-Monochrome Reality-
There was a heavy atmosphere inside the bar.
“Is it really true that Anna-chan did it?”
Kamamoto looked at Kusanagi. Kusanagi nodded and said ‘probably’ while lighting his cigarette.
Last night, after Anna had vanished, there was an incident where several people at a nearby crossroad collapsed due to suffocation. After they had been carried to the hospital, they all said that they had been "suddenly trapped inside water’, apparently. Which meant that they had all seen the same illusion and pa.s.sed out at the same time.
On top of that, in a place a few dozen meters away from that crossroad where there wasn’t any fire, there was an incident where several people suffered heavy burns. They suddenly felt pain in their skin, and directly afterwards, their skin burned red as though from the inside, apparently. The victims of both incidents had been carried to the Nanakamado hospital and were being treated.
“This mornin’, a report came from Scepter 4’s deputy commander.” Said Kusanagi with a heavy sigh. He remembered and repeated the words Shiotsu had gone out of his way to report over the phone.
“In accordance with the laws of administrating unnatural phenomenon, we have taken the Strain who caused danger to civilians, Kushina Anna, into our custody. Until it can be deemed that the risks have completely pa.s.sed, we will hold her."
Kusanagi looked up at the thin cigarette smoke that was rising towards the ceiling.
"This is apparently the duty of Scepter 4, which manages Strains… waitin’ for the other guys to make a mistake ended up causin’ us not be able to justify ourselves instead.”
It was two hours after Anna vanished that Honami was contacted by the center. Anna had been carried by an ambulance. She needed to be hospitalized immediately, and they couldn’t let Honami see her. Hearing that, Honami had tried to rush to the center, but Kusanagi and the others stopped her. It was hard to think that the guys from the center would cause Honami any harm right now, but thinking of Anna’s parents, they didn’t know what could happen. They couldn’t put her in danger.
“…I guess, surprisingly, that kid being a "highly dangerous Strain” might not have just been an excuse to lock her up, huh.“ Fushimi said that quietly, as he was sitting and looking at his toes. The way he twisted his face in an unsatisfied way and how he wouldn’t meet anyone’s eyes made him seem sulky, but it seemed like he might have been surprisingly putting up a front, going by how one could occasionally tell that his eyes would waver in uneasy restlessness.
"But… I can’t believe that Anna-chan would do something like that.” Kamamoto said with a frown. He had gone out to look for Anna, so he had also seen people collapsed in the road being carried off in ambulances. It had been an unnatural scene, seeing people being carried off for burns in a place with no fire. He just couldn’t imagine that quiet, little girl who seemed to just play with marbles doing it.
Totsuka brought his hand up in front of Kamamoto. On his fingers, a burn scar was still faintly remaining.
“This is a burn I got when I touched Anna-chan after she woke up from a bad dream. It’s the result of her being unable to control her powers due to agitation from her nightmare… an overflow of her powers.”
Totsuka lowered his hand and brought together the fingers that were still burnt.
“At that moment, I thought it was strange. Anna-chan’s powers are clairvoyance. If that’s the case, then why would I have been burned from an overflow of it, I wondered.” He slowly moved his eyes as though remembering that time.
“But that was really clairvoyant powers getting out of control."
”…what do you mean?“ Kamamoto tilted his head. Totsuka looked him in the eye.
"She sees all in the world, and feels it. She brings the outside world into her body. That’s that kid’s clairvoyant powers. But, in contrast, letting loose what’s inside her… that’s also, certainly, that kid’s ability.”
“So basically.” Said Kusanagi, taking Totsuka’s words.
“Memories of being burned, memories of drownin’. You mean they’re inside that kid, and when she’s disturbed mentally, they spill out through her clairvoyant powers.”
Kamamoto folded his thick arms and growled.
“Anna-chan, she’s had such a bad burn, or been choked before…” Those were words that came from him simply feeling sorry for her. But, Totsuka and Kusanagi, who had felt that the truth was in a more tragic place, for just a moment exchanged looks as though they were trying to shove the role of saying something unpleasant back and forth before Kusanagi heavily opened his mouth.
“Probably, she didn’t just get burned or almost drown because of an accident… it’s just a theory, but I think she had it happen to her at the center.”
Kamamoto was at a loss for words.
A silence like mud fell.
Yata, who seemed like he’d be the one to stand right up first, was for some reason quiet today. Even as he leaned on the counter and had only his eyes gleaming, he didn’t raise his voice in anger and stayed quiet.
“…If Mizuchi seriously wanted to make Anna-chan make contact with the "Slate’, then that isn’t ordinary. He wouldn’t have been picky about the methods to draw out her power… if that kid’s powers would be strongly drawn out by pain and sufferin’, then-”
Without listening to the end, Suou moved. He moved his back from the wall he had been leaning on and took one step forward.
“I’ll crush it.”
Those roughly thrown out words had no eagerness, or visible anger. But at the king’s single sentence, everyone’s faces twisted tightly.
“Alright.” Kusanagi replied lightly.
Within the members who were giving off murderous spirit, Fushimi still had an unchangingly sulky face. Like that, he tried to casually leave the bar. Right then, Yata, who had been still and quiet until then, went about two steps after Fushimi and called out,
“Saruhiko!”
Fushimi stopped at the bar’s door and turned only half his face around towards Yata.
“It’s not your fault.”
Yata looked right at Fushimi. Fushimi fidgeted slightly as though surprised. Just for a moment, his eyes trembled, but he didn’t give a single word in reply and left the bar leaving behind only a click of his tongue.
The words that Anna had probably eavesdropped on- the words that had shaken Anna’s heart, and became the trigger for her powers running wild, were probably the ones that Fushimi had spat out.
“Totsuka.” Kusanagi quietly called Totsuka as usual for times like these, but Totsuka shook his head.
“Saru-kun probably wouldn’t like my followup.”
Totsuka looked between the door that Fushimi had gone out of and the side of Yata’s face, as Yata glared in the door’s direction while drawing himself up to his full height.
“Saru-kun is okay… for now, at least.” Totsuka said quietly, with a complicated expression.
When she heard the sound of a knock, Honami raised her head. Standing up from the bed she had slept in with Anna the day before yesterday, she went to the door. Before she got there, it opened from outside.
“Suou-kun.”
The one who appeared from the other side of the door was the room’s real master. Suou entered with his usual expression, and closed the door behind him. Honami, who had had the exit closed off to her by Suou’s back, looked right at his face as though glaring at him.
“…what are you planning. Doing something that’s like locking me up.”
Suou and company and definitely not allowed Honami be to alone when she had tried to go looking for Anna, who had vanished. They always had someone by her, and even when notification that Anna had been taken to the center came, they didn’t let Honami go there.
They had halfway forcibly taken Honami to the bar and locked her up in this room as though imprisoning her. Even if she had been told to rest, there was no way she could sleep. Honami had been thinking all night. There was no mistake that they knew something about Anna that she didn’t. They were trying to hide that from her while doing something.
“I’m Anna’s guardian.”
Suou’s eyes matched Honami’s. They were in a much higher position than hers as she stretched her back out to her full height. During highschool, she had scolded this problem child of a man countless times. But what was getting in her way right now was an adult man who you wouldn’t think had been the boy she was responsible for teaching just a few years ago. Even then, Honami didn’t waver. Before she was a person with no power, before she was even a teacher, Honami was the one who protected a single girl named Anna as her replacement parent.
“Hey, what do you guys know?”
“…”
“Is there a secret to Anna that I don’t know?”
“…”
“What are you guys trying to do with Anna?”
“…”
Even if she asked repeatedly, Suou wouldn’t answer. Honami put a hand on her cheek and sighed deeply.
“If you don’t intend to answer, then fine. Suou-kun, get out of the way.”
Suou didn’t move. Looking away from Honami, who frowned as though in a bad mood, he sighed.
“…there was always nothing more oppressive than your trust, but… just this once, trust me.”
Suou looked up and at Honami.
“I’ll bring that brat back.”
“…what do you mean…?” When Honami let out that unsure voice, suddenly Suou’s atmosphere changed.
Until then, even if she heard that Suou was someone feared throughout Shizume city, to Honami he was nothing but an extension of that naughty boy. She felt as though nothing about his base nature had changed. She had only seen the face of his that was in the sunlight, the face where he was concerned with her, trusted by Kusanagi and Totsuka, was admired by kindly boys, and had charisma.
But right now, Honami felt an overwhelming pressure from Suou.
As though she had run across a large carnivore, as though if she moved a single step she might be devoured, she felt that kind of instinctual fear.
…why am I being afraid of Suou-kun.
Honami tried to force down the fear she felt in her body and smile. The next moment, she thought Suou’s eyes shone red. At the same time, some kind of immense invisible power flowed out from his body, and Honami felt as though it were pushing in her direction. It may have been something like pressure. But to Honami, it had a physical effect. When she was swallowed up by the power coming from Suou, strength left her knees, and she fell to the floor.
In contrast to her will, she couldn’t put any power into her legs. Her body shook. Her teeth rattled. Her body was completely ruled by fear towards Suou. Tears blurred her eyes. They were tears from fear, as well as from confusion at herself for feeling fear that made no sense towards someone she liked.
“Why…” When Honami whispered that, Suou’s presence calmed. The pressure that had been crushing Honami vanished, and she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she had been holding. Suou smiled wryly in a troubled way, and looked down at Honami. She had never seen him make such a face until now.
“I’m a monster from your point of view.” Suou said.
“Your niece, if I had to say one or the other, is a person leaning towards this side of things.”
Honami’s shoulders shook. Looking up at Suou so much her neck hurt, she desperately moved her still shaking tongue and asked.
“Are you calling Anna a monster?”
“There’s people who’d call her that, probably.”
Anna was certainly not a normal child. There were places where she would see things others couldn’t, and her parents had been very worried, and she had actually been reported to have an illness in her brain.
But…
Honami suddenly looked up at Suou.
“Anna isn’t sick?”
“She isn’t.”
“Then, her being taken to the center…” Looking up at Suou, who was quiet, Honami slowly felt uneasiness run through her body.
“What happened to Anna? …What is that center?”
“If you wanna know, ask that brat directly. For that sake, don’t move right now.”
“Suou-kun!"
Suou’s hand was lightly left on Honami’s head. In response to this unexpected gesture, she looked up at him in surprise.
"What that brat’s most worried about is your safety."
In reponse to Suou’s words, Honami opened her eyes wide.
"For that brat’s sake, don’t leave here. I’ll bring her back.”
“Suou-kun.” Honami called his name.
“What exactly are you?”
With a self-hating and somehow desperate smile, he said,
“A king, apparently.”
Anna was in a room at the very bottom of the center’s underground.
Curling up in a ball in a chair, she closed her world up inside her body. Her world, which had spilled out, had hurt the people around her.
A flood of feeling.
Anna’s pain, her suffering, like light reflecting off of shattered gla.s.s had scattered around, and it swallowed up innocent pa.s.serbys. Anna had run around, unable to hold in the overflow of her clairvoyance, spreading about her pain and suffering until she lost consciousness. She didn’t remember how she had come to be carried here. But when she came to her senses, she was in this room, which was so familiar it was sickening.
“Have you learned your lesson?” Said Mizuchi. The man wearing a white coat and smiling with no emotion in his eyes was standing on the other side of a table.
On top of the table was a spread map. On top of that, red marbles were scattered. Mizuchi slowly walked around the table to stand behind Anna. The one-person sofa she was sitting on was apparently a deep blue color. But she couldn’t see that color.
To Anna, this room was buried in monochrome. Only the red marbles scattered across the table were the sole color she could see. She held her knees and looked up waveringly.
She remembered the pretty red "that person’ held. The red that had spilled out from that person’s body. It, in one stroke, dyed and changed Anna’s world, which had been sunk in monochrome.
Anna remembered what happened at the amus.e.m.e.nt park. When was the last time she had just spent time having fun without thinking about anything? There had been a time before Anna started going to the center when her, her parents, and Honami who had come to play went on a picnic. With a lunch made by her mother, sitting on her father’s shoulders, it was spring, and there were many flowers blooming.
Honami told her the names of each flower. There was a spot with lots of red anemones blooming, and Anna had gazed at that red flock of flowers without getting bored. On the way home, they promised to all go to an amus.e.m.e.nt park next time. Though, that promise would never be fulfilled, Anna would enter the center, and her parents would end up dying.
Apparently, in addition to being unable to see anything but red, Anna had exhibited strange behavior ever since she was little. There were times where she couldn’t seem to tell the difference between her pain and other people’s pain, and she seemed to be seeing hallucinations- though in truth, she was just seeing through things, or seeing the past and the future. Anna’s parents were worried about her and took her to a hospital. After receiving multiple examinations, Anna was directed to this center. Her parents were told that she "had a problem with her brain’, while she was told that "you have a special power’.
Anna herself didn’t know how long she had had what Mizuchi called "a special power’. Mizuchi had told Anna that, including her parents, normal people must not know of her powers. They were something to be hidden, and it would bring danger upon anyone who found out. At that point, she hadn’t been subjected to such experiments yet. But, to Anna, a life where she was torn apart from her parents, locked up, put through experiments she couldn’t understand, and forced to use her powers was full of suffering. So, Anna,
“I don’t want to go to the center anymore.” Said this while clinging to her mother, during a temporary leave from the hospital. Her mother exchanged troubled looks with her father, and spoke gently while stroking her hair.
“But, Anna. It may be difficult to be hospitalized… but it’s to make your sickness get better.”
“It’s not a sickness.” Said Anna. She had gone and said it.
“The people at the center, they say I’ve got a power other people don’t, and they only do weird experiments… I don’t want to go there anymore.” Anna said to her parents what she had be told she couldn’t tell. Over fear towards Mizuchi’s threats, her feelings of wanting to run away from their and her trust that her parents could do something about it had won.
Her parents talked together late into that night. The next morning, the two of them told Anna that she didn’t have to go there anymore. It was Sunday. They left Anna to Honami and left in a car. They had most likely gone to the center to negotiate about Anna direction. It was when they were returning from that that they were in their accident and died.
Anna had closed her eyes when she was told of her parents’ deaths. She closed her eyes, which while they wouldn’t even show the world’s colors would show things she didn’t even need to see, and she also closed her heart. She had tried to make the reality she didn’t want to see into something that wasn’t there, and closed the lid on it. She had turned her eyes away from that truth, despite having led her parents to their deaths.
…Coward.
“Have you learned your lesson?"
Mizuchi’s voice fell from behind her. He was repeating what he said earlier.
"You’re a dangerous person. Your current existence brings harm to those around you."
Anna listened to Mizuchi’s words quietly. She no longer had a heart to be hurt by them. When her parents died, she closed her heart, erased her emotions, and became something like a doll. Even though she had become a doll, she had gone and ended up having something like fun, her closed heart had opened, and the world she had locked up had wavered so much it spilled out.
Anna closed her eyes, and once more, she put away her own heart and her own world deep in her body, and closed the door on it.
"Tell me one thing.” Said Anna.
“Did you kill mom and dad?” She asked about the reality she had tried not to see. In the monochrome room, such a silence fell that she felt pressure on her ears. But that silence didn’t continue long. Mizuchi let out a light sigh. It had no weight, and it even seemed to hold a shade of exasperation. Then, with a fake smile, Mizuchi said,
“Of course not.” It was a tone that was so thinly veiled it didn’t even try to hide the truth hidden beneath it. Anna remembered what Mizuchi had told her after her parents had died and she was to be sent to the center again.
“You have the caliber of a king. If you were to lean on a normal person, you’d do nothing but make them unhappy.”
That was a threat to the safety of Honami, who had become Anna’s guardian. It was blackmail to her, asking if she wanted to make her aunt end up like her parents. Even though she had been told things like that, she couldn’t believe now that she had turned her eyes away from the truth of her parents’ deaths.
“I won’t leave here anymore. So don’t do anything to Honami.” To Anna, who said this in a flat voie, Mizuchi took on a compa.s.sionate expression.
“You don’t need to have such a tragic determination. If you become able to control your powers, and if you manage to reach the "Slate’- if you manage to become a king, there will no longer be any need for you to be locked up here. You should go out under the sun and rule openly."
Mizuchi’s hand touched Anna’s hair.
"Right now, the throne among the "Seven Kings’ that is open is the forth king, the blue king’s throne. Considering your color-blindness, in truth the red king’s throne would be most appropriate, but unfortunately that seat was recently filled. If you had come to this center a bit earlier-”
“Stop.” Anna said in a quiet voice, as though cutting it away.
“I should just become the blue king, right.”
In response to Anna’s reply, Mizuchi made a satisfied face. He moved away from her chair and left a hand on the table with the map and marbles.
“Now then, shall we begin."
In response to those words, Anna moved her will to the marbles on the table.
In response to Anna’s will, the marbles began to move. They rolled around on top of the map, gathering at one spot. The clicking noise of them b.u.mping into each other filled the room. The place where the marbles had stopped was the place where the golden king ruled, the tower at the center of Nanakamado. The corners of Mizuchi’s mouth curled into the shape of a smile.
"Now then, what do you see?"
Anna’s back shivered. There was something she "had to see’ in this place on the map. She closed her eyes. Closing her actual sight, she opened her other eyes. Her mind floated up from her body. First, her will slipped in to the marbles on the table that were taking in her power- then into the subject the marbles were reacting to. Anna mind, apart from her body, leaped through s.p.a.ce, and went to that place. To "See’ not with her eyes, but with all her mind.
What Anna first "Saw’ was a wide s.p.a.ce opened right in the middle of a pack of buildings, and the mysterious building like a gigantic turret. Looking up at that, the top of it was a tall, tall building that pierced the sky. She entered it, and headed right for above. A heavy pressure wrapped her mind.
Anna’s mind wavered in the face of the first strike since the time she had ended up "Connecting’ with Suou. The contact with Suou’s mind had shaken Anna fiercely, but it hadn’t rejected her. In fact, once they had "Connected’ once, the inside of Suou’s heart had even felt comfortable. But, this was different. What was wrapped around her was trying to throw her out.
This was the "Slate’s’ will- and it was the presence of the golden king who guarded it. Anna, while somehow holding on to her nearly vanishing consciousness, directed her mind to what she sought. Her will shook, and she started to not be able to see anything. The s.p.a.ce around her was filled with white light.
Right when she thought she was going to be thrown back just like that, she "saw it’. A wide, hall-like room with a tall ceiling. It was dim, and the air had so much pressure it felt heavy like jelly. Deep in the room, a gaudy sliding door was there, and gave the wide s.p.a.ce an unnatural splendor.
The floor was gla.s.s. Beneath that transparent floor, a large stone could be seen. A strangely delicate mark ran across the stone’s rough surface, and something circular peeked out.
It was the Dresden slate.
It was the first time she had made it this far. Anna gazed at the "Slate’. Looking down at the thing that was as big as the bedroom in Honami’s home, she quieted her heart. She felt that the "Slate’ was alive. It was pulsing. That pulse was so big, so heavy, so deep that it could make one feel as though they were the world itself’s pulse.
Anna leaned her heart to those movements. Synchronizing it with her own pulse, she tried to become one with the "Slate’. In response to Anna’s contact, the "Slate’ shined. The mazelike patterns on the "Slate’s’ surface had light run along them. Right then, something huge pressed against Anna’s insides. Anna’s head whited out. Many images and sounds gushed down at her, and Anna’s senses went over their maximum capacity-
When Anna woke up, she was fallen on the floor. Apparently, she had lost consciousness and fallen from the sofa. Anna slowly got up. The marbles on top of the map had scattered in all directions and fallen on the floor.
"A failure, huh.” Asked Mizuchi.
“…but, I touched the "Slate’."
When Anna replied, the corners of Mizuchi’s mouth curled up.
"I see. What remarkable progress."
Mizuchi kneeled on the ground and lifted up Anna’s hair.
"As I thought, you become more sensitive as you accept more suffering.”
Anna listened to Mizuchi’s words without feeling moved.
“But, there’s no time… since thanks to you interacting with the red clan, there’s a possibility of things getting a bit troublesome.”
In order to stiffen her body and not feel anything at those words, Anna turned her eyes away.