Chapter 4 — A Hazy Phantom Gray in the Distance

1

A town stood up ahead. Stacks of vivid orange roofs piled together as the buildings stretched in clumps along the foothills of a mountain. The road we’d been on was just compressed dirt, unmaintained and littered with potholes. The tires sank fairly easily into them, and if we had sped up, it would’ve been a bumpy ride. As we approached the town, though, it turned into a paved path and the Kettle became much more comfortable to ride in.

The town had no fence or wall surrounding it, no clear demarcation between inside and outside. A handful of houses and old-looking huts just sort of gradually started lining up along the road, and then all of a sudden the scenery changed to crowded buildings like we’d crossed some invisible threshold.

“There’s...no one here,” Nito murmured, her forehead pressed against the window.

The homes on either side of us were mostly boarded up. The odd one or two had windows or doors broken in, revealing their interiors, but they were all dark. Despite all that, remnants of the lives once lived inside them clung to the homes. Even with no people around, the city had a certain—almost unpleasant—air to it of a place that people had recently lived. The buildings hadn’t yet fallen to the wind and rain, and it was too clean to call a ruin.

I pulled back on the throttle and dropped our speed, the Kettle slowing to almost a crawl. Looking out of the windows was almost like looking into a movie. The absence of all the people that you’d expect to be around in a town like this made the sight lose all sense of reality. I’d felt this same sense of unease multiple times before. It was a bizarre sensation of floating around off the ground, almost like vertigo. My head always went fuzzy when I saw this kind of thing; I could never fully accept what I was seeing.

I looked carefully around as if trying to find my bearings until my gaze suddenly stopped on a two-story building. It had a big pair of double doors, one of which had been knocked over. As we passed in front of it, the midday sun had illuminated the interior, showing that it had racks of clothes inside.

I stopped the car and pulled the reverse lever. The Kettle began to back up.

“Did you see something?”

“I’ve been wanting some more clothes. A nice shirt if I can find one.”

“The shirt you’ve got is great. It’s lived in.”

“Thanks for that.”

I kept my eyes on the mirror as I steered the car back and finally to a stop right in front of the store. I grabbed hold of the crank handle on the door and spun it to roll the window down.

“You’re not getting out?” Nito asked after a puzzled pause.

“Something seems odd.”

Though I hadn’t come across any yet, that didn’t mean this world had no people in it that would do us ill. The possibility remained that survivors would be lying in wait somewhere, particularly in a town like this. I wanted to avoid the risk of the Kettle being stolen, or of Nito being harmed.

I strained my ears but could hear nothing. A cautious survey of our surroundings also revealed no signs of anyone. Finally, I opened the door and got out. Craning my neck to look inside the building, I could see things like a thick coat and work wear on display.

“That’s probably not cashmere. You coming, Nito?”

“No,” she decided eventually. “Just bring me back something nice.”

“Keep watch then, if you would. Blast the whistle if anything happens.”

There were two steps leading up into the store. As I climbed them, the stairs creaked under my feet. Once I’d gotten over the broken door, I was inside. Racks of clothing formed narrow walkways. Wooden poles mounted above, just within reach, also carried clothing. The dim store was full of the scent of dust and musty cloth.

I picked up a nearby piece of clothing and found that it looked well worn. That wasn’t just from the passage of time—someone had worn the clothing before. I supposed this must have been a second-hand shop. It had a plethora of clothes. Finding stuff I wanted would probably be a big ask. I didn’t think I’d enjoy window shopping after too long.

Further inside I found a counter. It held a lantern, a metal box, and a huge tabletop sewing machine. There was cloth lined up on the machine and the needle was piercing through it, like whoever owned this place had just been sewing. The corridor going even further back past the counter probably led toward where they’d lived.

I circled around the counter, taking a deep breath.

A small stool stood in front of the machine. Sitting atop it was a mound of white crystals, and a yellow dress had fallen down to twine around its legs. Round-tipped shoes poked out from underneath the hem. The clothing lying there told me nothing about the person. There were no memories here, just a pile of broken crystal. No one was even left to grieve for them.

How on earth had these people’s lives just stopped one day?

I felt like a spike was driving itself through my temple and I suddenly lost the strength in my legs. Staggering, I put out my hand onto the counter. The crash of something falling rang out. When the almost anemic feeling had passed, I opened my eyes. The metal box had fallen onto the floor and its lid had burst off, sending coins and notes scattering out.

Right, money. Yeah, I need to pay Nito back... I thought vaguely. As I crouched and reached out for it, I heard a whistle from outside. In a flash, it sounded again and my hazy mind suddenly cleared.

I burst up, my legs holding my weight this time, and sidled quickly through the clothes, shoving my way through the last row of hangers as I sprinted out of the door. The sunlight stabbed into my eyes now that they’d become used to the dingy interior and I couldn’t keep them open, even in a squint. Shielding my eyes with my hand, I raced over to the Kettle.

“Nito!” I called, putting my other hand on the open window frame.

She was half-sprawled across the driver’s seat, gripping the whistle’s control knob. She stayed in that position as she looked up at me.

“Keisuke, look,” she said, pointing out of the windshield at the road stretching away in front of the Kettle.

The bright light reflected off the flagstones, washing everything in white and making even outlines hard to distinguish, but I could still see a person standing there. Eventually, I got used to the amount of light and could make out that the person was wearing a green dress that pooled on the ground. It was a woman.

“The witch?” I asked.

The figure standing there seemed so divorced from reality that it was all I could think of. It felt like she would vanish with the next gust of wind, standing as she was in the center of an utterly deserted town. Her long hair suddenly seemed to sway as she moved off to cross the road.

“Keisuke, let’s follow her!”

Nito’s yell brought me back down to earth. If that woman was the witch, then we had reached our goal. Even if she wasn’t, we could ask her for clues.

I pulled myself back into the Kettle and lifted the throttle.

2

We roved around the town searching, but—almost as if it really had been a dream— we couldn’t find the woman. The sun had finally begun to set and the shadows of the houses around us were lengthening. With no streetlights or house lighting, the town began to fall into complete darkness. There weren’t any trees or plants around either, so it was even more desolate than the nights in the forest. Everything just felt cold and lifeless.

I pulled up alongside a row of traffic bollards. There were no lights in the town, but the headlights of the Kettle revealed dirty flagstones and reddish-brown brickwork.

“I wonder where she went,” I mused.

“I think she’d have gone home,” was Nito’s eventual answer.

“Did she even exist in the first place?”

“Don’t say such scary things,” she admonished, glaring unhappily at me while wrapping her arms around herself in a hug. “She should be somewhere in the town. I don’t know if she’s the witch, but...”

If the woman we’d seen was indeed real, then Nito was right that she’d probably be in the town. However, we’d found no sign of her. The town was too big to just search at random by driving around it in a single car.

“Well, let’s look for somewhere to stop for the night.”

The sun was already well on its way down, and there wasn’t much time before it would be fully night. It was too late to properly set up camp; we’d gotten too caught up in our search. There were no rules on where we could camp, and we could have just set up the tent right where we were, but Nito didn’t look too happy about that prospect.

“We’re stopping in the town?”

“We can use the beds in some house, maybe? Though it might also be nice if we found an inn or something.”

Nito put her face against the window’s glass and looked up at the three-story apartment building next to us. When she looked back at me, there was a definite frown on her face.

“It’s...a little...scary,” she said, the words leaving her mouth slowly, one at a time.

“You slept in the mountains just fine though?”

“That was a different fear, or maybe just unpleasantness.”

I looked out of the window myself. I could understand how, with no lights or signs of life, it felt peculiar to be surrounded by so many man-made structures. Windows and doors lined the road in regular rows, but they were all pitch dark.

Back when I was a kid staying at my grandparents’ for the summer, I’d been terrified of the storeroom at the end of the second floor and of the looming closet. It had always felt like something was lurking inside of them. The actuality of whether something would come out or not hadn’t really mattered; even though I’d known that it was impossible, I still hadn’t been able to calm down.

I’d slept in plenty of abandoned villages and towns since then, but I still sometimes woke up in the dead of night, utterly convinced I’d felt someone going past the room I was staying in. Whether that was just the eerie environment getting to me or just me imagining things or what, it still meant I couldn’t get a good night’s sleep afterward. Nito was both unused to this and young, so she’d obviously be more sensitive than me.

I grabbed hold of the wheel again and put my other hand on the throttle.

“We’ll keep looking for the witch tomorrow. Let’s leave the town for tonight.”

“I’m sorry,” she spoke up after a few moments.

“I was a little scared too,” I admitted.

I sped up, holding the wheel, and started driving down the middle of the road. Abandoned vehicles stood cluttered along the roads, making them much narrower and in some places even impassable. I kept us to a moderate speed and progressed slowly, keeping a close eye on the road in front of us. We’d gone all over the town looking for the dress-clad woman, so I had absolutely no idea where we were right now, but I knew if I followed the road, we’d get out eventually.

The road narrowed abruptly and we came to a T-junction. Two potential paths stretched out to the left and right. Without any real thought, I pulled the wheel over to the left.

In the next moment, there was a huge crashing noise and the Kettle shook. For a second, it felt like we were floating, and then a hard shock of impact traveled up through our backsides. Panicked, I stepped on the brake while pulling back on the throttle. A drum of water fell from the roof past the windshield, hitting the ground with a thunk. Then everything went quiet; utter silence filled the car, except for the ringing echo in my ears that might well have been my imagination.

“Are you okay?” I asked finally.

Nito looked back at me with wide eyes.

“Just shocked.”

“Me too.”

The car had pitched forward, and about half of the windshield was now looking out directly over the ground. The flagstones were broken, revealing the dirt underneath. I must have just gotten the front wheels stuck in some kind of sinkhole without noticing. The Kettle’s headlights barely lit up the sight in front of us, but I could still make out a few other details: several of the drums of water had fallen from the roof carrier, and there was a drop of about half a meter from the car to the ground. The Kettle was sort of bowed forward, but I could feel that its back wheels were still on the ground.

I pulled the reverse lever and slowly lifted the throttle. The Kettle began to move back ponderously, but then I heard another crunching impact and hurriedly stopped it once more.

“Um,” Nito spoke, looking at me.

“Yeah...” I answered, looking fixedly out of the windshield with my hands still on the wheel.

“You heard that sound?”

“I did...”

“Was that... Just maybe...”

“You don’t need to say it. I’m thinking the same thing.”

“This is the first time I’ve ever wanted something to be my imagination this badly.”

I stayed still for a while, my hands remaining on the wheel as an uneasy silence filled the cab. Sitting there motionless wouldn’t change reality though, so I knew I’d have to make a decision and act. I twisted around and stretched to reach the back seat, fetching the lantern before opening the door.

“If I don’t come back, call the police.”

“What are the poleese?”

I didn’t answer, just took the slight hop down out of the listing car and stood for a moment on the ground. A warm wind was blowing through the twilit town. I closed the door and crouched, lighting the lantern, then stood again, lofting it into the air.

The Kettle was well and truly stuck. There was pretty much a vertical drop in the road, and the Kettle had grounded itself across it. If we didn’t shove something into the gap to make a slope, we’d never be able to get up out of the hole.

The connection between the Kettle and the auto-trike had taken the difference in level. The sudden drop had lifted the rear of the Kettle, which had broken the metal fittings between the two vehicles. The pole attaching them had warped, and me trying to force the Kettle back might have even been the cause of that.

I sat down and just gazed at the metal fixture. It was obvious at a glance that it wasn’t fixable. I’d quite clearly done something which could not be undone. The blood drained from my face as I rubbed at my temples. I heard a door open and close, and then timid footsteps coming toward me.

“Shall I call the poleese?”

I gave a rueful laugh at Nito’s question.

“I’d love to, even if I would get arrested for driving without a license.”

Even without the metal frame, I could probably use some rope to tow the auto-trike. It was precious to Nito, and full of her luggage, so I had to do something.

“Sorry,” I told her. “I should have been more careful.”

Nito was crouched across from me, her hands resting on her knees. She peered at me from within the ring of lantern light, on the opposite side of the metal fixture.

“You couldn’t have known the road had gotten this bad. I don’t think it’s your fault.”

Still, I should have paid attention to more than just the steering wheel. I’d let myself get too relaxed on the deserted roads. I couldn’t help but sigh. As things were, we couldn’t even leave this spot, let alone look for the witch.

I scrubbed at my face. What to do? I had never had this happen before. I’d never learned or been taught the way out of this kind of situation, so I didn’t know what to do. The world had already fallen; I wouldn’t be able to find someone to help, so I’d just have to think it through myself. The answer wasn’t just going to be lying around.

My head felt numb, and my mind was overcome by a strange swirling sensation. It would have been better if I were alone. If no one was with me then what I did wouldn’t affect anyone else. My failures wouldn’t matter, and I could choose when everything ended. Nito was here now, though, and I had a responsibility for her life. I hadn’t realized how simple, or how heavy, such a thing could be.

“Keisuke.”

The voice was right in my ear, and I shot up in shock. At some point, she’d come around and crouched next to me.

“Are you...okay? Are the poleese that scary?”

She was utterly serious as she spoke, and I couldn’t help but burst into laughter.

“Why are you laughing? How rude.”

She pouted and frowned at me. It must have worried her to see me slumped over and covering my face at a time like this. I couldn’t let myself go in front of her like that. I slapped my cheeks to get myself thinking straight again and then put on a smile.

“Of course I’m okay,” I said, before searching for what to say next and deciding on: “Let’s have dinner.”

I couldn’t think of a solution, and just sitting around like this would worry her. I wanted to take my mind off things and calm down a bit. While I wasn’t actually hungry, the actions of cooking were familiar and comfortable, so it would make me feel much better about things.

Nito looked lost for a reply at first, but eventually nodded. I moved toward the Kettle’s rear doors, which were near the ledge. The car was at an angle, but it wasn’t difficult to get things out. The crash into the sinkhole had scattered things all over the place though; after a bit of a tidy-up, I pulled out the box of cooking utensils and my backpack.

This situation was familiar to Nito, and she’d laid out the round groundsheet. Our surroundings were completely covered in a blanket of darkness, but the Kettle’s headlights lit up the area ahead of us and the lantern sufficed for the space directly around us. I poked my head back into the rear of the vehicle and dug around for some cans from the box stuck between the seats.

As I did that, Nito had gone down into the hole. Her shadow stretched out across the pool of light from the Kettle’s headlights. She approached a drum and checked whether it was empty. The first one apparently was and she carried it easily, putting it at the side of the Kettle. The second she heaved heavily up on, trying to lift it into the air with two hands but unable to move it.

“I’ll take over.”

“Sorry...”

“You’ll get back at this thing someday.”

I moved the drum over near the ground sheet and took my shoes off before stepping onto it, sitting cross-legged and getting out the Svea from the box. I lit it and put a frying pan on top, drizzling in some oil to warm. When I opened the round can I’d gotten from the Kettle, I found thick slices of fish that looked somewhat like mackerel inside. I put two of them into the frying pan and loosened them with a tap of my wooden spatula. They soon started to cook, a delicious smell wafting up off of them.

The tall, cylindrical can had whole tomatoes inside. I turned down the Svea a little and mixed them in with the mackerel before letting everything simmer. I opened the seasoning case and added some sugar along with a pinch of salt and a good helping of powdered stock. Once I’d roughly measured those three spices in by eye, I mixed them through the dish.

The juice from the mackerel and the tomatoes thickened eventually into a sauce and began to bubble. I retrieved some water from the drum with a pot and swapped that with the frying pan, turning the heat up. Light leaked out from underneath the pot and made the area much brighter.

A glance up revealed Nito was crouched with her arms around her knees, watching the water within the pot. I had no idea what the expression on her face meant. She might have been angry, or even depressed. I couldn’t blame her for either. I still wished I’d been able to do things better. I knew that regretting things now wouldn’t help in the slightest, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling.

Before long, bubbles floated up from the bottom of the pot, steadily increasing in number. I added a pinch of salt to the water before opening an oblong can. Inside was dried yellow pasta. One handful was a serving, so two handfuls would do for both of us. I lifted out that amount and broke the pasta in half—the noodles were too long to fit in the pot otherwise—then added it a bit at a time to the water.

There was no cooking time listed on the packaging like back home, so I had to decide how long and gauge the time on my own. I pressed the button on my watch to switch it into stopwatch mode. The pasta sank slowly to the bottom of the pot and the seething water calmed. As I watched, the bubbles started getting stronger once again.

“When I paint,” Nito suddenly said, “it never goes like I wanted it to.”

The topic was out of nowhere, but I guess Nito must have been sick of the silence.

“But you’re so good at it.”

“I’m just a beginner. I’ve painted enough that I know what to do to make them look good to other people, that’s all.”

Don’t put it so deeply, I thought with a twisted smile. I didn’t get what she was trying to say. Her paintings were utter works of art; they probably would look right at home in a museum. I supposed what she’d mentioned must be something only people involved with the art itself would understand.

“With oil painting, you paint over it from the top, and you can shave off the paint if you want. With watercolors, though, the more you paint over them, the dirtier the color gets. You can’t get the white of the paper back. Once you paint it, you’re stuck with it.”

“Sounds difficult.”

She nodded.

“When I was learning with mom, I did nothing but screw up. I sulked that I couldn’t do it right and threw things away before I’d finished them. When that happened, she used to tell me ‘there are no mistakes in painting, just surprises.’ I never used to understand what she meant by that.”

Nito paused and glanced up at me, frowning.

“It’s incredible when things go the way you want,” she continued. “But then you’re limited to your own imagination, and nothing unexpected will appear as you paint. You can make beautiful paintings, but that’s all they’ll be—just beautiful... I’m sorry, I can’t put it into words, but... They’re not mistakes, they’re surprises. And that goes for you too.”

That was when I finally realized that she was trying to make me feel better. She was using a somewhat roundabout example, like an adult might, and it just came out clumsy and indirect, but her kindness shined through all the same. I could tell how hard she was trying, even though she’d never done this before, and I couldn’t help but burst into laughter.

“You’re awkwardly kind, huh?”

“Is that supposed to be praise or criticism?” she asked, frowning more and glaring at me with a red tinge on her cheeks. “You only get one chance to answer.”

“Praise, of course.”

I was happy for her concern but also felt pathetic for making her worry about me. I imagined smacking myself on the back and saying that I couldn’t keep fretting in front of her. It had nothing to do with being older than her or acting as her guardian. No, it was the simple male instinct to look cool in front of a girl. Even that trifling thing showed its worth, making my heart feel shockingly lighter.

I mixed the pasta around in the pot with a fork. It had gone completely limp, taking on the water to grow heavy and glossy. I checked my watch and noted that it had been about the right amount of time. When I took one of the strands to taste test, it had a good bite to it.

I brought the frying pan with the sauce over and used the fork to scoop up the pasta from the pot into the pan. Once the pot only had water left in it, I put it onto the ground and set the frying pan back over the heat. I mixed it to cover the pasta entirely with the sauce. Once it had warmed up a bit, I took the pan off the heat and handed Nito a fork and bowl from the box.

“There we go, done. Pasta special with mackerel and tomato sauce.”

“I see. It seems tasty.”

She was still sulking like a kid as she took the utensils from me and almost stabbed the pan to dish the pasta up into her bowl. After a brief word of thanks for the meal, she rolled some pasta onto the fork and filled her mouth. Immediately, her eyebrows rose and her eyes went wide before closing in bliss. She let out an almost pained groan, her puffed-up cheeks moving as she chewed and swallowed. Then, she wordlessly let the fork clatter against the bottom of the bowl.

“Was it good?” I asked.

“It’s incredible,” she answered honestly, despite her anger, which made me laugh again.

I took some pasta for myself and ate a big forkful with plenty of sauce. The sharp spice and scent were ameliorated by the acidity and sweetness of the tomatoes. All together, it brought a new depth of flavor to the light taste of the canned mackerel. The pasta in this world tasted strongly of flour and wheat, so I wasn’t a huge fan, but in this case it went perfectly with the sauce. The more I put in my mouth, the richer the flavor became.

We ate, utterly focused on the pasta. To think that dinner could taste so good even with the world in ruins, sitting in a pitch-black and deserted town, our car having plunged into a hole next to us. It was such a simple truth, but I only realized it there in that moment.

Even when we’d finished, we hadn’t had quite enough. Nito was looking longingly at the pan, and there was still sauce inside it. I stood up and put my shoes back on, going over to the back seat of the Kettle. I searched through the cans and eventually found what I was looking for. When Nito saw the cans I’d brought back, her face brightened.

After lighting the Svea again and putting the sauce on to warm, I opened the smallish, rectangular can I’d just brought over. The food inside had a rather strong scent that prickled at my nose, and a deep yellow color—it was cheese. I put it on the chopping board and used a knife to cut it in half. The one piece went into the pan, and as I stirred it through with the spatula, it started to melt into strings.

Next, I opened a cylindrical can and took out what was practically a log of bread. I divvied it up into four pieces and cut about halfway through each piece before cutting up the cheese that was left and putting a bit of it inside each piece of bread, making tiny sandwiches. I took the pan off the heat and used the Svea directly on one sandwich. It would start to burn fairly quickly, so I went in bursts, moving the bread toward the heat and quickly away again. As I did, the bread gradually heated up.

Once both sides had browned, I opened it up and saw that the cheese had started to melt and spread across the warm and fluffy bed of bread around it. A skin had formed on its surface, and when I poked at it molten cheese gushed forth like magma. I used a fork to scoop up the tomato and cheese sauce with shreds of mackerel and slathered that generously onto the bread. I offered the sandwich to Nito and she took it with sparkling eyes. Even as I moved to start on my own portion, Nito just stayed there, holding it in both hands, waiting.

“You can start,” I told her.

“No... I’ll wait,” she said, biting at her lip to hold back.

By the time I’d finally finished making mine, I was worried she might just start drooling. As I bit into my own sandwich, Nito opened her small mouth as wide as she could. The crunches of us each taking a bite merged into one. Our gasps of surprise, the exhalations out of our noses, and even our sighs of contentment were all in sync as well.

Ah, cheese. The big cheese had arrived. What a thing—cheese the almighty.

I nodded contentedly several times. The canned cheese was a priceless treasure, rarely seen. Maybe they just hadn’t made much of it, but either way I was sure everyone would have used up what they had before long.

When we’d had the sauce with pasta, the tomatoes’ invigorating acidity and sweetness had enveloped everything. Now, the cheese brought all the elements together and gave the dish a strong savory flavor. It was rich even in texture and went utterly perfectly with the bread. The only other ingredients were tomato and shreds of mackerel, and those were leftovers at that. There wouldn’t have been enough for a full hamburger or sandwich with just the leftover sauce, but melting in the cheese had stretched it to a full-fledged meal. The combination of the sauce dollops and the crispness of the bread was to die for.

I took a glance at Nito to see her small frame swaying from side to side. Her eyes were screwed shut and there was a grin on her lips. Just seeing her expression was making me happy as well.

Oh, so that’s what it is, I realized. This is happiness.

It was such a simple thing. I was full of emotion, and yet all we were doing was eating delicious food. Could I even call that happiness? Was it even right to feel happiness in this world, what with the fact it was in ruins and scores upon scores of people had just vanished into nothing?

As I watched Nito munching cheerfully away at her sandwich, though, those worries floated away. The moon had appeared in the sky at some point, along with the stars, and it felt almost like the sky here was the same as the one from my world. The town was pitch-black, the Kettle had fallen into a hole, and the auto-trike was no longer connected to it. These were irreversible failures, but perhaps you could indeed just call them surprises. If we hadn’t hit that hole, we wouldn’t have had this meal here.

“Nito,” I called.

She looked up at me with utter innocence, her cheeks still stuffed and a smudge of sauce at the edge of her mouth. Her rounded cheeks reflected the flickering flame from the Svea. She tilted her head in question, and I suddenly became all embarrassed and shook my head.

“Nah, never mind.”

I didn’t yet have the courage to honestly tell her “thank you.”

3

The pasta and bread ended up being rather filling, and strangely calming as well, so we’d gone to sleep pretty quickly afterward. Nito had slept in her auto-trike, while I’d set up my tent next to it. She was still scared of the darkness-shrouded town, but we’d covered the windshield with a sheet and then she’d managed to calm down and sleep. Personally, I’d meant to think over how we’d get out of this until I drifted off, but I’d fallen asleep the moment I’d lain down, and the tent was already bright when I came to.

In the end, our rescue mission began with me running my fingers through my bedhead to get my hair back in order and looking things over with a sleepy gaze.

“Let’s get the luggage down first,” I decided.

“The luggage?”

The Kettle had a roof rack atop it made of metal poles. Tied down to it with rope were drums of water and boxes of mana stones and cans, along with things like pots and pans that would be fine even if they got wet. The impact of falling down into the hole had sent the load askew, but the majority of it was still up there.

“Whether we go forward or back, I think it’ll be easier if we’re carrying less.”

“I see. I’ll do my best!”

“I hate to tell you when you’re all fired up like that,” I said, looking at her clenching her fist, “but you’re doing the stuff in the car.”

She deflated a bit, pausing for a long moment.

“Is there something wrong with me?” she asked eventually.

“No, it’s just the weight.”

“I have weight,” she insisted.

“It’s a matter of scale.”

“I can’t believe this,” she grumbled, before setting about sorting the luggage in the car.

“Get the fragile stuff out of the way, like the wine we got from Ned.”

“Right.”

I untied the rope from the roof rack and got each drum and box down one by one. I took breaks as I worked, but I was still done in by the time I’d gotten them all down.

“What next?” Nito asked.

“Hmm, what indeed?”

She looked at me silently.

“Quit looking at me like you’re thinking, ‘You have no idea? Unbelievable.’”

The bright sunlight now illuminating our surroundings made the situation clearer. The hole took up most of the width of the road with a circular collapse. Reddish earth was visible at the bottom of it, and it was about as deep as my knees.

“I guess we were lucky. We’d have been done for if it were deeper,” Nito opined.

I nodded back. Not only would we not have been able to escape, the Kettle would have ended up abandoned. I noticed that several flagstones had dropped inside the hole, probably from the original road surface.

“Say, you see those stones?” I asked, crouching at the edge and pointing.

“I do,” Nito answered, crouching next to me.

“If we piled them up by the tires, do you think that might work?”

Nito put her finger to her chin and made a thoughtful noise before looking at me with an inscrutable expression.

“It is worth the attempt.”

“Don’t you think you’re getting a little too into things?”

“Just a bit,” she answered after a pause. “I mean, it’s like an adventure novel. Working your way out of danger is exciting.”

“Ah, right.”

There was a slight flush to her cheeks, and her nose was twitching restlessly. This was a different reaction than I’d expected from her. It struck me that she was actually rather bold...

Well, it’s hardly any surprise. She did set off on a journey on her own... This was way better than her crying or being angry, in any case.

“Let’s get started then.”

“Let’s!”

Seeing her move away and hop down the drop made all the strain from yesterday just drain away.

“I really thought I’d screwed up. Look at her enjoying herself though,” I muttered to myself.

There was no doubt in my mind that her brightness was what had saved me.

She’d immediately picked up an armful of stones and tottered back. She put them behind the front wheels of the Kettle and then let out a sigh.

“Why are you just sitting there watching?” she demanded.

“I was just thinking the weather was nice.”

“You can sunbathe later.”

“Actually,” I told her, “I’m solar powered.”

“Then get up and work while the sun’s still up.”

She chivvied me along and down I went into the hole. It was hard work shifting the stones, but we realized that we only needed to fill in the two front tires’ worth of space, so we managed to finish before noon.

“I wonder if this’ll work,” I said.

“Why would it not?”

The slope of broken stones was rather uneven, and it looked like a good kick would collapse it.

“Well, I guess we only need to use it once,” I decided.

“Either way, it’s not me driving at least.”

“Hey, I can hear that smugness,” I said, glaring at Nito as she whistled tunelessly and turned her face completely away from me.

That was the truth of the matter though: unless I could drive it well, the Kettle would lose its balance again. I crouched down in front of the fruit of our efforts and gazed at the slope, still somewhat uneasy.

“Isn’t that dangerous?”

“Yeah, looks like it’ll fall pretty easily,” I said, looking up at Nito.

She shook her head at me, looking around in a panic.

“Up,” she said. “Look up.”

I did as she said and soon saw a man half hanging out of the window of a three-story apartment building. He took out the cigarette from his mouth and breathed out a plume of white smoke before smiling at us.

“How about it? Fancy a trade?” he called down.

It was a complete bolt from the blue, and I couldn’t muster a single word. Nito rushed behind me to hide. The man didn’t wait for a reply, just cheerfully yelled an “I’ll be right down” before vanishing from the window.

Is he shady? I thought, my mind racing. Uh, right, a weapon. I need a stick or something. Ah, I’ve got the gun. Maybe I should get that out.

Even as I had the thought, I didn’t move. Eventually, the door to the first floor opened and the man came out wearing a huge backpack. He came over, pausing by the auto-trike to set his bag down before walking the rest of the way to us. I could feel Nito pulling on the back of my shirt.

“You don’t need to be so nervous. I’m Jack, a traveler.”

“I’m Keisuke. A-A traveler,” I imitated in a tiny voice, unable to think of anything else to say.

I heard a slight sigh of wonder from behind me.

“I’m Nito. Also a traveler.”

“Well, aren’t you happy about that,” I chuckled.

She was looking smugly back at me, apparently pleased by the appellation. The man calling himself Jack bent at the waist and gave her a cheery greeting. He gave off the air of a cheerful older fellow, and he didn’t seem to be a bad person, at least at a glance.

“You’re in a tough spot though, huh?” he said. “You’re better off not driving in the town at night. You never know where you’re gonna fall.”

“Did you...see?” I asked hesitantly.

“Sure did. I was sleeping up there,” he told us, pointing up at the window from earlier. “It was a right racket, so I wondered what’d happened.”

It was embarrassing to think he’d seen our failure. I wanted the earth to just swallow me up. Well, come to think of it, there was a convenient hole that’d do well enough right in front of me...

“You could have said something,” I protested.

“You wouldn’t have wanted an old guy like me coming up to you at night, would you? Plus, there’s a kid with you. I didn’t want to deal with all that wariness.”

Nito seemed to realize that he meant her by “kid” and poked unhappily at my arm. That must have really irritated her.

“Why turn up now, then...?”

“I just got up and when I took a look I saw you were gonna try that unstable slope,” he said, dropping down into the hole and scrutinizing our work. “I don’t think it’ll take the weight.”

“Ugh.”

Considering I’d driven it into the hole in the first place, I didn’t have much confidence in my driving, frankly. Plus, I’d already thought that it looked like a good kick would take out the slope.

“So, about that trade.”

“What is it you want?” I asked cautiously, deciding to hear him out.

“It’s nothing massive,” he insisted, waving a hand. “I just want you to take me to the bridge.”

“To the bridge?”

“It’s a little past the town. It’s called the Soralt Bridge. I was going to walk to it, but a working car would be heaps better.”

Nito and I exchanged glances, holding a silent debate.

“You just want a ride?” I asked.

“Right. I don’t mind the back seat, or the roof even.”

After a brief moment of worry, I quickly came to a conclusion.

“Okay then, sure.”

I still wasn’t entirely convinced he was on the level, but that was inevitable with us not knowing each other. Taking him to the bridge was no big deal. The important thing now was to get the Kettle to safety, as unharmed as possible.

“Great, thanks!”

Jack looked up from inspecting the hole and held his hand out toward me. Cautiously, I gripped it and gave him a handshake. He was so relaxed I almost felt stupid for my reticence. It must have been the composure that comes with age.

Jack rolled his sleeves up and hoisted a fist-sized rock off the ground near his feet, then started digging at the exposed dirt.

“Um, what are you doing?”

“We’re on the clay stratum here,” he said as if it was obvious.

Sure, the clay stratum... So what?

Nito and I could only watch wordlessly as Jack gathered the reddish-brown earth together into a mound. Then he gathered up smallish rocks and fragments of flagstones and put them on top of it. When he didn’t have anything suitable, he broke apart the flagstones.

“This is water, right? I need some.”

He took one of the drums we’d removed from the Kettle and poured the water onto the pile of clay and stone fragments before mixing it all together by hand. Eventually, it started to harden until it looked like a massive, sopping-wet lump of bread dough. He picked up a handful of the mixture and slapped it onto the back of some larger flagstones, laying them along the top. There was no hesitation to his movements, and soon he had the drop buried in rubble and formed into a smooth slope. He then did the same on the other side before using the water drum to wash his hands. Then he rolled his sleeves back down.

“It’s pretty rough and ready, but it should stand up to a single climb.”

“Um...is this your job?” I asked.

He laughed shyly.

“Nah, I’m just copying.”

I didn’t think simple copying went that far. The ramps were still fairly damp, but they looked sturdy even at a glance. I wasn’t worried about driving up them.

“Whoops, hang on. They’re not dry yet, so you’ll need to give it four hours,” he warned.

That was going to be a fairly long wait. I folded my arms, wondering what to do with our sudden surfeit of free time. Nito, on the other hand, immediately went for her rucksack of painting materials. Jack looked at us both and laughed.

“Didn’t you come to see the witch?” he asked.

4

Rumor of this town had spread far and wide—the vast majority of its visitors came specifically to meet with the witch. Likewise, Jack had already gone to see her and knew the procedure.

“You do need to give her something precious to you in exchange for her answering your question though,” he’d advised before guiding us through the town.

That had given me pause. “Not like money or anything?” I’d asked.

“Nope. I don’t exactly get the metrics, but I’ve heard one person gave a pricey ring set with a sunset gray stone, and another person offered a beaten-up cloth marionette.”

So it isn’t about how precious the item is monetarily, but how much it matters to the person that owns it, I guess.

Knowing that we were after the witch, Jack had offered to guide us. Apparently, the witch had a house and it was within walking distance.

“Can this witch really be trusted?” I questioned, only to get a quizzical look from him; guessing that the witch’s reputation must have been common knowledge, I added an explanation. “I’m an otherworlder.”

“You are, huh? That’s new. Guess you wouldn’t know, then.”

His reaction was less dramatic than I’d expected, which felt like a bit of an anticlimax given how much importance I placed on the fact I’d just shared with him.

“Long ago, witches were commonplace in this world,” he explained. “There were also mages and training establishments for them. Nobles used to go about the whole business with sticks up their asses. Then steam technology powered by mana stones came about, noble society collapsed, and mages started to fade away. Magic’s out of fashion these days; steam’s more convenient. Anyone can use it, plus it’s cheap.”

“Huh... I guess it’s a tough world.”

“Not like you’re uninvolved,” he added.

“Wait, me?”

“The whole idea of steam technology came from one of you otherworlders,” Jack said with a broad grin. “Back then, mana stones were mana gems. They stored mana from the labyrinths, and people used them to have a fairly comfortable life. Plus, mages prized pure mana gems above all else. They were a symbol of magic itself.”

At some point, I’d gotten completely lost in the man’s voice. Jack was like a professional storyteller, speaking clearly and with no hesitation.

“Then, one day, along comes an otherworlder. ‘Let’s burn those,’ he says. Do you understand what utter blasphemy that was? It was crazier than burning money to bake your bread. Either way, though, those precious mana gems gained the new name of mana stones, and burned away as mere fuel, without leaving a trace.”

“I suppose it’s what you’d call a revolutionary idea, or maybe a reversal of values.”

As soon as those words left my mouth, he pointed at me.

“There! That kind of thinking is what makes an otherworlder. Back then, magic was the cornerstone of civilization. People burning mana gems was tantamount to denying their whole lives, culture, and history. That otherworlder’s suggestion spread through the world and transformed it into something unrecognizable. Just because it was ‘efficient,’ we trampled over our past culture to reach prosperity.”

I understood what he was trying to say, but it was difficult to really put myself in their shoes. As far as I was concerned, people had been burning coal for generations for its energy—the concept was pretty mundane. I was sure the person that had thought up burning these mana gems and creating steam technology hadn’t thought too deeply about it either.

“I didn’t do any of that,” I stressed.

“True. Even if an otherworlder thought it up, it was us that accepted the idea and ran wild with it. Anyway, what I was trying to say is that even now that we’re at the height of the steam age, there are still people that have quietly inherited magic, and they’re called witches.”

“So they can use magic still?” I checked.

“Apparently. It’s rare you get to actually meet one, but they’re an old legend, and the legend says if you bargain with a witch, she’ll answer your question—any question—correctly.”

I looked at Nito and she nodded back. She’d told me so, but apparently witches were indeed a commonly known thing in this world.

“You could hear the stories from anyone back when I was a kid. The hero would strike a bargain with a witch, or the witch would trick a greedy merchant, stuff like that. It’s not like anyone knows how magic really works though, so people believe it’s probably possible.”

I suppose it’s like an urban legend. Those tales felt a little different than the whole pumpkin turning into a carriage thing or the princess being fed a poisoned apple though.

“You said you’d met her. Did she answer your question?”

Jack looked back over his shoulder and gave a somewhat exaggerated smile, the corners of his lips moving high up his face.

“Of course.”

Before I could ask what his smile was supposed to mean, he pointed forward and said we would be able to see the place now. I craned my neck and looked in the direction he’d pointed. Up ahead stood a two-story mansion with radiantly white walls. Spires rose up from the roof, like on a castle, and latticed windows lined each floor in a symmetrical array. A short stone wall surrounded the building, but the gate was open.

The closer we got, the more details were visible. As we finally arrived at the gate, Jack strode through without pause. More cautiously, Nito and I followed. A stone path led straight from the gate toward the mansion. In a rounded space about halfway along it stood a dried-up fountain with a statue of a lion-like creature atop it, roaring defiantly at us. All of the windows were closed, except one on the right-hand side of the first floor. Its curtain swayed in the breeze and loud singing issued out through it. It was opera, maybe—the clear soprano voice seemed to stretch out endlessly in beautiful song. Still, maybe the player was broken, or just simply old, as the sound wavered in volume and even occasionally cut out.

Jack climbed the three steps up to the main entrance and pushed the door open. He made no move to enter and just indicated the path.

“She’s in a room on the right. That’s where the singing’s coming from.”

“You’re not coming?” I asked.

“She’s got nothing for me now,” he answered with a shrug.

I looked at Nito to see her staring inside with a stiff look on her face. More than fear of the witch, it seemed to come from being nervous about finally getting her question answered. This was it. She was about to learn whether the Golden Sea existed—or rather, whether her mother had lied.

A dusty red carpet greeted us as we entered the mansion. A sweeping staircase stood in front of us, winding upward, and a large landscape painting dominated the hall. Corridors stretched out beyond open doors to the left and right, but even then the house didn’t look quite vast or maze-like enough to get lost in.

We followed Jack’s instructions and headed down the corridor on the right. Tall windows lined the high-ceilinged corridor, letting enough light in that it was almost strangely bright. The singing grew louder as we progressed until eventually it was clearly audible. Ahead of us was a fluttering curtain, the only one filled by the wind. The door to the room across from the curtain was wide open, and once we drew close enough, I poked my head through it.

The room itself had no window and was fairly small. The lack of natural light made it somewhat gloomy despite the full daylight outside; only a single lantern lit the room’s interior. A pair of sofas stood between us and the far wall, facing each other across a long coffee table, but no one was sitting on them. A single cabinet stood on the side of the room, and next to it a woman was perched on a thin-legged chair, languidly resting her cheek on the cabinet. On a small table in front of her sat a gramophone—a black box topped with a horn that spread open and drooped outward, almost like a lily—playing music that gave me shivers.

I wasn’t sure whether I should call out to her. There was a particular atmosphere to the room. Perhaps it came from the music, perhaps from the woman, or perhaps a combination of the two. Whatever it was, it made me hesitant to disrupt the scene.

The wind blowing in from the window in the corridor strengthened and the curtain rustled behind me. The woman suddenly raised her head and saw us. She straightened her back and stood up from the chair, eyes still sleepy. Her dark-green dress billowed in the wind. This was definitely the same woman we’d seen in front of the secondhand shop.

“The witch?” Nito murmured, but it was less of an actual question and more of a confirmation to herself.

The woman’s eyes softened slightly, and her painted red lips alone seemed to come into sharp relief against the rest of the room.

“You have something you are searching for, don’t you?”

Nito’s shoulders trembled.

“Come inside,” the witch said, seating herself on the small sofa on the far side of the table.

Nito and I were both bewildered, but we couldn’t just stand in place forever. Carefully, we entered the room and sat across from her. The witch sat elegantly straight-backed, her long legs pressed together and angled off to one side. Even her fingers on her lap were completely gorgeous. I straightened without meaning to.

“I will answer,” the witch began, “a single question. The answer will be either an affirmative or a negative, and you only get one chance to ask. Very well?”

She wasn’t speaking to me, but to Nito. Somehow or other, she knew that it was Nito that wanted to ask something. Nito was still tense with nerves as she gave a halting nod, her head moving like a rusted hinge.

“Also, as payment, I will take something that is precious to you. Have you brought such a thing with you?”

Nito nodded again, looking down at the item she had been holding all this time. The thing she had pulled from the Kettle when Jack had told her of the witch’s conditions was her mother’s notebook.

“Are you sure?” I asked.

It was, without a doubt, the thing most precious to her in the world. Her whole journey had started because of it. She looked up at me and nodded. I had no doubt she would have agonized over it far more than I was, but there was no hint of hesitation in her eyes.

“I don’t have anything else irreplaceable,” she told me. “Besides, I know all the pictures by heart.”

Nito leaned forward and held out the notebook. The witch also moved slightly forward and stretched out her hand to take it. She caressed the old cover and looked once again at Nito.

“This is bursting with your memories of a certain important place,” she said. “I can see several vivid images. This was your father’s...no, your late mother’s notebook, which you inherited. I see. That will be sufficient.”

Nito’s eyes were wide.

“H-How could you tell?”

The woman didn’t give her an answer.

“Now, ask your question. Consider it carefully, though, as you do not get a second chance.”

Nito’s fists clenched in her lap, creasing her dress. I remembered our conversation around the campfire. She had never been able to leave her room, and the pictures her mother had showed her from that notebook, along with the stories about them, had been the only beauty in the world for her. But then her mother had died and she’d realized she didn’t know whether those stories were the truth or not.

Nito was searching for the Golden Sea, but I was sure that what she was actually searching for was the truth. She wanted to know whether her mother’s tales—which had supported her mind and soul for so long—were actually true. That was without a doubt the reason she had traveled across this dead world. If she could confirm that the places within her mother’s notebook were real, then she could believe that the tales she had been told of the most beautiful place in the world—the Golden Sea—were also true.

But, I thought, what if they’re not?

“Does the place called the Golden Sea exist?” Nito finally asked.

She waited intently for the reply, her eyelashes quivering with the effort to not blink, refusing to miss even the slightest shift in the witch’s expression. The witch took her gaze directly. Time seemed to stretch out, and I stopped breathing. As a smile made its way onto her lips, the witch spoke.

“It does not.”

I was certain I heard Nito gasp.

“Unfortunately, there is no place called the Golden Sea in this world.”

Silence settled over the three of us. The gramophone in the corner echoed, and then the beautiful, but painfully out-of-place, soprano voice suddenly vanished as even the music fell silent.

“I...see,” Nito answered, her gaze falling.

The sunlight streaming in through the open door lit up the back of her head in silver as her hair fell in a shadow over her face. I heard her murmur another soft “I see.” I thought she might be crying, but when she raised her head, there was a smile on her face.

“That’s a relief. Thank you.”

Then, seeming to realize I wanted to say something, she preempted me, adding brightly, “I’ll go out ahead. You should ask whatever you want to. You don’t often get the chance to meet a witch.”

She stood up and left the room, and I followed suit immediately.

“You don’t have a question to ask?” the witch queried.

I stopped and looked back.

“Maybe some other time,” I said, bowing at the bemused woman before leaving.

5

After we left the witch’s mansion, I’d eaten wordlessly with Jack and Nito. By the time we’d tidied up, the slope had dried and we’d managed to get the Kettle out of the sinkhole safely. Obviously, though, we hadn’t been able to get the fastenings for the auto-trike back into shape.

We’d been driving in the Kettle a while before a bridge started coming into sight. Jack, who was sitting next to me, murmured nostalgically.

“Was the little lady’s answer not great either?” Jack asked casually.

“So you also didn’t get a good answer?”

“Any answer someone else gives you won’t be one you’d like to hear,” Jack replied, winding the window down.

He took out a cigarette from his pocket, lighting it with a match. After taking a pull, he blew the smoke out of the window.

“She seemed beat up about it though,” he added.

“You’re right...” I agreed reluctantly.

We’d gotten the Kettle out, so now I was taking Jack to the bridge to hold up my end of our bargain. Nito wasn’t with us, though, as she’d stayed behind with her auto-trike. She’d claimed it was to make things easier: that way we could just leave the luggage we’d removed from the Kettle there, and she’d keep watch and guard the things. I couldn’t exactly force her to come along with us.

“I can sympathize,” he added softly. “The more precious what you’re looking for is, the more disappointed you get.”

He took another pull. The smoke smelled really sweet.

I could imagine how it felt too. If I’d learned that the one chance I thought I had—that man in black—wasn’t part of the world anymore, then I’d probably be just as depressed. Finding him was the whole reason for my journey. That’s why, even after hearing about a witch that would answer any question, I couldn’t muster up the courage to ask one myself. If she told me there was no chance of finding the man in black, there would be no more reason for me to travel, and no reason for me to be here. If there was no reason, there’d be no point to anything either.

Eventually, we got to the bridge, and I stopped just before the crossing. Several abandoned steam vehicles that had rusted away in the rain and wind cluttered the bank. They were blatantly empty as well.

“It’s a big bridge,” I commented.

The structure was imposing, made of a mix of stone and metal. It stretched out completely straight to the opposite side of the gorge that lay below it, supported by several arches cresting up from its foundations. It felt strong, as if declaring that it wouldn’t waver with the ages, but also intensely lonely. The same sentiment struck me every time I saw man-made structures in this desolate world.

“Pops made that,” Jack said.

I whirled around in surprise to see him smiling proudly.

“He was an architect that specialized in bridges. He made bridges all over the country, and he was the best at it. See, even without the inspectors to keep up on maintenance, it’s standing strong.”

He opened the door and got out of the Kettle, stretching his hips. The afternoon sky was a light blue, with thick, fluffy clouds flowing languidly across it. Water thundered through the wide river beneath the bridge, but there was nothing on the other side, just the road and the rolling plains of greenery and white sand.

“I’m finally here,” he commented. “Man, it took a while.”

“There’s nothing but the bridge here.”

“It’s fine,” he told me.

He smiled as he pulled his rucksack from the back seat and put it at his feet. Then he put his hands on his hips and stared up at the bridge, cigarette still between his lips. His expression was that of someone looking back into the past, toward nostalgia.

When his cigarette had burned down, he flicked it to the ground, stepped on the butt to extinguish it, and spoke.

“I crossed the continent to get here.”

“That’s incredible,” I marveled.

I didn’t know how big the continent was, but I knew it wouldn’t have been some simple day trip. I’d been traveling in the Kettle for ages and hadn’t exactly gone far. Jack took out a metal tin from his pocket—so scuffed up it shimmered as if coated in mist—and withdrew another cigarette from it, sticking it between his lips.

“Sorry for dragging you way out here. Thanks for the help.”

“It’s fine,” I told him.

“Make sure to cheer up your girlfriend.”

“Seriously, she’s not my girlfriend.”

“She’s not? Well, I guess she is a bit young.”

I knew these were the phrases leading up to a goodbye. Still, I didn’t move. Despite knowing that he probably wouldn’t appreciate my comment, I couldn’t just say nothing.

“You know nothing good’ll come from dying, right?”

His eyebrows rose, and he returned the cigarette to its case with a bitter smile.

“You’re a sharp one,” he said eventually.

“No.” I shook my head. “You just looked similar.”

“To who?”

“Me, a while ago.”

He laughed.

“Yeah, I suppose you’d get it,” he muttered.

“Besides, asking me to leave you somewhere like this is just bizarre. There’s nothing around.”

“Nothing around, huh? Yeah, guess not.” He nodded to himself, then mused, “But don’t you know, otherworlder? The world’s ended. This ain’t the only place; there’s nothing left anywhere.”

I couldn’t give a reply, but he wasn’t looking for one.

“I had things too,” he added. “I earned money at work, even if there wasn’t a point to doing it. I went out to drink on sleepless nights. I had a whole bunch of stupid pals, and we’d go out betting it all and then losing it all on cards. I even had a woman I fell for. But they’re all gone now, just piles of those shitty crystals.”

He turned back to me to make sure I was listening, knocking on the hood of the Kettle twice.

“This world’s culture, its people—it’s all over. It’s warped. Whatever caused it and whoever’s fault it is aren’t important now. The sun’s set, and here’s the night. The age of magic faded away, and this time it’s the age of steam’s turn. We reap what we sow, burning away those mana stones like there’s no tomorrow. The only thing left is to have a drink and go to bed. If you have to sleep at some point, you can at least choose for yourself when to do it. Don’t you think that’s our final right as the lingering remnants of this world?”

I had no words to refute him. I’d thought much the same, after all.

I’d been dragged to this world somehow or other and found it in ruins. All I’d been doing was wandering the place at random trying to survive. I had no place to return to, and no place to go, so I just clung to the idea of searching for that man in black. He was the first person I’d met in this world and he had treated me like a friend, explaining the situation to me. If I hadn’t had the goal of finding him, I wouldn’t have been a traveler—I’d have just been lost.

“When you lose your objectives, hopes, destination, and home, living becomes tiring,” Jack added. “You should understand that well enough.”

I nodded in agreement.

“The only escape from this abandonment is death. No one wants to die, it’s just an option they choose because they see no other answer.”

I’d brought that gun to my head countless times in front of the campfire at night. I’d thought I might wake up if I pulled the trigger. Perhaps being in this world was a dream, and I’d wake up once I died. Being in this world not knowing the path I should take, or even what I should do, fumbling through the blackness without even any moonlight, was just—

“Say, did you know?” Jack interrupted in an excessively bright voice. “When they make huge bridges like this, a small town gets built around it. The craftsmen and their families move in entirely and live there for years as they build it.”

He looked around the area.

“Sure, there’s nothing around now, but there used to be houses upon houses. I was brought up here. Strange, ain’t it, to think my hometown’s a bridge. The house itself’s gone, but I grew up watching him build that bridge. Pops’s head was full of nothing but bridges, though, so I rebelled. Didn’t want my life decided for me. I’d have ended up a bridge builder too, at that rate.”

“I left twenty years ago,” he continued. “I was living it up and then the world fell apart like this. It was too late, but I sent off a letter anyway. I figured I’d meet up with Pops here one more time, square things up before the world ended.”

He looked at me and laughed bitterly.

“The witch told me that Pops died before he read my letter. He probably wouldn’t have come either way, though. He’d have forgotten his worthless son by now.”

“That’s...not true.”

“It’s fine, don’t let it bother you.”

He looked up at the bridge steadily for a moment, then murmured just loudly enough for me to catch that he’d wanted to build bridges when he was a kid.

“Did the witch actually say that he died without reading your letter?”

Jack didn’t answer, just shrugged. Something tugged at me, like I knew the piece that fit into this gap.

Suddenly, as if someone had clapped me on the back, the sense of unreality lifted and the world solidified in front of me, along with a strong conviction. The feeling might just have been because I wasn’t from this world, or maybe someone had preordained this moment long in advance. Perhaps it was all just some strange coincidence. I didn’t know the truth, but there was one thing I did know. I knew that someone else had been headed to this deserted place with nothing else around.

I raced for the door like something was pushing me forward, scrabbling for the back door of the Kettle and fumbling with the handle before finally managing to open it. Nito had taken out most of the luggage, but the box of unbreakables was still in there, with my clothes and other sundries and...a piece of folded paper.

I yanked that out and offered it to Jack, who had come to inspect my craziness in puzzlement.

“What’s that?”

I didn’t answer. It might have just been my own delusion, but my hands still shook at the premonition I’d had.

Jack frowned and took the paper, then unfolded it. He looked down at it wordlessly, falling to a seated position and covering his mouth. Eventually, I heard him weeping, unable to keep himself under control.

It was the map. The map that I’d found in that truck at the side of the road. The map that had the station on it, the town, and then the neatly drawn picture of this bridge, circled several times to mark it as a destination.

The truck’s driver had been coming here. Here, not to the town based on some rumors of a witch, but past that town to the bridge itself. I didn’t know what exactly he’d been heading here for, but I knew there were two people in this world that this bridge had been more than a bridge to. For them, it was a source of precious memories and a place to call home.

I looked away from Jack to the bridge itself.

Yeah, it’s a pointless world, I thought. Each and every person had lost something. Still, there were people living their lives as best they could. How strong were they that they could keep going like that, despite the pain of having lost what should have always been there for them? I stood there for a while, vacantly watching the clouds drift by.

The sobbing eventually stopped and Jack stood up, wiping at his reddened eyes.

“That picture is definitely Pops’s. Where’d you find it?”

I looked at the map he was holding and pointed to the area where I thought I’d found the truck. He mumbled in acknowledgment before looking up at me.

“Say, I’ve got a request,” he told me. “Let’s make a trade.”

He took out the scuffed metal cigarette case from his breast pocket and offered it to me.

“Would you take me back to that town? Looks like I’ve got somewhere to go.”

I nodded and took the case from him. Jack clapped me on the shoulder.

“You’re a lifesaver, peddler.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“They were people that went to remote villages in the past, trading for necessities. And, well, you’ve given me something I needed.”

There was far less hidden behind his smile than before.

Peddler, huh? That didn’t sound so bad. It felt better than just considering it as having been given something, or having taken it for myself. Instead, I was only taking care of it, looking for someone else somewhere that needed it before handing it over. That fit much more nicely, somehow.

“I actually took some of the water and fuel from the truck I found the map in. I’ll give it to you. You’ll need it if you’re journeying again.”

“That’d be great,” he answered after a pause. “Are you sure, though?”

“Yeah, I was just taking care of it for a while.”

Sure, I’d used some of it, but I could cover the difference with what I had from Vandyke.

“Let’s head back to town, then,” I suggested.

“Ah, would you mind waiting? I want to look at the bridge a bit more... Don’t look at me like that, I ain’t gonna jump. I gotta go meet Pops, so I need something to tell him about, that’s all.”

I watched him head off toward the bridge. He was walking steadily, so I figured he’d be fine. I got back in the driver’s seat to wait. There was something I had to do when I got back to the town. The song and the witch’s words spiraled around my head.

“You don’t have a question to ask?”