Case 00: A Person Who Is Nothing (3)

Or perhaps I wanted to escape into my thoughts and distance myself from reality.

I just wanted to think about what the hell was going on more slowly. I knew I had no time to think, but there was one thing I had to be clear on. As if groping around in the dark, I touched on that puzzle.

That was-- just what was ‘Yoishi’ doing all this for in the first place.

Sako spoke of it as well. That ‘it destroys simply because it’s amusing’. That might have been the case. I couldn't understand it at all, but there might be those in this world who can’t help but have that inclination. However, he also said, 『Weren't they a little too elaborate to merely be something done ’just for fun’?』

Right, just now, A – no, ‘Yoishi’ said it. 『Now then, there’s only one thing left to do.』. Didn't that mean that there was something it had been carefully building up to at this point? Didn’t that mean that it was all part of some elaborate plan? But – just what was that? For what purpose was ‘Yoishi’ doing all this?

Firstly – was the Tengu Incident. On that occasion, ‘Yoishi’ must have been inside the man named Niizawa. After making him climb up to the branches on the stepladder and hanging himself – it probably possessed Kii-chan and removed the stepladder, adding a sense of unease to the scene. And that was also for the experiment of hanging the father, as mentioned by Sako. Then what about the headless incident? That must have been in order to dismember the mother. It possessed the person named Nagami, made him behead himself, then used Kii-chan’s body to close the window. With that, a sense of unease was left at the scene of the crime. Then, why did it kill Kii-chan? If I recall correctly, the old man said, 『It was as if to see how far her body would go before it died』. Perhaps that too was an experiment, and that was as far as the experiment went. After going through those series of experiments, it must have confirmed what it could and could not do with a human body. Then – here comes the important part, why did it conduct these experiments? What was ‘Yoishi’ ultimately trying to accomplish?

‘Yoishi’ having possessed A after Kii-chan, killed the mother, dismembered her, and stored her in the toolbox as soon as it arrived here. The father was murdered when he was about to go to the police, he was hanged somewhere outside, and after M had fallen asleep, his body was hung inside the house once more. In the midst of all those actions, it tampered with Leo’s mouth, to hide the fact that it was inside A. What was the meaning in that? Dammit, I had no idea.

I had no idea, but at any rate, M was the only one left, and I was sure M had something to do with ‘the only thing left to do’, I was sure A was trying to do something with M – as I desperately worked out the thoughts in my head, when--

Suddenly, Sako’s unhealthy pale face appeared in my mind.

…That guy, just what in the world did he realize?

Why was Sako so afraid, and why did he disappear in such a hurry?

『It means we can’t stay here anymore.』

『It means that we are all just pawns.』

『Because us staying here itself might be its trap.』

--What did he mean by all that? What did he mean by including not only the flesh and blood humans, but even me in this category, who was not supposed to be alive in this world?

I took a deep breath, calmed myself down-- and recalled everything that happened up until now the best I could: Before I met M, and after I met M... And from there, I drew everything in my mind I had experienced, one by one, in turn. The day when I, who was nothing more than weak electric signals, defined ‘myself’. All the memories engraved on ‘myself’ since that point. There, the me from before, in those fragments of countless memories and scenes that were unknown to me, mixed in and melted together. “The highest order and the lowest order”-- For some reason, those words of Takamura came back to me. As always, I didn't know what they meant, but they fit my current situation to a tee. The many layers of my memories were being overwritten, and the idea of "me," which was supposed to be the highest order, could no longer be constructed, and in that moment—

At the limits of my murky thoughts, she appeared.

A young girl with long black hair and white porcelain-like skin was wearing a black blazer with a black tie.

Her hair danced in the wind, and as she held out her hand as if beckoning me, she whispered somewhat happily.

“Everything, is in reverse.”

(A….a, arrrrrrrrrrrrrrghh!!)

Something inside me screamed, and in that instant, the answer suddenly hit me on the head.

With a feeling of disgust that almost made me vomit, I felt as if I understood ‘Yoishi’s’ true intentions.

No—no, I still didn’t know if that was correct. I didn’t know, but if it was – then everything fit together perfectly. At the same time, that word which had been a jewel to me, had now slowly transformed into malice itself.

I returned from the depths of my thoughts with a deep sense of futility.

In reality, I was still present in the rear garden of the mansion. And there was no time left: Everything would be over once A reached M. I didn’t know if it was right or not, but I decided to bet on it anyway. However, being nothing more than a ghost in corporeal form, could I reach M before A even if I ran? No, that was impossible. Couldn't… I deliver my message to M in some other way?

In that moment, a divine revelation came down to me.

That’s right – there’s that thing.

I clasped my hands once before the old man who had collapsed and no longer moved, and immediately slipped into his pocket. In the right pocket of the old man’s jacket – the cell phone that lay tumbled there. I tried to possess it with everything I had. Even the cell phones of this age must have had a texting function. And M had a PHS in her hand. The problem was whether there would be a signal, but I had no choice but to bet on the slim possibility.

I dissolved my existence in the air, and assimilated myself into the silver device with countless electronic components built in.

Being nothing more than weak electric signals, there was only one thing I could do as an infinitely meaningless existence in this world. That was to use the internet as an intermediary to move as a discarnate entity. If I could do it with the search terminal in the library, I should be able to do it here too.

A signal, a signal – let it be any signal, no matter how weak, just carry me away!

Reaching out with both hands, my arms in my consciousness pierced through the old man’s body, slipped through the mansion, and reached up to the heavens. With my fingers stretched out as if to grab the wide-open sky, I grabbed a signal in the 800-megahertz radio band wandering the skies. I can do it! I slipped myself into the world of the internet.

What stretched out before me, was a world compressed with bit rates of zeros and ones. I was cast out in a world of countless linked extranets, then disseminated, and roughly understood the organizational information that made up the Internet.

In short, all I had to do was find a virtual server, and turn myself into the correct e-mail account. However, when I fabricated my ID, password, and stepped into the virtual private server once again, it seemed I had made some kind of mistake. The load balancer came alive, and I was forwarded to a place I didn't expect. Without knowing which way was up and which was down, I was whirled round and round in an infinite space, and then, perhaps triggered by a spam assassin, I found myself surrounded by many strange, emotionless people. I yelled, “Get out of the way”.

However, they silently encircled me. They even brought out a long, sharp-looking blue dragon sword in their hands.*

Of course, all of this was my subjective view.

However, that's just what the world was. The world that the brain believes in is all there is.

“Ah, bring it on then.”

Someone howled inside of me. At the same time, an intense fighting spirit swelled up inside of me. I couldn't allow my consciousness to be lost in this vast world. There was a young girl I had to save no matter what. That girl called me a ‘friend’ in this world filled with malice. I couldn't betray her, even if I’m ripped limb from limb!

I planted my foot firmly in place, and armed myself. Here, where will itself was digitized, I could produce any large weapon I wanted to in my hands. But only within the range of my absolute mass. In short, I made my right leg disappear, and transformed both of my hands into large war tridents. I brandished them with all the power I could muster, and started to smash their swords one after the other. I continue to slice off their arms, their heads, and their torsos. I yelled, and raged, and before I realized, I found myself surrounded by guys in armored black suits who covered the entire ground, but I continued to blow them away without mercy. The sky flickered. An electrical sound that sounded like thunder violently exploded. However-- this violent rampage might have impaired some system somewhere. When I looked around, my surroundings were in chaos. The sky was enveloped in a whirlpool of black clouds that began to swirl round and round. Knowing that, I extended my extremely thin left foot even as I continued to fight and blended it into the net space.

I then managed to locate that information and dragged it out. It seemed there was a cold standby – in short, a mechanism that activated the standby system in the event of a failure. I decided to make use of that. It would take some time to restore as compared to a hot standby, and as my left foot continued to be connected to the Internet, I continued to beat up the spam assassins. That's right, I was stalling for time. As the chaotic world became even more chaotic and uncontrollable, I transferred my entire mass in one fell swoop. I continued to convert myself into a single e-mail, but—now, after all this time, I suddenly realized something.

The contents of the e-mail.

That's right, I hadn't thought anything about what the e-mail would say. What did I need to write in order to save M? I hectically calculated my mass and the time it would take to reach the server that had jurisdiction over M’s PHS, and realized that only twenty or so characters was all that could reach her. Wait – just twenty characters? Only that much? How would I be able to let M know of the danger with just that much? I felt gloomy, but I had no time to be depressed. My consciousness was open and time was passing infinitely slowly, but there was no time left.

For the time being, I made a sentence that would convey it with the minimum number of characters.

『Run away, your sister isn’t your sister anymore.』

No… would M believe this email sent by someone somewhere she didn’t know? Would she even open and read it?

At that moment, something intense overflowed from within me once more. Then, it changed into the next line.

『I’ll definitely protect you. Frog』

That was my limit.

My consciousness scattered to the Internet, I was swept up in the rapid flow, and my consciousness flew off.