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CONTENTS
Afterword
Chapter 1: "Bad Person -basic human-"
Chapter 2: "I Want to Mourn You in This Town -memories-"
Chapter 3: "Beneath the Despair That Seems About to Fall - please give me wings-"
Chapter 4: "The Prey Who Shouted XX at the Center of the World - I"
Chapter 5: "My Globe -revival-"

A world where Nagase is dead, and a world where she isn't.
Huh? Which one was my reality, again?
Lying Mii-kun and
Broken Maa-chan's
The Future of the Beginning is the End

Chapter 1: "Bad Person -basic human-"

"My Future Self"
Class 3, Year 3, Nagase Tooru
When I grow up, I think I'll be, like, all adult-like. Right now, my handwriting isn't very neat, and I can't cook at all, but I think I'll be good at those things when I'm an adult.
But when I told my mom this, she said:
"It's not that you just get good at things when you become an adult. Striving to become good at them is what it means to become an adult."
I don't really get it! But Mom was the one who sounded more, like, "adult-like" when she talked.
My little sister has reached that sassy age where she talks back all the time, so I've been trying to get my act together too, but I felt like I still had a long way to go.
I like adults. Many of them are kind, so I can't help but respect them. There are even some older guys who make me think, "I want to be an adult like that." Becoming an adult, according to what Mom said, is hard.
But since there isn't much else for me to do,
I can just focus on becoming an adult,
so I'm sure I'll become a respectable one.
That's why my dream for the future is...
to become an adult.

I remember that the thing I received as a nursery school graduation memento was a rice bowl.
To create the patterns on our own rice bowls, we followed Teacher So-and-so's instructions and did something. This act is terribly vague in my memory, and perhaps I'm misremembering, but I have a feeling we made the basic pattern by dripping a child's favorite color onto the surface of water poured into a bowl. Well, to be honest, where the idea came from doesn't really matter, but in my memory, that's the only thing that left an impression.
Indigo, dripping onto the water's surface. The color I chose, which uses the same character as my given name, was a deep hue, hardly what you’d call refreshing. It was dropped onto the still surface of the water, either by me or perhaps by Teacher So-and-so.
The indigo liquid, thin like diluted paint, spilled onto the center of the water's surface. The faint sound of water meeting water echoed in the corner of the room. There were many children playing around, making a racket, but that noise was swallowed by the sound of the water and didn't reach my ears.
The indigo encroached upon the water's surface. Something shapeless and slovenly spread out lazily, without defined edges. Teacher So-and-so inserted chopsticks into it and gently stirred the surface. The drifting lines of indigo swirled around, the thin lines tracing a trajectory like a mosquito coil.

That became my very image of "memory." More so than the rice bowl, which was broken two days after I received it, this has taken root in me as a graduation memento even now.
When I try to trace my memories, fragments of the nursery school's yellow floor, its tattered white walls, the ceiling, and the cloudy sky come to mind. Flash, flash, flash. They appear and disappear at a speed my eyes can't follow.
And when that slideshow-like prelude ends, a desk, and on it, near a stack of several sheets of copy paper, a bowl and the water's surface are placed at the center of my vision. Within it, that thin, indigo thing, almost as if it were solid, floats buoyantly. And then, it begins to spin, all on its own.
Much faster than when the teacher stirred it with chopsticks, an indigo vortex sweeps across the water's surface. As it continues to spin, having formed a shape like a rotating disk, it gradually transforms into something from my memories. Colors that could never be expressed with just indigo and water seep out like the roots of a plant protruding from a crack in a wall, expressing themselves freely. I look down, celebrating the goings-on within that vessel as if watching a film screening to its very end.
The birth of my memories often went through such a process.
Even now, memories were dissolving, mixing, being stirred, and then being born. The things nurtured by the water's surface in my dreams didn't often try to envelop me in euphoria. They were all detached, realistic dreams.
Though, at first, they were all such wonderfully lie-filled dreams.
It must mean that waking up is approaching. But, "realistic dreams." What an amusing phrase. A reality like a dream would surely be wonderful, but perceiving reality as if it were a dream also seems like a happy way to be.
Either way, the current me would probably be saved by it.

The bowl vanished from the tabletop, and my viewpoint soared higher and higher into the sky.
Finally, while leaving a sensation like my lower back snagging on the wall, I pierced through the ceiling, and everything went black. Thus, my consciousness turned towards reality, which maintained self-awareness more firmly than the water's surface.
When I woke up, Mayu's round, innocent eyes were peering into my face. I was startled.
"Nyoah~" "Nyanu~" She countered. My cute Maa-chan, with her vertically slit, reptilian pupils, smiled like a cat. With that all-too-beaming smile, I was enveloped in such an electric love that I felt I might lose all my memories up to that point. The part about short-circuiting with black smoke billowing from my eyes, well, that was mostly a lie.
The bedroom of the apartment Mayu was renting. A bed. Two debauched high school students. It's a rare thing for me to wake up later than Mayu. Or perhaps Mayu was just up early.
Either way, it's not normal. This feels like some kind of incident is about to occur.
Hmm, that's a problem. I am, after all, a supremacist of everyday life. That's not a lie, by the way.
Mayu, in her pajamas, was sitting beside me in a cat-like, on-all-fours posture. Then, as if triggered by my awakening, she leaped onto my stomach with a "Nyaa~"—"Gyaah!" First, her two knees dug into my lower abdomen, but it served as the best possible alarm clock, so I decided to overlook it. That's a lie, though. I almost lost consciousness.
"Shurinko," Mayu says, rubbing her cheek against mine, completely ignoring my groans. Her cheek is filled with a pleasant coolness, having apparently spent the morning of this late September season.
It's unimportant, but I wonder why writing "like a dog's posture" feels humiliating, while writing "like a cat" gives off a graceful or girlish impression.
I'm thinking about such things. Even though there's so much I should be considering, abandoning all the everyday things, like how the bed seems about to sink in... Wait, was that a lie too?
"Pero pero." Kind Maa-chan licks the sweat from my forehead. Today's Maa-tan is behaving unusually. Perhaps I've grown cat ears or paw pads, and she's matching my transformation. Normally Mayu rolls around on my lap, but occasionally reversing roles doesn't seem so bad.
After licking my sweat and making my cheeks sticky with her saliva, Mayu goes "pyoyaa" and moves away. Then she flaps her arms like wings. Since Maa-tan is an angelic girl, I became slightly worried she might join the angels descending in Rubens' paintings. I'm exaggerating (this repertoire is also running out).
"Today I woke up earlier than Mii-kun!" Ah, so that's why she's in such a good mood and cat mode.
"Bachi bachi bachi." I try to clap with just my mouth. It's obviously impossible, but it feels like it worked, so that's fine.
"Maa-chan perfect!! Mii-kun wants a rewaaard!"
"What would you like?" "A home date!"
After boldly demanding to skip school, Mayu comes rolling and frolicking around again. Rather than me being pampered by Mayu, I prefer being "gyurururu muchuu" like this. Mayu seems to value waking up early as her greatest achievement, and she doesn't have the slightest doubt that today's home date is confirmed.
"But we are people who must go to school."
"Whyyyy!" Myuki—she digs her nails into my forehead without hesitation and tears at it. In shonen manga, it's common for seasoned warriors to have forehead scars, and now I have five lines drawn across my face. "Maa-chan was a good girl waiting until Mii-kun woke up! Mii-kun's unfaithfulness!"
She adds some slaps and scolds me. Hmm, I don't understand = Maa-chan's world is super connected. But that's what's good about her. For the well-trained Mii-kun, Mayu's selfishness and self-centered aspects are "Di Molto Maa-tan-ness!"
This isn't a lie—I'm different from those half-baked good boys out there. You could also say I'm beyond saving.
"Boo." "Moni moni." She kneads my cheeks. "Myuu." Mayu also pinches my side. Twists it. U-turns it (Agyaa!). T-that movement shouldn't be possible unless my flesh or skin detaches from me like achieving enlightenment. How is my body transforming under these pajamas? I imagined myself in a semi-gel state, thinking that would allow me to envelop Mayu without gaps when going out. I was in serious condition.
"Feeling better?" I ask, still nuzzling her cheek.
"Mmm-kyuu," Mayu mews in a strangely deep voice. "I de-ma-and a home date!"
"Today's a school date. Besides, we had a date yesterday, didn't we?"
"We just went to the supermarket!!"
"Alright then, today's an Earth date. Now, get your uniform on."
"Spinny-spinny!!" My neck spun around like a globe. It felt like I could almost see a garden of light behind me. Who on earth was that black silhouette beckoning to me there?

"...A dream?"
Maybe it's because I've got a full lineup of people, young and old, male and female, who've passed on before me, but I had too many possibilities to pinpoint who it was. Still, the number of people who'd welcome me even in the afterlife has to be limited.
"..............." Forget limited, I wonder if anyone like that even exists.

Come to think of it, what time is it? It's rare for me to oversleep, so I have no grasp of the time at all. Outside the window, it's overcast, looking like even the slight disturbance of a plane passing by could make it shed rain like tears. A sparrow perched on the balcony railing, as if annoyed, was looking up at the sky, just like me.

Rolling around on the bed, Mayu looks up at my face. Twisting my neck seemed to have brightened her mood a bit. Oh, super effective. But it's a method I can never use again.
"Hey, hey, what kind of dream were you having?"
"When you were sleeping, you were going 'bwon bwon'."
I'm amazing. I always thought I wasn't very human-like, but this is getting specific.
Well, setting aside such delightful laments.
"I was having a bad dream."
The way my bangs swayed as I shook my head was somehow annoying. I felt like tearing them out. Remembering a time long ago when I used to grow my hair out made it even more so.
The dream was about me doing sports chanbara with Biwashima Yagoto, and for some reason, both of us had wooden swords and were beating each other up. People don't call that a sport. They call it actual combat.
I woke up just as I was about to be minced with enough force to cause atomic disintegration or something. Without dragging that minced state with me, I was regenerated into this world with a healthy body.
"Mmm, Mii-kun's bad dream... Was Maa-chan going snip-snip-snooip?"
"Clank-clank-claaank is something I'd like to pass on too." Nothing was clearly conveyed, but I played along.
"I don't want Mii-kun going nyua-nyua-aan either!"
"Mhm, mhm." How to specifically prevent that from happening is completely unclear, man.

Alright, time for school, so we move on to getting dressed. I carry Mayu, who's reluctant, biting, and angry, in a princess carry, and get our preparations done one after another. Wash her face, I take off her pajamas, I put on her socks, I change her underwear, and then, "Hey, do it yourself."
"Funya?"
She was standing there with a sleepy face. The face-washing had no effect; my-way Maa-chan was suffering from the backlash of waking up early. Same old energy-saving specs as always. If a refrigerator had Mayu's specs, it'd be a problem, wouldn't it? It would get extraordinarily cold while running, but it wouldn't last even half a day.

Waking her up halfway and making her fussy seemed like it would cause more trouble, so I decided to carry her on my back to school. Sleepy Mayu quickly started to breathe softly in sleep on my back. I headed to the living room like that and was finally able to check the time.
"...Oh dear." The clock mercilessly pointed to a time when first period had already started. I approached the clock and tried to turn back the hands with my finger. The hands turned back easily. But when I let go, they immediately resumed moving from that position. I, who possess no special abilities, couldn't even stop a clock that merely indicates time, not actually controls it.

I put Mayu down on the living room sofa, temporarily undid the red string on our pinkies, and then changed into my uniform too. Still summer uniforms. Winter uniforms start in October, so I need to get Mayu's ready as well. Well, this year, the period we wore summer uniforms was over a month shorter than our classmates. A week has passed since we came back from our trip, and I'm starting to feel less tired. Well, to begin with, no incidents really happened, so it was just mild fatigue from Mayu dragging me around, biting me, and clinging to me. Right now, I'm in top form, with no problems mentally or physically. In fact, I've been feeling great lately, my head feels light. I can sleep well too, as a bonus. It's like I've absorbed too many Mayu components and am undergoing Mayu-fication. Thanks to that, I'm definitely late again today.

After changing, I stuff textbooks into my and Mayu's bags, finishing our preparations. I hook the handles of both bags onto my wrist, then hoist Mayu, who's lying on the sofa, onto my back. While I was at it, I retied the red string as it was before. If it's not connected when she wakes up, Maa-chan's patience—and neurons—might snap, so this idiot couple contributed to world (the world of just the two of them) peace again today.
However, the string was quite frayed in the middle. If I don't replace it soon, it'll probably snap.

"...It's been a week."
I murmur as if to confirm, and close my eyes.
After making sure I hadn't forgotten anything, I left the house with Mayu.

How should I put it? It was like a hole that had opened up in the palm of my hand before I knew it. Every time that empty seat comes into view from my spot at the back of the classroom, I'm reminded of that state.
Even though a classmate from the same class was murdered, that was last week's news. The funeral and burial were already taken care of during last week's long weekend, and most people had already "passed through" her death. Some uninvolved classmates, not wanting to go to a funeral during the holiday, wished like a typhoon that she'd died on a school day instead. Or, for those who were traveling and couldn't be involved in the funeral at all, they aren't even trying to touch upon her death from the start. What I need to deal with now is just the difficulty of the lessons, a side effect of my long hospitalization, and grasping the current situation.

After that, I carried Mayu on my back to school, and we joined class from the second period. Since she didn't seem likely to wake up, I put sleepy Maa-tan to bed in Mayu's seat in a different class. Of course, the red string of fate extending from our pinkies was undone. On the way, I thought I saw Fushimi in the classroom, but I was in a hurry, so it didn't leave an impression.
Being a little late is the only thing out of the ordinary; otherwise, I'm attending class as usual. I *can* attend. I'm past the point where I can make up for my academic delays, but if I can maintain a sense of normalcy, that's fine.
But when I try to look at the blackboard or the teacher standing at the podium, that one empty seat inevitably comes into view through the gaps between countless heads. The flowers and vase that had been placed there were cleared away in a day because they were in the way of cleaning, and it remained merely an unused seat. There's still some hesitation now, but in a week, someone else will probably start using that seat during lunch breaks when groups gather to eat.
If that's the case, they might as well just move it to another empty classroom.
Just like how you put a corpse under a grave because it gets unsightly if left out in the yard, they should do the same. It's not like anyone feels anything or has sorrowful thoughts just by seeing it, so leaving it be is fine too, though.
Unlike a corpse, a desk probably isn't creepy even if it rots. But, you know, it's like this: no matter how beautiful someone is, if they become a corpse or get dismembered, they quickly transform into an object that evokes revulsion.
I can't think of any specifically refined sentences, but it feels somewhat philosophical. Like attaining enlightenment. For example, hmm... telling people who worry about the superiority or inferiority of their looks to just "open themselves up." Like a horse mackerel, splayed open, *pak-pak*. Not just yourself, but also the person who makes you feel inferior, *pakkuri* open them too. Then there's no difference. Surely, those who judge faces by the arrangement of muscle fibers aren't in the majority yet. As fellow few "opened" brethren, perhaps friendship could even sprout, transcending the barriers of hatred.
Furthermore, if you're exposing the flesh and innards of your face, it's no time for telling lies. As I see it, only truth accompanies pain. That's why humans try to obtain information by hurting others. Otherwise, people just tell lies and are useless.
......Come to think of it, "Don't lie to yourself" is often treated like some profound saying.
Does that mean if you think the person you're facing is an idiot, you should just say "idiot" to their face? True, you'd be simultaneously upholding the teaching of not lying to others either, killing two birds with one stone, but depending on how they react, you could end up with a net loss instead of a gain. What on earth do adults want to teach children?
Or is it that thing they say, "Buy hardship even if you have to pay for it while you're young"? So they're also telling us to pick fights, huh? It's the profound education of adults, telling us to get involved in buying and selling from a young age. Pockets full of lies.

And, while this lying masochistic bastard was lost in some delusion, the bell signaling the end of second period rang.
The atmosphere in the classroom relaxed, and even though the teacher was still explaining the English sentences written on the blackboard, no one was trying to listen. Still, the teacher raised their voice, trying not to be drowned out by the sudden uproar and the sound of the chime. It was like sitting in the stands right after a home run was hit; only those around me were excited, and I was fed up. If only they were like me, getting excited about art class content in their heads during English, it would be nice and quiet. My notebook is still blank, without any copied blackboard notes, and I still haven't moved on to a second one since advancing to third grade. If I keep it blank like this, it'll probably be promoted to Mayu's free-drawing sketchbook around the New Year. That seems like a more meaningful use for it, I imagined, closing the notebook.
After the teacher finished an explanation that ate into about two minutes of break time, they had the class president give the signal. Half the classmates bowed haphazardly while chatting with their seatmates. The teacher, without hiding the wrinkles on their face born from accumulated dissatisfaction and fatigue, gathered their teaching materials and hurried out through the entrance by the podium. The class president who gave the signal walked slowly to the blackboard and began to erase the remaining English sentences with an air of annoyance.

Not for any particular reason, but I remained standing instead of sitting in my chair, just standing there. A sense of euphoria, similar to light-headedness, filled my vision. It was due to a heat that was slowly, like steam, filling up my head. This heat, annoyingly, made me shiver with chills. It was a contradictory thing: heat without warmth. Since it's an illusion produced by my brain, there's no point in pointing out any contradictions. Lacking a solution, I had no choice but to hug my arms. My shoulders were trembling. For this to happen at the end of September, when the late summer heat still lingers, maybe it's not actually a hallucination but just a simple cold.
If they say idiots catch summer colds, then what about late-summer colds? If I get branded with something like "half-assed idiot" or some lame pun, my right and left brain will start squishing "idiot" between them, and my head will be in big trouble. If it starts deforming, tangling and untangling like a beanbag cushion, the whole neighborhood will suspect I've got an alien inside me. Crap, I can't tell where the lies begin anymore.

...Well, anyway, my brain is operating without a hitch, pointlessly, just like always. Unchanged.
Even with Nagase Tooru dead, my everyday life doesn't change at all.
Even when I was told of Nagase's death, I didn't shed a single tear. For about a week after that, well, my memory just got a little vague, and now I can come to school like this and quietly attend classes.
There isn't a single ripple in my life. If Maa-tan were curled up at my feet, tripping me over, that would at least involve my body swaying up and down. Speaking of Maa-tan, I wonder what Mayu will do for lunch. If she's awake, she'd probably come over and ask me to eat with her.
It's not like Mayu made a bento today, so I'll either buy something at the school store or eat at the cafeteria. Did I even bring my wallet? As I started worrying about such things, I tried to push thoughts of Nagase to the back of my mind. But my eyeballs reacted on their own, stupidly sending the information they'd picked up to my brain.
I saw something white, like a scrap, in the drawer of Nagase's desk. Heedless of drawing the attention of those around me, I moved to Nagase's seat. I pulled out the chair and put my hand into the drawer.
Inside was a math textbook, not considered important by Nagase, who was heading for a humanities course. She probably left it at school because it was a pain to carry home. Even though it's forbidden, or rather, teachers warn against it. Maybe this was Nagase's own rebellious phase.
"Ah, good. I could laugh. Because it was funny. Haha." Does this count as one of Nagase's belongings, I wonder?
If I think of it that way, I can quickly decide how to handle it.
Without hesitation, I shoved the textbook back into the desk drawer and waited for someone to come get it.
While quietly slipping a prayer into the white mist caused by my dizziness.

Initially, when the body was returned by the culprit, it took even her relatives time to identify her, as she had been missing.
From what I've heard, the state of Nagase Tooru's mutilation was apparently in a realm where her life seemed to have ended about twenty times over. It was so bad that if God performed some half-assed miracle and brought Nagase back to life, she would probably try to kill herself right after seeing her reflection in a mirror. Nagase wouldn't have liked using her internal organs as fashion accessories either.
Nagase went missing on the second day of the long weekend. That was the day Mayu and I went to the beach on our trip, and played our "kamakura game" sharing a single shirt. On that day, Nagase reportedly went out for some shopping that could have waited until tomorrow or been done yesterday, and then she never came back.
She wasn't the type to run away from home, and moreover, she was lightly dressed. The search began immediately the next day. However, although they traced her movements partway, it didn't lead to her discovery or rescue.
While that was happening, Nagase was discovered two days later. It was probably around the time Mayu and I were in the midst of establishing Maa-chan Land. A nearby resident found Nagase, folded up and stuffed into a drainage channel along the apartment complex. As far as I'm concerned, from around that point, I'd like to call her "the former Nagase." Judging people solely by their appearance is apparently frowned upon by society's virtues, but Nagase herself wouldn't want to admit, "ssu ssu," to her own boneless, Hiruko-like state. Well, since writing it out is a pain, I'll add "former" in my mind, but I'll just refer to both her pre-dismemberment and post-dismemberment states as "Nagase."

Nagase became the victim of a bizarre murder and shot to momentary fame. The town, too, is further polishing its reputation for regularly producing murderers; they'd probably want to invite one as a guest for town revitalization. Even if that's a lie, with Sugawara's murder case a year ago as a turning point, the town has definitely become a land where eccentrics and deviants run rampant. "I really hope that through the efforts of the police, they can create a town where small citizens like me and flower-mark beautiful girls like Mayu can live in peace. Peace is the most important thing, that's a given."
"As someone with little power, that's a painful opinion to hear. So, Mii-san,"
"Yes?"
"While you claim to have no interest, why did you call me out to ask about the case?"
Kamiyashiro Natsuki-san, sitting on a round stool and facing me, asks this without letting her smile falter.