I didn’t expect the Harvester to let us into his room so casually.But now, that surprise is drowned out by something much bigger—my thoughts and emotions churning, vaster than the sea.
Inside his room, it looked like a typical ship cabin at first glance.
A bed built into the wall. One sofa. A low table in front of it.But unlike my room—though I’d barely gotten a look before running out, startled by Mamoru-kun and the lady—this one had a heavy desk and chair, and was maybe three times the size.The door over there probably leads to a shower.
But what’s throwing me isn’t the layout.It’s what’s in the room.
Sitting on the bed was a slightly grimy stuffed cat—there was no mistaking it. That was Chammy.One eye green, one blue. Gray tabby fur, with a faint patch of brown on the chest. It was definitely Chammy.
My grandmother gave it to me when I was a child—back when I loved cats but was allergic to them.
I wanted to reach out and grab it, the nostalgia hit that hard.But something—some creeping unease—held me back.
I turned to Aochi-san to say something.
“That’s my soccer ball,” he muttered, staring at a hook on the wall.
Soccer ball? I didn’t see anything. But he kept talking, ignoring my confusion.
“It’s in that black net. Man, I remember that.”
His voice, though, was tinged with unease.
Uh, hey now—I glanced toward Oze-san for backup.
“Oze-san, do you see anything familiar?”
“Books. Stacked on that desk over there. The ones I used to read to Mamoru.Not that anyone else can probably see them.What is this place?”
We’ve already had heart harvesters, the dead, a complete lack of any other crew… so yeah, “What is this place?” is becoming a recurring question.
The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.
“You can see warm memories,”Mamoru-kun answered in place of the Harvester, who’d gone off to collect more hearts.I wondered what Mamoru-kun was seeing right now.
The three of us stood there, each with something from our past right in front of us—yet none of us could bring ourselves to touch them.
Then Aochi-san turned toward the window and said,“There’s a huge number of hearts out there now.”
Sunlight streamed through the not-so-large window, catching Aochi-san’s face in a glittering glow.Mamoru-kun was staring at him, utterly entranced.Not that Aochi-san noticed.
Worried about Oze-san’s emotions, I quickly moved between them, blocking Mamoru-kun’s view as naturally as possible and glanced outside.
—And what I saw took my breath away.
Under the fierce midday sun, countless golden waves scattered and shimmered across the sea.Floating above them were dozens—maybe hundreds—of burning hearts.
I’d assumed, since the Harvester had called them “unsaved hearts,” that they were from the dead.But these hearts… they were beating.Each one burned, pulsing wildly, almost violently alive.
What does “unsaved” even mean in this case?They felt more alive than I did.
We were all watching in silence, spellbound, when suddenly—
THUD.
A deep boom echoed from beneath us, and the ship lurched hard to one side.
We all grabbed the walls or windows to steady ourselves, exchanging startled looks.Mamoru-kun, apparently familiar with this, calmly explained:
“The old man dropped the net.”
“Apparently the Harvester dropped the net,” I relayed for Aochi-san, who couldn’t hear Mamoru-kun.
He raised an eyebrow.
“Are you sure he said ‘net’? Not ‘bomb’ or something?”
“What? Those aren’t even remotely similar—wait, what is that?”
Beneath the cluster of burning hearts, a large, gray, spherical object had appeared.It looked… a lot like a bomb.
“Is he planning to blow them up? That’s awful,”Aochi-san said, his strong sense of justice flaring up again.
Mamoru-kun’s eyes sparkled at his words.Please, stop saying cool stuff in front of the kid…
“Wait—look. The hearts are drifting toward the bomb.”
Oze-san, ever the calm observer, had noticed.Thankfully, he hadn’t caught Mamoru-kun’s reaction.
Sure enough, the burning hearts were slowly gathering above the gray sphere.Were they going to merge into one massive heart?
That’s what I thought—until it happened.
A massive white bird shot across the sky, flying low and fast, aiming straight for the cluster of hearts.It was beautiful, like a red-crowned crane—slender, elegant, poised.But the air around it was colder than a winter sky.
“That’s the bird after the hearts? Is it going to eat them?”
Before I could stop him, Aochi-san bolted for the door.
I grabbed his arm, holding him back with everything I had.
“What are you going to do? Just watch. Look—look at that!”
“You seriously think I’ll fall for a distraction—”
He turned back—and froze.
He was staring at another bird, one that had dived down from the sky.
Its wings shimmered black, its beak was beautiful, elegant.
“…That’s the bird that saved me.”