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There is an old road extending far beyond the foothills of the mountains. Beside it run train tracks bolted deep into the earth over a winding bed of crushed stones. The steel rails run hot and the hardwood beams smell of superheated creosote, but no locomotive rumbles past and no whistle cuts through the dry stillness of air.
How long has he walked this road? He wears thin sandals woven from straw, yet his feet never tire; and though the sun peers from the sky like a chronic silver cataract, he never breaks a sweat.
Only once does he wonder at the total absence of another living thing. Even the trees have surrendered their bark and leaves; their trunks have long peeled smooth and pale like bone.
Perhaps he has been alone all his life.
But no. This isn’t true. He had a friend, once. It was a long time ago.
In the timid shallow waves, the Star Plasma vessel laughs with her entire body folded in half, as if holding her organs together, as if she might fool someone into thinking this is what she wants. To stand where the land slowly erodes into the sea, giving way to the endless cycles of the tide.
Satoru sidles up with his hands in the pockets of his shorts. Like Suguru, he’s left his shirt unbuttoned; unlike Suguru, he hasn’t bothered to apply sunscreen. Suguru wonders idly if Limitless works on the subatomic level, like a personal ozone layer.
Do you pity her? Suguru asks.
Why should I? says Satoru, his gaze fixed on the vessel. You heard the boss. If she doesn’t merge with Tengen-sama, the world gets screwed big time.
So in other words, you see her as a necessary sacrifice to protect the weak. To ensure our own survival.
Satoru gives him an indifferent look. How many times do I have to say it? We’re the strongest.
Tengen-sama is immortal, Suguru feels obligated to point out.
So what? It’s not like we’re done either.
Done with what?
Evolving. Getting stronger. Whatever you want to call it.
Suguru laughs. After a moment, Satoru tilts his head and grins back.
During their last night in Okinawa, Suguru is reading in bed when someone knocks on the door to his hotel room.
Come in, Suguru says, looking up from his book.
Satoru sticks his head through the doorway, still in full uniform.
Did you need something?
Can I sit here? Satoru asks, loping across the room to fling himself on the armchair by the window before Suguru can answer.
By all means, Suguru says dryly. Make yourself at home.
Satoru stretches out, long and leonine, his legs folded over the armrest and his hands behind his head. Through the open curtains, the cold distant moon washes silver into his hair.
Are you tired?
Nah. Satoru's skin looks sallow, the skin around his lips chapped and white. He’s been running his technique for over thirty-six hours. But it’s so boring, you know? Staying up by myself while everyone else is asleep.
Then I suppose, Suguru says, setting his book aside, at the very least I can keep you company.
Satoru angles his sunglasses down and turns the full bloodshot weight of his Six Eyes onto Suguru.
Why else do you think I’m here?
The tracks are laid in such perfect regularity they begin to warp and distort his vision.
For the first time something like uneasiness or perhaps awareness sinks in. That tree, crooked like a broken hand, hasn’t he seen it before? In the dust he sees what might be footprints, but the uniform pattern of wood beams is starting to give him a headache, and he thinks maybe—
—This hand is not my hand. This body is not my body—
A village in the Kanto-sanchi, says Yaga. They have a goat problem.
A goat problem, repeats Suguru.
Yaga nods. Specifically with kamoshika.
What sort of problem?
Something keeps killing them off.
Haven’t kamoshika been culled systematically for years now?
This village is part of a conservation region, so they’re rather attached to the goats. Yaga taps his fingers on the lectern. Anyway, it’s nothing you shouldn’t be able to handle.
At the village Suguru finds no welcome, only curtains and blinds drawn tight, the cloying smell of decomposition. No need to track the greasy residue of cursed energy when the curse has kindly provided a trail of mutilated kamoshika to follow.
They are odd animals. Goats only in a broad sense of taxonomy, with a thick wolfish pelt and the nimble step of antelopes, caught between some strange circumstances of evolution. He cannot decide if he finds them terribly ugly or terribly majestic.
He locates the curse by the outskirts of the village near a grove of trees, in the shape of a massive bloated kamoshika, its forehead bearing a single cycloptic eye. Semi-Grade 1, possibly Grade 1. A worthy addition.
The curse lurches forward on twisted legs, bleating in a child’s voice. The strange rectangular pupil of its eye looks like a trembling dark ingot.
Suguru stretches out his hand.
Years ago he stood before a curved wall of glass, behind which various marine life glided by in slow-roaming droves, as though suspended in water and carried along by some unseen current. The aquarium’s mottled light rendered everything dreamy and incorporeal.
Something caught his eye, noticeable only because its vertical movement interrupted the shoals of drifting fish. The carcass of a small shark floated up to the surface, its belly chewed out by some predator higher on the food chain. Now lesser creatures nibbled at the flesh, the tattered strips of skin, suddenly fearless in the absence of danger.
Even these small, mindless fish. Even they knew the flavor of death.
Behind him stands a man holding a rake. It takes Suguru a moment to realize the man is not holding out the rake to him, but at him.
Did you—did you just—?
Suguru wets his mouth. The curse has been exorcised. Your animals will be safe now.
He takes a step forward. The man takes a step back and brandishes the rake. Suguru stops walking.
Ingest. Ingest. But who shall bear the burden of humanity’s salvation?
It’s so damn hot, complains Shoko, rolling her head to the side. From the woods comes the perpetual buzzing of cicadas. Ash falls from the cigarette between her fingers.
I don’t really think inhaling smoke is going to cool you down, Suguru says.
No, but it’ll take my mind off how miserable it is.
In the distance they can see Satoru strolling toward them with a plastic grocery bag swinging on his arm, no doubt full of candy.
I think you guys should fuck, Shoko says abruptly.
Excuse me?
She lolls her head on her arms and looks up at him. You heard me. Bet he’s a good lay.
Suguru raises an eyebrow. He’s hardly around these days anyway.
Does that bother you?
No more than it probably bothers you.
Shoko hums and ashes her cigarette. Seems to me like you’re kinda stuck. Like you can’t make up your mind about something.
And you think sleeping with Satoru will solve that?
Not exactly. I think you already know what you wanna do. But you need some convincing to follow through.
I think you have too much faith in Satoru, he says, smiling easily. Or maybe in me.
Satoru comes up and sits beside Suguru on the steps.
What were you talking about? he asks, fishing out a lollipop from the bag. Looked serious.
We were talking about the weather.
Shoko inhales on her cigarette and blows a perfect ring of smoke in Satoru’s face.
We were talking, she says, about commitment.
Of course it ends like this. He knew it from the start.
Satoru stands before him, his Six Eyes clear and terrible.
Do me a favor and bend down, would you? Suguru says. I don’t want to die looking up to you.
The expression on Satoru’s face is unreadable. Slowly he kneels before Suguru until they are eye level.
Satoru perfected the Limitless years ago. Even after fighting Suguru’s amassment of curses and sorcerers, an instinctive barrier prevents anything that might harm Satoru from touching him.
Am I a threat to you, Satoru?
Yes.
Suguru laughs. Even now? Even like this?
You always have been, Satoru says quietly. You always will be.
Suguru lets go of the stump where his right arm used to be and reaches out with tired fingers.
Now he is certain. He has been walking in a great circle, though how many times he has retraced his own steps, following the circumference of train tracks sutured into the ground, he cannot say. Now the landmarks make themselves apparent to him like a familiar melody, or the last line of a poem, or the taste of sugar dissolving away on his tongue—
How are you gonna let yourself get used like that? Suguru?
—a voice he used to know.
There is an old road extending far beyond the foothills of the mountains.
Oh, my friend, my old friend, what have we done?