by Yusuke Kishi
I was like an athlete in a competition against an opponent with an overwhelming lead. Even if victory was impossible, I would continue my futile struggle until the match was over.
What, or who, in the world was I trying to deceive? Was I trying to preserve, for my own sake, the image of myself as someone who would never abandon a dear friend? Or was it simply because Satoru was there?
I looked ahead at Satoru. He seemed so calm, but I had no way of knowing how he really felt. Was he, like me, trying desperately to avoid the looming pit of despair? Or was he thinking about something else entirely?
When I noticed it was just the two of us skiing side by side, I realized what I had truly been afraid of.
Excluding my parents, Sage Academy was my entire world. And within it, the only people I could call my true friends were those in team one. One by one, those friends had disappeared until only Satoru and I were left.
No, I thought wildly, I don’t want to lose any more friends.
I don’t want to lose anyone else I love.
Satoru’s figure blurred and became someone else’s.
Without thinking, I stretched out my hand. For a second, a familiar figure that had been sealed in the graveyard of my mind appeared before my eyes. But it was nothing more than an illusion, and vanished as quickly as it had come.
I was forced back into cold, hard reality. In this world, it was just the two of us.
Perhaps Maria was feeling just as lonely. No, I couldn’t even come close to how she felt. She had thrown away everything and run.
Unlike yesterday, today the sky was clear and the sun reflected so brightly off the snow I could barely see. But despite the cheery weather, I couldn’t shake off the feeling of gloom that covered me like a cloud.
Thanks to Satoru’s uncanny sense of direction, we soon found the speedboats. As I took off my skis, Satoru pushed the boats out onto the water.
“I’ll steer, so you can rest a bit,” he said, turning toward me.
“Why? Aren’t you tired?” I asked, but only out of habit.
“It’s fine.” He pushed me away gently.
With that, I lost all will to resist and collapsed against the boat after muttering a quick, “Thanks.”
I dozed off almost instantly. It was as if I were falling through the boat and into the hands of the kappa waiting to take me to the bottom of the river.
I dreamt. At first, they were only incoherent nightmares caused by my stress and fatigue, but soon, strange monsters started appearing from the depth of my subconscious.
There were demons waving long, insect antennae, circling blindly around and around on the ground. A group of one-eyed goblins flew overhead, trailing dust from their moth-like wings.
The souls of the damned shamble along, chained to each other. Large cow sacs clung to their abdomen and controlled them so thoroughly that even though they wanted to escape, they could only stare and moan.
Half-transparent, pink minoshiro twisted their bodies seductively. Their feelers were erect penises, and the clitorises at their base opened and closed like sea anemones.
On the other side, the god of death, appearing as the shadow of a giant cat, glided past on silent feet.
Queerats sniffed their air with their ugly snouts. Their faces were completely smooth and featureless, but in exchange, the folds of their skin held numerous eyes that swiveled about unceasingly and flashed razor-sharp teeth.
But scariest were the fiends, children whose faces were gradually covered with sprays of blood, their eyes rolling back until only the whites were showing in the ecstasy of slaughter.
The monstrous creatures seethed and writhed. And there he was, at the far end of it all.
Half hidden in shadow, the figure of a boy. Everything from his feet to his torso, and most of his neck was visible, but his face was hidden in darkness.
The faceless boy. I tried desperately to call out to him, but his name just wouldn’t come.
He seemed to recognize me, but said nothing. Last time, I could hear him but not see him. This time, it was the opposite.
But I could understand the message he was trying to send–anxiety and concern.
“How can I find Maria?”
The faceless boy shook his head slightly.
“I don’t understand. What should I do?”
He didn’t respond.
“Tell me, please. What in the world should I do?”
He didn’t say a word, and I couldn’t see his lips, but somehow, I knew what he said.
Bewildered, I stood rooted to the spot. I couldn’t understand why he would say something like that. Then his next words hit me like a bolt of lightning.
No. It can’t be. What are you saying? That’s so cruel…
I tried to protest, but no words came out.
“Saki. Saki!”
A voice was calling me.
I suddenly awoke.
“Saki, were you having a nightmare?”
I opened my eyes and saw Satoru’s worried face peering into mine.
“…yeah, kind of.”
I was drenched in sweat. I tried to smile, but it probably just looked like an unnatural grimace.
“We’re here. We’ll have to use our skis from here on out.” He looked concerned. “Do you want to wait here? I think I’ll be alright by myself.”
I shook my head firmly. “I’ll come too.”
“…okay. Got it.”
He seemed to realize it was pointless to try to talk me out of it.
Our tracks were still clearly visible around the area where the snow huts had been. This was the place we had set out from yesterday. All we had accomplished in the past day was to circle back right where we had started.
No, it was even worse than that. The day before, we had known we were in for a difficult journey, but we also felt certain that we would be able to find Maria. Now, there was nothing to go on.
Still, we strapped on our skis and pushed off, hoping for a stroke of good luck.
The second search yielded no results.
Maria and Mamoru seemed to have managed to unearth the sled and take it with them. But even after scouring the area within a ten-meter radius, we couldn’t find a single sled track. Maria probably anticipated that the town would search the immediate area and levitated it out. Once they were a good distance away, she could set it down and erase its tracks in the snow as they traveled.
As I watched the sun sink behind the mountains to the west, quiet despair and resignation welled up inside me.
“Saki.” Satoru put his arms around me from behind. “Don’t cry. …we did all we could.”
That was when I realized I was crying. Somehow, I hadn’t even noticed the warmth of my tears as they rolled down my cheeks.
“We still have time tomorrow before the deadline. Once it’s light out, let’s go northwest. Maybe we’ll find some trace of their tracks there.”
I knew he was just trying to console me, but unless we were the Three Princes of Serendip1, we’d never find them.
Still, his words were comforting.
We prepared to spend the night out in the snow-covered fields. Although we had brought tents with us in the boat, we decided to take a leaf out of Squonk’s book and build a snow hut.
We piled the snow around us into a hard, compact dome then hollowed out the inside. Since we had cantus, I thought we’d do a better job at it than Squonk had, but it was surprisingly difficult. Packing snow was actually easier with a shovel than with cantus. But the real problem was that neither of us were really focused on building the hut.
Once we had shelter, it was time to make dinner. I had no appetite, but we hadn’t eaten since breakfast, so I had to force myself to eat no matter what.
Satoru carved a nice stone pot, filled it with snow, and put it over the fire. He added miso and rice to make gruel.
We ate in silence.
Satoru tried to draw me into a conversation, but I just couldn’t find the energy to answer. He cont
inued talking anyway.
“…so I want to capture a false minoshiro and see exactly how much of what the book says is accurate.”
I wasn’t trying to ignore him on purpose, but only parts of his sentences made their way into my mind.
“…isn’t it obvious that something as powerful as cantus can’t be powered by the tiny amount of energy released when glucose is metabolized? So the author proposed two hypotheses about where the energy comes from. The first was that all cantus used in the solar system drew its energy from the sun. I don’t understand how exactly the sun’s energy is harnessed, but by this theory, you wouldn’t be able to use cantus if you were outside the solar system. Or at the very least, the method of activating your power would be completely different. Isn’t that interesting? Though of course, since it’s impossible to prove or disprove this hypothesis, he could just be making it all up.”
“…so using psychokinesis, cantus in other words, steals energy from the sun and decreases its entropy, making it age faster. The sun’s lifetime is supposed to be around five hundred thousand years, but if we keep using our cantus, its death might come much sooner.”
“…the second theory is even harder to understand. In quantum mechanics, the observer effect states that simply observing a phenomenon alters it. This occurs on everything from the microscopic to macroscopic scale. It’s like the false minoshiro said, the existence of cantus was first proven in an experiment by that one scientist.”
“…in short, time, space, physical substances, were all reduced to information. Cantus has the unbelievable power to rewrite the very information that creates the universe. So if you take this idea all the way, it’s possible to completely change the universe. That’s a huge, circular notion. First the building blocks of the universe are created, starting from quarks and building up to the elements, organic matter, and life itself. Then species evolve and develop a complex brain with which they use to transform the universe…”
“…the most fascinating thing is that psychological mechanisms behind cantus are almost exactly the same as those used in shamanism in undeveloped societies. A social anthropologist named Frazer put magic in two categories, contagious magic and sympathetic magic. The latter one is especially…”
“Hey, Satoru,” I interrupted. “Will we forget about Maria and Mamoru too?”
His expression hardened. “Not even if I’m dead.”
“But what if the Board of Education alters our…”
“I won’t let them do it again,” he said. “They’re dead wrong if they think they can control my thoughts and memories forever. If they try to force something on us again, we’ll just leave town.”
“We?”
“You’re coming with me, aren’t you?” He looked a little worried.
I smiled. “It’s the other way around.”
“What?”
“I will leave the town. And you’ll follow me.”
Satoru looked dumbstruck for a few moments, then finally smiled in defeat.
“Fine. That works too.”
“Hey, if we do leave, let’s look for Maria and Mamoru and live with them.”
“Yeah, of course. Four are better than two.”
“Exactly! And when we find them…” I stopped. I couldn’t speak, as if something were stuck in my throat. My body began to shake, and I burst into tears.
When I finally found my voice, all I could do was wail.
Satoru held me as I cried.
That night we slept together in the snow hut.
It was my first time being penetrated, and more painful than I had imagined. Maria and I had experimented with each other quite a bit, but intercourse between male and female was totally different, and it hurt.
“Are you okay? Does it hurt?” Satoru asked, stopping in mid-motion.
“Mhmm. Wait a little. I’ll get used to it soon,” I answered through gritted teeth.
Why was life so unfair to women? I complained mentally. In addition to the inconvenience of forty weeks of pregnancy, we also have to go through pain that a man could never endure in order to give birth. So why does sex have to hurt too?
“Don’t push yourself.”
“It’s fine. …doesn’t it hurt for you?”
“Not at all.”
I suddenly realized that although Satoru knew full well I was in pain, he was too aroused to stop. And far from empathizing with me, he was probably getting off on it. What an asshole.
But soon the pain disappeared. I felt myself growing wet. Instead of feeling like I was being forced into something unpleasant, pleasure began to take hold.
I moaned and Satoru asked, “Does it feel good?”
“You idiot.”
It was an unneeded question. Instead of answering, I raked his back hungrily.
So I was no longer a virgin. And now I was forced to think about how I would pass our next physical exam. Once again, it was the woman who had to deal with it.
Satoru’s movements grew more intense. Even as I felt my pleasure mounting, I had a moment of panic. If I got pregnant, things would get really complicated.
But before I could stop him, Satoru froze.
I thought he had finally realized the problem, but that wasn’t it.
He was looking down at me with an expression of such love and tenderness, I thought he was about to cry.
I had a sudden realization. His look wasn’t directed at me. I wasn’t sure how, but he seemed to see in me the shadow of the boy he had never stopped loving.
At the same time, I felt from the bottom of my heart a longing for the same boy.
Satoru started moving again, faster this time.
I was quickly reaching my climax. When I orgasmed, the face I saw was no longer Satoru’s, but another boy’s.
Both of us were using each other to make love to someone who was no longer in this world. It might be extremely abnormal, and you might even say we were cheating on each other, but we both knew and wanted it.
After I orgasmed, Satoru pulled out and came on the wall of the hut.
For a while, we simply lay panting.
Even in the pleasant afterglow of sex, the words the faceless boy had said in my dream went around and around in my mind.
Why did he tell me what he did?
He told me not to aid Maria’s escape.
And that she had to die.
Part V: Fires of the Apocalypse
Chapter 1
I washed the daikon, burdock, carrot and other root vegetables and cut them into bite-sized pieces. I scooped everything into a bowl and brought it to the naked mole rat nest box in the breeding center. They usually live in burrows underground, but at the present were doing quite well in a complicated network of glass tunnels.
I opened hatch to the feeding area and emptied the contents of the bowl inside. Hearing the sound of tumbling food, the mole rats hurried through the tunnels to feed. As subterranean creatures, they have poor eyesight and are sensitive to sounds and vibrations.
They were all completely hairless and resembled wrinkly sausages or ham with stubby legs. In order to easily identify the worker rats, the sides of their bodies were labeled in permanent ink with numbers from P1 through P31 in order of birth. The ‘P’ meant that they were property of the public office, but we also said it was because they were little porkers.15
As the workers started eating, a naked mole rat twice their size appeared. It bumped into P8 coming in the other direction in one of the tunnels, but continued forward as if nothing were there. P8 scrabbled desperately for a foothold, but was flattened as the big mole rat walked right over it.
The big mole rat was Sarami, the queen of the nest. She was a darker red than the workers and had white and brown spots on her body, making her look like a salami sausage, hence her name.
Three mole rats labeled ♂1 through ♂3 followed behind her. Since there were few fertile males in a colony, these three were not required to gather food or protect the nest. Their only duty was to mate
with Sarami to produce more mole rats, even though they are originally Sarami’s sons.
When Sarami approached the feeding areas, all the workers moved aside to let her through. Queen Sarami and her beloved sons had the first pick of the meal.
It’s rare to find an animal whose appearance and behavior makes you feel so depressed. And even though I’d developed some compassion for the naked mole rats as I looked after them, I couldn’t help disliking them every time I noticed how similar they were to their cousins, the queerats.
And therein lies the question. What in the world were people of the past thinking when they decided to selectively breed these ugly creatures to the point of having near-human intelligence?
Granted, other than naked mole rats, there were no mammals that exhibited eusocial behaviors like that of a worker bee obeying its queen. But if all they wanted was an animal to subjugate and use as servants, I could think of a number of more appealing animals. For example, if they wanted subterranean animals, meerkats were much friendlier and easier on the eyes.
Anyway, raising naked mole rats was my job, whether I liked it or not. But it was not my main duty. My real responsibility was the investigation and regulation of queerats in the Exospecies Control Division of the Department of Health in Hayring.
July, year 237. I was 26. Six years ago, I graduated from Sage Academy and found a job at the Department of Health. Those who had graduated with top grades in cantus were entered into a lottery where various studios could bid to have them as an employee. On the other hand, people like me, who were average at cantus but had excellent academic grades, usually found administrative positions at various departments in the district.
To be honest, I had fantasized on more than one occasion that when I graduated, the Ethics Committee would call upon me to assume the position of future leader of the villages. But for some reason, Tomiko had maintained an air of complete indifference, and I had to admit that assuming I would be invited to work in the very heart of the town’s governing body was a huge overestimation of my abilities.
Given all the things that had happened in my life until now, I didn’t exactly trust the Board of Education (rather, to say I hated them would be more accurate), so I couldn’t look for work there. The library would have been okay, but I wanted to escape my mother’s protective grasp as soon as possible. And since my father was still the mayor (he held office for an unusually long time), I avoided any positions directly related to the town hall. In the end, there was nowhere else for me to go but the Department of Health.
