34. Blood Play
The one who called out to us was "Clock Ryu."
Even though it should have been our first meeting, I was terribly confused by the fact that I clearly remembered his full name.
Clock Ryu was a handsome male high school student model.
He swept his sulfuric acid-soaked bangs back, as if to show off his chiseled features.
A look of unconcealable worry floated on his face.
"I'm fine."
When I asserted plainly that there was truly no problem, the voice of a high school girl, sounding skeptical, cut in from the side.
"Really? You don't have eyeballs, though."
Turning my gaze, I saw "Ability Emi."
It was my first time meeting her too, yet I remembered her name vividly.
Ability Emi wore an expressionless face, as if she had decided to remain indifferent to everything in the universe.
Her long black hair also covered her face like a curtain rejecting the outside world.
However, this time, she was observing me with some interest. Though I soon realized her interest wasn't in me, but in the goggles I was wearing.
"Those are cool. Can you lend them to me?"
Before I could answer, Rin replied instantly.
"No. I made these for Big Brother."
"You made them!?"
Ability Emi approached Rin.
"Amazing. Can you make one for me too?"
Rin stared at Ability Emi somewhat dubiously for a moment, then answered shortly, "Okay." And from her invisible inventory, she immediately took out another pair of goggles.
They had a camouflage pattern, designed like military-issue gear. To my eyes, they were rugged and hardly gorgeous, but they seemed to match Ability Emi's taste. She happily accepted them and put them on right away.
The moment she put the goggles on, they exploded.
They detonated with a loud blast like an anti-personnel mine, blowing Ability Emi's head away.
In the space where her head should have been, there was now nothing.
The moment I saw that sight, a word, as if programmed before my manufacture, was automatically output from my mouth.
"...Headless Girl (Mutouko)?"
I had no idea who the robot "Headless Girl" was in the first place, but as soon as I said it, I realized that the wreckage before me was not her.
This humanoid was merely Ability Emi who had lost her head.
And at that sight, the two people nearby froze.
Looking to the side, I saw the "Pixel Siblings," set as fraternal twins and returnees from abroad.
They were frozen in a common "snapshot of youth" pose, as if taking a PR photo for a summer resort while playing in the river.
Rin, as if pouring cold water on them, declared in a completely bored voice.
"I'm bored of playing in the water."
Hearing that, I tilted my head.
What did she mean, bored already, when we had just entered the river?
"We just got in, didn't we?" I said. "Weren't we going to play? Weren't we going to play in the river?"
"Of course I intended to, Big Brother," Rin emphasized.
"Of course I intended to. But, you know? Big Brother, you know? Isn't it boring? Playing in the river."
unable to keep up, I asked back politely.
"What is?"
"I mean, this is Venus, where breaking stereotypes is considered a virtue, right? Deciding to play in the water just because we came to a river is totally un-Venus-like."
"Then, what on earth would be a Venus-like way to play?"
"That's decided, of course."
"You say 'decided,' but you just said you wanted to break stereotypes..."
Interrupting my words—her Big Brother trying to grumble—Rin's voice was packed into a soap bubble and roared across the sulfuric acid river.
"Let's play with blood."
The moment the soap bubble burst, countless porcupine quills scattered from inside like shrapnel from a grenade.
They mercilessly pierced the entire bodies of the returnee-setting siblings, "Pixel Hikari" and "Pixel Hikaru."
The two humanoids were instantly covered in needles, and countless dots were engraved all over their bodies.
Their skin literally "pixelated."
Their entire bodies transformed into high-pixel-density displays, and ultimately, the two turned into home appliances like giant wall-mounted televisions.
On their body surfaces, now monitors, video playback began.
It was a scene of elegant life on some planet in the Andromeda Galaxy, where they supposedly lived before "returning" to this country.
Memories condensed with their nostalgia were screened amidst the flow of the sulfuric acid river.
The two on the screen were chatting happily in an alien language not used in the solar system, while playing the piano and violin.
"Beautiful..."
Clock Ryu, who was entranced by the screen, muttered.
He swam closer as if drawn in and stopped right in front of the TV.
Too close.
Just as I approached to warn him that he should keep some distance, he suddenly dove into the screen of the Pixel Siblings' memories, as if captivated by the scenery outside a window, or jumping into an open window.
Before I could stop him, his figure easily vanished to the other side of the two dimensions.
Then, the screen immediately turned an ominous red.
The memory footage, which had been a black-and-white movie, took on a monochrome red hue.
The content also transformed; Clock Ryu joined the Pixel Siblings' performance, turning it into a music program playing a discordant trio.
Since the movie had turned into a concert, I tried to operate the remote control to change the channel, but Rin snatched the remote from the side and switched to the channel she wanted to watch.
Projected on the screen was a scene of "blood play" that might have unfolded with us in this river.
It took the form of live news.
In the sulfuric acid river, me, Rin, Clock Ryu, and the supposedly headless Ability Emi and the Pixel Siblings were each holding toys like water guns.
But what was fired from them was not water.
It was fresh blood.
Dark, blackish blood gushing from the muzzles drenched each other's bodies.
The parts bathed in blood festered, grotesquely swelling like lumps of meat with exposed circuits, bursting, and then regenerating.
They were splashing each other's internal fluids, raising innocent shrieks of "Kyaa, kyaa," indulging in a blasphemous game of defiling one another.
Next, beach volleyball began.
Used as the ball was the head of Ability Emi, which should have been blown to smithereens by the claymore earlier.
The severed head, dangling wiring and spinal cables from the cut neck, flew through the sky drawing a parabola.
Everyone received, tossed, and spiked it, staging a refreshing and fun midsummer moment.
And the one wearing the most joyful smile in that scene was none other than the ball itself—Ability Emi's severed head, flying back and forth through the air at the hands of the humanoids.
Spinning round and round in the air, she wore a beaming smile, happier than anyone else in the world.
That ecstatic expression was almost enviable.
Every time her head was tossed, her long black hair danced in the air.
It was like the tail of a comet tracing the path of the head. Yes, like how comets release gas and dust as they approach the sun, trailing a beautiful tail.
Her snip-severed head flew back and forth through the sky, trailing her long hair.
We volleyed that smiling sphere—the ball named Ability Emi—back and forth to our heart's content, hitting it like a volleyball. We played engrossed until the smile vanished from the ball and the blood drained away.
By the time the vitality completely faded from Ability Emi's face, I suddenly noticed something.
No, rather than noticing, a fragment of memory returned.
"...Oto (Thunder)."
I tried saying the name.
Something bitter echoed in my taste sensors.
A resonance like dark chocolate with over 90% cacao.
A taste where a certain sweetness lurked within the intense bitterness.
Like the antioxidant effect of polyphenols or the awakening effect of theobromine, that bitterness was not merely unpleasant but stimulated the deep layers of the brain, leaving a faint, immoral pleasure in the aftertaste.
Such a super-bitter and sweet recollection revived.
"Oto is not here."