Side Story: Dance Time
Red hair whips in the wind.
Before that red-haired woman stands a strange man—a ridiculous figure in long johns plastered with scraps of metal.
Looking him over, she begins to introduce herself.
"My name is Jeanne."
"..."
The ridiculous man answers her introduction with silence.
"I'd like you to become our comrade."
"Why me, of all people?"
The voice is thick with suspicion, but Jeanne presses on regardless.
"With your power alone, most fights could end peacefully."
"..."
"We intend to change this ruined world. Help us."
"Have you ever killed a person before?"
The ridiculous man asks something strange.
Experience of killing someone...
In this ruined world, there's no one without that kind of experience.
Everyone, at least once, has taken a life to survive.
So Jeanne answers without a moment's hesitation.
"I have."
"..."
"If that's all you wanted to know, then—"
"Then answer this. Have you ever, out of private feelings, killed someone powerless? An ordinary person with no strength at all—one of the weak who could never have killed a soul?"
"What?"
"..."
The man sits down quietly and begins staring at the floor.
"I have."
The mask he wears makes it impossible to tell what he's looking at.
But Jeanne thinks he's looking at the distant past.
"Hey, hey, wake up, Kasai!!! Quit sleeping and get up already!!"
"Ugh... Sis, don't wake me up by shaking me. Use your words..."
"As a sheriff, you must remain vigilant at ALL times!!!"
"Ha... if we're being technical, we're a vigilante squad. Since when were we sheriffs?"
"Sheriff just sounds cooler, hehe."
My name is Kasai.
Honestly? Vigilante... yeah. Not exactly sheriff material.
"No, isn't appointing me sheriff just because I awakened an ability a bit much, Sis?"
"Hm? Once you awaken an ability, you're stronger than an ordinary person. Good enough for me."
Right...
Awaken an ability, and you become stronger than ordinary people.
That thing you feel coursing through your body... nobody's ever settled on a proper name for it, but if you learn to wield the stuff I call energy, you can grow even stronger.
But...
my ability is complete garbage!!!!
All it does is make the sound of my heartbeat a whole lot louder. With a pretty pumped-up rhythm, at that...
What a goddamn joke...
-Ding ding!!
"Two monsters approaching from the front!!!!"
The lookout shouted, bell clanging wildly.
"Kasai!!! Told you waking you up was worth it!! Come on, let's go."
"Uh..... wouldn't it be better if the monsters just DIDN'T come... Sis?"
I grabbed my shotgun and ran toward the monsters.
"Tch..."
I grumbled and complained as I shook the monster blood from my body.
"Hey, Kasai!! Still, thanks to you, the two of us took those monsters down easy!! Good work."
"..."
Yeah. My worthless ability.
The one that makes my heartbeat loud and hyped-up.
Because of that, it draws every eye in the area—which is exactly why the two of us can win fights so easily on our own.
"By the way, Sis—what's the deal with that weapon?"
"Oh, this? It's a hammer, obviously. How do you not know that? Our Kasai's a little short on common sense..."
"No, it's not that I don't know it's a hammer... ha... I'm asking because it doesn't exactly look like an ordinary hammer."
The hammer my sister carried and wielded so well.
I used to just assume she was insanely strong because she was Awakened.
But this seemed to be on another level entirely, so I asked.
Because to my mind, nothing else about her looked special—only this hammer.
"I got it in a deal with a fairy."
"A what?! A fairy?! One of those monsters that absolutely cannot be killed?!"
Fairies.
Fairies weren't Awakened who had turned into monsters—they were immortal beings that had been monsters from the very beginning.
And they were known to be vicious creatures.
Fairies deal.
They take things—everything from the material to the abstract—and hand out blessings or relics in return.
Honestly, to kill something like a monster, you do at minimum need an ability or a relic.
Which meant this hammer my sister carried was a relic?
"Wait, Sis—you're supposed to give something precious to make a deal with a fairy. What did you..."
"Hmm... it was some kind of memory. I handed over the memory of what I gave them, so I don't remember."
"What does that even..."
"Still, I scored a totally badass hammer, Kasai. This hammer, you see, keeps the pain it deals to its target permanent."
And with that, my sister launched into a list of the hammer's glories.
Honestly, it sounded like she was repeating the same thing over and over.
Ah... if this was how it would go, I shouldn't have asked.
Whether she noticed I was bored or not, she grabbed my arm.
"Hey, Kasai~ Cue the BGM!"
"No—you want to dance HERE?"
"Shh, shh~ Cue the BGM!"
"No, weren't YOU the one saying earlier we had to stay vigilant..."
"CUE THE BGM!!!"
-Dum!! Duuum~~
A heartbeat rang out—light, jaunty, almost refreshing.
No, honestly, if my heart pumped to a beat like this, wasn't something wrong with my body?
"Hmm... this song is... it's like a courante!! You know ballroom dancing, right?"
"Ha... well, you taught me the basics two months ago."
"Then here we go, Kasai!!"
Hand in hand, we began to dance.
I knew nothing about culture from before the fall.
My sister said she'd learned about the pre-war world from her grandfather.
So I simply followed my sister's rhythm, letting it carry me through that unfamiliar dance.
That time felt eternal, and yet far too short.
After dancing in the middle of a stretch of land where monsters could burst out from anywhere, we were on our way back to the village.
That was when my sister started talking.
"Kasai, ever heard of the Sky Light Stone?"
"Of course I have."
The Sky Light Stone.
Just as the name said: a stone that glowed with the light of the heavens.
It had the power to keep monsters from drawing near, and it also suppressed the abilities of the Awakened.
We'd learned about it after buying some from a wandering merchant.
"Right. According to the merchant, monsters shouldn't be able to come anywhere near us."
"Compared to before, they've definitely dropped off. Back in the day, we couldn't have even attempted a silly dance like that."
"It's not silly, Kasai!! Anyway, yes, they've thinned out—but a few monsters still come running like they know exactly where our village is."
"So?"
"..."
My sister went quiet, dragging it out.
"Nothing. It's nothing."
Waving a hand like it was nothing at all, she brushed past it.
"Oh, by the way—wasn't it so cool how I call out attack names? My Trippella Hammer!!! Isn't the attack name just cool?"
"Ah, yes, yes. Very cool, Sis."
"That's no effort at all!!!! Put some praise into it!!"
"Ah... yes..."
My sister had abruptly changed the subject.
Instead of questioning it, I decided to just play along.
Then one day, it rained.
If it had been my sister, she would have said, 'Dancing in the rain feels SO good—cue the BGM!!'
But the one who spoke to me that day was not my sister.
"Oh—Village Chief?"
"Hehe, no need for such a formal greeting. It's thanks enough that you keep watch over our village."
"What brings you out here?"
"Your senior partner's fallen ill today. You'll be keeping watch alone."
"Sis is sick?"
"That she is. She's being treated in the heart of the village."
"Understood."
Ha...
A solo shift?
Here's hoping no monsters come.
Fighting alone is rough.
Hmm...
So bored.
Damp through from the rain, and my mood wasn't great either.
I missed my sister.
Maybe I'd head into the village.
"I'm gonna go check inside the village real quick!!"
"Yes, sir. And what if a monster comes?"
"I'm fast, remember? I'll sprint right back."
"No, hold on—"
"Yep, off I go~"
I took off at a run.
Part of me was worried, too.
That sister of mine, sick?
Honestly though, more than worry, I ran to her because I thought it might cure my boredom—no, this hollow, empty feeling that had settled in my chest.
The closer I got to the village, the louder the commotion.
People laughing...
No—the air was thick with laughter seized by madness.
And something like long poles was moving in the crowd.
Things were skewered on the poles.
Chunks of meat...
The closer I came, the clearer it became.
Vivid. Unmistakable.
The laughter rang louder, too.
"Who are you? An outsider?"
"No. I'm with the vigilante squad guarding the village outskirts."
We almost never went into the village proper. The only contact between those of us on the fringe and the people living in its heart came through outside merchants or the chief.
So it made sense that these villagers were seeing my face for the first time.
"What's going on here?"
"A witch tried to kill our chief, and the chief struck her down magnificently. So we're holding a festival."
Witch? The chief struck her down? A festival?
My head spun.
"You're holding a festival like this... in the rain?"
"Ah! The rain purifies the witch's corpse!"
"The witch's corpse?"
"Yes. Over there."
The villager pointed at the chunks of meat skewered on the long poles.
Looking closer—it was a human arm.
Startled, I looked at the other poles.
A woman's breast. A leg. A thigh. An arm. A leg.
A caved-in, familiar head...
That familiar head...
"Sis?"
At that very moment, someone was running toward me.
"Oh my, isn't that Kasai? But what are you doing here?"
"Chief... before I answer your question—what is that head hanging on the pole?"
"..."
"WHAT IS IT, CHIEF?!!!!"
The chief said nothing.
After a while, his mouth finally opened.
"Kasai, you may find this hard to hear, but the witch tried to kill me and seize power over this village."
"What?"
"And she tried to finish me off with that hammer!! But thankfully, painful as it was, the villagers swarmed her and brought her down easily."
"..."
My sister?
Really?
No. Something about this was wrong.
"Chief, are you all right where the hammer hit you?"
"Oh? Well, I'm fine now."
The hammer... the relic...
"Still, I scored a totally badass hammer, Kasai. This hammer, you see, keeps the pain it deals to its target permanent."
My sister's words from that day surfaced in my memory.
A hammer that keeps pain permanent—and he says he's fine now?
And one more thing.
We Awakened are many times stronger than ordinary people.
And my sister had been subdued... by a handful of ordinary villagers?
"But a few monsters still come running like they know exactly where our village is."
Another of her words came back to me.
Monsters finding us as if they knew our location—despite the Sky Light Stone...
What if there was an Awakened out there who could call monsters?
And the Sky Light Stone also suppressed abilities...
"Kasai..... you must be struggling terribly right now. I—"
-WHOOSH!!!
My fist shot toward the chief.
-WHAM!!!
"Oof! What do you think you're doing?!"
"How did you dodge that?"
"What's that supposed to—"
"I threw that punch for real. An ordinary village chief shouldn't have been able to dodge it."
"..."
The chief went silent.
"Why did you kill my sister? Why did you call the monsters here?"
I hurled my questions at him as though they were certainties.
"A village can only endure with a proper threat looming over it. And that bitch's eyes were too damn sharp for her own good—she caught on to me and tried to use it against me."
"..."
"Hoo... surely you, too, want this village to endure, so the people here can live in happiness? Ah! And shouldn't a festival like this have music?"
"Music...?"
"I mean your ability, boy. Go on, turn on the music."
"Music...."
Filthy.
It wasn't the rain that had made it filthy.
It wasn't just the surface, either.
The rot went all the way to the core.
And this man wanted me to just turn on the music......
"EVERYONE, QUIET!!!"
"..."
Every eye in the square turned to me.
"What do you think you're doing?"
The chief's voice wavered with alarm.
"Isn't this far too boring? It's a festival, isn't it? So let me show you a real dance party."
With that, I concentrated my energy into a single point—and spoke.
"Transform."
I now stood transformed in that bizarre outfit—ridiculous long johns plastered with scraps of metal.
"IT'S DANCE TIME!!!"
A sound rang out—wildly exhilarating music.
"Wha—my body's moving on its own?!"
"My legs just started moving however they want!"
"Kasai, stop this at once! That's the chief's order!!"
Everyone danced, swept up in the beat.
I simply stood still and watched.
One minute. Ten minutes. An hour. Five hours. Ten hours. A day. Two days.....
People collapsed one after another.
Some fell from sheer exhaustion; some dropped when bones in their bodies finally snapped.
And even then, they tried to keep dancing.
Like worms writhing on the ground.
And so...
-Crunch.
I stomped them dead.
Time flowed on like that, until only the chief was left alive.
The chief was still dancing—laughably, absurdly.
"Spare me.... make it stop...."
"..."
I killed the chief mid-dance.
The rain was still falling.
The music changed.
Familiar.
This music... a courante...
I danced the ballroom dance.
Dancing in the rain.
I had no partner.
But I danced as though I did.
-Squelch. Squelch.
I moved my body through the steps, and each one came down in a puddle with a wet slap.
No—maybe they weren't puddles of water.
Maybe they were pools of blood from the people I had killed.
Even so, I kept dancing.
If someone asked me—have I ever, out of private feelings, killed the powerless? Killed the weak, ordinary people who could never have killed a soul?...
Yes. I have.
The people of this village had been ordinary folk who did nothing more than act on their chief's incitement.
I killed them.
My head ached.
Everything inside me was a tangled mess.
And so, I danced.
