Beatless: Volume 2

  Phase9「Answer for Survive」

  He didn’t feel regret. He knew his own limits, and he knew the place was, relatively speaking, calm.

  The life he had lived up to that point was about to end, but there he sat, just killing time. As he listened in the darkness to the sounds of his family moving around, feelings of helplessness welled up within him. He was even struck by the sudden impulse to run to them for help. But instead he sat there, staring at the dark ceiling.

  He knew his worries were irrational. But if everyone in the world had been able to throw away their own doubts and stretch out their hands to others, trusting in them, the world would not have turned out the way it had.

  If humanity was divided between those who looked at the sunset and saw the beauty of the fading light, and those who saw it and feared the coming night, he would fall in the latter group. It was thanks to his own pessimism that he had ended up where he had. But he was sure half the world felt the same as he did.

  ***

  No matter how much everything else had changed, Arato was still a high school student. So every day, he went to school. Kengo was always there in the classroom, too. After becoming Methode’s owner, Ryo Kaidai didn’t come to school as often, but sometimes he was there, too. Their paths had divided, but they still studied and did club activities. To Arato, the fact that there was still one thing they all had in common made things better, somehow.

  “Morning, Endo,” said one of the nearby girls, greeting him when he walked into the classroom. Ever since things had gotten weird between him and Ryo, he and Kengo had grown more popular among their classmates. Ryo had a large presence, and Arato doubted the fickle nature of personal relationships in high school would change no matter how many decades went by.

  That much change he could get used to, though, and he was all ready to continue living out a normal high school life. But, that day, Arato saw a face he’d never expected to see waiting for him in his first-hour homeroom class: it was a brown-skinned girl with platinum blonde hair, whose party he had attended not too long ago. Today she was dressed in a normal high school uniform, completely unlike the night of the party.

  When she addressed the class, she puffed out her chest and looked down at them with her normal queenly air. “I’m Erika Burroughs,” she introduced herself.

  A shock ran through the classroom as everyone realized they were in the presence of a celebrity, one whom everyone had heard about on TV.

  When things get too normal, people start to hunger for something exciting to break through the tedium, so it wasn’t long before she was the talk of the whole school. Videos of Erika started showing up on the local net, which was run by the students, in huge amounts. During breaks, not only students from their class, but also students from completely different classes, would show up and flock to her seat. Students even lined up in the hallway just to get a look at her.

  “Some of those vids are going to start leaking out into the public internet soon,” Kengo said. With how crazy things were getting at school, it was only natural that Kengo would take notice as well.

  “I had no idea she was this famous,” Arato said.

  “Watch the news, will you?” Kengo grumped. “Last year, they were talking about her constantly. I mean, this is the very first person to be brought out of cryo-sleep that we’re talking about. She’d been sleeping since the start of the 21st century.”

  “Well yeah, but she was still just a normal person who got frozen,” Arato protested. “Beyond that, what else is there to her?” Ever since Erika had started coming to school, the students had all been acting as though every day was a festival.

  Kengo stayed in his seat, but shifted his gaze to the knot of students around Erika. “I guess there’s an element of fantasy to it,” he mused. “A person from the previous century is almost like a person from a completely different world. Plus, she’s from the Burroughs family. They’re crazy rich, with all kinds of companies in their name.”

  “Well yeah,” Arato said. “But Ryo’s family is crazy rich too, right?”

  Kengo dropped his voice lower. “Yeah, but they say she’s got even more money than the Kaidais,” he murmured. “Plus, everyone else in the Burroughs family... well, they didn’t make it through the Hazard. All that’s left of the Burroughs is their lone heir and the massive amounts of wealth she inherited.”

  Arato made a sympathetic noise when he realized what Kengo meant by ‘didn’t make it.’ So, Erika was an orphan? Images of the Burroughs mansion, where the party had been held, floated up in his mind. The gates and furnishings of the place were from a different age; everything preserved in the state it had been in when Erika was frozen in the early 21st century.

  “How can everyone smile like that around her, then?” Arato asked. “Her life is a tragedy.”

  “The news put a pretty good spin on it,” Kengo said, shooting another glance at the crowd. “Turned her into a modern Sleeping Beauty.”

  Arato followed his eyes and unexpectedly found himself meeting the gaze of Erika herself.

  “Well, what a pleasant surprise,” she said, standing elegantly and walking over to his desk. “It appears we are in the same class.” Wrapped in a school uniform, her already sickly-thin body looked even more delicate.

  Suddenly, all eyes in the class were on Arato, who was just an ordinary high school student, and the pressure of all those gazes made him freeze up. Fear quickly swallowed any of the normal happiness or embarrassment that he might have felt from being the center of attention.

  Meanwhile, Erika bathed in the attention as she greeted Arato politely and then passed him by.

  It was as if a giant monster had brushed by him. Not Erika herself, of course, but the massive pressure of the students’ gazes that followed her. For a moment he pictured how it would be if Lacia and the other hIEs’ fight went public, and Arato’s breath caught in his throat.

  If his classmates ever found out about what was happening with Lacia and her ‘sisters’, they would treat Arato even worse than they were treating Ryo, he was sure. The thought of all those staring eyes and raw emotions being pointed at him made him shiver. But Arato also remembered watching Lacia act as a model; he knew that, as horrible as the staring eyes of a crowd could be sometimes, they were also a window into the reality of the giant system known as human society.

  Without thinking it through, Arato called out to Erika as she went to leave the class. “Where’s your hIE at?” he asked. He was sure that Erika had shown up at the school as part of her battle plan, so Mariage should have been there with her.

  Erika looked back at him. “My hIE is in the waiting room,” she said. “If I had her accompany me to class, how would I ever get any studying done?”

  The classroom should have been a safe place for Arato, but at that moment he was feeling the same goosebumps he had on the night of the party. He looked around for Ryo, who should have been nearby, but Ryo was nowhere to be found.

  Erika tilted her head in consternation. Knowing her real background just made her seem like even more of a stranger in that time and place. “It’s unfortunate Ryo Kaidai doesn’t appear to be here,” she remarked. “I was hoping to speak to him a little more.”

  After Erika showed up, the whole school went through an antique phase. Aside from their modern terminal pads, students wanted their bags and accessories to match the 21st-century ones Erika brought to school. To Arato, it seemed like Erika was actually enjoying her high school life; she showed up every single morning and attended all of her classes. She even ate lunch together with her classmates.

  Arato pushed his desk over next to Kengo’s and munched on a sandwich he had bought from the school store. Kengo’s family ran a restaurant, so he had a lunch from h
ome every day.

  “Actually I make my own lunch every day,” Kengo said, seemingly out of nowhere and to nobody in particular.

  “Huh?” Arato had no idea what Kengo was reacting to, so he looked at the hamburger and potato salad in his friend’s lunch. Even the apples, which had been cut to look like little rabbits, did seem to fit Kengo’s personality.

  “I might inherit the restaurant someday,” Kengo explained. “Plus, I make mine and Olga’s together, so it saves some time. Why don’t you have that hIE of yours make your lunches?”

  “I don’t really want everyone knowing about her,” Arato said. “And I don’t want to have to make stuff up when someone asks who made the lunch.” Also, things had been awkward between Arato and Lacia ever since he’d confessed his love for her.

  “You’re creeping me out, man,” Kengo said. “Why the hell are you putting that much thought into this?”

  Arato realized his face was bright red. “Of course I’m taking this seriously,” he said defensively. “I’m terrified.”

  “What? You?” Kengo asked, honestly shocked. “I always thought optimism was one of your strong points.”

  Arato wanted to clutch at his head in despair. Thinking about Lacia made his rational mind go out the window. When he thought about spending the future with her, especially, fear sent shivers up his spine.

  “You really have changed ever since you met that hIE,” Kengo mused.

  “You mean I’ve gotten more mature? I’ll agree, if that’s what you meant,” Arato said. As freaked out as they made him, thoughts of Lacia also made his lips curl up in a natural, dreamy smile. Kengo let out a sigh, as if he couldn’t stand being with Arato when he was like this.

  One of the girls from their class walked over to their joined desks. Behind her, Arato could see Erika, who had returned to her seat, waving her hand. Apparently, the girl who had walked over was excited to have been given an order by the delicate young queen.

  “Um, Erika wants everyone to gather at her desk,” she said. She wasn’t the only one; several other of Erika’s worshipers were happily running her message around the class.

  “May I ask for your company?” Erika inquired, beckoning with a smile. “I am really enjoying going to school,” she said, once she had their attention. “Would you be surprised if I told you I always wanted to try attending school?”

  Several female students had slid their desks over to Erika’s, creating a large island. As expected of the owner of her own company, Erika’s lunch was extravagant. She had even brought along fruits and paper plates to share with everyone.

  Whenever Erika opened her mouth, the girls around her automatically shut their own.

  “Even before I went to sleep, I was always in the hospital, so I was never able to attend school,” she said. “There is nothing quite as interesting as something you believed you would never have, only to get your hands on it at last.”

  As if to protect their Sleeping Beauty from boredom, the seven girls who had gathered their desks around hers began chatting. “I was just saying this, but there’s been a bunch of vids of Mikoto on the net recently,” one of the girls said. “Ever since she got busted during that terrorist attack, there have been all these videos of her doing silly things, or singing songs. But they weren’t there before the attack, right?” The pony-tailed speaker speared a slice of melon and passed the conversation on to the next girl.

  Kengo’s chopsticks stopped moving. He had been there, during that terrorist attack. He had been one of the Antibody Network terrorists committing the attack.

  The girl with the ponytail suddenly looked in their direction. Leaving her fork, she walked over to their desks. “Do you know anything about the videos, Endo? Your dad was involved with that stuff, right? Is he making them?” she asked, too focused on talking to Arato to notice Kengo’s troubled expression.

  Before Arato could answer that he didn’t know anything about it, a girl with a short bob-cut continued the discussion. “So someone’s posting her videos after she got broken? Isn’t that kind of nasty?” she asked.

  “It totally is,” the ponytail girl agreed. “But the vids had tons of views. One of them already had a million last time I looked. Who the heck is watching them?”

  “I mean, you were, right?”

  Without waiting for Arato’s answer the ponytail girl was pulled back into the conversation and returned to her seat. “But isn’t it weird how she got famous like that?” the first girl asked. “I didn’t even know who Mikoto was until I saw the video about her getting destroyed.”

  Erika, setting aside her status as a CEO to be a normal high school girl for the moment, joined in the conversation with obvious interest. “With the popularity of those shocking videos, Mikoto has gotten a brand new character,” she said. “It’s almost as though the Mikoto everyone has come to know as the videos spread is a completely different being. We humans assign identity to things based on how they appear to us.”

  Arato, who hadn’t spoken a word despite being invited into the circle of the conversation, met her gaze.

  Erika tapped at her cup with one finger. It had Hello Kitty on it, and was probably from the 21st century like the rest of her stuff. “For example, imagine you’re a child who dearly wants one of these Hello Kitty cups,” she said. “To someone who wants one of these, it is not merely a cup. It has a special meaning to those who want it, simply because of the character printed on the side. I think the concept that a simple cup like this could become beloved because of its appearance is quite beautiful, personally.”

  The white kitten in her ribbon had worn myriad costumes over the hundred-plus years since her creation, and Arato had to agree that her cute presence indeed made Erika’s cup seem like something special.

  Erika narrowed her eyes in amusement, as if to provoke Arato. As she looked at him, he got the feeling that she was comparing his relationship with Lacia to that of the child who wanted a Hello Kitty cup.

  “I don’t really care where affection comes from,” Arato growled. “My feelings are still important to me.”

  “Oh, of course your affection is important,” Erika replied. “But it’s also easily misdirected. Through the years, we’ve stood mice, ducks, hedgehogs, beagles and all sorts of other animals up on two legs to create characters that everyone would love. Just how many beloved ‘almost human’ icons do you think there have been over the years?”

  Erika rested her chin on her hands, looking dissatisfied with the poor reactions she was getting.

  “I won’t argue that love doesn’t have its place, but you should also realize that it’s a force which can be measured like any other,” she said. “For example, if we go back to what you were just talking about, those videos have set Mikoto up to become a tragic character that people can love. Objects, characters, and machines can easily bear the burden of the identities we project onto them. But a human would crumble, walking the lonely road of living up to others’ interpretations of them.”

  She seemed to be looking for a response, so Arato decided to raise his voice for the others. “Are there many people who do that?” he asked.

  Erika smiled. “I myself became ‘Sleeping Beauty’ without realizing it,” she replied simply, and then took up her Hello Kitty cup in one hand to sip at her warm milk.

  Lacia was continuing her work as an hIE model. Even after everything that had happened, she aggressively attended studios and location shoots that could have been dangerous. Arato got the feeling that she prioritized her modeling work over the fight in which they were caught up.

  Lacia was doing a studio shoot that day, which was something Arato was finally getting used to. It was actually a competition with human models in the mix, so the number of staff on location was larger than normal. Lacia’s popularity had grown steadily, and had spread enough by this time that she was being given jobs from major advertising media clients.

  “Why do you look so gloomy?” a voice asked Arato. “I’d say it went really w
ell.”

  Arato had been going to say his greetings, but someone had beat him to the punch. She was a tall, long-haired woman, with an air of carefully cultivated beauty. Her name was Oriza Ayabe, and she had almost been crushed by a chandelier previously when Methode attacked during Lacia’s big photo shoot.

  In the studio, Lacia was acting out a normal lifestyle with a stylish male model, though the place was strangely missing any of the sounds that Arato would associate with normal life. She was doing a joint shoot with a human male model, today; apparently she was playing the guy’s female friend. Of course, everything from the furniture to their accessories was a product being advertised. The male model was tall and muscular, more handsome than Arato by far. But even he looked inferior next to Lacia.

  “Though I’m surprised,” Oriza continued, watching the studio shoot from afar with her arms crossed. “I figured you’d be more jealous.”

  To Arato, the expressions Lacia was aiming at her model partner were more overdone than the ones she showed him. “She always looks more natural with me,” he said.

  “Oh, gross. I do not want to hear about it,” Oriza said, her shoulders shuddering in disgust. Especially among women, the concept of a man being in a romantic relationship with an hIE was not seen in a positive light.

  One of the camera assistants got a text and hurriedly raised his voice. “Yuri’s here!” he shouted, and the room was suddenly full of tension.

  An androgynous girl, her dark green hair cut in a short bob, entered the dim light of the studio. This was Fabion MG’s top hIE model, Yuri, and loud voices were raised as everyone in the studio greeted her. Normally, there should have been no reason for a machine like Yuri to get such deferential treatment. But, especially on that day, there was no denying the explosive charisma that Yuri gave off. Even the director of the shoot politely stood from his chair to greet the almost supernaturally charming Yuri.

  “Oh, give me a break,” Oriza grumped, eyebrows knitting in revulsion at the display.

  Arato didn’t know how to react. Yuri certainly was charming, but she was also being used as a tool. He couldn’t help recalling what Erika had said that day at lunch.