Chapter 1.1

 One year later, the adventure resumes

"Have you calmed down a little?" Siesta asked outside the bathroom. "...Yeah."

In the bathtub, I gave a small sigh of relief.

While lecturing me about how I couldn't have a healthy mind in an unhealthy body, Siesta had half forced me into the bath. She was right; my physical and mental strain had eased, and my brain fog was slowly clearing.

"Shave your stubble while you're at it." "Yeah."

"Can you wash your back by yourself ?" "Yeah."

"And don't pee in the tub."

"…What am I, a kid?" I smiled wryly. How old did she think I was anyway?

"Well, I don't know how much you've grown." Siesta sat down; I could see her back through the frosted-glass door. "'Give a guy three days to grow, and you might not recognize him at the end.'… Remember? You're the one who said it," she told me.

I'd forgotten until she mentioned it. "Yeah, I guess that's true." In our case, it had been way more than three days.

Today, Siesta and I had truly reunited for the first time in a year. "I never dreamed you'd still be living in this apartment, though." Siesta's light laugh drifted to me from the changing room.

She'd used the master key, one of her Seven Tools, and walked into my place like she owned it. Just like before.

"…The 'I never dreamed' bit is my line."

At dawn on the day I'd fought Ms. Fuubi, I'd sworn I'd get Siesta back someday.

Of course, I'd known it wasn't going to be easy. That was why I'd been

prepared to put everything I had on the line. But right now, that wish had really—

"You're…not SIESTA, right?"

A memory of the maid flickered through my mind, and I asked without really thinking. After all, you couldn't tell the two of them apart just by their appearances.

"Are you stupid, Kimi?" That old familiar line zinged back at me from the changing room. "We've talked for this long and you still aren't sure?"

"…Yeah, good point."

Only one person in the world scolds me that way—and it's you, Siesta.

That meant I'd gotten my wish.

Even so, I couldn't be 100 percent delighted about it. I'd lost something irreplaceable in exchange.

"But it sounds as though she did make contact with you."

Just when my eyes were threatening to go misty again, Siesta's voice broke in. From the gist of the conversation so far, I assumed she was talking about SIESTA the maid.

"Yeah. I got through that problem you assigned me."

Through the maid, Siesta had given each of us a task to handle and had shown us the way to resolve our worries and problems. Her one miscalculation had been that the future we'd chosen was different from the ending she'd imagined.

"Where is she now?" I asked the original Siesta. When I'd run into SIESTA at the former SPES facility a few days ago, she'd been living inside a computer terminal, but…

"Carrying out a different task. She's the one who gave me the master key before I came here."

Come to think of it, I'd returned the key to her at the lab. Did that mean she'd guessed Siesta would wake up all along?

"Siesta…" How in the world did you wake up? I was about to ask the question, but I swallowed it back down.

I didn't have to ask. I knew.

Siesta was probably aware as well. That was why she was here.

"What I need to do now is rescue our friends. That's one more reason to defeat Seed as soon as possible." That had to have been Siesta's dearest wish for four years—for six. Before she met me, she'd encountered Seed on that

island. He'd defeated her and stolen all her memories of the facility, his organization, and her companions. Even so, she hadn't forgotten her mission; she pursued Seed, and had spent three whole years fighting SPES with me.

At the end of that story, Siesta had lost her life. However, she'd managed to transfer her heart and mind into the body of her enemy Hel—aka Natsunagi. After that, Siesta and Hel had consolidated their memories, and Siesta had reclaimed the ones she'd lost.

"I'd forgotten some important things," Siesta said quietly on the other side of the thin door. "The fact that I met Nagisa six years ago. The fact that I lost Alicia. That past was the last thing I could afford to lose, and still…" Her voice was subdued.

Still, I knew better than anyone that Siesta wouldn't back down.

"I won't forget any more. I won't let them steal anything else from me. I won't hesitate. I won't lose. So, Kimi…" Siesta's intense voice seemed to pierce through the door and echo in the bathroom. "I want you to be my assistant, just one more time."

I could see a familiar silhouette on the other side of the frosted-glass door. We'd had a similar conversation here four years ago. I'd turned her down that time. I splashed hot water over my cheeks, then gave my answer. "—Yeah. Make me your assistant again."

It was about time I got out of this tepid water.

"So please, Siesta. Help me find a way to save Saikawa."

A few days earlier, Seed had taken Saikawa to use as a potential vessel for the primordial seed. However, if he was planning to use her that way, he wouldn't kill her.

"Yes. Seed has always wanted a perfect vessel. Hel and I were his top candidates, though. If he's going to use Yui Saikawa instead, it's probably going to require some prep work. I'm sure we still have a chance to save her."

"! So then—"

"It's all right. We'll save Yui too, of course," Siesta declared firmly. But… "Saikawa 'too'?"

Something about the way she'd said it seemed odd to me. It was as if she thought there was somebody besides Saikawa who needed saving… Was she talking about Charlie? But Charlie was in the ICU, and as frustrating as it was, there wasn't anything we could do for her.

"You can't mean…"

My heart was pounding loudly. I shook my head; it couldn't be that. If it was, though… If something like that was really possible… It was a ray of hope, and I wanted to grab it in spite of myself. After a seemingly endless silence, Siesta said—

"I'm not giving up on Nagisa Natsunagi."

 Cold memories

"Siesta, what's this about?"

Soon after, I'd gotten out of the bath, then found Siesta in the living room.

I wanted to know what she'd meant by not giving up on Natsunagi.

But all she said was, "If you don't dry your hair, you're going to catch a cold." She patted a nearby floor cushion, motioning for me to sit down. "Here, give me your towel."

I sat cross-legged on the cushion, and Siesta got behind me and rumpled my hair with the towel, drying it off. When I looked at the low table, there was a pizza delivery box on top. Siesta must have made the order while I was in the bath.

"You can't have sound thoughts with an unsound body, after all."

So now that I'd washed up, we were going to eat? Remembering I hadn't eaten a thing for the past three days, I opened the box. "…Were pizzas always shaped like Pac-Man?"

"I couldn't quite wait until you were out of the bath." When I took a closer look at Siesta, I saw a piece of cheese stuck to the corner of her mouth.

She hadn't changed. I gave a wry little smile, and then we sat across the table from each other and started on the pizza. It was the first time in a year that we'd had a meal together.

"…This's great," I said.

The comfort food was especially delicious to my tired body. I'd had pizza with Siesta at my place four years ago, too. After that, I'd left on an adventure with her, and we'd spent three dazzling, extraordinary years together.

Whenever we'd gotten through one of our many fights with pseudohumans or survived unforeseen incidents, we'd toasted with Coke and stuffed

ourselves silly.

…This is everything I wanted, I thought. Taking a bath, eating and talking with somebody who was important to me. But those were privileges exclusive to those of us who were alive. As for those who weren't… Natsunagi—

"Assistant."

The next thing I knew, Siesta was gently drying my eyes with her fingertips.

Had I always been this weak? "…Sorry."

"This is nothing new."

Siesta and I both smiled wryly at each other.

"I know everything about you, Kimi, weaknesses included. It's fine," she said. She was acting like she was my new parent.

"You don't know about this past year, though." "True. But…"

At that, Siesta's smile grew troubled.

"I do know you were trying to bring me back to life."

Oh, right. At dawn, just after I'd fought Ms. Fuubi, about ten days ago, I'd declared an oath to SIESTA and to Natsunagi's heart. It must have reached her.

"You're not going to say it?" I asked. "Say what?"

"The usual."

She could easily call me stupid for it. I thought she should, really.

Considering what that wish had ended up doing—

"I won't say it," Siesta told me. I couldn't look her in the face. "I shouldn't."

That made me raise my head. Siesta was looking straight at me. Maybe it was my imagination, but her eyes seemed just a little wet.

"…I didn't think I had the right to say this now." Saying nothing would be the same as lying, though, so I told Siesta the words I'd been keeping in. "I'm glad I got to see you again."

"So am I."

Siesta accepted the thought with a smile, without teasing me the way she

used to. Neither of us could be thrilled with the situation in the truest sense of the word, though. Yes, I'd gotten my wish, but this wasn't the ending I'd wanted. I really couldn't call this outcome a "happy" one.

So I asked her one more time: "Hey, Siesta. What do you mean, you're not giving up on Natsunagi?"

"I can't say anything for certain yet, but has anybody actually seen her body?"

Was that what this was? So Siesta didn't know about that yet… The momentary glimmer of hope was snuffed out.

"—I did. I held her hand and felt it growing colder."

What I'd seen three days ago came to mind. Something sour worked its way up from the pit of my stomach.

On that day, lying in a hospital bed, I'd heard about Natsunagi's death from Ms. Fuubi. I hadn't wanted to believe it. Setting my feelings aside, believing it seemed wrong somehow.

After all, a year ago, I'd made a big mistake regarding Siesta's death. At the time, I'd lost some of my memories to Betelgeuse's pollen; Ms. Fuubi had told me about her death later on, but what I'd heard hadn't been the truth. Because of that, I'd decided I couldn't take Ms. Fuubi's statement at face value and had bolted out of my hospital room. …Then I'd run into a doctor.

The man had said he was the director of the hospital and shown me to a certain room. And there…

"Natsunagi was lying on a bed, unconscious, hooked up to a ventilator."

There were all sorts of tubes connected to her body. It was like every available scientific technology was trying to preserve this one girl's life.

"Then Nagisa really is still…" "Alive? That's what I thought, too."

True, there was no way to know how the situation would progress, but Natsunagi wasn't dead. There had to be a possibility of saving her. …Or so I'd hoped, until the doctor kept talking.

"Nagisa Natsunagi is brain-dead."

The term meant exactly what you'd expect. The brain had lost all function, and the possibility of recovery was zero. The patient would never wake up again. In most countries around the world, a person was considered officially dead when their brain died.

Thanks to the ventilator and medication, her EKG was still undulating

quietly, but even that wouldn't last long. As Natsunagi didn't have any relatives, there was no one to make the decision to take her off the ventilator, so she'd simply been kept on.

Her condition had changed suddenly, and they'd closed her room to visitors. Just before, I'd held her hand for the last time. It had been as cold as ice, which wasn't right for a girl with such a summery name.

"I see…" After she'd heard the story, Siesta lowered her eyes in thought. "So we can't confirm Nagisa's current condition."

Exactly. As I'd said a minute ago, no one was allowed to visit her at this point. In fact, if you thought about it in terms of what turning away visitors meant, I could guess what had happened to her. Natsunagi really was—

"We don't know what her condition is." As I responded to Siesta, I erased the conclusion my mind had already drawn. "I do know someone who might know how she ended up like this, though."

"You mean…" Siesta seemed to have thought of the same person. Her eyebrows furrowed.

"That's right. Your junior—Mia Whitlock."