by Nisioisin
The Darkness.
“─gh!”
“…gh!”
“~~~gh!”
“Guh…”
Mayoi Hachikuji, Shinobu Oshino, Yotsugi Ononoki.
And I─shuddered.
We’d been left speechless by it, the way it had appeared so suddenly, without warning, seemingly illogically.
I just kind of had my guard down.
I really mean it when I say “just kind of.”
For some odd reason, I’d convinced myself that this former cram school was safe─I do make the worst assumptions, don’t I?
“Guh, uuugh─”
“It’s time to run, everybody!”
It wasn’t me, in my clear confusion, or Shinobu, who was seeing it in person for the first time in four hundred years, or Ononoki, who stood closest to the Darkness─
But Hachikuji who was the quickest to act.
Her judgment was the swiftest among us all.
“Y-Yeah!”
Run?
But how?
We could have Ononoki activate the Disengagement Edition of her Unlimited Rule book like before─that’d be a good idea.
But as I mentioned, she stood closest to the Darkness─we couldn’t approach her position. Getting any closer to her might make the Darkness engulf her─along with us.
Ononoki was going to need to run toward us, but she didn’t seem to comprehend this sudden development quite yet.
She was probably trying to comprehend it, though.
Which was exactly why─she couldn’t move.
Still, she was the only one with a way to escape at that moment─Shinobu couldn’t run off to the South Pole since she’d mostly lost her vampiric skills.
I was pretty much in normal mode, too.
As for Hachikuji, that went without saying─what were we supposed to do now?
What could we do to get away?
Faced with a “phenomenon” that we weren’t certain was our foe, which seemed to lack a will of its own to say the least, what in the world might we do─to get away from it?
Or maybe not?
Should we be fighting here instead of fleeing?
But we didn’t even have the first clue as to how to fight it.
True, the Darkness had devoured my beloved bicycle. I should have hated it, in other words, but I didn’t know what to think of it.
I didn’t even know if it was our enemy.
How was I supposed to feel any enmity toward it?
“Guh─”
Our stare-down only continued.
This situation, where we were all frozen in place, dragged on and on─it may have been just a few seconds in reality but felt so much longer.
Ononoki was the only one with a way to escape from this place─but with her in a stupor, no one could move.
No.
I was wrong to think that no one could─there was an exception, though it might not have been “someone.”
The Darkness could.
That’s right─it did move─but not toward Ononoki. It could have swallowed her whole just by moving forward a few feet, but that isn’t what it did.
No─instead it moved toward Hachikuji, who stood farthest from it.
Slowly─none of us noticed that it had started to move.
“Hachikuji!─” I yelled, hoping to get to her before the Darkness─but only hoping. I didn’t know if I should really move yet.
We didn’t know what might stimulate the Darkness─it might react to my movement and start to move faster like Ononoki said.
That’d be one thing, but it could also start teleporting around again, engulfing Hachikuji in one go, or possibly even everyone present─
So all I could do was holler.
“─Come this way!”
In any case, the Darkness seemed to be gliding toward Hachikuji─which meant that no matter what, she and she alone had to act. And in that case, I wanted her to come toward me at least.
Shinobu and I were connected by my shadow, so there was no need to do anything about her─once Hachikuji joined me, we could grab right onto Ononoki and have her activate that thing─activate the Disengagement Edition of her Unlimited Rulebook.
If it was too hard to make it out through a window, she could just crash through the ceiling─it didn’t matter where we went, she just needed to put some distance between us and it at an incredible speed, and we should be safe.
Temporarily, at least.
“O-Okay!”
Hachikuji’s fragility in the face of adversity actually seemed to work in her favor… She was usually such a rebellious girl when it came to me, but not only did she not question my words, she obeyed them immediately.
While I might leap onto Hachikuji, it was extremely rare for her to leap onto me. Come to think of it, this made two times in one day, which was even more rare.
The strangest things can happen over the course of a life, I thought, which is precisely why I can’t die here─as I caught Hachikuji in my arms.
The Darkness didn’t stop moving─it passed where Hachikuji had been, engulfing a few more of the desks that had stood behind her.
It really was like a black hole.
Then again, I thought of black holes as something with suction─and while this thing could swallow you up, it didn’t seem to suck you closer. In that case, we could get away. Even if it got to our destination before us, we could get away as long as we were fast enough.
I held Hachikuji tight (a split second)…
I leapt toward Ononoki (a split second)…
I grabbed onto her body (a split second)…
“Ononoki,” I yelled (a split second), “now!”
“Huh? H-Hey, kind monster sir, that’s going too far. Stop it, already. Don’t touch me there. What are you thinking? Consider the situation we’re in.”
“What are YOU thinking?!” I screamed as loud as I could and head-butted her.
I couldn’t put my hands on her because they were holding onto Hachikuji─and Shinobu had already sunk into my shadow. Our feelings weren’t linked for nothing─having secretly worried that she might needle me later saying, Ye abandoned me, I was seriously relieved that she understood me without any verbal exchange.
“We’re escaping, Ononoki! Like before!”
“Oh, so that’s why─”
I even felt anger at how she seemed to have forgotten about the option entirely, but naturally didn’t have the time to pursue the matter.
The Darkness changed direction.
Now it came toward us.
Or at least─looked to be, though it was probably an illusion.
“Unlimited Rulebook: The Disengagement Edition.”
025
We were transported in an instant─I heard later that Ononoki was able to go through the window normally and didn’t have to crash through the ceiling.
Not that I should call flying out of a window “normal”…but Ononoki just maybe hesitated to destroy the abandoned cram school that was home to so many of my memories.
I’m using phrases like “just maybe” and “I heard later”─the reason I don’t sound sure is that I couldn’t read Ononoki’s expression at the time or our trajectory.
We were simply going too fast.
Ononoki was no match for Shinobu’s peak-state super jump instant air dash, according to Shinobu─judging from our velocity, though, Ononoki’s leg strength might have been comparable in this case at least.
Actually, I was knocked out by the kinetic impact─it wasn’t even close to the kind of speed that my consciousness could withstand.
“That’s because I didn’t go easy unlike when I first did it─it was an all-out escape this time. You should consider yourself lucky that your body wasn’t torn to pieces from the sonic boom, kind monster sir,” Ononoki explained.
Actually, it was more like an excuse.
This girl never apologized…
Then again, she probably figured we couldn’t get away unless sh
e went at that speed, and we did in fact manage to get away. I should have had no complaints…but still didn’t feel like thanking her.
Humans are emotional animals.
“So… Where are we now?”
When I regained consciousness, I was somewhere I’d never seen before─it seemed like we were in the mountains, but I didn’t know which.
All mountains tend to look the same when you’re in them…but at least it didn’t seem to be the ones I knew so well…or rather, was deeply tied to, that featured Kita-Shirahebi Shrine. I felt no familiarity with this place.
Hmm…
Actually, forget where. What about the time?
It was a…night sky…approaching daybreak, actually.
“I don’t know where we are, kind monster sir. I didn’t have the luxury to pick a target─though I’m sure I went roughly north from that abandoned cram school.”
“North… Um, but why are we in the mountains?”
“Three quarters of Japan’s land is mountains. A haphazard jump is probably going to land you in them.”
“…”
Shinobu had said that three quarters of our planet is covered by water so that’s probably where a jump would land you. Ononoki was making a similar point at a reduced scale.
“Well, I don’t think we’re that far away…” she told me. “I jumped almost straight up the first time, which is why we only had to travel a few miles as the crow flies.”
“Is it not…following us? I mean, the Darkness?”
“It seems that way. I guess it’s true that it’s bad at dealing with vertical motion… That is how the Aberration Slayer got away four hundred years ago, too. I should have jumped more upward this time, too─we ended up flying like a cannonball because I aimed for the window and traveled at a shallow angle.”
We probably went a few dozen miles, maybe even more than a hundred, Ononoki estimated with a nonchalant look.
It seemed like we’d escaped without thinking of what might happen next.
Well, she’d gone fast enough to make me black out, so maybe we’d broken the hundred-mile barrier…
And it wasn’t even per hour, so I was really lucky that I hadn’t gotten thrown off.
“Wait, where’s Hachikuji? Don’t tell me she got thrown─”
“She’s fine. Thanks to the tight grip you had on her chest, kind monster sir─quite the seatbelt, I must say. She’s sleeping in the shade over there.”
“Sleeping… Did she pass out again?”
“No, she was awake when we landed. She said she was sleepy because it was night, and went to bed.”
“…”
Such audacity when she didn’t have to face adversity head-on.
Nerves of steel.
“Oh, because it was night… Right, the time… When is it? I mean…how long was I out?”
“How long? Just long enough for Miss Hachikuji and I to have our fun with you.”
“What did you do to me while I was passed out?!”
And hold on, “Miss Hachikuji”?
Sheesh, were they getting along?
“To be specific, one night─ever since early evening,” Ononoki enlightened me, “so I guess that would be about twelve hours.”
“Twelve hours…”
What a good night’s rest.
I was mentally exhausted too, so my body probably used the opportunity it had when I blacked out to go into sleep mode─not that I felt at all refreshed.
“Though I said Miss Hachikuji and I had our fun with you, actually we tended to you, kind monster sir.”
“O-Oh… Sorry for the trouble.”
“Are you really? Saying so doesn’t cost you a thing… If you’re being sincere, why don’t you swear you won’t get angry even after you see everything we drew under your clothes?”
“How about I get angry now?”
Kick.
No, I wanted to but stopped myself.
Whether or not they’d really tended to me, a guy passing out during an escapade was nothing but a burden─I was grateful that they hadn’t abandoned me there and simply run off.
“At any rate, if we’re being cautious, our rule that it won’t follow us if we travel vertically is just based on past experience. It’s only worked so far. There’s no telling how it’ll go next time.”
“Yeah… Past experience aside, I can’t figure out the first rule about how this Darkness works. What is that thing?”
I might have been less anxious if it actually kept on chasing us.
Even at that moment, the Darkness might pop up right next to me─I’d breathed a sigh of relief, but that wasn’t our situation at all.
“So, Hachikuji…”
I stood to go check up on her as she slept, just to be sure. There was a chance that she’d been injured and that Ononoki was trying to be thoughtful.
Then again, I wasn’t too sure whether Hachikuji, a ghost, could sustain an actual injury…
Either way, I was worrying too much. She looked the very picture of health as she slept there under the trees.
I even touched her and made sure.
Yup, she was in good health.
“Okay, then… Now what? If we don’t even know where we are…”
Muttering, I pulled out my cell phone.
Hmm.
I should have expected as much, but it was out of service─which meant we were deep in the mountains, far from any towns…
It seemed unthinkable, but could Ononoki have put in so much effort that she took us to another country? What if we were in the Grand Canyon?
…I guess the Grand Canyon isn’t a mountain.
“I’d love to launch a counterattack, but can that thing be counterattacked?” I wondered out loud. “And it’s hard to tell if it’s really coming after us in the first place… We can’t even be sure if it’s following Shinobu, since that’s just based on experience too…”
“The first step of our counterattack will be listening,” Ononoki said.
“Listening?”
“Gathering info─did you forget what I was saying right before that thing appeared? I told you there was someone who knows about this thing that isn’t an aberration but a phenomenon. Remember?”
“…”
Um.
Now that she mentioned it─it felt like she’d said something like that.
My memories were vague since I’d passed out right afterwards…but I believed the name was…
“Gaen…”
Gaen─Izuko Gaen.
So we needed to hear what she had to say? She knew Kagenui…right? Were we going to have to approach Kagenui first to get to her?
“Ononoki… What about your job? Is everything going to be okay?”
“Of course it’s not going to be okay. But I can’t just go back to my work now─I’m not that cruel.”
“Do you have any way of contacting Kagenui? You couldn’t yesterday, but some time has passed since then. She must be close to done with whatever she was doing, right?”
“Contact my sister… Hm. Considering our predicament, we might have to try, even if it’s no good, even if she’s still working. In that case, I do have a few tricks up my sleeve to gain access…but I can’t use any of them this deep in the mountains.”
“Can’t you telepathically communicate with her or something?”
“Unfortunately, our bond isn’t that strong. To approach her, we’d have to climb down this mountain, then call her or text her─not that I’d expect an immediate reply. I have a negligent sister.”
“Negligent… Well, I guess I don’t see her as the type to reply to text messages within the minute.”
Whatever her personality, though, Kagenui was our only hope─she appeared to be our only route for contacting Izuko Gaen.
“Telepathy is too much to ask for, but it’d be nice if my sister could at least use her sixth sense─that said, I’m sure she’d readily abandon someone as inconsequential as me if she had to.”
