“Stop screwing around! How many people do you think have
died
because of you two? Just how many people have you
killed
up till now?!” His gun hand shook with anger.
“Please stop, comrade. Even if you could kill either me or Kohina, you’d surely die before you managed to kill the other.”
Do it, Rentaro Satomi. If you don’t kill this man today, he will continue to spread death like an epidemic. You won’t get a better chance than this to stop him. Kagetane is bluffing. Don’t be tricked. Abandon your reason. To hell with thinking calmly. Fulfill your duty.
But no matter how much he thought it, his trigger finger was frozen and would not move.
Rentaro squeezed his eyes shut. “Damn it!” He put his gun away and went to a fallen tree in desperation, sitting down angrily. “I’m grateful for your help with my wound. But I can’t trust you two.”
Saying only that, Rentaro watched Kagetane and Kohina as they sprawled on the other side of the fire, his trigger guard still on his gun.
The flames of the bonfire seemed to sneer at him as they moved.
It was the perfect chance. And you just wasted it.
It smelled like dirt. And grass.
Rentaro could sense just the slightest bit of light on the other side of his eyelids. His shoulder felt cold, so he tried to pull up his blanket, but he couldn’t feel the familiar smoothness on his shoulder, and his hand waved in the air a few times until his consciousness suddenly awakened.
He stood up with a start and looked around. He had fallen asleep without realizing. Before him sat the smoky remains of a bonfire with just the faintest warmth still remaining. Realizing that his clothes were tinged with moisture, he looked around and understood why: There was a thin layer of morning mist, and the sky was cloudy. There was still no sign of the sky returning to normal from its covering of Varanium ash.
There was no trace of Kagetane and Kohina in the spot where they had been sleeping. Rentaro was silent at that—it looked like they left
without doing anything to his person, even though they had had plenty of chances.
He checked the time. It was 8 a.m. He had fallen asleep around 3 or 4 a.m., so he was not fully recharged, but considering the situation, it wasn’t too bad.
Allowing his feet to go where they wanted, he pushed through the place that had been too dark to see last night. There was almost no undergrowth; instead, it was a mysterious scene with enormous, giant sequoialike trees continuing all around him. As if territorial in their own way, after a while, the stand of trees turned into different kinds of vegetation. The prehistoric Jōmon cedar, sitting in the middle of a nest of roots sticking out of the ground, was where Rentaro had tripped while being chased by the large pack of wolves the day before and thus gotten into trouble. Lichens, too, grew thick between the countless bumps of the fat tree’s bark, and there were smashed cars stuck to the trunks, lifted up as if purposefully surrounded.
Rentaro gazed at the sight for a while. If he had woken up next to this scene without reference, he would have succumbed to loneliness and despair, believing himself to have been thrown into the distant future where material civilization had collapsed, and he was cut off from returning to his own time.
It still was not completely clear what effect the Gastrea virus had on plants, but even so, it was hard to separate it from how big they had grown in the ten years since the war. Of course, the plants had gotten better at surviving their environment. There were even absurd instances where there were forests like the Amazon inside Japan, such as during the Kagetane Hiruko terrorist incident.
The area where Rentaro found himself was part of the Unexplored Territory near the Monolith, so this was still not as bad as other places.
There were two days until the replacement Monolith arrived.
“So you were in a place like this, huh?”
Rentaro was surprised by the sudden voice and turned around. “Why are you here?”
The owner of the voice was who Rentaro thought it was. There was a girl looking at him sullenly with undisguised wariness, holding four short swords; and a mysterious man with a mask and silk hat. “There was one thing I forgot to tell you yesterday,” said Kagetane, holding
down his mask. “We encountered that Gastrea you call Pleiades yesterday, once.”
“Where?!”
As Rentaro braced himself to take a step toward Kagetane, the man suddenly raised an arm. “Just follow the river upstream. There’s a big Gastrea campground there. I didn’t see where the compressed mercury was being fired from, but that’s probably Pleiades.”
Campground. Even Gastrea have campgrounds, huh?
That was something Rentaro had been wondering about since he entered the forest the day before. He’d been sure that the instant he entered the forest, there would be Gastrea concealed all over the place and had readied himself for that, but in the end, the only Gastrea he had encountered were the wolf ones.
In other words, the two thousand Gastrea of Gado’s estimates were gathered in one place resting—like a human company of troops.
“Why are you telling me this?” Rentaro demanded. In the past, the man in front of him had tried to summon the Zodiac Scorpion in order to break down the Monoliths. And his motivation for committing the crime was to restart the Gastrea War to give the New Humanity Creation Project a reason for existing—in other words, he had fervently wished to be needed.
From Kagetane’s point of view, the current Tokyo Area where the Monolith had collapsed by chance should have been his ideal. Even though Kagetane had saved Rentaro last night, the biggest reason he couldn’t trust Kagetane was because of the worst-case scenario: that Kagetane was on the side of the Gastrea.
Kagetane narrowed his eyes behind the mask and laughed. “Now, I wonder why? I don’t really think about things like that much.”
How serious is he?
Rentaro wondered.
“If I had to say, it’s because I like you. But unfortunately, if you continue like this, you will definitely die.”
Rentaro couldn’t help but be at a loss for words.
Kagetane continued. “You’ve been strange since yesterday. You said you were working separately from your Initiator, but you don’t seem worried about her at all. You seem to be prepared for the special mission of defeating Pleiades, but there is no sign of your adjuvant around at all. If this was an official mission, then it would be a little hard to
think that they would send a lone Promoter out to assassinate a Gastrea. In other words, it is reasonable to assume that you left your squad because of your own justice or were banished for some reason.”
He couldn’t make a single strangled sound because it was exactly as Kagetane had said. Rentaro wanted to retort with something sarcastic, but he reconsidered, thinking that he couldn’t buy the location of Pleiades for all the money in the world. Honestly, thanking Kagetane would be offensive, so he snorted and walked past them, starting to walk toward the river for now.
But with the sound of his boots stepping on dirt, Rentaro noticed that there were other shoes mixed in. “Hey, what are you doing?” Stopping and looking back partway, he saw that Kagetane and Kohina also stopped short, as he suspected, about ten paces behind him.
Kagetane shrugged and spread out his arms. “I wonder what? You just happen to be in the path upon which we are also heading.”
“Do what you want.” Rentaro snorted in desperation and hurried forward quickly, but he soon heard footsteps behind him again. Rentaro succumbed to the mysterious feeling of annoyance mixed with bewilderment.
After the wolves in sheep’s clothing came Kagetane in sheep’s clothing…
It was such an unfunny joke that he felt his cheek spasm. “You bastards walk in front.”
“No thank you. I do not want to suddenly be attacked from behind.”
Rentaro scratched his head.
Damn it, what the hell is this?
After following the river for a while, Rentaro left its banks and climbed up a small mountain to check the time. As morning turned to afternoon, the temperature rose, and with the warming air, their body scents would be lifted higher; it was safer to gain altitude to keep the Gastrea from sensing them before climbing down again at night.
Rentaro looked sideways at Kagetane and Kohina next to him, not letting down his guard. He couldn’t calm down with them there, but Kagetane said he didn’t want to walk in front either, so that was the compromise. His bizarre companions traveled with him, as if nothing was out of the ordinary.
Next to him, Kohina was loudly—intentionally so—breaking the bar of chocolate Kagetane had given her while continuing to check Rentaro’s movements. She seemed to be saying,
Papa said I can’t kill you, so I won’t kill you…just yet.
Because chocolate bars were a lightweight, high-calorie food that didn’t take up much space, they were fitting for survival supplies, and Rentaro had heard that the self-defense force and other military organizations gave it to their soldiers as portable provisions. He had thought this since watching the food preparation process yesterday, but Kagetane seemed to be even more of an expert at survival than Rentaro had ever imagined. It was nice to have someone like that in his party—of course, that was if he was an ally and not an enemy.
“Satomi, look at that.” After they had climbed up a steep protruding rock face for a while, Kagetane handed Rentaro a pair of digital binoculars.
Rentaro checked the state of his wound where the wolf had bitten him and kneeled down, looking through the binoculars in the direction Kagetane indicated. He got chills like someone had put a block of ice down his back and ducked reflexively, looking at Kagetane.
“Did you see it?” Kagetane asked.
“Below that?” said Rentaro.
“If it’s in the same place as it was yesterday, then probably, yes.”
Rentaro looked hesitatingly through the binoculars again. In the optically enlarged world, there was a large flock of bird-shaped Gastrea flying in a circle over a fixed spot, and underneath were trees densely woven together, their thick canopy spread out such that it blocked even sunlight.
Suddenly, a dull noise echoed and a titanic tree shook hard; the birds it housed hurriedly took flight en masse. The leaves at the tops of trees rustled, and he could tell that a large being was moving through the forest. Rentaro’s heart thrummed with nerves. It was there. There was some kind of land-dwelling Gastrea in that area.
“Good timing. It’s going to rain soon,” said Kagetane.
Surprised, Rentaro lifted his face and saw the man looking up with a hand stretched out over his head. Following Kagetane’s gaze, Rentaro also looked up. The weather had been cloudy since the morning, and it didn’t look like there had been much change to it.
As if understanding Rentaro’s misgivings, Kagetane continued. “The sound is echoing pretty far. That’s because the temperature is rising, and there’s more moisture in the air.”
Just then, there was a rumble of thunder from the clouds, as if backing up Kagetane’s words.
He’s like a prophet
, Rentaro thought in awe.
In any case, the rain was welcome. Their smell would be washed away by the rain so canine Gastrea wouldn’t be able to track them, and the noise from the rain would also make it harder to hear their movements.
However—
“It’s that black rain again…?” Rentaro had learned the main points of World War II in history class, and he couldn’t help but connect the black rain to the atomic bomb and felt a physical aversion to it.
There were no adverse effects to humans being rained on by the ashes from Special Varanium; in fact, if the bleached Monolith had even a little magnetic field left to give off, the rain could possibly even restrain the Gastrea’s movements a little. However, yesterday, when the black rain first poured down, the citizens who wanted to protect the home front became panicked, and the radio and news incessantly repeated “Don’t worry” to calm the panic.
Suddenly, Rentaro thought about how Enju and the others were doing. Half a day had passed since he had fled into the night. Everyone in the adjuvant had probably already figured out that Rentaro was gone.
He wondered how Kisara had broken the truth to Enju. Did she tell Enju straight-out that he had left on a mission from which he had no hope of returning alive? Or did she try to give Enju hope by telling her that he would be back eventually?
It was probably the latter. If Enju had known that Rentaro was in danger, she was likely to follow him and rush into the forest to cause a small disaster. There was no way Kisara would not realize that.
Suddenly, he had the urge to hold Enju tight and just breathe in the smell of her hair.
In any case, he had to defeat Pleiades first. If he safely completed his mission, then Gado probably wouldn’t lump any more blame on him. He would defeat Pleiades and boldly return to Enju’s side.
Rentaro glared straight at the Gastrea campground.
The sky soon began to cry. Like the day before, there was a large amount of rain. In a bad mood, the sky rumbled, but there was still no lightning yet.
As Rentaro climbed upstream, he wiped the raindrops from his face and looked at the palm of his hand. The raindrops coiled about like diluted ink.
After a while, a three-tiered waterfall spread out in front of their eyes. It was as wide as the river itself, and the top tier had a drop of about three meters, the middle tier about two meters, and the bottom tier about three meters again. Normally, it might have been a beautiful scenic spot, but currently, the river was a dark reddish-brown, muddied from the dirt, sand, and rain, and the fact that it was about to overflow.
Yesterday, Rentaro had jumped into such a fearsome muddy current.
“We should probably jump to the other side now, while we can,” said Kagetane.
“Yeah.” Rentaro immediately nodded at the suggestion. The Gastrea campground they looked down on from the top of the slope was probably on the other side of the river.
“Kohina.”
“Yes, Papa.” Kohina released her power, and her eyes turned a bright red. Kagetane offered her a shoulder, and they got to the other side in one jump.