2001 The Children of Bottle

by Ryohgo Narita

  Possibly because he was feeling hyper, he yelled the greeting with an odd accent.

  The individual who’d spoken was bound hand and foot and tied to a chair at the head of the table, in the “birthday seat.” Maiza and the other three sat around him.

  The master of the castle, who’d been captured during the night, had ended up spending the whole night tied up. Even then, no sooner had he opened his eyes than he issued detailed instructions to Maiza’s group to change the decorations inside the castle to their Christmas versions.

  They really weren’t sure why they should have to do something like that, but the girls were already working silently. In the end, perhaps motivated by guilt, the visitors all worked hard to decorate the castle.

  “Don’t you ‘Merry Christmas’ us. Honestly,” Sylvie muttered, giving a tired half smile. “The moment Czes found you, you panicked and jumped off the roof…? Granted, you won’t die, but even recklessness has limits, you know.”

  “There are no limits to recklessness! Everything that goes beyond its own limits is reckless, and—”

  “Let me just say this: I don’t intend to listen.”

  “That’s mean!!”

  Behind Elmer and the others, whose conversation sounded like a comedy routine, Czes silently stood off by himself. Elmer hadn’t mentioned his conversation with Czes to the group; he’d based his story on the premise that he’d fallen off the roof on his own. To Czes, it felt as if someone was covering up his crime for him. It made him desperately uncomfortable, and he’d hesitated, wondering if he should tell Nile and the others the truth. However, in the end, he’d let it go, and the situation had turned into what it was now.

  “The truth about why you fell should stay between you and Czes.”

  Maiza seemed to have guessed that something had happened between the two of them, but he hadn’t tried to pry. Come to think of it, neither Sylvie nor Nile had asked him about it, either.

  Was it possible that they all knew everything and were protecting him?

  If so, they should really mind their own business.

  However, Czes didn’t feel like checking and simply stayed quiet. In the midst of his silence, he thought back over what had happened the previous night. The only thing that came into his mind was the image of his right hand, set on Elmer’s head.

  Could I trust anyone that much?

  The question had surfaced abruptly, and in response, Czes immediately shook his head. If it was Maiza, or his new friends in New York—Isaac and Miria, or even Ennis, who’d lived with him as an older sister—he wouldn’t mind having one of their right hands on his head. However, he probably wouldn’t be able to be so innocent about it, let alone actively make them put their hands there.

  Besides, how was it possible to do something like that with a person you’d just met again for the first time in almost three centuries? Czes had worried about that all night long. You could say it was because Elmer was an idiot and leave it at that, but his bearing wasn’t like other people’s. For example, Isaac and Miria, the nutty couple in New York: They could probably trust Czes without even thinking about it, smile at him as he put his right hand upon their crowns.

  However, this Elmer guy was calculating to the last. He wasn’t spontaneous. He tried to make people smile with shrewdness and a resolute goal. Although his calculations were mostly wrong, on the whole, he was completely mystifying to Czes.

  What had made Elmer go so far? At the time, he hadn’t given even a little thought to the idea of eating him.

  As these doubts coiled and circled, Elmer abruptly called out to him.

  “Don’t look so glum, Czes, my boy. Smiles rule the world right now, you know? Specifically, well, guys who don’t smile die. Just look at the world-subjugating archfiends in cartoons and things. They’re smiling like they’re enjoying life, right? See, they’re not smiling because they conquered the world: They conquered the world because they were smiling. So let’s smile before the demons do and send food to aid starving people around the world so that they can smile—”

  It might be better not to understand after all.

  As disgust welled up in Czes, Nile leaned back self-importantly and urged him on to the topic at hand.

  “This is no time to be receiving signals from somewhere weird, Elmer. You yourself are the archfiend of this village, are you not? Let me just say this: I will have you keep your promise. Go on. Speak.”

  “He’s right, Elmer. We talked to the girls in the castle yesterday, and they said you’d kidnapped them from the village as ‘sacrifices.’ They wouldn’t tell us any more than that, but…what’s going on, exactly? You don’t seem to have committed any violence, but…depending on the circumstances, I may treat you rather sternly.”

  Maiza’s usual smile had vanished from his face, but Elmer deflected the man’s intense gaze with a smile of his own.

  “‘Kidnapped’ is rude. When I demanded sacrifices from the village, they offered those girls to me.”

  “It’s the same thing.”

  “No, see, it really isn’t…”

  With a knowing look, Elmer shook his head, then drew a deep breath and launched into his story.

  The story of the time the village had acquired a demon.

  “All right, where should I begin…? I know. It started when I got killed here.”

  Three years ago December

  When Elmer had come to the village, the lone girl had been the only person who met him.

  The girl’s attitude had been weirdly subservient, and he’d wondered about her, but he’d had her show him around the village for the moment.

  The villagers made no attempt to show themselves to him. The doors to every house were shut tight, and they stayed that way. However, their gazes followed him from the shadows, clinging to him like a fog.

  “Whoa, not good. Oh crap, oh crap, this is seriously not good. Wild animals gunning for me are glaring at my back. Man oh man, is this what they mean when they say popular guys have it rough? Or are aliens maybe plotting to abduct me…? Can I assume that being popular with aliens is the ultimate global standard, in a way?”

  As he was saying things like that, the girl led him to a shed in a corner of the village.

  “Whoa, this is all there is? Seriously?”

  No one could have called a good environment, not by any means. The shed was so decrepit that it seemed as if just a little more snow on top would send it tumbling down. One of the doors had been taken off, the windows were broken, and it was doubtful whether it would provide any shelter from the cold.

  “…Well, it doesn’t look as though anyone in the village is using it. Erm, I’m sorry for being so picky, after you went out of your way to show me. Besides, I’m the one who said anything that kept off the wind and rain was fine… Okay, then I’ll take you up on your kind offer and stay here. Thank you. To show my gratitude, I’ll teach you about Christmas properly tomorrow, so look forward to that.”

  On that note, he tried to take his leave of the girl, but for some reason, she followed him in.

  “Huh? Oh, it’s fine. Don’t worry—I’ll figure things out on my own.”

  Elmer smiled at her, but the girl murmured, sounding troubled:

  “This is my house…”

  “Huh?”

  His smile froze, and he scanned the dark interior.

  Then, gradually, Elmer’s expression shifted into something serious.

  Inside this shack, which didn’t even have a foundation and didn’t seem like a house at all…several girls were gazing at him.

  All were grimy, and each of them wore the same blank expression. Their faces looked vaguely similar, like siblings or something of the sort.

  As Elmer stood still, unable to process the situation, one of the girls—the one who’d first led him there—spoke apologetically.

  “I think we can fit…one more person. If it’s too cramped, I’ll sleep outside…”

  The present

  “I tell you wha
t: That was a shock. If they’d been more my type—y’know, glamorous bombshells with hourglass figures—it would’ve been a legit harem. I would have been over the moon. These kids were only about fifteen, though, so it’s not like I could do anything, right? I mean, apparently that’s a pretty popular situation in Japanese manga these days, but you wouldn’t want that in real life.”

  Still tied to the chair, Elmer chattered away about his past. The tale really didn’t sound plausible, but Maiza and the others had seen these similar-looking girls, so they accepted that part and kept listening to the story.

  “And then what happened?”

  “Well, I thought they were probably sisters who’d lost their folks and were being ostracized or something, and it seemed like it wouldn’t be nice to ask about it, so I kept quiet. Then, the next day, I tried going around the village. In the end, though, none of the villagers showed themselves. I could tell they were watching me from a distance, but when I called to them, they’d run off somewhere. So I figured I wouldn’t stress about it, and I started looking for a place where those kids could live without having to worry so much. And then I heard about this abandoned castle. Apparently the villagers thought it was haunted by a monster, and they steered clear of it, but I didn’t see anything… So I cleaned the place up and made it so we could all live here.”

  “I can accept that much. However, why have you become the monster?”

  In response to Maiza’s question, Elmer’s lips warped cheerfully.

  “I just thought, since we were spending Christmas in a snow-covered castle, we needed to spruce it up a bit. I had the girls help me, and we worked hard and put up all kinds of decorations in one night. We didn’t have a single sheet of origami paper to work with, so we just used rocks and twigs from the nearby trees… However, the next day, on Christmas proper, the lot from the village came up to the castle. I thought, Finally, I made contact, now I can have a Christmas party and get acquainted with the villagers at the same time, woohoo!, but they were all carrying weapons and told me to get out of the village! I kept the girls behind me and tried to protect them, but against several dozen hoes and sickles, I was at a serious disadvantage. I was in deep trouble, and they had me cornered! …Well? Are you on the edge of your seats yet?”

  “…You’d better not be making this up.”

  “Don’t look at me like I’m a resident of Liar Town. No, I’m really not lying… Well, to put it bluntly, they killed me.”

  At those words, Sylvie stared back at him blankly.

  “Huh…? Why?”

  “I complained a bit, and the guy in charge of the village, Dez, just hauled off and decked me. If that had been all, it would have been okay, but—”

  As if finishing the sentence for him, Maiza murmured:

  “—They saw you regenerate, didn’t they?”

  He seemed to have been right on the money. Elmer averted his eyes awkwardly and continued.

  “When I came to, they’d driven a stake through my heart. It hurt like hell. I was thinking, Geez, vampires really have it rough.”

  “I know. Wounds to your heart are no joke.”

  Czes muttered as if remembering something and shivered like he was cold.

  “Well, once I managed to get the stake out, I regenerated right away, but…I figured I’d just say it was a good thing I was alive and headed to the village to clear up the misunderstanding.”

  “Huh?”

  “They were incredibly freaked out. It was hilarious. This lady who had a fruit stand on that central road just fainted dead away… Then they surrounded me again, and that time, they tried burning me to death. I was already on fire when I desperately made a break for it. I rolled down this snowy slope, over and over, and finally put the flames out, but then I couldn’t stop rolling, and I ended up buried in snow. In the end, the snow hid me, but still.”

  “……”

  “The sun came up again, and bright sunlight shone down on me. When the snow thawed, I woke up, then discovered that my lower body was frozen! It took me a whole day to get back to the castle, but I figured I’d just say it was a good thing I was alive, and the next day, I went back to the village to clear up the misunderstanding.”

  “What?”

  At that development in Elmer’s story, Sylvie dubiously interjected. However, Elmer let it slide and kept talking.

  “The villagers looked even more freaked out. Talk about a laugh riot. The girl who’d been setting out fruit screamed and ran away… Then the villagers surrounded me again, and that time they bound me hand and foot and threw me into the river. Well, I got washed ashore downriver, and I walked back through the woods to the village. I figured I’d just say it was a good thing I was alive, and in an attempt to clear up the misunderstanding—”

  At that point, Elmer seemed to notice the mood of the others around him. He coughed, then changed the course of his story.

  “At any rate, that sort of thing went on for days.”

  “Let me just say this: You idiot.”

  “Don’t say it straight out like that, Nile. See, I just thought, if I greeted them with a smile no matter how many times they killed me, eventually they’d understand that I didn’t mean them any harm.”

  “If it had been me, I would have simply left the village.”

  Nile’s comment seemed perfectly natural, but Elmer gently shook his head.

  “I hadn’t achieved my goal yet… Well, I’ll tell you about that in more detail later. At any rate, I’d planned to stick with this approach for the long haul, but then I noticed that the girl who’d first shown me around had a serious wound on her face. When I asked her, she said the village headman had done it. That burned me up… So I threatened the villagers a little. All I did was show ’em a few of the magic tricks I’d used to swindle people when I was an alchemist, but their attitudes changed drastically after that, and they started treating me like an archfiend.”

  Sylvie had stayed quiet up until that point, but when she heard that, she spoke softly.

  “Yes…there’s something odd about the villagers, too. Being that persistent, when you hadn’t done them any harm…”

  “Nah, I think it’s pretty normal. They say Europe during the witch hunts was a whole lot worse. Inquisitors who were after money, inquisitors who framed people as witches to gratify their own sadistic desires—there were lots of those guys around, but people caught up in a mob mentality are scary, too.”

  Cackling away, Elmer spoke about something that wasn’t remotely close to funny.

  “You guys don’t know the terror of ordinary folks. You’re way too unfamiliar with the fear of ‘Nameless Villager A.’”

  Remembering the treatment he’d received, he continued speaking, still smiling ironically.

  “People turn to violence when their desires spur them to it. However, most people can control themselves. Those are, well, ‘ordinary folks.’ In that case, when is it that ordinary folks are driven more by violent impulses than by desires? What causes it? Terror, that’s what.”

  “Hmm. I can understand that, albeit not completely.”

  Seeing the masked man nod, Elmer nodded back quietly.

  “People use terror as an excuse to exercise their strength, in order to protect themselves. If it happens in the middle of a group that’s experiencing the same terror, it’s an action everyone condones… Although it’s still intolerable for the guy who gets assaulted when he didn’t do anything. Ha-ha-ha.”

  He paused to draw a deep breath, then, changing his tone and bearing, continued his story.

  “All right, getting back to the story. I told the villagers, just as a joke, ‘Give me a sacrifice once a year.’ Those guys, though… They took it seriously, and a girl actually showed up. So, since there was no help for it, I asked for enough food for the girl. Allow me that much, please: The villagers had worked her like a cart horse. I just thought she had the right to it, see.”

  “…Food aside, there’s still a problem here. Let’s say yo
ur prank doesn’t matter. We do want to know what those girls are—”

  When Maiza attempted to ask a more pertinent question, Elmer’s body abruptly began to emit a series of unpleasant creaks and pops.

  Their eyes went wide at the sudden noise, and then, out of the blue—

  “I did this sort of trick for them, too. Bwa-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha.”

  Along with that laugh, a smoke screen erupted from him.

  Elmer toppled over backward with a clatter, plunging himself into the smoke and disappearing. Nile hastily checked the chair, but all he found were untied ropes and a fallen chair rigged up with smoke bombs.

  “That sound… Was that—?”

  “Yes. Apparently he dislocated his joints. Hunh…formidable fellow.”

  As if mocking the four of them, Elmer’s voice echoed from somewhere near the ceiling.

  “Hey, relax. Even if you don’t catch me—February! When February comes, you’ll understand everything, I promise…”

  December 26, 2001 Morning The old castle

  The sky was endlessly clear, and the cold air stung every inch of skin.

  The castle hadn’t seemed that large from the outside, but when it came to decorating the inside, they felt keenly aware that it boasted quite a lot of space. Picking up a New Year’s decoration, Sylvie heaved a sigh over the expanse around her.

  “So what on earth is happening in February?”

  She’d grown completely accustomed to modern conveniences, and the idea of spending the remaining thirty-five days or so in this castle was very painful to her. Just how many years had it been since she’d been somewhere with no showers, TV, or magazines?

  In the first place, this forest had been positively littered with odd things ever since they’d driven into it. The isolated village. The girls who’d appeared on horseback. The castle, with its odd design. Their onetime companion, who reigned there as a demon… And the villagers terrified of Elmer.

  Even though they’d celebrated the arrival of the twenty-first century only a year ago, this village was just like a fantasy world from a book or movie.