A Fruit Hung from My Head
I was suddenly shut inside a place made of strange iron bars. The space felt familiar, as if it had always been my home—and yet, though my memory was hazy, the place where I slept and lived had never been this cold.
A single bulb, so faint it seemed about to die, was all that lit the room. The whole scene looked like a hideout where criminals gathered.
Uneasy, I gripped the bars and peered around. The place was crammed with machinery, and there wasn't a trace of a human being anywhere. All I could hear was the intermittent beep-beep of the machines. The barren quiet, the total absence of any presence, left me desperately anxious. I wished someone—anyone—would show up soon.
Had a little time passed? From the stairs above came a creak, and then the sound of footsteps—tap, tap—spread through the laboratory. My ears pricked, and I hurried to see who had come in.
"Bora! Haru!"
Thankfully, they were people I knew. I greeted Bora and Haru with all the joy I had in me. If it was them, they'd let me out and pet me, surely. I looked at them the way a puppy looks at its people, tail wagging.
Had they locked me in here as an April Fools' prank? Or was it a surprise party because it was my birthday? To go this far just to startle me—I was genuinely moved by how thoroughly they'd prepared.
But Bora and Haru only stared at me with cold expressions I had never once seen on their faces. The sudden shift in the air felt wrong. Could they even make faces that cold?
Overwhelmed by their silent presence, I called their names again in a voice that had already shrunk. They didn't so much as look at me. They spoke only to each other.
"Give it water and sunlight, and the specimen grows on its own."
"Then we'll have to lock it in a cell that gets sun."
"And we've found a beneficial effect in the specimen's hair, so we'll need to cut it every day."
"We'll have to get the clippers ready. The department head also said to draw the specimen's blood once a month."
What...?
I was learning for the first time that Haru and Bora could look straight at me and speak that coldly. I seized the bars and shook them.
"Haru! Bora! Quit joking and let me out of here!!!"
The bars rattled and clanged, and the two of them turned this way. The moment they looked, I shook even harder. Let this damned cage come down.
But what came out of Bora's mouth was nothing like what I'd hoped. She had something like an earpiece in her ear.
"The specimen is acting up. Administering a sedative."
A mechanical arm beside her lifted some strange syringe and swung it toward me. I backed away, trying to dodge, but restraints shot up from the floor and bound my limbs. I couldn't move an inch.
"N-nnngh!"
I tried to tear free by force, but the restraints were so solid they didn't budge. The mechanical arm drove the syringe into me. The needle was sharp, and the spot it pierced hurt terribly.
The moment whatever was inside entered my body, though, the whole world became a bother. Was this the sedative? Through my blurring vision, all I could watch was Bora and Haru turning their backs and walking away from me.
Bora... Haru... I'm right here...
"Aagh!!!"
I jolted awake. Outside, the sun was already rising. Feeling the plush give of the bed beneath me, I realized everything just now had been a dream.
It had been so vivid, though, that the aftertaste lingered. My whole body was trembling.
I scrambled up and ran to the office. Haru was there, face-down on the desk, sleeping with a little drool at the corner of her mouth. I shook her awake in a hurry.
"Haru! Haru!"
"Mm... huh? Hana, what's wrong?"
She sat up in a voice still thick with sleep. Not the cold face from the dream—this was the Haru I saw every day, wearing that warm smile.
I dove into her arms. Dream-Haru and dream-Bora had tormented me, so the real Haru owed me pets right now.
I buried myself in her chest and nuzzled, and she laughed as she stroked my head.
"Hana. Affection the second you wake up? Did you have a scary dream?"
"Yeah!"
I burrowed into her arms as if they were my own house, desperate to forget the cold version of her I'd seen.
Dream or not, it had been far too real. I didn't think I could look Bora in the face today. I kept remembering that shocking scene—her expression blank as she ordered the sedative.
If I'd been captured by some strange organization instead of the Starlight Guild, wouldn't the dream have played out exactly like that? Relieved it hadn't, I went with Haru to get breakfast.
I ran into Bora on the way to the cafeteria. I flinched. That part stays a secret. I hid behind Haru's leg and checked whether this was the cold Bora from the dream, or the real one.
My head felt as heavy as a ton of stone. Set against how light my body usually was when I got up in the morning, it was night and day.
"Ugh..."
It didn't feel like a cold. Lying down, it barely mattered, but the moment I sat up a dull weight settled in my head, as if someone had hung a weight right on top of it.
With my head that heavy, everything was a bother. I lay back down and picked up my phone. There was plenty of fun stuff on it.
Should I start my own channel? Uploading my gameplay to NewTube sounded like it could be fun. The thought of someone else watching me play was thrilling in a way nothing else was. I had a streak of showing off in me; I wanted people to see my gameplay and be impressed.
I was fiddling with my phone like someone with nothing better to do when, after a while, a murmur rose outside. The office staff were coming in to work. All those people, assigned just to look after me—Haru and Bora would have been plenty.
Of course, I was supposed to look after Department Head Kim Jaeman as well. Baldy. But with that little hair, he barely registered as the same kind of person. If he'd only had a decent head of hair, his face would have looked young for his age. Without it, he was nothing but an old man.
I could feel nine in the morning drawing near. A little more time passed, and someone opened the door and came in.
"Hana, what are you doing?"
It was Bora. Because of the dream I hesitated for a beat, but the Bora in the dream was the one who'd done wrong, not the Bora standing here, so I lifted my head to greet her.
"I'm on my phone!"
When I looked up, she wore the expression of someone who'd just seen something rare. Was there something on my face? Yesterday's ketchup hot dog must have left a smear beside my lip. Otherwise there was no way she'd clap a hand over her mouth and stare like she'd witnessed a marvel.
"H-Hana!"
"...Yeah?"
But she wasn't looking at my face. Her gaze was aimed a little higher. Was there something on the crown of my head? I raised a hand and felt the top of it.
Tok.
As I fiddled with my hair, I felt something like a stick standing straight up from the very center of my crown.
What is this?
I couldn't sense the change in my own body at all. Bora, though, pulled out her phone and started taking pictures of me.
"B-Bora, there's something weird on my head!"
I said it in a rush, but she didn't seem to care. She just kept photographing me, then hurried out. Probably to fetch the office staff.
Feeling the heavy something on my head, I climbed down from the bed. There was a mirror in the bathroom. I headed there to find out what on earth was sitting on top of me.
"Huh...?"
The mirror was mounted a little high, so I stepped onto a stool and looked at my face. On the crown of my head hung a fruit I had never seen before. Roughly speaking, it looked like an apple.
But I could see what was strange about it. This fruit wasn't living with its roots in the ground. It was living with its roots in my head.
A thing like a twig stood in the exact center of my crown, and from that branch hung a single apple so glossy and plump that just looking at it made my mouth water.
I didn't get to look any longer. Bora came back through the door and led me down to the laboratory—probably to study my health, and this bizarre fruit.