Mushi Uta:Volume 10 Prologue
Prologue: 0.00 The Others[edit]
This happened before she was in elementary school.
It was around the beginning of June. She remembered how she turned toward the park, enticed by the smell of verdant trees.
It was a small park, built right in the middle of a neighborhood with many high-rise apartment complexes.
Inside were only a wooden bench, a slide, and a small sandbox surrounded by a wooden frame.
She found someone she knew there.
Thin, fragile-looking limbs peeking from within a camisole. The hem of a battered, worn-down hoodie dirtied by sand.
Noticing her approach, the child wore an innocent smile.
“Ah, good morning.”
At the time they were acquaintances, neighbors living in the same building.
Although they later went to the same elementary and middle school, they neglected to keep in contact.
Despite heading to different routes and going separate ways—they ended up reuniting later.
Meaning, they were childhood friends.
Nothing more or less.
“What’re you making?”
She approached her childhood friend, looking at the pile of sand and asking.
“A castle. Will you help me?”
With that complacent, toothy smile, her childhood friend looked like a small animal. That polite yet lisping way of talking actually served to further emphasize this childish innocence.
On the other hand, she, who used her finger to poke the castle, was often said to be mature. There was her face, which often caused people to mistake her for an elementary school or even middle school student, but perhaps it was her calm and adult-like behavior that led to this mistake.
“Hmm, should I? It’ll probably break down if I touch it.”
“If you help me, you’ll be appointed as my knight.”
“Knight? Have you watched some weird cartoon again? If I’m the knight, then what about you?”
“The princess.”
Saying this and rising up, her childhood friend headed to the nearby water fountain and then hurried back. A palmful of water was splashed on the castle. —Seeing half of the sandbox wet, she realized that her childhood friend repeated this process again and again.
Another round trip was apparently needed. Taking yet more water, her friend came back…
And stumbled, falling and striking the side of the castle.
“Eh!”
“Ahh! Ahh!”
Seeing the castle, she was surprised and her friend was crying.
“Uh… ukh…”
“Come on, don’t cry. Let’s build it again, alright? I’ll help you.”
It happened just as she patted the head of her crying childhood friend.
Leaping over the park’s fences, a person appeared in front of the two.
He was a man dressed in tattered clothes. The momentum caused him to roll on the ground, and he could barely stand.
“Are you okay?”
Her friend asked innocently.
“Uu…”
She would never forget his face. Whether it was due to malnutrition or an illness, he was so emaciated that the bones in his face were prominent.
She was also surprised at his exhausted behavior, but more than that—she was scared. With his eyes bulging out as if he was being chased by an assassin or a wild beast, he opened his mouth.
“—?”
He didn’t speak in Japanese. Clearly shocked, her friend turned toward her.
“Oh no… is he an alien?”
“English. Are you OK?”
While wishing he wasn’t some kind of pervert, she tried asking. Since her education-obsessed parents have sent her to English classes since she could remember herself, she could at least hold simple conversations.
“Are they… are they here?”
The man said in English. Looking closely, he was a young man. Although his voice was hoarse, it was also young.
“They?”
“They’re after me… they’re chasing after me…! Why…?! We’ve done nothing to them…! We didn’t want any of it…!”
“It?”
“It’s like we’re being hunted…! Right… they’re hunters—”
Seeing the young man cough, she pointed toward the water fountain. He took off, practically leaping there.
Meanwhile, her childhood friend grabbed her hand from behind.
“Who is he?”
“Dunno. Said that someone was chasing him.”
“So he’s playing tag?”
“I don’t think so. Probably not.”
After drinking some water, he looked more relaxed. The young man came back to the sandbox, wary of his surroundings.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. No need to be afraid of me.”
“…”
“Have you not seen anyone around? Someone who looks like they’re rich.”
“Nope.”
As she shook her head, the young man looked relieved.
“I see…”
“Who are you, mister? Is someone chasing you?”
“I’m still a teen… but well, I guess that can’t be helped with how I look. I’m, well…”
The man hesitated and then wore a bitter smile.
“Ever since coming to this country, they only called me Alpha.”
“Alfa?”
“The one chasing me is a monster. —I’m the same, though.”
“Hmm. He says he’s being chased by a monster.”
So she explained to her childhood friend, who in turn stepped in front of the young man.
“It’s fine. Kanon and her will protect you.”
“Eh?”
She ended up raising a voice without thinking. Meaning, both she and her childhood friend, Nakayama Kanon, would do it? She tentatively interpreted it for the young man.
Just like she thought, he was surprised.
“Kanon is a princess and this is Kanon’s knight. We will beat the monsters.”
The young man burst into laughter.
“Really? Wow, you look strong.”
“We’ll erase the monsters!”
“Haha, so you’ll erase the monster to save me? That’s incredible.”
“As a princess I can use magic and I have many allies.”
Her childhood friend spoke with a puffed chest.
A princess.
Right, perhaps her friend’s lie had served as the starting point.
Her childhood friend’s cute lie.
One day, it would end up involving both her, as well as dozens, hundreds, thousands—no, even more people than that—
0.01 The Others[edit]
Did her childhood friend remember that very first lie uttered in this park?
More than ten years passed since then.
The world changed.
The biggest change of all—was the appearance of Mushi.
She grew and became proficient at wielding lies. On the other hand, her comrade in lies was probably bad at them even now.
She mumbled softly.
“Can you see this?”
She was currently standing on a gigantic stage.
The hundreds, no, thousands of people gathered around below her were all waiting for Kanon’s words. All of them were clad in bizarre coats—in ceremonial robes.
Looking down at the arrayed “believers”, she too was clad in these ceremonial robes. Crowned with a wreath of laurel leaves, she was also holding a khakkhara staff in hand.
The ghost town full of buildings being constructed was enveloped in an abnormal silence.
“The pair’s lie will now change the world…”
The childhood friend that she was whispering to was not there.
However, Kanon would surely come there. Along with those scary Mushitsuki.
And she would use them—as sacrifices.
That was why she kept on lying for so long.
“Kanon-sama…”
A voice rose from among the believers.
“Kanon-sama…!”
“Kanon-sama!”
“Kanon-samaaa!”
The voices became a chorus, cheers, and then shouts.
Answering their voices, she lifted her hands. All voices instantly stopped and silence returned.
“…”
Smiling, she turned to look at the towering building behind her.
This was a castle.
Illuminated by the setting sun, the shade of this medieval European-style white castle and its spire covered the desolate ground.
This was one thing they managed to obtain by Nakayama Kanon lying over and over again.
She had obtained this castle, a sacred place isolated from the impure world, and also hundreds of people—of Mushitsuki—to extol her.
Kanon’s lie was painting over reality.
Simply being weak allowed protection from the harsh truth.
“Kanon and all of you are weak. Very, very… weak.”
She spoke to the microphone set on stage.
“Losing, running away, and finally arriving here. All of you should be the same.”
None denied her words. They all just looked up at her face.
They all thought of dying many times before. None of the people there hesitated.
“Those who corner us are always strong people. …Being strong is nice, right?”
A roar reverberated.
The clouds floating in the east were dyed in red. That crimson, even more intense than the sun itself, created the shape of a Great Yama tiger beetle made of flames launching at the sky.
And yet her speech did not stop.
“This is because strong people are those who expose the secrets of bad guys, the heroes who vanquish them.”
This time an earthquake shook the ground. A white glow could be seen pouring down from the eastern sky.
It was snow.
In this period where summer just ended, pure-white snow was falling at the eastern sky.
“Weak people like us are only used by the strong people and get stepped on. They don’t even turn to look at the weak.”
Flames and blizzard, the two incarnations of destruction, were both approaching this place.
“Even now strong Mushitsuki are coming to kill us all. —But we’re fine.”
All the believers wore calm expression, not moving a muscle.
“We will probably not lose.”
The number of lies piled up by her and Kanon was innumerable.
At first it was mere mischief.
Next it was to gain a place where they belonged.
And while they joined hands and walked together—the number of people walking with them increased.
“Do you believe in Kanon?”
She asked.
All believers—smiled. She didn’t even need to ask for their answer.
“Kanon also believes in all of you.”
All of them were weak people who gathered here and admired and believed in Kanon.
It was her duty to protect all these important people.
Even if—she needed to draw enemies there, or deceive her childhood friend.
“Eliminate the wicked Mushitsuki approaching us!”
Raising the khakkhara above her head, she commanded.
“Our enemies are the Blaze Class Rank 1, Harukiyo! As well as Secret Class Rank 1, Fuyuhotaru!”
The believers all raised battle cries. The air shook with angry roars and fervor.
“We shall destroy them, and then embark on our final fight against the Special Environmental Preservation Bureau!”
She swung down her staff vigorously and shouted.
“Kanon and the believers now declare a Holy War!”
The lie she’d thought up with her childhood friend in the sandbox.
How did that small lie swell into such massive proportions?
She began to recall the eventful lives of the two liars that brought them to this point.
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