c14 2

“Whaaat?” the girl asked, and the boy looked down.
“Nah... it’s just... we’re comrades, right?”
“Comrades...”
“Right? How should I put it? We’re together through thick and thin... or something like that, I dunno really. What happened...? Like, what are you thinking and feeling, I guess? I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure you’re suffering. Could you, like... tell me about it, maybe? I’m not sure me listening will help at all, though. No! I may not be good for much, but maybe there’s something I can do...”
“Then hold me.”
“Eh?” The boy let out a cry of surprise, his eyes going wide as he looked at the girl. The boy’s gaze nearly ignored the girl’s face, lingering over her breasts, before turning aside.
Honestly, boobs, boobs, boobs, was that all? Boys only ever looked at girls’ boobs. Did they think girls didn’t notice? How could they not? It was almost like the girls were just an attachment that came with the boobs. Did they not think girls would be hurt, being treated that way?
You’re nothing but a dick to me. How does that feel? It’s deeply, deeply hurtful, right?
“No, um, that’s a bit...” The boy was mumbling to himself.
The girl smiled broadly. “It’s okay. I was just kidding.”
“Oh! Ohhh. Y-You were kidding. Of course. No, it’s not like I took you seriously there. It was so sudden. You surprised me. It’s just, um, I may not need to say this, but it’s not like I’d never consider you as an option, but we’re comrades and all. Yeah. It’s important to have some sense of moderation...”
In her chest, there was an unease. It hurt. It hurt bad. Tears, sparkle. Tears. Tears. Tears.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Huh?”
“I don’t matter.”
“Wah...” The boy hurriedly jumped back.
That was because the girl’s sparkling tears were closing in on his feet. Sparkling, glimmering. Tears. Tears. A sea of tears, sparkling, growing, more and more.
“...Shihoru-san!” The boy tried to swing his big katana, but he hesitated.




The stupid, foolish boy.
He had no intention of saving the girl, but he was trying to get by with gentle-sounding words.
In her heart, there was unease. Tears, sparkling.
Disappear.
Disappear!
The girl quickly raised her arms. The accumulated tears, tears, tears went flying, whirling around and assaulting the boy.
“Urkh...”
It was too late for the boy. No matter what he did, it was no good. He couldn’t run. She wouldn’t let him. The poor, stupid boy. The poor, ugly girl would shed more sparkling tears, no doubt.
Sparkle. Glimmer.
“Tonbe!”
“Yes, Io-sama!”
Then, all of a sudden, she heard voices she wasn’t familiar with one after another. Something unbelievable had happened. A man who was far fatter than the ugly girl got between her and the boy who was about to be swallowed up by sparkling tears.
The man had something small in his hand. It was a small mirror with a handle. A hand-mirror, most likely.
When the tubby man crouched in front of the tall boy, the handmirror instantly grew to a size that covered both of them.
Mirror, mirror. The mirror reflected the sparkling tears. Sparkle and glimmer, glimmer and sparkle. Sparkle, sparkle, glimmer, glimmer. “Eeeek!” The girl thought she had gone blind. That was how brilliant it was. “Ahh! Ahhhh!”
Her eyes were open, but everything had gone white. It didn’t just look white. She couldn’t see anything.
Her eyes, they hurt, ow, ow, ow. She fell to one knee, covering her face with both hands. It hurt, it hurt, it hurt so bad. Even as she did, though, the tears were flowing. They didn’t ever stop. It was possible they would go on forever, never stopping.
In time, she was able to see the outlines of things again. She came to her senses.
They were gone.
No one was here.
Rubbing her eyes, blinking, she double-checked. Yes, they were gone.
There was no one around.
The poor, ugly girl was all alone.


3. My Darling Friends [be_my_friend]


My, but they could fly.
More like, how long were they going to keep flying for?
Forever?
But Haruhiro was finding himself less and less able to think about that.
They weren’t just flying, after all; they were spinning, too. It was a little hellish. No, not just a little. It was absolute hell. Spinning hell.
He figured this was a kind of spin you’d have a hard time subjecting yourself to even if you tried. It was beyond making your eyes spin, or anything on that level. At this point, it was all mush. It was like his brains, his blood, fluids, and organs, even his bones, were all mush, a total mess, and he was still getting shaken, and shaken, and shaken.
Because they were cocooned inside the black skin of the shovel, he couldn’t see outside at all, and the, what, sensory deprivation? That only made the heavy impact seem worse, or something.
They probably touched down, at last, but then: Wham, bam, smash! He felt like there were multiple impacts.
Ohh, we are so dead, he thought.
Which meant he wasn’t dead. What a relief. Well, no, it wasn’t a relief at all.
“...Alice?” he asked hesitantly.
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
“...Yeah.”
There was no way Alice was okay. Alice’s voice was all weird. Or was he the one who’d gone weird?
Were his ears all messed up? No, that wasn’t all. Haruhiro was supposed to be clinging to Alice. But he didn’t feel like he was touching another person, or anything resembling warmth. Could he move his hands and feet, or couldn’t he? It was all incredibly vague.
He was breathing. No question about that. Alice was, too. They were both alive. That was good, at least.
Was it? Was it really?
He felt like, even if he was alive, quite a few more unpleasant things than pleasant things would come of that.
Quite a few? An awful lot, maybe? It wasn’t fair. Was someone picking on him, maybe? These days, he had to wonder.
Okay. He felt a little better now.
He took a deep breath. “Are you hurt at—”
“We’re getting out,” Alice said before he could finish.
The cocoon made of black—or blackish, well, black was probably fine—black skin came undone, dividing into thin strips, and wrapping around the stick of meat Alice was holding.
Haruhiro narrowed his eyes. Was it a hole? Alice and Haruhiro were in the bottom of a hole. Not particularly deep, or large. He could see the polka dot sky.
The cocoon had probably fallen, and embedded itself in the ground. But it hadn’t come down in a flat place, apparently. Had it hit a building or something? Had they come through a roof, then fallen to the ground?
“Get away,” Alice said, shoving Haruhiro to the side.
Before he could even respond, he was elbowed in the face. That hurt pretty badly, but Alice wasn’t one to care about such things. Alice crawled out of the hole, and Haruhiro followed.
This really was the inside of a building. There was a hole in the ceiling. It was a small, one-floor house, apparently.
There were windows, and they had stained glass in them. Light was coming in through the hole in the ceiling, but it could hardly be called bright. Even so, well, he could more or less figure out the situation inside the room.
There was something like a fireplace. There was a couch, a table, and what looked to be a bookshelf. The walls and floors were likely stonework. In the floor was the large hole Alice and Haruhiro had come out of.
“Someone’s house?” Haruhiro wondered.
“I don’t know that it’s someone...” Alice started to say, then held the shovel at the ready.
The door opened.
Alice took off, as if flying, and knocked whoever opened the door to the ground with the shovel. “Come on, Haruhiro!”
“Huh?”
This was probably no time to be blinking. Alice was already out of the building. He shook off his confusion, and chased after Alice.
The door was still open. The person on the ground, the one knocked to the ground by Alice, was acting as a doorstop.
It was a blond girl wearing a light green dress.
No, wrong.
It would be easy to mistake it for a girl, but it was a doll, maybe?
The shape was human, but the texture of its skin wasn’t that of a living creature. It looked hard to the touch. There were seams at the joints of its exposed arms and legs, too. It was on its belly, so he couldn’t see its face, but it was quite an intricate doll.
It didn’t budge now, but it had been moving just a moment ago.
—Right?
It had opened the door, and attempted to come inside.
Even though it was a doll?
That was creepy, but this was Parano. There were always bizarre things. In fact, there was nothing but bizarreness happening here.
Haruhiro jumped over the doll of a little girl and went outside.
There was a thin haze. Was this a city? There were rows of buildings, all of them stonework with slate-tiled roofs. It was all incredibly normal, really.
It made him think, Yeah, there are cities like this, aren’t there? In fact, it was too normal. It didn’t fit in Parano.
Alice was right over there, having waited for Haruhiro. Or had Alice waited?
This was Alice, so maybe not. Alice might just not have been able to go anywhere.
There were people. The residents of this city, perhaps? Over there on the street, over here, and not just a few of them.
Their forms were blurred in the haze, but there were tens of those residents, maybe more, none of them approaching for now, at least.
However, they were surrounding Alice and Haruhiro at a distance.
They weren’t just on the roads. He could spot figures on top of buildings here and there. In other words, they were up on the roofs, too.
“We got sent a real long way...” Alice muttered.
“Um... where is this?” Haruhiro asked.
Alice looked down, sighing. “Doll Town. Ruins No. 3.”
“Oh... so that’s it.”
Everything in Parano was transient and changing. Sometimes slowly and gently, other times suddenly and intensely. The geography was no exception. Even if there was a stony mountain here now, it might be a sandy desert soon afterwards, or it might turn into a gray forest instead.
However, according to Alice, who had spent much longer in this world than Haruhiro, even in Parano, there were a number of places that continuously existed. For instance, Ruins No. 1 to Ruins No. 7, the ruins of seven cities and the area around them, were an example of that.
“The place we met the dream monster, the Scarlet Forest, that was Ruins No. 1... right?” Haruhiro asked.
“Yeah.”
“From Ruins No. 1 to Ruins No. 3, that’s...”
“It’d be a long walk.”
Time and distance were vague in Parano, so they could only be measured by how they felt. Even rough approximations, like It’s about X kilometers or It would take about half a day, didn’t work. It might be better to think of it as being less they were vague, and more that time and distance were not absolute measures. Despite that, Alice was saying it’d be a long way, so it must’ve been quite a long way indeed.
“I’m amazed we survived,” Haruhiro said.
“I didn’t want to come. Not here.”
“You didn’t?”
“By the way, there’s a Doll Town in Tokyo, too, but this isn’t like that.”
“Tokyo...” Haruhiro murmured.
The word had a strange ring to it. It was apparently the name of a place. He felt like he knew it, or maybe he didn’t. It felt like he might remember if he thought about it, but this was clearly not the time.
Doll Town.
Dolls.
“All of them, they’re not people... they’re dolls?” he asked.
As he looked at all of the figures on the roofs, Alice let out another exasperated sigh.
“This is the doll master’s town.”
“Um... Someone you know?”
“We were friends. Until she fell into darkness.”
“Darkness...”
“She’s here.”
“Huh? Where?”
“There.”
Alice turned to face behind him, to the left. Haruhiro hurriedly turned that way, too.
No one was there. Not on the street, anyway. But there was something standing on the roof of one of the buildings that faced onto the street.
It had a human form, if you could call it that. There was a head, a body, two arms and two legs, all of the things that should be there, but... they were thin. Damn thin. With the exception of the head, with its extravagant hat, it was all slender. The neck and the limbs were practically sticks. It wore a very short skirt, and its breasts were covered by a cloth that looked like underwear. Its hips were thin, too. Even if a human slimmed down to the extreme, sucked in their gut, and then tightened the waist with some sort of belt, they might not be able to get that thin.
Because of the hat, which made him think of a cake with too many decorations, and the multiple pairs of glasses that it was wearing for some reason, he couldn’t make out the face at all. Still, it had big lips, and they were red to the point of looking toxic. It was apparently a woman. She was apparently the doll master, so she probably wasn’t a doll.
“Ngh... Ngh... Heheh... Heh...”
Was the doll master laughing? She had a voice like the wind blowing at midnight.
“Nui...” Alice thrust the tip of the shovel into the ground, and spoke in a pained voice. “It’s been a while.”
Nui. Had that been the doll master’s name when she was Alice’s friend? Nui.
At some point, the dolls had started moving. It was hard to see through the haze, but there seemed to be dolls here and there, judging by where it was possible to make out the color of their dresses, so they must have been slowly closing in on Haruhiro and Alice.
Or rather, weren’t there more of them now?
Was it just his imagination? No, they were definitely growing in number. Could it be that all the dolls of Doll Town were gathering here at this very moment?
Nui was speaking in nonsense now. “Ahh... Ngh... Heehee... Kuh... Guguh... Fuh...”
“Nui,” Alice said, with grief, “I don’t want to fight you. It may not make any difference to say this, but... we were friends, weren’t we?”
“Foo... reh... nuheh... dzuh... gugheh...”
“I didn’t mean to come. Not that I don’t want to see you. It’s just... I can’t see this reunion going well. So I’ve been avoiding it. You can stay here, forever, making your dolls. That’s what you want, right? I won’t get in the way.”
“Hahh... Heah... Hahh... Nghheheh...”
“No good, huh.” With a click of the tongue, Alice pulled the shovel from the ground.
“What do you mean, no good?” Haruhiro asked.
“We can’t talk to her,” Alice said. “It doesn’t look like she knows me, either. She is a trickster, after all. I can’t blame her.”
“Like Haname, you mean...”
How long ago had that been? Well, in Parano, that question might be meaningless. Alice had taken him to Ruins No. 2, Bayard Garden. The master of that place was a trickster called Haname, and it was supposedly safe if you didn’t mess with her garden, but stuff had happened, and they’d had a bad time there.
That image of Haname as she seemed to fill the sky was still burned into Haruhiro’s mind. If that was the power of a trickster, wasn’t this situation incredibly bad?
“Are... are we going to fight?” Haruhiro hesitated.
“Let me think about that after I’ve hit her.”
Before Alice could add, Come on, Haruhiro hugged Alice from behind.
Depending how you looked at it, this could be the act of a pervert. Haruhiro wasn’t doing it because he wanted to, by any means, but if he didn’t do it fast enough, he might get told off for not being able to do anything without being told to explicitly.
Haruhiro’s magic, Resonance, amplified Alice’s magic, Philia. However, Haruhiro had no idea how Resonance worked, or in what way, or what effect it had. He felt a pull that was spiritual, not physical. If he were to be a bit hyperbolic, it felt like his soul was being pulled out. That, or, if he were to liken himself to a container, he was filled with life energy. That was flowing into Alice.
“Go,” Alice whispered.
Alice could let go of the shovel at any time, so it went without saying that the shovel was not Alice. Despite that, the shovel was Alice’s fetish, making them one and the same.
The hard, yet flexible skin peeled off. Throbbing at the mere touch of the outside air, the shovel’s true form, which was awfully easy to hurt, was exposed. That skin protected Alice. It also became a sword that cut up enemies, as well as a spear and a halberd.
Destroy. Destroy. Destroy. Destroy. Destroy everything that tries to harm me.
The skin unleashed its fury. It stretched and folded freely, whipping about, becoming ten or more blades, and assaulting the nearby buildings and the doll master.
The doll master did not back away. She lifted her stick arms. The shapes of each of her fingers were different. The index and middle fingers were scissors. Another was a curved knife, one was a gimlet, one was a chisel, and one was a bow saw.
The fingers of both the doll master’s hands were all tools for making dolls. However, they were more than just tools. They weren’t just used for delicate work, but dangerous things, too.
The doll master pierced through and stopped the shovel’s strips of flesh with the tools on her hands, cutting them apart. The skin couldn’t hurt the doll master.
But I knew that. It was like he could hear Alice’s thoughts. Knowing that is what let me turn the skin on the doll master without mercy. The doll master—no, Nui—was my friend. Even now that she’s turned into this thing, I don’t want to kill a friend. But Nui fell and became a trickster. I won’t hold back just because the doll master was once my friend.
They aimed for her feet. The skin slashed the hell out of the building the doll master was standing on, the nearby buildings, and the dolls that were pressing in towards them.
The doll master’s buried in the rubble. I’m sure she’ll get herself out in no time, though. Still, we can get out of here before then. So long, Nui—
The moment he moved away from Alice, Haruhiro realized this was all very strange.
Alice was already running. He had to follow, so that was what Haruhiro did. His body was moving as it should, but the inside of his head was a mess.
What was it? What the hell had happened?
Just now, that was Alice.
He had been feeling and thinking almost like he was Alice.
Was it because of the magic? Resonance? He had been Alice’s first time seeing it. It was apparently a rare magic. A magic that amplified the magic of others. The fact of the matter was, when Haruhiro touched Alice, Alice’s magic would get stronger.
But was that really all there was to it?





4. The Way Things Shone When we First

Met [toki_meki]

“...Destiny,” Tonbe said. “Yes, that’s it, I think it was destiny, my meeting with Io-sama. That’s the only thing it could be called, but I wouldn’t say Io-sama and I are bound by destiny, because if I said that, Io-sama would scold me. ‘Hold on, Tonbe, you’re creeping me out. Could you stop? Seriously, it’s gross. Here, look, I’ve got goosebumps.’ And when she showed me her upper arm—no, not her upper arm, she wouldn’t show me her upper arm, would she? Well, her forearm with goosebumps—I’d stare so hard, I would, of course I would, right? I’d look at it like crazy, right? I mean, it’s Io-sama’s forearm, after all! Even if that would just creep Io-sama out even more. I know it would, but I’d still look. Yeah, I’d look. Like, I could do it so many times, just to see Io-sama’s goosebumps. I’m thinking ten, maybe? Like, I’m talking about getting off here. Gwuhuhuhuhuhyuh! Oh, this is a secret, by the way. Seriously, if you don’t keep it a secret, things’ll get out of hand. I’m counting on you. But, well, anyway, I’m glad I was able to meet Io-sama, you know. Like, that alone was enough to have made it worth being born. In the beginning, in Sherry’s Tavern, right? You look like a volunteer soldier, so you must know Sherry’s Tavern. So, I was there, right? And I heard a priest was recruiting party members. Now, I was in another party at the time, but they were all total shit. The kings of shit. The shit kings. Gwuhuhuhuhuhyuh! They’d call me fat, and ugly, and gross, and creepy, and smelly, all sorts of things. Now, maybe some of it wasn’t entirely untrue, but still, how could they say that to my face? I mean, sure, they acted like it was all a friendly joke, but anyway, it was horrible. So, when I snapped, they were like, ‘What’re you getting so red in the face for, man? We were just having fun with you. You’re so funny.’ Those times, I’d think I’d maaaaybe been a bit immature about it, and I’d back down, but when it happened over, and over, and over, and over a million, billion times, repeatedly, in the end, I started to think, You guys are playing me for a fool. You’re not having fun with me. You’re mocking and laughing at me. I’m hurt here. I might’ve put on a stupid grin, but I was on Heartbreak Alley when I entered that tavern. What’s Heartbreak Alley? Whatever! I may be 171 centimeters tall and weigh 81 kilos, but I’m not over a hundred, okay? Don’t call anyone under a hundred kilos fat. It’s an affront to the concept of fatness. You agree, right? Right? Well?”
“Oh... uhhh...” Kuzaku said. “I guess, yeah...”
I don’t know whether to agree or not, he thought. I mean, I’m not even sure what he wants me to agree with.
I don’t even know anymore. I mean, this guy, he’s been muttering to himself quietly beside me this whole time. It doesn’t seem like he’s gonna stop, either. He’s been chattering nonstop the whole time we’ve been walking. I can only listen to so much. It’s like, I try to listen, but I don’t hear the words. This fat ass, he’s so damn annoying...
“For a start, there was Sakumata, that guy who was what you’d call the leader of the party that claimed they were ‘having fun’ with me,” Tonbe went on. “I wonder if he’s still around. Is he still alive? Well, he was around back then. That guy was going out with the party mage, but they broke up, then he went out with the party thief. I mean, at a glance, maybe he was hot? Like, he figured he was pretty hot stuff, too. The fact was, he’d openly say stuff like, ‘I’ve never been hard up for women.’ Man, your face is nothing special. You’ve got a face like a smashed banana. Long face, a snub nose, thin lips, droopy eyes. He might’ve been one of the less ugly members of that party, but that’s the low bar to end all low bars. By the way, your girlfriends, the mage and the thief, I hate to be the one to say this, but they were middle of the pack, at best. Maybe worse. My face may not be the most symmetrical, and if you were a pretty boy, you might be in a position to call me ugly, but I don’t want to hear it from you. You’ve got no right to say it.”
“Uhh... Yeah, sure...”
“So, basically, I was thinking, I want out of Sakumata’s party. Maybe I should quit. What should I do? Then’s when, hot damn, a goddess came down to me. That’s right! She was a literal goddess. When I went to see the priest recruiting party members, get this. There was a goddess there. A goddess who’d come down to earth from heaven. Like a lightning bolt. I was shocked silly. Gwuhuhuhuhuhyuh!”
“Oh, uhh...”
I don’t care, but can you do something about that laugh? Kuzaku thought vaguely. I mean, I’ve had enough. I’m seriously starting to get fed up with this.
“Uh... sorry, Tonbe-san.” Kuzaku tried to interrupt as politely as he could, but Tonbe the fat paladin didn’t care one bit.
“I don’t know what it was. She had silky smooth hair, and a petite figure, but she was, like, really, really, small, but not in a delicate way, you know? She had a feminine figure, you could say? The priest’s uniform is white, after all, and that whiteness, it reaaaally suited her. Like, her skin, it seemed so smooth, and they sparkled, her eyes, I mean, because they were so big, and more importantly, this goddess was already surrounded by volunteer soldiers, but the moment her eyes met mine, she smiled for me. A grin. My heart felt like it was going to stop, you know? No, that’s no lie. I’m not exaggerating. My heart literally came to a complete stop for a moment there, okay?”
Why couldn’t this guy have died then? Kuzaku grumbled silently. If he had, I wouldn’t have to listen to this bullshit, nonsense story, now would I?
No, I take that back. It’s not good to think like that. Sorry, sorry. No matter how awful he is, I shouldn’t be wishing him dead. He saved me, after all. This fatso. Guess I shouldn’t call him that, either. Well, he is fat, though. I don’t think being fat’s that bad, but there are different kinds of fat. His kind sort of pisses me off. No? Am I just pissed because he’s Tonbe? Hmm. Could be. But I’m tired, and sleepy. Still, it’s a wonder I’m still going. It’s less that I’m walking and more that I’m falling forward, and then my leg moves up on its own, and then I fall again, and then my other leg moves up. That same thing, over and over. Also, it’s weirdly sweet...
“This goes without saying, but I decided immediately,” Tonbe went on. “I went right back to that stupid, idiotic, smashed-banana-face Sakumata, and told him, ‘Goodbye, we’ll never meet again, forget I ever existed, yes, that means forever.’ Then, right away, I rushed to my goddess, worked up my courage, and nominated myself to be one of her comrades. I don’t remember what I said exactly. It was, I want to change my life, or something along those lines, I think. Oh, and I think I said something like, I’ll do anything, so please take me, too. I mean, obviously I’d do anything, right? This was Io-sama, a goddess, after all. I had to. Guhfuhfuhfuhfuhyuhohohyuhyuhohoh!”
I’m at my limit, Kuzaku moaned silently. I clearly can’t take any more, and I don’t care anymore. I’ll just collapse.
The moment he fell, there was an immediate kick.
“Ouch!”
Kuzaku rolled around with both hands holding his forehead.
Surprisingly, the one who kicked Kuzaku in the forehead with the toe of their foot was not Tonbe. “No sleeping, you dolt.”
Another person accompanying them, one who wasn’t fat like Tonbe, was looking down at Kuzaku.
“D-Don’t kick me,” Kuzaku muttered. “Ow...” “Yeah, I’m gonna kick ya!” the guy said.
He was dressed all in black, a look that screamed he was a dread knight. His chin was awfully long. So long, in fact, that it stuck out from under his mask. His eyebrows were close to being triangles, he had sanpaku eyes with their whites showing, and an incredibly thin forehead.
There were limits to how thin a forehead could be. Kuzaku had never seen a hairline that came this low before.
“If ya sleep, it’ll cause trouble,” the other guy said. “’Course I’m gonna hafta kick ya. If yer gonna sleep, then die. If ya can’t die on yer own, I’ll murder ya myself.” “Gomi,” said a voice.
It was a voice as clear as a glass bell. That beautiful voice was... calling someone “gomi,” a word that meant “trash”?
When Kuzaku looked, a long-haired beauty in a white robe was looking in his direction.
Though he called her a beauty, there was a mask on her face, covering the bottom half of it. Even so, she was ridiculously beautiful. He felt like Tonbe had called her petite, but she was of average height, neither tall nor short. Her proportions left nothing to complain about.
She was like, well, an orthodox pretty girl. The pretty girl. It was like, when someone said the words “pretty girl,” she was the kind they meant. There was a translucence to her, a cleanliness? So pretty that the word “pretty” itself seemed stale. Like, “right there is a pretty girl.”
Pretty girls were not a fiction. They truly did exist.
The pretty girl’s outfit wasn’t all white. There were blue highlights. Though it had been tailored to be cuter, it was what you’d recognize as a priest’s outfit. It suited her insanely well. It was like it was a oneof-a-kind outfit, custom ordered for a pretty girl.
That pretty girl, with a voice that fit a pretty girl, had said just one word: gomi, which meant trash or garbage.
It hit him with destructive force.
“Leave it at that, Gomi.”

Chapter end