Book 3 Chapter 7
The next thing I knew, I was in the hospital.
Of course, it wasn’t that abandoned hospital. It was a perfectly clean general hospital in the city.
Since I had been hit by the rotating blades of that murderous triple chainsaw, I had assumed I would have needed something like twenty or thirty stitches, but when I pulled up my pajamas and checked my side, I found it was only covered with a large, rag-like piece of gauze. It had been a close shave. That felt somehow disappointing, but it made sense when I thought about it. If I really had been hit by those rapidly rotating blades, my organs and blood vessels would have been torn to shreds. I would have died instantly without time to say anything.
“Satori-kun.”
The Class Rap called out to me from beyond the curtain dividing up the large hospital room. My beautiful sisters, stepmom, and Class Rep had taken turns coming to visit me, so the other guys in the hospital room could not stop grinding their teeth. Even my witch underclassman and a surprisingly busty mermaid occasionally showed up. You wish you were me, don’t you!? Ah ha ha ha ha! Ghh!? Laughing hurts the wound in my side…!?
“Why are you twisting around like that, Satori-kun?”
“I-I wanted to feel like I was really alive…”
“I see.” The Class Rep pulled up a nearby folding chair and sat down. “To be honest, there are too many unbelievable parts about how we managed to get back from that Peace Committee Convalescent Hospital alive. I’ve pinched my own cheek countless times myself.”
“You didn’t have it so bad, Class Rep. All three female members of my family are Archenemies and my dad used to work for the Bright Cross. And then my real mother has omega-evolved into a hunter that human society can’t control. There’s something wrong with a world where I’m the only normal human!”
“I don’t think you can call yourself normal when you built a disaster environment simulator on your own and then crushed the entire Bright Cross.”
“Wasn’t me. It’s Maxwell that’s so amazing!”
“And who was it that built Maxwell? Honestly now.”
No matter what the Class Rep said, I just couldn’t think of myself as an incredible person.
I felt like I had regained a little of it that night, but nothing would change the fact that I had abandoned my own mother in the past. Since I had been caught in my parents’ divorce and didn’t know what a “normal family” was like, I couldn’t tell you if all of Japan’s families were like the tear-jerking dramas that aired at nine or ten at night. But when I had heard something falling apart within that closed house, I had fled outside instead of rushing inside. I was a coward who hadn’t been able to intervene or cry with them, so I did bear a sin there. Even if it was small and even if I couldn’t have actually forced my way into that adult problem, I was still a pathetic coward for running away from the pain instead of at least trying to do something about it.
However.
“That’s not true.”
When I told the Class Rep that, she smiled and said something odd.
“It’s true you always took shelter at my place when they started fighting. And I don’t think that’s a bad thing. But, Satori-kun, when you were curled up, sniffling, and refusing to touch the cocoa in front of you, you would always say the same thing.”
“?”
“ ‘My mom and dad fight because I’m there. So if I’m not there, they’ll stop fighting.’ ”
“…”
No.
Wait. In that case…
“I don’t know if they were really fighting over you. My guess is they weren’t, but there’s no way of finding out now.”
She smiled.
From her position one step removed, that childhood friend next door might have seen a side of my family I hadn’t.
“But, Satori-kun, you weren’t running away and you were fighting. Even if that meant abandoning a warm home where everyone was waiting for you. And you prayed every day that your parents would make up. That might not have happened, but I won’t let anyone deny your effort or feelings. Yes, not even if it’s you yourself.”
The small problem of a small family was over.
Magatsu Taori had disappeared, but from the look of things, she would not try to attack Satori and the others again. There was no real proof of that, but Amatsu Yurina was a mother, too. So she understood. Even if it had been accident, the memory of tearing into her own child with a blade would weigh too heavily on her. Could she continue to proudly use and rely on those combat skills? The answer was probably no.
And Yurina herself felt a trembling in her fingertips. The sensation of that sharp branch piercing his flesh would not vanish so easily.
But one fundamental problem remained unresolved.
“Absolute Noah will continue, no matter how much Satori resents me for it. When I brought you to this family, I decided I would be that boy’s mother as much as I am that man’s wife, so I will not back down on this.”
The Amatsu house grew tense as soon as Satori was gone. Amatsu Yurina, two Archenemy sisters, and a former Bright Cross researcher all lived below that single roof. Magatsu Taori’s concerns may not have been entirely off base. A child without so strong a will would have been swallowed by the darkness in no time.
At the same time, it was that boy’s presence that kept the tension in that house below a certain level.
In that way, Satori really was a hero to Amatsu Yurina. His skill with a sword or shield was irrelevant. This was at a more fundamental level. Even when removing the bias for one’s own child, he was necessary to maintain order in the ultimate closed environment of Absolute Noah. Just like a dehumidifying agent in a dresser, he could protect everyone from a torrent of musty malice. And he would not discriminate between human and Archenemy.
Erika the Vampire and Ayumi the Zombie had showed up for the night meeting. It took place in the dining room with the lights out.
The sisters looked displeased, most likely because they did not support the Absolute Noah plan. And so they did not like that Satori had been made a cornerstone of the plan against his wishes.
“Fuguu. We still haven’t agreed to go along with this, mom.”
“Besides, we don’t know what this Calamity thing even is. We’re Archenemies and we’re the undead who overcame Levels 1 through 4 of the Bright Cross’s cruel disposal methods. I don’t know if it’s a war or a disaster, but isn’t it a little too soon to give up?”
When her two daughters frowned, Amatsu Yurina sighed while wearing a blouse so thin her black bra showed through and jeans so tight the shape of her butt showed through. She was Archenemy Lilith. She had likely made countless other suggestions before arriving at Absolute Noah. And none of them had worked, so she had ended up at this one.
“…Have you seen the online news about mass honey bee deaths in America?”
“Fuguu?”
“How about the many seals washing up on beaches in the UK or the roads covered in dead crabs in Australia?”
“That’s probably caused by mold, parasites, or bacteria. They all have different cause, so drawing any connection between them is nonsense. And none of them sound like they would infect humans anyway.”
“Yes. And the details don’t actually matter.” Amatsu Yurina readily rejected what she herself had said. “The problem, Erika, is that everything living in this world has what you could call an ‘extreme natural enemy’ that will wipe out the entire species if they simply run across it. Because the key and keyhole differ between species, the causes of death won’t all be the same. And they won’t run across it often. But if the key just happens to fit in the keyhole like a randomly-entered password just so happening to work, then it’s all over. The odds are so low you can almost feel the guiding hand of god there, but once it cleanly fits inside, not even the advanced civilization of humanity will be an exception. Just like that, the entire species will go extinct.”
“…”
“God created this world. Including all living things within it. …Does that mean god also made sure he had individual switches to destroy each of those species? For when Sodom and Gomorrah were filled with wicked deeds or when Shemhazai and Azazel descended to the earth, slept with human girls, and produced countless demons. That way he can blow away the earth’s civilization as easily as hitting the reset button.”
Something was approaching.
When the earth was filled with evil deeds, a switch was automatically pressed and human civilization would collapse. And unlike seabirds or honey bees, there was no measuring the effect the annihilation of humans would have. Even without all-out war, the planet’s land and seas were covered with nuclear aircraft carriers and pharmaceutical factories full of dangerous chemicals. …She hated to admit it, but the evil deeds that would pull the trigger were probably the Archenemies. Each time the human race supported them, the hands of the clock ticked forward. And Satori’s destruction of the Bright Cross might have driven it to the point of no return.
Of course.
That was only if you thought of the absolute being known as god as something with a physical presence and accepted that he truly existed in this world. Archenemies could ignore the laws of physics in some ways, but they did not unconditionally accept all of the occult. They would believe what they had seen for themselves, but that was not necessary limited to science and physics. That was the only difference between them and normal people.
“What is…?” Erika gulped. “What is going to happen to Satori-kun and the other humans?”
Amatsu Yurina shrugged.
“If we knew that in advance, this would be a lot easier.” And she said, “We will only know what it is when that ruin has already swallowed us whole.”
Back to Chapter 6
