Time slipped away, marked only by the hollow clatter of empty beer cans rolling across the concrete floor.
Kazuki and Himeko sat huddled together, their cheeks flushed a deep, feverish red.
The alcohol had thickened their tongues and blurred their vision, stripping away the walls they usually kept up.
“Ka—Kazuki…” Himeko swayed dangerously, unable to keep her balance even while sitting.
Her words slurred together, yet she forced them out with stubborn persistence.
“Actually, I’m so scared…
I’m terrified of being deleted by you…
But I can’t show it.
I have to play the optimist.
I have to keep smiling…
Because if I do that, when you finally abandon me, I won’t look quite so pathetic…”
Kazuki’s head spun in slow, dizzying circles.
Hearing her confession, he let out a low chuckle.
He reached up and thumped his own chest hard, immediately coughing from the blunt force.
“Listen to yourself…
I act—actually thought you weren’t afraid of anything in heaven or earth.
Turns out you’re just scaring yourself in your own head.
How could I ever throw you away?
You’re my partner…”
He stiffened his neck, his voice rising in a sudden burst of drunken bravado.
“Me!
Kazuki!
I make my home wherever I stand, and I make peace with whoever I meet!
When it comes to loyalty and valuing the bonds I forge, I—I have never lost to a single soul!”
Himeko suddenly slammed her hand against the floor.
The sudden motion nearly sent her remaining beer flying.
Her golden eyes lit up with a brilliant, hazy spark.
“That’s right!
That’s exactly right!
If that’s true…
then you—you don’t need to try so hard to group up with others!
You have so many card friends like me.
How could you ever be lonely!”
Kazuki slapped his forehead, struck by the deep logic of a drunkard.
“Ye—yeah!
You’re absolutely right!
I must be stupid from the booze!
I’m not lonely at all!”
A few more cans were drained.
Their gazes grew increasingly glassy, lost in the haze of the alcohol.
Himeko finally gave up on sitting.
She flopped backward, lying flat against the cold concrete of the rooftop.
Her fiery red hair fanned out beneath her, pooling like a soft crimson blanket.
The wind kicked up, swirling pale cherry blossom petals through the air.
A few drifted down to rest in her hair and against her flushed cheeks, but she made no move to brush them away.
“Kazuki,” she murmured.
Her voice was incredibly soft, as weightless as the petals dancing in the breeze, yet it carried a sudden, piercing clarity.
The drunken slur had vanished entirely.
“Do you want to know about…
my life before this?”
Surrounded by a fortress of crushed aluminum cans, Kazuki sat cross-legged, his heavy head resting against his drawn-up knees.
He blinked slowly, his mind wading through the fog.
“I want to…
of course I do.”
“Then I’ll tell you.”
Himeko’s consciousness was drifting, but the sheer weight of her memories anchored her.
She forced herself to enunciate every word.
“I had a dad…
and a mom.”
“Sounds like standard equipment for most people.”
“You’re drunk.
Don’t interrupt.
Just listen.”
“My mom died of an illness when I was very young.
That day…
I was the one keeping watch in her hospital room.
She was just lying there on the bed, her hand slowly turning cold in mine.
I held onto her.
I held her hand for a long, long time, right up until the nurses finally pulled me away.”
A faint tremor crept into her voice, but she swallowed it down and kept speaking.
“After that…
Dad was always busy with his research.
Or maybe…
maybe he just couldn’t stand looking at a face that resembled my mother’s so much.
I went abroad to study, and his work kept him half a planet away.
We spoke less and less.
It got to the point where…
I could barely even remember the last time he had a real conversation with me.”
“Back then, I used to wonder—if I died too, what would Dad do?”
Her tone dropped to a fragile whisper, unearthing a secret she had buried for over a decade.
“Kazuki, I don’t know which corner of the universe you hail from, and I don’t know what the culture is like there.”
“But where I grew up, it feels like every East Asian child harbors the same extreme, morbid fantasy about death.
We imagine that after we die, our parents will finally break.
That they’ll kneel before our lifeless bodies, crying their hearts out, consumed by absolute regret.”
“I thought about it too.
More than once.”
“I wondered what his reaction would be if I died right in front of him.
Would he finally drop the work he was always too busy to finish?
Would he crouch down and actually look at my face?
Would he feel the guilt?
Would he regret abandoning me for all those years, being so incredibly stingy with even a single word of genuine affection?”
“People always say that guilt is the heaviest chain parents lock around their children’s necks.
But as children, we hide the darkest thought of all in our hearts—we want to use our own deaths to rip that chain off and lock it right back onto them.”
Her voice finally broke.
Her fingers curled inward, her nails digging sharp, painful crescents into her palms.
“I thought it would just stay a dark, pathetic fantasy for the rest of my life.
I never expected that one day, that absurd thought would actually become my reality.”
“I came home from school one afternoon and heard an argument on the roof.
It was Dad and Welt.
I stood there and listened to my father say he wanted to contact an extraterrestrial civilization and draw them to Earth.
He said the world was rotten to the core, and that only through total destruction could it be reborn.”
“I was frozen.
I couldn’t process it.
I couldn’t believe that the man who had been my father for my entire life actually wanted to destroy the world with his own hands.
That he was willing to wipe out countless children just like me, kids who were just waiting for their parents to come home.”
“I ran out to stop him.
I cried.
I screamed at him not to do it.
But the way he looked at me…
it was like looking at a stranger.
Cold as ice.
He told me I didn’t understand his grand ideals, that I was nothing but a stumbling block in his way.”
“And in the end…
he killed me with his own hands.”
The tears she had fought so hard to hold back finally spilled over.
They slid from the corners of her eyes, striking the cold concrete and soaking into the crimson hair fanned out beneath her.
Her voice shattered completely, carrying the heavy, suffocating weight of a sob she had choked down for over ten years.
Even her breathing shuddered.
“I remember it right up until the moment my heart stopped.
When he killed me, he didn’t even blink.
I collapsed to the ground, and I watched his back as he turned and walked away.
He didn’t say goodbye.
He didn’t even look back.”
“That…
was my life.”
The wind sweeping across the rooftop suddenly died down.
The cherry blossoms seemed to fall in slow motion, drifting silently to the floor.
Kazuki’s head, resting heavily on his knees, slowly slipped downward.
Lulled by the rhythm of Himeko’s tragic recounting and the massive amount of alcohol in his blood, his dizzying drunkenness finally dragged him down into a deep, heavy sleep.
…
“Hiss—this liquor is way too strong.
My stomach feels like it’s full of molten lava.
It’s burning.”
Kazuki cracked his eyes open, finding himself still slumped on the concrete of the rooftop.
His throat felt like he had swallowed a handful of coarse sand, dry, scratchy, and painfully inflamed.
A violent wave of nausea hit him.
He couldn’t hold it back.
Scrambling to his feet, he stumbled blindly toward the edge of the roof, dropping to one knee as he dry-heaved, nearly throwing up pure stomach acid over the side.
Panting heavily, Kazuki wiped his mouth and turned around.
He spotted Himeko sprawled out on the floor, completely dead to the world, her eyes rolled back in a drunken stupor.
A spike of pure annoyance flared in his chest.
With a metallic clatter, he forced his noodle-limp arm to grab an empty beer can.
He chucked it weakly at Himeko’s head.
It bounced off her forehead with a hollow thwack, dealing absolutely zero damage.
“You natural-born drunkard!
I am never letting you touch a drop of alcohol again!”
Just thinking about the night before made his blood boil.
She had thumped her chest, swearing the cheap booze tasted like sweet spring water, constantly pressuring him to drink just one more can.
Now the aftereffects were tearing him apart.
His mouth was a desert, his brain felt like it was packed with wet cement, and his body refused to listen to his commands.
The thirstier he had gotten, the more he drank; the more he drank, the thirstier he became, until he had completely blacked out.
He didn’t have the energy to argue with a passed-out drunk.
With a single thought, he severed his connection to the Card Space.
He didn’t even linger in the System Space, instantly transferring his consciousness back to the real world.
Time in reality hadn’t shifted by a single second.
The room looked exactly as it had before he entered the mental domain.
Suddenly, the translucent system panel materialized in front of him, flashing with a new notification.
The status of the [Student Himeko] card had updated.
[Student Himeko] [Card Status: Can Transform, Wish Fulfilled, Stored in Card Slot]
Kazuki’s mind raced.
Acting on pure instinct, he materialized the [Student Himeko] card between his fingers and, without a second thought, willed it to summon.
A blinding flash of white light illuminated the room.
When the glare faded, a sleeping beauty was lying flat on his floor, her entire body radiating the overpowering stench of cheap alcohol.
It was none other than [Student Himeko].
[Elysian’s Note:
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