“Actually she'd asked me to read her fortune. She might have been joking.”
She probably was. She couldn't say it to Hinako's face, but there were probably not many children who believed in that kind of thing these days.
She couldn't know Yuko Yabe's intentions, but she couldn't have been serious. Shizue kept looking at Hinako's pale, almost translucent, skin.
“I read her fortune,” Hinako said. “And I saw a dark star. But I was scared to tell her. But then she didn't show up to class yesterday. I got worried. When I went on my monitor she wasn't connected. So⦔
Kunugi stiffened.
Hinako's lips quivered.
That was when Shizue noticed Hinako was wearing gray lipstick.
IT SOMEHOW FELT
moist outside.
She must have been imagining it.
Yesterday's rain had dried up. It'd been sunny all day today.
Though Hazuki hadn't once confirmed the weather outside herself.
The wind struck her cheek. Her hair was pregnant with the gust and billowed up. Hazuki held her chest. Her palpitations sped up. She'd just run for the first time in a while.
This road never ended.
It kept going and she couldn't see ahead.
It made her uneasy. The city was a large box. It didn't suit Hazuki's scale. It was like looking at a low-resolution image on a large-screen monitor. It felt hollow and the edges were blurred. How was it that with such low density, reality could draw up the images so clearly?
She could see a black shadow straight down the road.
“What are you doing?” asked the shadow.
“If you're coming along let's go together.”
“Together?”
She hadn't planned on going together.
Why had she flown out like that? She wasn't sure herself. Maybe she'd wanted a last word with Mio for jimmying her way into her house and then leaving as abruptly.
Noâ¦
That couldn't be.
“You're so
weird
,” the shadow said. “If you didn't want to come along then what are you doing?”
“What am I doing?”
“I mean, are you just going to follow me?”
“Yeah.”
Just then a street lamp went on.
It illuminated Mio's face.
“It's late.”
“Yeah, and dangerous,” added Mio.
“If you're not coming you should just go back now. Even if there isn't a murderer out there, you'll be stopped by the police walking around wearing that.”
Hazuki wasn't in regular clothes.
Still, Mio had no right to talk.
“What about your clothes?”
Hazuki ran up to Mio. “I'd run away,” Mio said. “I'd just up and run. I don't know what âup and run' means, but I'd do it.”
“I would too.”
“Impossible. You ran thirty meters and are already out of breath.”
“Out of breath?”
“You're panting, right?” Mio said, a little snide. “When you pant, they call that being âout of breath.' Your shoulders go up and down. You can't run at all, Makino. You're weird.”
Was she?
In indoor athletics at least, Hazuki was of above-average physical strength. Even in her medical exam, she ranked an A-minus.
“That's not what I'm talking about,” Mio said. “You're funny. Let's go to Kono's place.”
“Funny?”
Hazuki didn't know what was so funny.
She didn't understand why Mio insisted she come with her. Should they have been going to Ayumi's house in the first place?
“Can we walk there?”
She had a feeling it was far away for some reason.
“Of course we can. I'm pretty sure she's really close.” Mio got up on a stone ledge by the sidewalk and looked up the address on her monitor.
“She's in Section A, right?”
“I think so. She's not in
my
neighborhood, that's for sureâ¦Oh, here we go.”
Mio went into a side alley. “This is an unusually old neighborhood. It could get dicey up ahead.”
Up ahead. There was so much depth to the city. It was gross. Different from the maps.
Or so Hazuki thought.
Mio went into the alley. If Hazuki fell behind she'd lose sight of her.
She brought out her monitor and opened the navigator. Confirmed her location. Until Hazuki determined her placement in the world with an axis of coordinates she wouldn't feel grounded.
Should they be uncomfortable walking forward into an unknown? She'd have a bird's-eye view of the city with a map. She'd know what lay ahead five meters to the east, know who occupied the building behind the wall. But right now she couldn't see anything. In which caseâ¦
“Hurry up already. We're not in official residential quarters anymore, so it's easier to get lost.”
“There's a nonofficial living quarter in Section A?”
“Idiot. Sixty percent of Section A is nondesignated. Cities were originally built ad hoc. Short of demolishing everything and building anew, no area can be perfectly designed.”
I didn't realize it wasn't all built at once
.
Of course it wasn't. I just hadn't really thought about it
, Hazuki said to herself.
This world had been the same since Hazuki was born. At the very least, the world she'd seen and heard hadn't changed. The world of the past she'd learned about was certainly cut from a different cloth, but it was wholly removed from the present. The remnants of that past were certainly still felt in parts of Section C, for example, but for Hazuki at least that was all another world.
The earth kept going.
They couldn't have been walking more than twenty minutes, but the sky was already completely different.
Perhaps because of the time.
She never went outside at this hour. Of course everything looked different when the light changed.
Even so, this view of her block was beyond her wildest imagination.
“The city implies the time.”
“It's not something you can just reset,” Mio said. She grabbed a pole on the sidewalk as if to hop off it. “Look at this. It's not a cable pole. It's just a plain column. A useless pole. Made of concrete, no less.
They don't even have these in the red-light district. Doesn't make a lot of sense to leave just one. It truly is just ornamental. It has no use!”
Mio cackled. “It's a Section A under heaven. Of course the cables are laid underground.”
“What do you mean âunder heaven'?”
“What do Iâ Don't be stupid. That's what this is called. This neighborhood. Haven't you ever been here?”
“I've never had to.”
It was difficult to walk here.
Hazuki concentrated on the tips of her feet. The road was hard. She didn't want to look up. The sky was in the midst of turning to night, and she didn't want to see the exaggeration in scale. She heard Mio's voice.
The area patrol is making its rounds
â¦the voice seemed to say.
“They're making rounds. Let's not run into them. Oh, over here.”
Mio slipped into a side street as if to hide herself. As she turned on her heel a red signal bled in the distance.
“What are you doing?”
Caught zoning out, Hazuki was pulled into the alley by her sleeve.
It was a hilly road.
It was a public road that had only been half completed.
“This used to be a burial ground.”
“Burial ground?”
“Where you bury dead bodies.”
“Really?” Hazuki asked. “Probably,” answered Mio.
There were very few street lamps. The houses lining the street looked like black clumps.
The shadows stretched toward their distant destination.
“Isn't there a forest up ahead?”
“We're not by a nature preservation area, so it's probably just a natural outgrowth. Our area's ecological standard is met with the green area cocooning the community center, so if we see forest, it's just land that's been left alone. It's really started to become decrepit, hasn't it? People used to love growing trees and stuff, so it wouldn't be so weird to do it again.”
“Still.”
It looked like a forest.
“Hey, there it is, Makino.”
Mio pointed at the very forest.
There stood a new-looking house against the backdrop of the black forest. Mio ran up to the gate. The white cheeks on her small face lit up green, reflecting the monitor's display.
“This is it,” Mio said. “Kiyomi and Ayumi Kono. I didn't realize Ayumi lived here with her sister. I heard her sister's out of the country right now.”
When did she hear that?
Hazuki remembered hearing something about it too.
Hazuki advanced up to where Mio was.
The gate display said no one was in the house.
“They're out.”
But Mio made no sign of moving. Kept staring at the building.
“You plan on going in anyway?”
She was going to use her new modified card.
“It's a crime to go into a house when no one's in.”
“It's a crime even if someone
is
in. But I don't think I'll need this.” Still expressionless, Mio jutted her jaw forward, apparently distracted by something she saw on top of the building. Hazuki also lifted her gaze.
It was a standard three-story building.
Butâ¦
“What's that?”
There was definitely some kind of square object on the roof. It had been obscured by the blackness of the forest at first. The dimensions were illuminated from within, meaning there was light inside.
“It's moving.”
“Moving?”
Mio fumbled through her clothing and eventually came out with a clunky-looking object Hazuki had never seen before.
“What is that?”
“You can see things more clearly with this,” Mio said as she brought the binoculars to her face. “So that's what that is,” Mio whispered, and walked past the gate forward to the building.
“What is it?”
“Well⦔
“Well what? Besides, you still can't just barge onto property like this. The cops will show up.”
“This isn't like your house, Hazuki. There aren't surveillance cameras everywhere. Until I'm inside the building I'm not actually on anyone's property. It's no different from being on a public road. If they can do it, we can do it.”
“I don't understand what you mean.”
“Listen⦔ Mio said, exasperated, and went along the side of the house between the fence and the building to get to the back.
“Kono is here.”
“It said she wasn't.”
“She is. Watch.”
The knocking sound of beating metal.
It was hard to walk. Nonstandard width. The ground was made of a material not conducive to walking. Hazuki finally made it through the gap to the back of the house, where Mio struck a pillar with the palm of her hand and looked up.
“Look. It's a spiral staircase. They must have attached it after the place was built.”
“Why? Why would they put something like this on the back of their houseâ¦?”
It was hard to see in the dark, but this was the sort of metal staircase one hardly ever saw anymore.
“Obviously it's to get to the top,” Mio said, and turned around.
“Top?”
“You really
are
stupid. To get to the room on top of the roof.”
“That was a room?”
That wasâ¦
They added a room to the roof?
But by the time Hazuki had realized this Mio was long gone, up the stairs and twirling upward toward the sky.
Hazuki started up the hard metal stairs.
The more energy she put in her legs the higher she got. Repeat. Her view kept rotating. It wasn't her spinning, but the world. Hazuki eventually found herself at an incredible height.
Mio's back. And beyond itâ¦
A white nape she was too familiar with.
And very short hair.
Ayumi was leaning against something and looking at the night sky.
“Illegal entry,” Ayumi said without moving.
“Illegal building structure,” Mio answered back.
“You're clever. We
are
outside.”
“What's it for?”
Ayumi turned at the neck only. From behind Mio, Hazuki could see Ayumi's pale face.
“Makino.” Ayumi confirmed Hazuki's presence with the short utterance.
Though she couldn't tell from Ayumi's voice, Hazuki thought they must have surprised her.
Ayumi let her eyes wander and stepped outside.
It was pretty wide.
A third of it was the square room with a small window. Light shone from inside it.
“Whatâ¦is this?”
“A dove house.”
“Doves,” Mio repeated, and thrust her head through the door left open.
“Where are they?”
“I don't know their schedule.”
“Hmph.”
Mio withdrew her head and said sarcastically,
“I didn't realize doves slept in beds.”
“That's mine.” Ayumi stood up. Mio closed the door.
“You here all the time, Kono?”
“Yeah.”
“It must get quiet. You turn on the vacant sign and turn off your main monitor. But what do you do about homework? You couldn't possibly do it out here.”
“I go downstairs for that. About once a week.”
“You go home once a week, eh? That's pretty savage.”
“You can't eat up here either.”
“Hmph. So you cook too?”
“What do you want?”
“Wait a minute.” Mio walked up to Ayumi and stopped at the handrail.
Hazuki and Ayumi were forced to face each other.
A round red orb glimmered behind Ayumi's shoulder.
The moon.
The moon truly hung in space.
Ayumi stood with her back against the moon.
Hazuki lowered her eyes and said just inside her mouth, “Sorry.”