PrologueFrom the top of the mountain to its roots, there was to be seen only a featureless, barren wilderness.
An arid wind gusted across it; nowhere was there to be found even the smallest puff of spring air. Under a thousand years of a.s.sault from the scorching wind, the plants had ceased to remember to grow upright. The insects here came in two varieties: one having evolved to being more hard, more heavy, and the other having become more small, more in number, each by its own means eking out a living in this harsh landscape. Only the lizards could bask languidly in the sun and continue to pa.s.s days of happiness.
Besides these, there was only sand and rock.
A car had been left here.
This box-shaped vehicle was the color of the blue of the skies and was as iridescent as a dragonfly. Having been abandoned here, it faced its headlamps to the west, corners drooping down just like eyes holding back tears.
In its line of sight stood two humans.
“It’s a car.”
Ai, small and young, pointed at the car and thus spoke.
“Yes, it is.”
Yuri, tall and older, nodded his head.
With an outstretched finger, Ai wiped a line across the windscreen and, sighing admiringly, said:
“I only knew that you could sometimes pick up pretty rocks or fruits on mountains, but never imagined that, out here in the wilderness, you could actually pick up a car.”
“No, nor that it’d be as good as this...”
Yuri opened up the bonnet and answered as he appraised the contents. Ai, just like a child who liked getting in the way of adults’ work, peered at what he was doing from the side. She smelled metal, oil, and sourness, but of course did not understand a thing she saw.
“Will it move?”
“This car has been modified in many places, but they did a very neat job of it—looks like even the keys are still here.”
Ai exhaled with her nose and kneeled before the headlamps.
“Were you abandoned?”
The car kept silent as if deeply unhappy.
“...Where did the owner of this car go?”
The car refused to respond, and so Ai got up and asked the question again. It was a woman’s voice who replied:
“It should be these two, no?”
Ai looked around the other side of the car and found Scar standing here, pointing at the ground with her shovel. There was a patch of earth there that was moister than the rest and looked to have been turned only hours ago, and two large pieces of rock had even been placed there like headstones.
The two looked one another in the eyes and, mutely, prayed for the dead.
“It really is mysterious.”
“Yeah.”
Ai raised her index finger and spoke.
“Who was it that buried these two?”
“A Grave Keeper, of course.”
So Scar said.
Ai raised a second finger.
“But, why here, in this sort of place? Why just put the car here and leave it?”
“Who can tell? I am not in charge of organizing the thoughts of humanity.”
The lines Scar used to avoid questions exemplified the manner of Grave Keepers, and made Ai sigh and turn to glance up at the man beside her.
“I think there has to be some purpose to it.”
With that, Yuri climbed without hesitation into the driver’s seat. Ai, seeing this, carefully raised herself into the seat beside his.
This was her first time riding in a car.
“They probably came here with a purpose as well, but having not achieved it after all, ended up to rest the way they are now.”
Coughs and splutters issued from the engine as Yuri started up the car.
“The reason why they just left behind this car...”
The engine started up amid a thundering noise that seemed fit to shake the earth. The vibrations made Ai jump in shock and then cling to her seat.
“Should be because they didn’t need it any more.”
The entire car began to vibrate regularly.
As if deep in thought, Yuri folded his arms around the steering wheel and didn’t speak.
“…You’re not thinking of stealing it, are you?”
Ai creased her forehead, displeased.
“And I thought you’d have more common sense than this…”
“Well, normally I wouldn’t do this sort of thing. It’s just that this time... You know, my car was originally meant to be parked on this stretch too.”
The car vibrated some more.
“I’d driven that car for a long time and had kept it maintained well. When I got here and prepared to ascend the mountain, I abandoned the car without even removing the keys. Do you know why I did that?”
Ai already knew the reason for it but didn’t want to say it out loud, and so didn’t speak.
“It’s because I was about to go meet my death. Whenever I thought of this place, I’d also wind up thinking about what to do with what I owned after dying. That was quite strange, really. That car was the only thing left that I owned, but I had no way of getting it back onto the road, and had hoped at least to leave it for others to use.”
And that’s why I left my car behind, the blue-eyed man added.
“It pa.s.ses the tire check, and can leave at any time.”
Scar sat at the back. With her were rugs, teapots, kettles and the like, a whole pile of baffling objects stuffed together, by some baffling means, in an orderly chaos.
“...I wonder what wishes those two had when they were still alive.”
Ai tilted her head back to look and found the headstones to be out of her range of vision.
“Who knows...maybe they wanted to save the world.”
The adult thus mocked.
“Maybe. Then, as for me…”
The child nodded with complete seriousness.
“I will continue on their dream.”
And gripped her shovel tightly as she spoke.
“Oh?”
“Yes. So, oh, we can probably count as the rightful inheritors of this car.”
“I didn’t think you could be this flexible too.”
Yuri, wanting to get accustomed to the car first, slowly pushed the accelerator down and drove the car forward. Tires sending pebbles flying, the car found its way onto a structure that could just be seen as having once been a road.
West-bound, they advanced.
Ai looked northwards from her side seat.
Up in the north, there was a mountain. On the mountain, there was a village. In the village were her home, her parents, and all the villagers she once adored. All of her past lay in that direction, north.
The two graves rested in the place that she had only just arrived at.
“Goodbye.”
Ai lowered her head for a long moment in that direction.
“Let’s go.”
Said Scar, smiling gently.
Yuri said nothing, and just stepped on the accelerator.
The man, the child, and the female Grave Keeper.
The three thus began their journey.
“Oh, right, what about this youth here?”
“Huh?!”
Emergency brake.
So actually, they were four.