Amarao stared at the screen and muttered, "I knew it—Mabase."
"Classification: half-active pulse wave. Something is guiding the satellite's descent directly into Mabase."
After hearing the report, Commander Amarao narrowed his startling thick eyebrows.
Chapter 3
After that horrific night, things continued to worsen.
The next morning, Naota couldn't stand seeing Kamon's and Haruko's faces, so he left the house straightaway.
It was the day of the second game between the Martians and the Fragments, but Naota didn't have any desire to go, so he slowly walked toward the bank near Mabase Bridge, where he bumped into Mamimi. She was the same as always—a high school girl without anything to do.
They started "playing" in the morning.
White steam poured from the MM factory on the hill and slowly spread across the sky, robbing the world of its color.
Day after day; I'm always in the same place, always looking at the same scene, and repeating the same things over and over again, Naota reflected. Will I be able to go somewhere else someday?
Mamimi drew on Naota's back with her finger. It was the beginning of an innocent game where he had to guess what she'd written. The first thing she drew was a character for "ta," probably for the first character of Tasuku's name.
Someday, somewhere, just like my brother… Naota started to say to himself.
All of a sudden, the sound of an approaching motorbike engine interrupted their game.
"Oh, it's Haru!" Mamimi exclaimed happily.
Naota had left the house so he wouldn't have to see Haruko, but she'd seen the two of them and stopped nearby. She was wearing her uniform and appeared to be on her way to the baseball field.
"The game's started already! Are you doing unwholesome things again?" Haruko asked.
At that very moment, Mamimi was hugging Naota from behind. Indeed, for a young boy to be doing what Naota had been doing was pretty unwholesome, but Naota didn't want to hear that from the likes of Haruko.
Naota's head bandage was tied tighter than it had been the day before, to keep the horn pushed in.
What exactly were you up to last night? Naota felt like swearing at Haruko. He didn't want Mamimi to hear him sound that jealous, though, so he swallowed his words.
Not knowing what Naota was thinking, Haruko said, "Hey, c'mon, let's go take a swing."
"Takkun's in the game?" Mamimi asked, surprised. "But Takkun isn't the kind of person who would actually swing the bat."
Mamimi's casual remark troubled Naota even more. Not "the kind of person who would actually swing the bat"?
Did Mamimi think of Naota the same way Haruko did?
"You can ride with me to the field," Haruko offered.
With his lips still pursed, Naota declined the offer. "No thanks, I don't play baseball."
"It's Canti's first game."
Hearing that, Mamimi's eyes lit up, and she jumped excitedly. "Lord Canti?"
"It's worth it just to see him field," Haruko promised.
"I want to go see!" Mamimi pleaded.
"You know, your home runs yesterday weren't anything special." Naota's words, which were nothing more than those of a sore loser, were already lost on the girls.
"I'm coming, Haru!" Mamimi exclaimed.
"Okay!"
With the elated Mamimi clinging to Haruko's back, the Vespa sped off.
Left alone, Naota shouted, "I'll never let you be my coach again!" bitterly to no one, and then he went home, clenching the bat in his hand.
Until that point, he never would've been able to imagine he could kill his own father.
The house Naota returned to was eerily quiet. Shigekuni and Haruko were at the game, and Kamon wasn't in the shop.
As Naota thought how the bakery might as well shut down, he heard a noise from the back of the house. It was their pet cat, Miyu Miyu, in the corridor.
Miyu Miyu glared into the living room with a strange shimmer in her eyes. Lore said cats could see mysterious things humans couldn't, and it seemed as though their cat had spied something unusual, given that it looked like it was glaring at a monster in the living room.
Naota shared the cat's suspicion and definitely sensed there was someone in his living room. Instinctively squeezing the bat tighter, he peered into the room and saw Kamon sitting alone. At least, Naota thought it was his father. The person looked a little different than his father usually looked. The man wasn't wearing a shirt and was disheveled, leaning against the wall with his mouth open. There was a sense of indecency about him.
Naota thought back to the night before, when he'd felt sickened that Haruko had been in Kamon's room.
"Oh." Noticing Naota, Kamon quickly tried to hide his exposed stomach. He then peered into Naota's face and shot a satisfied smile as if he were gloating about something. "Oh, Haruko, I asked you not to leave any marks. If Naota sees them, there's going to be trouble."
Naota glanced at Kamon's abdomen. It was obvious that what he was trying to hide were love bites. Naota could feel his face stiffening up and his disquiet quickly turned to rage.
To provoke his son further, Kamon said, "You see, your father and Haruko have that kind of relationship."
"That kind of relationship?" Naota felt an unspeakable bitterness toward such a blatant display of self-satisfaction and felt completely betrayed. His mind replayed the words Haruko had said to him about seeing him first. Damn it! Despite the fact that she said that…
Kamon leaned against the wall, trying to stand up straight. "You must be hungry. We have your favorite—genetically modified bean curd—Naotaaa."
Having addressed Naota with an odd intonation, Kamon made Naota feel as though he were being made a fool of even more. Then, Kamon inexplicably repeated Naota's name over and over again like a broken record. "Naotaaa, Naotaaa, Naotaaa…"
Naota screamed at his father to shut up, gripping the metal bat in his hand.
That was when the switch flipped on.
Naota suddenly whacked the television in front of him with the bat, causing the cracking of Braun tube and the shattering of plastic.
Although Naota had only hit the television, his father made a sickening "ugh" sound, like one a chicken makes when its neck is broken.
When Naota glanced over, he saw that Kamon's neck was bent at an unusual angle and that Kamon had collapsed on the floor in front of him. Actually, the brass clock that'd been on top of the television had flown up with the force of the whack and landed directly atop Kamon's head.
Naota sucked in his breath and took a step back.
An hour after the crime, Naota was in the interrogation room at the Mabase Police Station. As he waited alone in the sparse room, he stared through the barred glass window and could see the midday sun shining brightly outside.
"Shock! Sixth Grade Elementary Schooler Snaps, Beats Father with Bat!" That would be the next day's newspaper headlines.
"No, no—he was such an ordinary, mature, good kid. You never would've thought it of Naota…" That's what Naota's homeroom teacher Miyaji and other people would say on chat shows.
I killed my father, and now I'm in an interrogation room facing homicide charges. It's still light out. Hey, what time did I get up today?
Naota was finding it difficult to breathe, not due to lack of air in the room, but because he was thinking of the wide-eyed, fallen Kamon, and was having flashbacks of his father's fallen corpse.