Chapter 02

Chapter 02

 

OGINOME RINGO loved the word “fate.” Especially when it referred to “a fated meeting.” A single encounter could alter the course of your entire life. Such special meetings could not be mere chance. Surely, such a thing was fate, she believed. Of course, life was not made up of fortuitous meetings alone. There were plenty of unpleasant, sad things as well. It was quite painful to consider that such misfortunes were also fated, entirely out of one’s power to influence. And yet, she believed:

“Even sad and painful things must have some meaning to them. Nothing happens without reason in this world.”

She stood at the corner of the subway station. She pulled a small mirror from her school bag and coated her lips in a pale pink lip balm. It had been advertised as making your lips, “as moist and glossy as a ripe apple,” and caught her eye. Then, she combed her fingers through her hair, swiftly arranging it. Her heart ached with joy and nerves. But at the same time, it was a surprisingly blessed pain.

A girl from another school took up position beside her, chattering on her cellphone. Cradling her phone with her shoulder, she opened up a gaudily decorated folding compact, at least twice as large as Ringo’s, and began applying additional mascara to her already overemphasized eyelashes.

“Yeah, I’m off to my date with Takashi. It’ll be fine. I’ve got my triple lace strategy today.”

Ringo glanced at the girl out of the corner of her eye. Her face was slathered with so much makeup, one might think she was about to step out on stage. Her hair was too bright to be called brown. She had visible cleavage, and the buttons of her blouse were open enough for her lacy bra to peek through. Her skirt was daringly short, and her thighs were bare. If anyone at Ringo’s all-girls school were to dress like that, they would probably be stopped the moment they walked through the gates by the teachers who hung around for morning greetings.

“Huh? My triple lace strategy? Well, you know…” She cackled, and her boisterous voice permeated the space.

Ringo checked herself over again in her little mirror and nodded, a faint smile on her face. She was fine. Even if she wasn’t wearing that much makeup, even if she didn’t have mascara on top of false lashes, and even if her chest was rather modestly flat, she wasn’t bad at all.

She put her mirror into her bag and walked to her usual place. She already felt painfully nervous, her diaphragm clenched so tense it was hard to breathe. It was coming so soon now that she couldn’t contain herself, but she put her hand to her chest and steadied her breath. Every step of the way had been just as she intended.

Yes, Oginome Ringo was a believer in fate.

 

Roasted smelt, natto, and eggs. And some miso soup. Then the pickles. The three of us crowded around the table and said a proper blessing. Another fine morning, no better or worse than any other. Still, that penguin hat, sitting atop the cabinet, bothered me, and with the mysterious penguins sitting beside us, it probably could not be called a typical morning at all.

“Come to think of it, what should we be feeding these things?” I had unthinkingly only prepared enough breakfast for us three humans. “What’d you all give them yesterday?”

“We never fed them!” Himari gasped in realization, her brows pinched up in the middle of her forehead. “They must be starving!”

“They eat fish, right? They’re penguins,” said Kanba, not seeming especially concerned as he continued shoving food into his face. He looked fatigued.

“These guys aren’t typical penguins, though.” I looked at the penguin who stared at me. I had never heard of penguins who could be shipped in cold storage. Invisible penguins wandering around Tokyo in the middle of autumn seemed even rarer.

“The lady at the aquarium said they usually give them sardines and scad and mackerel,” my sister said. Today, Himari’s hair, usually worn in a loose ponytail, was pinned up with sparkling rhinestone pins, and she wore an autumnal violet dress. She preferred the kind with skirts that gave a gentle silhouette.

“Sardines, scad, and mackerel…” I repeated, carefully confirming that Himari was her usual self. I looked at each of the penguins. Sardines, scad, mackerel. Feeding them would cost a lot, wouldn’t it? The price of blueback was pretty high lately. That aside, even butter and vegetables and other things would be nothing to sneeze at. Suddenly, my gaze stopped on the penguin next to Kanba, the biggest eater in our household. Somehow, I got the notion that this penguin would be the biggest eater as well.

Now that I thought about it the three penguins seemed to bear an unsettling resemblance to myself, Kanba, and Himari, in personality and mannerism.

“Here you go,” said Kanba, suddenly picking up some smelt from my plate and offering it to the penguin. Without hesitation, the penguin chomped down the smelt, so readily it seemed it might eat Kanba’s whole hand as well. “Oh, looks like they eat smelt too.”

I was so wrapped up in thought that I forgot to be angry about Kanba stealing from my plate. At the very least, these were living creatures. Even if no one else could see them, and even if they looked nothing like typical penguins, as long as they were in our house, we needed to feed them. But we had no way of affording the extra cost.

“I wonder if we couldn’t just give them some cheap dog food or something,” I muttered, sighing.

“Survival Tactiiiiiiiic!!!”

As I shot up in shock and turned to look at Himari, my vision was obstructed by a gust of white frills and lace. That sweet smell spread again through my nostrils. That familiar rhythm thumped so loudly that I was sure the whole house, maybe the entire world shook with it. I opened my eyes a crack to see Himari appear from out of the flood of dazzling light, the penguin hat atop her head, looking for all the world like a queen. Her black, enameled boots sounded wildly.

We were once again in that alternate space.

“Surely, you worthless nothings have been told!” Himari stuck her right foot out swiftly, her eyes shining red.

“So that… wasn’t a dream,” I said.

Unlike me, who looked around wildly, my brother calmly squared off against Himari.

“You must obtain the Penguindrum!” Himari shouted in a voice that seemed to rumble from the pit of her chest.

“Where is it, then? This Penguindrum,” asked Kanba.

“Today, at 8:10 A.M., board the train headed to Ogikubo. Enter the third car and stand by the second door. At East Kouenji Station, Oginome Ringo will board,” she said, her voice melodic and sonorous.

“Oginomeringo?” I repeated, like an incantation.

“Follow her and search her person. This girl possesses the Penguindrum. Probably.”

The pseudo-Himari swiftly averted her eyes.

“Wait a minute, what’s this probably?!”

“Hold up, are you seriously gonna tell us to do this when you don’t even know for sure?” Kanba stepped in, coldly demanding the same information I’d asked for.

“What? Is that too much for you to stomach? Do you not care what happens to your sister?”

Shocked, I looked at Kanba. He wore a look of regret, but it did not seem that he had any more interest in talking back.

“W-We gladly accept your task, oh Lady of the Hat.” I bowed my head seriously for the first time in my life.

“Lady of the Hat?” Himari, nay, the Lady of the Hat, furrowed her brows for a moment, but then continued. “Very well. You will be certain to locate the Penguindrum. Should that fail to happen, consider your sister’s life forfeit!”

“Y-yes, ma’am!”

Kanba’s face twisted, and he ground his teeth.

“But for you to expect us to take responsibility on such vague information, is…” I started to say, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a penguin pressing a mysterious button.

“…isn’t very, aah! N-nooo!!”

A square-shaped hole opened up under my feet, and I fell at once into a space devoid of color or sound. A terrible void. Even a subway tunnel was not as dark and quiet as this.

“Shall we initiate the Survival Tactic?!” Far above, I heard the clear voice of the Lady of the Hat issuing a decree.

I fell straight down into the darkness. The Lady of the Hat, or rather, Himari. I wonder if she’d been angry because I suggested feeding the penguins cheap dog food?

There was no way that hat could be controlling her.

 

Kanba and I sat side by side near the door on the train we’d been instructed to find. Kanba nodded off, but I was on edge, throwing quick glances around the crowded train and checking the time on my phone.

Himari definitely died right in front of us, and then came back to life thanks to that thing. As if this was some malicious game that God cooked up, that thing instructed us to locate the “Penguindrum” in service of some “Survival Tactic.”

“Hey Kanba, what kind of person do you think this ‘Oginome Ringo’ is?”

“Well if she’s ridin’ the train this time of day, she’s either an office lady or a student,” he replied, cracking his eyes open and rubbing them sleepily. “Either way, all that matters is we get the Penguindrum.”

The announcement for East Kouenji Station came through the air, and we looked at each other and got to our feet, moving near the doorway. Just then, the train arrived at the station, and commuters on their way to work and school came flooding in, and soon the train was full. It took an enormous effort to make sure that my brother remained right beside me.

“Aniki, we’re never gonna be able to tell who’s who like this!” I said frantically.

“We’re fine. We’ve got them here for that exact reason.” He looked back at me, his face tense.

“I see.”

Those little penguins might actually be useful here, I thought. However, when I finally spotted the penguins again amidst the crowd, they were pincered between the riders’ legs, squished up and stuck aloft.

“This is impossible for them,” I replied softly.

Kanba let out a deep sigh.

The penguins appeared to be attempting to return to us, making sorrowful faces. Their black eyes stared pleadingly as they were crushed between the legs of high school girls and women in pants suits. The way they were looking at us, it was like we really were their owners.

One of them pushed up tight against a high school girl’s back, levering its body out through the gaps between the riders. It rolled out onto the floor and ran for me, looking at me with a desperate expression. When I instinctively held my hands out, it balled itself up, and embraced me, burying itself in my stomach.

“C’mon, what are you all doing? This is important,” I said, quietly comforting it as I lifted it up.

“Just a minute!”

“Yes?” I looked up at the shrill voice to see a tall, long-haired girl glaring at me. Her lightly tanned skin and plump lips looked distressingly mature. Had she seen me talking to the penguin and been taken aback by how creepy it was?

“Don’t yes me! You touched my butt just now, didn’t you?!”

She stared directly at me. Perhaps because she was so loud, some of the passengers around us shot glances our way.

“That’s not true!” I raised my hands in denial, dropping the penguin as I did.

“Stop lying! You were just groping all around back there, weren’t you?!” She took a step forward and glared at me, unknowingly grinding her foot down on the penguin.

“Th-there’s been a misunderstanding!” Obviously, I could not tell her, It was that penguin-like thing that you’re stomping on that did it, and I’m honestly not sure I would count as that thing’s owner. Of course, no one else could see the penguins in the first place, and I wasn’t sure if they were even tangible.

“Then, what was it?” she demanded. “Come on now, spit it out!”

I shrank back, unable to even grimace. I knew that in cases like this, once you accepted the blame it was all over, but then again, I did feel somewhat responsible, as the penguin’s caretaker.

Just as I was about to give up hope, I felt a presence at my back. A low voice spoke.

“That was probably my bad.” Kanba had a listless way of speaking, one which barely concealed a bright and mischievous air.

“Huh?” asked the girl, looking beside me.

There stood my brother, attempting to hide something.

“My bag was caught. I was just trying to pull it free, so that might be what happened. I didn’t mean anything by it. Still, if I made you feel uncomfortable, then I should apologize.” Kanba gazed at the girl with anxious eyes and said sincerely, “I’m sorry.”

It rung out as grandly as though they were the words of a lover, finally reunited after making his beloved wait for him for twenty years. My jaw dropped, forgetting myself as I looked at my brother, who acted like a completely different person.

“Well, in that case, I guess there’s nothing to apologize for. With your bag getting stuck and all,” the girl said haughtily, her cheeks flushing.

“I really am sorry.” My brother, having repeated himself for assurance, glanced at me and gave a mischevious grin. It was, without a doubt, the face of a scoundrel.

“Shinjuku Gyouenmae, Shinjuku Gyouenmae,” the train’s speakers intoned. Once more the train came to a stop.

“Oh, this is our stop, then,” said the girl, turning back to the friend who boarded with her and calling, “Let’s go, Ringo.”

Kanba and I looked at each other in shock. She definitely said “Ringo.”

“You go,” he said hurriedly, scooping up the penguin and handing it to me. “That uniform belongs to Oukagyoen Girls’ School.”

“What about you?”

“I need to make some arrangements.”

My brother practically shoved me out into Shinjuku Gyouenmae Station, and, left with little choice, I began running after the two girls. The round, elastic penguin was oddly heavy, and carrying it was difficult, but I learned from our first encounter that it couldn’t keep up with me while running.

As I hurriedly passed through the gate and exited above ground, I saw the long-haired girl again, and next to her, the girl I assumed was Oginome Ringo. They weren’t far ahead. I could definitely catch up with them.

“Goood morniiing!”

Yamashita appeared in front of me, calling out in a carefree voice.

“Yamishita, stop it!” I stared at Ringo’s back as she steadily moved away from me, trying to fend off Yamashita, who abruptly grabbed at me.

“What’s with you? Lookin’ all gloomy first thing in the morning. ’Sup, you havin’ girl problems?”

Seriously, was there anything besides girls and romance in Yamashita’s head?

“Sorry, just go on without me!” I said, running off and leaving him behind. I could not allow myself to lose sight of Oginome Ringo, the Penguindrum, or Himari’s life.

“My, my! What’s this? Has love finally found our little lord Shoma?” I heard Yamashita’s voice from behind as I ran after the girls. How wonderful it would’ve been if this were truly something so frivolous.

 

As the name suggested, Oukagyoen Girl’s High School was an all-girls’ school. While it had been relatively easy to follow Oginome Ringo nearly to the school gates, now we were surrounded by throngs of girls wearing the identical uniforms. I hid in the shadow of a telephone pole, lost for what to do. I was very clearly a suspicious person—what was I doing here, and why? There was no way I could possibly find Oginome Ringo again without being a spy or a detective or something. But I could not afford to give up without doing anything.

I snuck up to the rooftop of a building near Oukagyoen. As I gazed at the buildings, which were far more beautiful than that of our school, I texted Kanba my location and waited, bored.

I leaned over the fence, taking in the autumn breeze. The penguin at my feet spaced out as well, as if mimicking me.

“An all girls’ school, huh?” I said dazedly. “What do I do? Do I need to dress in drag?” I asked the penguin, but it only looked back up at me, giving no response.

“Do you want to dress in drag?”

I flinched, turning around at the sudden voice. Kanba looked at me suspiciously, carrying a large paper bag.

“K-Kanba! Where have you been?!” I put my hand to my chest.

“Around. Anyway, take a look at this.”

He pulled a laptop out of the paper bag, opened it smoothly, then took a USB stick from his pocket and loaded it up.

I held the penguin and gazed at the screen as a roster of individuals appeared: photos of the students of Oukagyoen. He flipped past several and stopped on what appeared to be Oginome Ringo’s page.

“Is this a… roster? Where and how did you get something like this?”

“Hm? I’ve got an old girl who’s good at this kind of thing.”

“Good at what?” Was there a spy or detective amongst the number of my brother’s ex-girlfriends? It was beyond imagining.

“Hacking,” he said plainly.

“Isn’t that illegal?” My face stiffened; that was distinctly more terrifying than what I imagined.

“Oi, lemme see yours for a sec,” said Kanba, squeezing the penguin out of my arms. He pulled out a big, fat marker, and, perplexingly, wrote a “2” on its back.

“My penguin’s number one, and this one’s number two. The one back home with Himari is three. Better not to bother about it.”

This made things less complicated, yes, but it wasn’t very appealing. Wouldn’t it be better to give them names? They didn’t have to be complicated ones.

“Here we go,” he said quietly.

He began pulling assorted electronics out of the bag and lining them up on the ground. He used duct tape to afix transceivers to the penguins’ backs and small cameras to their heads.

“That should work.”

Of course. It seemed his idea was to have the invisible penguins search inside of the school for us. He briskly gave the penguins a set of directions, and took a transceiver in one hand, switching the laptop screen to a feed of images captured by the two cameras.

“Will this really be okay?” The penguins were not especially quick-witted. My stomach started to ache from anxiety.

“Yep, that’s good. Keep going straight ahead. Don’t look around too much,” Kanba said coolly into the walkie-talkie, not displaying a hint of worry.

The image swayed as the penguins tottered along, continuing down the tidy, spacious hall, just as they were told.

“Right there. Go up those stairs. Then, the third classroom on the left, that’s class 1-C.”

I scratched at my stomach in boredom—and also because the two camera images were swaying terribly, and staring at them was making me queasy.

“Head for the seat by the window,” Kanba urged the penguin with certainty, flipping through the roster.

Suddenly, Penguin No. 1 looked up at the studious face of Oginomeringo, or rather, Oginome Ringo.

“Bingo,” said Kanba.

She had thick bangs that hung just above strong-willed eyes. Maybe she did possess the Penguindrum.

“Now, look through her stuff. Check every nook and cranny and see if there’s anything suspicious.”

I looked up from the screen as he said this, startled.

“H-hey, are you sure it’s okay to be doing this?” My voice fell softer as I spoke.

“What else are we supposed to do? We’re investigating a total stranger.”

I didn’t have any other ideas, and it wasn’t as if I had the means to get close to her on my own. Still, that was not the issue. As I fell silent, Kanba sighed softly.

“As long as we don’t get caught, it’s fine. It’s not like we’re hurting anyone.”

“That’s not the problem. I’m saying this is morally wrong. Just because no one else can see the penguins doesn’t make it okay. Or legal.”

Just as I wondered where exactly Penguin No. 1 positioned itself, given it was rather dim, suddenly her knees came into view from a strangely low angle. However, the next moment things went dark again, and I realized that it was rolling around on the floor. No. 2 appeared to have its eye on her commuter bag hanging from the side of the desk. It appeared to be trying to jump higher, so that it could peek inside, but it still could not reach. What on earth was it trying to do?

“So, what do we do?” Kanba asked flatly. “If we can’t get the Penguindrum, Himari’s gonna die. If this Oginome Ringo does have something so amazing, there’s no way she’d just happily hand it over it us just because we asked. Do we really have a choice here?”

I knew he was right. We didn’t have a plan, but morals were not going to be enough to protect Himari in these dire circumstances. Still, was this really alright?

As I fell silent again, Kanba said softly, “We have to do this.” I glanced at his face. “It’s for Himari.”

Seeing his firm expression, his brows furrowed, I gave up. Now wasn’t the time for any pointless arguments.

Somehow, No. 2 seemed to have managed to stick its head into her bag, but from there we could only see it squirming about, and the investigation could not continue.

 

The morning’s lessons were long over. On the laptop screen, from a peculiar angle, we saw a scene of three girls, Oginome Ringo and her friends, eating lunch together. One of the three was the girl who had mistaken me for a pervert on the train this morning.

The benches were neatly arranged in the park-like courtyard. The penguins wandered around the girls’ feet, as though trying to surround Oginome Ringo. At the moment, Oginome Ringo was eating a sandwich and playing on her phone.

“Ohmygod so like, he was so cool! He was all, ‘If I made you feel uncomfortable, then I should apologize. I’m sorry.’ Right, Ringo?”

The long-haired girl’s impression of my brother was actually pretty good. I started feeling vaguely embarrassed, and noisily slurped milk from a carton. Kanba faced away, nibbling nonchalantly on some anpan, as if totally used to people saying things like that about him.

“Man, I wish I could’ve seen that!” replied a lively-looking girl with a short haircut. “That sounds like something else!” She shut her eyes, lightly touching her cheeks, sounding deeply moved.

“He really was cool.”

“So, what about that first suspicious guy?” asked Short Hair.

“Mm, that kid who was with him? He was pretty much nothing,” said Long Hair, instantly dismissive.

Kanba snorted laughter. Penguin No. 2, meanwhile, seemed wholly focused on the bento on the girl’s lap.

“Ah, hang on, what is camera No. 1 capturing?!” I looked at the screen just in time to see a clear view up Oginome Ringo’s skirt. I sputtered, “Pay attention to them, would you?! I swear, you’re all terrible!”

I puffed out my cheeks, grousing at both my brother and the penguin. Just as I thought, Penguin No. 1 really did resemble Kanba.

“Which one?” Kanba looked to the screen, intrigued, focusing on the image from No. 1’s camera with deep interest. “Oho.”

“I think that guy’s uniform was from Gaiennishi High,” one of the girls said.

“No way, that’s so close!”

“Seriously. Makes you wonder how we’ve let such a handsome guy escape out from under our noses all this time.”

The whole time, Oginome Ringo only took quiet bites of her sandwich, staring at the screen of her phone, not participating in the conversation. Was she talking to someone? Looking something up? Reminiscing over photos?

“Ringo? What’s up?” called Long Hair, suddenly noticing how silent Oginome Ringo had been.

“It’s nothing,” said Oginome Ringo, shaking her head, her face popping up from the screen.

“Now then, I was gonna eat that octopus sausage! Huh? Where is it? Did I eat it already?”

In reality, Penguin No. 2, standing at her feet, had eaten her octopus sausage, but there was nothing I could do about that.

“I’m going to head home a little early today,” Oginome Ringo said suddenly, and both the cameras focused on her at once. She quickly cleaned up her sandwich wrapper, grabbed her bag, and stood up.

“Ringo?” The remaining two seemed dumbfounded.

Kanba and I hurriedly cleaned up the odds and ends we had spread around the rooftop like a picnic, so that we could follow her.

The penguins sluggishly followed Oginome Ringo, as per Kanba’s instructions. The camera atop the more rambunctious No. 1 was now somewhat more lopsided than before, as though the tape had come slightly loose.

 

Oginome Ringo headed straight for Shinjuku Gyouenmae Station and boarded the train. We boarded the train as well, taking a seat a short distance away from her.

“Oginome Ringo’s house was in East Kouenji, wasn’t it?” Kanba asked quietly, holding a paper.

“She’s going the opposite way from home, then.”

I glanced at Oginome Ringo to see the penguins hanging around her. No. 1 seemed particularly interested in try to squeeze its head between her thighs again, but as though Oginome Ringo uncannily sensed this, she tilted her head and shifted in her seat.

“She’s got something,” said Kanba, making a strange face.

Obviously: we were only following her around like this because she had something. Though she did not appear to possess anything unusual.

“Kanba, what exactly is this Penguindrum, anyway?” I asked, as I watched No. 2 roll off of its seat.

“How should I know? Doesn’t seem like 1 or 2 know either, and that Penguin Hat never said what it was. I couldn’t even start to guess,” he replied brusquely.

“I wonder if it’s even something that we can actually take.”

“Well, it’s gotta have some kind of form, if we were told to find it and bring it back with us, right?”

“I guess all we can do is look for it, just like the hat said.”

“It was for Himari.” For once, as if we were both operating on the wavelength that twins supposedly always shared, my voice joined with Kanba’s. However, unlike the unease that lingered somewhere within me, I saw determination stark on Kanba’s face, reflected in the dark window beyond the benches.

 

In a teeny, tiny voice, Oginome Ringo muttered to herself. “A man’s heart is through his stomach. Your underwear is your everyday weapon.”

When we arrived in Ikebukuro, Oginome Ringo entered a book shop inside a large building, and flipped through the magazines with a serious expression.

“I mean, it seems like she’s just standing around and browsing, pretty typical.” My brother and I were standing by a shelf some distance from her, magazines flipped open for show as we pretended to read them, our eyes instead trained on her.

“Don’t let your guard down. She might be giving some kind of secret code signal.”

“Seriously? Just what kind of secret code…” Just as I spoke, the cheery ring of an incoming call came from my phone in my back pocket.

Noticing the sound, Oginome Ringo suddenly looked our way.

“Idiot! Put that thing on silent!” Kanba quietly raged.

“S-sorry, sorry!” I frantically hunched over, looking to see who was calling. It was from our house phone, which meant it was from Himari. “Sorry!” I said again, pitifully, and answered it.

“Onii-chan?” Sure enough, Himari sounded rather displeased. “Where are you right now, and what are you doing?”

“Where? Uhh, we’re at a book store.”

“Is that Himari?” Kanba asked from beside me. I nodded, moving a little way away.

“You two skipped school today, didn’t you?”

“Huh?! How did you know that?” I asked, inadvertently letting the truth slip.

“Tabuki-sensei called because he was worried! You don’t ever do anything like this!”

“Ah.” I scratched my head, a warm smile on my face, as the image of my bespectacled homeroom teacher flashed before my eyes.

“Shoma!”

I turned around at my brother’s voice, to see that Oginome Ringo finished her browsing, and was just about to leave.

“Sorry, Himari. I’ll call you back later! I’m really sorry!” I hung up the phone and quickly followed after Oginome Ringo.

It was unforgivable to make Himari needlessly worried, but this was all for her sake. If we found the Penguindrum, we could return to our normal, peaceful lives.

“We’re doing our best for you,” I muttered to myself, catching up with the penguin that was following Oginome Ringo. From this distance, I probably wouldn’t look quite as suspicious.

Just as she rounded the corner into a certain shop, the penguins’ eyes flashed toward us. They each held up a paper with a drawing of a can of squid.

“A can of squid?” I muttered, slowing down. Where had they even gotten the drawings?

“I think they’re saying we ‘can’t’ go in there?”

Just as Kanba suggested, the next papers the pair whipped out were a “No Entry” symbol. The shop front inside didn’t have such a symbol though, so we kept following the penguins and rounded the corner.

“This is—!” I reflexively gasped, stopping in my tracks. Kanba made a complicated expression and stopped beside me.

The shop front was absurdly cute, drawn with pastel accents, looking for all the world like an amusement park. Wherever you looked, there was enough lace and frills to make your eyes sting. In the middle of the shop, a display of white mannequins, clad in bras and matching panties, spun leisurely around along with a small wooden rocking horse.

There was a poster of a smiling female model in her underwear, and women picking up that same underwear to look at it. Amongst them stood Oginome Ringo.

I gulped thickly. Even if it was my brother, if two men were to enter this shop together, we were sure to be questioned.

“Lingerie store, huh? Wish I had a girl here.” I shuddered as my brother clicked his tongue. Was he saying that he could go into this shop if he had a girl with him?

“W-we absolutely can’t go in there. We can’t!” I paled, once more silently apologizing to Himari from the bottom of my heart.

We watched from a distance as Oginome Ringo wandered around the shop. She flitted between the displays, and then picked up a brassiere. I quickly averted my eyes.

“Don’t tell me that’s the Penguindrum,” Kanba said seriously. “If it is though, then I’ve definitely seen one like that before.” He sounded sincere, and I was too terrified to inquire where he’d seen such a thing.

“Would the Penguindrum be something mass-produced? Something store-bought? Either way, I cannot go in there and buy something like that!”

“I guess not.”

I looked again at Oginome Ringo to see that she placed the brassiere back on the shelf. Then, she moved further into the shop.

“Hey now, going for somethin’ a little more radical? Don’t tell me she’s gettin’ somethin’ with a hole down there.” He furtively began to step into the store, breathing heavily through his nose.

“No way, seriously? Huh? Hole? A hole where?” These increasingly intolerable circumstances were making me dizzy. Even without any open holes, everything here was frilly and sheer.

“Obviously, a hole that connects to the cosmos, idiot.” Kanba said strangely. Or, did he still have it in him to be telling jokes?

“Let’s get out of here. I doubt the Penguindrum is here.” Oginome Ringo really was just looking for underwear, and I was sure she would soon leave the shop again.

“Quit pulling my sleeve. Huh? Where’d she go?”

Suddenly I realized I’d lost sight of her. However, it did not appear that she had come out our way, near the entrance.

“This is because you were saying all that stupid stuff!”

“So this is my fault?! I’m going in! To the back!”

To the back, he said, but this was not a very large store. All that was in the furthest back, with its ornately painted walls, were piles of lingerie and an emergency exit.

Kanba shoved open the emergency door, and we went outside. The sun set, and I felt a slight chill on my skin from the wind.

“Damn it, which way did she go?!” We looked around the landing, but there was no sound of anyone climbing the emergency stairs, nor sight of anyone descending them.

“Oh, Aniki, there!”

Oginome Ringo walked along the edge of the building. Her skirt rippled in the wind, and some of the concrete that she was barely managing to balance on crumbled out from under her feet.

She dripped with a cold sweat, and her face was pale. But she continued sidling along.

“What is she doing over there?”

I couldn’t imagine what she was thinking, creeping along practically on tiptoe. A strong wind blew her hair into her face, and she looked like she was about to misstep.

“What do we do, Aniki?” I leaned over the fence.

“Now’s the time for these guys.” His gaze fell to the penguins.

“I wonder.” The anxiety in my heart was clear in my voice.

Now, just when had they ended up this way? No. 1 had a pair of panties on its head, or rather, its face, and No. 2 wore a brassiere on top of its head, the two cups just like two ears. Were these guys even stupider than we assumed?

The two penguins, now adorned with underwear along with their cameras and transceivers, began walking along the ledge.

“Oi, keep up the pace!” Kanba called. Though the penguins shivered at his scolding, they dripped with a cold sweat, and could not reach Oginome Ringo. All that we could see on the camera feed was the pocked and dirty wall of the building.

“I knew they couldn’t do it,” I said.

“Yeah, no hope here,” Kanba agreed.

I watched as a gust sent the underwear adorning the penguins flying, and was filled with a deep sense of regret.

“Hm?”

Several meters from the penguins, Oginome Ringo stopped. She took out her phone from the pocket of her uniform.

“Found iiit!” she said cheerily, standing up as high on tiptoe as she could and holding the phone aloft.

“Was that a shutter sound?” I looked at Kanba.

“Is she taking a picture?” He looked back at me equally perplexed.

With her objective apparently having been accomplished, Oginome Ringo began to make her way back.

“Oi, hurry up and get back here.” As soon as the penguins heard my brother’s voice, they began to totter back. It seemed we would not be returning home yet.

 

We followed Oginome Ringo back to the train, and then to Ogikubo. She now sat by a flower box in front of the station and began flicking through her phone, looking up now and then as if waiting for someone. We blended in with a group of high school boys who were gathered in front of a nearby vending machine, trying not to draw attention to ourselves.

“Wonder if she’s got a date with someone?” said Kanba. “The sun’s already nearly set, though.”

“Yeah, though given how weird she acted earlier, it might be with someone who has something to do with the Penguindrum.”

“Seriously though, what’s so important that she’d go to all that trouble to get a picture of it?” I still could not believe this Oginome Ringo was so important that she might hold Himari’s life in her hands.

“Who knows? Could even be that picture itself is the Penguindrum. Oh, she’s moving!” Kanba, who leaned on the vending machine, righted himself.

She stood up and waved as she caught sight of a man coming out of the station gate.

“Tabuki-san!” A smile leapt to her face, her cheeks pinking.

“Oh, Ringo-chan!” replied a familiar voice, smiling back at her as if it was completely normal.

He had slightly longish black hair, and totally unattractive thin-framed silver spectacles. A slightly crooked tie around his neck. And a plain-looking backpack. There was no doubt that this man was our homeroom teacher Tabuki Keiju in the flesh.

“Aniki, isn’t that our homeroom teacher? That definitely is, right?” I asked. Somehow this felt anticlimactic.

“Yeah, that’s Tabuki for sure.” A grimace crept to his face as well.

“On your way home from cram school again today? We seem to be running into each other a lot lately. You’re a hard worker,” Tabuki said peacefully. He really was a carefree guy.

“Yes, well…” Oginome Ringo looked down bashfully, though she still shot glances back up at Tabuki.

“O-ohh! This is perfect! I’ve got something that you’ll want to see!” she said, pulling out her phone at once, turning the screen so that they could both see. “It’s amazing, isn’t it? This was at that building in Ikebukuro you told me about the other day.”

“The red-rumped swallow’s nest?” He gazed into the phone screen, deeply interested. Oginome Ringo’s face reddened happily as Tabuki stepped up right beside her.

“Yep! I just got a photo!”

“Wow, this is super rare! But, how did you get this photo?”

“A swallow’s nest?” I thought of the luxury ingredient used in Chinese cuisine, but I knew this was something different.

Oginome Ringo tittered and said, “That’s a secret.” She was so endearing now; she seemed like a completely different person.

Kanba and I looked at one another. Just who exactly was Oginome Ringo? Kanba looked as though he realized something, but I still didn’t have the faintest clue what was going on.

Their conversation seemed to be drying up. “Anyway. Give my regards to your mother. Take care getting home!” he said with a vacant smile, waving.

“I will, thank you very much!” She gave him a nod, then suddenly said, “Um!”

Tabuki, however, had already nearly vanished back into the crowd. “I’m really looking forward to going birdwatching,” she added, very softly.

She remained there for a short while after, a bit wistfully, as if lingering in the echo of her words. Then she suddenly grinned, and began following Tabuki.

“Huh? Aren’t they done, though?” I asked vapidly.

It was now thoroughly night time. The moon hung in the cold, clear sky. It would be dreadful for Himari if we weren’t home soon. There was no doubt she would be angry with us.

Oginome Ringo followed Tabuki, who held a bag from a bento shop, and behind both of them were Kanba and I, along with the penguins. This was a thoroughly strange affair. It helped that it was dark out now, but following someone through a residential district was difficult. All the more so if that person knew your face. Oginome Ringo walked boldly on, however, never imagining that she herself was being tailed.

Finally, Tabuki arrived at an apartment building and entered a first floor flat. This was obviously where Tabuki lived.

Oginome Ringo peered at him from the shade of a nearby wall. We stood watching her from the shadow of a telephone pole, even farther away.

“Why do you think she’s following after him?”

“That chick’s in love with him,” Kanba said at once.

“Huh? No way!” I tried to keep my voice down, but shouted louder than I meant to. Kanba quickly covered my mouth.

“You really are dense,” he said, looking deeply and truly exasperated.

Suddenly self-conscious, I could only smile foolishly. Now that I thought about it, I supposed that did seem like an obvious conclusion, but frankly, had Kanba not said anything, it would have been a while before I realized.

“Hm?” Penguin No. 1 tugged on Kanba’s shirt sleeve. I looked to see that the pair of them had taken it upon themselves to fix their cameras, lights, and duct tape, and were puffing out their chests.

Oginome Ringo was just about to enter the building’s perimeter.

“Okay, time to redeem yourselves. Go,” said Kanba, and the penguins started waddling across the dark asphalt, following after the girl.

We leaned back against the guard rail, once more furtively opening up the laptop, and peered at the screen.

The image was dark, of course, but it was enough to tell that Oginome Ringo was no longer by the front of the building, with its rows of old doors. The penguins swiftly rounded the building to the back.

“She’s gone,” I muttered. All we could see was the light flooding down from the balcony, along with a few weeds.

However, as No. 1 looked all around, we could see that below the balcony, the grate to the underground ventilation system had been removed. It had been placed to the side, and there were slight traces of something scraping against the dirt.

“Hm? What’s that? Okay, get in there,” Kanba directed.

It was even darker underground. We could see nothing on either of the penguin’s feeds. Just as I thought this, however, a hazy shape of something moving appeared on No. 1’s feed.

As I stared at it, I soon realized that it was the slender thighs of Oginome Ringo, who crawled ahead on all fours.

“Wah! Those again!” It goes without saying what lay beyond her thighs. I quickly covered my face with the bag I was holding.

“That’s the second triple-laced pair of the day. Must be her fighting panties,” said my brother nonchalantly.

“Don’t say that so casually! And stop staring!”

“Yo.” The tone of his voice shifted.

I slowly peeked out from behind the bag, looking at the screen again.

Oginome Ringo twisted her body, lying faceup in the vent. She seemed to be holding a small flashlight in her mouth. In a practiced movement, she shuffled something out of the commuter bag she dragged along.

“What’s that?” Kanba focused on her hands.

“That looks kind of like the ones on the penguins, doesn’t it?” My mouth opened dumbly.

“A microphone?” Once more, he said something dreadful without any hesitation.

I scowled, but stared at the girl on the screen, my mouth still hanging open. She twisted a knob on the side of the small black device, adjusting it. As she did, there was a faint noise, and then the sound of a television show drifted faintly through the penguin’s microphones.

“No way, is she…?”

“Seems like she’s doing the same thing to Tabuki that we’re doing to her.”

“In other words, that makes Oginome Ringo…”

Apparently, Oginome Ringo was Tabuki Keiju’s stalker.

“Ah, gotta love a soda after work.” Tabuki’s nebbish voice felt even more ineffectual, filtered through the two microphones. You would think that he’d at least crack open a beer at home.

Oginome Ringo lay down in the dirt, a look of contentment on her face, as though she was listening to a lullaby, straining her ears for the sound of Tabuki going about his daily life. Seeing the dampness in her barely open eyes, I felt a shiver run down my spine.

“Don’t you worry. Soon, you won’t have to eat dinner alone anymore. After all, from now on, I’ll always be with you. I’ll never let you feel lonely. I believe in fate.” There was a deep sincerity to her whisper. “In destiny.”