by Kei Urahama
“Dad…”
Yuji called out to his father, who was probably witnessing everything.
A few short minutes later, the first angel descended from above.
PART ONE
RAPTURE
(619 hours after the appearance of the Dome)
Chapter One
An angel had come to the window.
The phosphorescent pink light emanating from it filtered into the room through the gaps between thin planks affixed over the glass, highlighting the face of Kazuya Ishida, who peered out through a crack. The pale light on his face shifted as the angel rose. It was as if it was scanning the inner workings of his mind.
Must be another suicide near this floor. How did it happen this time? Sleeping pills? A home-made poison cocktail of kitchen products? Or something more visceral, physical? Slicing a wrist, hanging by the neck, cramming their head into a plastic bag? No matter how, it’s irresponsible, Ishida thought. No idea if it was a he or a she, but they should know better… should know what they become after death.
Looks like it’ll be a busy day. No doubt I’ll be asked to clean up the mess.
Hopefully not a jumper. Don’t need to fight some flat thing scuttling around like a lizard. But then again, if it was a hanger... Chills the spine just thinking about it. If it is, then I’ll just reject it outright. Don’t care if they call me yellow. I’ve had it with hangers.
Ishida felt the suicide committer knew the consequences but selfishly did it anyway. Must have thought they were better off as a monster than going on as a rational person struggling through despair and depression. Then again, Ishida could understand the motive. Similar thoughts were taking root in his mind as well. Or at least it seemed a reasonable option.
If I want to avoid suffering in hell, why not become a demon instead? Adapt to fit the hell around me. Switch from the receiving end of this torture to the giving end…
Yes, I can understand suicidal feelings.
These depressing yet seductive thoughts came to Ishida as he watched the angel outside his boarded window, floating through the air forty meters high.
Yes, I can understand wanting to die quite well.
This being a twelfth-floor west-facing apartment, the window should have normally overlooked a near panoramic view of the Orion Garden complex. To the right was the four-story metallic compound of the Amusement Center, once boasting popular game arcades and a 3D cinema. Directly in front was the Central Square where the pyramid-shaped lighting system was situated, this central square was called Orion Garden and was the namesake of the entire complex. Just to the left stood a restaurant themed like a space observatory. Beyond that was a gargantuan structure once billed as Japan’s largest department store. Finally a fifty-story observatory tower had risen from the middle of it all. If you had a bird’s eye view hovering over the central tower, with its U-shaped wings spanning out either side, you might imagine it as a giant robot crawling out from the earth. The view at night had also been spectacular. Three high-tech machines, placed to mimic the pyramids of Giza, become the three stars of Orion’s Belt and emitted rainbow-colored arrows of light, creating a brilliant laser light show, sending this corner of the capital city into the future. In fact, this had been the prototypical future that all urban dwellers dreamt of, a hopeful symbol of the new century to come.
But Ishida’s view beyond the floating angel represented something different, a new kind of hellish era.
Now there was neither night nor day. No sky to think of. The sun, the moon and stars were non-existent, replaced by a dome-shaped wall of flesh. A phosphor light from the canopy veined with countless red lines, mottled like mixed paint, that trapped everything in this world of eternal twilight.
The pyramidal monument had once dazzlingly lit up the night with bright rainbow colors, but it was now only a set of eerie, dull black, slanting headstones. Zombies wandered around the base and at times even visibly fed on each other there. The Amusement Center had narrowly survived, but the office buildings next to it had disappeared into the wall of flesh. The giant department store across from it retained only its left wing and the observatory had disappeared entirely.
From Ishida’s perspective the wall of flesh appeared abruptly in the middle of the pyramid square and spanned above, as round and curved as his own skull. As if covered with a giant bowl of flesh, the Dome isolated this spot from the rest of the world. Its size was less than two hundred meters in radius, about twice the size of the Tokyo Dome baseball stadium. If it were part of a perfect spherical shape, the ceiling of the Dome would have been much higher. Hanging so low, it created a claustrophobic effect on human viewers such as Ishida.
The world has descended into hell since that day. Or rather we’re trapped inside this hell, cut off from the world we used to know. We don’t have a clue what could have happened outside the Dome.
“What is that?”
A woman spoke next to Ishida’s ear. Startled, he flinched away from her face next to his by the window. Kyoko Takasaki had been sleeping in the bed just a moment before and was suddenly standing next to him.
“It’s okay. It’s not on this floor. Probably further downstairs.”
Kyoko frowned deeply. “But it’s here, meaning someone’s dead. The bastard! Like a vulture!” She glared out the window.
At that moment, as if hearing her, the floating thing shifted.
Kyoko never called these things angels. According to her, calling one an angel was crazy. Indeed, these creatures, objects or whatever they were, were nothing like angels.
As far as Ishida could see, the one outside the window was just a sphere about 1.5 meters in diameter, and it gave off a pinkish glow.
This floating thing moved casually, disappearing into the shadows below the balcony railing. It apparently had located the dead person’s room. Ishida grew anxious, not wanting to see it carrying the corpse to the wall of the Dome overhead. He turned away from the boarded window, lowering the dark blue curtain to block out the light from outside. He knew it was useless to hide from the thing or block it from entering the room. It could pass through plywood, double-paned windows or thick walls if it wanted to get inside the room. Such obstructions were meaningless. It was like the Holy Spirit. Like an angel. Only it always left a burnt mark in its passing. Since that day there were countless such traces on the buildings inside the Dome.
Yes, since that time on that day.
The digital wall clock indicated a date approximately one month since it had all started. Yet in this enclosed world there was neither night nor day, no visible intervals of time, date or month. For Ishida that awful day stood out in his mind as if it were yesterday. November 17th now, so precisely twenty-six days had passed since it happened.
But the fanatics on the top floor of the building didn’t count dates. That first day was still continuing for them.
They called it Domesday.
Chapter 2
If I’d only done things differently…
Like parents whose young child has been killed in a hit and run right in front of their home, or who have even lost their child by crashing their own car… always overcome with sorrow and regret.
If only they hadn’t forced their young son to get out of bed and go to school, just allowed him to be a little late… if only he hadn’t crossed the road at that moment…
If he’d taken the other way to school… People mull over the past even though it’s impossible to alter; they obsess over predestined moments, making their living hell that much worse.
In the case of Ishida, that fateful, unforgettable moment was when he realized he’d forgotten his watch about a hundred meters after leaving home.
In that moment it began; my own Domesday, or as the believers say, The Day of Reckoning. Still Ishida was plagued by his own regretful thoughts. If only I had gone back to get my watch…
If I had done that, then when I arrived at the train platform I wouldn’t have rushed into the train the instant before
the doors shut. It was Tokyo’s busy beltline, the Yamanote, where trains depart every three minutes. Which is to say if I’d gone back to collect my watch, I would have been at least three minutes behind the time I’d actually arrived at the moving walkway feeding into the Orion Garden complex. If I’d only gone back I wouldn’t be in this spot now.
Ishida was well aware that such regrets are pointless. It was not just that one moment that would have changed things. His rational mind tells him so. Yet such a rationale just spirals downward in an endless cycle of regrets, pondering how each moment could have been altered.
It really didn’t have to be that precise moment. In fact, on that moving walkway flowing toward the complex, if he hadn’t been in such a rush, wading through people lined up leaning on the handrail… If he had just stood on the belt and let the machine propel him forward, he wouldn’t have been caught up in this world.
To have a different outcome, not just a matter of minutes, a delay of several seconds to tie his shoelaces, for example, would have been enough.
October 22nd, Monday.
Despite the odd hour, just prior to 3pm on a weekday, Orion Garden appeared quite crowded.
Perhaps because its expensive opening ceremony was still fresh in people’s minds and a flashy laser light show had been held every holiday, the place was now a most popular metropolitan social spot. It surpassed places with similar facilities such as Osaki and Ebisu. The two-hundred meter long passage that connected the Garden and the Yamanote Line station could be traversed by a moving walkway, taking large numbers of guests to a futuristic paradise via conveyor belt.
Regarding the moving walkways of this city, there is, in short, one rule with regard to all horizontal escalators—the right half of the narrow passage is less than one meter and thirty centimeters wide, so that one side can always accommodate people who wish to hurry ahead.
This is because there are two different interpretations of this contraption. One interpretation takes into account that this is a mobile device just like its counterpart, the elevator. People who choose to follow this view remain still, holding the handrail, giving themselves over to the speed of the machine. Another interpretation is to see it as an accelerator machine. Those who go by this understanding don’t mind occasionally rubbing shoulders with each other, walking on the belt at the same speed they would walk on normal ground, moving along at the right side of those in line. Those who are stopped on the belt are largely composed of visitors from the countryside, dating couples, tired workers and the elderly. At times, with an expression of outrage, easily-irritated city folk charge past them.
Ishida belonged to the latter group. To begin with he never liked to stand in line and even more so on that day since he was in a hurry. He had promised to visit one of the apartments at 3pm in Orion Garden, to meet with a film director. Naoki Fukazawa was a friend from their film school days.
Despite having no big box office hits, Fukazawa lived in an apartment in one of the luxury condominiums called “Sirius Palace”. About a year prior, Ishida had been invited to the new domicile and remembered being slightly jealous of his friend who’d probably been able to buy the place with his wealthy parents’ money. A million-dollar apartment with two living rooms, a dining room and a kitchen totaling approximately thirty square meters, was far beyond compare to Ishida’s squalid, little thousand-bucks-a-month rental. (At the time, Ishida had no clue he would soon be living in that palatial apartment himself.) Fukuzawa was the typical spoiled son of a rich father. In all fairness, Ishida couldn’t complain since that prodigal son gave him regular jobs that helped him survive despite the unstable vocation of scriptwriter. On that day they were supposed to meet about a one-off special drama scheduled to air the next season.
However, the drama was still in an early planning stage with meetings at Fukazawa’s apartment, so Ishida needn’t have been so strictly punctual. Yet he had forged ahead, pushing by a parent and child who stood half way in the middle of the moving walkway. He pushed by even though he had no idea whether or not he was late, since he was without his forgotten watch.
“Excuse me.”
Ishida had looked down and spoke to the boy of five or six who so abruptly wandered into the accelerated-person’s lane. Until that last instant the child had been obscured behind the form of his mother, invisible from the back. If Ishida hadn’t miraculously stopped short in a feat of urban prowess, he would have barreled into the boy.
“Oh, sorry.”
The mother in a purple dress and fancy makeup tugged back her son, who looked up at Ishida, mystified, as if a collision of entities in space and time was a concept beyond comprehension. He would never forget the wide, sparkling eyes of that boy, whose hair was dyed yellow like an adult, as he looked up at him.
Someone behind him gave an elaborate cough, indicating for him to proceed, to stop interfering with the other accelerated people coming up behind. Ishida slumped forward as he passed the mother and child, sticking out his right hand to prevent the child wandering out again.
And then it happened.
A loud roar like thunder struck Ishida’s ears. He was instantaneously hurled forward onto the moving aisle. He came to himself, his hand touching the cold metal beneath. He felt an uncomfortable floating sensation, severe tinnitus, and a pressure against his legs as if something had fallen on them. He could feel his legs dripping wet as if some liquid had splashed on his jeans.
On all fours, he twisted back to see that half the body of the boy he’d just passed had fallen on his legs.
The young body had collapsed prone and was missing most of its head and right side. It was sliced as if cut by a razor sharp sword, bisected with gouts of blood and colorful entrails uncoiling and spilling over Ishida’s legs. For a long moment he did not even brush them away. This most bizarre sight he’d ever seen in the world paralyzed him. Yet, it wouldn’t be right to say “the world”—what he saw before him was not of this world…
This world behind him no longer existed.
Chapter 3
“It’s downstairs?” No way! Is it that old man?” Kyoko said as she leapt off the bed and got dressed.
“What are you going to do?” Ishida said, looking her over.
A little thinner than before.
He examined her body, tinged a dark red in the mottled light invading the gaps between the plywood and curtains as she pulled the black staff jacket over a gray, skin-tight T-shirt.
“I’m going down, of course.”
After dressing, Kyoko switched on the battery light hanging from the ceiling, the deterioration of her body even more conspicuous in the brightness. She was now a remnant of the vocalist she’d once been. Only occasionally seen on TV, once having risen up the charts to the top-25 rock singles. The first time he’d met her she’d had long hair down to her waist, but now it was crew-cut like a soldier. The hair, once dyed bright blue, was fading, returning to its original black at the roots. No longer wearing flashy Goth make-up or her trademark silver cross ear-rings, she was nearly a different person now. But in the current situation, her mental strength was the most impressive thing about her, enduring steadily an entire month on. She still hadn’t lost the will to live. Rather, Ishida felt, it had waxed even stronger.
“What are you going to do? Go? Stay?”
Kyoko looked at him with irritation. Strong woman indeed. Even if he didn’t accompany her, she would go on downstairs alone. Go to see if something had happened to the reclusive, crotchety old man they had barely exchanged two words with.
Ishida and Kyoko had met shortly after the rest of the world disappeared. Since then, living in this insane place together, unable to escape, Ishida had fallen in love with her. Wanted to protect her even.
But then again, what was waiting for them downstairs?
Chapter 4
The first time Ishida had seen the monster they called an angel was only a few minutes before meeting Kyoko. Before that there were no angels, nor were the walls the colo
r of flesh. Suddenly, only thirty centimeters distant from Ishida’s body, still burdened with the child’s fresh corpse on his left leg, a wall of a brilliantly shining white appeared. Yet, within the white walls there were many darker parts with fresh, crimson blood issuing out of them.
When he first saw them Ishida didn’t recognize that they were sections of human bodies sliced cleanly through. Then when he looked up and saw the face of a man floating just behind him, he saw this was no accident.
The man’s face, still maintaining an impatient expression, slipped slowly down the surface of the white wall leaving traces of bright red blood in its wake. In retrospect, Ishida realized the man’s expression was that of someone urging, “Hurry up! Get moving!” This had been directed at him. This face was that of the man who’d impatiently coughed right behind him. Now the man’s face was approaching Ishida’s foot, gradually inclining at an angle. Ishida couldn’t take his eyes off it, but crawled away from the wall on hands and knees. He finally became aware of others around him when he bumped into someone sitting paralyzed with fright much like himself. A suit-clad young businessman, who’d been in line just in front of the boy, had twisted and stumbled backwards taking a pratfall. His expression was that of someone screaming, but the voice was only a murmur. The thunderous roar of the wall’s appearance had rendered Ishida temporarily deaf. The display of panic in the crowd around him was carried out in a strange silence.
Anyone near the wall fled from it toward the exit of the enclosed walkway about one hundred meters distant. Others who had been heading toward the station were caught frozen mid-step, their only remaining halves sliding slowly down the wall. Those who remained on either walkway were leaping over the railings and rushing to the exit via the wider walkway in the center. Ishida and the businessman were the only two left on the lane on their side.
Ishida repeatedly batted his legs as if swimming until finally the child’s body fell away and released him. Suddenly it was the businessman who clung to him instead. Ishida looked back at the wall, still rooted to the spot.
