レッドアイ面通し [Red Eye Mentooshi] – Red Eye Lineup
Shuuya Kano made it his business to understand people. His siblings, Ayano's friends, and even the newest members of the Mekakushi Dan whom he had only met a short time ago were all targets. Or maybe, thinking of them in those terms, it wasn't any attempt at understanding at all. It would perhaps be more accurate to say he made it his business to be able to predict them.
It was because of that that he was almost entirely certain he was going to be the only one to seriously approach Marry and ask, so he'd waited a few days until the dust had settled. He also already knew what the answer was likely to be, but he'd been surprised before.
"Hey, Marry!"
He'd waited until Kosuke was busy with his part-time job and Ayano had gone out with Tsubomi. Shuuya had also gone out, but with the express purpose of making it back before any of the others, and from the way that Marry was still reading in the living room by herself, it seemed he'd succeeded.
"Ah, welcome back, Kano!" She gave him a smile, then went back to her book, and he casually sat down on the couch next to her, trying his best to keep his grin even.
"Say, Marry, we've been friends for a while, right?"
She looked up again with a confused expression, but after a moment, nodded. "Um… yes. I guess so."
"Theeen! As a friend, I'm going to ask you a big favor! Ah, but you can't tell the others, okay? It's a secret." He held a finger to his lips, giving her a wink. "You understand, right?"
"Ah, um, I think I do, maybe…" She was clearly getting more flustered, though, so Shuuya decided he didn't have the luxury of convincing her to agree to keep quiet any more than that. It was time to skip straight to the point.
"Would you give me back the snake I was keeping?"
"… Eh…?"
She was staring at him with an expression that clearly said she didn't believe her ears. Honestly, he didn't blame her. After all, the main focus of the Mekakushi Dan had been to discover the secrets behind their powers so they could, among a few other things, live normal lives without them. That was the goal that everyone had been on board with. Even him, ostensibly.
"It's a strange request, isn't it? Then, think of it this way." He placed his spread hand in front of his nose and mouth, obscuring a good portion of his face. "Imagine one day you're given a mask. And you're told you should never take it off. So you wear it, day after day, on and on and on. You wear this mask for years. Some days you hate it, and some days you don't mind, but you never, ever take it off. Suddenly, one day you find that your mask is gone." He took his hand away. "Don't you think that might be scary? By then you've forgotten what your own face is like. You were so used to nobody seeing anything, and now everyone can see everything." He leaned a little closer, and Marry leaned back to match. "What does my face look like? What sort of expression am I making? Can everyone see exactly what I'm feeling? I haven't had to think about those things since I was so much younger."
And it was even the truth. He didn't even know what sort of face he was making right now. Was he still smiling? That didn't quite feel right in his cheeks. If not a smile, then what? What sort of expression was he making that was causing Marry's eyes to go wide like that?
"K-Kano…" she shrunk back a little further, then suddenly shook her head. "I-I can't! I can't give it back to you! It's…"
Her gaze slipped to the side as she trailed off, but Shuuya just gave an easy sigh and sat back, putting his hands behind his head. "Aah, that's what I thought you'd say! Well! Don't worry about it. Go ahead and forget I ever asked, too. It wasn't that important."
"Ah, I, um… I'm sorry… It must be really scary…"
"Hm?" He glanced her way with manufactured surprise, as if he himself had already forgotten. "That? That was just another lie." He laughed, and she seemed taken aback at the sudden change. "Ah, did I have you convinced? Well, if it's not possible, it doesn't matter how convincing I am. How unfortunate!"
He knew he was smiling for sure this time, but he had no idea if it was a smile that gave him away anyway. He knew what convincing smiles looked like, and he knew what suspicious smiled looked like, but his muscles didn't quite remember how to make one or the other.
Marry puffed out her cheeks, though, and crossed her arms, giving a soft 'hmph!' noise as she turned away before going back to her book and ignoring him. So probably, he had given the right smile. Ah, but which one was the right smile when he had just told the truth he didn't want to be believed…?
That Marry would actually tell the others had been a genuine worry of his, but if she did, none of them said anything. He had his suspicions that at least Kosuke was told, but Kosuke of all people was still quite used to keeping information he shouldn't know about other people to himself. As a child who couldn't learn to stop listening fast enough, the first skill you'd pick up instead would be shutting up. People couldn't hate you for the things you never let them know you knew. Whether or not Marry had been convinced by Shuuya's lie, Kosuke almost certainly would have realized that it had been the truth. And like the good guy he was, he would have covered for him. That was just how it was.
He didn't like the idea of Kosuke knowing that he'd wanted his ability back, but even if Marry had given it back to him, not even Shuuya would be able to keep such a thing a secret forever. Either way, Kosuke learning would have been inevitable. Hopefully he was only a little disgusted at Shuuya for it.
It was difficult for him. Exceedingly difficult. Back when he had first gotten his ability, he had locked himself in the bathroom for hours, practicing with his different masks. Now that he had lost those masks, he once again locked himself in the bathroom for hours, re-learning what the muscles in his face did. How long had it been since the last time he'd given someone an honest smile? Was he sure his face could actually do it, or was that just something he'd painted on with his ability? Ah, no wonder others found it so strange that he was always grinning like that; it made his cheeks hurt in almost no time at all and made holding that expression for hours seem like a nightmarish task. He was often smiling beneath the mask anyway, just in case it slipped (he stumbled, though rarely, but more often it was Tsubomi punching him) but it was not as wide a grin as he showed to others. He still knew how to lie with his words, but one emotion too strongly in the wrong direction and he watched his carefully-constructed expressions fall apart in the mirror in front of him. Was that what he looked like when he cried? It was so disgusting. How had none of the others pushed him away when they saw him making a face like that?
Shuuya had lost control and it terrified him. His muscles were too honest. It didn't suit him. He didn't like honesty. He absolutely hated it, actually. The world he could construct through lies was always less terrible than the truth of the world around him. Kosuke hated lies, but Kosuke had been hurt by lies. Shuuya never used his lies to hurt anyone. Well, almost never.
His lies were his protection. Without his lies he would have been long gone. Though, when one considered that the snake might have been one of the biggest lies, that statement became a bit too literal. He had never thought that he'd have to live without the snake again. With what that guy had said, what Ayano and her mother had discovered, Shuuya had been certain that removing his ability would cost him his life. It had been unfathomable that there would be a path that let him here, standing in front of the mirror, practicing how to look sad of all things, so he knew how it felt and would be able to stop himself from doing it ever again.
He wasn't going to give up his lies, with or without his masks.
Slowly, bit by bit, he relearned how normal people lied. How to grin when he felt like absolute shit. How to laugh when his throat wanted to tighten up and make his voice waver. How to look like his guard was down when it was anything but. His lies were how he'd protected those most important to him. His lies continued to be his defense. He was a natural liar, after all. No one knew him less than he knew himself.
August 14, 10AM. Shuuya had taken the earthquake as his cue to go to bed, so it was long past when sunlight had begun streaming into the room when he pulled himself awake again. It took him a few moments before he registered that he hadn't turned on the air conditioning overnight. The air was hot, stifling, like it was trying to suffocate him. It seemed this year had another unbearably hot Obon in store.
Without even sitting up, he grabbed the remote and turned the air conditioning on. Soon, the dull sound of the fan started up, and he sighed, covering his eyes with an arm.
The sunlight was far too bright for his liking. He didn't deserve light as brilliant as that.
Actually, it would be nice if the sunlight could go away for a while.
He continued to lie in bed, and eventually the air around him cooled. Finally the fan turned off automatically, and he peeked past his arm.
Still too bright.
With a soft huff he sat up and glanced towards the calendar. Tomorrow had a little red sticky note on it, blank except for its color. Nothing more to signify the date that changed his life during several different years. Maybe that was fine. It would be four years since the last time such a thing had happened. Perhaps letting it pass unnoticed would be the best kindness that could be done.
Shuuya was about to lie back again and let lethargy take over when his stomach raised protest, letting out a quiet but angry noise to remind him that he hadn't eaten in nearly twelve hours. Well, the normal stores were open now, so probably he could go buy some more supplies. He wasn't in the habit of keeping his refrigerator stocked with more than what he needed to get him through the quick meals he sometimes had, after a long evening's worth of work that more often than not recently seemed to stretch well into the night.
Last night he'd found some of his food had gone bad, and he'd finished eating the rest. So probably it was time to buy more. He could even go to a restaurant while he was out.
Out of bed and into the bathroom. The same routine as usual, checking for new bruises or scrapes that he no longer had the power to hide. He didn't care nearly so much about possibly getting roughed up back when he could imagine the injuries away, but that was another thing he'd gotten used to all over again. Hide or excuse the marks. Ah, the 'I was moving a heavy box and my grip slipped' on his right shoulder from about a week ago was finally gone. Luckily, it seemed yesterday hadn't given him any new tales to spin, but the 'I jumped out of the way of a bike and tripped on the pavement' on the back of his neck from a few days ago was still…
Still…?
Shuuya slowly rubbed fingers over the back of his neck, and though he could feel the roughness from the scabbed skin under his fingertips, in the mirror, there was nothing. No brown bumps. No redness. Just his normal, smooth skin. He leaned in closer, trying to get a better look despite the angle. But no matter how closely he looked, he couldn't see any evidence of the injury beneath his fingertips.
He pressed down sharply.
The pain shot through him in a harsh spike up his neck, and he winced a little. Suddenly, beneath his fingers, the expected scabs appeared as if they'd been there all along.
"… No way…" Shuuya let up, and the scabs remained.
He narrowed his eyes, and a moment later the injuries were gone from the mirror once again. In their place was a distinctive red scarf, and above it, staring at him intently from the surface in front of him was the familiar fifteen-year-old face of a girl who hadn't been fifteen for a long time.
"No way…!" It came out in her voice, in that voice he'd spent so long learning to imitate exactly. As he stared at her, he felt something welling up inside of him. It was a tight heat, growing and churning and building until it felt like he was going to burst open. Was it excitement? Was it fear? His face twisted into a sneer. Shuuya found himself laughing, a laugh that refused to echo off the walls, leaving just the sound of it resounding within his own body to let him know that it existed at all. Ayano stared back at him, her image almost frozen in place, as if she were only helpless to watch as he laughed to himself.
Everything that he wanted and hated had come back to him. He'd never call himself a good person, even after four years without his ability, but now he was back to being a monster.
Only a monster would choose to hide themselves in their own skin, after all.
"Aah, what kind of wonderful and terrible story is this, I wonder?"
Faces cycled past his eyes in the mirror in front of him. His siblings, the friends of his sister who now knew him for him, the rest of those who had formed the Mekakushi Dan, Mother, the Tateyama adults… and back to his own face, staring with its innocently suspicious grin. The grin he had carefully crafted to be just too strange to be believable.
The grin that wanted to be saved from itself.
Well, a lot of good it had done him. He hadn't been saved. He hadn't been saved at all. He'd just had his defenses taken away, only to be left with a gaping hole and all of his fear and confusion still intact. Even without his ability, he never figured out who 'Shuuya Kano' really was. He'd just learned a new way to lie about it to the world around him.
Aah, it really was the worst that his ability had come back. But if that was true, why could he still feel the sneer on his face beneath the mask?
"Because you're a monster," his reflection answered him.
"Wh-whoa!" Tsubomi's outburst had both Shuuya and Shintaro immediately turning her way, but she seemed to be already preoccupied with pulling her phone out of her pocket. Once it was out, the sound of it buzzing made it obvious why she'd startled. She looked at it in confusion, and upon catching a good view of the screen, her expression softened. "Enomo… Ene?"
Shuuya moved closer, and sure enough, Takane was sitting there in front of the screen before them. But she wasn't her usual cheerful self. Rather, Takane hand her hands over her mouth, shoulders shaking as if they were the cause of the device's vibration.
She seemed to be crying.
"Ah, what's this?"
Behind her, she'd pulled up an article on Tsubomi's phone, and all three of them leaned in to get a closer look. One by one, they froze as they processed the headline.
"BREAKING NEWS: Idol Momo Kisaragi's Condition Currently Unknown Following Fatal Concert Incident"
"Wha… what the hell is this?!" Shintaro nearly grabbed the phone out of Tsubomi's hand and began scrolling through the article. "Lighting fixture… hit the stage… no official statements yet… hospital… 'multiple attendees already declared dead'?! What the hell is all this?!"
"Looks like it happened about half an hour ago…" Takane spoke with a voice that was right on the edge of breaking. "They were broadcasting live, so I was able to find the footage, a-and…"
She didn't make it farther than that, and the vibrations of the phone increased as she continued to cry.
"Ene… They said they're not sure, so it's not like they know she's d-d…" Tsubomi swallowed thickly and looked away from the phone.
"Well, that concert was in this area, right?" Shintaro and Tsubomi both turned to Shuuya, who for once wasn't wearing a grin on his face. "In that case, can't Older Kisaragi go see her to find out how she's doing? You're her older brother, after all."
Shintaro's gaze dropped to the ground, before he slowly handed the phone back to Tsubomi. "Uh… sorry. For just… grabbing it like that."
"No, it's… okay. Kisaragi, are you…?" but he'd already turned, starting to walk down the street, hands in his pockets, head ducked. Tsubomi glanced to Shuuya, and he to her, before the two followed. "She might still be alright, Kisaragi."
"She's not." He took his hands out of his pockets and gripped his hair, pressing the heels of his palms against his forehead. "She's not! All of us get our abilities back, and within a day there's just some freak 'accident'?! Like hell it was! I've seen this too many times already!"
"Then that's what you're thinking too, right?" Shuuya put a hand on Shintaro's shoulder and leaned in a little. "If something unfortunate happens to 'those with red eyes', it's almost certainly 'that guy's' fault, isn't it?"
Shintaro didn't move, and Shuuya felt a bit of frustration at that. This was exactly the sort of possibility for which he'd gone to Shintaro in the first place, and here he was, being the same useless guy as before. Shuuya probably should have expected this, but that didn't make it less annoying.
"Well, do what you will." He shrugged and stepped back again. "If this is 'his' fault, then even if Kisaragi is dead, you'll probably have another chance. The rest of us will just trip over ourselves until the main character saves the day—"
Shuuya's reflexes had improved greatly over the years, but even with that, he'd had his guard down. He could only brace himself a little against the sudden punch, and before he really processed it, he was stumbling backwards and falling to the ground.
"Don't put all of this on me, dammit!" Shintaro looked like a bit of a wreck, tears staining his cheeks and eyes red and puffy, but Shuuya could taste the blood he knew was leaking from his lip beneath the mask he fought his pain down to get back into place, so he didn't have much room to talk. "If it hadn't been for all of you, I wouldn't have saved anyone! So don't just say it's all on me!"
"H-hey, Kisaragi…! Calm down!"
Ah, why was Tsubomi standing up for him when she punched him more than anyone else?
"Don't tell me to calm down! Momo's dead! She's…!" His voice broke, and he slowly lowered himself to a crouch, as if trying to hide his face as more tears spilled forth. "I fucked up... There has to be—to be something, something I could've…!"
"Hey, weren't you just the one saying a second ago that it wasn't all on you?" Tsubomi placed a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back a bit, causing him to tip and fall into a sitting position on the ground. A moment later she sat down too, so all three of them were in a little circle on the path. "You relied on us before, so do it again. I think Kano's right that you should go to the hospital before jumping to any conclusions—"
She cut off as Shintaro shot a glare in her direction. "Don't say I'm jumping to conclusions when you don't even understand anything!"
"Master, yelling at Commander isn't going to fix anything!" Takane glared, her face taking up most of the phone's screen as if to make sure he could see her expression properly, but that just redirected Shintaro's anger at her instead.
"I'll stop yelling when you all stop dismissing me, dammit!"
"Everyone's being so lively! But, isn't this the sort of situation where there's better things to do than get mad at each other?" Shuuya knew that if he didn't stop them now, they wouldn't get anywhere. Maybe because he had been so close to 'that guy', he should be the one to believe Shintaro most of all. After all, for such an existence to create a plan that was, as far as Shuuya was aware, completely reliable up until the final moment where it had been disrupted by someone holding the same sort of knowledge, there had to be some degree of predictability to everyone's actions. So even though they had progressed passed those 'loops', it wouldn't be unfathomable that such a predictability still held. Perhaps it was that sort of knowledge that seemed to fuel Shintaro's certainty even in a 'now' that held no memories of itself. To Shuuya, and probably the rest of them, such a certainty was absurd. Even believing in Shintaro's ability, there was still far too much doubt for him to be comfortable. But trusting someone else came easier than trusting himself, so he showed the rest of them a smile as he continued. "After all, if Older Kisaragi is certain enough of Kisaragi's condition that he's willing to discard even the possibility of her survival and instead rush into a future without it, well, there's not much the rest of us can do, is there?"
"Don't put it in such disgusting words…"
"But that's only because it's a terrible decision, you know!" He pointed straight at Shintaro. "Are you certain enough from just the situation around you that Kisaragi is dead? Because if she's still alive and you act as if she's not, you risk bringing about the very death you're already lamenting as reality."
Shintaro held Shuuya's gaze for a couple seconds, before dropping his head and making a noise as he brought his hands up to rub his face. Shuuya wasn't sure whether or not he saw a flash of red in those obscured eyes. "… It's too similar. It's too similar not to be the same. Alive or dead, things are already happening… Things are already falling apart all over again. The future we fought so hard for… has already been fucked up. Ah… dammit…"
"I… can't say I believe that you're right." Tsubomi shifted a little. "But, if you're that certain… I'm willing to put my trust in the ability that saved us. So, let's assume…" she trailed off, glancing to the side a little with a lowered gaze before looking back up at Shintaro and continuing. "Let's assume that Marry will fix this in her way."
In her way, Shuuya thought, was a remarkably delicate way of saying it.
"If this is actually 'that guy's' doing, that… is probably his goal, but we don't know of any better way to save Kisaragi at the moment. What do you need us to do so this doesn't happen again?"
Shintaro put an arm on his leg and rested his head in his hand, shoulders still shaking slightly. "I… I don't know. How the hell would I know?"
"If you don't try to learn anything, you'll never learn anything! Come on, Master. Even an idiot knows that much!" Takane stared up at him from the screen and crossed her arms.
"D-don't call me an idiot…!"
"I'm not!"
That seemed to catch his attention, and he finally lifted his head enough to look at her.
"Master is really smart… really, scary smart. But you still needed to learn things too, right? You had to start somewhere. Well, let's start learning. You may not learn what you need to do the first time, but if you don't learn anything, then you absolutely won't learn what you need to do! So let's get out there and find something for you to learn! Let's save Little Sister!"
His gaze drifted away. "You're all the idiots, for putting your hope in someone like me who can't even control his ability…"
Shintaro gave a heavy sigh and pushed himself back to his feet.
"Ene. Can you get the security footage from the concert?"
Immediately her face brightened, though she wasn't quite so cheerful as to smile. "I tried already, and it's no good. But! If you can hook something that transmits a signal up to something in the closed circuit, I can probably get in!"
"So we have to get inside there, huh? Commander, you can sneak us in, right?"
"… Right. Easily." She stood up. "Are you alright now, Kisaragi?"
"Hell no." He gave a sharp laugh that died the moment it left his lips, wiping his face on his sleeve. "But what sort of older brother would I be if I just stood by and let my little sister die without doing anything?"
Using the bus, it only took about twenty minutes to get to the area of the concert venue, but getting close was another story. Between the emergency workers, the excited press, and the ever-growing crowd of onlookers, not even Tsubomi's power was of much use for getting near the entrance.
Despite the late hour, the area near each major door seemed to be seas of people, even as security tried to keep them back. They were squeezed tightly enough that getting past them without bumping into a single person would be absolutely impossible. Even as far out as they were, the crowd was already impressively dense.
Luckily, they didn't need to go in the front at all.
"If you go around the right side and most of the way down, there's an emergency exit that goes into the backstage area!" Takane pointed for emphasis, and the three of them headed in the direction she'd indicated. They escaped the crowd from the central entrance, leaving them with some breathing room. But no sooner had they done so than the crowd from the right entrance loomed in front of them.
"Hey, how many people are gathering here, even…?"
"Well, we have to get past them, either way…"
But it was true that this amount of a crowd was certainly unusual. Well, maybe it had to do with that after all. If Momo's ability had gathered attention as would be expected, it could perhaps have been the live broadcast that compelled all these people to come here after the accident.
"Hey, it's Momo's older brother!"
Shintaro froze, but when he turned, he seemed to relax a little. "Oh, it's just Hibiya…"
Well, it wasn't that Shuuya could blame him for being startled. Having an idol for a sister probably meant that being identified as "Momo's older brother" was about to lead to an interaction with a fan who was a little too obsessed with her.
"Don't—hey, you know, right?! About… Momo's…" Upon second look, Hibiya's condition seemed rather poor. He was breathing heavily, with tears streaking his face, and roughed up on top of it… What had he been doing recently to put him in such a state?
"Y… yeah. I heard. Why're you here, though…?"
Hibiya's eyes went wide, then his gaze dropped, and he clenched his fists in the front of his pants. "Hi… Hiyori. She was here, too. She had… tickets, to go backstage. I was trying to find her, to give her her phone, but then, I saw… I saw Momo… I saw her when… she…!"
His eyes went wide, red for an instant, before he suddenly collapsed.
"Whoa—!" Luckily, Tsubomi was close enough to grab his torso before his head hit the ground, and she lowered him slowly the rest of the way. She gave a quick sigh of relief, and when she lifted her head, her eyes were also red. "Hey, Kano. Sorry, but do you think you can watch this kid for a bit while we get inside? I don't think we want him taken to the hospital with the rest of them… He's probably just had a rough time of it recently."
"Ah, you're making me miss out on the interesting part? How disappointing! Well, if the Commander says so, I'll do it, but I'll want a full report afterwards, okay?"
With Tsubomi's help, he managed to scoop Hibiya onto his back. Calling this guy a kid stung a little when Shuuya realized that Hibiya had since grown taller than him, but there was little to be done about that. They moved farther from the venue until they managed to find a bench hidden in a small side area off the main walkway, and it was there that he placed Hibiya down and sat next to him.
"Alright then! Now don't take too long!"
He waved at the two of them as they headed back towards the building, until a tree obscured his view and they disappeared.
Shuuya looked at the boy lying next to him, and after a moment, took out his phone and flicked all the way through his contacts. From the bottom, he started going through them one at a time.
Kosuke Seto. Maybe.
Ayano Tateyama. … Maybe.
Haruka Kokonose. … Impossible.
Tsubomi Kido. Impossible.
Momo Kisaragi. Unlikely… and if she actually died, impossible.
Shintaro Kisaragi. Impossible.
Takane Enomoto. Impossible.
Hibiya Amamiya. Maybe.
There weren't many options.
"Eeeeh…? When exactly did you get my phone number, now…?"
"Ah, Ene?" He glanced down to find that sure enough, the avatar had appeared in the corner of his phone and was now staring at the list of names. "Weren't you going with the two of them?" He smiled and went to close his contacts list, but the girl on his screen somehow grabbed it first, holding it on the screen where it displayed her name for both of them to see.
"I was, but it'll take them a few minutes to get inside anyway. But… hey, you even have Haruka's number?! Creepy! I should delete these!"
"Why? Is there something wrong with having your number? I'm not like you; I can't go tracking and invading people's phones on a whim…" He let the edge slip through his grin.
She huffed and crossed her arms. "Well… putting that aside, where did you even get them…?"
"Why, from Commander, of course!" Not that Tsubomi had known he'd copied the numbers out of her phone.
"…" Takane seemed to accept that. "Anyway, what were you doing?"
"You know, I thought to myself, Kido and Older Kisaragi might be busy right now, while I have nothing else to do. So, what if I were to play the detective to kill some time?" He scrolled back through the contacts, and Takane turned to watch. "Just now, I was going through our list of suspects!"
"S-suspects?"
"Right. After all, 'that guy' is just like the rest of the snakes. He can't exist in our world without someone to host him. So, I thought it wouldn't be unreasonable that the condition might be something like, 'someone who died on August 15th', and I have a handy list of a lot of those sorts of people right here! Given that assumption and what we know, who would be the most likely host, do you think?"
Takane stared at the list for a few more seconds, before turning to him. "Who?"
"Ah, who indeed? Well, if I die before the other two get back, it's almost certainly the kid lying next to me." He tossed a grin towards Hibiya, still sound asleep. "He admitted himself that he was here around the time of Kisaragi's 'incident', and he said that he saw it. One would expect that would be through his own ability, but it just as easily might not be, hmm?"
"Wha… then why are you alone with this kid?!"
"Ah-ah-ah, if you're too loud, you might wake him." Shuuya turned back to Takane. "If I'm keeping an eye on him, he can't sneak up on us, now can he? And if I'm the only one alone with him, it comes out as very suspicious if I suddenly wind up dead, too. In this sort of situation, any move 'that guy' would make would at least let us know where he is. Then, Older Kisaragi would know the person he needs to pay attention to when it comes to 'next time'."
Takane shivered. "Okay, fine. But there's someone else it could be, right?"
"Why, it could be anyone we haven't seen for ourselves just yet! Though unfortunately, that means that Seto and Sis are both options. Ah, and I suppose Marry would qualify, too, wouldn't she?"
"… Are you just ignoring Haruka to spare my feelings?" Her voice was flat as she asked it.
"Not at all! I don't think you're the type who is delicate enough to need such consideration. It's more that this is happening here, right? You two aren't anywhere near enough to this city to be suspects."
"Ah, is that… why…? Then… about that…"
The way she fidgeted as she said it seemed like it might be a bad sign.
"Actually, we are in this city. Since two days ago. There's a tournament we're in; tonight Haruka's there since it's his… bracket's…"
Shuuya knew that his surprise was showing on his face, but he'd care a lot more if he couldn't feel every muscle in his body frozen in an instinctive panic. Haruka's here. Haruka's…
"Wha… you're actually suspecting Haruka, aren't you?!"
"… Hey, Ene."
"…" She puffed out her cheeks and crossed her arms. "Yeah, what?"
"If something happens to your body while you are being Ene, do you think the you who is Ene would notice it?"
"Wha—aaaaah don't say things like that! Like I said, Haruka's out at the tournament, and besides, it'd still take over an hour to get to you guys by train…!"
"But for someone like Konoha," Shuuya finally fought down his fear enough to get his expression back under control, and settled back on the bench casually, "to whom the limits of a normal human body are completely irrelevant, being only that far away isn't much of an inconvenience, is it?"
"Well… ah… no, I guess… not. But, why not me, then?! I'm not even with my body, and you're still talking about Haruka like he's…!"
"Ah, don't misunderstand. The you who isn't Ene is still a suspect, too. But there are two reasons why… ah, I guess it would be correct to say, Konoha is now far and away the most likely suspect of all. First of all, he's the only one who has been possessed by 'that guy' in the past. You were there to see it as well."
That terrifying dark shape that swallowed the white figure and spit out a black one in its place.
"The second… well, I never told you it, since it didn't matter, so don't take it the wrong way that you're just finding it out now. If there's anyone 'that guy' would favor, it would be Konoha. Since he had been planning to make Konoha his body from the very beginning."
He knew it was the sort of thing that was going to take a few seconds to sink in. For several moments, it almost looked as if his phone had frozen, as the girl on it didn't move one bit.
Finally, she managed to make a weak sound.
"L… Liar. That… That has to be a lie…!"
He grinned. "I'm a liar and I lie, but I'm not lying to you!" Of course, who could believe such an unbelievable statement?
But considering the common ground between himself and Takane, it wasn't entirely a surprise that she took his suspicious statements and believed what she had to out of them. "I… I'll be back."
She disappeared from the screen, and Shuuya finally closed his contacts list and rubbed a hand over his eyes. "Haruka, huh…?"
Ah, truly this was the worst possible situation.
