CHAPTER 17
B Movies and Unpolished, Uncut Gemstones
First Friday of October
Shiage Hamazura, having quit Skill-Out due to certain circumstances, now did menial labor for a minor organization in Academy City’s underworld called Item. The small team was made up of just four members, but it was apparently a group to be reckoned with nonetheless, and he got the feeling they were receiving a large budget from somewhere.
This particular story began with one of that mysterious organization’s members, Saiai Kinuhata, a girl of about twelve years, asking an offhand question.
“Hamazura, Hamazura,” she said. “Can you get an ID for me like super-mega-fast?”
“I once led over a hundred people in Skill-Out, even if it was just temporarily,” grumbled Hamazura. “Why should I have to do dumb little errands like that…?”
“You’re being super-complainy right now—so, the ID?”
“Damn it. That’s a demand, isn’t it? You’re ordering me to make one. Well, I can throw together a smart card pretty quick, but passports and stuff like that would take a while.”
Hamazura was a criminal through and through. At no point in their conversation did he ever say he couldn’t do it.
Kinuhata waved her small hands to reassure him. “Oh, uh, they don’t have to be, like, super-intricate or anything. I just want to fake my age, so it can just be, like, a high school student ID or something.”
Hamazura was baffled. “What the heck do you want something like that for?”
“It’s for a super extremely important mission,” Kinuhata began, acting like explaining all this was a massive chore. “It’s so I can watch a PG-13 movie coming out next week!!”
And that was how Hamazura’s first job of his second life began.
Watching movies was Saiai Kinuhata’s hobby. She loved movies spanning many different genres and qualities. However, she was only fanatical about the kinds of movies that elicited reactions like I’ve never heard of those or worse, make people say What…is that…?
“Wait, I didn’t know there was a theater around here…?”
“It’s only B grade this time. And if you want B movies, this is totally the place to go. If you want to go all the way to C movies, though, you have to go even deeper.”
“Ehhh…,” groaned Hamazura.
They veered off a main road onto a smaller one, then onto a lane that branched out from that, then found a building that looked like one of those multipurpose structures, except squashed down from above.
The theater was buried in a very densely populated area; even satellites would have had a tough time spotting anything. Apparently, this was a location known only to Kinuhata. It was, of course, a theater specializing in movies that only aired in a single location—a unique place where the clientele was assaulted by obscure works that would never see the light of day ever again after this airing. A facility of indie terror that would put amateurs into a coma.
Kinuhata put her hands on her hips, then exhaled. She seemed to be psyching herself up. “We have the ID now, but there’s one more thing I want in order to touch up my appearance. If we both show the same IDs together, we’ll totally be able to fool the ticket lady.”
After one thing or another, they managed to slip past the intelligent-looking librarian-type ticket lady’s cautious gaze and infiltrated the theater. They proceeded down the dirty hallways, which made the place look like a mansion in a horror game, then opened a pair of double doors to step into the screening room beyond.
The building was small to begin with, but the screening room was even tinier. It was like a school auditorium, only bigger, and even the multilevel seating somewhat resembled a university lecture room, the kind you’d see on TV.
But there was something odder than that.
“…Hey. This movie opens today, and you can’t see it anywhere in Japan except for here, right? How is this place completely empty fifteen minutes before it starts?”
“Ahhhn! ?”
When he got some weird heavy breathing in response to his question, Hamazura turned a blank face on his companion. The girl looked like she was about to swoon—her legs were wobbling, and both her hands were pressed to her cheeks.
“I’m the only one on opening day for a movie you can only see right here. That means I’m the only one who understands how super-wonderful this work will be!! Yes, I know, it’s all an illusion. But right here, in this moment alone, I will be the only one experiencing what the honored director wants to convey with his film!!”
The airhead seemed to have gone off on her own weird journey by herself, so Hamazura left her there for a minute to buy some popcorn. When he came back to the seats in the very middle of the theater, Kinuhata looked at his popcorn and laughed down her nose at him.
“Heh. I thought you would have understood what a folly caramel popcorn is—it’ll make your throat super-dry in the middle of the movie. You really don’t get it, do you, Hamazura?”
“Then quit reaching in and scarfing down even more than me. Look, I got drinks, too.”
“Oh, you think that will be enough? Out of all the things, you chose a large carbonated drink. What are you going to do when you have to go to the bathroom in the middle of the movie? Hamazura, you really are a total Hamazura after all, I suppose.”
“Says the one holding her carbonated drink tight while swinging her legs around under her seat…”
In the meantime, the lights in the theater dimmed. There was a soft electric hum, and then the screen lit up. Ordinary movies usually started with a stream of around ten minutes of previews from the distribution company, but this feature film started right away. It was like they were so strapped—for various things—that they couldn’t even introduce any other movies.
As he glanced at the title card that came up, which looked like paper someone had cut up and pasted directly onto the film—in the era of full digital movies, no less!—Hamazura asked lamely, “Hey, uh…”
“What is it, Hamazura, that is so important that you interrupt me during what is totally the greatest moment of my life?”
“…Thirty seconds in, and the screen is already filled with frenzied zombies who literally just have their faces painted blue-green. How am I supposed to react to this?”
“You totally don’t understand how to enjoy B movies, do you?” said Kinuhata back. As she helped herself to the popcorn without asking, she prefaced that usually talking was banned inside movie theaters, but she’d make an exception. “Listen here. All B movies look super-shabby. These are people with no money or manpower desperate to make something. There might be a few exceptions, but there’s really no surefire way to make them look impressive.”
“Then why would they bother cramming so many economy-class seats in a tiny movie theater? Wouldn’t it be better to see the huge Hollywood hits in one of the really big theaters?”
“Do you really think so? It might come as a surprise, but the movies everyone calls B and C are more likely to be diamonds in the rough and can surprisingly stick with you longer than the big hits that come out every month and constantly break records over and over. Even while you’re complaining about how totally stupid one of these movies is, the next thing you know, you’re super-engaged.”
“Right… I don’t really get it.”
Hamazura sighed. As he thought, it didn’t help at all asking someone why something was interesting when they enjoyed it from the get-go. It felt like someone was explaining, at length, what was so great about a band he wasn’t that into.
B and C movies are diamonds in the rough compared to most big works, eh…?
Maybe that was something these movies and people had in common, he mused to himself.
The world was filled with people of all sorts of different talents. How many of them were given a chance to properly express those abilities, though? How many unused abilities had been buried, unbeknownst even to their owners who lacked the massive budgets, capable mentors, and the equipment and facilities needed to make full use of them?
Shiage Hamazura, for example, had received a Level Zero rating, but that could have just been an issue with how the teachers were nurturing his talents. Saiai Kinuhata, for example, might have had an ability she could healthily express if she went somewhere that had more sunlight. Academy City only had seven Level Five espers in it—but was that really all? The world outside the city was big. There could be an eighth or a ninth, their talents lying dormant and undiscovered, working as street-side flower vendors or something.
When he thought about it like that, it started to make a little more sense how this magnum-wielding detective shooting away at the green zombies on this tiny little theater screen really did represent a challenge to how much inequality existed in the world. Maybe he was simply declaring that even if he’d been denied the place and destiny to fully exercise his own talents, he was still enjoying his life more than anyone else on this planet?
“……”
The information from the screen transformed into a sprawling scene in Hamazura’s mind.
He did feel like those sorts of revelations changed the way he viewed works like this. Rather than a depressing sense of sympathy, it was more like an odd understanding. What was there right now wasn’t entirely interesting, but it did let him think it would get more interesting as it went along. It was a strange feeling: not quite trust, not quite excitement. Just an uninterrupted desire to follow this director’s future works.
Was this what drew Kinuhata to these movies?
He gave her a casual, sidelong glance. She didn’t notice how his gaze rested on her face, which was illuminated by the reflection from the screen. Her expression was solemn in a way, single-mindedly homed in on the screen.
And then, she abruptly opened her mouth and said:
“Ugh. This is super-boring.”
A moment later, with a wham, Hamazura fell out of his chair headfirst, spilling the caramel popcorn all over the floor.
“Wha—heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey !! You’re the one who forced me to forge you an ID and dragged me here to watch this film no one’s even heard of before!! You’re the one who was in the lead, waving her movie-loving flag around—at least pretend to be enjoying this!!”
“That’s strange. When I read the pamphlet, it seemed like it would be super-interesting. But about ten minutes in, I realized it hadn’t really grabbed me. I suppose you have to see movies in person to really know for sure. How very profound…”
“Whoa, hang on a second. What the hell was that weird sense of understanding and a willingness to identify with B movies that was beginning to sprout inside me?!”
“What are you talking about? There’s no way a shitty movie like this could ever teach you anything. And besides, I highly doubt you have any idea how to properly enjoy B movies yet.”
“…?!” Feeling like she’d pulled one over on him, the doorway to movies in Hamazura’s heart slammed shut.
As if intent on running down a fleeing enemy, Kinuhata yawned and said, “Well, the heroine is totally going to die in about twenty minutes. The whole staff has been dropping hints for a while now that they really want to kill her off already.”
“Wow, you’re not even slightly invested!! Y-you know what, no! I say she won’t die!! That heroine is going to survive the zombie apocalypse and witness the dawn of a new day together with the protagonist!”
“Wanna bet? I’ll bet a stick of gum she totally dies.”
“She won’t die!! As a matter of fact, I’m practically obsessed with this tight-lipped, brave heroine!!”
Right after he said that, the screen showed the single female member of the team getting killed and eaten. It wasn’t instant death, but her skin rapidly lost its color, and she was wearing an expression that just begged for a background of flower petals scattering in the wind.
Hamazura held his head in his hands.
“Yes, the gum’s mine!” Kinuhata said resolutely, her voice reverberating through the theater.
When going to a movie, always go with someone who will stay until the credits roll.
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