The Children Reason

by Jin (Shizen no Teki-P)

  As I idly watched Kido lug her out of the room, Konoha began to snore loudly across from me.

  That guy was kind of out-there, too; that blank stare of his made it impossible to guess what was running through his mind.

  And now he was here, sleeping like a baby in a house he had never seen before. Utterly vulnerable.

  …It’s like a child who grew up without maturing at all.

  Judging by how Hibiya acted, there had to be a lot of complex drama between the two of them.

  …No, not just them, either. Even Ene—even the Mekakushi-dan, for that matter—had some kind of history with him.

  Ene’s unnatural behavior reminded me, although I tended to overlook it pretty often, that she had a past like everyone else. The fact that this, shall we say, unique life-form(?) was holing up inside my computer hardware should have felt like a bigger deal than it did.

  It wasn’t that I never pondered what happened to her before she came to me. But whenever I asked, she would always dance around the subject.

  I took a distracted glance at my phone screen. Ene, who couldn’t have known my thought process right now, was busy making up a futon bed.

  “…What’re you doing?”

  “Huh? I’m about to sleep, what do you think?”

  “Oh…Huh.”

  I was pretty sure Ene bragged once about how she was “such a high-spec girl, I never have to sleep at all!”

  But I let it drop. Needling her any further would just spell more trouble for me.

  “Whew. Sorry to leave you alone.”

  Kido shut the door behind her, rubbing a sore shoulder as she spoke.

  “Not that it’s any of my business, but I think she may wanna try a little portion control.”

  “Ha-ha…Sorry about this, though. I mean, staying here two days in a row and all.”

  “Nah, it’s no biggie. It’s our fault anyway. Today, though…Man, we’re all just gassed, huh?”

  Kido looked pretty spent herself as she plopped down on the sofa facing me.

  Me, she, and Ene were the only conscious Mekakushi-dan members left. Konoha, who dropped out a few minutes ago, was now slumped on the sofa by Kido, arms loosely splayed out in both directions.

  “Ooh, looks like Mr. Faker’s checked out for the night, hmm? Nice to see someone making himself at home.”

  Ene, now burrowed into the futon she made up, stuck her face out from the side and gave Konoha’s sleeping face a disapproving grunt.

  “What do you mean, ‘Mr. Faker’?”

  “Mm? Just the nickname I gave him. It’s kinda tough to tell ’em apart otherwise.”

  “Oh, right, he looks like someone you know, yeah? But what kind of guy is…”

  Just as I was about to ask, Ene’s eyes swiveled toward mine.

  “Oh, what? All right, all right. You don’t want me to ask? I won’t.”

  Ene flashed a cheerful smile at me.

  “There’s a good master! I mean, I’m kind of in the dark here, too. But I’ll try to explain it to you…sooner or later. You know, master, in terms you’d understand.”

  There was a bit of melancholy betrayed on her face.

  She dodged the subject, like she always did. But this might have been the first time she promised to tell me anything.

  Still, this is Ene we’re talking about. She might just be feeding me a line.

  “Yeah, well, I guess we all got our own crap to deal with. Though, of course, I invited him here ’cause I kind of need to know some more about that…”

  Kido looked to her side. Konoha was lost in slumber. I couldn’t guess why he so valiantly fought against Mr. Sandman a second ago. Whatever the reason, he didn’t win. Kido sighed, and as if on cue, Konoha finally lost his balance and slumped to the floor.

  “Though I guess he’s pretty useless now. Not that we’d be doing very much this late anyway.”

  She sunk deeply into the sofa cushions, hanging her arms on the upper edge as she crossed her legs.

  “Tomorrow, huh…? Hey, who was that kid, in the end?”

  Kido stared at the ceiling.

  “Hm? Oh. Hibiya, right? The way his eyes danced around like that…That’s probably a sign that he’s gonna gain an ‘ability.’ Like the ones we got.”

  Hibiya had yet to come-to after that encounter, but apparently he was still in a pretty unstable condition. After being briefed on the situation, Seto volunteered to keep watch over/take care of him for the night…which brought us to now. I found myself gazing at one of the bare lightbulbs under the ceiling.

  “Oh…I guess we can trust Seto to watch out for him, though. Seems like a pretty straight-up guy.”

  Kido let out a soft chuckle.

  “Yeah, well, he’s got a good head on his shoulders, but we all got our weaknesses, you know? Betcha anything he’s sleeping right now, actually.”

  “A good head on his shoulders” is the main impression I carried of Seto myself, from the moment we met. To Kido, that appraisal was probably backed up with hard-earned experience.

  I had only met the guy this morning, after all. No way would I have any kind of deep understanding of his psyche.

  “Listen, uh…I mean, you guys…”

  “Mm? What?”

  Kido flashed a confused look as I stumbled over myself. Was this something I was safe in asking? Would asking take me on a one-way trip down a road I’d never return from again? I tried to weigh these doubts in my head, but my own fatigue helped ferry the question to my lips.

  “Those eyes you all have…I mean, I dunno if I should be asking this or what, really, but…they’re not normal, you know? Momo’s, too. She said she doesn’t remember when she wound up like that, but I’m guessing she’s gotta be related to you guys somehow.”

  The confusion remained written on Kido’s face as I asked her point-blank. But the moment I closed my mouth, a benign smile spread across her lips.

  “…I probably shoulda talked to you before this guy showed up. Sorry about that.”

  Kido hunched forward, palms clasped between her knees.

  “Oh, no, I mean…That’s fine, but, you know, I guess I couldn’t stop wondering about it.”

  I averted my eyes, feeling bizarrely ashamed over my hesitation.

  “No, we really needed to talk. It’s just…You’re right. It’s a little off the beaten path, so it’s not like we can just bring it up in broad daylight. These abilities have caused a lot of grief for all of us, too. So explaining everything right away…It’s kind of a self-defense reflex, keeping us from doing that.”

  I turned my face upward as Kido spoke.

  Her expression bore no sadness. Her eyes were clear and unclouded, revealing the strong, driving will within.

  “Y-yeah, I guess I can see that. It’s nothing I get at all, and…well, you know.”

  That’s right. What am I trying to do, learning more about these guys? The heavy implications are why I stumbled over my words.

  What would satisfying my curiosity accomplish?

  What could I do once I knew?

  Whatever “incident” Hibiya got wrapped up in, it was allegedly serious enough that somebody’s life was in danger.

  It might be something we couldn’t even afford to involve the police with.

  Hibiya is…growing an ability. The same kind Kido and her cohorts had. And now they’re keeping guard over him, trying to nurse him through it.

  What about me, though?

  Is this really something I should take the plunge and ask?

  I could always clam up, return home like nothing ever happened, and go back to my Internet-playboy lifestyle.

  Of course I could. This has nothing to do with me. I have a—

  “You running again?”

  For a single instant, a bracing chill ran down my spine. I felt like someone was crushing my heart with their gnarled talons. A cold sweat erupted across my forehead.

  “Shintaro? Hey, you all right? You’re not looking too well…”


  “Oh, uh…no, I’m fine. Sorry. I’m okay now.”

  “…All right. You must be pretty beat, too. Wanna pick up this topic tomorrow, maybe?”

  Tomorrow. Was I going to be here tomorrow? Ene all but asked me to head back home earlier. I couldn’t know for sure, but she might have been concerned for my safety.

  But I couldn’t just…

  “No, I…Could you keep going? Just a little is fine.”

  If I walked out of here and back into that bedroom, what would that achieve?

  Maybe I didn’t want to leave these guys after all. Maybe going back to self-imposed solitude scared me.

  “All right. Great. So let me tell you about how I got this ability.”

  Kido smiled, perhaps noticing something I hadn’t. She blinked, and then her eyes flooded with a deep crimson shade.

  “My ‘Concealing Eyes’…That’s what Kano calls it, anyway, but basically it’s the ability to make myself and the things around me less…detectable.”

  She reached for a magazine sitting on the table next to her, bringing it up to my eyes. From the edges inward, the magazine grew hazy, imprecise in the air, before neatly disappearing into nothingness.

  As I squinted into empty space, I realized all over again what an astonishing trick it was, thrust before me like this. I could understand why Kido was loath to discuss it much.

  If word about this got out to the public, there’d be a huge media frenzy. She could have been trucked off to some government research facility. Or worse. One could imagine all manner of nightmare scenarios.

  “I used to have parents, too, before I got…well, this. My mother wasn’t related to me by blood, though. And my dad was horrible. He went screwing around with girls every single night. His company went totally bankrupt before long. And not even that was enough for him to lose. So he set fire to our house.”

  “Wh-what…?”

  Considering the story took just a few seconds to relate, Kido’s past lacked nothing in shock value. But recalling the memories didn’t seem to pain her at all. Her voice remained calm, as if reminiscing over some silly little grade-school rivalry.

  “Heh-heh. Pretty rough, huh? But that’s not even the main story.”

  “Oh…”

  “Me and the rest of my family were all in the house when my dad torched it. My sister and I, we couldn’t get out of the bedroom.”

  “That…wouldn’t that kill you…?”

  I was pretty shaken by this point. Kido, no doubt noticing this, betrayed a mischievous smile.

  “Mm-hmm. He killed me, all right. I couldn’t breathe any longer, and then the fire consumed my body.”

  “Oof…”

  “And then I saw it. The wall of our house split apart, and there was this giant, fanged mouth opening up!”

  “Gagghh!”

  Now Kido was riding the moment, like a counselor busting out her best ghost story by the campfire.

  Given the late hour, her storytelling acumen was more than enough to keep me captivated by fear across the table.

  It was more than a tad off-putting in a way, her giving me such a fright, considering her laughable performance at the amusement park–haunted house a few hours earlier.

  But, despite her electrifying buildup, Kido refrained from continuing. She crossed her arms in defiance, a look of supreme victory on her face.

  I grew unable to bear the silence.

  “…And, and then what?”

  Kido remained in the same position as she triumphantly replied:

  “Hm? That’s all.”

  “Huh?”

  The expert feint was enough to make my jaw visibly drop.

  Kido had woven this tale of a young girl burned alive from head to toe, then consumed alive by a huge, bizarre monster. But considering that experience, she looked remarkably healthy and undigested right now. Something didn’t add up.

  “So…so what’s your ability all about, then?!”

  “Oh, yeah, so when I woke up in the ruins of my home later on, it was already in me. All my burns disappeared, too, or at least most of ’em. It was a pretty weird night.”

  “But what was that big evil mouth thing that you saw?”

  “Well, I saw it, but my memory kind of totally blanks out after that. I’m guessing it must’ve swallowed me up, but I was the only survivor of that fire, and really, I just have no idea what happened.”

  Kido raised her bent arms in the air, in the classic “search me” gesture.

  Now I knew the entire story, such as it was. But the storyteller was a bit lacking in important details. Things just seemed stranger and stranger.

  “Huh. So what I’m getting from that is…you guys don’t really understand any of this either. Yeah?”

  “Yeah. Of course, I’m doing as much research as I can, but…Well, that’s kind of an ongoing process. I was still a kid back then, and I told the police about everything I could think of, but they never really investigated.”

  No, they wouldn’t. Telling a story like that with a straight face wouldn’t build much trust in people. It’d cause serious trouble.

  But if whatever happened to Hibiya was the same kind of thing that happened to Kido and the rest, it was probably in no one’s best interest to call the cops. Maybe that was why Kido offered a helping hand and brought him here. She saw a lot of herself in him.

  My mind dwelled for a moment on the central issue. The part the police would never believe.

  The strangest thing about Kido’s tale, by far, was the “huge mouth” that consumed her. The rest of the story was pretty morbid, too, but nothing you couldn’t imagine happening in real life. If anything to Kido’s past connected to her current “anomaly,” that was it.

  “What about the rest of you guys? Did Kano and Seto get eaten by that ‘huge mouth,’ too?”

  “Kano told me he saw ‘the exact same thing,’ but I guess his memory went blank right after that, too. With Seto, his memory went dark while he was drowning in a river, so he’s not too sure whether he saw it or not.”

  Her mention of the word “drowned” instantly brought up memories from my own younger years, memories that existed only in a fog by now. It was something I recalled now and again, but suddenly Kido’s story was tinting those memories a far more ominous shade.

  “…You know, I think that’s maybe when Momo started to be like that. After she drowned in the ocean.”

  “Kisaragi?”

  “Yeah…You know, um, I’d appreciate it if you don’t discuss this with her too much. But yeah, there she was…and our dad, too, trying to save her…”

  There was apparently a whole crowd of people watching my dad diving in to help Momo after she got swept into the sea. Once he swam over to where Momo was, a giant wave swallowed them up.

  I heard all about it from my mother afterward, once I got home from the test prep center I was attending. There was an immediate search-and-rescue effort, of course, but they never found my dad. The next day, somebody spotted Momo washed up on the beach. Miraculously alive, they said.

  “Oh…I see. Yeah. Not the kind of thing you wanna bring up with Kisaragi around the breakfast table.”

  “No, yeah, you see what I mean? But your story reminded me of something else, too.”

  There was something in common between Kido’s tale and Momo’s drowning.

  Kido said she woke up in the burnt-out shell of her house. Which meant that, for the entire time that place was burning to the ground, she was there.

  Momo wasn’t found until the next day. Which meant that, between that wave and her discovery, she was there in the water.

  Thinking about it rationally, would someone have any chance of survival in those conditions?

  No. They couldn’t have. Yes, miracles happen every day in our blessed, beautiful world, and all of that. But you couldn’t explain all this away with trite aphorisms like that.

  Why not? Because once you add Kido’s “huge mouth” to the mix, everything suddenly made sense.
>
  What if that mouth swallowed up Kido just as she succumbed to the flames, and swallowed up Momo just as she took her first lungful of water? They could’ve been inside there that whole time, before being “spit out” just before their respective miraculous rescues.

  It was kind of a wild story, yes. But Kido’s and Momo’s “abilities” with their eyes might provide all the evidence needed to prove it.

  “I was just thinking, if that ‘huge mouth’ you saw was the reason why you all got those abilities with your eyes, then maybe that mouth swallowed up Momo back then, too. I know that’s pretty off-the-wall, but…”

  Pretty off-the-wall, but something told me that the common-sense rules of planet Earth were powerless in the unexplainable face of these “abilities.”

  And behind these unexplainable skills, an unexplainable common presence…

  “Hmm. Yeah. We were kind of thinking along similar lines ourselves. And if Kisaragi had that same thing happen to her, I guess we can pin the blame on that…thing for our abilities. She’ll have Kano backing her up on that too, so…For now, that sounds like the safe bet to make. I guess. You know, though…”

  “What?”

  Kido brought a hand to her lips, suddenly stumbling across something in her mind.

  Her eyes focused on a single point atop the adjacent desk, as if scanning some invisible jigsaw puzzle for the one piece that’d lock everything together.

  “I just…you know, there’s something else. It was in Kisaragi’s story, too. All of us, we nearly lost our lives while someone else was nearby. Kano was with his mom, and Seto said he was with his friend.”

  Kido’s gaze remained transfixed on the table as she fumbled with something in her mind.

  “And yet we were the ones who survived. And the people with us…and I don’t know if it’s a result of that or not…but they all vanished.”

  The observation startled me.

  “So…when your house was on fire, did…um, did they find your family’s bodies in there?”

  “Yep. My mother and father’s…Just them. They never found a trace of my sister, and I was the only one who survived.”

  “But then…”