NOVEL NEXT “Big sis! Dummy! Sea cucumber! Sea anemone! Bad grown-up!”
Thud, thud, thud! The little hand of the child pounds on the girl’s chest.
After the explosion, the child had to spend weeks alone in this empty space.
Revi is now letting out all the loneliness and gloom she had felt over time to the girl.
“W-Well, she said she’s sorry…”
“That’s not enough! I don’t care! Big sis is a dummy!”
Revi ranted for quite a while, but she still didn’t seem entirely relieved, sniffling as if to emphasize her displeasure.
Turning away from the girl in an exaggerated manner, like a walking billboard for a sulking child, she stomped to a corner and plopped down.
“…Ugh.”
Hearing a soft whimper from the child again, a perplexed expression crossed the girl’s face.
Well, she knew why it had come to this.
Though she couldn’t help it, it was still her fault for bringing a live bomb into the space where Revi had lived.
However, she had completely forgotten about Revi’s existence during the past few weeks.
Of course, she didn’t mention that fact in front of the child, but, even so, she couldn’t hide the reality that the child had been alone all this time.
“Revi, I’m really sorry.”
Sniff.
“Are you really not gonna forgive me?”
“I don’t know, I hate you, big sis.”
Once again, the girl scratched her head as if flustered.
As mentioned before, the girl wasn’t very good at dealing with children.
Perhaps feeling her already limited communication skills wouldn’t cut it, she figured it was time to pull out her trump card.
“I brought ice cream.”
Poke!
Revi’s body froze in an instant.
A brief moment of silence.
The child seemed to hesitate for a moment, as if contemplating something, but it didn’t look like that would ease her heart.
Still facing away from the girl —
“There are two of them.”
“…!”
Hearing that, she finally couldn’t hold back anymore and dashed to the girl.
“Wow…”
With a small gasp, Revi’s eyes widened.
It wasn’t just the number of ice creams; she had never seen anything so vividly colorful in her life.
She had tasted ice cream before, but what she had eaten up until now was far from vivid or luxurious.
To her, the ice cream the girl offered was dazzlingly beautiful, like nothing she had ever seen.
“Can I really eat them all?”
“Yep, that’s why I brought them.”
“Really?!”
Once the girl gave her permission, the child gleefully grabbed the ice cream tub.
Looking every bit like a child, she scooped the ice cream with a small plastic spoon, gazing at it as if it were too precious to eat, and then took a big bite, her face lighting up in ecstasy.
“…”
The girl looked at the child, who was sitting on the ground, with a rare smile.
For some reason, it felt like watching two close sisters.
As the ice cream tub was about half-finished, the girl, patiently waiting, finally called out the child’s name.
“Revi.”
“Yeah? What is it, big sis?”
“When you finish that… how about we go outside for a bit?”
Right after the girl spoke, the child, who was frantically eating the ice cream, paused.
“Outside…?”
Did she hear something unexpected? Revi mumbled with the spoon still in her mouth, looking dazed.
After a few seconds of hesitation, the child seemed to ponder over what the girl said, but eventually started shaking her head.
“No, I can’t do that…”
“Why not?”
“Because… I can’t leave here…”
Revi hung her head, looking quite dejected.
For a spirit bound to this place for eternity, leaving was something unimaginably out of reach, and impossible to contemplate.
“Then, would it be okay if you could leave here?”
“…How?”
“You don’t need to worry about that.”
However, the girl said she could open the locked door here.
An unexpected opportunity that had come after such a long time.
For the child who had thought she’d never leave this place, it was nothing less than good news.
But then, she recalled something and began to deny herself in a small voice.
“But, I’ve done a lot of bad things…”
Revi tried to remember past events.
The terrible happenings that took place here and the terrified gazes of the adults.
Whether it was to get just revenge for her past or to have a moment of catharsis in her life, that massacre had indeed happened.
Thus, the child knew well that she was indeed a monster.
“And I don’t know what’s outside, or what could happen…”
Monsters don’t converse with humans.
And after realizing she could no longer communicate with anyone, the girl had decided to become a monster.
Yet, since meeting the girl, the child had reverted from being a monster back into a human, and all the feelings she could never feel as a monster now tightened around her heart, making her afraid to leave the underground and enter the outside world.
“I’m scared to go out, big sis… Can’t I just stay here?”
Revi looked up at the girl, her face filled with fear.
After a brief silence, the girl silently stared at the child and finally slowly began to speak.
“Sure, you’re right. We don’t know what might happen if we go outside.”
The girl’s first words acknowledged the child’s statement.
That was not an empty comment.
Stepping into the unknown was not a pleasant experience, a realization the girl had painfully learned through her long experience.
“Something unpleasant might happen. You might get hurt or, perhaps, become so terrified that you’ll want to come back here right away.”
Maybe it would be the best choice to leave the child here.
After all, the consequences of taking a child who was clearly no longer human outside were uncertain, even for herself.
Even if they went outside, the child would never be treated as a human.
For her, this darkness could very well be a far friendlier space than the outside world.
“But if we don’t go outside, nothing starts. Not joy, not sadness — you can’t experience anything here.”
Yet, despite all that.
Seeing the child, born human but now a monster, the girl couldn’t help but see reflections of herself.
The girl wanted to teach the child how to live as a human.
“Revi, do you want to spend your whole life in this empty space?”
“No… I don’t want that. But still, I’m scared that something might happen…”
The girl reaches out her hand.
But the child hesitates, even with the hand before her.
The time spent in darkness made it hard for the child to take that step forward.
“Then, I’ll be with you when that time comes.”
“…Really?”
“Yeah, it’s a promise.”
The child’s gaze fell to the pinky finger extended towards her.
A symbol of a promise she had learned before.
Unlike others she had seen before, the girl before her never broke a promise.
The child hesitated for a moment but then linked her pinky with the girl’s.
“Okay, it’s a promise!”
With a face that looked more innocent than ever, she replied in an energetic, lively voice.
*
When the girl returned from her brief outing, Oliver was having a chat with those who had transported her on the roof, but then he unintentionally swallowed hard, seeing something lurking inside the military helicopter.
“Is that… the entity that was said to be underground at the facility?”
“Yeah.”
Oliver pointed toward the inside of the helicopter.
At the far end of the helicopter, in an abyss of pitch black dark where no light reached, floated an unidentified head.
“I’ll ask again, but that thing really has no hostility toward us, right?”
“I told you! Why?”
“It’s just that… it feels like it’s been staring at me since earlier…”
He asked the girl with a hesitant voice.
Although she told him it was safe, the gaze of that thing, hidden in the corner of the helicopter and staring at him, wasn’t what one could call friendly, even in jest.
To be honest, it would seem much more convincing to say it was casting a curse.
“….”
However, the girl, regardless of his concerns, walked into the helicopter, acting as if she were speaking to it.
“It’s just shy.”
Then she approached Oliver again, conveying words that felt completely out of place with its appearance and that seemed hard to believe it could even say.
“…I see.”
After a brief silence, Oliver decided to stop overthinking.