CHAPTER 4

JOY ANGER SORROW FUN

Nile

February The old castle

The month changed, and one day, after a stretch of fair weather, the trader came.

The thing that appeared in this village, which was greatly divorced from the outside world’s level of civilization, was enough to remind them that this was the twenty-first century, not the past.

“That’s…”

When the sun had almost reached its zenith, a roar suddenly echoed through the area, startling Maiza and the others and sending them scrambling for the castle’s main gate.

There, they saw an enormous motorized snow sledge that was roughly shaped like a truck.

“What’s going on?”

The huge truck had stopped in front of the castle, and the first thing Czes and Sylvie did was try to get a look at the driver’s seat. However, the window glass had been specially treated, and, like the cars politicians rode in, the side windows were black and merely reflected the light.

When they circled around to the front, they were able to dimly make out the truck’s interior… But when they saw the person inside, Czes and the others were struck by a terribly eerie feeling.

Whatever was in there did seem to be human, but a black mask covered its whole face, and what looked to be a military helmet covered that. It had something like goggles over its eyes, so it wasn’t possible to see what they were like—but its face was turned their way, and it seemed to be watching them.

“Heh! Did that startle you? Or are you homesick for the outside world now?”

As Maiza and the others were examining the truck, they heard the same old teasing voice behind them.

“He’s the trader… Though, that said, he never gets out of the truck.”

Ignoring Maiza and the others, who weren’t sure what to ask first, Elmer called out loudly to the man in the driver’s seat. Spreading his hands and indicating his companions behind him, he said:

“You understand the situation, right? Take us back with you.”

“Huh…?”

Before Czes could ask what he meant, the engine roared, drowning out his voice. Rear wheels kicking up a ferocious spray of snow, the truck sped away down the snow-covered mountain road. The road through the forest was only slightly wider than the truck itself, and if another vehicle came from the opposite direction, there wouldn’t be room for them to pass each other. That said, in all likelihood, the driver was doing this because he was absolutely certain that there would be no oncoming vehicles.

“All right, he should be back in an hour or so.”

With that, Elmer went back into the castle, leaving his four dumbfounded companions behind. After that, all that remained were Maiza and the others with question marks floating over their heads—and, as proof that this had not been a dream, deep tracks in the snow.

Afternoon The forest road

“It’s been quite some time since I was jostled in the back of a truck.”

“Makes you feel like a calf on its way to the market, doesn’t it?”

Riding in the rear of the truck-shaped snow sledge—in other words, with the cargo—Maiza, Elmer, and Fil (just one of them) bounced and jounced along. The sledge plowed powerfully through the snow, and every vibration resonated inside them like a deep bass sound.

Up until a moment ago, Fil’s eyes had been wide open with something akin to excitement, but she must have gotten tired. She’d fallen asleep, using as a pillow one of the sacks of wheat the villagers had given the trader.

“By the way, Maiza.”

“What is it?”

Elmer had spoken abruptly, and he sounded rather formal, so, although Maiza had been stretched hugely and been on the verge of falling asleep, he woke himself up again.

“Why is Nile wearing a mask?”

“……You’re asking that now?”

“No, well, I mean…! Things were all muddled the first day, and then I just never got the chance to ask! Asking after the fact felt, y’know…wrong. Besides, he didn’t explain it himself, so he might have been hiding it from himself, too. If me getting a reputation for insensitivity is all that would happen, fine, but Nile seems like he’d actually get mad.”

“True. Once Nile gets angry, he’s completely unmanageable.”

Remembering the masked man’s intensity, Maiza agreed, smiling wryly. “His mask is—well, he says it’s insurance.”

“Insurance?”

“He says that if we put our right hands on his head, and he’s wearing something on it, he might be all right. In other words, if there’s some sort of obstacle between palm and head, he may be able to keep from being devoured.”

“Oh, I see… Hunh. He’s quite a worrywart, too, then.”

How about that. That’s not what Czes said.

As Elmer was thinking this, Maiza smiled a little and added:

“No, it isn’t that Nile doesn’t trust us. According to him—”

“Say you and I were camping. Half-awake, in the middle of a dream, you grab a tasty-looking melon. Then, in your dream, you think, I want to eat this! Now, what if your ‘melon’ was my head? I would be sent to the next world in my sleep. Let me just say this: I do not think getting eaten by one of you is the worst thing that could happen to me, but I will not tolerate dying over something like that. That is all.”

“Ha-ha, there, see? He is a worrywart!”

Elmer cackled. Still smiling quietly, Maiza murmured:

“Well, that’s what he says, but…I think it may actually be something else.”

“Yeah?”

“Nile says he’s spent the past three hundred years on battlefields all over the world. The whole time, he stuck to areas where the fighting was considered particularly fierce, and he kept himself on the front lines.”

“……”

“I don’t know what he was trying to learn by going exclusively to places like that, or what he saw there, but… It’s possible he wears that mask because he has something else on his mind…although that’s just a guess.”

As he spoke about his old friend, Maiza looked as if he’d become aware of something. Elmer watched his face for a while. Then, suddenly, he smiled with relief.

“Maiza. You must’ve met some real good people.”

“That was abrupt. Why?”

“No, it’s just…your smile. It’s more cheerful than it was three hundred years back.”

Elmer had brought up something odd out of the blue, and as Maiza responded, he smiled wryly.

“Does it look that way?”

“Yeah. If Czes learns to open up a bit more, I bet he’ll be able to smile like that, too,” Elmer said, remembering the boy’s sad expression during their conversation on the castle roof.

“Hmm? What about Czes?”

“Nothing. Just talking to myself.”

At that point, the conversation nearly trailed off, but Elmer had one more thing to say.

“By the way, how’s the demon doing? He’s one of your pals, right?”

“”

The words left Maiza speechless for a moment. He stared at Elmer, who was grinning like a mischievous little kid.

“Surprised?”

“How did you know…?”

“Some stuff happened between him and me, way back when.”

He must have been pleased that he’d managed to startle the coolheaded Maiza. Elmer’s laugh echoed in the back of the truck, and he sounded truly cheerful.

Mystified, Maiza tilted his head to the side, but, deciding that Elmer probably wouldn’t tell him even if he asked, he didn’t pursue the issue further.

“So, that reminded me. Are any of you still practicing alchemy?”

“—Czes was until a little while ago, but I’ve given it up. Sylvie and Nile have as well. We’ve already achieved immortality, one of the ultimate goals, and so now, unless we’re doing it because it interests us, research itself is probably impossible… Let’s see. If there’s one who might be, it would be…Huey, I’d think.”

At the name of his old companion, Elmer gazed up into space, looking faintly nostalgic. “Ah, I see, yeah. Even if it isn’t alchemy, I bet he’s running some kind of experiment.”

“He’s the type who attempts to see whether the power of immortality could be used to overthrow the government, after all,” Maiza offered.

“Ah, I miss him. I haven’t seen him in forever. Denkurou, too, and Begg, and Victor.”

Seeing Elmer’s vaguely sad smile, Maiza also recalled his old companions’ faces.

“You could simply go see them, you know. Leave this village.”

“Yeah, I’ll go. In order to do it, though, I’ll need your help, Maiza.”

“Ah? What do you—? Oh.”

Before Maiza could ask, the truck abruptly began to decelerate.

Some sort of metallic creaking came to them from the front of the slow-moving vehicle. From the back of the truck, they couldn’t tell what was happening, but it seemed likely that some sort of gate was opening.

A few seconds later, the truck gradually began to pick up speed, and their surroundings were abruptly enveloped in darkness.

“…Is it a tunnel?”

“We’re almost there.”

The tunnel ended almost immediately, and light poured down around the bed of the truck. However, Maiza had been paying attention to the things he could see from the back, and the scenery was far more desolate than he’d anticipated.

Before he had time to observe anything in detail, the truck suddenly slowed again, then came to a stop.

“Did you think we’d be in the city all of a sudden? In that case, you win the booby prize.”

They’d arrived at what appeared to be a laboratory of some sort.

Ignoring Elmer, who was cackling, Maiza poked his head out of the bed of the truck and looked around. They were in a large warehouse, and it appeared as if the structure had been built over the tunnel to hide it. It seemed like the sort of dock used to build warships, only scaled down and hauled up onto dry land. Several figures were visible inside the building; they were dressed like security personnel, with guns in the holsters at their hips, and they were obviously the polar opposite of the people they’d seen in the forest.

When Maiza saw the concrete floor and the security guards, his senses were immediately yanked into another dimension. Up until ten minutes ago, his brain had been calibrated to the feeling of wandering a fantasy world in the forest, and now it found itself abruptly confronted with the reality of twenty-first-century Earth. Realizing he was feeling mild culture shock over civilization that he should have been used to, Maiza smiled to himself a bit awkwardly.

One of the guards seemed to have noticed Maiza. He started toward them, one hand on his holster. From the fact that he hadn’t signaled to any of his companions, he didn’t seem to be specially trained military personnel.

“Well, now. What’s going to become of us?”

Maiza asked the question calmly, as if he was more than used to this sort of situation.

“It’s fine, no worries. He won’t shoot us on sight.”

Elmer was still sitting down in the bed of the truck, stroking the sleeping Fil’s head and smiling.

“…So keep your knife where it is for now.”

“Understood.”

Maiza’s hand left his hip, and he waited for the security guard to make his move. However, a few seconds later, they heard a door open at the front of the vehicle. The guard’s eyes cut to the door momentarily—and then, as if nothing had happened, he turned his back on them.

As if it had taken the place of the retreating security guard, they heard a dark, solemn voice that seemed filled with condensed fatigue.

“So you’re Elmer’s companion, then?”

When Maiza glanced in the direction of the voice, an old man with a large build was standing there. He held a pair of goggles and a mask, which he had likely just removed, and it was clear that this was the individual who’d been driving.

The old man looked into the bed of the truck and saw Elmer—who’d raised a hand and was smiling—and the girl who slept beside him. At the sight of Fil’s face, relaxed in sleep, the old man exhaled heavily. He wore a complicated expression.

Then he turned to Maiza and introduced himself, but…

When Maiza heard the old man’s name, the temperature of his expression cooled rapidly.

“I am Bilt Quates. I’m responsible for this forest. That said, I go by a different name in the official family register.”

“So yeah, to put it bluntly, that man is a descendant of old Szilard… Although I hear he never met him.”

As they walked through the storehouse, Elmer delivered a matter-of-fact explanation.

“Their faces look similar, don’t they? I tell ya, the first time I snuck into the truck and came here, it made me jump. Well, I was plenty startled when the guards surrounded me and beat me up, too, but anyways.”

“……”

Ordinarily, Maiza would have met Elmer’s banter with a forced smile, but now he didn’t even seem to hear it. He just gravely followed the old man.

However, Elmer wasn’t the least bit deterred, and he kept blabbing away with a tongue that was even more loquacious than it had been a moment ago.

“C’mon, Maiza, don’t look so scary. This old guy…well, ‘old guy,’ sure, but we’re older than he is. Anyway, he’s got nothing to do with Szilard anymore. He’s a commendable fellow who’s devoted his life to carrying out his parents’ wishes, even though it’s not work he personally wanted to do.”

“Work?”

Maiza’s voice surged with a severity he would normally never have shown.

“…You mean isolating people who know nothing in the middle of the woods?”

“Calm down. You’re scaring Fil.”

When Maiza came back to himself with a jolt and widened his field of vision, he saw Fil, following them as if she were hiding behind Elmer, wearing a vaguely frightened expression.

“…I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize. If you’re going to say you’re sorry, just smile for her the way you always do. That’ll make Fil feel better, too.”

Elmer grinned and thumped the girl on the back, and the sight seemed to help Maiza regain his composure. He gave a somewhat awkward, slightly troubled smile.

As if responding to it, the old man who’d introduced himself as Bilt began to speak.

“Where should I start…?”

Bilt Quates. He was a descendant of Szilard Quates, the man who’d once gained immortality along with Maiza and eaten many of their companions onboard the ship.

Bilt’s grandfather had been one of Szilard’s descendants and his capable assistant.

Not content with an immortal body, Szilard had begun working to create a homunculus in order to fulfill his own thirst for knowledge.

It was said that perfect homunculi were miniature people raised in flasks, and that in exchange for having all the knowledge in the universe, they were unable to live outside these flasks.

Realizing that some of the knowledge he’d eaten contained information regarding homunculi, Szilard had intensified his research, seeking perfect knowledge.

However, even if he did have eternity, it would have been too inefficient for him to continue his research alone. To that end, he’d had his own descendant and other competent assistants pursue a variety of research.

That said, he never let another alchemist research his own immortality. He’d used chemists with no knowledge of alchemy to compound his liquor as well, not even allowing his own scion to take part in the work.

Bilt’s grandfather had worked under this untrusting man, and one day, based on a theory Szilard had given him, he had succeeded in creating a type of homunculus. He had used Szilard’s immortal cells as a catalyst, and the homunculus was immortal as well…but it had sorely lacked the all-important “perfect knowledge.”

“After that, they made and got rid of several similar specimens, and apparently, in the end, old Szilard made a female homunculus called Ennis or Eris or something. I say ‘in the end’ because…shortly after that, he dropped out of touch completely.

“My grandfather had originally conducted his research in America, but he took that opportunity to return to this country, where the Quates family resided. Then, using Szilard’s connections and the property the Quates family still had—well, that would be this land. At any rate, my grandfather made use of those, moved to this region, and continued his research independently.

“Then, for the sake of a certain plan, he threw away all his assets and started development work in the forest. That plan was an experiment regarding homunculi.”

Their research had been conducted in order to discover two things: a perfect homunculus and immortality.

To that end, they’d created two varieties of homunculus. Both had been created using a solution known as “the failure” as a base.

It had been a flawed immortality elixir: It granted an imperfect immortality, one that could not stop aging.

This had held a hint regarding the homunculi they made. The elixir brought about immortality by fusing the cells with something in another dimension: To borrow the vocabulary of magic, the immortality resulted from being “possessed” by some sort of colony that regenerated infinitely. Szilard had understood this and had directed his research accordingly. Another world—there was no telling whether it was a multiverse or some completely different element. Because a being known as a “demon” was apparently involved, someone had floated the wild theory that it was a demon realm.

However…simply understanding this hadn’t helped them make any progress in the homunculus research, and once Szilard was gone, their work had reached a total impasse. Even so, as they continued the research on their own, they’d come to a realization. That “someplace else” that acted as the foundation for immortal bodies… Would it be possible to make the minds of sentient beings in that place possess multiple bodies on this side?

They’d pursued that line of research, and as a result, they had created two types of imperfect homunculi.

One type was male, and it grew just as humans did. The other was female and did not grow, but it had a short life span. At the end of their research, they’d managed to keep it from getting older than a certain age, but only in terms of appearance. In exchange, its life was drastically shortened…and in order to compensate for that flaw, they constantly kept five bodies “live.”

“In other words, that’s Fil.”

In very sophisticated tones, Elmer stated that fact as if he were giving the answer to a quiz question.

Arriving at a certain door, Bilt began to punch a code number into the electronic keypad beside it. As they waited, Elmer continued his explanation, calmly adding his own theories as he went.

“When one body ‘aged’—or, well, there was no change in its appearance, but anyway—when its health failed and it seemed close to death, Fil was supposed to return to this laboratory. They’d estimated the rough times for that on this end of things as well.”

As if to confirm this, Maiza looked at Fil, but she only gave a small nod. She didn’t seem to feel any particular emotion about it.

Patting her head lightly, Elmer went on.

“Have you ever played video games? If you compare it to that, it’s like working two controllers by yourself, playing two roles on your own. Then, if one character dies, you keep playing with the other character, and while you’re doing that, you hit Continue. For example: You know how subway entrances are scattered all over the place aboveground, but underground, they’re all connected? In this case, the aboveground entrances are these kids’ bodies, and underground—in other words, in that other world—their minds are all connected.”

Just as Elmer finished speaking, the door in front of the four of them opened with a motorized whirr.

What they saw inside was…

“…I thought things like this only existed in movies or comic books.”

Maiza was looking at a row of enormous tanks, each of which could easily hold a human being. Most were empty, but several were filled with an aqueous solution, and he realized that each of these had a mass of some sort floating inside it.

“This is…”

They were shaped like human children. Their bodies were curled up, and they looked like fetuses in the womb. The fleshy tube that stretched from each one’s bellybutton ran down to the bottom of the tank, where it disappeared into something that resembled reddish-brown mud.

Maiza examined the body carefully—and although he’d half expected it, his face clouded slightly.

The face of the girl floating in the tank bore a strong resemblance to Fil’s.

“They aren’t clones, see, so they don’t have the same faces. Even so, due to the environment and the human cells used as a catalyst, they end up looking as similar as sisters. Anyway, when a body dies, it’s put through a special treatment process inside this tank and turns into a clump of flesh like the one at the bottom. I’d really rather not use the word with regard to people, but it’s what you’d call recycling.”

When Elmer had explained that much, Bilt produced a small glass bottle.

“This is the ‘water’ that serves as a catalyst to link their wills.”

The bottle held a clear liquid. As far as appearances went, it was almost impossible to tell it apart from tap water.

“…It looks like plain water to me.”

“The stuff that made our bodies like this looked like plain liquor, didn’t it? Even if it was the failed version, it was the basis for creating this, so it’s only natural, no?”

“You do have a point.”

After Elmer and Maiza’s exchange had ended, Bilt went on with his tale.