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CONTENTS
Another Beginning: 'Wandering and Kidnapping'
Revisiting the Previous Summary: 'It's Been So Long, I've Forgotten How to Lie'
-
Chapter 6: 'naked human - Purely Limited -'
Chapter 7: memories - Time Machine - Part D
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Chapter 8: 'please give me wing - Copper-Made, However -'
Chapter 9: 'xx - Part D'
Afterword
Chapter 10: 'revival - Lies for Ages More'
The Story of a Lying Boy and a Broken Girl
Epilogue: 'From All That Has Been, To All That Will Be'

I will lie to you again.
To make you happier than you've ever been.
Lying Mii-kun and
Broken Maa-chan
The End is the Beginning

Another Beginning: 'Wandering and Kidnapping'
"Mii-kun, isn't he here yet?"

That day, the girl realized she wasn't dreaming.
For ordinary people, the time spent dreaming is shorter than reality. But the girl's life was fundamentally based on spending more time in a state of reverie than with her eyes open. Considering this, for the girl, reality itself was like a dream. A girl who doesn't dream is akin to losing her grip on reality in either world.
Late September. The girl, who had spent the night sleeping on hard ground alongside the dried-out husks of cicadas, awoke before noon. The sun had climbed so high it was beyond reach, but at the shrine that had become the girl's bed, the branches and leaves of trees blocked the sunlight. The dense, verdant atmosphere and the deep green enshrouding the sky, combined with the chirping of cicadas echoing from somewhere, were like a 'cocoon' enveloping the girl.
Slowly, the girl lifted her eyelids and sat up. Beside her lay a university notebook and a pencil. Before brushing the dirt from her hair, she snatched them up first. Despite prioritizing them, she had no hesitation in crushing the spine of the notebook. Perhaps from being repeated many times, the notebook bore countless nail marks.
Her eyes now fully open, the girl possessed a striking beauty, befitting some sort of peerless belle. However, to earn such praise from those around her, her expression lacked a touch of humanity. Naturally well-formed corners of her eyes, thin lips, modest cheeks. No matter what part was isolated or who observed it, she would undoubtedly be identified as originating from beauty. But why was it that when these features came together as a single face, that human touch was lost?
As she looked down, her semi-long hair, like brown buried in black, covered the 'imperfect form' born from the combination of her perfections. The girl, just like that, began to count on her fingers, trying to recall the last day she had a dream. Her bangs hid her eyes, and it was uncertain if she could even see her own fingers.
One, two... as her fingers steadily bent, was she counting days, or perhaps going back as far as years? The girl herself seemed somewhat vague and hazy; no light of intention lit her vacant eyes.
When her fingers eventually counted to '8,' the girl opened her hand as if shaking something off. She stood up and began to walk without brushing off her dirt-stained clothes and hair. The girl would not recall, not even to the very end, that last night, driven by a sudden impulse, she had engaged in self-harm, scattered vomit around her, and cried. The memories the girl had tasked herself to prioritize were unrelated to such hardships.

Fortune or misfortune, or perhaps sheer indifference. As she walked along a country road flanked by fields where crops barely grew, dirt trickled from the girl's hair, blown by a headwind. Once the dirt, scattering like a trail from her hair, was gone, the wind died down. It was as if some unseen will, refusing to allow the girl to remain soiled, had intervened. The girl herself merely stared ahead, seemingly feeling no particular emotion.
The girl's way of walking lacked stability. Regardless of her own will, her feet would invariably veer to the right or left. As if, for amusement, she were moving after spinning in place multiple times. The girl had an abnormality in her semicircular canals. Not congenital, but acquired. Perhaps because of this, the girl often fell.
Just now, she tripped on a stone between the sidewalk and the roadway, falling diagonally to her right. The girl, whose body ended up jutting out into the roadway, didn't even try to break her fall. Her long-sleeved elbow, hip, and then the side of her head struck the asphalt in that order. Without so much as a grimace, the girl accepted the pain. Her complexion didn't change; she only wiped away the sweat brought on by the late September heat and her long sleeves.
The driver of a car approaching from behind was aghast to see the girl suddenly fall. After all, if he continued straight, his tires would have run over the girl's upper body. He hastily slammed on the brakes, stopping in an awkward position on the road. Fortunately, no following cars appeared immediately, so the driver pulled his car to the side of the road. Then he got out and, warily, approached the girl who was still on the road, looking more like she was lying down than fallen. The driver was a man, and a reasonably decent human being. He would likely have swerved to avoid even a dog, cat, or crow lying on the road.
"Hey, are you alright?"
"I'm fine."
As he spoke, the man bent down to look at the girl's face. At that, the girl moved her eyes for the first time since falling. As if disliking being peered at by the man, she sat up, evading his outstretched hand.
The girl's voice was opaque and cold. A tone of rejection, as if brandishing a knife to keep others away from her. The man immediately sensed this and took a step back. The girl, having stood up and confirmed she was holding her notebook and pencil, started walking without giving the man so much as a glance.
The man hesitated, wondering whether to call out to her again, and froze with his hand awkwardly extended. The girl didn't look back, turning onto the road to her left. The man watched her go, still troubled, but eventually seemed to conclude that she'd probably be alright, and returned to his car. Had he persistently continued to speak to her, there's a possibility the pencil clutched in the girl's hand might have gouged out his eyeball, so his giving up at that point must be said to have been fortunate for both of them in the end.

The girl entered a park not far from the shrine. The park, created for the dual purpose of a playground and sports ground, seemed to have too much vast land. Though it was daytime, there were no gleeful shouts of children running about. On a holiday with fine weather, the only one using the park was the girl. Normally, this would be strange, but to those who knew the town's current circumstances, it was an expected sight. Though for the girl, indifferent to the world, it meant nothing.
The girl stopped in front of the park's horizontal bar. There, she slowly opened her notebook and, with the pencil clutched so tightly her fingers might bleed, scratchily wrote something down. On a new page, this was written:
"The horizontal bar in the park where we played during spring break. He wasn't there."
Peeking from the edge of the notebook, ruffled by the wind, past pages were also filled with similar entries.
"The community center where we played on a Sunday in October. He wasn't there."
"The agricultural experiment station where we came to dig sweet potatoes in autumn. He wasn't there."
"The elementary school home economics room where he said the candy I made in cooking class was delicious. He wasn't there."
"He wasn't there. He wasn't there. He wasn't there. He wasn't there. He wasn't there he wasn't there he wasn't there he wasn't there."
The notebook, in which the girl's craving was meticulously recorded, was already nearly half-filled with 'He wasn't there.'
The girl pressed down the edge of the notebook, which was rustling and flipping in the wind, and finished writing another 'He wasn't there.' As soon as she was done, she turned her back to the horizontal bar, crushing the notebook and pencil in her grip. Even after leaving the park, like a migratory fish, the girl wandered through the silent holiday town. The pattern of her destinations was governed by the memories within her. No one but the girl could decipher it. Even the 'boy' who lived within her memories probably couldn't grasp it all.
No one could accurately describe the girl's state of mind. What the girl sought was simple and pure, yet the way to reach it was so complex that it led to an abandonment of understanding.
The girl suddenly stopped and looked up at a roadside tree. After shaking her head, scanning her surroundings for any figures, she opened her notebook again. Below the entry about the park she had just written, another 'He wasn't there' was added.
"The tree and path where he protected me when I fell. He wasn't there."
After writing that, the girl stabbed the pencil into the tree trunk and moved it as if to gouge something out. The trail left by the pencil formed the name of the 'boy' the girl relentlessly sought. By the time she finished writing, the pencil lead had snapped, and the tip tumbled off. The girl scratched at the splintered wood of the pencil, as if peeling skin, to expose a new lead. She made a test scribble with the misshapen pencil on the edge of her notebook; though the line was thick and its outline vague, it could draw a black line. Once she confirmed this, the girl started walking straight ahead again.
This was how the girl spent her holidays. Or rather, perhaps because she yearned for a moment of rest, she instead gave up her holidays, walking the town until her legs were stiff. For days, for years, she pushed forward, heedless of her surroundings.
Only her heart ignores it. Keeps losing.
However, for the past eight years, the 'forward' the girl faces has been the sky above.
And the girl's feelings poured out towards it have become 'fantasy'.
A realm that, no matter how much a human walked, was utterly unreachable.
From all that has been, to all that will be.
At twilight, the girl was walking in front of a residential area. The trees were colored by the evening sun slanting through them, as if autumn leaves had passed their peak and begun to wither. Even when yellow branches and leaves were rustled by a cool breeze, or when her own hair danced as if being toyed with, the girl paid no attention at all.
Not because she wasn't interested, but as if the very function of having interest had been omitted.
In the residential area, there were no signs of adults, let alone children. Indeed, not just here, but the entire town was quiet. A dangerous incident, a string of serial murders, had beset the town, making it difficult to go outside.
The girl, wandering aimlessly since daytime and now walking the path enveloped in twilight's glow, was now the out-of-place figure.
The girl keeps searching. For the reality she lost eight years ago. For the way she wishes the world to be. What keeps the girl alive, what has placed a curse upon her feet, is nothing other than memory. For that, she wouldn't mind losing anything, or anyone getting hurt. For the girl, only herself and 'one other person' were needed to suffice on this Earth. Precisely because that other person is missing, reality becomes a dream, making the girl forget her weariness. Enabling her to walk on and on, endlessly.
It was only when she spotted a pair of children sitting by a wall that such a girl finally moved her eyes. They had the air of an older brother and younger sister, snuggled together, heads bowed forlornly. The brother looked to be in middle elementary school, the sister in the lower grades, both with a worn-out childishness clinging to them. The girl, keeping her distance, stared intently at the children. Kirikiri-kiri, as if her pupils were constricting. Her eyes, usually more reptilian, became even more mechanical, spurning any biological emotion. With an expressionless face, what thoughts were circulating within the girl? If her mouth, her eyes, every part of her, renounced speaking, no one could possibly understand. The same could be said for the girl herself. Her mind and body were disconnected, as if existing in different time zones. Though belonging to the same place and using clocks of the same standard, they lived indicating separate times. The girl's incompleteness stemmed from this.
Within the girl, there was an entire world unique to her.
It just didn't mesh. Not with society, not with the flow of time, not even with her own growth.
Continuing to stare, without blinking, the girl began to move. Her shadow covered the narrow path lined with time-worn, generally grimy houses. Only the upper half of the shadow stretched unnaturally, as if mimicking a mouth opened to its limit. Wavering, just like its unstable outline, the girl too, swayed.

The brother noticed the approaching girl first. Towards the girl, who scraped the side of her head against the wall and was at times drawn towards the opposite wall, he turned his trembling eyes. The brother, naturally, had never met this girl, who was five or six years older than him. But at a glance, he could recognize the danger that clung to her. The girl's aura was different now from when she had been walking around during the day with a sullen face. Yet, the brother didn't try to run; he watched the girl's movements. Half-consciously, he gripped his sister's hand. The sister looked up, glaring at her brother's sudden action. But immediately after, she noticed the approaching girl and her face tensed. Her aura was too different from a mere passerby, her steps unstable, swaying left and right. An alien, hard, as-if-about-to-crack gaze.
Then, the girl stopped in front of the siblings. She extended the hand not holding the notebook towards the brother and grabbed his small hand. While the brother was still taken aback, the girl, without hesitation, pulled his hand strongly, forcing him to stand. Showing no mercy to the grimacing brother, whose elbow pained him from the unnatural strain, the girl next reached for the sister. The sister instinctively recoiled, but because her hand was held by her brother, she couldn't escape. With one right hand, the girl gripped both siblings' hands together and pulled them as if handling luggage.
"Wh-what is it?" the brother asked the girl, bewildered. The girl didn't even look back. She turned around, dragging the siblings back the way she came. The soles of the siblings' dirty shoes scraped along the ground. The sister, half-clinging to her brother as if pleading, looked up at the girl. The girl completely ignored them. "Um, where are we... uh..." Faced with the girl's too-sudden appearance and actions, the brother couldn't organize his thoughts enough to know what to ask. The girl paid them no heed at all, simply trying to drag them out of the residential area. Strangely, the siblings didn't offer much resistance. Even in this critical situation of being dragged by the hand by an obviously suspicious girl, they didn't panic excessively, nor did they cry or scream.
The siblings' house was visible if they looked back, but they didn't even turn their heads as if to return there. The girl was trying to take them somewhere. The eyes of the two children looked up, taking in that fact.

It was nothing extraordinary; just as the girl was peculiar, the children, too, were not ordinary.
As if refusing to return home. The children did not look back at the way home.
The narrow path spread before them. As if entrusting something to the cold hand leading them towards the unknown.
The siblings looked at each other for a long moment, then nodded. Then, looking down, pulled by the girl's hand, they began to move their feet of their own accord. The girl, perhaps sensing this, turned back slightly for the first time. But she did not open her tightly closed lips, merely looking down at the siblings coldly with eyes that held neither pity nor curiosity.
The sight of the girl, clutching her notebook, forcibly pulling the siblings' hands together with one of her own, was indeed bizarre.
However, the awareness brought about by the serial murder case, causing residents to refrain from going out on holidays.
The school's directive that children should not be out and about, which had backfired.
And the siblings, who had their own complicated circumstances and didn't seek help from those around them.
These three factors allowed the girl's brazen 'kidnapping' to succeed easily.
And so, the girl returned to her dwelling, an apartment, bringing the two children with her. First, the girl picked up a hammer that was ready at the entrance, like a shoehorn, and with it, struck the siblings' faces. Though it was only one blow each, it was enough to incapacitate them. They hadn't lost consciousness, but the attack, delivered without any hesitation or warning, dealt the brother and sister a shock greater than mere pain. Their vision blurred.
The girl dragged the siblings up into the hallway. It was a high-class apartment, spacious enough for someone living alone, and then some. Passing through the living room, she threw the children into the Japanese-style room at the back. While the siblings writhed, battling the intense pain in their heads, the girl went around the bedroom, making preparations. Preparations for 'confinement.'
Truth be told, the girl had experience attempting confinement before. Though memories of that time were almost entirely lost to her, there was apparently a part of her that unconsciously worked to learn from past failures. The girl had even thoughtfully prepared handcuffs for confinement. Dangling two of them from her hands, she returned to the Japanese-style room.
In the Japanese-style room, the girl pinned down the siblings, who were still crouching, pressing their foreheads. She cuffed their ankles to a pillar in the room, restraining their movements. By the time this task was finished, the siblings' faces had turned pale for a different reason. What would this expressionless girl before them do next? The siblings huddled together, directing terrified eyes at the girl, as if regretting their own naive choice.
But contrary to their expectations, the girl did nothing more to the siblings. She left the Japanese-style room, closing the sliding fusuma door. The girl flung her notebook and pencil against the living room wall as if slamming them down, then moved to the window. Bracing herself by digging her nails into the large window leading to the veranda, the girl's figure faced the scenery outside. From the third floor of the apartment, the view showed various things being seared by a sunset that seemed to blaze. Meanwhile, blackish-purple clouds, resembling internal bleeding, spread across the sky as if to suppress the churning red. The contrastingly colored sky and the deserted, silent town were solemnly preparing to welcome the night. Of course, the girl, as usual, paid no heed to such scenery. Though she faced the window, she was indifferent to what lay outside it.
What the girl's eyes were fixed on was her own face reflected in the window. Her own countenance, unresponsive as a Noh mask. In the dim room, she stared at her eyes, which maintained their reptilian pupils. The girl's fingers began to move on the windowpane. "Hate, hate, hate." Her fingertips traced it over and over. Eventually, it reached her lips too. "Hate, hate, hate." Directed at herself, at the face that wouldn't show any revulsion, 'hate' seemed to swirl around the girl, tightening silently. The tips of her nails, continuously tracing the glass, began to distort and dent in the middle, and tears welled up in the girl's eyes. But they didn't flow from the corners of her eyes; instead, they pooled within, as if slowly drowning her eyeballs.
When that 'hate' ended, her expression suddenly changed, and the girl's face softened. A smile, gentle as if melting, with no support whatsoever. A side of an innocent little girl that she revealed for the first time today. Her cheeks, which had been less tensed and more like frozen earth, crumbled as if crushed, and the dammed-up tears flowed out as if a restraint had been removed. Sniffling, the trickling tears formed multiple lines on the surface of her cheeks. The paths chosen by the tears were unstable, wavering left and right as if mimicking the girl's broken semicircular canals. Like rainwater seeping into parched ground, her dry cheeks absorbed the tears and became moist. As if not hesitating even to rot from excessive moisture.
What could the girl be seeing now? Her eyes, completely closed in a smile, seemed to have already forgotten her reflection in the windowpane. Her fingers, which had been tracing the glass, stretched out and opened, pressing her entire palm flat against it. As if waving to something approaching from beyond the window. The girl looked as if she might break down crying. Her knees buckled, and her forehead collided with the windowpane. The forehead, bumping unceremoniously, made a dull sound. The girl, keeping her forehead pressed against the glass, began to slide down into a crouch as her knees bent. But she caught herself midway, put strength into her fingertips pressed against the glass, and straightened her body.
The girl, lifting her face, continued to wear a smile far younger than her age. This too, like her Noh mask-like expressionlessness, seemed artificial. Because there was utterly no gap in her emotion, no room for it to waver. A mechanical, yet simultaneously, an expression of an exceedingly pure heart was faintly reproduced on the windowpane. Her face, exposed to the setting sun, appeared as if one slanted half was shedding red tears. The girl sniffled, her lower lip trembling.
And so the girl smiled, and as tears, terribly salty and thick, streamed down her face, she waited longingly. For the realization of a dream, lost and detached from reality. For the time when the boy would take her hand.
"Mii-kun, isn't he here yet?"
The matter involving these children becoming known as a disappearance case that would stir the town, and the story of the lying boy and the broken girl being told—that would be a little further in the future.

Revisiting the Previous Summary: 'It's Been So Long, I've Forgotten How to Lie'
"Are you sure that lie will fly?"
No, I'm being serious. It's been so long, after all. Just remembering 'Soredemo Machi wa Mawatteiru,' I ended up rereading it four times. So, it's possible that this story, which we're about to resume, might have no lies in it at all. Even quitting smoking sticks if you keep it up for a year.
"Though, coming from me, someone who's never smoked, an analogy like that probably isn't very credible, huh."
And next, I have to apologize for the fact that, forget lies, I have to admit it's honestly difficult to even explain what this story was about. I've completely forgotten, surprisingly enough. What kind of person I was, how many sad things happened. What else have I forgotten...? No, what *can* I remember? I only remember a very few important things.
".........Right then. What kind of summary can I give that wouldn't be a lie? What a strange thing to worry about."
"Ah, uh... yeah, I can't remember anything at all. Unfortunately, this is extremely difficult."
"I don't remember anything about the past anyway, so I might as well give up and talk about what's to come. Yeah, let's do that. Forgetting the previous content at this point seems like it'll work out somehow, doesn't it?"
"Ahem. This isn't a consistently difficult story. The protagonist brandishes a justice dependent on the individual, protects his one and only princess, and kicks the enemies to bits. That's all there is to it. We've just added a bit of a modern arrangement, or what-have-you, and go around carrying cell phones and knives, that's all."
"This time, it corresponds to the latter part. Can it also be positioned as the concluding arc, I wonder?"
"Though, I haven't been told what exactly is ending."
"Truth be told, I don't even know if the 'enemy' will really appear, so I can't definitively state the genre in a big way yet. It holds plenty of potential to become a gentle love story, and that, for me too, is something to look forward to once the lid is off. That said, honestly, it probably won't be all peace and quiet."
"After all, neither I nor the princess have the personalities or destinies suited for that sort of thing."
"Full of ups and downs, bizarre and extraordinary, full of vicissitudes. ...Ah, speaking of which, I just remembered something I do recall. It's the most important thing. The thought that there might have been a time I'd forgotten even this honestly makes my heart ache. Even though it's such an incredibly simple and precious way for an emotion to be."
"That I love Maa-chan very much."
"This alone, my memories and feelings for her, are constantly being updated. Really, you know."
"So, without forgetting those feelings, let's start the story again from here."
"Well now, the continuation finally begins. No matter who tries to hold it back, things will finally be settled, black or white. And in the end, will this become 'The Story That Tells of My End'?"
"The answer, surely, will be found by the future me who has reached the very end of the end."

Chapter 6: 'naked human - Purely Limited -'
"And so he set off on a journey and saved the world, they say. Happily ever after, happily ever after."
"......Eh, is that the end? That's right, Akane. For me, his story ends here."
"Even I am allowed to choose whose story I get involved in, you know."
"Getting mixed up in such a dangerous story is simply too much for a lady like Watakushi."
"At the end of a story, one jester like Watakushi is enough."
"Yes, the amusing and funny comedy starring a jester also ends here."
"So, let's just say seeing him off is good enough."
"......Listen, Akane, if you want to be happy, don't get friendly with types like him."
"From my perspective, he is truly an 'unfortunate' person."
"Being near someone unlucky attracts danger. So, you have to keep your distance."
"In short, cultivate an eye for men. Like me! (Thrusts a thumb up vigorously)"
"......What, because you've only ever seen Father and Brother, even *he* looks decent to you?"
".........Hmmph. Well, even for someone like him, people do seem to gather around him to some extent. Yes, really."