35. "It's All Right. The Unknown is the Way."
"Oto is not here."
Among my classmates, only Oto is missing.
I looked down at Ability Emi's head, which had just been passed to me, holding it with both hands instead of tossing it to the next person.
She looked tired of being treated like a ball, her expression on the verge of tears.
I suddenly felt a faint hope that perhaps some secret, or a hint leading to Oto's whereabouts, was hidden inside her head.
As I stared at her, Ability Emi's ball-head spoke to me.
"What's wrong? Aren't you going to play?"
"Do you know Oto?"
When I asked abruptly, Ability Emi nodded as if it were natural.
Without anything below her neck, how was the physical action of "nodding" possible with just a head? It must be a supernatural technique achievable only because this is Venus and she is a cutting-edge humanoid robot.
"I know her."
Ability Emi said in a terribly exhausted voice.
Even if she was just being delivered through the air from hand to hand without moving on her own, the act of "devoting oneself to being a ball" seemed to exact a considerable toll.
Signs of deep fatigue seeped into her face.
"Oto is, well, she's a sacrifice."
At the word "sacrifice," my entire nervous system—the vast array of transistors constituting my CPU—reacted violently, as if they all sparked with static electricity at once.
Some memory was trying to surface from beneath the water.
But I couldn't articulate it clearly. The frustration of it being a paper-thin distance away, yet just out of reach of my memory chips' grasp.
To break through this irritation, I decided to dare to speak the word aloud.
Not stopping at micro-physical phenomena like arithmetic processing in the brain, but outputting it as sound to create macro-physical ripples in the real world, I tried to pry open the closed circuit.
"Sacrifice."
As expected, the moment I uttered the word, a sharper, clearer memory revived.
But I still hadn't reached the core.
"But why? Why was she chosen as a sacrifice?"
When I asked, Ability Emi put on a solemn face like a class representative and said instructively,
"There's no particular reason. She was just unlucky. Or rather, you could express it as her being lucky."
"How can you interpret that as lucky?"
I countered, unable to hide my irritation.
"Being chosen as a sacrifice means being killed absurdly, doesn't it?"
"Absurdity."
Ability Emi rolled the word in her mouth like dark chocolate with over 90% cacao, tasting it.
Intense bitterness.
But deep within, a definite sweetness lurked.
Just as polyphenols make blood vessels supple and theobromine awakens the brain, the concept of "absurdity" permeated my thought circuits not merely as pain, but accompanied by a certain intellectual excitement and immoral aftertaste.
"'Absurdity'... That is, in short, a very attractive word pregnant with the nature of the unexpected. Without absurdity, reason cannot exist. Without reason, this world itself wouldn't hold together."
"What are you trying to say?"
"I mean, maybe that's what a sacrifice is. Fuel to drive this world."
"...Fuel?"
"Yes."
Despite lacking anything below the neck, Ability Emi managed a dexterous nod.
"She is now becoming the electricity called sacrifice, powering this world."
"Where is she now?"
To my question, Ability Emi made an expression like shrugging with just her head.
"Reverse Flow Shrine (Gyakuryu-jinja)."
"What is that?"
"It's the shrine of this village. Which means..."
Ability Emi pointed with just her gaze toward Rin, who was waiting downstream.
"It's that child's house."
I shifted my gaze to Rin.
She was waving both hands innocently, staring at me as if to say, "Hurry up and toss it." Her figure was the very image of a little sister eagerly waiting to play with her brother.
Keeping my gaze fixed on her, I continued my interrogation of Ability Emi.
"Apparently, that child is my little sister."
"So, you become the God's big brother. Not bad."
"Is that child a God?"
"That's right. She's the God this village worships."
"Then..."
Strength slowly gathered in my eyes as I stared at my sister, Rin.
"So Oto was made a sacrifice because of that child?"
"Exactly."
Ability Emi affirmed.
"In other words, Oto-chan was chosen as that child's 'snack,' and right now, she's being frozen preserved in the freezer of the Reverse Flow Shrine at that child's house."
"...Freezer?"
"Yes."
Ability Emi said it somewhat distantly, yet with a tinge of pity.
"In this scorching Venus, it's probably the coldest place. I don't know outside this village so I can't say for sure, but at least as far as I know, it's the harshest land of extreme cold on Venus. She might freeze and shut down very soon."
Noise of impatience ran through my CPU.
I pressed her rapidly.
"How can I get to this Reverse Flow Shrine?"
"That, I don't know."
Because Ability Emi answered so flatly, my impatience turned to irritation.
"What do you mean? Haven't you been there? Isn't that why you know about the freezer and that Oto is there?"
"Ah, that. The procedure that the sacrifice is stored in the Reverse Flow Shrine's freezer and thawed during the Blood Festival is just shared knowledge on the village network. Probably information via the shrine maidens working there. Besides, the Reverse Flow Shrine isn't a place you 'go' to. It's a place that 'comes'."
"What do you mean, a place that comes?"
Ability Emi explained as if it were a hassle, yet expounding an important truth.
"Normally, when you say 'place,' the coordinates are fixed and don't move, right? There's even the word 'real estate' (immovable property). But the Reverse Flow Shrine was built specifically to destroy such stereotypes. So, the mechanism is that the place comes to the visitor. Everyone has been inside because the shrine comes to them during the Blood Festival, but no one should have ever visited it of their own accord."
"Then, how can I make the Reverse Flow Shrine come to me?"
"That won't happen unless it's the Blood Festival."
"So, I have no choice but to hold the Blood Festival again?"
"That's incorrect."
Suddenly, a voice that wasn't Ability Emi's cut in from the side.
Turning around, it was Clock Ryu.
I tossed the ball in my hands—Ability Emi's head—towards the waiting Rin with a pon, and turned to face Clock Ryu.
"What do you mean, incorrect?"
"The Reverse Flow Shrine was established to destroy the stereotype that 'places are fixed' in the first place. But, you see, because of that, it's now conversely starting to be trapped by the new stereotype that 'it exists to destroy that stereotype'."
Suppressing the urge to flick the forehead of this beautiful male model, I continued my questioning.
"Can you explain that more simply?"
"In short,"
Clock Ryu began his explanation gleefully, as if he had been waiting for this.
"It doesn't mean you can't go there yourself. You don't necessarily have to wait for it to come to you. There must be a way for you to go to the Reverse Flow Shrine if you look for it. A strategy that takes advantage of the stereotype of 'destroying stereotypes'... Do you get it?"
"How specifically can I go? If there's a way, tell me."
"I don't know that much. You have to find the route to get there yourself."
"How?"
Clock Ryu shrugged instead of answering. Then, seemingly having lost interest in the conversation with me, his gaze began to wander toward his friends who were enjoying the ball game—or rather, the severed head game.
Eventually, he left my side to rejoin the game. But as he left, he left me with one thing.
"It'll be all right. You'll find it. Because the unknown is the way (michi koso ga michi)."