Episode 24: Day Seven, the Ghost Lady (3)
The ghost lady pressed her right hand to her forehead as she watched me standing there, blank and uncomprehending. The sight stirred a twinge of guilt. I'd been teasing her nonstop, after all.
Ah. They do say a man is nothing but a beast who goes helplessly weak before a beautiful woman.
I hadn't done a single thing wrong, and yet seeing her so disappointed and deflated made me feel as if I ought to apologize. I bowed my head.
"I'm sorry I couldn't understand you. Once I'm back in the real world I'll study English hard, so please just bear with me until then."
At my words the ghost lady looked briefly startled, then broke into a pretty smile and nodded.
Come to think of it, what had that been earlier — the thing that struck my face and swept past? Even Search hadn't sensed a thing. Well. Once I got out, learned to read lips, and picked up some English, I could ask her… assuming I even had the time. Would she pass on the moment we left?
…Picturing her passing on left me strangely unsettled.
When I stopped to wonder why, the answer was plain. She couldn't speak, and yet the mere fact that I now had someone I could trade thoughts with had been an enormous comfort.
Comfort? It had comforted me?
Ah…
Seven days. Only seven days, and my mind had apparently been driven all the way to its limit.
The memories of those seven days flashed past in an instant. My emotions had swung violently up and down; stray thoughts and trash-heap desires, dozens of times worse than the idle fantasies I used to spin back in reality, had surged and throbbed inside me, and I'd even gone so far as to desecrate a corpse — something I never would have done under ordinary circumstances. I'd scraped past death again and again, and all the while, scanning my surroundings without rest through Search, one fact had kept hammering itself home: in this vast world I was the only human, and nearly everything else I might meet was an aberrant I would have to fight for my life the instant we crossed paths.
For someone whose mind felt fragile enough to shatter at a slightly hard blow, the Phase World had been a bottomless swamp. All that endless, useless thinking and fantasizing — maybe it had been one way of protecting my sanity. I had a feeling that if I'd survived and gone back to reality without ever realizing it, I would have swung Search around without restraint, that ability like some contaminant in my hands, lost to my desires, and lived a life that dropped straight into the abyss.
So without my noticing, my mind had been drawn so tight that the slightest nick would have split it open. And thanks to her, that inner world of mine had steadied a great deal…
I turned my face away from the ghost lady and the smile I wanted to keep looking at.
Our first meeting had laid a crushing burden on my heart and my mind, but over half a day of talking through her expressions, the gestures of her hands and feet, and the handful of words we could manage, I'd come to see that she was kind and earnest, gentle, and something of a mischief-maker. The very model of a lovely woman no man could help but fall for. And I — a lifelong virgin who, family aside, had never so much as held a woman's hand — couldn't even look straight at so beautiful an adult woman.
Ghost or not, with a nature like bright sunlight, and me with next to no immunity where women were concerned… somewhere along the way, I had fallen for the ghost lady.
I scratched my cheek, brushed away the clods of dirt that came pattering off it, and sighed. Drawing on my memories, Analysis judged that even my personality had shifted. The pitch of my fantasies, and the speed of my stray thoughts, had both grown much faster.
But if I stayed with that ghost lady — the one tilting her head at me even now — until I returned to reality… so long as she kept her place in the phase stone and existed at my side in this Phase World, I had a feeling my mind would neither grow any more contaminated, nor collapse.
I followed her as she beckoned me on and walked ahead, and partway along I made up my mind. Watching her face carefully, I asked, cautious.
"U-um. Miss Flandre?"
When I called out, the ghost lady turned my way and tilted her head toward me, as if to ask why.
Taking courage from her expression, I confessed… no. I made a request.
"C-can I call you… Franc?"
She nodded. Twice.
Yes! At the sight of the ghost lady — Franc — smiling faintly and nodding, I clenched a fist on the inside.
My heart seemed to tremble. Thinking about it, walking and talking with a woman for this long… wasn't this the first time, across all of middle school and high school put together?
The thought filled me with an odd sense of duty, as if I ought to say something so she wouldn't get bored. I thought for a moment, then opened my mouth.
"Come to think of it, if I hadn't stolen a look at you showering, I might not have survived."
Franc blinked her large eyes and looked at me with an expression that asked what on earth this boy was suddenly saying. Then, as if her thoughts had caught up to that moment six days ago, drinking at the waterfall, she stopped dead and covered her face with both hands.
…Aaaaaah.
You idiot! Of all the things you could have brought up!
I nearly launched into a panicked flood of nonsense, caught myself, and scrambled for a subject that might turn the conversation somewhere useful. Feigning all the composure I could manage, I opened my mouth.
"B-back then, Franc, you washed up, scooped mud out of the pool, and smeared it over yourself, right?"
Still hiding her face, Franc peered at me through the gaps in her fingers and gave a small nod.
…But isn't that pose even more embarrassing? Sure, her arms cover her chest, but I can see the rest plain as day — the three clean lines of her toned stomach, that cute little navel, the smooth lower belly, the pubic bone with its dainty little dusting of hair, and even her sex, laid utterly bare.
"If it hadn't been for that, I never would have even thought of smearing mud on myself. Up until then camouflage hadn't crossed my mind at all, but when I saw what you were doing I figured it would hide my scent, so I copied you. In the end, that's what saved my life from the giant mole. And meeting that giant mole was what let me awaken my ability in the first place."
When I pointedly indicated my school uniform, steeped dark with muddy water, Franc's eyes went wide. She must not have imagined I'd run into the giant mole.
Reading the worry and the curiosity sharing her face, I answered.
"I was heading back along the river by the cliff with mud smeared all over me when I suddenly heard a rustling behind me. So I hid behind a tree right away, and that was the moment the giant mole showed up."
Once I'd sketched out what came after, Franc's face showed relief that I'd come through the danger, and at the same time she looked at me with something pitying and sad in it.
Under that gaze my chest itched strangely, and the words spilled out exactly as they rose, without passing any review in my brain.
"The ability I awakened then could sense aberrants and all sorts of other things, and even after that I met the horned puppy, climbed the cliff and ran into the long-snouted lean wolf, met the big female field rat. I was able to keep myself alive through all of it thanks to the mud. Which means the reason I got to meet you, Franc, is you!"
I went on to tell her how much comfort I'd taken, how much easier my heart had felt, since meeting her at midnight last night, and I bowed my head.
"Thank you, Franc. That's what I wanted to say."
She had been listening quietly, and at my thanks tears began to gather in her large eyes.
Huh?! Wh-why was she crying? Had I said something wrong?
Flustered by the sight of her sniffling, I flailed for a moment, then realized something and scratched my head. Franc must have been worn so thin in spirit, living alone for so long, that even a thank-you was enough to make her cry.
She wiped the tears away with her fingers and, though she wore no clothes at all, answered my gratitude with an elegant little bend of the knees, as if she were lifting the hem of a dress in both hands.
That cute, unadorned honesty — the way she answered every single thing I said without pretense — stirred up a feeling of fondness all on its own. Wanting to make a woman like that my own… wouldn't that be only natural, for a man?
I wiped under my nose and said it.
"The way you look is a little too stimulating for me."
Feeling the weight on my heart lift, I'd pointed out her nakedness in a roundabout way, and she answered with a peculiar smile, covered the important parts of her body with both hands, twisted slightly, and shot me a sidelong look.
…Th-the destructive power of that is no joke.
Maybe she couldn't do anything about her clothes? I'd gone out of my way to let her know, and she still didn't change into anything else — perhaps her soul had been fixed in place while she was naked. Then again, giant Franc had been naked too.
The sheer sex appeal of her set my heart pounding and my face burning as if it were on fire, and when I fanned my cheeks with one hand and pretended to look elsewhere, her eyes curved prettily into crescents. Awkward, I laughed sheepishly; she answered with a bright smile of her own, then took the lead and started walking again.
Following her guidance, something occurred to me, and I asked.
"If I move fast and end up far away, what happens to you, Franc?"
I'd asked because I was curious what would happen if we got separated while she was outside the phase stone in her ghost state. Franc smiled brightly and gestured for me to try running. So I ran at an easy pace and glanced back to check — and once about five hundred meters had opened between me and her, standing quietly where she'd been, she vanished in a blink and appeared right beside me.
When I looked back that last time and Franc was gone, my heart nearly dropped out of my chest. I was about to turn around in a panic when her small, pretty face popped out at my side — and thank goodness it did, or I'd have been halfway to a breakdown.
Calming my pounding heart, I asked what had happened, and Franc pointed at the phase stone in my pocket with a triumphant look, as if to say she'd finally gotten to tease me once, too.
The phase stone? She'd moved along with the phase stone? Now that I thought about it, a gray light had appeared at the center of the stone. Could Franc be bound to it?
If her body was tethered to the phase stone, how was she supposed to get free later? Could she just pass on whenever she pleased?
When I asked whether she really was bound to the stone, she nodded that yes, she was. And as if she felt bad for teasing me, she kept sneaking glances at my face, wondering whether I was angry.
"I'm not mad. So what happens when I go back to reality?"
Only then did her face brighten. She thought for a moment, made a circle with her fingers about the size of the phase stone, showed it shrinking smaller and smaller, then opened her hand and pointed a finger toward the sky.
"You mean when the phase stone disappears, you pass on?"
The phrase seemed unfamiliar to her. She tilted her head for a moment, then nodded that yes, that was right.
So when the phase stone vanished, she vanished too?
I took the phase stone out of my pocket. A stone that kept giving off a not-inconsiderable amount of Phase Power… was it a consumable? Once all the Phase Power inside had flowed out, it would disappear, I supposed.
The knowledge that I'd be parting from her before long sent a chill through one side of my chest, but I forced my thoughts elsewhere. Until the phase stone disappeared, I could be with her. That was how I'd think of it.
There was something I wanted to confirm before that.
"Can you pass on even before the phase stone disappears?"
I felt oddly sorry for asking, but I had to know, so I kept stealing glances at her face as I did. If she passed on the moment I returned to reality, I didn't think I could bear it. I remembered something Dad had said once — that where there's a meeting, there's a parting — but still, seeing her for a long time was better than seeing her for a short one.
Heart pounding, I waited for her answer, and she shook her head to tell me it was impossible!
For an instant my face lit up and I nearly let out a cheer, but I crushed it down with everything I had and just managed not to let Franc see. Just imagining what she'd think if I cheered at an answer like that made me dizzy.
The phase stone she dwelt in belonged to a Peak-Rank aberrant, so I guessed we could be together for a long time. And if I calculated how much Phase Power was being lost, I'd have a rough idea of when we'd have to part, which would help me steady my heart in the meantime.
Keeping watch on the surroundings with Telescopic Vision, I walked for six hours and covered about thirty-two kilometers — nearly twice the distance I'd managed along the cliff over the whole of the past seven days. And judging by our heading, if we kept on like this we'd reach the cliff before long.
"Franc. If we keep going this way, it looks like we'll head down below the cliff. Is the direction right?"
Franc looked at me as if to ask how I'd known, crossed her fingers into an X and shook her head, then nodded again.
"We won't go down below the cliff, but the direction is right?"
Nod, nod!
"Then how far are we going?"
She thought for a moment, spread all the fingers of both hands once, then held up two more.
"We have to walk another twelve hours?"
Nod, nod!
"What's there?"
At that, Franc pointed a finger at me, pressed both hands together against her cheek, and mimed sleep.
"…A hideout where I can rest?"
Franc beamed and clapped once, so brightly I could almost hear the smack of it.
Was she guiding me to a safe hiding place because I hadn't been able to sleep? Grateful for the thought, I smiled wide and said to her,
"Thank you. I'm expecting something incredible?! A safe hideout!"
I looked at her with exaggerated gestures and a grin, as if I were counting on something truly extraordinary, and I could feel her growing flustered.
Hehe. I'd laid the emphasis on thick for incredible and safe, and watching her fidget in a panic — as if it might not be quite that safe — was unbearably cute.
"Oh. It's a reasonably safe place? Even so, you're going out of your way to guide me. There's no way I'd be disappointed."
Only then did she seem to realize she'd been teased again. With a sulky look she reached out and made as if to pinch my arm. She looked thoroughly annoyed at having fallen for it once more.
We walked another four hours like that, until the sun went down, and strangely enough we didn't encounter a single aberrant. Must have just been lucky.
A little farther on, the trees thinned, and the cliff — and the flooded expanse beyond it — opened out before my eyes. The sunset sinking past the western forest stung a corner of my mind with a cold ache, but the thought that Franc was beside me turned that feeling a hundred and eighty degrees, into something as cozy as slipping into a warm blanket.
I stopped and looked out over the water, and Franc came up beside me to look the same way.
From the top of the cliff I could tell it curved gently, like a folding screen, because far off to the right the waterfall showed as a tiny thing in the distance. I hadn't noticed it from below — the trees were tall enough to block the whole view, and the cliff itself bent in a slow curve.
Then my gaze drifted naturally toward the northwest. The place where Franc's body, from her time as a giant, lay abandoned. The trees hid even the traces of the battle, of course.
Franc looked at me with a face that asked what I was seeing, so I told her that she and the giant mole were over there, and said, apologetic,
"I'm sorry. I wanted to bury your body…"
Franc smiled gently, nodded, and then shook her head once. The thought was enough — was that what she meant?
I watched the sunset with Franc for a while, then, before it got any later, looked for a tree that would do for resting. Thirty meters back from the cliff I found one three times larger than the rest. The branches were awkward for lying down, but the trunk was easily fifteen meters across, so even the relatively thinner limbs higher up were as thick as small trees, and there were plenty of decent places to rest. A few of them were thicker than my own torso… it looked as if I could hollow out the top of a branch a little and make myself a bed.
Drawing on what I'd learned climbing trees and scaling cliffs, I went a full fourteen meters up and settled onto the branch I'd had my eye on. All I'd done was cut handholds and footholds with the horn awl on the way up, and thanks to Analysis it had been genuinely easy.
Franc climbed after me along the marks I'd dug… and even without a body, she slipped a few times, then hauled herself laboriously up the trunk and sat on the branch at my feet with a sigh.
I don't get it. She's a ghost — why is she affected by gravity?
Anyway.
"Fifty-three meters to the top of the tree. That's enormous."
Franc, gripping the trunk with both hands, heard me and looked up with her mouth slightly open — and I was looking at Franc's chest with my own mouth open.
Bent at the waist like that, tugged lightly by gravity, call it presence if you like… even if she was a gray-white, translucent ghost, that… should I call it the shading I could see, or the texture… anyway, it was incredible, and every time I looked I couldn't help but marvel. In more ways than one!
I discreetly adjusted the front of my pants so Franc wouldn't notice, then looked around. The spot I'd chosen didn't have many leaves on the inside, but the outside was thick enough to hide me without much trouble, and looking west I could see through the foliage all the way to the horizon beyond the cliff. The view wasn't bad, either.
I looked around, then turned my gaze back to Franc.
When we'd first met she'd been pale and whitish all over, but after she'd entrusted her body — her soul? — to the phase stone, the blurred parts had faded and she'd grown steadily clearer. Now, twenty hours on, she had a distinct outline compared to before, and seemed to trail a very bright gray smoke. Because of that, it had become hard to see through her body to the other side with the naked eye. Honestly, though, I liked her better now that she was less transparent.
What was good about it was, well… her spirit-body had grown denser, so the curves of her body and the clarity of them had become definite, and I could see them for certain! Her n-nipples, for instance. Her p-pu… ahem. Her sex, for instance!
She'd always held herself straight, but climbing the tree must have tired her quite a bit; she was bent at the waist, miming the wiping away of sweat. The posture being what it was, I stole a glance at her stomach, wondering whether the flesh there might fold — and Franc, catching my gaze, drooped her eyebrows in an awkward, half-risen pose.
Flustered, I stammered, then asked,
"Franc, you don't even have a body. Why are you struggling so much?"
At that she made a face like huh?, tilted her head, and then put on an expression that said she didn't know either.
To look that vacant and adorable… was it because she hadn't been a ghost for long?
But she straightened her back at once and closed her eyes.
Opportunity! In that gap I feasted my eyes on Franc's body to my heart's content — the nipples standing at the tips of her breasts, the sides of her waist that looked soft enough to yield under a hand, her nape, her collarbones, her stomach. I studied her hard, trying to burn that naked form into my eyes and my mind as thoroughly as I could…
and her body began to rise, little by little!
"Huh?!"
She floated slowly up to about fifty centimeters, turned toward my startled voice, looked at my face, smiled faintly, and then slowly settled back down.
Amazed that she'd floated, startled that she'd done it so suddenly, curious how — I stared at her with all of that packed into my gaze, and she looked away for a moment, then smiled softly, lay face-down on the branch, and avoided my eyes.
Don't tell me she hadn't realized she was a ghost? Was that why she was dodging my eyes and playing innocent? I had the thought that my words had needlessly made her fully aware of it, but I shook my head and let it go.
Anyway, Franc… I can see everything.
Because she'd lain down with her legs pointed this way, it was all laid bare: a pair of buttocks so plump and springy they looked as if they'd push my fingers back if I pressed them, and, through the gap between her thighs, her small petals and an anus like a chrysanthemum blossom. For some reason, now that she'd grown clearer, I could even sense a distinct texture to her, and if she showed herself to me like that, just as she was, I didn't think I could hold out…
The truth was, ever since I'd met her I'd been hard the whole time, and it felt a little like torture. Maybe because so much blood had rushed there, it even hurt — and I hadn't once taken care of myself since crossing into the Phase World…
Anyway, she was propping her head on both arms and idly kicking her legs, and I really ought to say something about the pose, shouldn't I? Constantly reminding her that she was a ghost felt somehow uncomfortable, so I decided to steer clear of that subject as I spoke.
"Franc. Are you all right?"
At my question she turned only her head to look at me, puzzled, and that face was awfully cute! The more time I spent with her, the more she showed me this mischievous side rather than the demure, dignified figure from when we'd first met — enough that I wondered whether the woman of a thousand faces they talk about in books wasn't Franc herself.
"Franc, I can see all your precious places…"
When I said it while scratching my cheek, Franc startled, covered her backside with one hand, and pressed her thighs together. I'd seen the chrysanthemum twitch when she startled, and her sex shut like a clam, and my heart hammered.
She really is a young lady who's bad for the heart, in every possible way!