In any case, to capture all these moments on film, a photographer would have to be dedicated. Recently, Mamimi had been skipping school so she could follow the robot.
Naota didn't really like this development. Maybe it was because she now paid more attention to the robot than to him. Damn, is this jealousy?
"You're so lucky, Takkun," Mamimi said. "He doesn't come over to my place."
"You're not allowed pets in your apartment, are you?" Naota asked coldly.
Naota had hidden the fact that the robot had come out of his own head. Keeping the details vague as to how his family had come to have a robot, he explained that it was an automated helper in the Nandaba household.
"Yo, Sameji," greeted Haruko, coming out onto the veranda. She was wearing a sloppy shirt. Haruko had begun calling Mamimi "Sameji," due to her last name, "Samejima."
Mamimi smiled. "Hey, Haru! Good evening!"
Mamimi seemed to admire Haruko an awful lot, something that had surprised Naota. After all, Mamimi had seen Haruko run over him when they'd all met. Despite this, Mamimi respected the young woman, who utterly lacked any common sense. At the end of the day, maybe Mamimi had bad taste. If that were true, then what did that say about Naota, who liked her?
Standing on the porch, Haruko looked up at the night sky and said, "Hey, it came back."
Zigzagging across the sky was an illuminated object. It was the robot.
"It's doing that again?" Naota complained. "Can't it do that somewhere no one will see it?"
"It's so cool," said Mamimi.
Its monitor shining like a headlight, the robot slowly descended straight into the Nandaba household garden.
"Turn off your lights," Naota grumbled.
"Lord Canti!" Mamimi started a thankful prayer to the robot, which was still in the garden.
"Canti?" asked Naota.
"The God of the Black Flame, Lord Cantido."
"Always with that computer game. You can't give it a name yourself?"
"Canti, you're late. You got the stuff?" asked Haruko, deliberately using the name Mamimi had given it. She extended her hand toward the robot.
'Lord Canti' handed over a convenience store shopping bag.
Taking out her evening meal of spicy curry bread and a canned drink, Haruko addressed Lord Canti, "I didn't ask for this! I said the juice with pulp in it! You're so useless!"
"Haru, you shouldn't say that," Mamimi cautioned, unable to let it pass. "He's a god. He's going to turn Endsville to dust."
"Endsville?"
"It's from her game," Naota explained.
'Endsville' was another word she had picked up from Fire Starter. It was the name of the town where the game was set.
Sliding open the paper door, Shigekuni peeked out. As always, he regarded Mamimi with scorn. Shigekuni didn't think much of her. Every time he saw her, he made cruel or sarcastic comments.
In truth, Naota thought Shigekuni's behavior was another expression of jealousy. Shigekuni had been a baseball fan since he was little. Thus, he was very proud of Tasuku, who had inherited his passion for baseball and displayed a natural talent for the game. Because he felt Mamimi somehow would steal Tasuku away from him, he was downright nasty to her.
"Look at my clothes," the old man suddenly boasted. "Tasuku sent them from America."
It could have been an innocent boast, but it was also, likely not coincidentally, an attack on Mamimi, who hadn't heard from Tasuku. That fact alone should have irked Mamimi. However, she ignored the spiteful old man and pointed her camera at the robot, pressing the button to take another photo of Canti.
"Hey, what are you doing, taking pictures of other people's machines? Don't you dare take another picture of our machine. If you do, I'll call the police at once," Naota's grandfather said, pretty much echoing the MM guard. Then, he slammed the screen door shut.
Not fond of Mamimi's newfound obsession, Naota seized this opportunity to speak up, "You know, you really should stop following this robot around. You've been skipping so much school that you're going to get in trouble soon. If you get kicked out of school, there's no way my brother will like you."
Mamimi stood up silently. With a brief, sad expression, she looked at Naota. She started to say something, stopped, and walked out of the garden without a word. She left the photos she had brought over, which were still spread out on the balcony.
"Are you really going to let her go?" Haruko asked. "Why not?" Naota answered. "Nothing bothers her, anyway."
"I see," Haruko said, biting into her spicy curry roll. "Don't buy bread from the convenience store. This is a bakery, you know."
The robot, standing in the garden, watched Mamimi leave.
The next day, on their way home from school, Naota, Gaku, and Masashi went to look at charred ruins again. They'd heard rumors that there had been another fire last night, and that it probably had been arson.
"You can smell the smoke still, huh?" Masashi said.
The remains were surrounded by police tape; several police-related people sifted through the ashes inside.
It had been an abandoned house. Although Naota had seen the site fairly often, now that the ground no longer contained a building, it looked strangely small.
When they moved closer to the scene, one of the workers signaled not to come beyond the tape.
"This isn't merely arson," Gaku said meaningfully. "It's the work of a UFO."
"A UFO?"
"You haven't heard? Recently, a strange object's been sighted in the skies above Mabase. Its picture has been in the paper, too."
Gaku apparently had taken a particular interest in the fire incidents, which was fine—but Naota really wanted to avoid the UFO subject.
"These fire outbreaks," Gaku continued, "they're probably caused by that UFO."
Silently, Naota reflected, He might be right. The arsonist might not be Haruko, but Canti.
The reason Canti—as Mamimi had christened it—was here remained a complete mystery. The weird robot had come out of Naota's head; it would zigzag elusively across the night sky, lighting up its shining head. It certainly wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that the robot was responsible for the fires.
Naota recalled the night it had emerged; there had been another robot Canti had defeated. That one had been pretty violent. It might be only a matter of time before Canti became like that. No one had died in the recent spate of fires, but who knew what might happen? He had to do something.
Carefully, Naota retied the bandana in such a way that his classmates wouldn't notice.
Anyway, why does all the bad stuff happen to me?
When he left the others at the ruins to go home, he took a different route than usual. Although normally he wouldn't cross the bridge, Naota walked toward the riverbank, thinking he might swing by the hangout.
Mamimi might be there—and if they were alone, maybe he wouldn't feel as irritated as he'd been last night. Maybe he could be nicer.
He reconsidered at once.
As if she'd be there! She's in love with Canti at the moment. That stupid high school girl is having a great time, unaware that I'm hiding a horn under this bandana. It would be stupid to put any faith in that carefree girl.
Still she might be at Mabase Bridge right now!
His irritation battled his desire to see Mamimi. If he saw her, he knew he'd get angry right away. He'd get angry, but he still wanted to see her. Unsure how he felt, he looked at the water flowing under the bridge.
Something brown floated there: Shoes. And two legs.
Looking closer, he saw several high school girls standing at the edge of the river. One girl was surrounded by the others. The girl who was surrounded sat in the flowing water, her skirt billowing in the river. The shoes that had washed away seemed to be hers.