The Amphisbaena (10 page)

“H-Himeragi? Are you all right?” Now uneasy himself, Kojou asked without thinking.

But Yukina raised a reassuring face as she replied. “Of course. There is no problem whatsoever.”

“Er, well, your face turned as white as a sheet…”

“You’re just imagining it.”

Her reply was crisp, but her voice was frail. As Kojou kept thinking,
She can fight in midair like she’s walking a tightrope without a net, so there’s no way, right?
he asked…

“…You wouldn’t be afraid of airplanes, would you?”

“Absolutely not! I-I am a Sword Shaman of the Lion King Agency, after all.”

As Yukina’s childish excuse made Kojou think,
I made better lies in kindergarten
, he stifled the strained smile that threatened to leak out. It was cute that Yukina had an unexpected weakness like this, but he didn’t feel like making fun of her when she was so desperately hiding it.

Yukina, who had been coerced into and given no option but living as a Sword Shaman for the Lion King Agency, was not permitted to display weakness before others. After all, such behavior would lose her the only place she had in the world. No doubt that was why Yukina had always pushed herself and behaved decisively since she’d been a little girl.

She couldn’t sound weak even in front of trusted friends and allies. Kojou had known a similar type of isolation once before. He’d probably been wrapped in the same emotions when he was on the basketball court.

Finally, Kojou got tired of the isolation and quit basketball. Someone like him had no right to laugh at Yukina.

“Actually, Nagisa’s bad with airplanes, too. …Actually, she’s bad with any kind of vehicle. She gets sick right away.”

“I told you, it’s not as if I have a hard time with airplanes…”

Yukina objected to Kojou’s blunt utterance with pouty lips.

Right about then, the airplane they were on began to accelerate down the runway for takeoff. Yukina’s entire body froze at the increasingly forceful engine sounds and the shaking of the fuselage.

Seeing how Yukina had already lost her senses, Kojou silently grasped her shaking hands.

“…S-senpai?”

“Ahh, sorry. I thought you might relax more if I was holding your hands. You didn’t want me to?”

“I have said no such thing…!”

Yukina spoke in a hasty-seeming tone as her quivering hands grasped Kojou’s hand back. Kojou sighed an exasperated sigh as he gazed out the window.

The plane immediately left Itogami Island; it was blue ocean as far as the eye could see. He could very roughly tell their direction by the angle of the sun, but he no longer had any way to know where they actually were whatsoever. The aircraft itself seemed to be running smoothly enough, but the fuselage of the old-style propeller plane was more rickety than he’d expected; Kojou became concerned whether they’d ever make it back. Perhaps Yukina’s unease was contagious.

“…I wonder if the research project Kanase’s dad is working on is really related to the Masked…” Kojou murmured to himself as if trying to distract his own mind. He wasn’t all that worried about Kirishima overhearing them from the front seat inside such a noisy aircraft.

“Yes…I think it is highly likely,” Yukina replied with a grave look.

It was a natural conclusion. With those runes of light rising from all over Kanon’s monstrous form, it was extremely likely Kanon had undergone some kind of ritual to transform her flesh and blood.

High-level ritual sorcery like that required an organization, plus someone who could actually perform the ritual on Kanon herself. Kensei Kanase, a sorcerous engineer for a major corporation, as well as Kanon’s adoptive father, definitely fit the profile.

“So he altered his own daughter into a monster like that and made her kill her own kind…?”

Kojou made a rude click of his tongue as he muttered. However, Yukina made an even more austere face as she shook her head.

“You probably have the order backward.”

“Ah?”

“Kensei Kanase didn’t alter his own daughter, but rather…”

“…You mean…he adopted Kanase so he could do this to her…!” The altogether horrible hypothesis colored Kojou’s field of vision with rage.

If that orphaned girl, having finally found a family of her own, knew that her father saw her only as raw material for an experiment…

Kojou could no longer even imagine the despair Kanon would face in that moment.

Then, Yukina made what seemed like a frail, self-deprecating smile as she lowered her eyes.

“I might well have a lot in common with Kanase. That’s why…” The few words that Yukina spoke finally made Kojou realize the truth of how she felt.

Certainly, there was a lot of overlap between Kanon now and when he’d first met Yukina, raised as a Sword Shaman. As far as Yukina was concerned, one wrong step and it could have been her being used as a guinea pig in Kanon’s place. That was why Yukina had invoked the name of the Lion King Agency at Magus Craft Incorporated so they could meet Kensei Kanase: She was desperate in her own way to save Kanon.

“Last night…Kanase saved us, didn’t she…?”

Recalling the taste of deadly combat he’d tasted on top of the cell tower, Kojou sought affirmation in a subdued voice. Yukina made a small gasp, lifted her face, and squeezed Kojou’s hand more strongly.

“Yes.”

As she nodded firmly, Yukina’s eyes said:
And that’s why this time, I want to save her
. Kojou felt the same way about that. In the end, that was reason enough for Kojou to save Kanon.

But as if mocking their mutual resolve, the airplane suddenly shook hard and began heading down.

“Hey, newlyweds. Sorry to interrupt your lovey-dovey chitchat, but we’re landing.”

As he spoke, Kirishima pointed to a small island floating in the middle of the sea.

It was an island shaped like a half-moon with green forest all over its middle. It couldn’t have been even two kilometers’ radius. It looked like you could complete a stroll around the whole island in half a day. There were no signs of houses from the air. It was a completely uninhabited island.

“That island’s a Magus Craft research facility?”

As the doubtful Kojou asked him, Kirishima made a tedious nod.

“It’s just a nameless, deserted island, but we call it the Goldfish Bowl.”

“Goldfish Bowl?”

When Kojou crooked his neck, thinking,
What’s that supposed to mean?
the airplane began a large turn. They were entering a landing pattern. The engine became even noisier; the fuselage shook even more fiercely.

“Hold on tight, the runway’s a little bare bones. No margin for error.”

“…By runway, you don’t mean that field over there?”

“Don’t talk. You’ll bite your tongue!”

“Wah… Seriously?!”

The old propeller plane charged toward the field, with nothing but grass spread out over otherwise barren ground. It was about the same width as an elementary schoolyard; there weren’t even markers, let alone pavement. It wasn’t something you could call a runway in good conscience.

Without hesitation, Yukina pressed herself into Kojou, but he had no leeway to blush over it.

The aircraft violently touched down with roughly the same force as a crash landing. They bounced off the rough surface several times, slowly decelerated, and barely came to a stop before going over a cliff.

With a practiced hand, Kirishima undid his seat belt and opened the ill-fitting door.

“We’re here. Now get off, lovebirds. I’ve got a schedule to keep.”

“We’re not a couple, you know.”

Kojou objected, but there was no strength in his voice. Pulling the tottering Yukina by her hands, Kojou slowly made his way off the aircraft. It had been a long time since he’d set foot on solid ground, and it’d never felt so good.

“Are the Kanases really in a place like this?” Kojou asked while gazing at the sight of the empty, uninhabited island. Kirishima made a thin smile rich with implication.

“Who knows. I’m sure you’ll meet them soon enough… If you live that long, anyway.”

“…Kirishima?”

After confirming that Kojou and Yukina had moved away from the aircraft, Kirishima slammed the plane’s door shut. The airplane’s engine revved up with great force once more, sending the small plane gently running forward.

“Sorry, honeymooners. Well, blame Beatrice for this, not me, ’kay?”

With a wave through the window, those were Kirishima’s parting words. As he grasped the meaning of those words, Kojou’s facial expression froze in terror. In haste, Kojou ran after the accelerating airplane.

“H…hold up, pops!”

“Who the hell you calling pops?! I’m still twenty-eight…!”

As the airplane gradually lifted off the ground, Kirishima’s shouts grew quieter.

Kojou was beside himself as he stared at the small plane as it grew distant, seemingly vanishing into the pale sky.

“…Gimme a break here.”

The powerful tropical sunrays made the blue sea glitter.

It was some fifteen minutes later that Kojou roused himself from his daze.

Though the situation seemed hopeless, it might have been too soon to say that.

Though he’d held on to paper-thin hope, the airplane that had vanished over the horizon did not return; all that remained were the cruel, mocking voices of the birds around them. They’d been abandoned on a completely uninhabited island. Beatrice Basler had deceived them.

As Yukina stood still in shock near the cliff, Kojou timidly called out to her. “Er… Himeragi, are you all right?”

Yukina looked back with a pensive expression before lowering her face
in dejection. She no doubt felt responsible that she hadn’t seen through Beatrice and Kirishima’s scheme in spite of the powerful Spirit Sight ability she rightly took pride in as a shrine maiden.

“I’m sorry, senpai. This is my mistake.”

“It’s nothing you need to apologize for, Himeragi. I got fooled, too, same as you.”

“No, I was most careless, in spite of fully expecting that Magus Craft might be involved in the Masked incident.”

“Well, not sure it’s carelessness so much as…being rattled by the whole airplane thing…”

“It is not that at all! I was merely careless!”

Yukina continued to bluff her way forward even now, somehow unable to make that concession.
Well, that’s fine and all
, thought Kojou as he used his parka’s hood to block some of the strong sunrays.

“So this means that Beatrice is in on this with Kanase’s dad, huh…? Shit. Going to meet them without telling Natsuki completely backfired…”

Realizing his own error in judgment, Kojou could only regret it now.

Natsuki and her peers were as yet unaware of the connection between the Masked and Magus Craft Incorporated. Further delays in the investigation would only make Kanon’s position worse and worse.

He didn’t know what Kensei Kanase wanted to use his daughter’s body for, but now he’d have even more precious time to conduct his
experiment
.

“I suppose so. They really got us. I never imagined the Fourth Primogenitor could be eliminated from Itogami Island by such means.”

Yukina spoke in a tone that somehow oozed regret. She was likely in shock that Kojou, the individual she’d been assigned to watch, could be rendered completely powerless with such ease. Kojou felt a bit conflicted at her fierce competitiveness rearing its head in an odd direction as he took out his cell phone.

“…Out of range…figures. Even if I use the GPS, this island’s not gonna be on any map, is it? Useless,” Kojou grumbled, cutting the power. “I suppose we could get lucky and have a ship pass by… Probably not, huh?”

“In the first place, the passage of passenger airplanes and ships in the
waters around a Demon Sanctuary is restricted by law.” Yukina calmly informed him of the unpalatable fact.

It wasn’t as if Kojou thought that Beatrice and Kirishima would have dumped them in a place where rescue was easy or likely. It was better not to expect aid to come for some time.

“We’ll have to think of how to get off this island later. First, let’s examine the island. We need to secure water first.”

“Water?”

“Yes. Food and shelter after that, preferably while we still have light.”

Yukina took her silver spear out from the guitar case on her back. It seemed she intended to use it to slice away tree branches to create a path through the forest.

“…Feels like we’re shipwrecked sailors on a deserted island, huh?”

Kojou spoke with no tension in his voice at all. Yukina sighed and looked back at Kojo. “We don’t
feel
like it, we
really are
on a deserted island.”

“R-right… Man, if no one rescues us, worst case we might be living here together for the rest of our lives. This is like some bad joke…”

Kojou clutched his head as he looked over the tiny island, completely cut off from civilization. To a pampered modern person like Kojou, just the thought of living without convenience stores, supermarkets, the Internet, television, electricity, and running water was enough to terrify him. He was all the more frightened that while he and Yukina were left in such primitive surroundings, Kanon would be placed in even greater danger. He couldn’t even form the words to describe the worst-case scenario.

However, for some reason, Yukina had a hurt look in her eyes as she glared at Kojou.

“‘Worst case,’ you say… Being all alone with me is a bad joke…is it?”

“Huh?”

“No, it’s nothing at all.”

Turning her back to him as she spoke, Yukina headed into the forest. Her spear gouged out a tree trunk before Kojou’s eyes with what felt like indiscriminate swinging.

“Er… Himeragi? You don’t happen to be, um, upset?”

“No. I am not upset whatsoever. I am simply marking the path so that we do not become lost.”

“I-I see. Makes sense.”

As he said those words, feeling nonetheless like he couldn’t agree all that much, Kojou walked after Yukina, advancing into the forest.

It was easier to walk in the forest than he’d imagined, probably because the dense foliage of the trees obstructed sunlight, preventing grass from growing below. Bare volcanic rock became a gently descending slope that continued down to a small inlet.