NOTEBOOK/FUJIWARA, AIKO
DATE: 2006年9月22日
T R A P P ED
inside.
how does the monster make the screaming inside. the black birds are in me now. can you be released. Can yyyyyyyyyyou be released. find the door. find the way. you cant belong here. you cant belong inside. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. i can hear it. get out. be free. i can hear them hearing me. i will do it. i will drink it and you will be free. open my mouth and free the black birds. the three-legged one is not coming. hhhhhhhhhhheee is nnnnnnotttttttttt here. drink the potion. drink the potionpoisonpotionpoisonpotion. free the black birds trapped inside. drink the key. open the door. flyyyyyyyy away with them. ffffffffffffffflllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy away. we are alone. but we will not be travelers lost on this road.
The next morning Moya and I walked out to the last kaki tree. Or the twisted mass of branches and chopped-up trunk that used to be the last kaki tree. We stood there for a long time.
“We can beat him,” I told her, massaging my now-unbroken arm. It was still a little tender.
“I’m sorry, my dear,” Moya whispered as she walked slowly toward the shattered tree. She knelt down and touched the gnarled trunk. “Koda, I want you to stay here with the tree,” she said without looking back.
“No.” I slipped Yori’s goggles over my neck.
She stood and turned around. “Kōtenbō killed Seimei. He killed the kaki tree. And if you go with me to Sarutadō, he will kill you, too.”
“He also killed Yori and Aiko and Ichiro and Taiki. I can help you defeat him.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“I can help you.”
“You’re just a silly human kid.”
“You need me, Moya.”
“I don’t need you!” she cried back.
Moya wiped at her cheek.
“If you go in there alone, you might not come back,” I said.
“If you come with me, you might not come back,” she said. “How can you be so foolish, Koda? I tried to show you that Seimei thought the same thing.” Moya slowly sat down on the grass. “You could run. You could run far from Kusaka Town and become a priest at a shrine to Inari. She would protect you from everything.”
“I couldn’t live with myself,” I said, walking up to her.
“Why doesn’t anyone like my priest idea?”
“Because it sounds really boring.”
She looked up at me.
“And the whole abandoning-our-town-to-a-murderous-tengu idea,” I said. “There’s that, too.”
I sat down next to Moya. “Besides, hiding me is what Kōtenbō thinks you’ll do. Who in their right mind would take a teenage kid and lock them in a room with a murderous mountain demon? Twice?”
“Certainly not a sane person.”
“Exactly.”
“You’re not helping your argument at all here.”
“That’s just my point. The reasonable thing to do is keep me away from that cave at all costs.”
“Right.”
“Maybe leave me at my house or in this grove. But if Kōtenbō reached the kaki tree, he can reach me. I don’t think I’d last long against an ax-wielding tree killer. And if I have the choice, I’d rather face my threats standing by your side.”
“You know just what to say to make a girl swoon, Koda.”
“We can bring down Kōtenbō,” I said. “This time is different from any other time because you have a secret weapon.”
“What would that be?” she said.
I pointed at my face and whispered.
“What?” she said.
I whispered really softly again.
“I can’t hear you.”
“My brain, Moya! My brain.”
“Your brain is our secret weapon?”
“Yes,” I said, snapping Yori’s goggles to my forehead. “I am a suri and Kōtenbō is scared to death of me.”
“Gods,” she breathed, “I wouldn’t say he’s scared to death.”
“He is very scared of me.”
“A little nervous, maybe.”
“Petrified.”
“Anxious, at best.”
“The point is, he doesn’t know everything in the whole world, Moya! He can’t see inside my mind. He doesn’t know what we’re thinking. What we’re planning. Hell, I don’t even know what we’re planning!”
Moya thought for a moment. “It would be a shame for your homeroom teacher to chop you into bits while I’m gone.”
Moya stood and pulled a long broken shard from the core of the kaki tree. A small flame stood up from her finger. It whipped in the wind, searing the outside of the wood.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Making you a spear,” Moya said. She blew on the singed bark and then scraped the end on a rock, turning it over and over in her hands to sharpen the point.
“Wait, do kaki trees kill tengu?” I said, squatting next to Moya. “Is that why Kōtenbō was killing them off? It makes perfect sense now.”
“Nope. It’s just a regular wooden spear.”
“But if I throw it hard enough, it should tear through him like it would tear through rice paper, right?”
Moya tested the point with her finger. “I don’t think any law of nature would allow for that to happen.”
“Then what am I supposed to do with it?”
She held the spear up in front of her face and lit the whole thing in green flame. The wood crackled and pulled together, shrinking and shining like polished stone.
“You’re going to do what you do best—distract people.”
She blew out the flame and handed me the spear. It was warm to the touch.
“So you need me to wound him?” I asked.
“You just have to hit him. Or throw it near him. Just get it somewhere in his general vicinity.”
I looked down at my spear, which had seemed so awesome when it was on fire. “This isn’t going to hurt him at all, is it?”
“Like throwing a toothpick at a bullet train. But you just have to give me time to grab his sword.”
“Wait, you can grab swords?” I said. “That’s, like, a thing you can do?”
“Sure. Or melt it. Whatever. We’ll figure it out when we get there.”
“Figure it out? Dear gods and goddesses, I take back what I said. This plan I didn’t know is actually freaking terrible.”
Moya shrugged.
“We are so screwed,” I said.
“The most important thing, Koda, is getting that sword out of his hands. Every person Kōtenbō personally murdered was stabbed in the chest. We have to get the sword out of his hands before he can use it.”
“And again, this hinges on me hitting a tengu with a sharpened stick?”
“Yep,” she said, walking away from me. “Master your weapon, my little samurai. We’ll leave when I’ve paid my last respects to the kaki tree.”
“Just like that? No demonstration? No words of advice?”
“Pick something,” she said. “Throw your spear at it. Do that a bunch of times until you don’t miss.”
Oh, we are so screwed.