Chapter 4 : Love & Discards & Human Emotion

Late the next afternoon, the map led them to the industrial sector of District 19. Here, there were no manicured willow trees or glittering storefronts, only the oppressive shadow of the Wall's massive, gray concrete and an abandoned park long overgrown with weeds. The point on the map indicated the base of a tree.

Using an old piece of scrap iron he found by the fence, Haruto got to work. A few minutes later, the metal clinked against something hard. It was a thick, metal box. Haruto pried it out of the dirt, wiped the soil off it, and stood up.

Inside the box wasn't what they expected. It wasn't a typical time capsule. At the bottom lay a worn, plastic hospital wristband, faintly bearing Natsuko's name. Beside it, a faded photograph of a pale yet smiling girl sitting in a hospital bed. And in the center of the box rested a tiny, thick glass vial in which some dense, pitch-black fluid pulsated.

And beneath the vial lay a folded piece of paper with the official letterhead of the Kinkyo Clinic. Haruto placed the box on the ground and took out the paper. As he began to read, his stomach tied in knots.

"This... this is a consent form... For trauma excision," Haruto whispered, turning pale as his eyes scanned the official stamps.

"And a letter... from your brother."

"Dearest Natsuko... If you are reading this message, it means our shared treasure hunt has come to an end. And it also means that I no longer remember you. I'm so sorry that I am this weak. Our parents are no longer in Japan; they fled from the grief as soon as your little heart stopped beating, but I stayed behind in your emptied room. I can still hear the beeping of the hospital machines. I can still see you lying in that bed, too weak to even walk to the window, feverishly drawing this map. 'This is where we'll go in the summer when I get better'—that's what you said, and you smiled, even though we both knew you would never leave that room. The cinema, where you never got to eat popcorn. The waterpark, where the sunlight never touched your skin. The festival, which you could only watch from the window, from afar. A whole life, an entire summer, that you were never allowed to have.

When you passed away, my world was destroyed. I cannot live in this city without you. I cannot bear that I get to see the sunlight and you do not. That your entire adolescence was filled with pain. That is why today I am going to the Clinic. I am having this splitting, unbearable agony excised from me... and with it, every memory of you. In this box, I have sealed your hospital wristband, your map, and a small piece of my dark, pulsing grief that remained of me. I am burying it here by the Wall so that if I ever return to Japan, I can get my memories of you back. I hope that someday, somewhere else, we can walk this list together."

The paper slipped slowly from Haruto's hand.

"You... you never dropped your key into that canal..." the boy whispered, taking a step back. The weight of the realization brought tears to his eyes. "You are your brother's buried grief."

Natsuko slowly looked up at him. The girl's face was now so infinitely peaceful, but the outlines of her body began to blur. Her skin started to disintegrate into tiny, pitch-black spores—Ink—which the summer wind slowly caught in the air. She wasn't a living person. She never survived that hospital room. She was merely an entity born of her brother's left-behind, unbearable pain and her own unfulfilled desires, a Discard that manifested solely to experience the summer she was never granted by life.

"So that's why I never tasted food. That's why I was always so cold," the girl smiled softly as her hands crumbled into black ash.

"I am just a lingering memory. But Haruto..." The girl looked at the boy one last time with her tearful, eyes. In her gaze, there was no fear now, only love filled with pure gratitude.

"Before I disappear... thank you. Thank you for jumping in after me. Thank you for holding my hand at the movies, and for showing me the fireworks. Thank you for this summer, Haruto. I got to feel real."

"Natsuko!" Haruto threw himself forward desperately to embrace her, but his arms clasped only air and the swirling, dark Ink dust. The girl was gone. All that remained was the stifling summer heat, an abandoned park, and the rusty metal box on the ground.

At that exact moment, on the other side of the Wall, amidst the ruins of District 16, a radar beeped sharply in the basement of the former "Jackpot" pachinko parlor. Tetsuo, the dark-circled, exhausted doctor of the Recyclers, leaned over the green-flashing monitor and set down his coffee cup. "Gaiku!"

"That special Discard that's been polluting Kinkyo's canals for years, the one that killed so many people from poisoning." A tall man stepped out of the shadows. Gaiku slowly blew out a plume of cigarette smoke. "What about it? Don't tell me it leveled up?”

"It vanished. We just got the report that its remains were found," Tetsuo shook his head in bewilderment. "The Recyclers didn't kill it, and neither did another monster. According to witnesses, it dissolved into nothingness all on its own."

Haruto sat in the dark at the base of the abandoned slide for hours. His journal lay on the ground. The pages where he had drawn Natsuko's face rested silently in the grass. In his hand, he clutched the glass vial where the dense, black Ink pulsed—the pure love and unbearable grief of Natsuko's brother, excised at the Clinic.

Early September, after school:

The sound of footsteps broke the silence of the night. A tall, elegant man wearing an impeccable black suit stepped out of the darkness. On the lapel of his jacket gleamed the silver badge of the Shirakawa Clan.

The man stopped in front of Haruto and his friends.

"I see you've found one of the Kinkyo Clinic's concealed defects, my boy," the man said.

"That raw, unsynthesized Ink in your hand is highly unstable. But in the right circles... for certain individuals in the Upper City leading the hybrid research, it holds incalculable value.”

The man reached into the inner pocket of his jacket and tossed a thick, bound stack of banknotes onto the ground, right at Haruto's feet.

The Shirakawa Clan is willing to generously compensate your discretion.

Haruto slowly lifted his head. His eyes, which over the past weeks had reflected love, innocence, and the warmth of summer, were now cold and hollow. He looked down at the money, then at the vial, in which Natsuko's final, true essence pulsed.

"This isn't for sale," Haruto said, his voice hard. "And if you take one more step toward me... I swear, I will figure out how to use it as a weapon against you."