Chapter Five

Chapter Five

 

1.

 

NAOMI OPENED HIS EYES. Without rising from his chair, he lifted his head up to look around. Morning light leaked into the room between the blinds.

The sounds of the hospital room were the same as always. The air conditioner hummed faintly, and the medical equipment array let out quiet beeps, the noise indicating that she was still alive.

Unfolding his arms, Naomi pressed his fingers to his temples. He’d pulled an all-nighter. Sleep had seemed completely impossible.

Twelve hours had passed since it happened.

Everything had gone according to plan. Sure, a few unexpected developments had popped up, but he’d accomplished his main goal perfectly.

It would be fine. Of course this would work...wouldn’t it?

Logic and emotion fought for dominance in his mind. Any plan, no matter how carefully plotted and carried out, could end badly. There was no such thing as a guaranteed outcome, or so the cold, analytical scientist in him said.

The other part of him—the desperate, emotional part—just shouted “it’s going to be fine” over and over again, an argument based mostly on wishful thinking.

It was a pointless conflict; he could bash his feelings against his rational mind all day long, and it wouldn’t make the slightest difference. All he could do was wait.

But if this doesn’t work…I don’t know what I’ll do…

An unfamiliar sound drew Naomi’s attention over to the medical machinery. This was a new sound—one he was sure he’d never heard in the ten years he’d been visiting this room.

Beep.

He stared at the monitor on the largest machine, at the long, flat line it always displayed.

It had just moved.

Naomi sprang out of his chair. His knees buckled under him as he rose, pitching him forward; he grabbed the rail on the side of the bed and pushed himself back up.

The woman sleeping in that bed had an oxygen mask strapped to her face. She’d been hospitalized for a very long time, and the effects of that stay were painfully visible; she was emaciated, with hollow cheeks and an unnaturally thin neck and shoulders. But her chest still moved quietly under her thin blanket.

Leaning over the bed, Naomi stared down at the woman’s face. The unfamiliar beeping of the machinery kept going.

It was the sound of life. Of brain activity.

The sound of a soul returned to its body.

He thought he could see her eyelids stirring just slightly. He watched intently as they slowly began to open. She flinched slightly as the light hit them for the first time in years.

Her pupils moved, first in one direction, then another.

She was looking at him. She was looking right at him, meeting his eyes with understanding in her own. She could see him. She knew he was there.

She was conscious.

“Oh God…”

Naomi heard himself speaking from what felt like a great distance. An overwhelming flood of feeling surged through him, moving his body against his will. He felt his face scrunching up and the tears running freely down his cheeks.

Collapsing forward, he wrapped his arms around the woman’s slender body.

“I missed you, Ruri,” he moaned, the words barely coherent. “I missed you so much!”

Her mouth moved slightly in response. But after all the time she’d spent asleep, her vocal cords couldn’t make a sound.

 

Summer, 2037. At Kyoto Chubu General Hospital, Ichigyou Ruri awoke for the first time in a decade.

 

2.

 

THE TIP OF A CANE tapped at a regular rhythm against the polished floor of the hallway.

Katagaki Naomi made his way past the front desk and left Chubu General Hospital. The world outside was bright and sunny, the hot summer day cut by a breeze for once that improved things considerably.

He’d honestly wanted to stay at Ruri’s bedside, but there wouldn’t be much that he could do for her until later. It was going to take a long time for her to recover from the physical effects of a ten-year slumber, and he had to leave her rehab in the hands of the doctors and nurses. He wasn’t a medical professional.

It might take a while, but in the full scope of things, it was nothing. She’d woken up. That was what really mattered.

Kamanza Street, a leafy avenue that ran past the front of the hospital, seemed more vibrantly green than usual today. Naomi turned down it, heading toward his work. He still had a few important things to do.

He led with his cane with each step, moving it cleanly and confidently with his right hand and forearm. Back when he’d first started using the thing, he’d struggled to walk even short distances with it. He’d never known that you used a cane with your right arm when your left leg was disabled, and getting the hang of it had been a challenge. He’d come to resent any building without a proper elevator.

But time and practice had gradually eliminated those problems. Now, he could move around as quickly as an able-bodied person.

As he waited for the light to change at the crosswalk, his phone started to buzz. Just as he’d anticipated, his job was calling. He sent a quick I’m on my way and picked up his pace as he crossed the street.

 

The numbers on the elevator’s screen ticked upward, the B next to them indicating that the car was plunging deep underground.

On the wall next to the buttons, an information panel listed every department and their floors. The names were technical, even indecipherable to a layman; one glance at the list would tell you this was a staff-only elevator. At the very top, in slightly larger font, were the words “Chronicle Kyoto Project Center.”

The doors slid open onto a short hallway ending at an oddly bulky metal door. Naomi stepped out of the elevator and strode through the door. A camera installed in the wall above automatically scanned the faces of anyone who approached and identified whether they were authorized personnel. A second after it spotted Naomi, the door slid open automatically.

Instantly, the sound of panicked voices reached him.

“The unrecognized region is still expanding!” someone yelled. An array of green-tinted overhead lights illuminated the space; in a sunken, octagonal central area, researchers in uniform ran back and forth among numerous computer consoles, their movements frantic. At its very center, a cluster of anxious people had gathered around an enormous table monitor.

This was the AllTale Control Center.

His cane clacking against the tile floor, Naomi stepped into his workplace. The group at the central monitor all turned to look at him with expressions of confusion and concern.

“Naomi!” whimpered a bearded, middle-aged man at the center of the group. Like the others, he wore the white jacket of their official uniform, but there was a T-shirt clearly visible underneath it, and his shorts and sneakers weren’t exactly professional either.

Senko Tsunehisa, the chief operations officer of the AllTale Center, was a 57-year-old man who’d somehow managed to avoid growing up. It was part of what let him achieve so many genuinely astonishing scientific feats, to hit on ideas a true adult never could. And at the moment, he was pouting like a cartoon character.

Naomi deeply trusted and respected the man. He was the only mentor Naomi had ever had. He was also a serious annoyance when it came to anything outside of work.

“You’re here, Naomi!” said the woman seated beside Senko, speaking in Indonesian rather than Japanese. “We’ve got serious localized damage in the records. We tried using the automatic data repair module, but it can’t keep up.”

This was Xu Yiyi, Senko’s assistant and the project’s chief researcher. Quickly tapping her fingers against the table monitor, she called up a summary of the ongoing incident. This woman did the work of three ordinary researchers; she single-handedly made up for Senko’s capriciousness and lack of common sense.

“Don’t know what caused it, either!” said Senko with a casual shrug. “Any ideas, Naomi?”

For whatever reason, these two had started using Naomi’s given name rather than the more professional Katagaki-san, and now almost all the other staff members followed their example. It didn’t really bother him, but it did feel a bit like he was still back in school.

The two of them looked at him expectantly, but he shook his head rather than replying. The most convenient answer was that he just didn’t know what was wrong.

“Let’s focus on the problem at hand for now,” he said, approaching the monitor table and tapping at the screen, which showed red lines radiating away from a large circle labeled AllTale at the center of the display. “Looking at the map, the damaged data seems to be causing cascading damage to other sections of the records. At this rate, the butterfly effect is going to push us past the point of no return. And if we let that happen…”

“The whole simulation collapses,” said Senko, scratching his head. Xu didn’t say anything, but she was staring intently at the map with a deep frown on her face. It was clear from the display alone that their intricate, infinite-capacity masterpiece was on the brink of a complete system failure.

Senko folded his arms and closed his to eyes think. After a few moments of hesitation, he turned back to face Xu and Naomi. “We need to initiate recovery mode.”

The pronouncement elicited a chorus of groans from the other staff members. Everyone in the room was familiar with the procedure, but they’d never had to use it since the AllTale system started running.

Recovery mode involved a temporary shutdown of AllTale’s hardware systems, followed by a backup and repair of all the records it preserved. It was a last resort emergency maintenance method, only to be used in a Stage 4 crisis scenario. Even with the staff working at full speed, it would take thousands of hours to complete.

No one objected, despite the grumbles. With a situation this dire unfolding, Senko’s decision made sense.

“This way, we’ll at least keep the hardware safe, right?” said Senko with a glance around the room, his tone consoling.

The formal order hadn’t been issued yet, but Xu was already rising from her chair. “First things first, everyone. We need to retrieve and preserve the records in block format. Then we get the repair started.”

“Yeesh, this is going to be a pain,” Senko added helpfully with a shrug of his shoulders. He looked at Naomi with an apologetic expression. “Can you get on this right away, Naomi?”

“Of course.” As he replied, Naomi reached into his pocket and took out an ID card, clipping it to his shirt. The terminals automatically scanned these cards to authorize access, so he needed to have his on when he was working.

The plastic case still had the word NAOMI! scrawled on it in Magic Marker—the remnants of another one of Senko’s stupid pranks. He’d been meaning to wipe it off for ages, but never seemed to get around to it.

The card encased inside the holder, on the other hand, was a very professional-looking ID that listed his full name and official title.

AllTale Center

System Management Director

Katagaki Naomi

 

3.

 

ONE OF THE ALLTALE CENTER’S PERKS for senior staff was a personal room on site. Naomi had earned one of his own upon his promotion to director.

The room was about 140 square feet and it contained everything he needed: a work desk, bookshelves packed with technical tomes, and a thick blanket for the days when he was forced to sleep at work. At first, he’d tried to keep this room tidy, but by now it had acquired the clutter of a lived-in space.

Naomi picked out a few books from his disorganized shelves. This would be the first time they’d ever run Recovery Mode on the AllTale system, so they’d probably run into unexpected errors. He should prepare as thoroughly as possible.

Once he’d chosen everything he thought he might need, Naomi glanced down. There was a half-open cardboard box sitting partway under his desk; a grimy vest was visible inside it.

It wasn’t a particularly fashionable piece of clothing. Exposed electrical wires were taped clumsily to its entire surface, and since he couldn’t wash the thing, every inch of it was dirty…but the inside of it was particularly filthy, especially the back.

It wasn’t just sweat that had soaked into the fabric. It was blood, and skin, and bits of charred human flesh. The stains had dried out long ago, but they were still disturbingly vivid. Most people would have flinched and looked away with a grimace.

But Naomi just smiled with a far-off look in his eyes.

Reaching down to close the lid, he sealed the box shut with tape and pushed it out of sight entirely. With his books under one arm and his cane in the other, he left his room and headed for the control center.

 

The preparations for entering Recovery Mode took several hours of feverish work. But even when they were complete, there was no way to tell how smoothly the function would go. The team decided to closely monitor every stage of the process, expecting that they’d need to manually intervene at multiple points along the way.

“We’ll start off in Safe Mode and focus on breaking the connections between the records for a while. If things get too out of whack, we’ll smooth them out with the Sifter. Once we’re done, we’ll open up every sector simultaneously.”

Senko went on to explain the process step-by-step in detail, then turned back to his desk. “My system sure is a mess, huh?” he murmured with a little laugh.

A message popped up on the Control Center’s front monitor to indicate that the preparations were complete, and a dialogue box appeared on Naomi’s screen asking him to confirm the initiation of Recovery Mode. As the man responsible for the system’s upkeep and maintenance, it was his job to press the start button.

He turned back in his chair, looking to Senko for final confirmation. With a slightly sad look on his face, the bearded man nodded.

“No way around it, I guess.”

Naomi nodded back and reached out toward his monitor. But just as his finger was about to touch the screen, he hesitated.

Memories flashed through his mind in quick succession. He furrowed his brow; these weren’t productive thoughts right now. Some things were best forgotten.

The time he’d spent inside AllTale was best forgotten.

For the past three months, he’d carried out an operation there. He’d materialized in the simulated world and contacted his younger self. He’d warned the boy of Ichigyou Ruri’s accident and told him how to prevent it. He’d trained him extensively, moved him around the board like a pawn, and helped him save the girl he loved.

And then he’d stolen her away.

He’d had no choice—it was the only way to repair her brain, since he needed the quantum record of her consciousness to complement the undamaged areas. The only way to obtain that map was to pluck the data that composed her out of the system entirely. Retrieving data from a quantum computer wasn’t as simple as copying a computer file. It required close observation of the AllTale system.

But the more closely quantum data was observed, the more the original was altered. It was impossible to produce a perfect copy; the process would inevitably distort and destroy the original data. So, Ichigyou Ruri disappeared from that world when he retrieved her data. It was an inevitable side effect of the process.

With his mission completed, Naomi left the quantum simulation and returned to reality. The world he’d abandoned still existed inside AllTale, of course. What was happening in there right now? How had it been affected by his actions?

He had no idea. The nature of the system made it impossible to observe clearly from the outside. But even if he couldn’t see it now, that world was real. The Kyoto he’d spent three months in still existed. So did the people living there.

The Recovery process would erase it completely.

They would retrieve the quantum data from the system and return the AllTale hardware to its initial state. After repairing the records externally, they would be returned to the system. The simulated world inside the machine would be annihilated, piece by piece, and then rebuilt anew.

When he pressed this button, that world would end. With the simulation shut down, his mission would truly be over.

The kid would disappear along with it.

He’d known all this from the start, of course. His actions would leave a lasting impact on the AllTale system, and he’d assumed they might have to do a full Recovery. This was all going more or less as he’d expected.

He knew that. His feelings now weren’t logical, they were just useless sentiment.

“Naomi?” Senko called dubiously.

Naomi shook his head and pressed the start button.

A long list of steps popped up on the main monitor, and a colored progress bar began to inch forward along the first row. They would need to keep a close eye on things for another ten-odd hours before the automated process could completely take over.

Forcing himself to focus on the task at hand, Naomi looked back down at his monitor. But just then, a hand fell on his shoulder.

“Why don’t you go get some rest, Naomi?” said Senko, as casual as ever. Naomi blinked in surprise; the real work was just starting. “I mean, you didn’t get any sleep yesterday either, did you?”

“No, but that wasn’t work related…”

“I was really happy to hear about your girlfriend, y’know.”

A smile spread across Naomi’s face despite himself, and he nodded slightly. Senko knew all about Naomi’s girlfriend, who’d been in a coma for a decade. From the day Naomi first joined his research lab in college, the two of them had been closer and friendlier than a typical professor and student. The team had slept over at the lab more often than not.

When Naomi graduated, Senko had brought him right into the AllTale Center under his command. The man was more than a mentor or boss to Naomi—he was closer to a father figure.

“Must have been one eeeemotional reunion!” Senko added, sticking out his lower lip and pretending to cry. “Wouldn’t be fair to lock you up at work right now. I don’t want you telling everyone what a nightmare of a boss I am!”

“I think I’m needed here, though…”

“Not to worry. I can handle ten times your workload, anyway.”

Naomi had to laugh at that. It was true, in a sense; he was still a very long way from reaching Senko’s level of expertise and knowledge. But the man rarely focused on any given task for very long. Given his short attention span and tendency to goof off, he usually wasn’t any more productive than Naomi was.

In other words, the extra work was mostly going to fall into Xu’s lap. The way she was scowling at Senko suggested that she knew it, too. That only made him want to laugh harder.

After a moment, Xu let out a small sigh and pointed toward the exit.

Naomi bowed his head gratefully to both of them and took his ID badge off his chest. With a brief apology to the rest of the staff, he hurried out of the Control Center and headed for the elevator.

 

It was past 8 PM and, outside the center, night had already fallen.

Clutching his cane more tightly than usual, Naomi hurried down the street toward the hospital.

Was she awake right now, or sleeping? Either was fine with him, of course. If she was asleep, it would only be for a few short hours; she’d open her eyes again in the morning. That was nothing compared to ten long years.

He realized he was practically bouncing and tried to tamp down on his excitement. As his mind grew calmer, a nagging hint of guilt slipped into his thoughts.

Mentally, he apologized once more. To Senko, to Xu, and to all the coworkers he’d lied to.

And to the boy.

All of this was his fault, but he could never tell them that. He’d keep it locked up in his mind forever and take his secret to the grave.

Calmly, deliberately, Naomi headed for the hospital.

A cold moon hung in the Kyoto sky.

 

4.

 

A COLD MOON HUNG IN THE KYOTO SKY.

An unpleasant, sticky wind blew through the city. Thick clouds rolled into view, hiding the moon; before long, they’d covered the entire sky, forming a solid lid over the Uji River.

The people who’d come to see the fireworks were chatting in the distance. Some of them sounded excited, others concerned.

“Was that lightning?”

“Was there an accident?”

None seemed to know what had happened, but most of them weren’t too worried. Whatever it was, it was over, and no real damage had been done. Now that the show was over, it was time to go back to their normal lives. Their first priority was to make it back to the station and head home before the trains filled up.

The fireworks were over for the year.

“Sensei?”

Standing alone in the middle of a bridge, Katagaki Naomi called out once again. There was no reply.

He stared up blankly at the sky. His mind couldn’t form any coherent thoughts. His brain had been going a mile a minute, but now it felt like it’d shut down completely.

He wanted to think, of course. Slowly, with the clumsy ineptitude of a toddler, he pieced words together inside his mind. Nothing was making any sense, but he forced his thoughts forward one step at a time.

Naomi scanned the length of the bridge. Ichigyou Ruri was nowhere to be seen. She’d been standing here moments ago, but now she was gone.

Why? Well, the claws of that crow had surrounded her, transformed into a cage, and disappeared into the sky. It had reminded him a little of the way the fox-masks had teleported them here. Maybe she’d been sent off somewhere else now.

In that case…

“I’ve got to find them,” Naomi muttered softly to himself.

He shuffled one foot forward. He’d meant to take a step, but instead, the sole of his shoe scraped weakly against the stone surface of the bridge.

He was close to one of the bridge’s decorative poles, a post of painted wood and metal pointing straight up at the sky. That was convenient. Approaching it, Naomi pressed his right hand to its surface.

He wasn’t wearing his glove.

“Huh?”

Right. The glove had sprouted wings and flown away on him. He didn’t have the God Hand anymore. It had slipped his mind somehow.

He’d have to find some other way to pursue them, then.

For now, he needed to get moving. He started to walk. There was no point hanging around on this bridge all day.

Where was he supposed to go, though? The station, maybe?

As he thought through his next step, Naomi stepped mindlessly onto the broad steps at the end of the bridge and tripped, tumbling down to the very bottom.

Naomi grimaced in pain as he hit the ground. He’d smacked his arms and legs against the hard stone stairs, and he could tell some of his scrapes were bleeding. He lay still for a moment, spread out like a dead frog. He could hear muttering voices around him—apparently he’d had an audience for his pratfall. How embarrassing.

Naomi tried to pick himself up, but his joints ached and didn’t act how he’d expected. Humiliated, desperate, he pressed his hand to the stony ground.

But he didn’t have his glove on.

And in this moment, he finally understood.

No train, no bus, no boat could take him where he needed to go. Nothing could take him to where she was.

“Give me something,” he said, pressing his right hand to the ground.

Nothing emerged.

“Give me anything!” he shouted, punching his hand against the unyielding stone. “A plane! A car! A bike! How about an elevator? A flight of stairs? Anything’s fine! I don’t care!”

He punched the ground again and again. Over and over. But it was still stone. It refused to transform.

“Come on, please! Turn into water, I don’t care! Just do something!”

A drop of water fell beside Naomi’s hand.

Another followed, and then another, plopping softly against the stones. A summer rain fell from the thick clouds above; in no time at all, it grew from a drizzle into a storm.

It was a natural phenomenon, of course. Naomi’s hand hadn’t produced a single drop of it. An ordinary human hand wasn’t capable of something like that.

After a long moment, Naomi forced his aching body to its feet and trudged off through the driving rain.

Deep puddles had formed on the sidewalks, but Naomi rushed straight through them. Muddy water splashed up with every step he took, but what did it matter? His pants and shoes were already soaked through. There wasn’t much point going around.

He breathed rapidly, in gasps. It felt like his heart might give out at any moment. But he didn’t stop walking. If he slowed down, if he let himself catch his breath, he might start thinking again.

He might remember she’d been taken away.

He might remember that Sensei did it.

His chest burned, an unendurable pain that ate him alive from the inside out. He ran toward Shimogamo, desperately hoping that relief was waiting for him.

Maybe she’s back at home right now.

He had no reason to believe it, of course. Why would she disappear into thin air, only to reappear back where she belonged? Still, he headed for her house, clinging to a fantasy.

Through the heavy rain, he finally saw her house come into view some way down the road. He came to a sudden halt, his breath caught in his throat.

The rain was avoiding her house.

Naomi opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He looked up into the sky, disbelieving.

The Ichigyou residence was surrounded by a semi-transparent dome made of countless hexagonal panels locked tightly together, colored like a stained-glass window. Particles of light slid around their edges. Sometimes, one of the panels would flash bright red before returning to its semi-transparent state. The rain bounced right off it.

“What is this?”

With faltering, hesitant steps, he approached the surface of the dome. As he drew close, one of the hexagonal panels flashed and displayed a message in Japanese.

Major data corruption has been detected in this sector.

This area will remain inaccessible until repairs are complete.

AllTale System

Naomi furrowed his brow. It was the kind of bland error message you’d see when a computer broke down. He could understand what it meant, at least—this area was broken in some way.

But this was Ichigyou Ruri’s home. How could it be broken?

Naomi’s heart thumped painfully in his chest. Suddenly, it all felt horribly real. Sensei had told him everything months ago. He knew what this world was, and he’d thought he understood.

But he hadn’t. Not really. Not until this moment.

He could hear the man’s voice echoing in his ears.

“You are a record of Katagaki Naomi as he existed in the past.”

“So then…I’m…”

“The God Hand works by directly accessing the data AllTale uses to generate this simulation.”

Naomi’s head spun. The ground beneath him didn’t seem real anymore. He pressed a hand to his mouth, trying to hold back a wave of nausea.

I’m not real.

I’m just a piece of data in a computer. So is Ruri.

So is this entire world.

Naomi heard a splash behind him, and he spotted something on the other side of the road. It was an oddly shaped humanoid figure wearing a bright yellow belt. And of course, there was a kitsune mask covering its face.

But...why? It didn’t make sense.

Naomi reached up to touch his face. He wasn’t wearing those glasses anymore, of course, but these masked things were supposed to be invisible without them. They didn’t belong in this world, after all; they were a part of the system that controlled it.

Something clicked in his mind, and he turned back to the dome. Shouldn’t that apply to this thing, too? It was clearly part of the AllTale system, so it shouldn’t be visible to the naked eye.

Splash.

Spinning back, Naomi saw the fox-mask draw closer. As it strode through the puddles, water splashed up around its feet.

Naomi didn’t understand what was going on here, but he could tell it wasn’t good. Something had gone very wrong.

Its legs were touching the water. The fox-mask had physically manifested inside this world.

At that moment, he noticed two more approaching him. All three moved toward him at a slow, steady pace, the emotionless eyes of their masks fixed directly on him.

“Go away!” he cried fearfully, thrusting out his arms to ward them off. The hands in front of him were naked...empty. He had no tools or weapons, nothing to use to fight them. And somehow, there were twenty of them approaching now.

“Ah…” His voice trembled, and then broke.

“Aaaaah!”

Screaming, Naomi turned and fled. Driven by sheer terror, he ran without even a glance over his shoulder. He could hear countless footsteps following close behind.

 

There was a puddle of muddy water inches from Naomi’s face. It was nauseating, but he couldn’t lift his head away from the ground. He was lying on his stomach underneath a truck.

He’d fled to the north end of Kyoto, not far from the mountains that encircled the area. The houses were fewer and further between as he ran; there weren’t many places to hide out here. Finally cornered by the fox-masks, he had been forced to flee into a field dotted with plastic greenhouses, where he’d slipped under this truck to hide. Now he was trapped down here.

Turning his head as far as he could, he tried to scan the area. The ground was covered in puddles; raindrops rippled their surfaces. A boot slammed down into one, splashing dirty water directly into Naomi’s face. He forced himself not to cry out.

The mud around the truck was torn up by countless footprints. There weren’t just twenty or thirty of those masked things anymore; more than a hundred pairs of legs walked endlessly around the area, searching in all directions.

Every single one of them was looking for Naomi. He didn’t know why, but they’d chased him single-mindedly all the way from Ruri’s house.

They moved slowly, so at first he’d thought he could lose them if he ran. But the fox-masks kept popping up out of thin air everywhere he went. It didn’t matter how far he fled; they appeared in the middle of the street, inside the houses, and between the trees.

Now they were wandering around only a few feet from Naomi’s face. They didn’t seem to know where he was, for some reason. None of them bent down to look under the truck.

But there were just too many of them. It had to be a matter of time until they started physically ramming themselves against any nearby objects. Squeezing himself flat against the ground, Naomi quieted his breathing and tried to think. How could he escape?

The question had been running circles around his mind for a while now, but he wasn’t coming up with much of anything. No matter how hard he tried to focus, he found his thoughts moving in unproductive directions, seeking escape from this grim reality.

Why did this have to happen?

He’d worked so hard these last three months. He’d done what felt right to him. He’d even faced a challenge that felt downright impossible. He’d done it for himself, and for her...and for his mentor.

In classic Little Match Girl style, his mind pulled up the happiest memories it could find. He remembered the day he met Ichigyou Ruri, and the time they’d spent together in the library committee. He remembered sitting next to her at the front desk and reading quietly together. He remembered pulling the cart full of books along the road, sweating through his shirt.

He remembered how he’d opened up to her about the books he liked, and how she’d understood. He remembered the day they started going out.

He remembered how certain he’d been about all the happy days ahead of them.

Naomi’s imagination pulled him away from reality, made him forget about the masked things hunting for him. He fled into his mind, into his happiest fantasies.

He remembered a few things that didn’t involve Ruri, too. His first encounter with Sensei at Fushimi Inari, and the agreement they’d reached on the rooftop. His training sessions with the magic glove, and their long discussions, planning out his romantic strategy. The help he’d finally given Naomi that night when he replicated the books.

Sensei had taught him so many things and helped him grow like a brother. He’d been a real mentor, a true friend.

Naomi’s face crumpled and bitter tears ran down his face. His hands clawed at the mud as he tried to squeeze them into fists.

It was a lie. It was all one big lie.

All of it was fake—his kindness, his sternness, his concern. There was no hate in Naomi’s heart, only pain and sadness that he’d been deceived, and that Sensei was gone. He was heartbroken.

He’d lost everything he cared about.

A croaking sob forced itself out of his throat, and his tears disappeared into the muddy water.

He could see the legs of the wandering fox-masks reflected in that same puddle. For some reason, they’d stopped moving. Naomi tilted his head to look up from the ground. The countless legs were all frozen in place. He watched them uncertainly.

Without the constant drumming of the masked things’ footsteps, an eerie silence had fallen on the area. In that silence, Naomi could just make out a faint sound from very far away.

Is that a siren?

It sounded a lot like the alarm the local government played over the city’s loudspeakers during emergency evacuations drills or to announce a missing person. Naomi thought he could hear a voice as well, but the words were muffled and hard to hear from underneath this truck.

Listening closely, he managed to pick out a phrase or two. He thought he heard the words “Recovery Mode.”

A bright light flashed, and Naomi covered his face reflexively.

Squinting, he peered out from underneath the truck. One thing’s kitsune mask was shining. In its very center, something round, bright, and yellow had appeared—it almost looked like the warning lights set up near road construction.

It was an eye—a single, shining eye grown in the center of the mask. Or perhaps a third, if you counted the two slender ones on the mask itself.

One by one, the same eyes appeared on every mask Naomi could see, like a chain reaction. Simultaneously, their hands all began to glow.

Naomi had to smile at that. It was a weak, miserable smile, but what else was he supposed to do?

It was the God Hand. The familiar glove had appeared on every one of the fox-masks’ hands.

One of the things knelt down and pressed its hands to the ground. A large section of soil reshaped itself into a neat cube and promptly disappeared, leaving nothing behind.

Naomi understood what had happened. He knew how the God Hand worked inside and out, after all. That thing had just rewritten the world, converting a piece of the ground into pure information. The dirt hadn’t been replaced with air or turned transparent; it had been erased.

That thing had turned something into nothing.

Suddenly, the entire army of masked things erupted into frantic motion. Instead of their slow shuffle, they ran rapidly around the area, slamming themselves at every object in their paths. Some leapt at the ground itself. Others attacked the greenhouses. Some threw their hands at the walls of nearby houses. And with their gloves, they changed all of it to nothing.

They were erasing Kyoto. They were deleting this entire world.

Everything suddenly got much brighter, and Naomi realized that the truck he’d been hiding under had been erased. A three-eyed fox-mask was staring right down at him.

Naomi thrashed frantically into action. Wriggling like a bug on its back, he rolled over and crawled away on all fours through the mud. He slipped on the slick soil but somehow managed to scramble to his feet; an instant later, he was running blindly away, as fast as his legs would carry him. But the fox-masks were running too, moving just as wildly.

There were hundreds of them now, or even thousands. They weren’t pursuing Naomi specifically anymore, though; now, they were after everything that made up this entire world, Naomi included. Sprinting in every direction, they destroyed everything they touched like a rampaging army of bulldozers. Bit by bit, the world was leveled, reduced to nothing.

The all-engulfing wave of masked things was close behind him. Naomi was out of options—all he could do now was run.

 

Naomi trudged up a gentle slope, walking along a road that led through the mountains surrounding Kyoto. There were fewer houses here, and much more greenery. No one else was on the street, and he hadn’t seen a single car on the road so far.

All alone, Naomi dragged his aching, soaked legs forward. His drenched clothes were heavy with water; they dragged him down like chains.

He wasn’t moving quickly now, too exhausted to force himself to run. Still, the fox-masks hadn’t caught up to him yet.

Most of their army had headed toward the dense city center, rather than spreading out to the fringes. Their goal was to erase everything, so maybe they were drawn to areas crowded with objects and people. If that was true, they’d probably wouldn’t get to the mountains for a bit. If Naomi dragged himself out into the woods, he might be able to hide for a little while.

And after that…

His line of thought ran aground. There was no way to complete that sentence. He knew what was coming in the end...eventually, there’d be nowhere left to run.

Naomi’s legs slowed to a halt. He looked up at the dark, cloudy night sky through half-closed eyes.

In the distance, another siren blared out.

Naomi’s eyes snapped open, and he forced himself to listen closely. This was the second siren of the evening. Once again, it came from somewhere far away; once again, he heard some sort of announcement playing. But he’d put more distance between himself and the city now, so he couldn’t make out a single word. All he could do was wait anxiously, listen to the blaring sound, and see what happened next.

A pebble rolled across the ground toward Naomi.

He looked down at it curiously; it seemed to be moving all on its own. Before long, other little rocks began to follow its example.

After a moment, he figured out what was happening. The slope he was walking up was growing steeper.

A rock the size of a baseball came tumbling down as the road rose up in front of him. A moment ago, it had been no steeper than a wheelchair ramp; now it was more like the ramp up a pedestrian bridge. Before Naomi could even try to flee, it turned into an asphalt slide.

“Ah! Aaah!”

Naomi fell to his hands and knees, clutching at the ground, fighting against the growing force of gravity. But it proved pointless; the road just kept rising up and up.

The force of gravity overwhelmed that of friction, and his body began to slide downward along the slick, wet road. He couldn’t stop his fall, just slid faster and faster as the road grew steeper.

Throwing the weight of his body to one side, Naomi managed to change course slightly. Sliding diagonally toward the side of the road, he tried to grab hold of the guardrail, but his rain-slick hands slipped off. Still, he kept reaching out for it, trying to at least slow himself down a little. The road was as steep as a ski slope now; his arms and legs flapped desperately against it.

Naomi found himself approaching a curve in the road. The guardrail he’d been sliding alongside was now a metal bar directly in his path, and his shoulder slammed into it, sending a shock through his entire body. Ignoring the pain as best he could, he caught hold of a support post, finally pausing his descent. There was a streetlight standing right next to the post; Naomi reached out to grab it, then wriggled his way onto its thicker pole, finally regaining his balance.

This new perch made the situation terribly clear.

Naomi was balanced on the side of a light pole, his arms and legs wrapped around it. The ground was a vertical wall.

Stunned, he looked over at the sky.

It wasn’t above him anymore. It was straight off to the side—a great wall of dark clouds, stretching out vertically in the distance.

In the middle of that wall was a hole.

The dirty gray clouds had formed a kind of funnel around it, like an antlion’s trap. At the center was a small, black spot that Naomi couldn’t see inside—from here, it looked pure black.

Objects soared through the air toward it, and it sucked them in. First, Naomi saw it eat a car. Then a vending machine. Then a bus. Then a building. All sort of things flew off the surface of the city and disappeared into that hole.

The light pole he was sitting on, which had been horizontal, began to bend.

Everything finally clicked into place.

The world had been bent at a 90-degree angle. Soon, it would be bent to 180 degrees. The ground would be up and the sky would be down. Before long, everything in this world would fall into the sky.

They would be shaken down, bit by bit, like flour falling through a sifter. For a moment he wondered what they’d do about objects that were solidly attached to the ground; but then he remembered that the fox-masks had been rampaging through the city for some time now. They’d probably been cutting everything loose, ensuring everything could fall into that hole.

It felt horribly plausible, considering what he’d seen. This was how everything was going to end, with the entire city vanishing into that tiny dot. It was all going to go. The buildings, the trees, even the soil.

And, of course, him.

I’m going to disappear. I get it now. I’m…

“I’m going to die.”

Somehow, it felt more real when he spoke the words out loud.

As a kid, Naomi had once broken his favorite toy robot. He’d been trying to turn it back into a car, but it got stuck, and when he tried to force it one of the legs snapped right off. It was immediately clear that it couldn’t be repaired, no matter what.

What he’d felt in that moment was the closest comparison he could think of to what he felt now—that feeling of inevitability.

Naomi began to cry. He blubbered like a child at the overwhelming pain of it all. It was just too much to bear. And the more he cried, the more miserable he felt.

But what else was he supposed to do? It was over. It was all over. There wasn’t anything to be done.

That toy was broken.

And he was going to die.

“Ichigyou-san…” He called out to the girl he loved, who he knew he’d never see again. His pointless cries disappeared into the hole, along with everything else.

Then, as he stared at it through his tears, something occurred to him. He’d seen something like this before. But where? When?

Right…when Sensei took her away…

The crow’s claws had rained down from above, forming an octagonal cage. And that cage had flown up into the sky.

It had pierced the sky, opening a hole that looked just like the one he was staring at now. And if she’d gone into that hole…maybe she was waiting on the other side of it?

There was a low, loud crash as a large truck collided with a small building in midair, breaking both apart. A moment later, they were both sucked into the hole.

Naomi shook his head fiercely, the blood draining from his face.

“I can’t!”

The idea was ridiculous. Jumping into that hole would be suicide. And there wasn’t even any guarantee that it connected to wherever Ruri had gone. He had zero evidence—the thought was just a convenient fantasy.

He wasn’t living in a story. Things wouldn’t work out so neatly.

Katagaki Naomi avoided taking risks. He never threw himself at a challenge unless he knew the outcome in advance.

Those were the rules he’d lived by since the day he was born. He’d never changed. He couldn’t change. Even after meeting Sensei, he’d simply put his faith in the Ultimate Manual, letting it give him all the answers. He’d never broken his rules, not even once.

Oh. Wait.

The image of a book had flashed into his mind—a stained old novel with a nice illustration on the cover, frayed corners, and a library card in the back.

He’d made that book, hadn’t he?

Yeah. I remember now. I pulled it off, didn’t I? I had no idea how it might turn out, and Sensei told me to stop, but I did it anyway.

Just that once, I made my own decision.

Naomi looked up from his creaking perch. The world suddenly looked oddly clear to him, like the feeling when your head clears up after a cold.

He rose to his feet atop the slanting light pole like a gymnast on a balance beam.

And then…

He jumped into the sky.

 

5.

 

INSIDE THE HOLE, Naomi saw a jellyfish.

He was in outer space. It was made of water, and every possible color all at once.

Something big swallowed him up. He was broken into chunks, and every piece of him caught fire.

Once he was nice and smooth, he was scattered into bits.

Someone was looking him in the eye. Naomi wanted to say hello, but he couldn’t.

There wasn’t any Naomi left to speak.

 

6.

 

SOMETIMES, A SHINTO SHRINE has a particular kind of stage, the kind used for Noh theater, mamemaki rituals, and other similar events. Naomi had lived in Kyoto his whole life, so he’d seen a lot of shrines for a boy his age. He recognized that he was standing on one of those stages almost immediately.

Naomi glanced around him. There were two white mounds of sand just outside the stage, on opposite ends. They seemed familiar, but he couldn’t remember where he’d seen them before. They were definitely from a shrine in the city, though.

He looked around again, hoping for another hint. But apart from the mounds of sand, the space around him looked like heaven, or maybe hell. Possibly outer space.

Slowly, something dawned on him.

“Am I dead?” he murmured sadly to no one in particular.

“No, you’re not.”

Naomi flinched backward. There was a three-legged crow standing on the floor right in front of him.

Once he got over his initial surprise, Naomi stepped toward it cautiously. It was that crow, the one that had turned into a glove. Or maybe it was a glove that turned into a crow. Whatever. Either way, it had betrayed him.

And just to make things even more unsettling, it was speaking to him.

“Uh, you can talk?” Naomi asked.

“Yes, I can,” the crow replied in a calm, businesslike manner. Its voice sounded like a woman’s, but its tone was oddly flat; it reminded Naomi of a prerecorded menu on a corporate support line. “I can also answer your questions. To repeat, you are not currently dead.”

“Oh. Really?”

“Additionally, you may consider me your ally.”

Naomi looked at the bird dubiously. It was a little hard to take the thing at its word, especially since it had backstabbed him not too long ago.

On closer inspection, though, he realized that this crow had a small patch of blond hair on the crown of its head. The crow he knew had been completely black; maybe this was a different bird entirely. Not that he had any way to be sure.

“Katagaki Naomi,” the bird said; apparently it wasn’t going to give him time to think this over. Staring at him with its glassy, unreadable eyes, it continued, “You’re going to take Ichigyou Ruri back with your own hands.”

 

7.

 

“I’M GOING to what?” Naomi responded stupidly.

“Take back Ichigyou Ruri,” the bird replied, ignoring his obvious confusion. “The world has been thrown off balance. To correct this, the Homeostatic System will likely attempt to erase her. You need to prevent this. Return her to her rightful place in the world where she belongs.”

“That’s, uh, easy for you to say…” Naomi couldn’t make any sense of this, and this bird didn’t seem to want to help him understand. He had no idea what to think.

Ruri had been stolen from him. That was true.

He wanted to see her again. He’d jumped willingly into that hole on the off chance it would take him to her. But he hadn’t really thought through what might come next.

He knew what he wanted. He wanted to bring her back, to see her again, to wrap his arms around her.

But…

Naomi stared down at his hands. “I’m completely powerless.”

“Incorrect,” the crow replied calmly. “You have a power all your own. One you developed through steady, focused practice.” The bird wasn’t sitting in front of Naomi anymore. Startled, he looked around and spotted it flitting through the air some distance away.

Suddenly, it banked in midair and began to dive straight toward Naomi at an incredible speed.

Naomi threw up his arms reflexively to block the attack. The bird slammed into him a split second later; but strangely, there was no pain whatsoever.

Instead, there was a glove on his right hand. Naomi stared at it blankly. It wasn’t the same as his old one—this one was pure white.

“What are you?” he murmured in disbelief.

“Just a crow,” his glove responded. “A crow that watched you work very hard for the last three months.”

Naomi felt something surge out of his glove. He couldn’t see it or hear it, but it was enough. He understood now.

He could reach her with his own hands.

“Katagaki Naomi-san,” the glove continued in its voicemail-menu voice. “Do you want a girlfriend?”

I’ve heard that one before…

This time, the answer was easy.

“Yes!”

Naomi’s hand closed around something of its own volition. He’d grabbed hold of a shining cord—like the Spider’s Thread from that Akutagawa story, only much thicker and sturdier. Looking up, he saw that the roof of the stage had disappeared. The cord stretched up endlessly into the heavens.

Naomi gave it a great, powerful tug. In response, the cord yanked him up; his body soared into the sky like a firework.

He rocketed through the sky, past the stars, past outer space itself, and into a perfectly vertical rainbow-colored tunnel. The great string guided him into its mouth. He flew up and up through it.

The journey felt like it took years, or perhaps seconds. Maybe both.

Naomi’s body shrunk into a tiny speck. The border between him and the world grew vague and uncertain. Things were passing through him in a constant, chaotic torrent: energy, objects, people.

And at the end of that great river, Katagaki Naomi fused with himself.