Volume 14, 2: Freeloaders Tend to Grow in Number - Cannibalization.(3/7)
“But Elza, you don’t see a 4.5 tatami room every day, so isn’t it kind of exciting? Like a poor but happy couple pressing their shoulders together for warmth and reconfirming their love for each other. Kyah☆”
“C’mon, Claire, that’s probably the same kind of excitement you get from a Columbian prison tour or a Thai military torture tour. You’re paying money to enjoy a lack of freedom.”
“Please don’t say that! The visuals of collars, handcuffs, and creaking ropes hanging from hooks are encroaching on my Showa song paradise!!”
“You’ve got a surprisingly detailed imagination. I bet this teacher’s pet is secretly quite the perv-...”
“Ei☆”
After the glasses girl gathered strength in her stocking-covered legs and hips to deliver a punch to the delinquent girl’s side, one of the girls doubled over. Even through the sweater, her large breasts jiggled a needless amount.
Claire ignored her choking companion and turned toward Kamisato.
“You told us a little over the phone, but what exactly is going on here?”
Patricia noticeably put her guard up in the corner of the room and short Ellen only shrugged while dragging her baggy lab coat behind her like a ceremonial kimono, so Kamisato had no choice but to answer.
He placed a hand on the side of his neck and shook his head to the side a little, but the joint would not crack.
“Try to contain your surprise when you hear this.”
“Sure, sure.”
“I was just being threatened a little bit. She said she has some horrible secret and I’ll get dragged into some awful incident if I get any more involved.”
“Ohh...”
“Ohh...”
The glasses and delinquent girls both rubbed their index finger against their temple and spoke up in harmony.
Ellen then chimed in with her ankle-length black hair swaying behind her.
“In other words, the setup is complete.”
“Y’know, did she really think a hot-blooded boy was going to back off when he heard that? Are you sure she isn’t sitting there waiting for the boss to jump at the opportunity?”
“She only draws Kamisato-san in because she isn’t aware what she’s doing. You know, just like always.”
There seemed to be some hidden meaning to that, but...
“Yeah, it was especially bad with you, Claire. You were outside and in public, but you were still nude when you turned that corner and ran right into the boss. Talk about cheating. Thinking back, you really were the queen of cheating.”
“I-I don’t want to hear that from you! Who meets a guy by suddenly falling from the sky in this day and age!? What dimension did you even come from!? And not only did you manage to land right on top of Kamisato-san’s face, but what happened to your panties!? Did you leave them in that other dimension!?”
“I did have something on! It was a large band-aid though!!”
“Come now. You need to thank Ellen-chan here for using my unofficial forensic investigation skills to solve that earthshattering incident. I bet that bastard never imagined those initial missing panties would end up being the key to ending it all. Nice job, me. And Kamisato-han was of course a real hero.”
They had moved their conversation along and left him behind, so Kamisato Kakeru lightly scratched at his head and tried making a rebuttal.
“I’m not doing any of this because I want to.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“Don’t be silly.”
It took them less than half a second.
He himself was apparently not the one who decided who “Kamisato Kakeru” was.
Ellen waved her baggy lab coat sleeve as she said more.
“This might stray somewhat from the main task, but we all know Kamisato-han can’t ignore it. Even if we decided to ignore it, he’d run off to the other side of the world to save her on his own if he had to. So it would be best if we helped him out so he can finish it as quickly as possible and get back to the main task. Is that okay with you?”
“Sure is,” said Elza.
“I don’t mind,” agreed Claire. “Instead of attaching a bell to a cat’s collar and letting it wander around, we’re holding the dog’s leash and taking a walk with it, right? I’d feel more comfortable that way and I personally prefer it.”
“That taste. You really are a special kind of perv-...”
“Ei!! Ei ei!!”
The violent rush from the teacher’s pet silenced Elza’s diaphragm.
However, Kamisato was not the only one who had been left behind. As the older girls’ conversation continued without her, Patricia’s hands nervously wandered through the air.
Kamisato lightly shrugged as he too had been abandoned.
“Don’t worry about it. They’re always like this.”
“Eh? Oh.”
Patricia tried to say something, but the others cut in first.
“The weirdest one of us all is trying to act normal.”
“And he has guts hitting on a girl right in front of us! Honestly, could this be following the standard script any closer!?”
“This is how Kamisato Kakeru gathered one hundred girls to construct his personal empire. Now, we need to organize things, so let’s make a list of what we need to do and sort it by priority.”
Ellen clapped her hands to gather attention.
The girl named Patricia had some sort of large problem and a few steps were needed to solve it. Kamisato Kakeru began thinking about the aspects of these girls that were just as unique as his own right hand, but...
“First, we need to take a bath, but this rundown apartment has a shared bathroom and no bath. I wonder how the other residents get by.”
It came so suddenly. Ellen’s thought seemed to fly in from the farthest reaches of the universe.
However, this was apparently not simply a case of her being out of her mind.
“Yeah, I asked around and there’s apparently a bathhouse around here that they usually use. That’s what this tiny teacher told me.”
“A bathhouse! Oh, that has a wonderfully retro ring to it!! It has so much more charm than some dull Western term like ‘hot spa’!! And it’s one of the checkpoints any couple in love simply has to try out at least once! Pant, pant. Huh? Why is everything getting so blurry? Pant, pant!!”
“Quit going into full bloom, you pervert. You’re steaming up your glasses with a self-powered thermal power plant.”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” cut in Kamisato.
He could not believe that no one was opposing the idea. That meant he had to do it himself.
And he still could not crack his neck.
“Why are we about to go take a bath all of a sudden?”
“Come now. Because we’re preparing for battle, of course.”
Ellen looked entirely nonchalant as she answered, so Kamisato covered his face with a hand. He could not tell how these girls’ minds were reaching this conclusion.
“Is this what I think it is? Is it some kind of code that seems entirely incomprehensible if you don’t have the kind of mind that can view the world exclusively in terms of ‘amazing’, ‘awesome’, and ‘cute’?”
“What’s got you so quiet, boss?” asked Elza. “We ran right on over here as soon as we got inside Academy City. We weren’t hanging around setting up a hideout like you. Plus, we’re approaching the limits of what deodorant can accomplish. It’s like sports practice after PE. Listen, if we begin a new sweaty battle without a shower, it’s going to damage our pride as girls, which is more important than the world itself!!”
They forced their opinion on him.
They got by on momentum alone.
That was generally how Kamisato Kakeru’s everyday life went.
He shook his head in exasperation and started to join the girls, but something else stopped him. Yes, they had Patricia, an outsider, with them. She seemed unwilling to have Kamisato Kakeru, the final normal person, leave her.
“Wh-why are you all talking about taking a bath all of a sudden!? I don’t want to take one. This really isn’t the time for that!!”
“Ohhhh, right. Foreigners don’t have a bath culture like us. I hear a lot of them feel pretty turned off by the idea of an open-air hot spring.”
“...I really don’t think that’s the problem here.”
Kamisato gave a mild retort.
Patricia was clearly in the right on this one. She had been thrown into an entire group of strangers and, not ten minutes after meeting them, she was being asked to go take a bath with them. That thought process was completely broken.
Or it should have been.
Once again, it came down to the thought processes of a girl that a “normal high school boy” like Kamisato Kakeru found so incomprehensible.
“Well, we won’t force you to do anything.”
“But with your best interests in mind, I have to ask if you’re sure you want that. From what I’ve heard, some kind of goopy black octopus came out of you. This isn’t really an issue of individual taste. I’m just amazed you would show your face in front of a boy after that. And while I don’t know what that goopy thing was, what if it starts to smell after a while? Can you put up with that? Are you sure you want a boy to find out that kind of stuff comes from a girl’s body or that a girl is that kind of creature? If you say you don’t mind, then you can curl up in the corner and stay here, but I’d be about ready to bite my tongue at that point. And not just because it’s the boss I’m talking about. Isn’t it normally all over as soon as the general category of ‘boys’ finds out?”
“Wha-?”
In her jogging wear and down jacket, Patricia’s face blushed and then grew pale. Claire, the gardening club member in glasses, casually cut in. Because she was messing with the flowers on her head, her breasts were visible through the sides of her white dress.
“If that’s just the type of girl she is, then what does it matter? I know we’re not one to talk, but Kamisato-san is surrounded by girls and they all want to show off with something that no one else has. ...Maybe she’s trying to be the smell-fetish girl. H-hm... Going that route certainly would be a courageous decision.”
“You’re really picking up on the worst side of Japanese culture to look at it like that. You truly are a hopeless perv-...”
“Ei!!!!!”
With a solid sound, Elza was silenced (as her breasts jiggled), but Patricia had bigger things to worry about.
She did not want them to force that identity on her.
“N-no!! Don’t place me on those weird rails!!”
She desperately protested, but it was not enough to stop forensic lab coat girl Ellen.
“But if you keep this up, you’ll be there whether you like it or not. We’ll all be washing away our sweat in the bath while you’re here all alone and stinky. Oh, but Kamisato-han is nice, so he won’t let it show if it bothers him. He might even take pity on you and be extra nice. See, it doesn’t matter what you want. You have no say. It isn’t up to you. You’ll be placed on those rails Elza and Claire mentioned regardless. Do you understand now?”
“Wh-wh-wh-wh-why do I have to follow that kind of-...”
“But wouldn’t it be painful? Come now. I don’t know your exact age...”
Ellen gave a cruel smile and spoke her next words like she was stabbing a knife into the girl.
“But people look down on someone who can’t take a bath on their own by your age.”
Kamisato very nearly voiced his surprise.
He had a vivid vision of an invisible lever being thrown.
Blonde forehead girl Patricia shouted back on reflex.
“I can take a bath on my own!! A Japanese bathhouse isn’t a problem! D-don’t mock me like that!!!!”
Patricia pressed a fist against the center of the down jacket covering her flat chest.
That represented the disturbing pulsation that had been there not long before.
It had dived down through her entire body, but it would gather back in one spot and surface like an eight-legged monster from the dark sea.
Elza had not heard the details of the situation, but she seemed to have good instincts for this kind of thing.
“Is something the matter?”
“Eh? No, nothing. It...it doesn’t appear when I’m just sitting around...”
The delinquent girl with roughly cut hair scratched her head at Patricia’s hesitant answer.
She seemed to be a caring person because she pointed her thumb at Claire next to her.
“I don’t know what your problem is, but the world is a big place. You can even find glasses girls with tropical flowers growing from their heads smiling in the shopping district like it’s nothing. You’re free to believe whatever you want, even if that leads to some kind of complex, but try thinking through it again. Is that obstacle really insurmountable? And what would be the perfect time to overcome it?”
“Elza, you seem to think you’re being helpful, but can we speak out back later? And I don’t think a psychedelic girl who always carries around a bottle of coins like it’s her baby has any right to talk about what’s normal.”
“Oh? What’s that, Claire? Do you want me to bring out the herbicide or the lawnmower?”
The conversation jumped from place to place, moving the eye of the storm in the process. Patricia had been left behind once again, but that casual treatment may have been proof she was not being too much trouble.
At any rate, they all left the rundown apartment.
Kamisato had entered the city before the others, so he knew where the bathhouse was. He briefly considered intentionally taking a wrong turn to make a large circle back to the rundown apartment, but he could tell this was something of a life-or-death issue for Claire and Elza and he knew he would probably end up beaten to a pulp if he tried that. Obediently doing as asked seemed the best course of action.
As they walked along the nighttime street, he placed a hand on the side of his neck.
He was apparently trying to crack the joint, but it did not seem to be working.
When he noticed Patricia giving him a puzzled look, he smiled and explained.
“It has no real meaning.”
His voice sounded kind yet somehow hollow.
“I wanted some kind of continual obsession. It could have been spinning a pen, whistling, or anything else. I wanted some small spice to leave the category of dull and uninteresting, so I ended up with this habit.”
After a short while, a likely building came into view.
“There it is. See the chimney?”
“Hey, isn’t this supposed to be Academy City, the town of cutting-edge science? Isn’t the technology supposed to two or three decades ahead of things ‘outside’?”
“It must be a cutting-edge bathhouse with a cutting-edge boiler connected to that cutting-edge chimney. Now, let’s get inside. We’re not photographers in search of retro scenery.”
For some reason, Ellen grabbed Kamisato’s hand and began pulling him inside.
Confused, he came to a stop.
“Um, I arrived here a few days ago, so the situation isn’t the same for me. To be honest, I don’t really feel any need for a bath.”
“Sigh. Well, you don’t have to and I guess it’s allowable for a boy to be the one sweaty person in a group of girls. I suppose it makes you the wild type. Ah ha ha. That’s not you at all.”
“Eh?”
Kamisato brought his nose to his upper arm.
While Ellen hid her smile behind her baggy lab coat sleeve, Elza spoke up in annoyance while holding her plastic bottle in both hands.
“I vote no to that. I don’t want to get anywhere near the guys on the baseball or judo team who claim it’s a virtue and a treasure of youth or whatever. I’m not going to flat out reject everything that sweats, but at least pay some attention to your surroundings.”
“You’re such a romantic, Elza. Or rather, you have high standards. Is your ideal guy the dashing prince on horseba-...”
“D-don’t be ridiculous!! I-I-I-I don’t dr-dr-dream about th-th-things like that, y-y-y-y-you moron!!”
“Elzaaa, I know you’re panicking, but if you beat that broken glasses girl with your bottle of coins any longer, I’m gonna have to break out my crime scene investigation toolset.”
“Ah!?”
The delinquent girl came back to her senses and finally let go of the glasses girl’s collar. Claire collapsed limply to the ground, her dress’s shoulder straps slipped down, and a few petals fell from the giant twintail-like flowers.
Staying outside was not going to help, so they entered the building.
The old lady at the attendant booth tilted her head at the extremely strange grouping of a boy and four girls, but she still invited them in as customers. They had been prepared for some kind of high-tech payment system, but they apparently only had to hand change to the old lady. For a high school boy like Kamisato, this actually felt stranger than something high-tech.
Kamisato alone made his way to the men’s bath.
“See you all later.”
“Oh, right. ...Heh heh. But that ‘later’ might be a lot sooner than you think.”
A chill ran down his spine, but he decided to assume he was imagining things. The highly unique Kamisato Faction could be cruel in their words, but they were also quite caring. Ellen tended to take on the role of organizing things, so she held Patricia’s hand as she waved and started toward the women’s bath.
Inside the changing room, Kamisato found no other male customers. He did not hear any voices through the frosted glass divider either, so he may have been the only one there.
He bought shampoo and soap from a vending machine, removed his clothes, and entered the bath area. As he had expected, he was the only one in the large area, so he felt somehow lonely.
However, he was the kind of normal high school boy one could find anywhere, so being alone did not mean he started jumping into or swimming through the tub.
He sat on the small bath chair and began diligently washing his body.
It was easy to lose track of time with the lively girls around, but when alone, he tended to get lost in thought.
For example, his thoughts turned to Kamijou Touma.
He had been interrupted by the incident involving those red and black creatures and the two girls, but he could not ignore that boy either. For his group, the Kamijou issue was the main task.
He looked down at his soapy right hand.
“Do you wish for a new world?”
As soon as he muttered those words, everything vanished.
He thought quietly while narrowing his eyes at the clean hand that appeared as the soap bubbles disappeared.
He would find the answer.
He would make sure of it.
He then looked at himself in the mirror on the wall and he sighed.
(That’s more skinny than normal. I might be in trouble if I don’t start working out a little.)
How exactly would he would be in trouble?
After some thought, he realized something unpleasant was rising in his chest.
I’m not doing any of this because I want to.
He said that so often that it was losing all meaning and becoming a catch phrase, but it nearly escaped his lips again.
And then...
“...Eh heh heh.”
“?”
“Oh, what’s with the serious look in front of the mirror? You’re quite the narcissist when you’re alone, Kamisato-san. ...H-huh? I can’t see. Ahhh!! Why are my glasses fogging up now!? Don’t tell me it’s because I switched to my cheap spares after the lenses broke earlier!!!”
“Claire?”
Kamisato turned toward the absurd voice. As a modern teenager, he was unfamiliar with the exact layout of a bathhouse, but it seemed the dividing wall between the men’s and women’s baths did not reach the ceiling, leaving a gap at the top. The pervert with fogged-up glasses was poking her head out from there.
Being a girl has its advantages, he thought with a distant look in his eyes.
If the roles were reversed, he would likely have had his head split open without a chance to explain himself.
He placed a hand on the side of his neck and asked a question.
“What are you doing?”
“Eh heh heh. I sent out some cable sensor roots, so I already know there aren’t any customers besides us. And even if someone else tries to approach, I set them to automatically intercept, so we’re safe. That means we don’t need to worry about the distinction between men’s and women’s baths. What I’m saying is, how about I wash your ba-...kyah!?”
Before she could finish speaking, the glasses girl was pulled back to the other side of the wall.
The sudden disappearance looked like someone had grabbed her leg.
Then Elza’s voice came from beyond the wall.
“Don’t worry, boss! I’ll protect your chastity! ...Huh? Ellen’s missing. Did she slip away during the confusion!?”
“U-um, she went running out of the girl’s bath earlier without even putting on a towel.”
Just as a bad feeling came over Kamisato, the frosted glass door to the men’s bath slid open.
The girl stood boldly in the entrance.
She must have been loved by god because her long hair was plastered to her wet skin in a way that perfectly covered all the important bits. This was a new feeling. Could hair become clothing for mankind? A distant look filled Kamisato’s eyes as he recalled a saying as old as asking if a banana counted as a snack. He wanted to believe that thinking of that fruit after seeing this scene was not a metaphor for anything inappropriate.
Even now, Ellen hid her smile behind her hand in a misguided attempt at elegance.
“Hah hahhh!! Blame yourselves for not keeping up with me! Now, Kamisato-han, let us get to know each other a lot better!!”
“Damn her!! Now that she’s crossed that line, I’ll have to act as a human shield. I am the boss’s bodyguard, after all! I have no choice! That’s right, I have no choice!!”
“N-no fair!! I’m his bodyguard too, aren’t I!? So why was I the only one pulled away!?”
The situation was a complete mess.
Kamisato turned around and searched for an escape route, but the main entrance was blocked by Ellen while Elza and Claire were beginning to climb over the dividing wall like zombies.
He was completely cornered and Ellen slowly approached him with a smile on her face.
“You know what, Kamisato-han?”
“Yes?”
“I think you should just place the blame on us and go along with this pink situation.”
What happened next will be described in a fairly abstract fashion.
—The Fisherman Shakes Off the Kraken’s Tentacles and Escapes by the Skin of His Teeth. (In the style of a Greek sculpture)
“...”
Left all alone, Patricia quickly washed herself, returned to the changing room, and put her clothes back on. Part of it was being culturally unaccustomed to letting others see her skin, but it also had to do with Sample Shoggoth living below her skin. It was being calm now, but whenever she saw her own white skin and the blood vessels showing through, she would remember that thing that was covered in indescribable objects reminiscent of eyeballs or suckers. She would remember the fist-sized mass and the branching tentacles.
She wanted to avoid looking at it even if that did not solve anything.
The smartwatch on her wrist displayed her heartrate and blood pressure. It had originally been a health management app, but anyone who did not know about her condition would assume it was broken and needed to be reinstalled.
With nothing to do, she stood in front of the fruit milk vending machine.
(Is it a mixture of milk and a few fruit juices? Come to think of it, Leivinia likes Cinderellas and Shirley Temples, doesn’t she?)
Her sister had bragged about them by calling them non-alcoholic cocktails, but they were really just mixed drinks. Seeing this reminded her of that sister.
The sentimental feeling caused her to reach out her hand, but it apparently did not take cards. She had plenty of black cards that could be used to pay tens or even hundreds of millions of yen, but she had no loose change.
A heavy depression filled her.
She saw no ill will in the conversations among the community built around Kamisato Kakeru.
They may have had their own kind of goodness and justice.
However, that did not mean it was directed toward her.
“...”
She quietly placed her fist at the center of the down jacket covering her flat chest.
There was sweat on her bare forehead.
She hated the mere fact that this action had become a habit.
It felt the same as when a parasite spread its territory by manipulating a snail into being eaten by a bird.
Part 8
It was an unbelievable sight.
Medicine had always had a grotesque and repulsive side if one looked only at the actions and ignored the intentions. Anesthetizing a patient, cutting them open, cutting out an organ, and placing in a new one was a “good” action when one knew it was saving a life.
“Ugh.”
But when viewed directly, it was hardly surprising that Kamijou felt sick to his stomach.
“Urp!"
“Oh, was a lady’s bare skin too much for you?”
Birdway smiled and buttoned up her blouse. Her expression looked strained and it was likely due to more than just passing out. For one thing, what if it had not been an attack by Kamisato Kakeru that had caused her to pass out?
“And while I’m talking about having her eat this organ, there’s more to it than that.”
She replaced the large brooch and put on a nonchalant look.
“Threads and sheets made from corn starch are used in medicine. When used to close or cover a wound, they attach to and fuse with the human body so they do not need to be later removed. I’m creating a new organ based on that material, so it really isn’t that different from some corn potage.”
“Also, African magic includes a way to escape a curse by making a doll of wheat to take your place as well as a way to curse someone to death by sacrificing a doll made of corn.”
Birdway nodded at Index’s explanation.
“The world is filled with stories of plants or grains arranged in human form to take someone’s place. In fact, dolls made of animal matter are a lot rarer and you can’t create a doll without adding some mystery into the mix. They act all high and might about their sacrificial ceremonies, but securing a full human body is a lot harder in this day and age. They’ve had to search out replacements, so they’ve developed methods of producing the same effect as the sacrifice by eating a doll made of wheat or corn. I’m using that for my own purposes.”
Doll-sized Othinus sighed.
“That would explain why the supposedly green animal skin is red. Are you trying to grow an apple in your chest?”
It was psychedelic and grotesque.
That optimal answer seemed to rob one’s willpower just by looking at it.
But at the same time, Birdway had done enough to keep Kamijou and the others from making any kind of complaint. If she created the organ and had Patricia eat it as planned, the entire problem would be solved.
It was just as Birdway had said in the begin-->>