CHILDREN RECORD 2

The room’s clock seemed to echo as it ticked away.

The time was just about to reach nine p.m.

Naked lightbulbs hung down from the unfinished ceiling, giving the room an unexpectedly homey, bright-but-not-too-bright feel.

Kido had been standing in the kitchen for the past few minutes, vigorously scrubbing away at six sets of dishes. The cabinets were beginning to fill with sets of neatly organized plates and utensils.

Konoha, seated on the sofa opposite from me on the table, was engaged in a regular cycle of closing his eyes, drifting off for a moment, then snapping back to attention.

“Nnmmhh…I can’t eat any more…Ooh, but I’d be rude if I didn’t…”

My sister, meanwhile, had already descended into a deep sleep over to my left, spittle drooling pathetically from the side of her mouth.

…Look at us. What are we? Children? Or does Kido really seem like that much of a “mother” to us by now?

Somewhere along the line, this whole evening began to feel like some kind of sleepover with our playground pals.

Just this morning, I was furrowing my eyebrows at the Mekakushi-dan, suspecting them of leading some kind of subversive cult. Half a day later, I’d grown remarkably used to them all.

Even someone like me, someone who’s barely kept a person-to-person conversation going in the past year, was part of the gang now. That’s how damn friendly they all were.

“I gotta hand it to Momo. Only a girl like her could dream about eating after all that food. Why’d she go to sleep so fast, though, master?”

“I dunno. Maybe she’s training to be a cow or something.”

Out of fatigue, or for whatever other reason, Momo fell fast asleep just a few scant minutes after gorging herself.

“And right after she about crapped herself when that kid called her fat. Crazy!”

I doubted she even remembered that exchange by now. I often marveled at how much like a frumpy, middle-aged housewife she acted at times. It no longer surprised me much.

“Yeah, well, I’m sure she’s just tired and stuff. Hey, Kisaragi, get up. If you’re gonna sleep, do it in my room.”

The washing-up complete, Kido approached Momo as she removed her professional-grade apron, the Chinese character for “technique” written across the chest.

She gave Momo a couple of light slaps across the cheek. “Uunnngh, you sure can put it away,” she replied, still lost in her idyllic dreamland feast.

“Oh, sorry. You can just leave her there. Once she conks out, there’s no getting her up ’til morning.”

“I can’t just let her crash here, though. Guess I’ll try to carry her…Ngh?!”

Kido’s face twisted a bit in wonderment as she attempted to lift Momo with her arms.

“Y-you got…a lot on you, Kisaragi…!”

She managed to heave her up off the sofa, but the effort made her breathing noticeably labored. This, from the same girl who manhandled Hibiya like he was an inflatable pool toy.

Come to think of it, I remembered looking up Momo’s weight in one of the pop-idol sites she’s listed in and chortling to myself.

As I idly watched Kido lug her out of the room, Konoha began to snore loudly across from me.

That guy was kind of out-there, too; that blank stare of his made it impossible to guess what was running through his mind.

And now he was here, sleeping like a baby in a house he had never seen before. Utterly vulnerable.

…It’s like a child who grew up without maturing at all.

Judging by how Hibiya acted, there had to be a lot of complex drama between the two of them.

…No, not just them, either. Even Ene—even the Mekakushi-dan, for that matter—had some kind of history with him.

Ene’s unnatural behavior reminded me, although I tended to overlook it pretty often, that she had a past like everyone else. The fact that this, shall we say, unique life-form(?) was holing up inside my computer hardware should have felt like a bigger deal than it did.

It wasn’t that I never pondered what happened to her before she came to me. But whenever I asked, she would always dance around the subject.

I took a distracted glance at my phone screen. Ene, who couldn’t have known my thought process right now, was busy making up a futon bed.

“…What’re you doing?”

“Huh? I’m about to sleep, what do you think?”

“Oh…Huh.”

I was pretty sure Ene bragged once about how she was “such a high-spec girl, I never have to sleep at all!”

But I let it drop. Needling her any further would just spell more trouble for me.

“Whew. Sorry to leave you alone.”

Kido shut the door behind her, rubbing a sore shoulder as she spoke.

“Not that it’s any of my business, but I think she may wanna try a little portion control.”

“Ha-ha…Sorry about this, though. I mean, staying here two days in a row and all.”

“Nah, it’s no biggie. It’s our fault anyway. Today, though…Man, we’re all just gassed, huh?”

Kido looked pretty spent herself as she plopped down on the sofa facing me.

Me, she, and Ene were the only conscious Mekakushi-dan members left. Konoha, who dropped out a few minutes ago, was now slumped on the sofa by Kido, arms loosely splayed out in both directions.

“Ooh, looks like Mr. Faker’s checked out for the night, hmm? Nice to see someone making himself at home.”

Ene, now burrowed into the futon she made up, stuck her face out from the side and gave Konoha’s sleeping face a disapproving grunt.

“What do you mean, ‘Mr. Faker’?”

“Mm? Just the nickname I gave him. It’s kinda tough to tell ’em apart otherwise.”

“Oh, right, he looks like someone you know, yeah? But what kind of guy is…”

Just as I was about to ask, Ene’s eyes swiveled toward mine.

“Oh, what? All right, all right. You don’t want me to ask? I won’t.”

Ene flashed a cheerful smile at me.

“There’s a good master! I mean, I’m kind of in the dark here, too. But I’ll try to explain it to you…sooner or later. You know, master, in terms you’d understand.”

There was a bit of melancholy betrayed on her face.

She dodged the subject, like she always did. But this might have been the first time she promised to tell me anything.

Still, this is Ene we’re talking about. She might just be feeding me a line.

“Yeah, well, I guess we all got our own crap to deal with. Though, of course, I invited him here ’cause I kind of need to know some more about that…”

Kido looked to her side. Konoha was lost in slumber. I couldn’t guess why he so valiantly fought against Mr. Sandman a second ago. Whatever the reason, he didn’t win. Kido sighed, and as if on cue, Konoha finally lost his balance and slumped to the floor.

“Though I guess he’s pretty useless now. Not that we’d be doing very much this late anyway.”

She sunk deeply into the sofa cushions, hanging her arms on the upper edge as she crossed her legs.

“Tomorrow, huh…? Hey, who was that kid, in the end?”

Kido stared at the ceiling.

“Hm? Oh. Hibiya, right? The way his eyes danced around like that…That’s probably a sign that he’s gonna gain an ‘ability.’ Like the ones we got.”

Hibiya had yet to come-to after that encounter, but apparently he was still in a pretty unstable condition. After being briefed on the situation, Seto volunteered to keep watch over/take care of him for the night…which brought us to now. I found myself gazing at one of the bare lightbulbs under the ceiling.

“Oh…I guess we can trust Seto to watch out for him, though. Seems like a pretty straight-up guy.”

Kido let out a soft chuckle.

“Yeah, well, he’s got a good head on his shoulders, but we all got our weaknesses, you know? Betcha anything he’s sleeping right now, actually.”

“A good head on his shoulders” is the main impression I carried of Seto myself, from the moment we met. To Kido, that appraisal was probably backed up with hard-earned experience.

I had only met the guy this morning, after all. No way would I have any kind of deep understanding of his psyche.

“Listen, uh…I mean, you guys…”

“Mm? What?”

Kido flashed a confused look as I stumbled over myself. Was this something I was safe in asking? Would asking take me on a one-way trip down a road I’d never return from again? I tried to weigh these doubts in my head, but my own fatigue helped ferry the question to my lips.

“Those eyes you all have…I mean, I dunno if I should be asking this or what, really, but…they’re not normal, you know? Momo’s, too. She said she doesn’t remember when she wound up like that, but I’m guessing she’s gotta be related to you guys somehow.”

The confusion remained written on Kido’s face as I asked her point-blank. But the moment I closed my mouth, a benign smile spread across her lips.

“…I probably shoulda talked to you before this guy showed up. Sorry about that.”

Kido hunched forward, palms clasped between her knees.

“Oh, no, I mean…That’s fine, but, you know, I guess I couldn’t stop wondering about it.”

I averted my eyes, feeling bizarrely ashamed over my hesitation.

“No, we really needed to talk. It’s just…You’re right. It’s a little off the beaten path, so it’s not like we can just bring it up in broad daylight. These abilities have caused a lot of grief for all of us, too. So explaining everything right away…It’s kind of a self-defense reflex, keeping us from doing that.”

I turned my face upward as Kido spoke.

Her expression bore no sadness. Her eyes were clear and unclouded, revealing the strong, driving will within.

“Y-yeah, I guess I can see that. It’s nothing I get at all, and…well, you know.”

That’s right. What am I trying to do, learning more about these guys? The heavy implications are why I stumbled over my words.

What would satisfying my curiosity accomplish?

What could I do once I knew?

Whatever “incident” Hibiya got wrapped up in, it was allegedly serious enough that somebody’s life was in danger.

It might be something we couldn’t even afford to involve the police with.

Hibiya is…growing an ability. The same kind Kido and her cohorts had. And now they’re keeping guard over him, trying to nurse him through it.

What about me, though?

Is this really something I should take the plunge and ask?

I could always clam up, return home like nothing ever happened, and go back to my Internet-playboy lifestyle.

Of course I could. This has nothing to do with me. I have a—

“You running again?”

For a single instant, a bracing chill ran down my spine. I felt like someone was crushing my heart with their gnarled talons. A cold sweat erupted across my forehead.

“Shintaro? Hey, you all right? You’re not looking too well…”

“Oh, uh…no, I’m fine. Sorry. I’m okay now.”

“…All right. You must be pretty beat, too. Wanna pick up this topic tomorrow, maybe?”

Tomorrow. Was I going to be here tomorrow? Ene all but asked me to head back home earlier. I couldn’t know for sure, but she might have been concerned for my safety.

But I couldn’t just…

“No, I…Could you keep going? Just a little is fine.”

If I walked out of here and back into that bedroom, what would that achieve?

Maybe I didn’t want to leave these guys after all. Maybe going back to self-imposed solitude scared me.

“All right. Great. So let me tell you about how I got this ability.”

Kido smiled, perhaps noticing something I hadn’t. She blinked, and then her eyes flooded with a deep crimson shade.

“My ‘Concealing Eyes’…That’s what Kano calls it, anyway, but basically it’s the ability to make myself and the things around me less…detectable.”

She reached for a magazine sitting on the table next to her, bringing it up to my eyes. From the edges inward, the magazine grew hazy, imprecise in the air, before neatly disappearing into nothingness.

As I squinted into empty space, I realized all over again what an astonishing trick it was, thrust before me like this. I could understand why Kido was loath to discuss it much.

If word about this got out to the public, there’d be a huge media frenzy. She could have been trucked off to some government research facility. Or worse. One could imagine all manner of nightmare scenarios.

“I used to have parents, too, before I got…well, this. My mother wasn’t related to me by blood, though. And my dad was horrible. He went screwing around with girls every single night. His company went totally bankrupt before long. And not even that was enough for him to lose. So he set fire to our house.”

“Wh-what…?”

Considering the story took just a few seconds to relate, Kido’s past lacked nothing in shock value. But recalling the memories didn’t seem to pain her at all. Her voice remained calm, as if reminiscing over some silly little grade-school rivalry.

“Heh-heh. Pretty rough, huh? But that’s not even the main story.”

“Oh…”

“Me and the rest of my family were all in the house when my dad torched it. My sister and I, we couldn’t get out of the bedroom.”

“That…wouldn’t that kill you…?”

I was pretty shaken by this point. Kido, no doubt noticing this, betrayed a mischievous smile.

“Mm-hmm. He killed me, all right. I couldn’t breathe any longer, and then the fire consumed my body.”

“Oof…”

“And then I saw it. The wall of our house split apart, and there was this giant, fanged mouth opening up!”

“Gagghh!”

Now Kido was riding the moment, like a counselor busting out her best ghost story by the campfire.

Given the late hour, her storytelling acumen was more than enough to keep me captivated by fear across the table.

It was more than a tad off-putting in a way, her giving me such a fright, considering her laughable performance at the amusement park–haunted house a few hours earlier.

But, despite her electrifying buildup, Kido refrained from continuing. She crossed her arms in defiance, a look of supreme victory on her face.

I grew unable to bear the silence.

“…And, and then what?”

Kido remained in the same position as she triumphantly replied:

“Hm? That’s all.”

“Huh?”

The expert feint was enough to make my jaw visibly drop.

Kido had woven this tale of a young girl burned alive from head to toe, then consumed alive by a huge, bizarre monster. But considering that experience, she looked remarkably healthy and undigested right now. Something didn’t add up.

“So…so what’s your ability all about, then?!”

“Oh, yeah, so when I woke up in the ruins of my home later on, it was already in me. All my burns disappeared, too, or at least most of ’em. It was a pretty weird night.”

“But what was that big evil mouth thing that you saw?”

“Well, I saw it, but my memory kind of totally blanks out after that. I’m guessing it must’ve swallowed me up, but I was the only survivor of that fire, and really, I just have no idea what happened.”

Kido raised her bent arms in the air, in the classic “search me” gesture.

Now I knew the entire story, such as it was. But the storyteller was a bit lacking in important details. Things just seemed stranger and stranger.

“Huh. So what I’m getting from that is…you guys don’t really understand any of this either. Yeah?”

“Yeah. Of course, I’m doing as much research as I can, but…Well, that’s kind of an ongoing process. I was still a kid back then, and I told the police about everything I could think of, but they never really investigated.”

No, they wouldn’t. Telling a story like that with a straight face wouldn’t build much trust in people. It’d cause serious trouble.

But if whatever happened to Hibiya was the same kind of thing that happened to Kido and the rest, it was probably in no one’s best interest to call the cops. Maybe that was why Kido offered a helping hand and brought him here. She saw a lot of herself in him.

My mind dwelled for a moment on the central issue. The part the police would never believe.

The strangest thing about Kido’s tale, by far, was the “huge mouth” that consumed her. The rest of the story was pretty morbid, too, but nothing you couldn’t imagine happening in real life. If anything to Kido’s past connected to her current “anomaly,” that was it.

“What about the rest of you guys? Did Kano and Seto get eaten by that ‘huge mouth,’ too?”

“Kano told me he saw ‘the exact same thing,’ but I guess his memory went blank right after that, too. With Seto, his memory went dark while he was drowning in a river, so he’s not too sure whether he saw it or not.”

Her mention of the word “drowned” instantly brought up memories from my own younger years, memories that existed only in a fog by now. It was something I recalled now and again, but suddenly Kido’s story was tinting those memories a far more ominous shade.

“…You know, I think that’s maybe when Momo started to be like that. After she drowned in the ocean.”

“Kisaragi?”

“Yeah…You know, um, I’d appreciate it if you don’t discuss this with her too much. But yeah, there she was…and our dad, too, trying to save her…”

There was apparently a whole crowd of people watching my dad diving in to help Momo after she got swept into the sea. Once he swam over to where Momo was, a giant wave swallowed them up.

I heard all about it from my mother afterward, once I got home from the test prep center I was attending. There was an immediate search-and-rescue effort, of course, but they never found my dad. The next day, somebody spotted Momo washed up on the beach. Miraculously alive, they said.

“Oh…I see. Yeah. Not the kind of thing you wanna bring up with Kisaragi around the breakfast table.”

“No, yeah, you see what I mean? But your story reminded me of something else, too.”

There was something in common between Kido’s tale and Momo’s drowning.

Kido said she woke up in the burnt-out shell of her house. Which meant that, for the entire time that place was burning to the ground, she was there.

Momo wasn’t found until the next day. Which meant that, between that wave and her discovery, she was there in the water.

Thinking about it rationally, would someone have any chance of survival in those conditions?

No. They couldn’t have. Yes, miracles happen every day in our blessed, beautiful world, and all of that. But you couldn’t explain all this away with trite aphorisms like that.

Why not? Because once you add Kido’s “huge mouth” to the mix, everything suddenly made sense.

What if that mouth swallowed up Kido just as she succumbed to the flames, and swallowed up Momo just as she took her first lungful of water? They could’ve been inside there that whole time, before being “spit out” just before their respective miraculous rescues.

It was kind of a wild story, yes. But Kido’s and Momo’s “abilities” with their eyes might provide all the evidence needed to prove it.

“I was just thinking, if that ‘huge mouth’ you saw was the reason why you all got those abilities with your eyes, then maybe that mouth swallowed up Momo back then, too. I know that’s pretty off-the-wall, but…”

Pretty off-the-wall, but something told me that the common-sense rules of planet Earth were powerless in the unexplainable face of these “abilities.”

And behind these unexplainable skills, an unexplainable common presence…

“Hmm. Yeah. We were kind of thinking along similar lines ourselves. And if Kisaragi had that same thing happen to her, I guess we can pin the blame on that…thing for our abilities. She’ll have Kano backing her up on that too, so…For now, that sounds like the safe bet to make. I guess. You know, though…”

“What?”

Kido brought a hand to her lips, suddenly stumbling across something in her mind.

Her eyes focused on a single point atop the adjacent desk, as if scanning some invisible jigsaw puzzle for the one piece that’d lock everything together.

“I just…you know, there’s something else. It was in Kisaragi’s story, too. All of us, we nearly lost our lives while someone else was nearby. Kano was with his mom, and Seto said he was with his friend.”

Kido’s gaze remained transfixed on the table as she fumbled with something in her mind.

“And yet we were the ones who survived. And the people with us…and I don’t know if it’s a result of that or not…but they all vanished.”

The observation startled me.

“So…when your house was on fire, did…um, did they find your family’s bodies in there?”

“Yep. My mother and father’s…Just them. They never found a trace of my sister, and I was the only one who survived.”

“But then…”

Two separate disasters, two different abilities instilled in their eyes, and the “huge mouth” linking them together.

And then Hibiya babbling. “I think this girl may have died. I have to help her.” A theory started to take form in my head.

“So maybe both you and whoever you were with got eaten by that…something. And then you were the only ones that came back out. With those abilities…”

Kido picked up the thread before I could finish the thought.

“And not one of our companions has ever been found. Which means that, after they got swallowed, they’re still over at…wherever they got sent to.”

It was a twisty, frenzied tale, but—whether coincidence or not—it worked as an explanation. Between Momo’s nascent ability, our missing father, and a “truth” we never would have found alone, it felt like we were slowly building a path to some ultimate answer.

“And, you know, we kinda thought about that, too. Like, what if each of those people we cared about is still alive, inside that ‘mouth’ or whatever? We’re trying to investigate everything we can about it, ’cause…I mean, we care about them, inside of there. But given how all the memories of the time we spent in there are wiped…”

Kido sighed midsentence, immersing herself back into the cushions. There was little imagining the kind of hardships they had between losing their parents, their families, the people important to them, and making it here.

Being all alone, with those bizarre superpowers, may have caused them all kinds of grief.

I began to wonder what they even thought about life, about living in a state like this.

It was hard to imagine. And that made me all the more aware of how much of a self-centered, totally carefree life I had been leading.

What else would you call it? I gave up on everything so I could live an empty life of seclusion. What would I ever understand about these guys?

They were so eager to help Hibiya because they knew what kind of “pain” he was going through. They knew it all too well themselves.

“So, that’s the long and short of it.”

Kido was first to break the tense silence.

“Basically, we kind of know how we got these abilities, but we really don’t, either. What I’m thinking, though, is that we can at least take care of Hibiya until he gains some control over his own skills. We’re kind of used to that process by now, so…I don’t know what happened to the girl he said was with him when he got, you know, swallowed or whatever, but I’d like to do what we can to search for—”

“W-wait a sec.”

Kido seemed just about done with her story. I wasn’t ready for that.

The path forward was now perfectly obvious, as if somebody carefully laid out every brick of it for me.

“You said you don’t remember anything from when you were in there, right? You, and everyone else?”

“Y-yeah. Yeah, nothing. Nothing until I opened my eyes again.”

Kido was cagey with her reply, unaware of what direction I was taking this.

“I just remembered. Hibiya told Konoha that he ‘just stood there and watched.’ Maybe he would…”

Kido’s eyes opened wide as she realized the portent behind my words.

“Maybe he remembers, you know? What’s on the other side of that mouth?”

In an instant, Kido shot to her feet and began walking away from the sofa.

“Hey…Hey, where’re you going?! He’s sleeping right now, remember?”

She twitched a bit again, then slumped back into the sofa.

Her eyes were averted, her cheeks a little red, ashamed at her sudden, impulsive behavior.

An impartial witness to that scene, a far cry from our grave conversation of a moment ago, probably would observe, “Oh, yeah, you’re a girl, I guess I kinda forget sometimes.” Luckily, I didn’t say that. Otherwise, I would’ve rag-dolled farther than Kano whenever he mouthed off within earshot of her.

“Yeah, I…I mean, I know why you’d be in a hurry. I’m kinda a victim here, too. I haven’t seen my dad in years, but if I ever saw him again…”

If I ever saw him again, what would that do for me?

What’d I even say to him?

What would my dad think when presented with this son of his who spent the past several years rotting away, alone in his bedroom?

“Shintaro?”

“Hmm? Oh, sorry…But anyway, let’s keep going with this tomorrow. Guess Kano’s not gettin’ back anytime soon, anyway.”

The walls of the hideout were festooned with clocks of every variety, from digital LCD to German cuckoo. For all I knew, that machine with the weird, colored liquid dripping down inside of it, perched atop a small shelf, could have been a clock, too. Every one of them, each with their own methodology and style, unerringly pointed to half past ten.

“Yeah, probably not. Who could guess what he’s doing…? Man, today has just exhausted me. I don’t think we’ve ever hosted so many people in here at once.”

Kido stared at the front door as she spoke, her voice interspersed with a touch of exasperation and more than a hint of readily noticeable excitement.

“Being the boss of this gang would tire anyone out.”

Maybe it was a bit embarrassing for her all along. Her cheeks turned redder than before.

“Oh, shut up! You don’t have to poke at me like that! I…I’m going to bed, all right?”

With that, Kido zoomed back to her feet, just as she did before in the last impulsive fit, and began walking to her room.

Then, as I watched on in confusion, she turned around. “I got some sheets out for you,” she said, pointing at a stack of blankets piled up toward the front. “You and Konoha can use those.” Then, with a slam, she disappeared behind her door.

“What was up with that…?”

She could act as tough as she wanted, I reasoned. But she was still a girl, deep down. I never had half a chance of understanding her. There was no point lingering on it.

Just as I decided to switch off my brain for the night, I felt an immense fatigue swarm over my body. I must have hit the wall myself.

“Eesh, I’m exhausted…”

I rose up, the springs of the sofa creaking in response. My body felt like a chunk of lead.

Somehow, I dragged myself over to the blankets, choosing a couple at random off the top before returning to my bed for the night.

Placing a blanket on Konoha, currently sleeping the sleep of the dead in a rumpled mess on the floor, I suddenly realized I had no idea how to turn off the lights.

“Umm…Switch…Where’s the switch?”

I glanced around the room, but nothing switchlike made itself known.

This must have been what purgatory was like. Right when I needed to sleep the most, I run into this. What should I do? I couldn’t just leave them on…

As I puttered around the room in a blind search, pondering over the injustice of it all, I felt someone’s presence behind me.

Surprised, I whirled around to find Marie, her springy white hair framing her equally white, fluffy pajamas. She stared at me like I was an intruder.

“…What’re you doing, Shintaro?”

Suddenly, I realized that I had a special ability of my own. The ability, when eyed by an innocent little girl, to sweat profusely on command. I hadn’t done anything particularly suspicious, but despite the smile I attempted to put on, my perspiration wasn’t helping my case much.

“Ohhh! Uhh, Marie! I was just, uh, trying to turn off the lights, but I don’t see where the light switch is!”

The agitated explanation was enough to soften Marie’s face back to normal. She pointed at a dartboard hanging on the wall.

“It’s over there. You push it right in the middle.”

I breathed a sigh of relief as I pressed on the bull’s-eye as directed. With a click, all the bare lightbulbs hanging from the ceiling blacked out in unison.

The moment they did, Marie’s scream made my heart leap out of my throat.

“E-eeeeeeek! Don’t just turn them off like that!”

I frantically pushed the button again, only to find Marie back to her previous “why did you do that” face, this time with some tears welling up in the corners of her eyes.

“…Why did you do that?”

“N-no! I was just making sure it worked, okay?! I…Ughh, I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

This is such a pain in the ass. All I want is some sleep. Why do I have to go through all this mental anguish?

“It’s all right…”

Apparently placated, Marie turned around and returned to her room.

What did she come out here for? I thought about asking, but if she was leaving of her own volition, I figured it best not to prod her any further.

“Um, good night!”

I gave a couple of distracted waves, watched Marie disappear into her room, and turned out the lights.

With a heavy sigh, I shuffled toward where I thought the sofa was.

Lying down on it and pulling the blanket over my body, I gave my cell phone a quick peek. Ene was still curled up in her futon.

“She is such a pain…”

I said it out loud. The futon didn’t so much as twitch.

That was enough for the night. I put the phone on the table and closed my eyes.

The hum of the air conditioner dominated the darkness.

Looking back, today had been an insufferably long day, one that was hard to believe took only twenty-four hours.

I was introduced to the Mekakushi-dan only this morning…Well, technically, I ran into them at the department store yesterday. But they were good guys. I found myself taking a shine to them almost immediately, despite myself. It might be the first time I’ve experienced anything like that, actually.

I was invited over by some people, had a meal with them, discussed what was going on with our lives, and set up informal plans for tomorrow.

That, by itself, sounds like how any group of friends interacts with each other.

Our conversation was a notch eerier than your typical chat among friends, but never in a million years did I think I’d be blessed with an opportunity like this.

…Is this really the right thing for me? Really?

The more people I encountered, the more I laughed with them, the more it felt like it was fading away that much more quickly.

But, still, even for just a little while—even if it was just for whatever remained of the summer—I had a right to see some greater meaning behind running into these guys. Right?

I asked the question into the darkness. Not to myself; to somebody who could never have been there with me, but who still remained clear in my mind.

         

“Hey, Shintaro?”

“…What?”

“It’s great that you made all those friends. Is it fun being with them all?”

“Hell no. This hasn’t even been a shred of fun for me.”

“Oh, you big liar! You were acting like you had a blast today, Shintaro. That might be the first time I’ve ever seen you smile so much, in fact.”

“No, seriously, I’m not. They’re just bossing me around all day. I feel like I’m gonna die from exhaustion.”

“Hey, Shintaro? Do you remember me?”

“What’re you talking about? Of course I do.”

“So can you say what my name is?”

“Uh…Where’d that come from? What’s up with you?”

“Come on, Shintaro, can you say my name?”

“H-hey, knock that off…Knock it off, okay?”

“I…I guess you can’t, huh? You can’t remember anything about me?”

“Please…just stop. Please, I’m asking you here…”

“Can you, Shintaro?”

 

         

“Aaaaaagghh!!”

“Wraagghh?!!”

I propelled myself off the sofa, my body covered in sweat. My mind was hazy, as if had been tossed into a blender and pureed for ten minutes.

Darkness surrounded me. The low whir of the air conditioner was the only sound.

It took me a little while before I realized that this was the Mekakushi-dan’s hideout, and that I was attempting to sleep on their sofa.

“You scared the crap outta me! What’s wrong with you?!”

Suddenly, light flooded into my eyes. The scene around the hideout returned to focus, just as I left it a moment ago.

Turning around, I saw Momo, her finger on the dartboard switch, looking concerned.

“Oh. Hey, Momo. I’m okay. Just having a dream.”

“What kind of dream made you do that? You look terrible.”

Momo took a sheepish step closer, peering intently into my face.

“I told you, I’m fine. But what’s up with you? Aren’t you sleeping?”

“Huh? Oh, I kinda woke up, so…I figured I’d go see how he was doing in the meantime.”

She chuckled nervously to herself, as if ashamed to disturb me.

“…Oh. Okay. Well, you didn’t wake me up or anything, so don’t worry.”

“No? Well, I know you gotta be tired after everything that happened the past two days. Sleep tight, okay?”

“Sure…Oh, right.”

I stood up to face Momo, still crouched down next to the sofa.

“Hmm…? What’s up, big bro?”

“Listen, uh, why’re you going through this whole charade?”

The question made Momo’s face erupt in a mixture of panic and fear.

“Um…Huh? I don’t really know what you mean…”

I kept my eyes on her. She turned hers to the floor.

“I know you, Momo. Once you fall asleep, I could take a baseball bat to you and you still wouldn’t wake up. That’s always been a huge issue for you, right? That, and you just had a massive fight with Hibiya. Why would you want to check up on him in the middle of the night? That, and—”

I didn’t have to go on. It was already enough to silence Momo for good. Her gaze was still on the floor, so I couldn’t read her face very well.

“Momo calls me ‘Shintaro,’ not ‘big bro’…Kano.”

The air shimmered. The next instant, Kano stood back up, staring at me with that huge, simpering grin that never left his lips.

“…Man, you are just a total gas, Shintaro, you know that? I can’t get enough of it.”

“Yeah, thanks. So you mind filling me in? Why are you transformed into Momo at this time of night?”

Even as I stood there, as resolutely as I could, that eerie grin remained painted on his face.

“Hah-hah…Guess I’m in the doghouse with you tonight, huh? Well, I suppose I can’t blame you. Not after I disguised myself as your dear, dear sister…yeah?”

The wink he aimed at my direction confirmed my suspicion that he was deliberately playing me for a fool.

Not the way Ene always did, though. This was brimming with sadism, making a calculated effort to stab me right where I didn’t want to be touched the most.

“Not exactly, no. I mean, it’s your house; you can impersonate anybody you want to. I’m just asking you why.”

“Mmmm, well, not just for no reason at all, no. But what would telling you accomplish? Like, what would you even do if you knew, Shintaro?”

Kano swiveled around, turning his back to me, then spread his arms wide.

“I mean, it’s kinda weird, isn’t it? You’re acting so freakishly tense over this, of all things. I’m just thinking, you know, you might be forgetting something pretty important, huh?”

I couldn’t gauge his face where I was standing.

But his words seemed to form a vise around my heart. It was like his eyes were sifting through every secret I kept in the nether regions of my soul.

“…What are you trying to tell me?”

“Hmm? Well, just that, pretty much. You know? I mean, Shintaro, it’s written all over your face. You’re about to forget something reeeeeeeally important for all time, you know?”

One of the lightbulbs above Kano’s head began to flicker.

Every flash seemed to illuminate his back like a strobe light.

“What the hell could you ever understand…!”

“Oh, was I right? Eesh, you don’t have to get all hot under the collar like that. I mean, you did forget, didn’t you, Shintaro?”

His sneering attitude brought my rage to the boiling point.

“For eff’s sake, I haven’t forgotten anything!!”

I grabbed at Kano as I fired back, forcing him to face me. The lightbulb shut off entirely for a moment.

When it came back on a second later, I felt my rapidly beating heart tear itself apart.

“So how come you never try to help me?”

There, I saw Ayano, her shoulder-length black hair a sharp contrast with her crimson-red scarf. There was no way I could ever mistake it. She smiled.

“Ah…ahh…”

My legs began to quiver. I was liable to collapse at any moment.

My brain abandoned all hope of comprehending reality any longer, channeling meaningless syllables into my mouth instead.

“Come on, Shintaro. Answer me. Or have you forgotten all about me by now?”

Ayano, her artificial smile now practically touching my face, stared at me with glassy, lifeless eyes. I began to have trouble breathing.

“N-no…I…”

All the thoughts dancing around in my mind for the past few years tried to bubble up to the surface en masse. But I couldn’t give voice to them. I couldn’t bring a single one of them across.

Ayano didn’t wait for me. Just like that day. And I couldn’t tell her anything then, either.

“It’s all right now. Farewell, Shintaro. Be well.”

The next moment, every bulb in the room went dark. Another instant, and they were back on. Ayano was gone without a trace.

My legs gave way, and I fell knees-first onto the ground.

I planted a shaky pair of hands on the floor for support, but like a dam giving way to a flood of emotions, my eyes welled with tears that fell helplessly below.

As if marching right behind them, all the feelings I had locked away swarmed to the surface, paralyzing me to the spot.

…Is this my punishment? For never lending an ear to her, for never being able to reach out and give her a hand to hold, this is my punishment?

“I’m sorry…I’m sorry…”

The words finally took form, softly echoing across the room, then disappeared, never knowing who they were destined for.