The Three Sacred Tools

♪Poet — Present♪

Miss Adagio wasn’t breathing.

So the Emerald Princess placed a burden on her body! She transformed in order to stop the flood… She had pushed herself too far.

Ah. It was all true.

The Grim Reaper’s warning, the contents of the prophecy, and my dream. All of it had been pointing to this moment, to this fate.

To the fact that Miss Adagio would die.

Miss Adagio lay limp. The court physician shone a light into her eyes, then weakly shook his head.

“No! I absolutely refuse to accept that!”

“It’s fate. Give up,” Growl said, gently patting my shoulder.

“What did you just say!?”

I grabbed him by the collar, but when I saw that he himself was teary-eyed, I sank down powerlessly.

Ah!

I knew this would happen!

I knew it!

“It’s just like the prophecy said.”

“I know that! I know! Just as the prophecy said, the rabbit, the dog, and the dragon joined their voices, and a miracle happened! Most likely, from now on, the age of darkness will end and become an age of light! That part is fine! But the dragon crossed over to the land of the dead!”

“What comes after that?” Growl asked.

“The three sacred resonant tools shall call forth a miracle.”

“That hasn’t happened yet. Do you have any idea what those resonant tools might be?”

“There’s no way something that convenient would…”

I stared at the Mirror Chord floating above the levee. It was a tool that reversed the flow of resonance particles.

It had already fulfilled its role of lowering the water level.

There was a crack in it.

I suppose we had overused it too much. It wouldn’t be strange if it broke at any moment.

“If resonance particles are flowing to the world after death, and if we could reverse that flow…”

“How would we access the world after death?”

“Right…”

“But your line of thinking might not be bad. Otherworldly religions have been gaining real form recently, haven’t they? What religion did Miss Adagio believe in?”

“Well, since it’s an otherworldly religion, she probably never had the chance to undergo any formal initiation… But she did see Kishimojin at a temple and cry, didn’t she?”

“I see. Buddhism, Japanese style. What kind of afterlife does Japanese Buddhism have?”

“If I remember correctly, it should be Mahayana Buddhism, so the Pure Land.”

“Is there a way to connect to the world after death?”

“There is a ritual called Obon. The Ullambana Sutra was established in China in the fifth century… Ah!”

“What is it?”

“The Dancing Radio! There’s AM Urabon-e!”

I pulled out the item I had supposedly put away in subspace and tuned the channel.

“We are currently interrupting our dance broadcast to bring you news from the Rabbit Kingdom. Today, we are broadcasting from the Sanzu River studio.”

At those words, Growl and I instinctively looked at each other.

“The Sanzu River is the river that connects this world and the next! The radio receives resonance waves! If we can reverse that flow with the Mirror Chord—!”

Growl and I bumped fists.

I went to call my brother, who was surrounded by soldiers and receiving cheers.

“Brother Sonnet! One more trio! Please!”

“Hm? The river flooding has already been stopped, has it not?”

“That’s not it! This time, I want to bring back someone precious!”

“I do not quite understand, but very well. I simply need to sing the soprano part in place of that dragon girl, correct? There was a time when I studied countertenor a little.”

We performed an improvised trio. After a while, the sound from the radio stopped.

Could this be…

“We can assume the resonance waves are flowing backward,” Growl said.

“But reversing the flow alone won’t call back the soul of someone dead…”

“Do you still have the Come-Come Megaphone?”

“I see!”

Growl’s words made me realize it. I couldn’t believe I had failed to notice something like that.

I held the megaphone and shouted.

“Miss Adagio!”

How is it…?

There was no reaction, but…

“Lend that here a second.”

Growl snatched the megaphone away.

“What are you doing?”

“Allegro!”

He shouted an unexpected name.

Growl, what are you doing? Don’t you want to save Miss Adagio?

What on earth is he thinking?

And after shouting, he just went off somewhere.

♪Rabbid— Present♪

I was once an assassin.

Becoming a Grim Reaper is a strange twist of fate.

I grew sick of the trade of taking lives, so to clear my head, I went to listen to a verbal art called rakugo.

The story was called “The Grim Reaper.” Apparently, it was an adaptation of a tale brought in from a different cultural sphere, something called Grimm’s Fairy Tales, but it seemed to have now been incorporated into part of Japanese Buddhist belief.

I thought that when I died, becoming something called a Grim Reaper might not be so bad. In life and after death both, I would go to take lives.

After returning to my original world, I researched how to become a Grim Reaper, and now, here I am, having successfully made it my trade.

Today too, I took the six mon coins and crossed the Sanzu River.

My passengers were two souls.

Allegro and Adagio.

The two of them sat quietly without crying or screaming.

These two had lived as one body of shared fate, and it seemed they would die that way too.

“We’ll be reaching the far shore soon.”

I was about to make the final stroke of the oar when—

“Miss Adagio!”

“Allegro!”

What!?

Why are Poet’s and Growl’s voices reaching this place!?

The boat is being rewound!

There’s no way something like this should happen!

Those people must have done something. Well, fine.

In honor of their obsession and love, I suppose I’ll let this failed mission slide.