Book 2 (3): Deep Autumn — Chapter 2:

From the New World

Chapter 2

Shun had a pet dog called Subaru, named after “the star Subaru” in Sei Shonagon’s The Pillow Book, which referred to the constellation Pleiades. After more research, I found that the name Subaru came from the fact that it was many stars united into one image.¹¹

One winter’s night more than two thousand years after The Pillow Bookwas written, a puppy was born. It was a difficult birth, and the mother, along with the rest of the litter, died. The one living puppy born under that starry sky was named Subaru.

However, Subaru didn’t live up to the beautiful image his name created. Most dogs in Kamisu 66 were purebred Japanese dogs, with perked ears and curly tails. Bulldogs like Subaru were rare (or nonexistent; the bloodline could have died out altogether for all I know).

Compared to the other dogs, Subaru was ugly. I still don’t know why that breed was even created in the first place. He had short legs, a stout body, and a wrinkly face. Right in the middle of his squashed snout was an upturned nose. Surprisingly, all of the books containing information about bulldogs that I found in the ruins of the library were labeled as class three, “possibly dangerous, handle with caution”, and forbidden to the general public. Why was information about the establishment of dog breeds treated with such paranoia?

Satoru said that one book he had read stated that bulldogs were created in ancient England to fight bulls. If that was true, then there might be a connection with our own aggressive instincts and it would make sense for those books to be banned.

Although Satoru made up stories often enough for me to suspect what he said, it didn’t mean he was incapable of telling the truth. But in this case, I just couldn’t believe his words for a number of reasons. First, I couldn’t figure out why dogs needed to fight bulls. Although the book Satoru read said it was for sport, I didn’t believe that humans could be that senselessly cruel. Second, I’m not sure exactly how big bulls are, but they must be huge compared to dogs, making it impossible for them to actually fight. Third, the only bulldog I know of, Subaru, was extremely gentle. To have the descendant of a breed of fighting dog be this docile is something I couldn’t imagine. And, to the best of my knowledge, Subaru has only ever acted violently once in his entire life. But that’s a story for a later time.

Shun was an only child, and he took care of Subaru as a surrogate mother. Since Subaru couldn’t walk very quickly and got tired easily, Shun couldn’t bring him everywhere he went, but once in a while I would see them taking a walk together. It was a funny contrast seeing Shun striding with his long, slender legs and Subaru trotting on his stout little legs to keep up.

That’s why I was surprised when I saw him walking alone on the hill overlooking the town one day. It was autumn, and the setting sun filled the air with melancholy. It was about two weeks after the incident in the practice room.

“Saki,” he said, sounding as if he were waking from a dream.

The hazy evening light made it impossible to read his expression.

“What’s wrong?” I took a step toward him.

“Stay back!” he said sharply.

I halted. We were twenty meters apart.

“Why?” my voice rang with sadness.

“…sorry. But I want to be alone.”

“Alone?”

“Yeah.” He looked straight at me, then averted his gaze.

“Is that why you broke up with Satoru?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“But why? You want to be alone so much that you’d abandon all your friends?”

“That’s…even if I explain, you won’t understand.” Shun took something out of his pocket.

Metal orbs glittered in the setting sun. Wasp balls. You use your cantus to levitate them and spin them around at high speed to produce a buzzing sound. It was one of the first toys we used at Sage Academy to develop our powers. No one in our class bothered with them anymore, so it was strange to see someone as skilled as Shun using them.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to meet for a while.”

The three balls orbited Shun’s head, catching the light of the sun and buzzing discordantly.

“What do you mean?”

“I can’t go to school for the time being. I have to get treatment.”

“Are you sick?” I was extremely worried. Was he contagious? Was that why he couldn’t come near us?

“Hm. Sick…it’s not like a cold or a stomach flu. How should I say this? It’s not my body that’s sick. It’s my mind.”

At the time, I didn’t understand what sickness of the mind meant. Was he infected, was it some bacteria, or a virus?

“Well, I have to go.”

“Wait,” I called out as he turned away. “Even if we can’t meet at school, I can still visit you sometimes, right?”

“I don’t know about that,” he seemed to be hesitating, “I won’t be living at home anymore.”

I gasped, “Where are you going then?”

“To a small bungalow for rehabilitation, or that’s what they call it, but it’s really just a small house. I’m moving there in a few days to start living by myself.”

“Where is it?”

“I can’t tell you that.”

I was speechless. Until then, the idea of keeping secrets from each other was an impossibility to me. If he really couldn’t tell me, then the truth must be worse than I could imagine.

“Shun.” My mind was completely blank. I didn’t know what to say. “Are…are you really going to be totally alone? What about Subaru?” I asked, mentally prepared for the worst.

“He’s at home,” he said simply. “I wanted to take a walk so I snuck out by myself.”

I was slightly relieved that Subaru was okay, but I was still getting more worried by the second. What in the world had happened to Shun?

“Is there any way I can help you?”

He didn’t answer. The only sound was the buzzing of the wasp balls.

“Shun, I’ve always lo-”

I was so close to confessing my feelings for him, but he interrupted.

“Saki, I don’t know if I should tell you this but I think it’s for the best.”

“Huh?”

“Remember the summer camp two years ago? We thought we managed to hide the fact that Rijin sealed our cantus. But we didn’t.”

“What?” I didn’t understand what he was trying to say.

“They probably knew everything. I don’t know why, but I think they simply decided to delay punishing us.”

“I don’t know where you’re going with this.”

“They’ve been watching this whole time. I just recently noticed.”

My body felt heavy, like a sinking ship. Cold sweat rolled down my body.

“There’s probably no need to warn you by now, but, Saki, watch out for the cats.”

“Cats? What cats? You mean copycats?”

Shun moved his head ambiguously, neither a nod nor a shake. “Oh yeah…here, take this.” He took off the choker he was wearing and threw it to me.

It was a lot heavier than I expected. The thick leather band was inlaid with metal rings that opened up on hinges. It looked like a neck cuff for prisoners.

“What is this?”

“A charm against cats. I made it.”

“Subaru has one too, doesn’t he?”

Actually it looked nothing like Subaru’s collar. He smiled briefly at my joke, but didn’t laugh.

He started to walk away, but stopped all of a sudden.

Some small white animal was coming toward us. Subaru. Running as fast as his little legs could carry him.

“Silly dog…I told you not to follow me,” he said quietly to himself.

Then he turned away from me, away from Subaru, and walked quickly down the hill.

The little bulldog ran after him, wagging his tail. He wasn’t very good at running to begin with, but his steps looked even more unsteady now.

Then I noticed that Subaru’s right hind leg seemed to be injured. No, that wasn’t right. There was something weird about it.

But before I had a chance to take a closer look, he had disappeared into the deepening twilight.

“In other words, we have to find out where Shun went,” Satoru said quietly.

“But how?” I asked uncertainly, though Satoru’s words did cheer me up a little.

“How? With every possible method,” he said, completely unfazed.

“Are you still trying to get back with him?” Maria said, giving him a cynical look. “Now that we know he didn’t break up with you because he hates you.”

“That’s not my intent,” Satoru answered levelly. “Anyway, don’t we all have a lot of questions to ask him? Are we really under surveillance? What did he mean by watching out for cats? And…” Satoru’s hand clenched into fists, “what in the world is going on with Shun?”

I felt my heart twist painfully. I hadn’t told anyone about what I had seen in the broken chicken egg. I knew instinctively it had a direct connection to whatever problems Shun was facing right now, but if I said it out loud, then my fears would become reality, so I couldn’t say anything no matter what.

Shun hadn’t gone to school in four days. We gathered behind the school building after classes were out and were having a huddled discussion.

“…but if they’re really watching us, wouldn’t it be better not to do anything that stands out?” Mamoru said carefully.

“Yeah, he’s right. I think it’s too dangerous,” Maria took Mamoru’s side.

“So you’re just going to abandon Shun?” Satoru asked angrily.

“I didn’t say that. But…” she looked around nervously. “Even now I feel like I’m being watched.”

“There’s no one around. Stop being stupid,” he sneered.

I suddenly thought of something. “Hey, remember when we were running from Kiroumaru? There was this creepy bird following us around all night.”

“You too, Saki? Those were nightjars and crows trained by the queerats.”

“If the queerats could do that, then the Ethics Committee would have even more clever tricks, right?”

“Yeah! I’ve heard stories too. Geniuses like Shisei Kaburagi, Koufuu Hino, and Yuu Tatebe can control genes and create animals from their imagination. I wouldn’t be surprised if that weird bee over there were watching us right now.”

Everyone fell silent. The oppressive mood weighed heavily on us. If they did use surveillance bugs, and we didn’t notice, then we were done for. Plus, where the bug sends its report after it returns to its hideout was a whole other issue.

“…okay. I’m going to look for Shun anyway. You don’t have to help if you don’t want to.”

“I’ll help.” I said immediately.

“Wait! You’re making it sound like we’re not worried about Shun at all. Don’t,” Maria protested. “I’m just saying it’s too obvious if all four of us start snooping around. Right, Mamoru?”

Mamoru opened his mouth. It looked as if this wasn’t what he meant at all, but in the end, he nodded without saying anything.

“You’re right. Let’s split up and look then.”

We divided ourselves into two groups. Maria and Mamoru went to talk to Shun’s friends from other teams. Satoru and I went directly to his house.

Luckily, there was already a public canoe available when we arrived at the dock. We set off down the web of interconnected canals.

The village of Pinewind is situated in the northernmost region of Kamisu 66, and Shun’s house was on the northern outskirts of the village. It was a huge gabled building supported by a thick pillar a meter in diameter, over which a thirty meter long beam held up the ceiling. I used to play there a lot as a child, and it always gave off a somewhat scary aura I didn’t expect from wooden houses. Once we got older though, we started playing outside and stopped visiting each other’s homes.

The canoe sped nimbly through the waterways, but Satoru suddenly slowed down way before we were even close to the junction leading to Pinewind.

“What’s wrong?”

“Look at that.”

I followed his gaze and saw numerous boats moored near the junction. They were all much bigger than the canoe we were in. An image of “god’s eye”, the town’s seal, along with a red number were drawn on the side of each boat. These were boats used by town officials, and the different Sanskrit words painted on the side showed which division they belonged to. These had the word Hrih, symbolizing Amitabha or the Thousand-Armed goddess, so they were probably from the Department of Health or Environmental Protection.

“Just go past them.”

Our canoe headed straight on the waterway. I glanced at the junction out of the corner of my eye and saw, twenty meters above the water, a black and yellow striped rope. A clear sign that entrance was forbidden.

“What’s going on? Does this mean we can’t enter Pinewind?”

“It looks like it.”

“But…it can’t be.”

Did it have something to do with Shun? I wanted to ask, but was too scared to open my mouth.

“Guess we’ll just have to walk in.”

“Don’t you think there’ll be guards on the road?”

“Let’s go around, through the forest.”

We disembarked at a dock about a kilometer away and started walking in the opposite direction. On our left was a grassy field and on our right a forest of ferns, camellia, and evergreen trees. We made sure we weren’t being watched, then slipped into the forest.

“I have a bad feeling about this.”

“Yeah, me too.”

The feeling grew stronger with every step. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, as if there were a magnetic field ahead pushing all the particles in our body away from it.

How far had we gone? After a while, the black and yellow stripes came into view. The rope had been extended all the way into the middle of the forest.

“You’re kidding. Who even comes through here?”

“I guess this thing goes around the entire village.”

Satoru folded his arms and stared at the rope. It was tied around the trees in a zigzagging pattern, but didn’t look as if it curved around anywhere.

“Well, we’ll just have to go through here then,” Satoru ducked under the rope that was stretched out at eye-level.

I followed right behind. My heart was pounding and I knew we seriously breaking the rules but there was no other choice.

“Sh,” Satoru suddenly stopped and gestured for me to be quiet.

I froze.

There was movement in between the trees some thirty meters ahead.

Satoru turned around and mouthed something to me. Qu-ee-rat… It appeared to be a sentry.

We crouched in the shadow of the trees, trying not to breathe. I created a gentle breeze with my cantus to blow our scent away.

It felt like an eternity, but in reality probably only ten minutes passed. A sharp call echoed through the woods. The queerat sprang to attention and rushed off.

“Alright, let’s go.”

We started forward again. Finally, we came across a dirt road cutting through the evergreen forest. On the other side was a large red pine forest for which the town is named after.

After double checking to make sure that there were no people or queerats around, we darted across the road into the pine forest.

Suddenly, all the little hairs on my body stood up.

Panicking, I looked around wildly. I only saw trees and grass. Nothing out of the ordinary. But something felt completely wrong.

“Just as I thought, there’s something weird going on. Something bad in the air. We shouldn’t stay here for too long,” Satoru said, apparently getting the same vibes as me.

“What do we do?”

“We’ve already come this far, we can’t turn back now, right?” Satoru whispered, though he looked uncertain.

We went another forty or fifty meters into the pine forest. An unbelievable sight appeared before us. There was another rope stretched out at eye-level. But it wasn’t a simple black and yellow striped one.

“The Holy Barrier! Why?”

It was a pure white rope hung with lots of streamers. Why was the Holy Barrier, which was supposed to protect Kamisu 66 from the outside world, here in Pinewind?

“Did the town’s borders shrink?”

“No, that’s not it,” Satoru said, inspecting the rope. “This is obviously newly made. The old Holy Barrier is probably still where it always has been.”

“Then what is this?”

“Another barrier inside the town that goes all the way around Pinewind.”

It didn’t make sense no matter how I looked at it. The Holy Barrier was supposed keep bad things out, but now it seemed like it was holding something in.

Satoru sighed deeply, “Anyway, if we want to keep going, we’ll have to cross the barrier.”

I nodded. Going beyond the Holy Barrier was completely different from crossing a simple “entrance prohibited” rope. If we were found out, nothing we could say would help us.

But I already knew that this was the only way to find Shun.

We ducked under the rope, careful not to touch any of the streamers.

At first it seemed that nothing had changed. But as we kept going, abnormalities began to appear.

The usually lush undergrowth in the forest looked as if it had been mown down by a hurricane. Everything was twisted and dying.

I couldn’t read Satoru’s expression. We continued in silence.

The sky was only slightly overcast, and the sun was still high in the sky, but our surroundings grew darker and darker. The trees were blocking out the light, their thick branches seemingly fusing together to form a roof above us. In comparison to the undergrowth, the trees seemed to have grown much more than was normal.

Satoru broke off a branch and lit it with his cantus. Even though it was still broad daylight, we couldn’t see where we were putting our feet without a torch.

After a while, we saw a sliver of light between the trees. We tried to get closer, but were stopped by the roots of the trees. They rose out of the ground like giant snakes, coiling this way and that, over and around, making it impossible to walk through. It looked like an alien world. I was just about to suggest that we cut through with our cantus, but realized that it would leave obvious proof that we had been here. I reluctantly started picking my way through the gaps in the trees.

“Saki,” Satoru turned around, holding the torch aloft. “Look.”

He was pointing at the tree trunks. Their bark didn’t have the usual tortoiseshell pattern like normal red pines. Instead they were covered in lumps that looked like tumors or cancer cells.

Then, I saw that some of them resembled human faces.

Faces twisted in unimaginable pain, screaming faces, faces of the dead.

I shivered and looked away.

“Let’s hurry.”

I was almost prepared to face even more horrible sights ahead. Instead I was amazed by what I saw.

There was a slope that had been more or less cleared by falling boulders. The trees were sparse and the ground was full of mountain azaleas. What was weird was that even though it was already autumn, they were all in full bloom, covering the slope with red and pink flowers and filling the air with the most fragrant aroma I had ever smelled.

“How pretty…” I said, breathing in their perfume and going for a closer look.

“Stop. Don’t touch them,” Satoru caught me by the arm. “There’s something wrong with these flowers. Look,” he pointed down at his feet.

The ground was littered with the corpses of innumerable ants, bees, beetles, spiders, and other insects.

“Don’t you think this smell is way too strong? There’s probably some toxic substance in it.”

“In the azaleas?”

“They’re not normal flowers, no matter how you look at it.”

His words seem to break the spell. I looked at the flowers I had thought so beautiful until now, and shuddered at their deceptive poison.

No, that wasn’t the only reason I had shuddered.

“Where is this chill coming from?”

There was a cold wind blowing from the depths of the forest.

“…let’s take a look,” Satoru said, looking as if he were preparing himself for the worst.

As if possessed, we made our way toward the source of the wind.

“Snow!” he shouted.

“It can’t be. It’s still autumn. It’s not snowing anywhere.” I couldn’t believe my eyes.

Satoru touched the white powder that covered the roots of the trees. “No…wait. It’s not snow.”

“Then what is it?” I didn’t have the courage to touch it.

“Frost. There’s a lot of it so it looks like snow. I don’t know why, but the ground is much colder than it should be so the water in the air froze.”

The only place where frost never melted was in the permafrost layer deep underground.

It’s all messed up, I whispered to myself. Everything here had deviated from the normal rules of nature.

We took a detour around the frosted area. A hundred meters later, the forest ended abruptly.

“Careful,” Satoru said quietly.

We lay on the ground and crawled toward the forest’s edge.

It was a dizzying sight. Beneath us was a bowl shaped hole in the ground two hundred meters in diameter and a hundred fifty meters deep. It looked like a giant ant lion pit.

“Unbelievable. Did a meteor do this?”

“Sh,” Satoru put a finger to his lips. “There are people over there.”

There were human silhouettes at the bottom of the hole.

“…it wasn’t a meteor. One that’s big enough to make a hole this size would cause a huge explosion. We never heard anything,” he whispered in response to my earlier question.

“Then what is this hole?”

“Stop asking me about everything.”

“What? You don’t know the answer?”

Satoru looked offended. “I can only hypothesize. The hole was probably made by those people down there.”

“What for?”

“Sh,” Satoru shushed me again.

The two people were slowly floating upward. I was afraid they were going to come toward us, but they landed on the other side of the hole and started walking away. When they were out of sight, Satoru began talking at a normal volume.

“…they were definitely trying to excavate something.”

I stared down into the bottom of the crater. There was something down there, but it was hidden in the shadow cast by the hole. If I were on the other side, I would probably be able to see it. Suddenly I had an idea.

“Satoru, make a mirror over there,” I pointed.

He immediately realized what I had in mind. The air shimmered and blinding rays of light flashed in all directions. They gradually converged and a silver mirror appeared.

“Point it down more.”

“I know already! Yeesh.”

He slowly angled it downward. Soon we were able to see what was at the bottom of the hole.

We were stunned into silence. Hadn’t I come here time and again? Why did I not realize where we were until now?

The mirror reflected a large building almost completely buried in the dirt. Just one glimpse of the dark wood and I knew it was Shun’s house.

We didn’t talk much on the way back.

Even though we had come across many strange things in the pine forest, most of our thoughts were focused on Shun.

I didn’t know what had happened, but it looked like the Earth had tried to swallow Shun’s house whole. It seemed impossible to survive something like that. So why was I convinced that Shun was still alive?

Where was he now? Was he okay? Did he need help? All these unanswerable questions whirled around in my head.

“You said he left home, right? So he’s gotta be okay,” Satoru said, more to himself than to me. “Let’s go look for him tomorrow morning. I’m sure we’ll find him.”

“Shouldn’t we go right now?”

“The sun’s going to set soon. We don’t have a clue where Shun is right now. I know you’re worried, but we’ll have a fresh start tomorrow.”

How could he be so calm? Wasn’t he worried? Unlike Satoru, I wasn’t confident at all.

We arrived at the park where we were supposed to meet up with Maria and Mamoru, but there was no sign of them. We waited for a bit, but decided to go home.

“See you tomorrow, then.”

The words were unsuited for the situation. It sounded like we were parting after a picnic in the park. We went our separate ways; Satoru headed toward Hayring and I took my canoe back to Waterwheel.

Shadows stretched across the village as the sun went down over Mt. Tsukuba. Braziers were lit all over town, making the waterways sparkle with orange reflections. This was always my favorite time of the day, when I could enjoy the scenery as I reflected on the day’s events and looked forward to what the next day had to offer.

I tied up the canoe behind our house and went in through the back door. I was surprised to see that both my parents were home early.

“Welcome home,” mother smiled. “Dinner is ready. It’s been a while since we’ve eaten together.”

Father stared at me as I sat down at the table, then grinned broadly.

“Look at you. You’re all covered in dirt. Go wash up.”

When I came back, I expected my father to ask where I had been, but he didn’t. He was talking about the plans to install street lamps in the center of the village, as it seemed that using only braziers was not enough. But incandescent bulbs would require electricity, which was only allowed to be used to power the loudspeakers in the public hall. So in order to move forward with the plan, they first needed to revise the Code of Ethics.

“No matter how many times we petition, the higher-ups at the Ethics Committee never agree to it,” my father, the mayor, grumbled as he poked at a piece of fish with his chopsticks.

“It would be nice if you could do something about the lights in the library first,” mother said. Her job as head librarian put her in a position even higher than the mayor’s.

“The library already uses a fifth of our annual budget.”

“I know. But we’ve had to work late recently, and the phosphorescent lamps are too much of a hassle,” she pointed at the light above the dining table.

At that time phosphorescent lamps were widely used for lighting. Often called bontan balls, phosphorescent lamps are large circular vacuum tubes whose insides are coated with a special paint containing platinum or iridium. After you charge it up with your cantus the lamp would shine for a specific amount of time. However, it only lasts for about half an hour before the light starts dimming and you have to charge it up again, so that was annoying.

“Right now only Waterwheel has electricity to spare. But it’s impossible to lay down cables all the way to the library in Hayring.”

“Can’t you just build a new waterwheel next to the library?”

“That would be difficult. It would obstruct traffic, and the canals there flow too slowly to produce electricity.”

The more they continued their spirited discussion, the more I felt that something wasn’t right. It was as if they were purposely putting on this show to prevent the conversation from moving in an unwanted direction.

“…hey, do you know what happened to Shun?”

The two of them fell silent instantly.

I felt my pulse speed up. I knew full well this was a dangerous question, so why did I say it out loud? Was I angry at my parents for carrying on such a useless conversation at a time when we were so worried about Shun? Or was I gambling on the chance that I might discover some sort of clue?

“You mean Shun Aonuma?” father asked quietly.

“Yeah. He suddenly stopped coming to Sage Academy.” My voice cracked a little.

“It’s forbidden to talk about these things. You know that too, don’t you?” mother smiled chidingly.

“Yeah…but,” I looked downward, on the verge of tears.

“Saki…Sacchan,” father weakened as he saw my tears.

Sacchan was a nickname he hadn’t used since I was four or five.

“Dear,” mother said worriedly.

“It’s okay. Saki, listen. You will have to face many hardships in life. One of them is parting with your dear friends.”

“What happened to Shun?” I shouted, interrupting him.

Father frowned, “He’s missing.”

“Why?”

“A few days ago, there was a big accident in Pinewind. Shun Aonuma and his parents have been missing ever since.”

“An accident? What was it? No one told me anything about it. Why has…”

“Saki! Enough,” mother said severely.

“But”

“We’re worried about you. Okay? Don’t talk back, and listen to us. You have to stop prying into things that don’t concern you.”

I nodded reluctantly and stood up.

“Saki, please,” my mother said tearfully as I was about to leave the dining room. “I can’t lose another… No, I don’t want to lose you. Please do as we say.”

“All right. I’m tired, I’m going to bed.”

“Goodnight, Saki,” father said. He put his arms around mother, who was pinching the bridge of her nose.

“Goodnight.”

As I climbed the stairs, all I heard were my mother’s words. “I can’t lose another… No, I don’t want to lose you.” And something else I had heard long ago. A pained voice shouting, “I don’t want to lose another child!”

I lay in bed with a million thoughts running through my head, unable to fall asleep.

I’ve always wondered whether I had an older sister. The first time the thought crossed my mind was when I was around ten years old. My mother had accidentally left me unsupervised at the library, and I came upon an old dictionary (class three material). In Harmony School, we had talked about how our names reflected our parents’ wishes and expectations, so I wanted to know what my name meant.

“Sa” had three definitions, ‘dawn’, ‘early’, and ‘young’, but I didn’t know which one mine was. Since I was still a kid I thought it was obvious that I was ‘young’. Next I looked up “ki”. ‘Very young’, ‘time’, ‘little’… Just when I thought that the two words meant exactly the same thing, I noticed the last definition.

‘Youngest child’.

Of course, this wasn’t definitive proof that I was the “youngest child”. But my mother was more sensitive to the meaning of words than anyone else. I got the feeling that if I were the oldest child, I wouldn’t have had “ki” in my name.

As I thought about this, dim memories from my childhood began to resurface. I think I was two or three at that time. There was a person who always took care of me wherever I went. That person was older than me, but much younger than my mother. My parents called me Sacchan and that person Yocchan.

That’s right. My sister’s name was Yoshimi.

There was no evidence that this wasn’t just a false memory created by autosuggestion, but after hearing my mother cry that she didn’t want to lose another child, the idea that I once had a sister was becoming more and more convincing.

If this was the truth, then why was my sister no longer here? Had she really been eliminated? And did it have some connection with what was going on with Shun?

I couldn’t come up with any conclusions. I was trapped in a cycle of convoluted thoughts.

Then I heard something hit the window.

My head jerked up. Moonlight shone in through the open curtains and I saw someone floating outside of the second-floor window.

For a second I thought I was having a paranormal experience and felt my legs go weak with fear. Then the light fell on a head of red hair and I realized it was Maria.

“What’s wrong?” I opened the window.

“Sorry. I dropped by the park but there was no one there. I got a good scolding when I got home earlier.”

It would be bad if my parents saw her.

“Hurry, come in,” I gestured at Maria. “Why did it take so long? You were only going around to interview people, right?”

Maria clung tightly to me.

“Maria?”

“I was so scared! We were so close to being killed too!”

“What do you mean? Explain properly.”

Maria was trembling, but managed to collect herself. She sat down next to me on the bed and started talking.

At first, they had wandered around randomly looking for Shun’s friends. Fortunately, Mamoru seemed to have unusual luck in finding things and they managed to run into and question two or three people this way. But they didn’t discover any clues.

They realized something strange. Outside of team one, most of Shun’s friends were from Pinewind, but over half of them were absent from Sage Academy. And the one person they did manage to find refused to say anything at all.

They were about to head to Pinewind when they realized that Satoru and I were already on our way there, so they went back to Sage Academy.

But as usual, there were almost no students that stayed behind after school was over. The two of them were about to go home when they remembered something that Shun and Satoru had been talking about in the past. That story about how there were weird structures in the courtyard that smelled like ammonia and you could hear animals growling inside them.

“…so we decided to check the courtyard. Of course we didn’t believe that Shun was there, but we thought we might be able to find some clues.”

Somehow, Maria and Mamoru managed to get in on nothing but luck.

“But how did you get into the courtyard? Shun and Satoru had to memorize the position of the locks.”

“Did you forget? I can levitate. I went over the wall when no one was looking. Of course, Mamoru can’t, so I had to open the door from the inside for him. Anyway, Shun was right. There were about a dozen little bolts arranged radially…”

Who cared about the locks.

“Forget that. What happened?” I said impatiently.

“Same as when Shun and Satoru were there, nothing. Apart from the five little brick rooms in the back.”

I remembered what Shun had said back in Harmony School.

“There are wooden doors on the buildings, but they look super sturdy. Probably made of oak, four or five centimeters thick, and there are cast iron bars over it, with these hinges…”

“I don’t really care about the doors. Get to the point and tell me what you saw!” I shouted in irritation.

Maria had great concentration and observational skills, but sucked at summarizing what she saw.

“Sorry. Anyway, we wanted to find out what was inside, but couldn’t open the doors without destroying them.”

“I’m sorry too. I just really wanted to know what you guys found.”

“Yeah, so we put our ears against the door. We heard something.”

“What did it sound like?”

“A low growl. And then footsteps like some big animal walking back and forth. I could tell that whatever it was had noticed us too.”

“Wait a second. Is there that much room in that shed?”

“Uh-uh. I think the building is just an entrance that connects to a basement or a cell underground. The presence of that thing seemed to come from below.”

“Hm. But in the end you still don’t know what was making that noise?”

“Don’t jump to conclusions. We did see it afterwards. Though not its entire body.”

I resisted the urge to snap at her to hurry up and listened quietly.

“Mamoru and I were about to peek into the building when I heard the bolts on the door turning. Someone was coming into the courtyard. There was nowhere to hide so we jumped behind the buildings. Just in time too. The door opened the next second and they came in.”

“Who?”

“I couldn’t see their faces, but I could tell from their voices that there were three of them. One was probably the Sun Prince. The other two were a man and a woman, and the woman sounded like the one that interviewed us after we came back from summer camp.”

I swallowed. “What did they talk about?”

“I could only hear bits of the conversation, but the man was saying that they needed to hurry and settle this before he was completely demonized. And if they failed, it would be a disaster, and stuff like that. I don’t know what he meant by demonize though.”

Part of me had been prepared for this. Still, it felt like I had been hit over the head with a metal bat. Demonize probably meant turning into a karma demon.

“…and after that?” I forced myself to speak.

“The woman said to send out the tainted cats immediately. And the Sun Prince asked if she meant the black and striped ones that they’ve been using.” Maria’s voice shook. “Then they opened them. The second and fourth rooms. And these big animals came out. I only caught a glimpse of them, but they looked as big as the lions in the old zoos and a lot skinnier.”

“The animals…the tainted cats, didn’t they sense you hiding there?”

“Yeah. But someone immediately restrained the cats with their cantus and transported them elsewhere, so we weren’t discovered. …but, this the most important thing! The Sun Prince let slip where the cats were being sent. He said it’s a pity for such a talented child.”

I already knew who it was.

“I heard it with my own ears! Shun Aonuma.”