I Might Be Able to Wipe Away Those Red Eyes
Beyond the hospital window lay the same familiar scenery as always.
In the beautifully landscaped park out front, a man with a face worn thin by exhaustion was walking, surrounded by nearly ten women as they strolled together. Overhead, women in red-and-white uniforms soared through the sky, ferrying patients. Down a somewhat secluded alley, a schoolgirl in uniform had seized a pot-bellied middle-aged man by his necktie and was hauling him along. Midway he burst free as if trying to escape, only to be caught again almost at once and dragged back into the alley’s depths. Moments later, women who looked like police officers came sprinting into the same alley after him.
Half a year had already passed since I returned from the other world to this one.
My original world felt… strange.
Or rather, the only one who found it strange was probably me—the boy who had lived in that other world since childhood. If I closed my eyes and tried to recall what had happened there, the memories rose up as vivid as if they had taken place only yesterday.
The doctors and counselors all insisted it had been a dream…
But had it really?
I stopped gazing out the window and, just as I always had in the other world, slowly steadied my breathing and reached for mana.
Yet the ring of mana that once circled my heart, the mana that had once drifted mixed through the air…
I felt nothing at all.
When I opened my eyes again, all that greeted me was the same hospital room I had stared at for half a year.
Knock. Knock.
“Are you awake?”
“Yes, I’m up.”
Just as the gloomy mood threatened to settle over me, a familiar voice called out and someone knocked on my door. The moment I answered that I was awake, the door opened and in walked the attending physician whose face I had seen more than anyone else’s these past six months—the kind woman who patiently filled in all the common knowledge I lacked about this world.
“Up early again today, huh? Good boy~”
She smiled as she approached, gave my hair a light ruffle, then rested her hand on my forehead and closed her eyes.
In this world, every woman possessed her own superpower. Some simply had superior physical abilities; others could fly or shoot fire from their palms—feats that felt almost identical to the magic I had used in the other world. Each person, however, held only a single power, and the conditions for using it as well as its strength varied wildly, so some abilities were barely worth mentioning.
My doctor’s power was called Diagnosis. By placing her hand on a patient’s forehead and concentrating, she could analyze their overall health. She could only analyze, though—not heal—so if anything was wrong she would send me to other specialists for treatment.
“Yep! Healthy as ever today!”
She lifted her hand from my forehead and spoke brightly. The two years I had spent lying in this room—years I myself could not remember—had left my muscles stiff, but aside from that there was nothing seriously wrong with me. Even the stiffness had cleared up after about a month of rehabilitation. By now I was completely free of pain.
And yet I still could not leave this room.
“Watching the world outside again?”
“Yes. Earlier some man got dragged into an alley… Do you think he’ll be all right?”
“Oh. The sun’s pretty strong today—want me to lower the blinds?”
In this world, men were the weaker sex. Physically speaking, their bodies still built muscle a little more easily and they tended to grow taller, much like in the other world, so one could argue they were not entirely helpless. But the vast majority of men possessed no superpowers at all, so in practical terms they were usually the weaker party. On top of that, the influence of women’s powers made male births rare. The sex ratio was said to be roughly one to four.
As a result, men—already physically disadvantaged by the existence of superpowers—had become social underdogs as well because of the skewed demographics.
“You must want to go outside… I’m sorry…”
I was a physically and socially weak male, and young on top of that. Without a legal guardian accompanying me, going out was impossible. Unfortunately, my parents had not been rescued from the accident two years ago. The police officer who told me had tried desperately to keep it from me, but I had insisted until she finally gave in. I had more or less expected the news, so the shock was not overwhelming. What broke me was realizing that even the faces of my parents from my dreams had grown so distorted I could no longer picture them clearly. Despite having lived twenty years in the other world, I buried my face in the pillow and cried like a child who had forgotten his age.
In the end I was a seven-year-old boy with no legal guardian, and my claim of having visited another world was dismissed as trauma-induced mental instability. In a world where men were both weak and precious, that made me someone the state itself was obligated to protect. Police officers were always stationed near my room, and the surveillance cameras installed inside watched every visitor to make sure no one harmed me.
“It’s all right. I understand there’s nothing that can be done.”
Wanting to go outside was no lie, but I was not so dense that I failed to grasp the situation. I offered a small smile and said I was fine; the doctor’s eyes only grew sadder as she looked at me.
She chatted with me a little longer, stroked my hair a few more times, and then left the room. I stared at the closed door for a moment before raising the blinds again and turning my gaze back to the window.
With nothing else to amuse myself inside the room, I spent entire days simply watching the world outside—yet I never felt bored. The huge, angular buildings they called skyscrapers, the cars people rode in, the phones everyone seemed to carry… all of it was wondrous, things that had never existed in the other world. The fact that every person I saw was human was itself a marvel to me. When I asked my counselor whether other races existed, the startled expression that crossed her face was still vivid in my memory.
Through the window I spotted a boy who looked about my age, sniffling as his mother carried him out of the hospital. I turned my head toward the teddy bear sitting at the edge of the bed and slowly picked it up. It was the toy I had received after my very first counseling session, not long after I woke up. It was not as though I had never seen a stuffed animal in the other world, nor was this the first teddy bear of my life. On the contrary, the moment I saw it I became certain that this place truly was my original world.
I hugged the bear to my chest and buried my face in its fur. The only scent it carried was disinfectant, yet it looked so much like the teddy bear my parents—whose faces were already fading—had bought me when I was little.
On the CCTV monitor, a child sat in the hospital room with his face buried in a teddy bear nearly as large as his own torso, sobbing quietly.
“Haa… Fuck. Senior, I’m gonna step out for a smoke.”
“…Yeah.”
Creak… Slam!
The junior officer who had been watching the monitors beside me headed outside for a cigarette. I could not keep staring at the screen either. A little boy no older than my own daughters, parentless and mentally fragile, was locked inside that room. Who could watch a child like that with a clear head?
For six months I had watched those eyes sparkle with envy and wonder as he gazed out the window, only to shift, moments later, into a sorrow no child should ever wear as he stared blankly at the wall. Part of me wanted to adopt him on the spot and take him home, but adopting a boy was never that simple. I had submitted every required document and certification, yet when I first applied there were already nearly fifty people ahead of me. Months had passed since then; the number of applicants had surely climbed past a hundred by now.
On the screen the boy finished crying, wiped his slightly reddened eyes with the back of his hand, and tried—without anyone having taught him—to act more grown-up than any child his age should have to.
“Haa……”
I had worked for the security company for nearly ten years, but this assignment was by far the hardest. Having to keep watch over a child who was suffering mentally every single day… If I had not been getting paid for it, I would not have argued if someone called it torture. Or maybe the fact that it was this kind of work was exactly why I had to think of it as “just a job.”
There had been moments when the night-shift crew cooed over how cute the sleeping boy looked and I seriously considered requesting a reassignment. Those thoughts always vanished the instant the image of him crying flashed through my mind again.
BANG!!!!
“Senior!!”
“Jesus! What the hell?”
The junior who had gone out for a smoke came bursting through the door. She had always been a bit of a handful, but never the type to kick the security-room door open like a maniac.
“Senior!! Senior!! Congratulations!! Look at this!!!”
She grabbed my shoulders and shook them hard in her excitement, then thrust an envelope in front of me. Having mail delivered here while I was on duty was nothing unusual—I had set it up that way myself—but the moment I saw the sender’s name I shot up from my chair.
I had sent plenty of letters, but this was the first one I had ever received from that address. And a letter from them meant only one thing.
I looked back at the CCTV screen, at the child still hugging the teddy bear with one arm.
Perhaps… I might finally be able to wipe away those red-rimmed eyes myself.