Chapter 54: Chapter 2.4
The primordial seed, the girl of the vessel
Bat was a former SPES officer, and Siesta and I had a fairly deep history with him.
We'd met him four years ago, on a plane at ten thousand meters. Siesta had defeated him then, and he'd been in the custody of the Japanese police ever since.
He'd broken out, though, and here he was. Right in front of me. And in the tentacle that grew from his ear was—
"Kimi...zuka..." Saikawa looked to me for help, her expression agonized. "...! SIESTA said she was going to deal with you."
Yesterday, she'd gone out to do just that. Had he evaded her? ...SIESTA?
Really? No, more importantly—
"Give back Saikawa, Bat." I took my gun from its back holster. "Ha-ha! You're one dangerous producer."
Bat seemed to have been using his augmented ears to listen in on our conversation. He smirked at me. "Eh, that's fine. She's weighing me down anyway."
To my surprise, he released Saikawa without a fight.
"Kimizuka!" Saikawa ran up to me, then ducked behind me to hide, clinging to my waist.
"Are you okay?"
"He said I was heavy! Shoot him dead! Now!" "Great, you sound fine."
Patting Saikawa lightly on the head, I faced down the other two. A vampire and Bat—that was who we'd be fighting this time.
"Bat, why are you with Scarlet? Didn't you team up with Seed?" Fingers tightening on my gun, I looked from Bat to Scarlet and back. "Hey, c'mon, one question at a time." Bat gave his usual irritating laugh.
"The substance matters not. Bat, I will leave the explanations to you." Scarlet cracked his neck. "I only just awakened," he said, and then he melted into the shadows.
"Kimizuka, was that...?" Saikawa stared after him, wide-eyed.
"He says he's a vampire. It's hard to believe, though." Except he'd left proof on my neck.
"I see. Congrats on your graduation."
"...I don't want to 'graduate' with a dude." Also, this wasn't the time.
"Bat, what's your connection to Scarlet?" I pointed my gun at him again. "Originally, Seed asked Scarlet to bring me back," Bat said, revealing a
further link. "Apparently, SPES is short-handed. I'd parted ways with Seed once, but he made contact with me through Scarlet."
Right, this guy had left SPES on bad terms, and that was what had triggered the hijacking incident, four years ago. However, Seed had gotten Scarlet to contact Bat, acting like that whole past was water under the bridge. Then Scarlet had broken through the strict security and taken Bat out of jail... Out of the big house, the one I'd visited.
"No way am I going back to SPES, though. Actually, due to a certain reason, my interests and Scarlet's matched up, so we're working together."
"So you connected with me and Saikawa and left Seed out of it? It's pretty late in the game for this; what do you need now? You helped us out during that sapphire incident, remember?"
When SPES had gone after Saikawa's left eye, we'd resolved the incident with an assist from Bat.
"But now you're after Saikawa? Why? Did you decide to take her left eye after all?"
Saikawa caught the cuff of my sleeve and squeezed it. Her sapphire eye was a memento of her parents, and to her, it was more important than life itself.
"Good guess, but I've mellowed out. I'm not planning anything that fancy," Bat muttered quietly. He gazed dully at Saikawa. "I'm just here to recruit you. Would you join me?"
" "Huh?" " Saikawa and I said in unison. What the heck was this guy talking about?
"It's simple. I'm asking you to help me defeat SPES." "...Is that why you didn't respond to Seed's summons?"
"Yup. Right now, I'm building up my forces. I've got my ears, and she's got her eye." Bat's cloudy eyes turned toward her. "So, Yui Saikawa. Come with me."
He was trying to pull Saikawa onto his team with some kinda weak logic. "Do you think I'll hand her over that easily?"
"You heard him. Kimizuka is abnormally obsessed with me." "Saikawa, I know you're trying to help, but you're really not." Seriously, she never reads the room.
"You and the new girl detective are free to come along, Watson. Bottom line is, I need to be stronger—if I'm going to defeat that."
Bat's expression turned stern, and he brought up the name of the enemy leader who'd recently begun to move. "Why has Seed, and SPES, been so quiet over this past year? Have you thought about that?" he asked me.
During the year I'd spent in my tepid life, it was true that SPES hadn't tried to contact me in any way. I'd figured they just weren't interested in me, since I was only Siesta's shadow. But...
"Is there a particular reason behind it?"
"Let's go back in time a bit." Bat took a cigarette out of his breast pocket and lit it. "Several decades ago, the big guy flew to this planet as a seed. He wasn't able to adapt to its environment completely, though."
"...!"
This was new information. Seed's body wasn't built to live on this planet... Was that why he was so particular about his survival instincts?
"So Seed's been looking for a human vessel that will be able to survive on the surface."
"A vessel... He's planning to hijack someone else's body?"
Apparently he was trying to keep his own mind and powers, but he would switch them to another physical body.
"That's right. 'Vessel' sounds pretty simple, but it's not as if just any body will do. It has to be compatible with the seed, or Seed won't be able to move in."
"Compatible? —Don't tell me... That facility..." "You put two and two together, huh?"
Natsunagi had said that human experiments had been a significant part of her time at the orphanage six years ago with her friends. That had all been—
"Was that all to create a compatible vessel for Seed?"
Little kids had been collected at that orphanage and subjected to experiments just for that?
"The experiments went even worse than he'd expected, though. Far too few of their specimens were able to withstand the seed."
That had also come up in Natsunagi's story. The "durable vessels" had been few and far between. Alicia had attempted the experiment, failed, and died.
"On top of that, most of the compatible cases still had side effects." "Side effects? ...You mean like your eyes?"
Bat snorted, exhaling a plume of smoke. He was a former human who'd forcibly attached a seed to himself; in exchange for gaining power as SPES, he'd lost his sight.
"Right. The side effects take away some of the senses of humans, or even shorten their lives. Seed wanted a perfect vessel... And he finally found two candidates. They were—"
"Siesta and Hel, huh?"
Seed had said something to me last year: "If I side with either of them, the
plan won't come together."
Meaning he'd made Siesta and Hel fight each other, intending to use the winner as his vessel. He'd been trying to narrow his options from two to one.
"However, Watson, you already know how that went." "...Yeah. Although I only just remembered."
After Siesta and Hel's fight to the death, Siesta's vessel had been lost when her body died...while the other vessel held Hel, Natsunagi, and Siesta, and was already filled to capacity. If he'd tried to force it open, he probably would have broken it.
In other words, whatever it may have meant for us, Siesta's sacrifice had robbed Seed of both his intended vessels at a stroke.
"Well, Seed spent a year waiting for the day when those two would split once again. When that time came, he'd move into the body of the survivor."
"...But then it never did."
When Seed observed Siesta and Chameleon's fight on that cruise ship, he'd probably realized that Siesta had permanently attached herself to Natsunagi's body.
"That's the size of it. Of course, Seed hasn't been sitting on his hands for the past year. It's just that every time he tried to use his followers to start something, somebody prevented him from getting the results he wanted. And so he decided to go through Scarlet, who outranks him, and make his next move."
That was what SIESTA had told us about—Seed had lost his most promising candidate vessel and was looking for a new one. In order to qualify, the person would have to be able to use the power of the seed effectively, and they couldn't have developed any major side effects. If there was anyone like that near me, it was—
"Kimizuka..."
I felt a small tug on my sleeve.
Yeah, I know. I'd come up with my theory ages ago. "Seed plans to make Yui Saikawa his vessel, huh?"
The ugliest choice in the world
Seed was planning to use Saikawa as a vessel.
Several things hadn't made sense to me earlier, but they all started clicking
into place once we had that theory.
For example, in London last year, Seed had taken Ms. Fuubi's shape and visited me, Siesta, and Natsunagi (in her Alicia appearance at the time). He'd told us to "search for the sapphire eye."
Back then, I hadn't known what "the sapphire eye" meant, but he'd probably been talking about Saikawa. So a year ago, Seed had already been trying to bring us into contact with Saikawa—and keep her near Siesta as a backup vessel. Then he'd meant to size up Saikawa indirectly and try to cultivate her.
However, Siesta's decision had postponed that, and it had been a year before we'd met Saikawa in person. We'd been brought together by the advance notice SPES had sent to announce its crime: "I will relieve you of a sapphire worth three billion yen." That incident might have been an attempt to complete Saikawa as a vessel by putting her in danger.
"...So you mean, after Siesta died, things have been going according to Seed's script anyway?"
Seed had observed both the sapphire incident and the showdown with Chameleon on that luxury cruise liner. We'd thought we'd solved the problem, but we'd been in the palm of his hand the whole time.
"Exactly. Now that his most promising candidates are gone, Seed's going after that girl for sure. We should take steps to prevent it."
Bat dropped his cigarette to the roof, then made another attempt to convince Saikawa to join the SPES suppression team. "Besides, that girl has a better reason than anyone to fight SPES." Grinding his cigarette out under his foot, Bat looked at Saikawa.
"I do...?" Saikawa didn't seem to know what he was talking about. She cocked her head.
"Oh, I see. They didn't tell you what went into getting that left eye of yours."
Bat gave a little nod, as if something had just clicked into place.
I'd heard that Saikawa's parents had given her that sapphire eye, since she'd been blind in her left eye from birth...
"Think about it. Yeah, they may have been rich, they may have loved their only daughter, but do you think anyone would pay billions of yen for a false eye that was just a pretty rock?"
"That's..." Saikawa froze up.
Don't tell me...
"Does it have some kind of secret Saikawa doesn't know about?" I asked. "I only learned this the other day," Bat replied, "but soon after the sapphire
girl was born, she developed a malignant tumor in her left eye." Cancer of the eye. I hadn't heard of any cases of that before.
"It's a rare disease that mainly shows up in kids under five. This country has less than a hundred cases of it per year. If the disease progresses, it's treated by surgically extracting the eyeball, but even then, you couldn't call it a full cure."
That was when I finally saw where he was going with this.
They'd probably anticipated that Saikawa's disease wouldn't be cured by ordinary methods. Even so, her parents had wanted to heal their only daughter, no matter what it took.
"So Saikawa's parents turned to SPES?"
In order to save their daughter's life, they'd asked for help from a great evil.
"No..."
Saikawa's hands trembled at the revelation. Her parents hadn't told her.
They probably hadn't wanted to make her anxious.
...No, that wasn't all of it. What they'd feared most was—guilt.
"They invested enormous sums in SPES's experimental facility," Bat said, and all the possibilities clicked into place.
When Natsunagi had told us about her past, she'd mentioned a wealthy Japanese couple who'd regularly made big donations to the orphanage. Could they have been Saikawa's parents?
And then there were those reports about Saikawa's parents and illegal accounting. Had they found the suspicious money stream from six years ago?
If all those theories were correct, then... "...Just tell me one thing, please."
Saikawa let go of my sleeve. With effort, she spoke to Bat calmly. "If a normal person formed a contract and learned SPES's secret—once that contract came to an end, what would SPES do with those people?"
I knew what her question meant instantly. Before I could stop him, though, Bat answered.
"They'd kill them."
This was the worst scenario I could think of: Saikawa's parents hadn't died in an accident. SPES had taken their lives.
"That can't... No..." "Saikawa!"
Saikawa staggered, nearly falling, and I caught her from behind.
...Last night, Saikawa had told me she had next to no connection to either Siesta or to SPES, and so this was a story that belonged just to her. She'd taken pride in her own life.
But now they'd all linked together anyway.
She was right smack in the middle of this churning nightmare, and there was no way out.
"That means you have a reason to fight, Yui Saikawa. You're destined to take up arms against SPES." Bat drew the gun from his back and tossed it toward Saikawa.
He was wordlessly telling her to take it and fight. "I'm..." Saikawa's voice was trembling.
Saikawa had only just learned everything—the truth behind her eye, and the truth of her parents' death. She was nowhere near capable of making any choices right now.
"Bat, now isn't—"
Just as I tried to take a step forward in her place... "For hell's sake. Could you be any worse at this?"
A figure welled up from the shadows near Bat, and I recognized those golden eyes and silver hair.
It was Scarlet, the white-jacketed vampire, who'd just woken from his brief nap. He needled Bat irritably. "I'm appalled that you thought you could talk her around with that travesty of a negotiation, mammal. You stand down." Scarlet stepped out in front of Bat.
"Ha! Vampire. Don't get me wrong. I did ask for your help, but that doesn't mean I'm bad at..."
Just as Bat was about to snap at him— "Don't push your luck—lower life-form."
Scarlet's gold eyes flickered like lightning. "...!"
Suddenly, Bat fell to his knees. Then, as if he was moving against his will, he bowed to Scarlet.
"...Damn...it."
Bat was struggling, but his agonized face gradually slipped out of sight, until at last his head was pressed to the ground.
"I will not permit a mere human to disrespect me. Grovel there for a while and allow me to show you how this is done."
Was that another vampire power? After Scarlet had dominated Bat without even touching him, he turned to me and Saikawa again.
"Now, then. I am sorry for the trouble you've been caused."
Well, that was a surprise.
"No, we're..."
"He must understand that any attempt to form a contract must be accompanied by a commensurate price." Ignoring my confusion, Scarlet steered the conversation off in another direction—and it didn't take me long to realize it was the worst one possible. "What do you say, sapphire girl? Should you accept his request and assist him in subjugating SPES, I will grant you one wish."
"A wish...?"
When she heard Scarlet's proposal, Saikawa wavered.
"That's right. You can wish for anything you like. For example—" The vampire whispered sweetly.
"—why don't I bring your parents back to life?"
What we the living can do
"Bring Dad and Mom back to life...?"
Saikawa's right eye widened. It was as if she'd been offered a thread of possibility, a miracle she'd thought could never happen, and her heart swayed unsteadily. —But.
"That's not even possible." I knew it was cruel, but I cut that sweet hope down. "When someone dies, they never come back."
Everybody knew that.
The dead don't come back to life. What's gone never returns to the way it was. That's what makes us irreplaceable. We know this.
"Yes, you are not wrong." In a flat voice, Scarlet temporarily acknowledged what I was saying. But then... "However, I am a vampire—an immortal king. Remember?"
Still expressionless, the vampire bowed his head at a ninety-degree angle— and then he called toward hell.
"Return, lizard."
In the next instant, a human silhouette rose from Scarlet's shadow. "Kimizuka, that's..." Even the half-distracted Saikawa stared in
astonishment.
The figure was a slim man with silver hair and Asian features—and a long, reptilian tongue.
"Chameleon..."
He was a SPES officer, and our old enemy. We'd first encountered him in London a year ago, but at the end of that recent showdown on the cruise ship, he'd been lost in the ocean—or so I'd assumed.
"Why are you alive?"
Chameleon leaned forward limply, his long tongue hanging down. His shape was definitely the one I'd seen several times before in battle... But.
"—Ah, ah, aaaah, aaaaaah."
The sound seemed to echo from the depths of the earth. "What the hell is this?"
Chameleon said nothing coherent, just kept making that awful noise. His eyes were unfocused, and he swayed on his feet in an anemic daze.
Was this really Chameleon?
"Put bluntly, he is what one would call a zombie." Scarlet shot a cold glance at Chameleon. "The immortal blood in my veins can resurrect the deceased as the undead."
"...! So he's a corpse puppet?"
Scarlet walked around the three of us, smiling coldly. "Corpse puppet. I see. Yes, that's good. It's true that he cannot speak, nor can we communicate with him. He has lost his sense of pain, and his remaining physical senses hardly function at all. In that sense, he really is no more than a living corpse. However..." Scarlet went on. "The undead I create by drinking blood return with their strongest instinct from life intact. Put another way, they can attain
the wishes they harbored then. Well, human?" He turned to me.
"If you could have your wish granted even after death, would that not be happiness?"
Humans and vampires had completely different values—and that was what separated us. Either that, or this messed-up thought experiment was what happened when vampires tried to compromise their take on life and death with humans'.
I knew what this man was saying was wrong, but I didn't have an immediate response.
"Well? What will you do, sapphire girl?"
Scarlet's focus shifted from me to Saikawa. Well, she was the one he'd offered this choice to in the first place.
"Have no fear. I don't even need a corpse. If their bones, hair, or even DNA remains, I can resurrect your parents as undead."
"..." Saikawa said nothing.
A warped smile stole onto Scarlet's lips. "Go on," he murmured. "Decide quickly, or the bystander won't keep his silence."
Just then...
"—Ah, ah, aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!" The shriek was deafening.
"Saikawa, look out!"
Chameleon had flung his upper body back and screamed. He wasn't conscious; he didn't even know why he was standing here. He just howled, as if it was all he could do. Unsteady feet tangling, he lurched toward us in an attempt to attack.
Chameleon's instinct was to fight for survival.
Even after he had died and come back to life, he kept up that meaningless struggle.
...Because that was his wish.
"That's not what you told me, vampire."
Just as I heard that voice, Chameleon stopped moving.
He'd been reaching out to grab us, his eyes rolled back into his skull...but there was a long tentacle wrapped around his body.
"Oh-ho. You managed to move. Impressive, Bat."
Still facing forward, Scarlet spoke to the man standing behind him. This was the first time he'd used Bat's name.
The tentacle from Bat's left ear had reached out and restrained Chameleon.
He'd protected me and Saikawa.
"Hey, vampire. You didn't mention that your undead were this half-assed." Without flinching, Bat snapped at Scarlet again. "I proposed a contract because I thought you could bring the dead back to something that resembled actual life."
A contract with a vampire—that must have been the "interests matching up" that Bat had mentioned. He'd placed his hopes in Scarlet's ability to bring the dead back to life and had offered suitable payment. But the power hadn't been as almighty as he'd thought.
"Nonsense." Scarlet turned back, flatly dismissing Bat's challenge. "How could there be a miracle without a price? Nothing can be gained without sacrifice: That is a natural principle. Or, what, did you seriously suppose that your younger sister could be brought back as you once knew her from a single hair?"
"...! Shut up!" Bat was furious. He didn't turn that anger on Scarlet, though. Instead, he tightened the tentacle that bound Chameleon, taking out his frustration on the incomplete undead.
"—Ah, aaah, ah!"
Chameleon groaned in pain. He was no longer the enemy who'd given us so much trouble before.
"Come, sapphire girl. Choose." One more time, Scarlet offered the choice to Saikawa. "It is true that the revenants are degraded, but there's no need to fear. As I said before, the undead I create return with their strongest wish in life. Sapphire girl, what do you suppose your parents' instinct was?" Scarlet asked Saikawa, before narrowing his golden eyes and answering his own question firmly. "Love for their child, freely given. Therefore, once returned, even if your parents are reduced to corpse puppets, no doubt they'll never forget their love for their only daughter. Listen, sapphire girl," he said again. "Do you not wish to see them, one more time?"
Saikawa's only response as he made his case was silence. She stood very still, fists clenched tightly.
However, right in front of her...
"—Gah, ah! Aah!"
Even wrapped in Bat's tentacle, Chameleon kept wordlessly trying to attack us. Saikawa was standing beyond his outstretched hand. The gun Bat had thrown to her earlier lay at her feet.
"Saikawa..."
I started to say something to her—then changed my mind. This time, there was nothing I could do.
After all, before we came here, SIESTA had told me to watch over Yui Saikawa's decision. I had a hunch she'd meant this one as well.
"All right, girl. What will you do?" Scarlet pressed her to make a decision.
Chameleon had dragged himself right up to her. Saikawa had to do something now; she finally bent down and—
"You poor thing."
Gently, she stroked Chameleon's head. "..."
Scarlet said nothing. Saikawa watched him out of the corner of her eye... and didn't even glance at the gun by her feet. With a sad smile, she softly ran her hand over the groaning Chameleon's silver hair.
"You don't have to do this anymore. A kind ace detective and her assistant already put an end to your fight. It's all right now. Please rest."
...Of course. Chameleon had been created just to fight as Seed's clone. In a way, he was a victim. His struggle had ended with that showdown on the cruise ship. Siesta had seen to that.
"—Ah, ah, aaah." Chameleon howled, desperately wringing his voice from his throat. He might have been trying to tell us something. But the meaningless sounds only faded hollowly into the night sky.
"He's telling me to sing." Saikawa studied his face, as if she had managed to divine what he wanted.
"...Really?"
"I don't know."
"Hey."
Despite the weight of the situation, the retort just came naturally.
"Well, how could I? The dead don't tell us anything." Saikawa straightened
up.
"Some people might say we're full of ourselves, but I think all we can do is consider what that person would want, believe in it, and carry it out."
Turning back, she smiled at me. That smile seemed fragile, and it was sadder than any expression I'd ever seen from her. The sincerest, too.
"—Yeah, you're right."
What did the dead want from those they'd left behind? There was no way to truly know. How did Saikawa's parents want their only daughter to live now? They'd never be able to tell us.
But Saikawa still believed.
She trusted that the path she'd chosen for herself was the future they'd wanted as well.
"I'd always like to be someone that Dad and Mom would be proud of if they were alive. I was a wallflower with no friends, but now I'm singing, surrounded by a crowd of fans and companions. I think that would make them both happy."
That was what Yui Saikawa believed to be her parents' last wish.
She wouldn't be tainted by revenge. She'd just enjoy her time with her friends and continue her career as an idol.
"So I'm sorry. I trust that this will make you happy as well."
As Saikawa spoke, I saw a mic in her hand—or imagined one, anyway. This was her requiem for Chameleon, and for her parents.
And that was fine. That was how Yui Saikawa should be. Idol singers weren't meant to hold a gun.
Saikawa sang, whether or not the situation called for it, ignoring both the pseudohumans and the vampire.
"All right, please listen. The song is—" She'd sing, and sing, and sing.
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