Kami-sama no Inai Nichiyoubi Volume 2 Chapter 2

Part I

They passed through the gate.

The view of the city was released from behind the red city walls, and its wide expanse suddenly spread forth for the travelers’ eyes.

Before them was sun, castle, mountain and unending green.

There was wheat, still young and green, planted on what little flat ground there was that reached to the mountains. The wheat here looked to be faster-growing than the mountain variety Ai was accustomed to: from their color, they seemed nearly ready to sprout grains.

A couple of farmers sat on a ridge, watching their crops.

Ai could predict very clearly what adults like them talked about at times like this. They would resume up for the umpteenth conversations already dried and tasteless, like “They’re growing well this year.” “Yeah.”

The travelers’ eyes had long since become accustomed to the grey of the wilderness, so, faced now with this sudden assault of green, their surroundings seemed to them impossibly bright and gaudy.

A farmer suddenly noticed their presence and waved at them, and the rest followed suit. Ai rubbed her eyes and gave a small wave in return.

The car moved slowly, but eventually they shook off the farmers and continued onwards.

After a while, as the sun reddened behind the mountain range, the travelers arrived at the foot of the hills.

Any further and they would reach the market. All the buildings before them had been converted into apartment flats, with the ground floor composed entirely of shops bustling with the in-and-out flow of customers.

The whole of the Ortus market was in fact built of rock, with marble and clay and brick and the like having been combined together to form the compact apartments that fitted snugly together and packed the already narrow streets full to bursting.

The road had been maintained in excellent condition, with large and comfortable spots to rest all along its side. Households all but competed with one another in adorning their doors and windows with budding greenery and arraying the flowers of the season in other prominent locations: just before their eyes was an elderly lady changing her potted plants on the roadside. Children ran past them in packs like gusts of wind, laughing as only they can, while along the road wizened old men blew with their pipes streams of colorful smoke and casted bets on little games of dice.

Everyone was, of course, dead.

The dead looked like they’d stripped off old clothes, with their muscles withered and dried and some thin as a wire. The younger the dead in question were, the stranger they looked.

Skeletons parading about in three-piece suit and tie. Coolies with chains coiled about themselves to make up for missing body weight. Women so wrapped up in lace they looked to have been melded into some strange sartorial beast; youths who’d amputated their limbs and replaced them with prosthetic ones, looking like puppets; college students carrying library books under one arm and their heads under the other.

Most of the living treated these dead as monsters. They would react to such sights in much the same way: to think of the streets of Ortus as a devil-infested hell and say, frightened, that they shouldn’t have come here, then arrange for a speedy departure. This sort of thing had happened so many times that Kiriko had already given up being outraged at it.

But Ai was different.

She pressed her face glumly to the car window and watched the faces of the people they passed. She didn’t even stir at their appearance which so shocked others, instead watching only their eyes.

Unnatural or ordinary, strange or familiar, the faces of the dead all wore smiles. As Ai watched, they joked and talked and chatted and laughed with the people close to them, and on their faces were the smiles of the everyday.

A mother with a baby turned and beamed at Ai, and she waved and smiled back, a pure smile without the barest shred of surprise, pity or rage in her expression.

A tear rolled down her cheek.

Kiriko, thinking that he’d just witnessed something forbidden to him, hurriedly turned his gaze back forward. Up ahead, in the sky that had donned its night colors, he saw a star the same color as the tear, scattering light down on the city.

At the same time there came a “Wow…” from behind as Ai, too, saw this same scene.

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It was dark when they arrived at their hotel. By this time even the car’s gears had begun acting up, and they’d ascended the hill with difficulty, relying on only a single flickering headlamp to steer themselves into the carpark.

The appearance of the hotel was rather different from the apartments on the streets below, being a tall construct built of rock. All around them there wasn’t a single building in sight, making it seem as though the hotel had been isolated from the din of the market.

The carpark was unfamiliar to the travelers, as, rather than paving, the ground was just compressed earth. They took their luggage from the car and went over to the building. The moon was full, or very near it; and it lit up the night for the travelers below.

“This was a school a year ago.”

Kiriko pointed out the features of their residence as they walked. That there was the carpark, the male dormitories opposite to it, the female ones on that side over there, and here the school building, shut and locked.

“Right…”

Ai was spiritless in her response.

“… Let me just say something first.”

Seeing Ai like this, Kiriko was spurred on to say the words he’d been deliberating over a while ago.

“Thank you for saving me. I’m very grateful for it… but I don’t think you should stay in here. Ortus is a city of the dead, a city belonging only to the dead, and the living have no business coming in just to fool around. If it were up to me… I would not have permitted you entry.”

“Oh… Then why… Why did you still let us in…”

“It wasn’t up to me! I couldn’t have defied my superiors like that!”

“Ah… Is that… so…”

Ai didn’t even seem to be listening to him. Kiriko’s mouth tightened into a line.

“I hope you’ll leave soon after finishing your business here.”

“… Huh, you’re not making any sense, Kiriko-san…”

Dwarfed by the luggage she carried, Ai swayed unstably as she walked.

“… What did you say?”

“Aren’t you living as well?”

Kiriko kept his mouth shut.

“… Kiriko-san… that’s… funny…”

“… Ai?”

Something was wrong with her.

She rocked left and right as though rowing a boat, tripped, and fell to her right.

“Ai!”

Kiriko reached out and caught her in the nick of time.

“So much has happened today that her brain’s probably tired out.”

Yuri took Ai’s rucksack and slung it over his shoulder. Weight removed, Ai slumped down and fell asleep, looking as contented as a well-fed baby.

“… I’m sorry, Kiriko, but could you carry her on your back?”

“Huh? Oh, sure.”

The moment Kiriko presented his back to her Ai twined her arms around his neck and fell unconscious. Kiriko clasped her legs under his arms and got up with a low gasp, and only then did he stop to think “Why me?” But Ai was already on his back, and trying to hand her over to Yuri would just seem strange now.

Ai began to snore softly. Her face was entirely pale with exhaustion but for traces of red in the corners of her eyes.

“… Hey, Yuri-san.”

“What?”

“Ai… How old is she?”

At this time Kiriko didn’t notice that he’d broken a rule.

“Who knows? You ask her yourself.”

Ai spoke up.

“… I told you I’m not asleep… Really… I’m… not…”

“What kind of person says that in their sleep?”

Kiriko adjusted Ai’s position on his back and walked toward their rooms.