Chapter 16. Intimacy (4)
I knew as well as anyone that being held by someone was a good thing. And, truly more than my share of good fortune, I had one friend for whom physical affection came entirely naturally.
Jihye.
She was expressive to a fault, and while she wasn't the type to cling to me every waking moment, walking side by side she would link her arm through mine, or wrap me up in a hug when something pleased her — it happened often enough. It felt a little wrong to just stand there while someone hugged me, so I hugged her back; and even when the arm-linking embarrassed me slightly, I never once shook her off. No matter how oblivious I might be, I wasn't socially defective to that degree.
And yet — I couldn't say why.
Hayingun burying her face against my chest felt like something a little different.
Think it through, and I'd never done this with Jihye either. When we slept, we each spread our own blanket and slept apart; Jihye had never once pressed herself against me and fawned.
"Mmnh..."
Perhaps her breathing had grown tight — Hayun's face turned toward mine, legs kicking faintly as she wriggled her way upward, little by little. I clamped my mouth shut and tried with everything I had not to make a sound. The stretched-out chest of my T-shirt squirmed and shifted, and Hayun's face rose up through it. Her mouth was still buried; from the nose upward, she emerged. Her eyes stayed closed, and with every breath the fabric grew a little hotter, a little damper.
Was it any wonder that falling back asleep took me a little longer than usual?
Well, I did drift off again in the end. How it happened, I only hazily remember — as is true for nearly everyone.
But my memory of waking is perfectly sharp.
"...Eek!?"
My chest suddenly gave a long, buzzing hum, and my eyes flew open. Apparently it had rung out because Hayun had screamed directly into it. Dropping my half-open gaze, I found her face tilted up toward mine, eyes raised — remarkably dazed, for someone who had just screamed that loudly. It was scarlet. Just as I'd seen yesterday.
"..."
For a long moment I didn't release Hayun, only quietly looked down at that face. Thinking back on it, the reason I could behave so magnanimously was simply that I wasn't fully awake. You know how, some mornings, strange thoughts drift through your head as you wake? There are moments when genuinely absurd ideas go circling through your skull — and apparently that was me, right then. Before my brain could render a rational verdict, my central nervous system had already made a very strange decision.
My arms pulled Hayun in tighter.
She lay still for a moment with her face buried in my chest, then began to squirm, arms and legs. Perhaps because she realized I was right there, she didn't thrash at full strength — if she had, she'd have been free long ago.
"Pwah!"
Hayun, who had finally wrenched her face back and out of me, scrambled backward — and promptly discovered that, in truth, she had nowhere to retreat to.
Inside a tent two people could barely squeeze into. Propped against the closed flap, she went on quietly staring at me, her face dyed a red on the verge of bursting, her mouth hanging open.
"..."
And my own face — still lying there, gazing up at hers — slowly began to burn as well.
...What did I just do?
Belatedly, my brain went looking for its reason, fitted it into place, and screamed. Fortunately, none of that sound leaked out of my mouth. Like Hayun, I scrambled up in a panic and backed away — until the tent let out a creak like it was about to fall apart at the seams, and I had no choice but to stop. The air inside was strangely hot. Perhaps because we'd slept with the flap closed, on top of weather that was no longer very cold.
Add two people's breath to that, and...
"..."
Without either of us needing to go first, we both rose at once and hurried outside. The morning air that rushed in as the flap flipped open felt impossibly fresh — this in a spring when the fine dust should have been running thick.
As we stepped out of the tent, the kids looked our way. For some reason, those gazes felt loaded with meaning. In reality, I was probably the only one reading anything into them.
Damn it. At this point even my own thoughts wouldn't run the way I wanted.
Whether or not Hayun met my eyes, the situation kept rolling forward.
The calendar didn't line up for a National Assembly audit. Of course, if the story kept dropping fresh bait until then, we might find ourselves summoned after all — but none of us expected the controversy to stay burning for months on end. If you want to watch something blaze, you have to pile something flammable on top while the embers are still glowing.
That said, even if the timing wasn't especially favorable to us, the government at least showed no intention of turning hostile. The police had already joined forces with us once; they couldn't exactly sideline the police and call in the military — this wasn't a war. Under those circumstances, capturing six magical girls on the government's strength alone would be difficult, and even if they truly did arrest us, public opinion could well tip against them.
Above all, the government had merely been closing its eyes for the moment; at bottom, both the Federation and the alien corporation were in conflict with it. The whole reason the Company had been allowed onto this soil was the hope that it and the Federation would fight each other into a balance of power — so if it started cutting deals with the Federation at this country's expense, there was no need to keep indulging it. Whether they could keep indulging it was another question entirely.
In any case, the government had made moves of its own. The prosecution was apparently in motion; it seemed they had resolved to summon the chairman of Noir Corporation for questioning.
"He will probably comply with the summons," James said flatly. "He will attempt to pin every piece of incriminating evidence on the Former Chairman. That is the sort of trash he is."
"If he dumps all that evidence on the Former Chairman, what's left for them to live on? Weren't they planning to modify Earthlings and sell them off?"
"Beings who want vast quantities of energy exist everywhere," James replied. "It would hardly be strange for some of them to be on this very soil. Consider: a single human life could generate power far more efficiently than the fusion plants Earthlings have yearned after for so long. Someone, somewhere, will decide they can 'tolerate the sacrifice.'"
"..."
The faces of the magical girls listening had gone rigid.
"Besides, the Company's 'products' are manufactured goods from the very start. The genes of a dog and a wolf barely differ, yet Earthlings treat the two as different animals. So on the assumption that one could produce Earthlings with drastically reduced cognition, built for nothing but power generation — would no human come forward to make that deal?"
Human ethics had redrawn their standards again and again over a long history. And they were still being redrawn now. In that case — could a 'being without consciousness' really be judged 'not an Earthling,' just as James said...? Could it?
"That makes no sense."
Jua pushed back against James head-on.
"Hope and despair are emotions that arise from whole bundles of more complicated feelings. And it is already settled that no one but an 'Earthling' can run a circuit. If the other animals of Earth could have run circuits, it would have been done long ago."
Humans did, after all, raise cows and pigs and chickens and every other kind of animal to eat. If circuits could have been strapped onto that livestock to spin generators, it would have been attempted ages ago — they were already fitting circuits to human beings and running them.
"Are you so certain? For all anyone knows, the mere existence of something called an 'Earthling' may be all that is required. Perhaps the shape of the nerves matters, or the arrangement of the genes. At its foundation, the only principle ever established about circuits is that 'a specific emotion must be present.' There is no proof that 'no other method' does not exist."
"...But even so, that... the possibility remains of humans made to feel nothing but despair. Doesn't it."
"Precisely. Which means that if you wish to know, the only way is to prove it yourselves."
James looked at me.
"Back then, you did not kill those... mass-produced Earthlings. The government collected everyone who had been knocked out, and they have most likely not shown them to the Federation. Given the circumstances."
"Doesn't mean the Federation has any right to force the issue, either," Rose cut in. "If they tried, it would blow up into a serious problem. Assuming those people are Earthlings, that is."
Cherry nodded along in agreement.
"Then that's one more objective added," I summed up. "Capture the chairman somehow. And infiltrate the government — or find some other route entirely — to meet those surviving Earthlings."
Becoming a separate faction of our own wasn't something we could manage in a single stroke.
"The summons is next week. What we have to do... well, nothing grand. Spend the time keeping ourselves in peak condition. It would be lovely if we could genuinely kidnap the chairman, but our goal isn't so much an actual kidnapping as striking the pose of 'we have our eyes on the chairman.'"
Everyone nodded at that. Right — frightening the chairman half to death was the point. Which meant that, for now, we had no reason to step forward and demand to see those Earthling kaijin. We'd already refused the government's offer and come all this way; if we raised that subject first now, the government might well try to bargain with it.
With that, the short meeting was brought to a close, and we each went off to our own tasks.
One positive thing struck me on my way out of the building: thanks to all this thinking about Hayun, every other worry had been blasted clean out of my head. You could call that a disaster in its own right, I suppose. A disaster of emotion. A flood inside my skull, if anything.
All manner of thoughts churned together, washing in and out like the tide. The residue they left behind wriggled on the seabed, only to be swept away by the next downpour — over and over again.
What did Hayun think of me?
To be honest, worry came first. I mean, come on. No matter what, even two men don't trade backhugs inside a tent. But Hayun had done it. Not that Hayun saw me as a man — and naturally, she couldn't have seen me as a lover, either. Jihye had often pulled me into hugs too, so couldn't this simply be the kind of affection that exists only between girls?
Damn it. Aside from family, every girl I'd ever known was one of the ones I'd met in this world, which left me with no basis for judgment at all. Statistically speaking, of the five others here, Hayun was the only one who slept holding me. But the remaining four couldn't be called close enough to me for that, so they weren't exactly fair comparisons either. At most, Jua and I had only just begun to talk.
Which was why the scream Hayun had let out that morning gnawed at me so badly.
Backhugs were fine, but a hug from the front wasn't? Jihye had done that, and Hayun seemed to have, a few times. Sure, flinging yourself at someone in a surge of feeling was different from doing it in your sleep.
Don't tell me... she'd come to hate me for it?
I didn't want that. Even for a feeling I could never act on, having her beside me and not having her there were two entirely different sensations.
There, see? Even the circuit, nice and slow—
Flash.
But while I was pacing around near the entrance to the village, thinking such things, someone suddenly snatched my arm. I turned to find Hayun beaming, her arm hooked through mine.
"What are you doing all alone out here?"
"Oh — no, I was just thinking..."
Looking at Hayun's smiling face, several thoughts occurred to me. The first was relief. If what I'd done had crossed a line, Hayun might have started to feel afraid of me. Friends can swat and tease each other all they like, but if someone suddenly came at you holding soap while you were in the shower, that would be terrifying, wouldn't it? I wouldn't mind much if Hayun did that to me — but that's only because I'm me. I've never become a woman on the inside.
And yet there was Hayun, smiling at me like this. If not relief, what on earth was I supposed to feel?
...Euphoria, probably.
Setting aside the mere fact that she didn't hate me — Hayun had come to me first. She'd even linked arms with me. In other words, there wasn't a single reason I shouldn't be delighted. When the girl you like does this for you, how could you possibly hate it?
"..."
But then the two of us went quiet again. Hayun's gaze slid quietly downward. Her face was red. But she didn't let go of my arm. I quietly moved my gaze elsewhere as well. Naturally, letting go of hers never so much as crossed my mind.
Still — should I apologize for this morning? That the joke had gone too far? Or I could always claim I'd been talking in my sleep. I'd done it half-asleep, so surely that excused it. Even as I drafted excuses, the very act of cooking up reasons like that struck me as unbearably shabby — but without them, I didn't think I could raise the subject at all.
"Hayun."
"Jieun."
But in a truly strange twist of timing, the two of us had opened our mouths at the same moment. Our eyes met, and then we both looked away at the same time. What were we even doing. And through it all, Hayun was gripping my arm tighter than ever. Did she think I was about to bolt? She'd said yesterday that my wandering off alone had worried her — so I should apologize for that, too...
"That."
"Huh?"
At the voice that came out of nowhere, the sound slipped out of me before I could stop it. Hayun's hand flinched too. Even turning to look back, neither of us bothered to pull our arms apart — we were both, frankly, a lost cause.
"...The way you're linking arms like that."
The person who had approached while saying this was none other than Jua.
"That — is it something friends all do, too?"
Jua asked it with an utterly serious expression. We twisted around, half-crouched and awkward. To any third party it must have looked ridiculous, but Jua's own face was perfectly composed.
"Well..."
Hayun's eyes darted every which way. After all, she had been the first to link arms here. It seemed that if we left it any longer, no one would manage an answer, so I spoke up first.
"Between friends? Sure, that happens."
"It does?"
Jua's gaze swung to me. I was keeping my arm exactly where it was out of one hundred percent ulterior motive, so meeting that upright, honest gaze made my conscience ache like mad — but I resolved to brazen it out. It was the truth, after all. Wasn't it?
"Jihye and I used to walk around like this all the time."
Hayun had walked around like that with her classmates too, hadn't she — not quite friends, but still. Naturally, Hayun hadn't been the one to offer her arm first.
"Ah."
For some reason, Hayun made that sound. I glanced down and found her wearing something like disappointment.
...Why?
The arm she had linked with mine right now was about on par with Jihye's. She wasn't pulling any harder than usual.
"It does?"
Jua asked once more. Watching her, brow furrowed, sunk deep in thought, I suddenly remembered something and asked, carefully.
"You've never done this?"
"...I haven't. Why? Am I not allowed to?"
Jua's answer came with an attachment it didn't need.
"No, it's not that you're not allowed."
Somehow, it was a little sad.
I had no idea what Rose's, Dalia's, or Delphinium's friendships looked like. Honestly, I didn't much want to know. They each had their own circumstances; what business was it of mine to pry? Still, Rose had the look of someone who'd be popular at school, and Dalia didn't seem like she'd be unpopular either. Delphinium seemed the type to avoid that kind of attention of her own accord.
And Jua...
Jua was similar to Delphinium in her own way, but she was no 'Ice Princess.' If anything, she gave the impression of a short-tempered chihuahua. She was shorter than Hayun, too.
So, for some reason — with no other reason behind it at all — I simply, purely got the feeling that she had no friends.
This was the aura of one of my own kind.
"You really have never done this?"
At my question, Jua's eyes flew wide, as if she'd been struck by lightning.
"Ha."
Then she gave a short laugh, as if the question were beneath her. But her face had reddened slightly — it was bluster.
"Well, of course. I simply made a point of not forming that kind of relationship."
In that case, I didn't see why she'd needed to come all the way over to the two of us to ask about it. My face, never any good at managing its expressions, must have been leaking pity.
Jua's expression turned truly furious once more, and she strode right up to me. Was she about to take a swing at me?
But having marched all the way to my side, Jua — for reasons I couldn't fathom — bored her eyes into my arm, then abruptly hooked her own through it. And hugged it against her chest.
"Wha—?"
"What?"
Jua said, her face still absolutely livid.
"You said friends are allowed to do this?"
"...Uh, that's — I mean, yes, but."
This was quite a lot to take in. The moment I failed to hide it, Jua somehow grew even angrier. A chihuahua an instant from biting. Her face was pretty enough that it didn't fall apart quite that thoroughly, though.
But why?
"Jua?"
Hayun called her name, blankly.
"..."
Jua looked at Hayun's face — and seemed to realize what she was doing, because her complexion went deathly pale in an instant. Letting go of my arm, she — for some reason — glared at me all over again. Then she turned and bolted.
...
What was that.
Was she even more easily spooked than a chihuahua?