NOTHING

Stepping out from behind the desk Mirai’s presence grew in veracity. A warm light crept through the windows, shimmering over her contour. Shiyui felt a weighted urge to step back as Mirai approached ever closer. She could see in her eyes a growing volume of exasperation.

“You know that by “You” it meant you as in you, and not you as in me,” Shiyui fumbled through her words. “I know what it meant,” Mirai languidly replied. “Then why do you look so angry at me?” Shiyui pesteringly tagged.

Without paying her any mind, Mirai stepped over to a small cabinet off to the corner of the room and quickly began shuffling through it. Indiscriminately pulling folders and notepads out, only to toss them aside after a few glances at their pages.

“You don’t think we should find out what it meant just now?” a confused Shiyui asked. “Shut that damn thing off,” Mirai surprisingly ordered. Her voice direct and pointed.

“Wait…” Shiyui tepidly slipped in, “We don’t know if we’ll be able to get back into it again. We should first find out what it meant by tha–”

“Shiyui… quiet!”

Mirai then took the tablet from her and demanded to the AI directly that it shut itself down. Oddly remaining silent, Muffin slowly dissipated as the tablet screen dimmed to black. The lack of a response almost deafening.

Like facing an untimely farewell, Shiyui stood by with a hue of tenderness in her posture. Tossing the tablet aside, Mirai stepped past her and back over to Yukue’s desk, to which Shiyui pensively then followed.

“You’re cruel,” Shiyui balked. Mirai sighed before turning to face her with an unenthused expression. “Can you help me?” she reluctantly implored, “Sitting around waiting on someone or something to give us answers is pointless. I need to know if there’s anything else lying around here.”

Shiyui was struck by Mirai’s callous attitude but figured that nothing ever came of trying to force her estranged former coworker to do something she didn’t want to. As she nodded her head, she nonetheless kept one thing in mind, Mirai is hiding something…

Mirai yanked one drawer out after the other, finding nothing more than what seemed to be textbooks, magazines, and research papers on psychology and the human mind. None of which particularly crossed Mirai as important or otherwise unusual. Meanwhile, Shiyui randomly grabbed a book off of Yukue’s bookshelf and flipped it open, only to find herself at a loss for what was inside.

Every page was blank.

Grabbing another book at random, she flipped it open, only to end up with the same outcome. Each page vacant of words. She continued, book after book, blank page after blank page. None of it made sense to her.

“Mirai, none of these books have anything in them.”

Struggling to accept what she was hearing, Mirai made her way over towards her. Pulling a book off the shelf only to confirm Shiyui’s words to be true. Not a single drop of ink on its pages.

“What the hell is this? Just for display?” Shiyui questioned, but Mirai wasn’t so convinced. “Why the hell would she need to display empty books in her office?” she challenged, finding herself just as equally at a loss as Shiyui was.

Peeking at the spine of the book, Shiyui questioned what the writing meant, as she was struggling to read the kanji it was written in. Only for Mirai to deflatingly reply, “I’m not sure.”

“Which is why we should have kept Muffin active,” Shiyui didn’t hesitate to jab. But an unenthused Mirai simply bit back, “We tried that already, that thing said it couldn’t help.”

Twisting her mouth, Shiyui mumbled, “It said it can’t answer that question, not that it couldn’t help.”

Finding Shiyui irritating, Mirai swiftly brushed off her nagging as she resorted to dragging every book off the shelf, quickly glancing inside to confirm that each had nothing more than blank pages. With the shelf empty, she then attempted to move the bookshelf itself, and as it rocked back and forth, it was clear to her that nothing about it was suspicious. It was an ordinary bookshelf. Leaving the questions to lie within the books themselves. Except the books themselves literally had nothing within to offer as an answer.

As Mirai stood hawking over the pile scattered beneath her, she couldn’t shake the feeling that somehow everything that was happening seemed… fake.

“Look!” Shiyui wailed as she dragged a thin piece of paper out of the pile. This must’ve fell out of one of the books.”

Lifting the paper towards Mirai, the words Yumeko Nise where written across it, having been handwritten presumably by Yueko herself. Mirai then quickly lifted up a book off the ground and began shaking it upside down. Within moments, another piece of paper slipped from its pages. This one with the name Yobi Saihatsu.

Mirai carefully looked at the paper, attempting to conjure up any memories she may have had that could make sense of who the names belonged to, but nothing would come to mind. Leaving her with only one guess.

“Should we look for more? There’re probably dozens of them,” Shiyui asked, but Mirai would barely engage her question. “There’s somewhere I need to check.”

Unspoken, Shiyui held her gaze onto Mirai as she marched out of the room. “So, you’re not gonna try and make sense of any of that, are you?” Shiyui questioned concerningly, only to find herself being ignored once again. “Are you sure you don’t want to ask the police to look into this?” she then pressed.

Coming to a full stop, Mirai turned to face Shiyui directly, and with a brooding walk towards her, Mirai hammered, “I already talked to them, and it was pointless. In other words, they’re full of shit.”

Standing still with her face freezeframed on what could only be best described as a tasteless expression, Shiyui only found one response to give.

“… You’re such a brick wall.”

Breezing past her once again, Mirai fished a set of keys out of a drawer and slipped them into her jacket pocket. Quickly heading out the door. Shiyui scurried alongside her, hurriedly tossing her laptop into her bag and swinging it over her shoulder as she began questioning Mirai about Yukue. Noting that she had books on neuroscience sitting in her desk.

“She was a doctor.”

“Like… a doctor doctor, or a PHD doctor?”

“A manipulative doctor.”

“Oh… I’m sorry, what?”

Stepping through the front gate, Mirai happened across Femto-san, the next-door neighbor, passing by. Recognizing Mirai, he greeted her warmly before casually questioning why he hadn’t seen her much lately. “I’ve been busy, so I haven’t had much time recently to swing back into town,” Mirai exclaimed.

With an inquisitive, but in the same breadth, empty stare, Femto followed, “Oh… That’s pretty unusual...”

“What do you mean?” Mirai asked the seemingly displaced neighbor.

“Oh, no it’s just, most people here don’t really interact with… you know… We’ve been here so we rarely have the need to do business outside, you know?”

Not quite catching on to his scattered phrasing, Mirai simply nodded her head before quietly turning away from him. With his face twisted in an awkward contortion, Femto aimlessly watched Mirai as she walked off before faintly shaking his head. Only to be startled by Mirai suddenly turning to face him once more.

“Have you lived here your whole life?” she interrogated to a shaken Femto. And after a short pause, he promptly responded. “Well… yes.”

Mirai, stood silently for a moment before following with, “Have you seen Yukue?”

Femto oddly jerked his head back with a perturbed look on his face. “I don’t think I have...”

The unconfident tone in his voice rubbed Mirai the wrong way, but without pressing the situation further she bid the neighbor a farewell, then continued her way towards the side of the house.

Wrapping around to the driveway, Mirai approached a single car garage. “That was weird,” Shiyui said as she watched the neighbor make his way back to his home. As the door gradually lifted open she then found herself mesmerized by the vehicle stationed inside. “Your sister owns a car, and I had to take a cab to get here? Mirai, you really do suck, you know that.”

“It’s a perk of the town. All residents have one.” Mirai exclaimed to which Shiyui then swiftly switched gears. “Oh… And you plan on getting in that thing?” then in a whisper, “What if the aliens probe you?”

Mirai returned a staunch sneer as Shiyui glared back with gaping eyes.

“I wasn’t going to.”

Peeking over her shoulder, Shiyui gazed into the deep shadows lurking in the farthest depths of the garage. And within its abyss, a small shimmer reached out to the two of them.

Once again, Mirai looked towards Shiyui and gave another staunch sneer. But this time, with a touch of fervor as Shiyui stood clueless.

Moments later the roar of an engine shook the neighborhood. Mirai and Shiyui then zipped out of the driveway and swiftly vanished down the road.

Meanwhile, Femto stood ominously as the sound of the growling engine slowly dissipated with the growing distance between them. With another blank stare on his face, he began murmuring to himself, “That facility is useless…”