Editing City Series:Volume7 Layer 6 (section)

===Record 81: I Won’t Look Back For Anything Else===

'''09/10/1998

'''21:54

The Boss’s car zoomed through Itsukaichi.

“The place is nearly deserted tonight. No one’s jumping out in front of my car.”

“What do you do when they do that?”

“Deflect them with my wipers for 500 points.”

The Boss’s response made Lady lower her eyebrows unhappily. She was practically buried in the daily items we had bought to make the bomb shelter livable.

The Boss checked on her with his celluloid rearview mirror.

“Don’t worry about it. The moon isn’t out tonight, so there won’t be any idiot’s wandering around.”

“Is that how it works?” I asked and he nodded. And then…

“To change the subject, is there something wrong with Snowy?”

“Mentally, yes. But that’s nothing new.”

“I’m being serious here.”

“Oh, I sometimes see her seemingly in pain,” said Lady. “She has a room to herself in the dorm, so no one ever really notices.”

“Leave her be. We can do something about it if anything actually happens,” I said.

The Boss scratched his head and sounded like he was making an excuse.

“That’s true, but it makes me feel like I’m breaking a promise.”

“What promise?”

“You two live in Tokyo too, so you’ve been lectured by your past and future selves, right?”

“Yes, I have,” said Lady. “Like about Yokohama. Another me has even forced me to sit down and listen to a lengthy lecture.”

“Right? My other selves tell me all sorts of stuff I don’t get. Like that the future is ending and we have to go back. I apparently don’t get to see someone die in the future.”

I just about asked if that person suffered from a lung disease, but stopped myself. I might as well have been asking if it was Snowy and as much as I liked gloomy topics, I didn’t want to make someone else the topic of conversation. I decided to stay quiet.

Lady only nodded and turned to view the streetlights passing by.

I looked into the moonless sky and suddenly felt the chill of the wind created by the car’s movement.

Just as that made me realize it really was nighttime, the Boss stopped the car.

“Sorry, but a cat jumped out while I was thinking.”

“Really?” said Lady, turning to check the road. She had some weird tastes.

I had no choice but to get out and look across the road. Sure enough, I saw a cat-shaped…

“Brass plate?”

I picked it up and found it had the proper weight and everything and the shape was a lot like a cut-out for a shadow play. The abstract cat plate was a bit bent at the tail.

The Boss and Lady weren’t sure what to do, but I looked up into the sky instead.

The moon still wasn’t out.

'''Author Comment:

This talks a bit about Snowy, but it also tells us Lady stays in the girls’ dorms too.

The protagonist puts an end to that topic because of the past, but the Boss was asking because of the future.