Oze
“I want you to fight God.”
The winter sea’s air was taut as a mirror, and I had the illusion that it might reflect my own figure. Unable to grasp the meaning of Rhone’s murmur, I felt as if I could see the confusion written on my own face.
After dinner, I alone was invited out onto the deck.
“Who?”
“God. Ah, you don’t know?”
Rhone’s white breath was like a small cloud in the night sky. With that beautiful face of his, even such a thing seemed believable.
“Look at the sky. The Milky Way.”
Rhone gazed upward, as though he had no intention of answering my question.
“So the Milky Way really exists…”
A silvery river faintly flowing in the distance. As if painted with the strokes of a brush of light across the pitch-black sky. Light was alive. I had thought the same thing when I saw Nonno earlier. Nonno turned into a bird made only of the edge of light, and that river flowing across the heavens.
Light possessed a surer life than I did right now.
“Beautiful, isn’t it? Anything that harbors God is perfectly beautiful.”
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“Then who the hell is this? Saying fight one moment and offering praise the next.”
Rhone laughed, still staring at the sky.
“God is the one who created this accursed rule. In other words, the one who decreed we can only take a single passenger along.”
Sudden anger welled up in me. So it’s him—the bastard trying to make Aochi get left behind. I’ll never forgive that.
“Where is he? I’ll fight him right now. Don’t be fooled by appearances—I was pretty strong in fights.”
It had been since my student days, so I was surely rusty, but that didn’t matter. Anger would cover the gap.
“Calm down. God doesn’t show himself so easily.”
That only stoked my fury. Acting all high and mighty.
“Call him, damn it. You’re the one who told me to fight.”
“I don’t mean with fists. And even if you went at him head-on, you couldn’t so much as touch a strand of his hair. Listen, I don’t want to leave anyone behind anymore. And I don’t want your Harvester to vanish, either. —Sit down.”
Suddenly, Rhone pushed me down onto the deck. It wasn’t “sit,” it was “lie down.” Lucky I didn’t crack my head. Wasn’t there a corpse lying here earlier today? My back was cold, but with Rhone covering me, my chest was warm.
“Hey, are you okay? Did you fall? The deck’s slippery, you need to watch yourself.”
A lily-of-the-valley scent quivered right by my ear.
“You really are his favorite, aren’t you. I can’t help but feel jealous. I want him to save me too.”
“Come on, the Harvester’s favorite is Oomi, right?”
I pressed my hand against the hard floor to get up. Rhone, who had been on top of me, rolled off. He stared up at the river spread across the heavens, tears in his eyes.
“It’s you. He can’t abandon a lonely soul. No… it’s more than that. He’s drawn to you. Spitefully, I brought you here.”
I shifted my gaze to the silvery river floating in the darkness and asked:
“What the hell does that mean. Forget that—just tell me how to fight this so-called God.”
Rhone suddenly turned his body toward me. Even lying sideways, his face was striking. Being handsome has its perks.
“Because I went and declared I would ‘fight God,’ all sorts of things are going to happen from here on. If you don’t lose, that alone will be victory.”