Previously:
"Isn't it similar to the picture that's in the dining hall?" Miyauchi said. Yarai and Torako moved closer, and the images came into focus.
"!" Torako gasped and covered her mouth with her hands.
"… What…!? Yarai said, staring at the image in front of him with wide eyes, disturbed.
"Wh...What is this?" Miyauchi asked, confused and shocked. She wasn't the only one. Everyone was extremely unnerved by what they saw.
"..." Morita and Tokiwa were looking at the wall, too.
"Ah! Ahh!" Rei exclaimed.
"No… No way!" Oomori said.
"Just… Just what the hell is this!?" Mairya asked. "Answer me, Sengoku!"
"..." Akira looked grim as he faced them.
Chapter 28: Memorial
Everyone was waiting for Akira's answer, anxious to hear it, but most of them still had their eyes glued to the wall. Yarai was staring at the picture of Kurusu-sensei that hung on the wall with wide eyes.
"Se… Sensei!?" he said. The vice president was also still looking at pictures, running down the wall.
"N-No way! What is this!?" she asked. "Matsushita-san! Sugimasa-kun… There are even pictures of the people who died!"
"Ko… Kotomi!?" Rei exclaimed, shocked to see her dead friend's face there.
"Ri… Rion-chan!?" Oomori said, disturbed.
"Ah… Ahhh! It's can't be! Isn't that my picture!?" Miyauchi cried, looking at an image of herself that had been taken while she was practicing karate. "Our names are written below, too! And our ages are the same! No doubt about it!!"
"My… My picture is here, too!" the president said, looking pale.
"Mine too!" Tokiwa said, looking frightened.
"Th-Then..." Morita said nervously.
"These are… pictures of all the passengers… on that plane…?" Oomori said.
"..." Torako looked sadly at her own picture.
"Also, this picture on one side of the wall… the Garden of Eden… creation… both are pictures that are related to the book of Genesis. Just what the hell is this!?" Yashiro said.
"E-Everyone! Come here for a moment!" Rei called.
"!?" Miyauchi said. "That's Rei-san's voice… Wh-What is it this time?"
"…" They all looked at each other then followed the sound of Rei's voice. The walked down to the end of the wall in the middle of the room.
"Re… Rei-san, what's…?" Miyauchi asked. "…!" She and everyone else were startled once again when they saw what Rei was looking at. There was a huge, smooth block of stone that had been carved into a rectangle, and it was engraved with letters. "Th… This is a… stone monument!? Wh-What is this?"
"Look at the date," Torako said, pointing to it. At the top of the monument, there was a date.
"20XX. October 4th," Miyauchi read.
"October 4th, 20XX…?" the president said.
"Isn't that the day of the plane crash!?" Morita said. "These English sentences written underneath it… Mariya, what's written on there!?"
"Good father, good husband… good mother, good wife… and good child, good grandchild. The souls of the 334, who boarded NA 2307. May they rest in peace," Mariya read with wide eyes.
"Huh?" Rei said, shocked.
"R-Rest…? Wh-What is this!?" Morita asked.
"..." Miyauchi and the vice president looked at each other, bewildered.
"I see… So they though we died..." Torako said. She felt like crying when she thought of what that meant for her parents. Yarai glanced at her and remembered her theory about time travel.
'Don't tell me… she was right!?' Yarai thought, alarmed.
"I knew it! So that's it," Akira said.
"Eh!?" Rion said, looked at him, surprised. "Akira-kun… Fukui-chan… do you know something?"
"Se-Sengoku…? Y-You..." Mariya said.
"What the hell!?" Miyauchi said. Akira took the photo he had found out of his pocket and held it out so they could see.
"Everyone… take a look at this," Akira said grimly. They all looked and saw it was what appeared to be an old, aged photo of a woman making a peace sign with one hand, while she had her other arm around Akira's neck, holding him in place for the picture.
"… This is…?" Mariya asked as everyone stared at it, once again shocked.
"This is a picture of my mother!" Akira said.
"Sengoku's… mother!?" Yarai said.
"..." Torako was shocked, too. 'It's one thing for our pictures to be here, but a picture of his mother… What's that mean!?'
"J-Just what is this!?" Mariya asked.
"It was in the third floor supervisor's room," Akira said.
"Third floor!?" Miyauchi said.
"But there's no reason for something like that to be there!" Akira said, looking disturbed himself. "What's the reason for it to get so beat up and be in ruins like this!? But… But this… this picture was taken right before I went out on the school trip!" Everyone else, except Torako, now looked as disturbed as Akira.
"… Th-Then, that 'antenna' is… that tower really is… It really is… Miina-chan's gravesite!?" Oomori said, trembling.
"C-Could it be… that the machines we saw in the basement of the 'pyramid'… Although they were all worn out and rusting, I thought it was strange for the machines themselves to be new! They weren't old machines!" the vice president said.
"..." Miyauchi was beyond words. She sank to her knees, along with the vice president, Rei, and the president and, by extension, Yuki.
"I really can't believe it, but I can't think of anything else!" Akira said, still wide-eyed. "That we haven't been… in our world. We've been in the future this whole time!"
"..." Mariya gritted his teeth. 'It's not that I haven't considered it up until now… but.. it's ridiculous!!'
"What we've gotten involved in… hasn't been just the plane crash?" the vice president said. "Wh-What's going to happen to us… after this!?" Rion had tears in her eyes.
"..." Akira hugged her. 'Damn it! Why is something like this…? And how…? How is a picture of my mother in a place like this!? In the supervisor's room on this island? Put away in a really important-looking box? Why…!? My mother…!?'
—∞—
October 4th, the day of the accident, Yokohama
"[We interrupt this program, to bring you this breaking news,]" the anchor woman said on the TV in an office.
"Hmm?" a man said, turning his attention to the news.
"What…?" the woman next to him asked, looking, too.
"[Today, just past noon, contact was suddenly cut off from jumbo jet flight 357, leaving Guam and bound for Japan,]" the anchor woman reported. "[Many students from Yokohama Meikyou School on a field trip were onboard, not to mention many other Japanese citizens. There is concern about the safety of the 334 passengers.]"
"H-Hey, hey!" the man said as more people gathered around the TV. "Suddenly lost contact…? A crash?"
"I wonder if it was completely destroyed…?" a second man said.
"This a big event in the history of JAL!" a third man said.
"… Wait..." the second man said. "They said students on a field trip were on board, right? I'm sure Sengoku-san's son was..."
"Ahh!" a forth man gasped. "Wh-Where is Sengoku-san!?"
"She just went out, so she shouldn't have left the company yet! Go make sure!!"
"R-Right!!" the fourth man said, running as fast as he could, even down the stairs. He huffed and gasped, but then he spotted her just as she was stepping through the door. "Th-There she is!! Se-Sengoku-san!! It's awful! J-Just now, on the news..."
"Huh?" Akira's mother said, pausing to look back at him.
—∞—
Fukui Taiga opened his eyes. At first, his surroundings were bright and blurry, but as his vision began to clear, he realized people were talking around him. Two nurses were chatting while one of them replenished his IV bag.
"—so awful, isn't it?" the first nurse, who was working on his IV bag, said.
"She was such a nice girl..." the second nurse said. "Her mother must be devastated..."
"Do you think she knows yet? The news only just broke..." the first nurse said. Taiga tried to speak, to let them know he was awake and ask them what he was doing there, but all that came out was a raspy sound.
"!?" the nurses gasped, looking at him.
"H-He's awake!" the second nurse said.
"G-Go get the doctor! Hurry!" the first nurse said, shooing her out of the room.
"… Ah…. I… I… What… am… I… doing… here…?" Taiga managed to say. "W-Where's… Tora…?" He remembered he was out with his daughter, but the rest of it was fuzzy. He didn't like the way the nurse paled and started to look uncomfortable, avoiding eye contact with him. "Where's… my… daughter? Where… is she!?"
"Sh-She's gone… I'm sorry…!" the first nurse said nervously.
"Gone…?" Taiga asked.
"Th-The there was a plane crash… She was on it!" the first nurse said. Taiga felt the shock through his whole body.
"Eh…?" he said, unable to process something so horrible. A woman wearing a white coat entered the room.
"Oh, good! The doctor's here!" the first nurse said, relieved to have some help.
"I see you're awake… Excellent!" the doctor said with a forced sort of cheer. "You know, we really thought you weren't—" Taiga didn't hear anything after that. He stared at the ceiling, silently screaming on the inside. He wasn't sure how long he was like that, but when he was aware of his surroundings again, the doctor had gone, and he smelled a familiar perfume and felt something putting pressure on the edge of the bed on one side. He looked and saw his wife kneeling on the floor next to his bed with her arms folded on it, crying.
"… Ayako…?" Taiga said. His wife stopped sobbing and looked up at him with an incredibly pained expression on her tear-stained face.
"Tora… Have you heard?" she asked. Taiga nodded. He couldn't bring himself to say it out loud. Another sob escaped Ayako and tears rolled down her cheeks.
"… It's my fault..." she said with a choked voice. "Sh-She wanted to stay here with you, but I… I told her to go…!!" Ayako buried her head and stared sobbing even harder than before. Tears leaked from Taiga's eyes, too, but it felt wrong. Tora couldn't be dead. Then something occurred to him.
"… Did the news say everyone died?"
"N-No… They haven't… even found the plane yet..." Ayako sobbed.
"Then she's not dead," Taiga said.
"Huh?" Ayako said, looking up at him with her brow furrowed.
"If they haven't found the plan yet, then they don't know who died," Taiga said hopefully. "Tora's alive. She must be."
—∞—
"[Yes, this is Nakagami in Guam,]" a pretty reporter said from on site, speaking into a microphone. "[It's been three days since contact with the jumbo passenger plane carrying 334 people was suddenly cut off. The desperate search is continuing again today. Both on the sea and in the air. However, they have yet to discover anything that might be a clue.]" A helicopter flew in the background. "[They said that starting today, they will be working with the American navy and will be commencing a large scale search involving both America and Japan. Hopes are high that something will be found.]"
"Yes, thank you, Reporter Nakagami-san," an anchorman said back in the studio. "Now, let's review this incident! On October 4th, approximately thirty minutes after departing from Guam, JAL flight 357… communicated to the control tower in Guam that they had encountered an emergency. However, that transmission immediately stopped. It is believed to have been traveling through this area at the time." He pointed to the spot on the display of the flight path where the communications dropped out. "With 334 people on board the plane… as an airplane accident, it has become the fifth worst in the world! But this is quite a strange story. Isn't it, Tsuchiyama-san? Despite a frantic search lasting more than three days already, they can't find any traces of the accident!"
"If we assume it crashed and the fuselage was damaged, suitcases and life-saving devices would be floating around in the water," Tsuchiyama, a professor, replied.
"Since nothing has been found, people on the internet are calling it the 'JAL disappearing incident'," En, a writer, said.
"What's that?" the anchorman asked.
"A long time ago, they called incidents were people suddenly vanished 'human vanishing incidents'. It seems that this has been compared to it. But that is impossible!" the writer said.
"Nakagami-san is on site," the anchorman said, returning to the live feed. "How is the situation with the passengers' families who are there?"
"[As you'd expect. Everyone who has rushed here from Japan appears exhausted,]" Nakagami said. "[To the you the truth, 197 middle schools from Meikyou school were onboard, returning from a field trip.]" The families were crying in the background.
"Rion..." Rion's mother cried.
"It's okay, it'll be okay!" her father said desperately.
"Shirou-chan..." Mariya's sisters cried while holding each other.
"[As you'd expect. They're worried about the whereabouts of all the passengers,]" Nakagami said. "[Among those who regard surviving for three days after the accident as hopeless, there are some family members who are pinning their last hopes on a faint possibility.]" Akira's mother was trembling, praying for her son to be found. Torako's mother, who was sitting next to her, was in a similar condition.
"It'll be okay," Taiga said firmly, holding his wife's hand. Technically, he shouldn't be out of the hospital yet, but he had insisted on coming. "Tora's alive. I can feel it. Wherever she is, she's alive!"
—∞—
Four months later, two security guards were wandering the halls of a school building.
"But it's borin' when it's empty, ya know? Guarding a middle school in the dead of night..." the younger guard said.
"Be careful…! If you are not watching out, it'll come! This!" the older guard said, shining his flashlight from under his face, imitating a ghost.
"I'm completely cool with stuff like that!" the younger guard said dismissively. "I got a third generation smartphone. In an age of science, stuff like that… Hmm?" He saw a shadow sitting in one of the desks inside a classroom and freaked out. "Gyaaaaaaaaaaa! I-It's here! A Gho-o-o-ost!"
"What, you again?" the older guard said, shining his light on the shadow.
"Huh…?" the younger guard said. It was just an ordinary woman sitting in the chair. It was Akira's mother, and she looked ill with dark circles under her eyes.
"You're putting us in a bind, coming into the school by yourself! Could you please leave?" the older guard asked her.
"..." Akira's mother just stared at him. Eventually, she got up and staggered away.
"… Th-That scared the shit outta me! What's with that lady?" the younger guard asked, still a little pale from his scare.
"Oh, that's right, you just started here, so you wouldn't know… Listen, about four months ago there was a plane crash," the older guard said.
"Wasn't there some big to-do then? They ended up ending the search without finding anything, right?" the younger guard said.
"Yeah. Remember the kids on board the plane who were returning from their school trip? They were students at this school," the older guard explained. "Look, the place she was sitting..."
"Huh?" the young guard said, looking at the desk with him.
"It seems that is the desk her deceased son used!" the older guard said. "It seems she had one son. Because of the shock, she even quit her job. Once in a while she'll get like that and sit in his desk."
"That's so sad! I wonder what'll happen to her at this rate?" the younger guard said. At that moment, Akira's mother was dragging herself out through the school gate. Her clothes were disheveled. She didn't care what she looked like anymore. "..." She paused to look back at the school for a moment. She turned and started walking away on unsteady feet. 'My baby...' She remembered holding Akira as an infant.
Gyaaa, th-throw it away!
She had scolded him when he brought a snake home when he was in elementary school.
I'm telling you, a collar is really annoying!
Nothing doing. You're a middle schooler now, so you have to do it right.
She had buttoned up his collar properly for him on his first day of middle school.
All right, I'm going! Mom!
Akira had been so cheerful when he said goodbye to her before leaving on that fateful trip.
"Akira..." she said mournfully. She turned and stepped onto the crosswalk to cross the street. At that moment, she lost her balance. As she fell onto the road, a car came speeding toward her, blinding her with its headlights. The car just stopped short of hitting her.
"You idiot, that was close!" the driver yelled as he got out of the car. "The light's red! Where the hell were you looking while you were walking!?"
"..." Akira's mother didn't answer. Someone else got out of the car.
"Hold on!" another voice said.
"Y-Yes, sir!" the driver said, immediately backing off. An elderly man who walked with a cane stepped forward to look at her. His hair was long for a man's, and he was wearing traditional Japanese clothing.
"Haven't I met you somewhere before?" the old man asked.
"..." Akira's mother stared at him with dull eyes.
"I remember. You were in Guam at the time of the accident search, weren't you?" the old man said. "Let's take you home. Where do you live?" The driver helped Akira's mother into the car, and she quietly told him where to drop her off. After that she was completely silent, sitting with her head leaned against the window.
"..." The old man watched her.
—∞—
Daylight crept into the dark house that was full of trash bags that needed to be taken out. A chair was knocked over at the dinner table and the trash can was on its side. Dirty dishes filled the sink and counter. The only thing that was kept neat in the house was the framed picture of Akira and the fresh offerings his mother left in front of it. She was standing in a corner, watching her washing machine go, when the door bell rang. Once. Twice. Three times. She kept standing there, and the bell kept ringing. Eventually, she made herself move to answer it. She opened the door to find a bespectacled man in a suit on the other side.
"… Who are you…?" she asked.
"I'm here on an errand for Isurugi Yoshimi. My name is Hyoudou," the man said. "My employer has something he would like to discuss with you. Could you please come with me?"
"..." She stared at the man and, for whatever reason, decided to go with him.
—∞—
The Isurugi estate was a huge Western-style mansion. Akira's mother was showed into a nice room with expensive-looking furniture and a single painting on the wall. She stared at the work of art. There was a naked man and woman standing under a tree with a snake in it, and they were surrounded by animals in a lush garden.
"..." She continued to stare at it.
"That painting… do you like it?" a voice asked. She looked and saw the same old man who had given her a ride home. "It was painted in 1626… It's a work by Roelant Savery called 'The Paradise'," Isurugi Yoshimi said, approaching her.
"Is it real?" she asked.
"Ho-ho! I wonder..." he said, standing next to her. He went and sat down on a sofa. "I apologize for calling you so suddenly. Please sit down." Akira's mother sat down on the sofa opposite his. "Now then..." he picked up a thick packet of paper off the table between them and held it up for her to see. It said: 'Concerning Sengoku Yuna Investigative Report.' "Sengoku-san, I've been doing a little investigation on you. Sengoku Yuna… When you were twenty, you married Sengoku Masayoshi while you were still in school. That same year your only son, Sengoku Akira, was born. When you were twenty-four, your husband died from an illness. After that, while you worked as the secretary to the president of a major company, you raised your only son, being the only woman in the family. However, not too long ago, your son died in a plane crash."
"What are you getting at?" Yuna asked, narrowing her eyes at him for poking at her wound.
"…" Yoshimi stared at her. "There are some people here who'd like to meet you. Come with me..." He stood up and started walking away.
"…" Yuna reluctantly followed him. He led her down a hall to a certain door.
"Sengoku-san, I'm going to show you this room as well. This is the room… of my granddaughter, who was on the same flight as your son," Yoshimi said, opening the door to show her a large room filled with a bookcase that covered one wall from floor to ceiling, a luxurious bed, and lots of large extinct animal toys. "It's Miina's room. Miina was a different sort of child. She had an unusual interest in animals… She was particularly interested in extinct mammals. She drew lots of pictures. Those pictures were quite well done. I once used her drawings as a basis for an illustrated reference guide I created. Ho-ho-ho! I'm quite taken with those close to me." Then his expression darkened and derangement showed on his face. "Miina was my only family. She was the only thing I lived for. So, for her, I've started up a 'certain project'." He turned away from Miina's room and led Yuna further down the hall. "But, I'll die soon. For this project, vast amounts of money are necessary. If I die, the director might scrap the project. So, I want you to be the 'guarantee'."
"The guarantee?" Yuna said.
"Yes, only you can do it. You're the only one who has the same feelings as I do," Yoshimi said darkly. They were the only ones who were left absolutely alone, so devastated that it affected their sanity. He opened the door in front of them. "Let me introduce you..." Yuna found herself looking at table full of various nationalities. There even appeared to be an American general there. "They're helping me with my 'Eden Project'. I've gathered members from all over the world.'
"Huh?" Yuna said. There was a familiar face mixed in. She recognized Fukui Ayako by sight and wondered what she was doing there. 'Eden project?'
"Please sit down. I've already prepared your seat," Yoshimi said. He took his place at the head of the table. "Now then, ladies and gentlemen… let's continue the discussion, where we left off yesterday!"
