CHILDREN RECORD SIDE -NO. 3- (2)

Even when everybody’s gone, I’m never going to cry. We can cry once we see each other again.

We had made that promise, and so I thought I was prepared for whatever might happen.

But…I’m sorry. This is just so hard.

This is the third time my family’s disappeared before my eyes. Really, what kind of unlucky star did I need to be born under to have all these terrible things happen to me? You hear people proclaim there’s no God a lot, but if there really weren’t, maybe I wouldn’t have had to go through this crazy life of mine.

I don’t think God doesn’t exist. There’s some god out there, probably with a really evil personality, constantly hovering over all of us. Or something.

Whenever something bad happened to me, I’d play out these silly thoughts in my mind over and over again. It’s not like having a god around would change anything. I was aware of that much. But for some reason, I couldn’t shake the desire to see God for myself someday, to see what he’s like.

…Ah, but that might be part of the reason, too.

“Maybe she’s him. Right in front of me.”

I couldn’t be blamed for the thought. Not with the divine, almost overwhelming presence Marie was now projecting to me.

It all happened just a little bit ago.

Shintaro’s “operation”—not exactly the most detailed of plans, conceived overnight, but still almost too well devised—had ended largely as planned. We would use Marie’s power to halt our enemy—the “clearing” snake that had taken my father for itself—and capture it there. The process leading to that was carried out all but perfectly.

Things rapidly began to change after that single moment. The dark shadow that appeared in the center of the dimly lit laboratory killed two of my friends in the blink of an eye. The “clearing eyes” snake that jumped into my father’s body had, out of nowhere, jumped into Konoha’s.

Konoha’s ability was called “awakening eyes,” something that powered up the body it possessed in one way or another. He must have never expected the “clearing” snake to ever take him over.

Its vulgar, ridiculing laugh echoed across the room. I think I could hear Marie screaming in the midst of it, but by that time, all I could do was just stand there, faced with the tragedy in front of me. His incredibly powerful body, the incredibly cruel things in his mind… It was, in a word, the worst.

But by the time I realized that, the smiling face of Konoha, already twisted in a sinister sneer, was coming closer to me. I was lifted up by the throat, which forced my eyes shut, not even able to gasp for breath…and that’s when it happened.

I cringed at the voice that reached my ears.

“…Bring it on, Kagerou Daze!”

For a moment, I didn’t realize it was Marie’s voice.

Marie wasn’t afraid to act angry at us whenever we went overboard with picking on her. I should know—I was the one who picked on her the most. I was probably the one out of us who had seen her angry the most times. But the sheer rage behind those words when Marie spoke them was on a whole ’nother level.

At that very moment, the “clearing eyes” stopped moving on the spot. It was for just an instant or two, but the expression on the snake’s face seemed like one of pure terror to me.

Then, ripping through the frozen air in the room, a gigantic mouth, pure black in color, appeared. It was like every single ominous, eerie sight in the world compressed into a single thing, and it immediately snatched up Shintaro’s and Kido’s bodies, ferrying them off to parts unknown.

I don’t know whether it was the devastating impact of the sight or of the face that belonged to the fingers still clutched around my throat, but that was the last thing I saw before I lost consciousness.

…I couldn’t say how much time passed after that. Within the perfectly silent darkness, I awoke—only to find her in front of me, taking the form of Marie. Countless scales covered her cheeks, and her faintly glowing eyes featured large, slitted, dark-red pupils. Her formerly long, cottony hair was shorter now, and her bright, cheerful, still-childish face had an expression that made her seem like someone completely different.

Her sneer was aimed squarely at a figure that looked like Konoha, but done up completely in black. He was standing bolt upright, just as my father had been when Marie froze him just before. But while they looked the same, the circumstances were completely different from the situation with my father. The Konoha figure kept gazing forward, his face blank, as if he was peering right into the depths of despair. Marie’s power, as I understood it, didn’t make people do that.

Maybe it was instinct saying it to me, but if she could make the “clearing eyes” inside Konoha react like that, she had to be something beyond a mere human being. Someone who looked like Marie, but wasn’t. I recalled the word “Medusa,” and it made me gasp.

She turned to me, perhaps hearing my racing heartbeat, then wordlessly turned her feet in my direction. Her expression, glaring down at me, slowly advanced closer and closer. Once we were practically face-to-face, she crouched down and pointed at her own chest, speaking to me with her familiar voice.

“…Is this girl family to you?”

That wasn’t how Marie spoke. I hesitated for a moment, but judging by the question, it didn’t sound like she was trying to scare me into submission. I opened my mouth, attempting to answer, but I wasn’t sure what I should say. “This girl” meant Marie, I assumed—but if so, I wasn’t sure “family” was the right way to put it. Saying yes seemed a little difficult to me. Calling her a “companion” or “teammate” would be painting our relationship with too broad a brush. “Friend,” maybe? I wasn’t exactly sure. I wasn’t ready to do away with the “family” appellation entirely, however.

As I agonized over this, she let out a soft grunt and opened her mouth once more.

“Are you her husband, perhaps?”

……

“No!!” I immediately replied. Not that I found the idea disgusting or anything, but I didn’t want any misunderstandings.

The girl blinked at me, perhaps surprised at the volume of my hurried voice. Then she took a deep breath and chuckled a few times.

“Ah, so you can talk? You just had your mouth hanging open, so I thought that was how you communicated with people.”

She heaved a sigh of relief—all was well with her. The stern look on her face was gone now, and it even felt as if her body was a little smaller.

But her manner of speech was still nothing at all like Marie’s. As fluent as she was, I doubted this was just Marie falling into a different speech pattern out of all this chaos. And that left few possibilities. Some kind of trigger must have replaced Marie’s personality with hers. Or someone else’s. Who was to say if it was even a girl?

“…Um, who are you?” I bluntly asked.

She blinked at me again. It must have been a nervous habit of hers. It felt like she was carefully observing every word I spoke, every move I made. I thought she was doing that to avoid revealing herself, but then she spoke again, not interested in hiding the truth.

“My name is Azami.”

When I heard that name, the theory in my mind became proven fact. Azami, the Medusa who had written the diary Shintaro found in the house where Marie’s family had lived, was now possessing Marie’s body.

“I am the mother of Marie’s mother.”

“Oh… I see…”

How awfully forthcoming of her to say. By the looks of things, she might be a much more approachable woman than I pictured from the stories.

Now I had a grasp of the situation. If I was willing to believe Azami, she had jumped into Marie’s body just as “clearing” had jumped into Konoha’s. That would explain why she had the power to neutralize “clearing” like that; she was, after all, the origin of all the abilities that had been given to us. We were just borrowing those powers for our own use, but she could harness all of them much more directly, and powerfully.

It was kind of like we were a bunch of children fighting in the playground, and now there was a grown-up on the scene.

Yep. Made sense.

Talk about a real crappy story.

“Why… Why now?”

The words fell from my lips. With them, a torrent of memories ran through my mind, making my voice quiver.

“You’re way too late showing up, man! How many people you think have died already?! If you had been here…been here earlier, to help us…”

I couldn’t have said exactly what I meant by “earlier.” Maybe back when that robber attacked my mother, or when my father was caught in that landslide, or when my sister ended her own life. Those were all possibilities, but they probably weren’t what I meant. What I said, I said with the meaning “I wish you could’ve been here before Kido had to die, at least.”

But I told her nothing else. The feelings of helplessness kept me from expressing any more of my fury. Instead, the tears welling in the corners of my eyes did the talking.

“Ah…ooh…”

Azami softly, weakly whimpered at my words, bewildered eyes staring into space. I’ll bet she was confused. I knew very little about Azami overall, but she was a victim of the “clearing” snake’s scheme, too. Having someone chew them out like this out of nowhere would perplex anybody.

Simply having her here now, to lend a hand, was a blessing. I knew I was being unfair as I attacked her, and I didn’t really think what I said to her was right. But I still just couldn’t stand it. We were being victimized, trampled, and thinking about the helplessness of all the people who had been swallowed up just made me want to lash out. Anybody would do.

“I—I am sorry. I couldn’t even imagine the pain you’ve all had to go through. But…as much as I wanted to help you, I couldn’t.”

Azami kept her eyes down, like an innocent child, as she warbled out the words. They didn’t feel like an excuse, and I had no proof that any of it was a lie.

“…So why are you here now? At least tell me that.”

Azami shuddered for a moment. “My body and my spirit,” she half whispered, “were at the end of their rope once I lost my abilities. Right now, I, speaking to you through her body like this, am just a memory.”

“A memory?”

“Yes. I had the memories of my life transported into the mind of my granddaughter from the other world. I only wish I could have done so sooner…”

She pointed at her temple, probably referring to Marie.

“This girl’s ‘locking eyes’ have the power to take over the Kagerou Daze. Until she uses them, I can’t intervene in this world from where I am.”

She’d sent her memories into Marie’s mind?

Certainly, I suppose, we’re all kind of defined by our memories. If a baby’s raised in an English-speaking country, they’ll know how to speak English; if they’re raised in the jungle, they’ll probably learn a lot of hunting skills. Our memories are our personality, the most core aspect of our life experience.

So does that mean the memories of Azami and her life are burned into Marie’s mind now? If so, that would explain why Marie is speaking as Azami would…

But there was something else that mystified me about this.

…“Kagerou Daze.”

The exact same term that Marie had shouted a moment earlier.

When that thing appeared and swallowed up Shintaro and Kido just now, Azami’s memories must have flown in here with it.

But that sounded so strange to me.

Azami claimed that Marie had the ability to control the Kagerou Daze, but Marie herself had never breathed a word of that to us. She might have been hiding it, perhaps, but it’d make more sense to assume she never knew in the first place.

Would that even be possible for Marie? To fully accept her Medusa side and call the name of the Kagerou Daze like that?

As I thought this over, Azami suddenly lowered her eyebrows. “…It’s all thanks to Tsubomi,” she whispered.

The unexpected name from her lips made my eyes shoot open. She didn’t appear to notice.

“Before, when Tsubomi came from my world to this one, I asked her to deliver a message for me. I said that should she ever encounter my granddaughter, tell her to call for the Kagerou Daze for me. The ‘concealing’ in Tsubomi is attracted to the ‘locking’ within this girl. I figured they would run into each other sometime, and she would relay the message without fail.”

Azami’s voice wavered a bit at the end. Her expression seemed all too human for a so-called Medusa monster.

“I was so weak spirited,” she squeaked out. “But she carried out my ridiculous request. She was such a good girl, but…but I wasn’t in time. Nothing could possibly be more frustrating.”

Her tears ran down the scales that had appeared on Marie’s cheeks. The soft sobs she let out made it impossible for me to ask her any more questions.

To be honest, there was a lot I found fishy about Azami’s story.

Why hadn’t Kido said a single thing about the Kagerou Daze until now? And why had she been able to relay that message to Marie here, in this building? I couldn’t lie—I wanted some answers. But trying to get it out of her in detail right now? I wasn’t sure it’d be worth the time and effort. You can’t change the past. Knowing the meaning behind it all wouldn’t do much apart from assuaging my own feelings of helplessness.

But Azami’s tears absolutely convinced me of one thing.

…Apparently Kido wound up saving my life just now.

I let out a sigh and covered my face with both hands. I felt like there was no place left for me to go, and that feeling made my stomach churn.

Why? How come? And what now…?

For better or worse, none of the feelings that ebbed and flowed within me formed words in my exhausted mind.

“You were friends with Tsubomi?” Azami asked, a more cautious tone in her voice. She must have picked up on my feelings. And hadn’t she asked me a similar question earlier? She’d asked whether Marie was my family. I didn’t see any need to apologize for not answering that, but I opened my mouth anyway.

“Yeah…pretty much. We’ve been together since we were both little. She was really stubborn and awkward…but I liked her. I liked her a lot.”

It was a blunt way of putting it, I thought. But I wanted to express exactly what was on my mind. Hearing it, Azami gave me a short nod, said “I see,” and sniffled a little. I turned my face up, finding this odd, and saw that she was now quivering from head to toe, the tears larger than ever.

“It—it must be so sad for you. Being separated from someone you spent so much time with is painful. Like a burn extending across your entire body. Ngh…ugh… I don’t even know what to say…”

Huh. Like…she really is human, isn’t she? Showing so much empathy for someone she only met a moment ago… You don’t see that very often. The term “Medusa” seemed less and less appropriate for her by the moment.

The snake eyes letting out that well of tears bore the color of pain, like the blood in my own veins. A repugnant color, the color of constant torment.

I wasn’t willing to accept everything Azami told me at face value, of course. But I had good reason to—a small detail, but an important one. We were derided as monsters; we were reviled, shunned, and it made us feel so lifeless—and she understood all of that. No way I could hate someone with that kind of eyes.

…I’m pretty sure that’s how Kido would put it. Let’s try emulating that a bit.

“Well, that’s how it wound up. Kido did everything she could for us. It’s gonna be really lonely without her, but if she’s let me keep on living, I can’t sit here and cry forever.”

I stood up. About half of what I’d said was my own true feelings. But there were some lies in the rest of it. I had to stay confident and keep going forward before those lies melted from my mind.

“Thanks for talking to me about this, Ms. Azami. So what should we do now?”

“Azami,” she curtly replied, after one more convulsion of sobs. “The ‘Ms.’ part is unnecessary.”

“Oh. Um… Is that important?”

“Of course it is. It’s my most precious of names…one given to me long ago.”

…Yeah, I’ll bet it’s important. How human of her. Really.

“All right,” I replied. Then I turned back toward “clearing,” housed inside Konoha.

It was still standing there, no different at all from before, and with the expression it was making, it was a pretty freaky sight to see. There was no light in its glassy eyes, as if the soul had been plucked right out of it. I couldn’t sense even a shred of emotion on the face.

With things as they were, an impartial observer might think this battle was already over. But this couldn’t be all. Not yet.

For one, we couldn’t just leave Konoha like that—not when his body had been taken over that way. There was no telling when it might start moving again, and striking at us.

That’s why we needed something that addressed the root cause of this. Some way of taking down “clearing.” We hadn’t been able to do it before, but we had to now.

“With my granddaughter’s power,” Azami went on as I thought this over, “I imagine we can only immobilize him for a few minutes at most. So I took advantage of ‘concealing’…of Tsubomi’s power.”

The revelation made me ache inside. No matter how much I intellectually understood it, this was a reality that I still had trouble freely accepting.

Azami gave me a look, perhaps because I hadn’t given her any response. I mentally shook off the cobwebs and reconsidered her words. What does she mean, she used “concealing”? Kido had had the ability to thin out her existence, unchaining it from reality to the point of becoming invisible.

“Um, it doesn’t look like his body’s fading away or anything… How did you use it?”

“His body? …Ah. Well, fading out of notice is only one way to use ‘concealing.’ It’s actually pretty simple.”

She pointed at “clearing,” then ran her finger around in a circle, tracing the area around where he stood.

“I relieved him of every sense he has that picks up on stimuli in this world. He is no longer capable of recognizing sound, light, even his own heartbeat. It is like I have thrown him into a completely darkened world. I doubt he could even figure out how to move his body anymore.”

I shivered a little. It sounded almost coldhearted, the way she put it. Her expression, as she stared “clearing” down, had none of the caution or reserve she’d shown to me earlier.

Robbing someone of all their senses went far beyond the realm of reality. This wasn’t just a matter of mastering a special skill or whatever. Once again, I realized that this woman in front of me was a true-blue Medusa, a monster to be feared.

“But,” she added as she walked toward “clearing,” “all this does is buy us some time. It won’t last for long.” I hurried over to join her, and once we were in front of “clearing,” Azami peered intently at him, studying each detail. Then she let out a deep sigh.

“I knew it. He’s recomposing his body, little by little… Using ‘awakening,’ probably, to build a body that my powers can’t affect. I know he has full knowledge of my abilities, so I shouldn’t have expected anything less, but…”

“So what does that mean?”

Azami frowned, a cold sweat appearing on her forehead. “Not much longer from now, he’ll have a body that will be impervious to this approach for the rest of time. Then he’ll start taking action again.”

The fresh memory of my throat being half-crushed in his hand flashed back to me. That evil smile on Konoha’s face, so different from his usual soft expression. Just recalling it made me shudder, as if I’d lose it and faint on the spot.

“Uh, that, that’s really bad, right?! We can barely take him as it is… What’re we supposed to do now?!”

“W-wait, wait! Calm down!” She frantically shook her arms in the air, then crossed them, her breathing still ragged. “You should know that I expected something like this to happen! I haven’t been sitting in that other world twiddling my thumbs the whole time. Naturally, I’ve been thinking of measures to take.”

Hmm. That makes sense, actually.

“Clearing” had been one of Azami’s original abilities. Unless the enemy had some surprise attack or other trick up its sleeve, Azami’s Medusa powers had to give her a decisive advantage.

I began to feel more than a little embarrassed for carrying on so viscerally at what was basically just a scary story. Azami seemed pretty confident in herself.

Let’s leave it to her and see what happens.

“Just watch me,” she said, and I watched expectantly.

Thrusting both hands out toward “clearing,” she quietly closed her eyes. “No matter how much knowledge it has, no matter how powerful the body, it is still nothing more than an ability. One that lives under the rule of ‘combining.’ All I have to do is drag it out and make it bend to my will…!”

Her eyes still closed, Azami broke into a low, deep murmur. It seemed to fill the air with a rarefied, almost divine feel.

Is this it? The final curtain on our long battle? I’ve been through a lot—lost my family, lost my friends. Even when this ends, it won’t bring back what I’ve lost.

But the things that Shintaro, Kido, and my big sister had tried to keep safe remained out of our enemy’s hands. That fact alone felt like salvation to me.

I’ll have to thank Azami for this later, too. If it weren’t for her, I’d probably be…

“…Huh?”

The tone of Azami’s voice hadn’t sounded too rosy to me just then, but I was sure it was just my mind playing tricks on me. I was pretty sure she had said “Huh?” though.

Azami had her eyes shut tightly, applying a fair amount of mental force to something. She talked about “dragging out” “clearing” just now, but by the looks of things, it wasn’t that easy a process.

Well, hang in there, Azami. This isn’t really a win-lose kind of thing, but I really hope you won’t lose this for me.

She kept grunting in that low voice of hers.

…Um, is she really all right, or what? That sounds like it’s pretty physically demanding. You okay, Azami? Hang on—did she just give Konoha’s face a weird look? Like, “What the hell, why isn’t it out yet,” that kind of look?

You okay over there? Didn’t you just say that you weren’t twiddling your thumbs over in the other world? Why’re you looking like you’re about to cry? Come on, Azami, seriously…

“…It—it’s no use.”

By the time Azami turned around, her face was white as a sheet. Gone was the solemn majesty of her Medusa side. And I suppose my face looked much the same. The room was wrapped in gloomy silence, the air heavy and moist…and then that silence was broken.

“Wait, what?! Wait a second! I thought you were, like, totally confident just now! You said it was just another ability or whatever! What went wrong?!”

“Shuuu-shut up! How should I know?! I did everything I could! I don’t know why, but it’s just not listening to me, and…I just don’t know. It’s no use.”

“What do you mean, ‘It’s no use’?! I was expecting a lot more than that from you! Now what’re we gonna do? Huh?!”

“What?! Look, I’m trying my best here! You don’t have to speak to me in that tone of voice! If you think you can do better, go right ahead! Let’s see it!”

“Are you kidding me?! You know I can’t do anything like that! What the hell did you even come here for?!”

We wasted our breath on this pointless bickering for a little while longer. But suddenly, with a loud bang, the laboratory door flew open.

“Aaaaaaahhh!!”

I jumped into the air, spooked by this sudden noise from an unexpected direction. So did Azami. She flew up even higher than I did.

“Are you all right, guys? Did it work out okay?! Um… Whoa, Marie, is that a new look for you?”

It was Momo Kisaragi there, half out of breath at the doorway. The sight of the possessed Marie made her raise an eyebrow in confusion. Looking at the reptilian scales covering her cheeks and calling it a “new look” was a pretty serious stretch, I thought—and that was the first thing she said when she zoomed in here? That was typical Kisaragi, that was for sure.

But if she was here, that meant he should be here, too…

I turned my eyes beyond the door and spotted a larger-framed figure wobbling up to it.

“Y-you, you’re…going too far ahead, Kisaragi…Huff…huff…”

Seto, breathing hard, just barely managed to wheeze his words out, as if just completing a marathon.

Kisaragi was supposed to meet back up with us after her little diversion. If Seto was with her, that meant things must’ve largely gone as planned.

Seto’s role here, to put it simply, was to be Kisaragi’s bodyguard. He’d seek out any unfamiliar “voices” that could indicate enemy reinforcements in the area and make sure she was kept far away from any foes. He was a kind of sonar, in other words. I didn’t think he’d be too enthusiastic about it, given how it meant he’d have to use his ability a whole bunch. But he just said “I’ll take care of it,” all bold and confident, which was a surprise.

Of course, looking at how out of breath he was right now, he must’ve used and abused that ability a lot.

“Oh, Seto…” Kisaragi bowed her head in apology. “Sorry I went so far ahead. I didn’t realize you were so, you know, slow, so…”

“Sorry,” Seto replied with a weak smile, eyes turned downward. I figure Kisaragi could’ve put it in any number of better ways, but she had a point. Seto was brawny, but not exactly quick on his feet. And so here was Kisaragi, of course, leaving her bodyguard in the dust. What a tour de force.

Of course, her ability was pretty decently strong, so if she decided to really bust it out, I doubt she’d have much trouble taking out one or two enemies at a time.

“So, Kano, um…” She swiveled her head around and gave me another confused look. “What am I looking at here?”

Hmm. She must’ve noticed that Shintaro and Kido were missing. The realization made me feel like ice-cold water was being pumped into my stomach. I had tasted real despair a moment ago, and now it was Kisaragi’s turn.

While I failed to find it in myself to answer Kisaragi’s question, Azami suddenly began tugging at my shirt.

“Is this your friend, boy?”

There was a fair amount of distance between us and Kisaragi still. “Yeah,” I whispered into her ear, making sure the newcomer couldn’t hear me. “She’s part of our team. The younger sister of the guy the Kagerou Daze just took in.”

Azami groaned. I remembered how vividly she’d responded to my earlier confession. With everything I’d told her, I’m sure she could understand why I was hemming and hawing right now. But that’s how things were. We couldn’t hide the fates of those two, or Konoha, from her forever. If “clearing” started wreaking havoc with us again, it was game over for sure. Everyone living and breathing in this room would be reduced to a pile of lifeless flesh in the blink of an eye.

But how should I put it to her?

What if I mess this up and they both lose all will to keep fighting? Or, for that matter, what if they’re too frozen in place to run, if the circumstances call for it?

Before I could even begin to think about it, Azami pushed on ahead of me.

“Your brother…has been swallowed into the Kagerou Daze. So was Tsubomi. They fought courageously here, and then they died.”

My heart skipped a beat at the all-too-sudden announcement.

“Y-you stupid…!”

There had to have been a better way to report the news. But Azami just stood there, firm, and her presence was enough to silence me.

Kisaragi’s face tensed up. She uttered a few syllables, like “huh” or “ah” or whatever. Seto looked pretty shell-shocked, too, shivering a little before easing up and lowering his eyes again. The reactions pained me so much that I averted my own.

Now they knew. All about this new reality that we were all helpless to do anything about. I began to wonder how much time they’d need to fully face up to it. Or was there any point in even trying? Would they be able to stand it?

Despite my worrying, however, the silence didn’t last long.

“Oh…right. I see, I see…”

She pushed out the syllables, doing what she could to hold back the onrush of emotion.

“I know this must be beyond your strength to handle,” Azami replied, now carefully choosing her words. “But if we do nothing here, their sacrifices will all go to waste. We have yet to solve anything here. So…”

Before she could finish, another voice spoke over her.

“…I understand. Is there anything I can do?”

I looked up. Ahead of me, Kisaragi wasn’t betraying a single iota of hesitation. Her mind was numb, but she was baring it for the world to see, as if the sun itself were illuminating it.

As far as I could remember, I had seen two other people make that face. One was on that unforgettable day when my big sister made her resolve clear, up on the roof in the evening. The other was when this girl’s own brother made that face as he went in ahead of us. Kisaragi was trying to take on her brother’s mission—and witnessing that, Seto gave a silent nod of his own, although his eyes were a little watery.

After looking at one, then the other, Azami turned back to my own face, all but asking what I wanted to do… I felt like I was going crazy. Tortured by all these unfair events, faced with utter despair time and time again…but none of us were willing to give up. I suppose the resolve from every team member was stronger than I gave them credit for. I only wished our boss were here to see it.

Suddenly, my mind recalled the “final objective” of the plan that Shintaro had laid out for us. That was kind of a silly, childish way of phrasing it. His face had been deadly serious when he came out with it to us, so we had all busted out laughing. But we all had understood. We had known, after all the abuse we faced, that it was something worth risking our necks to reach out for.

“…There’s just no outdoing him.”

I had to snicker a little. Right up to the end, he was always himself.

Thus, we all reaffirmed with one another that we were in this for keeps, come what may. But before we could talk things over, there was one thing left to do. I took a short breath and offered some advice to the Medusa next to me.

“Well, how ’bout we start with introducing you?”

She pouted at me, as if I were talking nonsense. That innocent face of Marie’s, but with a sternness I had never seen before. The other two both nodded at me, clearly ready to ask for themselves if I hadn’t butted in.

…I mean, given how her whole character had changed, this was definitely more than just “a new look.”

The air that prevailed in the lab, smelling thickly of pharmaceuticals, was as tense as always. There, under the garishly bright light from the LCD screens that lined the walls as far as I could see, we put our heads together and brainstormed. I’m not sure if Azami’s awkward self-introduction had fully come across to my two friends, but we had at least shared what we knew with each other.

The situation wasn’t looking great. As Azami put it, attempting to control and neutralize “clearing” was dead in the water—but even as we tried to come up with some alternate plan, nothing came to mind. We couldn’t see anything like a clock in the lab, and that made things all the more uneasy for us. Some invisible time limit was looming over us, chipping away at our mental outlooks.

In the midst of this, I decided to ask Azami about one of the root issues bothering me.

“Like, Azami, didn’t all these eye abilities originally belong to you? You definitely use ‘concealing’ a hell of a lot better than she did, even. Why’s ‘clearing’ the only one you can’t control like that?”

Azami shrugged and rolled her eyes, as if this were the dumbest question in the world. I wanted to bop her on the arm for it.

“Look,” she muttered, “if you’re hungry, you eat, right? And if you’re tired, you sleep. There’s no need to explain that. And in much the same way, each of these abilities have certain ‘desires’ that take priority with them.”

She gave Kisaragi a poke on the chest. Kisaragi didn’t bother trying to dodge it. I couldn’t help but notice Seto averting his eyes from the scene.

This isn’t the time to act all prudish, man.

“For example, your ‘drawing eyes’ skill has a natural desire to attract attention from other people. It loves doing that. And each one of those abilities has desires like that, which serve as the ‘food’ that allows them to keep existing. If they are kept away from their desires, they hate that.”

I thought I might have been told something like that when I obtained my own ability, come to think of it. Azami made it sound like a physiological desire, but it seemed natural in my mind to picture it like a hungry snake. They say that snakes can be tenacious, vengeful, and maybe that’s why these “abilities” were so easy to imagine as snakes—creatures that lived off their day-to-day desires.

“But it’s not just a matter of these abilities blindly consuming what they want like that. People have the ability to handle and restrain their desires with reason, yes? And ‘combining eyes’ serves that role with all the other abilities. Right here.”

Azami took the finger jabbed into Kisaragi’s chest and brought it up to her own temple.

“Oh, okay,” Kisaragi murmured, nodding briskly, although it didn’t look like she understood too much of it.

“Most abilities fully submit to ‘combining’ without question. Collect all of the abilities, and you could even create an entirely separate world, like the Kagerou Daze. But ‘clearing’ isn’t submitting to ‘combining,’ because it’s likely following a terribly strong desire that takes priority over that. I don’t know what that desire is, but if I can’t control it, there’s nothing to be done.”

She hung her head, defeated. All those crazily strong and versatile abilities she’d created, and she seemed pretty helpless, herself. It gave me a lot of doubts.

But hang on. Maybe that’s why the abilities were born in the first place—created to help fulfill the assorted desires of the weak, helpless Azami herself. And when these abilities wound up creating the Kagerou Daze—in whatever way they did, I don’t know—the abilities jumped over to us, because we had desires like Azami used to.

Following that logic, all these snakes were attracted to us for the unique dilemmas all of us in the gang faced. If Kisaragi’s “drawing” skill craved attention, then Seto’s “stealing” must have been reacting to the desire to know what other people were feeling, or something. Consuming those desires, making them come true, allowed these ten abilities to continue existing.

We could harness these abilities only under certain restrictions, but Azami, with her “combining” skill, could harness “hiding” with the full force of “clearing” backing it up—and it’d be an utterly irresistible force, one that went against all natural laws. If that was the full latent power of these abilities, they all existed in a dimension that went beyond eerie. Far beyond.

For example, could you use “hiding” to make it impossible for someone to recognize anything in the world? Or maybe “deceiving” to make them think that everything in the world was actually something else? And did it even have to be targeted on a single person? What if you applied it to the whole world, for example?

The abilities would cause the world to lose its own reality, no doubt—they’d turn fantasy into the new reality. And when you made the world mistake that fantasy for reality, those ten abilities would be all you needed to make reality do whatever you wanted.

It was a wild story, the kind of thing that’d be laughed off if you wrote it in the margins of your notebook. But if you thought about it, it seemed that our abilities and the Kagerou Daze were connected.

If these abilities had the power to rewrite the rules of the world, it made sense that “clearing” went through all this trouble, concocting an incredibly intricate scheme, to strike at our abilities and Marie’s “locking.”

And that reminded me of the words “clearing” had told me there, under the sunset on that roof. If it had our abilities, those words could easily become true.

But for what? For what? We still didn’t know, but there was no doubting it: It would use those powers to make its desire into reality.

It would use the Medusa powers to rewind everything in this world and simply reset everything to zero.

The final scenario I had hazily understood in my mind up to now was beginning to look like merciless reality to me. I could tell that my mind, unable to come up with any decent ideas, was being eroded by the despair that was beginning to rear its ugly head. Try as I might, I couldn’t think of any brilliant ideas that would banish the despair. Maybe this really was the end for all of us. No matter how you thought about it, there was just no way to fix this wild state of affairs.

Clear…clear…

Wait a minute.

Whose name came up in my mind just now?

“Ah…hh…”

The weak, feeble groan was like the manifestation of the despair coiling itself up inside my brain. It easily penetrated my eardrums, going right through my skull and burning the word “death” into whatever slight hope my brain clung to.

Driven by survival instinct, the three of us immediately put distance between ourselves and him. Azami, on the other hand, promptly went right up to him, stretching her thin arms out as far as she could as she stood strong.

“Get out of here! Don’t think about anything! Just run!”

The sheer force behind her voice made it hard to imagine it was coming from Marie’s throat. It made my fingertips reach for the exit—but, sadly, I wasn’t so infatuated with myself that my mind was willing to put my own safety first. The other two were the same way. We all stayed there, unwilling to heed her command.

“Wh-what are you doing?! Hurry up…”

“You know that I’d want to, but our boss taught us that we need to follow through on what we say, to the very end. Besides, even if we run, we’ll still get killed eventually, won’t we?”

I was able to sass back at her because my mind was numbed by it all, no doubt. My body was shaky, unstable, but at least my mouth was still listening to what I told it.

“He’s right, Marie…um, I mean, Azami! There’s no way we could just leave you here. I mean, really, fighting by yourself? Stop trying to act so cool like that!”

Was that really a nice way to speak to a Medusa? I swear, Kisaragi’s a legend in her own time. It made Azami speechless, apparently, but in a few more moments, she gave up, muttering “You stupid fools” at us. She was right. Unable to do anything, no matter what kind of crap we spouted… We were fools. It was just creating more weaknesses for us.

There, before us, the darkened version of Konoha slowly kicked into action, brimming with ominous doom for all of us. His eyes remained glassy, and he didn’t turn them toward any of us. His spirit must have still been bobbing for air out in the world of darkness, but it wouldn’t be too long before he regained his original agility and lunged for us all.

No more time to conjure up a plan now.

But now, of all times, I suddenly had a revelation.

It was definitely an amateur’s approach, but given the lack of any other ideas, it was worth bringing up. The light of hope that had flashed in my mind for a moment earlier finally revealed itself fully—and it was the half awakening on Konoha’s part that had finally jarred it into existence.

“Hey, Azami…can you call for the Kagerou Daze?”

She turned toward me, her eyes splashed with the red of an overripe pomegranate.

Those eyes, the “combining” eyes, had called forth the Kagerou Daze a bit ago. If it could swallow Konoha’s body up for us, it’d at least defuse the current situation, if not provide a permanent solution. It meant plunging him into that other dimension; there couldn’t have been a crueler thing to do to him. But Konoha had just had his body taken over, that was all. He wasn’t dead or anything.

All of us had come back from the Kagerou Daze once, exchanging our own lives for those abilities. If Konoha was alive, there had to be a way he could come back to this world, didn’t there? Were we going to face the ultimate, unthinkable bad ending of having our minds taken over and being forced to torture each other to death? Or could we bring this to extra innings and get some more time to think things over?

Either way, I didn’t want to think that the former was the future we were granting the friends who were already in there.

“…When did you notice that?”

There was more than a bit of panic between the words of Azami’s question. It wasn’t her way of saying “I didn’t think about that!” or “Deliberately swallowing him up? Amazing!” It had that sort of awkward nuance that indicated she wished I had never picked up on the idea.

“Just a second ago,” I reported as I picked up on her discomfort. “If we can have the Kagerou Daze take him in, we can at least keep from all getting killed here. Of course, I’ll want to ask you later if there’s a way to rescue Konoha, but…”

“…Well, yes, I can use ‘combining’ to open an entrance. But…that’s all I can do.”

My suggestion didn’t surprise her after all. It wasn’t a totally impossible idea, either. The panic I’d caught a glimpse of earlier was now written all over her face.

“But the Kagerou Daze only takes in people on the brink of death,” she added. “If I want it to swallow up someone so beyond the concept of death as he is, I would need to change the very nature of the Kagerou Daze itself. But…”

She fell silent for a moment, resigning herself to something, before strengthening her voice.

“But it takes more than just the ‘combining’ power to change it. I’d need to take in at least half of the ten abilities…and that would come at the exchange of your lives.”

“Our lives…?”

The snakes lined up in my mind.

Marie’s “locking.”

Kisaragi’s “drawing.”

My “deceiving.”

Seto’s “stealing.”

And Kido’s “hiding,” already part of Marie.

Blithely counting up the number of lives on hand, I realized that this was exactly half of the ten right there.

“I already tried it. Right after I froze him…while you were unconscious. ‘Combining’ and ‘hiding’ alone were enough only to let me open the portal. But…I didn’t want to say it. You aren’t running; there isn’t a trace of doubt in your minds. If I said this, I thought you would…”

Her crimson eyes grew watery, like those of a child about to cry. In them, I could see no trace of the Medusa she was, the “monster” that people feared and loathed.

In the short time we’d known each other, I was starting to get the impression that she empathized with other people a little too much. None of it was happening to her personally, but she cried for it anyway, accepting it as her own. Most people weren’t wired that way at all, but she pulled it off with ease. It almost made me laugh.

I mean, really. This insane life I’ve led, and I’ve run into nothing but the kindest, gentlest people out there.

Kisaragi walked up to Azami, bending down a bit so they were the same height, then gave her an embrace.

“…Thanks for worrying about us. But I think we’re all safe with leaving this to you. You’re related to one of our best friends.”

“Nnh…eh…”

Azami sobbed pathetically, unable to reply. It didn’t exactly fill me with confidence to see, but I completely agreed with Kisaragi. When I looked up at Seto—checking on him, just in case—he gave me a grin that indicated I should never have doubted him.

I’ve been through a lot with all these guys.

That freaky haunted house we went through was a nostalgic memory for us now. Those days we spent on the bunk bed, looking at each other, laughing, crying, figuring out whether there was any happiness for us somewhere out there, seemed so vivid in my mind that it might as well have been yesterday.

Really, it was a good thing we didn’t have time to spend the whole night waxing nostalgic with each other. If we started talking, after all, we’d start to look forward to what was coming up in the future.

…And then it came. All too suddenly, and all too mercilessly.

“Graaaaaaahhhhhhhhh!!”

Twisting the body it occupied, “clearing” let out a beast-like yell. Its dull yellow eyeballs swiveled around, running across the entire room, then stopped once they found us.

“Too bad, you little pieces of shit.”

The twisted voice was like the sound of a snake licking its lips. It smashed against my eardrums, irritating my very spirit. There was no longer any sign of the friend I used to know.

“…!”

My body convulsed, as if the fierce chills and sense of danger would make it fall apart. “Clearing” was now a living personification of despair, its arms hanging lifelessly down as its ferocious eyes crawled all over us. It set its sight on Azami, its lips curling upward into a terrifying grin. Then…

…A single step.

With his jet-black right leg, he stamped down on the floor with astonishing force, summoning a roaring explosion that almost ruptured my eardrums and making shards of metallic tile smash against the displays on the wall.

This kinetic force propelled “clearing” forward like an ebony bullet fired from a gun, immediately closing the distance between itself and Azami.

This overwhelming bout of violence took place before anyone could say a word.

And faced with this hopelessly overpowered attack, Kisaragi, still embracing Azami, suddenly pushed her to the side.

Azami’s crimson eyes, as she floated up into the air, were open wider than ever before.

There was no sign of any “ability” within Kisaragi; as she made herself into a shield, she all but sealed her immediate future—but her resolve, the very force of her soul, left me enraptured.

Azami’s shout was drowned out by the loud rumble coming for the two of them.

Kisaragi faced up to the dark shadow coming for her—and gave it a soft, somewhat distressed-looking smile.

“It’s up to you,” she said—and then her body flew back, bouncing off the wall like it was made of rubber, creating a small ocean of blood on the wall and floor behind her.

It was so one-sided a tragedy that no one could even scream in horror. Then, as if it were checking items off a mental list, the eyes of “clearing” descended upon the sight of Marie’s body.

Another instant, and it was right in front of Marie. It grabbed her by the neck and effortlessly brought her up off her feet.

With a look of sheer ecstasy, “clearing” glared at the sight of the intensely terrified little girl.

“Stop…please…”

Before she could continue, the monster grabbed Marie’s right arm and twisted it off like the cap of a plastic bottle.

“Aaahhh!!”

He smiled broadly, satisfied at a job well done, as she screamed out in pain.

“Did you think I wouldn’t kill you? Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!!”

My vision grew hazy as that vulgar laugh echoed in my brain. The creature’s right fist rose up to land another devastating blow, digging itself deep into Marie’s side. A virtual waterfall of blood flowed to the floor, making wet, squishy sounds as it did.

…Ahh, it’s over. It’s all over.

I suppose I’ll never be able to see how that world I dreamed of turns out. Well, that sure sucks. We were almost there, too, it kind of felt like. If I ever get another chance at this, I’m pretty sure we could put up a little more of a fight, but that’s not gonna happen now. This isn’t some game I can reload.

But, hell, I had that parting shot to give the dude, at least. As useless as I’ve been my whole life, I can’t let myself take credit for how this ends without having tried to help at least a little bit.

The pain had dispelled the illusory Marie I had put up. My lips curled upward in anticipation. Something about the surprised look “clearing” gave me filled me with happiness. There was no more pain from my arm, or my side. It was the second time I had experienced this, and I knew what it meant.

In my fading consciousness, I could see the “real” Azami appear, undoing her “hiding” skill, five white snakes poised behind her as she fumed. I guess my ability was hers now, too.

It had given me nothing but trouble, but I was gonna miss that thing, I think. I mean, getting to pair up with Kido’s “hiding” one more time, at the very end, wasn’t exactly a bad thing. If anything, it went better than I would have thought.

Somewhere along the line, I had been thrown to the floor. It wasn’t at too lucky an angle, either, so I had to look at the detestable, hopeless glare of “clearing” right up to the end. I really wished it wouldn’t look at me with the face of my friend like that.

The Kagerou Daze opened its mouth. Quietly, I closed my blinded eyes—and right at the end, in the darkness, I heard a phone vibrate.

Oh yeahhh… She was here, too, wasn’t she? Well, there you go, I guess. Talk about thoughtful of her.

And then, I came to an end.

Before I did, for just a moment, I thought I heard the voice of someone I liked a lot. She sounded angry. I turned around.

There was nobody there. Which was so incredibly like her, of course.