Editing Mushi Uta:Volume 14 Chapter 2 (section)

== 2.10 Harukiyo Part 10 ==

The outskirts of Akamaki City in the past.

Alpha’s howling form was simply bizarre.

His flank had been gouged by the goggle-wearing Fusion-Type Mushitsuki boy—probably the first ever Fusion-Type. Even now, fresh blood was gushing out of Alpha’s wound.

Even so Alpha kept shouting at the top of his lungs, glaring at Harukiyo.

“—OOOOoooOOOOH!”

“…!”

Countless Eyes materialized all around Harukiyo as if to surround him. These strange objects, shaped like eyeballs covered by a tough membrane, all focused their gazes on Harukiyo while floating.

The moment after, all eyeballs simultaneously launched heat beams at Harukiyo.

“Is this also part of your past memories? —Obviously not.”

Harukiyo instantly surmised their trajectory and weaved through the net of heat rays.

“And that bleeding… you shoulda kicked the bucket already without any medical care!”

“Uh—Uuuh…!”

Alpha was tottering. Although this wasn’t reality, he apparently couldn’t ignore this wound.

Coming behind Alpha, C’s body double—the golden fairy was approaching.

As her small hand touched Alpha, a lightning strike pierced the man’s body.

“Gwah! —KwaaAAAAH!”

Alpha’s eyes changed, turning a crazed glare to Harukiyo again.

The number of Eyes doubled.

While flying and rotating all over the place, the Eyes unleashed a rain of heat rays. The large transport ship was cut into slices as though it was cake, and bottomless valleys formed in the wharf’s ground.

“You can stimulate the memories of the dead or Fallen Mushitsuki to forcibly Revive them—”

Harukiyo turned himself into a ball of flames, and kept dodging the rain of heat by a razor’s edge.

“That’s how the experiment at the Central Headquarters worked as well, right? What you’re doing amounts to continuing the experiments Miguruma started here, then! This is so awful you could laugh, eh C?!” 

The experiment of the Undying originally started by Miguruma’s father was inherited by his daughter, Miguruma Yaeko.

No, it was wrong to say she inherited it.

Unlike her father who chose to conduct human experimentation and just so happened to draw the Miracle Child—Miguruma was trying to achieve that certainly by conducting experiments on the new kind of humanity called Mushitsuki.

As a result, she gave birth to a new generation of Mushitsuki, starting with C.

She was the chicken—able to absorb even the Original Three, as well as cause the born chicks that could be called Mushitsuki go back into their eggs and reuse them again and again. Those who died as Mushitsuki and became Fallen, or else died as humans. Because she could Revive all of them in this form, she was the Super Class Rank 1, C.

A being that kept birthing the Undying and denied death.

Among those who Harukiyo met thus far, she was the most repulsive Mushitsuki of all.

“…Tch.”

More and more heat rays grazed Harukiyo. The heat wave flow he used to protect himself was disturbed and he was pounded against the roof of a storage container. Harukiyo took a landing position and soon rose up.

“Is that fine, C? Is this suicidal bastard the ‘egg’?”

He looked down at Alpha and the fairy snuggling up to him on the surface and spoke.

“Meaning he’s something like an insurance to you.”

The fairy did not answer.

“Because both you and Miguruma want a world where Mushitsuki are born. No matter what happens, you can return the world to what it was again as long as you have the egg. That’s why you’re trying to kill me and secure this guy, right? Because I’m in your way. —Still, you really thought you could make us fight and that I’d lose? You’re lookin’ down on me, eh?”

The expressionless fairy moved her arms, spurring Alpha with electricity.

Alpha raised a scream of agony and summoned more Eyes again.

“—You look like you can revive even the Egg if it dies. Looks like you lost all your charm along with your personality, stupid brat.”

Harukiyo kept dodging the vast web of rays that looked like a casting net using his heat wave.

“What pisses me off most is you, though. —Suicidal bastard.”

Kicking the wall of the container, Harukiyo instantly came in front of Alpha. He grabbed the youth’s collar.

“How long will you let her play with you? Try resistin’ just a little, damn you.”

However, Alpha just mumbled incoherently while glaring at Harukiyo.

“…Kill me.”

“…”

“As long as I’m alive, people will die—thanks to me, many people will become unhappy…”

Unlike Alpha’s grimace, Harukiyo erased his expression.

He used all of his might to throw Alpha away. Harukiyo’s physical strength managed to fling the youth many meters away, and he was pounded against the collapsing container’s walls. Fresh blood gushing out of the youth’s body created a path of red from Harukiyo’s face to the wall.

“The fuck’s this? You pretending to be hurt?”

While Alpha twisted his face in agony, C’s body double instantly moved.

Hit by golden lightning, the youth controlled his Eyes to shoot heat rays at Harukiyo.

“Or are you playing the victim?”

Not minding it in the least, Harukiyo calmly walked to Alpha.

Receiving concentrated attacks on his wall of flames, there were violent sparks spread around. Harukiyo was unable to fully defend against the attack and his body was ripped by the aftershocks.

“You’ve seen it just now, right? You’ve remembered it right now, right? —We’re under the influence of C’s mental attack, yeah? You realize she’s just showing you all your suffering to gouge your wounds, yeah? You understand she’d been showing you all those who died around you so she can push the blame on you, yeah?”

Seeing the slowly approaching devil of flames, Alpha’s expression transformed to that of fear.

“Alright, so I get to decide too. —You are an angel of death. Your living ain’t gonna help anyone and you’re an eyesore. Die already, you piece of shit. Not a single person in this world wishes you to live. This is the combined opinion of the entire fucking humankind.”

“—”

“Will you—acknowledge that?”

Harukiyo’s arm grabbed Alpha’s chest again. This time he was really pushed by the force of the heat rays, and while he was shedding blood from his entire body, his blazing eyes glared deep into the youth’s as he shook in fear.

“If you can think that, you’re free to just go and die already. —‘I’ve just been unlucky’, ‘this only happened due to some mistake’… you can play the victim like this and just end yourself. Don’t fucking tempt people by telling them to kill you. Aren’t you trying to be a victim to the very end?”

Harukiyo’s vision was dyed in gold.

C’s fairy was unleashing lightning at Harukiyo.

“Or do you actually think someone died because of you? If you’re really playing the victim like that—then you’re not allowed to wish for death.”

Harukiyo did not stop, however. He put strength into his arm to grab Alpha’s collar.

“Saying something like ‘please grant my dying wish!’ at the very end is not what the perpetrator does, dammit. Why’d I have to listen to a fucking sinner and kill ‘em? What a spoiled piece of mass-murdering shit you are.”

Alpha’s face was distorting more and more as he looked at it.

Even while he recalled his own life, suffered, and was about to despair—in the end, all he did was glare back at Harukiyo.

“—What am I supposed to do, then.”

It was like a hoarse voice of a question, but also sounded like he was raising a tantrum.

“I don’t give a single fuck.”

Harukiyo spat.

“Stop relying on me. You’ve got no allies. ‘Cause everyone’s thinkin’ you’re bad, anyway. So many people hate your fucking guts, but not even a single weirdo would ever try saving you. Even fucking fate itself is your enemy.”

“—”

“But if it was me, I’d say this. —I don’t give a single fuck.”

Harukiyo released Alpha, raised both arms and declared.

“It’s my own fucking life! No matter what anyone tells me, I’ve done nothing wrong! I’m neither a victim or a preparator; all I’m doin’ is living my own damn life! Everyone around me blabs about nonsense! No matter what they tell me, I’ll just keep happily livin’ my life and do what I want!”

Once electricity was added to the clash between the wall of flames and the heat ways, it was as though the area was assaulted by a typhoon. The warehouse was blown away without a trace, leaving only Harukiyo, Alpha and the golden fairy standing on the cracked earth.

“What will you do? I don’t care! Do whatever you want! If you don’t know what, then just keep living your life being used by others just like always! Isn’t it easy, not needing to think?”

Furrowing his brows, Alpha closed his eyes.

“However, you bastard—if you’re really some kinda monster born from a miracle or whatever, and you insist that you have enough conscience to think you’ve done something bad… I’ll come and kill you at some point.”

“…!”

Alpha widened his eyes in surprise. He looked up Harukiyo’s face.

“If you try and ask yourself even a little… couldn’t you have done better at the time—when people died near you, couldn’t you have saved even a single one? If you start really thinking of it as a crime like an adult even a little bit… you gotta first wish to live or nothing’ll come out of it.”

Harukiyo spoke.

“Doing your best to live and then get squashed like a bug. —That’s what being punished is all about, right?”

“…”

“When guys who did nothin’ tell you to kill them, they’re bastards who don’t even acknowledge their crime. Just do whatever you fucking please.”

Alpha gritted his teeth. It looked like he was about to look at Harukiyo with a face ready to burst into tears, but he then curled up.

Just like a kid.

Or perhaps he was like a newborn, even at this point.

While hugging up his own shaking body, the youth spoke in a thin voice.

“Can a person like… even think—of living?”

“You obviously can’t, you angel of death. Everyone’s dying because of you.”

Alpha gave a large shudder as Harukiyo gave this immediate answer.

At some point—the heat beams assaulting Harukiyo stopped.

“—GwaaaAAAH!”

As if telling him to move, the fairy unleashed her electricity on Alpha.

However, the Eyes floating in air made no attempt to move.

“I-I could only hold out this far… because I thought I might as well die whenever… guh!”

As Alpha was struck by lightning, Harukiyo kept punching him away as though to rub salt into his wound.

“GAAAH!”

“Hurts, eh? Feels painful? —What is it, so suddenly you’re greedy for life? You really are a piece of absolute flaming shit. Did you feel no pain until now?”

“B-but if I still live—and receive punishment…”

Alpha finally raised his face. He wore a weak smile on it.

“I wonder if I can apologise to all those who died because of me in this world…”

“At the very least you might feel better, rather than apologizing to those who had easy deaths.”

The devil sneered.

The world reflected in his eyes distorted.

The ravaged wharf and the caved-in transport ship all lost their shape, starting to melt away.

Alpha tried closing both eyes again. Completely unlike how he was thus far, his face was permeated by the hue of anxiety and fear.

“Perhaps… the thing that’s called life is very hard…”

He said it as if he only just now noticed.

“Nah—”

Harukiyo sneered and spat out lightly.

“It’s a piece of cake.”

For a moment, the blood-covered Harukiyo’s consciousness flickered—

When he woke up again, he was in a space completely unlike the wharf.

He could see Kusezaki Ume and Sakaki Haruka.

As well as Alpha, who was asleep inside the life support system.

Harukiyo came back to himself inside the cargo of the semi-trailer still rushing on the highway.

“Oh, you’re finally back! Are you okay, Harukiyo?”

Ume immediately spoke to Harukiyo.

Alpha probably repelled C’s mental pollution attack. As he lay inside the mysterious liquid, Alpha’s face became calm.

Harukiyo made a huge huff and sat down.

Although it wasn’t in the real world, he received too much of C’s attacks. He received quite a lot of mental damage, and although his physical wounds weren’t gone—

“—”

Harukiyo touched his own body and froze.

The blood wasn’t gone. Nor the wounds.

As he raised his head, still covered in blood—

“We’re in a pinch here! Since you were so late, we’ve been killed!”

As Ume said this, a cut appeared from his shoulder to his waist, cutting him cleanly into two.

“I died… It’s your fault, Harukiyo…”

Haruka also had a gaping hole opened in her chest, and strings of blood dripped from the edges of her mouth.

However, Harukiyo was not flustered in the least.

He calmly analyzed his remaining powers and this abnormal situation—

“Ah, damn… so I’m the only one still stuck inside C’s territory.”

He wore a bold sneer.