Boogiepop At Dawn
Page 14
“You were the one that defeated her.”
“...I'm not so sure,” Nagi said, scowling.
“I feel like this whole affair was a trainwreck. Not one thing went right...”
“Not everything does,” the cloaked figure said, oddly confident. It was a strange way of speaking-expressing conviction without reason.
“What do they call you?”
“You mean my name?”
“...what else would I mean?”
“Fair enough,” the cloaked figure said, thinking about it. Then he nodded.
“I shall call myself Boogiepop.”
“...that's a weird name.”
“You could say that as well, Kirima Nagi.”
Nagi nodded, ruefully.
She turned serious again.
“...what should we do about...the leftovers?”
“Forget them. Someone else will clean up,” Boogiepop said, disinterested.
Nagi glared at him, but he just shrugged.
“There are forces at work behind this. Major ones. Leaving things to them will cause less trouble,” he said, calmly.
That did seem to be true, Nagi thought.
“So Sasaki-san will be the killer?”
“If the world knew a doctor was behind it, there would be panic. All the patients she treated would be looked at with suspicion. And I doubt ‘Sasaki-san’ would want that. He would have been happy to take the blame. Anything for you.”
“…………”
Nagi did not look satisfied.
“What went wrong?” she muttered. What terrible thing had happened that brought all this to pass?
“Must be the bug,” Boogiepop said.
Nagi looked up.
“The world is not moving unrelentingly in one direction. It moves in all directions, like a swarm of bugs. Sometimes they make one unified motion, but other times, like this case, the movement simply collapses, without ever resulting in anything. That is all.”
“Then what should I do?” Nagi asked, her voice tight.
“How can I stop this from happening again? What can I do to make things turn out better?”
Boogiepop frowned.
“You intend to try again?”
Nagi glared at him.
“Is that a problem?”
“No...but if that's the case, then this is not goodbye.”
“Eh?”
“We may well meet again, many times, in similar circumstances,” he said, with a wink.
“I suppose.” Nagi shook her head.
When she looked up again, the cloaked figure was gone. He had vanished in an instant.
“…………”
She stood stunned for a moment, but then shook her head again,
“Oh well,” she said.
Then she slowly walked away, dragging her injured leg. She glanced back at the body once, but soon moved forward again. This time she did not stop.
The full moon above bathed the world in its constant glow.
“The Bug” closed.
CHAPTER 7
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn “Reprise”
“That's all."
In the world covered in ruins, everything crumbled and destroyed, Boogiepop's story ended.
“I see,” Echoes said, nodding gravely.
“Nothing can be explained easily. Everything is complicated. . .”
He sighed.
Boogiepop silently nodded in assent.
It was dawn now. The sky was turning pale.
The air never moved. If either of them dropped something, it would undoubtedly echo without end.
Boogiepop began to whistle, and Echoes began to hum along. He had only heard it once, but he remembered the melody.
For a while, they performed in chorus. No one else was here to listen, and the melody drifted around them quietly.
***
As they did, the world began to change.
The horizons grew indistinct, like an out of focus camera. The blur was drawing closer to them, but their performance continued.
Eventually the world was only in focus for a few meters around them, and only then did their song end.
“...I've never sung before,” Echoes said, grinning.
“It was very enjoyable.”
Boogiepop again produced that asymmetrical expression, half smile, half smirk.
“This world is almost finished. We must say goodbye, Echoes-kun, but I'm glad we met.”
“Yes. I am grateful that we were brought together here. I know not what quirk of fate it was, but just as Kirima Nagi carries on her fight, accepting the feelings of those she meets, I am grateful for what fate has done. Thank you,” he said quietly, placing his hand on his chest.
Boogiepop nodded lightly.
The world around them was vanishing quickly.
“Where will you go now?” Boogiepop asked.
Echoes smiled.
“I will watch over the world from a distance. No matter what happens to me. Yes...I'm just taking my turn.”
“I see.”
“And you? Boogiepop, what will you do?”
“Well...” he shrugged.
“First off, I'd better meet the Piper -- he made this world before Zoragi destroyed it. He appears to be waiting for me.”
His eyes looked rather stern.
“And then? You will fight on?”
“Well...” Boogiepop started to answer, but the vanishing of the world had reached Echoes.
His figure went out of synch with this world, blurred, and was gone.
All that remained was Boogiepop.
“...so,” he said, absently.
And, left all alone, he began to whistle once more.
“------------”
Even time had vanished. Only the hazy light of dawn remained. And there, Boogiepop whistled quietly, his whistle reaching nowhere, and no one.
“Boogiepop at Dawn” all over.
AFTERWORD
Beginnings
Erm. Most of the time, when people are ready to start something, they have already stuck their noses in pretty far. Take the phenomenon known as love at first sight; it does not actually begin at the chance meeting. First, that person's heart has to be ready for such an encounter. That way, when he runs across someone who perfectly fits that form, he falls in love. This readiness is not always based on an ideal type, but can also be based purely on negative emotions, whittled down by his reactions to things he hates until a form is made unconsciously. When something appears that is the inverse of these negative emotions, the person falls as though the ground underfoot has crumbled. Thus, nothing in the world ever truly begins; there is always a certain amount of preparation beforehand.
To give an example, this happened when I was still a student. I was staring vacantly at the street below out the window of a train stopped at JR Yuraku-cho Station when I thought I saw a black shadow in the middle of the crowd. I'm nearsighted, and I soon lost track of whatever it was...I think. I was pretty out of it, so it might just have been my imagination. I spent most of my time rather dazed back then. But this thing was like a black mass rising directly out of the ground, like a youkai or spirit. Perhaps I never really saw it, but just thought something like that might be neat.
At the time, I was already writing novels (during class...so consistently that even people I didn't know knew that I was writing novels...incorrigible) so you might say I should have just written about that, but at the time I was writing a different kind of novel and didn't feel like it. My head was full of that one thing, and I never even looked at anything else; but looking back at it, even then I was interested in all kinds of things, and I did spend a lot of my time on unrelated matters. I had started listening to music, but I had no intention of connecting that interest to my writing. It was just for fun. That's still partly true, even now. I did several other things that had equally little effect on my writing. They should have had everything to do with it, but I never noticed. And the shadow I saw out the
window of the train was just one tiny piece of this.
So when I did decide to write about it, all the preparations that I needed to write about it had already been done. I don't really know how. When I started I was all revved up to begin and I poured my energy into it. Yet, apparently, it had already started long before. Apparently everything works that way. Even if you fail constantly, if you end up slamming your face into the wall over and over, you are already starting something, and no matter how fruitless and depressing it might seem to be, even if it really is sad, nothing can stop it from starting. Even if nothing lies ahead of you but darkness.
I think.
This looks optimistic, but it really isn’t.
Oh well.
BGM “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning”
by THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
TRANSLATION NOTES
The End is the Beginning is the End
Nagi's name
(insert kanji) means “calm” in the sense of a lack of wind. It clearly contains the same metaphorical connotations in both languages; the kanji looks a little like (insert kanji) -kaze or “wind.”
Style
Flock of Crows
Technically a “murder of crows,” but in this context that was confusing.
Public Enemy No. 1
Love & Revolution
“Man was born for love and revolution,” are the words of author Osamu Dazai. They come from his novel Shayo, The Setting Sun.
Green
Mijikumono, an inexperienced person. Literally means “Unripened.”
Child is the Father to the Man
In keeping with Kadono’s tradition of music references, an album title by Blood, Sweat & Tears. A discovery made because that was how I was able to trace it back to the English expression...
A Three Year Old's Soul Lasts a Hundred Years
The Japanese expression “Mitsugo no tamashii hyaku made” translated fairly literally, but with an eye on preserving the actual meaning. Another translation is, “What is learned in the cradle is carried to the grave.”
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn “Reprise”
I'm Just Taking My Turn
“Ano hito no kawari ni” is literally, “In place of that person.” It is unclear who Echoes is talking about.
Piper
Waikyokuou is translated literally as “The King of Distortion,” but it appears to be a quotation from the Japanese translation of the lyrics to Stairway to Heaven. Apparently that's how some poetic translator chose to render “Piper.” The character of Piper plays a role in the fifth Boogiepop novel entitled Boogiepop Overdrive.
Zoragi
Zoragi is a rubber suit style monster that also appears in the fifth novel.
KADONO KOUHEI
A frustrated man wandering through life. He moves at one speed, and he left behind before he realized it. Wrote a novel about a hitman when he was nineteen that, in retrospect, may have been of critical importance. It also might just have been a sign that he hasn't progressed at all.
KOUJI OGATA
Born in 1970. Osaka resident. Barely managed to get enough credits to graduate from Osaka Design School. Did a lot of things after that, which brings us to the present. Enjoys motorcycles, tennis, and remote controlled models. Popular and frantically busy. Likes to drink.