3

The patterns carved into the stone-paved hill are connected to the mysteries of the world

The next morning, I was at my usual meeting with Hinami.

“I heard what happened from Mimimi. So she told you she likes you?”

“Yes. Sorry I kept it from you.”

Everything was in the open now.

I placed my hands on my knees and straightened my back, ready to receive my lesson.

“Well, I guess you were hiding it for her sake…”

“Uh, yeah.”

She pressed a hand to her head like she was sick of me. “I wish you’d told me. It affects the assignments I give you…and I was going to find out at some point anyway.”

“Y-yeah, I know. Sorry.”

Unaware of what was happening, she’d told me to talk to both girls about their types—if I’d done that with Mimimi, it would’ve been a disaster. And now Hinami knew anyway.

“So Mimimi said she has feelings for you… Hmm.”

“S-surprising, I know.”

“Yes,” she said, like that was obvious. “It is. It happened sooner than I’d expected.”

That was confusing.

“Y-you kinda sound like you’re not surprised about the confession, though?”

She widened her eyes in mock bewilderment. “I don’t just sound that way; I feel that way… You and Mimimi have spent quite a bit of time together, and you’ve got good chemistry. It was definitely in the cards.”

“C-chemistry?”

Hinami nodded. “She falls for your type easily.”

“Wh-what’s that mean…?”

I didn’t get it. Mimimi, the bright and cheerful girl who could do anything, was a good match for a bottom-tier character like me?

“…I’d like you to think about that on your own. You should be able to figure it out with a little reflection, and the process will help you think like a guy who’d be attractive.”

“O-okay…”

If Hinami said so, I probably had all the information I needed to come up with an answer…but I had no idea what it might be.

“But anyway, if she already said she likes you, then all the tasks I just gave you are pointless for her.”

“Th-they are…?”

Hinami nodded. “Which reminds me, I never fully explained the point of the assignment, did I? Although, I think you can probably guess. Any ideas?”

I reflected on what she’d given me—a dating-sim event map with three goals.

Yeah, I think I know.

“…To get closer to them, right?”

Our current conversation indicated as much, too.

“Generally speaking, you’re correct. More specifically, the point is to make these two girls aware of you and increase your likelihood of success if you do ask them out.”

“Ah, okay.”

I kind of knew that instinctively. This assignment was more obviously focused on romance than any she’d given me in the past.

For some reason, she sighed before continuing:

“Okay, next question… In a dating sim, if your affection for a certain character reaches the required level, then all you need to do in order to enter that character’s route is complete the key event, right?”

“…Uh-huh.” My response was a bit timid; there was something hostile about her tone.

“Do you think there’s any point in completing the rest of the event map, then?”

Ah, right.

Hinami was in her quietly angry mode.

“Um…w-well, as long as you’ve got enough affection, you don’t need to, really…unless you’re doing a speedrun or a hundred percent or something…”

“You see?” She glared at me silently. “So you made me give you an extremely inefficient assignment.”

“I-I’m very sorry…”

All I could do was throw myself on her mercy. I did honestly feel bad. I’d kept the confession secret so I wouldn’t upset Mimimi, but ruining Hinami’s carefully thought-out assignments wasn’t good, either.

She sighed. “Well, as long as you understand.”

The tension suddenly drained from her shoulders, and she smiled slightly. Her expression was a huge relief to me, and my spirits lifted. I swear she did this kind of thing on purpose…

“All right then, I’m going to give you a new assignment based on this information…or at least, I’d like to.”

“So you’re not going to?”

Knowing Hinami and her hard-ass approach, I’d been assuming she would give me a much harder task and then tell me I could go to hell because it was my own fault.

“Yes, you can just continue on the same course. But you’ll need to focus on Kikuchi-san.”

“That makes sense.” I nodded.

Since the point of the assignment was to help a girl know me better and like me more, doing that with Mimimi definitely felt wrong, even if I couldn’t fully explain why.

“Of course, it’s fine if you complete the map for Mimimi, too.”

“Huh?” I said, confused.

Hinami smiled boldly. “After all, the goal is to make her more aware of you.”

“Which is why it’s pointless, right?”

Helping her know me better hardly seemed necessary. She’d already told me how she felt, so we were a bit past that stage.

“You don’t get it, do you? The reason you make them more aware of you…”

She poked me in the middle of my forehead with her pointer finger.

“…is that you’ll become more aware of them, too.”

I was in a state of semishock, thanks also to the sensation on my forehead. “…Oh.”

“Is that good enough for you?”

“Yes, more than enough.”

Now that she’d said it, it made sense—I mean, her assignments were usually designed to affect me, so the idea that this was meant to affect how I saw Mimimi and Kikuchi-san made even more sense than the reverse. But was it right to go forward knowing that?

“I want you to focus on filling in the map for Kikuchi-san, but if the timing feels right or you want to give it a shot, you can try to work on Mimimi’s map, too. Please move forward along those lines.”

“…It’s half up to me, then?” I asked, nodding.

Hinami smirked. “You seem to prefer taking on challenges when it’s something you ‘want to do,’ after all.”

“Y-yeah…”

She raised one eyebrow and laughed. Why did I feel like she was pulling my strings? Even when I was allowed to choose my own challenges, she was ultimately the puppet master.

“I understand,” I said.

“Okay. Keep up the hard work.”

And so, still a bit off-balance, I started toward the second goal on my event map.

* * *

I was in the classroom, pulling various junk out of my bag to get ready for the day, when I heard a voice I didn’t usually hear in class say my name.

“…Tomozaki-kun.”

When I turned around, there was Kikuchi-san. She was looking up at me shyly.

“What’s up?”

Was something wrong? It wasn’t unusual for us to talk one-on-one, but she almost never approached me in class first thing in the morning.

“Um…good morning.”

“Oh, uh, morning.”

Even our usual hello had turned into a less familiar greeting.

“Uh, what’s wrong?” I asked.

She pulled a stack of papers out of the paper bag in her left hand.

“Huh?”

Oh…

“You already finished it?”

“Y-yes…”

It was the revised version of the script we’d talked about the day before. She was going to emphasize rawness and realism over simplicity and ease of understanding, leaving Alucia as real as she already was and bringing Libra and Kris to life a little more—and she was already done.

“Wow. Didn’t you have to change a lot of the dialogue?”

“Oh, um, yes. A lot of the changes were minor, but I think I redid all the dialogue…”

“A-all of it?” I asked, louder than I intended.

“Was that bad?”

“Oh, no, definitely not. But you were so quick. We only talked about it yesterday!”

Even though the play was only twenty minutes long, there was a lot of text. Probably twenty or thirty times more than any of the short compositions I’d ever written. And she did it all in one night?

She smiled shyly.

“…It was just so much fun. When I’m focused, the time flies.”

Her tone was quiet but full of passion. I hadn’t heard her talk like that much in the past.

She stared down at the papers in her hand.

“The characters are moving around in my head, and I need to find the words to capture them before it’s too late. Once I start, I can’t really stop…”

“Wow…”

Her face was shining as brightly as a ray of morning sunlight. I couldn’t help getting all warm and fuzzy just watching her.

But then her expression turned uncertain.

“It’s…a little weird.”

Her eyes were slightly moist. She made me think of a fairy who was afraid she would be banished from the human world.

I could never call her weird.

“No, it’s not! I think it’s amazing. You really have a gift.”

“…A g-gift?” She stared at her hands, then laughed, like she was hesitant to accept the compliment. “N-no way!”

She flapped her hands with a mixture of embarrassment and happiness. The gesture struck me as so adorable that I had to say more.

“No, I seriously think you do! I’m not an expert on this stuff, but as your average everyday reader, I really liked it.”

“Y-you did…?”

“Oh yeah, definitely.”

“O-oh…”

When I pressed the point a little, she gradually began to accept my compliments. Why not take it further? She was always so modest; it would be good if she could at least be confident about this one thing.

“You not only wrote something this good, but you also edited the whole thing in one night. It’s amazing. Most people couldn’t do that.”

“Th-thank you…”

I could practically hear the smoke of embarrassment puffing from her ears, so I let up on the compliments. Her face was a little red, too, which was making me embarrassed myself. It wasn’t like I’d lied, but I still felt guilty.

“Okay then. I’ll read this today,” I said, and she lit up.

“Great!” she answered cheerfully.

To me, those five letters were like the twang of a koto heralding the arrival of all the good fortune in world.

“…Huh?”

Suddenly feeling someone’s eyes on me, I looked around and realized that several people were staring at us in surprise. Well, Kikuchi-san hadn’t spoken that loudly, but it was unusual for her to sound so cheerful. Even I hardly ever saw her this excited, so to someone who’d never seen this side of her, it must have been a shock.

The curiosity had spread to a considerable radius around us; everyone wanted to know what had happened.

Since I was the one who suggested we perform Kikuchi-san’s play, people must have guessed we were friends…but the current scene was probably still a surprise.

I glanced behind me, and that’s when it happened.

“…Ah!”

“…Ah!”

How many times had we done this? My eyes awkwardly met Mimimi’s, and I reflexively looked away. But this time, I also felt like she’d caught me embarrassing myself.

Were we going to spend the rest of the day awkwardly crossing paths like this?

“B-Braaaaain!!” she called, more nervously than usual.

She walked to us, waving her hand, and stood in front of Kikuchi-san and me. Okay. She’d been moving steadily back toward normal interactions since the previous day, but why was she was coming over right now?

Both the girls I’d said I was interested in were standing in front of me at once. What a crazy situation. I didn’t know which one to look at, but while the rest of me froze, my heart was racing.

Mimimi glanced back and forth between the two of us, then raised her hand energetically. Kikuchi-san was obviously floundering at the unexpected situation.

“Brain! You and I better have some meetings soon, too, or else we won’t be ready in time!”

“Meetings…?” I asked, before realizing what she meant. “Oh right! The comedy routine!”

I’d almost forgotten we were supposed to do that. From Hinami’s assignment to the script meetings with Kikuchi-san and the awkward situation with Mimimi, there was just so much going on, I hadn’t had time to think about it. And now that I was thinking about it, I was getting worried. We only had a little over two weeks left.

“Yes, the comedy routine! Did you forget? Huh? Huh?”

She poked her finger into my shoulder hard. Hey, stop that! Even if she was acting normal, given how focused on her I was right now, her attack hit me extra hard. It was like every nerve in my body had suddenly gathered in my shoulder. I couldn’t think about anything else.

“I didn’t forget; I was just busy.”

“I know, you’ve got a lot going on! Huh? Huh?”

“Hey, stop…”

What do I do now? In my current mental state, there was no way I could get my mind off the reality that Mimimi was touching me. I mean, she had told me she liked me, and yesterday—heck, even a few minutes ago—we couldn’t even make eye contact. And now she wouldn’t stop poking my shoulder. My data-processing center was overloaded, all my blood was in my shoulder, and it was about to explode. How did she shift gears so fast? Normie adaptivity?

“Um, so when do you want to meet?” I asked, making a strong effort to ignore the sensation in my shoulder and move the conversation along in a natural manner. But I was still burning with awareness. My shoulder. Her finger.

“Well…,” she said, taking another step toward me.

And now she was poking me again while standing super close. Honestly, what was with the sudden change? Her big round eyes were right in front of me, right above the straight line of her nose. The line from her neck to her chin was as pretty as a doll’s, and even from this close, all I could say was that she was extremely cute. Well, I could also say my heart was beating extremely hard.

“Oh, but, Brain, aren’t you also the director?”

“You mean the script assistant?”

“Yeah, that!”

Mimimi seemed to have the idea in her head that I was the director, but should we go with that? As far as I knew, I was just support.

“Well, to tell the truth, I do have a lot to do… We’re still not done with the script.”

“Hmm, sounds rough. Well, don’t worry! I’ll find someone else if I need to!” She grinned and pointed in the air.

“…Okay, yeah.”

I think it’s human nature to want to help out when someone says something like that…but realistically, it’d be hard for me to put much time into it. I was okay at the moment, but soon, rehearsals would be starting, and I’d probably have more festival-committee work to do, too. Uh, wait a second, am I going to be able to handle all this?

All the same, I tried to think of a compromise.

“For now, let’s just assume I’ll do it and get together anyway. If it turns out to be too much, we shoulder…I mean, should just hand over whatever we’ve figured out to someone else.”

“Okay, good idea. I’m on board!”

Despite my fixation, I managed to move the conversation along smoothly. It was odd—I was so nervous before we started talking, but once I started riding the conversational wave, maybe I could stay afloat.

“Okay, so I have a script meeting today after school…”

“…Oh, okay.”

“Should we meet up tomorrow then?”

“Yeah, sounds good!”

The conversation between Mimimi and me bounced along at a rapid clip while Kikuchi-san watched and made little flustered noises.

Oops, I guess she got left behind a bit. I was used to this speed, but when Mimimi and I talked, the pace was fast even for normies. Kikuchi-san would be drowning in it.

Or so I thought—but Mimimi suddenly turned to Kikuchi-san and smiled.

“Do you mind, Kikuchi-san? I know you need him for the play, too.”

“Oh! Um, y-yes, it’s fine!” she sputtered, obviously startled by the sudden question.

“Ah-ha-ha. Don’t be so surprised!”

“Oh, s-sorry, thank you…”

She looked back and forth between the two of us, blinking in embarrassment. Her small-forest-animal aura transcended the world we lived in, and if I’d had a handful of sunflower seeds at that moment, I’m sure I would have given her every last one.

“Poke!”

That’s when Mimimi took her pointer finger and suddenly jabbed Kikuchi-san’s snow-white cheek.

“…Fyooii?”

A strange sound escaped Kikuchi-san’s mouth, which had taken an odd shape thanks to Mimimi’s finger. She blushed, realizing how she looked. What the hell was Mimimi doing?

“Wh-wh-wh-what…?”

I’m sure being touched like that was extremely unusual for Kikuchi-san. No wonder she was surprised; normal people don’t do that. Mimimi’s just weird.

But Mimimi completely ignored all sense of propriety and kept poking her white finger around the crimson-tinted expanse of snow.

“Nyeh-heh-heh-heh!”

“Fwa-ha-ha?!”

“Come on now.”

Mimimi’s laughter was so unpleasant that I had to stop her. Kikuchi-san was bordering on terrified, and I was already a little afraid myself.

“…Oh! What’s wrong with me? Kikuchi-san is so cute, I lost my mind…”

“I feel like you’re always losing it…” I sighed.

I think I know what happened. Mimimi has a thing for tiny, cute girls like Tama-chan, a category to which Kikuchi-san definitely belongs. Quick! Run, Kikuchi-san!

Kikuchi-san stood there at a loss for words, stroking her cheek with her mouth half-open. She was blinking her eyes very noticeably.

“A-are you okay?

“Oh, um, I think so, but I don’t know what just happened…”

“Don’t worry. I don’t, either.”

“R-really? I thought it meant something…”

“Ah-ha-ha, no, I don’t think so.”

“I-it doesn’t…?”

I tried to reassure her in a calmer, slightly slower tone than I’d used with Mimimi. Why did the crappy character have to be the one keeping this interaction going? Bridging the gap between two polar opposite girls was kind of a hard job for me.

Mimimi watched the two of us talking and tilted her head curiously, as if this was somehow mysterious to her.

“…What?” I asked.

She widened her eyes like I’d caught her off guard. “…Oh, um, nothing!”

“Huh?”

“Okay, I’d better get going! See ya later!”

“Huh? Oh, okay, bye…”

Before I could finish, she ran off to the back of the classroom. What the heck just happened…?

Kikuchi-san watched her disappear, completely perplexed.

“I feel like a storm just blew through…,” she murmured, still rubbing her cheek.

“Mimimi’s always like that…”

“I-is she?”

And thus ended the encounter between the angel tribe and the Mimimi tribe, with the Mimimi tribe vanishing into the mist. I, the translator, was exhausted.

* * *

That day at lunch break, I stayed in the classroom alone.

I was incredibly impressed.

“It’s so much better…”

I was reading the manuscript that Kikuchi-san had handed me this morning—the latest version of the play, with the characters redrawn.

“Aha, I see what you did there!”

I was sitting at my desk, eating a sandwich and reading, which was unusual for me these days. My years as a loner had prepared me well for doing something I wanted to do with or without other people around. Plus, I was a pro at mumbling just quietly enough that no one could hear me. Pretty impressive!

“…It’s not just the characters that she’s changed…”

That was a surprise.

Based on our conversation the day before, I thought she was mostly going to focus on reverting Libra and Kris to their more realistic selves from before.

But as I read, I realized she’d drastically changed other parts, too, so that the second half of the plot was now almost completely different.

“Yeah…I can see Kris doing that.”

Despite all the changes, nothing felt wrong.

A better way of viewing it was that when she adjusted the personalities of the characters, their actions also changed, and when their actions changed, so did the plot, like a line of dominoes. It was like by changing the characters to fit the actors, she’d breathed new life into them.

However she did it, the story had become even more beautiful.

Libra, the locksmith’s son, and Alucia, his childhood best friend, were exploring the castle one day. There, they stumbled on a hidden garden where a young girl named Kris had been imprisoned to care for the flying dragons. Libra was then condemned to death to cleanse the dragon they’d met of his “impurity.”

To prevent his execution, Libra and Alucia became temporary siblings and were given the task of caring for and educating Kris. The script was unchanged up to that point.

But from there on out, it was different.

Kris was an orphan who had been taken in by the castle to care for the dragons. Had she come from a farm family, a knight’s family, or a slave family? No one knew. For as long as she could remember, she had lived in the gardens with the flying dragons. She had never seen the outside world, let alone left the castle. That was her tragic life.

In the gardens—was everything she needed.

A soft, fluffy bed. A clean fountain. A warm bath. Beautiful, costly flowers chosen by the royal gardener. Peculiar trees, one of each variety collected from around the world. She could read any book she liked, as long as it was a myth or a fairy tale, and of course, the food she was served every day was the same as what the nobles ate.

But there was nothing else.

No family. No friends. No school. No ocean. No forest. No horizon. No animals other than the dragons.

And no happiness or sadness, not in the true sense of the words.

She was constantly lonely, but she’d never felt anything else. She had no way of knowing if it was even truly loneliness.

The force that transformed her safe, distorted, enclosed world—was the arrival of Libra and Alucia.

The first major change in the script was Kris’s reaction when Libra and Alucia arrived in the garden.

In the initial script Kikuchi-san gave me, Kris welcomed the two of them happily, maybe because she guessed they would free her from her solitude.

“There are humans in the world…other than me? Tell me, strangers, what are your names? I am Kris.”

She might have learned from books the custom of introductions, and she had clumsily copied it: asking their names, then telling her own.

It was a sign of her curiosity toward the outer world, as well as her honest nature.

But the new version was different.

The first thing Kris said when Libra and Alucia came to the garden was this:

“Wh-who are you? Why are you here…?”

Kikuchi-san had brought Kris’s wariness and fear to the forefront.

Of course, Kris probably did feel a twinge of the happy expectation of freedom that Kikuchi-san had depicted in the first version.

But more than that, she feared change and the unknown.

Kikuchi-san had created a true-to-life portrait of the emotions of a young girl who had spent her whole life alone.

She possessed both fear and curiosity, creating a very real contradiction within her character.

Her depiction of Libra had changed dramatically, too.

He was still an insatiably inquisitive boy who found it easy to get close to people. The big change was in how she revealed those characteristics.

In the first version, he was more of a hero type, and his ability to get close to people was depicted simply through his friendliness and good communication skills.

He stuck his nose in everything, made friends easily, and never let a situation stagnate. You could call him one version of the standard main character.

But that wasn’t true of the new Libra.

He still had enough inquisitiveness to poke around the castle without permission and the ability to get close to people—but the way she depicted these qualities was a little different.

Instead of smoothly making friends at every turn, he was awkward and failed a lot. But because he didn’t give up and kept on confidently trying again, he naturally made friends over time. He’d become a relatable character that you loved, faults and all.

If I were to name one similarity in the way she’d changed both these characters, it was that she’d emphasized their weakness and clumsiness. Kris feared change, and Libra was awkward.

That was human nature as Kikuchi-san saw it, I was sure.

But when it came to Alucia, Kikuchi-san had taken her strength to a further extreme.

In the first version, when Alucia and Libra got to the garden, Alucia immediately connected the alleged “impurity” of Libra’s presence with the fact that flying dragons naturally detested impurities, and she guessed that Libra would be executed. That was why she suggested they run away and pretend nothing happened, but the guards showed up and caught them.

The new version, however, took a different turn.

Alucia still made the same connection. But the action she chose in the moment—was now to break the wings of the dragon.

If the dragon lost its ability to fly because of an impurity, the palace would cleanse this impurity by executing the person who’d caused it. Libra would be killed.

But if the dragon lost its ability to fly by another method, there would be no reason to execute him.

Her logic was both correct and wrong.

It went without saying that harming one of these dragons was still a serious crime. But what if Alucia, the king’s daughter, did it “accidentally”? Chances were low that she would suffer the death penalty.

Alucia weighed the options almost instantly, and in order to save Libra, she began running toward the dragon to break its wing.

Just then—either because he’d guessed her whole plan or because he’d simply sensed something unsettling in her expression, he grabbed her arm and blocked her from moving forward.

“What are you doing?”

“Let me go. I don’t think you’ll understand, but if I don’t do this, they’ll kill you. Please. Let me do it.”

Libra refused to budge.

“No.”

“Just let me go. I have to break its wing.”

“I knew it. I won’t let you. You’ll die otherwise!”

“Don’t worry; I’ll be fine. I’ll say it was an accident. And I’d have to do much worse for them to execute a member of the royal family.”

“I still won’t let you.”

“Why not?”

“Because even if they don’t kill you, Alucia will die!”

As he said that last line, the guards arrived and dragged away the two trespassers.

After that, the plot was generally the same as in the first version.

Alucia rescued Libra from execution through a near-threatening negotiation with the adults, the two of them became “brother and sister” and were charged with caring for Kris, and their unique relationship began…

My mouth stuffed with a bite of my breaded hamburger sandwich, I lost myself in the story.

It was like a fairy tale, but the depiction of human weakness gave it a slight edge. Andi did the same thing sometimes—his fans called those moments “dark Andi.”

Maybe it came more naturally for Kikuchi-san to create dark, Andi–style characters than it did to copy his usual soft atmosphere. This version wasn’t just better than the first—its depictions of people were even sharper than in the story version, and I couldn’t put it down.

Eventually, the focus shifted to the relationship between the three young people in the garden.

Libra was in charge of bringing Kris her food and the books she requested.

Alucia was in charge of tutoring her, because Kris couldn’t attend school.

Of course, the two of them didn’t stick to their assigned roles. Libra sometimes talked about the books with Kris, and Alucia sometimes taught her things that weren’t in the schoolbooks, like how to make flower garlands. They were like friends, like family. Or perhaps like the caretaker and teacher they were officially supposed to be.

Their relationships couldn’t be easily described with a single word.

Kris liked to read.

Well, accurately speaking, she had no other way to pass the time in the garden. Her only other pleasure was to make crowns from the many flowers there, like Alucia had taught her. Aside from that, all she could do was read the books Libra brought from the castle library.

But because she could easily read a few books in a day, she burned through most of the fairy tales and myths in the library within a few months.

So the next stories she tried—were Libra’s tales of the outside world.

“Actually, the fastest dragons are the giants. People tend to think they move slowly because they’re so big and dumb, but each step they take is huge. They’re like…boom, boom! And they’re incredibly fast.”

“Wow! Tell me more!”

“I hear some institutes have been using their kinetic energy to make magical energy. The magicians say it’s a huge development.”

“Amazing! Hey, do you know how to use magic?”

“No way! I’m a locksmith’s son… The most I can do is unlock stuff.”

“Ah-ha-ha! You mean…by using one of those mechanical things?”

“Exactly! You’re sharp!”

“Don’t make fun of me! Of course I know that.”

“But seriously…with one of those, I can go lots of places and see lots of things. It’s all I need.”

“Huh…”

“You don’t believe me?”

“Of course I do! So your ability to unlock things is a very…”

“Very what?”

“A very wonderful kind of magic!”

Libra told her things she could never read in fairy tales or myths—things about real humans.

About how they lived and fought and loved. And sometimes died.

Kris lived in the same world as them, but Libra’s stories were the most familiar and unfamiliar she had ever heard.

“Kris! Alucia won the grand prize at the Magic Arts Tournament!”

“Really? Is it true, Libra?”

“I wouldn’t lie about that! She really is amazing…”

“She certainly is! Let’s have a surprise celebration at my next class!”

“That’s a great idea! Let’s do it!”

“Of course! I’ll make the most beautiful garland I’ve ever made!”

“Okay, I’m counting on you! And I’ll… Well, I can’t do anything, so I’ll just celebrate!”

“Ah-ha-ha! …Actually, that might be what she wants most of all.”

“Huh? You think so? I’m betting she asks me for a magic carbuncle or something.”

“Hee-hee. She might, but…”

“What do you mean?”

“…You don’t know?”

“No.”

“…Oh.”

The way Libra talked about her, Alucia seemed like a very serious, incredibly hardworking person.

But Kris got a slightly different impression from their classes together…

“Okay, Kris, did you do your homework?”

“Yeah. But there was so much! You’re the worst!”

“I am not. This is all for you, you know.”

“Is it?”

“What? …Is there something you’d like to say?”

“I mean, if this were truly for me, I think you’d teach me about the outside world instead.”

“Hmm… Okay then. Kris.”

“Yes?”

“In the outside world, there’s a kind of butterfly called a swallowtail. Do you know what a butterfly is?”

“Uh, I think it’s a kind of bug, right? Like this?”

“That’s a roly-poly! Don’t pick it up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Listen, you can have two bugs, but if they’re different species, they’ll be completely different.”

“But all we have in here are these.”

“I know. That’s why you need to study.”

“Do I?”

“If you want to hear about the outside world, you need some basic knowledge first.”

“Maybe you’re right…”

“So first, we study. Understand?”

“Yes, ma’am. I think you’re just buttering me up… At least I know what a butterfly is now!”

“Now, please open up scroll number forty-one.”

“Hey, are you listening? Uh-oh, I think I really bugged her this time…”

“Scroll forty-one!”

“Oh! Yes, of course…”

Alucia was rational and intellectual, never leaving herself vulnerable to attack. But Kris knew that beneath it all, she was kind.

As Alucia served as a teacher and Libra as a caretaker, the three of them grew closer and closer together.

Which is to say—

A chuckle escaped me as I read. I knew Kikuchi-san had added jokes because Tama-chan would be playing Kris. She knew how to give people what they wanted.

Something else was cracking me up, too.

It was pure coincidence, but Libra’s childhood friend, Alucia, was exactly like the real Hinami.

She was aggressive, arrogant, confident, and efficient in everything she did. And she got results.

In her lessons, she was merciless with her logic—exactly like the Hinami I knew. The hints of playfulness and occasional glimpses of her exhaustion and humanity were different, but that was unavoidable. Hinami’s level of strength felt more like fiction than reality. Why was the real person less real than the fictional one?

My guess was that Kikuchi-san had imagined what Hinami was really like and based her character on that. On the surface, Hinami was the delicate, perfect heroine, but Kikuchi-san must have figured out that something different was hidden underneath. I was chalking the pinpoint accuracy up to coincidence, though.

The next plot twist in the play hinged on the flying dragon.

These dragons grew up faster than humans and lived longer, becoming mature at around ten years of age. Of course, there was some variation, but it was said that almost all dragons could fly by the time they were thirteen. On the flip side, if they couldn’t fly by then, it was assumed there must be something wrong with them.

For example, an exposure to impurity.

The dragon that Kris was raising—turned thirteen that year.

“Why won’t you fly, my dear?” Kris murmured as she stroked the dragon’s wings. “Your wings have turned beautiful colors, and you’ve grown so big. You really ought to be flying by now.”

Her voice quivered with anxiety—with fear that it was her fault.

Three conditions were believed to be necessary for a dragon to fly.

One: The dragon had grown rainbow-colored scales with antigravitational properties.

Two: It had developed muscular strength that was adequate to support these wings despite their antigravitational force.

Three: It did not have any impurities.

When a dragon had achieved the first two conditions but still could not fly, everyone at the castle assumed that impurity must be causing the problem.

In other words—there was no choice but to cleanse the impurity. And so a movement emerged, pushing for the execution of Libra. The conflict around Libra escalated, and the drama unfolded.

But these were relatively minor. What really stayed with me was what happened after this drama was resolved.

Kris and Libra were talking.

“Kris, I might have figured out what the impurity is.”

“Really?! What do you mean, Libra? That’s a major discovery!”

“Yeah…”

“…Why do you look so sad?”

“…Kris. Flying dragons are very intelligent. You know that, right?”

“Yes. Even ordinary dragons are smarter than humans, and the flying ones are especially magnificent, aren’t they?”

“Yeah. Ultimately, humans are dependent on dragons, but we aren’t the only ones getting something out of the relationship. You could even say they’re playing with us.”

“Is that connected to the reason this dragon can’t fly?” Libra looked over to the dragon, which was napping by the water’s edge.

“Dragons—can see into the hearts of humans.”

“…They can?”

“And they are kind. They never forget the person who raised them, and they do everything they can to make that person’s wishes come true.”

“…All right.”

“Are you starting to understand now?”

“I’m not sure…”

“Kris.”

“Yes?”

“It thinks—that you don’t want to fly.”

He had revealed the weakness in Kris’s heart.

The garden had everything.

But—it also had nothing.

That’s why she was so bored, lonely, and curious. She’d wished she could leave.

But then she met Libra and Alucia.

They’d talked about all kinds of things, brought out all kinds of feelings in one another.

Now she had something more than the garden.

And her fear of entering the unknown world outside had taken over, more than her desire to leave the garden and soar across the open sky.

Everyone shared that same fear of taking a step toward something new.

She was more or less satisfied with her present reality; if she changed it, she might find something even more wonderful—but she also might find something more painful and trying. And once she took that step, she might never be able to come back. She was terrified of taking flight toward somewhere new.

Only one thing could be tying down the dragon’s wings: Kris’s own heart.

As I read Kikuchi-san’s script, I was hooked. There’s no other way to put it.

She had used a fairy-tale fantasy to reveal the weakness of a girl who knew nothing of the world. It really did bring to mind dark Andi, with its keen observations of human nature set in a dreamy world. But only Kikuchi-san could have written this particular theme in this way.

“…Yeah.”

That was why I wanted so badly for this play she’d poured her soul into to be a success.

Now everything in me was hoping for it.

* * *

After school that day, I went to the cafeteria with Kikuchi-san.

“So these are just my personal impressions, but…”

Kikuchi-san hunched her shoulders.

“…I thought it was fantastic. Even better than the short-story version.”

“R-really?!”

I nodded. “Yeah. When Alucia tried to break the dragon’s wings? I did not see that coming. It was so awful, I had to laugh!”

Kikuchi-san giggled. “I know. I couldn’t help smiling to myself when I thought of it. I was thinking, Would she really go that far?”

“Ha-ha-ha, yeah.”

We looked at each other, still smiling.

“Oh, and the part that stuck with me most was when we find out why the dragon can’t fly. Kris’s fear was, like, so real… I was thinking, yeah, this is how people feel.”

Kikuchi-san smiled meaningfully. “I thought you might.”

“…You did?”

She paused for a moment before answering. “I can’t say any more… It’s a secret.”

She brought her finger to her lips.

“Wh-what?”

“Hee-hee.”

This mysterious side of her was oddly attractive, and I didn’t want to ruin the effect by asking any more questions.

“Oh, also—what happens after we find out why the dragon can’t fly! I really liked that part, too.”

Kikuchi-san clapped her hands together. “Oh, I love that scene, too!” she exclaimed happily.

After Kris realizes that she doesn’t want to fly, Libra makes the following proposal.

“Let’s ride the dragon together and go see the outside world.”

It’s not that Kris doesn’t want to see the world—she’s just scared and lonely. Afraid to do it by herself and fly off into the unknown all alone. That’s why she wishes she could stay on the ground.

But…

“Kris is just afraid to see the world by herself, isn’t she?” I asked very directly.

Kikuchi-san took a quick breath in, then smiled warmly. “Yes. She was curious about the glittering world outside…but her fear outweighed her curiosity.”

“But if Libra was with her—she felt she could do it,” I said.

Kikuchi-san was happy to answer. “She wanted to take flight, but her fear held her back. She wanted to see the world with her own eyes, but the sights were just too scary to see alone. Libra is the one who leads her out of the garden. It’s a comfortable prison, but it’s so lonely, too.”

She was looking straight at me the whole time she spoke, her voice full of emotion.

“Yeah, that scene hit me really hard. It was like I could see it.”

Kris mounts the dragon with Libra, and they see the world from high above.

The sun feels warmer up there, and the scenes below are livelier than anything she’s ever seen.

Kris is so affected by the colors of this unknown world that she becomes dizzy.

“Kris would have felt so grateful to Libra for bringing her out of the garden,” Kikuchi-san said.

“Yeah?”

She nodded slowly.

“That world she’d been seeing all her life—that gray world—she would never want it back after she saw everything else.”

Her voice was so full of emotion, it was like she’d been the one on dragonback.

“…Huh?”

Something she’d said grabbed my attention—and a second later, I connected the dots.

Of course. That phrase she’d used just now.

It was the same phrase she’d used once before when we were having a deep conversation.

The gray world.

I realized something—or maybe I’d already started to realize it while I was reading the script.

A young girl withdraws into her own world; a young boy suddenly bursts into that world. The boy tells the girl about the outside, and she becomes curious about it. But she’s too scared to take the first big step.

I didn’t know if she did it on purpose or by chance.

But the story of Kris…seemed to trace exactly the same arc as Kikuchi-san’s own story.

Kikuchi-san’s experiences, her past thoughts, her present thoughts—they were all a part of Kris herself. I couldn’t avoid that conclusion.

When I thought back on the story from that perspective, the pieces fell into place one by one.

Kris had spent her days reading books in the garden.

Kikuchi-san had spent hers reading Andi books in the library.

Of course, there were lots of other things in Kikuchi-san’s life, which was why I hadn’t spotted the link earlier.

But there was no question about it—Kikuchi-san existed vividly within the character of Kris.

In that case…

The boy who suddenly burst into the garden where Kris had spent so many years reading alone.

The boy who told her all about the outside world.

The boy who finally led her into that world—the character of Libra was…

“Oh…” I gulped at the sudden realization.

“What’s the matter?” Kikuchi-san peered worriedly into my face.

“Uh, n-nothing…”

I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t think my instinct was wrong, but saying it to her directly did not seem like a good idea.

“…About Libra…,” I asked, to make sure.

“Yes?” Kikuchi-san tilted her head.

“What’s he…best at?”

She thought for a second, then said, “He’s good at lots of things, like opening locks, but if I had to say what he’s best at…”

Then she finally said it plainly.

“…it would be saying exactly what he’s thinking.”

Well, there you had it.

“…Oh.”

If what I suspected was true…

…then this script wasn’t made up from scratch.

She’d poured her whole self into the characters, distilling each of her own experiences until they crystallized into this incredibly special story.

In other words…

…“On the Wings of the Unknown”…

…was the tale of Kikuchi-san herself.