"But how did Boogiepop become a rumor? He's supposed to be a mysterious figure, his identity a secret. Who started all the legends about him?" I asked Kirima the next day after class.
"Probably Miyashita Touka herself," Kirima answered. We were alone in the room. Everyone else had already left.
"Eh? What do you mean?"
"Miyashita Touka is unaware that she has an alter-ego known as Boogiepop inside of her. But she knows it unconsciously. You know, like how you talk about yourself, but say it's a friend of yours? Same principle, she just told other people about her other self."
"That's it?"
"You should probably ask Suema about it. Well, not specifically, but she can explain it way better than I can."
"Hmm... I don't really get it."
"I don't know much about that bastard myself," she sighed. "Did everyone make a fuss when Yurihara didn't show?"
"The teacher asked if any of us knew anything, but nobody answered. It' s too soon for anyone to realize she's actually missing, so not much is going on yet. But for a straight 'A' student like her, skipping' s enough to get the gossip going."
"Huh..."
I'd called Yurihara-san's house the day before, but the answering machine lead me to believe that both her parents were all on business trips. Nobody knew she hadn't come home. It
looked as though the Manticore had deliberately chosen to make her move while they were out of town.
But all hell would break loose in a day or two. Yurihara would cause a lot more problems for the school than any of the other girls had.
Saotome Masami be buried under her shadow. His parents probably already knew he hadn't come home, but he was a boy, so they were unlikely to worry all that much if he was out all night.
"When was the real Yurihara... When was she replaced?"
"Not sure. But a pretty long time ago. She always had been missing. It was just that up until now, we simply hadn't noticed she was gone."
"I guess that's true..."
We both hung our heads.
It was a strange feeling.
We couldn't tell anyone the truth. If we did, it would just make things worse for all of us. And even then, if word about Echoes got out to the institution that made the Manticore, it would just be asking for trouble.
"So, all it ultimately amounts to is nothing?"
''It's better that way."
"Yeah..."
We stood up.
Most of the other students had gone home, and the sports teams and clubs were all in full session. There was nobody roaming the halls or stopped at the shoe lockers.
We headed for the gates, and the girl on gate duty was very happy to see me.
"Ah! President! Thank god you're here! Could you take over for me for a minute? I really gotta pee!"
I smiled and nodded, and she bolted off into the school.
"Everyone likes you," Kirima grinned.
"Or likes using me," I grimaced. I remembered all the times that Kamikishiro Naoko had talked me into fudging the numbers to make her on time. Which is how We got to be friends in the first place.
"Kamikishiro-san is really...?" I said softly, suddenly horribly sad.
"Yeah... I think so," Kirima whispered sorrowfully.
When Tanaka-kun had left us the day before, he'd said, "I don't know how to say this, but I feel like I should thank you all for Kamikishiro-san. Thank you."
He was almost crying.
"Tanaka-kun, what did you really think of Kamikishiro-san?" I'd asked.
He looked at me sadly. "Truthfully, if we had found her, I would've told her that I wanted to break up. But now... I'm not so sure."
"Hmmm..." was all I said.
I couldn't figure out what I should say to her other lover, Kimura Akio. We would probably never speak to each other.
If someday someone were to tell him, that would be But we all had to return to our daily routine, just exactly as things had been before.
"Kamikishiro said something strange once," Kirima said, looking up at the sky.
"She said Echoes was an angel. That the lord of the heavens had ordered him to investigate, and make the final decision on whether mankind should be allowed to live, or if it should be destroyed. He came here to find out if humans were a benevolent existence, or a malevolent one. If we were the latter, he would end our history."
I was taken aback. "An angel?"
"I mean, I'm pretty sure she was reading a lot into this. She had a tendency to blow everything out of proportion. My guess is Echoes and Manticore were both failed experiments in biotechnology. But if she was right..."
"..."
"We're still here. Looks like we're off the hook this time," she smiled sadly.
She had to say that. She couldn't let her friend's death be in vain.
But I couldn't smile.
Nagi hadn't seen the end of Echoes.
But I had. Clearly.
That light had made it as if Saotome Masami had never existed in the first place. It had turned the nearly immortal Manticore into a burnt crisp.
That was no biotechnological experiment.
It had beamed itself into space, but if something like that were fired at the earth over and over again.
"Then the one who really saved the world..."
"Wasn't me, wasn't Boogiepop. . .ultimately, it was that lonely little love-struck girl who was nice to Echoes. And we can't even thank her for it now," Kirima1 sounded almost irritated.
"......"
I had no answer for her. I just stared silently at the sky.
It seemed so far away.
◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆◆
As Kirima and I stood there staring absently into the clear blue sky, a boy and a girl came walking together towards us.
When I saw them, I couldn't stop myself from exclaiming, "Ah!"
One of them was Miyashita Touka. The other one was a third year student with a promising career in design that I had fallen
for and had my heart broken by, Takeda Keiji-senpai.
He looked a little nervous when he saw me, so I spoke to him first, to show him that he needn't worry about it. "Oh, senpai," I said as cheerfully as I could manage.
"Hey," he said vaguely.
Suddenly, Kirima was standing in front of Miyashita-san.
"Hmm. So you're Miyashita Touka," she said. It seemed that this was her first time meeting this side of her.
"Y-yes..." Miyashita-san said, nodding, in a cute little voice as far removed from Boogiepop's boyish tones as possible.
"I'm Kirima. Nice to meet you," Kirima said, and held out her hand.
To an outsider, it must have looked like the school delinquent was out to get her.
"Hey!" Takeda-senpai said, stepping up to protect her.
But Miyashita-san shook her head. "You too," she said, shaking Kirima's hand. Perhaps she understood this unconsciously as well.
"See ya," Kirima said, giving her a wry grin.
The two of them went through the gates, and I let out a big sigh, and stared up at the sky again.
I wasn't able to look Miyashita-san in the eye. I tried to smile at her, but I just couldn't.
There are too many things that just aren't clear.
It should be simple to smile at someone, but sometimes that's a terribly difficult and painful thing to do.
"It's so hard to smile..."
"Hm? What do you mean?"
I shook my head. "Never mind. It was nothing."
Nagi looked at me dubiously, but eventually, she looked back up at the sky, and began to whistle. It was a song I knew. I sang along, softly.
"Life is brief young maiden, fall in love;
before the crimson bloom fades from your lips,
before the tides of passion cool within your hips,
for those of you who know no tomorrow."
The autumn sky was so bright that it made my eyes water.
'It'll be winter soon,' I thought.