12:01 P.M.

12:01 P.M.

 

My stomach growled loudly.

Embarrassed, I blushed. I was the president of the discipline committee; it was my job to be fussy about the details. But that didn’t mean I was required to get hungry exactly one minute after noon.

Boogiepop turned to look at me.

“Feeling hungry?”

“N-not really,” I insisted. But I was definitely feeling it. I’d been planning on grabbing a burger after turning in the cram school application, so I hadn’t eaten anything all day. Just the yogurt drink I’d gulped down before leaving the house.

“Hunger puts your nerves on edge. You should eat something.”

“I don’t have any food!”

Boogiepop produced a lunchbox from under his cloak and handed it to me. It was wrapped in a cute napkin.

“………”

It was clearly handmade. For two.

“Um, is this…?”

“Yes. Miyashita Touka made that to eat with Takeda Keiji.”

“………”

I stared down at it.

“I-I can’t eat this.”

“Food is food.”

“That’s not the point! Poor Touka…”

“Don’t worry. She’ll just have to deal.”

Don’t say that with her face.

I stood there with the lunch in my hands for a good minute or two, but finally sighed, opened the lid, and split the chopsticks.

It bugged me that the onigiri were all different sizes and the sides weren’t chopped properly, but the flavor was pretty good.

“It’s good,” I said, quietly.

No response from Boogiepop.

But with food in my belly, I calmed down a little, enough to start wondering if I should really be sitting here eating at a time like this.

We’d come out of the eaves, and were somewhere near the entrance. The ground around the bench we were sitting on was covered in people. Not dead or anything, just asleep, but in this darkness the sounds of them groaning or muttering in their sleep felt like I was listening to the grumbling of the dead. It was…creepy.

Were they all meeting him? The King of Distortion? Like I’d met Saotome Masami?

“………”

I started to pick up the third onigiri with my chopsticks, and then sighed.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Boogiepop replied.

That was all I’d been able to get out of this shinigami for a while now. He didn’t seem inclined to take further action.

“But you’re here because you sensed something, right? Don’t you have any idea what that is?”

“If it was that easy, I wouldn’t be here at all.”

I gave up and went back to the lunch.

But Boogiepop went on.

“The one calling himself the King of Distortion has no destructive power. All he does is draw forth some sort of response from people. This isn’t like the last time.”

“Last time… you mean with the Manticore?”

“They were on the brink of creating something that would have devoured mankind. That was the real problem. That pitiable monster was beside the point. But this time…it seems like the real danger has not yet begun.”

“…?”

He made it sound like what he said was obvious, but I didn’t follow at all. I doubt Miyashita Touka would have, either.

Just what was going on under that hat?

Once again, my obsession with clarifying things had me on edge. There was far too much I didn’t know about the figure in front of me, far too much I might never know.

There are definitely similarities to multiple personality disorder, but…

After everything was over, I’d asked my friend Suema Kazuko about it. She knew a lot about abnormal psychology. According to her…

 

“Multiple personality disorder? Like how?”

“Um… just, like… their personality suddenly changes and…”

“I can’t say for certain. But Niitoki-san… there is one thing I know for sure. Nearly all instances of multiple personality disorder are fake.”

“Hunh?”

“Lies and acting. Almost every time.”

“B-but…not every time?”

“Sure. But we have no way of ever proving that. Multiple Personality Disorder is nothing more than a theory. One created by Stevenson for Jekyll and Hyde. If something like that existed, it would explain why people suddenly change. The theory was mostly popularized in America, where lawyers trying to make a name for themselves used the idea to bolster claims their clients were not guilty by reason of insanity.”

“………”

“Niitoki-san, even you have at least one secret, right? Can you really say you’ve never had to put on a performance to keep that secret? A performance that might make you seem very different from your usual self? But claiming that as a distinct personality is a quite a leap.”

“I-I get that, but…”

“Human hearts are really very flexible. You know how in melodramas they always go on about not lying to yourself? We do that all the time. To the point of inventing a new personality. But ultimately, that’s still that person’s actual personality, to my mind. It just seems obvious that personalities and human minds have far more sides to them than people tend to think.”

“B-but, isn’t it true they sometimes don’t know they have another personality?”

“Mm, that’s the thing. That’s the problem. They claim they don’t remember at all. But how can we prove that?”

“Hunh? Um…”

“Give them a lie detector test? All that measures is stuff like how much you’re sweating. Useless on any decent actor. People have fooled them by sweating when telling the truth, and faking calm when they’re lying. Measure their brain waves? Only thing that shows with any degree of reliability is if you’re awake or asleep. So what? Pray to God?”

“Hmm.”

“Multiple Personality Disorder is a kind of Xenon’s paradox. Maybe they’re lying. But if we try to prove they aren’t… well, that’s easier said than done. Obviously, someone bad at it will get caught quickly. Even in courts, it gets rejected most of the time. But if it’s really elaborate, then why go that far to hide anything? That’s another condition all together. That makes it even harder to figure out if it’s actually MPD. After all, there’s clearly something wrong with them.”

“My head’s spinning.”

“In my book, Multiple Personality Disorder is a product of desire—the desire to have an action we took be the work of someone else entirely. When they catch compulsive shoplifters, they often claim it wasn’t them, their hands just did it on their own. Just like MPD.”

“Hmm, I see.”

“Everyone feels like that sometimes. And that makes us want to believe MPD is real. I think. And in that sense, I guess you could say it really does exist.”

“………”

 

Suema’s ideas definitely made sense to me. But that meant Boogiepop wasn’t the result of MPD. Miyashita Touka was always Boogiepop and was just acting like she wasn’t. Or Boogiepop was pretending to be super normal high school girl Miyashita Touka.

It really didn’t seem like that was true, though…

I stared at him a while. Then Boogiepop started whistling.

The same song he’d whistled last time. The Overture to the first act of “Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg.”

A cheery tune totally inappropriate for a darkened room full of unconscious bodies.

“You’re good,” I said.

Boogiepop looked amused.

“Second time I’ve been told that,” he said.

“Who was the first?”

“Takeda-kun.”

Of course that got to me.

“Senpai knows about you?”

“Mm.”

“What does he think?”

“He’s a good guy,” Boogiepop said. With Miyashita Touka’s face, that felt meaningful.

“I bet you’re a pain in his side.”

Boogiepop’s response wasn’t denial or a smile, but a strange, asymmetrical expression.

“Probably.”

I wasn’t sure what to think. I mean, we were romantic rivals. At least, his other side was.

“Why does Miyashita-san love Takeda-senpai?” I found myself asking.

“Well, I’m not really sure. But I doubt her reasons are any different than yours.”

“Oh.”

I didn’t know what else to say.

What was I supposed to do with that information?

But the shinigami blithely ignored my confusion.

“Why do you love Takeda-kun?” he asked.

“I-It’s hard to put into words…”

My head was spinning. I just couldn’t talk about this with Miyashita Touka’s face looking at me. How could I? Should I just get mad at him? But I didn’t feel at all angry.

“…because he’s nice, I guess. He’s helped me out a lot. When we were both on the Health Committee, he took on a lot of tasks I was supposed to do…”

The more I talked the more pathetic it sounded.

“Sounds like him,” Boogiepop said, sounding impressed.

“Is that what Miyashita-san sees in him?”

“Well…I’m not even sure that’s why you actually love Takeda-kun, so I couldn’t say.”

“…what do you mean?”

“It all sounds like reasons you came up with after the fact. You found yourself liking him first, and then you found a way to explain it. However forced it may sound.”

He seemed oddly confident about his assessment.

“Y-you can say that, but…”

I didn’t have a “but.” I usually spoke my mind pretty clearly, but with Boogiepop it was always like pulling teeth.

“Well, what about you? What’s your opinion of Takeda-senpai?”

“I have no self. My thoughts on anyone are of no concern.”

“That’s cheating!” I said. Mad not at Miyashita Touka, but at him.

“I’m grateful to Takeda-kun. He’s the only one who’s ever called me a friend.” He made that face again, the lopsided one. “In that sense, perhaps I’m even jealous. Of you, and of Miyashita Touka.”

This caught me by surprise.

My jaw dropped. I must have looked really dumb.

Suddenly the entire Moon Temple shook. An earthquake? No, it didn’t feel right.

It was like something gigantic had tackled the building.

“Grrrrrrrrrrr…”

An awful noise, like the howl of a beast. It seemed both far away and really close at the same time; I couldn’t grasp the scale of the noise at all.

“…!”

Boogiepop scowled and stood up.

“Wh-what was that?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. He just ran off, toward the top of the building.

“W-wait!” I tried to chase after him.

But I heard something else from below. Something vibrating.

A cell phone?

I looked toward it. The phone’s owner was on his side, not moving…but his arm alone moved on its own, answering the phone.

“Yes? No, the chief said we should start handing out the stall food to everyone, so… Yes, understood. We’ll do that. Roger that.”

He hung up.

His voice sounded normal, but his eyes were closed the whole time.

Wh-what the…?!

What was that?

It was like he’d answered the phone without ever engaging his mind, on autopilot, or like…

“Like a second personality… Boogiepop!”

I called after him, but he was long gone.

“………”

I looked back down at the guy with the phone.

And froze to the spot.

The figures lying around me were no longer unconscious people. They’d been replaced with those twisted mannequins. The floor was covered with the grotesque creations…

“Ah…ah…?”

My ear caught a snatch of that song.

 

Dahhdadadan, dan da-dan!

 

“Custard Pie.”

“…eep!”

I crouched, terrified.

I’d already woken up, but…

That voice again, from behind me.

“He left at last. So…what were we talking about?”

The King of Distortion, wearing Saotome Masami’s face. Sitting on the bench we’d been on, smiling at me.