Curiosity Killed the Bear
"Gyaaah! Th-that's not what I—!"
Even through the agonized screams, the little bastard kept trying to talk. If he didn't finish his sentence before the hold was carried out, the suffering would simply go on.
Writhing in pain, he forced the words out with everything he had.
"I-I've never seen you talk to anyone your own age besides Miss Siyeon!"
"Oh, that? And here I thought…"
At a halfway-reasonable question finally managed all the way through, I casually let go of the hands clamped around his body and throat. I'd been looking forward to watching stuffing pour out of a doll for the first time in ages. Too bad it wasn't that kind of situation.
Why I don't talk to kids my age, huh. Isn't that obvious?
"You've got to have something in common if you're going to talk."
Kids. First-graders, no less—still untouched by the filthy grime of the world. What passed for conversation with the boys was usually just "What game are you playing on your phone? Wanna play together?" With the girls it started with "Have you seen that comic everyone's talking about?"
At least Siyeon, who actually enjoyed the magical-girl anime elementary school girls idolized, could have a cheerful chat about it…
But that's not me.
I kicked a little pebble that snagged my toe as hard as I could and muttered to myself. Tap, tap. The rolling stone lost its momentum before it got far.
Favorite games? Damn age-restricted grind-fest level-based RPGs I couldn't even play right now. Favorite anime? Proper fantasy series kids wouldn't understand. Hobbies? Researching monster archaic script.
So how the hell was I supposed to have a conversation? I'd have better luck grabbing a teacher and spending half an hour debating the reality of magical girls.
"Why not try picking up a hobby the other kids like? Jacks, or soccer…"
"Wow. I fucking hate that."
The bear's boldly offered "brilliant" idea was crushed on the spot under a look of pure contempt. When his hard-won proposal got stomped flat in under a second, those once-energetic paws drooped toward the floor. That look of utter disbelief on his face was oddly satisfying.
Then came the next question.
"…How on earth did you end up as this kind of elementary schooler?"
"Absent parents. Communities soaked in malice. News that never has a quiet day. That's how."
"…Normally people say 'because of' those things, don't they?"
I ignored the bear nitpicking my perfectly correct answer and headed home a step ahead of Siyeon. Even when I had nothing particular to do, old habits died hard—I powered on the computer for no good reason. Preferring a keyboard and mouse over a smartphone… I guess I was still an old soul after all.
"But is a community really that toxic?"
"Hm?"
I was sitting in the chair watching a video of a nickel sphere dropped into water when the bear asked, still looking puzzled. Come to think of it, this guy had only ever watched me use a smartphone from the side. He'd never actually used one himself.
I tapped the phone, opened one of the many browser tabs—the Magical Girl Gallery—and held it out to him.
"Take a look yourself."
"Ah, then I'll gratefully…"
Bowing his upper body, the bear accepted the brightened phone. He headed into the soft bedding that was a mascot's proper place, flopped onto his stomach like a person, and started tapping the screen.
So those plush hands could manage a touchscreen somehow. Special material, maybe? Ordinary gloves without a conductive coating usually couldn't press anything.
"Oh, right. Try not to look at the newest posts if you can help it?"
A little advice, just in case, to spare him a tactical nuclear strike.
He tilted his head, leaving a question mark floating over it.
"Pardon? Why would…"
"When I say so, just take it that way, you little shit."
I was watching a video and couldn't be bothered to explain, so I left it at that. After staring at the phone for a long while, he must have stumbled onto the gallery's hot topics, because he spoke up through the video's audio.
"Wow, you're kind of famous on this gallery place, aren't you?"
"Someone must've snapped a picture of my unmasked face at the offline meetup. Still going crazy about it?"
I hooked an arm over the chair back and looked his way, but he was so absorbed in the phone he didn't even think of looking up.
"Yes. Shall I read you the titles?"
"No."
"Um, looking at the comments… what's a 'deulbak'…?"
"Abbreviation. Knowing would hurt you."
The "I don't want to tell you" nested inside "knowing would hurt you." He picked up on the hidden meaning perfectly, shut up, and went back to the phone. The Magical Girl Gallery, and the word deulbak? I couldn't bring myself to put that filthy meaning into this small mouth of mine.
"…Miss Mari."
Around the time the algorithm that had started with the nickel-sphere video wandered all the way into supermarket sushi comparison videos, the bear called me again in a voice drained of all energy. Didn't seem monster-related, so I stayed slouched with an arm over the chair back and looked his way.
"What."
"…Humans, once they put on the mask of anonymity, become filthy and ugly."
With hollow eyes, he kept scrolling, scrolling down the bright screen. He seemed to have grasped, just a little, what human malice looked like. At last a sliver of common ground with the bear—a bond formed. I flashed him a grin and said, proudly:
"Right?"
I poked around for something to do on the computer, and memory rewound all the way back to games you could just download and play. The kind of game you could grab from any old blog. They were classics, sure, but for killing time they beat staring at videos.
Classic games, classic games…
While I was trying to remember what was out there, something flashed through my mind.
Ah. That one.
The game where you threw the objectives out the window, maxed out the loans, and used the grab tool to dunk angry guests into the water. The one where you derailed the rides past the rails and blew the passengers to kingdom come.
A game that let you vent the pure, unfiltered cruelty of childhood to your heart's content. I remembered it and immediately started searching.
Theme Park… Tycoon 2.
Looking at ten-year-old files scattered around like heaps of rice, I smacked my lips. Come to think of it, after getting into online games I never bothered hunting these classics down. By middle school I'd be pouring time into online games anyway, so for now I'd quench my gaming thirst with this.
Compared to old computers, the download and install flew by. Under familiar BGM I hadn't heard in years, even the cheerfully broken screams of the audience sounded nostalgic.
This is the stuff.
"Gyaaaaaah—!"
"? What."
Thinking maybe the game had that realistic agony sound effect, I leaned closer to the speakers. Listening carefully, the source wasn't the speakers at all. My eyes scanned for the origin of the noise—and landed on the bear, thrashing in agony with both hands pressed over his eyes like his mind had been contaminated.
I thought it was from the computer.
I wondered why he was suddenly like that, then arrived at the thought: what kind of post would make someone scream on sight? An ominous guess that turned out to be reality. I clicked my tongue and shook my head.
"Tsk, tsk, tsk."
Doing the one thing you were told not to do—was that the irresistible urge of intelligent life?
"Foolish mortal. This is what happens when you treat good advice like shit…"
I added a few more lines in the voice of a sage who had grasped the ways of the world. How many times had I told him not to get curious about the newest posts among all the threads. Curiosity doesn't just kill cats. It kills bears too. He never imagined one tap would cost him this much.
"Th-th-th-this…"
The bear couldn't even form words, writhing in misery. Quite the shock, apparently. I kept moving the mouse and picking targets without a care, and at the end of his pained moans—
"You f-f-fucking pieces of shiiiiit…!"
—the words finally burst from his mouth.
"Whoa. Is a mascot allowed to talk like that?"
"No—no! How am I supposed to hold this in?! Wow, this is really, wow."
At my remark he pointed at the phone with a trembling plush arm, looking back and forth at me, unable to continue.
"Ahh, that is human malice. Remember it well."
I instructed him in an anime-style delivery. Ignoring him, I loaded guests onto a roller coaster, then slammed it to max speed for a spectacular explosion. The red ride-malfunction message that popped up at the bottom, and the guest-death messages that stacked eight times in a row, let me savor every last drop of that old-school madness.
"I'm home—!"
Before long the sound of the door announced Siyeon's return. Click—it shut again. The Sea Snake Mascot hanging from Siyeon's bag floated leisurely through the air and coiled up to rest in the soft bedding.
"You're back? Dinner?"
I got up from the chair, walked to the entryway, patted my empty-feeling stomach, and asked promptly—figuring Siyeon had to be hungry by now too.
"I already ate with friends—"
The answer came back that she'd already eaten. I'd thought she was a little late; turns out she'd had a meal too.
"Then I guess it's just me…"
One serving. How long had it been since I'd ordered something I actually wanted? My smartphone was sitting near the bear, who had taken massive mental damage and collapsed.
I opened the delivery app, promptly ordered grilled samgyeopsal—something this body could never cook—and tossed the phone onto the soft bed.
"Ugh…"
"Mari, what's wrong with the mascot?"
Siyeon, kind enough not to ignore the moaning teddy bear, pointed at him and asked.
"Stuff happened. Ah—and it wasn't me, okay?"
I couldn't exactly explain the recent events to Siyeon, so I brushed it off vaguely.
Do you know the Japanese ghost story about the Kunekune? It's some kind of spirit you see in quiet countryside places… A white something that just writhes.
Fine from a distance, but the moment you get close and understand what it is, you go mad. In that respect, it lined up pretty well with the bear's current situation.
"Hu…mans, trash… kill."
What's he saying?
A low, repetitive muttering from him, like he was chanting a curse. I brought my ear closer to the bear to listen. What was he mumbling?
"Humans… disgusting trash… must kill them all…"
Not like he was chanting a curse. He was actually chanting a curse. So he'd finally gone mad. This wasn't a ghost story. This was real life.
Japan's Kunekune didn't live in quiet rural rice paddies.
It lived in the gallery's newest posts.