Missing Children (5 page)

I thought it was some kind of code at first, but after seeing the signature at the very bottom read “Momo,” I realized that this eerie message had been produced by my sister’s hand.

“Her writing is so messy……”

As if on cue, Kido followed up with, “I agree that it looks pretty bad, but…… Let’s just interpret it artistically.”

After realizing that it was Momo’s writing, I was able to read it surprisingly fast.

It roughly said something like, “I’m going out to look for a girl named Hiyori with Hibiya-kun. We’ll contact you if anything comes up, but we should be back for dinner.”

“Is Hiyori the girl that Hibiya mentioned? Anyway, they went out pretty early to go look……”

“They slept early yesterday just for this. And also, Seto, who’d been taking care of Hibiya, went out too, so he probably couldn’t be left alone.”

Kido explained, and then stood up to walk towards the entrance. I expected that she was going to do something about that guy who was still lazing about.

“Hey, how long as you going to keep sleeping for? Wake up.”

“Yeah…… Yeah, that’s fine……”

Judging by Konoha’s loose and groggy way of replying, it was the typical behavior of someone that was terrible at dealing with mornings.

Rather than not waking up at all, it was the ones that talked nonsense while still asleep that were much worse.

I felt like this was going to be a pain, but when I looked towards the entrance, Kido simply said, “It’s time to eat,” waking Konoha up immediately.

“Good morning.”

“Yeah, good morning. Come on, sit down. We’re eating now.”

Saying this, Kido came back with Konoha. Kido and Mary sat down beside each other, while Konoha sat down beside me.

“Seto isn’t here either, huh?”

“Seems like he’s at his part-time job. I got a text from him.”

“So that means this is everyone, right?”

“Yeah, that’s about right.”

I was already at my limits with suppressing my rumbling stomach. Picking up the chopsticks, I clasped my hands together.

“Thank you for the meal!”

The four of us all said this at the same time, and then each began to eat in own own respective ways. As for Konoha, despite having just woken up, he was bolting down his rice at a tremendous pace.

Even though they were simple dishes like fish, egg, and miso soup, the reason they didn’t taste bland must have been because of Kido’s cooking skill.

The way she subtly used seasoning was just like her in every way.

“Would it be alright to ask for seconds?”

Konoha said as he held out his rice bowl to Kido. There wasn’t a single grain of rice remaining in the bowl.

I couldn’t believe my eyes, due to the fact that not even a minute had passed since we’d started breakfast. Just what kind of digestive system did this guy have?

“Oh, yeah, of course. Eat as much as you like.”

Kido seemed happy to take the rice bowl from him and pile it with nearly twice the amount as before.

“Here. Is this enough for you?”

Kido laughed daringly as she passed the full bowl back to Konoha.

In front of such a large serving of rice, even Konoha, who was usually so expressionless, made a fascinated face. It looked like a scene out of a shoujo manga.

Well, even though it was usually very noisy, it wasn’t so bad eating breakfast with a lot of people like this.

The healthy menu may have been part of it, but it was a very pleasant morning.

As I thought of this while sipping my miso soup, I noticed that Mary was peeling off the skin of her salmon.

It was true that you didn’t normally eat that part, but…… Ah, but Momo always ate all of it. In that case, you wouldn’t normally eat it then.

Anyway, she was being awfully careful about peeling it off.

Since she was taking so much care to peel it, I found myself watching over her, wondering what she could be doing. When she had finally peeled it off cleanly, Mary proudly put the skin on her chopsticks and extended it towards me.

“Shintato, look! It’s like the snake skin from earlier.”

At Mary’s sudden remark, Kido, who had been stuffing herself with rice, let out a kind of anguished moan.

Compared to the terrible experience from earlier, something like this was bearable, but Mary didn’t seem to mean any harm.

“H-hey, Mary. You shouldn’t really do that sort of thing during mealtime……”

I didn’t know what I should say, but for the time-being, I tried to gently encourage her to stop, and Kido nodded vigorously in agreement.

“Uu~ But I did so well in taking it off.”

Saying this, Mary returned the salmon skin to the plate, put down her chopsticks, and lowered her head, looking depressed.

Come to think of it, reptiles seemed like something that would make someone faint just from the sight, but this girl seemed to be rather brave around them.

Even if it was because she was childish, it shouldn’t be something that girls would be particularly good around…… Ah, but Momo had said something like, “Can I keep a chameleon as a pet?” before. In that case, normal girls wouldn’t be good around them.

“Mary seems completely fine with that kind of thing, huh. Even though she’s a girl.”

I said, and Kido muttered while mixing the natto, “Well, she’d have to be.”

“Before coming here, Mary lived by herself in the mountains. That’d be hard to pull off if snakes scared her.”

Kido said that as if it wasn’t particularly strange, but as expected, I was taken aback.

“Mary on a mountain by herself!? What’s with that? What about her parents……”

The moment I said this, Mary’s shoulders shook, and she made fists on top of her lap.

Was it something that shouldn’t have brought up? It seemed my mouth had run off and said something careless.

Just as I started to feel regret building up in my chest and was about to apologize, Mary began to speak slowly.

“When I was little, my father died, and from then on, it was just my mother and I. But when I ignored my mother’s warnings and went outside, there were some scary people, and I think they took my mother away somewhere.”

“Wh-what do you mean by that……?”

“Um, my father is different, but for my mother and I, we’ve had red eyes since birth, and she said that we’re Medusa that appear in picture books. She also said that the people outside were scared of us, who were different from them. That’s why she said I wasn’t allowed to go outside, but I still……”

Mary’s story made the room fall into silence. Even Konoha, who had been eating at such a vigorous pace, stopped to listen to what Mary was saying.

Was that what Kido had meant by her living on her own?

After listening to her story, it sounded like Mary’s family had faced from kind of oppression from the people around them.

Maybe that was why they had been called “Medusa.”

When I’d asked Kido about it, she’d explained that Mary had the ability to temporarily stop the movement of people that she made eye contact with.

It was hardly an ability that a normal human would have, and if that was known to the masses, I understood how they’d be afraid of her.

“Mary…… This is the first time you’ve really talked about this, isn’t it?”

The one who said this was Kido.

It would seem that I wasn’t the only one that was shocked to hear Mary’s story.

“Y-yeah. I have more friends now, so I guess I feel safer. I don’t feel scared to talk about it anymore.”

Mary said this and smiled faintly.

I see. I’d heard that Mary hadn’t been here very long, but from the look of things, it didn’t seem like she’d talked about herself all that much until now.

“I see. Anyway, about your mother, there wasn’t…… a missing persons report for her, was there? Dammit……”

Kido said, an angry expression appearing on her face. She must have been thinking of the same thing as me.

Going by the mention of red eyes, Mary’s mother must have also been the holder of some kind of ability.

The fact that she’d been abducted when Mary had gone outside, and the fact that Mary was here right now, was that she had protected her from the people that were outside. In other words, it was reasonable to think that she had become a replacement.

The troubling part was, it was another thing if she’d been killed, but because of the fact that she’d been taken away, it had to be considered that it hadn’t just been an act of defense.  

Unusual things tend to pique people’s curiosity.

It might just be an unjustified suspicion, but this could mean that Mary’s mother had been taken by those foul-minded human to gain some kind of profit.

Thinking of it like that, I felt disgust stir in the back of my gut.

Mary’s family had tried to protect their own happiness, and had lived with just the two of them together.

Although they should have been helped in this situation, their happiness had instead been taken away; it was unforgivable.

“How could they do something so terrible……”

Those words I said were exactly how I felt at the time.

No matter how much I thought, I just couldn’t wrap my head around it. Before coming here, Mary had lived all by herself, unable to rely on anyone.

The words that Mary had said earlier when thinking about Ene: “It’s lonely to be on your own.” Just how much meaning had they actually held?

The feelings that had nowhere to go tightened in my chest.

Even as I tried thinking about what I could possibly do to help, I could only feel like I was being crushed by my powerlessness.

“Do you remember what the people that took her looked like? Even just one distinguishing feature would help.”

“…… I can’t really remember. It was so long ago, and since I’d been beaten up and was almost unconscious, I couldn’t see their faces very well. And when I came to again, both my mother and those people were gone……”

Mary said this, with a troubled, regretful face. If she had been subjected to violence, and it had been something that had happened when she’d been very young, it was understandable how she didn’t remember much of the details.

“I see…… Do you remember how many years ago it was, at least?”

“Umm…… I’ve counted over one hundred summers, so I think it was probably a hundred years ago. I forgot to count after that, so it might be even more……”

Mary answered with a nod after recalling.

I see, if it was as long as a hundred years ago, it was no wonder it was difficult to remember. If it’d only been a few years ago, then……

“A hundred years!?”

Kido and I exclaimed this at the exact same time.

A hundred years?

No, that couldn’t be possible.

If the girl before us said that she was one hundred years old, one hundred out of one hundred people would just laugh, “That’s cute.”

At our sudden outburst, Mary cried out, “Eek! I’m sorry!” with a jolt of her shoulders.

“Y-you’re kidding, right? In no way do you look like you’re a hundred……”

“I-it’s true! I was taught how to count! Ah, but whenever I asked my mother how old I was, she got mad at me and told me not to talk about it, so she never told me my age, though……”

Although Mary insisted this very indignantly, it wasn’t something that was so easy to believe.

However, the fact that I couldn’t easy deny it either, was probably due to the fact that an invisible person was right before my eyes.

Kido began to scratch her head. “Even with that kind of ability……”

The ability to live over a hundred years. Was Mary’s ability “immortality”?

No, that was ridiculous.

There was no way an ability like that existed.

I suddenly remembered the story that Kido had told yesterday about how she’d gotten her ability.

Kano, Seto, and Momo had all also awoken with one after a near-death experience.

Looking at what Hibiya had gone through yesterday, it was probably the same for him, as well.

However, Mary was the only one that had an ability from birth. It was clear that the way she’d acquired her ability was different from the others.

“Hey, Mary. Have you always had that ability since you were born?”

“Eh? Yes, that’s right. When I was young, my mother always told me that I wasn’t allowed to use it, though.”

All of this was too mysterious.

I had somehow figured out how abilities were acquired from yesterday’s conversation, but because Mary was the only one that was so different, I felt deeply confused.

She had an ability from the start, without having to go to “that world.”

And her mother had also been an ability holder.

A Medusa that lived for a hundred years……

It was an incredibly fantasy-like story, but there were countless mysterious just like it in this world.

Along with Kido’s incident, I couldn’t help but think that all these mysterious phenomena had to do with “something” that exceeded the hundred year gap.

If that were the case, we could come one huge step towards the real answer by solving Mary’s story.

However, even if we were to look for Mary’s mother, it would be useless to try and tell the police something like, “We’re looking for this girl’s mother, who went missing a hundred years ago.”