The girl lay on her back, staring lazily at the ceiling. She didn't remember when she had started — at some point, she just realized she was there. She must have still been half asleep. She sat for a while thinking that, but no matter how much time passed, the fog over her memory didn't lift.
Finally, she decided to sit up. When she did, she realized she was sitting in a coffin. It was an ornate thing, the inner lining made of a rich satin. Compared to her body, the coffin was rather large.
"I look like a vampire," she said, surprising herself with her own voice. It was much higher and much younger than she remembered. As she went to feel her own body, she realized she was holding something in her hand. Within her hand was a round stone, but as expected, she had no idea why she was holding it.She ran her hands all over her face and body. It was hard to call anything about her mature. She was also wearing a pink summer dress lined with frills. It appeared she was a child.
As she came to this conclusion, the room gradually became lighter. It was filled with cute-looking furniture and overflowing with stuffed animals that spoke of the tastes of a young girl. The only thing that looked out of place was the coffin. Once the room had become sufficiently bright, a woman in a red dress suddenly appeared.
"The fact that you are seeing this recording means my plan has succeeded. I have died, and you have survived."
The girl was relieved that someone had appeared. She was just thinking she might be in trouble if left alone.
"Allow me to explain your true identity. You are me."
The girl cocked her head. She didn't really understand. As if seeing her confusion, the image of the woman continued to explain.
"My name is Lain. I am called a Sage by the people of this world."
The words "Sage" and "this world" were familiar enough to the girl. She just didn't understand anything about herself.
"And you are a duplicate that I created of myself. In order to provide you with maximum independence, all memories relating to my personality have been removed."For being a duplicate, never mind her memories...even her body was completely different.
"Your body was prepared as such in order to facilitate your development as an individual. My apologies to you, but I let my own tastes run rampant. That was the form I once wished I could have had. While I was always described as cool and dignified, I was never called 'cute.' Instead, I was told that I had a hostile expression, or that I looked like someone who would become a murderer."
She wondered how the woman had responded to being told such things, but she could worry about that later. There was a chance this recording wouldn't play again. She had to make sure she heard everything the first time.
"The reason I have chosen such a strange, roundabout method is to avoid Yogiri Takatou's attack."
Yogiri Takatou. The moment she heard that name, her heart began to race. She knew all about him, and about his power, so she immediately understood why Lain had done what she had.
"Next, allow me to explain where you are right now. This is a hidden refuge on the surface. This room and coffin belonged to me, but from now on, they are yours. You should have plenty of funds, so live however you see fit. The two of us are entirely separate existences, so I cannot compel you to do anything."
Even being told that, the girl was still at a complete loss as to what to do. As someone artificially created, she had no proper memories at all. Even if told to live however she wanted, there was no sense of where to actually begin.
"Now that you've hopefully understood this much, I have a request to make."
It wasn't an order, no doubt in order to preserve the independence of her substitute. She was afraid of Yogiri's power reaching through to her.
Lain made her request.
"That's not fair," the girl thought out loud. Having just woken up with no memories, she had no reason for living, nor any basis on which to judge right and wrong. Given a request in that state, there was nothing for her to do but carry it out.
"Well, putting aside the request, I'll be going to meet this Yogiri."
She had a deep affection for Yogiri Takatou. No doubt that was also part of the original Lain's strategy for avoiding his power. But for the girl who understood nothing about herself, those feelings were still precious.
Or maybe that was all part of Lain's calculations, too. Either way, she didn't mind. Her feelings for Yogiri were the only thing shining within her.
◇ ◇ ◇
The blade entered through the shoulder, exiting through the flank, cutting the human-shaped monster diagonally in half. Blood and guts sprayed as the creature collapsed, its life coming to a swift end. In short order, its Soul began to diffuse, most of it absorbed by the long-haired Ryouko Ninomiya who had cut the beast down. The leftovers were split among her remaining party members, but that only amounted to scraps.
"You're so strong, Ryouko. You must have more experience points than anyone else by now." The one who spoke was Asuha Kouriyama, the Beauty Coordinator.They were in the middle of the forest. Yogiri's classmates were fighting to gain experience on their way to the capital. The girls here had joined as a party of four in order to level up with a simple strategy. They used the Charm Up skill on the party's strongest member, Ryouko. The aroused monsters would then rush her over and over, allowing her to cut them down as they approached. Thanks to that, the other three were able to level up in relative safety.
Of course, the amount of experience — or Soul — that each of them gained was proportional to their distance from the slain monster. Ryouko, being alone on the front lines, had risen head and shoulders above the others.
"Let's call it a day here. Charm Up is probably going to end soon, right?" Ryouko flicked the blade, handily removing the lingering blood. It wasn't just an ordinary sword. While Ryouko's overwhelming strength was in part due to her skill, the abilities of her weapon also played a major role.
"Yeah, if we keep going any longer, it'll be dark before we get back. Is that okay with everyone?" Asuha asked their other two companions.
Since the ones who weren't fighting could hardly disagree, they returned to the camp. Numerous tents had been set up in a clearing in the forest. Most of their classmates were gathered here. Having made it back to camp, they broke up the party and Ryouko made her way back to her own tent.
"Hello, Ryouko!"
She had a visitor. But this was a tent reserved specifically for her — one of those given to the high-level members of the class. Entering uninvited was against the rules.
"Could you not go inside my tent without permission?"
With her blonde hair and blue eyes, the girl inside was clearly not Japanese. Carol S. Lane. As her name and appearance suggested, she was a foreigner. Coming to Japan just in time to enter high school, she had been in Ryouko's class for two years in a row. As Ryouko looked at the smartphone she was playing with in her hands, she realized it was the phone she had lost earlier.
"Oh, sorry. Thank you for finding it for me." Ryouko immediately calmed down. She wasn't happy about Carol breaking into the tent, but coming to return the phone was probably an act of kindness. Even so, her current behavior was making Ryouko's gratitude wear thin.
"You no worry!"
"Can you not talk like that, please? It's making me angry."
"Really? All right, I'll stop." Carol slipped into fluent Japanese. Her trademark gag was to pretend she was awful at speaking it.
"Where did you find it?"
"Well, I didn't really find it. I was holding on to it the whole time. Here you go." With a smile, she handed the phone to Ryouko, who was speechless at the shameless admission of guilt. "The battery was getting low, so I decided to give it back."
Looking at the phone, she saw that the battery was below five percent. "Why on earth did you steal it?" She didn't understand Carol's motives. A smartphone was more or less useless in this world, so there was nothing to be gained from stealing it."I was interested in your observation tool, so I tried to brute force my way into it. Anyway, it didn't work, and the battery was just going to die, so I decided to give it back. Hey, could you actually show me how it works?"
The observation tool was a specialized app installed on her phone. There were very few people who knew about it.
"Who are you?!"
"I'm a ninja. The same as you."
Ryouko's heart leaped into her throat. The class given to her when she'd been summoned to this world was Samurai. Those who knew she was a ninja back home were vanishingly few.
"Me, American Ninja!" Carol returned to her poor, broken Japanese, but Ryouko was no longer in a state of mind to be upset by that.
It couldn't be a joke. Foreign powers were observing Yogiri Takatou — that was reasonable enough. Anyone who knew about him wouldn't be able to take their eyes off him for a moment.
"Well, it doesn't matter. It has nothing to do with me anymore," Ryouko said after a long pause. "I was surprised at first, but really, who cares about stuff from our old world?"
Those were her true feelings. If she could never return to Japan, her mission to observe Yogiri was pointless. What was most important was that she and her classmates survived.
"Yeah, I understand how you feel. So, can you show me how it works? There's no reason to keep it a secret, right?""If you're here to observe him too, you should already have something like that, shouldn't you?"
"We had a dedicated satellite so we could watch him at all times, but that doesn't really help us here, does it? But Japan already has a connection to Takatou, and your occult-related technology is more advanced than ours, yeah?"
Ryouko unlocked her phone. If Carol wanted to see it that badly, she didn't care enough to stop her. Opening the observation tool, she put in her personal passcode. When she did, Yogiri's current status appeared on the screen. She couldn't track his location without GPS, but it could still give her a rough estimate of which direction he was in and how far away he was. According to the tool, he was somewhere off towards the capital. In other words, he was moving faster than the rest of them.
"So he's alive after all."
"But Yogiri's power was supposed to be sealed...huh, no way...the first gate opened somehow..." Ryouko felt a chill run down her back. She had never seen the threat he posed personally, but she had heard all about the kinds of tragedies his power could cause.
"It's not really that strange, is it? He sealed it himself, so it would be easy enough for him to release it. All right, thanks." As if to say that was all she wanted, Carol made to leave the tent.
"Carol, what are you planning?" Ryouko called after her.
"Nothing in particular at the moment. At this rate, we'll meet up with him again anyway, right?"
"Aren't you scared?"
In Japan, they had been excruciatingly cautious, but back then death had seemed like a distant nightmare. With the seal released, however, it was now a reality that was creeping ever closer.
"Scared? Oh, maybe you're thinking about this in a different way than I am. Do you guys look at him as a monster or something?"
"Isn't he?" Just by thinking it, he could kill people. That was a true monster by any definition. Even when his power had been sealed, they couldn't rest easy. Just being in Japan had felt like lying on a bed of nails to her.
"I guess. But I think it's simpler than that. He's a being that rules over the deaths of all living things. What would you call that?"
"No way..." An answer so simple, and yet still astounding immediately came to mind.
"For those of us who have proof it really exists, there's nothing we can do but shed the faith we've had until now. That's just how it is."
With those words, Carol left the tent. Her new faith was something that had remained unshaken even after being sent to another world. Ryouko, who was just riding the current of her new situation, was a little envious of that unwavering belief.