Black Bullet - Volume 4 - Chapter 3.3

3

In the end, the Promoters rescued sixty-eight survivors in half a day. Thinking about the fact that the self-defense force’s infantry was a large force that had more than seven thousand people in it, this was only a hundredth of them, which was a depressingly low number. The injured were immediately brought to the medical squad. Those who were crying and had lost their will to fight from fear of Gastrea were deemed unable to withstand more battle, and were given similar treatment.

They were currently hearing what had happened from the survivors, but Rentaro wouldn’t hear anything from his lowly place on the totem pole, so he could only imagine what they were saying.

After a while, the black rain stopped, and when it grew dark, they used that as a chance to end the search. They kept trying until the very end, so even though they didn’t have any proof, they were able to feel pretty confident that they had picked up all the survivors.

They returned, completely exhausted, to a town close to the plain. The towns in the Outer Districts had been abandoned for ten years and were growing wild, overrun with trees and grass, with plants budding from their roofs. The plants had grown bigger due to the Gastrea virus, and some were swallowing up whole houses with their massive roots.

Tokyo Area, District 40, the Outer District where Rentaro and the others were fighting, had plateaus and steep slopes extending far into the area, so few people lived there. As such, there was little chance of coming across Manhole Children or people living illegally in the ruins, so the civil officer troops, who had lost their base to the Gastrea attack, requisitioned these buildings.

Fundamentally, the buildings in the Outer Districts were exposed to remarkable aging the moment people stopped living in them and heating them, as they went through differences in temperature and expanded and contracted over and over. The government did not recommend living in the Outer District buildings that could collapse at any moment, but everyone was tired of exposing their skin to the black rain that had been falling since morning, so there were no objections.

There were many different buildings of various sizes in the town, but only about a tenth had the minimum facilities to protect them from the rain and keep them warm. Peeking through a convenience store window whose glass had been shattered to pieces, Rentaro was very surprised to see a goat that had gone wild sprawled between the product shelves. The park he stopped by on the way back had an abandoned tricycle and a flattened soccer ball being blown drearily by in the wind. The letters on a rotting signboard with red rust making it thicker could only be half-read from the stains and peeling.

Even on the day it started being evacuated as a Gastrea danger zone, the residents must have thought they could return in two or three days. The whole town still looked as if time had stopped on that day ten years ago, with traces of the residents’ lives over everything.

Rentaro was heading toward a certain junior high school deep within the town. Faint light leaked from the gym that was connected to it. If he remembered correctly, this was where Kisara and the others were working. Thinking that, he diffidently opened the emergency exit door with a loud creak. When he did so, the noise that had been absorbed by the walls rushed at him. There was the sound of people groaning and sobbing mixed with other unintelligible screams, with the sound of slippers running on top of all of that.

Inside the building, it was like a field hospital. Injured civil officers and self-defense force troops lay on beds and futons, and when there weren’t enough, on rush and straw mats. Between them, volunteer doctors and nurses in white coats hurried back and forth. It was so loud that one had to yell in order to be heard by the person next to him or her, and the smell of medicine wafting through the building was so strong it made Rentaro’s head hurt.

Because they had no electricity, there were lanterns and candles all over the place, with electric lights tied on top of generators used in place of the normal lights, so the whole place was dimly lit, and there was a strange mood in the air that was hard to explain.

“Oh, Rentaro, Rentaro, Rentaro!” An especially loud voice called out, and he saw Enju waving an arm above her head as she ran toward him. With a thud, Enju’s head rushed into him and a soft weight rested on his chest. Hugging Enju to him, he noticed a pink nurse’s cap on top of her head.

When Rentaro pointed at it, Enju lifted her face as usual and laughed gleefully. “Isn’t it cute? They gave it to me since I was helping. They said workers had to wear this.”

“I-I see…,” said Rentaro.

Enju tilted her head slightly. “What’s wrong, Rentaro?”

“Nothing—”

“Oh, Satomi, you’re back early.” Turning around, he saw Kisara holding a washbasin with hot water in it. She also had a nurse’s cap on her head, like Enju. “Our shift is almost over, so please wait a bit.”

Rentaro looked around at the bustling atmosphere before looking back at Kisara. “Even Enju’s here. She’s not being a bother?”

Kisara smiled and shook her head. “Not at all. Enju’s a big help, holding the injured people’s hands tight and just being with them. Everyone seems to appreciate her. On the other hand, I can only do random chores, so I’m sure I’m more in the way of the doctors and nurses.”

Enju stuck out her chest proudly and sniffed. “You see? I am being of help.”

Rentaro watched Enju silently. It was possible that Enju was recovering from the painful incident of her classmates being killed in a bombing. He had the urge to ask her directly, but considering the possibility that he was stirring up a hornet’s nest, he could not speak carelessly. Rentaro hid his inner turmoil and patted Enju on the head, as if going through his usual movements, saying, “Yes, yes, good job,” pretending to act normally. Enju did not seem to notice.

“By the way, Satomi, have you met up with Dr. Sumire already?” Kisara asked.

“What? Doc? Doc’s here, too?”

Just then, Rentaro felt a weight on his shoulders as someone draped their arms over him from behind. Cold skin like a corpse. Said person put lips close to his ears. “Good evening, Satomi. It’s a nice night.”

“Gah!” Jumping away quickly and turning around, he saw a smiling face shining brightly with enjoyment through a curtain of hair that was left to grow as it pleased.

Dragging a long white lab coat, the coroner, Sumire Muroto, lifted her hand in casual greeting. “Yo,” she said. “I had some free time, so I left my basement room. The outside is nice sometimes, too.”

Rentaro’s mouth gaped in amazement, and he was unable to respond for a while. “Doc… Why are you here?”

“There was a request, so I came here today to supervise the doctors. Didn’t I tell you before? I’m a genius, so I have knowledge of everything. I’m just a coroner because it matches up with my hobby. In times of emergency like this, I get called in as a doctor, too.”

“So even Dr. Death saves people’s lives once in a while?”

“What, do you want to be euthanized, Rentaro?”

“I-I was just kidding. Don’t get mad, Doc.” Just then, a question crossed his mind. “Doc, didn’t you win a lottery ticket for the shelter? Why are you here?”

“I didn’t win it. I was given it. A government official came to my lab and said they couldn’t let Japan’s greatest mind die and gave me a ticket. I politely ripped it in half and threw it away then and there, though.”

“Huh?”

The corners of Sumire’s mouth lifted as she grinned. “What? Is that strange?”

“No… But if you’re going to rip it in half, then at least give it to someone.”

“Who would I give it to? Even if you had a single cup of water in the desert, it won’t do you much good, will it? At most, people will just start killing each other over the water. It’s more compassionate to resolutely throw the water onto the bare ground in this case.”

Rentaro paused. “Then, what fundamental solution would you propose for the lack of water?”

“Find a giant oasis that can quench everyone’s thirst, or get out of the desert. But looking at Tokyo Area’s current evacuation situation, I don’t see how we can find an oasis big enough to quench everyone’s thirst. I came here because I wanted to support the idiots who are carrying out the idiotic plan to get out of the desert.”

“Just so you know, once the Gastrea rush into this place, you won’t be able to run away.”

“I understand completely.”

“Doc, I thought you were a more logical person.”

Sumire grinned again. “Humans think about things logically and then move because of their emotions. I am the same. Keep moving, Rentaro. If you stop, death will catch up to you.”

“You’re right… Thanks, Doc.” Rentaro suddenly remembered something and asked her about Enju behind him in a low voice. “Doc, did you hear about Enju?”

Sumire’s eyes narrowed, and her expression grew stern for an instant. “Yeah, I did. Her classmates were killed because of all that uproar, right? It was very unfortunate.”

“Doc, how does Enju look to your professional eyes?”

“Don’t worry, she’s probably already fine.”

“What?” Rentaro’s mouth dropped open, stunned speechless.

“Enju has more mental strength than we think she has.”

“R-really?”

“You’re a really suspicious guy, aren’t you? Well, it might be that with the immediate danger of the Gastrea, she’s just not thinking about the bombing incident. Just in case, don’t say anything to her that might make her remember the incident.”

His strength suddenly left him in relief. It was all just his needless worrying. At the same time, he became embarrassed by all the nervous actions he took around Enju.

Sumire nodded in satisfaction and looked back at Enju and Kisara, clapping her hands. “Now, you two don’t need to help anymore, so go home and rest.”

“What will you do, Dr. Sumire?” Kisara asked wonderingly.

Sumire stuffed both hands into the pockets of her lab coat and smiled. “I will spend the night here. I’m going to do my own job. It’s better than you’d expect. It’s the perfect dimness with a nice atmosphere thanks to all the candles reminding us to slow down and reflect. On top of that, the groans of the patients around me make me feel like I’m in the middle of a zombie movie. Thanks to that, I feel like I’ll have some wonderful nightmares.”

After waiting outside the gym for a while, Enju and Kisara came outside. Rentaro accompanied the girls, walking streets wet with rain. Following the shining GPS dot sent from Shoma’s cell phone, they headed toward the place supposedly secured for them to spend the night. When he finally raised his face, Rentaro found a ruin standing in the middle of a thick forest. It was called Century Heights Hotel.

“Is this the place, Rentaro?” Enju asked him.

“Yeah… At least, it’s supposed to be,” he replied.

“I don’t like it. It’s kind of creepy,” said Kisara.

Rentaro couldn’t help but agree with Kisara’s opinion. He lifted the flashlight and shined it on the unfinished woodwork of the building; the place looked like a haunted house.

There was ivy growing over the edifices, and the place looked like it had sports facilities, including a pool and tennis court. It looked like it was trying to be an all-in-one leisure facility, but that resulted in an air that smacked of identity confusion. Picking up a pamphlet that had fallen on the ground, he was surprised to find that one could even hold weddings here, once upon a time.

“This plateau breeze will make your life more sophisticated.” The aesthetic sense of that catchphrase seemed to go beyond a strained laugh and gave him the shivers instead.

Rentaro and the others carefully picked their way through the entrance, where the ceiling had already collapsed.

“Oh, Big Brother. Welcome.” Wearing an apron over her clothes, Tina had a candlestick in one hand and a feather duster in the other and was running toward him noisily. “I cleaned this hotel so that we can live in it.”

Rentaro saw that the dust on the ground had been swept, and the broken glass in the windows had been removed, so it felt quite clean. “Well…even if you say we’re going to live in it, we’re just borrowing it for a few days.”

“Even so, if we have to stay here anyway, doesn’t it make you happier if it’s clean?” Tina’s eyes were sparkling. She looked like a child who had made a secret hideout.

When she led them to a Western-style dining room, they were met with an unexpected warmth. There was a long table with benches and a redbrick fireplace with brightly burning flames. Shoma, Midori, Tamaki, and Yuzuki had been preparing a meal and were just about to finish. There was a wood-chopping ax on the side, meaning someone had split apart the extra chairs and turned them into firewood.

Thinking about it sensibly, it did not seem to make sense that they would need to use the fireplace in the middle of summer, but after the ashes from the Monolith covered the sky, the temperature dropped suddenly, and to Rentaro, the warmth from the fireplace felt just right.

When preparations for the meal were completed, they didn’t need to be ordered to sit and eat. The stew piled on plates and bowls smelled sweet, and when Rentaro brought it to his mouth hesitantly, his eyes widened in surprise. “This is good…” It was a little salty, but they probably thought that on a battlefield, it was better to have strong-tasting foods. It was hard to believe that these were made from canned rations and ready-made food packages.

“Hah, how about it? What do you think of me now?” It was Tamaki, who sounded proud as he rubbed his nose.

“You made this?” Rentaro asked.

Yuzuki answered, challenging but triumphant. “My big brother’s the chef at home. A perv like you couldn’t even come close to his skill.”

Rentaro crossed his arms. This was exactly what was meant by “You can’t judge a book by its cover.” He felt the call of rivalry stir at the idea of another cook.

Once the meal was devoured, they were filled with a languid satisfaction. It wasn’t that there was a lot of food. In fact, since their storehouse had burned down in yesterday’s fighting, the amount of food they’d been given wasn’t enough to match the needs of all the civil officers who were left. If operations in Tokyo Area hadn’t been frozen, they’d have promptly received relief supplies, but right now, those prospects were dim. Even so, the sense of relief they felt that all eight of them had survived the battlefield and were able to share another meal together overrode the physical shortage of food and gave them comfort.

Midori and Tina brought coffee out unstably after the meal, and after that, they all chatted pleasantly. At first glance, it looked peaceful, but Rentaro noticed some awkwardness mixed into their conversation. If he had to say, it felt like they were choosing words in such a way that the critical points of their conversation were not meshing.

But at that moment, Enju’s innocent voice interrupted without sensing the mood. “Rentaro, why did Aldebaran run away?”

“There are rumors flying among the ranks of civil officers,” Rentaro started. “But no one knows the real reason why…”

“Oh, is that so?” Enju made a serious face and crossed her arms. However, she seemed to think of a different question and murmured, “Will the Gastrea attack us again?”

Everyone stopped suddenly and looked down. The light of the candles in the three-pronged brass candlestick flickered ominously. It was the question no one had dared to ask until now.

Everyone had already lost too much. For Rentaro, he had studied how tragic war was time and time again in class. However, what he experienced after actually being thrown into the middle of a battlefield was a hell that destroyed the clichéd view of war he had a hundred times over. That battlefield, filled with screams that made his hair stand on end and dyed red with blood and guts, had opened up the lid to his sealed-off trauma and overlapped with images of the Gastrea War he had seen as a child.

Honestly, Rentaro had avoided taking the initiative to start this conversation. However, if they continued to keep their mouths shut and avert their eyes from reality, it would result in a grave miscalculation of their chance at survival.

When Rentaro looked up, he focused on Enju. “Well, we still have three days. I can’t really say anything for sure.”

In the original scenario of the Monolith’s collapse, the Monolith was predicted to collapse seven days after Aldebaran injected it with Varanium corrosion fluid, and three days later, the replacement Monolith would be completed. However, because the Monolith had collapsed a day early, and they had already started fighting, even after a night had already passed they were still three days away from the arrival of the replacement Monolith. And it would be expecting too much to think that Aldebaran would not come back in the next three days.

“Satomi, wait…” Kisara raised her hand timidly. “About the Spear of Light…”

At those words, everyone’s faces clouded over with disgust. Everyone had had a hard time dealing with it on the battlefield. If Enju hadn’t saved Rentaro in the nick of time, he might not have been able to remain in this world.

“What was that, anyway, Kisara? Was it some sort of laser weapon or something?” That was the conclusion Rentaro had reached after thinking about it for a night.

It was the work of a moment, but the instant anything touched the silver thread that looked like a wire saw, every object in its path seemed to be chopped up in a second.

Kinetic bombardment—if it was like a bullet, tank gun, or particle beam, then it seemed like it would cause even worse damage than just blow things away around it. In the first place, if there were Gastrea that could shoot lasers, they would be an unbelievable threat.

However, Kisara shook her head quietly. “After spending the day helping the medical squad, I saw those who had their limbs cut off by the Spear of Light. All of them had various symptoms like deafness, loss of peripheral vision, and trembling.” Kisara stopped talking for a moment and stared at Rentaro. “Satomi, don’t you realize? These are all symptoms of a disease we learned about in Japanese history—Minamata disease.”

Rentaro put his chin on his hand. If he remembered correctly, Minamata disease was a pollution-induced illness caused by the intake of methyl mercury concentrated in the bodies of seafood. Once he got that far, he stood from his chair without thinking. “Wait a minute, then Kisara, that means…”

Kisara shifted in her chair and looked straight at Rentaro. “Dr. Sumire, who examined the corpses, said the Spear of Light that severed everything was probably compressed mercury.”

“Mercury…” The other members of the adjuvant were also unsettled and couldn’t hide it, murmuring unanimously.

Rentaro continued forward with his calm calculations. If that was the case, then somewhere, there was a Gastrea that could compress mercury inside its body and fire it.

“Big Brother, there is something I would like to report regarding that,” said Tina.

“Tina, don’t tell me you…”

Tina nodded once and released a Bit from her sleeve into the air. It silently floated in the air and circled around their heads. “After we split up, I saw the Spear of Light as I fought. At the time, I immediately shot out Shenfield to capture the Gastrea that fired it, but unfortunately, it was five kilometers away and so my rifle couldn’t reach it.”

“Five kilometers away?!” It fired at their camp from that far away? “What kind of Gastrea was it?” he asked, hoping against hope that she had seen.

However, Tina shook her head hard. “I’m sorry, Big Brother. Because Shenfield puts a large strain on my brain, it doesn’t have the ability to send images. All I know are things like the distance, wind speed, and coordinates. However—” Tina beckoned the patrolling Shenfield to return and held it in both hands, staring hard at it. “It is quite large. It’s about ten meters high; its length and width is also about ten meters. It’s probably a Stage Four.”

That was the thing that wreaked havoc on the civil officer base. They had no hope of winning unless they eliminated it. But how were they supposed to do that…?

Just then, a loud voice called “Excuse me!” from outside the door. When Rentaro stood to look out the window, he saw a man he didn’t know standing outside. “Is there a Leader Satomi here? I have a summons from Commander Gado. Please report immediately to the temporary headquarters.”