Editing City Series:Volume7 Layer 4 (section)

===Record 58: Never Forgets===

'''04/05/1998

'''21:46

It was spring break, but I was in Surface Tokyo with Lady and Snowy on the way back from a job in Kanda.

We had only just submitted our Chancellor’s Officers personnel paperwork. The train was pretty deserted.

We had gotten a lot of detailed information at the Emergency Teachers station. Ordinary students advanced to the next year in April, but we wouldn’t do that until September. If there were no promising students from the Mountain by then, we would be the Chancellor’s Officers for next year too. Of the 128 primary members of the Tokyo Chancellor’s Officers, most would either serve for more than a year or recommend someone in April and let them take over.

I was wondering if I would eventually do that too when I looked back inside the train and noticed Nobody was sitting next to me.

“Hi,” he didn’t greet me. “Nobody never forgets. That’s just how it works. Yes, how it works,” I didn’t hear him say in a deep voice.

“Long time no see,” I didn’t reply before looking back in the train. I found nobody was there except for me and for Lady and Snowy in the seats across from me. And that was fine.

The two of them were looking out the window and entirely ignoring me. Lady was kneeling in the seat and fully turned toward the window while Snowy had her legs and arms crossed with just her head turned. Our girls had such different interests and tastes, but they got along really well and created what you would call a girl’s space where I don’t belong.

“Look, Snowy. The train is crossing the Great Tokyo Fault.”

“Yes. There was once a hole here known as the Northern Tokyo Fault, but it was hit by an aerial strike during the war my grandfather fought in. That expanded the fault into what we see now.”

Huh. I didn’t know much about the prewar period, so that was news to me.

“You know a lot about this, Snowy.”

She ignored me for some reason. Dammit.

But whatever. I couldn’t see well outside their window thanks to the reflection, but the train was now on an elevated track crossing the empty space of the Fault. That thing I saw in the distant sky had to be Koganei’s midair park.

Then out of nowhere, Snowy turned toward me, tapped Lady on the shoulder, and pointed out the window behind me.

“Do you see the lights of the Keio Line in the sky out there? You should see the lights of a large city past that. That is Chofu, known for its large airport.”

Lady turned around and looked behind me. It felt this awkward itchy feeling like they were looking at me.

“The colossal air-defense Heavy Barrel named Beautiful Broadcast was the foundation of the imperial capital’s defenses, but when it realized its power had led to the aerial bombing, it drew the bombers away and self-destructed in that land. It triggered a gravity overload in its engine, which is why Chofu still has uniquely powerful gravity even for the Fault.”

As soon as Snowy finished, I didn’t hear Nobody’s voice in my ear.

“Nobody never forgets. That’s just how it works. And it’s fine that way.”

I turned around out of sheer curiosity and only saw my own reflection in the window.

'''Author Comment:

I later gave Nobody a personality, so I rewrote this one a bit.

I thought about making it an unidentified voice with the night or something speaking, but the line didn’t really allow for that.

When driving through Chofu at night, the darkness opens up where the airport was and it feels like there’s a big hole there.