再起動エピローグ [Saikidou Epilogue] – Reboot Epilogue

Shintaro Kisaragi, 22 years old. Four years ago, there was a certain "incident" that led to his becoming friends with a strange group of people. They pulled him out of his solitary lifestyle and for a while, those people became his world; because they were the only ones who broke through to him. With their nonsense about "gangs" and "abilities", they made him fight, suffer, and be happy, and somehow or another they seemed to have banded together and saved the world. Or maybe such a thing was just the delusions of kids trapped in a childhood that seemed to stretch on forever.

It had been four years since then, four long years. Or maybe it wasn't even that long, compared to the ages of memories that still lurked in the back of his head to this day, occasionally surfacing in his dreams, turning them to nightmares. But those memories were hazy, like the hazy days that had produced them, and with no more need for them he'd moved on with his life. All of them had.

Sometime, when none of them had been looking, most of them became adults.

At some point Shintaro had gotten it in his head that he might try for college in America. But lacking the qualifications that American colleges were looking for, with two years of isolation to his history, he was forced to set his sights back at home. The year following that fateful summer, with American rejections pouring in, he passed the entrance exams for a prestigious university on the other side of the city with flying colors. It was like a bad joke.

Now it was the summer break of his senior year, and he was back home to visit his family for Obon. He had made a few different friends in university, but none of the ones who had taken trips around the country were close enough to him to have invited him, and the rest were the types to hole themselves in their rooms on their computers at home, if they even bothered to head home at all. Not that Shintaro could really blame them; that had been his plan for the summer as well. Momo was off on tour for his entire break, and without her around, there wasn't anyone to drag him away from the screen. Well, not that he really minded, but as he sat in his old room using the old mouse he'd bought after the strangest few days of his life, it occurred to him that this was the first summer he wouldn't be seeing any of them.

It wasn't anything that had made them part ways in particular. It was just that sort of thing that happened as people grew older. Tsubomi had gone to a local university. Kosuke had a job in the area, and continued to live with Marry. Shuuya had moved elsewhere in the city and had his own job as well. Momo had continued her work as an idol, despite the loss of her ability. Takane and Haruka had planned on going to a university together, but after Takane failed the entrance exams three times, she started playing video games professionally. Haruka's university was in a different city, and the two of them had moved there together. Hibiya was now in high school back in his home town, while Hiyori was attending a high school here. Ayano had spent the past three years doing part-time jobs around the city, seemingly without direction. When Shintaro had asked her about it once, she told him only that she was waiting for someone who probably wasn't him.

It felt like the sort of thing that maybe should have upset him, but just knowing that they were each living their lives was more than enough for him to be satisfied with it.

The morning of August 14 began soon after 3 AM with an earthquake.

It was much stronger than most of the usual earthquakes, rattling nearly the entire house and knocking a few things around Shintaro's room to the ground. Though a much nicer wakeup call than a siren, it had still startled him enough that he was halfway out of his bed before he realized that there wasn't any cause for alarm.

He spent a few minutes on the ground, waiting for any aftershocks as he collected his broken pride. Even without Ene around, he still felt self-conscious about reacting to noise like that. When he once thought about it too hard, he realized that the one he'd been embarrassing himself in front of for over a year was not some malicious program but a real person, and ever since then he'd pushed his embarrassing mornings and unsightly evenings out of his mind any time they came back to the surface.

Shintaro took another few minutes to pick up various things around his room. Mostly it was useless items that had fallen off his desk, a few clothes that fell off the hangers in his closet, and his phone's charging station which had tipped completely over. Satisfied with these, he resolved to check on the kitchen in the morning. This earthquake had seemed particularly bad, and if he hadn't been mistaken, there had been some sounds of shattering ceramic mixed into the usual noise. He took one last look at his phone, rubbed a sleepy red eye, and climbed back into bed.

"Sorry! I tried to get my manager to pull some strings but she wouldn't budge! )o( Guess I really won't see my brother at all this summer, huh? ;o;"

Shintaro stared at the text message a few seconds before rolling his eyes. "Like hell it'd be useful getting me a ticket now," he murmured to himself. Momo had been promising to get him a ticket to one of her local performances while he was back home as an apology for being busy, but when she had still been having trouble with it as of a week ago, Shintaro had given it up as a lost cause. There were only two more nights of Obon, meaning two more performances before she flew north, and then she'd be away until long after his classes started up again. "Don't worry about it. I'll see you some other time," he sent in reply.

He put the phone back down, sighed, and returned to his computer.

"Hey, Master, are you spending today inside, too? How uncool!"

The voice made him freeze, an immediate, instinctive panic that four years later still remained ingrained in him. But… that was wrong, wasn't it? He looked around his computer screen, even minimizing windows, glanced at his phone… The girl who had once been "Ene", who had lived a year of her life in his computer out of some strange sense of duty and concern was now halfway across the country, probably yelling at a game where she was still playing in that sloppy, flashy style of hers. To say he missed her would be a gross misunderstanding of the situation. But for those lost two years of his, she had been his only real company, and he hers. In the end, it had been something so close that the awkwardness of it prohibited them from so much as texting each other, only speaking when in the company of others.

The last time he'd seen her had been at a regional tournament held at his university's facilities a year and a half ago, soon after she'd gone pro. He hadn't intended on making contact with her at all, but even after she'd won the tournament readily, from his position on the sides he could tell she was a little disappointed. It was after most of the participants had left, leaving just the staff cleaning up afterwards, Takane, the runner-up, and a few reporters interviewing them. He didn't even need to say anything to her. She spotted him standing by one of the setups off to the side, used just for fun, not even any of the official tournament matches, and even from across the room he could see the shift in her expression. She took off mid-question, making straight for him, trailing a couple of confused press in her wake.

"This is completely off the record! Personal rematch!" she'd declared to them when they'd finally caught up to her, after she'd already dumped her trophy and sat down next to him. Then, she turned to Shintaro, grinning. "If you win, the contract is renewed."

"Oh? I was going to say, if I win, you tell me what the passwords you set on those last three folders are."

"Eh? You haven't cracked them yet? Well, I like my conditions better, so that's what we're going with!"

"You really think you can beat me this time, huh?"

"I know I can! You're way out of practice, Shintaro!"

In the end, despite his win, he hadn't gotten those passwords out of her. Her excuse had been something along the lines of, "What, did you really expect me to remember when it's been so long since then?" Maybe she'd gotten the last laugh anyway. Maybe that was why he was still hearing her even now.

Before he could stop himself, he picked up his phone, scrolled through the contacts, and called Ayano. It was still unfathomably strange that the person whose suicide had driven him to cut himself off from everyone he could was back in the world again, resuming her life almost as if it had never stopped in the first place. But there were scars that had remained, maybe that Shintaro could only see because she had made herself so close to him. Her kindness had lost some of the warmth to it that he hadn't realized he'd grown accustomed to. Or maybe she'd merely stopped showing him a warmth that wasn't there in the first place.

She had lost that time in the kagerou daze. At twenty one, she still looked nineteen. She'd killed herself, but thanks to the snake, she never died. She simply walked into an unending world and waited there patiently for Shintaro to bring her back out again. Had she expected it to take two whole years? Had she expected it to take an eternity?

The call went to voicemail without picking up, and Shintaro hung up without leaving any message. Well, it was the middle of the day. Obon or not, retail life was sure to be busy at this time. Still, there had been a part of him that wanted to go back to those days where things had been so carefree, and hear her voice as cheerful as ever.

"How rare! Shintaro almost never calls me."

Memories that sometimes seemed to come to life. Experiences lived and those merely passed along beyond the boundaries of time. Sometimes, especially when he got tired, it became hard to tell which had belonged to this loop and which had belonged to one of countless others. He'd woken up with the memory of stabbing his own neck nearly a hundred times by now. If nothing else, the fear of what he might recall had kept him from making a habit of dozing off in lectures like many of his classmates. In some ways, his life had been no less heavily affected than Ayano's.

"Shintaro? Are you up yet?"

The familiar voice of his mother drifted up the stairs and through the door of his room, and he looked down at the phone still held in his hand. It was nearly 12:30; of course he was up. "Yeah, I am."

"Oh, good! Can you come help me clean up downstairs? Did anything in your room break during the earthquake?"

Ah, right. He'd planned on checking the kitchen this morning. "A few things fell, but I didn't find anything broken." Pocketing his phone, he made his way downstairs.

Much more seemed to be awry downstairs. His mother had already cleaned up most of the kitchen, a large garbage bag full of shattered dishware sitting in the entryway, but their living room was still a mess. Books were off their bookshelves, one of which had toppled entirely. Photo frames were either knocked down or askew, and there were shards of broken glass in one corner. Leaving the glass alone for the moment, he righted the bookshelf and started picking up books.

He didn't bother putting them back in order. For now, getting them off the floor was enough. Keeping the books sorted was more his mother's thing, anyway. He'd just barely started making visible progress on the pile when a glint caught his eye, and he reached down to see what it was.

The serene smile of a fifteen-year-old Ayano met his gaze, and standing next to her, his fifteen year old self. It was the photo taken of them when they began high school together. Up until Ayano's suicide, the picture had always sat on the table with other photographs of himself and Momo. During the period before he locked himself in his room, it had disappeared. He wasn't sure when it had come back out, or if maybe his mother had hid it in the bookshelf, knowing he never went for her books. Shintaro hated looking at pictures of Ayano from before. The smile she always wore, looking back on it, always made him feel like he was forgetting something important.

"Shintaro?"

He looked up to find his mom staring at him, a strange look on her face. "… Yeah? What is it?"

"Your eyes looked... Oh, no, it's nothing…" His mother seemed to waver for a moment, unsure, before seeming to recall what she'd meant to tell him and replacing her expression with a more cheerful one. "Oh! Because of the earthquake, there's an emergency trash pickup in half an hour. Do you think you can take the garbage bag to the pickup site? It's just a couple streets over."

He took one look at the bright day outside the window and felt a part of himself curl up into a small ball and die. This was a terrible idea, and if he agreed to it, he was sure to regret it. But the words still came out of his mouth, the words of an adult who had learned that there were some obligations in this world that no amount of sunlight could halt. "Yeah… sure."

He was right about this being a terrible idea. In fact, "terrible" didn't quite do it justice. This was an absolutely abhorrent idea, something the likes of which was nearly guaranteed to result in his untimely death. The heat outside of the air conditioned house was oppressive and insufferable. To make things worse, Shintaro had been living away from home for over three years. So when his mother had told him the site was "a couple streets over", he hadn't even remembered that he needed to ask which direction "over" was. There had only been one choice in what seemed like just yesterday. What should have taken five minutes had already passed the twenty minute mark, and the time at which this whole venture became pointless was less than ten minutes away.

Shintaro couldn't even tell if he'd been down this street before, but he finally found what seemed to be a place where a few different trash bags matching his own had been deposited. Without worrying about whether this was the proper location for his own neighborhood, he added his bag to the pile. But then, he thought to himself that maybe that wasn't the responsible thing to do. What sort of trouble would befall his mother if the neighbors started spreading rumors that her eldest child couldn't even put their trash in the proper place? Maybe all those not-so-unfounded rumors of his being a shut-in would come back to the surface like unearthed waste. Had there been rumors? Surely there had, if for no other reason than Ene attracting the attention of their neighbors at all hours of the night with all sorts of sounds. Or rather, it was unthinkable that there wouldn't be rumors, with attention already brought to their house it was all but inevitable. Would looking around be more suspicious? Ah, but if he didn't look around, he'd never know if someone was making a disgusted face in his direction. If he turned, then at least he would know what sort of fate he was in for.

Mustering far more courage than the gesture should have required, Shintaro began to glance around, at first hastily but slowly returning to a more normal of a speed. It was at that point that he spotted a familiar figure behind him. "Huh? Kosuke, what are you doing here?"

Kosuke didn't give a proper answer, just a smile and a small wave. Though he had already been tall before, Kosuke seemed to have not been finished growing when Shintaro had first met him. In the intervening years, the distance between their heights had grown a few centimeters, though Shintaro would have liked to think that his own height had increased as well. His shorter hair seemed to give him a more mature appearance, though beyond that and his height, very little seemed to have changed about him.

"You look like you need a drink." Kosuke made a beckoning motion and set off down the street, turning a corner around a nearby building. Shintaro soon followed.

He rounded the corner to find himself in a shaded alcove with a small collection of vending machines huddled against a building he never remembered seeing before, and a young man standing in front of them, already holding a can of soda. But it wasn't the young man he was expecting to see. "… Shuuya? Where's Kosuke?"

"Aah, that's the thing, Older Kisaragi." Shuuya, it seemed, hadn't grown at all. He even still wore the same hoodie from years ago, with only hair several inches longer as a marker that he'd aged in the meantime. He tossed the can in Shintaro's direction, and perhaps by sheer luck, Shintaro managed to catch it. It was cold to the touch, but he held it in his hands, not opening it just yet despite the burning in his throat nearly begging him to take a gulp, his gaze instead still locked on Shuuya. "We haven't been able to contact Seto since this morning. You understand, don't you?"

"Eh?" For a moment, despite the heat, Shintaro felt a chill run down his spine. "But, that's…"

That wasn't possible. That shouldn't be possible; the person he'd followed here was unmistakably Kosuke. But there was a way for Kosuke to have been here without being here at all, one possibility that should have long since become the domain of an entirely different person.

His eyes had been deceived. It was as simple as that.

"Of course, I wouldn't have expected you to believe me if I'd just told you. Commander Kido didn't until she tried out her own ability again herself, and you…" Shuuya pointed to him, the same smile from all those years ago still on his face, "well, I don't think you even learned to control it at all, right? What little there is to control, I mean."

Despite the fact that Shintaro was having difficulty taking in what Shuuya was telling him, he felt a spike of indignation at that, an automatic reaction to the insult from this person he disliked primarily for having known too much all along. "So you're here to tell me our abilities are back, since I wouldn't be able to see for myself? What's the point of even talking to me, if that's your opinion of me?"

"The point is, this is the sort of story where we need to bring in the main character before we make any moves."

Shintaro gave him a flat look. "Don't go doing stupid things like declaring me the main character with a straight face. If anything, that would be Marry, or maybe Ayano…"

Shuuya simply grinned back. That grin that he never seemed to lose. "Really? But being called the main character really suits you! The trump card who is surprisingly useless most of the time, but then at the very end, appears to save the day!"

Shintaro wasn't sure what he was more pissed at. The way that Shuuya was continuing to say all this with a straight face, or the way that he was in fact describing pretty well the way that events had transpired four years ago. "You always manage to make things sound the most disgusting… Besides, that still could apply to any of the three of us." An admission that Shuuya hadn't been wrong.

"Right, right. But there's still one thing that you have that makes you the most suited for a main character type!" Though his smile didn't change, his tone shifted, taking on a hint more seriousness. "If the rest of us screw this up, we need those eyes of yours to see everything that happens. Because you are the only one who can learn from the mistakes of all the Mekakushi Dan who have ceased to exist."

Shintaro's gaze dropped, and he finally opened the can of soda he'd been given and took a long, hard drink. Shuuya really did make things sound disgusting. The thought that he was sought out just in case everyone was sent back to square one…

"Wait, you think there's a chance Marry might rewind things again? I thought we'd moved past that."

"We all did."

The voice immediately to his left made him jump, startling and jerking his head to look. Though she hadn't approached them at all, hadn't moved in close, there was no mistaking that the woman was indeed standing right next to him right now. Her hair wasn't quite so long anymore, but aside from that there seemed to be very little change to her.

"Commander, you found us!"

"Hey, hey," Shintaro mumbled, redirecting the frustration over his own embarrassment, "if you can properly control it, don't go sneaking up on people like that."

"Sorry, old habit." Tsubomi said it quickly and easily, though there did seem to be something in her expression that was a bit regretful, or perhaps just upset. But by the time she'd turned to look at Shintaro, it had cleared from her face. "Did Shuuya already tell you that we cou—?"

"That's no good! Since we're reforming the Mekakushi Dan, we need to go back to our codenames!"

This time at least Shintaro had someone to exchange a flat look with, and looking at his own expression perfectly mirrored back by Tsubomi, he could only conclude that she was thinking the exact same thing. "Are you sure this guy is an adult?"

"Not at all. That's just what he claims." She gave a heavy sigh and ran a hand through her hair. "Did Kano already mention, we haven't been able to contact Kosuke?"

"Seto." Suddenly, there was a fist against Shuuya's ribs, and he made a soft "oof!" sound, cringing.

"… Seto."

"Y… yeah, he did mention something like that." And it was good to know now that Tsubomi was still prone to punching people, before Shintaro had the chance to experience her wrath himself. "Is that unusual?"

"I wouldn't be surprised if it were this joker, but a reliable guy like Seto? If he's working, he'd at least have called back during his lunch break. But… he's currently the only one in contact with Marry."

"… And something's probably happened to her."

"That much is obvious." Both Tsubomi and Shuuya turned to look straight at him, both pairs of eyes a bright red. Shintaro wondered when such a thing had stopped being strange to him.

He shrugged, drinking down the rest of his soda. "Okay, so you've found me. What are you going to do now?"

"Well, we're trying to gather our forces!" Shuuya piped up cheerfully. "Or, those that we can reach. Is Kisaragi back at your home?"

"No, she's—hey, why am I 'Older Kisaragi' while Momo's just 'Kisaragi'?!"

"Senior members have priority! Since she joined first, she gets to be Kisaragi! So she's not there?"

Shintaro bowed his head in frustration for a moment. The fact that his little sister was senior to him in anything was a shame that no older brother should have to endure. It completely went against the sort of relationship that was established. Just the thought of it set a heavy weight on his heart that brought a cringe to his face, twisted in pain at the sheer wrongness of it. Finally he gathered himself and lifted his head, but from the reactions of the other two he could only conclude that he hadn't managed to completely school his expression first. Undaunted, he continued. "She's on tour right now. Tonight she's performing at some big venue a few stations from here…"

"Right, right, got it. So we'll have to get her afterwards. Why, this is probably going to be her biggest concert in years! We can't very well interrupt that!"

The way Shuuya pointed it out made Shintaro wonder if he should warn Momo that her own ability was probably back. Well, Momo was an adult too now, and had dealt with her ability for a few years at least. 'She'll be fine' was perhaps a bit too optimistic of a thought, but 'she can handle it' certainly seemed right.

"So, then. There's Konoha and Ene—"

"Leave them for last, please." If only because the last thing Shintaro wanted was for Takane to know that she had free reign over his electronics once more. And besides, Takane had already suffered a lot with how Haruka's ability had affected him before. Even Shintaro had managed to gather that much from her. Maybe not knowing would be kinder to both of them.

"Oh? Is that fear I hear? 'Ah, Ene's ability is so scary! If she learns she can use it again, surely my life will become hell!' That sort of thing?"

Shintaro cast Shuuya a glare. "If you had her living in your computer for so long, you'd be scared, too."

"Ah! An unexpectedly honest answer! Alright, then, we can set them aside for now. That just leaves Hibiya."

"So he gets to use his first name, huh…? Hm? What about Ayano?"

The moment he asked it, it seemed to be the wrong question. Tsubomi's gaze fell, and even Shuuya's unwavering smile took on a different edge to it.

"Sis hasn't been answering her phone for a week. It's not that unusual, you know? If we ever sound like we're in trouble, she'll respond right away, but otherwise she seems to just forget sometimes." Tsubomi kept her eyes on the ground, even as she spoke. "She might even have gone tracking down Kosuke on her own without even thinking to call us back. That's how she is."

So that was why she hadn't picked up earlier.

"Isn't this great, though?" Shuuya continued, with an air as if trying to dispel the tension that had suddenly come up without trying to directly do so at all. "We're getting the whole group back together! It's almost like an epilogue!"

"That's not what that word means," Shintaro grumbled. "It's not much of an epilogue if something new happens. Then it's just a sequel. With any luck, it won't just become the same story again…"

"Do you think it's that likely?" Tsubomi said in a voice that was too loud to be a mutter, as she finally moved forwards and put some change into one of the vending machines.

"… No idea. I don't think I remember anything that's 'now' without it being the real now." He shrugged, slumping against a wall that separated the alcove from the next plot over, but soon stood up again as the heat from the sun-lit stones quickly leaked through his clothes to his skin. "I can't say that with any confidence, though. Like Kano said… I can't exactly control my ability." Shintaro squeezed his empty soda can enough to deform the shape, before dropping it into the recycling bin.

"Well, I'm sure you're not the only one! Speaking of, how about we call little Hibiya? Do either of you have his number?"

"Why would we—?"

"I do," Tsubomi cut Shintaro off, her cell phone already in her free hand as she scrolled through the contacts. She looked up to find him making an unpleasant expression in her direction. "… What's that look for? It was your sister's idea. 'A good commander should be able to contact all of her troops.'" She pressed the call button and brought the phone to her ear, gaze already shifted to some nondescript point off in the distance along the street as the dial tone began. "Well, by the time she'd said that, I'd already thought I wouldn't need to be a commander anymore…"