“Speaking broadly, if he was a normal person, I would tell you he needs absolute quiet to rest. Going into more detail—first, bruises all over and a concussion. Next, dislocation of the right shoulder and left ankle. Finally, pressure on his internal organs…”
“…Meaning you can’t make a call, right?” asked a tall man with beetle-like glossy black hair, choosing his words carefully.
The doctor let out a heavy sigh. “There is one piece of good news, I suppose…The scariest thing was the possibility of oxygen deprivation, because he was underwater for such a long time…but it seems the damage was minimal.”
The young doctor continued, looking at what seemed to be medical records in digitized form. “Still…Despite several eyewitness accounts, the root cause isn’t something I can believe out of the blue. A human body being blown hundreds of meters over a bridge, then skipping off the water like a rock before slamming into it…The situation by itself is unbelievable, but the fact that he staggered to his feet amid the worst of a disaster like that is strange, to say the least.”
“He was going easy…,” muttered someone from the dark hallway.
The doctor turned that way, but he couldn’t tell who’d said it. They were an odd group. So many of them all together in the hospital stood out magnificently, but nobody was individually conspicuous. It looked like a scene of a random crowd of people. And that was despite close to fifty of them being bandaged up.
“Anyway,” started the beetle man—the only conspicuous one of their number—asking the doctor, “this doesn’t mean it’s all over, yeah?” just to make sure. “If he can talk, I’d like to give him a quick apology, if I could.”
“Wh-what are you saying?! He needs complete bed rest! A-and I don’t know what you want to apologize for, but that’s not a good idea right now. He’s asleep from the anesthesia. And even without its effects, he probably wouldn’t have the stamina to wake up. We need to let him rest for the moment.” The doctor indicated the concentrated care room with his jaw. “And besides…”
In order to make it easy to see changes in patients at a glance, even from outside, the intensive care room had glass panes for walls, and they could see several patients asleep from the hallway. On one of the beds, ringed with a cluster of machines, lay a spiky-haired boy.
The beetle man glanced that way at the doctor’s suggestion. His face clouded slightly.
As though nestling against the bed, or as though kneeling on the floor, was a girl. A girl in a white habit, gripping the patient’s palm, enfolding it with both hands.
Index.
“…My experience as a doctor tells me to let them be,” cautioned the young doctor, having eliminated the emotion from his face.
The beetle man didn’t seem to have the guts to go inside and interrupt, either. After he nodded quietly, the doctor walked away down the hallway.
The beetle man—Saiji Tatemiya—took just one step away from the glass wall of the patient’s new room.
It frustrated him to no end, but there was nothing he could do for the boy. None of the healing or recovery magic handed down in Amakusa would work. All he could do was pray for his safety—and he didn’t know if he even had the right to do that.
They’d told him they’d protect him from Acqua of the Back, but they’d been literally kicked to pieces. Routed. Tatemiya and the others were in shambles after the man’s attack, which felt almost like a quick side job. They each fell to the ground as Acqua moved toward his target, and they could do nothing but watch him go.
On top of that, at the end, the person they were guarding fought to defend his Amakusa “friends”…and this is how he ended up. Bandages wrapped around his whole body, gauze plastered to his skin. A civilian wouldn’t have been able to tell, but it was plain to see from a sorcerer’s point of view. Even their blending in to the environment, like in peacetime, had thinned.
Amakusa had lost—to everything.
They’d lost to Acqua of the Back, and more importantly, they’d lost to Touma Kamijou.
“…Damn it.”
Tatemiya gritted his teeth. Battered though they were, the enemy wouldn’t wait. According to Itsuwa, Acqua of the Back said if they didn’t let him sever Touma Kamijou’s right arm and take it before a day was up, Acqua would attack Kamijou again. Obviously, they couldn’t let either of those happen—his right arm being taken or him being attacked.
They knew what they had to do.
They had to stand up and face anything in order to protect Kamijou.
“And why are you curled up like that?” asked Tatemiya.
In a corner, which had even less light than the dimly lit hallway, making it practically a lump of blackness, he sensed something like a small animal giving a start.
It was difficult to tell without looking closely.
But it was Itsuwa there, without a doubt, making herself small on the couch.
Bandages on her limbs, a square piece of gauze covering her right cheek. It looked incredibly painful, but it was her mind that had been shattered, broken so badly her physical wounds couldn’t compare.
“…I…I…”
Her voice was shaky and punctuated by a hiccup. A sob. She’d already shed so many tears that she couldn’t control her diaphragm.
“…I said…I said I’d protect him. My spear, my magic…None of it helped…But he said…he said thank you…I couldn’t protect him at all. I couldn’t even get a single hit in as Acqua walked away…But he thanked me…”
He could hear the sound of falling drops. It may have been tears, or it may have been blood from her palm, from her clenched fist.
“When…When I heard about him, I thought, What amazing power he must have. But I was wrong. He can’t rely on any defensive spells. No matter how much healing magic I use, I can’t even fix a glancing wound. He truly was fighting unarmed, and yet I…”
“Itsuwa…”
“I left him to suffer and did nothing.”
At that point, Itsuwa might have been smiling. As she sniffled, he could see a twist in her face that looked like one.
“Why is someone like that living such a carefree life by herself? There’s one odd person among the victims, so why isn’t she stricken by divine judgment?! This doesn’t make any sense. I should have been the one sleeping in that bed!! That would have solved everything!!”
Her sentences wavered between strength and weakness. She was confiding in them, talking to herself, repenting, venting, complaining, and howling like a beast—all at the same time.
She didn’t have a full grasp of her own emotions.
She was so cornered that she couldn’t give them any thought.
Tatemiya narrowed his eyes slightly when he realized that, then stepped toward Itsuwa, splitting the dark shroud.
“You gonna stand up?”
“…”
“What the heck are you doing anyway?” he asked lightly, but then he grabbed Itsuwa’s collar with a hand. Before anyone could say anything, he lifted her with fearsome strength and slammed her against the nearby wall.
A dreadful thud echoed through the hallway.
The impact shot through Itsuwa’s back, making it hard to breathe. But she didn’t put up any sort of resistance. She just gasped for oxygen, glaring back at Tatemiya with tear-soaked eyes.
“…too, you…,” she managed to say between breaths. “Tatemiya, you lost, too…”
“…”
She knew how ugly her words were. And that she shouldn’t have been venting her anger on Tatemiya. But she still pierced him with what she said—because her mind couldn’t endure any more without doing it. This girl, Itsuwa, truly wanted to protect the boy. She earnestly desired to fulfill her promise. And those feelings had been shattered to pieces by overwhelming force. They were precious, something Itsuwa alone needed to understand.
But instead of all that, Tatemiya said, “He risked his life to save someone like this?”
Itsuwa’s eyes widened at the remark. She looked
like he’d stabbed her with a knife. Her face hadn’t betrayed any pain even when he’d slammed her against the wall, but now it was filled with a twisted agony.
“Roughed up in front of your friends, in front of the one who saved your life and got wrecked for it…And you still do nothing. That kid seriously sacrificed himself for the likes of you? What a waste of life. It’s a dog’s death, is what it is. Hah. Pretty simple when it comes down to it, eh? This was just some idiot saving an idiot and doing something idiotic.”
Itsuwa’s face flushed with heat. Still being held up, she let out an animal-like roar and tried to throw a punch at Tatemiya. Before she could, though, he took her body from the wall it was up against and swung her down to the floor.
There came a rumble so loud it sounded like an earthquake.
He remained towering over Itsuwa, who was now having difficulty breathing again, and looked into her eyes. “Listen up. You don’t seem to understand this, so I’ll spell it out for you.”
His voice was low. Very low.
Fires of anger smoldered in Saiji Tatemiya’s tone.
“Acqua of the Back will return.”
Itsuwa gave a start.
Tatemiya forced her to think about the facts again—he knew them so well it made him want to pretend he didn’t.
“While we’re here worrying ourselves to death, the time limit keeps ticking down. Our lives already have a low chance of continuing, and with every second we waste, it gets a whole lot lower! Are you going to let that happen? There’s still a chance. However small it may be, there’s still a chance. And you’re going to throw it all away because of your bullshit regrets and guilt?! You’re going to give up and let his right arm be cut off before he knows the difference?! If you want to protect his smile, then get up. Don’t throw away someone else’s life just because it’s convenient for you!”
His shouting was practically a roar.
Itsuwa said nothing, so he continued, “If help came whenever we asked, we’d already be doing that. If someone told us our saint—our Priestess—would come, we could leave the rest to her. But that’s too good to be true. It’s impossible. Listen here—Acqua of the Back is absolutely going to return. Are you willing to make this hospital into a battlefield? All because you wanted to escape reality?!”
“Tate…miya…”
“You can stay quiet all you want, but Acqua won’t stop!! Even if we ask for help, the English Church won’t change their plans and send some nice little reinforcements!! All that’s left is for those who can move to move. We’re the only ones here who can fight!! We may be pitiful, but if we don’t do something now, who is going to protect that kid?! He’s still under the effects of anesthesia!! Don’t you get it?!”
The hand gripping Itsuwa’s collar cracked. He was holding on to it so strongly, he could have destroyed his own hand. And Itsuwa knew—she wasn’t the only one feeling angry, ashamed of herself. All of them had tried to protect Touma Kamijou, all of them had failed, and all of them accepted it.
They would still rise again.
They felt the shame of defeat, but instead of falling to their knees, they would rise.
To protect what was important to them.
Then…
I…I’m…
“You want to apologize to him?” he said, looking into her eyes. “You want to help that kid you’re supposed to protect? The one in there, all messed up? You want to get him back out into the sunlight?”
Itsuwa forgot to cough, even, and nodded slightly. She said something, but a sob made it indiscernible.
“…Then fight. Prove to him you’re the best woman out there. Let him know it was a good thing he risked his life for you. Apologies or smiles—no one can do either without being alive. Unless you want to repent in front of his grave, all we can do is fight.”
Tatemiya took his hand from her collar and slowly rose. He looked around, then asked the others, “Are there any other idiots who think like Itsuwa here?”
His voice carried through the hallway, as if thoroughly demolishing the depressed atmosphere brought on by their regret and powerlessness.
“If there are, then step forward. I’ll wake you up.”
Nobody answered.
But everyone was prepared.
Their regret and their sense of powerlessness hadn’t disappeared—they just had something stronger: the will to fight.
Tatemiya looked among his nearly fifty comrades gathered in the dimly lit hospital hallway and said, “If not, then fine. Now we just have to give this everything we have.”
The members of the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church wouldn’t turn back.
They left the boy and the sister in the intensive care unit and headed off to battle against a strong enemy again.
“Seriously. Someone right in front of us who can’t be saved? I expect everyone to reach out and help.”
There was only one thing to do.
Their king was in check, so they needed to turn the tables and protect the boy’s life.
2
Acqua of the Back lingered in the night’s darkness. He was in a forested park on a street corner some distance away from District 22’s third stratum urban district. His reason for being here was simple—he wanted to distance himself as much as he could from the artificial objects of scientific technology flooding the place. Of course, now that he’d realized even these woods were science themselves, an application of hydroponic technology, he was currently in low spirits.
The whole underground must be a space entirely created with machinery.
A starry sky hung above him, but even that was an illusion of planetarium screens. Anyone with a little knowledge of magic would have spotted the difference.
Lighting here was sparse, as if to keep expenses low. One small, square light, however, shone in the darkness: Acqua’s cell phone.
He was talking to the Roman Orthodox pope. Their phones, though, weren’t powered on. The glow on the tip of the antenna was the glow of magic.
Even with this, we can’t be sure nobody is listening in. Amakusa, was it?—those English Puritan vanguards seemed to have been here as well.
Still, it was better than stupidly using a phone inside the grand headquarters of the world’s science faction.
“I have to say,” said the pope, “I hadn’t thought you’d stop short of killing him and only take his arm. I believe Vento of the Front told me that those in God’s Right Seat never changed their philosophies.”
“That’s because Vento has personality issues. In actuality, we must be flexible in each situation, ready to take action as circumstances demand…Of course, in Terra’s case, he took it too far.”
Acqua had been the one to butcher someone in his group and send his corpse to enemy organizations, but he didn’t seem to feel regret or guilt over it.
“The reality is,” he continued, “that the boy’s uniqueness is focused in his right arm. Stealing that means removing the threat. We don’t have the time to be absorbed with a single young man.”
“Personally, I prefer it that way as well,” said the pope on the other end. Acqua thought he heard him smile. “I said this to Vento earlier as well, but…Destruction is the only choice for enemies of God who have clearly become such by their own volition—but I hear the boy in question does not yet know God. To be honest, I have qualms about simply killing him. Of course, Vento snorted when I said that.”
“…I don’t know what you expect from me,” said Acqua, voice level, “but I’m neither as upright or altruistic as you. If the time comes when I must kill him, I will do so. Now is not that time. If that time does come, I will merely kill him. I’m sure there is a future in which that time doesn’t come, should several choices and strokes of luck align. That is all this is about.”
He wasn’t lying. Only four people were part of the world’s highest organization. Terra of the Left, one of those few, had been swiftly murdered—by Acqua of the Back’s hand. If the boy was no longer hostile after his right a
rm was gone, that was fine. If he was, or if he refused to proffer his arm—the rest was simple.
Acqua would erase him.
It was so simple when put into words, and the single strike he needed to send the boy to his grave would be even more curt than his words. Because Acqua had the power. He had the resolve. And even knowing that, his face remained stone cold.
“Such an odd situation,” said the Roman pope abruptly. “God’s Right Seat was established as advisors to generations of popes, and now it has trodden into the center of enemy territory while I, the pope, observe from the Vatican.”
Crossism was a monotheistic religion.
They had but one God, and all miracles were centralized and managed around that one God. He was absolute, so nobody could resist him. Originally, all the world would have been filled with happiness, and no unhappy people would have ever appeared.
However, what was the reality?
A glance through history showed it clearly: The failure of the Crusades, the spread of the Black Death, the expansion of the Ottoman Turks. It was far from people being happy or not—the entirety of the European continent faced several turning points where it could have been annihilated.
It was too much for a single pope. But as the symbol of a religion holding up their God as absolute, the very act of consulting with another would, in a way, be scandalous.
That was why God’s Right Seat was created. A special group of consultants riding alongside Crossist society’s pyramidal structure, seeking to have such knowledge and power that even a pope could rely on them as needed.
Cardinals, consuls, tacticians—completely different from all these, people who didn’t actually exist inside that pyramid, carrying out the role of providing voiceless advice.
It always had four seats. The members of the Right Seat corresponded to the four archangels, who were especially important angels. Their existence had continued by switching out one after another—the “contents” only—in accordance with its need.
Still, perhaps at times, despite the terrible situations, the popes had relied overmuch on their shadow advisors. At some point, the Roman Orthodox Church had fixed itself around God’s Right Seat at the center.
A Certain Magical Index, Vol. 16 Page 8
