Even after climbing into his futon at the inn, Koyoi found it difficult to sleep. When he closed his eyes, that glass pupil flickered behind his eyelids like an afterimage seared into his retina. A translucent blue that reflected nothing. A raspy, help-seeking voice that clawed at the depths of his consciousness.
And then there was Kuon’s frozen left eye, steeped in the exact same color. From downstairs, the sour smell of cheap sake and the damp fragrance of wild herbs dissolved in hot water crept through the gaps in the thin paper doors. The vulgar laughter of the other guests had already receded into the night, replaced by the intermittent groaning of the old beams as they cooled in the night air—a sound like the sighs of the dead. It was the silence of the world losing its sound just before falling into sleep.
The deeper that silence grew, the more the flame of anxiety in his chest flickered violently for oxygen, scorching the back of his ribs.
The gaze that had held absolute zero when he was called a "Carrier" remained stuck to the surface of his skin, refusing to be pulled out.
Just who was he? Surely not just the grandson of a pharmacist. As Asahi had pointed out with his sharp intuition, the air around Kuon held an unnaturally clear scent, similar to the presence of those loathsome Observers. His stride was no different from a child's, yet his shadow cast by the moonlight did not waver in the slightest, as if it were fixed to the ground.
Every movement he made bore the traces of long years spent in a different place, void of emotion, where everything had been stripped away for the sake of survival alone. Within his voice, which still held the youth of a boy, resided a coldness like a frozen blade. That distorted inconsistency made Koyoi’s chest buzz with an unidentifiable unease. Turning over, the dry tatami mat grated against his skin, and the unpleasant sound dissolved into the night air.
In the next futon, Asahi was breathing in a deep, heavy, rhythmic sleep. Usually, he was so alert he would react even to the sound of a pin dropping, but once he placed his trust in a location, he was a man who could completely rest his steel-like body. That peaceful breathing was the only anchor in this abnormal night. Suddenly, he felt the space beyond the paper doors grow unnaturally bright.
For moonlight, the glow was far too pale, far too sharp. The light of a night where the mist has cleared often lacks kindness, possessing a cruelty that seems to slice through everything visible with a keen blade. The mountain ridges partitioned the night sky like black paper-cuts, and beyond that silence, a sense of something massive slowly but surely gestating brushed against his skin like a tremor in the air. Koyoi rose quietly and slid the door open, careful not to let the air in his lungs escape.
In the inn's small garden, the branches of a well-tended pine spread out in dark silhouettes, and a stone lantern stood in silence. Not even the sound of an insect could be heard. Even the wind had died out. It was an eerie night, as if the world itself were holding its breath in fear before a massive descent.
In the center of the garden. A single figure sat atop a flat stone, receiving the moonlight head-on. A boy. It was Kuon.
He sat cross-legged, and upon his knees sat a strange machine that seemed to drink in the light of the moon. A box of brass-colored, dull-glowing, complex gears interlaced in multiple layers. It looked like an armillary sphere of a lost age, or perhaps a compass that could drive destiny mad. From its center, a single thin, sharp blue beam of light extended vertically, as if to pierce the heavens.
With every step Koyoi took closer, the exquisite gears meshed with tiny click-clack sounds, and the smell of scorched oil and the unnatural heat emitted by the machine struck his nostrils. The arrogant insolence of trying to forcibly quantify the invisible breath of a god through the layering of inorganic metal was etched into every corner of the tool.
"...The moon is distorted."
Kuon's monotone monologue, suppressing all emotion, reached Koyoi's ears on the night air. In the deep layers of his voice, a quiet anger and an icy impatience were precipitated like dregs. Koyoi, drawn as if by something beyond his will, stepped onto the damp soil of the garden from the veranda in his bare feet. Reacting to the slight sound of grass bending, Kuon slowly turned his head.
There was not a shred of surprise there. It was a cold silence, as if he had foreseen with that blue glass eye from the beginning that Koyoi would wake at this hour and come here.
"...You."
"What are you doing?"
Koyoi pointed to the machine pulsating eerily upon his knees. The blue beam extending from it accurately pierced the full moon that reigned like the ruler of the celestial sphere.
"It's a Star-reading Board," Kuon answered shortly, as if spitting it out. As he finely adjusted a dial on the side with his thin fingertips, a hard click echoed, and the beam directed toward the heavens increased its density even further. The cold smell of metal rubbing against metal mixed with the raw scent of the night soil, grating on the nerves. The tool, which revealed the orbits of the stars and forcibly dragged out the flow of divine energy hidden behind the moon's phases beyond human limits, seemed to pierce the silver moon directly, disturbing the balance of the world.
A chill ran down Koyoi's spine, like grains of ice sliding down.
"It measures the arrangement of the stars, the phases of the moon, and the stagnation of divine energy dissolved in the atmosphere. ...It is a crystal of loathsome wisdom created by the Observers to capture gods."
Observers. The moment that word escaped Kuon's lips, Koyoi felt the air leave his lungs and caught his breath. As he had suspected, he was connected to those people.
"I knew it... are you one of the Observers?"
"One of them?"
Kuon wore a self-mocking smile, like someone laughing at the bottom of a dark well. He distorted the edges of his overly perfect mouth hideously and spoke as if spitting out a curse.
"Don't be ridiculous. I am the 'Masterpiece'—the greatest work born of their twisted desires."
"A work...?"
Kuon traced his fingertips over his left eye. The moonlight was trapped within its glass layers, and the artificial eye emitted an uncanny light that grated on the nerves. It was no longer a part of his body; it seemed like a creature that had an independent will, separate from its host, watching the night.
"This eye is a specially made prosthetic eye, with special glass and formulas embedded in the socket, for the sole purpose of seeing the colors of divine energy that cannot be captured by the naked eye. ...I was taken from my parents before I could even remember them, and raised on their cold experimental tables."
Kuon's voice was far too matter-of-fact. He was talking about a harrowing past, yet it was as inorganic as if he were reading out the record of someone else's life. But Koyoi did not miss the fact that his fist, clutching the machine, was so tight it had turned white and was trembling slightly in unison.
"Every day, every single day, cold needles and scalpels continued to carve my body. ...To capture the form of a god more clearly, the human parts were meticulously stripped away, bit by bit. Even the nerves that feel pain were called obstacles to observation, and they nearly severed them all."
"That's horrible... that's just too much..."
"Yes, it's a horrible story. ...But I escaped from there. Taking advantage of an uncontrollable explosion that occurred in the underground research facility. I crawled around like a stray dog, and when I was on the verge of death, I was picked up by that old pharmacist woman and made my way here."
Kuon redirected the Star-reading Board back into the abyss of the sky. The blue light extended ruthlessly, as if to pierce the center of the moon.
"But simply escaping physically isn't the end. This cursed eye has taken root in my body and will never leave. Like an indelible brand they carved into my soul."
"And now, they have appeared in this land once again and are beginning to move. ...At that shrine on the summit, surrounding this Tsukimidai."
"...What do they plan to do there?"
"They intend to drop the Moon God from high altitude to the earth."
The Moon God. Koyoi looked up at the sky as if struck. The full moon at the zenith of the heavens had, before he knew it, begun to take on a dark, muddy red color, like a bandage that had soaked up old blood. An ominous pulsation, like a heartbeat. A powerful pressure that tightened in the depths of his chest began to overwrite the silence of the night.
"It's an experiment to forcibly replace the divine energy residing in the moonlight with pure, controllable energy. They strip away the god's will, layer by layer, until it's just a massive battery. ...If the experiment succeeds, the night in this region will die forever. The god will become an empty shell, and it will never shine again to illuminate anyone."
"Something like that... something so cruel, I won't let them do it!"
Koyoi shouted, as if to rip through the silence of the night. Within the pouch at his waist, he could feel the wind god writhing in intense indignation, transmitting a hot vibration through the cloth of the bag. Using up a god as a mere tool... he could not possibly overlook such blasphemous arrogance.
"Of course. We're stopping them."
Kuon rose without a sound. He tucked the Star-reading Board into the deep darkness of his clothes. In that series of movements, not a shred of hesitation or fear of death could be felt.
"I will never forgive those who made me into a tool. I will turn every future they envision into ash with these hands. ...That is the sole revenge for which I live with this cursed eye."
In the abyss of his pupil, a blue flame of hatred flickered, burning deep within the chilled glass. It was a cold, yet far too hot, life-risking anger, unlike anything Koyoi had ever seen in the journey he had traveled thus far.
"...What about you?"
Kuon's gaze pierced Koyoi. It was a trial of an eye, as if to measure the purity of the opponent's soul.
"You're the 'Collector' who hears the voices of gods, aren't you? Will you stand by and watch a god be defiled before your eyes to protect your own peace? Or do you have the courage to step into the abyss of despair?"
"I won't stand by... I can't leave them!"
Koyoi answered immediately with a trembling voice. He took a step forward in his bare feet, staring straight back into Kuon's blue glass eye.
"I'm going too. For a god to be broken like that... I've had enough of it."
"And I want to help Bidro, too."
"Bidro?"
"The glass pupil. ...That child was also saying 'help me' from inside that dark cage. I could hear its scream."
"...Hmph. I see. So it wanted to be called by such a name."
For a single moment, Kuon slightly relaxed his tightly closed expression. It was the first human-like face he had shown, like a ray of sunlight piercing through a frozen land. A moment when the thread of his heart, which had been stretched to the limit and was about to break, loosened just a little.
"Then get ready immediately. ...We're taking it out of that cage."
"Taking it... Bidro?"
"Yeah. Its power is necessary for the operation. ...It's not just an exquisite glass eye. It's a fragment of an ancient god with the power to 'reflect' and amplify all light with its will."
Reflection. How that characteristic would face the science of the Observers and how it would be useful, Koyoi could not imagine at the moment. But in the depths of Kuon's pupil, he could see a firm calculation for victory, arranged like cold mathematical formulas.
"Bring that man with the sword, too. His skill seems certain, but with that level of swordsmanship alone, it would be difficult to break through the Observers' formulas. ...At best, he can be used as a decoy to draw their attention."
"Calling him a decoy... that's rude to Asahi-san!"
"If you have time to complain, move your legs. Use everything, even your own life. ...That is the only way for powerless humans to win against monsters like the Observers."
Kuon's words were as harsh as a whip, but behind them lay the weight of an immense resolve. A faint sign of a boy who had fought alone in the lonely darkness for so long finally trying to entrust his back to another.
"Yeah! I'll call him right away!"
Koyoi slapped the cold boards of the veranda and ran toward his room. He had to wake Asahi, tell him the truth, and return to that eerie pharmacy. The night had finally opened its massive jaws and begun to move. Looking up at the sky, the red moon, which had turned a muddy dark color, was shining as if to curse the world.
The wood of the veranda was as cold as ice, and the damp temperature of the night clung stubbornly to the soles of his bare feet. Every time his heart hammered in the depths of his ears, the flickering of the light in his chest coldly announced that he could never return to his peaceful yesterday. The time for the final battle was fast approaching. The darkness of the room sank deeper than ever before, and only Asahi's breathing remained there as a fragment of a reality that seemed about to vanish.
Koyoi gripped the pouch at his waist so hard his knuckles turned white, and questioned the heat of the inextinguishable wick of the light in his chest within his own soul.