Snow White’s Slumber

by Reki Kawahara

  “Come, come, Takumu. I know that as a samurai, you get excited about these warriors, but don’t go getting on ahead of the show,” Kuroyukihime interjected with a wry smile, and Takumu dropped his head, embarrassed. All the while, the times continued to flow past with Megumi’s smooth narration.

  Eight hundred years ago—the Kamakura era.

  Six hundred years ago—the Muromachi era. With the formation of medieval samurai society, several small villages appeared in what was currently Suginami Ward. The area around Umesato Junior High was a village known as Ozawa, and the temple at the center was called Koenji.

  And then they passed through the warring-states era to four hundred fifty years ago—the Edo period. Many tough laborers were transforming the narrow path to the immediate north of Umesato Junior High into the broad town road. The narration informed them that the Oume highway they came to school on every day had been built for the construction of Edo Castle, and they all cried out in surprise.

  A large, imposing procession appeared on the highway. This was the procession of the third shogun, Iemitsu Tokugawa, who was said to have enjoyed falconry in Ozawa. Because Iemitsu would sometimes stay at Koenji, the name of the village eventually changed to Koenji. Looking ahead of the falconry procession on their way home, Haruyuki saw the majestic figure of Edo Castle’s tenshukaku tower keep rising, looming above the streets of Edo.

  “The Castle,” Akira murmured, and they all nodded, each weighed down with their own thoughts.

  But finally, the Great Fire of Meireki burned Edo up. The tower keep was also burned down, and the night sky was dyed a brilliant red. In the present year of 2047, the social cameras would no sooner catch the signs of a fire starting than they were sending the information to the fire department network, so there were basically no large-scale fires, and the fearsomeness of the great blaze of Edo left them all at a loss for words.

  But the gutted town was immediately rebuilt. The development of the relay station that opened to the immediate east of Koenji, Naito Shinjuku, continued, and they could clearly see the bustling streets of town from the roof of Umesato Junior High. There were any number of great fires after that, but the city continued to develop at a speed that far surpassed the fires. The culture was overripe, and the wind of a new era finally blew in the town of Edo, which boasted the largest population in the world at that time.

  One hundred seventy years earlier—the Meiji era. This was the start of the Westernization movement, and the tree-and-paper-town streets changed to stone. The light of gas lamps bled into the night fog, and horse-drawn carriages passed on the cobblestone lanes. Finally, the laying of railroads began, and Kobu Railways started operation between Ochanomizu and Hachioji. A British-made K1 steam train raced along an open field a little way from the highway, puffing black smoke, and children chased after it, cheering. At the end of the Meiji period, Kobu Railways was nationalized and became the Chuo Line.

  One hundred thirty years earlier—the Taisho era. Koenji Station was built between Nakano and Ogikubo stations, and a new town sprang up around it. Of course, this wasn’t yet the overhead rail line, and the station building was surprisingly small, but it was in exactly the same place as the current Koenji Station. The steam locomotive ran ahead of other lines and turned into a train.

  And then, a hundred years earlier. The Showa era. In place of carriages, automobiles began to race down Oume Highway. Naturally, the cars were gasoline engines, and Japanese models like Datsun were mixed in with the Fords and GMs. Airplanes and biplanes appeared in the sky.

  Before Haruyuki knew it, the wild warriors who raced on horseback across the plains of Musashino were a distant vision. Over a period of a thousand years, civilization had made surprising progress, with the feudal system becoming a democratic system to give shape to a peaceful modern society. The sun sank, and the gentle lights of incandescent lamps shone in the windows of houses.

  Suddenly, however, an ominous formation of airplanes cut across the sky high above. Black objects fell from the bellies of the machines, and several explosions erupted in Ogikubo before his eyes.

  “Huh?! Is this the Pacific War?” Chiyuri cried out, shaken. “There were air raids in Suginami?”

  “Yeah.” Haruyuki nodded and gripped the railing tightly. “There was a factory in Ogikubo that made warplanes, so it was targeted straight off.”

  “You’re quite knowledgeable, Haruyuki,” Kuroyukihime said quietly, holding down hair that fluttered in the breeze with one hand. “I had no idea until we were putting together the materials to make this exhibit. And it only happened a hundred years ago.”

  “Oh! Uh, I never actually thought about it in relation to where I live, though.”

  While they were talking, the sound of engines roared above their heads once more. This air raid was a large one. Firebombs fell from countless bombers, and the town of Koenji was enveloped in flames.

  “Ah!” Rin cried out weakly.

  The Koenji Station building crumbled in the blaze. The shops and houses in the area were burned up one after the other, the night sky dyed a bright red. And it wasn’t just Suginami; all of central Tokyo was ablaze. The narration informed them that in over a hundred air raids, including the one of the night they were watching, a third of the area of Tokyo’s twenty-three wards had been burned to ash.

  In the summer of 2045 when Haruyuki was in sixth grade, a large ceremony to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the end of the war had been held in Tokyo. Bored by himself at home, Haruyuki had watched the broadcast of the ceremony, but he hadn’t been able to feel anything, apart from an understanding that there had been a war a hundred years earlier. That was no doubt because he’d thought wars from long ago were events from different worlds, different times. But that wasn’t the case. One had happened a mere hundred years ago in the town of Koenji, where he lived.

  As he stood there watching, time continued its endless flow.

  Reduced to a barren landscape in the war, Suginami was rebuilt in the blink of an eye. A new Koenji Station building was also built, and a brand-new 101 series train began to run along the silver rails. Finally, the era of rapid growth came, and the buildings gradually got taller while traffic on Oume Highway continued to increase.

  Fifty years earlier. Forty years earlier. Thirty years earlier. The town steadily approached the form it had been in Haruyuki’s memories. The combustion engine cars moved through hybrids to eventually become electric and fuel cell vehicles, while the people coming and going on the sidewalks gripped portable terminals in their hands.

  “Ah,” Chiyuri gasped. “The social cameras.”

  He looked closely and saw that black spheres—the social cameras—had appeared all over town at some point. The introduction of the cameras had actually happened with similarly little fanfare.

  Another significant change that didn’t look like much happened right away. The terminals disappeared from people’s hands, and in their places, wearable transmission terminals—Neurolinkers—began to appear on their necks. The counter in the bottom of his field of view read −0015.

  On the other side of Koenji Station, a large skyscraper condo with a shopping mall appeared. Haruyuki’s parents had bought No. 2305 in this building, and Haruyuki had been born the following year. Even though he knew it was only a reproduction, he stared at the windows in the area of his house. He imagined his mother and father, back when they still got along, and himself as a baby living together happily in the gentle light shining through the glass. But the timer quickly passed the year his parents had divorced.

  The time it took for the exhibit to move from the Jomon era eight thousand years earlier to the present day was a mere twenty minutes. A rough calculation showed that the scale of acceleration was about two hundred million times. The exhibit seemed to decelerate as it grew closer to the present day, but even still, the fourteen years since Haruyuki was born were equivalent to a tiny spark in the long history. A time so short and insignificant that he couldn’t f
ind any meaning in it.

  But this exhibit, “Time,” was not trying to make that point. History was a series of human activities. Perhaps even time itself was. They were alive right now in the midst of the flow of vast time. The time in which all people had lived was spun into thread and woven into fabric to create the long picture scroll that was history. And that flow would continue on from now. Forever. Endlessly. This was what the exhibit was telling Haruyuki and his friends.

  “Our long historical journey is approaching its end,” came the quiet announcement to bring the exhibit to a close. “Please look to the sky now.”

  Haruyuki and company all turned their heads skyward. Although the actual time was not yet two thirty, the sky was dyed the bright red of twilight.

  The counter finally reached 0000, but the digit on the right end went just a little farther ahead and stopped at +0005. A series of glittering lights approached from the distance of the twilight sky. They stretched out—perpendicular and endless—into silver threads. A ladder that continued up to the Heavens. It was…

  “Hermes’ Cord!” Haruyuki shouted, unconsciously throwing himself backward, losing his balance, and very nearly falling down. But Kuroyukihime grabbed his right arm—and Chiyuri his left—to keep him on his feet.

  Wordlessly, Fuko took Kuroyukihime’s right hand—and Takumu Chiyuri’s left. Rin, Akira, and Utai similarly held hands. Finally, Niko and Pard joined in, and the ten formed a large circle on the roof.

  The space elevator, Hermes’ Cord, was classified as a low-earth orbit type, but since it flew along at the supersonic speed of Mach 10 at the super-high altitude of 150 kilometers above the ground, to the naked eye, it was nothing but a small point of light. But the threads of this god of flight reproduced as an AR image approached slowly, low enough in the sky that they could clearly make out the details of the bottom station, and stopped directly above Umesato Junior High. The tip of the 40-kilometer-long elevator—made principally of carbon nanotubes—melted into the sky where madder-red changed to indigo blue and disappeared from view. A silver transport ship piled with some kind of cargo ascended from the station.

  “Five years from now, in 2052,” the narration recommenced, “the world’s first international manned Mars mission will begin. The parts for the spacecraft will be carried to Hermes’ Cord’s top station, and the ship will be assembled in orbit. People who once ran through the grasslands of the Jomon era with stone lances in hand will step onto the soil of Mars eight thousand years later. But this doesn’t mean we will stop there. Humanity will continue to move forward for hundreds, thousands more years. Our parents’ generation, our own, that of our children—we will all walk that path.”

  The transport ship, having reached the edge of the sky, flickered brightly and disappeared. Hermes’ Cord started to move again and receded, swallowed into the large twilight sun.

  “This concludes the student council executive’s exhibit ‘Time.’ Thank you for joining us.”

  With Megumi’s announcement, the counter disappeared, and the red of twilight faded until the cloudy sky returned. But that was the only change that happened in his field of view. Because the view spreading out beyond Umesato Junior High had already become one with the AR image.

  There was a slight pause, and then an enormous applause swelled up from inside the school. Haruyuki also let go of Kuroyukihime’s hand and slapped his hands together enthusiastically, and his friends quickly joined him.

  Niko had supposedly stopped crying, but something bright rose in her eyes once again. Without bothering to try to hide this, the second Red King said, “I’m glad I came today. I can really feel the meaning in me being born, becoming a Burst Linker, and making friends with you guys.” Wiping roughly at her eyes with a fist, she continued jokingly, “Buuut, Kuroyukihime, you know you got high school exams, yeah? Can’t believe you had the free time to make something huge like that!”

  “Y-you don’t have to mention that now,” Kuroyukihime retorted, her face grim, and everyone laughed out loud. Soon, she was smiling, too, as she shrugged lightly. “And it’s not like I made it by myself. The president’s surprisingly good at this sort of thing…Well, I did use up thirty points, though.”

  “Ah, no fair!” Chiyuri yelped.

  “It is not ‘no fair’!” Kuroyukihime argued immediately. “There is no more just use of Burst Points than this!”

  Everyone raised their voices in laughter once again.

  Watching over this cheerful back-and-forth among his comrades, Haruyuki made one hard decision in his heart. When Lime Bell took apart the Armor of Catastrophe, Mark II, in the Unlimited Neutral Field, he’d had the thought that Citron Call might be able to rewind the extinction of Metatron, too. That hope—or regret—was still there. If there was even a 0.1 percent chance, he felt compelled to try it.

  But.

  Chocolat Puppeteer, who he’d met in the Setagaya Area, had explained to him that when a dead Enemy is restored, it’s at best the same species of Enemy; the exact same individual is not reproduced. The bond that took long hours to build was gone forever.

  Even if he could bring Metatron back, there was no guarantee it would be the proud Archangel who fought Haruyuki, helped him, spoke to him, and was destroyed protecting him. If she regenerated as a completely new Legend-class Enemy Archangel Metatron, that individual would immediately kill Haruyuki and Chiyuri on the spot.

  He wasn’t afraid of being attacked. But Metatron’s essential nature was a “soul” that had lived in the Unlimited Neutral Field the vast amount of time of eight thousand years—in terms of human history, from the Jomon era to the present day—cultivating knowledge and deepening her thinking. To revive her as a soulless Enemy was a desecration of his Metatron. Above all else, she herself would not want that.

  “What’s. The matter…Arita?” Rin had come up beside him at some point, and now she tugged on his sleeve, and Haruyuki came back to himself, hurriedly shaking his head.

  “Uh, oh, no, it’s nothing. I was just, um, thinking about stuff.”

  “I’ve. Thought a lot. Too. Like. I have to cherish. The time I spend with you. Like this…Even more than. I have…”

  “Uh, oh, y-yeah, right.” Haruyuki started to nod, and Kuroyukihime grabbed his collar; Fuko, Rin’s sleeve.

  “Haruyuki, I’m very happy that the student council exhibit caused you to think about a number of things, but I didn’t intend the takeaway to be that you should deepen your relationship with any particular girl.”

  “That’s right, Rin. I would appreciate it if you would also cherish your special training with me as much as the time you spend with Corvus.”

  ““R-right…”” Haruyuki and Rin replied together.

  “The message I got was there’s no time to waste,” Pard commented coolly. “There’s thirty minutes left until the school festival ends at three.”

  “Oh yeah. Anything you wanna recommend that we haven’t seen yet?” Niko asked, having completely wiped her tears away.

  Haruyuki thought a minute, the collar of his shirt still gripped from behind. He’d already shown them his own class’s exhibit, and anyway, after they’d all been knocked out by the student council’s super-junior-high-student-level AR display, he would be too embarrassed to show them the work he’d finished up in a single night. Did any of the other classes do something that might be fun…?

  Pard was apparently headed for even greater impatience in life, because she said, as though she just couldn’t wait any longer, “Then we show Kuroyuki, Chiyu, and the professor Haru’s class’s exhibit, too.”

  It appeared that the two members of the Red Legion had decided to call Kuroyukihime “Kuroyuki,” Chiyuri “Chiyu,” Takumu “the professor,” and Haruyuki by his full name or “Haru” in the real world. This kind of nickname normally came into existence spontaneously at some point, but his heart couldn’t help but skip a beat at Pard suddenly calling him Haru after going with Crow all this time. He coughed to hide his surprise.
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br />   “B-but it’s totally nothing compared with the student council’s display…”

  “What are you talking about? I’ve really been looking forward to it. As have Takumu and Chiyuri,” Kuroyukihime said, letting go of his collar.

  Chiyu-Taku also chimed in enthusiastically.

  “Of! Course! It’s our class display, and if we didn’t have time today, I was going to get you to let me see it after the festival closes to the public.”

  “Same here. I’ve been hearing good things about it.”

  “…O-okay then, just for a sec…” He nodded slightly, although he was actually happy to hear Kuroyukihime and the others say that.

  “Right.” Fuko clapped her hands together and smiled brilliantly. “We’re all together at last, so after that, why don’t we go to the Animal Kingdom again? Sacchi and the others haven’t tried it yet.”

  “Huh?” Haruyuki stiffened instantly, and Pard, Niko, Akira, Utai, and Rin looked away awkwardly. But when the still-smiling Fuko went so far as to wink exaggeratedly at him, Haruyuki couldn’t refuse. He turned back toward a doubtful Kuroyukihime, Chiyuri, and Takumu. “Uh, um. Okay then, let’s get going to eighth-grade Class C…”

  The last thirty minutes of the festival actually saw a number of exciting developments.

  Fortunately, the three who hadn’t yet seen “Thirty Years Ago in Koenji,” the class exhibit Haruyuki had worked so hard on—although his hard work was about a hundredth of the efforts of Kuroyukihime—appeared to enjoy it. This era passed by in the blink of an eye in the student council exhibit, but if you looked closely at the recent past of around 2017, it did make you think about all kinds of things…was Kuroyukihime’s comment.

  Then they headed toward the problematic eighth-grade Class B’s Café Animal Kingdom. Reina Izeki, the project producer and fellow member of the Animal Care Club, grinned as she led them to a table. “So you’re back, Pres?” Just like the last time, they ordered drinks with animal names. Chiyuri, on her first visit, chose the Kitten’s Prank, and similarly inexperienced Kuroyukihime ordered the Twilight Crow.