“Should I be happy about this or upset?”
Sylvie wore a complicated expression. After another good look at her face, Elmer muttered:
“Well, no, but… Even if she switched her glasses for contacts, Sylvie wasn’t this tall, and her figure was pretty short on curves, and, I mean, she was seventeen then! No matter how you look at this lady, she’s over twenty! Czes hasn’t grown, so there’s no way Sylvie would—”
“She didn’t drink it then. The elixir of immortality.”
Elmer’s doubts were natural for someone who’d known her before, but Maiza interrupted and briefly explained. Picking up where he’d left off, Sylvie began to tell the story, sounding somehow entertained.
“I became an alchemist because I wanted eternal beauty. I got the liquor that would bring me eternal life on that ship, but unfortunately, I was only seventeen, and I wasn’t fully grown yet. So I stealthily poured the liquor into a little bottle, spent several years polishing myself, and then I drank it.”
At that explanation, Elmer dubiously looked her up and down.
“…In other words, you’re the ‘twenty-something Sylvie’ version?”
“What do you mean, ‘version’? Well, I suppose it’s a bit like that.”
After thinking a little, Elmer set a hand on Sylvie’s shoulder and spoke. His eyes were filled with pity.
“Sylvie. Before we rejoice over our reunion, tell me one thing, and be honest.”
“What is it?”
Under Elmer’s suddenly serious gaze, Sylvie’s pulse quickened slightly.
“Don’t worry. No matter what the answer is, I won’t abandon you. We’ve got eternity, and you can atone for your sins little by little.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just give it to me straight. Exactly how much blood, from how many little kids, did you bathe in to get so beautiful?!”
“I really hope you know you how incredibly rude that was.”
Sylvie raised her arm, preparing to slap Elmer’s cheek. Evading it by a hair, he turned back to Maiza and the others.
“Well, all joking aside…”
“Tell me exactly where the joking started and ended. Please.”
“I actually knew you were Sylvie the moment I saw you. Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”
Sighing wordlessly, Sylvie raised her right hand high in the air again.
“Whoops… Huh?”
As Elmer tried to back up to avoid it, his body was abruptly pinned in place.
Maiza had hold of his right arm, while Nile’s hand gripped his left.
“Elmer, Elmer… That was really unkind.”
“Let me just say this: A slap for that is inevitable.”
Firmly trapped between them, his legs rose slightly into the air.
“Huh? Wait, uh, seriously?”
As Elmer turned pale, Sylvie’s palm bore down on him in an elegant arc, and—
With the sharp, pleasant slap echoing in his ears, Czes stood a little apart from the others, gazing up into space.
“Elmer and Sylvie haven’t changed a bit.”
Czes murmured sadly so the others couldn’t hear, seeming oddly grown-up.
“—So I’m the only one who has…?”
They’re smiling. Master Elmer and the people from elsewhere who came to the castle.
They’re smiling as if they’re enjoying themselves, really having fun.
Master Elmer hasn’t changed at all. It’s the same smile he always gives me.
ButI can’t smile.
If I could, like that…
Like those people, the ones Master Elmer invited over…
If I could smile that way, how I’d—
But I can’t. I can’t smile from the bottom of my heart.
Even though Master Elmer smiles at me from the bottom of his.
Even though he’s trying to teach me how.
Despite everything, all I can remember is sadness.
The sadness should be what keeps me from smiling, but…
What I’m saddest about now is the fact that I can’t smile.
“Well, anyway! The place isn’t much, but make yourselves at home!”
“It isn’t even your house…”
“Czes, please stop pointlessly needling my sore spots like that… And down we go.”
With a red handprint on his cheek, Elmer sat down heavily on the sofa beside the fireplace.
After the incident, they’d moved from the entryway into a drawing room, and Maiza and the others had decided to hear his story there.
“So you’re the only ones who came here today? Are any of the others still all right?”
Elmer was the first to speak, after he’d finished feeding the fire. It was an extremely important question, and Maiza’s group looked at one another for a moment.
After some slight hesitation, Maiza spoke for the four of them.
“…Of the thirty who were on that ship, there are only nine survivors now, including us.”
When he heard that, Elmer was silent for a short while. A hush hung over the five of them, and Elmer bowed his head, his face lit red by the glow from the fireplace.
A few seconds later, when he raised his head to look at Maiza’s group…he was smiling.
“I see. That’s sad, but I’m happy.”
“Huh?”
Looking as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, Elmer leaned far back in his seat and began to explain.
“You see, frankly, it was possible that I’d spend eternity without ever seeing any of my old friends again. However, today, all of you came. That means the worst-case scenario improved to ‘everyone besides the five of us is dead.’ But now you’re telling me that there are other survivors… Yeah, it’s okay to smile. I think in this situation, it’s fine to smile.”
“You’re quite the optimist.”
“No, it isn’t that. Smiling’s the only way I can mourn everyone’s deaths, that’s all. To be honest, I’m no good at being sad. I’m bad at it. You could even say I hate it. Oh, just so you know, I have absolutely no intention of forgetting the people who died. To help me keep that resolution, Maiza, would you tell me something? Tell me who else is still alive.”
Giving a long-winded excuse for why he wasn’t grieving, Elmer prompted Maiza to continue. At Elmer’s reaction, Maiza gave a smile that was both mildly appalled and relieved.
“You really haven’t changed a bit. Yes, the other survivors are Begg, Huey, Victor, and—”
“Oh, Huey’s still all right, too? Victor slipped into the FBI and caught Huey, didn’t he? I read about it in the papers, ages back.”
Elmer smiled faintly, basking in some nostalgic memory.
“What’s Huey up to now? I heard rumors that they’d jailed him, but his term must be over by now, right?”
“We don’t know, either. I haven’t heard that he was eaten, so by now he may be continuing his experiments somewhere.”
“He’s a dyed-in-the-wool experiment junkie, that guy. In a way, he was more of an alchemist than any of the rest of us… Oops, sorry, I interrupted you.”
Seeing Maiza’s complicated expression, Elmer hastily encouraged him to continue.
“No, no, I don’t mind. And then, we still don’t know where the last one is, but—it’s Denkurou, Tougou Denkurou. You remember him, don’t you? He was the only Asian there.”
“Yeah, ‘Ninja.’”
“Ninja?”
“That’s the nickname I gave him… Wait, what? Maiza, you guys haven’t seen him yet?”
At that, the four turned to Elmer, eyes wide.
“You have?!”
Maiza’s shout held a complicated stew of emotion.
The young man shrugged, seeming a bit troubled. “We just ran into each other by chance, about ten years back. It was at this Edo Wonderland something-or-other place in Japan, and he was dressed like a ninja. I haven’t seen him since, so I don’t know if he’s still okay.”
“You’re
kidding… We searched Japan first thing. Even when we were on the ship, he kept saying he wanted to go back to Japan, so we looked in and around his hometown—”
“When was this?”
“About twenty years ago, I think.”
On hearing that, Elmer flapped his hands and grinned.
“Oh, no, no, that’s no good. He only made it back to Japan about a decade ago. See, apparently Ninja tried to walk back to Japan from America. He got into some sort of trouble up at the North Pole and spent two hundred fifty years as a Popsicle.”
“……”
“A Soviet nuclear sub found him, and while he was running around with the KGB on his tail, he tried to cut across Germany and got shot at the wall. It sounded pretty rough. Then someone in East Germany hid him, and after the wall came down, he finally made it back to Japan, or that’s what I heard. And apparently, he was terribly shocked at how his country had changed. His family had died out long before the war—about the time the country was opened to the rest of the world. Since then, it sounds like he’s been wandering all around Japan.”
“A grand adventure.”
Nile’s comment wrapped up the subject of Tougou for the present. After a moment’s silence, with no hesitation, Elmer breezily cut to the heart of the matter.
“I didn’t hear Szilard’s name in there.”
At the mention of that man, with the exception of Maiza, they all looked away. Each seemed to feel something different.
Szilard Quates. The oldest of the alchemists who’d gained immortality had been the one to take advantage of the curse allowing them to prey on one another and had attempted to devour all their knowledge.
After a pause, Maiza curtly described the current situation:
“Szilard is dead.”
When Elmer heard the unembellished bottom line, his expression became complicated. He seemed deeply relieved, but also faintly desolate.
“…I see. Then, counting Denkurou, that’s nine of us exactly.”
Maiza hesitated for a moment, then nodded firmly.
“That’s about the size of it.”
“Say, were you looking for me just to tell me that?”
In answer to Elmer’s question, Maiza nodded, smiling faintly.
“I see… Wow, sorry about that. Thanks. Those feelings alone are enough to make me smile. Actually, I could roar with laughter over that. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ah-haaah-bleargh! Gkh! Ga-ga-ah! Ha! Ga! Ha! —! —! —! —! —! —! —! —! —! —! —! Ah! Ghauha!”
Elmer suddenly collapsed to the floor, then began coughing violently, flopping and struggling like a cicada on its back.
“Are you all right?”
“Wh-when I tried faking a laugh! Gastric juices! C-came back up! Went into my w-w-w-windpipe! I’m dying! Dying!”
Every time he tried to inhale, he coughed reflexively, and he couldn’t breathe properly. Elmer felt as if he were drowning in air, and three hundred years of life began to flash before his eyes.
“Well, if you wouldn’t force yourself to laugh…,” Sylvie muttered.
“Let me just say this: You half-wit… Regardless, wasn’t such uproarious laughter tremendously rude to Maiza?”
As if to say, It’s not like he’ll die or anything, Sylvie and Nile didn’t budge from their chairs. Maiza got up and rubbed his back, while Czes peered into Elmer’s face with worry.
“Are you okay?”
Czes reached out his right hand and patted Elmer’s cheek. Then, gradually, he shifted his palm toward his head—but Elmer did nothing in particular.
“Yeah, I’m okay now. Thanks, Czes.”
Czes took his hand away and returned to his chair without responding. Vague displeasure colored his young face.
“Mm?” Elmer didn’t understand what his expression meant, and he tried to ask about it, but—
“All right, Elmer. Now it’s your turn to tell us a few things.”
—Maiza’s voice caught his attention, and the question evaporated from his mind.
“What are you planning to ask me about? I know a few state secrets, but I can’t tell you—”
“We don’t care about those.”
“Are you sure? I actually do know state secrets from the Republic of Nauru.”
“I’m being serious.”
Elmer attempted to turn him aside with banter, but Maiza was completely serious. “What on earth is this village? Why do they call you a demon and fear you? Are you really exploiting the villagers somehow? And what in the world are those girls—”
“Don’t say it all at once! You’re making my head spin! Spin-in-in-n-n-n-n-n-n-n—”
Clutching his head in both hands, Elmer began to tremble violently, right on the spot.
Brrrr-brrrr-brrrr-brrrr-brrrr-brrrr-brrrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr-rrr.
The vibration gradually accelerated, and just when his head was moving fast enough to leave afterimages—
It fell off.
“AH?!”
Everyone in the room stopped breathing. The head rolled partway down the black clothes and disappeared into the cloth, and ferocious smoke billowed out of the place where the head had been.
In the blink of an eye, the smoke had filled the room, temporarily making it very hard to see.
When they inhaled it, they felt a slight pressure in their lungs, but the gas didn’t seem to be poisonous. Determination made, Maiza and the others crouched down and checked on Elmer.
The smoke cleared rapidly, and in the midst of a faint haze, they saw…Elmer’s black clothes lying in the middle of the room, along with a small tube that seemed to be the source of the smoke. And that was all.
“He’s as clever as always…”
Maiza watched the currents in the smoke that still hung in the room, but none seemed to be moving. He’d probably slipped out, somehow, during that brief moment.
“They often do that in stage magic, don’t they? Escape from their own clothes.”
Examining the workings of the fabric, Czes murmured a dull comment.
Just then—
“A game! Let’s play a game!”
Elmer’s clear voice abruptly sounded in the drawing room.
The announcement rebounded around the space with great enthusiasm, striking strange echoes across the stone walls.
“It would be a great help if you stopped playing around.”
“Starting now, I’ll run away from all of you for a while and continue my work at the same time! If you manage to catch me, as a reward, I’ll answer those questions!”
“Elmer.”
“It’s no good, Maiza. You know nothing works once Elmer gets like this.”
Czes spoke from beside him, and Maiza nodded as though he’d already given up.
“There’s really no help for it, is there…”
“Okay! Wonderful! That’s just like you to be so reasonable, Maiza. All right: Once again, let me greet you! Welcome to this village, a place left behind by both history and society, a place that has always been a world apart! In other words, this is another dimension, a fantasy! I sincerely hope you’ll throw yourselves into your roles!”
Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! A laugh echoed around the room, gradually fading.
Taking a seat, Maiza heaved a big, resigned sigh, as if to say Good grief. “Well, I was very used to this sort of thing in New York.”
“Unlike Elmer, though, Isaac and Miria were more spur-of-the-moment about it.”
“Who are they?” Unfamiliar with the names, Nile lobbed a question at Czes and Maiza, but…
Just as Elmer’s laugh disappeared completely, a knock sounded.
In the midst of the surrounding stone walls, the wooden door seemed odd and wrong. Through it, they could faintly hear a voice that seemed to belong to a girl.
“Um…I’
ve made some tea.”
“Oh, thank you. Come in.”
The room’s rightful master had vanished, so for the moment, Maiza answered in his place.
“Excuse me.”
The individual who entered was a girl in red clothes, as they’d expected, but she wasn’t one of the girls on the horses a short while ago. Although she looked very similar, her haircut and facial features were subtly different.
Elmer’s absence seemed to bewilder the girl. She looked restlessly around the room with troubled eyes.
“Hmm. Elmer’s words aside, I dare say we could ask this girl, could we not?”
Nile’s proposal wasn’t anything that had required “daring” to say, and Czes trotted up to her with a childlike gait to pose the question.
“Say, miss? How do you and the other girls know Mr. Elmer?”
He’d asked directly, using his privilege as a child, and the girl’s answer was frank as well.
“I am…a sacrifice.”
Just how long had the village been here? There was no way for the ordinary people who lived in it to answer that. The elderly among them had sometimes acted as if they knew, but they had already passed on of old age.
For the generation of villagers who currently occupied the settlement, this place and everything in it had been their world for as long as they could remember, and the dense forest around it had been like the basin of the waterfall at the end of the world.
Those who had doubts had ventured into the forest, one after another, and their shallow curiosity had been shattered, along with its faint glimmer of hope.
They didn’t even notice that the density of the trees in the forest was abnormal. They didn’t know what normal was.
The unusually thick woods extended too far to get through on foot. Several people had given up and turned back, and many people had never returned again. The forest confused their sense of direction, and it was rumored that it made them walk the same path, over and over. There was a long tunnel on the single road through the woods, but its entrance was closed up tightly—and recently, apparently, the whole hill had collapsed.
2001 The Children of Bottle Page 6
