1
…When was it exactly?
“Tosuke, sometimes I cannot help but feel that I’m an awfully terrible person,” said Kigawa Norisuke with a sigh after he’d finished his ice cream.
“Really? You’ve done bad things? I wanna know about them. Tell me!” Tosuke asked his guardian with patent curiosity.
“Oh, there are many things. For one, I’ve been fooling everyone. Deceiving and lying to everyone around me. Of all the employees who work beneath me, not one of them knows what kind of job it is they’re being made to do.”
“You’re lying? But why?”
“That’s a good question…” Norisuke’s eyes looked distant. “My childhood was at the end of an era[1], so I spent my youth without ever really knowing what was right. I struggled on, swearing that I’d find the truth of it all… And what do you know? I found it.”
“Found what?”
“The truth. Although, to the world at large, it’s naught but a lie.”
“…?”
“I’ve been lying constantly to everyone ever since, all for the sake of this truthful lie.”
“…I don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. What happened to telling me about the bad things?” Tosuke was a little miffed. Norisuke smiled.
“Ah, I apologize, it seems I’ve bored you. Well then, how about I tell you about the time I managed to cheat someone out of fifty tons of sugar? It was back when the world was still a dangerous place. As for the ones who had the stuff…well, they were a stingy bunch.”
“Uh-huh!”
Tosuke’s eyes sparkled. He was deeply absorbed in the old man’s war stories. The narratives Norisuke spun were peppered with his “eeks” and “ahhs” as if he was witnessing those exact moments himself, his pale-green face turning blue with delight. It was an incredibly strange sort of blush, but none there would have called it so.
* * * * *
…Bad things, huh?
Even during the daytime, the mountains remained gloomy. Gnarled trees with their thick trunks ran the length of the slope, utterly undeterred by the sheer incline, and from the vines that twined themselves around them hung innumerable leaves. The only traces of light were muted and seemed to carpet the world in a veil of silk. What’s more, there was barely anything that could have been used as a foothold. A path was out of the question. Here was a primordial forest in which visitors seldom tread.
But even amid the darkness, one could see the pale-green skin that peeped out from his tattered clothes, now barely sticking to his body. Green it may have been, but it was bright enough to provide no camouflage against the green of it’s surroundings. If anything, it was even more prominent.
What makes something…bad?
He muttered to himself as he crossed the sheer incline one could barely call a slope. Feeling the way forward with his hands, it was hard to say whether he was crawling or tracing a wall.
Occasionally his messy hair, which fell to his shoulders, would get caught on a vine, but he carried on without trying to push it away, ignoring it until it either became untangled or was pulled out from its roots. Did he feel no pain, or was it no longer on a level that could bother him? Whatever the answer, it seemed evident that he had already adapted to the place.
From time to time, he would stop and glance around, catch a bug darting around on the ground, and toss the protein-packed clump into his mouth. And even as he did these things, he still continued to wonder.
Bad things, huh…
He roamed on with unsteady feet. It had been almost four months now.
Back then, he’d protected Sonoko from an unseen attack, taking advantage of the confusion afterward to escape, and he’d been living this way ever since.
It would be a lie to say that he felt no shock at his staggering fall from grace, but because he’d resolved at the decisive moment not to be found out, as there wouldn’t be anywhere left for him to go anyway, he’d more or less comes to terms with it already. The injuries he’d sustained had healed in no time at all. He was surprised about it himself. He appeared to possess an extraordinary life force that could not be extinguished. Far from killing him, the hit hadn’t even knocked him unconscious…
I wonder… just how much Norisuke knew about all of this.
Norisuke hadn’t had this kind of power. That much was clear by looking at the old man’s somewhat ailing figure. He’d even nursed him, and there was never anything about his body that could have suggested immortality.
Tosuke knew he was different from normal people, but in truth, he never thought he’d be this different. It was a bitter pill to swallow.
Other thoughts also crossed his mind. How long could he keep this up, living hidden in the mountains like this? Until he died? Or no, perhaps even death would not be granted to him...
Not that there was anything he could do about it. He simply lived his life in a haze.
Ice cream, and the people that enjoyed it seemed so terribly far away. It felt like a story from a world made only of dreams. He couldn’t possibly have been there.
No…
There was one. One person whom he still couldn’t bear to think about.
But he didn’t expect to ever see her again. He mustn’t. She told him it was problematic for her to be around him. He couldn’t go to her.
“………”
He shook his head faintly. He’d been trying to live without thinking, but try as he might, he could not erase the thoughts from his head. Before he knew it, all sorts of things would come flooding back to him.
I should head back to the hideout…
He began to head toward the cave in which he lived, taking a different route from the path he’d come from. He was acting on instinct, but the technique was one that wild animals such as bears used to confound pursuers and avoid those lying in wait. That instinct was what warned his body with a jolt on the way back.
“……!”
He flattened himself against a rock and cast his eyes downslope.
On the modest shore of a trickling stream, there stood a man. He didn’t seem to be looking his way in particular. In one hand he held some kind of board, while the other moved industriously—he was sketching.
…He’s drawing?
It certainly seemed that way, but it was strange for someone to come all the way out here while apparently wearing no gear. Aside from the sketchbook and related implements, only a picnic basket lay at his feet.
I wonder if he lives nearby?
It was possible that he lived in some kind of woodland cabin. But for it to be so deep in the woods, the surrounding trees would had to have been cut down, and there would need to be a path cleared for cars to pass through. He hadn’t seen anything like that.
…Who could he be?
His sketch appeared to capture the whole panorama. He was constantly shifting his eyes and moving his hand across the sketchbook, its pages rolled over.
The man was fast. His hand movements suggested considerable experience. He hadn’t ever drawn before, but he felt that this man’s movements were much like his own when he used to make ice cream.
“………”
He realized he’d become entranced in the man’s work. Without making a sound, he moved, shakily, closer to the man. Naturally, he’d been longing for human company.
In the end, he stayed rooted to the spot the whole time until the sun went down and the man packed up and left. Even when he’d returned to his hideout, he couldn’t take his mind off one thing: Just who was that man…?
And so, the following day, he went back to the same place again. The man, as he expected, was still drawing away. And he would stay engrossed in his work the whole time, from morning to dusk. His powers of concentration were undeniably brilliant. And Tosuke, too, continued to gaze at this the whole time. That he could achieve such a state might have been quite a feat in and of itself, but the person in question had no awareness of that fact.
Both he and the man went on like this together for almost three days. As he observed, he noticed that, for having such apparent composure and refined technique, the man was rather young. He’d met all sorts of people once, back when he lived in human society, but he got the impression that the man wasn’t like any of them.
If only I could speak to him…
The thought drifted into his mind. But it was a fleeting desire.
If he just sauntered out into the open with his creepy skin, the man would run away and never come back–that, or they’d start combing the mountains to catch him. Yeah. The people who’d tried to kill him and Sonoko would surely sniff him out and come to attack him.
That’s right… I swore, never again… Not with anyone…
It was the irrefutable truth.
So just watching like this was enough. Probably, what the man was doing was a study, or a sketch for him to picture things in his head. Once he’d finished the actual final piece, it was sure to be something wonderful. And that alone was fun to imagine.
On the fourth day, the man was nowhere to be seen.
“………”
He’d known it would happen, but he couldn’t help feeling assaulted by a terrible dismay. He staggered into the open, even going up to the spot where the man had been standing till now.
“Haah…” he sighed, looking around at the scenery like the man had done. But from his point of view, that scenery inspired no feelings in him–it was simply a mountain. He couldn’t find the “beauty one wishes to capture in a painting” or anything close to whatever the man had seen.
“Haah…”
He slumped himself down on the spot. Gazing listlessly at his feet, there was a glimpse of a shadow on the ground. Thinking it to be a cloud he looked up, and there stood a young man.
“………”
His eyes grew wide as he stared at the figure.
“Hi there.” The man gave a curt bow, smiling. “So, you’re the one who’s been observing me lately.”
“………”
“I have to admit, I was a little frightened at first. But now I’m relieved. You really were just watching me draw, weren’t you?”
The man’s tone was incredibly gentle, betraying no trace of agitation or fear.
“………”
He couldn’t form an answer. So instead, the man asked him.
“If I recall, you’re…Kigawa Tosuke, aren’t you? I saw you in a magazine.”
His body tensed with a twitch.
“Wh…who are you? Why don’t you…?”
Why wasn’t this man afraid of him? And if he was after him, how come he wasn’t attacking?
“Why…aren’t you running away, even after you’ve seen me?”
“Because I have no reason to run from you. Though, I do have a need to thank you for taking an interest in my art.”
“No, but that’s…”
“You’re a kind person. I can see that very clearly.”
The man gave a nod. He was unfazed.
“You…don’t look think I’m weird after looking at me?”
“That goes for the both of us, then. You could never tell by looking, but on the inside, I’m a pretty strange guy.” The man winked mischievously.
“…Just who are you?”
In response, the man quietly answered. “My name is Asukai Jin.”
TL Notes for ACT.3 part 1
[1] This most likely refers to the Japanese calendar system. Era’s are determined by an emperor’s rule. When a new emperor takes the throne, a new era begins. Each era is given a name, or 年号(nengo). This is like the Japanese version of being a Millennial or a Gen-X-er.