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Chapter 129: Chapter 4.1

...Which isn\'t to say I\'d collapsed at some point and ended up in the hospital. "Oh, right. I spent the night here."

This was Sun House, the children\'s home that looked like a church. Jekyll, the old man in a wheelchair who was in charge of the place, had arranged for me to stay the night.

I\'d been given a private room. When I got out of bed, my head felt sort of hazy. I was pretty sure I\'d gotten enough sleep, but I still felt tired.

It was probably because of the dream I\'d been having—about a house on fire.

Inside, a child was wailing.

The fire truck wasn\'t there yet. I\'d just happened to be passing by, and like the other onlookers, I stood there helplessly.

"Okay, well, I\'ll be right back."

Only one person in that crowd chose to take action. Just that man. He dumped a bucket of water over his head, then headed into the blazing house.

"Ha-ha. Can\'t keep that kid waiting, can I?"

I\'d probably tried to stop him, but I didn\'t really remember. It was all a dream, after all.

But Danny had definitely smiled. He\'d started toward the fiery vortex, all alone.

I\'d reached for him as he walked away, but it was too late. "Just a nightmare."

Right as I finished reviewing that painful dream, the phone rang. I checked the name on the display, drew a deep breath, then pressed the TALK button.

"Good morning. Did you manage to sleep without me there?" said a voice I didn\'t recognize.

The name displayed hadn\'t been wrong, though.

"Yeah, I was fine. I was just thinking I missed your snores, Gekka."

"I don\'t snore, all right? ...I don\'t think," she muttered. She sounded cross, but not quite sure of herself. "I swear. And here I was worried about you."

It seems I\'d been on her mind because of what had happened yesterday.

After our visit, Gekka had said she had work to do and went back to the hotel by herself. So I was the only one who\'d stayed at Sun House last night, and apparently, she\'d been worried enough to call me.

"That\'s very kind of you," I said diplomatically.

"Well, I am an adult," she responded, sounding like a kid. She might not actually be that much older than me after all. "What?"

"Nothing."

Still, what made Gekka want to change up her appearance every time? She seemed to be using a voice changer again today; her voice had been different yesterday. She must have wanted to conceal her identity at all costs.

Was that her work style, or was it the policy of the organization that sent her on missions? Either way, she was probably still hiding a lot from me.

At this point, though, I wasn\'t planning to get to the bottom of it. Assuming it wasn\'t related to Danny\'s death, anyway.

"Well, Gekka-the-adult? What are you cosplaying as today?" Switching gears, I started joking around with her.

"I just got out of the shower, so I\'m naked. Stark naked." "Put on some clothes before you use the phone."

That\'s no good. Even if she was actually an adult, she was a hopeless one. "Kid, what sort of cosplays do you like?"

It\'s way too early in the day for this sort of conversation.

"If we don\'t discuss what I\'ll be wearing, you won\'t recognize me the next time we meet, remember?"

Ah, I see. So we were making arrangements for next time. ...Meaning there was going to be a next time? I didn\'t know what business she was being called out on, but I thought about it carefully before I answered. "A nurse, or a cheerleader."

"Huh! So that\'s what you\'re int—"

"Only a layman would answer with either of those." "A layman...," Gekka echoed, sounding mystified. "For an expert..."

"What?"

"It\'s gotta be family restaurant uniforms." "... "

Silence.

"Then uniforms from convenience stores or fast-food joints." "... "

There seemed to be poor connection. Was it because my smartphone was two generations old?

"When did the signal cut out?" "It didn\'t. I heard all of that."

"I see. Then let\'s move on to the main topic."

Life is short. After having a pointless conversation, you have to work faster than usual.

What was Gekka actually calling about?

"Yes, well..." She was still a little evasive. "It\'s important, so maybe we should meet in person. My business will be wrapped up before the end of the day."

So we really would be seeing each other again.

"Yeah, okay. Where and when do you want to meet? I was planning to head back home after this." I thought I\'d done everything I needed to do at this facility. Yesterday had tired me out, so I\'d rested for a night, but I meant to go home today.

"Actually, I may not be able to answer the phone for a little while. I\'ll call you again later."

"You sure are busy."

"Yes, because I\'m Ms. Gekka."

I didn\'t get the connection there. We both said "See you" and hung up.

The conversation had been nothing but banter, and now the room was quiet again.

Silently, I went over what Gekka had said. "Is it about Danny, or...?"

She\'d mentioned something important. Using common sense, it would probably be him. Yesterday, after we\'d split up, I\'d spent some time thinking about Danny.

Really, though, I shouldn\'t have needed to. I\'d already come to terms with the fact that Danny was dead. Meeting Gekka just made me think about him again, though, and I\'d uncovered one new piece of information.

Danny had been sheltering children with special circumstances here in the Hokuriku region. It sounded like something he\'d do, and I\'m sure it was because of his own philosophy, not because he hoped to get anything out of it.

"Then what about me?"

He must not have thought I was somebody he needed to protect. If he had, he wouldn\'t have left me behind in that apartment by myself. It was just like that dream: I\'d reached out with everything I had, but Danny had run into that inferno, and he\'d never looked back.

"It\'s fine that way."

Danny wasn\'t my dad, and I wasn\'t his kid. We weren\'t family. I wasn\'t sulking about it, and I wasn\'t being sarcastic.

It was just a fact. That was our relationship. Just then, someone knocked twice.

"Come in," I said, and Grete opened the door. "Um, w-would you like to eat breakfast with us?"

She still seemed a little embarrassed, but she smiled at me bashfully. It was as if she were welcoming me into their circle...to the family Danny Bryant had made. What was the right way to react to that? I didn\'t know, but I nodded. "I\'ll be right there."

As always, fake smiles were handy.

I hadn\'t expected the breakfast invitation. On top of that, it had been a long time since I sat at a table with other people, let alone a group this large.

Feeling a little bewildered, I kept working on my stew and bread. Before long, Grete sat down beside me and talked to me about this and that. More than half the conversation was about Danny. Still, the man in her memories was a little different from the one in mine.

From what she told me, Danny had brought a present for each of the kids whenever he\'d visited the facility. He\'d smiled and complimented them on their special skills and quirks and helped them grow, acting just like a real dad.

"...What\'s with that difference in treatment?" I griped at my deceased self- proclaimed teacher. No matter how far back I went, I couldn\'t remember him ever complimenting me. He\'d certainly never given me presents. He was the sort of guy who\'d die three days before my birthday. Geez. He could have at least paid the apartment\'s electricity bill before he went.

Silently grumbling about that, I finished breakfast, then headed for Jekyll\'s room. I was an outsider, but apparently, he had something important to tell me.

Come to think of it, when Gekka and I had come to the facility yesterday, Jekyll had looked at us and said, "I thought you\'d come someday." What had that been about? Still wondering about that, I knocked on the door of the room where Jekyll was waiting.

"I\'m glad you\'re here."

When I opened the door and walked in, the old man welcomed me from his wheelchair. The room was set up like an office, and Jekyll was in front of a bookshelf that stood against the wall. He was holding a book. "I asked you to come because I needed help to move this shelf."

Yeesh. Apparently, I\'d been called in as a handyman. Hadn\'t he had something important to discuss with me? ...I did owe him for my room and board, though. Sighing inwardly, I headed toward the bookshelf. "Which way do you want me to move it? Left or right?"

I switched places with Jekyll in front of the shelf. There were several hundred books on it. Would I have to empty it first? Just as I\'d started to wonder about that...

"Could you push it back?" Jekyll asked. He wanted me to push the shelf, not left or right, but back.

The big shelf was set right up against the wall. Pushing it back seemed pretty pointless. However—

"...Is this a ninja house?"

Just to see, I did as Jekyll had instructed, and what had looked like a bookshelf swung back like a door and beckoned me into unknown territory.

"I guess not going home yesterday was the right move." Although I didn\'t know what was waiting for me there yet.

Jekyll was wearing a small smile. I made eye contact with him, then we both passed through the door. As we continued down a chilly corridor, Jekyll wheeling his chair by himself, he began to explain.

"This facility, and particularly this space, was originally a safe house for Danny Bryant. The man really was quite reckless, so he had many enemies."

Most of that wasn\'t news to me. Danny had spent a lot of time away from the apartment where we lived; during some of those trips, he must have been lying low here. It would have been partly in order to get away from his enemies, but he\'d probably also wanted to shower the kids here with affection.

"I only know bits and pieces about the sort of work he did, and how he came to create this facility. He almost seemed to be trying to erase any traces that he\'d lived at all. But..." Jekyll stopped in front of a wall.

No, what I\'d thought was a wall was actually an enormous safe.

"Inside this safe is classified information about a certain job, something Danny kept hidden until his death. He gave me this message: \'Someday, children capable of opening this Pandora\'s box will appear.\'"

Jekyll looked up at me from his wheelchair.

His gaze seemed different from the gentle one I\'d seen before.

"Last year, soon after his disappearance, a sealed letter arrived at Sun House. It held strings of numbers that appeared to be a code; once we\'d decoded it, we were left with a number that we believed was the key to this safe."

"...You decoded it? It was that easy to figure out?" What was the point of a cipher anyone could break?

"Yes, a quantum computer could have broken it easily, given a few years." You wouldn\'t think it by looking at him, but apparently, this old man cracked jokes. "However, there\'s a child at this facility who\'s rather clever with numbers. Thanks to him, we solved the riddle in a matter of days."

"...I guess AI and robots aren\'t quite ready to outshine humans."

Jekyll was probably talking about a gifted kid like Grete, someone with extraordinary skills. Danny must have had some sort of reason for housing those kids here.

"However, simply turning the dial didn\'t open the safe. You see, this enormous black box has one other small lock." Narrowing his eyes, Jekyll gazed at a little keyhole near the dial. Without that key, it wouldn\'t open. "I imagine you understand what I\'m getting at?" he asked, without even glancing at me.

"...This is bizarre." I couldn\'t even manage a self-deprecating smile. I sighed. "I wasn\'t his family. There\'s no way he\'d leave something that important with me."

Who, or what, had Danny been protecting this safe from? He hadn\'t even told me that. Of course I didn\'t have the key.

"Using your emotions to determine anything is a very difficult task," Jekyll said, with his mild voice. I turned around. He was watching me with kind eyes. "People often say that life is a series of choices, but I believe that basing those choices on your own emotions is a risky endeavor. Joy, anger, and sadness can flare up inside us, but we can\'t sustain the intensity of the moment when they do. However, when pressed to make a significant decision, we invariably rely on those intense, fluctuating feelings. Even I still do it, at my age," he said ruefully. "In the midst of that chaotic torrent of emotions, we\'re subject to the passion that holds the most color in that moment. We yield to it, even though we\'ll already be a different person by tomorrow\'s first light."

What was Jekyll trying to say? What was he telling me? I didn\'t even have to ask. But then what should I do? If he was saying not to rely on my feelings, what should I rely on?

"—Memories, huh?"

The things that had happened to me. Objective facts that I\'d actually experienced.

That\'s right. That\'s what I\'d told Grete yesterday.

When your heart wavers, when you hesitate over a decision, you can rely on the memories that have been etched into you.

What had I heard from Danny, over those two years? What had he shown me?

What had he entrusted to me? What on earth had he—

"I take it you\'ve thought of something?" When Jekyll spoke, I turned to look at him, startled. He was smiling again. "I won\'t ask for that answer now. Just keep it deep within you, and do what you need to do."

Jekyll was encouraging me. He\'d left this in my hands—the key to open this enormous Pandora\'s box, and the right to do it.

"Uncovering the secrets hidden at the end of a grand adventure is a mission that\'s always given to young people. Old soldiers can only watch over you." Jekyll sounded self-deprecating, but he blinked in a slow, satisfied way.

Then he went on: "This may sound melodramatic to you now, but that\'s all right. Someday, old as I am, I would like you to tell me a tale in which you turn the world upside down, forging even intense emotions into a weapon."