Horizon:Volume 1 Chapter 12

Chapter 12: Innocents in Remorse Way

It occurs within the afternoon sunlight.

The movements of the thoughts that seem to escape one's grasp.

Where could their destination be.

Point Allocation (Family)

●

A single figure was seated atop the stairs.

Her long hair fluttering in the wind, that person was Kimi.

Sitting on the stairs, she was propping her face up on her palm, looking downward all the while.

Below her.

There was a large stairway, the second schoolyard, and another stairway. In the second schoolyard, the clubs of the physical strand were performing mock battles/undergoing combat practice as part of their respective club activities.

However, Kimi was directing her gaze beyond them and their actions.

What she was looking at lay beyond the school campus. A straight path forward in the nature sectors.

In front of the road, paved with resin meant to imitate stone paving, a single boy stood.

The lines of his uniformed figure slender, he was Toori.

Kimi looked at his back as he stood there, unmoving. She said this, sighing as she spoke.

"If you're scared, it's fine if you go back, Toori - Because you're my idiot brother."

Kimi spoke those words, hugging her knee to herself. And after a while, at the place she was looking at, Toori started to move. He would wind around, repeatedly start to sprint with his body slanted forwards, start to poledance low on a streetlight's poles..

"Hehehe. My idiot brother. Just as I thought that the atmosphere was right, you punch it right in the face."

It was just as Toori had poledanced too much and had started to slowly crawl up the streetlight's pole like a bug.

A voice could be heard from behind Kimi.

"What's Toori doing? Huh? Is that a new type of game? Or should I blow him off it?"

"Teeheehee, Sensei. I had heard that you were drinking in the cafeteria, but what have you come here for?"

"Well, maybe...I'm just enjoying the cold air."

A figure clad in a jumper, bottle of sake clutched underarm, sat to Kimi's right.

The figure fixed her hair, which was slightly mussed.

Kimi frowned at her.

"Hehehe, Sensei. You can't comb your fingers through your hair unless it's for fashion. Toori does it a lot, but it'll damage your hair, so leave it to me."

As Oriotorai was seated next to her, Kimi combed her hair with a comb she took out from her bosom.

Oriotorai left her hair to be fixed by Kimi as she wished, but she relaxed her face, which was flushed with blood as a result of her drinking.

"Heehee."

"What is it? That's really creepy, Sensei."

"Ah, no, I was reminiscing about how a granny close to here would do this for me."

"A granny...Could it be that you come from the Izumo district?"

'Hehehe'. Oriotorai narrowed her eyes as she laughed.

"Well, I've been to lots of places, but I'm probably the most happy here."

"Teeheehee, Sensei. Please don't tell me your life story even after suddenly getting all drunk and treating people like grannies."

"Isn't it fine? Or maybe I should say, for me, this is a day to be celebrated as well."

"Oh, what a coincidence, this is day of celebration for Toori as well. It would be nice if he wanted to celebrate more tomorrow, though."

Hearing Kimi speak, Oriotorai nodded. She turned her gaze to Kimi.

"You're kind."

"...Wait, don't look this way, the comb won't pass through properly, will it?"

'Sorry, sorry'. Oriotorai apologized, but she touched her neck with her empty hand.

She fingered the chain hanging there before moving on to the other chain, which dropped towards her chest.

"Keep going, keep going..."

Her words were directed to the subject of her gaze, Toori, who stood atop a pole.

Kimi combed the back of her hair.

"Hehe, will Sensei be my idiot brother's ally?"

"Whether or not the idiot brother's ally, I don't know, but I will become Aoi Toori's ally~ Or Kimi, or anybody else's. At the very least, I'm definitely the ally of everyone in my class. - Ah, but, teaching staff can't be directly involved in inter-student battles, so when it comes to that, you'll have to forgive me, alright?"

'Yes'.

Kimi nodded. She stood up to comb the other side of Oriotorai's hair.

"...Oh? Ah, as I thought."

"What is it?"

"Before, Masazumi crossed over here, coming from Tama, over there. Somehow, it seems that she was trying to pass through to the halfway point of Remorse Way from the nature sector, but she's a girl who always seems to cut through weird places..."

Kimi lightly touched the comb to her chin, inclining her head.

"Teehee, but well, I wonder what the vice-president intends to do? Going to a place like Remorse Way..."

●

There existed a figure striding through the forest.

In the midst of the forest, shadowy due to the afternoon sunlight, Masazumi walked as she looked around the area.

Masazumi was carrying a paper package under her right arm.

"Coming in from the side in order to take a shortcut to Remorse Way was a bad idea..."

I thought to follow what the cafe's female shopkeeper had said and stop by Remorse Way before I headed to the Academy and gave this small package to Toori. Lying right in front of Ariadust Academy, Remorse Way was a road that passed through a section of several nature sectors, lined up next to each other. If you walked through the nature sectors sideways, you should reach it faster than circling around the edges of each sector, but...

...I'm not lost, am I?

The nature sectors came in blocks, just like the residential and transportation sectors, but to recreate natural conditions, in places where natural sectors lined up, the divisions between blocks were not clear. Where the greenery grew tight, a wall of leaves and branches came into being. I had already passed by several roads, but I only just realised that the number I had crossed didn't match up with my calculations.

"...Somehow, it seems that I'm leading myself into being spirited away."

When I was in Mikawa, there were many similarities amongst the Phenomena that happened within the city. Above all else..."The Lost Nobles".

I still remember the Phenomenon in which my mother disappeared. I still remember that which I saw when I returned home. The people in the neighbourhood gathered around the fence and the magisterial automatons searching my house.

The feeling of loss and the regret that welled up afterward still exist in my heart as fresh memories. The fact that the Phenomena took someone close to me remains fresh in my mind as well.

Even now, after one year has passed, I don't want to ever make time for myself to be alone, and though the clerical phone I wasn't carrying at the time is the cheapest you can find, I always carry it with me, never letting it leave my skin. Just like it's a charm.

"No way. I'm pretty sure that I'm already in the forest next to Remorse Way."

Listening carefully, I can hear in the distance the sound of goods being brought in from the continental port. I can make out the shadows of ships moving through the sky, and there's probably also the echo of Naruze and Knight as well as the rest of them clamoring in the skies. So I think I'm fine, but for now...

...When I come out into the next road, I'll try walking towards the Academy.

And after handing this package over to Toori, I'll investigate Remorse Way.

So Masazumi thought.

However...

...Where's the road?

In her panicked thoughts, there existed the fear about being spirited away, but there existed also a strange feeling of expectation.

And that was...

"I wonder if I'll figure something out if I investigate Remorse Way."

Just like the female shopkeeper said, just like Sakai said, if I investigate Remorse Way, will I be able to understand what lies within everyone?

'I wonder'. Masazumi ran her gaze through the cracks in the walls of branches and leaves as well as those between the trees, and as she did...

Masazumi came out into a small garden built within the forest.

"Oh."

I raised my voice into the air. The open space was an earthen square tens of meters in length. There was a small house, a place of repose, and there were children playing in the open plain. In a wooden bench next to them, there were also several parents that had accompanied their children here. Looking around, there was a small path to the stern, but that seemed to be the proper entrance.

...This is...

This is the first time I've come here, but I remember seeing the roof of this place of rest from one of the Academy's windows.

"I didn't mistake the road?"

Sighing once, Masazumi looked from the place she had left to the building that was the place of repose.

It was a building whose interior took up a large amount of space. Coming from the entrance, it had one room, and further inside, there was a room with beds and a large window. Figures of people could be seen in the entrance and interior, which carried a tinge of evening shadow, but the atmosphere was...

...like that of a conference room.

Thinking this, Masazumi halted her gaze on a plaque stuck to the wall of the place of rest. The metal engraving indicated:

"'May the spirits find repose' 1618..."

'Something for the respose of souls, then?' Masazumi judged. If it's thirty years ago, then Mikawa and its surroundings would still be busy, and the insurrection that used Catholic Ability against government oppression and battles that were occurring everywhere in the Far East should have been in existence.

I had heard that while still young, Lord Nobunaga had suppressed those insurrections and secured his place as the head of family.

"Something from that time, then?...It was left here even after Musashi's renovation."

A breath.

Masazumi saw the directional sign pointing towards the forest, on which was written: "Forward Way".

"I wonder if there're many reposiums around here?"

Looking at the light coming from Remorse Way, just beyond the trees, Masazumi stepped into the forest again.

Remorse Way.

I have a vague idea of why that place is called Remorse Way.

"If you descend from the Academy and walk the road for a while, there's a stone slab to the side. The words inscribed in it were: '1638 All those who reside in Musashi pray for the girl, Horizon A's happiness in her next life,' huh."

Thinking about it now, doesn't it seem like that's related to the name Remorse Way?

Regret always follows loss. That also applies to me. When my mother disappeared...

...I should have done that. I should have done this.

I regretted.

On that day, when I went to the Academy, I said that I would be back, but I don't remember an answer. Whether it couldn't be heard or whether I couldn't hear my mother's answer, I don't know. It might be that my mother disappeared in that time, ever so slight though it was.

Masazumi thought. A regret the same as hers had created that stone slab and the place of repose that held the name of a reposium, and it had left those things behind.

If that was so, that girl is the embodiment of the remorse of Remorse Way.

Wondering about it, Masazumi took a breath, stopping in order to inhale the forest air.

At that moment.

"----"

Suddenly, a voice could be heard from outside.

The voice was a voice of song that echoed from afar.

A voice that made the Song of Passage melody.

●

Masazumi knew who was singing the Song off Passage. It was a voice she had heard in the morning and just before noon.

"P-01s?"

Morning, just before noon, and afternoon. There were times when the times were a little off, but she would always sing every so often. As for today, now was the time for the afternoon song.

Behind her, the voices of the playing children could be heard coming from the park.

Masazumi heard both the voice of song and the voices of playing as they mingled together, and she turned her gaze toward the stern of the ship, where it could be heard the Song of Passage was coming from.

...Today, it feels like I'm hearing her voice really often.

It's been one year since both P-01s and I have come to Musashi. However, if I think about our relationship, it's only the relationship between one of the staff members of a cafe and a student, one of the customers. Yet, I'm able to understand what she does every day...

...Comparing the situation now with the past, we've started to talk quite often. About borrowing books and things.

I also talked about my mother, and today, I also told her about my body, though it's more like that spilled out.

It's probably a one-sided feeling, but it's certain that there's someone with whom that I can talk about things like that.

We've both lost and been deprived of things, and for the both of us, there are things that we have been able to gain in Musashi, the place we've come to.

"...I wonder if it would be fine for me to say that we're friends?"

The words she muttered only because she was alone were left hanging in the air, and Masazumi once more set forth, walking forwards.

Stepping on the grass, setting her sights on the scenery and light that poked through the gaps of the trees...

"----"

She immediately came out onto the road. The scent of leaves and wood hung thinly in the air.

Turning around to look, the shadowy forest in which she had been walking and the place of rest she had just seen were silently existing beyond the branches and leaves. However, the forest was dimly lit.

'I walked a pretty long way,' she thought.

...So it really is a place for the repose of spirits? From outside, it really looks like a quiet place.

'Well it's evening, the kids playing there must have gone home,' Masazumi thought.

And as she did.

Suddenly, a voice called out to her from the street behind her. It was coming from a relatively high place. It was the voice of a man, ringing out from the window of a carriage stopped in the road.

"What on Earth are you doing in a place like this, Masazumi?"

The voice she could hear was one I'm well acquainted with. However, for me, it was a voice that made me cower.

It was the voice of a person who was unable to answer my hopes, in a time long past.

He left my mother and I, and even though he called me to Musashi...

...This person did not even meet with me often.

It was the voice of my father.

●

Under the afternoon sky, the scene of a meeting set in Remorse Way, a meeting between a carriage and a student came into being.

There was a gaze that watched it from afar. That which the owners of the gaze were sitting on the were the steps to the Academy. The female teacher with a sake bottle under her arm and the long-haired girl giving the teacher a manicure. The two of them looked at both the student in uniform and the carriage.

"-Masazumi's gotten out. It seems like she's talking to the people in the carriage though."

"Hehehe, Sensei, why is it that there's seaweed in the gaps of your nails?"

"That's simple. Aren't there sometimes times when you don't have chopsticks? With that, what you need is courage and decisiveness."

Rather than that...

"Isn't that strange? Over there and over here..."

Oriotorai jutted her chin forward, pointing something out.

What she was indicating as 'strange' was Masazumi, who was facing the carriage, a serious expression on her face as she stood unmoving. But that wasn't all.

"Toori..."

Toori, who was sitting atop a streetlight, was staring into the distance.

Just like the two, he was looking at Masazumi, staying completely still.

He was staring.

●

Behind Masazumi. The direction to which she turned.

There stood a carriage.

Drawn by two horses, it could hold six passengers, with the benches facing one another inside each able to seat three people. Through the opened window, a single man was on the middle of the bench to the back of the carriage. The black-haired man, body clad in western clothing, lightly held up his hand to silence the men sitting across from him.

"What are you doing here?"

Masazumi felt her body contract at those words, directed towards her though their owner was not looking at her.

'I'm shrinking from him.'

Masazumi herself understood this. She knew the reason for this clearly as well.

However, this was not the time nor place to wither away. In the interior of the carriage, which I could barely see through the window, opposite Father was a member of Musashi's provisional parliament as well as an executive from the chamber of commerce and industry. In Okutama, there were many business that were started personally or as part of clubs, not to mention unions.

Therefore, Masazumi spoke.

"-There are still many things I do not know about Musashi, so I was surveying the area."

'I'm speaking like I'm trying to earn myself points,' she thought. And if things went as normal...

...'I see.' It was his pattern to leave me silently, only the echo of that statement in his eyes giving any form of acknowledgement.

However, something different came to pass.

"Is there anything you've found out about the reposium inside the forest you've just come out from?"

"Eh...?"

There was some surprise at receiving a response from her father, but what Masazumi reacted to was what he had actually said. The words that her father had spoken to her could be thought to be merely lip service for the sake of his appearance, but all she could say at that point was:

"-Um, is there something about that place of rest?"

If my father knows something, I'd like to ask. However...

"You haven't studied enough. It's shameful that you don't know a single thing."

Spoken to in that manner, their gazes never meeting, Masazumi felt herself start to frown.

Concerning the condition of the parent-child relationship between her father and herself, 'unclear' would be the best description. It could probably be concluded as bad, but they had never clashed to the point where one could clearly say that, nor had they ever conversed.

...However, when Mother disappeared, this person...

He didn't come to Mother's funeral for her supposed death. In his place, a messenger came, and I was encouraged to move to Musashi.

I told my father about wanting to attend the Academy as a person desiring to be a politician on Musashi.

The voice that answered me said this:

"What are you saying? -Turn your eyes elsewhere, away from being a politican on Musashi."

...Do you not care about me?

That was the first time I had thought this.

One year has passed since then. He doesn't meet my gaze, and we don't speak often. And as for now? I wouldn't be ignored when he's in front of his clients, would I? He wouldn't respond by saying that he doesn't care, would he?

Therefore, now, Masazumi tried to say something.

...Not enough study?

Today, I was told something similar to what the cafe's female shopkeeper and Sakai told me. I know that I haven't studied enough. Not knowing about Musashi, not knowing about the people in the same class as I, I know that I'm unable to match my father, who has already reached that position. However...

...I haven't forgotten to learn.

I want to say that. Yet, how should I say it?

Not knowing this, a smouldering heat was born in her stomach.

Simultaneously.

A voice spoke from within the carriage.

"-Be that as it may, my dear, you are carrying something quite strange."

'Eh?' Masazumi looked at the small package clutched under her left arm.

...Why's he interested in this landmine-like thing----!

"My business transactions also deal with that kind of thing. It is a first edition copy, making it even more rare."

"Ah, no, this is, um, a friend's..."

Masazumi tried to follow up with an explanation, but her father's voice rang out, stifling hers.

"I don't really understand, but - give it to me."

Masazumi gulped down a breath.

...That's impossible.

I can't do that. This isn't mine. It's something that annoys me, and I don't want to carry it, but I can't.

Yet, Masazumi thought.

She thought that this was an transaction.

If I show integrity, their impression of me will be good, and this impression will continue into the future. If I resist, I will be treated as if I am still a child. However...

"If it's a friend's, then buy one after this and send it to him. He won't notice."

The other side of the transaction had even prepared an escape route.

If I do not give it to him, the clients will take that as my father's shame, and I will be seen as a person whose will is difficult to bend.

If I give it to him, my father will be able to show his clients evidence that he can make me do things according to his will, and it will give the indication that I hold no position but that of a submissive servant.

If I desire to be a politician, then what I am to do is completely within my grasp.

So Masazumi thought.

However, she thought that there was something that she had to keep.

And that something was this.

Even if I am trying to become a politician like my father...

...I don't want to become like him.

In spite of this...

"Masazumi."

A voice could be heard. This was the final decision. As a political hopeful, before the people who hold power in Musashi, what choice should I make? Her father was chasing her towards a rushed judgement.

"----"

She didn't know. Even not knowing, Masazumi thought to follow her heart. She thought to let herself speak what she wished, leaving it to her own judgement. She thought that that was her heart's true decision.

It was at that moment.

Suddenly, a voice came flying at her from her right. It was the voice of a boy.

"Alright, Seijun, nice job~~!!"

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