Starlink (4)
‘What the hell is this all of a sudden…!!’
My body wouldn’t move the way I wanted it to.
I reached out for the fragments as they broke away, but I couldn’t catch a single one.
Even when I tried to right my body in midair with my ability, even when I tried to cling to the pieces of myself as they came apart, it was impossible.
My outstretched hand vanished. Then my flailing legs vanished. And in that instant, when every sensation I had and every part of my body disappeared—
Flash.
“……!”
I opened my eyes in a place I’d never seen before.
Not that it was really a place I could call a place.
Somewhere black and blue afterimages drifted through the air.
It looked like walls had been thrown up out of square blocks of structure... an irregular space, as if some sort of error had occurred there.
“Ahh—. ……I’m back to normal.”
My voice rang out perfectly fine.
Even the arms and legs that had fallen away were completely back in place.
‘Is this the Star Lounge…? That place?’
It had to be.
This must be the place WIKI had called me to.
‘Maybe WIKI is here too….’
No, of course they were.
Why else would they have invited me?
“W-WIKI…?”
I called out softly, just in case they’d arrived first, but there was no answer.
So I fiddled with the terminal on my wrist to figure out what was going on, but—
“It’s not working…?”
For the first time since entering the Tower, the terminal wasn’t responding at all.
Why? Did that mean it couldn’t be used here?
But it had never been like this before….
‘……Though the place itself makes no sense to begin with.’
This wasn’t a case of the location changing because I’d entered some other tower.
I had been in the Hideout, and then I’d been suddenly moved.
Just accepting the permission WIKI had sent made my body disappear and reconstruct itself.
There was nothing here, and yet everything that should have been visible in the dark could still be seen—a mysterious place.
“WIKI──!!”
The moment I shouted, wondering how long I was supposed to stay here alone—
“W-Wooooahhh─!!”
“……!!”
Someone I’d never seen before suddenly appeared out of thin air.
Thud.
They landed on their butt, then started flailing their arms and legs around with a shocked expression….
“WIKI…?”
“……Jutak?”
“……”
“……”
I stared blankly down at WIKI, whose face froze in an instant.
The flailing arms and legs hung suspended in midair.
And then WIKI, looking back at me, quickly swept their gaze from my head to my toes—
“Ah… fuck….”
Then, looking completely flustered by the situation, they squeezed their eyes shut and covered their face.
‘Is that really WIKI…?’
The face was hidden, but it was definitely WIKI.
I’d looked at their photos dozens of times today alone.
I knew it from a single glance.
Besides, they were the only one who could possibly have been here.
“WIKI…?”
“……Sorry, but could you not look at me for a second?”
“Huh?”
“I’m embarrassed, so turn around for a sec.”
“Ah… okay…!”
At WIKI’s low voice, I turned around immediately.
Were they embarrassed? I didn’t really mind, honestly.
“Hoo… Sorry. Okay, you can look now.”
I swallowed hard.
At the voice from behind me, I carefully turned back around.
WIKI, who had been awkwardly seated just moments ago, was now standing normally. They wore an awkward smile and gave me an awkward wave.
“Hi…?”
“Ah, hello…!”
I bowed deeply, then cautiously met their eyes.
They were tall. Compared to me, they were at least a head taller.
No, maybe two heads. It made sense, compared to me, but still….
‘Seeing them in person, they’re so much better-looking….’
That thought surfaced on its own.
Way more so than the people in those flyers scattered across the blood-stinking streets.
At the very least, among everyone I’d seen with my own eyes, they were the most handsome.
Not just for a man or a woman, either—they looked outstanding, like a doll, like a sculpture.
I’d seen them in pictures many times, but the real thing was so different… the kind of face that made you stare without realizing it.
‘I can’t get my mouth to move….’
I needed to say something, but I didn’t know what.
My whole body was shaking. It felt like I might start crying.
Not because of WIKI’s looks, exactly.
‘So there really was a person….’
It was only then, in my stupidity, that the thought truly hit me.
“……”
“……?”
When was the last time I’d seen another person?
I didn’t particularly want to cry.
I hadn’t come here planning to cry, either.
“……Jutak?”
At the voice calling me, all I could do was swallow.
I had thought I would live locked in the Tower by myself forever, until the day I died.
Back in my original world, I’d lost everything already. I’d let go of everything precious to me.
I had assumed I’d just keep living alone here and die alone.
Drip—
“Huh…? What’s wrong with me…? S-Sorry… sorry, WIKI….”
“……”
Under someone’s warm gaze, under that smile full of awkwardness and genuine welcome, I bowed my head like an idiot.
I didn’t want them to see me like this.
I hadn’t come with a script for what to say, but at the very least, I wanted to talk while smiling.
I wanted to thank them for always taking such good care of me, and I wanted to observe what kind of person they were.
I wanted to tell them I was sorry for losing the Irregular because of me, too. I really did.
“So… there really is a person here…. I even wondered if you were fake…. haha….”
I was laughing awkwardly, but I couldn’t bring myself to look at their face.
This was supposed to be a happy moment, so why I was acting like this, I didn’t even know.
“I thought… I’d never meet anyone until the day I died….”
“……”
“A voice… a face…. I really thought I’d never see anyone and just die alone….”
When I first entered the Tower, I was shocked.
And in some ways, I was even happy.
Because it was a world without monsters.
Where I could barely manage one meal every few days, where I drank contaminated water and doubled over in pain.
Where I fell asleep shivering in a place that was like winter all year round, never warm for even a moment.
I thought it was enough just to escape that life.
I had lost the only family I’d had and lived a life where I was always being glared at.
“I… was here for a really long time….”
“……”
“I lived alone for fifteen hundred years….”
But even that only lasts a day or two.
Year one. Year two. Year three.
By the time ten years had passed, I began to notice something was wrong.
Hard bread, lukewarm water, the Tower where I was all alone, a mind rotting away from repeated death.
How long was I supposed to stay here?
I couldn’t die. But what was the difference between living like this and dying?
“There were days when I couldn’t tell whether I was alive or already dead.”
“……”
“It was so long that even the period when I used to wonder whether this life had any meaning feels like ancient history now….”
Then a hundred years. Two hundred.
Even after crossing the distant wasteland of a thousand years, another five hundred passed.
I kept forcing myself to believe everything was fine, that I had the Gallery so nothing was wrong──
But when I came face to face with a real person, I couldn’t hold back the emotions surging up inside me.
“Sorry… this probably isn’t fun to listen to….”
“……”
I’d thought I was simply happy.
I’d thought the changes that came with WIKI’s appearance were just exciting, something stimulating and fun.
But maybe I’d been lonely all along.
The sight of a person in front of me, the sound of a person’s voice in my ears—
it was turning my head to mush.
Rustle—
“Got anything else to tell me?”
“Huh?”
“I like hearing stories. This is a story that’s been waiting fifteen hundred years, isn’t it?”
“……”
At the edge of my sight, which had been fixed on the floor, I noticed that WIKI was now sitting down.
Their profile, tilted slightly up toward the sky, came into view.
“Sit down. No need to stand there so awkwardly.”
“Huh?”
“This isn’t the Tower, and you’re not alone, Jutak.”
“……”
“You don’t have to keep standing there like it’s an ordeal. If you want to cry, you can cry. It’s not exactly a comfortable place, but there’s someone here to listen.”
I opened my mouth slightly at their matter-of-fact tone.
Maybe they weren’t bothered by it. Maybe I had thought I was telling them something far too heavy.
Honestly, it was the sort of story that had nothing to do with WIKI at all.
It was the kind of story a normal person would probably ignore, a realistic story that wouldn’t help anyone survive, something like that….
‘If I’d said this back in the original world, they’d have told me to go look for food instead of wasting time crying.’
Maybe because they were from another world.
Or maybe this person was simply kind.
Rustle.
“S-sorry to trouble you….”
“You’ve had it rough.”
“……”
I had.
I’d died thousands, tens of thousands of times.
And yet I couldn’t die, so I kept swallowing that loneliness and living on by myself.
I couldn’t throw away the life my little brother had saved, into some death whose meaning I didn’t even understand at the end of the world.
“I don’t really do vague comfort, so this is all I can say.”
“WIKI…?”
“You’ve really suffered. If even being with me like this for a little while can ease the loneliness….”
Smiling faintly, they turned their head toward me and smiled.
A smile full of warmth… the kind my younger brother used to show me all the time long ago.
“……”
Thump!
‘I-I’m losing it….’
My heart slammed hard in my chest.
My face burned like crazy.
My mouth went dry, and my head dropped again.
“Ah, uh… um… y-yes….”
“Honestly, I don’t think I can sit around talking like this all the time… but, well, if it gets hard, talk to me anytime.”
“I… I’ll be counting on you….”
Even though I’d just been crying a moment ago, the corners of my mouth lifted as if I’d been possessed.
Why? Why was that?
I didn’t know.
I really didn’t know, but I wanted this time to keep going a little longer.
I didn’t want to return to the Tower I’d known before.
“Is there anything else you want to say?”
“W-Well….”
“Then, sorry to ask, but… could you do me one favor?”
“Huh? Ah, yes! You said you wanted to do an experiment together…!”
Right. Only then did I belatedly remember why I’d been called here in the first place.
They had summoned me to figure something out, to run an experiment.
When I’d only heard their voice, all sorts of things had crossed my mind, but looking at this place, it had clearly been about the Tower.
“If it’s something I can help with, anything at all—”
I was about to say I’d help.
Rustle.
“……!!”
“So you really are a hologram.”
The moment WIKI’s hand overlapped mine as it rested on the ground, I stopped breathing.
“Ah, uh, oh.”
Seeing the grin on their face, I no longer felt confident I could carry on something called a conversation.
────────
‘The body looks normal enough, but it really is a hologram.’
I let out a dry laugh as I looked at our two hands, perfectly overlapped and passing through each other.
I’d tried to see whether I could touch them at all, and failed spectacularly.
‘Is there one minute left?’
I wasn’t sure whether Jutak could see it too, but a timer had appeared the moment we moved into this space, and by now it had counted down to one minute.
The space looked like a backdrop straight out of a movie.
At a glance, it gave off a virtual-space vibe… more like a science-fiction or futuristic setting.
‘The size is about the same as the Hideout.’
It probably took about five seconds to walk from one end to the other.
There wasn’t a single piece of furniture or tool here. Only the “space” itself existed.
I’d been startled when my body suddenly floated up and seemed to tear apart, but I guess it had just been part of the presentation.
Or maybe it was a necessary step for summoning me here.
‘So the original plan got pushed back, huh.’
I’d been planning to run a few experiments with Jutak, but somehow the mood had evaporated before that could happen.
‘Maybe because I came back from the Deep Tower and saw that orphanage again after so long.’
If I was used to seeing someone cry in front of me, then I was used to it.
The sobbing from the bathroom, the cries that echoed through the night…. The voices of kids suffering under a reality they couldn’t escape had become horribly familiar.
And in that inescapable reality, the only thing I could do was listen.
‘Fifteen hundred years.’
It was unfathomable.
I couldn’t even begin to imagine what it would feel like to live through that much time.
And not just anywhere, either—fifteen hundred years in a Tower like this, in a place where you didn’t even understand the meaning of your own existence and couldn’t feel the warmth of another human being in the slightest.
‘You’ve really had it rough.’
I’d used 5,000 TP to come here, but after seeing the way Jutak had been so down, it seemed better to let this time pass without pushing anything further.
‘Trying to touch their hand was just a minimum verification test, that’s all.’
So—
“I’ll be in your care from now on too….”
“Ah… uh… yes…? Huh?!”
“……You okay, Jutak?”
“W-What do you mean?!”
……They must have been crying just a second ago. So why were they grinning like that now?