Memories

The walk up to the location made it ever clearer that the drug was available with every step the duo took. The streets became lined with people gleefully sprawled out like they just dropped on the spot. Some made happy chuckles, whether to the duo passing or to whatever their mind was seeing was unclear, while others were so out of it, Mamoru could not tell if they were dead or alive any longer.

Yamiko shuffled closer to Mamoru and pressed her arm against his. Her arms were drawn close to her chest and stomach, and she looked with wide, and worried, eyes at some of the people as they passed by.

Hikari’s ghostly form looked equally disturbed. She hovered a bit higher than the duo with furrowed brow and a jaw that clicked from side to side.

As the number of people in that state increased, the girls’ faces suggested their moods turned increasingly sourer. None questioned the high school boy on whether the direction was correct, as the streets answered that on their own.

Someone new to No Go would perhaps have questioned whether the cops would come and bust the operation properly, to end this endless row of people too doped up to make it anywhere until the morning—if they even lived that long to begin with. Such questions would have been pointless. The cops, at least the majority of them, were in Suba’s payroll. That was why it was so easy to find the stuff, and so easy to get passed out on the street without a word being said. So long as a corrupt officer got more money, anything that company did was going to get a pass. It was yet another reason Mamoru was so sure they were distributing the Fetamayuku.

Hikari finally spoke up, the ghostly voice in her head quaking with something that could be mixed up between fear or anger.

Their magical capacity is being shut down at the same time their nous is being pried opened. Why would anyone do this to themselves?

Mamoru withheld his answer out loud. Yamiko would just find it strange for him to suddenly start talking. He focused on the simple answer in hopes the ghost girl would read his mind just as she always did.

It felt good, that was what anyone who took the stuff ever boiled it down too. For a short while the pain numbed, and the troubles of life faded away. Those that were “lucky” even reported visions.

Mamoru’s mind drifted away from the streets and back to the night his sister left.

She had grown so thin over the last few months that he knew something was wrong, but it wasn’t until that night when he finally confronted her.

Mae had come home from what was supposed to be job hunting grinning and walking with slow, uneasy steps. She dropped her purse right before the door, kicked her shoes off without bothering to line them up for later, and stumbled to the couch all while Mamoru watched from the kitchen table.

He put his schoolwork down and walked past her plate of food, covered with plastic and long since cold, to the older woman. She was still dressed in a nice skirt and blouse, like she had actually been job hunting if it wasn’t wrinkled beyond belief.

Mae giggled like a maniac while staring out into space. Her eyes were hazy and even when she looked at him, he could tell she wasn’t looking at him.

“Hey,” she said lazily to Mamoru.

“Your dinner is cold,” he replied sternly.

“Don’t want it. Not hungry,” the stick figure of a woman replied.

“Mae,” Mamoru said. He grunted and shook his head. He had already looked into the purse laying by the door once before, he knew what was in there. He had figured it out, but he was too afraid to say anything. “I think we need to talk.”

“Oh, oh, wait,” she said with zero energy, “I have good news. I got a new job.”

“Someone hired you?”

“Yeah, yeah.” She sat up, swayed for a moment, then pressed her hand to her chest, “You are looking at one of the new AI directors at Subarashii. Pretty cool huh, though it’s a position where I will live at Strength Tower, but don’t worry, your big sis made sure the money will be sent to you.”

“You can’t be serious!”

“I am, silly.” She spoke in a stead voice, hinting no playfulness the words would have seemed to have carried in other contexts.

“No. No.” Mamoru marched to her purse and snatched it from the ground. He expected to find the usual bottles on top, but instead there was paperwork with the Suba logo clear as day. Under the papers were the bottles, but Mamoru started to scan through the letter. He picked up only that it was a bunch of legal jargon before it was yanked from his hand.

Mae held the paperwork close and glared at him. She reached for her purse, but he pulled it further back.

“Mamoru, give it.” Her voice was laced with weak anger, like she couldn’t even manage enough energy to express herself.

“No!” Mamoru pulled a bottle from her bag and shoved it in her face. “I’ve been quite for months because I wasn’t sure what to do about this, but I can’t any longer. Not with this, this weird job acceptance to the company that killed Mom and Dad!”

“Mamoru, don’t you understand, I will make so much more money that you will be able to live a good life.”

Mamoru gritted his teeth and threw the purse across the room. It smashed against the wall and the contents spilled everywhere.

“While you get locked up by a shady company that is willing to hire an addict! Why would I want that?”

Mae’s eyes were welling with tears, a stark contrast to her otherwise expressionlessness.

“Mamoru, you’ve become so awful. I tried so hard, so hard, so hard to take care of you. I’m such a, such a failure, but you don’t have to torment me. Just go away! Go away!”

She drooped low to the floor and wrapped thin arms around thin legs. Mamoru felt something shatter within him, but he knew he couldn’t back down. He kneeled beside her.

“Mae, you’re sick. Subarashii isn’t the right answer, you need… a doctor or something. Look why don’t I take you tomorrow, to someone who might be able to help, and you can get better?”

“I just want the pain to go away.”

“The doctors can help. I’m sure of it, why don’t you just get to bed now, and we can figure things out in the morning?”

She weakly nodded and Mamoru helped her to her room. She stripped to her underwear while walking to bed, her clothes no longer hiding the thin layer of skin wrapped around her bones, and she flopped onto the bed. Mamoru was satisfied with that for the time being and closed the door with a soft, “Good night, and see you in the morning.”

Mae didn’t reply. He figured she was already asleep.

Mamoru learned she ran in the middle of the night. Her bedroom door was left ajar, and her purse hastily snatched—a pile of trash that fell out before was left on the floor—before she left. It wasn’t even clear if she bothered getting dressed before leaving. The letter from Subarashii was of course gone with her.

Mamoru rode up to Strength Tower and demanded to see his sister that day, but the woman at the desk, in a rather smug tone, told him there was no woman by the name of his sister working at Suba.

Yet, weeks later the first check came in.

So that’s what happened? Hikari’s voice brough Mamoru back into the present. He silently cursed himself for dwelling so much on his past when the mind-reading sword picked up everything.

The high school boy shook his head and focused back on the street. This was still only step 1, but he was going to figure out where they were keeping his sister and save her.