Editing Mushi Uta:Volume 8th Episode 30 (section)

=== Part 2 ===

“—Are you reading that storybook again?”

On top of the bed in the sickroom that no one visited, Mari closed the storybook. Its title was ''The Magic Potion''.

Raising her face, she saw Sensei was there. He was still young and wore a white coat, but rather than looking dignified, it made him look more innocent. After all, he wasn’t a doctor at the time but only an intern.

“…”

Before meeting Arisu, Mari felt sick with loneliness more than her actual illness.

She always stared outside the window expressionlessly. Mari didn’t know how to smile, how to be surprised at the scenery that never changed day from day.

Sensei too silently switched the water in the vase. Her main doctor was different, but as Mari was his first patient, he came to meet her, weaving the time between the busy times of his internship.

According to what Mari thought, Sensei didn’t fit the job of a doctor.

He was too kind.

He inserted too much feelings into his first patient Mari, and because of that he kept feeling guilt for what he’d done to her. —She couldn’t begrudge him as he forced himself to make this choice. That was the kind of man he was.

“A cherry blossom sapling is better, you say? No no, it ‘taking root’ in a flowerpot is a bad omen. You really are ignorant at certain things, Aria.”

Sensei mumbled to no one. As Mari turned to him, he held his mouth with a start.

“Oops, I spoke aloud again. This thing makes me look crazy to my peers. It really is a bother, geez.”

“Is Aria Varei still inside you, Sensei?”

Sensei was a normal intern. He was born, went through school, and finished medicine school. He had a family register and even a family.

At the same time, he was also—Sanbikime, one of the Original Three.

An inhuman being. A Prototype Mushi, a monster that created Fusion Type Mushitsuki.

He told Mari about it.

He said that Aria Varei was the Prototype Mushi called Sanbikime’s real name.

“Since he made me a Mushitsuki, isn’t he supposed to vanish?”

“That Aria. Such a liar.”

Other than Sensei being too kind, if anything changed in him at all, it was his somewhat otherworldly way of speaking.

More precisely, he himself wasn’t Sanbikime.

Sanbikime was a separate being that was residing inside him.

“’This irregularity’s the first time for me! I told you this already!’ —Is what Aria says.”

Sensei spoke to Mari. He apparently quoted the being living within him.

“…”

Being the first one seen by a monster and being made its receptable. Sensei was about as misfortunate as Mari—no, perhaps even more than her.

Even so, he was smiling calmly.

“When Sanbikime turns someone into a Mushitsuki, he separates from the host and goes to sleep until finding a different vessel.”

So Sensei said. Mari then took over.

“Then, the original vessel—loses their memories regarding those they turned Mushitsuki…”

“Both of us were hoodwinked. By this guy inside me, a crook that looks just like me.”

Sensei tapped his own chest with his fingers, laughing.

Sanbikime, Aria Varei, had no personality. Therefore, every time he was in someone, he would copy that person’s personality and communicate with the host.

Completely unlike the other Original Three that were Oogui and Shinpu, it was a troublesome system—apparently, this was what Aria had said.

“Wow, Aria’s greatly opposed to that. I can hear you even if I block my ears, so stop it.”

“So it’s irregular… because I was sick?”

“Aria thinks so. The moment someone becomes a Fusion-Type Mushitsuki, their body is remade. Therefore, he thinks that if someone’s body was abnormal from the get go and they become a Mushitsuki, it’d give birth to some sort of error. —Since you were reborn anyway, I wish your disease healed as well.”

His tone was half-joking, but she could clearly see the vestiges of guilt in Sensei’s profile.

''—I’m sorry. What a horrible thing I’ve done to you…!

The young man had crumbled down crying only once in front of Mari as she became a Mushitsuki.

“I can’t ask for too much. If I hadn’t become a Mushitsuki, my heart would’ve stop when they tried to resuscitate me back then.”

“…”

“You’re not telling me that it was better for me to die back then rather than become Mushitsuki—right?”

“I can’t say anything anymore.”

The young man smiled.

“You can just decide yourself one day. Whether to forgive me—or punish me.”

He was already long resolved—

So was his way of speaking.

“The power of Aria inside me greatly weakened. Will he vanish or will he use his remaining power to create another Mushitsuki? If you want revenge, you should probably do it soon.”

Leaving the vase behind, the man spoke as if it was a joke.

“And Aria would lose easily to you. Not just Aria. Dio as well, obviously, but you might even be able to win against El.”

Shinpu and Oogui.

At the time Mari had no interest in the other Original Three. That was also before the young man had inadvertently let slip about the Undying Mushitsuki.

Right, that time.

Mari thought of it.

“—I’m jealous.”

“What?”

“Aria chose the Angel’s Potion.”

Changing forms.

Passing time.

Sanbikime would keep living forever.

For Mari, who was bound by an incurable disease, it really was the ideal.

“—I wonder if I could, too.”

Mari would never forget what expression Sensei had worn at the time.

He looked unbelievably stunned.

And more than that—he looked really sad.

“Is this Morpho butterfly my dream given shape? —It’s another me, right?”

As Mari reached with her hand, a Morpho butterfly came flying out of nowhere, glowing in silver.

“If so, then if I will leave everything to this Morpho butterfly—if I abandon this body, can’t I keep living inside someone? Yes, just like Aria.”

According to Aria, Mari was special among Mushitsuki. If she brought out her full powers, none would be able to stand up to her.

Since she was like that, then maybe, just maybe—

“This might be one method. If possible, you can try it. —But you know, living inside someone isn’t something like that, Mari.”

What was the difference?

Mari couldn’t understand the youth’s words.

“Remember this, Mari.”

That was around the time Mari just became a Mushitsuki.

After that, Mari came to know of the being called the Undying Mushitsuki—and with feelings close to envy, she spent her days looking for them.

“You’re going to suffer from now on, but please don’t lose sight of what’s really important.”

As she kept hunting Mushitsuki lying in Akamaki City, she became feared as Hunter.

“Aria was simply reborn like this, and doesn’t exist anymore. But you’re different. You’re living right here.”

And—she met with Ichinokuro Arisu.

The one and only friend to remember that the girl Hanashiro Mari had lived.

“You’re not like Aria. You’re not a being that doesn’t exist anywhere, nor anyone’s copy. The person called Hanashiro Mari is alive right here.”

Sensei spoke in an unusually powerful tone of voice.

“Keep being yourself and live.”

He was probably gone.

By now he was gone somewhere—he probably, just like he said, forgot about Mari and went to live a different life.

And Aria, just like he’d been programmed to, would gain a different personality and yield himself to his fate. Or perhaps he’d long since lost his powers and got erased.

After this, Mari had been thrown into the perfect solitude known as death.

“I… want to live—”

In her right hand was the Angel’s Potion.

In her left hand was the Devil’s Potion.

Holding both Potions in hand, Mari—

That day, she’d yet to understand the meaning of the words Sensei told her.

Therefore—

“Even if I become Arisu—”

Mari finally decided on the option that would allow her to regain a flesh-and-blood body.