Inou-Battle wa Nichijou-kei no Naka de - Volume 9 - Chapter 5

Chapter 5: Kiryuu Rei

If you can claim with all your heart to not want to die,

Then what more proof do you need that you’re alive?

—Excerpt from the Reverse Crux Record

I found myself in the second ward of the local general hospital. Hajime hadn’t headed toward the diagnosis and treatment building where they conducted tests and outpatient examinations, but rather to a separate building a short distance away where the inpatient facilities were located. Apparently, the second ward was dedicated specifically to long-term patients.

“Do you think he’s here to visit someone, maybe?” I wondered out loud.

“It seems the only rational explanation,” said Umeko. “Though there is always a slim chance he may be acquainted with a doctor or nurse who works here.”

“Yeah, but...meeting up with a patient really does seem like the obvious option.”

“Indeed. Especially considering that he stopped to purchase something from the hospital’s shop. I would presume it was a gift for the person he came to see.”

“Right...though giving someone something you got from their hospital as a get-well gift’s pretty out there as far as faux pas go, if you ask me.”

The hospital’s second ward featured a rest area on its second floor, right near the reception desk. Umeko and I had sat down on one of the sofas in that vicinity, and we were currently speculating about Hajime’s visit. Hajime himself had quickly stopped by the receptionist’s desk, checked in, and headed farther into the facility. Tailing him past that point would’ve been rough, unfortunately. We would’ve had to have checked in as well to move any farther ahead, for one thing, and even if we’d found some way to sneak past, the hospital’s corridors were narrow and wouldn’t have provided any decent places to hide as we followed him. For the moment, we’d decided to stand by in the reception area and keep an eye on things while we planned our next move.

“So then, Hitomi—what shall we do now?” Umeko asked.

“Hmm. Good question... Wh-What do you think?”

“If you truly intend to take my opinion into consideration, then so be it: I believe we should return home without delay.”

“O-Oh, come on, don’t be like that!”

I understand why you want to go home, don’t get me wrong! But, I mean, we’ve come this far, haven’t we? We should at least stick it out for a little while longer! In any case, as Umeko’s tone had implied, asking for her advice had probably been a mistake on my part. I was the one who’d come up with this whole tailing operation in the first place, so it was only fair for me to take the initiative when it came to making our plans.

“Anyway, I’m just relieved that Hajime isn’t here because he’s sick, or hurt, or something,” I said. That wasn’t something I could be completely certain about yet, technically, but enough signs pointed to him being here to visit someone that I felt safe in my relief. I’d become so worried I thought I might drop dead on the spot when I’d realized he was going to the hospital, honestly, but it seemed my fears had been groundless and he wasn’t suffering from any sort of malady himself after all.

As I breathed a sigh of relief, Umeko looked over at me. “You care dearly for First, don’t you, Hitomi?” she quietly commented. Her expression was as blank as ever, but I felt like I could make out a slight trace of exasperation in her tone.

“N-Nah, no way! Who’d care about a guy like him?”

“Do not lie to me. Until you realized that First’s purpose here was to visit a patient, you had the countenance of a woman who had just learned the world was about to meet its end. Surely your own panic did not escape you?”

Ugh! W-Well, what was I supposed to do? As soon as I learned he was going to the hospital I started thinking about how he might’ve been horribly hurt or contracted a terminal illness! I couldn’t stop my pessimism from spiraling out of control!

“A-Anyway,” I said, steering the conversation in a new direction, “the real question is who Hajime would be here to visit!”

“Have you heard aught of any such matter?”

“...Nope. Not even a little.”

I’d known Hajime for a pretty long time, and he’d never said anything that even hinted he might know someone who was hospitalized. To be fair, that was a really private sort of matter, so it only made sense that he wouldn’t have spread the information around willy-nilly even if he had known someone who was in that sort of situation. What really made me curious, though, was the fact that he was clearly a regular here. Hajime had gone through the procedure at the reception desk with perfect efficiency, and he’d plainly had the layout of the hospital memorized. There was no doubt in my mind that he’d been here many times before, and if he’d been visiting this person on the regular, it implied that whoever they were, they were someone quite special to him.

“First returns,” said Umeko, whose powers of perception were really quite exceptional. She could tell it was him from the sound of his footsteps alone.

I held the newspaper that I’d bought at the hospital’s store in front of my face, and tipped Umeko’s straw hat at a downward angle to hide hers. Then I glanced over the top of the paper, just as Hajime stepped into view. Umeko had been right, and once again, I was deeply impressed by how capable she was.

Meanwhile, Hajime passed by the receptionist’s desk and got onto the elevator that led back to the first floor. I waited until the elevator doors closed, then I put down my paper.

“I guess he’s going home, then,” I said.

“So it seems. What shall we do now, Hitomi?”

Hmm. That’s a good question. I’d kicked off our little covert operation because I was curious about what exactly Hajime had had to “take care of,” and for all intents and purposes, I’d already accomplished that objective. I would’ve liked to have figured out who exactly he was visiting, sure, but that was way easier said than done. The only sources of that information available were the receptionist or maybe one of the nurses, and they weren’t likely to share it with a couple randos like us. It was a patient’s private info, after all. Plus—and honestly, this was the biggest factor—I was at long last starting to feel awfully guilty about this whole affair.

At first, I’d been tailing him under the suspicion that he’d gone off to see some other woman or to hit up a sketchy store...but as it’d turned out, he was visiting someone in the hospital. That was just about as proper and reasonable as a task could be—not to mention that if that person had been sick or otherwise hospitalized for an extended period, it was probably for something pretty serious. I’d gone and found out about something he hadn’t told me—something he’d wanted to keep secret—and I was beginning to feel a definite sense of regret for having done so.

“Let’s go home, Umeko,” I finally sighed.

We stood up from the couch and began making our way toward the elevator. I paused by the window we’d passed by on the way, which offered an unbroken view of the tree-lined path that led up to the hospital’s entrance. There was Hajime, walking along toward the bus stop with his umbrella held up above him. Apparently, it had started raining...and that’s when a voice from behind me shocked me senseless.

“Do the two of you know Hajime?”

I fought through my astonishment just enough to turn around, and found that one of the nurses who’d been working by the reception desk had approached me. “Eep!” I squeaked. “U-Umm, I, well...”

“Oh, sorry! I didn’t mean to startle you,” the nurse said with a quick chuckle. She was slender, with eye-catchingly beautiful black hair, and looked like she was in her thirties...or forties, maybe? I’d never been very good at judging how old women were, but I certainly didn’t get the sense she was in her twenties. “It’s not every day we get someone acting that suspiciously in here, and I couldn’t help but get curious,” she continued.

That hit me right where it hurt. I’d been sparing no effort to ensure that Hajime didn’t notice me, and apparently, that level of caution had backfired and made me look like a creeper.

“S-Sorry, but it’s not what you think! I’m not up to anything suspicious at all, really,” I said, though if I were being completely honest, I sort of was. I mean, I’d gone out in a trench coat, sunglasses, and a mask for the specific purpose of tailing someone, not to mention Umeko’s shorts, T-shirt, and bug cage getup, or the fact that we’d apparently come all the way to the hospital for the sole purpose of hanging out in the waiting room.

Yeah. Okay. We’re suspicious, all right. Unambiguous creepers, even. Are they going to drag us into a back room and have the police question us...? I fearfully wondered, until the nurse smiled at me.

“So, do you know Hajime?” she repeated. “You seemed to be paying awfully close attention to him, so I just assumed. Sorry if I was wrong, though! Maybe I’m just jumping to conclusions.”

“Ah! Umm... Y-Yes, I do! We know each other,” I answered. This was all happening so suddenly that I didn’t even consider trying to make up an excuse.

“Aha! I had a feeling,” the nurse said with an elated clap. “Are you his girlfriend, maybe?”

“N-N-No! No way! We’re not like that at all yet!”

“‘Yet,’ huh?”

“Agh! N-No! Not yet, not ever! I’m-holding-an-everstone levels of never ever! I, umm,” I floundered helplessly.

The nurse let out an amused little giggle. It really was little too, from its volume to the expression she made as she laughed. It was a very subdued laughter, all around. “Well, in any case, this is nice to see! Hajime’s never brought friends with him before,” she said.

“Well, actually...he didn’t really bring us. The thing is...”

I explained what had happened, framing it as Umeko and I having tailed him as a practical joke. I also claimed that Umeko was my little sister, for convenience’s sake. She was clever and quick enough on the uptake to figure out what I was going for in a flash, and she backed me up by saying, “Indeed—I am this woman’s brethren.” I would’ve preferred if she’d been a little more inconspicuous with her phrasing, but beggars can’t be choosers and all.

“Hitomi and Umeko. Got it! Well, thanks for putting up with Hajime,” the nurse said.

I almost replied “He doesn’t make it easy!” on reflex, but I managed to hold it back and say, “Oh, no, it’s no trouble at all,” instead, which was definitely the more diplomatic option.

In any case, that exchange drove home something that I’d been noticing all throughout the conversation: she was acting really familiar with Hajime. It wasn’t every day you met someone in a position like hers who would talk about a twenty-something-year-old man with that sort of tone. For a moment, I wondered if she was just a much more overfamiliar person than her trim and tidy appearance would suggest...but then a much more believable explanation struck me.

It wasn’t that she’d specifically decided to be overly familiar with Hajime, in all likelihood. Rather, I figured that she’d known him since he was young enough for that sort of tone to be appropriate, and she had simply never broken the habit. It was perfectly natural for adults to never quite internalize the fact that the kid they’d known since he was in elementary school had grown up into a full-fledged adult himself. If that’s what had happened, it would explain the slight affectionate familiarity in her tone very easily.

“So...does Hajime come here often?” I asked.

“He does,” the nurse confirmed. “His timing’s sort of all over the place, but he makes a point of stopping by at least once every three months or so, and he has been since he was in elementary school.”

Just as I’d suspected, Hajime was a hospital regular. Him having picked up the habit in elementary school matched up with my impression of the nurse’s tone toward him perfectly as well. As I nodded in satisfaction, however, the nurse muttered one last thought, seemingly to herself.

“I guess even a kid like him feels like paying his mother a visit every once in a while,” she said, a faint smile spreading across her face.

His...mother? As in, Hajime’s mom? As in, Kiryuu Hajime’s birth mother? “Umm... You said that Hajime started coming here when he was in elementary school, right?” I asked.

“Right.”

“So...I’m guessing the patient he’s been visiting has been hospitalized nonstop since then?”

“Yes, that’s right,” the nurse confirmed with a stunningly casual nod. “She’s one of the patients I’m responsible for, actually. It must’ve been...almost exactly a decade ago, actually. She was caught up in a major accident—a truck crashed head-on into a bus—and she ended up in critical condition. She made it out alive, thankfully...but she’s been unconscious ever since.”

I was speechless, and gaped as the nurse spoke on. “She was out shopping with her son when the accident happened, apparently. It’s just horrible to think that, well...a boy may have seen his own mother fall victim to a terrible accident right before his eyes,” she said, her voice quiet and somber. I, meanwhile, felt a deep, dark sense of discomfort begin to brew within me.

Hajime’s full name was Kiryuu Hajime...but he lived in the Kanzaki household. He lived with his biological father, his stepmother, and his half sister, from what I’d heard. I’d never been privy to the details, but considering he still used the Kiryuu surname to this day, I’d sort of surmised that he hadn’t been living in the Kanzaki household since he was an infant. Most likely, he’d moved in with them at some point in his early childhood. I had the impression that his biological father had done a perfectly good job of taking care of him, of course, but it still seemed natural to conclude that some unfortunate set of circumstances had led to Hajime leaving the Kiryuu household and ending up in his father’s care instead.

“Whoops—you probably didn’t need to know all that, did you?” the nurse said with a rueful smile. “Sorry about that! Don’t tell anyone, okay?”

“Right, sure! Of course,” I replied.

“I guess I was just so happy to meet one of Hajime’s friends, I went and ran my mouth a little.”

“You...really care about Hajime, don’t you?”

“Well, of course I do! I’ve known him since he was thiiis little, after all!” the nurse said, holding her thumb and index finger maybe three centimeters apart.

Well, someone sure is exaggerating! Then again, for just a moment I thought that maybe even Hajime could be cute if he really were that tiny...but I dismissed the thought as soon as it sprang into mind. Even if he were three centimeters tall, I knew for a fact he’d find some way to spoil the effect.

By the time we left the hospital, a light drizzle had begun to fall. Umeko and I shared an umbrella as we walked to the bus stop, and when we arrived, we found that Hajime was already gone. It seemed a bus had already been by to pick him up.

“So, then...First’s mother fell unconscious when he was a child and remains so to this day,” Umeko said abruptly as I shook the water off my umbrella, her tone as casual and matter-of-fact as ever. “It would stand to reason, then, that the desire First seeks to fulfill through this War would be—”

“Umeko!” I snapped, then took a deep breath. “Sorry...but please. Let’s not talk about that, okay?”

“Very well,” Umeko agreed, then let the subject drop, just like that. I really had to appreciate how understanding of a kid she was.

The Fifth Spirit War, a battle royal in which individuals like us known as Players were granted supernatural powers and tasked with fighting each other, offered a clear reward for its victors. The Final Eight—in other words, the last eight Players to remain in the running—would each be given the opportunity to have one wish granted.

The beings who orchestrated the War—known, appropriately enough, as spirits—bore powers far exceeding the realm of human imagination. They could restore leveled buildings in the blink of an eye, freely manipulate people’s memories, and even grant people powers of their own. As such, when they told us we could have any wish granted, I got the impression they really did mean any wish at all. No matter what we desired, they would grant it for us. For a spirit, bringing someone out of a decade-long coma would be like taking candy from a baby...not that I knew for sure whether candy was even a thing in spirit culture.

I had no proof...but I was still more or less convinced. I finally knew why Kiryuu Hajime was participating in the War, for better or for worse. Hajime was fighting for his mother’s sake.

I took in a sharp breath as a tremendous pang of guilt pierced through me. If I said I hadn’t wanted to know Hajime’s motives, well, I’d have been lying. I’d always been curious, and a part of me was even happy to finally have my answer. That happiness, however, was vastly outweighed by my regret. This was something he’d never talked about—something he hadn’t wanted to share—and I’d gone and dug it up without his permission. What I’d done was no different than eavesdropping or cheating off someone else’s test. It was shameful and cowardly. And, above all else...

“Hey...Umeko? Let’s keep what happened today a secret from Hajime, okay? I mean the part about us tailing him, of course, but also everything we learned at the hospital. Let’s just...keep it all between the two of us.”

“Understood.”

“If I ever learn about this officially, I want to hear it from Hajime himself.”

Above all else, I was hurt—hurt that he’d never shared something this incredibly important with me. I was ashamed that I wasn’t someone he felt he could depend on. Was I really that unreliable in his eyes? Did he not trust me? Weren’t we friends? Weren’t we partners? After all this time...was I still not one of Kiryuu Hajime’s trusted wings?

“I wish he’d just told me,” I muttered, so quietly my words were drowned out by the sound of the ever intensifying rain. By now, it had turned into a genuine downpour.

☆

The rain had finally decided to pick up in earnest, which was something of a blessing for Toki Shuugo. If it hadn’t been raining at all, the odds were good he’d already be dead. His opponent would’ve picked him off, and he would’ve dropped out of the Spirit War, just like that.

Shuugo gasped for breath. The seaside factory he’d been fighting in was barely even standing anymore. Most of its outer walls, a number of support pillars, and the machinery inside had all been blown to flaming pieces. The whole place had more or less been one big inferno a short while ago, but the rain pouring through what little remained of the roof had extinguished the better part of the blaze, leaving an excess of charcoal behind.

Shuugo was currently leaning on one of the pillars that, while singed, had largely survived. He was covered with burns, his arms having been particularly scalded, and he was very clearly in a terrible state overall.

“Ugh... Dammit all... That little bitch,” Shuugo growled as he gritted his teeth.

The battle between Toki Shuugo and Hachisuka Happa had been hopelessly one-sided so far, dominated by Happa from beginning to end. Shuugo had sustained injury after injury, his condition worsening the longer the fight went on, while Happa had yet to take any damage worth noting. It seemed safe to call it Shuugo’s total defeat. His power just wasn’t a match for hers in terms of sheer firepower—not to mention that their respective natures put him at a terrible disadvantage.

BOMB Voyage allowed Happa to manipulate explosions as she pleased, and the destructive force behind the blasts was truly intense when she wanted it to be. She could generate an explosion powerful enough to send people flying through the air with all the effort it took to light up a lighter. There just wasn’t much that you could do when you were being harried by one explosion after another. Tactics failed in the face of her overwhelming firepower.

Shuugo had managed to figure out that she was probably making something in the air around her explode, given that she hadn’t simply blown him up from the inside and always seemed to generate her blasts in midair, but that didn’t change the fact that the gulf between their respective reaches was impassable. A knife fighter like Shuugo was hopelessly mismatched against her power.

It certainly didn’t help that Shuugo had always relied more on his own physical capabilities than on his power. Ever since he’d gotten wrapped up in the War, his preferred fighting style had been to overwhelm opponents who would rely on their powers’ petty tricks with his sheer speed and might, crushing them before they could become an issue. As such, a simple but wide-scale power like Happa’s was the sort he had the most trouble dealing with. In a sense, Players like her were his natural enemy.

Under ordinary circumstances, Shuugo would’ve decided to pull back the moment he realized he was at a disadvantage. He would’ve run away, or otherwise taken the time to work out a countermeasure for her ability. This time, however, he just ran straight in in a planless suicide charge. His irritation and desperation had driven him into a foolhardy frenzy, so he rushed forward, intent on stabbing and stabbing until there was nothing left for him to cut. And, as a result...he’d been crushed. He’d made it out alive thanks to the sudden rainstorm and his foe’s subsequent disappearance—she’d chosen to make her exit when the storm had picked up, it seemed—but if the rain had been even a few minutes later, there was little doubt that he wouldn’t have lived to see it.

“To hell with this bullshit,” Shuugo spat as he powered through the pain and forced himself to stand.

She ran when the rain started...which must mean that something about the rain makes it hard for her to fight, he thought. As he took one painful, plodding step after the next, he considered his next move...but, no, “considered” wasn’t the right word. There was nothing careful about Shuugo’s thought process—he was being driven by pure impulse.

Maybe rain makes the power of her explosions drop, or maybe she can’t make them at all when there’s too much moisture in the air...? Doesn’t matter. I just have to chase her, one way or another. No way in hell am I letting it end before I get her back for this!

Shuugo was driven by a mixture of irritation with his foe and fury with himself. Hachisuka Happa’s openly dismissive attitude had gotten under his skin, and knowing that he hadn’t been able to teach her a lesson, and in fact had gotten the crap kicked out of him, left him enraged at his own failure. He couldn’t accept this outcome. He couldn’t accept anything about it.

And yet, deep within the reaches of his mind, some small part of Shuugo wasn’t letting his rage overtake him. Ever so slightly, part of him was starting to question his decision to take on Hearts single-handedly, without even a plan to back him up. When that part of him asked what he was even fighting for, he felt so unstable it was like he’d suddenly stepped onto a patch of ice.

Shuugo wasn’t acting under anyone’s orders. He’d started this fight on his own, and so far, he’d had yet to figure out what—if anything—it all actually meant. Shuugo wasn’t violent enough by nature to let his fury entirely take the wheel, nor was he benevolent enough to brush off his rage and let it all go. His nature had left him in limbo, and in the meantime, his irritation grew ever stronger.

“Oh, for the... Are you kidding me?” Shuugo moaned as he reached the area he’d parked his motorcycle in. Somewhere along the way, his beloved bike had toppled to the ground—most likely, it had been hit by one of the chunks of rubble Happa’s explosions had blasted all over the place. Its headlight was cracked, its body dented, and its handlebars hopelessly crushed.

“Son of a bitch!” Shuugo spat, then he set off on foot, leaving his wheels behind. He still didn’t have a clear reason to fight, of course. He just chased after his foe because, in his mind, this was a chance he couldn’t miss. He was a bared blade, without a purpose and without a scabbard to return to, left to aimlessly wander the battlefield.