Chapter 138

「June 8th, 2015, there was a group disappearance in the city's Fuji High School. It was a little before classes began, but including teachers and students there were a little less than 200 missing.」

「Group disappearance? At my school?」

「Yes. Of course, there's been nothing like this type of disappearance before. Even more, the remaining 400 or so that didn't disappear saw a strange light. They said that a meter wide magical circle of light appeared around each person, and that those people were vaporized and had disappeared.」

「Um, like in a manga or anime story?」

「Yes, just like that. When I saw the videos they had taken with their cellphones, it almost seemed like a movie trailer or something.」

Miyakawa took a breath as if to say, 『but, with that being said…』

「No matter where we looked, we could find no reason for it happening. So many disappeared, but there was no clues left behind as to why. Just then, you appeared. After all I've said, you can probably guess, that you were on that list of those that disappeared as well. The only one that returned from this event. And the same thing happened as when you left, a magic circle of light that appeared suddenly during school. Nothing about it makes sense to an old man like me.」

「…」

「Well, are you sure you can't remember a thing? It's been a year of investigation from the event. You're the only one with any clue about what happened, and we don't want to close this investigation without some sense of what happened.」

I had disappeared for one year?

A group disappearance at the school, a meter wide magical circle of light appeared around each person, and those people got vaporized?

It was so unrealistic, my mind couldn't understand it.

What is this old man saying, the words seemed so superficial that they seemed to just scatter from his mouth.

Now Miyakawa looked at me a bit perturbed, and his tone became rough.

「Could you not just sit there silently and tell us SOMETHING, your friends Kenta Kida and Suehiko Ido are on that list too, you know?!」

「…wait, both of them?」

As he was sketching out what had happened, suddenly those two names reverberated in my mind.

「Why did only you return? No, HOW did you return?! Where are all the others that disappeared now?!」

「Wait, Mr. Miyakawa.」

The doctor sprung forward, requesting that the officer stop, but he simply continued.

「Shut up! We've got 186 people with no trace of where they've gone, just disappeared into shadows! What happened to you for the past year and three months?!」

Clunk! A loud sound in the middle of the room.

「…get out of here, don't bother my brother you fat ugly pig! If you're thinking about chewing something out, why don't you stuff your face with someone else, okay?!」

The sound I heard was Mai's chair hitting the floor.

Her face had changed completely, and she looked really pissed.

(Ah, this sucks, she's about to go nuclear.)

Most of the time, my sister has the gracefulness of a saint and is quite reserved but she will, without a doubt, use her mouth to rain down unholy poison onto whoever threatens her family and/or friends when she is in the vicinity.

「Mai, calm down. I'm fin…」

「If you're not going to stop this idiot, then shut up. I could care less about this waste of oxygen.」

「Oh…uh…」

My sister stopped the conversation flat. Even though it was normal for her, today she was especially vicious.

However, since my mind was absolutely filled with all of these unbelievable stories, it felt good to return to an everyday life that I was used to.

「Mr. Miyakawa, I understand how you feel, but I can't allow my patient to go through this. That's enough for today.」

「Miyakawa, let's come back later…It's too much.」

「Excuse me. However, I'd like you to remember one thing. In the memories you've lost, the lives of 186 people hang in the balance. I know it's hard, but, even if it's just a small thing, if you remember anything, please let me know.」

Miyakawa shut his eyes as if he was pondering over something, and said with a deep and echoing voice.

「…I understand. If I do think of something, I'll let you know.」

「Well, then.」

Miyakawa and Onishi stood from their chairs and after taking a long bow left the room.

☆

「…Miyakawa, you need to stop that. I know how you feel, but there's also what happened last month. If we don't handle this correctly, public opinion will turn against us.」

「Yeah, yeah, I know. I just wanted to make sure he had no memories.」

After we left the hospital, Miyakawa said and slowly shrugged his shoulders.

「It's been a year of noise since this happened and we still haven't found even one clue…there is one strange thing about the Ukei family that we have to investigate. The boy is in the center of the group disappearance, the same day his parents fall and die, his aunt and grandmother disappear, and the sister gets away from the phenomena that happened at the school. There has to be some connection.」

「Well, he's the only one that had returned, so you can't say that he has no relation to all of this. I mean, can we even categorize all that as coincidental? There's no way to say the younger sister is related, so don't make a big deal of it. Still, it does suck to be treated everyday as those『worthless and lazy cops』by the community.」

「Hah hah hah, they're always going to see us as worthless, Onishi-kun. Since we've had no breakthroughs, we pretty much have been just wasting time.」

I sighed, and then simply laughed to myself.

However, I still wasn't happy about anything. Even with all of this, I felt pretty sympathetic to Ukei.

He was the victim in this, after all, and if he could have helped us in any way, he would.

「Okay, if we can't get this resolved immediately, we can at least start cleaning it up. The first thing is we can make this guy some good live bait.」

「…in order to do that without having to do some dangerous stuff, we can't lop off the local thug's heads to blame them and cover it up, it will get us in trouble with Public Safety.」

A scandal unheard of in today's police force.

If dead bodies came from it, then the trust in the police wouldn't have hit rock bottom.

Since the upper echelon of the police couldn't conceal the whole affair because everyone knew about it, from that, everyone thought the police had messed up investigating the whole disappearance.

「Hah hah hah, of course it's impossible. No matter how much criminals' heads you cut, they always grow back!」

「…anyway, I don't want to be the target of any more criticism. I'm the one put here to watch over you, so don't piss me off.」

「Yeah, sorry. But still, don't worry, because I'm ready to take the fall for it if something bad happens.」

「Miyakawa!」

「Hah hah hah」

What a jerk.

Because of this guy, even an able cop like me gets glared at from my superiors.

「So anyway, Onishi, you believe that rumor? If it's right, then I wonder where the kid came home from.」

「The rumor, do you mean THAT rumor?」

One motive for the incident was a story that would make any normal person fall down laughing.

One person that saw the event stated that the people involved went to an alternate world.

「Well, it does make you think though. This time there was no video of the event, but he did arrive back wearing some kind of fantastic outfit.」

「Onishi, you've still got that hard head of yours. No matter how many times I've seen that picture, no matter how many times I've seen his clothes, I still can't believe a weird occult story like that…but I almost believed it after seeing the boy today.」

Miyakawa said it with a calm and composed manner, but when he saw that picture of the boy, he looked quite weak.

「I wonder what life that boy lived when he was gone. He looked scared…like he was about to be killed by some opponent's fists.」

「…」

After saying that Miyakawa, who said he'd quit smoking, lit up a cigarette.

The reason that I thought the boy wasn't just some kid was the way he looked at us.

…he looked shaken…like a boy that had come upon a wounded bear while hunting with his father.