Kami-sama no Inai Nichiyoubi Volume 2 Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Dragons

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 there 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 the umpteenth conversations which were 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 onward.

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, close 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 cast 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 the same scene.

---

It was dark when they arrived at their hotel. By that 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 car-park.

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 car park 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 an year ago.”

Kiriko pointed out the features of their residence as they walked. That there was the car-park, 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 that, 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 that 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.

Part II

Morning was long past when Ai awoke.

She sat up wearily. She had no memory of the room she was currently in, nor any idea of her circumstances; but to these she paid no mind. She yawned widely.

It was only after she had allowed the cells under her every tooth and beneath her tongue and even of her vocal cords to bask fully in the morning air that she shut her mouth and looked around her.

...Where was she?

The room was dim and unlit, but soft rays of sunlight slanted in from the windows and illuminated the specks of dust in the air.

She looked to her right and saw another bed, on the far side of which were a dressing table and a wardrobe put against the wall.

Not a sound penetrated the room from outside, imbuing it with a hushed atmosphere.

Slowly, Ai turned her half-opened eyes towards the left and swept her gaze across the room, seeing a door, bookcase, desk and chair arrayed in it.

Then, at the left wall...

She found a window with curtains drawn.

“...Shuuu…”

Moving as if she were swimming, Ai stepped off the bed and padded barefoot to the window.

The curtain was thick and kept the room dim, but the sunlight contrived to shine around it and into the room. The curtain’s edges glowed with the passing light. Floating particles of dust were set sparkling by the light falling on Ai’s toes.

She drew it open.

The light that shone in was strong enough to hurt even when she squinted her eyes shut. Warmth flooded through every corner of her body, scorching away the dazed drowsiness that had occupied her head just a moment ago.

Ai looked out over Ortus.

“Wow…”

Unthinkingly, she stretched out her hand, lifted up the latch and pulled the window open. The wind that blew in set Ai’s bangs fluttering along with the curtains, and she squealed in delight, resting on the frame and leaning her body half out of the window.

The road stretching from left to right before her was fully paved with white tiles that shone beneath the sun’s light. As Ai turned her gaze down across the city, she saw the green of the wheat fields and, further ahead, the red bricks of the city walls.

And to the right, she could see a dark colored castle, built into the tall hillside.

Unable to contain her excitement, Ai pushed herself back into the room and almost stumbled backward in her haste. Recovering, she then spun toward the wardrobe with the leftover momentum. She threw it open with the same energy with which she had opened the window and saw her coats hanging neatly there along with her culottes.

She suddenly realized that she didn’t know what clothes she was wearing. She looked down, and saw the shirt and underwear that she normally wore.

And she began to wonder, quite naturally, who it was who had gotten her changed.

Probably not Kiriko, she thought. As for Yuri...that was quite possible, but she couldn’t tell whether the one who’d changed her clothes was the uncaring traveler or the father taking care of his daughter.

That left Scar. She would be the best of her companions.

“...Ai?”

Ai heard Scar’s voice from behind just as she was thinking about her. She turned around and saw her lying on the other bed.

“Scar-san! It’s time to get up! Good morning!”

“...No, it’s already noon.”

“Eh?”

With her enthusiastic greeting met by a dispirited reply, Ai pulled out her pocket watch from inside the coat and checked the time. The hour hand pointed at twelve.

It was then she noticed that the sun did seem rather high up in the sky.

“Scar-san...why didn’t you wake me up…?”

“...I did…”

And so her question of blame was met by an answer of even greater blame.

Scar told Ai that both she and Yuri had tried to wake her, but she’d been too deeply asleep to be roused.

“...To think you managed to sleep all the way till noon... You have me impressed.”

A little apologetically, Ai scratched her head and asked the question that had preoccupied her a moment ago—“Was it you who helped me undress?”—and Scar replied with a “Yes.” Good.

“...Ai, you’re always so lively, aren’t you…”

Ai looked more closely at Scar, and only then saw that she seemed drained somehow, dressed only in a shirt and even now in bed, curled up beneath the covers.

“What happened? Are you too lazy to wake up as well, Scar-san? Or did you eat too much last night?”

“...How do you say it? Is this the feeling called sadness?... Ai, please do not group me with you in your mannerisms and behaviors.”

Ai walked across the floorboards to the bed, held her forehead to Scar’s to see if she was feverish. She wasn’t, and she didn’t look particularly ill either.

“Do you feel unwell?”

“,,,My chest hurts. My head hurts too, and I feel sick…”

“Right. Is it that voice from before—can you still hear it?"

“Yes...”

Scar turned away from Ai and looked directly in front of her.

“I wanted to find its source...”

“You mustn’t. Please stay here and rest.”

“Alright,” she returned obediently.

“...Now, what should I do? Do you need a doctor?"

“I don’t know...are there doctors who can treat Grave Keepers?"

“Aren’t there?”

“Who knows…”

“...Wait, Grave Keepers fall sick?”

“I’ve never heard of it happening before…”

Ai came down with the flu once a year, but it didn’t seem like she’d be the best reference for Scar’s present condition.

“Yuri said that he’d buy some medicine on his way back, so I should just stay here like this...and wait and see if I get any better…”

“Ah, really? Yuri-san’s gone out?”

“Yes. He looked quite busy, having to go fix the car and replenish our supplies… Oh, he left a note.” Saying this, Scar handed a piece of paper folded in half to Ai.

On the note was written:

“Do not, under any circumstances, leave the hotel.”

Technically, that was a message conveyed through a myriad others. The ones like, “There are many dangerous people among the dead, so don’t leave the hotel,” or, “If you cause a ruckus, it’ll be almost impossible to clear up, so don’t leave the hotel,” were reasonable enough, but, “The air this season isn’t good on the throat,” was clearly just needless fussing. And, “Look out for cars,” was something you’d only say to a person leaving the house.

Ai folded the note into a paper airplane and flew it out of the window. Although the paper must have been heavy, soaked full as it was of that ramblingly incessant ink, on attaining freedom it flew high up into the blue Ortus sky.

“Scar-san.”

"...Yes?”

“Please answer my question honestly. Do you need looking after as you are?”

“No, not at all.”

Scar even waved a hand to emphasize the fact.

“If you stayed here, you’d only make it worse... Do you want to go get something to eat?”

“A-Aren't you being a little too forceful here…?”

Ai was a little hurt, but she nonetheless went and dressed herself. She pulled on her culottes and socks and did up her bootlaces, changed her shirt, tied her hair, set her straw hat on her head and swung on her coat.

She went over to the window.

“Should I close it?”

“...Yes, and the curtains too.”

Ai pulled the window closed and drew the curtains across.

“Well, I’ll be off for some food then.”

She stood by the door as she spoke.

She didn’t really need her hat and coat just for that, but Scar refrained from pointing it out to her.

Instead, just as Ai was hurrying out of the door, she called to her back-turned figure, “Did you bring your permit?”

Ai’s embarrassment at that mistake was quite substantial indeed.

---

Ai dashed out of the room, but naturally, she didn’t have the faintest idea of where she wanted to go.

She first headed to a corridor and, after peering left and right, found a staircase and descended to the first floor. Something told her that she couldn’t let herself be discovered, so she walked on tiptoes. With the floor plan at the first floor stairs, she found a place where there was water, and there washed her face and drank hugely to quench her thirst.

Signs of past students filled the dormitory building. There on the blackboard was still the name of a student punished with cleanup duty, and there in the umbrella stand was still stuck a baseball bat. The display cabinet placed beside the main doors still held dozens upon dozens of medals and trophies, while the lost-and-found box, long since been forgotten about, still held a blue notebook within, awaiting its master. Ai picked up the notebook and flipped through the pages.

“Actually, I am quite hungry after all.”

She announced this to the statue of some unknown notable situated between the second and third floor, and began searching more boldly through the dormitory building. Her plan was to find Kiriko or Yuri and get some food off them. Deciding to focus her search on the first floor, she spent her time running to peek at the front door, and heading to the janitor’s office to explore. A lot of things captured her interest on the way, but right now her primary objective was to find food to eat.

So Ai ran to check the canteen. She crossed the entire length of the room, peering with a baffled expression at the place where used bowls and plates were collected.

And in the kitchen, a certain Keira Venna saw all this as it went on.

“What’re you doing over there?”

Caught completely off-guard, Ai leaped up in fright and looked frantically around for the speaker.

“This way.”

Keira looked at Ai from over the counter that connected the kitchen and the canteen.

“N-Nice to meet you! My name is Ai Astin!”

“Hey. Nice to meet you too. I’m Keira Venna, the manager of this place and its cook.”

Ai stood at attention and summoned up a voice from the depths of her being.

“I-I just wanted to say, I didn’t have anything to do with the globe on the second floor falling down! It was already on the floor!”

“...So you’re confessing before anyone’s even asked you about it... You’re a funny kid.”

Keira disappeared back into the kitchen, and Ai was left standing there at a loss for a good while.

“Here.”

Keira returned and plonked a tray on the counter.

“Huh? What’s this for?”

“It’s for you. You're going to eat it or not?”

Ai stood on tiptoes to peek up at the tray, and found that it was laden with freshly baked bread and a thick, rich stew.

“Oh! Thanks for the food!”

She took the tray from the counter and scurried over to a nearby table, and began to dig in.

“That was great!”

Ai had finished the bread and stew in just a few mouthfuls, and now she was carrying the tray back into the kitchen.

“Um, Keira...you’re a really good cook…”

“Really? Well, thanks.”

Keira was sitting on a chair in the kitchen with a newspaper in front of her, and she didn’t even look up from it as she answered. She was solidly built and looked to be middle-aged, and her face always seemed to wear a slightly ironic smile.

Ai placed both hands on the counter and pushed herself up, so that she could see over it.

“I didn’t know the dead could cook so well, you know.”

Then the tray was off the counter and in the air, speeding towards her head. It connected. What shocked Ai the most as she stood there blinking in confusion wasn’t the pain of the impact, but rather that she couldn’t tell what was going on.

“Let me tell you, kid, 'You’re a really good cook' was fine by itself. You didn’t have to add that bit about the dead. D’you think that just because we’re dead doesn’t mean we’re not allowed to be good at cooking? How about we sit you down for a lecture from old Miss Keira here on cooking with science, and how we don’t need to use our senses for it, huh?”

“Ah—No—I meant—I’m really sorry!”

Ai, who had since fallen below the counter, had to push herself up again to deliver the apology.

Keira placed two cups in front of Ai, and the warm bitter fragrance of tea began to issue from them.

“Here. Have some.”

One cup was larger than the other. After giving it a little thought, Ai decided that it would be best to be polite, so she picked up the one that looked small enough to be part of a toy set.

“Blergh!”

The tea in it was concentrated to the point of being thick, and was both scalding hot and very bitter.

“Silly, that one’s mine.”

Keira lightly removed the cup from Ai’s hand and sipped at the dark-colored liquid within.

“You've never had dehva tea before, right?”

Ai nodded a few times in response, and began sticking out her tongue experimentally. So bitter was the tea that even now she was unable to speak.

Dehva tea was a specialty of Ortus’. The first draft that the dead took was both thick and bitter. The second, the Living Blend, was made with the used leaves of the first and was therefore half as strong. That was the blend in the larger cup that was pushed toward Ai, and which she now raised carefully to her mouth.

Keira took care of Ai as if on a whim, returning occasionally to the kitchen to check on something that was cooking in the pot. It was during one of these times that Ai addressed Keira’s turned back.

“E-Excuse me!”

“What is it?”

“Do you know where Yuri-san and Kiriko-san went?”

“If it’s the tall one you want, he left right when morning broke.”

He’d said that he had to take the car to be checked and repaired. He’d also asked where the telegraph office and drugstore were, it looked like he’d be heading there as well.

“Kiriko’s probably at work, but he’ll be back by dusk.”

“Does Kiriko-san live here?”

“Yes... Oh, but if he’s gone to the castle, it might be nighttime before he returns.”

“The castle?”

“To see the princess.”

On hearing this, Ai was reminded of when she first met Kiriko, and he’d mistaken her for a princess.

“Kiriko-san knows the princess?”

“Yeah, that’s right. I heard the princess treats him like a friend. What, didn’t he ever tell you anything about it?”

“He only said that he had to run errands all over the city...”

“That’s what he does. When he’s here he runs errands for me, and when he’s at the castle he runs them for the princess.”

Ai was so impressed that, without really noticing it, she soon slurped up all of her tea.

She returned her teacup to the counter, thanking Keira for the tea as she did so.

Then she checked the clock. It was just noon then, and there was plenty of time left in the day.

But there was nothing for her to do in that time.

Ai rested her chin on the counter, alternately watching Keira as she worked and tilting her ear to listen to the clock as it ticked away the time.

This was the first time she hadn’t had anything to do since she left the village.

“Excuse me…”

Ai couldn’t stand it much longer.

“Excuse me, can I go out into the city?”

Keira’s face took on a pained expression.

“What did the tall one say?”

“He didn’t say anything at all.”

Well, he hadn’t.

“...Then I don’t have any reason to stop you. But be careful. Ortus has been closed for nine years now, and just about everyone’s forgotten how to behave around living people like you.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“But, Keira-san, you seem...perfectly normal to me.”

“I am a cook after all, so I get to see the living from time to time… Well, where’re you planning on going?”

“I saw this Mask Street on my way here yesterday, and I want to go take a look…”

“Ah, there’s good. Did you bring your permit?”

Ai flashed her new entry permit at Keira.

“If you get lost or need help, show this card to anyone nearby, preferably the ones in the shops. Also...hey, put this on.”

Keira took from a drawer an object completely incongruous with its surroundings, and handed it to Ai.

“A mask?”

“If you’re heading to Mask Street, then of course you’re going to need one of your own! Plus, you stand out a little too much, so this’ll help you blend in a bit more."

Ai looked at the mask. It was shaped like a fox’s face and seemed filled with all the exciting mysteries of a different country, much like the group of dead they saw yesterday.

The smell of cardboard and glue flew up her nose.

“Does it look good on me?”

“Not bad, isn’t it? Let’s lower your hair now… Also, don’t wear that long coat of yours out, put on this jacket instead.

Ai’s golden hair billowed down from her shoulders to her back, a yellow blanket wrapped around her body.

She looked for all the world like a straw-hatted golden fox.

“Not bad. Now go on, it’s your debut.”

Thoroughly enjoying this, Ai barked once at Keira.

Then, she dashed out to the noonday street.