3 Nanane Kyoko - Aroma

3
Nanane Kyoko - Aroma

 

Nanane Kyoko called her talent Aroma. It could capture scents from the future.

However, she was lying to the other five.

She talked as if she was going to school somewhere, but in fact, she wasn’t going to school at all.

She’d refused to give her exact age, insisting only that she wasn’t twenty yet, but she was actually the youngest of them. She was tall enough that no one guessed the truth.

And the biggest lie she’d told was that she was from a normal middle-class family and lived nearby. Her family was a complete work of fiction.

 

***

 

Sometimes, when I see Mitsuo-kun looking all pleased with himself, I just get so mad.

I don’t hate him or anything. I just wish we’d met him a little later, is all.

Kasumi-kun and I were the first of our group to meet. Well, Koumoto-kun and Nozomi-chan had been a dynamic duo before, but this group of six started with the two of us.

And sometimes, I wonder…if it had stayed just him and me, would Kasumi-kun and I be…a little closer than we are?

I’m in love with him.

But no matter how many hints I drop, he just thinks I’m making fun of him, so I always end up laughing it off.

Sure, I’m not really trying to let him know how I feel. I just can’t bring myself to say it outright. To say, “I love you.”

 

The six of us used pagers to get in touch. All of our pagers were taken out in Koumoto Kouji’s name. He paid for them all, too.

We all had money now, but when we met we only had the kind of money kids our age have, so Koumoto-kun was really generous—at least, he spent a lot of time thinking about how we should stay in touch.

It had actually been really easy for Kasumi-kun and me—and Mitsuo-kun—to find Nozomi-chan and Koumoto-kun.

The three of us met up on a Saturday, and we hung out in the café by the station, watching the crowds, wondering if the other three Kasumi-kun saw would pass by. And they did!

“Oh! There,” Kasumi-kun said, pointing.

We looked. A boy and a girl were walking on the other side of the street. They looked less like a couple and more like brother and sister.

“Um, yeah,” Mitsuo-kun nodded.

I really couldn’t wrap my head around how his power worked, or what it could tell him, so I found myself asking, “You’re sure? Can we really trust you?”

And he got upset. “It’s true! I dunno how… I just know, okay!” he yelled.

“Shh, keep your voice down,” Kasumi-kun said. Too late. Everyone was staring at us.

“Uh… ahaha, sorry. Nothing’s going on, pay no attention to us,” I said, smiling at everyone and bobbing my head.

Everyone chuckled and went back to what they were doing.

Bright red, I whispered, “That was soo awkward! Mitsuo-kun, get with it!”

“I… I didn’t mean to…”

He was as red as I was.

Kasumi-kun said nothing. I followed his gaze.

The pair on the other side of the street were staring back at us.

“Yo,” Kasumi-kun said, waving.

The boy looked at the girl. She nodded.

And then they came over to us.

I knew they’d smell like Kasumi-kun, but it still surprised me when they did.

“Seems like you know us,” the boy, Koumoto Kouji-kun, said.

“Seems like you know we do,” Kasumi-kun said.

The girl—Tsuji Nozomi—looked at Mitsuo-kun. “I’ve heard your voice before. The same thing you just shouted.”

What she meant was that Koumoto-kun’s Whispering had captured the yell Mitsuo-kun had just let out. His partner, Nozomi-chan, had heard it and remembered his voice. They explained the details eventually.

But at the time I was just baffled.

“Why are we suddenly a group after all this time alone?” I said.

Kasumi-kun shrugged. “Each of us tried predicting something, and predicted we’d run into each other. Guess those predictions just overlapped.”

“Maybe,” Koumoto-kun said. “You seem level-headed.”

In hindsight, our biggest problem wasn’t that we had powers the world couldn’t accept, or that we got overconfident and tried to bite off more than we could chew.

It was all too easy for us to find each other, so we became friends just as easily. Everything we had, we got without any trouble. That was all.

That 120,000,000 yen was the same. The money itself wasn’t a problem. None of us were the type to turn the sheer size of that cash pile into a problem; we just divided it up like it was nothing. But it was just all too easy.

 

***

 

Sensing something approaching, ‘he’ awoke from standby mode.

As a weapon of destruction, he came equipped with hibernation functionality. In protracted battles of attrition or when ordered to lie in wait for an assassination opportunity, this functionality allowed him to survive for years without resupply.

“Something caught in my trap?” he asked under his breath. After years of isolation, he’d developed a habit of talking to himself, but these words were inaudible to anyone but him. His missions were invariably solo and he rarely had anyone to talk to.

He began to move, making no sound.

This was no jungle, nor a battlefield. It was an ordinary building in a normal city. The building hadn’t had much money poured into it; there were no high-tech security systems or anything like that, just typical low-cost construction.

He was at the top of a spiral staircase, the emergency exit. It was normally closed off. He’d laid a trap there, and waited.

The bait was 120,000,000 yen.

But no ordinary human would know it was there.

Only an extraordinary human would ever come here.

The sort of human monitored by the system that created him. The Towa Organization.

The type that knew things they should not. That did things they should not be able to. People like that were referred to within the Organization as MPLS, but he did not know the origin of that name.

They’re here.

Light broke the darkness. Someone flipped a switch below.

He was hiding in the shadow formed where the corridor from the emergency staircase connected to the main building, completely invisible from the stairs.

The footsteps came closer.

Three males, two females… all young. Mid-to-late teens…

Tiny variations in the echoes of their footsteps told him the heights and weights of those approaching, and even gave him a rough idea of any illnesses they might have.

He heard voices.

“Mmm, here! I remember this dizzy feeling.”

“I’ve definitely smelled this moldy, dusty stench.”

“So is it really here? This treasure or whatever? Mm, Koumoto?”

“I can’t hear my own power, so you’ll have to be the judge of that.”

“I know, but…”

“Man, these stairs are long.”

“You can wait here, Nozomi.”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

Few listening would understand what they were talking about.

He said ‘power’…

He nodded to himself.

This group had somehow predicted their own actions and known that they would come here.

Had they come because they’d known they would, or had they come because they thought they should? Had they predicted it, or had they bent the future to their will? That was a paradox, and one where the truth would never come to light.

Either way, it wasn’t his problem.

The problem was what he should do about them.

If they were dangerous, he had to eliminate them at once. If not, he had to apprehend them. To kill, or to capture…

He waited silently as the five of them passed by, never noticing he was there.

They found the bag resting on the floor above.

“Whoa!”

Cries of jubilation.

“Holy crap, it’s real… How much is there?”

“I guess this counts as treasure? Not exactly what I’d dreamed of. Very…real world.”

“Ah… Kasumi-kun, that was it!”

“Oh.”

“That’s the phrase I predicted?”

“So weird! Hearing your own words before you say them!”

“Now you get how weird I feel all the time.”

“You’re just a weirdo, Mitsuo-kun.”

“Don’t be mean!”

They were clearly excited. But they didn’t react to the money itself the way he’d thought they would. It was more like they were just enjoying doing this at all.

“But how is this here? I mean, there’s that story about someone with too much money throwing it away in a bamboo grove, but…”

“This doesn’t really seem ‘hidden,’ exactly.”

“Abandoned campaign funds?”

“The most boring origin story.”

He moved quietly, drawing closer. They were busy talking. None of them were looking at the stairs.

It’s a question of numbers… five is a lot. And they’re conspiring together. I have to treat them as a significant threat.

He made up his mind.

He would have to use enough force to disable them, and kill them if necessary.

Right…!

He got ready to leap, prepared to tackle all five at once.

And just then… one of them looked right at him. A tall girl.

Her eyes met ‘his.’

––––!

For a moment, he hesitated.

The girl frowned for a second and then did something he couldn’t believe.

“Ahhh!” she said, pointing right at him. With a smile that radiated pure joy, she exclaimed, “I know you!”

“Huh?”

He blinked, completely thrown off by this warm welcome. He had never once in his life had anyone smile at him.

 

***

 

When I yelled, everyone turned and looked.

“Oh, you’re right! It’s him!” Kasumi-kun said. He’d seen the newcomer in Mitsuo-kun’s eyes. We all knew his face from the sketch Nozomi-chan drew based on Kasumi-kun’s description. He was a boy with a very pretty face.

“Er, um…”

“You know about us, too?” Koumoto-kun asked.

“N-no, I, er…” he stammered, flummoxed. “Um, why are you…here? Is that money…yours?”

Mitsuo-kun burst out laughing. “Nope! It belongs to the six of us.”

“Six…?”

“Including you,” Nozomi said, smiling at him. She was normally pretty poker-faced, so when she did smile, it was really cute.

He blinked at us.

We went down the stairs and stood around him.

“Hate to spring this on you, but you’re one of us now,” Koumoto-kun said.

“O-one of you?”

“You sound suspicious, and I don’t blame you! But you aren’t like other people, are you? Isn’t that what brought you here?”

“Er…”

“No need to hide it!” Mitsuo-kun said, comfortingly. “We all have ‘talents.’ Mine’s called Baby Talk. Lamest name ever, right?”

“Mine’s Whispering.”

He looked around at us, mouth flapping like a goldfish.

“Uh… s-so you can all…tell the future? Like…”

“Yep,” Kasumi-kun nodded.

“Really?”

“If it wasn’t true, we wouldn’t be here, and neither would you.” Kasumi-kun shrugged. It was so like him to be blunt about it.

“So you’re all…friends?”

“And you?” I said, happily. “Want to be our friend?”

He looked surprised.

“Me? Your friend?”

“Is that bad?”

“N-no, just… I’m, you know… you can’t just trust me…” He hung his head, muttering.

We looked at each other.

And then all of us laughed.

“Wh-what?”

“Uh, you’ve got quite the sense of humor there, buddy,” Koumoto-kun said, grinning.

“Huh?”

“We can’t trust you?” Koumoto-kun said. “Don’t worry. None of us trust each other.”

“We all keep our private lives secret,” Nozomi-chan added. “You don’t need to tell us anything.”

“But…”

I winked at him. “But we’re still friends. That much we’re sure of.”

“Yeah.”

“Pretty much.”

Kasumi-kun and Mitsuo-kun chimed in.

“Friends…” the boy said, looking like a prisoner who’d seen the light of the sun for the first time in a decade.

“What’s your name? I’m Koumoto Kouji.”

We all gave our names.

“I… I’m…Yuu. Tenjiki…Yuu.”

He seemed highly embarrassed by this.

“That’s an adorable name! Kasumi-kun, you’re not the only one.”

Kasumi-kun scowled at me, but Tenjiki-kun just turned even redder.

 

***

 

And thus there were six of us.

A lot more happened before today—but really, nothing that’s worth mentioning.

Koumoto-kun was into helping people and had already saved a baby and called in a fire five minutes before it started—stuff like that—but me? I was just having fun.

We met up three days a week. There was no set schedule. If someone made a prediction, they’d let the rest of us know via the pagers. We mostly met up in karaoke rooms.

“Feels like a waste, though,” I muttered, one day.

“What does?” Koumoto-kun asked.

“I mean…we never sing!” I responded. “All this time in karaoke places, but…” I waved a hand at the machine quietly churning out some enka song. “Do you want to sing? I don’t really know any songs, but help yourself.”

“Anyone else?” Koumoto-kun asked.

“L-Leave me out of this,” Mitsuo-kun said, shaking his head. “I-I don’t like singing.”

“Tone deaf?” Koumoto-kun chuckled.

Mitsuo-kun went beet red. “I just don’t like it!”

“Me either,” Nozomi-chan said.

“Huh?” I straight up didn’t believe that. “But you’ve got a beautiful voice.”

“Yeah, sorry.” She glanced at Koumoto-kun. Was she checking his reaction? Koumoto-kun was too busy making fun of Mitsuo-kun to notice. I thought to myself, She’s only saying that because he said he wouldn’t sing. That made sense.

“Then, Kasumi-kun? Tenjiki-kun?”

“I-I don’t really mind, but…” Tenjiki-kun said, stiffening up. He was positively shaking with embarrassment. Nope, there was no way he was singing in front of us.

“D-don’t worry, I’m not forcing you,” I said and glanced at Kasumi-kun.

He was sitting in stony silence.

“Um…”

“They don’t got ‘em,” he muttered.

“Huh?”

“No Bob Marley, no Steel Pulse.” He sounded disgusted.

“Who?” Koumoto-kun asked, baffled. I was, too. I’d never heard either name before.

“Foreign music? I mean, ‘Bob’…”

Kasumi-kun ignored Mitsuo-kun’s question. “It’s a load of crap,” he spat. His tone was straight up hostile.

I was pretty taken aback.

“Wh-what, Mikage? What’s gotten into you?” Mitsuo-kun asked.

Kasumi-kun didn’t answer. “Look, I ain’t singing. It’s stupid.” He then glared at me like this was all my fault. I tried to think of how to respond.

“No need to take that tone,” Koumoto-kun said. “Nanane just thought it would be fun.”

“And I’m saying it won’t be.”

“Damn, dude…”

“L-Look, it’s fine, okay? Sorry I mentioned it.”

The mood was getting ugly fast.

“If I could sing I would, but… Sorry,” Koumoto-kun said, giving me an apologetic look.

“N-no need, seriously.”

Kasumi-kun sank back into silence.

We spent the rest of the day producing predictions that weren’t of any use at all and chatting about nothing until it was time to go.

As always, it was dark out by the time we left. After saying our goodbyes, everyone decided it was time to head home.

“Good night,” I waved to them and made it look like I wasn’t in any hurry as I waited for the others to clear out.

If anyone saw which way I went home, well…that could be trouble. My current crash site was right next to this particular karaoke place.

I’d been regularly changing where I slept the last few months--staying at apartments with weekly rentals, at business hotels, at twenty-four-hour saunas. I was tall enough to pass as a businessman if I dressed like a man and kept sunglasses on, so I was able to get a room just about anywhere without a second glance. I always gave my occupation as ‘freelance writer.’

I’d wager I was getting the most use out of that 120,000,000 yen. When we found it, I was scraping the bottom of the money I’d saved before running away from home. If we hadn’t found it, I’d have been sleeping outside.

Right now I was at a cheap hotel by the station. Not one of those hotels, but probably a hotel that was mostly used for that anyway. As long as you had money, no one cared who you were or what your purpose was.

But if any of them saw me going in a place like that…

So I hung around for a few minutes before slowly walking away.

The town at night smells murky, like leftover bits of the day. I felt like it was clinging to me.

I didn’t feel like getting dinner. We’d eaten a few snacks during our meeting, and I had no appetite.

“Argh…” I dunno why, but I felt really down in the dumps. “I’m a mess,” I muttered.

The hotel was a two-minute walk away. I’d only just arrived when a voice came from behind me.

“Yo, Nanane.” It was Kasumi-kun.

………?!

I froze.

Did he see me? Did he know I was headed into the hotel?

There was only one reason a high school girl would go in a hotel like this. Only one anyone would think of, anyway.

Crap. How could I explain this? What should I say?

I just stood rooted to the spot in silence. I could hear him coming up behind me.

“So, uh…”

“Wh-what?”

I swung around to face him. Like a jack-in-the-box, my heart was trying to leap out of my chest.

“Well…” he hesitated.

I was sure he was gonna ask what I was doing in a place like this. I almost blurted, “No, it’s not what you think!” but the words stuck in my throat. I whispered, “Ah…”

“It’s just… I’m sorry,” Kasumi-kun said.

I gaped at him.“For what?”

“For earlier. I got…pissed off.”

He wasn’t meeting my eyes, staring fixedly at something to one side of me.

“O-oh, that? Forget it,” I said, still trying to calm myself down. “S-so you just came after me to apologize?”

“Yeah, I dunno. You looked depressed, so…”

“I’m fine. Nothing wrong with me. Yeah.”

I was mostly just relieved Kasumi-kun hadn’t noticed where I was going.

“W-wanna get some tea? Not here, obviously,” I said, desperate to get him away from here.

“Not here?” he said, suddenly realizing we were standing outside a seedy hotel. There was only one reason a boy would be talking to a girl in a place like this. “R-right,” he nodded.

We headed to a café we often went to. Once there, I reassured him once again.

“Seriously, Kasumi-kun, you’ve got nothing to apologize for. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”

I took a sip of my coffee. It was cheap coffee, but I found the scent of second-rate blends much more relaxing than gourmet stuff brewed with the best beans.

“Nah, I was just taking my feelings out on you. I knew it wasn’t your fault. He stared at his hands.

“Well, what are friends for?” I asked. I guess I sounded a little sad, because he shook his head.

“Not that. You had no way of knowing. Just… once…”

“Once?”

He had my attention.

“Yeah, I used to have this friend. He really liked karaoke…used to make me go sing all night with him.”

“Had enough to last you a lifetime?” I said, not really thinking.

He shook his head again. “No, it’s just… he died.”

He said it so quietly it took me a moment to grasp his meaning.

“Oh…”

“He didn’t have any friends but me, really. No one else to ask. So I was always the one he dragged into it. But thinking back on it… I did the same shit to him.”

I sat in silence. Kasumi-kun continued, “He had nothing really going for him, nothing else he was any good at, so karaoke was the one bright spot in his life. He sucked at it, too… And then, before he ever got any better at it, he dropped dead, miles away from anyone he knew.” We sat in silence for a moment. After a beat, he went on. “So, like, I dunno, I just…can’t do karaoke any more. He liked it so damn much that every time I sing, I feel like I’m…praying for him. But even then, I just…”

On the table, his fingers wove together and split apart again.

“So it ain’t about you. Or the others. Nothing to do with you. So for me to get like that… I’m sorry.”

He finally looked up at me. And his face froze.

Because I was crying. Big tears streaming down my cheeks.

“Wh-what…?”

“Kasumi-kun… I’m so sorry,” I said, choking up. “Sorry, really… I didn’t mean to hurt you like that.” I wanted to sink into a hole. I can smell scents from the future, but can’t pick up on anything that really matters. I felt so horrible. I couldn’t stop the flood of tears. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“S-stop that! It’s like I did something to you, now…” Kasumi-kun stole a quick look around. But I just couldn’t stop myself. There was snot mingling with the tears and I must have looked a fright, but they just kept coming.

“L-Look, here, wipe your face.”

Kasumi-kun held out a handkerchief. I took it, but just held it tight.

“Argh, alright then,” Kasumi-kun grabbed a bunch of paper napkins from the table and started wiping my face with them.

I let him do it, like I was three years old again. Somehow…I wasn’t embarrassed at all.

 

***

 

If I’d run out of money, what would I have done?

Given up on this runaway thing? Gone back home, back to making meals for my mother and her new lover, since she can’t stop being a kept woman after flubbing the paternity suit?

Or would I have refused to ever go back there, and gotten myself a job in a massage parlor or a strip club or…one of those shops?

Or—and this idea was by far the most appealing—would I have wound up dead in a ditch somewhere?

But now, none of those felt real. None of them seemed like serious possibilities.

Except when the six of us were together, I’d spent months not talking to anyone else. Honestly, the times we spent together were the only thing that mattered anymore. We all said shit like, “Yeah, well, I don’t trust any of you,” but the one who said that the most was Kasumi-kun, and he could be so nice to me.

“I doubt I’ll live that long,” I said once, when we were all piled into a karaoke room.

“Why not?” Mitsuo-kun said, baffled.

“Just a hunch,” I said.

“You’re wrong, Nanane-san,” Tenjiki-kun said. “If we help each other out, we can get through anything. I’m sure.”

Those words sounded so genuine when he said them.

“You’ll help me out, then, Tenjiki-kun?” I asked, grinning.

“O-of course!” he said, nodding.

I was super happy, but I played it off as a joke.

“Kasumi-kun? Will you protect me, too?”

“Not if I can help it,” he said, grimacing. “Besides, I’ll die before you ever do.”

“There you go again! Talking like that…”

“You said it first.”

“I got no plans to let you win the futureless contest.”

“None of us have one.”

“Oh? Is that so?”

“We’re all in the same boat.”

“I can’t say I get it, but, like…” Mitsuo-kun shot us both a look. “Don’t that kind of talk scare you?”

“Not really,” Kasumi-kun said.

“Nope. Facts are what they are,” I said, laughing.

Mitsuo-kun scratched his head. Mitsuo-kun himself was the least likely of us to be scared by anything, I thought.

Then Nozomi-chan turned towards us and hissed, “Shhh!” Her finger was pressed to her lips. She’d noticed Koumoto-kun going into a trance. “He’s starting up. Quiet.”

We shut up, and waited.

Koumoto-kun had forbidden us from ever recording his whispers. He argued that recorded evidence could put him in danger of being discovered. That’s why he and Nozomi-chan had partnered up. Now the rest of us were his listeners, too.

His started shaking.

The sound he made was hard to describe, like the wind leaking out of his throat.

“…ough…is the purity good enough? Go-gon… not a problem… 100% pure… go-gon… one shot of this and anyone’ll be… go-gon …”

There was more than one person, and not just human voices—background sounds were getting mixed in.

“…can’t remember the last time it rained this hard. Where’d it even come from? Go-gon… you got what it takes to pay for this volume? … go-gon… of course… go-gon …”

And then, like always, it was as though a switch flipped and he was back to normal.

“So, what’d I say?”

“Uh…” I said, not sure how to describe it.

“Bad news, either way,” Mitsuo-kun sighed. “Probably a drug deal.”

“What? Really?”

“They were talking about purity,” Nozomi-chan said, frowning. “And a pretty big deal. They said ‘enough cash to pay for this volume,’ so not exactly a street corner deal.”

“Whoa, jackpot, huh?” Even Koumoto-kun looked spooked. “Can we narrow down where? Let the cops know?”

“Cops won’t be any use!” Kasumi-kun roared. We all jumped.

“Wh-what?”

“Those pigs don’t care what happens to people!” he yelled, his face bright red. “You report this, they’ll just try and figure out the route or whatever, making some shit excuse about letting them make the deal so they can follow it.”

This was so not like him.

“And while that bullshit’s going on, everyone they’ve sold shit to is getting strung out! We gotta do something, first!”

His hands were clenched, and his whole body was shaking. He was beside himself with anger.

I’d never seen Kasumi-kun like this. I didn’t know what to do.