Editing Kami-sama no Inai Nichiyoubi:Volume4 Chapter1 (section)

===Part III===

"Ah."

Ai let out a little cry.

"Another one."

There was a silhouette to the right side of the road, in front of them. This silhouette was of medium height and size, a black-haired boy carrying a shovel over his left shoulder.

It was a Gravekeeper.

The car slowed down just a bit and drove next to the Gravekeeper. For a moment, Ai faced the Gravekeeper at a distance of three meters, and they went their separate ways the next moment.

The Gravekeeper that was increasingly distanced looked at her and waved his right hand in a friendly manner.

Ai was in no mood to wave back, and merely looked at him for just a while. She then closed the window of the passenger seat and sat back without further ado.

The Gravekeeper had blue eyes.

And he had his usual smile.

And—

"The same face…"

Ai hugged one knee in an uncouth manner and thought.

Earlier, the group fled as fast as they could, but on second thought, there was no way the Gravekeepers would ever harm the Living. It was a waste of gasoline when Julie reacted by slamming the pedal, but Ai was in no mood to blame him for that…after all, it would be a natural reaction for a human. The sight was as revolting as seeing a swarm of overwintering ladybugs, how hundreds of crabs swarming around dead river fish…

Such objects looked very normal in isolated cases, pretty even, but in crowds, there was a fundamental fear.

"What’s there beyond this…?"

Ai asked a rhetorical question. The answer was obvious. There was only one thing the Gravekeepers would be headed for.

The Dead.

Ai stared ahead. What lay ahead was an ordinary wilderness that showed no change, and there was no sign of anything.

However, surely there was something mysterious ahead.

"Found it."

Alice said. Ai did not know what the former was talking about, and turned around to see him flip the pages of a thick book. The book was so close, one could practically smell the ink, and there were countless mug shots on the pages.

"It's probably this one—‘The Bazel Family’, circulation, directive, low chances of berserking…they aren’t a major family, huh?"

"W-What are you talking about?"

Alice did not explain as he tossed the book at Ai, who flipped it over and looked at the cover. Written on it was, ‘Gravekeeper Compendium - 48th Edition’.

She then flipped back to the original page, and saw a beaming boy in the photo.

It was the same face of the hundred Gravekeepers they had seen in the wilderness.

She was stunned.

She continued reading, and found a checklist of height, age, skin, hair color and other characteristics. Their movements were ‘circular’, and their burial directive was to ‘prioritize those in close proximity’.

Ai kept flipping through the pages.

"…What is this?"

"As you can see, it's a Gravekeeper catalog."

"So there’s such a thing?"

Ai was surprised and glared at Julie for hiding such a thing. The middle-aged man turned his head in the opposite direction, <i>"Ah, it’s the 48</i><i>th</i><i> edition already?"</i> playing dumb. Ai swore to herself that vengeance would be hers in a boring manner, and then looked back at the book.

"There are so many Gravekeepers here…."

"But most of them are basically the last generation of families that have only been confirmed once."

"? What do you mean?"

"You’re asking me that…eh? You're a Gravekeeper and you don't know that?"

"…Not really, actually."

"Hmm. I guess so."

Alice found it incredulous, but he reached out for the book in Ai’s hand, deftly skipped past the first half of the book that was filled with the preface and explanations, the aged pages giving off a scent of cheap ink. He then opened the chapter with the data.

"Ever since the mysterious beings known as Gravekeepers suddenly appeared, humanity naturally wanted to research them. And then, well, there have been a number of discoveries."

He tapped on a row of Gravekeeper photos.

"One of them is the Gravekeeper taxonomy. For some reason, they are mainly classified as ‘same face’ and ‘different face’."

Ai thought back to the Gravekeepers she had met so far. She, Scar, and the boy they met were ‘different faces’, while the hundreds of teenagers were ‘same faces’.

"The researchers lumped all of them together and gave them names. In other words, ‘family names’."

Alice's hand reached up and flipped through the catalog, before reaching the page of the boy they had seen earlier in the wilderness. Written on the page was ‘Bazel Family’.

"Of course, the Gravekeepers didn't call themselves that. The researchers just  named them so out of convenience. My guess is that they’re either discovered at Bazel, or there was a person called Bazel who found them, so that’s how they’re named."

Ai was barely listening. While the conversation continued, she noticed two things and began to furiously flip through the catalog.

One was easy to find.

Silver hair, white skin, and a beautiful right eyebrow without a scar.

<b>"The Heartstone family."</b>

The mug shot showed her, but it was not her. The familiar, unblemished face seemed amiss, and Ai did not feel any familiarity at all.

She flipped the page, and the next page introduced a different Gravekeeper, so she returned to the previous one. The section involving this girl took up half a page—and only half of that.

At that moment, Ai felt a little weird.

<i>"Circulation: random direction, chances of berserking= low, confirmed population= tens</i>. " Ai read the checklist that she did not really understand, and did not really pay heed to. No matter how many times she read it, it kept slipping away and just would not stay in her memory.

"The 48th edition has Scar? Now this is troublesome…"

"Oh, so this is Scar? —well, it’s the latest edition, and she's from a minor family, so I don't think many people know about her."

While the two men discussed, their conversation did not enter Ai’s mind either.

She stared at the cover intently.

Then Ai suddenly realized that there was no smile on the Gravekeeper’s.

There was no such no such thing as a Gravekeeper who did not smile.

In other words.

This photo was taken after she died—or perhaps after she was killed.

She continued to flip through the pages, and found that most of them did not have smiling faces.

A chill ran down her spine.

A chill ran from beneath her feet, up to her thighs, and then to her heart. She did not think that Julie, Alice, or anyone else would feel this kind of fear. It was a fear only she knew of.

No one else would feel terrified seeing an illustrated book of insect specimens. No one else would feel fear, much less empathy.

But Ai felt it. She could not help but project herself onto these Gravekeepers after she saw they were killed and annotated like insects.

For some reason, Ai pretended to be absorbed in the catalog, trying not to let anyone know about it. She was afraid that Alice and Julie would find out about the fear she felt.

She continued her search for something else she noticed.

She flipped through the catalog of dead Gravekeepers, sought the search items, and defined the characteristics. <b>Her own characteristics.</b> Hair color, skin color, and gender—she started looking through them. Not this, not this, not this either..

"If it’s your family, they’re not here."

Alice said.

"…I told you there are lots of families that are only seen once, right? Most of such Gravekepers are born, and just disappear without anyone knowing…"

This was what Alice meant by family. Ai heard him loud and clear, but she could not resist the urge to check it out for herself.

She flipped through the pages.

Eventually, she arrived at the last page, and the search was over. As Alice had said, Ai and her mother's family were not there.

Not at all.

Ai slumped back down into the seat with a thud. Her body just could not move as her heart willed it to be. The strange feeling of finding Scar's family and not finding her own slowly shook her body.

<i>Why?</i> She wondered to herself as she stared at the opened pages laid on her stomach. Why did she feel this way? Why did she have to feel this way?

Silence reigned in the car.

Julie, Alice, Dee, and Celica too were all silent, not disturbing Ai's silence.

Outside the car, the weather was as dry as ever; the unusual rain caused by the Gravekeeper had vanished like an illusion.

"…It’s not a good photo."

Dee said, as thought she had enough of the heavy atmosphere. The weight of the air was something this ghost was extremely sensitive to, for it was her field. She looked towards the monochrome pages, and saw the photo of Scar that was not Scar.

Ai automatically nodded away. This reaction left Dee’s expression increasingly bitter.

"Anyway...!"

She glared at Julie in the driver's seat.

"Why did Scar just disappear?"

"…I don't know…"

Julie said with a grim look.

"Ehhh~that's irresponsible of you, Uncle. You were with her the whole time."

"Yeah…so all the blame falls on me..."

"Ahh seriously! I’m not talking about that. I want you to explain clearly!"

Julie had accepted all blame for Scar's abandonment of the baby, and was willing to be reproached. However, he was using it to conceal the details of what had happened, and was unwilling to reveal more. Dee wanted to expose this, <i>Mfufu, </i>so she teased him.

"What what, uncle? Seriously, what did you do? Did you knock her over?"

"Maybe I should have done that…"

<i>"!?"</i>

Dee, who said it, and Alice, who was listening in the background, both looked towards Julie once again in shock.

"T-that’s lewd of you! You're lewd, Uncle! You already have me! You idiot! Idiot!"

"O-old man. I-I don't know if I'm ready for the subtleties of adult men and women yet…well, you know…"

"What do you mean, knock her over?"

"Ahh goodness! Don’t revive only at such moments!"

Alice and Dee were screeching in the background, while Julie remained oblivious to them, lost in his own world.

"…Uncle, isn't there a sign or something?"

"A sign…?"

Julie basically hugged the steering wheel as he gripped it.

"There’s a lot of such signs. After being away from Ai, Scar became more and more unsteady. Back then, she used hug Celica tightly, but she then ignored Celica, and she also lost a bit of weight…it felt like she’s a girI who had a teenage pregnancy, and didn’t know what to do…"

"If you knew that much…you should have followed up with her, old man. Aren’t you a grown man?"

"Yeah, you're right. I should have helped her out. And I probably could have…but I failed to do so…"

<i>I'm not so sure about that,</i> Ai thought absentmindedly.

Julie said that he could have done something to get Scar to relax, and should have, but he carelessly neglected to do so. That was what he claimed.

<i>That's a lie,</i> Ai thought. It was not that he did not do it, but that he could not.

Scar, carrying Celica about, was increasingly mentally stable with each passing day..

<i>But what about Julie?</i> So Ai wondered. Was Julie mentally stable to begin with?

How could he remain calm when surrounded by a young girl who just had a baby?

Julie had lost his wife seven years ago. Back then, the societal norm was that ‘the Dead should just die’, but Julie refused to accept this, and wandered in the wilderness with his dead wife and remaining daughter. In the end, he lived in seclusion, hiding in the mountains. There was no way his wife could have received any postorterm treatment, and became increasingly ‘selfish’. Initial, her wish was basically ‘I’m fine with being buried, you two should return to the city’, and her soul slowly rotted, until she could only make noises like ‘kyarararara’ or ‘urererere’.""

Was Julie truly stable? Could he really remain mentally stable by living in the mountains, hiding with a woman whose spirit was gradually weakening?

On top of that, the woman had a baby. A newborn baby.

At this point, Julie was thirty two years old, the same age as Hampnie. His daughter, who died last year, was fifteen. In other words, he became a parent when he was also sixteen or seven years old. It was said his wife was also a classmate of his, and their marriage was not completely out of their own volition. Ai knew about it. She heard about this from Hampnie Hambart, who told her this amongst many others on that last night, on the hill under the full moon.

So Ai never imagined that someone like Julie could have been stable, living hidden in the mountains with a young girl who had just had a cute baby.

<i>I should be able to do it</i>, Julie’s insistence looked so gaudy to Ai. He claimed he could do it even though he could not. He was just like a child.

"…Well, don't be so hard on yourself. Old man."

"Yeah…."

Alice consoled Julie, who went silent. Ai could not say anything as she herself was too depressed to chime in.

The mood in the car hung so heavy that it felt like a solid matter, and no one could move.

"…Uuu, it shouldn’t have ended up like this."

The ghost seemingly drowned in the air. She fell onto the chair and slumped down. Celica looked at it curiously and cackled in amusement.

The only thing that remained healthy was this baby.