“I…”
Minoru gave up on deciding which parts needed to be said and dove right in. “I’m afraid of other people, too. But it’s because they’ll start to have memories of me, and I’ll have memories of them. I think what I’m really afraid of is those memories—inside others and inside my own mind… But lately, I’ve realized that might not be the source of my power. If it was, I probably would’ve gotten a memory-altering ability like Chief Himi, after all…”
At this point, Minoru was addressing his own concerns as much as he was addressing Suu’s.
“Ever since I got this power, deep down I’ve been thinking…this isn’t the absolute solitude I wanted. If it was based on that desire, I don’t think what happened last week would’ve been possible… Bringing another person into my protective shell, that is.”
“The Professor told me about that. You protected Accelerator from an explosion in your fight against Igniter, right?”
Suu’s voice startled Minoru out of his brooding, and he nodded.
“…Right. But I was able to do it only once. We tried to re-create it in experiments recently, and when I couldn’t make it happen again, Yumiko was furious with me.”
“Hmm…” Suu tilted her head thoughtfully, gazing off into space.
“…Minoru. Is it okay if you can’t see me?”
“Wh-what?”
“If you can’t see the other person, would you still be able to bring them into your protective shell?”
Minoru was stunned into silence for a few moments, then stammered out a flustered response. “I…I can’t! Even if I couldn’t see the person, I could still, um, f-feel them…and besides…” He continued as if frantically firing off excuses. “When it fails, the other person gets pushed away super quickly! Even in the experiment room, where there’s mats and meter-thick foam padding on the walls, Yumiko’s nose was turning red after a while!”
A soft giggle escaped Suu’s lips at that. “I bet she got really mad.”
“Yeah…I mean, of course she did. I don’t want to try that experiment again for a while… I mean, the point is, it’s too dangerous to try it no matter who it’s with!” Feeling a cold sweat on his back for some reason, Minoru was breathing heavily as he finished his messy statement.
However, Suu responded quite casually.
“We have a mat right there.”
“H-huh?!”
Suu’s slim index finger was pointing straight at the wood-frame bed up against the far wall. After another few seconds of shocked silence, Minoru shook his head rapidly, his back stiff. “Wh…? No! I mean, technically it’s a mat or at least a mattress, but, um…there are other problems with that… I mean, er…”
Minoru gulped and looked at Suu.
“Wait…are you just messing with me?”
“…I just wanted to know more about both our abilities…”
The Refractor’s elfin face clouded with disappointment.
“A-ah, um, I’m sorry!” Realizing his mistake, Minoru apologized reflexively. Suu had just admitted earlier that she was terrified of men looking at her with lust. It was absurd to think that she would joke about that sort of thing for fun.
She really does just want to learn more about her powers and help me figure out mine, he thought, chewing his lip and looking down again as he reproached himself. And I responded so rudely…
“Let’s try it, then,” Suu said casually, her face instantly returning to its usual aloof expression. “See if you can bring me into your protective shell.”
…But how am I supposed to do that?
As if seeing the question in his eyes, Suu answered calmly, “I’ll lie down on the bed, and you can activate your powers above me.”
“Uhh…”
As Minoru sat dumbfounded, Suu stood up coolly, walked over to the bed, and casually stretched out on top of the blankets.
“Uhhh…,” he repeated.
Suu flicked her violet-blue eyes toward him. “It’s all right. I’ll activate my ability to its full extent, too, so you won’t be able to see me at all, and I won’t see you, either. That should lessen your fear of us creating memories of each other.” With that, Suu’s Third Eye power went into action, just as promised, and her delicate form vanished into thin air with the same faint sound as before.
The light from the streetlamps that streamed in through the window was simply curving around her body, rendering her perfectly invisible. But unlike the firm leather seat, the soft blankets on Minoru’s bed wrinkled underneath her weight, showing a vague outline of her body.
“All right, go ahead.”
Suu’s voice came from the indented outline on the bed, but Minoru didn’t move right away.
I know she’s invisible, but…
He stared uncertainly at the seemingly empty bed. Thinking about it, Minoru decided this was at least as stressful as when he’d had to stand behind Yumiko and press up against her. Minoru doubted he had the self-possession to practically lie on top of a girl on his bed, much less to bring her into his protective shell.
Minoru opened his mouth to apologize and say that he couldn’t do it after all, that it was bound to fail anyway, but then he paused, Suu’s words from a few minutes ago playing back in his mind.
“It’s the color of apathy… I don’t interest you at all.”
Those words, coupled with Olivier’s accusations from the previous week, weighed down on his heart painfully. Being afraid of others and being apathetic sounded similar, but they weren’t really the same. The latter, after all, implied that he didn’t care whether other people lived or died. What if the source of his power was not really fear but apathy? Had he gained the ability to create a protective shell because, deep down, he didn’t care about anyone else as long as he himself was safe?
…That’s not true!
Minoru gritted his teeth, steeled himself, and walked over to the bed with new resolve. If his power had really been born from a selfish desire to protect himself, he wouldn’t have been able to bring anyone else into his protective shell. But he didn’t want what had happened at Ariake Heaven’s Shore to be his only proof that his power had come from somewhere else.
Minoru put both his knees down on the bed, avoiding the area that most likely contained Suu’s legs. Cautiously confirming the location of Suu’s upper body with his fingertips, he placed both hands approximately above her shoulders.
“…Okay, h-here goes,” Minoru mumbled. Taking a deep breath, he cautiously lowered his body toward the bed.
The wooden bedsprings creaked quietly and lightly as he felt something soft against the front of his body. It was a very strange experience: There was definitely something underneath him, but it looked as though he were simply floating above the bed. No matter how hard he squinted at the now slightly deeper indent on the bed, he could see nothing but blankets.
Detecting the faintest scent of shampoo, Minoru swallowed and spoke with a dry mouth.
“U-um…a-am I too heavy?”
“It’s fine,” Suu responded, her voice as level as ever. “I’m a Jet Eye, too, after all.” She had a good point—to a Third Eye host’s enhanced physical strength, the weight of one person was no big burden.
But what about mentally speaking? Minoru thought, despite himself. No matter how scientific the goal might be, technically speaking, he was still on a bed pressing down on a person he had just met today. “Um…you’re not scared?” he blurted out half unintentionally.
“Only a little,” Suu admitted, her voice close to Minoru’s ear as she continued on. “…I’m sorry. I said I just wanted to know more about our powers, but the truth is, that was only half my reason. The other half was…to test the limits of my own fear.”
“To test the limits…?”
“Yes. Of all the men I’ve met, you have the least threatening gaze I’ve ever seen. I thought, if I can be near this person without being afraid, then maybe someday…”
Trailing off, Suu lightly touched Minoru’s hands with
her transparent fingertips.
“There, see? I’m not scared. So you shouldn’t be scared, either, Minoru… Whenever you’re ready.”
In truth, Minoru had only half understood the meaning of Suu’s explanation at best. But for just a moment, the warmth of her fingertips on his hands made him forget his negative thoughts.
“…Here I go.” Without a second thought about what might happen if he failed, Minoru activated his protective shell.
The room had seemed quiet enough before, but only when it disappeared completely did the volume of the background noise that had previously been audible become apparent. The sound of cars passing on the road in front of the house, the low hum of the ventilation system, the voices from the TV that Norie was watching in the living room—all of them vanished at once, leaving behind a profoundly complete silence.
Immediately, though, that silence was broken by the sound of shallow breathing.
Minoru had expected the invisible Suu to be repelled by his protective shell and pushed farther into the bed, but in his now blue-tinted field of vision, he saw no such thing. The blankets on the bed had only shifted ever so slightly. Which meant…
“…Did it…work…?”
The fact that he could hear Suu’s quiet whisper was another surprise.
“Y-yes…it looks like it did,” he replied in an equally hushed tone, realizing he had been holding his breath.
Why he had succeeded on the first try now when he had failed so many times in the experiment room was a complete mystery to Minoru. All he knew for sure was that he really did have the ability to bring other people into his protective shell. In other words, this power hadn’t come from fear or apathy toward others at all.
But in that case, what was the source—the emotional trauma—that had created this invisible barrier? As Minoru contemplated this thought, Suu once again spoke near his ear.
“Amazing. There really is a barrier there. It doesn’t feel like anything… No texture, no temperature or friction, yet it’s completely solid…”
“Ah…Suu, you can feel the shell?”
In response, he felt her nod, her hair brushing invisibly against his cheek. “Yes, I feel it. Which means its shape must be dependent on your posture.”
“Th-then that means that if I’m not careful about how I move…” Minoru gulped. Usually, the shell projected about three centimeters around Minoru’s body and adjusted to match his movements. So right now, it must have expanded just enough to encompass Suu’s body as well.
So it’d probably be impossible to walk around or run like this…, Minoru thought.
At that moment, Suu said something to even further startle Minoru to his very core. “Also…what’s that noise?”
“Wh…?” Minoru had gotten so used to it that he had completely forgotten about it. When he produced his shell and cut off all outside noise, those sounds were mysteriously replaced by a low, rhythmic thudding. Over time, he had come to assume that this was produced by the Third Eye in his chest, indicating that it was working and that he could hear it pulsing through his body. However…
“Y…you can hear this noise, too, Suu?!”
“Yes. It’s a very mysterious sound…”
“D-does it sound to you like it’s coming from my chest?”
“No. It’s…closer than that. I wonder… It almost feels like I’ve heard it before somewhere…”
Minoru sank into uncertain silence, but before long, Suu spoke again. “Minoru. I can’t really move right now, so I need you to reach into my breast pocket and pull out my smartphone.”
“Huh?” Minoru squeaked, then shook his head quickly and lightly. “I-I-I can’t!”
“I’m not asking you to do anything difficult. Come on, hurry.”
“Th…then at least deactivate your ability so I can see your pocket…”
“If I do that, then this whole phenomenon might fall apart. It’s not as if I’m expecting you to enjoy it, so calm down. We have to record this sound and bring it to the Professor so she can analyze it.”
Two minutes later.
“U…um…” Sitting on the edge of the bed next to Suu, who had deactivated her ability and was once again visible, Minoru was keenly aware that he was sweating profusely. “Now that I think about it, wouldn’t it have been easier for me to just deactivate the shell for a moment and borrow your phone so I could record it myself…?”
Holding her ultrasmall phone to her ear, Suu blinked for a moment as she processed Minoru’s words. “…You’re right,” she muttered. “But it’s better that we avoid activating our powers too frequently. Keeping it to a single time was for the best.”
Only as he heard these words did Minoru realize he had forgotten himself and activated his shell in his own home. Not only that, but Suu had used her ability, too. If any Ruby Eyes had been nearby, there was a chance they’d been detected.
Noticing Minoru’s anxiety, Suu put her smartphone back in her pocket and turned to him. “Don’t worry. I’ve been monitoring this neighborhood all day, and besides, my ability’s detection radius is extremely small.”
“D-detection radius?”
“Yes. It’s the range of how close a Ruby Eye would have to be to pick up the scent of a Jet Eye’s ability or vice versa.”
Minoru was already quite familiar with this phenomenon. Whenever a Ruby Eye used their ability near him, he smelled an intense, almost animalistic scent of dirt and iron. He didn’t know what it smelled like for them, only that Ruby Eyes could detect Jet Eye powers in the same way.
However, he hadn’t realized that the range of this effect could vary depending on the individual.
“The detection radius of a Third Eye user’s ability varies based on the nature and scope of that ability,” Suu explained to a blinking Minoru. “To put it simply, the bigger the effect that the atom manipulation has, the wider the radius. In the SFD, members like Divider and Accelerator have a detection radius of about twenty-four meters. By contrast, Speculator’s and Searcher’s radii are close to zero.”
“I see…” Thinking about each of the mentioned SFD members’ abilities, Minoru nodded. Certainly, Divider (Olivier) and Accelerator (Yumiko) had abilities that affected their whole bodies or the area around them, while Speculator’s (Professor Riri Isa) involved only her own brain, and the power Searcher (DD) used had virtually no effect on reality at all.
But by that logic, a powerful effect like Suu’s invisibility seemed like it would have a very large detection radius. As if reading his thoughts, Suu shrugged lightly. “It’s not as though I turn my body into glass or anything. I cause the light around me to alter for only a fraction of a second at a time… In fact, in a battle a little while ago, a Ruby Eye didn’t even notice me until I was less than sixty-one centimeters away.”
“Sixty-one centimeters… So that’s your ‘detection radius,’ then?” Minoru thought some more. Where does my protective shell fall in this equation? Creating an impenetrable wall around me certainly seems like it’s having a major effect on reality. Does that mean I would have a wide detection radius like Olivier and Yumiko?
“According to the Professor,” Suu said, her brow furrowed as if she, too, were thinking about something, “your isolation power should have an enormous effect on the environment, with a detection radius several times that of Divider, but…according to the data from your encounters with Biter and Igniter, it most likely goes up to only about nine meters. She thought it was very strange…”
Suu fell silent for a moment, looking at Minoru with her mysterious lilac eyes.
“…But after entering your protective shell earlier, I think I might understand. I believe your ability gives off a scent only in the instant it’s activated. Once the shell is completely formed, it blocks out even its own detection radius… It really is the ultimate form of isolation. In that moment, it was as if you and I were alone in our own separate world… Maybe that is the source of your power.”
Suu stood up smoothly and walked
toward the door. As she grasped the doorknob with her slim white hand, however, she paused, and spoke without turning back to face Minoru. “Be sure to report the results of today’s experiment to the Professor for me… I enjoyed talking with you today, and the sushi was delicious. Thank you, and I’ll see you later.”
She turned the doorknob, pushing open the door. As she turned her head ever so slightly on her way out of the room, Minoru thought he saw a faint smile on her lips.
2
Two days later, December 30, 2:00 p.m.
Standing in Toyama Park in front of the path that led to SFD Headquarters, Minoru hesitated.
When Suu Komura had told him two days ago that he should report their experiment to the Professor, he had nodded—but now, he wasn’t sure how he was going to tell her. He’d met Suu for the first time, invited her in for dinner, chatted with her in his room, and ended up conducting a test on his bed to bring her into his protective shell and succeeded on the first try… No matter how he phrased it, it wasn’t going to sound good.
“…Why am I the one who has to report this, anyway?” Minoru grumbled into the scarf that covered the bottom half of his face, his hands shoved into his pockets.
Still, if it was only the Professor, it wouldn’t be that bad. The real problem was what he was going to say to Accelerator, Yumiko Azu, after having attempted the same experiment with her a few days earlier and failing so repeatedly and spectacularly that she ended up skinning the tip of her nose.
…But I’m sure she’ll be taking today off or else be out in the field somewhere, so I won’t have to see her. Yeah, definitely.
Reassuring himself with this groundless line of wishful thinking, Minoru began to walk down the path into the forest.
Arriving outside the seemingly run-down apartment complex that housed SFD Headquarters, Minoru stepped into the ancient elevator. When the doors creaked open on the fifth floor, he stepped out into the spacious room that made up the entirety of the floor.
Minoru crept quietly into the room, but as he looked around, he saw that his prayers had been answered. Sitting cross-legged in front of the big-screen TV was Olivier Saitou, and Professor Riri Isa was holed up in her research booth, peering at a monitor. Nobody else seemed to be around.