He must have deliberately visited the café when the manager wasn’t there.
The person he had wanted to interview from the beginning wasn’t the manager of this café, but an ordinary part-time worker.
That must have been why he had occasionally seemed to be plotting something else.
The regular customer who had been watching from a short distance away suddenly went pale.
After fidgeting anxiously for a moment, she picked up her smartphone and began tapping furiously.
She was probably contacting the manager.
She had originally been an undergraduate student in one of his classes. Now she was a graduate student, and she sometimes had him review her papers.
In truth, she was closer to the manager than I was, so she could certainly contact him in an emergency.
If only everything could be explained this logically, life would be much easier.
“How would you explain the case of that elementary school student?”
Unfortunately, there was no logical way to explain the case of that foolish child.
“The sequence of events was probably reversed.”
“Reversed?”
“Rather than predicting or prophesying anything, perhaps the child mistook a wishful fantasy created after everything was over for reality. His guilt may have manifested in a peculiar way. Cases like that are fairly common among children of that age.”
“My, my. I wasn’t hoping to hear the sort of answer a counselor or a ‘professor’ would give.”
“......”
I hadn’t imagined the emphasis he placed on the word “professor.”
It sounded as though he were mocking the manager, which put me in a foul mood.
Still, I had experienced enough irritating and troublesome situations like this to avoid showing it.
“If you want an occult answer, then perhaps the child truly did predict it.”
“Oh?”
He reacted with surprise, as though my response were unexpected.
I disliked the almost viscous interest filling his expression.
“The term ‘sixth sense’ is widely used, and a fair amount of research has been conducted on it. Many people also believe that children possess such senses when they’re young, only to lose them as they grow older.”
“You’re suggesting that the child perceived something through a sense that transcended the ordinary five and made a genuine prophecy?”
“I’m only saying it’s possible. I’m already several years into adulthood, so I wouldn’t know whether such a thing truly exists.”
“What a shame.”
His tone didn’t sound disappointed in the slightest.
The subtle consolation in his voice, as though he already knew everything, irritated me.
“Then you’re claiming that it’s possible to make predictions through some other inexplicable force—in other words, that genuine prophecy exists?”
“I’m not sure.”
I had no intention of making such a grand claim.
“It might simply be the result of an unusually acute sense. Suppose someone possessed a far keener sense of smell than others and could detect the scent of water in the air, allowing him to predict rain consistently. In a different era, he might have been revered as a great prophet.”
“But that’s different from a sixth sense, isn’t it?”
“People sometimes say they felt an ominous premonition. But there’s no way to know whether that feeling belongs to a sixth sense or whether one of their ordinary senses is simply exceptional.”
“Then was that elementary school student particularly sensitive to such ‘ominous premonitions’?”
“I wouldn’t know. As far as I’m aware, that elementary school student lost the ability to feel anything like that afterward and grew up to become an ordinary member of society.”
“Did he really? According to my research, that child was transferred between psychiatric and general wards numerous times. For several years, in fact.”
He had investigated quite thoroughly.
Not many people had dug deeply enough to uncover what happened during that period.
The years when the child repeatedly moved from one ward to another.
***
The ignorant, foolish child quickly began learning about the world.
At least enough to be transferred from the stark white room in which he had been confined to a shared room with several children around his age.
His body had grown weak because he refused to eat. He also couldn’t leave the hospital because he had clawed at his neck and the rest of his body until he was covered in blood.
There, he made a friend.
“Hey, do you want to play this too? I want someone to battle.”
It began when the other child approached him and asked him to play a moderately popular pocket-monster game.
They got along rather well.
The shared experience of being unable to attend school and remaining confined to the hospital was enough for them to become close.
They played games together every day, winning and losing. They talked, fell asleep at the same time, and woke at roughly the same hour.
Becoming close was inevitable.
They both knew that they regarded each other as friends.
“You’re lucky. You can go outside whenever you want.”
Although I wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital, no one stopped me from moving around. My friend, by contrast, was forbidden from leaving his bed.
“But they said I’ll be fine after this surgery. Once it’s over, let’s go outside and play together.”
The moment I agreed, it happened.
Perhaps everything before had merely been a delusion.
Just as the doctor, the counselor, and my aunt had said.
Perhaps the guilt of being the only survivor had been so overwhelming that I had fabricated the entire story.
In truth, none of it had been my fault.
It was only a delusion.
A misunderstanding caused by unbearable loss and grief.
In truth, I was normal.
That was what I had believed.
Then the future unfolded before my eyes and shattered that delusion.
I knew.
Tomorrow afternoon.
The friend in the bed beside mine would die on the operating table.
I had heard that it wasn’t a particularly major operation.
They had said that if this surgery went well, he would be able to return to an ordinary life.
I had seen my friend and his parents beaming as they told me that.
They seemed to have heard something about my circumstances from my aunt because they always treated me with special consideration. They had kindly told us to remain friends even after he left the hospital.
They were a family that still possessed what the foolish child had already lost.
I saw that family come to an end.
I saw the death of my brightly smiling friend.
I saw the people surrounding him wailing in despair after he fell into a sleep from which he would never awaken.
I saw cold, oppressive air descend upon the once-cheerful family.
“Where should we go? The amuse—...... Ah. Want to see a movie? There’s a really fun one, and the third movie comes out next month......”
All I could do was stare blankly at my friend as he smiled brightly, stopped to consider my feelings, and then resumed smiling as he spoke of the future.
My entire body trembled.
I didn’t want to let him die.
But was it really safe to change the future again?
I had already experienced the price of acting in ignorance down to my very bones.
What if something else became twisted?
But I still couldn’t abandon him.
But...... But......
Only then did I realize why my entire body was trembling.
The headache and pain that had rendered me senseless after everything ended before were now reverberating throughout my body.
They were worse than when I saw the kitten’s death, but weaker than when I saw my family’s.
Even so, my consciousness was steadily fading.
A shrill alarm rang out, and nurses and doctors rushed inside.
I saw my friend’s face crumple, close to tears.
The sight remained in my blurred vision, making me want to cry instead.
I knew.
What happened in the past hadn’t been a delusion.
This wasn’t a delusion either.
And I wasn’t even capable of making a choice.
No matter how desperately I wanted to save him or twist the future, I couldn’t.
What was I supposed to say?
Even if it meant being confined and restrained alone in that stark white room again, should I scream that my friend was going to die tomorrow?
Would anyone understand?
Could I explain it?
And even if I did...... could I prevent it?
I realized that I couldn’t save him.
The powerless child was neither a doctor nor a nurse.
He didn’t know why or how his friend would die.
He knew only the outcome.
He possessed no power, so even after seeing the future, he couldn’t change it.
He couldn’t even make a choice.
He realized all of it.
Tears flowed as his senses faded.
He had hesitated even though he wanted to change the future. He wanted to change it, yet lacked the power to do so.
He learned how horrifying that was.
His consciousness faded.
When he opened his eyes again, he heard anguished wailing.
He regained consciousness beside two adults despairingly clearing away his friend’s now-empty place.
It wasn’t a conscious decision that made him tear open the wounds across his healing body.
It was an irresistible compulsion.
In the end, as his friend’s bed became empty, he was sent back to the stark white room.
***
“I discovered many fascinating things while investigating that elementary school student.”
“Fascinating things?”
The reporter continued with a broad grin.
“An unusual number of people around him died.”
“He spent a long time in hospitals. That’s hardly surprising.”
“No. More precisely, someone near the child seemed to die whenever his condition—or perhaps his circumstances—changed.”
“......”
“So, how should I put this......?”
His smile was unpleasant.
The knowledge that he had investigated so thoroughly made it even worse.
Perhaps I should have called him perceptive.
Everyone possessed something at which they excelled.
Everyone had something that could be called a special talent.
At the very least, one of their abilities would be slightly superior to the rest.
Prophets were no different.
If a certain café manager who took in a broken child specialized in seeing futures concerning someone’s love, then that broken child specialized in seeing something entirely different.
He specialized in seeing how things ended.
***
The slightly older child was transferred to another hospital room.
It was still a stark white private room, but at least he had some freedom of movement.
He had been transferred there after his aunt screamed at the doctor and furiously protested something.
The hospital had a beautifully maintained garden outside the ward.
Many people, from the elderly to children, wandered through it.
Among all the patients strolling in identical hospital gowns, one person caught his attention.
An old man.
He held a paper cup of coffee in one hand and walked slowly and precariously through the garden.
He was the patient in the neighboring room.
The child sometimes encountered him while passing through the corridor or walking in the garden.
Without realizing it, he approached the old man.
Because he had seen it.
The coffee overflowed from the old man’s violently trembling hand.
Hot coffee spilled across his skin, and at the same moment, the staggering old man pitched forward.
Beyond the hospital garden.
Toward the four-lane road.
A passing bus struck the falling old man with tremendous force.
That was the old man’s end.
The child knew that the old man in the neighboring room would die that way.
This time, he wanted to stop it.
Even though he had no idea how the price might return to punish him.
He had seen it.
Once he had seen it, the desire to change it was inevitable.
He had failed to save his friend because he possessed no ability to do so.
But this time was different.
Enduring the throbbing pain that came as the price of seeing the future, he walked forward and grabbed the old man’s arm.
They were directly in front of the hospital entrance.
The paper cup shook, and the coffee sloshed as the old man’s startled eyes turned downward.
A bus roared past.
Watching it pass behind the old man and disappear, the child released an involuntary sigh.
A sigh of relief.
This time, he had succeeded.
Fulfillment, triumph, and a sense of omnipotence filled him.
He could do it.
He could change the future.
As long as he possessed the necessary ability and could endure the pain caused by prophecy, he could change it as many times as he wanted......
“......Yes. I’m glad I didn’t make you witness it.”
The old man stroked his head.
His hand didn’t tremble in the slightest.
His touch was merely gentle.
It was as though he were soothing the child’s trembling body, shaken by the storm of emotions and the pain coursing through it.
As his trembling gradually subsided, the child realized that something had gone wrong.
Before he could properly understand it, a sensation like freezing ice sliding down his spine made his skin crawl.
He didn’t know why.
Even so, he felt as though he somehow understood.
The feeling made him hold his breath.
Still holding his coffee, the old man turned and slowly walked back toward the ward.
His steps were perfectly steady.
The following morning, after the child had spent the entire night groaning from the price of seeing the future, a disturbance erupted in the neighboring room.
Shouts filled with rage, irritation, and every imaginable negative emotion echoed through the ward.
They came from the old man’s family, who rarely visited him.
An inheritance. Unfairness. Profanity. Words of hatred.
As those piercing voices filled the hospital, the child realized something.
Seeing a single scene from the future didn’t reveal the story hidden behind it.
Then, the next day, he learned something else.
Some people chose their own endings.
The still-foolish child hadn’t saved the old man from death......
He had merely interfered with the old man’s choice.
The child, intoxicated by his sense of victory despite knowing nothing, had merely been immersed in a delusion of his own making.
As he passed the now-empty room beside his after the commotion ended, he learned many things.
At last, he managed to put everything together.
Every future he had seen had shown him someone’s end.
He was a prophet who saw only death.
When he saw the death of a kitten with no connection to him, he suffered nothing more than a headache.
When he saw the deaths of his beloved family, the pain was severe enough to make him collapse and lose consciousness immediately.
When he saw the death of a friend he had grown close to, the pain was strong enough to make controlling his body difficult.
When he saw the death of an old man with whom he had exchanged little more than passing greetings, the pain still allowed him to move.
And most importantly of all—
Even if he tried to change the future he had seen, he could never know what consequences would follow.
Sometimes......
His efforts might even be meaningless.
Only after reaching that conclusion was the foolish child able to take his aunt’s hand and leave the hospital.
***
“So whenever something changed in that elementary school student’s circumstances, it seems someone close to him invariably died.”
“......”
Had he interpreted my silence as his victory?
A triumphant look appeared on the reporter’s face.
It left an extremely unpleasant taste in my mouth.
“There was one exception, however. In fact, that was where my investigation began. When that elementary school student was somewhat older, there was an incident involving a female student—”
“Excuse me!”
The reporter was interrupted by the regular customer’s furious voice.
She stormed toward us, visibly enraged, but I raised a hand to stop her and spoke instead.
“Just as everyone possesses a field of expertise, if prophets belonging to the occult truly existed, they would probably have their own specialties.”
“......Pardon?”
“In that respect, you’re remarkably courageous.”
I felt a faint smile form on my lips.
I was imitating someone who had once taught me.
It was a smile that had always proven effective.
“The elementary school student you investigated appears to have been closely associated with death. Perhaps that was his specialty. Which brings me to something else.”
Feeling relieved now that my headache had almost completely faded, I tilted my head.
“You own a dog, don’t you?”
“......”
“A brown dog. Quite an old one, too.”
The reporter’s face instantly stiffened.
Watching instinctive unease seize him was remarkably satisfying.