Side Story: ＡΩ

"Umm, maybe I just don't understand it properly, but will this actually do anything?"

The young woman in a black suit finally voiced the question that had been circling in her head for a while. Under her brand new suit she wore a white blouse, and her long hair was tied up behind her head. Her appearance gave a strong impression of orderliness, and as that orderly, artificial appearance suggested, she was here job hunting.

They were deep in the mountains, about three hours away from the closest bus station. But as much as it seemed they were a lone island in an ocean of wilderness, the building she had found there was strangely modern.

The Independent Higher Order Organism Research Facility. It was one of the many organizations she had applied to. After seeing the information they had provided about themselves at their recruiting seminar, she felt they should have a job for even a liberal arts student like her. And aside from employees being forced to live in company dormitories, their requirements were surprisingly lax. After how hopeless her job search had seemed until that point, she had jumped at the offer to come here immediately.

And now, she had just finished reading the documents they had put before her. Though the complicated legalese went over her head, she could get the general gist of it. Basically, it was a waiver saying if she died while working for them, they weren't responsible.

"Ah! You're wondering why we'd make you sign something that couldn't be legally binding, when we could easily make you disappear without a trace anyway, right?" the lab-coated young man across from her said happily. Aside from the chairs and table, and of course the two of them, the sparse room was completely empty.

"You just said something kind of terrifying, you know that?!" She wouldn't normally feel it was okay to talk back at a job interview, but in circumstances as suspicious as these, she couldn't help it.

"Yeah, well, the factional warfare here is kind of intense. Even small things like this are used to trip you up at every step. So it's best that you know what kind of situation you're getting into."

"Can I go home?" No matter how hard it had been for her to find a job, she wasn't interested in risking her life.

"Ahaha, after bringing you all the way here, we can't just let you leave, can we?" he replied as if it were a given. She considered just running from the room right then, but that led her to a realization — there was basically no way for her to get home on her own. She was in the middle of a remote research facility in the mountains, far removed from human civilization. Walking home when it took her three hours to get here by car was basically impossible.

"I don't understand! What is going on here?! What, am I going to be some sort of test subject or something?!"

"I guess it's easy to think a facility like this would do human experimentation, but don't worry. We're not going to make you take any strange medicine or anything. The description we wrote on the recruitment advert was an accurate summary of what you'll be doing...although maybe calling what we do just 'office work' was being a bit too liberal."

"And what happens if I don't sign this?"

"You'll just be thrown in without any explanation."

"Thrown where?!"

The contract also had a non-disclosure agreement written into it, but a facility like this would have no problem getting rid of one or two people, so any sort of contract was likely a formality. The moment she had boarded that bus for the interview, her fate had been decided.

If she couldn't run away, there was no point in opposing them either. Reluctantly, she signed the contract — Asaka Takatou.

Nodding in satisfaction, the man in the lab coat handed her an ID card.

◇ ◇ ◇

Asaka hung her head as she walked down the stark white hallway. It reminded her of a hospital. The lack of any other people made her wonder if there were any others working in the facility at all.

"Is this a research facility for some evil organization or something?"

"Not at all. We're a proper institution, working for the betterment of humanity and the world," the man beside her responded, seemingly offended by the accusation.

"A proper institution wouldn't have such a suspicious way of recruiting people."

"Honestly, the fact that you were willing to join us properly was quite a relief. Having to brainwash everyone that comes in here is so inefficient, and it can impact their performance, too."

"So this is an evil organization!"

"We have pretty free rein with our methods, so I guess you could see it that way. But this facility is here to protect not only the people, but the entire country of Japan. Ah, here we are." The man tapped his ID card on the nearby card reader. As he did, the wall quietly slid open, revealing an elevator. "You need your ID card to get anywhere in here, so please don't lose it."

Following him, Asaka stepped into the elevator. Once the door closed, it quietly began to descend.

"Now, it'll take a while to get down there. Would you like me to explain anything in the meantime?"

"What do you actually want me to do here? Is there really any reason it had to be me?"

"Basically, your job will be taking care of a monster."

"What do you mean 'monster'? Is it something your evil research has created?" She had no idea what he could possibly mean by "taking care of a monster."

"It's not really something where it had to be you. We're just trying a number of different approaches."

"So what exactly are you researching at this facility?" She changed the topic, as he appeared to be avoiding the subject of the monster.

"How do I put this...are you familiar with the term 'mutually assured destruction'?"

"No, not at all."

Mutually assured destruction was a strategy used in nuclear warfare. The idea was for countries that had nuclear weapons, in the event of being hit by a nuclear attack themselves, to still have the capability of launching their own nuclear attack in response. Basically, it guaranteed that any use of nuclear weapons would result in nuclear retaliation. The theory was that this would prevent two countries from ever actually going to war.

"So wait, are you researching nuclear weapons here?!"

"That would make things easy, wouldn't it? We have the materials, after all. I feel like it would be fine to research it in secret, but the higher-ups are rather stuck on Japan's three antinuclear principles. There's no way they'd allow us to do that here. But that leaves us defenseless against other countries which have developed nuclear weapons. You know how dangerous a situation that is for us, right?"

"Kind of, but what can we do about it?"

"To that end, this facility is researching curses. Basically, 'if you nuke us, we'll put a curse on your country.'" Asaka was taken aback by the stupidity of his comment, but there was no sign the man was joking at all. "I also thought it sounded ridiculous when I first heard it. But even if you don't understand the principle or the logic of how it works, when you see that it does, it's hard to say anything. That's what science is."

"So, when you said I might die, that means..." Although she didn't want to believe it, after hearing this much, Asaka had basically figured it out.

"Yes, death by a curse. Oh, from the word 'curse' you might get the impression of a brutal, agonizing death from within your own body, but no, you'd just die instantly, so don't worry about it. You won't feel any pain at all; you'll literally just drop dead on the spot."

"How could I not worry about that?!"

"Okay, we need to switch elevators here, so we have a bit more walking to do." As they were talking, the elevator came to a stop. Calmly ignoring Asaka's anger, the young man opened the door.

Asaka gasped, struck speechless by the sight of the hallway beyond. It was black — not just dark, but covered in writing. The walls, the ceiling, even the floor were crowded with lettering.

"What is this?! It looks terrifying!" Upon closer inspection, it seemed they were Chinese characters written with a brush.

"They're sutras. Maybe it's just empty consolation, but it helps some people."

"I'm not sure whether I can even ask where we're going, but is it that far?"

"We're heading to your workplace right now, and we still have a ways to go. It's kind of meaningless, but the higher-ups were terrified, so they forced us deep underground. The multiple elevator changes are also just in case." The man stepped out into the hallway crowded with sutras. Asaka hurriedly followed.

After walking for a while, the man spoke again. "Are you familiar with the term 'ＡΩ'?" It seemed to be a continuation of their previous conversation.

"Are you making fun of me? How would I know something like that?"

"Those are the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, Alpha and Omega. It basically means 'from beginning to end,' or something like 'everything' or 'eternity.' That's the codename of the test subject you will be responsible for."

"Is this test subject human? So this person is cursing others?" At the very least, she hoped it was human.

"I wonder, is it really human in the end?"

"What do you mean 'really' human? It's a person, right?"

"I haven't seen it, so I can't really say."

"Are you serious?"

"I mean, if you get cursed, you die. There's no way I'd want to get close to it."

Faced with his total indifference, Asaka lost the will to complain. "But it's one of your test subjects, right? Aren't there videos or something?"

"Oh, I forgot something pretty important. No one is allowed to make recordings of ＡΩ, video or sound. There are rumors that just watching a video of it will get you killed, after all."

"Now that you mention it, I did see a movie like that once..." Asaka's unease was continuing to grow.

"Of course, I've heard reports of exactly what it looks like and what kind of organism it is, but I don't want to give you any preconceived notions."

"If it's my job, isn't it kind of important that I know?"

"Think of it as part of your research. How will it react to meeting someone like you? Yes, recording the actions of ＡΩ is an important part of your job."

If digital recordings were banned, then she supposed the only option would be a handwritten journal. "Assuming I survive, right?"

"For now, I'll just say none of its caretakers have died before, so you'll probably be okay."

"Oh, do you mean I'm going to have coworkers?"

She had thought this dangerous job was being pushed onto her alone, but if she had coworkers then she would feel a lot better about the whole thing.

"It depends on how the situation develops from here, but for now you'll be by yourself. No one has died yet, but previous caretakers have dropped out due to mental health issues."

"There's no peace of mind here at all, then..." Asaka muttered.

"It's not like we make you do everything by yourself, though. There's an autonomous robot there too, so you can go ahead and put it to work as well."

"So...what exactly do I have to do? What does 'taking care of it' mean?"

"What exactly is ＡΩ, you mean? You won't be that worried when you find out. Ah, we've made it to the next elevator."

Boarding it, they began descending further. After going for this long, they must have made it incredibly far underground. The facility must have been regulating the airflow, but Asaka was finding it harder and harder to breathe.

"What we understand so far is that, just by thinking it, ＡΩ can kill anything. So far, we haven't found any way to defend against it. While we have no complaints about its strength, it's basically impossible to control, so it's hard to call it a weapon, and it can't really be used in warfare."

"If that's the case, should you really be studying it in a lab?" If something like that existed, just having it deep underground seemed dangerous enough.

"Right? That's what I think, too. But in the end, we can't kill it."

"Is it immortal or something?"

"No, its body is probably like any other person's. It's definitely possible to kill it, but there's a reason we can't — it can detect any attack coming at it before it happens and counterattack. Well, that's actually the part that made people think of using it as a means of mutually assured destruction."

"But it's already this far underground, right? Why don't you just bury it? If it's a living thing, it'll starve eventually."

"I'm surprised, Miss Takatou! That's pretty brutal of you! But we can't do that, either."

"Why not?"

"If we tried, humanity would probably be wiped out."

Asaka froze, taken off guard by that conclusion, after having skipped past the logical steps to get there.

"It kills just by thinking. So if it doesn't know you exist, it can't kill you. You get that much, right?"

"Well, you can't think to kill someone you've never heard of before, can you?"

"Right. To kill an individual, you have to know about them. But if it wants to kill indiscriminately, there's no such need. In short, if it ever decided to kill every person on Earth at once, it would be possible."

"Isn't that an obscene level of powerful?!"

"We don't really know if it's possible, but we don't know that it's not possible, either. So we can't really risk it."

"Well, what exactly do you want me to do?"

"We want you to give it the mentality of a Japanese person. So if Japan is attacked, it'll feel the need to respond."

"I don't know how well I'd be able to teach or train a monster..."

"You have your teaching license, don't you?"

"What? Well, yeah, I figured I'd just get all the licenses I could, just in case, but...wait, was that the reason you hired me?!"

"That's one of them, yes. We're not just hiring any old person here, you know."

"Dammit! I never should have gotten that license if I didn't plan on using it!"

As Asaka chastised herself, the elevator fell silent. They had arrived at their destination.

"Now then. From here, you'll have to go on by yourself. Just walk down the hallway," the man said, swiping his ID card to open the elevator door.

"By myself?"

"Unfortunately, I'm not authorized to go any farther. And even if I was, I wouldn't want to."

"Is it safe for me to be getting so close to something so dangerous?" Asaka asked, glaring at the man.

"Leaving it alone any longer just increases the risk. We figure it's better than nothing at all, so please just take it easy and do your best." As expected, the man had no intention of either coming with her or taking her back. "Here are your instructions. The details of your job are written inside," he finished, handing her a stack of papers.

Realizing she wouldn't accomplish anything by standing there, Asaka finally stepped into the hallway. The moment she did, the door shut behind her. Looking down the corridor, she saw a metal door not far away. It was enormous, with numerous solid-looking metal components arrayed about its surface. It reminded her of an underground vault in the center of a bank.

Can an ID card actually open this type of door?

Though she doubted it would work, she nevertheless touched her ID card to the card reader. As she did, the door emitted a loud noise as metal bolts and hinges began to move.

"Whatever! If humanity gets wiped out, it's not my problem!" With a desperate self-pep talk, Asaka stepped through the door.

◇ ◇ ◇

The setting sun shed a blood-red light over the surroundings. The high-pitched wails of the cicadas added a melancholic feeling to the unnerving scenery.

Before Asaka was exactly the kind of scene a Japanese person would think of when told of the countryside — rice fields, a narrow river, and a small forest up on a mountainside. Red spider lilies lined the road cutting between the fields of rice, and crows flew through the sky overhead.

The twilight scenery had a somewhat sinister feeling to it. But if one went to the countryside, this kind of landscape was rather common. The only problem was that it was actually in an underground research facility.

After passing through numerous elevators and hallways lined with sutras, magic circles, and carved idols, Asaka had finally ended up here.

"It's like the scenery's been spoiled..." Asaka was filled with an overwhelming fear. While she was still half-doubting the existence of whatever it was that lived here, she could tell the fear with which it was regarded was very real.

The greatest proof of that fear was just how deep underground they were. The research facility was up on a mountain, yet she must have been far below sea level at this point. Whoever had made this place wanted to seal whatever was in here far away, where they would never have to face it.

What on earth was it?

Asaka looked at the scenery around her. There should have been a door behind her, but all she saw was the same countryside surrounding her. The door and walls showed images of that same view — in short, it was all fake. No matter how much this place put on airs, it couldn't have been all that large.

"So, what do I do now?" Up until that point, the path had more or less been a straight line. She'd seen a number of side doors on her way there, but her ID card couldn't open any of them.

Looking over her instructions, she saw that her destination was a mansion in the center of the forest. So she made her way to the small wooded mountain, the only thing standing out among the rice fields.

Passing through a shrine gate at the entrance of the forest, the mansion quickly came into view amidst the dense vegetation. It was an old-fashioned Japanese-style building. The moment Asaka saw it, she got the impression that it was haunted.

As she drew closer, it became more and more obvious that the building's age was real, and not a holographic projection of some sort.

"Hello?" Standing at the entrance, she called into the house. There was no answer, but she had expected as much. The door was unlocked, so she stepped inside. Taking off her shoes and walking into the house proper, she felt a presence inside. Tentatively, she made her way towards it.

The floor of the dark hallway creaked beneath her feet, suggesting an even greater age to the building than she had thought. Asaka did her best to ignore the unpleasant sticky sensation of the floor, gradually speeding up. After walking for a while, she saw an open sliding door. Something was clearly inside it, so she stopped in front of the door, steeling herself before peeking inside.

It was a boy.

He was in what looked like a living room. Not doing anything in particular, he sat cross-legged on the tatami floor in a white kimono.

Is that AΩ?

After all the warnings she had received, seeing him felt like a bit of an anticlimax. He looked young enough to be in the lower grades of elementary school. There was nothing scary about him at all.

The boy looked back at her with a blank stare. Seeing that plainly innocent face, Asaka began to grow angry. Perhaps merely as a result of the pressure she had felt in getting there, the anger was slowly welling up inside her.

Not knowing what to do when Asaka suddenly appeared in front of him, the boy smiled. It was a dry, ironic smile. A know-it-all, resigned smile that was decidedly unchildlike. The moment she saw that, Asaka's anger boiled over.

"Those idiots! What are they doing, keeping a kid locked away down here like this?! What on earth were they thinking, making a place like this?! What are they, stupid?! How are they so scared of a little kid?! And you too! Look how pale you are! Have you just been hiding inside this house the whole time?!"

"Huh? Yeah, I've always been in here..."

Hearing that, Asaka immediately walked into the room, grabbed the boy, and put him on her shoulders. Walking down the hallway, she ignored her shoes as she stepped out of the entranceway to the mansion. Running through the forest, she approached the rice paddy and, with a roar, threw the boy inside.

"There! You're outside! Play! Find some crayfish or shrimp or something, the ones who are transparent so you can see their insides! Put a firecracker in a frog's butt and watch it explode! Get scared as you watch a wireworm burrow its way out of a praying mantis's stomach!"

The mud-soaked boy looked back at her in shock. It was no wonder, considering Asaka's sudden outburst. But that lasted for only a moment. Sitting in the muddy water, he slowly raised his right hand to point at her.

"Die."

Asaka had, up until that moment, completely forgotten that he was supposed to be a monster that could kill people with a thought. The fact that she could be dead at any moment had completely slipped her mind.

Wait, am I going to die?!

From what she had been told, there was no way she could avoid her fate. Asaka waited for that final moment to come, struck by a sudden, stinging fear. But nothing happened.

Then she heard a thud on the ground behind her.

"What...?"

Asaka turned around. Something was lying there on the earth. It was shaped like a person, stretching out from her own shadow. She would never have believed something like it could exist, but it continued to slide out of her shadow right before her eyes.

"It's probably been hiding in your shadow this whole time."

"What is it?"

"No idea. It looks like it had trouble with the charms, so maybe it's a demon or something? Sometimes they come here and try to kill me."

"Oh, I...see..." Asaka had no idea how to respond.

"Hey. I don't mind looking for shrimps or whatever, but it's almost nighttime, so can we do it tomorrow?"

"Huh? Oh! I'm sorry! Wow, what did I just do?! I'm really sorry!" Jumping into the rice paddy, she helped the boy up.

"Are you here to replace Masaki?"

"I don't know who Masaki is, but probably, yes. I don't really know what's going on here, to be honest. My name is Asaka Takatou. What's yours?"

"The people here call me ＡΩ."

"No, no, no, that's just a codename. What's your actual name?"

"No idea. Before I came here they called me Lord Okakushi, because I made people disappear or something? More importantly though, I'm getting kind of hungry."

"Me too, actually...wait, do I have to cook?!"

"Masaki cooked for me, so..."

Taken in by the strange atmosphere, she hadn't thought all that hard about it, but it made sense that if her job was to take care of this boy that she would have to cook for him too.

"You're kind of funny," the boy said, laughing at Asaka's surprise.

"Yeah, I guess I can't argue with that..." She didn't have any excuse for the behavior she had shown since meeting him. She felt somehow pathetic.

◇ ◇ ◇

Looking in the refrigerator, Asaka was at a loss. It was full of food, but it was hard to call them anything other than "ingredients." Having never cooked meals from scratch before, she had no idea how to use these seemingly high-class materials.

"All right, I give up!" Throwing in the towel immediately, she began searching other cupboards. Deep in the back of one, she found some instant ramen. "Er, well, it has to be ready by the time he gets out here, right?"

After returning to the mansion, the boy had gone to take a bath, since he had been covered head to toe in mud. Asaka was also dirty, but it was nothing that she couldn't wash off in the sink, so she had done so and then immediately set about preparing dinner. As she was boiling the water, the boy came back out.

"Hey, even if you're an elementary school kid, put some clothes on in front of other people!"

He was completely naked.

The boy's expression was puzzled. "What's elementary school?"

"Seriously?" If she had to guess, she'd say the boy had no education to speak of. Asaka's anger at the clear neglect he had been shown was beginning to resurface. "Of course, I feel like feeding him nothing but instant ramen is probably going to be called neglect too..." Without even being able to cook, she didn't have much of a right to be angry. Feeling ashamed of herself, she turned back to the stove.

As she told the boy to go get dressed, she turned off the burner. Cutting the lids of the cups, she poured the boiling water inside. After about three minutes, the boy had returned wearing the same kind of white kimono he'd had on before. Sitting him down at the low dining table, Asaka sat across from him, putting the two cups of instant ramen on the table.

"What's this?"

"You don't even know what instant ramen is, huh?" His previous caretakers must have had the utmost concern for his health. The instant ramen must have been something they saved for themselves. "Well, for now, just try eating it."

Since he seemed unsure of what to do, she removed the lid for him and handed him a pair of chopsticks. At the very least, he seemed to know how to eat noodles with chopsticks, and quickly dug in.

"Wow, this is good. I've never had something that tasted like this."

Although she had done nothing more than pour hot water into it, Asaka still felt a slight sense of pride. She started on her own food. The nostalgic everyday flavor of the noodles finally gave her a chance to breathe a relaxed sigh.

"Hey. Uhh, right, your name. Do you really not have one? What did your mom call you?"

"Mom?"

"Well, never mind. Not having a name is pretty inconvenient. Calling you ＡΩ all the time will be a pain."

"Really? Okay, you can call me Asaka then."

"Except we need to be able to tell ourselves apart..." Asaka muttered with a sigh. It seemed he really didn't care one way or another. "I'll just choose one for you. Is that okay?"

"Sure."

Although she had figured it would come to that, now that the moment was on her, she had no idea what to call him. As if the answer might appear there, she stared into the boy's face.

"Hmm, how about Yogiri, then?" That was the name of a dog she had once owned. Thinking he looked somewhat like a puppy, it was the first name that came to mind.

"So, Yogiri Takatou?"

"Wait, why are you taking my last name?!"

"You have to have something like that added to your name, right?"

"Geez, why is it starting to look like I'm your mom?! But if you don't even know that much...well, that's fine. So from now on, you're Yogiri Takatou. Nice to meet you." Getting past her own commentary, Asaka reached forward to offer him a handshake.

The boy stared blankly at her outstretched hand.

Seeing that he didn't seem to understand what she was doing, Asaka stepped over beside him and took his hand by force. "This is a handshake. Nice to meet you! Now, repeat!"

"Nice to meet you?" With a puzzled expression, the boy did as he was told.

While Asaka didn't fully understand what she was supposed to be doing here, it was impossible for her to think of this boy as a monster. So, however reluctantly, she decided to see how things would go.