An autumn blue
sky swept overhead in a broad arc.
Between the
trees lining the sloping road, the sea reflected the blue of the sunlight.
The wooden
bucket held by Otaki Gorou was filled with clear water, with the handle of a
ladle sticking out.
Washed by the
chorus of cicadas, he climbed the stairs made of soil held down by logs and
embedded stone. Passing through a grove of trees, he came upon a bare cliff.
Resting their backs against the rock wall stood natural stones of various
sizes. Some were covered in moss, some had cracked and crumbled, while others
barely showed their heads above the dirt.
To the left
stood a relatively new stone, and Otaki Gorou walked over to those rocks,
scooped water from the wooden bucket with the ladle, and poured it over them
from above.
The stones were
merely round rocks that had been rolling around the area, with no particular
letters carved into them. Taking the hand towel hanging around his neck, Otaki Gorou
went around wiping every single stone.
Crouching in
front of the stones, he pressed his hands together and closed his eyes.
The stones lined
up beneath the cliff were what were known as whale mounds, stones stacked one
by one after every whale hunt. Although new stones were no longer set up around
here, Otaki Gorou knew that Kojima Genzou came to visit these graves once a
month.
Having them join
in shouldn’t incur any divine punishment—that was Otaki Gorou’s thought
process, believing it would be better for things to be a bit livelier.
The four new
stones lined up side by side were, starting from the right end, Rodan,
Anguirus, and Kumonga. As for Rodan, it was the single one he had wrestled with
first; as for Kumonga, since he didn’t know how many had been defeated, they
were grouped together as a single entity.
They’re all just
collective intelligences or something of that sort anyway, he reconciled with
himself.
As for Godzilla,
he had hesitated over whether to place a gravestone, but felt it wasn’t his
place to hold a memorial service. For the other kaiju, he had a genuine sense
of having defeated them, but regarding Godzilla, simply saying it disappeared
felt closer to reality.
On the day
Godzilla disappeared in Tokyo, Otaki Gorou was in the back of a truck with Kai
Takehiro.
After sending
Jet Jaguar—with Arikawa Yun strapped to its back—heading toward Godzilla, the
truck fell from the remnants of the Metropolitan Expressway, and the heavily
injured two could only watch the course of events unfold as if it were
something in a dream.
Otaki Gorou remained
silent about what he had seen in that final battle. He merely leaked a single
impression:
“I was
flabbergasted.”
Arikawa Yun made
it back almost completely unharmed, but as for the wreckage of Jet Jaguar, not
even a single fragment could be found.
Since then,
there had been no sign of the Old Man—Otaki Gorou—attempting to rebuild Jet
Jaguar.
Otaki Gorou sat
silently in front of the leftmost stone, yet rather than facing the gravestone,
he leaned his back against it and gazed out at the sea of Nigashio.
“Hey,” Otaki Gorou
called out to nowhere in particular, shook his head, fell silent again, and
stared at the sea.
In the warehouse
of Otaki Factory, Jet Jaguar’s designated spot remained open just as it was.
While they hadn’t set out any particular memorial meal, strangely enough, no
one felt like putting anything there, leaving a gaping blank space.
“Don’t you think
the Old Man has been lacking energy lately?” Kanahara Satomi asked Katou Haberu,
who was using a beam spanning that blank space to count his pull-ups.
“Isn’t he...
just... his normal... self?” was Haberu’s reply, thinking that these past few
months had simply been abnormal. In fact, he even thought that over the last
few months, the Old Man had been all too sane. One could say the world had
temporarily caught up with the Old Man, though.
“Where’s Yun?” Kanahara
Satomi’s eyes swept around before coming to a stop on the circle marked on the
calendar taped to the wall.
“Ah,” she said,
convincing herself. “Today, huh?”
Looking up at
Haberu, she asked, “Isn’t she an acquaintance of yours?”
“She is, but...”
Haberu paused the movement of his arms lifting his body and replied, “Well, I
figure they’ve got a lot to catch up on.”
Following the
simultaneous disappearance of Godzilla and Shiva, Kamino Mei had been kept in
protective custody due to various circumstances, but her custody was
transferred to the Japanese side just the other day, and she was released
yesterday after questioning in Japan.
Upon her
release, Kamino Mei immediately requested a meeting with Arikawa Yun above all
else. Haberu had indeed been Mei’s high school classmate, and Yun and Mei had
no direct acquaintance, yet over the past few months, the relationship between
those two had been closer than that of poor relatives or lovers.
What would
develop from there next—Haberu believed it was tasteless to even think about
it, though he felt the definition of the word tasteless might need to be
rewritten a bit.
Although the
world after Godzilla’s disappearance had generally returned to normal—at least regarding
the laws of physics—the scars were starkly left behind. Even if one tried to
look away, they were strictly there.
The
reconstruction of Tokyo was only at its beginning, and debate over relocating
the capital intensified. Many of the world’s major metropolises were forced to
construct new urban areas while leaving the destroyed districts as old towns.
“Hey! Haberu!”
The Old Man appeared
in the garage while brandishing a sports newspaper. His eyes were gleaming
brilliantly.
“See?” Haberu
indicated to Kanahara Satomi with his eyes. Satomi gave a light shrug of her
shoulders, turned on her heel, and walked back toward the office.
On the front
page the Old Man held out, the headline “Strange Fish Appears in Nigashio”
leaped out, accompanied by a photo of a fisherman holding up a fish. The fish
had three heads, and its fins were spread out like wings.
“That’s a fake,
isn’t it?” Haberu said.
“It’s a golden,
three-headed monster!” The Old Man had no intention of listening to Haberu’s
words from the start, calling out toward the office: “Sacchan!”
“Where’d you put
that picture? The one with the three-headed dragon breathing electricity from
its mouth!” Saying so, the Old Man disappeared into the office, while Haberu
offered a dry smile toward his back.
“Also, that
thing! The guy dressed in metal armor, a cross between a weasel and a turtle,
that supposedly showed up in Yodo River long ago!”
To Haberu’s ears
came Kanahara Satomi’s cool response:
“What is that
even supposed to be?”
The events to
come from here on out would likely belong to a story to come from here on out.
“Hey,” Haberu
called out toward the void open in the garage.
There was no
response, and the space merely opened its mouth expressionlessly. An ordinary
garage wall, no different from usual, was there, and time yet unconstrained by
anything flowed quietly through it. Dust kicked up by the Old Man’s wooden
clogs floated in the beam of light streaming through the wide-open shutter.
Haberu listened to the message brought by that blank space for a moment, then returned to his pull-ups.