Missing Children (10 page)

The deep pink flower, though only one, was bravely in full bloom.

“…… What kind of flower is this?”

Crouching down to look at the flower, Tsukihiko crouched down beside me.

“Y-you don’t know? It’s pretty rare for you to not know something…”

“D-don’t say something so foolish. I simply can’t remember at the moment…… N-now hurry up and tell me what it’s called!”

Tsukihiko laughed softly at my response, and as he gently stoked the flower, he replied.

“The name of this flower is……”

CHILDREN RECORD PART FIVE

(translated by
re-fuzaichakushin
)

"Why would you say that?!"
Mary screamed that at me with an extremely threatening attitude.
Her hair that was dangling from side to side rippled greatly as if showing her emotions.
Her two pink eyes gradually flushed into a deep red color in tempo with her ragged breaths.
"O-oi, Mary. I’m sure Shintaro didn’t mean to say anything bad. Besides, it’s just a guess. You don’t need to be so……"
Kido’s words were sort of right, but they were also a little off.
I hadn’t recognized my talk earlier as being a “possibility”.
I was convinced that that was the “truth”.

At Kido’s words, Mary went “Uuuuuuu…!” and, groaning as if she wanted to say something, began to spill tears.
At those tears, Konoha seemed to cower hesitantly, and looked back and forth between Mary’s face and my own.
"I, I’m…going outside…!"
"Oi, Mary…!"
Mary heatedly stood up, and, ignoring Kido’s quiet voice, jumped outside and left.
"I, I’ll, go after her!"
Having said that, Konoha also flew outside to chase after Mary. With that guy’s legs, it would probably be an easy chase.
Only the two of us, Kido and I, were left inside the room. Kido sighed a soft “Hahh…” and slumped down in her chair.

"Hey, Kido. What do you think?"
When I asked her that, Kido scratched her head roughly and replied, “I’ve got the exact same opinion as you.”
"It looks like, somehow, we did her wrong. In the end, if you look at it from Mary’s point of view, she probably heard "her own grandmother was the cause for the disturbance to everyone.""
"Well, there’s nothing we can do about it, is there? If you talk about it more carefully to her later, so that she properly understands, it’ll be fine."
I sat down in the chair that Mary was sitting in earlier, in order to look Kido face to face.
In my head, I’d planned to organize this neatly, but there were too many things I couldn’t swallow down.
"Well, with this, we pretty much know what Mary is."
"Yeah, as expected, it was written this accurately. Even if this was forced on you, you could understand it."
Kido said, and flipped through the open diary.

"Monsters……huh. In the end, people don’t change no matter what era it is."
Kido’s face as she said that seemed to be languishing somewhere.
These guys had also probably received the same treatment as what was written in this diary.

"But even so, in the end, the main cause is this power called "clearing eyes"."
"Yeah, no matter how you think of it, I can’t think of anything other than that. Just…can you even call this an ability?"
Kido’s opinion was also correct. Among the “10 abilities” that came up in the diary, no matter how you thought of it, only this “clearing eyes” ability didn’t belong.
"No, I don’t get it. At least, it definitely doesn’t look like it’s being "used", but…"
For as long as we read the diary, it didn’t seem like we would be able to actually confirm with the person himself if it really was an “ability”.
But, if these abilities had really created “that world”, it’d probably be better for us to make sure that we really should be counting “clearing” as another one of them.
"Anyways, at our current situation, the people we’ve confirmed to "have abilities" are the five people who’ve dealt with Mary, huh."
"About Hibiya, I just don’t get which of them could be residing in him right now. You also think the same about Konoha, don’t you?"
"Yeah, I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. There’s no way ordinary people with bodies of flesh and blood are able to jump tens of meters."
In the contents of the diary, there hadn’t been anything that I could think of as being Konoha’s ability.
If that was the case, then it was probably one of the ablities that hadn’t had any details written: the abilities of “waking eyes” and “opening eyes”. It was just a problem of which one it was.
"Anyways, if we include Konoha, then that’s six people. There’s still four ability-bearers out there who haven’t been identified…"
"For the time being, we might be able to meet with whoever possesses the "clearing" ability and ask them for some information about "that world"."
"If that power’s even appeared in the world on this side. If it hasn’t, then we can’t really do anything."

As a result, the information that we’d obtained from this diary had been something huge.
The mystery of “that world” and the “abilities” were beautifully connected, and could now even be thought of as a signpost.
It may be that we’ve reached a point where, after just a little more, we’ll be able to see the truth about these series of incidents.
If we continue on at this pace, it might even be possible for us to take over “that world” and bring back the people who are no longer here.

""That world", huh…"
""That world", y’know…"

Kido and I both shut up after saying that much. No, we were probably talking about the same thing.

"…Shouldn’t we decide on some kind of name for this? It’s hard to talk about it either way, though."
"What a coincidence. I was just thinking the same thing."
But, having said that, it’s not like I really had any good sense about naming things. Well, it’s not like a cool name is really necessary, as long as it’s a fitting name that’s easy to say……

"How about "heat-haze daze"?"

When she said that, her eyes lit up and began to sparkle.
Ahh, this is probably a person with self-confidence…is what I sort of had a feeling about.
Sure enough, it was like Kido’s expression was saying, “Pretty good, right?” as she waited for my reaction.
"By the way, "heat-haze" means something that’s appeared and disappears soon. "Daze" has the meaning of being "dazzled"…"
Ahh, on top of that, she’s begun to explain it.
Like trying to explain a story she brought up with a slip of the tongue, it’s tremendously frustrating. In all honesty, I wish she’d stop.
"O, oh. I got it. That’s great, isn’t it, and so…"
"No, wait. Listen to me. There’s one more meaning behind the word daze……"
Nonono, that’s a hassle.
We’re done with this topic now, right. What kind of meaning are you trying to give to it.
I don’t care what the meaning is, I said it’s fine, didn’t I.

"O, okay! Well, all of this makes a decent amount of sense, so we should go back now. It’d be a pain trying to get back in the dark."
"Hm? Ahh, that’s also true. How about I continue talking more about the meaning again when we get back to the hideout?"
Take a break already. It’s not like it’s that great of a name, either.
Well, by the time we get back to the hideout, she’ll probably have already forgotten about it.
Anyways, listening to her talk about this for a long time will be too painful. Let’s just get back to the hideout quickly and make Momo listen to her in my place.

I stood up from my chair, and headed to the entrance.
I opened the door, and, maybe as a result of the sun’s direct rays of light, my body temperature went up remarkably.
When I thought about having to return on that same road again, I suddenly felt tired.
I’ll catch a piggyback ride on Konoha……no, that’s no good. He’s carrying a backpack.
In that case, I’ll get him to carry me in his arms……no, on the way here he was carrying Mary. Either way it’s no good.
"Well then, I wonder where Mary is."
Kido, who had followed after me out of the house, said as she closed the door behind her.
Mary had said, “I’m going outside,” but it hadn’t been that long, so she couldn’t have gotten very far……
Kido occasionally looked around her surroundings while trembling slightly, and saw a bulky white silhouette flitting about on the other side of the house, far behind the bushes.
"Oh, she’s here, she’s here. O~i, Mary, I’m sorry about earlier! Come back he~re!"
When I said that, Mary, who was far away, seemed to scream something, but she was too far away and I couldn’t hear her clearly.
"Did she say something…?"
I had no choice, so I separated the bushes and advanced forward, until I was close enough to be able to carefully confirm that it was her.
Like before, Mary screamed something, but just what was she trying to say?
Anyways, I advanced into the very depths, and from a certain position, the bushes in front of me disappeared from view as if they were never there.
Scared, my feet stopped moving.
As I did that, I was able to clearly hear a crying Mary screaming “Help meeee!” in a pitiable voice.
When I gingerly tried to get closer, from where the bushes stopped me to where Mary was standing, there was a cliff about 5 meters wide.
"Ma, Mary?! Why’re you in a place like that?!"
When I was about to ask her how she managed to get across such a distance, I looked around, and, just slightly off into the distance, I could see a log spanning the gap like a bridge.
Mary began to cry a lot as she said, “I, I was c-chased b-by a beee!”
She’d probably said “I was chased by a bee.”
It most likely meant she’d crossed on top of the log while running from a bee and gotten to the opposite side, huh.
"What kind of situation is this…"
Just then, Kido came up behind me, and, becoming aware of the situation, shouted “Mary?!” in a surprised voice.
"Oi, what should we do……"
"No matter what do, we’re going to have to do something and help her, right? Oh yeah, where’d Konoha go?"
That’s right, a cliff of this size would be nothing for someone like him.
Something like jumping all the way to the other side, picking up Mary and jumping back to this side should be no trouble for him.
"That’s true. That guy’s timing, going off somewhere at a time like this…"

""Did he get lost?""

Both Kido’s and my shoulders fell.
The fact that he wasn’t here right now—was it because of that? Which way had he run off to, I wonder.
But anyways, without him, there was nothing we could do about the current situation.
As far as I could see in that state, telling Mary, “Cross that log again” would really be cruel.
But for me to cross it and take her across, it’d be impossible no matter how many times I did it. In the first place, I basically didn’t have the courage to cross the chasm all the way to the other side.

"Anyways, we’ll just wait for Konoha…"
As I was about to say that, in the next moment, a small yellowish object entered my field of view.
It flapped its wings very rapidly, and very quickly loomed in front of my eyes.
It was a bee.
"Gyaaaaahh!!"
At this sudden occurrence, I twisted my body away.
I have to get away from here immediately, I have to get away……
The instant I thought that and stepped away, my foot masterfully kicked the air instead of the ground.
……Crap, I messed up.

Kido’s shocked face entered my field of view, and very quickly became small.
As if being pulled along by an extremely powerful force, my body began to plunge headfirst to the bottom of the chasm.

……Ahh, it’s no good. This can’t be helped.
I looked at Kido’s figure, still not too far off, and began to think of my own end.
This will hurt a lot, won’t it. Well of course it will, since it’s from this height.
Now that I think of it, when Ayano died, too, this is what she thought of. Though I hadn’t understood anything from just looking from the rooftop, I get it now. So this is the kind of feeling it is.
"She was scared, wasn’t she."
Immediately after I whispered that and closed my eyes, a shock ran through my body, and I lost consciousness.

※

The moment I opened my eyes, what jumped out at me was an abundant amount of blood flowing from a gaping wound in Konoha’s quivering body.

Intuitively, I realized that he had saved me.
My body didn’t hurt anywhere, but the scene in front of me was so crushing it felt like my chest had been pulverized.
Next to Konoha was a branch as large as a person’s arm, growing as if it was stuck through the ground.
Blood clung onto the pointed tip of that withered branch.
That had probably pierced through his stomach.

Far above me, I could hear screaming voices, but right now, rather than paying attention to them, I was thinking with all of my might for a means to save the person right in front of me.
My cell phone had no reception.
Even if I carried him, I wouldn’t make it in time.
Besides that, what could I do?
First aid. No good, it’s not at a level where I could just do something or another.
Something. Isn’t there something? A way to save this guy, something……

"Why would you……!"

I couldn’t say anything besides that to Konoha, whose shaking had gradually begun to lessen.
At those words of mine, Konoha weakly whispered something.
At the same time, he coughed out blood, and his words were nearly lost in the sound of his coughing, but without a doubt, Konoha had said, “Because we’re friends.”
My body shook, and tears began to spill.
Had I done something for this guy?
No, there wasn’t a single thing I’d done at all.
Even so, Konoha had covered for me, and could no longer move.

Even though the light had already vanished from Konoha’s eyes, only his flowing blood still continued to spread on the earth.

……Oi, I’m begging you, do something. You’re in Konoha’s body, aren’t you? We’re friends. I want to save him. I’m begging you, I’m begging you, so please……

The next moment after I prayed that, I felt as if the air had frozen in an instant.
Like I was being glared at by some kind of small animal; it was that kind of feeling.
In the brief moment that I thought that, countless snakes jumped out from Konoha’s motionless body, tying it up.
Konoha’s eyes, which had, until just a moment ago, been lifeless, began to gleam dark red, and his pulse began to beat with a thump, to the point where I could hear it even at this distance.

Powerless, I could do nothing but sit there and stare, dumbfounded, as my friend was rebuilt right in front of my eyes.