“It’s nothing worth thanking me for,” R replied curtly and adjusted the hat on her head.
▽
After miraculously overcoming that last incident without any injury, the year’s summer festival came to a close. And safely, for the most part. All that was left was to head home, but the police stopped me for questioning because I had seen the perpetrator up close. I asked everyone else to go on ahead of me, and answered all I could with the other pyrotechnicians. All told, it took about 30 minutes.
By then, there were barely any people left around. Only the festival workers who were cleaning up afterward were still on the grounds. I cast a sidelong glance at the people closing up their stands as I left the community center. There was nobody outside along the road up to the community center, either. All the visitors had long since left, while those cleaning up had yet to do so. Perhaps precisely because it was that liminal moment...
“Whew...”
The surroundings were too quiet. I exhaled loudly in what may or may not have been a sigh. I had a feeling this would happen. I spotted it immediately—that red kimono peeking from the shadow of a utility pole.
“I can see you.”
“Hwuh?!”
After a small squeal, L revealed herself hesitantly. She had a rather awkward expression. I waited for her to speak.
“...Why did you save me?”
“Anyone would have done the same,” I answered with a shrug.
“Liar! I came to erase you, you know? Why would you save someone like that...”
“That’s just the kind of person Rekka is,” R answered. “He’s the type of person to move instinctively when he encounters situations like that. He’s exactly as the doctor described to us...”
L reacted to the word “doctor” with a twitch.
“L, I don’t know what you’ve been told or by whom... But who do you think you should trust more: the person who told you to kill this gullible idiot, or the doctor who told you to protect him?”
“Shut up! Don’t talk about that person before me!” L suddenly raged, glaring at R furiously.
“By that person, do you mean the doctor? Why would you say that? The doctor was really worried when you disappeared.”
“Lies! The doctor threw me away!” L continued to shake her head, denying R’s words “We were created to save the future, you know?! That’s what we were designed for! What we were trained for! And... And the doctor took that away from me! That means I have no purpose anymore!”
Suzuran’s face suddenly flashed through my mind. Before Suzuran was Suzuran, she was a homunculus named Silver Slayer. Her body was made of quicksilver—a vampire’s weakness—and like her namesake suggested, she was created to slay them. L seemed to be in a similar situation. She’d been created for a single purpose, but that job had been taken away by her little sister. I couldn’t even imagine how crushed she must have been by that.
That was probably how the one R said was “pulling the strings” took advantage of L’s dejection. It may have been a different method, but it was still a mission to “save the future” that they’d given her.
“L, the agency did not remove you from your mission with ill intent. The doctor simply...”
“Shut up! You don’t understand how I feel! How a reject like me feels...!”
“...”
“The doctor threw me away because my specs were lower than yours, no?! I’m a useless reject... That’s why I was tossed in the protected residential division!”
“Just stop it already.” R’s attitude suddenly changed as she shut L down.
“R?”
R ignored me and approached L in a careless—near defenseless—way, and then grabbed her by the collar.
“Useless reject, lower specs... As if the doctor would abandon you over things like that! There’s no way I would abandon you over that!”
R was shouting with all her emotions on full display, and her roar made L cower. She must have been pretty shocked, too... I’d never heard R talk like that.
“It’s true that after you were transferred to the protected residential division, the doctor got too busy with my final adjustments to visit you. But the doctor was still always thinking about you! And when I went to visit you after my adjustments were completed...”
“Sh-Shut up!” L smacked away R’s hand as she stumbled over her words, then distanced herself.
“L!”
“I won’t be fooled by your words! I’m going to save the future and prove my worth on my own!” L yelled at R.
She then started to disperse into particles, but before she disappeared, she pointed at me and said, “I’m never going to give up!”
Now only R—who had just stiffened up—and me were left on the dark street.
“R.”
“...It seems I really can’t do it as well as you, Rekka,” she muttered as she adjusted her hat. Then she did a flip in the air and regained her typical expressionless demeanor. “Now, let’s hurry back home. Harissa’s waiting.”
“Y-Yeah.”
I descended the hill with R moving at her usual place by my side. We were both silent for a while, but then...
“Hey, R...”
“What is it?”
“What are you going to do about L?”
“Who knows?”
“Don’t say that...”
“Oh, don’t worry. I’ll be sure to protect you if L tries to target you again.”
“That’s not what I mean...”
“Well, there’s nothing else to be done with someone so stubborn,” R said, casting her eyes downward.
“She’ll be back before long, knowing her.”
“I’ll try convince her again when she does.”
“I see...”
If R wasn’t giving up, then it would probably be fine.
“But let me know if there’s anything I can do to help, okay? I’ll try persuading her, too.”
“Oh, really?” For some reason, R got a gleam in her eye when I said that. “Then once we return home, sleep with Harissa.”
“Wh-What?!” I spluttered loudly, completely flustered.
“Didn’t you say you’d help me? If you would just put an end to my story and stop the War of All, L would have no reason to target you anymore. Everything would be solved, and that’d be that.”
“Ugh...”
“What are you grumbling about? You even celebrated your engagement in Harissa’s hometown the other day. Now go enjoy your spousal privileges.”
“Th-That was just a friendly visit! Harissa never said anything in the end, anyway...”
“That’s because you didn’t seal the deal. But whatever. I can settle for a summer fling instead. Let’s head to Iris’s spaceship immediately.”
“We can’t do that, either!”
“Oh? Are you saying you won’t be satisfied with just one? Then we can visit Rosalind’s mansion and Rain’s place, too...”
“That’s not the problem!”
—Fin—
R’s Special Mission: Final Report
“Thus concludes my report.”
I informed my superior of the investigation report I had just transmitted, containing all the information I had gathered on the heroines until now. With that, my special mission should have been completed, but...
“Wait, R.”
“What is it?”
It was pointless, but I feigned ignorance anyway.
“Why did you let L escape?”
I knew I had that question coming.
“She had a particle relocator in her possession.”
“Taking into account your abilities and equipment, it should have been possible to apprehend her before she used the particle relocator.”
“...”
“Why did you purposefully let her escape?”
Well, I seemed to be in a bit of a pinch. It didn’t look like I could talk myself out of this one. I had at least 20 frivolous excuses prepared, but each one only had a fifty-fifty
chance of working. What to do...?
“Intentionally allowing a hostile to escape is a severe breach of orders. You will be dismissed immediately if you are deemed to be unsuitable for the mission.”
“All right, that’s enough.”
Just then, my superior and I were interrupted by a third party cutting in on the chat log. There were only letters displayed on the screen, but I knew it was...
“Doctor?”
“Ding, ding, ding! As expected of my daughter. You knew right away.”
There was no mistaking it. This lighthearted tone had to be the doctor—the one who’d created both me and L.
“Doctor, you may be one of the leaders of the agency, but this is a breach of protocol—”
“What are you pretending to be so calm for? The jig is up, you fool.”
Jig? What was going on?
“It’s been revealed that you guys were the ones who betrayed the agency, kidnapped L, and sent her as an assassin.”
“...”
“You sure had some guts using my daughter like that, you rotten bastards. A neutralizing squad will be there within three seconds, just you wait.”
“W—”
The messages from my superior cut off there.
“Good grief, what scum...”
“Doctor. What’s the meaning of this?”
“It’s exactly what it sounds like. Humanity remains the same no matter how much time passes. I’m still investigating whether or not they were bribed, but they were the ones who took L out of the protected residential division and handed her to the other side.”
“I see. Were they the ones who sent L to this time period, as well?”
“I believe they were involved somehow. But it was reckless of them. The space-time translocator isn’t something that can be easily operated. Calculating the rewind of a constantly flowing variable like time, approximating a time line, securing four-dimensional coordinates—both pre-computed and in real time... Do they realize just how complicated that all is? No one other than me could possibly do it all properly.”
“I see. But at least I understand now.”
“Understand what?”
“This ‘special mission’ of mine.”
It was probably a ploy to separate me from Rekka and make him an easier target for assassination. L had mentioned that her immediate contact with Rekka was an unforeseen circumstance, which meant she was initially supposed to be teleported elsewhere. Then she would just have to wait for me to leave Rekka’s side so she could assassinate him. The reason why my special mission was given the oddly long deadline of “until the end of summer” was probably because they had issues getting the space-time translocator working perfectly, just like the doctor suggested. They only had a rough estimate of where they’d be sending L back to, so they were just trying to keep me busy for a while. If they’d specified the month, day, hour, and minute precisely, then they’d have to make sure I wasn’t with Rekka at that exact moment—which they couldn’t necessarily do. In the end, their inability to operate the space-time translocator properly had led to the downfall of their plan.
“I’ve got the general gist of what’s going on now. Do you know who’s behind this, by any chance?”
“No, unfortunately. Not even I have the faintest clue. The agency is investigating to the best of its ability, though.”
“Oh, well.”
Though they may have had the help from my former superior, we were dealing with someone good enough to hide L from the agency, after all. It wouldn’t be that easy to identify them.
“All right. I’ll leave the investigations to you, Doctor. I will continue my mission.”
“You got it, girl. Oh, I had something I wanted to ask you, R.”
“What is it?”
“Why did you let L escape?”
“...”
“Oh, don’t get me wrong. I’m not mad; I’m just curious. L was right in front of you, and you had the ability to catch her. So why not do it?”
“While the particulars are unknown, L technically assisted an opposing entity and betrayed the agency.”
I decided there was no need to lie to the doctor and spoke honestly.
“On top of that, I failed in trying to talk her down, and she continues to stubbornly target Rekka. I deduced that the agency would deal with her appropriately if I were to apprehend her in that state.”
“So you wanted to win her over and get her to at least offer the agency information about who was behind all this? That is why you delayed capturing her?”
I hadn’t gone into that much detail with what I typed, but the doctor read between the lines.
“All right, all right. I get it. Leave the convincing in the future to me. You focus on convincing L. Oh, and I don’t mind if you punish the runaway daughter a little. Mother will allow it.”
“Understood,” I replied with a wry smile. “And also... I have something I’d like to ask you too, Doctor.”
“Hmm? What’s up?”
“If I recall correctly, during my pre-education stage, you said I had to know about how Rekka’s... how the male mind was charmed by the female chest. You had a lot of graphic references, too.”
“Indeed. I made sure you had all the materials you’d need. You didn’t have any interest at first, but you eventually got so into it you started to reach for m—”
“That’s irrelevant right now.”
I put a stop to the doctor’s trip down memory lane right there.
“When you showed me the footage, I asked you why my chest was flat, to which you replied: ‘If Observer R had a big and charming chest, the target Rekka Namidare would be constantly in agony.’ Is that right?”
“That’s what I said.”
That answer made perfect sense. My mission was to have Rekka choose a heroine—not me—in order to save the future, after all. It would have been a hindrance to my mission if he developed desires for me. And I had accepted all this.
“However, when I made contact with L the other day, I discovered her bust size was set two centimeters larger than mine.”
“Oh, my.”
“Don’t give me that. There’s no mistaking my scanner readings. What’s the meaning of this? L was meant to take the same mission I did. What is the reason for the discrepancy?”
“Sounds like you’ve finally reached that age, huh? Being bothered about things like this...”
Excuse me? What was this phony mother saying?
“I’m not bothered. I’m just questioning why such a design flaw occurred.”
“It’s not a flaw, per se. Maybe L just grew up?”
“Kiklim are artificial life forms. Growth is impossible.”
“Even artificial life forms can grow up. How else would your heart grow into worrying about things like this?”
“...!”
It really shouldn’t be possible, but that declaration sounded so certain that I could hardly say a word in return. Come to think of it... L had a really colorful range of emotions for a Kiklim. Was that because she had “grown up”?
“I can’t believe my precious R is worried about the size of her chest... Is this puberty?”
“I’m only 12 years old.”
“Heh. At any rate, I’m glad to see you have more emotions compared to before. I’m so happy you turned out to be a nice girl.”
I could feel the affection in the text from the other side of the screen. It really did seem like moods could transcend time and space.
“That’s because I’m your daughter.”
I sent that message to the future containing all of my affection.
“All right. You take care of yourself now, you hear?”
“You too, Doctor.”
The semi-transparent display screen disappeared after that last message.
“Now then...”
“Hmm?”
Rekka had been reading a magazine on his bed, and reacted to the first thing I said out loud in a while
“
What’s wrong, R?”
“No, it’s nothing,” I answered while looking at Rekka’s face. “Something just crossed my mind all of a sudden. Let’s do our best.”
—Fin—
Afterword
This was volume nine of the battlefield love comedy, bringing you a summer vacation full of mostly suspense and little bit of vacation. Hello again to the readers returning from volume eight, and it’s nice to meet all of you who bought all nine volumes at once.
While volumes seven and eight also occurred during summer vacation, this time the story revolves around a more traditional take on high school summer vacation. You know, the usual. Baseball, training camps, yokai exterminations, pools, pools, and more pools.
And it was full of heroines in swimsuits that weren’t revealed last time (volume five)! Watanuki designed numerous wonderful swimsuits for this volume (I may have been a little selfish and requested more swimsuit illustrations...). Personally, I am wholly and utterly satisfied that we were able to include the swimsuits of the “last bosses,” as R put it. Make sure to check that out right away if you haven’t read it yet! Volume nine of Little Apocalypse is also my tenth volume as the author Namekojirushi. I only realized that as I was writing this afterword, but I was kind of touched. It’s all thanks to you readers who support me. Thank you all so very, very much.
When I first released volume one of Little Apocalypse, I wondered if it would last, but somehow... the series has been around for, uh, what? Two years now? This is also all thanks to... You all know the drill now.
And now for the acknowledgments. Firstly, to Nao Watanuki, whose continually diverse character design has allowed Little Apocalypse to continue as it has... I mentioned it earlier, but the lovely swimsuit illustrations and various summer vacation scenes were illustrated in the best way possible. Thank you very much.
To my editor, Mr. Nanbu, who’s been looking after me since my debut, thank you very much. Also to the comic author Koji Hasegawa; the editing and sales departments at HJ Bunko; the bookstores; and the readers who are supporting Little Apocalypse, I hope you’ll continue reading.
And finally, a little self-promotion! I have actually started a new series concurrent to this one at Fujimi Fantasia Bunko. The illustrations will be done by the well-known Youta, who draws cute, sexy, cool, and beautiful artwork. The first volume will probably be released next month in October. Please check the Fujimi Shobo homepage, Twitter, or Dragon Magazine for further details. I hope you’ll enjoy my new series, too.
I Saved Too Many Girls and Caused the Apocalypse: Volume 9 Page 15
