A week after that moment, Miyaji was training her students to high jump in the schoolyard of Mabase Elementary. It was a PE lesson of course. Since the day before, the students had been fired up as they'd tried to clear the bar at a height higher than they'd been able to jump before. Ninamori, Masashi, and Gaku were there in their gym clothes; Naota, however, was not present.
Since the day Haruko had returned, Naota hadn't come to school once.
"I wonder when he's coming back," Ninamori said.
"It's bad, huh?" Masashi sighed.
"What's bad?"
"It's bad. I heard Miyaji is going over to his house tomorrow. But he's not there, either."
"He ran away?"
"Could he—" Gaku chipped in, "Could he have eloped with that touch-feely older girl?"
"It's bad."
"But…" But, Ninamori thought, if he had the courage to do something like eloping, then he's probably fine. The troubles that Naota had in his heart were something that, in the end, only Naota could understand. But she thought she could guess at what those troubles felt like—being trapped in a labyrinth with no exit, wandering aimlessly with no hope of rescue. Ninamori had passed through that labyrinth herself, so she knew there was a way out. You simply had to cry. You merely had to examine what was weighing on your mind. You had to stop pretending to be a grown up.
Ninamori had cried to her parents. The day before the school play, she'd acted like a child—no, like a child should act. She'd stamped down her foot and then broken down into tears, telling them how she felt.
Naota would be okay if he cried to someone, too, Ninamori thought. Even if he didn't come to school. Not coming to school wasn't a big problem.
Naota was with Haruko. Ever since she'd returned, he'd been skipping school and hanging out with her. For entertainment expenses, they'd simply been getting by with Naota's meager allowance—or with Haruko's bold personality (she didn't hesitate to run out of a restaurant without paying).
Naota had never imagined this feeling of freedom he now possessed. None of his summer vacations could match the pleasure of the past few days. It truly was a special season.
They had been in all-night cinemas. They had made big wins at the horse races; then, they'd lost it all on the next race, but they'd laughed happily about that, too. They had spent a day at a hotel pool. And at night, they'd stretched out their legs at a baseball stadium and watched a real professional ballgame. And although Naota was just a school kid, he had been to some shady places that it wouldn't be fit to mention in a publication like this, and had some very daring experiences there.
But it didn't matter what dangerous places they went; because he was with Haruko, he felt safe. It was the same as the thrill he'd felt when he'd snuck out with his brother one night to watch a fire.
There was even a day when they'd had to evade the pursuing police after violating the speed limit with two people riding the Vespa. That day, in fact, two patrol cars and a police motorcycle had smashed into the barrier and crashed. As usual, though, Haruko, hadn't concerned herself with such small matters.
Today, they were standing on top of a tall hill in front of a convenience store, eating cup ramen.
Mabase was enveloped with smoke as usual. Due to the smoke, the sun looked like a lazy giant red king in the west.
Haruko took a bite of her ramen and made a disgusted face.
"Yuck."
"I told you so," Naota said, satisfied. "The regular stuff is always safer than the new stuff."
At the convenience store, Naota had chosen a brand he'd eaten frequently, but Haruko had made straight for the new stock lined up in the shop. Naota had predicted that it would probably be disgusting, and it seemed he'd been right.
Haruko pouted over her bad luck in choosing it, and then she screamed, "Change!" and forcibly exchanged hers for Naota's.
What a selfish girl, Naota thought. That kind of selfishness was below that of a child.
"When you act selfish all the time, bad things are bound to happen, you know."
"Oh, well," Haruko replied. "If bad things happen, I'll deal with them. It's like eating bad ramen; it's part of the richness of life." She started slurping on the delicious stolen ramen.
"Well then, you should eat your own ramen," Naota complained.
They had been hanging out together for the past week, and Naota had been reminded how selfish a girl Haruko was. That girl only thought about what was good for her, and she didn't even try to hide it. It almost seemed like she was proud of this part of her character even.
And every time Naota saw the selfish parts of her personality, for some reason, it made him smile.
"This mist is so obnoxious." Haruko continued eating the ramen as she gazed at the city beyond the MM factory on the hill, completely vexed. The factory was hazy from the smoke it itself produced.
Naota knew that Haruko had been at war with MM this whole time. "Why do you hate MM so much? Is it your job?"
"They have something I want," Haruko said with a broad smile. "They took something, and I want it back."
The thing that she really wants must be that man Amarao spoke about, Atomsk. Naota didn't ask any further questions; even if he had, he probably wouldn't have gotten straight answers. That was Haruko's way; she was rather crude, yet she rarely spoke directly about why she was really there.
Anyway, there was something more important that Naota wanted to take this chance to ask her. "Why did you really come back?"
What's the real reason you came back to me?
Haruko replied, "I need you, Takkun."
What a terrible lie! Naota knew that Haruko didn't really need him at all. He knew it well. As he chewed another mouthful of the ramen he had shoveled into his mouth, Naota scowled; it really was disgusting. But then, he smiled again—because he was with her.
In contrast to that pleasant scene, below the fog of the city of Mabase, an unknown threat was growing.
In the night-cloaked back alleys, Mamimi and her new pet were hiding. The robotic Takkun had been growing, and it was now the size of a dog. Mamimi had been looking after it ever since she'd found it by the river, giving it cell phones as food.
After it had eaten her own cell phone, she'd gotten it into her head that it only ate cell phones. And nowadays, there were more than a few shops near the station that would hand over a cell phone if you were to leave a name and address, so Mamimi had collected as many phones as she possibly could, giving them all to Takkun.
Takkun had eaten them up—and with his ridiculous appetite, after he'd eaten them all up, he'd wanted even more. It was quite a lot of work for Mamimi.
But soon, it had become clear that her new pet could eat things other than cell phones, as well. He had a number of things he liked, but they were mostly metal or electronic things. And as soon as he ate something, he would increase in size by roughly the same amount.
Now, robotic Takkun had become Mamimi's holy beast, complete with a collar attached to it. She called it a "holy beast" because that name came from the Endsville game.
It was a new unknown menace that was being cared for.
Two days earlier, the fire incidents had started up again, burning homes of students at Mabase Shinda High School—to be more precise, burning homes of students who had bullied Mamimi.