And so a new case file begins
“I didn’t mean it like that, and don’t twirl around. I can see your panties.”
“Wow, you’re right. Then you twirl too, Sisi. We’ll beat Nana with numbers that way.”
“I want no part of that majority vote. And don’t call me Sisi.”
Our conversations always went like this. Somebody would say something dumb, and then somebody else would point out how dumb it was. Then we’d all crack up.
To me, that daily routine was—
“Excuse me.” Just then, there was a knock at the door, and a man in his sixties entered. He was wearing a white lab coat. “How are you feeling… Well. You two are here too, I see.”
The man was a doctor, and the director of this orphanage. As he noticed the other two, he gave a wry smile, although he knew that getting mad at them wouldn’t do any good.
“They sent you this.”
“…? Ooh!”
He’d handed me a new teddy bear. As far as gifts went, it did seem a little childish for me, but honestly, it was really cute.
“If I recall, they have a daughter who’s about three years younger than you girls, so they may have had that age in mind.”
The present was from a certain wealthy Japanese couple. From what I heard, they donated large amounts of money to this orphanage, and they also sent us gifts at regular intervals. I’d never met them, but the idea that they were thinking of us made me happy.
“Well? What did you need?” Siesta asked the doctor, rather suddenly. She seemed to know he hadn’t come here just to give me a present.
“…I’m no match for you, am I.” The doctor gave another bitter smile. “Actually, I’d like all three of you to give me a little help before breakfast today. It has to be done on an empty stomach.”
“I see. All right.”
Siesta nodded, without attempting to fight; it wouldn’t have done any good anyway.
Ali planted her hands on her hips and said, “If I must,” as if she was used to it. But as for me…
“You look pretty reluctant.” The doctor glanced at me. He sounded troubled. We had this exchange every single time. But I didn’t care what he said to me; this was something I just couldn’t—
“This will benefit you kids as well, you know. You understand that, don’t you?”
“…Yes.”
Oh, I understood, all right. In the end, I always had to do what the adults said.
“Thank you for your cooperation—Number 602.”
With a satisfied smile at doing what he came to do, the doctor turned to leave the room. “You got it wrong,” I called after him. I had to say something. “My name isn’t Number 602. It’s Nagisa.”
Nagisa. That was the name Siesta had given me.
They only called me by a number here, but she’d given me a name.
“…Yes, that’s right.” The doctor looked back again, smiled gently, and left.
“Nagisa…” Siesta was gazing at me as if she wanted to say something.
“Yes, I know.”
Thinking of the painful hours that lay ahead, I nodded.
The “help” the doctor was referring to had to do with the medication trials this facility conducted.
The orphanage’s operating costs were covered by using the children as clinical trial subjects.
Almost like a detective
The medication trials were conducted once every two weeks or so.
The facility’s several dozen children were the test subjects, and even though I had a weak heart, I wasn’t exempted. They made me participate every time. They said there was data they could get precisely because I wasn’t healthy, but that did mean the burden on me was greater than it was for the others.
The trials had a lot of side effects; we’d come down with fevers, throw up, or even develop burning pain all over. Still, our hard work helped keep the facility going…and the sense of mission, the idea that they were helping create medicines for unknown diseases, kept the children going.
I had one more special reason to work hard: my troublemaking friends.
First, there was Siesta. We’d made friends a few months ago; before that, I’d always been on my own. I didn’t know which facility had sent her here, or even what country she was from. I tended to get depressed, though, and she’d come to play and talk with me almost every day.
Then, through her, I’d met another friend.
“I found something funny,” Siesta had said when she brought Ali to me one day. Almost as if she were bringing me a new toy. She hadn’t been wrong, though: When I was with her, I really never got bored…and although I might complain, I always looked forward to the days when they came to visit.
—And yet.
“Why aren’t they coming?”
The last time I’d seen them was on the day of the clinical trial. For one day, three days, a week after that, they hadn’t come to my room at all. Had I made them mad somehow? Or had something happened to them?
“…Where did they go?”
All I could do was wait for them to come to my room again. I was lonely, but I’d just have to deal. I’d been on my own all along anyway.
Besides, I’d fought with Siesta a lot. Maybe it was better this way. Yes, I was lonely, but there was no way around it.
…Am I lonely?
I was disgusted with myself for being so spoiled. I wanted to throw my whole revolting self away.
Arrrgh, I wish someone would just take over for me.
“Haaaaah.” I heaved a big sigh that nobody else would ever hear.
“People say that every time you sigh, it delays your marriage by a year.” Siesta poked her head out from under my bed.
“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh!”
On reflex, I hurled the teddy bear at her.
“Hey, don’t yell. They’ll catch me.”
“Dangerous characters like you should get caught, and fast!”
Th-that scared me! I thought my heart might stop. Did she forget I’ve got a bad heart? I really wish she’d give me a break…
“Were you lonely?”
“…Not particularly. I haven’t been alone in a long time. I was trying to enjoy it.”
I got back into bed, hoping to shut down any further questions from Siesta. Times like these, the best policy was to look at the patterns on the ceiling and ignore her.
“Lying delays your marriage, you know.”
This time, a section of the ceiling opened up and Ali’s face appeared.
“Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaugh! Are you actually trying to give me a heart attack?!”
I also wished they’d stop spouting weird theories I’d never heard of. How long did they want to keep me single, anyway?
“Actually, I had something kinda serious to discuss.” Siesta crawled out from under the bed, then sat down on a stool at my bedside.
“Huh? Where’s my chair?” Ali asked from the ceiling.
“You just lie on your stomach up there and wait.”
“Sisi, you’re being so mean to me.”
Without sparing a glance for Ali, Siesta turned to me. “It’s been three months since I came to this facility, and I’m starting to get concerned about something.” For some reason, she glanced around the room. Then she picked up the teddy bear I’d hurled at her a minute ago. “I’ve been wondering why they have to run clinical trials when they get donations.”
She was getting suspicious of the explanation that the facility relied on money from the trials to cover its operating expenses. She had a point. If this place was using its children as guinea pigs to earn extra money, that was a problem. We didn’t want to help with those trials. We only put up with them to protect the life we knew.
“Besides, look.”
There was a zipper in the teddy bear’s back. Siesta unzipped it, and something fell out. My eyes widened.
There was a little machine on the floor that looked like a round battery.
“It’s a bug,” Ali said from the ceiling, her chin resting in her hands. “The facility’s hiding something from us.”
“…! You mean they’re watching us? Then aren’t they listening to us right now…?” I worried.
“It’s all right,” Siesta told me. “I made sure they’ll hear a dummy audio track from this room, instead of what we say.”
“Wait just a minute! When did I wander into a spy movie?!”
“That’s part of the reason we haven’t come to visit for a week. We were getting ready. I’m sorry.”
“Getting ready for what?! And also how?!”
Haaah, I can’t find comebacks fast enough. Couldn’t they be a little more considerate of my physical limitations here?
…Hm? Be considerate of my limitations?
“Did you do this for me?”
Why had Siesta developed suspicions about the facility and made her move now? Could it be because she’d seen how reluctant I was to help with that trial the other day?
“I don’t know what you mean.” Siesta got to her feet smoothly, acting as if she hadn’t noticed a thing. “I just want to find out what this place is hiding.” Her eyes seemed to be focused on something far away.
“…Heh-heh.” I laughed a little behind her.
“I don’t recall saying anything funny.” Siesta seemed to think I was mocking her, and she turned around with a sulky face I never saw from her.
“No, that’s not it.” I smiled and shook my head. It was just that, when I’d seen Siesta, I’d thought…
“You seem like a detective.”
“All right, Sisi. Do it.”
“Copy that. Here we go!” Siesta pulled me onto her back for some unfathomable reason, following Ali’s instructions.
“Huh? What?! What—what—what’s this…?”
“Starting now, you’re going to be in on this with us, Nagisa.” As usual, Siesta opened the window. Then she set a foot on the sill.
“Whoa, wait-wait-wait! Wait, okay? What are you going to do?!” I had a really, truly, horribly bad feeling about this…but by then, I had no other options.
Because, with me on her back, Siesta had already—jumped.
“It’s fine. My shoes can run through thin air.”
“That’s impossibleeeeeeeeee!”
I squeezed my eyes shut, sure I was about to die.
Girls dream of secret bases, too
“Hm. It looks like she’s awake.”
That was Siesta’s voice. When I opened my eyes, her beautiful face was the first thing I saw.
Had I passed out after that? I was lying on a sofa. When I sat up, I realized I was in an unfamiliar room.
“Welcome to our secret base!”
That was Ali. When I turned toward her voice, she was standing there triumphantly, hands on her hips.
“Secret base?”
I looked around and noticed that the room was a little odd.
“Is this all cardboard…?”
The whole place—walls, table, and even the sofa I was lying on—was made of cardboard. It was a cardboard house.
It did seem about as secret-basey as it could possibly be. The question was what they did in it, and why they’d brought me here.
“This is our strategy HQ.” Siesta sat down on a cardboard chair. I noticed the plural, meaning our other troublemaking friend was involved. Of course.
“She asked me to make this, so I did. Sisi, I swear… Once she sets her mind to something, she just doesn’t stop.” Ali turned her palms to the ceiling in an exaggerated shrug of resignation.
“…I really wish you wouldn’t call me by that silly nickname.”
Siesta looked away; she seemed unusually embarrassed. She always acted very grown-up, and it was a relief to see that she had a childish side as well.
“So you said this was a strategy HQ?”
“That’s right. We’ve made this the base for our resistance while we put together a strategy to strike back against the adults.”
Siesta opened the doors of a cardboard closet. Inside were…
“What…are those…?”
They were weapons. Lots of them. The sort I’d only seen in fiction. I didn’t know their technical names, but there were all kinds of guns and blades of various shapes in there. Don’t tell me these were the work of…
“Eh-heh-heh! I made them!” Ali flashed me a peace sign.
I’d expect no less from a little girl who made bombs for fun. Ali made all sorts of toys, calling them “inventions,” so the other kids adored her. I’d never dreamed she’d made anything this crazy, though…
“But do we really need things like this?” I eyed the weapons from a safe distance. I didn’t even have the courage to touch them. “If you have something this dangerous on hand, you mean you’re planning to fight the adults for real, right?”
And really, was there any need to “resist” this much? What were the adults, and this facility, hiding from us?
“Good question. We don’t know yet.” Siesta shook her head quietly. “There’s no harm in being prepared for anything, though. We should try to resolve trouble before it even comes up.”
“…Y-you’re getting all complicated on me.”
Is she really my age? Well, I mean, she’s never told me her actual age, but…
“So what do you think?” Siesta asked. “Will you fight alongside us, Nagisa?”
To be honest, I was scared.
Not of defying the adults, though—of learning the truth. I was just scared that something was going to change irreversibly.
It wasn’t that I was content with this place, of course. If finding out the truth would free us from those awful clinical trials, I couldn’t even tell you how good it would be.
But these past twelve years—my whole life— I’d been here, in that hospital bed. No matter what I did, that time grabbed my legs and refused to let go.
“I…”
I couldn’t find an answer right away, and I lowered my eyes.
Watching me, Siesta said, “Someday, let’s just walk out there and look at the ocean in broad daylight.” That made me remember our first meeting. And then: “Let’s fix your heart, too. Then we’ll run around at the waterline all we want. But if we’re going to have a future like that—something has to change.” She held her left hand out to me.
“…I guess it’s not much of a choice.” Giving a weary, dramatic sigh, I said, “I’ll help you!” I took her hand and got to my feet.
“…Hrm. Why are you two off in your own little world over there?”
One of us seemed to be in a bad mood. Ali had her arms crossed and was standing tall—well, maybe not that tall—watching us.
“Don’t be cranky. I’ll give you a big hug later. Or at least Nagisa will.”
“Sisi, you dummy! Naaaanaaaaa!”
“Whoa, you smell like oil…”
“I was just making an inveeentiooon!”
As we watched Ali throw her tantrum, we both laughed.
If it was the three of us. If it was us, we’d be able to get over any changes, any hardship.
Somewhere along the way, all my reluctance had evaporated.
“All right, once again…” I moved so that the three of us were standing in a circle. “Let’s uncover this facility’s secret together!” I held my right hand out toward the other two, palm down.
“Huh? Oh. We’re doing this, hm?”
“Ah-ha-ha! Nana, you’re more of a little kid than I thought.”
“Don’t yank the rug out from under me right at the end!”
We laughed, and got mad, and cheered, and made our vow together.
“…Geez.” How could I have embarrassed myself like that? Unbelievable. I went back to the sofa by myself, propped my elbow on its arm, and rested my chin in my hand.
“Hm?”
When I took another look around the room, I realized there were a whole bunch of toys and stuffed animals over by the window. Were they the ones that couple always gave us? Even then, it seemed like too many for Ali to have gotten on her own.
Well, about all I could say now was…
“I think you’re a hundred times more of a kid than I am, Ali.”
The real enemy
Several weeks later…
“Ow! Siesta, you just stepped on my foot.”
Siesta and I were walking through a dark building, side by side.
“Huh? No I didn’t.”
“…You’re kidding me. Then what just…”
It was so dark. A sudden chill ran down my spine, and I caught Siesta’s arm.
“Yes, I’m kidding.”
“That’s just mean! Why would you do that?!” I swear, this girl… You’d think she was born just to tease people. I really couldn’t handle her, and I prayed fervently that someday she’d find somebody who could take over for me.
“And? Is the enemy really this way?” I asked, lowering my voice.
“Yes, definitely. All the cameras in the building are currently under our control.”
We’d remotely hijacked the surveillance cameras, and we knew exactly who was in the building and where. Ali was keeping an eye on the situation and giving us directions. She was back in the strategy HQ, watching over us to make sure nothing went wrong.
“This is finally it,” I said, psyching myself up.
“This is our answer,” said Siesta. “We won’t do as we’re told anymore.”
“…Right.”
For the past few weeks, we’d investigated this facility under Siesta’s leadership. We’d taken sneaky pictures, placed wiretaps, and done all kinds of recon. We’d used Ali’s inventions to gather information until finally we made our big discovery. Today, Siesta and I were going to confront the enemy with it.
Of course, that was going to change the way we lived.
Because I was physically fragile, I’d hardly ever played with friends. Lately, though, I’d made two friends I could count as partners in crime. If we turned this facility against us, we might get split up. And I couldn’t deny that idea made me feel a little lonely.
“Do you want to back out?” Siesta whispered sweetly, as if she’d read my mind.
“You’re such a jerk.” I let her have it. Really I just needed to get the thought out of my head.
Yes, I’d hesitated. I’d thought maybe it would be better to leave this to the other two. If I ran now, though, I was sure I’d regret it later.
This is my chance, I thought. My very last chance to fly away from that hard bed. From this birdcage.
And so I—
“I’m doing it. I won’t forgive you two if you leave me out of this.”
As I spoke, I slipped my hand into my pocket, and my fingers touched something hard. I really hope I don’t have to use this.
“Honestly. You’re both such children.” Siesta smiled gently.
After we’d walked a little farther, we reached our destination. It was an elevator that led to the basement. We nodded to each other, stepped in, and went down.
When the doors opened, the first thing we saw was several big tanks. They were filled with green liquid, and there was something inside them, hooked up to tubes.
“Well, well. Visitors?”
A voice spoke from somewhere near the back of the room.
“It’s a little too soon for the experiment, though.”
The speaker stepped into view—a bespectacled man in a white lab coat: my doctor, and the director of the orphanage.
“Are those pseudohumans?”
Siesta pointed at the contents of the enormous tanks.
“…Oh-ho. You’ve done your homework.” The corners of his lips rose, silently acknowledging that Siesta’s hypothesis was correct.
That was the secret of this facility.
Those weren’t actually clinical trials. They were human experimentation.
It was an attempt to grant extraordinary physical abilities by implanting a certain unknown energy source in human bodies. They were conducting this experiment on children who had no families, over and over, with the goal of eventually creating a “pseudohuman.”
“Is that what you are, too?” Siesta pressed the director.
“I am Seed.”
Suddenly, the man’s tone changed. At the same time, his appearance shifted through several different stages. First he was a blond man with his hair combed back, and then his body distorted into a voluptuous woman with long hair. Then, finally—
“This is the form I’m most accustomed to now.”
He transformed into a slim young man with white hair.
Well, I couldn’t tell whether he was actually male. His symmetrical features could have been feminine as well, if you wanted to see it that way… I’m not sure how to put it. There was something almost holy about that lack of gender, that total androgyny.
“That said, it is just a temporary shape. The ones in there are also not the real thing.” The youth who’d called himself Seed gazed at the contents of the tanks with clear eyes. “They’re copies I created from pieces of myself.”
“Then you’re trying to use the children to make a real pseudohuman?”
“Well, for now, that’s accurate in a general way,” Seed replied. “Although I’m not partial to the word pseudohuman.”
“What for?” Without thinking, I broke into their conversation. “Is it for war? Money? …Why did you have to sacrifice us?”
I’d lived at the facility for twelve years, but there was something I’d never realized.
Many of the children had disappeared.
Kids who’d been right next to me during a clinical trial one day had been gone the next. They must have died during the experiments…and then our memories of them had been erased with some sort of drug.
“Some try to use my power to gain money or military might. However, personally, I don’t have the slightest interest in them. The only thing that motivates me—is a tenacious instinct for survival.” Seed’s face was expressionless. Swaying lightly, he blocked our way. “Well? What now? You’ve learned the truth of this facility, and my objectives. What’s the point of confronting me?”
“We’ll stop you, of course. No matter what it takes.”
In the next moment, Siesta had taken the musket from her back and pointed it at him. It was another of Ali’s inventions, naturally.
“An empty threat?”
“It’s real.” As I spoke, I took a detonator switch out of my pocket.
This facility stood on an isolated island, far out in the ocean. We knew we couldn’t run, so we’d have to fight. “All I have to do is push this button, and I’ll blow the laboratory to bits.”
I moved my thumb toward the red button. If I pushed it, we wouldn’t escape unscathed either, but it should make for a decent negotiating tactic.
“—You really are still green.” Something like disappointment flashed across Seed’s blank face. “The plan begins now, though.”
“Wh-what are you talking about?!”
He wasn’t taking us seriously at all. I held the switch out one more time, making sure he’d seen it.
“You’d sacrifice yourself, hm? It’s no use. I can tell from one look at your trembling fingers that you aren’t brave enough to push it.”
“I—!”
Just as I was about to argue back…
“Then why not push it?”
…Seed’s eyes flared red.
“…Huh?”
For some reason, my thumb moved on its own. It was being drawn toward the button. “Wait, wait-wait! What?! No…!”
My thumb was going to press the switch. And I knew this bomb was real…
“—!” Noticing the emergency, Siesta pointed her gun at Seed and pulled the trigger.
“…? It…didn’t fire?”
No bullet came from the muzzle. And in the meantime, my thumb had pressed the red button, but—
“Nothing’s happening?”
At first glance, it looked as though we’d been saved, but it did mean we had another big problem.
Both of Ali’s inventions were duds.
Was it coincidence? Just bad luck? Or…
“I’ve known of this future ever since the distant past,” Seed murmured. And then…
“Ooh, you two are being so bad.”
Someone else spoke behind us.
Fearfully, I turned around to see a girl with pink hair.
“You can’t point those weapons at my boss.”
The last name I called was…
“Ali…?”
I couldn’t accept what I was seeing, and I fumbled and dropped the detonator switch. Ali passed right by me and went to stand beside Seed. She was smiling faintly.
“Why are you…?”
Next to me, Siesta was watching her too. Her expression was grim, and her eyes were narrowed. I was sure she was praying that the explanation she’d just thought of was incorrect.
“Ah-ha-ha! So sorry. I’ve been on his side the whole time,” Ali said, forcing us to face the cruel reality. “I’ve known kids were disappearing from the facility for ages.”
That was something we’d only found out recently—the deaths of the children involved in failed experiments and the drugs to erase them from our memories.
But Ali said, “I’ve kept a journal for years and years; I’ve never missed a day. When I compared my faulty memories to it, I realized that kids were vanishing and nobody knew.”
Come to think of it, Ali’s secret base had so many dolls and stuffed animals in it that I hadn’t been able to believe they were all hers. Had those belonged to the kids who’d died? Apparently, she really had known about the disappearances long before we found out.
“…If you knew that, then why did you join them?”
She should be able to see who the bad guys were here.
“Well, it’s only natural to side with whoever’s strongest, isn’t it?” Ali had used similar reasoning to reach a completely different conclusion. “You have to live smart, you know.” She gave us a teasing smile. “Anyway, these kids won’t do at all.” Her attitude changed abruptly, and she pointed at Siesta and me as she advised Seed. “Any girl this easy to fool won’t be any use to you. Don’t waste seeds on them.”
Seeds? I hadn’t heard that term before.
However, from what we’d learned so far and the direction the conversation was heading, I could guess. “Seeds” must be the unknown energy source that was supposed to turn children into pseudohumans. Ali was saying Siesta and I shouldn’t be allowed to have them.
“You should give me one instead, please,” she said, trying to persuade Seed that she was worthy. “As an inventor, I’m gonna be interested in pseudohumans. Obviously. Besides, I’ve given you all this help. Okay? C’mon, won’t you?”
She sounded exactly like the childish Ali I knew as she pestered Seed for the seed like a spoiled little brat.
—But.
“I think it’s too early for you.” Seed rejected her proposal, still blank-faced.
“It’s fine.” I didn’t know why she was being so stubborn, but she doubled down on her request. “It’s fine, I know I can handle it. I’ll master the seed for sure.”
“Then what shall we do with these two?” Seed asked, almost as if he was testing her.
“These two” were me and Siesta, of course. We’d learned the secret of this facility and what Seed really was, and he was asking how to dispose of us.
“Just take some of their memories, the way you always do,” Ali replied. “After that, you can let them go. I really don’t think they’ll be useful anyway.” She kept on talking a blue streak, without sparing a glance for us. “Oh, right, make them forget me too, would you? Kinda gross to think about them remembering me the whole time.”
…Oh, is that what this is, I thought.
Ali was Ali after all.
“Also, while we’re at it, I doubt we need the other kids either. I mean, you were using this place to create a pseudohuman, right? If I become your first success, you won’t need this lab anymore—”
While Ali was still chattering away, Siesta interrupted.
“Are you really okay with that?”
Her voice was very sharp.
“To summarize what I just heard, you’re planning to sacrifice yourself to save us.”
“…!”
For the first time, Ali’s face twisted.
That’s right. I’d had the wrong idea. When something you believed in turns out to be wrong, you have to ask yourself what you’re going to believe in again. I should have trusted Ali’s emotions instead of her actions. I should have trusted her nature, the same way I always had.
“…This is fine,” Ali murmured quietly. “If somebody’s sacrificed, this experiment will end. If I master the seed properly, no one else has to go through this again! Isn’t that right?!”
Ali had only been pretending to be Seed’s ally, in order to protect us. She’d picked up on the facility’s secret before anyone else, and I’m sure she’d initially planned to do something about it on her own…but then Siesta had begun doing the same thing.
And Ali knew that once Siesta set her mind to something, she wouldn’t stop. She’d pulled us into this, but at the same time, she’d acted as a double agent to keep us safe.
“So please…” Laying a hand on her chest, Ali shouted at Seed, “I’ll do it! I’ll inherit that seed for you! So these two can be—”
“Fine.” Seed, whose face was still expressionless, accepted her plea. The next moment, a single, long tentacle sprouted from his back.
“…! I won’t let you do it!”
Something supernatural was playing out right in front of me, and I almost cringed back. But the tip of that tentacle was sharp, and it was easy to imagine what was about to happen. Even though I had no weapon, I ran to Ali.
“…!”
But that was when a terrible pain shot through the left side of my chest. My heart… Not now!
“Nagisa!”
“G…go…” I’d crouched down. Siesta was focused on me, but with a glance, I told her to go to Ali.
—But then.
“This is a prime opportunity for an experiment. We can’t have you obstructing it.”
Even though none of us had spoken, we heard a voice.
“…!”
Almost immediately, Siesta crashed to the floor. It was as if something had fallen on her.
“Come on, no struggling.”
“! No… Don’t…!” Siesta’s back arched. Her voice was trembling.
“Ha-ha! Do you like the feel of my tongue that much?” Unpleasant laughter echoed from the empty air. Our opponent must have made himself invisible. Even Siesta hadn’t predicted a being who wouldn’t show up on a security camera.
We were powerless. In front of us was an enormous enemy with a tentacle that moved as if it had a life of its own, and one solitary girl.
“All right. Let us conduct the last experiment,” Seed said evenly. “This is my seed. Accept it.”
The pointed tentacle closed in on Ali’s chest, over her heart. It was the worst possible way this could end.
She twisted halfway around, calling back to us. She was wearing her usual artless smile.
“Hurry up and forget me.”
I don’t have any clear memories of what happened after that.
Was the shock so great that I lost them?
Or did I force that pain and suffering onto someone else?
It was as if I’d been locked up in the dark. I lost all sense of myself as a person.
At the end, I screamed a name.
My friend wasn’t compatible with the seed. She died in a welter of blood right there in front of me. Only her name was etched in my mind forever.
“—Alicia!”
Finding mistakes and comparing answers
“That’s right. Six years ago, the three of us fought SPES at that facility on the island. The ace detective…well, Siesta, and me, and Alicia.” Natsunagi said all of that in a rush, as if it was flooding back to her.
One year ago, Charlie and I had encountered the enemy leader at a laboratory. That had to be the test facility that had come up in the story. Six years ago, SPES had been attempting to create pseudohumans there, using children as guinea pigs.
That story had given us two new pieces of information.
The first was that Siesta and Natsunagi had known each other as kids.
Siesta hadn’t initially given her the name “Nagisa” last year, just before she died, but six years ago. Had she given her that name again, five years later, because she’d realized Hel was actually her former friend Nagisa?
And the other fact was—
“Alicia actually existed. She wasn’t just part of Natsunagi.”
One year ago, when I’d met Alicia in London, I’d assumed that her appearance was made up, something Hel (or Natsunagi) had created with Cerberus’s seed. There had been a real Alicia, though—a girl with pink hair. Natsunagi had met her at the facility six years ago. Then she’d seen her die. The image of her must have been indelibly imprinted on her mind, and when she used Cerberus’s seed several years later, she’d unconsciously assumed her appearance. Then, even though she’d lost her memories, the name Alicia had still been somewhere in her mind.
“I never once called my master ‘Alicia,’ you know.” In the mirror, Hel narrowed her eyes.
She was right. Hel had kept all of Natsunagi’s memories in her place. She had to have known that “Alicia” was someone else.
“Still. I suppose you can’t even imagine it, but there was a time when that ace detective was young and inexperienced,” Hel went on.
Siesta had still been a child, and she’d gone up against Seed without a plan. Chameleon alone had been too much for her. Maybe it was those experiences that had molded her into the flawless ace detective I knew.
Even so…
“By last year, Siesta wasn’t the type of person who’d fail easily. Why didn’t she notice that Natsunagi looked like Alicia in London? Why didn’t she notice something was off?”
Siesta, Alicia, and Natsunagi had met six years ago. Five years couldn’t have been enough to make Siesta forget her friends. I really couldn’t imagine that she’d see those pink ponytails and not realize it was Alicia.
“It’s simple,” Hel said. “The ace detective was missing memories as well.”
“…! Siesta? Missing memories?”
Well, actually, that made sense. Natsunagi had just told us about it herself: At that test facility, the children’s memories had been erased on a regular basis. After Alicia’s death, Siesta must have been forced to forget some of her memories from the facility, including SPES, Natsunagi, and Alicia.
“What happened to Siesta after that?”
“She fled the island.” Hel gave a cold smile. “Even after they’d partially erased her memories of SPES and her friends, that ace detective slipped out of the facility… She wasn’t running away, though. She did it to fight. She stole Seed’s seed, and one day, without warning, she was gone.”
“Siesta took a seed?”
Maybe that shouldn’t have surprised me. Siesta’s combat abilities were superhuman. And then there was her heart…
Just like Bat’s ears, Chameleon’s tongue, and Cerberus’s nose, Siesta’s heart had had a special ability. When Natsunagi had acquired the heart, she’d picked up her memories as well. Maybe that had been due to the seed’s power.
“…Why?” I couldn’t wait for Hel to continue her explanation. “If Siesta’s memories had been erased, then why did she steal the seed and escape from the orphanage?”
“You’re going to make me say it? Me, your enemy?” In the mirror, her lips twisted. “It’s simple. Even if she forgot why she was fighting, or who her enemy was, she remembered the mission she’d been given. That’s all,” she said with a bitter, dissatisfied smile. “All right. I think I’ve told you most of what there is to know about the past. You certainly have it rough, dredging up stories that are over and done with from a year ago, or four years, or six.”
…She had a point. Natsunagi, Siesta, and I had forgotten all sorts of things, and they were all vital memories. Lately we’d been spending most of our time gathering the fragments of them, one by one.
This settling of accounts with the past must have started on that day.
The day when Nagisa Natsunagi woke me up, in that classroom after school.
The day when she’d set this story in motion again after it should have ended.
This story in which the detective was dead.
“Nagisa.” SIESTA took a step forward and finally spoke to Natsunagi’s back. “Are you sure it’s all right to end this story this way?”
Those blue eyes were unwavering. Even as part of a mechanical doll, they hadn’t changed. I knew this gaze—it was the one directed at me a year ago, when I’d guessed that Hel and Alicia were the same person and then tried to pretend it wasn’t true. She wouldn’t let you lie or run away.
“Hel.”
Acknowledging those feelings, Natsunagi spoke to her reflection in the mirror.
“What happened to me after that? After I saw Alicia die.”
Natsunagi’s story hadn’t ended yet.
Alicia had died, Siesta had escaped from the facility…but what had happened to Nagisa Natsunagi?
“That’s when I was born,” Hel told her.
This tale had begun when Natsunagi said she wanted to know more about Hel; it would end with her, too.
“Well, my consciousness was already inside you, dormant. To be more accurate, that was the first time I became your dominant personality, Master.”
And ever since then, Natsunagi’s body had been under Hel’s control? The shock of Alicia’s death had destabilized her memories and personality, and Hel had seized her chance.
“After that, I became a formal member of SPES. I didn’t mind letting them experiment on me. The other children were in the way, and I ran them all out of the facility. After that, I was special to Father, his one and only.”
Was that what had happened…? Then Siesta and I had encountered Hel in London last year, after she’d risen through the ranks to become one of SPES’s officers.
…Still, there was something in that explanation that just didn’t ring true for me.
“Why would you go that far for SPES? For Seed?”
Seed had said it was his survival instinct that was making him attack humanity. Since SPES’s officers were all clones of him, they were cooperating because that was what their instincts demanded.
Hel was different, though. She was human, and she was also an acquired personality that had grown in Natsunagi’s mind. There was no logical reason for her to align herself with Seed.
“Heh. Are you a sadist?” The red eyes in the mirror narrowed. “Look, don’t make me embarrass myself over and over. —It was love, all right? Love.” The girl gave a self-deprecating smile. “That was the core I needed.”
“The core…?”
“That’s right. You could call it a tether, there to keep me in this world. Without it, I felt as if I’d disappear. I am just a fake, after all.”
Oddly enough, her master Natsunagi had confessed to having the exact same worry. She’d been suffering after she’d lost her memories and identity too. However, the pain had been the same for Hel. As an alternate personality who had no physical body, she was an extremely vague concept.
“Will you laugh at me for seeking love for such a reason? For sidling up to Father and trying to win his affection because I didn’t want to disappear? For blindly believing in his love, and deceiving my comrades, and tormenting innocents? For losing the battle and losing my power after all I’d done? —Will you laugh?” she asked us, smiling.
“No. I won’t,” said Natsunagi.
“How could I?” she continued. “More importantly, I’m sorry. And thank you.”
“…What are you saying?” Hel hadn’t been expecting to hear that from Natsunagi, and she grimaced.
“First, the things I was never able to say to you directly. You shouldered all my pain and suffering, didn’t you? I’m sorry… I’m so sorry.”
Hel was an alternate personality Natsunagi had unknowingly created to help herself escape her pain. In a way, she’d been born just to take over someone else’s suffering. Now, Natsunagi was telling this other self what she felt for the very first time.
“ ‘Thank you’? I—I don’t want thanks from—!”
“Well, I mean…” Before Hel could work herself into a rage, Natsunagi spoke to her from the heart. “You protected me.”
“From pain and hardship, you mean? I really don’t want the person I had to shield thanking me.”
“No, not that.” Rejecting Hel’s assumptions again, Natsunagi gazed into the mirror.
“You became a member of SPES in order to protect me. Didn’t you?”
There are no monsters anymore
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Hel’s lip curled. “I joined SPES for your sake? That can’t possibly be—”
“I mean, if you hadn’t, they would have killed me.”
“…!”
The reflection’s expression slipped—more like shattered, really.
“Six years ago, we learned SPES’s secret. Alicia wasn’t able to take the seed, and she was killed. My body was too frail to be of use to SPES. They would have killed me too, before long. They should have. But then you appeared.”
Natsunagi looked steadily at her other self in the mirror.
“Hel, by insisting that you could be useful to SPES, you kept them from disposing of me. When you swore loyalty to Seed, you were trying to save my life. It was all for my sake. In order to protect me, you became a devil.”
“…! You can’t prove any of that. What proof do you have that I’m that soft?” Hel was breathing roughly.
“You said it yourself. You let the facility’s children get away.” Natsunagi hadn’t let a single word Hel said slip past her. She went on building her theory. “You said you intended to make yourself special to Seed, but that’s not convincing. You have a heart. You can feel sympathy for others.”
“A human heart? …That’s impossible. You know how many innocent people I killed in London.”
“You’re right. And it’s not a minor crime. But you did that to save me, too.”
“…!” Hel’s red eyes widened.
“One year ago, in the fight with Siesta, you lost your heart. That meant my body would die.”
It had happened right after the battle between the humanoid weapon and the biological weapon in London. Using her hand mirror, Siesta had turned Hel’s red eyes against her, and Hel had run her own heart through with her sword. Not only had it been a life-or-death crisis for Hel, but it should have meant death for her master. “After Cerberus died, you made it look as if you were continuing his Jack the Devil killings…but you were actually searching for a compatible heart for me.”
“…! But the ace detective didn’t say a word about that last year. She thought I’d just been running through hearts like batteries in an attempt to keep myself alive. Are you saying she was wrong, Master?” Hel pressed Natsunagi about her intentions, her eyes dark.
“No. Siesta herself is saying that she came to the wrong conclusion.”
“…Oh,” I murmured. That was the mistake SIESTA had asked us to find, the mistake Siesta had made a year ago.
Siesta had misread Hel’s motives—misread her emotions.
“The ace detective said that? Don’t make me laugh. When would she have—” Before she could finish her sentence, Hel froze.
“You understand, don’t you? You’re me, after all,” Natsunagi reasoned. “Siesta lives in me. Over this past year, she’s been talking with your personality in my subconscious. During that time, she came to the conclusion I just stated. She realized that as far as you’re concerned, I’m actually the most important thing in the world.”
“…!”
The eyes of the girl in the mirror wavered as if she felt unsettled.
“Hel. Most people would accuse you of being a devil who took innocent lives. I know, though. I’m the only one who does. Even if you are a devil…you’re definitely not a monster with no feelings.” Natsunagi refused to accept Hel’s mocking self-evaluation. “You said you wanted to be loved, and maybe that’s true. But you didn’t just want to be loved. You loved me. You were kind enough to love me.”
“Stop…!” Hel’s heartrending scream echoed in the quiet room, where only the flame of the lantern flickered.
Natsunagi didn’t stop. “Your sins are mine. I know I’ll pay for them someday.”
“Stop it… I don’t… I didn’t want that…”
A single tear trickled down the face of the girl in the mirror.
Was it Natsunagi’s, or…?
As an outsider, I had no way of knowing. I had no right to make conjectures, either.
—Even so.
“No. I’ll help you carry your sins. We’ll spend our whole lives atoning for them. After all—” Natsunagi held her palm up to the mirror.
“There’s no such thing as only taking, or only giving. No relationship is that one-sided. Am I wrong?”
This was a mirror. An infinity mirror bringing two girls to face each other.
Everything went both ways—sins, love, tears, and even smiles.
If Natsunagi believed in Hel, then I was sure—
“I swear—you’re such a fool, Master,” the girl in the mirror whispered.
In the next moment, I heard it. I saw it plainly.
The big mirror cracked loudly, and Hel leaped out of it. Natsunagi caught her and held her close.
“Thank you.”
I’m sure that was the moment Nagisa Natsunagi graduated from her past.
And so a new case file begins
“So? Exactly what kind of story was that?”
The conversation in front of the mirror was over, and SIESTA and I were talking in the living room.
Immediately after that, Natsunagi had passed out; SIESTA had said it was probably a reaction to suddenly regaining her memories. Right now, she was resting in the bedroom.
“What do you mean, ‘what kind of story’?” SIESTA asked, elegantly sipping her tea. Apparently, androids needed to rehydrate too.
“Don’t play dumb. When you said you’d summon Hel with an infinity mirror, you were lying, right?”
I know those urban legends about infinity mirrors—about how you could summon devils with them, or see the past and the future. We’d summoned Natsunagi’s alternate personality into the mirror and asked her about the past, but I just couldn’t make it feel real.
“You’re as hardheaded as ever, Kimihiko.” She set her cup in its saucer. Her expression and posture were identical to the real detective’s. “Although you’re also correct.”
“I am, huh?”
Then why did you call me names?
“That said, Nagisa actually was talking with Hel.”
“You mean she was playing both roles in that conversation?”
No, “role” probably wasn’t the right word here. It was more as if she’d been talking with herself, through the mirror.
“I only prepared a place where that could occur easily. After that, Nagisa summoned Hel from her subconscious and had a talk with her.”
“I see… So in a sense, Hel was actually there?”
Two girls, separated by a mirror.
Natsunagi and Hel had definitely met there, confronted each other, and talked things out.
I was sure Natsunagi had regained all her memories now, in the truest sense. At this point, she’d be able to accept their reality and move forward.
“By the way.” I decided to ask about something that had been bothering me. “If Siesta realized she’d made a mistake during the past year, how did she tell you about it?”
If SIESTA had asked us to find the error, Siesta must have told her about it somehow. However, Siesta had apparently noticed her mistake while talking with Hel inside Natsunagi’s body.
Since Siesta’s own body was gone, how had she passed the message on to SIESTA?
In response to these perfectly natural questions, SIESTA said, “It happened the one time Mistress Siesta borrowed Nagisa’s body.” She began to talk about last week’s incident. “Immediately after your fight with Chameleon on that cruise ship, Mistress Siesta instructed me to contact your group.”
“…Ah. It happened while I was out cold, then.”
So that was when she’d done it. After she’d gotten all of her business out of the way, Siesta had gone back to sleep inside Natsunagi.
“Still, who’d have thought Siesta would deduce wrong?”
I wasn’t trying to criticize her. I was just genuinely startled.
“That may have been due to her missing memories as well.” SIESTA’s voice was quiet; she gazed into her cup. “Mistress Siesta had forgotten both Alicia and Nagisa. She didn’t remember how Hel’s personality had been created. However, if she’d sensed something odd in the fact that a friend who’d died six years ago had appeared in London…or if she’d registered Hel’s true feelings about Natsunagi… In either case, she might have found her way to the correct conclusion a year ago.”
…I see. So Siesta had been just like me and Natsunagi.
We’d all lost precious memories and made some misunderstanding, but now we were filling in the missing pieces one by one.
“So even Siesta gets things wrong,” I said, although it really didn’t need saying.
“Yes, she’s human.” SIESTA’s response was casual. “…Unlike me,” she added, a little lonely.
“Listen, SIESTA, you’re…”
Just as I started to speak, it happened.
“Your phone’s ringing,” SIESTA pointed out, and I noticed that the smartphone I’d set on the table was vibrating. The screen read Fuubi Kase. Phone calls from her almost never meant good news; I had a bad feeling about this one as I pressed the TALK button.
“I’ve got bad news and bad news. Which do you want first?”
“That’s not even a choice…” I hung my head. Just what I was afraid of.
On the other end of the line, I heard a long sigh, and I could imagine the smoke.
“Ms. Fuubi, when are you actually going to quit smoking?”
She’d declared she was quitting at least twice already. I’d been right there both times.
“Well, I always want to quit. The damn things just won’t leave my lips alone.”
“Why don’t you find yourself a guy instead?”
“I’ll hang up on you.”
…Uh, you’re the one who called.
“So? What is this bad news?”
I’d have preferred not to hear it, but since she’d called me, it probably involved me. In that case, it was better to find out fast.
“Right. First off.” Ms. Fuubi paused for a beat, then dropped a bomb: “—Seed and Bat have teamed up.”
“So you really do know about Seed, Ms. Fuubi.”
In the past I’d forgotten, Ms. Fuubi had retrieved me from the island after Siesta’s death. Apparently her ties to SPES ran deeper than I’d thought.
“Yeah, I figured you’d be finding out soon.” As if doing me one better, Ms. Fuubi languidly exhaled her cigarette smoke. “Anyways, I dunno what the deal is, but apparently Seed helped Bat pull off a jailbreak. You kids keep a sharp eye out, too.”
“Bat broke out of jail, and he’s with Seed…” But Bat had rebelled against SPES four years ago. As punishment, he’d been ordered to pull off that skyjack at ten thousand meters. Why would he team up with the leader of SPES now?
“And then, the other bad news is…”
Just as she was about to tell me the rest, my doorbell rang.
“Visitor?” Ms. Fuubi’s tone was suddenly grim.
At this point, I didn’t even have to ask what she was worried about, but… “I’m going to answer that.”
“Hey, I’m trying to tell you—”
“I know. I’ve got some insurance, though.”
In the unlikely event that the visitor was him, SIESTA was here. She and I exchanged glances, and I headed for the entryway.
“Besides, he’s got no reason to come after me now.”
Grumbling—and certain that Bat was standing right outside—I turned the knob. “Still, he’s got pretty good manners if he’s ringing the door…bell?”
When I opened the door and saw who was actually there, I was incredibly confused. “S-Saikawa?”
Those pink hair streaks, and the eye patch over her left eye. By now, there was no way I could have mistaken her for anyone else. My visitor was the impudent Yui Saikawa, the world’s cutest idol.
“Kimizuka, please be my producer!”
She was looking up at me. As usual, she completely failed to read the room.