Editing We Don't Open Anywhere: Miki Kouzuki's Closed World (I)

== Miki Kouzuki's Closed World (I) ==

I was talking to Kouta, who was occasionally staring off into the distance, amidst the hustle and bustle of the pre-homeroom classroom.

It was June 19th. Two weeks had passed since Masato Yahara’s body had been found.

The murder, king of all scandals, sent ripples throughout the school. But contrary to my expectations, the ripples faded within a week. The reason was that Yahara had always been something of an untouchable delinquent, avoided by his schoolmates due to being perceived as an abnormal individual. Thus the event was simply perceived as an “abnormal individual” becoming involved in “abnormal incident,” allowing interest in the entire affair to quickly fade. It was like a gangster getting killed; insufficient to pique the interest of the public.

The school had already returned to its daily routine, everything working normally.

But there was one exception.

The fact that that exception was Kouta went without saying.

Kouta, Yahara’s sole friend, was dragging out his death.

“Looks like they still haven’t caught the killer, huh.”

It would be too sad for Kouta if he didn’t feel that I least I felt sentimental towards Yahara’s death.

“Yeah. They still haven’t been caught.”

But given Kouta’s abilities, he likely realized that my sentimentality was simply a pretense. But he nodded all the same.

...To be quite honest, I couldn’t muster any sadness at Yahara’s death. Although I felt pity for him, that was the extent of it. And I suspected most others would feel much the same way I did. Even his parents didn’t look particularly sad. To the contrary, they seemed rather glad that a nuisance had disappeared from their lives. Every way you looked, people were simply feigning sadness, and most were doing a dozen times worse of a job than I was.

It seemed this fact came as a shock to Kouta. He was trying not to let it show, but... actually, knowing Kouta, he may not have realized it himself.

“Kouta...”

“...hm?”

Even his responses were delayed. He had been like this a lot recently.

“Well, if you’re able to... I’d like you to try to stop thinking about Yahara.

“Why?”

“It might be dangerous.”

Kouta’s eyes widened in puzzlement.

I wasn’t confident. But it looked to me like Kouta’s state was changing by moment to moment. And Yahara was no doubt the cause of that.

The dead can’t use magic.

But a person’s magic is most powerful in the moments before their death. In order to leave behind traces of themselves within another, they can use “agglutination” magic. People put down their defenses when faced with the dying. No matter how much of a sinner that person was, people inevitably forgive them, stop resisting them, and accept their influence. Depending on who their partner is, the living may even unconditionally take on the will of the dead and agglutinate. It’s not dissimilar to succeeding the will of the departed.

And Yahara clearly left something in Kouta. If Kouta were a normal person, even if he agglutinated he would only extract the parts that were useful to him, so he himself wouldn’t change. But this was Kouta we were talking about. The pinnacle of indifference, not only would he not notice changes within himself, he wouldn’t even care whether they were for good or for evil.

So if he kept thinking about Yahara, he was in danger of agglutinating.

He was showing symptoms already.

“Recently, my magic hasn’t been as potent.”

Kouta wasn’t supposed to have an attribute, but he was beginning to take someone else’s on. He was drifting away from mine. As for whose attribute he was taking on, it should go without saying — Masato Yahara’s. If things continued on this way, at worst Kouta might end up becoming a powerful, evil magus like Yahara was.

“Everyone, note that the bell has rung. I would appreciate it if you took your seats.”

At the same time as the bell rang, their class representative’s voice called out. Their class’s distinctive routine.

Thinking it rather unpleasant as I looked at said representative, I somehow felt a sense of displeasure from him when our eyes crossed. Was he trying to tell my to get out of his classroom?

“...I have to get going. Let’s give it our best this week, okay?”

“Yeah.”

On account of Yahara’s incident, we had postponed his home visit until this week. I had until then to think of a way to resolve this situation. I shouldn’t be in so much of a hurry. My foe was powerful, but he was also dead. Even if this situation continued, my foe couldn’t draw any more magic.

“See you later, then. Bye bye!”

Although my hand was trembling, I smiled as sweetly as possible. A smile has the power to forcibly bind a person. That’s why I made sure to never forget to smile.

My bedroom. It was both my territory and within a boundary. It was the place where my magic was amplified the most. In there, there should be no shortage of ways to dispel Yahara’s magic.

After I returned to my classroom, I scowled as if I were glaring at a blackboard and thought about Kouta.

I had to reanalyze the individual named Kouta Hiiragi.

Kouta had low magic resistance. He took magic magic in without resisting in. The reason for that lay in his efforts to avoid possessing an attribute of his own. His entire life was makeshift. Changing his attribute from moment to moment, he spent his days noncommittally. There were plenty of people who lived like that. Heck, I had been that way once too.

But most people wouldn’t go so far as to forget their own attribute. Even if they changed themselves on the outside to match their partner, they would be loath to accept them inside their very attribute.

But Kouta had no such reaction. He would take people in not just superficially but to the bottom of his heart.

What I was most concerned about was that attribute taking hold after being accepted so.

It was practically a miracle that an attribute <i>hadn’t</i> taken hold in him yet. As proof of that, he had already started becoming stained in mine.

Attributes are largely determined by one’s family environment. When you’re young, your family helps form the basis for your attribute. Whether you try to rebel against your parents or ingratiate yourself with them, through that process your attribute takes its form.

But for whatever reason, Kouta never created a baseline personality. He wasn’t influenced by his family.

As for the reason no attribute had taken hold in him yet, it was likely due to the fact that he had never had any particularly deep relationships outside his family either. Given his disposition, despite his ability to make friends he was probably unable to make close friends or a girlfriend. In order to form deep relationships, people have to lay themselves bare. But Kouta had nothing <i>to</i> lay bare. He was empty. He had no way of forming such relationships. Although he didn’t realize it himself, he had a habit of keeping others at an arm’s length so as to avoid forming such deep relationships.

That was my hypothesis.

So with that to work off of, I contemplated how to save him from Yahara’s clutches.

I had to first discern how exactly he had changed. But understanding that, I could uncover the properties he didn’t have naturally, correct them, and bring him back to normal. As long as I could do that, everything would be fine.

I was left with a nagging sense of discomfort.

But what specifically made me uncomfortable?

In order to collect my thoughts, I focused my vision on the tip of my mechanical pencil. You often saw people in manga and such close their eyes to focus, but my approach was the opposite. I would open my eyes wide and focus on a single point. It was even better if that point was something with traces of my magic in it. My mechanical pencil, which I used every day, fit that definition to a T. I stared at the tip for so long it got burned into my retinas. With that as my signal, my thoughts sharpened.

But right in the middle of all this, someone poked my back several times, breaking my concentration.

“C’mon, Sayuri! What do you want?”

Whispering so the teacher wouldn’t hear me, I turned to glare at the culprit, Sayuri.

Her dyed-brown hair wash in a straight perm. Her loose sweater intentionally concealed her hands. And wearing a short skirt that accentuated her universally-esteemed legs was my classmate Sayuri Taneoka. Her willful, almond-shaped eyes shone with self-esteem and strong intent. From the first day of school I realized that she would be the center of attention in class, so I make sure to curry favor with her.

Sayuri’s personality was strict, which I was fond of. And she wasn’t the type to put others down. So even though I called myself a magus, we still got along quite well.

“You haven’t taken any notes in forever. You’ve got something on your mind, right?”

She went on, grinning for some reason.

“It’s about a guy, right?”

...Well, she wasn’t wrong.

“Ooh, looks like I nailed it. If that’s the case, did Makino confess to you?”

“...Makino?”

That wasn’t the name that was on my mind.

“Oh, that’s not it? It got out that he had the hots for you, so I figured he must have finally confessed.”

Hearing this, I glanced at Makino’s seat. He happened to be glancing at me as well, and as our eyes met I returned his smile.

Makino did act over-familiar at times, but... was that really the case?

“Besides, doesn’t everyone already know that I’m going out with Kouta?”

“Yeah, but isn’t that, like, you know? Aren’t you two one of those fake couple-type deals? You know, where you go out with some random guy to keep the rest of the guys away? You know he doesn’t suit you, he’s like a background character or something.”

While that wasn’t true, the fact that we weren’t a normal couple was. But getting into the details would be messy, so I just laughed ambiguously.

Although she seemed to want to drag the conversation out and began poking me again, I simply ignored her.

Good grief, Sayuri... or rather, all high-school-age girls seemed to love talking about romance. Perhaps that was a simple form of magic.

Kouta.

Kouta. Kouta.

I want to protect him. No matter what.

At long last, it was finally lunch break.

We sat in the courtyard as always, each eating our own sandwiches. After my initial failure with the homemade lunches, I decided that I would try again once I had practiced a little more. Granted, I had only practiced once since then, but... sooner or later!

With Yahara’s glare no longer present, I was a little concerned that Yamazaki or whatever his name was would come hassle us again, but in the two weeks since the incident had come to light he hadn’t shown up once.

I had decided that during this lunch period, I would take a different approach from this morning. In order to root out the cause of my discomfort, I wanted to see Kouta in as flat a condition as possible. To do that, I had to hide my concern and act just as bubbly as always. Given Kouta’s disposition, no matter how down he was over Yahara’s death, he would probably match my behavior and interact with me just as he always did.

Just as I expected, Kouta was talking perfectly normally. As we conversed, we laughed together, and I would occasionally unilaterally touch hom on the back or shoulder.

“So in other words, you really <i>are</i> collecting lizard tails and hanging out with black cats, aren’t you, Miki?”

As far as Kouta was concerned, this conversation didn’t particularly have any deeper meaning.

“I don’t, I’m telling you. I try to avoid following any formal conventions or anything. Although, it is true that certain rituals can strengthen magic’s power.”

“Are you saying that there’s things you wouldn’t do for the sake of magic?”

I was at a loss for words.

At my abrupt change, Kouta looked at me with worry on his face.

“Yup. After all, there are some things that if you go too far with, you become unable to go back.”

...That’s right. Ever since “that mistake,” I had been suppressing my magic. Compared to how I was back then, I had much more common sense and much less power.

<i>Is Kou even the one you’re really tryin’ to protect? ...Heh, you can’t even refute it. What you’re tryin’ to protect by force-staining Kou’s ass Is your flimsy-ass, brittle little closed world.</i>

I suddenly recalled the words Masato Yahara spit at me.

I had no retort for him. After all, I couldn’t proudly puff up my chest and proclaim it to be false.

Even now, I wasn’t certain that staining Kouta with my magic was the right thing to do.

“What do you mean by ‘unable to go back’?”

After I had gone silent, Kouta asked me a question as a follow-up.

So with all my effort, I put on a smile.

“Well... you know how integrating into everyday society is pretty tough, right? You know that it’s not something that just anyone can do, right?”

“You’re right. My sister refuses to go to school, and a couple of my relatives are shut-ins, so what you’re saying kind of resonates.”

“I see.” You being the way you are makes me worried for your sister as well, but I’ll set that issue aside for now. “The more a person holes themselves up in their closed world, the more powerful their magic becomes. So if you’re completely compatible with normal society, you can’t use it. But if you entrust everything to magic, your closed world becomes all-encompassing. If that happens, the people around you will see you as a weirdo or a freak.”

“Like Matsumi-senpai?”

“...Ahh, maybe.”

I had heard about Ririko Matsumi from Kouta. Although the scanning she used surpassed my ''interpersonal magic'', I knew how to explain parts of it.

She fixed her eyes in place and let out a strange voice that sounded like a machine noise. It was self-hypnosis that let her raise her powers of concentration to the extreme. A ritual designed to open her magical circuits. Normally to accomplish that you’d have to draw a magic square, mutilate yourself, or do some other form of large-scale preparation, but it seemed she didn’t need to. This was probably because she believed in her magic implicitly.

Ririko Matsumi had isolated herself from society.

A commonplace worldview leads to relatively weak magic. Furthermore, it lacks appeal. Most people recognize that they’re going to die without accomplishing anything or leaving behind and notable traces. Because it’s so unappealing, some people want to discard it. There’s plenty of types of dubious, half-baked kinds magic, like cults, that try to quietly drive away commonplace worldviews.

Ririko Matsumi is a person who discarded her commonplace worldview.

“Miki, do you know anyone who became unable to go back?”

I did.

I knew of someone other than Ririko Matsumi.

And the person who drove her to that point was none other than myself.

“Nope. I just know this all in the abstract.”

I lied.

I didn’t have faith in myself to explain it right now.

“Huh.”

Kouta casually saw through my lie. He had to have seen through it. But because he was Kouta, he didn’t follow up on it.

And yet—

Discomfort.

The discomfort I had been looking for was right here.

“Miki, is something wrong?”

Kouta gazed at me worriedly. <i>He was staring at me. It was like he was trying to peer into me.</i>

That’s it. Those eyes. Kouta’s eyes weren’t like that before. <i>Kouta was analyzing my responses.</i>

Kouta excelled at understanding others. But he never cared about their motives. He simply understood things as they were. It was precisely because he didn’t care that he didn’t have an attribute.

“Miki? What’s going on? Is it something <b>I </b><ref>This... doesn't translate super neatly. Essentially, Japanese has a number of variants on the word "I", with Kouta generally using a more polite, reserved masculine I ("boku") and Masato using a less polite, aggressive masculine I ("ore"). Throughout the story, all instances of "ore" are going to be and have been bolded, as those both plot-relevant and sort-of bolded in the original text.</ref>did?”

I knew. A man whose eyes looked like that.

A man who called himself “<b>I</b>” like that.

Masato Yahara.

I lightly touched the red hair band, which appeared completely ordinary, that was keeping up my hair. It was an inexpensive hair band, the kind you could buy anywhere. But because it held up my hair, the place in my body most densely packed with magic, almost every day, it had gradually changed into something special. Perhaps if the right person looked at it, it would appear to glow orange.

I had a means to release him from the curse. For Kouta’s sake, I resolved to use this hair band in the <i>most effective way possible</i>.

But, why?

Even though I was doing it for Kouta’s sake, it felt like I was betraying him.