Chapter 06

Chapter 06

 

KANBA WAS BEWILDERED. From the moment he set foot in her hospital room, Kuho Asami looked at him with a complete and utter lack of interest.

“Who are you?” was the first thing out of Asami’s mouth. A large, square bandage was affixed to her forehead.

“What do you mean, ‘Who,’ Asami?” asked Kanba, his face twitching. Certainly, he dumped Kuho Asami in a pretty inexcusable way, and acted thoroughly unimpressed with the “Takakura Kanba Romantic Casualties Club” the other day, single-mindedly sipping his coffee and saying little until he could get out of there. But Asami, of all people, should have known that Kanba would not have reacted well to that. He assumed that she must be toying with him again.

“Might you be one of my fans? I’m sorry, you’ll have to go through the agency.” Asami looked deeply troubled and a little frightened.

“Asami, have you seriously forgotten me?”

Kanba felt unnerved at how dry her gaze was.

The accident that happened that night. The fact that her testimony changed. He thought that the accident was peculiar, so he had come to visit and check in on her. But maybe it had just been a coincidence. He couldn’t begin to understand what it meant that Asami’s memories of him had been snatched away.

“Please don’t speak to me like you know me. I’ll call someone!” Frantic, she reached out for the nurse call button. As she did, her arm collided with the bedside table, and a ball that had been hidden behind an ostentatious flower-filled vase dropped to the floor, rolling to Kanba’s feet.

He had seen this charred, golf ball-sized thing before. As he looked at it in shock, he felt his phone vibrate in his pocket.

“I know what you’re searching for,” read the message. The message was identical to the one he received when Asami and the others called him out to that restaurant, and it was from an unknown sender.

He glanced at Asami, who was still looking at him nervously, and left the room before anyone could arrive.

Perhaps Asami’s accident had not been completely accidental after all.

 

Shinjuku Gyoenmae Subway Station. On the way home from school, Penguin No. 2 and I boarded the train car that we had been directed to. Oginome-san was already ready and waiting for us. From a more innocent standpoint, this was the sort of thing that would have made Yamashita jealous, but I was not here on any date.

“Where’s your brother?” asked Oginome-san in a harsh tone.

“I couldn’t get a hold of him.” When Kanba was unavailable, it was usually because of some girl. He was always leaving the house on some minor errand or other, and I never knew where he was or what he was doing. As a result, I once again found myself in the awkward circumstance of meeting up with Oginome-san alone.

“What useless brothers,” she said, casting a glare at me and lightly clicking her tongue.

“I mean I’m here, aren’t I? What do you mean, ‘useless’? You’re the one who called us out here all of a sudden.” Never mind the fact that I’m the one who saved your life, I could not add.

Oginome-san glared out the dark train window, uninterested in what I had to say.

“Listen. If you try to sneak a peek at my diary like you have been, or take it from me forcibly…” Her eyes flicked to mine.

I let out a deep sigh. “I know. You won’t lend me the diary. Or are you saying you’ll toss it into an incinerator?”

“Even if it’s for Himari-chan’s sake, that is the one thing I cannot relinquish. I absolutely cannot slip up in my plan.” Her gaze returned to the dark window.

“Plan?”

“Project M. My greatest trial,” she said, a significant look on her face, scarcely even listening to my words.

Project M. I watched her serious face in profile, wondering if the “M” might not stand for “marriage” or something like that. I wanted to believe that even a stalker like Oginome-san would not be thinking that far ahead.

“Are you going to help me? Or no?” she asked.

“I’ll help. I should help, right?!” I replied in desperation.

I felt like I spent every free day with Oginome-san. The times I spent laughing with Himari, doing the cleaning and the laundry, already felt like a distant memory.

I gloomily imagined my sister sticking little strawberry-shaped signs where she and Kanba planted the strawberries, looking at me with a smile and saying, “We’ll eat them when the berries are ready!” Why was I instead stuck taking part in this stalker girl’s weird machinations?

 

Oginome-san’s home, in East Kouenji. I had not been able to step inside her room the last time, and it didn’t seem like I’d see it today, either. I could not get past all of the piled-up boxes, after all.

“What is all this? Are you moving?” I was dumbfounded.

“Something like that. Now, carry these,” she said promptly.

“Huh? All of this?”

“Of course. That’s why I told both of you to come, obviously. But there’s nothing to be done for it. All you need to do is carry. Carry them!” She pursed her lips.

Through trial and error, I was able to tie most of the boxes to the mattress, and hoist the whole thing onto my back. It wobbled terribly and was naturally quite heavy.

“Can’t you carry a little more?” I asked.

She made a pitying face.

It took so much work just to stand that I was incapable of spitting a reply. By comparison, Oginome-san, swinging a single travel bag around in her hand, was relatively carefree.

“Hrrngh!” I took the first stumbling, miraculous step forward, and then steeled myself and took several steps more, when suddenly I stepped on something soft.

“You idiot!” Before I had a chance to look down, Oginome-san sent me flying back. I went rolling on the floor, burden and all.

“Wah! What the heck are you doing?!” I shouted, collapsed onto my side.

“You just stepped right on Ka-chan and Ot-chan!” She glared at me, cradling a pair of stuffed animals in her arms.

“Wha?” I looked closer to see that they were a stuffed kappa and otter. Thus, “Ka-chan and Ot-chan.”

“I’m sorry, Ka-chan, Ot-chan. That must’ve hurt,” she said softly to the pair of toys, tying them securely to the handle of her travel bag.

“Are you taking them with you, too?”

“These children are my family! Obviously, I’d always take them with me!”

“Family, huh?” It occurred to me that I knew nothing about the composition of the Oginome family. What kind of people lived in this spacious, lifeless home besides Oginome-san?

“Do I have to spell this out for you?! C’mon, let’s go!”

No. 2 was kind enough to look at me, worry in its eyes.

 

“We’re here.” Oginome-san stopped as if for a much-needed breather.

“Of course,” I said beside her, looking up at the strange little weathervane-adorned gate of the building that housed Tabuki’s apartment.

Just as she had the time that we tailed her, Oginome-san went around the back of the building, sneaking towards Tabuki’s place from behind. She didn’t intend for me to carry these things underground, did she?

And yet, that’s exactly where I ended up, crawling underneath the building, luggage strapped to my back and all.

“C’mon, move!” she said, as though I was blocking her way, and I slowly stood.

She unfurled a blue tarp and neatly covered the piled-up luggage.

“Anyway, this is what we’ll hide it with.”

“Um, isn’t this the apartment where my teacher, Tabuki, lives?” I said nervously.

She cast a glare at me.

“U-um, I mean, it’s on the faculty roster. It’s close to us, so I just happened to remember that.”

Her face abruptly went blank.

“If you want me to lend you the diary, you’re going to shut up and do as you’re told. You said so yourself, didn’t you?”

I swallowed the words I’d been about to say.

“Then just keep up the pace! No unnecessary talking. There’s still more stuff to carry.”

“Huh? There’s more?” There was more luggage. My eyes narrowed to points.

“We’re moving all of it! Before this evening!”

I hung my head but said nothing. Directly in my line of vision was Penguin No. 2, casually licking an ice cream cone that it must have snatched from somewhere, watching a line of ants marching on the ground.

 

The department store’s rooftop was filled with playground equipment for young children and artificial grass, a number of white garden tables with matching chairs, and a line of carts selling juice and crepes and ice cream and the like. After school, there was knockoff carnival music from the play place, and the joyful screams of children as they ran around. Students ran around making merry, and lovers walked past holding hands.

In front of Kanba, Chizuru and Yui sat at a table, each casually licking a soft serve cone. Kanba held out his phone to them, which displayed the suspicious text.

“Which of you sent this? This constitutes harassment.”

“I’m telling you, I have no idea what that is,” replied Yui, sounding bored.

“Yep, the sender’s number isn’t either of ours,” Chizuru added.

“How can you all be so casual about…” Kanba realized how unnatural his own words sounded and cut himself off.

When Asami invited him out, he mistakenly read too much into the message she had sent him, assuming it had to be related to the Penguindrum. However, Asami suffered an accident, and all of her memories of Kanba had been, probably intentionally, erased. Given that he happened to receive a text with an identical message at the moment that he learned this, this time he could only conclude that it was from someone who knew that he and Shoma were searching for the Penguindrum. But this did not necessarily imply that it was from either of the women before him.

After all, how would Asami, Chizuru, or Yui have gotten their hands on such crucial information in the first place?

“I see. But there’s someone pulling the strings behind the scenes, right? Listen, this person is way more dangerous than you all think. Asami…” he started to say, then cut himself off.

“What about Kuho-san?” asked Chizuru, head tilted.

“Uh, never mind.” It was hard to tell just how much these two knew. Given that they did not appear particularly surprised at the mention of Asami, they probably did believe that what happened to her had been some simple accident.

“That reminds me, I heard from Kuho-san that you had a new girlfriend, Kanba-kun?” Yui scowled at him.

“Never mind that right now.”

“I heard that too,” Chizuru added, glaring. “Tell us, who is she?!”

“Hey, gimme a break already,” said Kanba. His eyes went wide as something like the bead of a red laser beam suddenly appeared on Chizuru’s forehead.

“Spit it out!” Chizuru said sulkily, not seeming to have noticed this herself.

“Is she some schoolgirl?” Yui, sitting beside her, was not looking at Chizuru, either.

Kanba backed away, trying to determine which direction the beam was coming from. Just then, there was a terrible sound, and a sparking sphere came hurtling past and struck Chizuru in the forehead. Chizuru’s head drooped down, and for a time she was motionless. Kanba and Yui stared at her, holding their breath.

“H-huh?” When Chizuru lifted her head, there was a sphere the size of a golf ball, identical to the thing in Asami’s room, stuck to her forehead.

“What is that?” asked Yui, tilting her head, looking closely at the ball.

“Oh heck, did a bird crap on me?” Chizuru showed Yui her forehead, as though it were no huge deal.

“That’s kinda big though, isn’t it?” As Yui turned around to see where it had come from, another laser beam appeared on her head. Without skipping a beat, there was another bang, and a second sphere came flying and struck Yui in the head. She jerked, momentarily losing consciousness, and then lifted her face. Stuck to her forehead was the exact same ball.

Kanba looked in the direction the ball had come from, suddenly shouting, “Who’s there?!” He looked at the rooftops of the surrounding buildings, but there was no sign of anyone. It seemed unlikely that it had come from anywhere on this rooftop.

“Kan…ba…kun…you’re terrible.”

Kanba’s gaze jolted back to the pair at Chizuru’s strange sounding words. Her voice was flat, her expression hollow. There was an emptiness to the eyes of both women, sitting side by side.

“Tell me I’m the only one you love.”

“No way, I’m the real one.”

“Hey, you guys…” Not even Kanba’s voice appeared to reach them.

“You’re so shameless.”

“Are you stupid?”

Their hazy argument over Kanba continued, as though they were under a spell.

Kanba watched, speechless, as the ball attached to Chizuru’s forehead suddenly began to spin, moving so quickly his eyes could not keep up. As he watched, a black flame began to rise from the ball. Chizuru opened her mouth wide and collapsed onto her back. Watching the rising flame, Yui muttered, “Oh no, what is that?”

As Kanba reached to try to pull the sphere from Yui’s forehead, that one began to rapidly rotate, and another black flame rose. She opened her mouth and collapsed as well.

The soft serve cones the girls held fell, splattering to the ground. The charred balls, now detached from their foreheads, rolled away. Sure enough, they were the same as the one that had been in Asami’s room.

“Snap out of it! Are you okay?!” Kanba shouted, pulling Chizuru up.

“I’m fine,” Yui said breathlessly. Kanba looked over at her. She was already sitting up, but her head hung down. “But I have a question: who are you?”

“Huh?”

“Speaking of…” Chizuru, propped up in Kanba’s arms, lifted her head, her eyes open a slit. “I have the same question. Who are you?”

Kanba slowly backed away from the pair, then seamlessly wove himself into the conversation and bustling activity that suffused the rooftop, as though he hadn’t seen a thing, and departed the scene.

 

Penguin No. 2 and I collapsed on the white corner sofa. We were surrounded by a sea of cardboard.

“Ugh, I’m beat!”

“Hang on, who said you could rest?!” Oginome-san said sharply.

“But we’ve made so many trips already!”

I thought about the tattered little red sofa back at our house, unsuited to the tatami. If we had a living room and a sofa this big, Himari would have a blast lying on it and reading books and knitting. I could watch her from the adjoining open kitchen as I prepared dinner.

“We have to finish moving all of this before evening! If we don’t, then my new house won’t be complete!”

“New house?” The phrase, which I could not ignore, pulled me back to reality.

“It’s none of your business. Look, just hurry and get back! Up!” She cornered me and grabbed my arm as I lay on the sofa, tugging.

“No! This is seriously impossible!”

I put all my strength into clinging to the sofa, resisting her pulling, when her face suddenly and inexplicably went red, her breath growing ragged as she drew nearer.

“Huh? Wait, what?”

Not saying a word, she pushed her face up against mine, with all the weight of her upper body, her lips pushing inevitably against my cheek.

“Th-th-this is our first night together.” She muttered something vaguely terrifying.

“Huh? Oginome-san?”

“I have to feel our sleeping breaths together, side by side.”

“Hey! C’mon, stop it!” No matter how I pushed against her, she sank forward, breathing hot breaths. “Oginome-san! What’s wrong with you?!”

I felt my terror rising, like a zebra being stalked by a lion on the savanna. Though it’s pathetic to admit, it’s not like I could have just slipped out around her. Nor could I behave like my brother, who would have probably taken advantage of the situation.

“I’m home!”

Hearing this stranger’s lazy voice, without thinking, I reflexively shouted, “No!” even though I should have shouted, “Help!” What I meant was, no this wasn’t what it looked like, it was not some indecent scene like my brother would find himself in, it was really just an accident, set in motion by some strange design.

“C’mon, get off me! There’s some misunderstanding here!” I desperately shoved Oginome-san away, finally realizing there was something wrong when I saw her face. I pressed my right hand to her forehead; it was burning up. “Crap, you’ve got a fever.”

A woman, who I could see over Oginome-san’s shoulder, was frozen in the doorway of the living room, staring speechlessly at me.

 

I helped the woman, who turned out to be Oginome-san’s mother, carry her into her room, intending to apologize and flee immediately, but I wasn’t off the hook that easily. Her mother placed warm tea and cookies before me as I sat in terror. The white, angular tea set suited this room perfectly.

“My apologies. I completely misread the situation.” She wore a white suit. She had strong, willful eyes, just like Oginome-san.

“I swear, that girl. I told her to take the day off. Honestly, collapsing on the way home from school. Still, it’s lucky that a fine boy like you happened to be passing by, Takakura-kun. There have been a lot of dangerous happenings recently.” Her mother smiled wide.

Helpless, I smiled stupidly. I gulped down the tea, some variety or other that I had drunk somewhere before. The hot liquid danced down my throat, and a peaceful feeling seeped into my insides. I wished I could tell Oginome-san’s mother that there was no one more dangerous than her daughter.

“So anyway, what are you to Ringo?” asked her mother, intrigued.

I choked and spat out my tea, quickly drying my mouth on my uniform sleeve.

“My, no need to hide it. Despite how I look, I’m a very open-minded parent.”

She grinned at me in an unsettling way. In this regard, she resembled Oginome-san not one bit.

“No, I mean, we’re just friends. Or rather, Oginome-san has been helping out my little sister.” I was apparently weak against the women of the Oginome household.

“Whaaat? How boring. And here I thought you passed each other on the way to school and fell in love at first sight!” She sighed, shoulders slumping, looking truly disappointed.

My face cramped somewhat. Just which of us had fallen for the other at first sight in this fairytale of hers? The idea of me falling for her at a glance was unthinkable. Though of course, the reverse seemed equally impossible.

“Judging by that uniform, Gaiennishi High?”

“Ah, yes.”

“Do you know Tabuki Keiju, then? He teaches biology.”

“Ah, yes, he’s my homeroom teacher.” I was surprised to hear that she knew Tabuki as well. Maybe I was about to get some unexpectedly valuable information.

“My, really? Tabuki-kun still stops by our place now and then. Ringo’s older sister was his classmate in elementary school.” Her eyes narrowed with a nostalgic look.

“Huh? She has an older sister?”

When we searched the place, we had not turned up any hints that two girls lived here. It was likely she was already living on her own, if she was the same age as Tabuki, but Oginome-san herself had never said anything to suggest the existence of a sister.

“Well yes, but…” Oginome-san’s mother suddenly looked very sad. “She passed away, a long time ago now.”

Her words flowed softly, like sand. The words of someone who already cried out all their tears and keened until their throat cracked, and whose well of grief had now run dry.

So that was how Oginome-san and Tabuki were connected.

Silence returned to the living room. I got the feeling that this spacious, lifeless room somehow resembled Oginome-san and her mother. Both in their strong eyes, and their bluntness. It was a somehow lonely atmosphere.

Finding it difficult to say that I was going to go home, I instead had seconds of my tea.

 

***

 

Clutching her large, beloved kappa and otter plushies, a little girl scurried down the dark hallway to the living room, rubbing her eyes. A comforting orange light flooded from the room.

“Mama,” the girl said. “I need to wee-wee.”

Just before she pushed the door open and entered, she froze, hearing her parents angrily shouting at each other in the room.

“So, you’re saying it’s my fault?!”

“No! I’m just saying it’s about time for us to make a new start.”

“New start?”

“Yeah, Ringo’s old enough now to understand a lot of things, and I feel terrible that her birthday always has to be ‘Curry Day!’”

“But tomorrow is Momoka’s…”

“I know, it’s the anniversary. But it’s also Ringo’s birthday!”

“So what? It’s our duty as parents to cherish Momoka’s memory forever!”

The girl gently peeked into the living room. She hushed herself, and squeezed strength into her shoulders. She got the feeling that she was doing something terribly naughty.

“Remembering her isn’t the same thing as dragging things out forever! No one is going to be happy this way! You need to open your eyes already!”

As they jabbed at one another beneath the overhead lamp, her parents’ faces were cast in shadow, and she could barely see them. The little girl rubbed her eyes again, and then was shocked when she opened them again. Her parents were gone, and where they stood was the spitting image of the kappa and otter she was holding. The huge kappa and otter were glaring at one another, each holding a cucumber and a clam, respectively.

“No! I don’t want to forget Momoka!” The kappa snapped the cucumber in half with all its might.

Fearful at the loud voice, the little girl held her breath, huddling up more.

“But we have Ringo now, don’t we?!” said the otter in tears, banging the clam on the table over and over again.

“We’ll love Ringo in Momoka’s stead. That’s what we decided five years ago!” The kappa now munched on the cucumber, beginning to cry as well. “But this is pointless. Ringo and Momoka are different people!”

“Even so, aren’t you Ringo’s mother?!” The otter stood up on the chair wildly, throwing the clam down on to the floor. “It’s just fate!”

“Fate?” At that word, the kappa looked down. Finally, it stood straight up on the chair, and said, “That’s too cruel!” It ripped the plate from atop its head and cast it onto the floor. The plate broke with a great snapping sound.

Suddenly, a large-headed eel, longer than the little girl was tall, appeared, trying to slip by her feet. Its eyes shone black, and its mouth gaped wide. It spit bubbles as it twisted its long torso, marked with a plethora of blackish spots, swimming through the gap into the living room.

The fearsome eel swam, fins rippling, flapping about at the kappa and the otter with its flank. Water suddenly flooded the living room, and the kappa and otter wept, bobbing up and down, head over heel.

“This is our fate. Until we accept that, we can’t move forward,” said the otter. It did not even grab for the clam floating nearby.

“Is accepting it our only choice? If that happens, our family will scatter and drift apart!”

The kappa was still hysterical.

 

Papa and Mama are crying. I’m a bad girl, because I can’t be big sis Momoka. I know that. But I know exactly what “fate” is. If I can be just like Momoka, then Papa and Mama won’t fight anymore. We’ll always, allllways be together.

Our whole family can be together.

 

The anxious girl held her kappa and otter plushies tight, the wheels in her head turning. She was so gripped by sadness and guilt, she couldn’t take another step.

On the floor, the puddle leaking out from her spread, sadly and silently.

The eel and the water flooding the living room vanished without her noticing, and her parents returned to their normal, shadowed human shapes.

 

***

 

It was seven years later, the thirteenth anniversary of Momoka’s death. Ringo and Tabuki sat side by side, eating the curry her mother made. By now, Ringo and her mother had started a new life, in a spacious, tidy condo along a slope.

“Don’t hold back now. Eat as much as you like!” Her mother took off the apron that she wore over her mourning clothes, folded it up, and sat down at the table.

“I will, thank you very much,” Tabuki quietly replied, clothed in a suit he was unaccustomed to wearing.

“Thank you for always being Momoka’s friend, Keiju-kun,” her mother said wistfully, but with a smile.

“Oh, no, of course.” Tabuki’s eyes lowered behind his glasses, and his hand holding his spoon stopped moving. “Momoka-san was my entire world when we were young. It was fate.”

Hearing that word, Ringo’s head snapped up, and she took a firm look at Tabuki’s throat and chin and cheeks and the skin of his forehead and eyes and damp-looking eyelashes. This man seemed far more mature than her, she thought.

Walking along the evening road with Ringo at his side, Tabuki watched their shadows stretching across the asphalt with a tranquil feeling.

“You didn’t have to walk me all the way to the station.” His eyes fell toward Momoka’s little sister, still so young. He could not deny that there was something in her aloof profile that resembled Momoka. But obviously, she was a different person. “What’s the matter? You’ve been so quiet.”

Ringo, clad in her black dress, asked him somberly, “Tabuki-san, was my sister really that special?”

Stunned at the unexpected question, his eyes widened slightly, and he looked again at little Ringo’s serious face.

“Ringo-chan, do you know how to ride a bicycle?”

“Uh-huh.” She gave an obedient nod.

“Well then, what would you do if, back before you knew how to ride, someone told you, ‘Come ride this bike, right now?’”

“That’s impossible. I’d fall. And also…”

And also, what? What was she trying to say? Ringo’s pace slowed.

“The moment you learned how to ride, you forgot what it was like not to be able to, right?” As he turned around to face her again, Tabuki’s face was lit by the orange glow of the setting sun.

“Uh-huh.”

Tabuki’s eyes narrowed, and he looked up to the sky.

“In that same way, it’s thanks to Momoka that I learned how to ride. The feeling of wind rushing past my ears, pushing forward through the air. The scenery rushing by so quickly it was startling. Momoka changed what should have been a familiar world to me into something special in an instant. She really did change me,” he said emphatically. “When I was with Momoka, the sky and the birds and the clouds, even the little pebbles at my feet, seemed like treasures, concealing new possibilities. Riding in tandem, we could ride on forever.”

Having said that all in one breath, Tabuki let out a sigh. He inhaled softly, and a lonesome look returned to him.

“But I can’t ever go back to that time. I still know how to ride a bike, but I can’t remember what those treasures were. Now and then, I suddenly think, ‘Why is Momoka no longer in this world?’ To me, a world without Momoka feels incomplete.”

This was a complicated conversation, Ringo thought. But it was not as if she didn’t understand. It was just that Tabuki was incredibly sad, and the fact that his sadness would never end sunk into Ringo’s heart like the setting sun.

“Tabuki-san, are you not happy?”

When he finished speaking about Momoka, more than being simply mature, his face in profile looked like that of an old man, one who had long since been left behind.

“I loved Momoka. So, I still have a lot of sadness and anger that I don’t know what to do with. But, if this was all part of fate’s plan, then surely there is some reason for all of it. At least, that’s what I’d like to think.” Finally, the youthful look returned to his face, and he smiled.

It was then that Ringo knew for certain what it was that she had to do, in accordance with fate.

 

When she returned home, Ringo headed straight for the desk in her room. In the bottom of the lowest drawer in the desk she inherited from Momoka, her diary was hidden. She picked up the diary, which had the name “Momoka” written on the back cover in little letters, considering “Fate’s Plan.” If finding the diary now, at this stage, was also fate, then everything was unfolding as it should.

She opened the cover reverently and drew in a breath.

“Here, I write the fate of the world,” Ringo read aloud, her voice steady. “When the future that is written here becomes reality, the things that I cherish should become eternal.” The sentences scrawled here in round, childish letters were engraved deeply into Ringo’s heart.

Ringo needed to become Momoka. That was Ringo’s destiny, and both her father and Tabuki were surely waiting for it to come to pass.

Now, delirious with fever, Ringo clutched the diary to her chest.

If Ringo could become one with Momoka, then everything she cherished would return to her. And she would be happy forever.

 

“Survival Tactiiiiic!!!”

A wind of white lace blew. The fluttering cloth brushed my cheeks, and that sweet, sweet, mind-melting smell filled my nostrils. Between the gaps of the flood of lace, red-eyed Himari appeared. With the penguin hat atop her head, the heels of her boots clacking, in an instant, she changed the room into that alternate space.

“You worthless nothings were given your orders! You must obtain the Penguindrum!” She stretched her hand out, placing her foot forcefully atop Penguin No. 3’s head. The sleeves of her dress swayed.

“No, c’mon, this is impossible! Today, she collapsed with a fever, saying something about her first night, and how it was fate and some stuff, and, uh? Aniki’s not here. Is it just me today?” A familiar hopelessness seized me.

Paying me no mind, Himari pointed at my nose, and said, “It is the duty of you cretins to actualize that ‘fate’ immediately, and snatch the Penguindrum from her! Listen. Whether it’s a first night or a deflowering or what have you, you are to make that pervert girl’s desires happen!”

“Stop saying filthy things through Himari’s mouth!” I said, raising a somewhat irrelevant objection. The penguin hat’s speech contained a malice that was utterly incomparable to the normal Himari.

“Silence, heretic!” Himari clicked her tongue.

“You’re the one who’s a heretic! Taking people’s little sisters hostage!” I suppressed the urge to cover my ears.

“A first-class heretic in the Promised Land! I will end you!” she spat.

“What the hell are you, some kind of thug?! That’s so outdated!” I already had a premonition of what was to come. Penguin No. 2 was already scrambling away from me. “W-wait! No. 2, stop! Hey!”

The button was pressed, and I was flung into the darkness. What the heck was I supposed to do here? All I wanted was to save Himari.

“Shall we initiate the Survival Tactic?!”

 

Though she realized it was a very old-fashioned strategy, Ringo arranged her bed’s pillows to look like a sleeping body, and then slipped out of the house in her nightgown. All she had to do was board the train from East Koenji to Ogikubo, and then the train would carry her straight to his side.

“Our first night together. There’s no changing fate,” Ringo said vaguely to herself, taking a seat in the corner of the empty train.

It was already dark as she slipped into the familiar grounds of Tabuki’s building, pulling back the tarp.

Tonight was her first night with Tabuki. She needed to hear his sleeping breath nearby. Clutching only the luggage that she could carry, she squeezed herself beneath Tabuki’s apartment. Rolling on the ground, breathing raggedly, she picked up the sounds from his room.

There was Tabuki whistling, and the sound of a frying pan moving skillfully.

Ringo shut her eyes tight, listening to those sounds for a while, then pulled out a camping stove and began her slapdash cooking, still lying on her stomach.

“The first thing we did as a couple was make dinner together. It got a little burnt, but Tabuki-kun told me it was delicious, like he always does,” Ringo recited from the diary.

Guessing when Tabuki would be sitting down at his table, Ringo began eating her own, purposely burnt, vegetable stirfry.

“And thus, our carefree life together began. Tonight, however, both he and I were to finally truly touch one another.”

Tabuki finished up his meal while watching a documentary on wild birds, and then slipped into the bath. Ringo pulled out a small washbasin and toothbrush as well. She filled it with mineral water from a bottle and went through her evening routine.

“We even bought new toothbrushes for tonight. Tabuki-kun’s is blue, and mine is pink.”

Tabuki stepped out of the bath, brushed his teeth, laid out his futon, and turned out the lights in his room. Ringo listened as he took off his glasses and snuggled into the futon. Judging by the sounds alone, Ringo crept around the subfloor space, trying to get close to him in her simplistic reproduction of the room.

She spread out the mattress from her room on the ground and made a partition with a blue cloth. Within was Ka-chan and Ot-chan, and the special picture of all three of her family together. She had a pillow shaped like a jellyfish, and her favorite tea set. The peach-shaped alarm clock was there, too. Decorating the inside of the little space with a beaded curtain and the ornaments that had hung from her chandelier, this space was now unmistakably Ringo’s new home.

On the humanoid outline drawn on the ceiling, directly in her line of sight as she lay down, she’d affixed a photo of Tabuki’s face. Ringo began speaking fervently within her mind.

Tabuki, do you remember? That day, when you told me that everything happens for a reason. I believe in that. Fate is like a hopelessly enormous ring, a wheel that’s constantly spinning, drinking up everyone’s joy and sadness.

Ringo lay down, just beside the space where Tabuki would likely be sleeping. She might have been underground, but for Ringo, this was no different from sleeping beside him.

Ringo knew. She had been born into the orbit of Momoka’s fate. Tabuki loved Momoka. And so, Ringo would become Momoka.

Despite the floor between them, Ringo embraced Tabuki, both body and soul. So that the future written in her diary could become reality. So that the things she cherished could become eternal.

 

Natsume Masako looked up at the night sky through a tall window, drinking milk tea, as was her routine before bed. She unconsciously rubbed together the pointer finger and thumb of her left hand.

Masako was vaguely amused by the girls who flocked to people like her and Kuho Asami. Their movements were entertainingly predictable, but this was nothing more than the prologue to the project she was soon to begin.

The soft melody of a piano tune echoed through the apartment, the second movement of Symphony No. 9 by Antonín Leopold Dvořák: “Going Home.” The fire burning in the fireplace threw off warmth and flickering shadows into the room. Steam rose from her gaudy porcelain teacup.

“Yes, yes indeed. Everything is proceeding according to plan.” Masako smiled faintly, stroking the head of the penguin that sat atop her lap, eyes glinting.

“Yes, it has been confirmed. The orbit of fate is within our grasp. Soon, Project M will be underway,” said the voice on the other end of the receiver.

Masako chuckled. Her beautiful curls swayed gently as she laughed.