From ANOTHER STORY, by yasu
The next land the girl and her friends traveled on to was a land echoing with the sounds of explosion and discord, the "Land of Sound".
Upon leaving the ship, the Left-Sided Servant clapped a hand over his ear. "As I thought, I'll be going back. It's so noisy! I can't even stand it for an hour."
"Eh? What did you say?" The girl called out, but there was no way that he should have been able to hear her above all of the noise.
The Puni-Puni climbed up on the Left-Sided Servant's shoulder, and yelled directly in his ear, "Pipi, papiiipi, puni-puni!!"
"So noisy!!" The Left-Sided Servant repeated the same thing over and over. Seeing a small town from the shore, they began to walk toward it. There were no buildings to speak of, nor were there a lot of other structures. But, in the houses in the village, there were doors, doors constantly slamming as if blown shut by a strong wind.
Inside, the houses were just plastered with giant planks, from above. As soon as the one human, the Halfling, and the animal saw something that looked like a meeting hall, something flew past them.
"Uwa!" The moment that something entered the room, the Left-Sided servant drew in a breath, stopping in his tracks. Somehow, tens of people were squatting down on the floor, as if they had grown senile. The old man immediately next to them was crouched down, as if he were a statue of "The Thinker".
"Hey...are you all right?" As soon as the girl raised her voice, the man raised his head, and smiled a half-smile.
"It's no good. He's already gone," the Left-Sided Servant mumbled. Next to him, there was a woman lying on a bed, gasping out breath as if she was dying...and a little farther down, a man who was constantly laughing, inexplicably. All the others, too, looked as if they were just staring vacantly at one place.
In this land, the people had had their ability to reason stolen from them by the explosions and dissidence. It was as if they had entirely become nothing more than skeletons. One of the men approached the girl, as if he was going to crawl into the bed.
"You guys, where in the world did you all come from, anyway?" It seemed that the man still had enough of his mental strength to speak.
"More importantly, do you know where the "Great Demon of Sound" lives?" The girl asked the man. She had heard that the Great Demon of Sound was hiding the music box containing the Melody of Wisdom in the forest, where he lived.
"In the Tower of Wisdom, in the middle of the forest. However, what are you planning, asking something like that?"
"I'm going to go and take back the Melody of Wisdom, and the music box it is hidden in!"
When the girl answered, almost as if shouting, the man stared at her, his eyes becoming small, as if he had just seen something very strange.
"It'd be better if you just gave up..." the man's voice squeaked out, weakly, "there, the sounds of discord and explosions are even louder, and the Demon will ask you horribly difficult questions. If you can answer all of them correctly, then he will release the Melody of Wisdom from the music box, or so they say."
"Right! So, away we go, then."
"However, the horrible noise makes you lose your ability to think, and so you can't reason well...and then, if you cannot answer all of the questions correctly, if you even miss one..."
"If I can't answer...? Wha...what happens?" The Left-Sided Servant breathed to himself, hearing the man's words.
"You'll be thrown into a cell of discord that...even in a lifetime...you cannot leave."
"Even if you can't leave in a lifetime, it can't be much different than being stuck here, can it?"
As the girl said this, the man raised his eyes to look at her, but his neck was still looking the wrong direction. "You're new here, so you don't know...but the noise in the demon's cell is so much worse than that out here..."
"Thank you. You've been a real help, knowing so much about the demon."
Looking up at the girl, he said, "Are you really going? I too thought about fighting the demon myself until a year ago, but now...now..."
With that, the man drooped forward, and fell silent.
Immediately upon leaving the meeting hall, the girl unfolded the mysterious map. It pointed the way to the Tower of Wisdom, straight into the forest. Even if you went into that forest, while it wasn't overgrown, the trees were ominous figures, the demons within them crying out with anguished voices. The deeper one traveled within, the more violent and numerous the sounds of discord became.
"Just a little more...hold on a little longer."
Then, the Puni-Puni suddenly ran past the girl and the Left-Sided Servant. "Puni!!"
"Hey! Where are you going?!" When the Left-Sided Servant looked ahead at the Puni-Puni, for some reason the leaves on the trees glittered red.
"Don't! You can't go that way! It's outside of the safe path shown on the miraculous map!" The girl caught up with the Puni-Puni, making to capture it.
"Look out! I don't know what will happen to you, because there's no way I'm going over there!" the Left-Sided Servant yelled.
The Puni-Puni, as if it had been living as a domesticated puppy, stopped from time to time to wait for the girl to catch up. It sat patiently, as if it was going to be caught.
It was time.
"Uwaaaa!" From behind the girl's back, after she had caught up with the Puni-Puni, she could hear the anguished scream of the Left-Sided Servant.
When she tried to look behind her, she saw the Left-Sided Servant, about to be dragged by a giant vine into the marshlands deeper in the forest. The Left-Sided Servant had fallen in to the bogs, his feet looking as if they were about to be dragged under. Of course, he started kicking his legs wildly.
"H...help me! Wha...what do I do?! I'm sinking! Oh no! I don't want to die!!"
The Left-Sided Servant struggled. Slowly, his body began to sink deeper and deeper into the bogs. The girl looked around, unable to move, not even to find something to help the Left-Sided Servant get free.
"H...hey!! Don't just stand there staring at me, save me, quick!!" The Left-Sided Servant said to the girl. Even so, the girl was so surprised, she just kept staring.
"What is it, are you scared? Are you going to leave me behind? Aren't you the Messiah?! You think you can save this world even if you don't save me?! Please! Help me! Help me, please!!" The Left-Sided Servant was buried up to his chest. In an instant, the Puni-Puni had jumped on top of his head.
"Hey! Stop it! You'll make us sink! Uwaaa! Oh no! I'm sinking! If I die, I'll haunt you!!"
"I know, I know, shut up! If you say anything, you'll be pulled under!"
"What did you say? You're kidding! For the most part..." The Left-Sided Servant continued to yell. Regardless, he kept sinking.
"Shut up!!" The girl angrily yelled, at the top of her voice.
As if overwhelmed by the strength of this outburst, the Left-Sided Servant suddenly fell silent. At the same time, his body stopped sinking.
"Ah, I've stopped." When he said this, his body once again sunk, with a wet noise.
"Over there in that bog is the Great Demon of Sound's trap! If you talk, the louder you talk, the more you sink! That red thing over there looks like the switch to start it, so be quiet, and I'll save you now."
So, until the girl had pulled the Left-Sided Servant out of, and well away from, the bog, they didn't say a word. The Left-Sided Servant took a deep breath.
"Geez! It's all that Puni-Puni's fault that I fell in! And then, that thing goes and jumps on my head while I'm sinking! As I thought, it's not good having such a dangerous thing along with us!"
"Surely, he saved you. It's not nice to always be saying such things about him. Me, too. Though it was good that I was able to notice the trap before falling into it, I'm sorry for not being able to think properly because of all the noise. Making traps like this one appears to be the Great Demon of Sound's real strength. If we're not careful...so, let's keep going! It's just a little farther to the Tower of Wisdom."
"Right...the Puni-Puni is really sweet, isn't he...though it's probably because he doesn't know what a horrible experience that was just now!" The Left-Sided Servant hopped along like he always did, but when the girl and Puni-Puni got ahead of him, he became disoriented and passed them by.
"Look! I can see the Tower of Wisdom!" The girl said, stopping in her tracks slightly ahead of them. Ahead of her, where she was pointing, there was a fortress with many floors, surrounded by a gate. Deep inside, climbing vines were visible. At the very center stood the tower, standing as if it was slicing through the heavens. It seemed as if the most violent, discordant sounds were coming from the center of the tower.
When the girl, the Halfling, and the animal arrived at the gates and walked through them, a booming, deafening voice came down from above.
"You all are the fools who say that you're going to fight against me?!"
"That's right, we are! Once we defeat you, we're taking back the music box containing the Melody of Wisdom!" The girl shouted upward, but she could not see the Great Demon of Sound. "Where are you? Show yourself!"
In the next instant, with a deafening roar loud enough to drown out the dissidence, the giant Demon of Sound appeared before them, his great three eyes opening, glowing with confidence.
"Wha...what is this monster?!"
"You're all fools to show up in person against the Great Demon of Sound. I cannot think you are very wise at all. And yet, I have heard that you carry the Music Box of Dreams...but if you are not wise, there is nothing you can do. You can only escape in your dreams...eh, even saying that much, I know you are not wise at all," the Great Demon of Sound's voice boomed within the ear-splitting dissidence, challenging the girl, "So, just try and take the Music Box from me!"
"So, we're fighting through use of questions, then, are we not?"
The Demon spread his arms in an intimidating gesture. "You know, don't you? What happens if you cannot answer all of my questions?"
"Of course!" The girl steeled her resolve.
As she did so, the Demon turned his silencing red eyes on the Left Sided-Servant. "And you?"
"Oh, no, this has nothing to do with me, I mean, I'm just...tagging along, aren't I? In other words, don't pay much attention to me."
"He's my companion. And the Puni-Puni, too." The girl said, the demon nodding with satisfaction.
"So, if you cannot answer my question, then I trust that you agree that the strange man, and that living thing, I don't know what that is, will suffer the same fate as you!?"
"I'm not afraid."
"Hey, hey, wait a minute, you can't just decide I'm participating in this...I mean, it really has nothing to do with me..."
The Demon's voice boomed out over the Left-Sided Servant. "QUESTION!! So, let's go, are you ready? What has one head, four legs at the beginning, then two legs, than three legs at the end?"
The girl's heart started pounding. She had the feeling she had heard this one before, but had no idea what the right answer was. Then, when she thought she might have it, the dissidence and all of the explosions were stealing her ability to really think things through.
"Fools! Not even knowing this simple of a question."
"That's right, now I remember! Babies walk on their hands and knees, then when they grow up, they walk on two legs, and then when they get old, they walk with the help of a stick, so that's three legs..."
"Answer quickly. You have one minute!"
"Fine. The answer is, a human."
"Yes...how cheeky! Correct." Since it was a conversation to be carried on over the deafening noise, it sounded like they were yelling angrily at one another.
Then, the Great Demon asked ten more simple questions. Normally, they were questions that someone would know immediately, but with each answer the noise grew stronger and louder, preventing the girl's ability to reason and think from working.
"Making it this loud...it's sheer cowardice!" The girl was yelling angrily, but the Demon's face looked like he wasn't aware of what she had said. Indeed, it was as if he didn't hear her at all.
Through the cooperation of the girl, the Halfling, and the animal, they were able to answer the Demon's questions correctly thus far. However, they were reaching the limit to just how much their powers of intellect could handle.
"Oh, yes, you really are an insolent one, aren't you!" The Demon, already yelling, raised his voice. "LAST QUESTION!!! This time, it's not like the other questions at all!"
Saying this, he brought forward his right hand, and four groups appeared, of six babies each. All the babies were crying and screaming with earth-shattering force, as if to drown out the noise around them.
"So, here's the question. Among these, how many are unneeded?" the Demon demanded.
Unneeded...? The same thing repeated in the girl's heart over and over again.
"This one's a hard one. Be careful! It's dangerous!" The Left-Sided Servant exclaimed.
"So, answer. How many are unneeded? For just this question, I'll give you a time limit of 15 minutes," the demon said, triumphantly.
With the addition of the crying babies over the rest of the noise, the girl finally surpassed the limits of her mental abilities.
"If only just the crying would stop," she thought, getting lost in her own thoughts. "Maybe if I do this..." Standing in front of the children, she picked the third one from the left out of the group and put him aside. Then, she tried listening to his crying voice, which had struck a beautiful chord.
"Of course! Together like this, all the crying children are clashing with one another, but you can set them apart!" The Left-Sided Servant jumped up and down, clapping his hands.
So, the girl, in the same fashion, started separating some of the children from the group. Upon doing so, the crying of both groups made a pretty chord.
"13 minutes and 15 seconds have passed...you have a minute and 40 seconds!" The Demon said cruelly.
"How many children did we take out of the group altogether?" The girl yelled out.
"One, two, thr...all together, there's six of them. So, there are six of them who are unneeded, right?" said the Left-Sided Servant.
"You have one minute left. How many are unneeded?" The Demon yelled again, angrily.
However, since the girl was unable to think, she was also unable to answer. The Left-Sided Servant kept going, glancing over at the girl, but she remained silent.
"You have 50 seconds! How many are unneeded?"
"Six!" The Left-Sided Servant answered, not able to hold it back any longer.
"So, the answer is six...is that all right with you?" The Demon asked the girl to confirm her answer.
"The answer is..." The girl stood there with her mouth open, as if she was going to answer. At that time, before her eyes, the light of the red moon shone in her eyes against the dark sky. At the same time, someone called out to her.
"You don't need me?"
One of the six children? She thought.
"...Wait!!" With that, the girl's face lit up.
"Oh...why didn't I realize that before...?" The girl mumbled to herself, as the Demon's count reached 15 seconds.
The girl moved over to the group of six children, and split them into groups of three.
Then, quickly, the cries of the children who thought they were going to be left behind created a nice chord.
"Five seconds! How many are unneeded?" The Demon asked again.
"The unneeded ones are..." The girl steeled herself and called out, "Zero! None of them are unneeded!"
The moment she did so, the Great Demon of Sound's face contorted, and he let out a horrible noise. "Uwaaaaa...!!" The Left-Sided Servant's body started to shrink back, and then the tower started to shake, sounding like it was going to collapse.
When they finally took notice, the sounds of explosions had stopped, and the beautiful chords made by the crying voices of the children, unable to be heard over all the noise, could be heard. When the children vanished, the Music Box of Wisdom appeared in their place.
The girl slowly opened the music box. Then, like a cleansing dawn, the Melody of Wisdom flowed through the land, making the plaintive cries of the Great Demon of Sound vanish away along with the dissident noise.
Then, the birds alighted from the trees, singing a soothing melody. In that dense forest, spreading to the sky, the girl, Halfling, and animal took a deep breath.
"Oh, that was so dangerous...I think that just took 20 years off my life! However, I did have a good answer to that last question, didn't I?" The Left-Sided Servant said, sitting on a gentle, grasslike meadow.
"There's no such thing as a useless human. No matter who they are, there's somewhere for them where they are important. For you, too, it would be good for you to find your Right-Sided Servant quickly. Surely, he's having trouble because you're not there."
"You think so, huh...he probably thinks I'm the worst person in the entire world," said the Left-Sided Servant, tilting his head, looking a little desolate.
"So, we can't just sit around and take it easy. To the next land we go!"
"I don't even know if he's still alive, I guess..." grumbled the Left-Sided Servant.
When she noticed, the sun had sunk, and dusk was setting in.
From the window, the slanted rays of the evening sun filtered through, the light noticeable in her corner of the room. Coming closer, she took something in her hands: A small box. On the lid was a mirror, reflecting the light of the evening sun.
Surrounding the outside perimeter of the lid was a design that, though simple, was beautiful. It looked as if it had been carved into the lid with a chisel.
"This is...from back then..." Nozomi remembered something else from when she was in elementary school. When she had been here half a year after transferring, she received a message from her father, shortly after the end of her third semester.
"From fifth year on, you'll be going to school in Tokyo." Looking back on it now, Nozomi, who had finally gotten along with everyone as if she was born in this place, hated it so much that she cried.
"For the first time, I have all sorts of friends and a place I don't want to leave behind! If I go to Tokyo, I'll be all alone again!"
But, of course, being a child, her feelings alone couldn't change anything. At school, without changing anything at all, she continued to spend enjoyable days just like always, with everyone who looked forward to hearing her stories. Nozomi, even though she knew she had to leave that March, let one day after another pass, without telling anyone a thing.
And then the day came. When Nozomi arrived at school, there were a number of girls gathered together in the corner, looking like they were having fun. One girl was speaking to the others around her, saying, "Hey, isn't this so cute?" and showing them all a small box. Inside of the lid, there was a mirror.
The girls around her were saying, "Show us, show us!" and "Oh, it really is cute!" with envy in their voices.
Nozomi, as usual, drew closer. "What is it, what is it? What's going on?"
Then, the girl in the center said, "No waay. We can't show Nozomi," with a little bit of disdain.
Since Nozomi thought that surely she was joking, she said, "What! Of course it's all right to show me! Just let me see it for a little bit!" Then, she reached out her hand, and one of the girls placed the box into her palm.
But then, the other girl, with a very upset tone, retorted, "I told you no, didn't I?!" before moving to snatch the box out of her hand.
Shaken by such strong words, Nozomi unconsciously withdrew her hand, and the box fell downward. Landing upside-down, the mirror on the lid cracked, with a dull noise.
The girl in the middle of the circle started to rave. "See, that's why I told you she couldn't see it!"
"Oh, no,...oh, no..." The girl who looked like she was the owner of the box started to sob.
Nozomi, easily flustered by such things, completely forgot to apologize, and fled as fast as she could. Once she returned home, she was so distraught she started to cry.
"Why? Why? Aren't they my friends? Even though this isn't even the day I have to leave all of them..."
After that day, she could never return to the school she had loved so well. Though there were times when she had the will, once morning came her head started to hurt, or she would feel terrible all over again.
Just like that, the last day of the term passed, with Nozomi still unable to return to school.
Thinking that she should go for at least the last day, thinking that she'd know for sure if no one greeted her walking in, she got up extra early, despite her stomach hurting, and arrived at school before anyone else. When she entered the classroom, no one had come yet.
"I really am leaving this school..." Walking slowly around the classroom, Nozomi remembered all kinds of fun things. Then, she tried sitting in the desk of the girl who had started sobbing before.
"Even though we were so close..." Suddenly, her eyes fell on something in her desk. It was the box that Nozomi had dropped before. Nozomi, with her same sinful curiosity, tried picking up the box, to find that the mirror that should have been broken had been repaired.
"How pretty..." Though she thought she shouldn't, Nozomi opened the lid. And then, she heard someone, perhaps students finally arriving at school, their voices coming from the hallway.
Nozomi, reflectively, flew out of the classroom, the box still in her hand. Even she didn't know why she had left like that. Not knowing what to do, she ran to that little shed, hiding the box in her secret room.
Just like that, without telling anyone, Nozomi left that school, and went on her transfer into Tokyo.
"That's right...after that, I couldn't genuinely laugh anymore...though it could have just been because I didn't have a chance to, always being worried about what others thought of me..."
Nozomi, remembering these faraway memories, gazed at herself in the mirror anew. Reflected back at her was the face of a woman that had already lost all of its radiance, tired as ever.