Editing Mushi Uta:Volume 11 Chapter 3 (section)

== 3.02 The Others ==

“Thank you very much. You really saved me… cough.”

Rolling Daisuke’s unconscious form into the shadow, Kasshi heard Mikko’s words of gratitude.

“I don’t need any thanks. I simply eliminated someone who stood in my way.”

“Have you killed him?”

“I just gave him a temporary shock that made him faint.”

“I see… cough. Now, let us go back to Kii-kun.”

“We don’t need him, do we?”

“No, I would feel too bad to abandon him…”

As Mikko narrowed her eyes in sorrow, Kasshi stared at her.

She already realized that Kasshi had been sent for some mission after the Undying. Kii-kun would probably stand in his way to accomplish this. However, quarrelling here or interrogating Mikko would be a waste of time.

“Even right now the danger just keeps growing. It is fine, with me, you and Kii-kun together, I will show you to the abandoned ship, just like promised…”

“Got it.”

Just like she thought, Kasshi agreed with her easily and started running.

“You are a good person, Kasshi.”

Mikko narrowed her eyes and smiled. She spoke toward the running boy’s back.

“You moved Daisuke to where he wouldn’t get attacked by Mushi, and as for Kii-kun… you act coldly, but you’ve let your guard down around him. You also looked relieved when Rui decided to stay with his daughter.”

“…”

“If we met under different circumstances, we surely would have been good friends.”

It was her real opinion.

She knew this was nothing more than a hypothetical, fanciful story.

However, it being her fancy meant that these were her true feelings.

“Especially you and Daisuke… you definitely would have gotten along.”

“He’s dangerous. It felt almost like—I was facing against myself.”

“Including the fact that you can’t abandon someone you have opened your heart to? You had no intention to abandon even Kii-kun, right?”

“…Sorry, but I don’t feel like I’ll get along with you either.”

“Daisuke also said something similar… cough.”

As they exited the back alley and came out to the main road, the boy with his face covered in tears was waiting for them.

“What’s up with you! I thought you went and abandoned me! —Hey, where’s Daisuke?”

“He apparently recalled some urgent errand. He said to let him act on his own and left.”

Mikko gave a lie explanation to the crying topknot boy.

Since Kii-kun was so honest he seemed to easily believe it. He made an expression that was a mix of worry and anxiety.

“Oh… but he’d be fine on his own. And we have Kasshi with us.”

“So you’re not going to even try protecting yourself.”

“Ah! I found a car that’s still working!”

Wiping his tears, Kii-kun showed Mikko and Kasshi to the road.

“Don’t have the key, though.”

It was a small van. It was abandoned, park on the alleyway.

“Cough… we obviously wouldn’t have the key. How typical of your half-hearted usefulness—err, I am not praising you, so could you please not smile?”

“It’s just the right kind of old model. No problem.”

Kasshi acted quickly and with no hesitation. He stuck a metallic rod through the window, unlocked the door, dove under the wheel and started fiddling with something there.

It took less than a minute to get the engine started.

“Get on.”

Following Kasshi’s orders as he took the driver’s seat, Mikko took the seat next to him and Kii-kun sat behind.

The van instantly moved. While skillfully avoiding overturned vehicles, debris of destroyed structures and collapsed people, they thrust through the main road.

“How can you start it without a key and drive it so normally… no, I definitely shouldn’t ask this.”

“Everyone has their own secrets. It is rude to ask him that, considering his infamous criminal record… cough.”

“I have no criminal record, nor am I infamous.”

As they approached the center of Akamaki City, the number of Imperfect Mushi increased.

“Uwah!”

Kii-kun raised a scream. A Mushi flew from the side and blocked their path.

Kasshi dexterously operated the gears and turned the wheel. Avoiding the Mushi’s attack a moment before it hit, he ran through the empty sideway and avoided danger.

“…Looks like going through the main road’s difficult. We’d better avoid it.”

“So horrible… is this actually possible…?”

As they reached the center of Akamaki City, there were more and more fleeing people and victims. All buildings, roads, and vehicles they could see were destroyed beyond recognition, and wounded people ran while screaming.

The van turned at a crossroads and looked for another road.

“Mikko… what did your father do…”

Kii-kun said. Mikko coughed.

“Until my mother passed away… he was a kind man. He was a respected doctor and a psychologist.”

Mikko could recall two forms of her father.

Her kind dad—as well as her dad possessed by his research, withered and thin, like a completely different person.

“He lost someone that had no replacement in the world and was trying to regain her… or perhaps he has sacrificed his reason and morals to never lose anything again. Surely even Rui—no, all people drawn in by my father’s research like moths into the flame were perhaps all the same…”

As her father completely changed, he also changed his ways to deal with Mikko, his biological daughter.

He used her like she was some stranger and made her take care of the test subjects. She could clearly remember their faces as they suffered and muttered curses of resentment.

As she recalled this—she felt her fever getting worse.

“If you ask me, he was neither patron nor researcher. He believed that clinging to hope and wishing for something amplified the power of vitality, and when he thrust these test subjects into despair again and again—he was just like a demon of hell. A demon who kicked down the stones piled on by the dead, tormented them and enjoyed their suffering to forget his own pain…”

“But there was a result.”

“It was a failure. Just a coincidence. Something completely unrelated was born.”

Mikko actually told him this, but her father scolded her violently. He actually said that she was the crazy one and even had her go through counseling.

So she reached her limits and ran away.

However—since it became like this, she couldn’t ignore it.

“Since the situation is like this, I believe we should nip the research in the bud. Although I was just a caretaker, I am one of those responsible for this… cough.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Burn it all down… the materials on the ship, samples, records—if anything came out after I left, then that as well.”

“If something happened… is there a possibility of the research about the Undying having been completed?”

The one to ask this was Kii-kun. Mikko and Kasshi looked at him through the mirror.

“No way… I believe the chances for that are low.”

“…Oh.”

“I can’t really think of how wishing for something connects to the Undying. If it really exists, how should we call it?”

Perhaps having thought of something, Kasshi mumbled as if speaking to himself.

Mikko narrowed her eyes.

She knew what to call it.

“That is… called a dream.”

Kasshi and Kii-kun raised their brows.

“A dream?”

“Do you not have one? Wishing to become something…”

The two boys were silent.

After a while, Kii-kun opened his mouth.

“I don’t really get all that, I guess… I’m just giving it my all to think how to end this without dying.”

“I also don’t have one—or so it should’ve been, but now… I don’t know.”

Kasshi spoke vaguely.

What was going to happen to these two boys ahead—

Mikko knew about their conclusion.

Although she supposedly forgot, upon meeting Daisuke, she recalled it while continuing this journey.

Due to a certain reason, she had “seen” it.

However, she still had to head over there.

Because it was a kind of—contract.

Mikko smiled, narrowing her almond eyes.

“Kasshi, Kii-kun, and Rui as well… I really like all of you.”

Suddenly being told this, the two boys reacted differently.

“Wha…! What’s that, all of a sudden… well, I don’t dislike you either, or rather, err…”

“I don’t think anything in particular.”

As they got away from the city center, the less people there were, there were also less Mushi.

Running as far as their gasoline allowed, the van Mikko rode on exited to the suburbs. When there were no more houses, they could also see no Mushi.

Finally they arrived to a plain made of exposed, discolored ground.

Kii-kun looked outside the window and groaned.

“This is…”

As far as the eye could see there were only mountains of discarded things around. At the horizon, where large machines such as trucks or cranes were thrown away, a gentle sea could be seen.

“A research facility…?”

If the Mushi-infested city was hell, then this was—

The end of hell.

The sky that retrieved its silence was being covered by even thicker clouds.

“Yes, in this landfill… it’s further inside.”

Following Mikko’s directions, the van with the trio crossed through the landfill.

Soon seeing what appeared, Kasshi muttered.

“Rather than a research facility, this is—”

Left on the landfill facing the sea, it was dirtied black and rusted by the salty wind.

It was probably imposing in the past as it travelled the world’s seas.

This huge body would have probably instilled awe in whoever saw it before.

However, the thing towering in front of them right now was nothing more than a lump of steel filled with loneliness and vanity.

“A ghost ship.”

A large, abandoned vessel.

This was Mikko’s group’s “finish line”.