Not BGM: Hsin and Suoming Combat Showcase

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#002 The Audition Experience - 1

TL : Cnine

ED/PF :

Part 1

　Spring mornings can bring considerable changes in the weather throughout the day.

　Sometimes it feels a little chilly, while at other times it is warm and pleasantly comfortable.

　Fortunately, Kyoya had managed to live without ever having to deal with anything called hay fever, so there was nothing for him to worry about.

　When he mentioned this to his mother, she would sometimes say resentfully, “It’ll suddenly start for you one year too, you know......” Rather than sounding as though she was advising him to be prepared, she sounded almost as though she were saying, “You’ll suffer the same fate as me.” It left him feeling as though he had been cursed without any ill intent. 

　Anyway, Kyouya thought, today was one of the good days.

　A warm breeze brushed his cheek before gently drifting away.

　Cold weather made the body tense, but the spring breeze seemed to softly loosen all that tension, as though it were gently coaxing his body to relax.

　Then, faintly, the delicate scent of cherry blossoms drifted towards him, tickling his nostrils and drawing his gaze upwards.

　Above his head, cherry blossoms bloomed as though they were spreading over him, their soft, almost-white colour standing out beautifully against the blue sky.

　This year, fortunately, the cherry blossoms had not been washed away by rain, and they were blooming in full even during the start-of-term ceremony season.

　 For some reason, Kyouya felt that simply seeing the sight of cherry blossoms beneath a blue sky made the scene seem somehow special.

「―― Sup, Kyoya.」

「Morning, Yuzuki.」

　The person Kyouya happened to meet on the way to school was Yuzuki Tabe.

　He was the sort of boy who ran around with the football club: energetic, mischievous, and with a slightly noticeable childishness about him.

　When the two walked side by side, chatting as they made their way to school, people often teased them by saying that, despite wearing the same uniform and attending the same school, they somehow looked like brothers with quite an age gap between them.

　Kyoya did not see them that way himself. But when he suddenly felt someone looking at him and turned towards Yuzuki, he noticed that Yuzuki was watching him with a thoughtful expression.

「Still, Kyoya, you really do seem kind of grown-up.」

「Really?」

「Yeah. But, you know, it doesn't come across as annoying or anything. You don't seem like some guy acting all grown-up and looking down on everyone. It's more like... Uh, how do I put it?」

「Maybe... You mean I have the sort of composure adults have?」

「Yeah! That's it! Exactly that! Is it something you consciously try to do?」

「Not particularly. I just happen to come across that way.」

「Seriously?」

　As they walked side by side, chatting about nothing in particular, Kyouya found himself thinking that Yuzuki was probably much more like an ordinary middle school student than he was.

　Kyoya's mentality had become strangely mature as a result of the influence of the “dreams” he had been seeing since childhood.

　It was not simply a matter of acting grown-up. Because he had relived the values and experiences of various adults within the “dreams”, he had gradually lost some of the ability to be shaken by things as purely and readily as a child would.

　So that was why he remained so composed.

　After all, he had experienced what amounted to far more lives than even most ordinary adults.

　Sometimes, Kyoya felt as though he was cheating somehow. But if most people knew what Kyoya experienced, they probably would not think, I wish I could take his place.

　 Because―― In front of Kyoya and Yuzuki, who were waiting for the traffic lights to change, there was the spirit of a child lying on the road.

　 Its body had been horribly crushed and was covered in blood. Its eyes were wide open as it looked up at them.

 《――o... o゛gaぁ゛...... za...... zazaza, n》

　 Someone who was no longer human, left behind after death.

　 The people walking through the city, and those standing still, did not seem able to distinguish it from the living.

　 Kyoya had learned by now that the spirits he had encountered seemed unable to listen to what he said, seeing only what they wanted to see.

　They would arbitrarily recognise the person connected to them as the person they wanted, then force that idea upon them. They would come barging into his life.

　 When he was little, he did not understand that this was simply how they were. Every time, he would run away, only to be caught, leaving him frightened.

　 Whether someone would actually want to experience that would depend on the person.

　 There might be the rare individual who would find it thrilling to have an unusual experience, enjoying the sensation of being pursued and driven into a corner as a kind of excitement.

　 But at least Kyoya was not one of them.

　 They would always make eye contact with him of their own accord, follow him without permission, and come all the way to his room without being invited.

　 Because of that, there was a period when he became mentally unstable.

　 By the time he started primary school, he had learnt how to come to terms with them, but Kyouya thought that, without a doubt, it was not a particularly pleasant experience.

　 As the traffic light turned green, Kyoya and Yuzuki began walking together.

　And so, when they reached the child, Kyoya stopped walking.

　 For an ordinary person, especially someone who was not used to such things, they might have pretended not to see it.

　But if Kyoya did that, the child would misunderstand and think that he had not noticed it, and it would end up following him.

　 So.

「Yuzuki, go on ahead. I think my shoelace is coming undone.」

「What? Just fix it after we cross...... The heck, you're not even listening.」

　 Fortunately, this was not a pedestrian crossing at an intersection.

　 Cars turning left or right would not pass through the pedestrian crossing signal.

　 Pretending to fix his shoelace, Kyoya crouched down in front of the child's spirit.

　The blackened, bloodstained hand of the child’s ghost slowly reaches out towards Kyouya.

　Kyoya does not pull away from the hand as it reaches towards his face. Instead, he accepts it.

　 What flows into him is a wave of terrible loneliness and overwhelming remorse.

　 This child is not cursing anyone. They simply wanted to apologise, and had probably been waiting here all this time for their “Mum”.

　They had been told to be careful whenever they went out onto the road, yet they had broken that promise. 

　That is what the child seems to have convinced themselves of. But that is not what happened.

　The final memory that comes through from the child is the scenery surrounding them in the last moments they saw after being struck and thrown by a car. 

　The pedestrian crossing signal had definitely been green.

　The driver had fallen asleep at the wheel, and, to make matters worse, the culprit had fled the scene.

　They had abandoned a life that might have been saved, without even administering first aid.

　If Kyoya told the child this, their sadness would surely turn into anger and hatred.

　 He could not stand by and watch this child, who had spent all this time waiting in a place like this just to apologise, become a being consumed by hatred and resentment.

　So instead, Kyoya gave them a gentle smile.

「―― Rest easy. It’s all right. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Your Mom isn’t angry.」

　He said it quietly, barely moving his lips.

　The child’s ghost opened their eyes wide, silent tears welling within them. Then, with what looked almost like a tearful smile, they softly faded away.

　The wind swept through the place where the child’s ghost had been, sending the cherry blossom petals dancing through the air.

　Feeling the breeze rush past him, Kyouya untied and retied his shoelace once, then stood up and jogged across the road.

「You know, you really shouldn’t try to fix your shoelaces right in the middle of a pedestrian crossing.」

「It was bothering me.」

「Haah? Seriously, you do some really weird stuff sometimes, you know.」

　Yuzuki, and his other friends as well, often thought Kyouya was a strange one.

　But Kyoya was fine with that.

　He had already come to terms with the fact that some things were difficult to understand, long ago, through the expression on his father’s face when he was little, and through the reactions he had experienced in his “dreams”.

「Anyway, more importantly! What are you gonna do for your work experience?」

「Work experience?」

「When we’re in our sophomore year, we can do work experience, right? You know, the thing where they let us see and actually experience what all sorts of different jobs are really like!」

「Ah, now that you mention it, there was something like that.」

　In an age dominated by the internet, information is abundant enough that, if one wants to look something up, they can find out about most things.

　That said, this is also an age in which it is easy to mistake having found information for actually knowing something. Without taking the time to understand things deeply, some people convince themselves that they know enough, and as a result, more children have begun to lose their curiosity or to think of the world as something simple and easy to understand.

　With this in mind, the middle school Kyouya attended had begun providing second-year students with an opportunity to choose from several occupations and take part in what was called work experience. They could observe people actually doing those jobs and have the chance to experience them for themselves.

「… Work experience, huh.」

　――――In my case, I've seen all sorts of “dreams”, so I've accumulated the feeling of having experienced all kinds of things already. Even if I did take part, I feel like most of it would probably lack much of a sense of freshness.

　Thinking about that, Kyoya listened to Yuzuki's childlike hopes of “I want to try it” and “I want to experience it”, as the two of them continued walking towards their middle school.