5_Epilogue_ The Closing Move

EPILOGUE The Closing Move The_Page_is_Shut. Kamijou hadn’t sustained as much damage as he’d thought. His spotty memory started to force hazy blurbs together. He knew he had collapsed in the Church of Matrimony, and that Index had shouted and run over to him; he remembered being in an ambulance; he remembered there being a bunch of time with special response or documentation or something; he remembered being diverted and brought into Academy City instead. He had promptly passed out when the frog-faced doctor looked at him, and he had awakened from his sleep on a soft, fluffy bed. Same hospital as usual, huh? Ugh, damn it, I can tell just by how the room smells…, he thought, eyes closed and mind foggy, before suddenly realizing someone was nearby. A quiet breathing and slight rubbing of clothing reached his ears. He felt a warm, soft hand lightly stroking his bangs. “Tsuchimikado got a good laugh out of it…” He heard someone’s voice. “…but I still think this is fine.” Her tone sounded a little reluctant, as though parting with him. The hand stroking his bangs stopped without a noise and retreated from his head. The warmth of her palm faded. Kamijou managed to slowly open his profusely heavy eyelids. “Hm…Kanzaki?” “Oh, did I wake you? I was just about to get going.” Kanzaki pulled back just a little bit in surprise at hearing his voice. It seemed she’d been sitting in the pipe chair for visitors beside the bed until now, looking at him. He sat up in the bed and shook his head to shake off his sleepiness. It looked like it was dawn. The fluorescent lights in the dark hospital room were off, and the glow of the morning sky filtered in through his window like the sunlight through leaves. On the small table next to his bed was an expensive-looking box of candy and a note she must have planned on leaving for him. As Kamijou’s eyes drifted around, Kanzaki slowly stood up from the chair. She must not have been planning to stay long. “…Oh…” Kamijou hazily started getting his mind’s gears in motion. He looked at Kanzaki again—she was wearing her usual outfit, a short-sleeved T-shirt tied at her waist so you could see her navel and jeans with one leg cut off so you could see her thigh. Her shirt being tied like that accentuated her already large chest, and you could see dangerously far up her thigh, up to where it started—sexy as usual, he thought, but he knew he’d be punched in the face if he said it out loud. He turned his attention to something else, eyeing the note on the side table. “For now, you left a note…?” As soon as he said it, bwshh! Kanzaki’s hand shot out at a terrible speed and snatched away the small scrap of paper. It was an impossible new record by sports engineering principles. Her face turned bright red and her eyes wandered to and fro, and she started to sweat as she crushed the note up with extreme speed. “I-it was nothing much. Now that I have the chance to talk to you directly, leaving a note is unnecessary, right?” “? But—” “It is fine already. It would have been embarrassing the moment I saw you read it.” Kanzaki went to throw the balled-up note into the trash can, but then changed her mind and stuffed it into her pocket instead. She must really not want anyone to read that, he thought, baffled. She put a hand to her abundant chest, took a deep breath, and her expression returned to normal. “What of the condition of your body?” “Well…There’s still some of the anesthetic left in my system, so I can’t really tell where it hurts.” “I’m sorry. There are…less than scientific healing methods involving eating that Amakusa has, but it seems they don’t work very well on you.” “…What are you apologizing for? You can heal wounds by eating sushi and hamburgers and stuff? Wow, Amakusa is awesome—it’s just like healing items in RPGs.” “Huh…?” replied Kanzaki with an uncharacteristically vague and confused expression, not quite understanding his simile. “By the way, where did Stiyl get to?” “He has left the city already. He said something about not wanting to stay very long in a place he couldn’t buy cigarettes. He complained about the age verification here being too strict for him to get any, too.” It’s supposed to be like that everywhere, retorted Kamijou to himself. “Can’t he just get you to buy some for him?” “I am only eighteen as well, so I cannot buy cigarettes.” “Why do you look like you don’t believe me? Why are you pretending to clean out your ears?” “You’re lying! You can only fake your age so much with that body! You’ve got to be past marriageable age at this pooiiii-ee?!” Before he could finish, a light-speed punch from Kanzaki shot toward his face and stopped. He trembled—he couldn’t even prepare for that one. In a calm voice, she said, “I’m eighteen.” “Eighteen, yes! A high school girl, and yet adulthood is within reach! Miss Kanzaki” Kamijou desperately smiled, his teeth clattering loudly. Kanzaki gave a very tired sigh and pulled her fist back. “…I feel like perhaps I should have let you have the note. Our conversation won’t get to the important part at this rate.” “Important part?” “Yes, a debriefing, or what have you…I came to notify you of what became of Orsola Aquinas, but should I not have bothered?” “Tell me! Please” Kamijou replied instantly, leaning forward. Kanzaki relaxed her shoulders a bit at how willing he was to discuss the topic. “It’s been decided that both Orsola Aquinas and Amakusa’s main force have been incorporated into the English Puritan Church. This is largely to prevent any revenge or assassination attempts by the Roman Orthodox Church.” Kamijou recalled Agnes and the sisters under her command. “So then Orsola will still be in danger?” “No. Behind the scenes, they might make it look like they’re after her, but behind that it probably wouldn’t have much meaning to go after her. The English Puritans have announced to the world of magic that Orsola’s decryption method was false. They believe Orsola won’t have to worry about being pursued for the Book of the Law now that people know it was a mistranslation.” So if Orsola then really had broken the book’s code, everyone in the world would be after her now. Definitely a lucky break, thought Kamijou with a cold sweat. “Hm? Wait, Amakusa’s gonna be under the English Puritan Church’s umbrella now, right?” “Yes. However well hidden their base is, there’s nothing in it for them to directly oppose the Roman Orthodox Church. I swear—there’s evidence that deep down, they wanted this to happen. For example…do you remember the T-shirt Saiji Tatemiya was wearing? It was white, and there was a distorted red cross on it.” “…Was there? I guess you’re right, come to think of it.” “There was. The red cross is the symbol of Saint George—the symbol of English Puritanism. He was probably fighting while dressed in it to show his intention to come to me, the English Puritans, or something. I thought I’d given them strict orders not to follow me.” “I see…,” said Kamijou, impressed. “You’re part of English Puritanism, too.” Kanzaki said, “I swear,” again under her breath. He wondered if she realized her face looked like a mother looking at a child who couldn’t be without his parents. “But are you, like, personally okay with that? Amakusa’s pretty small, but they’re an independent group, right? It seems like they’re being merged into a big corporation.” “They may be affiliated now, but it’s not as though we told them to abandon their Bible and teachings. It is more akin to a group of samurai being employed to a feudal lord. The framework of Amakusa will still be around. And Amakusa has always been a denomination that changes form to most suitably match the time period and hide from history. They don’t need to worry about remaining in their current form, so as long as they can live in peace, it doesn’t matter what happens.” In spite of that, Kanzaki had, without any hesitation, let go of the tiny society she had reigned over as leader before, for the sake of those she had to protect. Getting a glimpse of that side of her made Kamijou think how cool grown-ups were. She seemed eighteen, but from his point of view, eighteen was enough to be an adult all your own. As he turned that over in his mind, Kanzaki lowered her head, her posture formal. It wasn’t a cute little bob of the head—she kept it down and said, “Umm, well, that is, I’m sorry for all this.” “Huh? Uh, about what? Why are you bowing? What are you sorry for?” Kamijou’s head wasn’t working quite right, since he’d just woken up—so the sight of a girl bowing to him like this was extremely scary. The feeling that he’d done something really bad overtook him. Then Kanzaki spoke. “Well, I mean, that i-is,” she stammered, unusual for her, “I caused you a lot of trouble for, well, personal reasons, and…” It seemed like she wasn’t used to saying these words at all. Kamijou, in his daze, plucked out of the situation only the core fact that she seemed to be troubled by something. “Wait, sorry, Kanzaki. Did I cause you some kind of trouble? I’ll apologize, so—” “N-no, that’s not it. If you were to apologize now, that would put me in a truly awkward situation. Umm, it isn’t that—so getting back to the topic, what I mean is…” Whatever it was, it must have been pretty hard for her to say. Kanzaki twirled a finger through her bangs, preventing her own words from coming out of her mouth. Then, the moment she seemed to make up her mind and say something, the door to the hospital room flew open with a bang—despite it being daybreak—and without a knock. It was a tall man with blue sunglasses and a Hawaiian shirt. Motoharu Tsuchimikado was swinging around a plastic bag with something that must have been a get-well present. “Hmm, hmm, hmm Kaaammyyy, I came to play! I couldn’t afford an entire melon, so you’ll have to make do with a premium pudding dessert from the convenience store with melon slices on top.” Kamijou looked over, away from Kanzaki and toward Tsuchimikado. “Yo. Isn’t school starting in a couple hours? Shouldn’t you be sleeping—Oh, sorry, Kanzaki. What were you trying to say?” Urk—she flinched at that. Then, giving a sidelong glance to Tsuchimikado, she emitted an aura implying she didn’t want to have to say it in front of him—why must he have come at this exact time? “Ohhh. What’s wrong, Zaky? Did I come right when you were finally gonna beg forgiveness from Kammy? I bet you’re gonna say somethin’ real clichéd, like, I’ll repay you for all the trouble I’ve caused or I’ll do anything you want, yeah? Pfft—dah-ha-ha-ha Hey—it’s the crane paying her debts with erotica!” “Th-that’s not it! Who would spout such nonsense to this ignorant child?!” “…This…ignorant…child…” Kamijou hung his head, almost hearing a gong ringing in the background, and Kanzaki twitched. “Uh, no, that isn’t what I wanted to…I only said that to make Tsuchimikado take back his rude words, but the part about repaying my debts was, well…” “But Zaky, you’re gonna end up stripping, right?” “I-I will not strip! And what do you mean end up?!” “Oh? Then you’re going for the whole wearing-whatever-clothes-he-wants-as-an-apology thing? You sure do know how to treat your patrons right.” “Would you be quiet for a moment?! You’re making this more and more and more annoying with all your messed-up interpretations” Kamijou absently watched them from afar as they reveled (from his point of view) in their yelling match, but suddenly the gears in his mind all clicked in a weird place. …Wear whatever clothes…as apology…? N-no, I can’t—Kanzaki looks like she’s being pretty serious and stuff, so I can’t fool around like that now, come on, you know what’ll happen if you make her dress in a swimsuit like the dumb one Index was wearing at the beach this summer, it only takes five seconds to realize what a crazy delusion that is, go away, go away “…You look like you’re overheating over there.” “No, it’s nothing, really! I mean really—if a man like me even brought something like that to the register, it would mean the end of my life as Touma Kamijou, so I wasn’t thinking about anything like that at all” “?” Kanzaki struggled to understand the ambiguity and tilted her head. Tsuchimikado, however, grinned. “Heh-heh-heh. Now, what is thy desire?! A full-on ear-cleaning from an older, motherly lady while resting your head on her lap?! Or a surprisingly cute little bento from an older sister–like figure?!” “Stooop! Our dumb conversations are one thing, but don’t go exposing all my weak spots in front of a girl like this” “Tsuchimikado. I do not understand the situation, but it appears that you are only stimulating an injured person in a negative way, so I’ll have to ask you to leave the room.” “A-and what are you gonna do when it’s just the two of you? Wait, could it be?!” Tsuchimikado’s eyes flashed. “Is this the scene where you gently feed him little apple slices cut to look like rabbits?! I’m sorry, I had no idea!” “No, it isn’t! Please don’t arbitrarily get on my nerves with your arbitrary interpretations!” “Wait, what, then you’re gonna do it mouth-to-mouth? You know, when you do that in real life it’s kinda gross.” “Please just shut up and get out of here” After she shouted so loudly he couldn’t even imagine what Saiji Tatemiya’s face (or anyone like him) would look like, Tsuchimikado grinned and jumped out of the hospital room. Suddenly the early morning silence covered the room again. As Kamijou watched Kanzaki’s shoulders moving up and down in heavy, angry breathing, he trembled and thought, Tsuchimikado, oh Tsuchimikado. I think you said all that stuff because you were trying to lighten the situation a little, but you left things a bit unfinished here! “E-excuse me, Kanzaki? A-are you quite all right?” “…What is it? Why are you speaking so formally?” “I-I’m sure you know this, but all that stuff about repaying your debts and borrowing and lending, that was all just Tsuchimikado’s dumb jokes, you know?” Kamijou had braced himself to be yelled at the same way Tsuchimikado had been, but surprisingly, Kanzaki answered in a stammering voice. “B-but I…What else would you have me do…? You’re a civilian, someone I should have been protecting from the beginning—but I caused you to suffer all these wounds. Even I understand that this is far past the realm of just bowing and saying sorry. So…” Her voice got weaker and weaker as her sentence got longer, as though her own words were sticking into her. Once again, she started playing with her bangs with a fingertip—maybe it was an unexpected nervous habit of hers. After that, she violently rubbed her temples like she was exhausted and breathed a heavy sigh. Kamijou thought her actions looked kind of like a writer crumpling up a failed work and throwing it in the garbage. Personally, he would have preferred the post-incident stuff not to drag out very long, and for her to just say, “Nice job out there, see ya! ” like Tsuchimikado might, then leave. But it didn’t look like Kanzaki’s morals would allow her to do that. There was no choice. Kamijou sighed. He switched mental gears over to something a little more serious. “Wait, so, was this the important part?” “Yes. I have this predisposition to cause trouble for others, but I’ve been causing you one issue after another after another, putting so much weight on your shoulders. Every time I’ve shrunk away from it. And this time, it wasn’t just me—I got you mixed up in our problems in Amakusa as a whole…” “Hmm. But is there really any need to worry about it? We settled our problems just fine—everyone’s safe. I don’t think any of us really got any more hurt than anyone else.” Kanzaki looked surprised. She blinked a few times, then said, “Our…?” “Huh? Yeah, mine and Amakusa’s. Oh, uh, I guess English Puritanism’s, too. And Orsola and Index and Stiyl, and you, too. That’s what I meant by our.” “…” Kaori Kanzaki listened to those words, flustered. It was like a difficult problem she could never have solved had been figured out right in front of her in the blink of an eye. “What’re you so surprised about? I’m an amateur, so England and Rome might have problems and stuff but I honestly don’t see them as much different. What I want to say is that the opinion of this dumb, ignorant child is that groups of people don’t matter.” In contrast, Kamijou continued to speak without thinking about it too hard—as if saying the problem was so easy it didn’t need much deep thought. “It’s not like I’m taking sides with Index’s church or anything. It just so happens that Index is part of English Puritanism, so I’m their ally for the moment.” He heard the pitter-patter of footsteps from down the hall. That’s probably Index, he thought absently, continuing—as though confirming whose side he should have taken. “If Agnes asked me for help sometime, I’d probably go help her. She just happened to be the bad guy this time, but there’s no rule saying she has to keep doing bad stuff,” he declared, smiling. Kanzaki made another surprised face, then smiled, a little worried. The reason he had for acting was so immensely simple that it almost sounded absurd. But because of that, Touma Kamijou would never stray from his path. Never. England didn’t have a rainy season or a dry season—instead, the weather changed from one thing to the other fairly easily all year round. In this city, it was common knowledge that the weather could shift in just four hours, so there were plenty of people walking around in broad daylight with fold-up umbrellas. For these reasons, a sudden shower was currently hitting the city of London after being clear not too long ago. Nevertheless, the people of the city didn’t consider rain a reason to stay indoors. The road was already narrow, but it was packed to the brim with a rainbow of umbrellas. As the rain, almost a faintly damp mist, came down, Stiyl Magnus and Laura Stuart walked along next to each other. His umbrella was black as a cockroach, while the one Laura held looked like a teacup, white with gold embroidery on it. “If we’re just going back to Lambeth Palace, we should have just called a taxi.” “Those who cannot take the rain cannot live in this conurbation,” said Laura, gleefully spinning her umbrella around. There was no doubt, however, that he was biased. Stiyl wasn’t currently enjoying this mist-like rain very much. He was getting wet despite having an umbrella, and it made his cigarette wet—it was nothing but bad things. He glanced at the tip of the cigarette, which he was finding difficult to keep lit, and sighed. At the moment, he was following Laura, who was on her way back to her residence, delivering his final report on a certain incident as they went. The great and powerful English Puritan archbishop was the freewheeling sort who went to the cathedral when she liked and went home when she liked. She didn’t seem to like staying in one place very much, so it was quite often the case that reports and war councils would be held during these walks. There was no helping that Stiyl thought it troublesome to set things up to prevent sudden attacks and monitoring. There was a little trick on their umbrellas even now, making the area around them function like a telephone booth. It caused the umbrellas’ fabric to shake and converted those vibrations into voices, while at the same time making it so that the voices didn’t leave the “frame” of the umbrellas. “That should give you a basic idea of the incident. They intend to settle by claiming this was an independent armed action conducted by Agnes Sanctis and two hundred fifty under her command. By making it something they did on their own, the Roman Orthodox Church seems to want to defend themselves by saying they never wanted to assassinate Orsola.” “If they cannot rein in their own subordinates, they cannot get away with nothing, however,” said Laura, giving a wry grin and fingering her hair. Her beautiful hair could be called majestic, and with the raindrops forming spider thread–like patterns, it evoked fascination. Stiyl gave a quick glance at her face next to him and said, “…Did you need to go that far?” “Mm-hee-hee. Does it concern you, Stiyl? That I have welcomed into the English Puritan Church the esteemed Orsola Aquinas and the fellows in the Amakusa-Style Crossist Church?” “We don’t need to protect her—now that they’re officially saying they had no intention of killing her, they can’t recklessly bring harm to her now. If a sudden, unnatural death were to befall her in this situation, I believe it would escalate into an international Church problem.” “Then they needst only accomplish a natural death, I suppose.” Laura gave a barbaric smirk like a pirate. The difference between her face and her expression gave Stiyl pause. “Come to think of it, you knew the Roman Orthodox’s true intention all along, didn’t you? Why didn’t you just order me to save Orsola Aquinas from the Roman Orthodox Church in the first place? What a pain.” “Not everything. I hadn’t surmised so far as Orsola having mistaken the decoding method. But,” she continued, “for me, either way would have been fine.” Stiyl looked at her. She twirled her pure white umbrella. “Just hypothetically, Stiyl. If we had blundered in our deliverance of Orsola, would the situation have changed? If she had been returned to Rome, she would have been put to death. Whether we succeeded or failed, either way, the Book of the Law would not have been decoded. “So it didn’t matter which came to pass,” she concluded. Whether Orsola lived or died was a small problem and didn’t concern her. Stiyl exhaled, unsatisfied, and said, “Then why did you give me a personal order to give Orsola a cross? You gave me more to carry out in an already urgent situation. You can say what you want, but you intended to save her right from the beginning, didn’t you?” “Urk.” “The complete lack of reinforcements bothers me, too. You probably had a big Necessarius force positioned on the shoreline of the Sea of Japan, which is why you couldn’t spare any personnel, right? You used the cross incident as an excuse and put them there to raid Agnes’s forces while they were taking Orsola to Rome. You really are embarrassing, you know that?” “Mmgh! Th-that is most certainly not factual! I interceded in this altercation purely for the English Puritan Church’s benefit” Laura spouted denials, looking like steam was going to come from her ears, but Stiyl didn’t bother to argue. The fact that she was the only one who was angry must have really gotten to her, because her face rapidly reddened. “So what are these benefits you’re referring to?” “…You’re so quick to turn me aside. I mean Kaori Kanzaki,” she moaned in a huff. “This incident served as a good example. Kanzaki has immense power, and because of her upstanding sense of justice, she could always take independent action. Despite naught having occurred this time, she was actually still in a fairly dangerous position. We needs must obtain a new set of shackles if we are to stop that from happening again.” The relaxation left Stiyl’s face. Laura’s expression, too, had suddenly become more mature. “We canst not stop her with force, yes? Well, we could if we put our minds to it, but we would definitively sustain much damage as well. You have perused the report telling what fate befell those Knight fools, yes?” Stiyl recalled the details of the report from the separate force. Twenty-one fully equipped knights had planned on their own to kill the members of Amakusa, but somebody single-handedly drove them into submission. “And that is why she needs shackles that don’t involve force. She possesses an ample bond with Amakusa. Therefore, we cannot use negative shackles like threatening her harm if she does not listen, but rather positive ones, like offering her protection from the Roman Orthodox Church if she listens. If we emphasize such negativity involving Amakusa, she may rebel against us, but if we offer something positive, she wouldn’t do so. Right? What a delicious benefit that is.” Laura smiled happily—and it gave Stiyl a cold shudder. Though she might have seemed thoughtless at first, she was still the leader of English Puritanism, and the cruel administrator and constructor of the system of the Index of Prohibited Books. She created the rule that they needed to erase her memories every year. She created a body that required maintenance from the English Puritans. She lied that it was beneficial to the Church to keep Index from turning traitor. She lied that she would die if they didn’t, thus keeping Stiyl and Kanzaki from rebelling as well. No one was more used to tinkering with all of the scales deciding a person’s sense of values—their emotions, their reason, their sense of profits and losses, their ethics—than she. It bolstered the caution Stiyl felt toward her once again, but he was well aware there was nothing he could do about it. If he were careless, Laura wouldn’t flinch to give punishment—not to Stiyl, but to Index. That’s the kind of person she was. Thump—Stiyl’s shoulder bumped into a passerby. It was a student trying to worm his way in between the two of them. Whoops. By the time Stiyl’s body recoiled, Laura was nowhere to be found. The communication spell connecting their umbrellas was already cut off. He hurriedly looked around—what had she just done? He just barely spotted the white, teacup-like umbrella with gold embroidery far away. And the wave of people eventually swallowed up that, too, and it disappeared completely. “…” Stiyl, caught completely unawares by the whole business, gulped. He got another chill at the sight of the enigmatic leader of all variety of suspicious sorcerers, and thought. She had helped Amakusa to cleverly prevent Kaori Kanzaki from acting. He understood that. Then why, in the end, did she save Orsola Aquinas? He didn’t understand that. The way Orsola came up with to decode the Book of the Law was just a mistake, so there was no need to go through with securing her anyway. And saving her didn’t bind anyone to her like she was doing with Kanzaki. She may have been an accomplished missionary worker—great enough to have a church built in her name—but she didn’t seem to have the sort of charismatic attitude that could bring together whole groups and organizations like Kanzaki did. If she had, they wouldn’t have been able to easily plot to assassinate her out of fear of riots and secessions. “…She’s damn devious,” said Stiyl spitefully. If he were able to think of even one calculated reason she’d saved Orsola Aquinas, then he would have been able to assert positively that she was evil. But this was another thing about Laura that was difficult to deal with—there wasn’t enough for him to go on to say whether she was a good person or a bad person. In fact, she practiced both good and evil equally—truly as though keeping them in perfect balance upon scales. The scales, of course, wouldn’t tip one way or the other. With such a precise equilibrium being maintained, one couldn’t judge her to be good or evil—no matter how much weight rode on either tray. Thus, Stiyl couldn’t say one way or the other, so he ended up slinking along under the English Puritan Church. Or maybe that was her plan, the runic sorcerer speculated briefly before disappearing into the drizzle on the city streets. Word Count: (5005)