Eight o’clock on the appointed night. Waiting with his bike near the bus station “Torimochi City 5th Street” Yata could see the bus’ arrival. Bunny ears were bouncing in the window and moving forward and then Oogai Aya appeared on top of the stairs. Although the backpack with the bunny ears was the same, she wasn’t wearing her school uniform, but casual clothes. With a denim jumper skirt that had a big pocket made out of different cloth attached in the middle, socks with frills and high cut sneakers she looked less and less like a middle school student.
When Aya jumped down to the bus station she held onto the straps of her backpack and looked around a bit nervously, but as soon as she noticed Yata’s bicycle she beamed with happiness.
“Thanks for waiting, Michakibyu~n!”
When Yata saw Aya rush up to him he couldn’t help but think that Aya was glad he had really come because it had only been a promise to meet and he could have also decided to not come.
“Stop calling me that weird name. If you don’t I won’t guide you. Also that outfit is kinda….”
“Eh, is it, like, weird?”
“N- no, it’s not weird. Really not. I- It’s just that we’re out during nighttime and it stands out.”
Because the bunny ears on her back dropped as if upset, Yata got fl.u.s.tered and while thinking „Fushimi should come already—“ he cast about his surroundings nervously. Talking with normal girls was already difficult, but being with this kind of strange girl was fairly tense.
“Michaki-chan, you, like, know about this neighborhood very well, right?”
“Yata-kun.”
“Misaki-kun, you, like, know about this neighborhood very well, right?”
“……”
Compared to the stomach-twisting “Michakibyu~n”, this was much better, so whatever….. if he would have noticed that the atmosphere just got less tense for him he would’ve wondered how.
“Yeah, well. That’s because Shizume City used to be my old town, y’know.”
Proud, Yata hit the saddle of his bike. Another bus came this time from the other direction and they could see how it came to a stop on the other side of the street. When the bus drove away the thin shadow of a person stood next to the bus stop.
“Fushimi-!”
Yata was sincerely relieved and waved his hand energetically. From here Fushimi’s expression didn’t seem to shift and he waited for the traffic light to change before crossing the street. His thin pants, polo shirt and cardigan gave him a slender shape that made him look like an honor student on the way home from private school on a holiday. Yata on the other hand wore a jacket with camouflage pattern and baggy pants, somehow just like an adventurer’s outfit. He also had a helmet with a headlight but that had been too eager so he had not taken it along. Looking at the three all together their looks didn’t fit each other at all.
“Was it okay for you to go out at night? Since your parents seem kinda strict.”
Fushimi had seemed annoyed at them insisting they’d go pick him up if he wouldn’t come so he had made a promise to “come with them for now”, but Yata had thought that the possibility of Fushimi actually coming was fifty-fifty.
He’s surprisingly sociable, huh……
Though Fushimi might be fickle, Yata was excited nonetheless.
“Strict? My parents?” muttered Fushimi without meeting his eyes and the short sneer that escaped him made Yata worry a bit.
At the west side of this bus road was Shizume City. Based on what Aya had said the blimp should pa.s.s through the sky over Shizume City tonight.
“It’s gotten cloudy. Won’t we be unable to see the blimps like this?”
Ash-colored clouds hung in the night sky in which the city’s neon lights were dimly reflected. Clouds thinned out like worn out pants were also there and only there was faint white light. The moon was hiding on the other side.
“It’s planned that the blimp’s alt.i.tude will be, like, reduced so it’s no problem. It’ll descend to under the clouds.”
“What exactly do you mean with ‘planned’?”
“Okay then, let me now, like, present the plan for today.“
Aya seized the initiative and pulled out her PDA with the usual big bunny dangling on it from the side of her backpack. When the screen switched on blue light looking like plates appeared in the twilight.
"Uh? Isn’t that the same like Fushimi’s?”
When Yata looked to Fushimi, the latter was clicking his tongue in unpleasantness.
“The blimp will pa.s.s though Shizume City’s sky on this route tonight. The highest it will be is 300 meters, the lowest 60 meter and less. We’ll stand by right under the route and if we light "candle” the blimp should, like, certainly pick us up.“
On the holographic display were many maps showing. It looked like a map of the whole Kanto area, including Shizume City. A line that seemed to display the blimp’s route was drawn above the map in a fluorescent yellow.
Right now was the time when the traffic volume was the loudest. The noise of the cars pa.s.sing by on the other side of the guardrail was very loud and the three huddled together and peered into the display. The light of the display floating in the twilight lit up the faces of those three.
"How come you know stuff like the blimp’s route and it’s alt.i.tude?”
“That’s because the missions award you with, like, hints.”
When Aya operated the displays, they changed. Switching with the map on the screen was now detailed writing tightly crammed and spread all over the screen.
While staring at it Yata unintentionally flinched; all of it was numbers —- he couldn’t imagine how many ten thousand or hundred thousand numbers there were, it was a never ending list. For Yata who wanted to put distance between himself and math this was a nauseating sight. “Uge….”
“The hint «jungle» gives you is this row of numbers. Although «jungle» does not, like, tell you what it means. But it occurred to Aya right away. This is the estimated data of the blimp’s travel route. If they are a.n.a.lyzed it gets obvious at what time the blimp will pa.s.s through which place. When you notice that the date and times are mixed, figuring out the principle is easy. Understood? You have to, like, mark off every one of these 32 digits. The first four digits are the date, the next four the time, the next nine the X-axis, the next nine the Y-axis, and the last six the height. If you sort them and plot them above the map, you’ll get this kind of line when you connect the dots.”
The screen returned to the map. When Yata had it visually displayed, he too understood the meaning of the numbers. Is what it felt like…….or maybe not.
"Heh-….Oogai, you’re amazing.”
“It’s simple,” said Aya although she actually took pride in herself and glanced at Fushimi. But because Fushimi wasn’t impressed at all Aya grimaced in anger.
“If you, like, lie a satellite picture of Shizume City over the map you can see how many buildings lie on the route. This is the plan of where we will be. And that is when it’s Misaki-kun’s turn.”
“I see! If it’s about Shizume City then leave it to me! I lived in this city until the first grade of elementary school. During that time I had formed an exploration group and had taken them along to downtown to explore it, and we had also built a base. If there is a building that we can enter then I’ll figure it out!”
It seemed Aya had also heard that Yata had often invited his friends from the Yata-team to Shizume City to show them around. Somehow there was never a good time when it was convenient for the members, so they had put off their plans to go…..if Yata thought about it now, they probably had arranged things in advance to avoid going.
I had been pushy despite them not being interested, I sure was an annoyance…..
Because these thoughts made Yata feel down, he pulled himself together and turned back to the map. Like the “masked debt collectors” the “blimp” wasan urban legend, told in whispers among middle school students. They say a wealthy man lives gracefully in a blimp in the sky.
The “candle” Aya had brought up earlier – an app, where a special signal was lit to call for the blimp. Lonely and suffering people would hold up “candle” to the sky and wait, and then the blimp would come and pick them up. The blimp can bring those people to a paradise above the clouds, drop them off at a place constructed by a madman, and make them into p.a.w.ns of their world domination……there were various opinions on that matter, and for every idea a group existed that had heated discussions on the internet.
When he had lived in Shizume City there had regularly popped up “UFO eyewitness reports” among the kids, and when Yata had heard the talk about the blimp it immediately came to him that the UFO must have had been that blimp. It went without saying that Yata’s exploration group had also tried to capture the UFO. In those days he had not known that there was a system or that there was a method to call the UFO, so they had searched for it aimlessly and the hunt had ended in a failure.
To go on board the UFO, or rather the blimp, and take a picture of the mysterious wealthy person was the “mission” Aya had brought them along to. In short it was a real life partic.i.p.ation game. Within «jungle» there are several more “shops” that act as an intermediary for missions, like the bar below the tree Aya had shown them. The points that are rewarded when completing a mission can be saved, and there are also prizes like items. Jcube is a game that is only played within the PDA, but missions are for the most part executed in the real world, where real things have to be done, and that makes for clear limits.
“This building….”
Yata put his hand into the hologram and pointed out a single item on the satellite map. His finger got tinted blue by the hologram’s light.
“It still exists, huh. You can get on the rooftop by using the outdoor emergency stairs.”
“How many stories is it?”
“Should be….ten, I think.”
“If it is like that then the height of the rooftop should be 30, 40 meters.”
Aya affirmed that the blimp is visible from the place Yata had pointed out.
“Yeah, this is good. We can, like, crawl right under the blimp. That’s Misaki-kun for you, you can, like, definitely count on him!”
“I- I get it, so don’t come here! Touching is forbidden!”
Aya did a jump and because she looked like she was going to hug him, Yata faltered and escaped.
The two of them yelled and ran around Fushimi.
“If the destination’s decided then let’s go already” said Fushimi coldly, got out of the middle and started walking away. The two who had lost their center tripped forward.
“Don’t go off by yourself!” said Aya while running after Fushimi with short steps. Yata rode on his bike with only one foot on the pedal and the other one on the ground, surpa.s.sed Aya and Fushimi and took the lead.
“This way!” It bothered him that Aya and Fushimi tried to be the leader in this town that both of them did not know well.
Six years ago he had taken along the members of his exploring group, driven around Shizume City on a child’s bicycle – six years later he had returned, now on an adult’s bicycle together with friends different from back then, heading towards a risky task. The fingers of his right hand that held the handlebar felt itchy. Maybe it was because of the urban legend about being dropped off on a land built by a maniac, but the part of the blue hologram he had touched had seemed like it had been rewritten into something different, like matter from s.p.a.ce and made him feel itchy. Having started to be with new people made the bottom of his stomach feel like it was gently floating. Fushimi Saruhiko and Oogai Aya. The two were nothing like the people Yata had hung out with until now and they were a bit….no, very strange people and somehow extremely smart.
It was an exciting experience how with these two, knowledge they recalled was connected like this. It felt like the world how it had appeared to Yata until now was stretching into a direction he hadn’t thought about before.