The day was heating up fast. Summer in the prefecture frequently had temperatures going into the low thirties, and Saikawa wasn't sure this one was going to stop there. The mere act of emerging from the elevator had sweat beading on her arms, and she briefly considered proposing a stay-in playdate to Kanna. They could go back to the apartment and have a few rounds of Twister. Saikawa had gifted a deluxe version -- randomized, computer-spoken movement instructions -- to Kanna, because it was the same one they played when the beautiful girl was visiting her house. There was a lot of fun in getting tangled up with Kanna, to the point where it really wasn't about how who won or lost: it was how they crashed to the mat together at the end of the game.
She thought about suggesting it. And then she remembered that there was a boy with them. There was no fun in touching a boy, much less having one fall on you. He probably had really bony knees.
Boys ruined everything.
(Except for Shouta. But he'd sort of come pre-ruined. Miss Koyabashi blamed Miss Lucoa for that, and wouldn't go into details.)
Saikawa took a personal moment for fuming, then glanced at Kanna. The white-haired girl wasn't sweating. She hardly ever did, at least when it came to heat. Exertion, yes: if Kanna ran herself ragged -- which could take a lot -- then sweat would fall. But summer wasn't enough to do it.
It probably had something to do with Russian genes. There were supposed to be parts of that country which were extremely cold and if you could develop a resistance to one end of the scale, then maybe the other side just came with it.
The boy wasn't sweating either, but that made sense. Samoa was in the tropics.
He was standing just outside the elevator doors, and he was -- looking at things.
No. He was staring. Looking at the buildings, the roads, the people using the sidewalk on the other side of the street, and doing so with his mouth slightly agape and the too-long incisors on full display. Seemingly regarding just about every perfectly ordinary thing as if he'd never seen anything like it before in his life.
Maybe he lives in a hut. There had to be some Samoans who still used huts, much like there were people who lived in shrines. However, both conditions presumed that you got to go outside once in a while.
A man rode by on a bicycle. Emerald eyes watched the pedals and gears with open fascination.
"Where are we going?" Saikawa asked. In the early days of their relationship, she'd pretended to be doing Kanna a favor by letting the foreigner come along with her, but the true dynamics had sorted themselves out in a hurry. Kanna had pursued some fairly odd interests, and staying close to her had found Saikawa doing some really stupid things.
At least we probably won't be looking for ghosts this time.
Or aliens.
Of course, compared to the boy, that was probably an improvement.
There was a risk in going out to look for strangeness in Kanna's company. Like the near-constant shiver of nerves which said that you were on the verge of finding it. The little whisper in the back of the brain which said there was strangeness in the world, hiding in the closet or camped out next to the warmth of the kotatsu.
The monsters in the shadows. Waiting for you to look away. Or -- to almost look. To see things from exactly the wrong angle --
-- her eyes are beautiful.
Which didn't change what Saikawa had seen --
"I wanted to show Spike around the city," Kanna softly said. "His home isn't like this. Shopping arcade first. But we'll take the long way. Cross the river."
"The river," the taller girl carefully repeated.
"It's a better walk. He'll see more."
Maybe it'll be there again.
It had been there the first time. She knew that. No one believed her, but --
-- maybe it would be there.
Maybe it would come to the surface. She had her own phone this time. Her own camera. During the first sighting, Kanna had gotten in the way, but...
Saikawa wanted to find it again. But she didn't like going to the river any more.
Maybe it'll try to eat me.
Not by herself.
"The river," Saikawa said for the second time. "Fine." She knew the way, and thin legs pushed towards the proper street corner before their owner could change her mind.
She got ahead of the other two, found herself waiting for the light to change. The road was currently empty, but the safe thing to do was waiting to cross. Patiently watching the glow of the stoplights, because that was better than thinking about what had been in the river.
Kanna caught up. There were still no cars, but -- they knew to wait.
The boy reached them, strode directly past both girls, stepped into the street, got halfway into his next stride, and that was when a salaryman who was probably horribly late for his childhood decided to make up some time by gunning his big car across the intersection.
Most of what Saikawa would remember afterwards was the horn. The angry blare of sound, and she instantly decided it had been rude. But the rest was the outstretching of arms, both she and Kanna reaching forward, Saikawa had to reach out because she didn't hate the boy that much and they weren't close enough --
-- the sideview mirror on the SUV came within centimeters of the boy's chin. The car barreled around the corner, horn still blaring, and then Kanna managed to grab the boy's arm. The smaller girl yanked, and the boy was nearly vaulted back to the curb.
"Not on yellow," Kanna's soft voice instructed. "Some drivers do stupid things on yellow. Our side red, the other side blue. Then cross. Understand?"
The boy managed a rather uncertain nod. Lifted his right foot, shook it from side to side.
"You're all right?" Kanna checked.
"...yes," the boy said. "I'm not hurt." The foot shook again.
Saikawa instinctively looked down.
The shoe over the left foot was fine. Not the best fit, and fairly cheap for a walking sneaker, but there was nothing particularly wrong with it. The black-stained upper rounding over the toes of the right no longer existed. The dome had completely collapsed --
-- toes presumably wriggled. Portions of the lost curve tried to pop back into existence, and almost made it.
Maybe it was only the edge of the tire.
Maybe he had his toes curled back. Like he did with his fingers before.
Maybe the car was going so fast that it didn't have time for the weight to rest on anything.
Maybe his shoe was always like that.
"Cross when we do," Kanna evenly ordered. "Not before."
The boy nodded. The light changed, and Saikawa automatically reached for Kanna's hand --
-- the beautiful girl had moved away from her. Just enough to stand directly next to the boy.
To hold his hand.
She wanted Kanna to let go. She wanted to push them apart. To do anything which would make them stop touching and just for a moment, she began to feel as if Ilulu and Miss Tohru had a point --
"I'll walk him across," Kanna said. "Until he gets used to things."
And then they crossed together.
Saikawa remained on the corner. Fuming.
...well, at least they'd waited for her on the other side. Kanna had eventually glanced back, and that had let the beautiful girl discover that Saikawa had been steaming in place long enough for the light to change again.
They were taking the twisty path: the one which went through some of the less densely-populated areas. There were homes around, but just about no businesses. The best anyone could hope for was a well-placed vending machine alcove, because the yatais weren't going to show up until they got a lot closer to the river.
A food cart would have been welcome. A cluster of jihanki might offer a better automated selection, and Saikawa didn't care as long as either one appeared before they reached the shopping arcade. The other two might not be sweating, but she was going to need a drink.
There's public fountains along the riverwalk.
But that would mean going down to the river.
They kept walking. Saikawa made two ill-timed attempts at taking Kanna's hand, and found herself Spike-blocked.
The Samoan kept looking around. At houses, architectural styles, children playing, as if he was seeing it all for the first time. He was also staring at each passing car as if daring every last one of them to just try and make a move.
Stupid boy.
It had to be a foreigner thing. Maybe he was one of those people who thought that stoplights needed to end with green.
A small beetle flew by: red with black spots. Kanna's beautiful eyes tracked it. She was endlessly fascinated by insects. Which was really more of a boy thing, but -- quirky.
"Ten..." the boy uncertainly voiced. "Tent..."
"Tentōchū," Kanna softly told him.
"Ladybug," he managed on the third attempt.
"You have them? Where you live?" asked the white-haired girl.
"Yes. They're little a b --" hesitated "-- a little bigger."
"Or maybe you're taller," Kanna quietly proposed.
He laughed. Quick and bright, if somewhat nasal.
The pair mutually quickened their step. Putting some distance between themselves and Saikawa, who didn't know whether to fume or worry. She wasn't sure it was possible to do both at the same time. But Kanna was pulling away, walking with the boy, and they were speaking a little more quietly now. As if they were trying to keep from being overheard.
Saikawa tried to accelerate, making her walking pace as fast as it could be without turning into a full run. Strained her ears, because a pre-Kanna lifetime suggested that any kids who were trying to talk outside of her hearing were probably laughing at her --
"-- do you balance?" the boy half-whispered. His buttocks seemed to be twitching. "I feel like I'm going to fall over --"
"You get used to it," Kanna said.
"When?"
"Eventually." Paused. "That's how they move. It's not walking. It's falling forward. They just don't hit."
Which was when Kanna heard Saiwaka trying to catch up. Turned to face the taller girl, and the tone changed.
"You're hot," she said. "We'll find drinks."
Good
"Spike's never had Ramune," Kanna added. "We should find some."
Saikawa briefly tried to reconcile the refreshment deprivation equivalent of living without oxygen.
"What's --" the boy began.
"Soda," Kanna explained. "You'll like it."
I hope you choke on the marble.
A stray thought. It wasn't as if it had meant anything. The marble was in the bottle to keep the carbonation from getting out. You couldn't swallow it. Extracting enough of the things to create a playset was enough of a challenge.
It was also the sort of thing which normally would have come free-flowing out of her mouth in the presence of someone she didn't like, but -- Kanna was right there.
She wanted Kanna to be at least that close for the rest of her life. The boy was the problem.
And then they were at the edge of the river.
Well -- one of them.
The city had a couple of rivers, to go with what was just about direct proximity to the ocean. However, the closest beaches weren't very good. The best of them had some decent sand, all of which existed on a narrow strip of land which jutted a short distance across the water. It had a practical occupancy limit of about sixty, and mostly offered a stunning view of where the offshore wind farm was eventually going to be. Any really nice beach required a train ride. The local water parks were just easier.
The primary river was much more simple to reach. There was a walking path next to the left bank. Travelers would find benches to rest on, drinking fountains, and if you walked for enough time, you would find the place where it met the other river. Saikawa had once taken the hike with Kanna, bringing along a borrowed phone in order to get a picture of the confluence.
That had been the intent. A shot of the merge point, with the two of them next to it. Just to show that they'd managed to go that far together.
But now Saikawa had her own phone.
She paused at the base of the bridge. Looked down at the water, which was simultaneously too far below and not far enough away. She'd seen what was in it. Being on the bridge didn't matter. Not if it wanted to come up.
She didn't cross the bridge as much as she once had. There were times when she went out of her way to avoid it. Some weeks found her going back over and over, because she'd tried to talk her parents out of even driving over it and -- they hadn't listened.
A picture would be proof. Protecting everyone was worth the fear. The risk.
She took the rectangle out, made sure it had power, and fumbled with the icons for a few seconds. It wasn't the same model as her sister's, and she wasn't used to the setup yet. She had to be properly prepared.
Proper preparation had required stopping, and it only took Kanna six extra steps before the smaller girl noticed.
The white-haired vision paused. Softly asked the boy to wait, then walked back to Saikawa.
"Cee-Gee," Kanna said.
"It's my phone," Saikawa huffed. This was the truth. It was absolutely her phone. Her parents had given it to her and when someone gave you a gift, that thing was yours. As additional proof, it was keyed to her fingerprint. And, because she hadn't spent all that much time with the photo controls, had just captured a somewhat-smudged image of her fingers.
"Just CG," Kanna repeated. "It won't be there. They're gone."
Who's gone?
She tried not to fight with Kanna. Truly fighting might make Kanna cry, and... Saikawa only had a single lifetime in which to atone. Even an immortal one was eventually going to get crowded.
Saikawa didn't fight with the one she loved. Putting her foot down clearly didn't count.
"It's my phone," she said. "Maybe I just want to get a picture of the river. For your friend to have. I can send it to his number. Unless he doesn't have a phone either."
"He doesn't --"
"-- so we'll find a printer in the arcade." The words were nearly spat. "It's my phone, Kanna. I want to take a picture --"
The white-haired girl tilted her head slightly to the right. Back to center again, and the blue eyes were... sad.
"-- okay," Kanna softly told. "Okay. But there won't be anything. There never was."
"The river is real." Because that was how Saikawa had started to reconcile it. The river was real. The path. The air above it.
If the setting was real, then so was everything else.
Kanna turned back towards the boy, took two steps. Stopped, and spoke to that air.
"Don't fall behind, Saikawa," she asked. "Don't be scared. We'll cross together. There's nothing to be afraid of. It wasn't real."
Her beloved's words tended to be soft. Emotions were understated. Sincere, fully present, but -- muted.
It didn't hide the tinge of desperation.
They crossed together. It was almost possible to pretend that the boy wasn't there. And perhaps there was a moment during the passage when Kanna might have reached for her hand, but -- Saikawa was otherwise occupied. Pointing the lens at the water, ready to take the picture at any instant. At the first hint of what lurked within.
She caught the boy looking at her a few times as they crossed. She didn't care. The river was more important. Getting proof.
But there was nothing there.
Not on that day.
There had been another.
It was supposed to be a date.
Not that Kanna had probably seen it that way. But Saikawa knew the truth of it. Take the riverwalk to the confluence point? That was something which older kids did. And adults. There were a lot of adults who enjoyed the walk. Most of them were seniors, and that was why Saikawa absolutely could not propose a tickle fight within the shadows of the bridges. Laughter drew attention, nearly all of the seniors had phones, the phones came with cameras, and adults took things the wrong way.
Big kids took the full hike. Teenagers. And when it came to things which Saikawa and Kanna could do together, any kind of date was an early start. It was just a matter of reaching the point where the rivers met, then using her sister's borrowed phone to get a picture of the proof. That they'd come that far, that they were capable of going that far, and -- in time, they would go even further. Together.
Maybe they would even leave the prefecture. Saikawa didn't have to live in Oborozuka for her whole life, and -- Kanna hadn't been born there to start with. They could go to Ushishir Island together. Saikawa wasn't sure how that could be done, as there didn't seem to be any direct flights. But there had to be a way. Maybe it was a boat hire.
Maybe that was a place where people didn't give you funny looks when you talked about getting married when you grew up. There had to be somewhere in the world which accepted that. And it would hurt to leave her parents and culture and home behind, but -- they would be looking together.
It would be strange out there. Saikawa knew that, and also realized that the foreign films had given her only the smallest hint of that strangeness. But she'd spent a lot of time at the Kobayashi household. You got used to foreigners after a while.
But that was for the future, a soon-to-come stop on the endless road of an immortal life. Not so long to wait. On that beautiful sunny day, they'd been moving along the riverwalk, and Saikawa had been perfectly content with that. It was something she was doing with Kanna. That made it good.
And then she'd learned just how much strangeness existed in her own home, at the moment when the giant river serpent had erupted from the water.
How had she not seen it before the moment of emergence? That much was easy to explain: she'd been with Kanna. If she was going to look at anything, there was a perfectly suitable (and perfect) subject for her attention right there. But once the serpent had reared itself up...
How large had it been? She still wasn't sure she'd seen the whole thing. What had come out of the water, rearing itself up along undulating curves to seek out the sky, had been at least a hundred meters long. The scales had been blue, and a ridge of green spines ran down the center of its back. Hues which, in many ways, matched the river itself. It might not have been possible to make out the form while it was still within the water -- with one exception: the horn at the center of the forehead. Two meters, twisted and brown.
It had almost exploded from the water. Tossed itself about, sending liquid everywhere. And...
...there were apartment buildings on the opposite bank. A bridge nearby, with cars crossing. Had no one seen? Did adults ever truly see anything?
Saiwaka had expended the first few seconds of direct vision in reeling. Trying to reconcile what was in front of her, fighting back the fear as the monstrous serpent tossed and thrashed and seemed to play with the very air.
And then she'd remembered that she had her sister's phone.
She'd gone directly for it. Fumbled somewhat in getting it out of the bag, but she'd managed to get it turned on and placed in camera mode, aimed directly for the serpent --
-- and Kanna had gotten in the way.
Stayed in the way.
It had been something of a distraction.
Saikawa had persisted. Leaned left, darted right, tried to get Cute out of her lens so she could have a clear shot at Monster. Kanna had matched everything.
Then there had been a huge splash.
And the monster had been gone.
"CG."
That was Kanna's explanation for it. Computer-generated. They'd walked into a filming site during a shoot. Nothing more.
Saikawa had a word to counter that. She'd just never spoken it to Kanna because she tried to avoid those fights. And even so, the proper response would have been 'Detarame'.
(You couldn't say it front of adults, at least not with certain intonations. Spitting the term took it out of the 'nonsense' definition in a hurry.)
But she wanted to believe Kanna. Saikawa needed to trust her.
And she lived in Japan. Ushishir Island had a population very close to zero, which suggested some bad things about the local download rates. Saikawa's house was fully set up for wifi.
She'd dropped the subject, waiting to reach a computer. (It was a borrowed phone, and she was nowhere close to mastering typing on the screen.) But it had taken some time to get home. Kanna had asked to use the phone, made a call, they'd had to get all the way back to where they'd come in, it had been a long walk, and -- when they'd exited the riverwalk, Miss Lucoa had been at the top of the staircase. Waiting.
Shouta's older sister was normally -- 'carefree' was fair. (Miss Kobayashi was occasionally caught muttering 'irresponsible' under her breath.) 'Completely unconcerned with how much skin she's showing' was just about full-time. But on that day, she'd looked... worried. Her eyes (one green, one amber) had been half-shut from stress, and her hands kept going behind her back. Fingers wringing against each other.
She'd asked to speak with Kanna. Alone. They'd walked a short distance to gain isolation and in doing so, hadn't truly accounted for Saikawa's hearing.
Not that she'd caught most of it, and the majority of what she registered didn't make any sense. There had been something about "I would have needed to be here within ten minutes, Kanna," and "only so much time before it sets. It's -- too late."
The beautiful girl had lowered her head. White strands fell in front of perfect features, and...
...Saikawa had heard the soft sounds of crying.
She hated it when Kanna cried.
Miss Lucoa had carefully knelt down, gently rubbed at Kanna's shoulders. Said something about "can't do it too often." Kanna must have replied, because the next word had been "memory."
Indistinct syllables had flowed for a while. Volume had dropped. Miss Elma's name had been invoked twice, with open anger. And finally, with the increased decibels of careful insistence, "The more I use it, the stronger the chance that something -- slips. It's still underneath. All of the originals. Lurking. If we keep pushing..."
Kanna had said "CG" a few times. Almost sobbed it. Miss Lucoa had carefully hugged her, wiped the blue eyes. And once the white-haired girl was composed again, Shouta's older sister had taken them to their respective homes.
Saikawa had gone directly for the bathroom and, with true privacy gained at last, threw up.
The next five hours had been spent online. It was easier than sleeping.
She wanted to believe Kanna. So she'd tried to find a way in which Kanna's answer was the right one.
It didn't exist.
Computer-generated image? So where was the screen? Saikawa had seen holograms, during trips into Tokyo with her parents: the best advertisements liked to use them. But you had to project them: from or onto. Ideally, both.
A hologram rig tended to be noticeable. Saikawa had learned that there was one which could work underwater, but it was huge and incredibly expensive. And if the results could reach the air, then where was the screen? The sun hadn't been reflecting off glass or plastic. If it was just an advertisement, then what was the product? Also, exactly how did a hologram make water splash?
...all right. Abandon CGI entirely, because the articles Saikawa had been reading said the best place to put that kind of image together was the computer. You could create a serpent, but the best way to film it against the background of the river was to get a capture of the river and do the compositing inside the program. (The exact vocabulary involved was making her head swim, but she felt herself to be getting the basics.) Let's say this was practical effects. Someone built an artificial giant river serpent and somehow made it look so alive that the fake muscles rippled under simulated skin.
So who's doing the filming?
Okay, television always needed monsters for the heroes to fight. But to feel that any show would go that far required belief in something more impossible than a giant river serpent: namely, a sentai series with a budget. And if it had been a full-scale monster movie...
The articles said it was all the same laws. The studio had to get a permit from the city. Notices had to be posted in public view. People needed to be told that they might be filmed, because that gave them the option of leaving the area. There had been no notices, the city didn't have any record of a shoot in the district...
So maybe it was an amateur production. Running outlaw, filming without official notice. Which had somehow managed to construct... that. And where had the cameras been? The sound pickup, the operators? You couldn't hide all of it!
Or maybe it had been a monstrous river serpent.
...no.
That was exactly what it had been.
Kanna had lied to her.
...maybe she hadn't known she was lying. She'd decided it was CG -- so for her, that was what it had to be.
Maybe that was just the kind of lie which Kanna needed to tell herself in order to sleep without fear, and Miss Lucoa had been trying to calm her down.
Or maybe... maybe Kanna had known exactly what it was. And she'd been trying to protect Saikawa.
The last was what Saikawa had wanted to believe. So she'd let Kanna repeat the lie. Never challenging it too strenuously, avoiding the true fight. But she kept looking at the river. Avoided it when she could, hoped to get pictures whenever she couldn't.
Saikawa knew what she had seen.
She didn't talk about the giant serpent with Kanna, and Kanna didn't want her to think about it. Maybe that was just because she wanted Saikawa to sleep.
It didn't change what she'd witnessed. There were monsters in the world. She'd seen one.
And in a way, the strangest part had been seeing it... directly.
There were things which Saikawa thought she saw, and it had started shortly after Kanna had entered her life. A little past the first time Miss Lucoa had taken Saikawa aside for a private talk.
(What had Shouta's sister said?)
(She didn't remember...)
Always out of the corner of her eye.
....Kanna's eyes were beautiful.