Editing Denpa Onna to Seishun Otoko:Short Stories 01

== The Angler Woman and the Esper Girl ==
''Note: This is a short story that was published a few months after the final volumes of the series, only in electronic format.''
-----
How should I put it, the difference between an adult and a child is in their stride, right?

That was what the person with a strange hat who lived in a nearby apartment said the other day.

When I was a child, I could run without ever feeling any limits. But in reality, I was simply hitting those limits, those walls, at a slower speed. Because our strides differed, the speed at which we reached the wall was different. That was why children were so stubborn and refused to give up, while adults reached their end much faster. Of course, there were individual differences.

At the time, while I only half-listened, I found myself agreeing that there was some truth to it. As I reached an age belonging to adulthood, my compromises only continued to increase year after year. With money, with time off, and with human relationships.

Well, I suppose that was just how things were.

With that thought, my worries often began to fade into a vague haze.

Lately, I had certainly stopped banging my head against the wall and instead spent my time staring vacantly into the distance.

With my mouth hanging slightly open, I was waiting for a fish to take the hook, more out of habit than anything else. In the mirror, I always saw the reflection of a twenty-six-year-old woman with an unremarkable appearance and dark, unadorned skin, with a foolish expression.

“I see, Nii-chan, that’s a good point.” I praised him, only for him to get carried away and try to seduce me as if that was the main point. But when I ruffled the cage of snakes in the shop, he ran away. “Kyaaa, how scary!”

I was recollecting such things under the early summer sunlight. The riverbank was hot enough today to feel as though everything might evaporate.

The rain in late June this year had been terrible. The river running before my eyes was swollen and raging, such that if one were to jump in, they would undoubtedly lose all sense of up and down in the turbid water and drown.

The water had overflowed even to the downstream area, where plants as tall as my waist grew in thick clusters, making it impossible to visit on my days off. Even the crowd I had kept tucked away inside the shop had been nothing but a noisy nuisance.

Now, however, the sky was clear, with no trace remaining of the height of the rainy season. The deserted riverbank was utterly silent, save for the occasional breeze drifting from beneath the bridge that brushed behind my ears with a low, swirling rush.

The sensation of stepping on the grass, which was strangely uniform at about ten centimetres in height, and the sight of the landscape swaying in the wind felt wonderful.

As if they had only just begun to work after the official end of the rainy season was announced, massive cumulonimbus clouds and a pale blue sky completely covered the heavens above. The river water, which had once been so abundant, had evaporated to less than half its former volume, and if I peered closely, I could see through to a riverbed thick with aquatic plants. As the water level dropped, the small floating islands scattered along the way began to poke their heads above the surface once more. On one of those islands, a white light car that someone had abandoned remained lodged, even as algae continued to grow over it. I felt a sense of admiration, thinking that such a thing hadn’t even been swept away by that massive flood.

“…Hey, fish are swimming right there. And yet, I can’t catch any.”

I stared down at the fish swarming the river moss, slapping my makeshift, mere-for-show fishing rod against my palm.

Hey, aren’t you guys hungry? I’m hungry, so you’d better let me eat you.

A habit I acquired upon reaching adulthood was playing pretend while fishing. I had tried taking in nicotine and alcohol, but neither suited me, but this was the one thing that kept as a habit. It’s certainly not a hobby. After all, I’ve never caught a single fish. I did, at least, attach insect-type bait to the line, but the fish wouldn’t give it a second glance. I suppose even fish are picky eaters. Even though I loved all kinds of fish. Eating them, I mean.

“Haaa…” I let out a warm breath, shielding my sun-heated hair from the descending sunlight with my palm.

Long ago, I had seen a painting of a god fishing. The fishing line was dropped down to the surface of the Earth’s oceans, while the god himself resided in space. While I was impressed by the idea that even gods fished, my childhood mind simultaneously wondered if aliens were actually gods. And yet, here I was, indulging in the pursuit of fishing, a hobby of high nobility.

Even though I would grow bored within five minutes if I simply sat aimlessly by the riverbank, there was something mysterious about how I could remain there for hours while my line was cast. Perhaps it was because something unknown might be born. There was a chance a fish might strike the hook. Something might happen. By leaving my fishing rod completely neglected with that sense of anticipation, I found, in a way, a reason for being there.

As my knowledge and perception expanded with age, my life seemed to grow shallower. Humans are fundamentally creatures that grow in a shallow yet broad manner. Well, whether one perceives that as growth is a matter of individual perspective, but I viewed it in a positive light. If we were to build a society of those who were deep and narrow, interaction would inevitably become difficult. That was perfectly fine with me.

Even without diving deep into the ocean, it was possible that treasures might occasionally wash up in the shallows. A fishing hook relying on such a windfall truly failed to receive even the slightest hint of a bite.

The silkworm larvae, submerged in the water, swayed alongside the hook as if they were alive.

“I read somewhere that these can serve as bait, but maybe the fish around here just don’t like them.”

Well, I wasn’t fond of eating raw larvae myself, either. I could understand how the fish felt. Should I just go grill them instead?

Under the direct sunlight that felt like it might induce heatstroke, I enjoyed my holiday, remaining as motionless as a turtle. Up to that point, I was simply following the pattern of my usual weekends, where my fishing hooks went unused.

“…Ah?”

That was, until “it” came drifting down from upstream.

My eyes widened involuntarily, and I froze. My mind began to go completely blank, and I only managed to steady myself slightly when the wind brushed against my eyebrows and bangs. The sweat that had been waiting for an excuse to escape my body all at once burst forth.

What was that?

What was drifting down from upstream was not pink but white. Or rather, silver. A humanoid object was drifting towards me, floating on its back, encased in what looked like a thick suit, a spacesuit? the sort I’d never want to wear in summer. The visor covering its face dazzlingly reflected the light like the surface of the water. It was impossible to look at it directly, in so many different senses.

The thing remained motionless, as if surrendering itself to the river’s current. I strained my eyes, wondering if it might be a doll or a model, but I lacked the experience to make such a determination. Suddenly, its limbs caught on a floating island, halting its drift. It bobbed up and down, sinking slightly and resurfacing again with a rhythm as steady as a sleeping breath.

What should I do? Or rather, was I going to do something? Should I help, or should I pretend I saw nothing? I grew goosebumps as I jumped ahead with worries, hating the idea to touch what might be a drowned body, and just as my half-hovering bottom was about to touch the ground again, fate played a little trick on me.

The fishing line was being pulled by something without me doing anything. I had been staring wide-eyed since a moment ago.

“It bites! Wait, uh, ah, oh no, what am I going to do!?”

The fishing rod swayed as if demanding attention. Regardless, I gripped it desperately, trembling at the sensation of the pull. While I braced myself in a half-crouch to support the rod, which threatened to be dragged into the river, my focus drifted toward the spacesuit girl. I felt as though I were being forced to choose between two impossible options. If that space dweller was drowning, I should rush to her rescue immediately. Yet, it felt too much of a waste to abandon my fishing rod during the first struggle with a fish in my entire life. Should I prioritise the life of a stranger, someone likely far removed from my own world, or should I refuse to let go of this great achievement?

Whether weighing such things made me inhumane or not, I didn’t care!

The truth was, I didn’t particularly like humans!

I squeezed my eyes shut. The sweat that had pooled on my forehead began to trickle down, running hotly across my eyelids. A heavy sensation, so intense it felt as if it might snatch my very hands away, sent a numbness through my fingertips. Just as I caught the fish, I would save…

Argh, damn it all!

I snapped my eyes open, let go of my fishing rod, and wiped my eyes forcefully. This wasn’t sweat; they were my tears!

I screamed in a fit of desperation at both the motionless space freak and the annoying fish demanding bait.

“Don’t move! Don’t you dare move now, because I’m going to save you!”

I plunged into the river. In truth, I had often heard stories where two people ended up drowning after attempting to rescue someone struggling in a river or sea. However, those accidents happened because the drowning person clung to them with all their might; picking up a suspicious piece of drifting debris that was merely floating there without any movement was just, ugh, such a pain! Anyway, to be perfectly blunt, I didn’t care if I died today! I just didn’t care!

Whether I was swimming through the river or kicking against the surface, it was all a blur as I charged forward at full strength and grabbed the right arm encased in a spacesuit. Beneath the puffy fabric, I felt the sensation of a slender arm being gripped. There was no doubt; there was a living human inside. My first impression was that the figure was small, like a young girl. Then, I realised the river was shallow enough that one could touch the bottom, and I felt a sudden surge of helplessness. What on earth was she doing, drifting around in a river this shallow?

Immediately after that realisation, the helmet section flipped up. The visor that prevented me from seeing what lay beneath caught my face, and it was that person who recoiled in a sudden fright. Then, a voice reached me from beyond the spacesuit.

“Who are you? Do you want something?”

Through the visor, a muffled yet unmistakable voice questioned me in Japanese. The quality of the voice was, as expected, feminine, with a strange, high-pitched tone. While I felt intimidated by the extraordinary sound, I found myself getting angry at her attitude.

“What do you mean, ‘what do I need’… Normally, when you see someone drifting down a river, you’d save them, right?”

I did weigh that decision against catching a potential fish, though. The spacesuit girl fell silent at my words. A wordless pressure swirled around us. I felt as if I might start hearing phantom sounds like *zuoooooo*. The water up to just below my chest was freezing, while everything above the waterline remained stiflingly hot. I felt such a strange sensation that I thought my body might simply tear in half.

Unable to endure the silence, I eventually spoke first. Though I couldn’t help but scold myself to get out of the river and talk properly.

“Why were you drifting down the river in the first place?”

“I failed my landing.”

The spacesuit girl said it as if it were nothing. I had no idea what she meant.

“Landing? You mean you failed to land in the water, at the very least.”

“Ho, so that’s the deteriorating Japanese of the youth I’ve heard rumours about. Found myself an idiot, great.”

She put on airs when she said “great”. What an irritating little creature. She was the one who looked like an idiot.

“First of all, what do you mean by landing, and where did you fall from?”

I doubted she would say she had fallen from a rocket, considering her outfit.

When I asked, the spacesuit girl let out what felt like a derisive snort. It was a bold, mocking sound, as if she were making fun of my ignorance.

The spacesuit girl’s shoulders shook as if she were laughing at my stupidity.

Then, accompanied by the sound of her splashing water droplets away.

She pointed high up toward the blue sky and even beyond it. Toward that certain thing that stretched out into infinity, claiming she had come from there.

“From space, obviously. After all, I am an alien.”

“…………”

I turned my gaze toward the fishing rod that had drifted downstream and toward the direction where the fish had likely headed. A gentle breeze passed by. The wind, blowing as if to peck at the water’s surface, was a pleasant temperature, soothing my flushed skin. My body, where dry skin and wet skin coexisted, brought various memories back to life. I immersed myself in the past as if settling like sediment, losing oxygen in a state of intoxication. However, that daydream-like euphoria did not last long.

Amidst my escapism, the only thing that continued to mark time accurately was the steady trickle of sweat.

It was an awakening, similar to the sensation of sinking deep, deep into a pool, and then looking up at the surface as one floats toward the top. An ascent back to reality. After surfacing into the different world above the water, all that remained was emptiness.

“Oh, really?”

I had so many regrets.

“The fish I missed was a big one,” I thought, using the ceaselessly dripping droplets as a substitute for my tears.

The name of the town where I lived contained the character for “star”, and I assumed its origin probably stemmed from some ancient legend about stars falling upon that land. I had once researched the origins of the town’s name for a summer project back in elementary school, but those distant memories had long since faded.

A shrine that celebrated the land of falling stars stood about ten minutes away from the station. I happened to be passing right by it.

“…………”

Annoyed by the droplets still dripping onto my shirt, I looked back. Even if I ignored trivial thoughts like, “Oh no, my underwear is showing,” there was something behind me. A silver spacesuit was wriggling, making soft, pattering sounds. Through its visor, it looked as though it was staring vacantly up toward the shrine. There was nothing unusual about it at all.

In terms of appearance, its movements sounded like they should have produced mechanical sound effects, like a whirring or clanking, but in reality, it just went patter-patter, leaving wet footprints on the asphalt as it walked. The way its visor dully reflected the light while it leaned forward was somehow frightening. The fact that such a thing had been following me for this long was even more frightening. I wondered if I had accidentally picked up something truly dangerous. Fish, '''come back'''.

“Why are you following me?”

“I am merely looking for a place to sleep. Somewhere dark, damp, and out of sight would be ideal.”

A place to sleep? Who was she? Some kind of runaway girl? Just how extreme was her runaway outfit?

“You think such a convenient property just exists? Go sleep under the eaves or something.”

“Under the eaves. Hoh, under the eaves, huh? Noted. Noted.”

Something was wriggling inside the spacesuit. It was kind of gross. But it was also a little intriguing.

I wondered what her true face looked like. Was she plain, or youthful, or perhaps a beautiful girl? If she was like that beautiful girl I had seen in a nearby town before, the one that seemed to emit pale blue particles, I wanted to try taking an observation record of her. Then again, if she was a beauty so profound that she was practically non-human, she probably wouldn’t even need to hide her face.

Since a long time ago, my hobby had been observing various living creatures. I had concluded that humans were no good, that I grew bored of them, but I felt something slightly alien about this one. Not that I particularly wanted to get involved with her, though.

“Anyway, where did you even come from? You’re just wandering around on a weekday, so just go home already.”

I waved her away dismissively. As if indignant, the spacesuit girl stepped up beside me with a quick stride.

“I told you just a moment ago that I came from space. It seems Earthlings age internally faster than they appear; your hearing is already failing you.”

“Ugh, enough with that. So I’m the one making first contact with an alien while bypassing NASA? Wow, that’s just incredible. Shut up, you idiot.”

“You sceptical Earthling. Your heart… it’s so small.”

She insulted me while sounding almost admiring. Swaying from side to side in rhythm with her words. I felt like swatting her.

“Of course I am. Besides, it would be insane not to doubt people. If you hate the word doubt, then fine, call it curiosity or a drive for exploration. But blindly trusting a stranger you know nothing about isn’t tolerance or goodwill. It’s just a refusal to understand.”

After letting the heat take over and coolly declaring those spontaneous thoughts, I turned back to see how she’d reacted, only to find the spacesuit girl leaning against the wall with her head resting against it. She even went so far as to muffle her breathing to mimic the sound of someone sleeping, “ZzzZZ”.

That bitch. She was clearly looking down on me. It felt too foolish to even deal with her, so I decided to put some distance between us by walking briskly. I swung my arms that were empty now after losing my only possession, my fishing rod, with exaggerated movements, taking long strides. Thump, thump, thump. I turned around. Thump, thump, thump. She had started running.

“Just why are you following me!?”

I screamed as I began to run at full speed. The spacesuit girl, leaning back with a breathless gasp, screamed back.

“You bitch! Don’t walk ahead of the path I intend to take!”

“Who do you think you are?! Some kind of unreasonable brat!?”

“Fooo… my neck, the wind pressure, is going to rip it off!”

“Then don’t run! And stop moving your right arm and right leg forward at high speed at the same time! It’s creepy!”

In the end, the spacesuit girl ended up following me all the way to the front of my shop.

…And what’s more.

I wanted to demand an answer from destiny itself, wondering how the world could have gone so wrong that I ended up having to carry her into my shop.

“Pretending to collapse in front of someone’s shop… how incredibly cunning.”

Though it was a shopping district where duty and compassion ran thin, I ultimately decided to take her in out of a sense of social propriety.

As I carried the light but stiflingly hot spacesuit girl toward the second floor of the shop, I grumbled to myself. The others who resided on the first floor, or rather, were merely on display, were strangely loud, all of them groaning in disappointment for some reason today.

I wondered if it was because of the girl on my back. Then, she had one remark to offer in response to my complaining.

“I heard that for Earthlings, picking up something that was lying around and bringing it into your house is considered a crime.”

“Shut up until you cool down, or I’ll kill you. Argh, it’s so hot!”

I tossed the spacesuit girl carelessly onto the second-floor floor and slid face-first into the room. After rubbing my chin against the ''tatami'', I rolled over and lay on my back. I fumbled to turn on the electric fan and let the breeze wash over me.

“Aee…” A small groan escaped my lips. I closed my eyes, trying to steady my heavy breathing while feeling the sweat trickle down my skin… then, the breeze suddenly stopped reaching me. When I opened my eyes and looked toward the fan, I saw that the spacesuit girl had positioned herself directly in front of it. She was writhing with a sloppy moan, as if being buffeted by the wind was some kind of pleasure. I felt an impulse to pick her up and throw her out the second-floor window. However, the heat had stolen both my will to be angry and the strength to move; the reality was that I remained lying there, only capable of moving my lips.

“You’re making things stifling, so take off that helmet. Actually, just take off the suit.”

“As if I would allow myself to be directly exposed to the polluted air of this planet.”

“…Why are you wearing a fake spacesuit?”

I threw out the question that had been pushed entirely to the back of my mind. For some reason, the spacesuit fellow responded with a look of triumph.

“Fu fu fu. Did you truly think I knew nothing?”

“Uh, what?”

“This is exactly how Earthlings imagine aliens should look, isn’t it? I have heard tales of you lot arriving in space dressed just like this.”

“…Right, yeah, I guess so.”

Summer was truly a sinful season. It had the power to drive the minds of promising, innocent young girls to madness with its heat. I wondered why I had to go through this, picking up such a person, losing my fishing rod, and having the entirety of the electric fan’s breeze stolen from me.

I tightly gripped the hem of my shirt, which had become completely dry and now wafted with the heavy, humid scent of river water.

“Once you’ve cooled down, get out of here.”

“Guuu.”

“Rest assured, if you pretend to be asleep, I’ll just toss you out the window… Though I suppose it can’t be helped. If you’ve a runaway, you have nowhere else to go.”

“A runaway? What a shallow way to think. You Earthlings are far too foolish, try to be a bit more intelligent.”

The way she let out a soft, melting groan as the wind hit the lower part of her helmet made her seem just as dim-witted. It appeared that spacesuit girl was truly convinced that she was an alien… I see.

To be honest, a part of me found it incredibly entertaining.

After all, opportunities to observe someone with such a deranged mind up close were rare. As the thought crossed my mind, I began to feel it would be a waste to kick her out of the house so soon. I even felt like letting her stay for a while, just to see how much more interesting her reactions could get. Observing living creatures was, after all, my hobby.

It was the kind of thing that would earn widespread condemnation, like submitting a survival record of a cockroach with its head crushed for a summer vacation science project.

“Hey, what’s your name? I saved you, so the least you can do is tell me that much.”

“xx$x#xxx&amp;”

The spacesuit girl answered instantly, but what language she had spoken, masked by the breeze from the electric fan, was completely unintelligible to me.

“What? Sorry, say that again.”

“xx$x#… Ah, I see. I guess it doesn’t translate to Earthlings. Good grief,” said the spacesuit girl, shaking her head in lament. Ah, so that was her character setting.

“I am, um, uh… yeah, Hoshimiya Yashiro.”

“Hoshimiya, Yashito, Yashiro… Wait, that’s the place we just passed.”

The place that celebrated the falling of stars. Moreover, she was pronouncing it wrong. It was Hoshimiyasha<ref>Hoshimiyasha is a shrine in Nagoya. Its name is written with the same characters as Hoshimiya Yashiro.</ref>.

“Shut up. If you nitpick my name, I’ll drop a meteorite on your head.”

With a loud growl, the spacesuit girl raised both hands and lunged at me threateningly. Given the way she was impersonating a name, her status certainly smelt like a runaway.

“Alright, alright, Yashiro-san. So, what exactly is your purpose for coming from space?”

I decided to just nod and play along. At that, Yashiro gave a solemn nod.

“It is for work. I’m looking for someone called “Cousin”. However, I failed my landing and ended up in a different town.”

“Cousin? You came to see a relative?”

I deliberately asked as if I had only caught the first part of her sentence. Yashiro tilted her head.

“How could you possibly interpret my words that way? I told you I am searching for Cousin.”

“No, I mean, a cousin is… ah, is that their actual name?”

Maybe someone whose name was written with kanji like 糸子<ref>Itoko (糸子) is a female name. And itoko also means “cousin” but is written with different characters.</ref>? However, it felt as though our conversation wasn’t quite clicking. Yashiro, still tilting her head, seemed puzzled, muttering, “This fool before me should at least in theory be using the language of Earth.” I wanted to punch her.

“Well, if they were the type to be easy to talk to, they would be far too ordinary to be interesting.”

“Hmm? Did you say something?”

“No, nothing. I was just thinking that if you have nowhere else to go, maybe I’ll let you stay here for a while.”

“I shall accept that offer.”

Yashiro accepted without a moment’s hesitation, and quite arrogantly, at that. I stared blankly at her visor. It felt as though I were facing a distorted reflection of my own face. The sound of the electric fan’s blades whirred, while the voices of children playing outside drifted in.

I tossed and turned in bed twice before the realisation finally hit me. Everything was out of alignment.

“No, wait a second. Be a bit suspicious. Are you an idiot?”

“Heh heh heh, I told you that I knew. Your lack of mnemonic ability is entering the danger zone, you bitch.”

While remaining seated, she spun around in a rotation that felt devoid of friction. Then, Yashiro spread her arms wide and shouted.

“I foresaw that you would make such a proposal! Therefore, I am fully prepared!”

“Ha… You foresaw it?”

“'''Yes''', preeeecogniiiitioooon.”

“…That is quite a lot to take in.”

Aliens and precognition. They seemed related, yet entirely disconnected. Besides, if she could foresee my invitation, she surely should have seen a future where her supposed landing failed as well. The sudden contradiction nearly made me burst out laughing, but since it was amusing, I decided to let her continue her grandstanding. Still, seeing the proposal for her to stay the night progress so easily made me feel uneasy.

Her profile only heightened my anxiety, making me wonder if it was truly alright to let someone like her stay the night. She was an inscrutable piece of driftwood, still refusing to let me glimpse the true face beneath. I found myself caught in a mental struggle, torn between an excitement that made me want to look inside and the disappointment that would surely follow the discovery. Seeking escape from that feeling, I sat up, opened the window, and rubbed my eyes as I inhaled air so sharp it felt as though it might sear my very lungs.

When my vision finally cleared, the mundane rooftops of the town and the towering cumulonimbus clouds appeared somewhat dazzling.

It was still a bit too early for summer vacation, and I was an adult living through a summer where such things had long since been lost. Things like observing insects, afternoon trips to the pool, or making plans to play with friends felt nothing but distant. The summer heat existed only to force one to bow one’s head. I lacked even the will to run through the town, and my days were spent merely resentful of the sweat that poured from me every time I swept the outdoors or watered the garden.

It was a summer like chewing on flavourless, repetitive gum. And then, something drifted into it.

For the first time in a while, my heart danced at the prospect of creating observation records for a fake alien.

I gently cast a line, wondering, “What if this creature really is an alien?”

And so, in the early summer, I began my observations of this self-proclaimed extraterrestrial. However,

“Setting that aside,”

I pulled a single volume of the Rila○○ma<ref>Probably a reference to Rilakkuma, a popular bear character.</ref> book series from the collection arranged on my bookshelf and opened the first page.

“…Living alone, a young woman, someone in a mascot suit staying as a lodger…”

Most of it was likely correct. I turned around.

A girl, still wearing her helmet, was sprawled out on the floor in a star shape. I turned back to my book.

An incredibly adorable bear was doing nothing but eating and sleeping. It was truly nauseating.

I turned around.

“I’m hungry, feed me.” She slapped the ''tatami'' mat repeatedly, being nothing more than a mere freeloader stray that had wandered into my home.

I tilted my head.

“That’s strange.”

Most of it should have been correct.

It was the second day since I had picked up Hoshimiya Yashiro and the first day of my observations. I wasn’t exactly keeping a formal log in a notebook anymore. Instead, I was relying on my hazy memory. Aside from summer school projects, my attempts at record-keeping had almost always lasted no more than three days. Besides, it would be a problem if something like that stayed around forever. Primarily because of the food expenses and my public image.

As a side note, since yesterday, Yashiro had been glued to the television. I had stayed quietly on the first floor tending to the shop, while Hoshimiya Yashiro remained just as she was. She made no attempt to remove her helmet, which only served to increase my curiosity.

“I A M A N A L I E N”

As usual, the windowsill on the second floor was thick with a heavy, gloomily stagnant heat. It was the very start of the morning, and I found myself playfully dipping tomatoes into a bucket of water to cool them, just to distract myself from the sweltering humidity that made me want to discard not just my clothes but my very physical form.

I went through my usual routine in front of the rotating electric fan. It was an attempt to lower my body temperature, accompanied by the cold thought of, “What on earth am I doing?” but so far, it had never been successful. The voice, chopped into fragments by the fan’s breeze, didn’t sound like an alien’s at all. How boring.

“D I E I N V A D E R… Oh wait, in this case, am I the invader?”

“Oh, so you were an alien too?”

The self-proclaimed invader emerged from the adjacent room. She was already wearing a helmet first thing in the morning. When I realised that someone like this had witnessed everything I had been doing, I felt a refreshing urge to die, even though it was still early.

However, seeing someone dressed in a pseudo-spacesuit standing there in a room with Japanese-style decor was utterly surreal.

“So, this is how humans imagine aliens talk? I see.”

Hoshimiya Yashiro began fidgeting again, scribbling notes to herself.

“Did you really sleep in that outfit? If you had only asked, I would have at least lent you a shirt.”

Though I wasn’t sure if it would have fit. Yashiro was quite small, whereas I was, by comparison, fairly tall.

Yashiro let out a huff. I found myself wondering, unable to tell if I was impressed or simply accepting, whether she even had a nose to begin with.

“I told you, I cannot breathe the air of this planet directly. If I lived my life inhaling it without thought, my memory would end up as pitiful as yours.”

I suppressed the urge to ask if she was incapable of speaking without insulting me at every turn and simply responded with a quiet, “I see. You’re certainly thorough with your roleplay. You were working hard at it yesterday, too.”

Even during dinner yesterday, she had been hiding behind shadows, eating in secret to avoid my notice. It was incredibly suspicious. I even wondered if she was hiding a true face she couldn’t bear others to see. Yashiro said,

“It will be complete in a little while. Wait a moment.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

I abandoned any attempt at understanding and looked away. It wasn’t as if she were a pupa inside a cocoon. Did she intend to claim she was in the middle of metamorphosis?

After tidying up the summer blanket and the futon, I headed downstairs, ignoring Yashiro, who brazenly began demanding me to “feed her”. Before I could satisfy the hunger of this self-proclaimed alien, I had a duty to feed the others first.

I mean, this girl ate nearly twice as much as a normal person yesterday. For someone so small, she sure could eat. I liked that about her.

“I’ve been wondering since yesterday, what are you doing on the first floor? Can I eat it?”

As Yashiro descended the worn, narrow wooden stairs, bumping her elbow against them, she called out to my back.

“If you pay the proper price, of course. That’s just the kind of shop this is.”

We reached the first floor, which was filled with a fishy stench, and I teased the (provisional) runaway girl, who was bound to be penniless. But it wasn’t entirely a joke: the creatures kept in the countless cages on the first floor were kept alive here solely to be eaten. Those that were awake recognised Yashiro and me and began croaking and clamouring loudly. How noisy.

What I had been entrusted with by the foreign shopkeeper was a shop for selling edible animals. There were snakes, edible frogs, and various types of birds. There were also iguanas, cats, and turtles. There might have even been some species that would be problematic if they had been imported. However, since they weren’t animals I had personally sourced, I simply cleaned up their waste and fed them without a second thought.

“Which one tastes the best?”

“You’re clearly all set to eat them. You aren’t Japanese, are you? Probably not.”

“What are you even saying to an alien? Learn your lesson already.”

“Yes, yes.”

The ''clientèle'' here consisted mostly of foreigners living in the neighbourhood. Occasionally, someone would come in wanting to keep an iguana as a pet, but so far not a single person had visited to buy a snake to eat. But one did buy a frog. They said they were going to deep-fry it. Naturally, I thought it looked delicious.

Incidentally, the Chinese lady who owned the shop left me in charge one day and never came back. She really never returned. Since I had no other choice since I was working part-time back then, I simply moved in and kept the shop open on my own. While the bills for utilities and various other things still arrived, no notices for eviction or permanent closure ever did.

“Hmm…”

Yashiro tilted her head as she peered into the cheap tank in the middle of the shelf.

“What even is this thing?”

“Ah? It’s just a normal turtle. To say you’ve never seen a turtle… you aliens are quite naive, aren’t you?”

“Hm?”

It seemed my meaning hadn’t gotten through at all. I felt embarrassed for having said it. As I scratched my cheek, feeling sweat break out along with my shifting emotions, Yashiro plunged her hand into the tank.

“Ah, hey! Don’t touch the merchandise…”

I cut my warning short. I had witnessed a bizarre behaviour.

She slightly lifted her helmet, creating a gap at the bottom, and twisted it to scoop the turtle inside. I heard a muffled sound, not through the helmet, but Yashiro’s own raw voice, as if she were biting down on something. “Nama-fufai.” Then, after spitting the turtle back out of the helmet, she spoke a single word.

“It’s hard.”

“Don’t just bite things without a second thought.”

I smacked the back of her head through the helmet. Yashiro looked up at me as if to protest.

“And it’s fishy and bitter, too.”

“So it didn’t suit your taste? Well, fine! The turtle is totally freaked out!”

I snatched the turtle from Yashiro’s hands and returned it to the tank. Yashiro was still fascinated by the creature, peering down into the water and following the turtle’s eyes as it retreated into a corner. When she reached out toward it again, I tapped her on the head once more. This time, she lunged toward me with enough force to try and bite me. As I dodged her hands that were attempting to grab my hair, I strained my eyes, trying to catch a glimpse of her face behind the helmet… Hopeless.

“You bitch, my head is still a work in progress! What do you intend to do if it gets crushed and deformed?!”

“Besides, if you actually had precognition powers, wouldn’t you have known how the turtle tasted beforehand?”

Yashiro froze. She lowered her hands and began whistling aimlessly, staring off into space.

She was a (deluded) alien who was simply being earth-sized by my indifference.

“I used up too much of my power coming to Earth. I am currently recharging.”

“What a pain in the neck you are.”

I let my honest impression slip as I wiped the sweat that had pooled on my forehead from the exertion. I wondered if she had come from some land where turtles didn’t live. Where would that even be? It didn’t seem like turtles were flying around in space, but then again, there were no certainties.

“Come to think of it, don’t you need to go see this Cousin… san?”

“There is still time. For now, I have prioritised resting to recover my strength.”

“I see. Anyway, wait for me up there with your food. Following me around here won’t make you recover any faster.”

Working while talking to Yashiro was going to be a hassle, so I decided to drive her away. Besides, if I left her alone, she might end up biting every animal she encountered. I decided I would name her “Mad Dog”. Yup, sounds like a delinquent manga.

“If following you won’t make it faster, then I have no reason not to follow you.”

“What’s with you? Are you wearing that helmet just to prepare yourself for getting punched? Ugh, you’re so annoying. There are chilled tomatoes on the second floor, so go eat those.”

With a groan, Yashiro threw her hands up in total exasperation and headed up the stairs. It seemed she was the one who found conversing with me more burdensome now. I wished she would take this sense of fatigue and emptiness, which had been drifting over me even before work started, along with her.

I finally found myself alone and began the same work I had done yesterday. I cleaned the waste from the cages and fed them. I had to maintain their health until they were sold. In that regard, there wasn’t much difference between this and a pet shop. Their fates were also similar if they remained unsold for a certain period. Since abandoning them openly would violate local ordinances, the standard practice was to get rid of them surreptitiously. If someone was particularly malicious, they might kill them out of fear of causing an infestation of stray dogs or cats. As for me, if it was something like that, I would simply eat them. I ate everything that was here.

Whether it was a silkworm pupa, a turtle, or some unidentified insect.

The creatures here could be eaten even if they were sold, and they would be eaten if they went unsold. The only difference was whose stomach they ended up in to become nutrition, flesh, and blood. It was the law of the jungle, Guh ha ha.

Whistling softly, I tended to the various creatures that lived only to be eaten.

By the time a standard round of chores was finished, the sight of elementary school children walking to school along the road outside had vanished. Lamenting the disappearance of the fishing rod that was always kept in the corner of the shop, I headed up to the second floor.

Yashiro sat there with her back hunched, playing a game of make-believe alien in front of the electric fan, chanting, “I… AM…” She was even modulating her tone, as if she were practising… Actually, if she wasn’t wearing a helmet, there was no point in sitting in front of the fan at all.

“You’re certainly working hard.”

“Oh, this? It’s simply a necessary part of my training as an alien.”

She sounded quite pleased with herself, saying, “Oh, it’s nothing,” with no hint of embarrassment whatsoever. That girl was something else.

When I checked the sink on the second floor, as expected, both of the prepared tomatoes had been devoured. It seemed she had eaten them without taking off her gloves, for her fingertips, encased in the spacesuit, were sticky and stained with red juice. Sighing, I placed a hand to my forehead in exasperation and tossed the tissue box toward her. Yashiro caught it with her head. No, I shouldn’t say she caught it. The corner of the box clipped her, and it tumbled down between her legs.

“What are you doing, you idiot?”

“Shut up, idiot. What is this?”

“Use it to wipe your hands. Isn’t that your best outfit?”

“Hmm.”

The idiot looked down at her own hands. Then, she began wiping her hands against the surface of the tissue box. The green Elleair tissues<ref>Elleair is a brand of household products, like toilet paper, tissues, diapers, etc.</ref> became coated in a red smear mixed with bits of tomato skin, as if they had been drenched in fresh blood. It was becoming a chore to even count how many times this had happened with Yashiro, but once again, I found myself utterly speechless at her behaviour.

I wondered if this girl was just an idiot or if, to put it bluntly, she was actually insane.

“Tomatoes taste better than turtles.”

“Well, good for you. I mean, you’re an idiot in the first place for gnawing on a turtle.”

Whether she was indignant at being told that, or not, her visor seemed to grimace… or so it felt to me. Yashiro shouted.

“Have you ever gnawed on a turtle, then?”

“As if I ever would.”

“Then your opinion is meaningless. For all you know, it might be delicious.”

“…Hmm.”

I sensed a slightly profound nuance in that “for all you know”. Perhaps it was because I was always so hyper-aware of her. When Yashiro spoke, I fell into the illusion that her words carried a special, deeper meaning.

It was as if I were being overwhelmed by the bizarre situation of a self-proclaimed alien in a spacesuit discussing such possibilities.

With a huff, Yashiro tossed the tissue box aside. Her visor reflected the morning sun, momentarily blinding me.

“Humans like you give up too easily, and they quickly abandon the path to psychic powers. What a waste of potential.”

She started in on something again.

“Eh? Earthlings have psychic powers? That’s amazing.”

I gave a breezy, dismissive laugh. As I sat down, hoping to enjoy the breeze from the electric fan, I reached out to set the oscillation function, but Yashiro extended her hand to interfere. For some reason, it turned into a scuffle. The two of us began rolling around on the ''tatami'' mats, fighting for the right to claim the spot in front of the fan. To make matters worse, Yashiro continued to casually try to hold a conversation even while we were rolling.

“Despite all this, I am the type of person who repays favours. Upon a good-for-nothing like you, I shall bestow a single special power. What is it you desire?”

“Huh? What’s with you? Are you the type who just hands out powers if someone asks?”

I broke off the struggle and glared at that eerily opaque visor. She was going to give a psychic power?

There was no way I could ever enjoy such a thing, no matter how I looked at it. So, I decided to stop thinking seriously and replied with a joke.

“How about an ability where fish just hook onto the line just by thinking about it?”

“Is that really enough for you? Very well,” Yashiro replied with a simple nod. Her casual attitude made me feel strangely flustered.

“Wait, no, hold on, I was joking! Let me think a little more!”

“Hooooooo!”

Yashiro raised both hands and began to dance, accompanied by a chant that sounded utterly devoid of motivation. I watched in a daze as the spacesuit swayed left and right, spreading its arms as if to envelop me; then, Yashiro nodded with a “Hmph”. In the process, our scuffle resumed. We tumbled together across the ground in the sweltering heat.

“I have bestowed upon you the very power you ordered, so hurry up and go get some food.”

“Yeah, right” or “No way”. “Which should I shout?”

Rumble, rumble. The electric fan drifted away from me. It bumped into a shelf with a soft “gueh”.

Yashiro and I sat a short distance apart, and I checked my own hands. They weren’t hot. There was no sensation of something sprouting, no swirling premonition of change. The world did not look any different; the walls remained thick, and the ceiling remained low.

There was no way I could have felt any sensation or lived any reality of having been granted such power.

Well, she was probably lying, anyway.

“You really are something… how you’ve managed to make it this far with nothing but such blatant lies…”

When I turned around, I saw Yashiro peering into a box of sweets sitting atop the shelf.

Inside, there was a single cocoon. It was wrapped in a soft armour, spun from delicate threads.

Deep within it, it felt as though I could almost hear the heartbeat of a creature that was continuously undergoing a transformation, following its primal instincts.

“What is this?”

“That? Just some silkworms I’m raising as a hobby. An acquaintance shared some eggs with me. It’s just a hobby. They aren’t for sale.”

I had received four eggs, but only one had made it. Well, I wasn’t exactly being careful.

“Is this thing even alive?”

“I suppose so. Right now, it’s basically just shut inside its second egg. It’ll emerge soon enough.”

“Is it edible?”

“If you cook the pupa, it’s actually quite good. It tastes a bit like broad beans with a rich flavour.”

“…………”

“Don’t eat it.”

A click of the tongue echoed from behind the helmet. I wondered just how much of a glutton this person was.

“Since it is currently in the middle of building its body, the consumption of flesh is absolutely necessary.”

“Yes, yes.”

If I were to take the cocoon, I could boil it to kill the larvae and serve the pupae, but this time I intended to let it emerge. It was supposed to break through its cocoons tomorrow or the day after. As was natural for silkworms, it felt soft and squishy, much like a moth. Whether one found that soothing or reacted with a “Gyooeeeh” was a matter of personal preference.

As for me, I belonged to the former group. Gently squeezing them felt strangely comforting.

“These silkworms… I feel like they resemble humans.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Yashiro didn’t answer, instead staring intently at the cocoon. Common ground between silkworms and humans? Wings, bipedalism, lifespan, omnivorousness… I tried making various comparisons, but none of them fit. The only thing that came to mind was this:

Perhaps it was that neither could survive in the wild. Both had been domesticated and, in doing so, had lost their true nature.

In fact, this girl who (self-proclaimedly) considered herself as transforming inside that helmet resembled a silkworm far more.

…Ah, that was it. It was sudden, but I had just thought of a great experiment.

“Hey, Yashiro. Rock, paper, scissors!”

I shook my loosely clenched fist, prompting a match. However, when Yashiro turned around, she lacked any enthusiasm, asking, “What is that?”

“No, let’s play rock-paper-scissors.”

If Yashiro truly possessed precognitive powers, she should have been undefeated in such a game. But Yashiro did not show her hand and instead just stared intently at my clenched fist. She remained motionless, as if wrapped in a cocoon.

“What is this rock-paper-scissors’?”

“I’m saying, we decide the winner with rock, paper, or scissors… Do you seriously not know what that is?”

“There is nothing more foolish than asking about something you already know, Earthling.”

“Ugh, shut up! I’m trying to tell you…”

I decided to finally just explain it to her. While I was at it, I boasted that when a game of rock-paper-scissors gets particularly intense, she might even end up flying through the sky for some reason, and she reacted with an exaggerated sense of shock. Was she simple or just innocent?

I felt a small surge of joy upon realising she was someone worth deceiving.

“Fine, whatever. Just give it a try.”

“U-Umu.”

Yashiro became strangely formal, even dropping into a kneeling position, and thrust her right hand forward with great force. I took charge of the chant.

“Rock, paper, scissors!”

I played scissors, and Yashiro played paper. “Scissors!” I played rock, and Yashiro played scissors. “Scissors!” I played rock, and Yashiro played scissors.

“………………………………….Scissors!”

By the time I had won eight times in a row, I began to regret inviting this girl into my home. Well, on the other hand, it was impressive. But that wasn’t the kind of impressive I was looking for. There was no way anyone would intentionally keep choosing the losing hand.

“I’m not flying at all.”

“There were much more important things for you to address before that, you…”

This self-proclaimed alien went far too hard on the visuals.

Nothing particularly noteworthy happened for the rest of that day.

As usual, there were few customers. Yashiro spent the entire day glued to the television, passing her time like an elementary schooler who had already started her summer vacation.

The silkworm cocoons continued to protect their pupae, and I was simply hot. First day of observation after I had picked up Hoshimiya Yashiro and invited her into my home. I spent the day hoping that things might change dramatically every day, but the heat-soaked road outside, where heat hazes seemed likely to drift, never offered anything to pull me in, much like that fishing rod from yesterday. Hmm, how boring.

Second day of observation. In the morning, Hoshimiya Yashiro wrestled with an iguana. It was terribly distracting, so I decided I would never let her help with work again. Incidentally, Yashiro seemed to be on bad terms with the iguana because it constantly turned its back on her. Wah ha ha.

The early afternoon arrived, with the only customer being a suspicious middle-aged man who made a reservation to have a dog procured for him the following week. As I watched a group of elementary schoolers whose skin was already beginning to tan walk past the shop, I felt an intense wave of envy. Along with that fishing picture I saw as a child.

If there was a god in this world… The question would be: at what scale could such a being act with true divinity? Would it encompass the entire Earth or be limited to some specific corner of the universe? If one possessed a title as grand as “god”, I felt they would at least have jurisdiction over the Earth as a minimum requirement. Therefore, the idea that God resided in deep space, looking down upon the entirety of the universe in order to manage the Earth, didn’t seem all that strange to me.

If that were the case, then God was an alien. If one looked across Japan, there were countless towns that enshrined local deities. People felt a sense of security in being watched over by something omnipotent. Or rather, they found relief in being connected to something perfect. There was a certain comfort in having one’s life guaranteed by a being that even reached into the threads of fate.

From that perspective, harbouring dreams of aliens and enshrining a god were very much alike.

However.

I had no desire to recognise as a god a person who bit into a live turtle and proclaimed it tasted fishy.

Since I had far too much time on my hands, I decided to head upstairs while getting some hydration, only to find Yashiro stationed in front of the television. She was sitting in ''seiza'' position, still clad in her spacesuit, gazing intently at the recent exploits of the Vice-Shougun<ref>The “Vice-Shougun” here is the protagonist of the long-running historical drama ''Mito Koumon''.</ref>.

“Ho, ho… and who might this esteemed individual be? Noted, noted.”

I wondered what on earth that little spacesuit girl was learning as she sat there glued to a rerun of ''Mito Koumon''. I was incredibly curious as to what kind of expression was hidden behind that helmet as she memorised the crest of the ''inrou''<ref>In medieval Japan, an ''inrou'' was a small box attached to men’s belts that served the function of a pocket or a purse. An ''inrou'' features iconically in the drama Mito Koumon, where in every episode it is presented in order to theatrically reveal the protagonist’s real identity because it weilds the crest of Japan’s rulling clan.</ref>. Or rather, that was the only thing left to be curious about; everything else about her was already predictable. The rest is a known quantity. She was just a gluttonous freeloader.

Today, I decided I would somehow try to remove her helmet. I walked up to her nonchalantly and reached for the helmet, and with a sudden “Uraaaa-raaaa-raaaa!”, the girl spun around violently while still sitting in a ''seiza'' position, as if a roller were stuck to her feet. With that momentum, she knocked my hand away and scrambled toward the window.

“You bitch! What manner of insolence is this!?”

“You’re being way too influenced by period dramas, you know that?”

I flashed a polite smile laced with a click of my tongue. The fact that she was keeping it so secret only piqued my interest further. Even if she was just in the middle of a messy metamorphosis, like the contents of a silkworm cocoon, exactly as she herself had described, I still wanted to witness it. Even though I knew such a thing was impossible, I couldn’t help but feel a glimmer of expectation.

There was something about Hoshimiya Yashiro, a woman prone to such extreme eccentricities as biting turtles, that hinted at such a possibility.

Even if the ratio of deception to truth was nine to one.

“I understand your fascination with my divine countenance, but you must wait just a little longer. A few dozen seconds will suffice.”

“And what exactly is going to change after waiting such a short amount of time!?”

But I wondered if waiting that long would truly result in a revelation. She seemed the type to find some excuse to postpone it anyway.

“Oh, and more importantly, that thing, the silkworm cocoon is about to burst!”

She was being blatantly evasive. However, I couldn’t simply brush her off with an “What?” and turn away; instead, I looked back. The cocoon remained exactly as it had been yesterday. It showed no movement at all, and I regretted not just letting her words go.

“Oops, my mistake, that was a vision of a few days from now!”

“Then how about I make your prediction fail? By cutting this cocoon open right now.”

I directed a wave of indignation toward the silkworm, which was certainly being caught in the crossfire.

Though it seemed unrelated to that, Yashiro gave her gaze a break from the silkworm and turned back toward me with a look of satisfaction.

“It should be about time. It ought to be finished by now.”

“Hah?”

“I’ll let you behold the face of the completed ‘me’.”

With those words, she applied her own hands to the removal of the helmet, something she had been avoiding so much. I watched, my hands clenched into fists by instinct, as she grunted and strained, pushing it up with both hands as if it were too tight, eventually pulling the helmet off. A modest chin and mouth appeared, and then, with one final motion, the helmet was pushed up all at once.

It lost its cover, as if a jack-in-the-box had been dismantled in a single breath.

And a light source spread out there.

Her hair was a brilliant white, looking as if fragments of moonlight had been processed and pieced together. Her appearance was otherworldly, yet it possessed a perfection that resonated deeply with human sensibility. Every time she moved, light left a trail behind her, like the tail of a comet.

The true form (?) of Hoshimiya Yashiro was that of an extraordinarily beautiful girl. Or rather, she didn’t even seem like a living creature.

“Hmm, though it is contaminated, breathing the Earth’s air directly does feel pleasant.”

Her nose, flushed entirely red, twitched as she tried to draw in the fresh air.

“…………”

“How was it? I mimicked the expression of an Earthling. When you face me, it is like looking into a mirror, is it not?”

Where exactly? If I possessed such a face, well, I would spend my days being served by men.

As an aside, beneath the spacesuit she had stripped off while complaining, “Ugh, it’s so hot, so hot,” she was, in slang terms, stark naked. To put it plainly, she was completely naked. She wasn’t wearing a single stitch of underwear. Furthermore, Yashiro made no attempt to hide herself; she simply stood before the electric fan, letting the breeze hit her, letting out a long “Aaaah”. She wore a beautiful smile, brimming with a sense of pure liberation.

Did this girl simply have no sense of shame? Perhaps it was due to her foreign origins. Thinking she might want to wear something, I pulled a shirt and shorts from the shelf and tossed them at her. Yashiro skilfully caught both with her face with a “Gafu”, then threw the clothes back at me with the behaviour of a frenzied monkey. It seemed she was perfectly fine being naked.

As I stared vacantly at the completely nude Yashiro, I began to feel awkward myself. I was overcome by a type of embarrassment that made me want to avert my eyes. Because she herself was entirely unconcerned; the burden of that awkwardness seemed to be redirected toward me.

A thought surfaced, and I couldn’t tell whether it was a subjective feeling belonging to Yashiro or myself: I was glad that I was the one who had picked her up. If she had been picked up by a man living alone, who knew what would have become of her? Well, though I doubted most people would ever find a spacesuit girl floating down a river and invite her into their homes.

“You know, silkworms can’t fly anymore.”

It had become too painful to endure this stagnant air, so when I brought up the subject, Yashiro raised her head and gazed at me with her sharp, narrow eyes. Her eyes pleaded with me to continue.

“They used to be able to fly, but they were selectively bred to suit human convenience. Now, they can never survive in the wild. They are creatures that some people pity, I suppose.”

“I don’t feel that way, though,” I added as I finished my explanation. At that, Yashiro let out a short, stifled chuckle and gave me a look of pure disdain. Then, with that same expression, she spoke.

“They really are just like humans, aren’t they?”

“Ah, in what way?”

“You too have spent thousands of years repeatedly breeding yourselves to make life on Earth easier. As a result, consider the immense struggle now required just to reach space. Humans, no longer able to fly through the skies, seem to believe that Earth is their rightful home, but in truth, they are merely being kept like livestock.”

“…Kept by whom, exactly?”

“By aliens, obviously.”

With a self-satisfied huff, Yashiro gave a smug little laugh and pointed to her own chin.

“The problem is that so many humans refuse to embrace psychic abilities, completely unaware of the fact that they are being kept by aliens. Eventually, humans will regress and lose their power entirely.”

“Power, huh?”

Come to think of it, I did receive some kind of power of fishing yesterday. I didn’t need it; it was a waste, and it felt fake.

“What happens if we lose that power? Is it going to cause some kind of trouble?”

“It simply means one less source of amusement for the aliens who keep humans as pets. That’s quite a problem,” Yashiro muttered half-heartedly.

“I am not entirely sure, but in a circus performance, lions and elephants perform tricks, do they not? That is the sensation most aliens feel when they look upon humans. Therefore, when they exert more effort than expected and approach unimaginable superpowers, they feel a desire to praise them. It becomes the ultimate form of entertainment.”

After finishing her explanation, Yashiro readjusted her helmet with a muffled movement.

It was as if she were trying to express that she herself was one of those aliens.

…Though, wearing nothing but a helmet, she looked like a complete pervert.

Late that night, I stood by the window with my fishing rod slung over my shoulder, bathed in the night breeze.

The wooden fishing rods I had newly fashioned were incredibly crude, as they were the work of an amateur. Because of that, they could be made in very little time. I wrapped cloth around the handles of both rods to protect against splinters.

Without much thought, I ended up making one for my roommate as well. Even though she didn’t seem to have any interest in fishing.

Once that was finished, I reacted with a small “oh” to the lukewarm breeze and the faint chirping of cicadas. Even at my age, my heart danced whenever I began to hear the cicadas singing at the start of July. I felt as though I could accept the summer heat more easily than the winter cold. As a shiver ran through me from the wind brushing against the nape of my neck, I looked up at the swirling night sky.

The fishing lines cast by the gods were invisible against the night sky. I wondered what sort of things the gods might be hooking from the Earth with those unseen threads. Was it the souls of the dead, humanity itself, or perhaps the offerings made to the gods?

If everything born on this planet was granted by the gods, then did everything that vanished from this planet return to them? Were the important, wonderful parts of my trivial life never there to begin with, or had the gods fished them away? If it was the latter, I had only one demand: “Give them back.”

I wanted to live a much more amusing everyday life.

“Then you should go fishing for them, or something?”

I wasn’t in despair over life, nor did I hold expectations for humanity. I had grown into a moderate adult, my capacity for giving up and accepting things increasing day by day, while my sense of “perhaps” for tomorrow plummeted. I was constantly losing the battle against the summer heat.

In the midst of all that, I held onto a faint hope that a certain inexplicable lodger might change my daily routine.

But that massive fish did nothing but kick me instead of my fishing line. It wasn’t fun at all.

I was not as skilled at fishing as a god, so I could not pull up anything that would dramatically change my life through my own strength.

Even up until now, no matter how much resolve I mustered, my skill alone remained unchanged. Therefore, while I had no great regrets about my life, it was only natural that I held expectations for my future prospects.

Hoshimiya Yashiro, who was sleeping in the room directly across the hallway, lay there without making a sound or even the slightest breath.

And then, I hallucinated the sight of the flightless wings of a silkworm, not yet hatched from its cocoon, fluttering.

Flutter, flutter.

“Flutter, flutter.”

I muttered, gazed down at the night view, and let out a long sigh.

I swung my fishing rod toward the night sky and glared at the expanse beyond the fishing line, swallowed by the darkness.

Third day of observation.

First thing in the morning, Hoshimiya Yashiro challenged me to a contest. At that moment, I happened to be cleaning the tank, holding the turtle that she had bitten two days prior.

“A fishing contest!”

“…Hah?”

“I was listening to you muttering all creepily yesterday, you know.”

“Don’t insult me while taking pride in eavesdropping. So, a fishing contest… why?”

After glancing at the two fishing rods leaning in the corner of the first floor, she spoke.

“Since you doubt my psychic powers so much, I thought I’d prove them to you.”

“…Hmm.”

Yashiro or me. Which of our superpowers did she intend to expose? She was attempting to involve me, an almost entirely ordinary person, in an experiment layered with uncertainties: a fishing trip, which might be nothing more than a pastime for the gods waiting in space, conducted by a self-proclaimed alien, Hoshimiya Yashiro, who I suspected of being a god.

…Shouldn’t be too bad, I thought.

“Well, fine then. I’ll see you at lunch.”

Yashiro nodded with satisfaction.

“You shall experience firsthand both your own helplessness and my omnipotence.”

“Are you a final boss or something?”

“By the way, what exactly is this fishing thing?”

“…It’s about acting the way you do and waiting for someone to call you out on it.”

I felt as though I had already won. I gained no sense of elation; if anything, I just felt empty.

During lunch, I made a few rice balls and headed to the river with Yashiro. On the way, Yashiro had already begun devouring the rice balls one after another. By the time we reached the base of the bridge overlooking the river, she had eaten enough for both of us and suggested, in a half-asleep daze, that we should just go home, so I gave her helmet a sharp tap. After leading a screeching Yashiro away, who protested at the light blow to her noble head, we made our way to the riverbank.

We sat down by the side of a river where the riverbed was clearly visible. The sight of small, slender fish swimming in a river with a slow flow gave me a sense of coolness, a refreshing smoothness! What was that?

Was it okay to feel a sense of affection for something that moved with such a slimy and slithering motion? Well, whatever.

“Here, take this fishing rod. The first person to dangle the tip into the river and catch a fish wins.”

I handed Yashiro the second of my handmade fishing rods. However, she merely let out a derisive snort as she peered into the water.

“It would be faster to just catch them with my hands than to use something like that.”

“Then go ahead and try it.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, Yashiro plunged into the river. She thrashed about wildly, splashing and churning up the surface.

“Oh, oh! That child certainly has plenty of energy.”

She returned empty-handed after about five minutes. Her breathing was ragged behind her helmet, her shoulders were heaving, and she was clutching her side, as if the post-meal exercise had been a bit too much. Then, she collapsed face-down onto the ground. She slumped there, utterly limp, looking as if she might simply melt away under the sunlight. I tried removing her helmet. Her face was bright red, as if it had been boiled. Even so, that brilliance, like a light source, showed no sign of fading.

I felt as though I could have been convinced by an explanation that the light spilling from the sun had taken on a human form. Seriously, where on earth did this person come from? I knew of no country where creatures like this wandered the streets in abundance, greeting passersby with a cheerful “Hi!” I had never even been on an airplane, so it was entirely beyond my imagination.

“To think it can surpass even my precognition, I underestimated these fish.”

“And yet, you were quite happily munching on that very same fish at breakfast, weren’t you?”

“So, in short, you’re saying your precognition isn’t working at all, then?”

“The Earth will eventually become a world of fish once humanity has been eradicated.”

“I remember some scholar saying something like that. Was it a squid<ref>Maybe a reference to the manga ''Shinryaku! Ika Musume''.</ref>? Anyway, here, take this.”

I pressed the fishing rod into her loosely extended hand. While waiting for Yashiro to recover, I cast my gaze downstream. The point where the fishing rod and the hooked fish had drifted. I didn’t know what lay beyond that.

I was like a pupa, encased by this town and its environment, having no intention of leaving.

As those thoughts crossed my mind, the scorching heat beat down on my head, and I regretted not wearing a hat.

“It seems that I have come to this town to settle the score with the fish.”

As Yashiro sat up, she declared with strength while readjusting her helmet.

Hey, hey, wasn’t this person the one who had challenged me to a duel?

A love triangle between the fish, myself, and Hoshimiya had been established. I felt so fed up with this situation that I felt a desperate urge to suggest adding a turtle and an iguana just to turn it into a pentagon. Was I really at a level where someone would challenge me to a duel while they were on the verge of collapsing from heatstroke after failing to catch a fish with their bare hands?

My head began to ache.

Regardless, I began preparing for the fishing.

The bait was silkworm larvae, which were for sale at the store. They didn’t seem to be very popular among the fish in this area. However, that was precisely why it felt like a suitable way to test Hoshimiya Yashiro’s psychic powers. Regardless of whether it would actually turn into a real duel.

Since Yashiro was struggling, I hooked a larva onto the hook for her and cast the line, saying, “Alright, let the match begin.” It was unclear what Yashiro was thinking as she gripped her fishing rod. However, a sense of determination began to well up within me, a feeling that this time would be different. If I let a fish escape because of the person sitting next to me and let her beat me to it again, it would be truly pathetic.

A girl clad in a spacesuit and a person in their twenties who was slacking off from work sat by the riverbank.

Between the two of them, the smallest interstellar war in history was about to begin.

“…………”

“…………”

“What even is this? Nothing is happening.”

Yashiro grumbled. She was certainly impatient. Not even two minutes had passed since we started fishing.

“You’re supposed to know what’s going to happen if you actually have psychic powers.”

“Mm.”

She nodded with full confidence. I wondered if she had forgotten her previous line or if she simply preferred to overwrite everything.

“Is your premonition battery sufficiently charged?”

“About halfway, but if I don’t waste it, it should last until the end of the job.”

“Ah, I see. Then there are no excuses if you lose.”

When I pressed her on it, Yashiro shook her shoulders and gave a sarcastic laugh, as if to say, “You must be joking.” Feeling a prickle of irritation, I gripped my fishing rod tighter and prayed for a fish to come my way.

Heat swirled before my forehead, blending something like a white mist with a faint red hue. It was a mysterious image that appeared when I focused forward, yet lost my point of focus.

Whenever I acted while maintaining this image, an inexplicable sense of accomplishment would stir in my stomach.

At the same time, my fingertips began to tingle. It was the arrival of a pleasant tension that made it impossible to sit still.

“Hey, self-proclaimed alien. What kind of business brought you to this planet?”

“Fufufu, I can’t tell you that. It’s a corporate secret.”

As if she had grown tired of sitting, Yashiro acted coy, lying down on the ground while still clutching her fishing rod.

“All I can say is that the life of a certain Earthling is at stake.”

“Cousin-san’s?”

I tried to probe deeper, but she lightly ignored me. Instead, Yashiro turned the question back on me.

“Why did you suddenly challenge me to such a match? Is this some Earthling rule?”

“No, no, it’s because you were the one who challenged me.”

“Ah, then why did you accept?”

In response to the alien’s careless questioning, I, the representative of Earth, curled my lips into a thin smile. I wasn’t sure if my cheeks had softened, but I cast my eyes downward as if to repel the light, my eyelids growing heavy. Though I felt a vague lethargy weighed down by the heat, I forced myself to stir and lifted my head. The azure sky, filled with nothing but air, stretched out before me with an oppressive heat.

Why did my heart dance at the thought of a match against Hoshimiya Yashiro?

To be honest, I didn’t much care about winning or losing.

But if, perhaps, Hoshimiya Yashiro was an alien…

If, perhaps, that alien was a god…

If she were an existence just a tiny bit closer to the helpless currents and destinies of this world than any human…

“Don’t you think it would be interesting to accompany a god, just once?”

I offered that reason somewhat abruptly. I laughingly admitted it was a poor explanation.

“Yeah, yeah, exactly!”

“I’m telling you, try to be a little sceptical for once.” Was she even listening to me? “…oh?”

The fishing rod was being pulled violently. However, it was Yashiro who was gripping it. Whether she realised it or not, she was merely lying there, clutching the rod as if clinging to a straw. I hesitated for a moment, wondering whether to point it out.

“Hm? Something is pulling hard. Oh, oh oh!”

Whether she had noticed it or not, Yashiro pulled her body up halfway and readjusted her grip on the fishing rod. Propped up on one knee, she questioned me. For a brief moment, my eyes were deceived into thinking she was performing some kind of technical operation inside a spaceship.

“Hey, what is this?”

“Uh, well, the fish is, like, dancing a hard rock with the line…”

“Did a fish snag?! Did you see this? This is the fruit of my foresight!”

The moment she raised her hand to gloat, her strength faltered, and she nearly tumbled into the river. I instinctively reached out and supported Yashiro’s right arm. While wondering if we were even in the middle of a competition, I abandoned my own unresponsive fishing rod and grabbed onto hers alongside her. And my reason was this:

“Even with this rod, if I’m the one to pull it up, then it’s my victory. Wah ha ha!”

“What? That’s cheating! However, I admire that unscrupulous attitude, Earthling! I’ll give you my recognition, so now get lost!”

Yashiro charged at me, delivering a headbutt through her helmet. Every single blow landed right in my left flank, and I felt nauseated almost instantly. It wasn’t just the fishing lines running left and right that were shaking; the entire world felt like it was warping on a planetary scale.

“Hey, hold the fishing rod! You’re the one who caught it!”

I yelled at Yashiro, who had somehow let go of the rod and become solely obsessed with pushing me around.

“Fish can be caught any time, but this is my only chance to defeat an undefended foe like you.”

“You’re repaying my kindness with cruelty!”

“I already repaid you by granting you psychic powers! Now, focus your intent!”

“I’m busy right now! Since your hands are free, you do it instead!”

“Hoooooooaaaaah!”

“Are you actually going to do it?!”

It felt as though the roles of the angler and the psychic had somehow been reversed!

However, this was likely the more appropriate division of labour.

With that incredibly foolish shout at my back, I continued my struggle with the fish. Praying inwardly for lunch, lunch, lunch, I desperately pulled on the rod, trying to reel in the line that was darting all over the place. To think that such vibrant creatures could survive in a river that looks as though it might dry up at any moment. I couldn’t help but be moved by the mystery and resilience of life.

“Mm, this is… it’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming!”

“Wait, what is?! What, my rod? No, nothing’s happening! What is coming?!”

I yelled at Yashiro, who had suddenly become excited as if receiving some signal. She was pressing her finger against her visor, nodding to herself with a “Hmm, hmm.” More importantly, what about the fishing rod?! What about the psychic powers?! I glared at her, my eyes wide with exasperation.

“My precognition is whispering that it’s about to leap in.”

“Hey! What happened to my fishing powers?!”

“I already told you, I used them on you. And according to my premonition, all you have to do is follow this river downstream. Alright!”

“Hah?”

And then.

“Hwaaaaaaaaah!”

Perhaps overwhelmed by the intensity of her continuous chanting, Yashiro suddenly plunged into the river.

“Hah?”

With a modest splash that sent up a small plume of water, she dived into the shallow river, and the spray lashed against me. “You idiot! *Cough*!” I opened my mouth to scream, but river water rushed in, sliding deep into the back of my throat. Whether I had swallowed too much or water had even entered my lungs, I fell to my knees, coughing violently. The fishing rod I had let go of was swallowed by the river once again, and the weight and numbness of it still lingered at my fingertips.

As I watched, Yashiro, who had jumped in, floated back up on her back near the spot where she had passed under the bridge.

Clutching my fishing rod, I watched as Hoshimiya Yashiro allowed herself to be swept away helplessly. Neither a fish nor a silkworm larva was attached to the tip of the rod. So a psychic loses to a fish, noted, noted. This isn’t the time for that!

I ran downstream, chasing after Yashiro. It felt as though I were chasing salmon swimming upstream. I yelled at her. Unable to even organise what I wanted to emphasise most. With a heavy *thud*, she struck a floating island, and Yashiro spun halfway around as if she were swimming through outer space.

“Why are you just letting yourself drift along so calmly?! Hurry up and use your psychic powers or something!”

“This is what happens when I use my powers, don’t mind me. My duty here is finished.”

Yashiro answered with complete composure as she drifted away. Some water weeds were caught in her visor, obscuring her face.

“I’ve decided to head toward that town just like this. My latest prophecy revealed that if I simply drift along with the current, I will arrive at my destination. As expected, my premonition powers are the real deal.”

“Huh? You’re really going to just drift and arrive?! I mean, surely there’s another way to move, or, I mean, what even is the true nature of this psychic power?!” I mean, I mean, I mean, “Are you really okay with thisssssss?!”

Unable to accurately express her indignation and confusion, she ended up screaming. Without even understanding what “okay” meant or what exactly she was questioning, she barked at the retreating figure, which moved away as if performing some sort of ritual.

“That’s why I’m telling you, you should believe as well! If you are nothing more than a foolish Earthling who refuses to believe in anything, then at least believe in the portion of power I have granted you! Everything regarding these psychic powers begins from there!”

With that angry outburst, Hoshimiya Yashiro drifted away. She waved her hand in a careless gesture, even as aquatic plants clung to her face. While I felt overwhelmed by receiving such a lecture-like piece of advice from someone like her, I also felt a whirlwind of anger rising within me.

Before I knew it, I was mired in extreme discomfort, with my lower body enveloped in dense, waist-high grass. The vegetation rustled around me, as if I were standing in the dead centre of a marshland. Even while my feet remained trapped and immobile, Hoshimiya Yashiro continued to drift further away, disappearing downstream. I did not even attempt to move.

“Fine then… suit yourself… do whatever you want!”

I watched Yashiro go, clutching a bundle of grass in my hands. We were not the kind of people who would chase after one another to pull them back from the river. No feeling of regret arose, nor was there any room for loneliness in my heart at that moment. Hoshimiya Yashiro simply would not stay. Like the tail of a shooting star, she spanned the sky for a mere instant before vanishing into the distance. She was gone from my sight.

It was as if the universe were mocking me, a lone fool standing motionless in the thicket like a child on summer vacation.

Amidst the stifling heat and the heavy scent of summer, I ruminated on it over and over again.

What remained with me. The questions that had swelled without limit, like the river’s waters.

What was she even doing?

“…It itches. I’m getting eaten alive by mosquitoes.”

I pushed my way back upstream, kicking through the clusters of grass while frantically scratching my legs. As I followed the lead of my feverish, mindless brain, my right hand instinctively gripped a discarded fishing rod. I sat down heavily on the dirt and groaned, “Ah, ah, ah”, as if exhaling the last remnants of the fever, all while scratching the inside of my thigh. With a clumsy, amateurish motion, I cast the hook into the water, the technique so inefficient it seemed to ask whether I even intended to catch anything. *Plop. Bob, bob.* We he he.

“Ah, man, missed another one.”

I guess I’m just not cut out for fishing. After all, this whole thing was nothing more than a game played by the gods.

That was the thought Hoshimiya Yashiro used to proactively pretend that what had just happened never occurred.

…Ah, come to think of it. That’s when I was granted that psychic power to hook fish onto a line with sheer willpower. My hazy mind drifted back to that thought. So, was that it? Had Yashiro just used psychokinesis to hook that fish? That was incredible. I decided I had to try it right away. Ready, set…

“Hooooooo!”

As I struck a dramatic pose, a bizarre cry escaped my lips. I was being an absolute idiot, straining with all my might on the riverbank while holding a pose like a ''kabuki''<ref>Kabuki is a form of Japanese theatre, notable, among other things, for actors dramatically holding poses.</ref> actor in a dramatic climax, but I felt a surge of pure excitement.

Rising heat. Dreaming hopes. Something glimpsed in the space between the infinitely high sky and the swaying river weeds.

Under the summer sky, there was nothing but light. The water’s surface and even the fishing hook shimmered through the murk, the shapes of the light shifting moment by moment and searing my eyes. That excessive heat of light burnt through my cocoon, telling me of the distant reaches, of the very existence of the sky.

I found myself laughing as I imagined whether perhaps a silkworm might be flying there.

I looked up at the sky, dreaming of the “perhaps”. Believing that a “perhaps” might one day reach my hands, I entrusted my feelings to the fishing hook. Imparting heat and strength to the vague outlines of my dreams, I fantasised about the manifestation of psychic powers.

Huaaaaaaaa—!

“Oaaaaaaaah—!”

It was like the war cry of a human who had lost everything.

Or perhaps, like the roar of fulfilment, achievement, and liberation found by one who had gained it all.

Oh?

O, O, O?<ref>Every “O” here is written with different symbols from different writting sysems.</ref>

Oooooooooh!

“…And so, well, that was how things went. How about it, Makoto? You’re welcome to worship me as a princess, too.”

She had boasted with great bravado about having fought a fierce battle against aliens parasitising her brain just five minutes ago, and only ten minutes prior, she had tried to swindle about ten yen in change by using smooth talk to bewilder Erio, who was watching the shop. Now, sitting on a bench outside the candy store and drinking Ramune<ref>Ramune is a brand of lemonade, notable for its bottle that uses a glass marble as a seal.</ref>, Hoshimiya Yashiro, clad in a spacesuit, had responded to my matchmaking-style joke of “What are your hobbies?” by insisting that she was a person of many talents and many interests. She then went on to insult my own lack of talent and interests, criticised humanity in general by claiming that’s why Earthlings were no good, and began talking about fishing as one of her hobbies. She prattled on with great pride, presenting an unverifiable tale branded as a “secret tale”, and essentially demanded my respect. Whenever I dealt with someone like that, my reaction was always the same.

“Oh, really?”

The town was largely peaceful again today. It would have been even better if the neighbours had been just a little bit quieter.