Vol 1 Chapter 18 (1/2)

VOLUME 1-2

Chapter 18

“This is no good.”

“We’re lost. Completely.”

The next morning.

Luckily, the rain had stopped, but the two of them had been wandering through marshy gra.s.slands for several hours now. They had lost more precious time here than anywhere else. Just when they thought they had gotten out of that bleak rocky area with its lingering snow, they found a huge expanse of wetlands beyond it.

They couldn’t see anything like a path anymore. Though their stamina had recovered after a night’s rest, impatience filled the forefront of their minds. The two of them searched for a path out of this place while wading knee-deep in the mud.

The landscape, a mix of black mud and sponge-like gra.s.sland, didn’t seem like a terrain that the wolves would like at all.

As she quickly got tired of having her feet catch on aquatic plants, getting drenched in mud and freezing in place at the sight of a salamander the size of a large dog, Homura grumbled out loud.

“Wasn’t there supposed to be a lake in the unexplored area?”

Touya replied as he walked while measuring the water depth with a stick.

“Calling these wetlands that extend as far as the eye can see a lake—Mori-chan really committed a major slip of the tongue1.”

“…All right, try saying something a bit funnier, at least.”

Homura followed behind Touya while carefully wading her legs through the marsh.

After having tripped and pitched face forward once, she had resigned herself and picked up a stick to help her.

“Ah, even if you say that, I’m feeling really swamped right now.”

“If Tsuyu were here, she’d punch you.”

“What a harsh critic.”

Touya sometimes stopped and jotted down notes on the map, but he had no experience in mapping, so he was doing it based mostly on guesswork. Even if he had a wide field of vision, there was nowhere high up with a broad view within the wetlands, and the bird-like small trees that dotted the area made it hard to get an un.o.bstructed view.

Meanwhile, Homura took out the a.n.a.log camera, the most experience and burdensome item among her belongings on hand, and took pictures of the surrounding scenery. Her plan was to capture the Bagel in the sky and the distinctive mountains with the same angle and use the pictures as material to help deduce the terrain here.

However, that only lasted until fog started to enshroud the area.

Water birds swam beside Homura and Touya on the water surface along with their young offspring. It was a sight that seemed to completely change their feelings of impatience.

Homura couldn’t help getting very irritated at her submerged shoes and the coldness of the snow-thawed water which numbed her toes.

“I want to go to a spa resort and eat sweets…”

“That’s quite an escape from reality.”

“Coffee milk at the Benten Hot Springs would also be great…”

“No, Benten is a public bath house. How about you wipe your face? It’s pitch-black.”

Touya held out his canteen, which brightened up Homura.

“Is it all right…? Isn’t this our precious drinking water?”

“The water around here seems quite clean. There’s probably a source of spring water nearby.”

“Though it’s quite muddy in exchange.”

“That’s because of the rain. It’ll become clear after a while, and we can use a water filter too. Even the water in this canteen came from the river we pa.s.sed yesterday.”

“In that case, I can wait to wash up a little longer until we find some water.”

Touya nodded in agreement.

As they advanced further into the woods to find better footing while avoiding the places where the marsh became deeper, they eventually lost their way in the depths of the wetlands.

After cutting back and changing their path several times, the two of them came to a standstill on something like a peninsula that protruded from the marsh.

Snow-thawed water gently flowed through the field of water that didn’t qualify as either a river or a lake. The marsh’s depths exceeded two meters everywhere, making it impossible to get good footing.

While surveying the water surface and the reeds that swayed within it, the two of them stood there, stupefied and lost for words.

“……”

They finally had to accept the conclusion they had been trying to avoid—the fact that, as expected, the wolves had likely taken a wide detour around these wetlands to reach the other side.

Even for wolves, it wouldn’t have been easy to march through the chilly rain at night. Animals usually stayed put during bad weather, and all the more so when carrying someone injured like senpai. Touya had desperately hoped that they could still catch up if they could somehow find any traces of where they camped out, but…

With no option left, Touya gritted his teeth at the frustration that rose up within him.

“Is this as far as we go…?”

Touya gripped a reed stalk and hung his head.

“d.a.m.n it… am I going to fail to do anything again…?”

Despondent tears gathered at the corners of his eyes.

The s.h.i.+ning ripples they made on the water spread out into the distance and faded into the streaming fog.

Homura could only painfully watch Touya’s back on the sh.o.r.e as she was crushed by her own sense of helplessness.

“……”

Touya stuck his stick in the water and began searching for a path again, stubbornly not willing to give up.

However…

“Hyah, uu, wah, wah.”

He heard Homura’s frenzied voice behind him.

“T-T-Touya-saaaan!”

“What is it? Did a pink platypus appear this time—uwah!”

When he turned in the direction Homura’s disgraceful voice, Touya almost fell over in shock.

Homura, who had stepped onto a floating ma.s.s of reeds slightly, was now being carried away from the peninsula’s sh.o.r.e.

“What the heck are you doing!?”

“I was wondering what to shout when I started drifting away…”

“Shout for help, obviously!”

“He… Help… D-Do you have rope?”

The twig that should have been in her hand was now floating on the water and drifting away from her.

The floating ma.s.s of reeds, captured by the flow of an unseen stream, gradually picked up speed.

“Touya-ku… hii…!”

When Homura tried stepping forward, the floating ma.s.s of reeds shook and tilted beneath her feet.

“Crouch down! Don’t stand up!”

While following Homura with his eyes, Touya searched through his sack and headed for the tip of the little island he stood on.

“This is seriously bad… I won’t make it in time.”

Unable to immediately find something to use in place of a buoy, he had no choice but to tie his multi-tool to the end of his rope and then he threw it with all his strength.

However, the end of the rope hit the water a distance away from the floating ma.s.s of reeds and began to sink down.

The rope was out of Homura’s reach even if she stretched out her arm and fingers.

“I can’t reach it!”

“d.a.m.n it, no good, huh… Listen, Hinooka! Stay there!”

Shouting that, Touya threw his baggage down on the sh.o.r.e and jumped into the huge river of the marsh.

While clinging to the unstable floating ma.s.s of reeds, Homura tried to peer into the water.

Touya’s face briefly surfaced, but suddenly disappeared from her sight during the short time when the floating ma.s.s of reeds spun as it moved.

“Touya-kun…? …Touya-kun!?”

She hurriedly swivelled her head and searched for her partner, who showed no indication of surfacing.

“No way… No… Touya-kuuuuuuuuuun!”

Homura shouted in a trembling voice while leaning forward to peer into the water.

“Yaa…”

The roots of the floating ma.s.s of reeds she was gripping onto came apart, causing Homura to plunge headfirst into the water.

The strong currents, which acted like the wetlands’ arteries, pulled on Homura’s body and tried to drag her away.

The chill of the water made her chest tighten and quickly robbed her limbs’ freedom of movement.

Homura grappled with her own hair, which stuck to her face, and desperately tried to search for the surface in the water where she couldn’t tell up from down—

And then, she felt arms wrap around her back.

She felt the recoil of the person who held her kicking off the ground at the bottom of the water, and her face quickly breached the surface.

“Idiot, don’t jump in!”

“*cough*—But…”

As Touya supported her from behind, Homura repeatedly sank into the water and kicked off the bottom to surface, until they finally managed to catch up to the floating ma.s.s of reeds.

Touya helped push Homura up onto the floating ma.s.s, and then he clung to the roots of the reeds in the water.

While dripping water from her body and breathing heavily, Homura stood up and reached a hand out to Touya.

“Touya-kun, here—”

Touya took her hand and tried to climb onto the floating ma.s.s, but then he stiffened and stopped.

When he put his weight on it, the floating ma.s.s of reeds began to sink. Homura was startled when she saw the water suddenly rise up to her knees again.

“It’s no good. I’ll move it over to the sh.o.r.e bank like this.”

As he spoke and lifted his shoulders out from the water, Touya’s lips were becoming increasingly blue.

Soaked and trembling herself, Homura shook her head.

“No, it’s too cold in the water. You’ll die.”

“I won’t die—Could you take these from me at least…?”

Touya plunged his arms back into the water and brought out his specialized weapons.

“Your swords!? You kept hold of them!?”

“Of course. Though, they were heavy, admittedly. I wasn’t able to swim well because of them.”

Touya smiled mischievously.

“Are you stupid? You really are a sword fanatic—”

“Shut up.”

Smiling while crying, Homura picked up the swords from Touya and then gripped his ice-cold fingers.

The floating ma.s.s of reeds flowed along the water at a fixed speed. The sh.o.r.e they were originally at became smaller and smaller in the distance as the fog shrouded over it.

“Your baggage…”

“We’ll have to give up on warm meals. Yours is all we have left.”

Touya pointed at Homura’s sack lying next to the drenched longsword beside her leg. Besides her camera, there was only a single sleeping bag and the barest of truly essential items inside the sack. They didn’t even have the map anymore.

“I’ll act as a motor and push it, so you direct it towards the sh.o.r.e.”

Though Touya’s voice trembled, he still spoke as brightly as he could.

“Yeah.”

Homura stood up half-risen on the floating ma.s.s of reeds.

No matter how hard she looked around, the only things she could see were the fog and cl.u.s.ters of reeds protruding from the water; the sh.o.r.e bank was nowhere in sight. She couldn’t catch sight of it even on top of this huge ma.s.s of reeds.

Touya’s body temperature was draining away while she hesitated. The water temperature wasn’t even 10 degrees Celsius. It was as cold as a winter morning.

“Which way, for the time being?”

“…Uh… T-That way?”

“All right. Keep pointing out directions to me like that.”

Just as if he were using a swimming board, Touya began to vigorously paddle his legs.

The floating ma.s.s of reeds gradually deviated from the stream’s main current.

While her chest felt like it was about to burst open from anxiety, Homura desperately continued to search for the sh.o.r.e.

“…Hey, wasn’t there a scene like this in a movie…? That luxury pa.s.senger boat one.”

“Haha… are you trying to kill me here… *cough*… *cough*…”

Homura bit her lip at the sound of Touya’s choked breathing.

Wrought by impatience, she could only curse the time calmly flowing by. She gripped her drenched charm.

After paddling and aimlessly drifting through the water like that for over ten minutes—

Homura felt a strange discomfiture in her chest that was different from her feeling of impatience.

She turned her head around as if guided by something, and she felt like she saw a small sunlit sh.o.r.e amidst the fog.

“……”

It might have been an illusion. But Homura immediately followed her instincts.

“Touya-kun, that way! Turn left, towards 10 o’clock!”

“…You said turn right a minute ago.”

“Just do it!”

They changed course and continued on.

Meanwhile, the ma.s.s of reeds began to lose its buoyancy and gradually began to sink into the water.

—Eventually, the fog drifted away, and the sh.o.r.e appeared faintly in front of them.

What Homura had thought was sunlight were in fact yellow flowers blooming across the sh.o.r.e.

“Sh.o.r.e… It’s sh.o.r.e, Touya-kun!”

“……”

The dimly conscious Touya didn’t respond, with only the sound of his weak paddling to be heard.

Homura picked up his long sword and stuck it into the water, and she desperately began to row with it like on a ferryboat.

“…Hey, don’t use my weapon as an oar.”

“Shut up!”

Thanks to Homura’s vigorous rowing, the unstable ma.s.s of reeds began to collapse even further.

Touya mustered the last of his strength and put it into his feet as well.

“We’re sinking! Row… Row!”

Just when the floating ma.s.s of reeds came apart and Homura and Touya were thrown back into the water, they were already within walking distance of the sh.o.r.e.

“We made it! It’s sh.o.r.e! It’s solid ground!”

“……”

Touya’s response was too hoa.r.s.e to form words.

Seeing that, Homura quickly moved.

Lending a shoulder to Touya as he lay there ghastly pale, Homura carried him up to the rockface further up from the sh.o.r.e and sat him down. She gathered dry leaves to use in place of a towel and stuffed them under his clothes to suck out the water. She took out her sleeping bag from her sack, which had just barely avoided being submerged in the water, and put it over Touya’s shoulders to wrap him up.

“Pull yourself together, Touya-kun. I’m going to light a fire right now.”

“…You’re going to use smoke magic…?”

“Die! Freeze to death!”

After she used their emergency matches without hesitation to light a fire, Touya started s.h.i.+vering again.

After that, Homura could finally sit in front of the fire as well and raise her hands to it, and she could now tell how much her body had been chilled.

She took off her shoes and socks to become barefoot, and dried them in front of the fire.

While gazing at the yellow flowers, Touya murmured.

“I’ve seen these flowers before… But I don’t think they’re suited to such high wetlands, if I remember right…”

“…Now that you mention it…”

Homura also tilted her head in puzzlement.

“Aren’t these flowers that grow in paddy fields?”

“Yeah, that’s right. These are the kinds of flowers you see in unplowed fields.”

Touya put the sleeping bag down next to him and stood up, looking carefully at the rockface he had been sitting on.

“—This is a stone wall.”

“Eh?”

“A highway…? No, the remains of a cultivated field?”

It wasn’t just a natural rockface. The arranged stones were crumbling away and covered in moss, but it was definitely something a.s.sembled by human hands.

Homura and Touya were standing on one end of a stone wall that encircled the sh.o.r.e bank.

Homura surveyed their surroundings as she stood barefoot on the stone.

“……Mumu…”

As the fog gradually thinned out, she caught glimpses of the white line of the stone wall amidst the thicket of blooming yellow flowers.

“How does it look?”

“It seems to continue all the way to the other side.”

“Bingo, huh—fuah, ah, achoo!”

After drying themselves sufficiently, the two of them packed up their now decreased baggage and left the sh.o.r.e.

Unlike their previous vague search, the remains of the stone wall clearly showed them a direction to travel in.

They regained confidence in their footsteps.

The two of them didn’t even need to mention out loud between each other the probability that such clear remains of civilization implicitly might lead them to the den of that girl with the wolves—to a community of Nutellans.

Their surroundings continued to consist of wetlands, but trees started to stand out more and more as they followed the stone wall. The stone wall and the roots of the trees seemed to be keeping the soil of the field in check.

The sky cleared up and the temperature gradually rose, making it possible to see their surroundings better.

The sunlight illuminated a vibrant green sh.o.r.e and clumps of fog drifted over the ground like small clouds, the exact kind of scene that Homura would want to put as the background image on her cell phone.

“That was really dangerous, earlier.”

Homura said that as she poked Touya’s shoulder in front of her, and Touya nodded.

“…You didn’t mention doing an emergency withdrawal,” Homura added.

“Yeah. Sorry, for forcing this on you.”

Homura shook her head.

“I’m quite fine and lively now. It was all because I blundered in the first place.”

“Don’t worry about it. As Mori-chan would put it, it was all right in the end.”

“My stomach is hungry now, though.”

“Why am I not surprised?”

As Touya laughed, Homura asked another question in a slightly meek manner.

“…What would you have done if I had said we should do an emergency withdrawal right away back then?”

“Haha, another what-if? Sorry, but I would have refused.”

“I thought so.”

“I can’t return without getting any clue to senpai’s whereabouts.”

Homura felt the same way.

However, in the worst case scenario, Touya would have probably made Homura return by herself.

Even if he didn’t do that, they had virtually no food left. The few pieces of candy they had left had been divided between them and eaten during their rest earlier.

Touya, who was now lightly equipped without his baggage, showed no signs of caring about it and walked casually in front of Homura.

He suddenly started talking while facing straight ahead.

“You were right. I fell for senpai at first sight.”

“Eh?”

It was the topic that Touya had said he would talk about when all three of them returned to Earth in the tent last night.

“I instinctively felt that senpai was special. It’s that simple. That’s the kind of guy I am.”

“…Was it at the school entrance ceremony?”

“A little before that. It was during the autumn of last year. When I went to Seiran on a school visit, I met senpai for the first time while she was helping the student council president Rokujizou and acting as a guide for us.”

“Hmm.”

Homura trotted over to walk beside Touya.

“Seiran’s entrance exam was a bit hard for me academically, though I would have gotten in safely thanks to the sports recommendation I received. When I visited the school, I didn’t like the atmosphere of Seiran’s Kendo Club and wasn’t that interested in entering Seiran. I thought it’d be fine if I went to another school.”

“But you decided on Seiran…?”

“I was interested in senpai.”

“That’s all? That’s the reason you rejected your recommendation and went out of your way to pa.s.s the entrance exam with your own ability?”

“You’re quite well informed.”

True, he couldn’t have used the sports recommendation to get in and then not join any sports club.

“…Senpai was still in her second year and not the club president yet, right? What was she like then?”

“Let me see… She was a bit… no, completely unsuited to act as a guide. You know how she is normally, right? But she still explained things enthusiastically. She even pa.s.sionately explained the details of the Kendo Club that I had disinterestedly come to see, as if it were her own club. I could tell that she really loved this school. All the others who came on the school visit with me probably thought the same thing.”

“I see… I only went to the school for the first time on the day of the entrance exam, myself.”

“So you jumped in without prior preparation, huh? That’s just like you, Hinooka.”

“Grrr. Anyway, what happened next?”

“…So, I searched for and found senpai one more time before we left, and asked her what club she was in.”

“So indecent.”

“Kuh… I couldn’t help it, I was interested in her.”

Touya’s face clouded over.

“Of course, she was a member of the Exploration Club. But back then, she didn’t guide us to the club building. Because apparently, the club itself might have suspended its activities next year.”

“Eh, it might have? You mean the club really was in danger of being disbanded!?”

“Not disbanded, suspended. A temporary pause in activities. As if it could simply be disbanded with such a big building and so much equipment. However, since there was only one club member, the Exploration Club couldn’t remain active.”

Homura nodded in understanding.

Homura had already painfully come to understand the difficulty of investigating this huge planet all alone—and the danger and overwhelming loneliness that came with it.

“…So Inari-senpai’s skipping club and school was…”

Touya nodded at Homura’s murmur.

“Senpai told me that, even if she ended up being the only club member, she would transfer over to Koma-senpai’s Exploration Club at Hiyos.h.i.+zaka High and continue there.”

Homura was astonished.

“Isn’t that… basically a club takeover? It was that bad?”

“Yeah. I couldn’t stand that. Even if she were with Koma-senpai and her friends, it would have been too lonely.”

Touya’s cheeks burned red a little.

“—So, in the heat of the moment, I said that I would join the Exploration Club.”

That moment was the instant he so easily gave up on practicing kendo in high school.

Senpai and Touya really were the same in that regard.

Homura couldn’t help being shocked by the strength of their wills.

As someone who had enrolled at the school by chance and had joined the Exploration Club merely because she was scouted, Homura had no words to reply with.

“So… what did senpai say?”

“She said, ‘I’ll be waiting for you.’”

Touya’s eyes were gentle as he gazed down in reminiscence.

“That made you happy, didn’t it?”

“Yeah. I was happy. So much so that I thought I didn’t care if I died right then.”

Touya murmured that embarra.s.sedly and scratched his head.

Next to him, Homura took a breath and let the tension leave her shoulders, before crossing her arms.

“I see… If this were a TV drama or movie, Touya-kun would be an excellent protagonist. Senpai would be the heroine and I’d play a supporting role.”

“What’re you talking about? You’d definitely be the protagonist. If this were an absurd gag manga, that is.”

“Hey, hey, I was trying to encourage you with the greatest respect in my own way! What’s with that att.i.tude!? Just when I try to be nice, this is what I get!”

As Touya laughed, Homura indignantly drew up to him.

“At least call me the heroine of a cell phone novel, okay? Didn’t you say I looked like someone straight from a movie scene before?”

“I did, but it’s impossible for me to imagine you in that way anymore. You talk too much. And you reveal what you think too much.”

Homura became completely miffed at those words.

Touya unconcernedly encouraged her.

“Don’t undervalue yourself too much. I won’t say something meaningless like everyone’s a protagonist and first place in their own lives, but there’s at least one time in every person’s life when they can become a protagonist.”

“…It’d be nice if that were the case.”

While continuing to walk along the stone wall, they finally left the wetlands and approached the entrance to a forest filled with many diverse kinds of trees.

There, with his sharp sight, Touya found a rotten and deserted house.

It was a cabin that had almost entirely lost the form of a house and was filled with vines and leaves. They realized that it was a deserted house because there in the corners of the room lay the exposed keystones of what probably used to be pillars.

Homura picked up and stared carefully at a piece of wood that seemed to have been a fragment of a pillar.

“It’s all crumbling and in pieces… like it’s been abandoned for dozens… no, hundreds of years.”

“Decomposition doesn’t advance quickly in this cool climate, and since the humidity is strong due to the fog in the area, this place was probably abandoned since it wouldn’t pose a risk of forest fire.”

At the very least, there were no signs that anyone had visited this place recently.

Touya surveyed their surroundings further.

“It feels like a fis.h.i.+ng cabin… Could there be a boat nearby?”

There wasn’t any water, but there was a creek-like depression running towards the wetlands.

“A boat, huh… Things would have been so much easier earlier if we’d had a rubber raft…”

While thinking about such things, Homura felt some unknown discomfort in her chest once again, and she turned her camera downwards at the cabin ruins.

She turned her head as she felt her heart strongly pulled in a certain direction, and when she pushed her way through the nearby thicket—

“——”

Shocked, Homura drew back and hid behind Touya’s back.

Touya immediately readied himself in stance to fight, and Homura pointed over his shoulder at the interior of the woods.

“T-There’s… a person over there…”

“…It’s not a fallen tree or something?”

“No. It’s a person. They’re standing there supporting their body with something.”

Indeed, there was a silhouette standing pitched forward with their feet buried in the dirt beneath the shadows of the trees.

“Don’t they see us? They couldn’t be… dead, could they…?”

The human figure didn’t move at all.

“Is it… a scarecrow?”

“If it were a scarecrow, it would have a better pose to scare off birds.”

“Just what kind of pose is that?”

The two of them timidly approached while stepping on fallen leaves.

It was a wooden puppet whose original color had completely faded away and grown dull.

It was wearing ragged clothing and was leaning against a farming spade.

“So it’s a scarecrow, just like you thought, Touya-kun…”

“……It’s quite elaborately made.”

The puppet had joints just like a human and, most surprisingly, looked much more recently made compared to the deserted house.

Homura took up the camera, while being cautious about not using up too much of her scarce remaining film.

“Ah, I know. Touya-kun, take the picture.”

“Ah?”

“Look, I’m the first one to discover this, so don’t you think I have the right to take a picture with it?”

“Your heart’s self-possession is like concrete. Well, I’ll take the picture since it’s an important item of reference, though.”

Shrugging, Touya took the camera from Homura.

Homura adopted over-familiarly stance next to the puppet and made a peace sign.

Suddenly, she noticed the pendant hanging from the puppet’s neck.

When she pulled up the strap, a small bead-sized jewel inlaid in an almond-shaped wooden object appeared from the puppet’s chest.

“…Hmm? What a fas.h.i.+onable puppet.”

“…Ah… Hey, that’s…”

Touya sucked in a breath and brought his face close to the jewel, a mysterious green glow being reflected in his eyes from it.

“…Isn’t that a spirit stone?”

“Huh? Now that you mention it, it is a beautiful green…”

As Homura blinked and brought her face closer to inspect it, hard and rough fingers grabbed her arm.

“—Hi, hyah, gyah!”

The puppet moved towards Homura as she panicked and toppled over.

“—!”

Touya immediately threw the camera behind him and took out the swords at his hip.

The cord of the pendant around the puppet’s necked was pulled along by Homura when she fell backwards, causing it to stretch and then finally snap.

The puppet’s deformed amorphous and expressionless face came towards Homura.

“Nooooooo!”

Touya’s vigor-filled sword stabbed its tip into the puppets neck, and it stopped moving as if it were sown in place.

“…!”

He shook it off his blade with all his might, causing it to slam into a tree bunk with a bang.

Touya thrusted his sword forward and mercilessly gazed at the puppet.

“T-Touya-kun, stop…!”