A/N: Apologies, I made a mistake in terminology again. It's the Wakkanai province in Hokkaido, not Wakkaido.
Chapter Eight:
Surgite
The wheels of the train rumbled deeply against the metal rails. The view of the farmlands and rice paddies under the blue, cloudless skies, swept past continuously, only intermittently interrupted by the tall telephone poles and electric lines. The sight of a cow looking up curiously from its pasture while chewing its cud would appear, then as the train roared past, be replaced by endless green meadows again. The mountains behind them towered mightily over the scenery, some of the tops still capped by mantles of last snow. The sun was bright.
Sitting by the aisle, Mireille's focus readjusted to glance at Kirika's reflection on the window. The girl sat beside her on the window seat, her sullen face rigidly turned away from her and to the view from the train.
Mirelle looked at the two ticket stubs in her hands. They had flown from Tokyo to Sapporo, the capital of the island of Hokkaido, and had boarded the train to Wakkanai. She leaned against the cushion on the seat, closing her eyes. Exhausted from having spent the entire flight to Sapporo absorbed in studying the information Kinomoto had left them, she had accidentally dozed off into bliss during most part of the train ride and had woken up in panic, unable to remember where she was and what she was doing in a train. But the sight of the brooding Kirika beside her caused everything to come back painfully and to remind herself that this was going to be one of the precious moments where she could afford to sleep as peacefully as possible.
Kirika never slept. She sat on the same position she had taken since they boarded the train, never moving, only staring stonily outside of the window. Mireille was very much perturbed by her unyielding behavior. Of course, Mireille had long been accustomed to Kirika's long silences and statuesque attitude, but in the past she had been reassured that she and Kirika were on the same boat, at the very least. Now, however, she wasn't even sure if Kirika wouldn't suddenly snap and bring out her gun and kill everyone on sight.
It would be so easy to kill her now, come to think of it, mused Mireille, her mind going back to that old moldy promise she had given the girl. Kirika wasn't the same girl now anyway. She was a little less than a human being and just a little more than a rock. It would be so temptingly simple to just pull out a gun, cock it, place it against the back of her head (she wasn't watching anyway), and pull the trigger ever-so-slightly-
Mireille blinked, inwardly shaking that such a thought should occur to her. The rumbling sound of the train assailed her ears and she was grateful for the distraction. She must be going out of her mind. She tapped her companion. "Kirika."
Kirika only raised her eyes to look at Mireille's reflection, motionless.
"I have to go to the toilet. Keep an eye on this." Mireille tapped the laptop as she rose from her seat. Not waiting for an answer, she hurried towards the end of the car, opening the double doors and entering the next car. She slipped into the small lavatory cubicle and snapped the light on.
She stared at her reflection on the mirror. Her hair was tangled and there were rims around her eyes. Her skin was dry and paler than usual and her right arm had been bandaged by Kirika the night before.
Mireille bent to turn the tap on and splashed some water on her face, blearily looking back at the mirror again before ripping off a paper towel and rubbing herself dry. Then she pulled the topmost cover of the toilet down and sat on it, placing her elbows on her knees and resting her chin on her hands as she felt herself go limp from her weariness and finally give a sigh. If only it was possible for her to just disappear from the world for just one day. One day. The world didn't need her that much that it could at least spare itself one day of her, couldn't it?
She yawned and stretched, leaning back and rubbing the flesh between the her eyes and the bridge of her nose with two fingers. Unfortunately she had a responsibility to carry out, a responsibility that should be shared among three people but was now thrown upon only her. Some life. If she should ever get out of it alive, she was going to draw a hot bath the second she got home and have a long, warm soak, with broken bones and wounds and all.
And there was, of course, the matter of Kirika, she thought bleakly. Kirika's safety was the last thing on her mind; that girl could take care of herself even if she was knocked unconscious. She was built that way - her whole body had been conditioned to react to anything with self-preservation acting as the foremost basis, like some sort of Pavlovian fighting machine. But if her body was the strongest, her mind was in turn the most vulnerable. Her history of trauma had made it so unbelievably unstable - apparently the idea that 'What doesn't kill me only makes me stronger' didn't quite apply to Kirika's psychology.
Law of compensation, of course. Most of what made up Kirika had been sacrificed to the perfection of her physiology and, as a result, so little had been provided for her psychological well-being, if not none at all. In other words, Mireille reasoned gloomily, the chances of getting the old Kirika back were hideously few. First of all, she didn't think that self-induced amnesia could be cured by just mechanically activating her old memories back, assuming that they could defeat Schwarz and that he actually had some crazy machine that could do it. It was, after all as Kinomoto said, purely psychological, which meant it would be ultimately up to Kirika to trigger herself back, which, putting it mildly, would be quite unreliable.
Amnesia. What Kinomoto had theorized about Kirika's predicament wasn't too far-fetched; Mireille remembered reading somewhere that emotional shock could be a possible cause of amnesia. She was a little fuzzy as to what could cure it, though, and besides, neurologists haven't quite made much headway in the matter either. Maybe it involved placing the person in a familiar situation or emotion that could trigger something and unlock those memory cells?
It sounded like something that could come out of a soap opera, she thought wryly, but right now she was willing to grasp at any straw. But d'accord. Assuming that Kirika would never get her memories back, then what would its ramifications be? What would it mean to Mireille?
Mireille ran her fingers across her hair. What would it mean to her? Regret, perhaps. The Kirika she was with now wasn't the Kirika that she had been with in the past. And maybe she should have realized that concept earlier, that the Kirika she had been working with before this wasn't the Kirika that had killed her parents. And if she had, she would have been assured of the thought that she really would never have killed her despite her promise, in the same way that she could easily kill her now. All those time spent together...wasted because Mireille had taken Kirika's change for granted.
Loneliness too. She had grown used to having a shadow faithfully with her, a shadow that was actually stronger than her. There was something comforting in knowing that someone would be half the person she was without her. Selfish, yes, but comforting nonetheless...
Maybe she would be better off if she had never met her in the first place.
It was terribly unfair, she thought as she finally rose from her seat. She was the one lugging most, if not all, of the responsibility of the situation, while at the same time she had the most to lose.
A second later, Mireille opened the lavatory door. A heavily-built man with a brown jacket was crossing the small corridor and making his way to the other car where Mireille's seat was. Mireille followed him, leaving him when he found his seat first.
Kirika had moved. She had faced forward, her arm draped over the laptop Mireille had left and her head slightly inclined upwards.
"Well, I'm glad you're not as petrified as I thought," said Mireille dryly as she took her seat. "I thought I'd have to bodily carry you down when we reach Sappo-"
"Don't move. Someone's trailing us."
Mireille felt a chill. "Where?"
"Five o'clock."
"How many of them?"
"One."
"Just one?"
"Disappointed?"
"Hardly. It's a nice change to finally be the one with the advantage."
"Shall I take care of him?" Her voice was mild.
Mireille could not help glancing at her with the edge of her eyes. "Run that by me again, will you? I thought you said before we boarded the train that you're going to be as uninvolved as possible."
"I suppose I am getting bored. Besides, I hate the feeling of someone's eyes boring into the back of my head. Or that he has to follow me to the toilet."
Mireille rolled her eyes. Kirika certainly had gotten what she had bargained for - it was certainly the behavior of any girl her age, pregnant with angst. It was rather strange seeing her this way. But one couldn't blame her much. When one just wakes up and finds out that she can speak French so fluently because the "life" she had remembered to be hers was a lie, one wasn't bound to be very pleasant company.
"I don't think this train car's the most conducive for a battle royale and I doubt the passengers would appreciate one very much right now," Mireille finally pointed out.
"We'll take it outside then." Kirika was making a statement, not asking permission.
There was a pause as Mireille slid the laptop neatly behind her back, feeling very much like a mother who had to give in to the rebel daughter wanting a tattoo. "Fine. Just don't make a mess."
Kirika wordlessly rose up.
"Will you be taking your gun?"
Kirika jerked a thumb towards her seat. She had left it there. When Mireille looked back up, Kirika had gone. So had the man with the brown jacket.
Mireille looked out at the scenery, wishing she could enjoy it. Or at least be so indifferent of it as Kirika was so capable of.
Minutes later, Kirika returned.
"Well?"
"He won't be following you to the toilet anymore."
"Did anyone see?"
"I led him to the end of the train. I opened the back hatch and we had a bit of a scuffle. Then just when the train crossed the intersection, he slipped-"
"I'm sure."
"-and a few seconds later the other train from the other side of the intersection ran over him."
"Was that really necessary?"
"Funny, coming from you." Kirika was looking out the window again. Her eyes were small and narrow.
xxxxxxxxxx
The green light flickered. Then the faint light grew stronger until it finally steadied into a confident luminosity.
Mirelle unclenched her fists in relief, leaning back. The batteries were still working. How long they would last would be another matter, but they were working now, which had to count for something.
She waited as the laptop went through the perfunctory beeps and whistles as it booted itself. They had arrived in Wakkanai half an hour earlier and were in a small open-aired teahouse in the outskirts of town. She had a cup of coffee at hand and Kirika was sipping her green tea. At least some things never changed.
"All right, this is the route we're taking," said Mireille as the image of the Sugawara branch shrine appeared onscreen. She pressed a button that immediately replaced the image into a horizontal cross-sectioned blueprint.
Kirika lifted her eyes from studying the leaves in her cup.
As she began to drone about the movements they would be taking, Mireille would frequently glance towards Kirika's direction and look away with a frustration that was not easy to hide. She had no way of reading if Kirika was absorbing any of what she was saying. Or if the girl even cared. During the old days -and permanently in the old days, Mireille thought parenthetically - Kirika would sit and listen with silent attention. She was silent, but there was attention nonetheless. Now Kirika was looking at Mireille though there was no one seated in front of her. Her eyes never even touched on the screen.
"Any questions?" Mireille finished, almost in despair.
"Do you know what the German word 'Schwarz' means?" asked Kirika abruptly.
Mireille took her time as she closed the windows on the screen. "C'est noir, non?"
"Noir.Black. Kuro. Nero. Negro. Preto. Hei. Zwart." And Kirika rattled off a list of the word in all the languages she knew without any visible effort. Then she stopped and looked at Mireille accusingly.
"You'll have to try harder to impress me," said Mireille, the exasperation in her voice audible. "If you have a point, make it now."
Kirika glanced on the laptop. "Why don't we just blow the place up?"
"Why should we?" Mireille grasped her coffee cup and controlled her breathing.
"So you can do it by yourself."
The blonde looked at her sharply.
"Plant bombs around the perimeter. Go for cover. Boom." Kirika's voice held no inflection. " Finished."
"One, the place is huge. An explosion would attract a lot of attention. Two, it's built on a hill. It could cause a landslide."
"But you can still do it by yourself."
Mireile's eyes narrowed. "What has that got to do with anything?"
With a sudden move, Kirika leaned towards her and Mireille involuntarily drew back, wary. "From what I gather," said the Japanese girl in a soft voice, lifting an index finger, "I'm supposed to know you. And you're supposed to know me. We go way back, correct?"
Mireille was silent.
"But we haven't exactly been living the most appealing life in the world, have we? In the life you know, I get to tag along and kill people with you."
"You don't just 'tag along.' We're partners."
"Which makes it worse, you know. We do this a lot, supposedly, you and me; we sit down, make plans, go out at night and come back after making a corpse out of someone. That's the life you know, and that's the one you're forcing on me."
Mireille reddened. "I am not forcing it on you. You came to me-"
"It does not matter. Maybe you enjoy that kind of life, sticking your own neck for the knife every single day, with innumerable enemies just waiting for the smallest slip. Maybe you don't have a choice. But I do, and I want out."
"Now hold on a second-"
"There's no way going around it, miss. Not to make too fine a point on it, but you've made a wanted person out of yourself and apparently I was one too all along. I think it comforted you that you weren't the only one. That there was someone to kill with you and to cover your back."
The blood had fully rushed to Mireille's face now in its indignation. "Listen -"
"From what I gather, if you take the long way around to kill this person, meaning you and I playing partners, there's hope somewhere along the way I might go back to my old self, correct?"
"It's your true self."
"My 'true' self?!" Kirika's voice had risen to an octave that Mireille had never heard before. "That 'true' self where people try to kill me just because I can do this?" In one swift move, Kirika took Mireille's teaspoon and flung it away without even looking. A second later, a pigeon thudded on the ground, inert.
"Stop that."
Kirika's voice sank back. "Tell me, how many people do want my head in a platter?"
When her companion offered no answer, she continued, "If I go along with you, what have I to gain but more enemies, more bloodshed? It's you who want me to go back to the other life, miss. Not me."
"The bloodshed will always be there, Kirika." Mireille's voice was level. "Just because you conveniently forgot it doesn't mean it never existed." She looked at the dead bird and felt the eyes of the people around them on her. "In fact, attempting to forget is already by itself an act of remembrance. You and I, we have no choice. Even you are not fast enough, Kirika, to change your past. No person is."
Kirika stared at her.
"If you leave now, where will you go?" Mireille's eyes never left the pigeon. "What will you do?"
Kirika's eyes were cold stones. "Are you aware of the possibility that I can actually live without you?"
"I'm not saying you can't. In the long run, you will have more chances of survival than I would. Just not now. There are too many people looking for us. We have to stay together."
"I'm leaving after this."
Mireille did not know where to look. "It is your life."
"I'm glad that's clear." Kirika called for the bill.
xxxxxxxxxx
The dipping sun found two slight figures on bicycles making their way up a small hilly inclination. Coming closer, one would see their legs pumping on the pedals rhythmically and their tires making small rocks and clumps of dirt careen off the beaten path. Sunlight filtered through the trees in splatters, making shadows play on their sweat-bathed faces. In front of them rose a sprawling, ancient-looking pavilion, the polished shingles of its sloping roofs catching the orange rays of the sun.
They zigzagged up the road ridged around the hill.
When they had reached the summit, they jumped off their bikes and rolled them towards the wooden gate that loomed in front of the structure. There was not a soul in sight.
The taller one of them strode to the gate and lifted one of the brass circular doorknobs. The crash resounded, disturbing some of the birds behind her.
A minute passed before they heard a creak behind the gate and it slowly opened a few inches. A short elderly Japanese man with balding white hair and a wrinkled mouth peered out curiously, dressed in a spring yukata.
Kirika gave a smile that lighted up her face, bowing. "Good afternoon, sir. My friend and I came from Tokyo to do a little cycling here, but I'm afraid we got lost. I'm sorry, but could you perhaps direct us back to Wakkanai Station? The line would take us to Asahikawa."
The man was nodding in a friendly manner. "Of course, of course, I understand," he said, before following it with a slew of directions and mentioning a few notable scenic spots. "How do you find Hokkaido so far?"
"Thank you very much, it is very beautiful," Kirika said, bowing again. Mireille whispered something into her ear and she nodded. "I am very sorry to inconvenience you again, sir, but my friend needs to find a toilet. Perhaps-?"
He hesitated a little, but said, "Oh, that is not a problem. Please, use ours." He opened the gate a trifle bit wider, smiling.
Mireille bowed profusely before stepping over the threshhold and following Kirika inside.
The old man led them through a maze of corridors walled with the wooden lattices of paper shoji doors. The main courtyard stood in the middle, lined with willow trees and dotted with old boulders that enclosed small waterfalls. Carvings snaked around the rock walls, a body of a dragon appearing here only to disappear and reappear again in the next courtyard with its head and bronze eyes. There was no one around and the place was silent save for their footfalls.
Kirika and Mireille ducked and entered the last circle embrasure before their guide crossed the small courtyard and reached a small niche. There was a tiny sliding door made of wood. Mireille looked at it apprehensively.
"Do not worry, we have indoor plumbing here," the man said in Japanese, laughing toothily. "I will be waiting outside the embrasure. Please take your time."
Mireille slid the door after the man left and looked at clean white bathroom tiles, a squatting toilet with a flushing system, and a small sink. The light bulb was turned on. "Ten seconds," she whispered to Kirika, "then take care of the control center. Do you know where it is from here?"
"North passage, right at the next turn, straight until a left at the next turn."
"I'll be disabling the surveillance cameras from here. I have to say they're quite interesting, putting the breaker box for their surveillances in the restroom. Loyalty is definitely not an issue here. Anyway, you have thirty seconds to get there and I'll have the cameras turned off exactly by that time; they won't know where you'll be coming from. Comprenez?"
"You already told me this."
"Wasn't exactly sure you were actually listening to me. I'm touched." Mireille stepped into the restroom.
"Might you possibly find it weird why we haven't seen anyone else aside from the old man?"
"Bet he radioed everyone to stay inside when we came in. Call me crazy, but I don't think tourists are usually welcome here." She slid the door. "Ten seconds, all right? Then thirty."
When ten seconds had passed, Mireille turned off the light and knelt under the sink. She knocked at eight square tiles directly under the main pipeline and they gave a hollow sound. She easily removed them and uncovered the grey distribution box with a keypad of alphanumeric buttons on the front. She punched a sequence and the pad emitted a small beep. She pulled the box open to reveal a plethora of switches and eletrical lines.
She paused, looking at the flush pipe of the toilet that was only a foot away from her. The bug was there, plated in chrome and hardly discernible. It had detected her every movement, from the removing of the tiles to her inputting the access codes.
"Thanks, Kinomoto."
She looked at her watch and reached for the biggest switch in the box, flicking it off.
When she emerged from the restroom, Mireille had already pulled out her gun from the back of her shorts, expecting the swarming gunmen.
The halls were empty. Kirika was standing in front of her, gun drawn.
surgite, end