by Yuu Kamiya
Her breathing rough, interrogating them, full of curiosity, Jibril (naked). Almost forgetting the thirty-second rule, she hastily continued. At Jibril’s assertion, Sora simply clapped.
“Excellent. But, if you said that in our old world, you’d just be labeled a pervert.”
“The instinct to preserve the species is ‘perversion’?!”
Shocked as if by a bolt from the blue, and then with an expression of rapture, her hands together.
“Oh—how fascinating. I want to see this; I want to visit this unreasonable world!”
“…Hmmm, I can’t say that I sympathize.”
Sora drooped at her reaction.
“Actually, that reaction is kind of boring in a way…”
He had been hoping to twist Jibril’s smart face with shame…so to speak—sexiness that is not shameful is scarcely sexiness at all. And then, with Jibril’s body, like a work of art, it was like, you know, how you couldn’t get off on drawings that were too good—.
“Brother, Steph is more…fun…”
“Yeah. I’ll take video; you take pictures.”
“…Ro-ger…”
“Hey—what are you taaakiiing!”
“It’s okay; just remember, there are no juicy bits, so it’s not embarrassing. But don’t forget the shame!”
“What are you talking about!!”
…….
And so several hours passed. After that—it had become a space for which there were no words. In a junglelike primeval forest stood moai and a pyramid. In the center, Sora, chowing down on curry, naked, but wearing a ten-gallon hat. On his lap, Shiro, chowing down on mushroom-shaped snacks, naked except for cat ears and a scarf. And then there was Jibril, who kept being stripped of clothes anytime she got something on, still naked. As well as Steph, who—
“Eegya#%$≠†∂@+§&~#↓Ψ∞Ŷ!”
—chased around by a corps as freakish as Cthulhu, looked about out of SAN. Filling his mouth with curry, Sora spoke.
“Mnch, mnch… Hey, Jibril, don’t you ever get hungry? ‘Mantoru [mantle].’”
“Not to worry. Unlike the powerless Immanities, Flügel have no need for food. ‘Ruiaaga.’”
“Oh, I see… But don’t you get sleepy; the sun’s about to come up; don’t you want to resign?”
“—Heh-heh… Flügel need no rest, either, so please be at ease—”
“I still have an infinite supply of words. As I would like to draw out all the knowledge from you I can, I’ll welcome your company for any number of days, months, even!”
—Jibril spoke these chilling words sweetly, while still making it clear that she really did intend to do so. They suggested nothing but hopelessness to Steph—but. As always, Sora answered playfully.
“Ahh, I’d really like to greet the morning in my own room, so I’ve gotta pass—‘Gaikaku [outer core].’”
“Is that so. If you are weary, I won’t be offended if you lose intentionally? ‘Kurokku [clock].’”
Jibril murmured, and went on further.
“After all, you’ve already given me a fair bit of amusement for a frail Immanity.”
Though Jibril said this with a smile, Sora frowned.
“…You keep calling us powerless, frail—it’s starting to get to me—‘kuriichaa [creature].’”
—And with that word. The freakish corps that had been chasing Steph around disappeared.
“—Hff! Hff—hff—!!… Th-thanks, you saved me…”
“Th-they almost killed me,” Steph said as she slumped to the ground. With this in the corner of his eye, Sora said:
“Well, yeah, you know, looking down from Rank Six? We humans must look just like ants, eh? But I can’t help feel you may be underestimating the ants juuust a little bit.”
“My apologies; that you would consider yourselves—not weak, my goodness…‘Akari [lamp].’”
To Jibril, saying this as if she were sincerely taken aback. Sora responded, switching to a provoking smile with a hint of anger.
“If you think being tough and long-lived is power, you’re the one—who’s dumb.”
—At that one word, Jibril reacted with a twitch.
“You think I’m—inferior to Immanities?”
—What Jibril felt for Sora’s party was nothing like respect. It was more like the feeling one has toward an interesting book: in other words, mere curiosity. To be told that she was inferior to that book was entirely out of the range of her expectation. Regardless, sneering at Jibril all the while, Sora continued.
“‘Weakness’ isn’t having force or not. It means not being able to do anything—like, for example, some goons I’ve heard of who can’t do anything but fight when violence has been forbidden, right?”
“—…It seems you are incognizant of your position.”
In Jibril’s eyes as she whispered was what had greeted them on their first meeting—murder.
Yes—Jibril could render Sora and his lot unable to continue living anytime she felt like it. The fact that she hadn’t was purely play. Nothing more than a silly whim. Her gaze that demanded, “Aren’t you forgetting your place?” Still Sora took face-on as he spoke.
“Okay, I guess it’s time I educate you—on your weakness. Suck it in.”
And, putting his hand on the crystal, Sora—.
“Shiro, you ready?”
“…Mm…”
After addressing the nodding Shiro, Sora spoke to Steph.
“Stephy, have you caught your breath yet?”
“Huh? Uhh… Y-yes, just barely…th-thank you…”
“Yeah, thanks for all you’ve done; if we didn’t have you to kite all the mobs, we couldn’t have won.”
At Sora, casually declaring victory, Jibril furrowed her eyebrows. While Steph looked on dazed, Sora said with a great big smile, “—So, Steph!”
“Y-yes?”
“This is gonna kill a little—so get ready! Sit.”
“Pardon?”
Steph, brought unceremoniously to the ground, had no way of understanding what he meant. While Sora and Shiro—took a big jump and said: “Risosufea [lithosphere].”
—Instantly, everything on the ground disappeared.
—Mantle, outer core. They were words that Jibril probably wouldn’t know that gutted the planet. And then the word that signified the entirety of the top layer, lithosphere—dematerialized the entire surface of the earth and left them all simultaneously falling toward the core that remained. But Jibril took it calmly.
“…I see. So this is why you said spirit corridors—to deprive me of my wings.”
—Jibril, not knowing what the words meant. But recognizing Sora’s goal—to drop them to the core of the planet. She’d never actually seen the core of the planet, but—. She took a glance.
…Central temperature six thousand degrees…surface temperature three thousand degrees…perhaps. If she made it all the way in, the pressure would probably render her “unable to continue,” but, before that—Sora and his sister would die. Jibril laughed to herself at how terribly full of holes their plan was. Yes—after all, what it meant was that.
“—You’re…still trying to kill me?”
Not hiding her disappointment, Jibril smiled her way down. It was only a matter of time before the heat waves from the planet core left the two “unable to continue,” but—she might as well allow them to make the little time left enjoyable for her, she thought.
“I still won’t allow the morning to come—‘asa [morning].’”
With this whisper of Jibril—the sun disappeared. But—as Sora and Shiro fell, they took a deep breath. And put a hand to the crystal, saying with the minimum breath:
“…Sanso [oxygen]!”
—A fierce headache assaulted them all as they lost the ability to breathe. Of course, including Jibril…but then—
—To keep me from breathing…how meaningless. Indeed—Jibril was a Flügel. Her home was Avant Heim, at an altitude of over twenty thousand meters. It was true it wasn
’t as if she didn’t need to breathe. But for Jibril, who was composed of spirits, it wasn’t a particularly urgent problem. However—for the human Sora and Shiro, it was fatal. They would asphyxiate and promptly become “unable to continue.”
“—Surely now you see it is futile; just entertain me a bit longer— sonata.”
Jibril, asserting that it was impossible to kill her through asphyxiation. Requesting a certain word, for both of their sakes. Sora seemed to grasp her intent.
“…Damn…‘tane-ue [seed planter].’”
Sora, his aim ending in a misfire, reluctantly answered her request. He’s more obedient than I expected; I certainly would like to put ground back underneath us to continue the game, but… Thus smiling, Jibril said, for now.
“Then I say: ‘ea [air].’”
But, at that word, Sora abandoned his show of reluctance and twisted his mouth. Jibril didn’t know, after all. Air’s—“constituent elements.”
—Instantly. A pressure drop that threatened to rob them of consciousness assaulted them all. Having thought that she was restoring the air, and instead finding that she couldn’t breathe. Jibril spontaneously shrieked—
“—Wha—why—hng?!”
And then, regret. At this moment, her Flügel instincts told her that she had just inhaled a noxious poison. The name of the poison, indeed, was—oxygen. As his consciousness clouded in the precipitous pressure loss, Sora laughed. Jibril didn’t know it, after all—atomic theory. She didn’t know what oxygen was…which meant…
If she couldn’t breathe, she’d naturally assume it was another name for air, right? But what Sora’s word eliminated was only oxygen—not air.
—The rule: What is present disappears, and what is absent appears. Then, in an atmosphere from which oxygen had vanished, what would happen when one said air?
—The answer was before them. A single element of air, oxygen, remained, as all other gases vanished. One consequence of this was the fierce pressure drop, 80 percent, even, enough to take one’s consciousness—and another was a space full of oxygen, which taken in alone was nothing more than a deadly poison, in which breathing would kill Sora and Shiro in an instant—but.
—Slowly, Sora kissed Shiro.
“…Mm!”
—Circular breathing. To take advantage of the rule that this game could not invade the players’ bodies. The two could circulate the air that remained in their bodies between them. Though their consciousness clouded with the sense that their whole bodies were going to rupture from the sharp pressure drop, still. They could just hold on—for a short time, they could continue playing shiritori.
The events unfolding, the actions of Sora, none of it made any sense to Jibril. But, even so, when all was said and doneit was futile.
“…You think, a ‘poison’ like this…is capable of stopping me?”
Jibril, sneering at Sora and Shiro, still continuing their futile efforts. She thought she had already proven that breathing was not so important to a Flügel. Which meant, then, that all she had to do was not breathe.
—To begin with, it was impossible for them to kill a Flügel. The game was over. Soon enough, the heat waves of the planet’s core would reach Sora and his sister, despite all their futile flailing. I suppose that is all that can be expected—in the end, they are but Immanities… Looking at Sora with eyes as if viewing a toy of which she had grown bored, Jibril. But—on the face of Sora looking back at Jibril, itself.
“—!”
A smirk rose, looking down at her.
“Shiro, here we go!!”
“…Mm!!”
This time, they used all their strength—to blow out all their air.
—For their next move. Checking that the air, sans the extinguished oxygen, had been blown from their bodies until there was only a bit of what had been “created” left, to wring out the last of the air in their bodies the two cried out.
““—Atomosufea!””
With this word meaning “atmosphere,” this time, at last, all gases were lost—.
“—?!”
Something popped in Jibril. The gases she’d stored in her body, in the zero-pressure environment created by the loss of the atmosphere wreaked havoc as they pounded on her from inside, as if to rip her lungs apart. Sora and Shiro had blown out their air—in order to avoid this… But, even so. Jibril—could not be killed. More of this futility… Asphyxiation? Poisoning? Internal rupture from pressure difference? So what? If they thought that the war race created by the gods to kill gods—that the Flügel—were susceptible to the likes of such nonsense as this, their foolishness could hardly be overstated. A perfect vacuum—in such an environment, the two Immanities would die first. So overwhelmed that she thought she’d make a wisecrack, Jibril opened her mouth—and froze as she realized:
—That sound could not be transmitted.
Sound is composed of waves of vibration transmitted through matter. Now they were in a vacuum—essentially, in space. Without the medium of air—her words could not be carried to her opponent. One of the conditions of loss crossed Jibril’s mind:
—You lose if you fail to answer in thirty seconds.
And…the time a person could survive in a vacuum was—about thirty seconds—they were setting up for this?! Jibril was unable to hold back goose bumps. Indeed—if it wasn’t possible for them to chase her into being “unable to continue,” they could gamble on the survival time of thirty seconds and finish her with the thirty-second rule—. At the same time as Jibril reached that conclusion, Sora’s face flew into her view. While clinging on to the consciousness that threatened to disappear anytime due to the lack of pressure. Hugging his sister with all his might, as if to pressurize her, the human, belaboredly—smiled. His face looked as if it read, “You feel that?”
—Now I see: truly this is a most remarkable specimen… After things had come this far, at last, Jibril reevaluated Sora and Shiro. Indeed, it is a loss to dismiss these as mere Immanities—however.
—Jibril was unable to use magic. That was because she was a Flügel, her body composed of magical spirits in the first place. And it was also because of the present situation, in which her spirit corridors had been eliminated, but—. All the more reason—for me now to answer with the fullness of appreciation and respect. If she broke down her spirits—she was at least able to write a word in space with light.
—“Anjaku [feebleminded].”
See how things really are, Jibril said, with the word she drew in space in Immanity. They’d stretched their wills, called on their wisdom, sharpened their wiles, expended their mortality—and still it was not enough. Immanity could never win against the Flügel. There was no way for humans to reach the heavens—it was an eternal, inviolable rule.
…Before this answer. From the arms of Sora, holding Shiro, the force drained like melting snow. His consciousness was dimming, but, still—despite these desperate circumstances, for some reason, the two grinned slyly, put a hand on the crystal, and took out the note they had written ahead of time.
—A note that said: “Kuuronryoku [Coulomb force].”
It was—an interval too short to even be called an instant. As they just fell through space, the air and the crust and the outer core removed, the space now devoid of a single atom, all that remained, beneath their eyes, was the planet’s iron core. This high-pressure, high-temperature liquid metal core, sparkling white, burned Jibril’s retinas.
—The planet’s core…the iron-atom core. When the Coulomb force exceeded the nuclear force it worked against, which pulled atoms together—normally, it was an astronomical phenomenon that only occurred at the death of a supermassive celestial object, through gravitational collapse. And now, through the loss of Coulomb force, a little planetary core was beginning fusion instantly. The end result had been named in Sora and Shiro’s world: a gamma-ray burst by photodisintegration of iron—or.
A multiple-light-year star-system-vaporizing hypernova.
The war-race cre
ated by the gods to kill other gods. Able to withstand a direct hit from a hydrogen bomb—i.e., heat exceeding that of the sun’s corona, pressure totaling fifty megatons, oxygen loss and drastic pressure reduction due to the vaporization of the air, and the residual toxicity—Rank Six, Flügel. The hopeless difference in abilities, a wall that towered boundlessly above Immanity. But a wall that was finite—
—the paltry humans were about to climb over.
In the airless, soundless space, still, unmistakably, as Sora feebly raised his index finger, Jibril felt that she heard what he said.
“You think you can take force on the level of the beginning of the universe at 50 billion degrees Celsius? Let’s see, Flügel.”
—Jibril did not know what was happening or what Coulomb force was. But her instincts as a Flügel were screaming. That something incomparable to the explosion she had taken at the beginning. Something no concept in her knowledge was prepared to stop. A light that would return heaven and earth to nothingness—would assault her in less than a tenth of a second.
That’s—it can’t—how can I— But now, at last, Jibril.
—Finally understood the meaning of Sora’s and Shiro’s actions. Before they eliminated the surface of the earth, they had jumped up slightly…which meant that Jibril was slightly below. Whatever heat might come—it didn’t matter. Whether it was a trillionth, a quadrillionth, a quintillionth of a second. The one who died first would lose—and this. So this…was his true intent…in taking my wings. The first explosion—was a test of whether he could materialize concepts that were not known to both of them. After that single move, that man had already deduced all of the information he needed. It had been futile to try to kill her with heat, or with pressure, or with poison, but he had known that from the start. This series of exchanges was just a diversion. To make it look like he was betting it all on thirty seconds—a farce. Everything, everything was a trap. As Sora’s index finger indicated—. The game was already over with the first move.
