Editing Mushi Uta:Volume 14 Chapter 2 (section)

== 2.07 Harukiyo Part 7 ==

Harukiyo had never cursed his own life.

He was merely aware of the fact that this was how his life was.

He first understood it when he was little.

The fire caused at the time of his birth also erased his birth records. As his origin was a complete unknown, Harukiyo was taken in by a childcare facility. He grew up there until he was ten.

This facility was a remodeled old hotel that was used for children who had no relatives. He remembered there were much more children than employees there.

There were good and bad people among both the employees and the children. Harukiyo himself had nothing to complain about his living environment, and he knew it’d be the same no matter where he went to, anyway.

“What do you wanna be when you grow up?”

He had a friend who slept in the same room as him and repeated this subject every night as a matter of course.

He was about the same age as Harukiyo, and he also had a younger sister with the habit to sneak into their room. Both siblings had naturally curly hair as well as dark skin.

“Haru’s going be a president!”

Harukiyo was about to answer but the sister answered instead of him; yet another habit of hers.

“Right, he’s super strong in a fight, after all!”

“And smart! He’ll become really important and conquer the world!”

Even in the facility Harukiyo stood out, and the two curly-haired siblings spent every day along with him.

He saw his friend’s face distort—

When the ‘disaster’ finally arrived, just as expected.

“—Haru…! I can’t breathe…!”

It was an incident caused by a serial arsonist who did it on a whim.

Until then he was satisfied with small fires, but he just so happened to find that place.

A large building that looked like it could burn well.

“Haruuu…!”

Their childcare facility truly ended up burning well.

Flames spread all over the place in no time at all, and although it was the middle of the night the area became even brighter than during the day. Since it was an old building there wasn’t any satisfactory extinguishing equipment, and the flames that swallowed the first floor slowly encroached up the floors.

And while this happened, Harukiyo—

“Haru…!”

“Haru-kun!”

He was advancing through the scorching hell, leading not only children both below and above in age but even the staff.

Looking for places the fire hadn’t reached yet, he wandered between his house that he grew used to. While securing children who lost consciousness, calming down the panicking adults, shouting at those who froze in despair to rouse them, he kept looking for a way to escape.

“Haru… Haru…”

Next to him was also his curly-haired friend who carried his unconscious sister on his back. He’d probably never stop hearing the echo of his friend calling his name over and over like a curse.

More and more people joined Harukiyo who kept going without giving up—

But at a certain point, that number began falling.

Getting hit by a crumbling, burnt ceiling and engulfed by smoke, the people collapsed one after another.

Walking in the front, Harukiyo kept desperately looking for an exit and kept calling out toward his companions.

Finally, he found a lone ray of hope.

He made eye contact with a firefighter who just climbed the ladder and reached the window of the room Harukiyo managed to escape into.

Harukiyo turned around, shouting in joy—and his expression vanished.

He could only see a sea of fire there.

The firefighter in the window reached out toward the lone survivor.

“Hey, you…! Come here, quickly!”

So it happened like that—

Forgetting the heat of the flames and feeling his heart rapidly cool down, Harukiyo headed to the window.

In this world there were those with good and bad luck.

It was neither kind or harsh, but merely a world of possibilities. Some would have their lives end due to misfortune, and instead someone else would get visited by good luck.

So he would just live as a fortunate person.

Thinking like this, he was privileged with happiness.

Fortunately, he was taken to another facility, he was fortunately even enrolled to a school, and he even met a person of the opposite sex that he started fancying.

“Hey, you. You need to come to school more.”

She wasn’t some kind of exceptional beauty.

She went to the same class as him. Her most distinguishing features were her strong-willed eyebrows and braids. She was straitlaced and so exemplary that other people might have felt some revulsion on the inside.

“You’re making trouble for the others in your group. In cooking class, for example.”

She said this and gave a nasty kick to his desk. He remembered how this instantly changed his first impression of her. She probably wasn’t as serious as she looked.

“You were probably the one in charge of bringing potatoes, right? Your friends cried after having to eat curry without any potatoes, so how are you going to settle this? C’mon. —Eh, you weren’t crying? You had onions? That’s enough, just shut up. You can’t take it back anymore.”

On the other hand, Harukiyo was the kind of delinquent boy you could find anywhere.

Since he was so amiable, many vigorous boys gathered around him, and either won or ran away. Classes were boring, so whenever he’d gone looking for ‘disasters’—he didn’t mind playing the truant for the sake of his secret hobby. It was also around this period that he met Ume, who’d end up staying with him for a long time.

“It’s not just cooking class, either. Even when preparing for the school festival, don’t you feel bad for being the only one slacking off? …Oh, sorry for misunderstanding you… Everyone has cram school and clubs and things like that, right? So why are you the only one who—eh? I did apologize. It wasn’t half-assed at all. I-it’s fine, just shut up already! Am I saying anything wrong? What d’you mean, my ears are red? Is that even relevant to what we’re talking about? If he keeps going like that, then it might affect even our school trip—”

He began noticing her after that small event.

And he parted from her not long after that.

When Harukiyo parted from someone, it was ''always'' in a world dyed bright red. 

“—”

A burning rectangular box.

Just minutes ago, it had been a large bus driving through the mountains.

According to the news later, an unlicensed driver on the other lane took his eyes off the road while driving and caused the accident. This tragedy hitting the students on their field trip shook the public with the absolute worst result. There were zero survivors.

The bus that drove between the mountains took a bad curve and fell off the cliff.

Gasoline ignited and the fire spread to the dry trees as well. Only one person—Harukiyo—had been able to escape from the upturned vehicle by himself.

Although he was covered in burns and his entire body was lacerated from the windows’ broken glass, Harukiyo never gave up.

The moment before the bus was fully engulfed by flames, he dragged out several of his classmates. He even tried giving them mouth to mouth resuscitation.

“—”

However, no matter what he did, the braids girl never opened her eyes again.

That was how it happened.

While standing there and looking at his completely silent classmates, Harukiyo came to realize.

In this world, life was decided by good and bad fortune.

Harukiyo had not been spared from this in the least. Even this time he did his best to remain alive, and tried saving those who were misfortunate.

As a result, all that happened was that a line got drawn between those who lived and those who didn’t.

Therefore, Harukiyo felt nothing.

However, even so—

As if to escape from the siren sounds coming from afar, he left the place.

Seeing on the news that he was being treated as one of the victims, he never again returned to any school, facility or community like that, and just kept living on his own.

It was just a simple, single fact.

Everyone around him always died and he alone survived.

Every time he overcame death, he felt himself growing stronger.

Just like—a flame.

Using the lives of his precious people as fuel, Harukiyo kept burning brighter.

And if he really was this sort of being.

Then his continued living—was a sin.

The simple act of him living burned everyone around him to cinders. He was the most sinful being of all.

However, Harukiyo wasn’t the kind of admirable person who’d just acknowledge it so easily, and he didn’t intend to act out the hero of a tragedy, either.

“Repent…”

In his mid-teens, Harukiyo became a Mushitsuki.

Even when that happened Harukiyo was, as a matter of course, in the middle of a “disaster”. His first friend who was able to overcome that “disaster” with him, Kusezaki Ume, was also there.

“You child who can become mine vessel… repent for thy sins…”

Apparently, the one who butted in that “disaster” was called Shinpu.

Shinpu, one of the Prototype Mushitsuki who gave birth to Mushitsuki, invited him into a foul church. As he did, he said that without any prelude.

“Repent…”

Harukiyo was on the verge of death, but he remembered himself flying into a rage when he heard those words.

“—Don’t fuck with me…!”

At the time he didn’t even properly know what a Mushi was, let alone the Original Three. He mistook him to be some god or demon and vent out on him.

“What’m I supposed to be repentin’ for? I was only staying alive! So you’re saying that those who died around me were my own fault? I did my best! I tried saving them, not slacking off in the least! Even so—you say that you’re gonna punish me?”

“However, thou doth wish for a punishment…”

Twitch.

Having shown this millimeter of agitation at the moment was the mistake of a lifetime for him.

“Thou, who burns all those around thee, wish for punishment much more than anyone…”

“—What a load of bull.”

He soon noticed that Shinpu was neither God nor anything like that.

He was something much inferior—a piece of trash that made one nauseous.

“Punishing yourself is just fancy suicide. I don’t want nothin’ like that. If I’m having fun living without caring in the least about any sin and then get crushed like an insect, that’s what you’d call a punishment!”

“…”

“I won’t die. No matter what happens… no matter what cowardly method is used, I’ll keep on living stubbornly. And if people still try to punish me for that—I’ll burn them all to the ground and keep living!”

As Harukiyo howled, Shinpu looked like he flinched for a moment.

“As long as I’m alive—my life’s no sin.”

Seeing Harukiyo’s blazing eyes, that thing sneered.

“—Dost thou wish for power?”

Harukiyo’s answer to that question—had already been set.

He swore that he’d keep living no matter what he did. He’d use both brains and brawns as much as needed, and use everything he could. Even if—it was the sort of trashy power that he never wished for.

“If thou wish for it, I shall give it to thee… since thou possess the possibility to become mine vessel, the aptitude of a king…”

Thus, Harukiyo became Mushitsuki.

Following this, he began looking for a being who could punish him by himself.

“Disasters” came down bearing on them, and before they could involve unrelated people—he kept looking for an opponent that could kill him.

All so he could live.

So he could prove that his life itself was no sin, as long as he didn’t die.

Even so, for some reason—

After his life changed by his becoming a Mushitsuki, he ended up getting dragged into the fights between Mushitsuki.

“I’d just… managed to run away from Hunter, and yet…”

The possibility of the next “disaster” he obtained from the Mushitsuki was also a Mushitsuki.

While looking for a Mushitsuki that could punish him, he met the Original Three again.

It was the incident where an entire small island was swallowed by flames, nearly all of its inhabitants massacred.

If he recalled, that island’s name—was Aoharima Island.

“Hunter’s… a Mushitsuki…”

The white coat-dressed youth who told him that—introduced himself as Sanbikime.

“She’s quite the beauty, too.”

Relying on this information, he looked for Hunter, the strongest Mushitsuki.

And while going around—he made friends, little by little.

Including Kusezaki Ume, they were all powerful Mushitsuki. They weren’t comrades who gathered for a so-called shared goal, but they were, without a doubt, friends who could live along with Harukiyo.

However, his journey to look for the “disaster” Mushi—ended in a half-assed manner.

“—You can’t die, you two, alright?”

The fight of the meteor shower that everyone already forgot about.

The girl who was the “disaster” he was looking for smiled at Harukiyo and Kakkou and fell asleep. Even in that fight many people perished, excluding Harukiyo.

“I don’t give a single fuck about the fights of Mushitsuki or those things called the Original Three.”

Harukiyo just kept looking for “disasters” and sought to make preemptive attacks.

“How dare you vanish like that after saying you’ll punish me? I’ll never forgive you, Arisu.”

In order to settle the score with the asleep “disaster”—Sleeping Beauty—he kept looking for her.

In that course, he also touched many secrets related to Mushi.

He never wished for any of it.

Although he didn’t care at all about the fights between Mushitsuki—he might be the one among Mushitsuki who knew the most.

“I need to beat Arisu and look for the next ‘disaster’…”

While mumbling to himself and searching for Sleeping Beauty, her words never left his mind.

—I believe… that strength holds meaning.

Harukiyo simply became stronger to keep living.

That was all that was—and yet he ended up reluctantly involved in fights between Mushitsuki.

If his strength truly had some meaning, was there any meaning for him to become Mushitsuki? Even the fact he came to know secrets he didn’t care about?

That miniscule doubt even now lingered uncomfortably in his heart—

“—Didja see it? Eh? Nothing’s here my fault, right?”

Standing within the flames, he raised his eyes.

Inside the roaring flames stood another person—a small boy.

“But it doesn’t seem like you think that. Since you’re tellin’ me you wanna die, you must’ve done something horrible. —Show me the rest.”

That boy wore tattered clothes.

“Alpha.”

In complete contrast to Harukiyo’s flaming eyes, the boy slowly closed his eyes.