ve been alive, and I doubt I ever will again.

After all, he was a transforming superhero.

That sort of thing is only fun if they’re on TV. If you’re standing right next to one, it causes nothing but trouble. And, in my case, it wasn’t exactly somebody else’s problem.

I never once saw him smile.

He always looked grim, and would look at me and say depressing things like, “Takeda-kun, this world is filled with flaws.” This, with the exact same pretty face that always made my head reel.

But Boogiepop is gone now.

I’ll never know whether or not everything he told me was a lie.

 

***

 

One Sunday, with the middle of fall fast approaching, I was standing in front of the station, waiting for my girlfriend, Miyashita Touka. We were supposed to meet at eleven, but it was already three o’clock, and she had yet to appear.

Did I mention she was a year younger than me? Apparently, her family was pretty strict, and for some stupid reason, I was expressly forbidden from even attempting to call her house. All I could ever do was simply wait for her to get in contact with me. So, once again, I was forced to stand there fretting while I patiently tried to wait for her to show.

“Hey, Takeda-senpai!” someone called out.

I turned around to find Saotome standing there. He was my kouhai, on the same committee as I was. There were three other students with him, two of them girls.

“What’s this, a double date?” I said, aware that I was coming off as old-fashioned.

“Something like that. You waiting for yours?” Saotome gave off pretty much the same impression whether in uniform or out. Wherever he was, he seemed to blend in. “You do realize that dating’s against school rules, right?”

“Look who’s talking.”

“Oh, you’re on the discipline committee as well?” the guy next to Saotome asked.

Oh, yeah, sorry, I thought…but I couldn’t say that to a kouhai, so I just shrugged.

“Then I guess we’ve got nothing to worry about,” he said, putting his arm around the shoulders of the girl next to him.

Guess they were together. Go figure.

“Yeah, I don’t give a damn either, but the teachers are a different matter. Better keep an eye out so they don’t catch you,” I grumbled.

They all gave knowing laughs, then nodded and took their leave. As they walked off, I heard one of the girls say, “Guess who’s been dumped!”

All I could think was, Mind your own damn business!

I mean, it’s not that I actually like being on the discipline committee. It’s just that someone had to take the job and that someone ended up being me.

That day, Touka never did show.

(Have I really been dumped? Surely there would have been some sort of warning, right?)

I waited despondently until five, unable to let things go.

I knew I had to, though.

I dragged myself away, feeling like the world had cast me aside. I was the only person in my class not going to college. Heck, everyone else was off studying for entrance exams. It’s no wonder I felt so left out.

Then it happened.

Staggering towards me was the kind of guy who would stand out in any crowd.

He was a skinny young man, with roughly cropped hair that stood on end. He wore a badly torn, dirty white shirt that was just flung over his body. The shirt was unbuttoned, leaving his bare chest exposed. The bottoms of his pants legs trailed along the ground as his bare, shoeless feet shuffled across the pavement.

There was a serious looking wound on his head, and half his face was covered in blood. Though mostly dried, the blood stuck to his hair in clumps. One look at him, and I knew he was a mess, yet I couldn’t avert my gaze.

His eyes were unfocused, and he was moaning aloud. This was not some new fashion, but clearly a bona fide, genuinely crazy psychopath. Probably on drugs.

(Yeesh, there are actually guys like this showing up in our town now, too…?)

Spooked, I averted my course, giving him a wide berth. Everyone else was doing the same, so there was a sort of air pocket forming around him.

He tottered along in the center for a few moments.

Then, suddenly, he collapsed to the ground.

Before anyone could react, he began to sob quietly.

“Enhhh…enhhhhh…” he sniveled. “Unngghhhhh.”

Great, slobby tears rolled down his cheeks, heedless of his surroundings.

A circle of people—myself among them—formed around him, watching. None of us dared move towards him.

It was the strangest thing that I’d ever seen.

It was bizarre, like something out of a surreal Eastern European movie.

But there was one person who did approach him.

He was shorter than me and dressed in a long, black cape with a collar that wrapped around him like a great coat, and a black hat like a shrunken pipe or a top hat without a brim. The hat was a size too big for his head, and half covered his eyes.

On the hat and cape bits of metal gleamed, like rivets or some sort of badge, sewn along the hem. It gave off the impression of armor.

To match his all-black outfit, he wore black lipstick. His face was so white; it was like the ink painted on top of a glossy Noh mask.

Clearly, this was another crazy person on the loose.

The cloaked figure leaned his black hat over to the side, and whispered in the psycho’s ear.

The psycho stared up at the cloaked figure with empty eyes.

“……”

The man nodded and the psycho stopped crying.

There was a slight stir from the crowd around them. It seemed that some form of silent communication had been established.

The cloaked figure’s face snapped up and glared around at us. It was clear that he was seething with anger.

“Do you think to do nothing when you see a fellow human crying?!” he suddenly shouted, loud and angry, in a clear, boyish soprano voice. “Is this what the advancement of civilization has lead to?! Urban life weeding out and killing the weak?! It’s appalling!”

The crowd concluded that he was simply another loony and avoided eye contact, quickly dispersing. I started to follow suit, but he spun towards me, catching my eye. It was then that I finally got a clear look at his face.

Words can’t begin to do justice to the shock I felt at that moment.

Perhaps the best example I can give is to describe it like one of those nopperabou ghost stories—you expect a faceless ghost, but instead, the ghost looks just like you. At first you just don’t get it, but then you do, and it totally freaks you out.

I stared at him, eyes wide open and mouth agape.

But for him, I seemed to be little more than another face in the crowd, and he soon shifted his glare to the man next to me.

Two policemen came rushing up. At last, someone had reported the psycho.

“That him?”

“Get up!”

The policemen roughly tried to yank the man to his feet. He made no attempt to resist.

“No need to be so violent. He’s afraid,” the black-hatted figure said, not fazed by the idea of lecturing policemen either.

“What are you? His family?”

“Just passing by,” the figure replied softly. “Don’t twist his arm like that!”

“Step aside!” the policeman shouted, as another tried to shove the cloaked figure away.

But the cloaked figure bent his body like a dancer, and evaded the policeman’s sweaty arm.

“Wah!” the policeman cried, overbalancing and falling to his knees.

It was like some kind of kung fu, or maybe tai chi. All I know is that the cloaked figure’s motions came off as being extremely graceful and fluid.

“This is what happens when you resort to violence,” the cloaked figure spat.

“And that’s what I call interfering with a police officer!” the cop bellowed, springing to his feet.

“Try performing your duty before you accuse me of interfering with it. It is your job to save people who are in trouble, not to trample them beneath your feet,” the cloaked figure said, as if delivering a speech.

Meanwhile, the police had forgotten about the psycho, who had begun aimlessly tottering off down the street again with surprising speed.

The policemen turned hurriedly to give chase, shouting, “Hey, you! Stop right there!”

The cloaked figure in the black hat spun around, his cape fluttering, and dashed away.

“Ah! Wait!” The policemen clearly couldn’t decide which quarry to chase.

The cloaked figure moved like the wind, and vanished just as quickly around the next corner.

I was left standing there, stunned.

I was not stunned because of the cloaked figure’s bizarre behavior. Well, maybe I was, but much more shocking was having the image of his face burned into my eyes. The hat was low on his face and partially concealed it, but there was no mistaking those big, almond shaped eyes…they belonged to the girl that I had been waiting for all day—Miyashita Touka!

And thus ended my first encounter with the mysterious cloaked figure—Boogiepop.

 

2.

 

The next day, I went to school earlier than usual.

The school I go to, Shinyo Academy, has that something a lot of other schools don’t. Every student has an ID card, and every time we go in or out of the building, we have to slide it through a gate checker, like one of those ticket readers at the train station. They call it the Campus Advanced Information Administration System (or CAIAS, for short). Supposedly it helps the staff keep track of the exact number of students that attend, since the student population has started to decline as of late.

But in actuality, it doesn’t really change anything. Despite the grand design, this year, there have already been several students who have run away from home, or worse, simply vanished. The system they’re so proud of is really powerless when it comes to stopping students from doing whatever they like once they’re off school grounds. It’s what free will is all about.

Anyway, our school is up in the mountains, so we have to walk up long, steep, green roads just to get there. On this particular morning, there was hardly anybody out on the road. The sports teams had long since started morning practice, but the rest of the student body had not yet started to arrive.

“Yoohoo! Keiji!!” came a cheerful girl’s voice from behind.

I turned around to find a girl from my class, Kamikishiro Naoko, walking towards me.

This girl had a habit of over-pronouncing people’s names, like she was sight-reading a word in some other language. Plus, she was always chirpy.

“Now, now. Why so gloomy on such a beautiful morning?” she said, running to catch up, and thumping me hard on the back.

Both Kamikishiro and I were breaking the school rules against dating. You could say that it gave us a certain connection; a certain ease to our interaction. A sort of sympathy that we couldn’t expect to get from friends of the same gender. We always joked around together, but today I was hardly in the mood.

“You’re early,” I said curtly. “Not going for your usual dramatic entrance?”

Kamikishiro was almost compulsively late and she always insisted that it was due to low blood pressure. If a teacher tried to chew her out for it, she would apologize dramatically—and quite flirtatiously, I might add, which generally left the male teachers flustered, but always seemed to do the trick, getting her off the hook. A powerful technique, indeed.

“Yeah, well, had some stuff to take care of today. But spill already! How was your date yesterday?”

“F-forget about it.”

“You have a fight or something?” she asked, peering closely at my face with interest. She had a tendency to express her emotions a bit too obviously. She was very pretty, but had an open, loud laugh. This seemed to make some people think badly of her, no matter how good a person she was at heart.

“A fight? I wish we could have,” I sighed.

“Wait, what? That sounds serious!”

“Whatever.”

Another student passed us on a bicycle, so we fell quiet.

As always, there was a committee member posted at the gates, like a train station guard, making sure the cards went through the gate check smoothly.

“Oh, Takeda-senpai, you’re early,” said today’s guard, Niitoki Kei. She was the discipline committee president. Despite the ominous title, she was a tiny, cute girl with a childish face.

“D-ditto,” I said, waving. We’d been on the health board together last year as well, so we had seen each other regularly for two years.

“Mornin’, Kei!” said Kamikishiro. Although they were friends already, Niitoki had ignored Kamikishiro’s dates on several occasions, and this had brought them even closer together.

“My, my, are you two together now?” Niitoki said, eyes wide.

“That’s scary, coming from you,” Kamikishiro laughed.

“I didn’t mean it that way, really. Even if it were true, my lips are sealed.”

“Trying to earn a favor, eh? Looks expensive.”

“It is,” the committee president laughed.

If she knew that Kamikishiro had both a second and first year student in her saddle, I doubt she could have been so blasé about it. She was pretty serious, and she would probably get so angry that steam would shoot out of her ears.

We put our cards through the gate check and went inside.

“Senpai, don’t forget the meeting today!” she said as I waved in acknowledgement.

Kamikishiro giggled. “She’s so cute.”

“Who?”

“Kei. You know she’s got a crush on you, right? Puppy love…”

“You’re one to talk.”

Every relationship she had ended up like a war zone. I’m amazed she could still joke about it.

“So what was it? Fuji-chan dump you?” Who knows why Kamikishiro always called Touka by a different reading of the kanji in her name, but here she was doing it again.

“She stood me up.”

“I can see why you got chest pains, then! Ah ha ha!!”

I suspected that she, too, stood up many a man.

“What are girls thinking when they do that?” I asked. “It sure as hell isn’t about their boyfriend.”

“That’s not an easy thing to answer. Hmm… It all depends, really. I know that it’s not always because they don’t want to see you, though. You know, stuff just sort of comes up.”

“So what if they stand you up and dress like a man?”

“Hunh? What are you talking about?! What’s that supposed to mean?” Kamikishiro’s eyes widened.

Understandably. I didn’t know the answer either.

“Never mind. Must have been seeing things.”

“I don’t really get it…but you’ve got a lot of time on your hands, so you really ought to start taking love more seriously, ya hear?” she said in a sing-song voice.

“What?” I replied, scowling, and she burst into song.

 

Life is brief, young maiden, fall in love;

before the crimson bloom fades from your lips,

before the tides of passion cool within your hips,

for those of you who know no tomorrow.

 

“You’re in a good mood. You in love again?”

“Kinda. Tee hee hee.”

“For crying out loud, how many is this now?”

Before we hit the halls, we smoothly shifted to a more standoffish attitude. We weren’t going out, but it was never a good idea to start any rumors.

I let my feet carry me to Touka’s class.

Once there, it wasn’t like I could actually talk to her, so I wasn’t exactly sure why I was going—I just couldn’t seem to help myself.

Touka’s room was year two, class C, and it was still empty.

Feeling suddenly tired, I flopped down on a chair inside.

Once again, the cloaked figure’s words ran through my mind: Do you think to do nothing when you see a fellow human crying?!

I paused for a moment.

Was that really Touka?

A twin brother, perhaps…?

No, she’d never mentioned one before.

I heard someone coming, so I quickly got up and left the room.

I stood as inconspicuously as I could in the covered passage, a few yards away from the room, and kept watch. The more I watched, the more pathetic I felt.

(Aw, hell…)

Touka was about the twentieth student to arrive.

She was the same as always. There was no sign of any strange hat.

But for some reason, she had an enormous Spalding bag in addition to her usual school bag. The sort that people generally keep sneakers or gym clothes in.

Then she noticed me.

She shot me a quizzical, innocent glance.

I found myself grinning and nodding.

She smiled softly and nodded back.

Nothing different than usual.

She didn’t seem at all bothered about having stood me up either.

So as not to get noticed, we hardly ever spoke to each other at school. But words weren’t necessary. We had worked out our own sort of sign language that only the two of us knew.

So I made one of those signs, putting my index finger up. This sign meant back of the garden after school.

She made the same gesture, showing consent.

Yeah, it was just like nothing had happened.

Feeling like I was surrounded by a heavy smoke cloud, I drifted back to my own classroom.

Kamikishiro wasn’t there yet. Probably still ‘taking care of stuff.’ Same as me.

 

***

 

The discipline committee meeting was during lunch.

“Ehem. I expect that all of you have noticed, but this year, discipline has become rather slack. There are now four girls, students here, who appear to have run away.”

They called it a meeting, but we hardly ever spoke at all. The teacher in charge always droned on and on at us the whole time.

Frankly, we may have been called the discipline committee, but not one of us was operating under the illusion we could actually control anybody. Most of us were, like me, breaking those rules ourselves.

The boy I met in town yesterday, Saotome, was the secretary. He took minutes in a notebook. Despite double dating on the side, he melted right into the atmosphere here, like a model committee member.

“If any of you happen to hear about anything like that, then please, come running to me. One of their friends might be able to get in touch with them.”

We made no response. We never did. The teacher never seemed to notice.

“Incidentally, the infamous Kirima Nagi failed to arrive this morning. Make sure to keep an eye on her, hear? No telling what that girl’s plotting in the shadows.”

He glanced sharply around the room.

We remained silent.

The only sound was the scritching of Saotome’s pen, jotting down absurdly complete minutes.

Suddenly, the PA system crackled to life.

“…Miyashita Touka, second year, class C. Please, return to the infirmary at once. Miyashita Touka, second year, class C…”

I jerked in my seat, and it made a screeching sound on the floor.

“Mm? Something the matter?” The teacher glared at me balefully.

“I, uh, feel dizzy,” I said to excuse my actions, but in fact my head was reeling.

“Are you okay, senpai?” the president asked. “You look pale.”

“Third year? You go on back to class.”

Seniors had exams to study for and didn’t really play a major role on the committee. Heck, they didn’t even need to come the meetings in the first place. Of course, I wasn’t taking exams, but the teacher hadn’t bothered to remember that, apparently.

“Okay.”

I stood up, and the president followed suit.

“Sensei, I’ll take him to the infirmary.”

The teacher made a face, but then simply ordered her to hurry back.

“…That okay?” I asked Niitoki.

“Are you okay?” she whispered back.

I said nothing else, but rushed to the infirmary.

There was no one there.

I let out a huge sigh of relief.

The announcement had asked Touka to “return,” so she must have been there before, but gone out again.

(No, she was supposed to go home, but she must still be on campus. Her card hasn’t been swiped through the gate…)

Thinking furiously, I slumped down on the bench beside me.

“…You’re worried about her?” Niitoki asked.

“Yeah, a little.”

I looked up, and she spoke quickly, stiffly, “I thought as much. I’m in the same class as her.”

I gaped at her, but she kept talking.

“She’s been a little off recently. Like she can’t sit still. Glaring outside during class. The teacher yells at her about it a lot. I thought she might be having trouble with you or something.”

I had no answer.

“I like you too, you know. But—”

“………”

“But it looks like you like her more than me.”

She was glaring at me now.

I couldn’t think of any way to respond.

“I’m going back now,” she snapped, and bolted out of the infirmary.

Needless to say, I was out of it for pretty much the rest of the day.

 

***

 

After class, I went to the place where we had agreed to meet, but Touka wasn’t there.

Sunlight barely filtered down to the deserted rear of the building, so it was quite dark around me.

I threw my bag on the ground, shoved my hands in my pockets, and leaned against the wall.

I couldn’t figure out what to do next, so I stared aimlessly up at the sky.

The edge of the school roof made a clear straight line cutting the sky in half.

But there was a shadow jutting over that line.

I gasped in shock.

It was the silhouette of a person. A person with a flat, pipe-like protrusion on their head, wrapped in what seemed like a cape.

At that moment, I knew it was him. It was the mysterious cloaked figure.

When he saw me, he spun around and pulled away.

I yelled towards him, “W-wait!”

Right beside me, there was an old fire escape. It was connected to windows on each floor and went all the way to the roof.

I vaulted the locked gate at the bottom and raced up the stairs to the roof—in clear violation of school policy.

When I hit the roof, I yelled, “Miyashita! That you?!”

The cloaked figure slowly emerged from the shadows. He stared directly at me again.

“You…know Miyashita Touka?” he said in Touka’s voice. It was a little deeper, more male sounding, but if you listened for it, it was clearly hers. “I see. We met yesterday, didn’t we? I have done you wrong. I ignored you, and for that…I apologize.”

I rushed over to him and grabbed him by the shoulders.

“What the hell are you talking about?!”

Suddenly, my body was flying through the air, and then came crashing down upon the concrete with a hard thud.

“——?!”

Had he swept my legs out from under me? The pain raced through my entire body before I figured it out.

“What… What’s going on?” I cried.

“I should state clearly that I am not Miyashita Touka. Currently, I am Boogiepop,” the cloaked figure whispered.

“C-currently?”

So, Miyashita had been herself this morning? Is that what he meant?

“I’m sure you’ve heard the idea before. Simply put, it resembles the concept of the split personality. Understand me so far?” this “Boogiepop” continued.

“S-split—?”

“None of you have noticed yet, but danger is hovering over this school…and all mankind. That is why I have emerged.”

I couldn’t quite decide if I really should be referring to Boogiepop as “he” or not, but I could tell from his expression that he was deadly serious.

 

3.

 

That evening, I called Touka’s house directly.

“Miyashita speaking,” her mother answered.

In my most serious voice, I said, “Hello. This is Takeda from the Shinyo Academy discipline committee. Is Touka present?”

When she heard the words “discipline committee,” Touka’s mother made a little gasping sound into the receiver.

“H-has Touka done anything…? But we haven’t seen that since she started high school…”

That?

“I’d like to speak to her directly, if possible.”

“O-of course! Just a moment,” she said in a much too respectful tone for some high school kid. Any other mother would have just said, “Hang on a sec,” or something equally trite. She must have been distressed.

“Touka speaking,” said Touka, in her usual voice.

“Hi, it’s Takeda.”

“Yes?” she said flatly. Presumably her mother was hovering near by.

Apparently, the Miyashita residence still didn’t have any other extensions.

“Did you go somewhere this Sunday?”

“Not really,” she said, knocking the receiver twice. I took this to mean the same as two fingers held up in our sign language. It meant, Sorry, not right now.

Obviously, I already knew that, but I had to ask anyway.

“Hey.”

“Yes?”

“You ever heard of Boogiepop?”

“Eh?” she said blankly. I’d caught her completely off guard. “What’s that?” She wasn’t acting. She really didn’t know.

“Never mind. It’s not important. I just really wanted to hear your voice, is all. Sorry.”

“Thank you,” she said, very politely as if for her mother’s benefit. I translated it as a sign of pleasure.

So, it looked like she didn’t hate me after all.

“Then I’ll see you tomorrow at school.”

“Sounds good.”

I hung up first, and silence overcame me.

I crossed my arms and tried to think. That Boogiepop guy had been right. Touka had completely forgotten about our date the day before, as well as our promise to meet after school today.

 

***

 

“She doesn’t know,” he had said, standing on the school roof, in the light of the setting sun. “If something threatens to erode her foothold of ignorance, she instantly ceases to know that as well. To erase the anomaly caused by not meeting you yesterday, she will have deleted all memories of the date from her mind.”

“Deleted?” I said, still reeling, barely keeping up. “You mean, she’s forgotten that we were supposed to meet?”

“Precisely. But this is assuredly not because she doesn’t take you seriously. Quite the reverse. I imagine she loves you quite a lot. Which is exactly why she needs to forget so thoroughly.”

“How so?”

“So that she doesn’t feel guilty. She doesn’t want to even think about you being mad at her. But that is something beyond her control,” he said from her very own lips.

“What exactly are you? How long have you been…possessing her?”

“Possessing? Can’t say I like that choice of words. It’s not like I chose to appear.”

“Then why do you?!”

“Because danger is upon us,” he said, gazing at me levelly.

I flinched. His gaze held daggers.

“I am automatic. When I detect adversity approaching, I float up out of Miyashita Touka. That’s why I am Boogiepop—phantasmal, like bubbles.”

“Adversity? What kind of…?”

“There is a devil nesting in this school.”

I know that sounds absolutely nuts coming from me, but when he said it, the look in his eyes was unmistakable—he was completely serious.

The setting sun sent long shadows across the roof. Boogiepop’s black clothes made him look half invisible and he virtually faded into the darkness.

“It’s hidden among you now, but it poses a very real threat. It has barely begun to stir, but once it does, it will mean the end of the world.”

His words were the ravings of a lunatic, but if you actually looked at him and heard his voice, they were horribly convincing.

“Are… Aren’t you the same thing?” I asked, resisting him with everything I had. For me, this man taking up residence in Touka’s body was pretty much the same as the end of the world.

Touka’s other personality replied calmly, “I’m aware of that, which is why I never come out for long. This is also automatic. The rest of the time, I live peacefully as Miyashita Touka, gazing at you with ardor.”

“Ardor? Hey…!”

There was something antiquated about his manner of speaking. He even called me “kimi,” like a scholar from the Meiji era.

“My time today will shortly end. There is little meaning in my keeping watch like this, once school is over. Everyone has already gone home.”

“…So this dangerous being you’ve been going on about is one of the students?” I found myself asking.

Boogiepop nodded, “Most likely.”

“What is it, exactly?”

“It is better if you don’t know.”

“Why?”

“Because it is too dangerous. If you know more, something might happen to you. I would prefer to keep Miyashita Touka’s lover out of harm’s way.”

I know I’m repeating myself, but he really does keep saying this with her face and her voice.

“If it’s that dangerous, I think I should know. That body doesn’t belong to you alone, you know.” Even as I spoke, part of me was arguing that I shouldn’t take this guy seriously. Clearly, this was all just a paranoid delusion, caused by some bizarre psychological disease, brought about by an instability in Touka’s mind—yet the creature before me was Touka and not Touka at the same time. I couldn’t think otherwise.

Boogiepop sighed. “All right, but don’t tell anyone else.”

“Right,” I replied, swallowing hard. I steeled myself for anything.

But his words were too simple, and caught me by surprise.

“It’s a man-eater.”

 

***

 

After I called Touka’s house, I slumped dejectedly on my bed.

My head was a mess.

A split personality?

The school—no, the entire world was in danger?

What the hell?!

As delusions went, it was pretty damn delusional. It was like one of those crazy school-bound RPGs.

(But I don’t want to exactly go and drag Touka off to some psych ward…)

Boogiepop had said Touka forgets everything. So, in a worst-case scenario, even if we went to a hospital and had a doctor look at her, Boogiepop might never even appear. That would make her seem like the sane one, while whoever took her would come off looking like a complete idiot.

On the way home from school, I had bought a paperback called The Scream Inside - Multiple Personality Disorder, so I decided to delve into it then. I’d just grabbed the easiest looking one, but to my surprise, there had been an entire section in the bookstore on psychological disorders. Surely, the world was crazy enough already without all these diseases, I thought.

The writer wrote in a very conversational tone, so it was readable enough, but the sentences were filled with difficult words that left my head spinning. I did catch the phrase, “This disease is exceedingly rare—if not almost unheard of—in Japan.”

As far as I could tell, multiple personality disorder generally arises when someone is trapped in an oppressive situation and unable to cope with reality, shifting their emotions onto another personality in an attempt to create a new life. “The human psyche is open to the possibilities of both good and evil. In my opinion, multiple personality disorder occurs when one of these possibilities, suppressed by societal pressures, declares independence and begins to fight to exist. Regardless of how diseased the result or how destructive it is on the host body and those around it, the possibility makes no distinction between good or evil.” There was a lot of stuff like this where I kind of understood what I was reading, but at the same time, didn’t. Apparently in Japan, the basis for this type of action usually didn’t have a clear form, which meant that the vast majority of incidents would result in schizophrenia rather than multiple personality disorder. To me, it’s like talking about the difference between “God” and “The Universe.”

The author’s name was Kirima Seiichi. There wasn’t an author’s profile attached to the book, so I had no way of telling who he was or what his credentials were. But somehow, what I’d read just felt right.

(Then what sort of possibility was Boogiepop? What had suppressed him?)

I flopped back onto bed and stared at the ceiling.

Do you think to do nothing when you see a fellow human crying?!

Those words rang through my head again. For some reason, I just couldn’t stop thinking about them.

 

***

 

“…So that’s what it said. What do you think?” I asked Boogiepop. It was the next day after school, and we were both on the roof again.

“A suppressed possibility? Hmm… Not a bad explanation, I suppose.”

Miyashita had not been in class, so I’d swung by the roof on the off chance he was around. It seemed as though he took over the moment classes ended.

“However, in my case, I am not one of Miyashita Touka’s other possibilities.”

“Then what are you?”

“Good question. This world’s…?” he said quite naturally.

For a moment, I couldn’t grasp his meaning. It felt as though he hadn’t finished his sentence, but, instead, had just let it trail off. This world’s…? This world’s what?

Ignoring my blank look, he forged on, “I have no autonomy. I have no idea what Miyashita Touka might be thinking. She may well have some possibility, some hidden desire that produced me. But that has nothing to do with me. I have no dreams. I have only my duty. I am here only to carry out my purpose.”

“To save mankind?”

“Yes.”

“Why you?”

“I do not know. I would like to,” Boogiepop sighed, staring up at the sky above.

Not looking at me, he continued, “So you wish to ‘cure’ me, then?”

I jumped. Of course, part of me did want to. Miyashita Touka was my girlfriend. But I also felt it wasn’t something that I had to do.

“Mm, no… I dunno.”

I wasn’t making a guarded answer to keep an eye on his reaction; I was genuinely not sure any more. It didn’t seem like his presence was hurting anyone. Touka herself remained blissfully unaware.

(Only thing it actually interferes with is our dates.)

“I admit it would be better if I did not exist. If only there were no need for me…”

His profile was exactly like that of the girl I loved, and it looked somehow forlorn, so without thinking, I blurted out, “It must be hard for you…”

Not exactly the way you react to the ravings of a delusional multiple personality, I admit.

“Well, I’m hardly ever here, so…”

I’d thought he might be angered by my awkward attempt at sympathy, but he responded quietly. Not crazy at all.

The two of us looked up at the sky. It was cloudy. This time, there was no beautiful sunset…only darkness. There was a chill in the air, and it seemed as though a cold rain might start to fall at any second. It was the kind of day that dampens your spirit.

“Can I ask you something?”

“What’s that?”

“The first time I saw you, what did you say to that homeless guy?”

“Nothing important.”

“How did you make him stop crying?”

“I just gave him the encouragement he needed. Every person needs help when they’re suffering.”

“He needed help? How did you know?”

“He was crying. You could tell he was suffering just by looking at him,” he said plainly, like it was the most obvious thing in the world.

“But—but…” I sputtered, then sighed. “The rest of us ordinary people can’t understand that way of thinking.” Even as I said it, I felt pathetic.

“You’re a good man,” Boogiepop suddenly said.

“Huh?”

“I think I know what Miyashita Touka sees in you.”

“Please don’t say things like that with her face. When I meet her tomorrow, I won’t know what to do…” I said, realizing that this meant I had completely accepted Boogiepop as an independent existence.

Boogiepop made a strange expression. Beneath the low brim of his hat, his left eye narrowed and the right side of his mouth twisted upwards. It was a very asymmetrical expression that Touka herself would never make.

“Don’t worry. I am me, and she is herself.”

Later, I wondered if that expression was a strained sort of grin, but at the time, it baffled me. It was a sort of grin that seemed both sarcastic and somewhat diabolical at the same time.

I never did see him smile, though.

 

4.

 

After that, it became routine to join Boogiepop on the roof every day as he “kept watch.”

“I’m not really part of my class anymore,” I complained to him.

“You aren’t taking exams?”

“No, my father knows someone who owns a design firm, so I’ve been working there part time. He said that I had good sense and that I shouldn’t bother with college. That I’d be better off just starting to work for him directly.”

“The boss’ favorite craftsman, then.”

Touka had once said, “Are you sure? Sounds risky to me…” but Boogiepop sounded impressed.

Happily, I enthused, “Exactly, a craftsman. That’s what a designer is, really. We make what we’ve been asked to make.”

“Seems like you’ve got both feet on the ground,” Boogiepop said, sounding almost jealous. He lived half in some unearthly realm that only he could see.

“But Miyashita thinks it sounds dangerous.”

“She would. I don’t know her all that well, but there are far more girls who shun romantic men than there are those who are attracted to them.”

“Really? I mean, romantic?” It was an embarrassing word.

“I have no such hopes, but I believe humans need some sort of dream. Am I wrong?” Boogiepop always looked especially serious when he said things like this.

“I dunno,” I muttered.

“When you have no dream, when you can’t imagine a future, that means something in this world is flawed. Unfortunately, it is not I who will battle that flaw, but you and Miyashita Touka,” the self-described defender of the world said, staring into the distance.

Based only on his words, and on his outfit, it was impossible to think of him as anything, but a clown. After all, he had a woman’s face, but he talked like a man.

But if he was a clown, then I wanted to be a clown, too.

 

***

 

Being with him, talking with him, I could see no traces of Touka anywhere. What had happened to her to make him appear?

“When did you first come out?” I asked, one day.

“About five years ago. Miyashita’s parents were fighting, considering divorce. Her uncertain feelings at the time may have produced a stubborn creature like me. But I, myself, was far too busy fighting a killer that was stalking the streets to really pay much attention.”

I had a hunch which killer he was talking about. Five years ago, a serial killer had murdered five girls, and hung himself when it seemed they were about to catch him. It was a very well-known story, so it made sense for it to be incorporated into his delusion.

“Miyashita’s mother sounded like she knew about you…” I trailed off.

“Mm, she’s seen me a few times. We’re talking back in Junior High, after all. Miyashita Touka was not exactly free to move around. She even caught me climbing out the window once.”

“Must have been surprised.”

“She was hysterical, which caused me no end of trouble. She locked me in the house, so I had to knock the woman out to make my escape. Danger was approaching, after all.”

“Seriously?” No wonder her mother was freaked. It also explained why the Miyashita household didn’t let her have a phone in her room.

“After that, I suspect Miyashita Touka was dragged off to a psychologist, but I can only speculate. I never appeared.”

“She didn’t show any…unusual signs?”

Since the condition was almost unheard of in Japan, the doctor probably didn’t believe a word of it.

“Probably not. I imagine they had their doubts about the mother, though. After all, her parents were having marital problems at the time. But apparently, the whole fuss caused her father to blame himself and make amends. Things settled down after that.”

“Hmmm…” This reminded me of something from the book I’d read. Not a multiple personality case, but a manic-depressive girl. At school, she never spoke a word to anyone, but she was always bright and happy at home. Her parents and grandparents were apathetic and cold, and she desperately tried to brighten up the gloomy atmosphere. Unfortunately, the stress was too much for her, and its effects started to manifest externally. Her behavior grew stranger and stranger, until finally she was taken to a doctor and the truth came out. She was treated, her family repented, and the house became a much more peaceful place. This sort of “peace making” psychological disorder is apparently referred to as “the Trickster.”

For some reason, it sounded a lot like Boogiepop to me.

“So,” I said, and explained all this to him.

He made that strange expression again. “Miyashita Touka may well see it that way.”

“But you’re still here, even though that situation is over. Why? You never come out at home any more, right?”

“Right.”

“Then why?”

“I can’t explain it. I simply have my duty to fulfill.”

“You’ll just disappear when this ‘danger’ is over?”

“Yes. I will be a little sad to go this time, though. I won’t be able to see you again.”

This surprised me.

“You won’t…?”

“Right. Miyashita Touka will be here, of course. I imagine you prefer her.” His shoulders slumped a little.

I couldn’t think of anything to say, so I remained silent.

The two of us stared quietly up at the evening sky.

Boogiepop began to whistle. The tune was fast and bright, his breathing skillfully alternating fast and slow, but it was a whistle, so it sounded rather sad somehow.

I remembered that Touka couldn’t whistle.

(A suppressed possibility…?)

Even as her boyfriend, I suppose I was suppressing some part of her.

This thought weighed heavily on me.

He finished whistling, and I applauded. “You’re good. What song is that?”

“Overture to the first act of “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.”“

“Of what?”

“The most flamboyant piece the noisy, romantic, old composer known as Wagner ever wrote.”

“Classical? Hunh. Thought it was rock…”

“You’d have preferred “Atom Heart Mother”? I tend to like the old music,” he said, narrowing one eye.

All of our twilight ramblings passed in this fashion.

 

5.

 

One day, Kamikishiro was gone. She just stopped coming to school.

I didn’t know much, but it seemed that she had run away.

“You’re kidding?” I said as I heard the news.

“Really! The teacher told us. She hasn’t come home,” one of the girls in class said calmly.

“Why? Why would she run away?”

“I don’t know. That girl hardly ever talked to us. I bet she thought her pretty face would let her get by in Tokyo or something,” the girl snorted.

The girls in class were much less expressive than Kamikishiro, who was always laughing and joking.

“B-but…she had good grades. She looked like she was ready to pass the entrance exam for the college that she wanted to go to, right?”

“You sure know a lot about her.”

“What, did you have a thing for her, Takeda-kun?”

“It’s not like that. Still…” I started to say.

The leader of the girls in class, Sasaki, said quietly, “I think I know how she felt. She just…wanted to escape.”

“Escape? From what?” I asked, surprised. Kamikishiro had two boyfriends, one a first year, in the other a second year. I wondered if she was escaping them.

But Sasaki meant something else. “You wouldn’t understand, Takeda-kun.”

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t have exams. How could you possibly understand the pressure?”

I had no defense against that argument.

“Right, you can’t understand.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

The other girls joined in, almost accusatory.

The other students weren’t watching us directly, but they weren’t not watching, either. They just sort of sat around us, flipping through their vocabulary flashcards.

“I’d run away if I could. But I can’t. We’re not as irresponsible as Kamikishiro,” Sasaki said very coldly.

Everyone nodded.

Not one of them appeared to be the least bit worried about her.

“…When you see a fellow human crying,” I heard Boogiepop’s voice whisper in my ear.

The teacher arrived. We stopped talking and went back to our seats.

I was barely able to sit through class.

The guy in front of me was studying something else. Everyone was only in class for their transcripts; all of them were certain that their test scores were far more important than learning itself. Even the teachers agreed, so they just lectured tediously, never calling on anyone, never asking if there were any questions.

Why the hell were we even here?

What had happened to Kamikishiro? Had her cheery exterior been a lie? There had been I thought it was, but I hadn’t expected her to be the sort of girl to just up and run away.

 

For those of you who know no tomorrow.

 

But even so, I was just like the people around me. I knew nothing.

I hadn’t even known that Touka was possessed by this Boogiepop guy.

I didn’t listen to the teacher for the rest of class, and I sure as hell didn’t take any notes. For all my complaints, I was even less serious about this than the people taking exams. Without any purpose, I just sat there stewing.

 

***

 

That day, Boogiepop wasn’t waiting on the roof.

“…………”

I waited for him a while, but eventually the sun set, and I had to give up and go home.

 

***

 

When I climbed up to the roof the next day, Boogiepop was waiting for me, but this time in a girl’s school uniform; no strange costume.

“Hey,” he said, raising his hand. This gesture is how I knew it was him. Otherwise, I would have taken him for Touka.

“No costume?”

“Don’t need it any more. So she didn’t bring it with her.”

He had explained once before that Touka would unconsciously carry it around with her, but I hadn’t ever thought anything of it until now.

“What do you mean?”

“The danger is over,” he said flatly.

“Eh?”

“Everything’s finished, Takeda-kun.”

“W-wait! That’s so…”

“That’s all there is to it. That’s the way I’m made. When the danger is gone, I disappear. Like bubbles.”

“The danger…weren’t you going to save the world? It hasn’t been saved at all!”

“But my job is finished. What you mean by ‘save’ is not my job,” he said, shaking his head quietly.

“But you said you were going to fight the devil that lives in this school!”

“I did. I’m not the one that killed it, though…”

My mouth flapped wordlessly. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. But…but…that’s…”

“Thank you, Takeda-kun,” Boogiepop suddenly bowed his head. “I enjoyed my time with you. Until now, I had never done anything, but fight. You’re the first person I could really call a friend. Perhaps you only spent time with me because I’m part of Miyashita Touka, but I had fun. I mean it.”

“………”

I suddenly realized just how much I liked him.

I’d liked him since we first met in town.

And not because he had Touka’s face.

Everything I wanted to say but couldn’t express…he could and would at the drop of a hat. That’s why I liked him so much.

“Don’t go.”

“Eh?”

“Don’t go anywhere. You’re about the only friend I have. I’d really like to keep meeting you,” I hung my head, almost whispering. I may have been crying.

Boogiepop made that face again.

“That’s not true, Takeda-kun.”

“It is!”

“You simply aren’t connecting with the world around you right now.”

I stopped breathing.

“Miyashita Touka’s worried about you, too. Don’t let yourself think you’re the only one who’s worried.”

“But… But what about you? If you just vanished without anyone the wiser, wouldn’t that make you sad?”

“You’re the wiser, aren’t you?”

“But I’m…”

“I’m afraid you and Miyashita Touka have your job to do, just as I have my duty. You two have to make your own world. You don’t have time to waste belittling yourself,” Boogiepop said curtly.

There was nothing left for me to say. I hung my head and stuttered, “B-but…”

When I looked up…there was nobody there.

Startled, I raced across the roof.

But there was no sign of him anywhere.

Just like the first time I saw him, he’d vanished in the wind.

 

***

 

When I came down the fire escape, I found Miyashita waiting for me at the bottom.

I could tell instantly that it wasn’t him. When she looked at me, she smiled.

“You’re late, Takeda-senpai!” she said, in a tumbling voice.

“Eh…”

“You told me to wait here? And then you show up late, you big meany.”

I was taken aback. Then, it hit me.

She doesn’t know anything.

She doesn’t even notice that she doesn’t know. Her memories are automatically corrected.

That explained it.

She had automatically created a reason for her to be here.

“Ah, uh… S-sorry. I bumped into a friend.”

“On the roof? Were you called out by the school thugs?”

“Does our school even have any?”

“Good point,” she laughed.

Suddenly, I felt a great affection for her. “You got cram school today?”

“Yeah, at five.”

“I’ll walk you to the station.”

She looked surprised. “Leave school together?”

“Hey, I’m on the discipline committee.”

“You sure?”

“The gate guards are all my kouhai. They’ll let us by.”

I didn’t let her squirm out of it, but we didn’t hold hands or anything.

Niitoki was watching the gate. For some reason, the school’s problem child, Kirima Nagi, fresh off from suspension the previous Friday, was standing next to her.

She was slim and tall, and all the guys said she was as pretty as a model, but she looked a little harsh to me.

She was the polar opposite of Niitoki, and I was surprised to see them acting so friendly towards one another. When they stood next to each other, they looked like sisters with years between them, or perhaps a mother and child who were closer in age.

“Oh, senpai,” Niitoki said, smiling despite seeing her classmate Touka standing next to me.

“Hey,” I grunted.

“Hmm. So, you’re Miyashita Touka,” said Kirima Nagi abruptly, suddenly standing right in front of her.

“Y-yes…”

“I’m Kirima. Nice to meet you,” she said, thrusting out her hand. She sounded more like a man.

“Hey!” I said, butting in, but Touka bobbed her head and took the offered hand.

Kirima Nagi made a wry smile that reminded me of Boogiepop, and walked on by.

While we were still stunned, Niitoki said, “Come on now, senpai, Miyashita-san. Run your cards through.”

We did as we were told and exited the school.

The road was covered in fallen leaves.

“These maple leaves look so beautiful when they’re falling, but once they’ve fallen, they’re just a mess,” Touka said, walking carefully to avoid getting them stuck to her shoes.

“Mm, but they’re still lovely when they fall.”

“That your opinion as a designer?”

“Not really.”

“I’m jealous of you, you know,” Touka pouted as she suddenly started stomping through the leaves.

“H-hey…”

“I’ve got to take a quiz on idioms today. I hate it.” The leaves squelched beneath her feet as if she were tap dancing.

“You say that, but—”

“But I’m still going to college,” she interrupted, still keeping her face turned away from mine, slopping through the leaves. “No matter what you say.”

“What I say?” I couldn’t remember saying anything against it.

“You went and decided what you were going to do all by yourself. You’re all confident now. Like you’re snickering at the rest of us.”

“That’s what…” I was about to say, Everyone else was doing, but she looked up at me seriously, and I bit my tongue.

“That was pretty stressful, you know. I thought it was going to eat me alive. But I’m over that now. Finished with it.”

She looked up.

I was surprised.

She looked just like Boogiepop.

“To tell you the truth, senpai, I remember standing you up that Sunday.”

“Eh?”

“But I wanted to mess with your mind a bit. Sorry,” she said, and bowed her head.

Her movements were Touka’s. There was no hint of Boogiepop.

(It can’t be…)

Her anxiety had called out Boogiepop?

Was that the ‘devil in the school’?

Does that mean—that I had defeated it?

She had told me of her worries through Boogiepop, and she no longer needed to be afraid. The “danger” had passed.

I stopped in my tracks. My eyes were wide. Touka was staring at her shoes. “They’re all dirty now,” she said.

She giggled then, sheepishly.

Boogiepop had said he had no dreams. He never laughed.

“Eh heh heh.”

I looked at Touka’s pretty, cheerful smile, and thought, Boogiepop can’t do that.

It’s our job to laugh.

 

Interlude

 

Backing the story up a little…

 

Somewhere between day and night, in a dim, gloomy room, a girl lay on her side, without a stitch of clothing on her. She wasn’t moving.

The Manticore stood next to her.

The room was silent.

Slowly, elegantly, it stooped over the fallen girl.

It brushed aside the girl’s hair, and kissed her on the forehead.

It moved down to her nose, then her chin, neck, chest, stomach, and abdomen, licking each of them, leaving a thin blue trail. Everywhere its saliva touched changed color.

When it had licked the girl all over, the Manticore moved its mouth away.

The girl’s body began to change.

All over the surface of her skin, snap, snap, thin cracks tore open.

“…………”

The Manticore watched in silence.

At last, the girl’s body crumbled inwards, like a mud sculpture left in the sun.

A purple smoke rose into the air.

The Manticore sucked the smoke into its mouth.

The smoke rose and rose, but the Manticore never stopped breathing it in, like a fish tank with the plug removed, sucking it all away. Its throat moved, swallowing it down.

When it had swallowed the last puff, the Manticore ran its tongue over its beautiful, lipstick red lips.

A drop of liquid slipped from the corner of its mouth and rolled off its chin. This drop of liquefied smoke was the color of blood and flesh.

There was no other trace of the girl, or of the smoke.

Oh ho ho!

Oh ho ho!

Oh ho ho ho ho ho…!

In the darkness, the Manticore laughed.

Her name was ancient Persian, and it meant “Man-Eater.”

That delicate laugh bloomed like a morning rose, triumphantly extolling its evil.