Chapter 19: I Wish You Heaven (Part 3)
"Kimu-kun, do you think human existence is justified?" Kamikishiro asked, out of the blue one day.
"Nope," I said, instantly. I was getting used to her non-sequitors.
"Dang, neither do I," she sighed.
We were lying next to each other on the bank of the river that ran along the road leading up to school. Since most of the students took the bus, people hardly ever walked along this road. It was already dark out, and we could see stars above us.
"Humans just aren't that great. However, much of our civilization advances, we can't seem to do anything to make ourselves happier," I said, obviously, trying to impress her with something profound.
"Yeah... Maybe," she replied. She seemed kind of serious.
"Why do you ask?"
"I just met this guy, but..."
"You in love again? What about Tanaka?" I asked, surprised.
"Yeah. Yeah, I am, but let's put that aside for a moment," she said, sitting up. She gazed at the wavering reflection of the city lights on the moving water of the river. "He's from outer space."
She looked serious. She had to be joking, but she didn't seem to be waiting for me to laugh, so I took it as some sort of metaphor and just nodded. "Mm-hmm."
"But I don't think he's from some other planet. It's like, in space, there's this big consciousness, and it sent him here to, you know, 'test mankind' or something. Kind of like the inspection robots that always show up in Hoshi Shinichi's short stories? But he's not a machine or anything. It's just that his body isn't something that exists on Earth. It can, like, turn into anything. So, when he landed on earth, he disguised himself as human and tried to examine the world, but there were a few mistakes, and he didn't quite manage to pull off by being human quite right."
"....."
"He's evolved a little too much. He's got more power within him than any human will ever have in a thousand years - no, in ten thousand years! Apparently, space is just so big that they couldn't match him up with Earth time just right, so his true nature came out ahead of time, and the government or some kind of big corporation got a hold of him. But the idiots thought that he was just some mutant, and they did all sorts of experiments on him and cloned him. But, unlike him, that cloned copy turned into a brutal man-eater."
I no longer had the foggiest idea on what she was talking about. I elected to keep quiet until I could pick up the thread again.
"He wanted to communicated all this, but he couldn't. He was programmed in such a way that he couldn't talk to humans directly. It was so that he wouldn't reveal his true identity to anyone. Which was fine. I mean, after all, he was sent here to test humans and see if they would be nice to him. He wasn't here to negotiate or make speeches or anything. He was just here to observe, so they named him Echoes, since all he can do is reflect back the words that people spoke to him."
"....."
"But the man-eater killed everyone in the research facility and escaped. Now, it's off hiding inside the human society somewhere. But Echoes came after it, and he... And he met me."
"What's he going to do if he catches it?"
"Fight it, I guess. If he doesn't, it'll just take over the world or something."
"But he's an alien. Why does he care what happens here?"
"Yeah, true... Basically, he's just nice."
"That's it?"
"Isn't it enough? Isn't niceness the best motivation that someone can have?" she asked, looking at me kind of solemn. She then let out a sigh. "Half of this is just me reading between the lines. I think he's got some sort of other complicated reason too. You know, something about maintaining the balance of the planet. But if that was all... It's kind of sad, don't you think?" she whispered pretty downcast. She looked on the verge of tears, which made me uncomfortable.
I felt the kind of tightness in my chest that I thought that I'd left behind in Junior High.
I cleared my throat to hide this feeling, and said deliberately rough, "So, how the hell did this Echoes guy even explain all of this to you? I thought he couldn't talk?" It was a stupid nitpick.
So she said, "Ah ha ha! You're too smart! I can't fool you," and cackled.
"That's all?" I asked. The story was a bit too detailed to be dismissed like this.
"Yep, I was just kidding. Stupid little fairy tale-" Kamikishiro said with an impish grin stealing over the corners of her mouth.
We sat in silence for a while.
She was the first to break the silence. "But if Echoes wins, he'll probably go back to his home in the stars."
"Sounds romantic to me."
"I wonder what he'll tell them about us humans. I don't suppose there's much chance of him saying, 'Don't worry, they're a good species.' is there?"
"Where is he now?"
"Hiding at the school. Don't tell anyone."
I laughed. "Don't worry, I won't."
Stupid promise.
Because of that promise, I got myself suspended and had to lower my ambitions for college. But since I turned all my friends into enemies and spent the rest of the school isolated, I had nothing to do but study, and eventually, I used my grades to make up for the poor conduct report.
"The stars are so far away," Kamikishiro said, gazing up at the night sky.
"They're farther away than our lives," I said. I'm not sure what her story really meant, but she'd managed to get the answer that she'd wanted out of me, as I told her, "But if you open your heart to Echoes, then I'm sure he'll learn to like humanity."
"You think so?"
"I want to think so. Because the story you told me leaves us no salvation."
"Yeah. I hope you're right," she said, turning towards me and smiling.
But at the time, I didn't want her to smile. I wanted her to get angry with me for saying something so stupid. I tried to think of something even more stupider to say, but instead we headed back home. I walked off down the road to the station, and she went back towards the school, saying that she'd take the bus.
That's the last time I ever saw her.
She didn't come to school the next day. Or the day after that. She never came again.
◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆
Two cups of black coffee appeared in front of Miyashita Touka and me. Miyashita picked up on the waitress' look of keen interest and cooled down a little.
"Sorry, I shouldn't have slapped you. Still..." she said in a hushed tone.
"Don't worry. I know. I'm an idiot."
"I really do think that you need to let her go. She's... What was her name?"
"Kamikishiro Naoko."
"Oh, right. I didn't know her very well, but I think if she really did like you, Akio, then she'd want you to move on now. That's why she didn't say anything when she left. Makes sense?"
"That... That'd be nice."
Truth is, I'm pretty sure she never thought twice about me.
Eventually, Miyashita Touka let me go, forcibly exhorting me to cheer up.
We parted at the door of the cafe.
"Take care. You know, you really ought to do something about that hero complex of yours. Going to get you into trouble someday. You've got tests to study for."
"I guess," she said with head to one side. "But still..."
"Suit yourself," I said, turning to leave. It was then that she called after me.
"-Kimura-kun!"
I looked back and nearly tripped over my own feet.
It was certainly Miyashita Touka standing there, but for some reason, I felt like I was looking at a completely different person - a boy. It was as if she'd transformed or something.
"Wh-what?"
"Kamikishiro Naoko performed her duty admirably. You should perform your own duty, and make her proud. That's the only thing you can do for her," she proclaimed like she was giving some speech on stage.
Then she spun on her heel and was lost in the crowd.
"....."
I stared after her, watching the crowd flow onward.
◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆
When my bus reached the stop in front of Shinyo Academy, it was already past sunset, and there were no students in sight. Apparently, even the sports teams gave up on practice and called it a day, once it got dark. This must be why none of our teams ever so much as qualified for the national tournaments. It hadn't changed a bit since I was last here.
The gates were closed. Outsiders had to identify themselves over an intercom to get in, so I passed right by them.
I entered the school through a gap between the fences that Kamikishiro had shown me.
The darkened school grounds were silent like an abandoned building. The towering school building looked kind of like a giant, looming tombstone.
Until about a year before, I'd actually come here everyday. But now, I was a stranger.
Not much that I can say that was good about my years in high school, but I felt a pain in my chest when I thought about how little connection that I had now to my past. I remember Kamikishiro, and the abuse that I took after the incident like it was yesterday, but the rest of it was all far too long ago.
"....."
Why did I come here? If I was looking for the source of the letter, this place wasn't going to be of any use.
But this high school was the only remaining connection that I had with Kamikishiro. Someone else had moved into her apartment. There were no traces of her left.
There was nowhere else for me to go.
She just wasn't here.
Yeah. Somewhere inside, I had wondered if Kamikishiro herself had sent the letter.
But that was probably wrong. Even here in school, she wasn't around. The letter was nothing but a prank.
Everything was over. It was all in the past.
"....."
I looked up at the sky. It was cloudy, and I couldn't see the stars. And yet, I felt like I could see them like I had when I used to lay with her on the river bank.
She had told me all of her secrets, metaphorically. Told me; not Tanaka Shiro, not anyone else. And I never understood what she meant by it.
Wasn't that enough? That's all the reason I needed to love her for the rest of my life. No matter how much I fell in love with some other girl, she will always live inside of me in the way that she was then - impossible to understand, and more than a little crazy.
"Life is brief, you maiden, fall in love."
I whispered a snatch of the gondola song that she always used to sing while I wandered around the school.
I found myself in front of the gym. Suddenly, I wanted to see the storage room where the interloper had hidden himself.
Their exact relationship remained a mystery, but it was the last known trace of her.
I grabbed a flashlight from the emergency supplies, and shone it around the gym. I had forgotten half of the features of the place. I guess I really wanted to forget all about high school.
I found some kind of door or cover or something down by the floor, near the main entrance. Figured that must be it. So I hunkered down and opened it.
It was just an empty space. Iron pillars, concrete floor, ceiling. The foundations of the gym, I guess. Designed to absorb the impact of an earth quake.
I was here for three years and knew knew it was here.
(Guess this isn't it...)
I turned to leave.
But something moved near my foot.
There was a dry rustle.
"Mm?"
I shone the light at my feet.
There was something black and dried. I thought it was a glove at first, maybe forgotten by a workman, but it was too thin for that.
It wasn't meant to be put on over a hand.
It was a hand itself.
"....."
I stared at it in shock for a moment...
...Then screamed.
It was a mummified human hand.
(W-w-w-wwhat the hell is this?!)
My knees gave out and I fell on my butt.
When Kamikishiro had vanished, she hadn't been the only one. A number of other students had vanished both before and after her.
I'd never connected them before... But I could think of no other reason why a hand would be lying on the floor of the school.
Maybe it was because I'd kicked it or maybe it was the exposure to the outisde air, whichever the case, the hand crumbled away to dust before my very eyes. And within seconds, there was nothing left of it at all.
(What does it mean? What the hell happened here two years ago?)
But there was nothing to give me those answers. There was nothing for me to do but sit there in the dark, shuddering in fear...
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone