Editing City Series:Volume8b Chapter20 (section)

===Aoe’s Present: In His North Kantou Hometown===

The ramen shop was small.

The concrete building was only about 3 yards wide and 5 long, so it only had two tables by the wall and seats at the counter.

Aoe and Yuo currently occupied one of those tables.

Yuo was using her chopsticks to do battle with the miso ramen in her large bowl. Since it was summer, she was wearing a T-shirt beyond the miso-smelling steam.

Aoe had already emptied his extra-large bowl of ramen and soup. He wore a black tank top and white jeans and their luggage was contained in a single large black bag down by his feet.

He watched as she skillfully operated the chopsticks.

The clock on the wall said it was nearly 2 PM. Preparations for the afternoon rush hadn’t even begun yet, so they were the only customers.

There was only one worker: a boy working part time. He had nothing to do at the moment, so he was watching the old TV installed on the wall.

Aoe could hear baseball commentary coming from the TV.

A high school game was on.

He checked the screen, checked the kitchen, and then called out to the worker’s back.

“Where’s the old man?”

The worker’s shoulders jumped and he turned around.

“Huh? Oh, the neighborhood association dragged him along to cheer for our team. You hadn’t heard?”

“Mh. I only just got back in town. My plan is to stick around for a few weeks, but…”

Before Aoe could finish his sentence, he heard a hit. The worker looked back to the TV.

The metallic sound of the bat coincided with another sound coming from the distant sky: a steam whistle.

That familiar sound made Aoe sigh and look to Yuo again.

She had sweat on her brow as she leaned forward and carried noodles to her mouth and she kept brushing back her ponytail when it fell past her shoulder. But now she stopped and looked to him with a frown.

“What’s so funny? Why are you grinning?”

“Nothing really. Just that you chose this as the first thing you to eat after getting back to Japan.”

“You’re the one who kept saying you missed it in DT. And I don’t have much money, so what’s wrong with ramen? Also, I’ll make sure the program trigons taste like this from now on.”

“Sure, sure.”

Aoe checked his watch. The LCD watch displayed a cartoony Shiba Inu drawn in colored pixels. Aoe smiled bitterly as he stared at the dog sleeping happily sprawled out on the watch face. Then he looked away.

“Will DT be fine with you away for a while?”

“Yes. The open release mostly got ignored what with Babel collapsing and Akalabeth getting formatted. Telyb was right when he said our presence would only complicate matters.” Yuo kept grabbing ramen with her chopsticks. “And if I stay there for too long now, people would probably start saying I needed to inherit the throne.”

“Oh, yeah. There was talk of that, wasn’t there?”

“What about you, Senpai? You inherited the title of Martial Marts Master, didn’t you? That means you’re actually immortal like me, but are you going to register as a Japanese weapon?”

That question silenced Aoe.

Yuo fell silent too. But instead of giving him a questioning look, she resumed work on her ramen.

Aoe drank barley tea from his cup on the table and Yuo ate the cabbage floating in her soup before they both said the same thing at the same time.

“You could always choose to do something else.”

They exchanged a glance.

Yuo looked confused for a moment, but then she closed her mouth and smiled.

Aoe smiled bitterly. He leaned back in his chair and tilted his head back, giving him a view of the menu on the wall.

He noted the prices had risen a little and then noticed his butt wasn’t resting in the seat quite right. That was due to the bible in his back pocket.

He stood up, pulled out that bible, and casually flipped through it.

It contained a Japanese translation along with several notes jotted down in pencil. They must have been written by Ungyou before he died. The very last page included a note concerning Aoe and Algo.

It mentioned wanting to do something about Alternative’s disease for Algo and Alternative’s sake and wanting to free Aoe from the path of killing despite introducing him to GASAS. That note had the date written with it.

…''Three days before Algo defeated him.

Seeing that brought back a lot of unprocessed feelings in the bottom of his gut.

He noticed Yuo was looking his way. Her eyes were on the black leather-bound book he held.

So he looked her in the eye and held up the bible so she could see.

“Hey, Yuo. I hate to interrupt while you’re eating, but do you have a moment?”

“What is it?”

“Do you know what happened to the traitorous disciple?”

“No, what happened to him?”

She answered with a slight smile because she did in fact know. But he still nodded and answered.

“He took the silver coins he was paid for his betrayal, returned them to the temple, and took his own life.

“But,” he continued. “The temple’s chief priests refused to take the blood money, so they instead bought a potter’s field and turned it into a graveyard for foreigners.”

“The queen said she wouldn’t be rebuilding Babel and that land will be used for a shared graveyard. And…” Yuo lowered her gaze a bit. “The money saved by not reconstructing Babel will be used for reconstructing the city and researching Words Warn.”

“Mh,” grunted Aoe, looking to Yuo’s somewhat lowered eyebrows and then next to her.

A menu, small bottles of soy sauce and vinegar, and a chopsticks holder sat by the wall.

Something else was mixed in among all the chopsticks in the holder: a single three-tined fork made of green plastic.

Its color looked faded, suggesting no one had used it in a while.

He narrowed his eyes and looked to Yuo just once.

Then he stood up.

She looked up at him.

“Um, where are you going?”

“I’m heading outside now. You can handle the check.”

With that, he picked up the bag at his feet and turned toward the exit.



He opened the door.

“Oh.”

He felt a pleasant chill.

The door led to a narrow alley awash with the afternoon sun. The alley formed a stone-paved slope.

This town was surrounded by mountains and had almost no space between the harbor and the nearest mountain.

He stood on the slope that led from the harbor to the mountain slope.

Wooden buildings stretched out on either side and the street drew out a gentle curve.

Down the slope led the harbor, up it to the mountain.

The few late summer cicadas chirped from the surrounding mountains.

Looking past those mountains showed the color blue with some white clouds mixed in.

“It’s so peaceful,” he muttered, looking back down and realizing why it was so quiet.

He couldn’t see a single person around.

He was the only one on the stone-paved slope.

He was only accompanied by the gentle breeze carrying the cicada cries.

He tilted his head at the absence of anyone else and looked up again.

He looked up to the mountains.

The Kobayashi Dojo could be found past one of those mountains.

The trees covering the steep slope were a deep green and the leaves reflected the bright afternoon sunshine.

The street he stood on now curved gently through the city to reach that mountain.

Looking down that street and past the mountain ridge, he saw a large white cloud.

It was the kind of cloud seen at the very end of summer.

He stared up at that white color and reached his right hand into his jeans pocket.

He pulled out a ring – the one Algo had given him at the very end.

He stared down at the ring and his vision blurred.

“…”

He said nothing.

The ramen shop’s door slid open to his right, as if to break through his silence.

He looked back to see Yuo exiting while giving the wallet in her hand a concerned look.

She turned to him with wrinkled brow, preparing to say something.

“–––––”

But the anger faded from her face and she tilted her head.

“What’s wrong? Did someone do something terrible to you?”

“Mh,” he grunted, clenching his right fist and lightly striking himself in the face.

After hearing and feeling the solid sound and pain, he turned toward the slope and grabbed the bag with his left hand.

“Let’s go. The path is probably a mess after going unused for so long.”

“Yes,” agreed Yuo, lining up to his right.

Just then, loud voices erupted from both sides of them.



“–––––!?”

Aoe took a confused fighting stance until he realized these were cheers.

They were joyful voices.

Applause and cheers came from the wooden buildings along the formerly peaceful street.

He had felt all alone here a moment before, but now he heard people walking on tatami mats or wooden flooring.

People laughed and shouted “yes” or “way to go”.

Yuo frantically turned her head this way and that to look to all the noise and voices. Her gaze finally settled on the harbor town below them.

“This must be about that high school baseball game.”

“Did one of the teams win?” Aoe wondered aloud, scratching his head.

He heard a song.

He could see a school down toward the harbor. The newly-constructed concrete building was a high school. The song came from there.

Aoe recognized the song. So did Yuo.

She trembled once and turned toward him. She turned her back on the singing town and gave him a resigned smile.

“I don’t think we won this one.”

He thought for a bit before grunting a response.

Cheers – cheers which were false from their perspective – came from the seaside town.

So he smiled and breathed the summer air deep into his lungs.

He crossed his arms and asked a question while looking down at the town with Yuo.

“Ready to go?”

She thought for a moment before nodding.

“Yes.”

Her affirmative coincided with another cheer.

Joyful voices rose into the sky from the houses lined up along the streets.

The voices gathered together, joined together, and added to the song.

They added to a song born in this town and known to the pair who had returned there.

A joint cheer rang out.

But Aoe still didn’t see anyone around.

No one came to greet them. The cheers and the song were fake for those two.

But Aoe still reached his right hand out toward Yuo.

She nodded and took his hand.

Finally, her expression changed. She looked at their clasped hands with confusion on her face.

“Um, there’s something in your hand.”

It was a ring.

After a look of surprised realization, she blushed and looked to him.

He did not say anything. He simply grunted and faced the mountains.

''Let’s go,'' he thought.

He held her hand in his right hand and the bag in his left as he began walking.

The mountain path was long. And they were sure to stop when they spotted something familiar on the way.

There was no need to rush, but he still wanted to reach a certain point before it got dark.

[[Image:DT02_447.jpg|thumb]]

So he kept walking with Yuo by his side.

He held her slender hand with his right hand which was not forming a fist.

She squeezed his hand back.

That response contained no words, but its meaning was clear.

He nodded and then looked up to see the green mountains.

Past the mountains, he saw the large white clouds and the blue sky.

He viewed them all, held Yuo’s hand, and walked forward.

His feet showed none of the uncertainty he felt. He squeezed Yuo’s hand and she squeezed his back.

They turned their backs on the fake cheers while summer approached its end.

“Let’s go!”

To the place waiting beyond the mountain. To begin it all again.

Aoe and Yuo began walking.

And they kept walking.

While believing they still had so much to learn.

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