Sasaki and Peeps - Volume 6 - Chapter 4.2

<The Neighbor’s POV>

Traveling through the air gets us to our destination in a matter of minutes. The station, with its row of triangular roofs, is fairly large—about the same size as my school. Not only are the walls all made of glass panes, there’s even a huge clock set up in front. Aside from the expansive rotary outside the building, I see a parking lot and a plaza-like space.

In the city, you tend to imagine stations as being crowded in by tall buildings. Out here, though, that’s not the case—the area around the station is relatively empty. At its north entrance, I see the start of what appears to be a shopping district, but despite the time of day, many stores are shuttered. In the other direction, to the south, is a residential area. The houses have a lot of space around them, with small fields and even empty lots in between. The word pastoral sums it up nicely.

As you might imagine from how simple it was to note down the train timetables, it seems most people who live here use cars to get around. Because of that, a majority of businesses have relocated to areas along the highway that cuts straight through Karuizawa, leaving the station’s environs looking depopulated.

I alight on the station’s roof and take a look around.

“It’s easy to survey our surroundings here, unlike your last place.”

“Unfortunately, I don’t see anyone on the tracks.”

“What should we do now?”

“If our prediction was wrong, and they ran with their tails between their legs, then considering how far we had to come to get here, I’d expect the isolated space to have vanished already. But if they want to fight, they’re probably closing in on us.”

When the proxy war’s isolated spaces materialize, it’s more advantageous to stay moving than to stay still. Even if you can’t detect your enemies’ presence, moving around allows you to figure out what general direction they’re in.

The faster you are, the more accurate you can get. Of course, that doesn’t work if the enemy approaches you even faster. But you can only go so fast on the ground. I feel having a slight advantage from the beginning will prove invaluable.

“I like that! Then let’s keep on searching in the same direction,” says Abaddon with a grin. Apparently, I gave the right answer.

Since the demon has supposedly participated in death games many times in the past, he must know all this like the back of his hand. But he always leaves the judgment calls to me, so maybe he still considers this the tutorial phase.

I can’t help but feel a bit irritated by his attitude. Still, I can’t complain, since he really saved me back there in math class. Instead, I—the good-for-nothing Disciple—nod to the gleeful demon and once again take flight.

It doesn’t take long before we find the angel on the road. The three pairs of wings on her back and the blond hair reaching past her waist are both still fresh in my memory. This is the angel and Disciple pair that led a huge attack force against us at my previous school. Like before, she carries a sword in her hand.

Abaddon had called her Michael—a leading figure among the angels. Even I didn’t have to look up that name. She’s so famous, her appearance was actually a letdown. It makes the whole proxy war seem kind of cheap.

“It’s your mortal enemy, Abaddon.”

“I’m curious why we can’t spot her Disciple nearby.”

The angel stands on a side street branching off from a busy major road. Like Abaddon said, I can’t see anyone else nearby. Normally, Disciples always travel with their partner angel or demon. This tendency is even more conspicuous inside isolated spaces. After all, Disciples are weak compared to angels and demons. If an enemy catches you alone, you’re basically dead.

That isn’t necessarily always the case—if our opponent knows this isolated space was formed by a single angel and a single demon, and if the Disciple is especially good at hiding, it’s possible they might have split up. But that’s a pretty rare scenario.

“They may be attacking with an army again,” I tell Abaddon.

“I don’t doubt they’ve got a few of their angel friends hiding somewhere in here.”

When we spot the angel, we stop in midair. That’s when she notices us.

She looks up at the sky, brandishing her sword. But it doesn’t seem like she’s about to charge at us. She just stands there on the road, wary.

“I’m pretty sure they’ve more or less figured out our new location.”

“Did the Disciple see our faces the other night before they escaped?”

“Maybe, but there’s a hundred other possibilities, so there’s no point thinking about it.”

“You’re right about that.”

“We should get personal information on all of them from our spy. I don’t like how they know where I live, while we’re clueless about them. With Futarishizuka’s help, we may be able to figure out their addresses just from his phone contacts.”

“That’s a wonderful decision! I just wish you’d come to it earlier.”

“Think about it! I didn’t want to ask her for even more when we still don’t have a reward for her. To be honest, I’m a little concerned about who she really is. Why would someone as rich as her be working for someone else?”

“Well, I agree wholeheartedly with your concern that we hold the lowest position in our group right now.”

Abaddon and I continue our strategy session as we stare down at the ground. The angel doesn’t move. During the last attack, she valiantly charged right at us, so this is more than likely a trap. The demon floating next to me already seems to understand that, of course, so we don’t bother to bring it up.

“And that’s why I think you know exactly what we should do next,” he says. “If we can take her down here, we’ll have a lot more freedom in the future. And we’ll have a reward we can give Futarishizuka.”

“Don’t you remember how helpless we were last time? How we almost got killed?”

“The fact that you have past experience to draw on means this time will be different. Don’t you agree?”

“I suppose so. I just got a new house. I don’t want someone blowing it up so soon.”

Unlike last time, I can fly. If something happens, I can use my own power to escape. I won’t be left behind in any tight spots, and I won’t hold Abaddon back. I can even use him as a shield to escape the isolated space. The angels can probably fly, too, but my tactical options are much broader than before.

And while I don’t really want to consider this, I know the sparrow working with my neighbor is always hanging around in Futarishizuka’s villa. According to Abaddon, he’s as powerful as angels and demons are. I can rely on him as a last resort.

As I’m mulling all this over, somewhere in the back of my mind it dawns on me that my life has become an awful lot like a shounen manga.

“Abaddon, please reveal yourself.”

“Yup! I’ve got this!”

My partner begins to melt into goop. I’ve seen this fleshy shape several times, but I’m still not used to it. His true form is grotesque, like he tore open his gut and clawed out his own organs. His volume instantly expands to the size of a car, swallowing his clothing and accessories up inside him.

The huge, writhing, pulsating mass of flesh reaffirms to me that Abaddon is, indeed, a demon.

“I can leave half behind to protect you.”

The fleshy ball comes apart in the middle with a snap; it reminds me of holding heated mochi in both hands and stretching it. One half moves toward me. The other one takes aim at the ground.

“Please show me your confidence is well deserved, Abaddon.”

“If you insist, I guess I better not embarrass myself!”

The mass of flesh shoots down toward the ground like a bullet. As it does, it expands, trying to swallow our opponent whole.

The angel pulls back to dodge, then sees an opening and slices off some of Abaddon’s flesh with her sword. Now in his meat form, though, he shrugs off this minor strike and lunges ever forward, closing the distance.

As the angel continues to slice him, small chunks of meat fly this way and that. Grotesque is the only word I can think of to describe the splish-splash of the fleshy juices as they splatter all around.

Keeping track of this scene out of the corner of my eye, I scan the ground, trying to find Michael’s Disciple. With my partner holding the enemy back using only half of his mass, if I find the angel’s Disciple, it’s as good as checkmate.

But no matter how much I look, I can’t see him anywhere. Maybe he’s keeping a safe distance from the battle, staying on the move and changing elevations. I gaze inside the buildings and squint at their shadows.

Then, suddenly, the silence is broken.

Noise floods in all at once—car exhaust, a train passing on the tracks, people chatting along the road. It’s like someone pressed the PLAY button again on a paused audio file.

The isolated space is gone. Immediately, I check my surroundings. Not a moment later, there’s a bang, and pain shoots up my arm.

“Ugh…”

Reflexively, I turn to look and see my uniform sleeve is now red. Frantically, I turn toward the source of the sound. A few dozen meters away, on the roof of a house, there’s someone in a prone position looking at me. In their hands is a weapon—it looks like a rifle.

I didn’t see this person inside the isolated space. Desperately, I launch myself up, trying to escape.

That’s when the second shot comes. This one grazes past my feet and speeds away.

“Agh…”

It hurts.

It hurts so much.

I want to fall to the ground and start crying.

But if I do that, it will only assure our defeat. As I try to figure out what to do, my mind in chaos, Abaddon flies up from the ground. His attention is already on my arm. There’s a lot of blood, a whole lot more than a period or a nosebleed; it’s sliding down my arm toward my fingers and dripping off.

“Whoa! Are you all right?”

“Abaddon, hide us.”

“Roger that!”

In any case, I need him to conceal us from public view—I can’t let something this stupid cause trouble for my neighbor. At the same time, it will help protect me from the shooter.

“Let me heal that for you, too.”

As Abaddon speaks, the pain in my arm melts away. I take my left hand off the wound; I don’t see any trace of it now.

That calms me down a lot, and I can finally start looking around again. “I don’t see the six-winged angel anywhere.”

“Seems like this was what they were really after. They turned tail and ran.”

“Then it was a trap, after all.”

They lured me to an area where they’d already hid a sniper, then had the Disciple move on his own in order to disengage the isolated space. I had actually considered the possibility that they might aim for the moment I landed and hit me with a car or something.

But I didn’t think they’d bring out a rifle. I look back at the roof, but the sniper is nowhere to be seen. He probably decided to retreat when I vanished. How efficient.

“Should we run away?”

“Well, of course we should.”

I never thought they would use firearms in broad daylight with people around. That’s even more aggressive than blowing up my apartment. Isn’t he scared of being caught by the police? Or do they already have the police on their side? Considering my own relationship with my neighbor and Futarishizuka, everything seems terrifyingly possible.

“I need to know right now—nobody can see us, right? Even angels?”

“That would depend on who we’re talking about. I doubt weaker angels can see us. I don’t know what will happen if the one I was just fighting shows up, though. Personally, I’m more concerned about human ingenuity.”

“You mean like thermal cameras?”

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

Is he saying that we can fool things that rely on visible light, but not infrared? Or maybe this power is only effective against humans and not anything else—I can imagine that being the case, too. After all, the angels’ and demons’ powers are like miracles, unexplainable by science.

Whatever the case, it’s probably best not to overestimate Abaddon’s abilities.

“Then I don’t want to go straight home, in case they still haven’t figured out where we live. I’ll wander through town for a while first to try to scout out the angel and Disciple who ran away. Any objections?”

“Nope. I think that’s a good idea.”

With my partner’s approval, I fly off in the opposite direction of my house. He floats through the air and lines up at my side.

“I really am sorry they got you with that shot. I hope you can believe me.”

“I don’t mind,” I say, looking at my bloodstained uniform sleeve. “Besides, you healed it right away. I don’t need to concern myself with every little scrape.”

I’m going to get a uniform for my new school soon, so there’s no need to worry too much about this one. That said, the same thing could happen again. Maybe I should get several spare uniforms to keep in reserve, including more shoes.

“If my neighbor sees me like this, he’ll probably start worrying. Before we go home, I want to wipe it down. Once we’re back, could you dispose of these clothes?”

“Wow. Even in a situation like this, you’re so considerate of him,” says the demon, sounding exceedingly impressed.

Compared to the seemingly endless string of miseries I was forced to endure until only a few days ago, a little pain in my arm is nothing. I suspect that’s exactly why Abaddon chose me as his Disciple.

“I’m just the person you thought I was.”

“When you say stuff like that, it puts me in a bit of an awkward position as a demon.”

As we fly, I sweep my eyes over our surroundings. Unfortunately, we don’t encounter any more isolated spaces. Our opponents must be far away by now. If they’re acting as a group, the angel might have stayed behind, but according to the rules of the death game, angels and demons killing people outside of an isolated space is banned.

“I think the Disciple is out of reach at this point.”

“Where should we go to wash off all that blood?”

“I’ll use a multipurpose restroom in the station.”

The angels beat us this time around. But I think we came away with something, at least. We found out how clearly wary the other side is of Abaddon—enough that they’d consider killing me outside an isolated space even when the six-winged angel is with them. That means we’ll have the advantage as long as we can keep them in an isolated space.

“I’ll wait until school ends to go back and get my things.”

“Oh, right. You sneaked out of the classroom during a break, didn’t you?”

I take my phone out of my skirt pocket and check the time. Another twenty or thirty minutes, and sixth period will end. By the time I’m done washing off the blood in the restroom and making myself presentable, it’ll be the perfect time to head back.

The teacher might scold me, but there’s nothing I can do about that now.