Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume2 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 8===

It felt like waking from a long, long dream.

When she came to, the girl was alone. Her little sister who had grown bigger than her was gone, the boy and the two girls were gone, and the very, very scary white girl was gone.

She was still in Toy Dream 35.

At first, she thought she had returned to the past…no, to her original world, but she soon realized that was not the case. The city around her looked a lot like it, but the paint and signs were completely different. And when the girl had been killed, the city’s grand opening had been approaching and the power had been off. She had snuck in, thinking it was like a secret base, but then she had run into that monster. It was because the city had been like a brand-new model house that no one had come to save her no matter how much she screamed.

This was still the distorted world, her sister’s world.

But the location itself was the scene of her murder. Because people around the world had taken a mild interest in the ghost known as the Rainy Girl…no, in the depressing crime from the past, the incident had been “searched for”. And that had summoned her here. And the most appropriate place was the spot at which she had been killed.

Furthermore, if the people had subconsciously, involuntarily, and irresponsibly searched for and brought her back like restoring a deleted virus, what if that applied to the murderer as well as the victim?

Just as the Rainy Girl had been summoned here, that murderer would also arrive here.

“…”

The end was nigh. The deathless world at the foundation had crumbled away and this mysterious space was supported by the bugs and errors that world had created as side effects, so this too would be broken. Yet oddly enough, the girl’s outline was clearer than ever before. It was like a cruel joke. It was like she was being displayed more fully now so she could experience the pain, fear, and destruction of her murder all the more vividly. The world returned her sense of pain so it could torture her and it returned her throat so it could hear her scream. That was the extent of the malice she felt here.

Still holding her umbrella and with raindrops still falling on her raincoat and rain boots, the girl simply looked up.

That strange person stood there without wearing any kind of rain gear. Even after taking into account her child’s point of view, he was clearly abnormally huge. His muscles bulged out with complete disregard for his skeletal structure, so he had likely undergone the genetic tuning that had been all over the news for a while. Injecting banned drugs from outside the body was against the rules, but if they were produced inside the body, nothing could be done. At the very least, it was not banned under the existing rulebook. This was the result of undergoing the one-way ticket of organ surgery for that reason. In the end, that simple loophole had been filled by an updated rulebook and those people and their superhuman strength had been driven from the world of sports.

A grass sickle blade glistened wetly. The weapon looked out of place in his baseball glove-sized hand. He may have wanted to seem like a civilized human being by using a weapon. Or perhaps he had decided beating her to death with his fists would be like leaving behind a calling card.

The words he muttered below his breath did not reach the girl’s ears. More than the quiet volume, the intonation was bizarre and made it sound like a strange incantation.

The girl more or less knew what would happen next.

She remembered how her grown little sister had seen her and described her in that “living dream”.

I’m going to die here.

I’m going to die without returning to the world I came from.

Only the fact of her death would return to that world.

That could not be changed now. And that was not a bad thing. No matter how it happened, it would be odd for her to survive here. What was odd was wrong and what was wrong was bad. It was right for her to be murdered here. What was right was just and what was just came from a good heart.

Thus, goodness had abandoned the girl.

Thus, justice had left her to her death.

“Yes,” she muttered.

The man shouted something and shoved the girl.

She collapsed backwards and he leaned over her while raising the grass sickle. She could tell from his eyes that he was taking aim at her face or head.

She would die here.

That weapon would be swung down nineteen times and she would be so thoroughly killed that she would no longer have a real face or head.

She knew that, but some words spilled from her mouth as a dark look filled her eyes.

“This was…for the best.”

For a brief time, she had seen her sister all grown up in that intersecting world.

With a smile on her face, her sister had lived in a fairy tale of a place and had found people she could rely on.

The girl could not destroy that.

So she chose what was right and spoke those words to herself while staring up at the deadly weapon.

''However…

A great noise interrupted.

It was a tightly clenched fist.

As the man leaned over her and prepared to swing down the grass sickle, the fist dug into his cheek with enough force to break the bone. The blow had someone’s full body weight behind it and it knocked the man off of the girl. He then rolled along the wet ground.

The girl recognized the newcomer.

A boy had thrown the fist. He was the one who had stood beside her mature, grown little sister.

It was Shiroyama Kyousuke.

But he should not have been “here”.

“…Why…?”

As the girl forced out a scratchy voice, Kyousuke crouched down and reached into her raincoat pocket.

He pulled out a smartphone.

“I’d appreciate it if you wait until later to bring up the privacy issues. As soon as I noticed the White Queen’s malice, I switched the GPS on and snuck it into your pocket. After all, I had no way of knowing when or where you would disappear and reappear. I wanted to increase the odds of finding you as much as possible. I was worried the disappearance and reappearance would mess with the electronics, so I’m glad I could pick up its location.”

“No, not that! I’m supposed to be-…I have to be killed here…!!”

At that point, Kyousuke ended their conversation and turned his back on the girl.

He used his body as a shield.

He of course did so because the man he had punched away was squirming. He would get up again at this rate. The entire world seemed to be saying it was right for the girl to die and no amount of opposition would change that.

That meant Kyousuke’s actions here were wrong.

Or they should have been.

While keeping the girl protectively behind him, the boy spoke without looking back.

“Why do you think I’m doing this? The calculations to reach the relevant answer shouldn’t be that complex.”

“But!!” The girl shouted a rejection of what was happening to her. “But I can’t survive here! Pulling away the foundation just for me is wrong! It’s right to let me die here and we have to do what’s right! There’s no room for me in this world!! None at all!!”

“Everyone changes the world. It’s just that most people don’t realize they’re doing it.”

“But!! Not everyone can bring the dead back to life! Everyone calls that cheating!!”

“If so, have you ever thought about ''why'' people think it’s wrong?” Kyousuke spoke with his back to her. “You’re using an irregular method to save someone whose death has already been determined. That seems wrong because the effects of the change will spread throughout the world and change everything, which will reject everyone else’s honest efforts. It would erase everyone else’s bright happiness and smiles for your own convenience.”

“Then…!!”

The girl shouted until her throat was dry.

She had seen her grown little sister in that world where everything intersected. Her sister had been smiling and a happy world had surrounded her. The girl had felt lonely when she found no place for her in that world and it had saddened her that everyone feared her when all she did was stand there, but even that small girl knew she must not destroy that.

“Then why are you destroying your own world!?”

“I’m not necessary destroying it,” he immediately answered. “Just think about it like this: What if altering it won’t take away anyone’s happiness, won’t rob anyone of their smile, and will actually benefit everyone? …What crime is there in that? And if it isn’t a crime and it won’t produce any evil, then there’s no reason not to save the dying person. There’s nothing wrong with saving you here.”

“…”

“This is our last chance.”

Alice (with) Rabbit seemed to thrust his words before the girl.

He faced the murderer who was trying to “reboot” his mind, but he was clearly speaking to the girl.

“In that distant world you saw, Librarian-chan was smiling, wasn’t she? She was happy enough and satisfied enough with her life, wasn’t she? But what if? Don’t you think adding you into the mix would create an even more wonderful world that removed the ‘enough’?”

“But…but…”

“Besides,” spat out Kyousuke. “What even is the ‘proper world’.”

“That’s the world where I’m killed!! All of it was built on top of that!!”

“Was it really?”

Kyousuke calmly replied to the girl’s cries of true desperation.

“Does the White Queen’s evil really stop there? She was intentionally lying. In order to break me.”

“Eh…?”

“Before being pulled back to her world, the Rainy Girl will be killed by the murderer in this chaotic world. Thus, her death will remain unchanged and everything will revert to normal despite any irregularities. That’s what she led me to believe, but it’s completely wrong. The place and the murderer might be the same, but you weren’t supposed to arrive in this chaotic city. If you’re killed ‘here’, then that murder technically won’t happen. That means whether I save you or abandon you, the world will still be changed.”

“B-but…no, but…!”

In other words, her death would be meaningless.

Weighing her life against seven billion other lives was a complete falsehood and that one lie would take away an irreplaceable life. It was the ultimate evil.

“The White Queen knew that, but she still tried to have me choose it. ''She wanted to see me ‘do the right thing’ by abandoning a girl I could have saved only to discover the world changed regardless''. She wanted to crush me with the fact that I had chosen to let you die when I could have saved you even if it was ‘the wrong thing to do’! And by so thoroughly defiling the name of Alice (with) Rabbit, she would have broken me and obtained a convenient dress-up doll to play with!! Are you going to say doing what she says and dying would really protect the ‘proper world’!?”

The girl was dumbfounded.

What did this mean? The girl herself had been prepared to offer up her life to protect her grown little sister, but had that resolve been trampled underfoot by that pure white smile?

The girl’s small body trembled at that bottomless malice.

However, it was not over yet. This would not end in despair.

Not as along as that boy possessed the will to fight the Queen’s evil.

“So let me say it again. It doesn’t matter how trivial a difference it is. Now that the murderer and victim have met in a situation where they shouldn’t have met, the world will change. It has to change…no, we have to change it. And if the risk is the same, it all comes down to our decision. If it can only change for the better or for the worse, we have to change it for the better. What do you want? Do you want a world with a few more smiles around a girl whose life was spared, or do you want a world where that girl’s death was assumed and a family falls into darkness as planned. ''Which do you want to be ‘the right thing to do’''?”

She had thought the world’s justice had rejected her.

She had given up, assuming the world’s goodness had abandoned her.

But…

“Really?”

The girl hesitantly spoke up.

“''I don’t just have to wait for what’s right? I can really stand on the side I’ve chosen''?”

“How about I rephrase this to make it a little more unfair? If the circumstances of the murder are changed just a little, the investigation back in your world might change. And if he escapes, he might kill even more people after you. …So this isn’t about doing something or doing nothing. Just letting this play out has its own risks.”

“…”

“A time bomb is about to explode and we’re the only ones nearby. The police and the military won’t make it in time. In that case, I think we have the right to make the ultimate decision. Do we sit there and wait for it to explode, or do we try to disarm it despite the danger? I say we risk our lives, tremble in fear, and choose one of the colorful cables to cut. Choosing the best option available seems like ‘the right thing to do’ to me.”

“………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………”

“ ‘Save my sister’s world.’ …Who said that? If there’s going to be risk either way, it can’t be wrong to work toward reducing that risk as much as possible, toward reducing the tragedy as much as possible, and toward increasing the number of smiles as much as possible. Is what I’m saying really that strange?”

The girl looked back and forth between Shiroyama Kyousuke’s back and the man squirming on the ground.

For a while, she was unable to speak.

She reflected on Kyousuke’s words and faced what she had seen.

There had been no place for her in that scene.

However, that did not mean she had not been needed.

Her little sister had pursued the secret of the Rainy Girl and had grown angry when someone was trying to toy with that existence. When she had learned that the Rainy Girl would be killed by the murderer whether she remained here or returned to her original world, she had clung to the summoner boy and tearfully begged him to save her.

Having no place there after so much time had passed was not the same as being rejected from the very beginning.

They had wanted to accept her if it had been possible.

But that gruesome murder had torn it all apart.

If that was all…

If it was just some gear out of place…

If she could have been there too…

(I want to…stand.)

Something changed in the girl’s chest.

The gears that had been jammed for so very long were slowly beginning to turn once more.

(I want to stand there…and smile with my sister again…)

So she looked up.

She faced that utterly depressing “reality”.

There was no such thing as a “proper” world. The weight bearing down on her had been a false illusion. The only thing standing in her way was the creepy murderer. Not even offering up her life would fix this and it would only fulfill a few people’s dark desires.

The invisible path forward was not something someone else prepared for you.

It was something you made and walked down yourself.

In that case…

If Shiroyama Kyousuke’s answer was correct…

If she could choose that…

“Then no. I don’t want to die.”

She finally said it, as if peeling the pure feelings from her stubborn soul.

“I want to go to festivals, I want to get first place at the athletic festival, I want to have fun at an amusement park, and I want to go around Toy Dream 35 with my sister once it’s finished! I want to go to middle school, I want to go to high school, and I want to grow up! I want to fall in love, I want to learn all sorts of things at school, and I want to show my sister how amazing her big sister is!! I want to be proud of myself! I want to face forward!! I want to see the future!! I want to walk my own path and become something someone can look up to!!”

[[Image:BloodSign_v02_354.jpg|thumb]]

What the girl really thought was released into the world.

She gathered all her strength and shouted to the summoner who could overturn it all.

“So…hic, so please! H-help…help meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!”

That voice should never have reached anyone.

That hope had been snuffed out. That scream had been sealed away.

But that boy heard it.

And to prove that simple fact, Shiroyama Kyousuke looked back to the girl just once.

The summoner known as Alice (with) Rabbit pulled his Blood-Sign from the back of his hoodie and accepted her request with a fierce smile.

“As you wish.”

At the same time, a roar finally reached them.

Their opponent had finished “rebooting”.

Instead of just squirming on the wet road, he rose up with the grass sickle in hand.

Kyousuke’s Blood-Sign produced a whistling sound as it spun around.

The girl’s little sister was not here.

The boy could not use his mysterious power.

If by some coincidence or in some kind of bad joke that blade stabbed deep into his body, Kyousuke would die. That large man’s muscles swelled out to an unnatural extent, so if he swung his powerful arms with no concern for the damage to his own body, he could probably break through a car door. But as the boy stood protectively in front of the girl, he spoke to his opponent.

“You’re a lucky man.”

He aimed the tip of the Blood-Sign toward him.

“After all, you won’t become a murderer today. Your arms and legs might get a little messed up, but you’ll be able to rethink your entire life. A pretty good deal, don’t you think?”

He received a yell in response.

The man ran forward with the deadly blade at the ready, so Shiroyama Kyousuke also stepped forward.

It would end here.

The very, very end was truly beginning.