Volume 9, 4: Be Dyed in [email protected]???(6/6)
“..”
In a world where the coup d’etat of Hyakki Yakou had succeeded, I was overcome with the tremendous heat of all my body’s protein boiling as the Illness Magic User took over the Fuuka Village hotel.
“..............”
——No matter how far I went, “it” never ended.
Worlds created by a wrong decision were slammed into me one after another.
As all the pain rushed to a single point, my body trembled so violently I thought I would bite my own tongue.
I had no idea how much time had passed.
I felt like I had been wandering for a hundred if not a thousand years.
But the true despair did not come from the pain or the fear itself.
I noticed something.
Even after all that, I noticed I had only moved forward a few centimeters.
“................f......”
How much farther did I have to go?
How long would I have to do this before I could reach the Zashiki Warashi? In fact, who had even guaranteed that this would end after making it a certain distance? If the Zashiki Warashi..no, if the inevitable decline controlling her decided on a whim to take a step backwards, this infinite hell would grow even longer.
“He’s given up.” “He’s given up!” “He’s given up in front of his woman.” “Throw him out.” “Let’s throw him out.” “He’ll break.” “He’ll break now!!” “Kee ha ha!!” “Yes.” “You can’t reach anything.” “You can’t reach it.” “You’ll just die.” “Die!” “Give up.” “Break already!” “Now.” “Now!” “Now!!”
The white skulls swimming through her glossy black hair looked at me and mocked me through her headphones. Countless handprints crawled along the yukata that covered her ample bodylines. Her hair slithered like snakes and covered her face as jewels glared out like twisted eyeballs. This power did not hate anyone. It was not fixated on anyone. It was inevitable decline. It simply took and simply ruined. It viewed that itself as its goal, like it was appreciating some elegant aesthetic.
Could I really do something about that?
Could I overcome it?
I bit my lip, tasted blood in my mouth, and stared straight ahead.
The Zashiki Warashi was only ten meters away, but she seemed infinitely distant and would not approach me.
Could I endure this that far?
Wouldn’t I crumble away into something like a lump of tar?
I would break. I would be destroyed.
If I let go, it would all fall into ruin. The world’s destiny or evil spirit that was this law of inevitable decline would only give me a momentary flash of dark joy. I knew that, but I could not stop my heart from heading in that direction.
It was like a growing stomachache on the train when the next station was a long way off. It was like the rapidly growing thirst discovered the instant you stepped out of the sauna and saw the vending machine. The wall of my limit was approaching with tremendous speed. The last ten minutes I had overcome were nothing compared to the next minute I had to overcome. The strength it had taken to endure for a minute might be used up in a single second afterwards. The curve of rapid exhaustion seemed to have quadratic growth. Time itself seemed to be wearing down my fragile soul.
My very self wavered.
And even if I tried to rely on “someone else”, I was trapped inside this subspace where the red tatami mats continued as far as the eye could see. The Zashiki Warashi stood before me in this alternate dimension that trapped me in dark death, symbols of ruin, and inevitable decline.
Was it hopeless?
What I sought was right in front of me and I held the kaleidoscope needed to overturn this, but I still lacked something needed to cover those ten meters. And I could never find whatever it was in this never-ending world of isolation!
But as soon as I thought that..
“I see.”
I heard a voice.
I heard a definite voice in this world where I should have been alone.
“And? I hope you aren’t foolish enough to add ‘so I might as well give up’.”
It arrived like a gust of wind that swept away the disturbing heat filling my head. Moving just a few centimeters had exhausted me to the point that I thought it would fry my brain, but now someone stood next to me.
What? Me?
He had a more solid build than me, he wore a lab coat over a suit, and he wore glasses that really didn’t suit him. More importantly, his eyes were reminiscent of a thick swamp and he had some people standing next to him: Madoka, the Succubus and a short gray demon.
Wait..it can’t be. Are you saying he stuffed Tselika in a machine and tamed her!?
But even though everything was wrong, I still reached a certain conclusion.
That was me.
It was Jinnai Shinobu.
I had never known that name could be defined so broadly.
“Is that anything to be surprised by? This is the singularity where the threads of destiny gather. It’s the rule-breaking land where all parallel worlds are concentrated. So what’s so strange about a meeting between two people who never should have met?”
I was dumbfounded, but then something else happened.
On the other side from him, I saw another new form. It was me, Jinnai Shinobu. However, this one was half my height and looked only five or six.
As soon as I noticed this alternate version of myself, I sensed a great presence behind him.
I didn’t have it in me to look back, but I more or less knew what was there.
There had to be Jinnai Shinobus as far as the eye could see. Some might have failed in something and some might have succeeded in something. In the past or the future, they had each taken a different path than me. And altogether, we created a group of nearly infinite number to face those hellish parallel worlds.
“Each individual ruin is an individual death. If the combined failures of the individual named Jinnai Shinobu are the strongest barrier against this personal hostility, then we only need to negate each and every one. To put it another way, each world can only kill one of us.”
“..Yeah.”
“Simple, isn’t it? It has to be. At least compared to the suffering of losing your beloved before your very eyes.”
“Yeah!! I know that much!! I know the Jinnai Shinobu standing here..the Jinnai Shinobu that made it this far has to be one hell of a lucky guy!!”
We didn’t need a cue.
Our thoughts were united.
“So I’ll go for even the cruelest of options. Lend me your strength, Jinnai Shinobu!! I’ll show you the gentle conclusion of the Jinnai Shinobu who can call her Yukari!!!!!”
Part 13 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)
“PSI_ver_RAIN: If you actually think about it, this doesn’t really make sense, does it? A group that wants to ban speculation on debris is going to send that debris down so people can collect it. Aren’t they just admitting it’s valuable? Won’t the speculation just heat up more the more they do that?”
“Anemura email protected: Um, and is it really safe to have satellites falling down to earth? It would have to hurt if a piece fell on you, and even if that requires the same bad luck as getting hit by lightning, that would still mean some definite victims every year. Can anyone who knows more about it tell me the details?”
Those short posts changed everything.
The stagnant water began to flow.
“It doesn’t look like a perfect solution, though,” said Madoka-chan in her sailor uniform. “Those Hishigami people have set up a donation site. They’re trying to raise as much money from supporters as they can to fund a launch as soon as possible! Even if the other companies are reluctant, this will let them buy a free pass with the power of money!”
“It’s all over once they reach a certain amount of money. They’ll be able to keep going no matter how much opposition there is.”
“Like we’ll let them do that.”
“And how do you plan to fight them?” asked Mishima-san.
I gave a succinct answer.
“Fundraising on the borderless internet is actually a gray zone. If they’re suspected of illegally transferring money, they’ll have trouble finding supporters. We just have to hit them with suspicion. If people think they’ll be complicit in something illegal if they take part, the donations will stop. Even if the police aren’t functioning, the brand-name of the guardians of the law should still be effective!”
“Detective, don’t tell me you’re planning to post under your real name in this freely expanding internet society. The winds may have begun to change, but stir up people’s animosity and they’ll dig up all the data on you they can find!!”
“I’ve already asked civilian middle school girls to do the same thing.”
I smiled a little and looked to the two posts from the girls who had helped out.
“The adults can’t get cold feet now. These people are trying to send nuclear batteries and dangerous rocket fuel tumbling down to earth, so stopping them comes first!!”
Part 14 (Hishigami Mai)
Things had gotten bad.
The large bus and truck were still crashing into each other. Plus, the back of the truck contained Ou, a failure who would slaughter at least thirty million people. I needed to cut away that container to eliminate the possibility of her waking, but the problem wasn’t the 80 kph car chase. It was all the eyes of Tokyo.
Working for an underground organization could be tricky.
So..
“Zei, Akane, Ran. Which one of you is the most useless?”
“..”
“..”
“..”
“Don’t glare at me like that. And don’t start grabbing at each other either! Okay, I’ll be borrowing one of those camouflage cloaks that use the science of perception to trick the human brain and program analyses. I don’t care what happens to you afterwards. You can grab at each other’s hair to settle things amongst yourselves once and for all if you like. The weakest one who loses the game of musical chairs can stay here!!”
“Wait, Mai-san. A fight between women scares me even more than an asteroid! This is going to be absolute carnage!!”
The cowardly man’s cries didn’t matter.
I pulled the cloak over my head, picked up the Sunekosuri, and jumped out the broken window and onto the truck.
“U-u-um! Why did you throw me out here too!?”
“Stop it, partner. Did you think you could get out of this without playing a role?☆”
We stood on the joint connecting the front of the truck to the container on the back. The heavy metal connector was accompanied by a mess of cables to send signals to the rear wheel breaks and such. No, there were too many of them for just that, so they may have been related to Ou’s storage tank.
Anyway, I just had to remove the cut-away safety lock and pull the lever, but..
“It’s completely broken!? And there are marks from a gas burner being used!!”
“How can he say he loves being reasonable? He’s completely insane.”
If Ou awoke, thirty million people would die. That was certain. Plus, it was unknown how far the carnage would spread beyond that. And that of course meant he would die first there in the driver’s seat. But anyway..
“So what do we do, Mai-san? Oh, you have a gun hidden in the heel of your boot, don’t you?”
“That small caliber handgun can’t break such a thick metal connector. And that’s too much effort. I’ll just break it with my bare hands.”
“Waaah! You’re as much of a monster as ever!!”
Although I had remade myself to deal with Youkai and not things like this, so I didn’t recommend doing these things that would break my own body.
Then an irritated voice reached me over the satellite phone.
“Mai, are you ready? I would really rather not use Ou as a bargaining chip!!”
“Shut up, you stupid brother!! Do you know how messed up things have to have gotten for me to be the straight man!? And I can hear you grinning while you say you’d rather not use her, you unreasonable bastard!!”
“Yes, yes. So you still have that kind sort of reasonableness. I’m jealous. Yes, so very jealous.”
He was hopeless He was completely self-absorbed.
There was no real reason to waste effort chatting with him.
I grabbed the metal connector with both hands and it produced an odd creaking sound. I prepared to pull it out, but..oh, dear. That wasn’t good at all. My shoulders and back were creaking too. I was going to have to replace all of my arteries and muscles afterwards and probably check over my entire skeleton too. For a normal person, it was like swapping out everything but the brain and heart!
But my efforts weren’t wasted.
The joint was like a mechanical dinosaur’s backbone, but it was definitely beginning to change shape.
Just a bit further..
“Hishigami Mai!!”
Red Zei shouted to me from the bus where she was grappling with the others like her.
A moment later, something ran down my spine.
“!?”
As soon as I swung my head to the side, the container’s thick wall was broken through from within. A wet and swollen translucent hand that almost seemed made of liquid pierced straight through the spot my face had just been in. It was not a fist or stabbing fingers. The hand simply grabbed at empty air. It was shaped like a child’s small hand.
But I could tell what that stinging sensation was.
It was death, it was slaughter, it was Ou. If that touched me, it was all over. No defense or knowledge would help. This had nothing to do with the methods or efficiency of killing. It was death on the fundamental level of one’s soul or core.
The flabbily swollen arm pulled back.
A pair of eerily glowing eyes pierced through me from the darkness within the hole.
If the hand had been pulled back, it would be coming again.
Just like an arrow fired from a drawn bowstring, the next attack was coming.
How much of the original Hishigami Enbi did this reproduce? 20%? 30%? Even with the Youkai medicine, I doubted it was even half the original. And this was what she could do? Sister, just how much of a genius are you!?
Sweat poured from my entire body, but I couldn’t stop working now.
Once the steel egg cracked open, she would be freed.
At this point, she could still be contained.
So..
“Oh, ohh.”
To be honest, Mai-chan probably didn’t really need to go along with all this.
Thirty million people would die? So what?
Japan would be destroyed? What did I care?
I could always leave Tokyo, flee Japan, and pull out a beach chair and parasol to enjoy the final paradise on the other side of the globe. A Hishigami Woman could pull off that kind of unfair method.
But even so..
This wasn’t about the Hishigami Women and it wasn’t about business or the rules of our underground industry. I recalled what the Sunekosuri had said. His wife Ohatsu and son Gisuke were important, but that wasn’t all. He wasn’t just an accessory to his family and he had gone to Hyakki Yakou of his own free will.
Yes.
This must have been something that I personally wanted to do.
“Oh, ohh, ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
Part 15 (Jinnai Shinobu)
All the Jinnai Shinobus moved at once. They charged toward the “things” that were thinner than the thinnest paper and would hit you with an apocalyptic level of pain, fear, and despair when you broke through them.
With each Jinnai Shinobu’s sacrifice, one layer was broken and we moved forward.
One after another, the parallel world barriers were breached and we continued on.
Every mistake was accounted for and every wrong decision was accepted.
No.
That wasn’t quite right.
It was true that most of the Jinnai Shinobus had not made it this far.
But they had had their own endings.
——To overcome the worst case scenario of Japan being sold off, one had made a contract with Archdemon Tselika, made an enemy of the world, and finally been reunited with the Zashiki Warashi who waited on that contaminated archipelago.
——One had left the small world of Japan with Madoka and spent his time engaging in financial battles with demonic investors who seemed to embody the seven deadly sins.
——One had gained the direct fighting strength of the Yuki Onna, defeated and neutralized extremely deadly Youkai like the Shuten-Douji and the Nine-Tailed Fox, and used them as Shikigami.
——After the death of Nagisa’s beloved dog had driven her insane, one had stuck with her to the end, managed to regain her sanity, and used nothing but human power to face the nationwide Youkai controller constructed by Akki Rasetsu.
——One joined forces with Marguerite and the Succubus and managed to rescue the other soul that had been hidden in her womb.
——One had stopped the Aoandon’s rampage by teaching her of kindness back in Zenmetsu Village, had taken up the sword Kusanagi, and had fought alongside his “daughter” in the battle over the three Imperial Regalia.
——When Majina had completely stolen Hyakki Yakou away from Hafuri, one had used his Youkai-attracting trait and swore to the sobbing girl that he would create a new Hyakki Yakou that would never hurt her.
——One had built a time travel Package around the Aburatori, used it to prevent the Hyakki Yakou coup d’etat in advance, and truly protected a certain family.
——One had gone the widow route, fallen for Ver. 40 Mei rather than Ver. 39 Yukari, and retrieved her heart with a device that provided salvation.
——One had successfully seduced both Mei, who did not age, and Hafuri, who had grown up, and thought he had won the legendary oyakodon..right up until Majina’s ghost came back from the depths of hell during the Bon festival and punched him.
——One, one, one, one..
They may have been different from here, but that didn’t mean they were failures. Those were the results of the decisions they had made, but I had mistakenly seen them as obstacles and viewed them as hells. That had pissed them all off. They were insisting that they would take care of and look after their own worlds.
So I just had to look at my own world.
I had to look beyond all those other worlds.
I had to look to the Zashiki Warashi!!
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!”
I ran once more with the kaleidoscope in hand.
“No.” “This wasn’t supposed to happen.” “Break.” “How can you still stand!?” “No.” “Wait.” “Stay back.” “Stay away!” “I’ll crush you.” “We’ll crush all of you.” “I’ll crush every last possibility!” “We don’t need those bright things.” “I don’t want to see them.” “Because.” “It wasn’t..” “It wasn’t enough to save us!!”
The children’s skulls displayed in the Zashiki Warashi’s black hair used the headphones to threaten us. The handprints moved about her yukata with none of their previous confidence. The twisted eyeball jewels rolled around inside the sea of hair covering her face. It was filled with impatience, anxiety, and rage. But that hostility sent out by the inevitable decline told me everything I needed to know. The end was near. I..we..Jinnai Shinobu was on the right path!
The many Jinnai Shinobus caught up. They passed me by. They smiled as they moved ahead and were burned by those many ruined parallel worlds and by their true hellfire that lay beyond different decisions that, to me, looked mistaken.
So the fear faded.
My sense of rivalry overcame it.
Even if we were all Jinnai Shinobu and even if we all wished to save the Zashiki Warashi, she was mine.
I wasn’t going to let any other Jinnai Shinobu touch her!! I wasn’t going to let them save her in my place! Even if none of those other conclusions were any better or worse, I was the one that had chosen this and made it this far! So how could I let them take the best part? I was the only one that got to take that Good-for-Nothing Nee-chan in my arms and call her Yukari!! Let me have that much pride, you idiots!!
I clenched my teeth.
I raced desperately forward and reached out my hand.
I broke through all the screens and all the red-dyed images of hell.
I raced across the countless battlefields.
And at the very last moment, I thought I felt a push on my back. I didn’t have time to look back, but I had a feeling someone was smiling there. Another Jinnai Shinobu who had made a different decision and couldn’t reach this point was leaving something with me.
He was telling me to make my dream come true, to not let her cry, and to put the biggest smile on her face.
Then that seemingly endless distance shrank to nothing.
I held the Zashiki Warashi in the red yukata tightly in my arms.
She was as limp as a doll.
The small skulls and handprints wriggled across her.
No one had told me what to do with the kaleidoscope.
I didn’t know how Youkai worked, I didn’t know the details of the Package, and I didn’t know what kind of techniques or tools supported them.
But the destiny of inevitable decline had wanted to reject that salvation. The skulls in her hair, handprints on her yukata, and jewel eyeballs in her serpentine hair had most wanted to keep me from approaching her. It had put all sorts of obstacles in my way to keep me from doing that. It was like throwing a detective with brilliant deductive skills onto a battlefield with shells flying everywhere or throwing a veteran martial artist into a gag space. Having me fight out of my element had acted as a barrier.
That was what the infinite parallel worlds had been.
They had been nothing more than distractions to get me to lose sight of my goal.
So I just had to stay focused. I just had to look to the Zashiki Warashi and seek what I wanted in the very beginning. It didn’t matter if it was out of place, inappropriate, or embarrassing. That kind of self-restraint was nothing more than interference from the destiny of inevitable decline. When I was trying to continue forward like normal, the magnetism and attraction of the situation would guide me off track.
I couldn’t let it affect me or sweep me away. I had to stay true to myself.
It didn’t matter how pathetic or silly it was.
This had to be the one and only correct answer in this world that was scattered with as many options as there were stars in the sky. I had to trust in myself after my decisions led me this far!! I didn’t have the power to save the world, but I had managed to choose the one path that the million other Jinnai Shinobus hadn’t been able to. So I needed to be proud of that! It was something I could truly be proud of!!!!
Further strength entered the arms that held the Zashiki Warashi.
I felt her pulse.
The countless handprints didn’t matter and the white skulls had fallen silent.
I focused on her face as she looked unsteadily up at me.
We weren’t enemies.
She wasn’t a threat I had to defeat.
I couldn’t forget that.
Yukari was my girlfriend.
And when I was with her, I just had to do what I most wanted to do.
With that alone in mind, I gently placed my lips on hers.
It was like a switch had been thrown.
I heard a deafening sound and the never-ending world of red tatami mats was immediately blown away.
The handprints on her yukata, the skulls in her hair, the serpentine hair, the jewel eyeballs, the inevitable decline, and everything else were gone.
The unpleasant noise from her headphones had grown silent too.
Part 16 (Uchimaku Hayabusa)
I gulped with the Mystery Freak and the others as we viewed the screens in the cruise ship’s trading room. We focused on the message boards that had grown quiet, as if the previous commotion had never happened.
“Does this mean..?”
Part 17 (Hishigami Mai)
In a certain metropolitan area, I watched the container roll away after it broke through the chain link fence of an industrial complex. I wiped the sweat from my brow while clinging to the rest of the truck with the Sunekosuri. That monster was only sleeping and I doubted that would be enough to kill her, but..
“..It’s over for now?”
Part 18 (Jinnai Shinobu)
I kissed the Zashiki Warashi.
What purpose did that serve?
Perhaps it was important that the creator of the kaleidoscope made physical contact with the Zashiki Warashi it was targeting.
I didn’t need to know the answer. It had worked and that was all that mattered.
Her full body weight leaned against me.
The next thing I knew, we were inside the familiar tea room of the thatch-roof house. We were surrounded by the Umbrella, Lantern, Tanuki, Fox, and plenty of other Youkai and the Zashiki Warashi seemed embarrassed having so many creatures around her. I could feel her squirming in my arms.
We were back.
We had faced inevitable decline in the graveyard of the world built by the remains of the countless destroyed eras that lay beyond an endless labyrinth of “what ifs”.
But we had escaped that terminal of intersecting destinies and returned to our normal life.
“Shinobu, this is a little embarrassing.”
“Ha ha. Sorry, sorry.”
“And I thought something tasted rusty, but you have a cut on your lip.”
She brought her finger to my lip and looked at what got on her finger.
“See? You have all this white blood on there.”
When I heard those words, I pulled her close again and pressed her head to my chest.
“Sorry..”
I had messed with her head.
And I hadn’t wanted her to see the look on my face when I accepted that fact.
“What is it, Shinobu?”
That considerate question could almost be called innocent.
But I was unable to answer her and simply held her tighter in my arms.
Then I bit my lip again and said more in my heart.
Even if it meant dirtying my hands, I just couldn’t accept a future without you.