Chapter 33
Conclusion, The God Who Is There.
It's been a while since I looked up at the Tokyo sky.
Even if I'm almost killed by incomprehensible gods, or face something more inexplicable than death, this place never changes.
Rokuhara laced his fingers together as he looked over my report.
"No abnormalities, huh?"
Rokuhara looked down at the document filled with innocuous phrases.
'No abnormalities' meant there was absolutely no information about Misaki. I heard Rokuhara had also visited that village.
A distorted god statue, the terminus of an abandoned railway, a village that seemed unchanged for decades. I wonder what he thought when he saw that stagnant place.
"What did you think when you saw that village?"
Rokuhara shifted his gaze from the paper to me and asked.
"What do I think..."
There was something I'd been feeling ever since returning, but I hesitated to say it aloud.
"Even though I understood nothing, it felt like something had been resolved..."
Rokuhara looked back at me with the same gloomy expression and gave a small shrug.
"I felt the same way."
I widened my eyes.
"Like something irreversible had happened, like everything suddenly made sense, like there was still something left undone... But in any case, it felt like something had ended."
Sunlight reflected off every window in the city, piercing in like arrows.
Rokuhara and I stared out the window.
"Maybe that village's god has something that makes you feel that way."
The mountain of documents cast a deep shadow. I wanted to ask Rokuhara, "Did you cry too when you left that village?" but I couldn't bring myself to say it.
I've always thought government hallways resemble hospitals.
Miyaki, sitting on a backless sofa with worn-out urethane, raised her hand when she saw me come out of the room.
"How was it?"
"Nothing special. 'No abnormalities.'"
Miyaki gave a wry smile.
"How about the handover from your previous department?"
"Also 'no abnormalities' on this end."
I put coins into a vending machine standing in the shadows and bought two coffees. The sound of the cans dropping echoed heavily.
I tossed one to Miyaki and sat down beside her.
A handheld game console blinked on her lap.
When I peeked at it, I saw something like a black cloud drawn in coarse pixels. In the blank space at the center was a torii gate. The black must've been the forest.
"I'm recreating the village we visited."
"You're really into it. I wouldn't go back there even in a game."
I pulled the floor-standing ashtray next to the sofa toward me, took out a cigarette, and lit it.
"If you can do all that with such a tiny game console, someone should invent a portable phone already."
"I don't think that's possible."
Miyaki set the game console down, gave me a slight nod, and pulled the tab on her coffee can.
"Games are ignored because they're useless. But something as functional as a portable phone would get discovered and erased immediately."
"Erased by the government?"
"Something even more uncontrollable."
"You say some pretty weird and scary stuff sometimes."
Miyaki laughed evasively.
"I was thinking on the way back from that village. Maybe The Unseen God doesn't mean no one knows it, but that it hides the people who do."
The fluorescent light traced the side of Miyaki's face. Ash dropped from my fingertip.
"...If that's true, it's beyond our control."
"It's better that we can still make guesses. Especially since nothing ever comes out of that village."
Miyaki set down her can and stood up.
"Things that are truly uncontrollable don't even register as problems. You can't address something you can't even recognize."
Without heading anywhere in particular, Miyaki stood facing the window at the end of the hallway, which had a protective wire mesh.
The mesh-like light shimmered, staining the hallway.
We've faced a lot of incomprehensible things together, but maybe I understand her the least.
"By the way, your previous department... where was it?"
"Ah, it's already gone. What exists now is a bit different..."
Miyaki answered with her back still turned.
"The Imperial Household Agency... I guess."
"The Imperial Household Agency?"
An unfamiliar term.
"You mean the one by the moat in Chiyoda Ward?"
"Yeah, something like that."
That area falls under the jurisdiction of the Imperial Special Administration Bureau. It's a department ordinary people can't even perceive, existing for over a hundred years. I'd never heard of any transfers or reforms there.
"If that's true, you're an elite. Why'd you get dumped here?"
"Maybe I learned too much."
Her light tone revealed nothing of her true feelings.
The view of Tokyo through the window was filled with white buildings blurred against the blue sky and clouds.
"You remember that 'God of Contradiction Reconciliation'?"
Miyaki suddenly brought it up.
"We're doing similar things, in big or small ways, aren't we? We keep things quiet because making Territorial Divine Offenses public would cause chaos, and we handle the aftermath."
"Yeah..."
I tapped the end of my cigarette against the edge of the ashtray.
"Civilians have no idea what we're doing. They live their lives not even knowing such gods exist."
Miyaki kept her back turned.
"Like that unknown village, maybe there's a world where a massive Cold War turned into an actual war, and our country got caught up in it—and now we live in a world full of distortions caused by forcibly erasing that reality."
Her outlandish words flowed like a dam breaking. I forgot to exhale the smoke and just stared at her slender back in a suit.
"Katagishi-san, have you ever thought we might be living in a reality patched together after contradictions were fixed?"
"Yeah."
Smoke pooled in my mouth and billowed out from the corner of my lips.
"Same as Territorial Divine Offenses. If it's beyond our control, we just have to accept it and live on. We don't have the power to change it."
Miyaki turned around and gave a small smile.
"I'm glad I ended up in this department."
"Lucky me, having such a dutiful junior. Though you act weird sometimes."
I crushed the cigarette butt into the ashtray. It made a sound like a sparkler.
I stood up, walked over to Miyaki, and looked down at the city of Tokyo.
"Tokyo hasn't changed in years."
Miyaki stared at the winter sky, hazy in the sunlight.
"Katagishi-san, what year of the Showa era is it now?"
"It's Showa 104, right?"
I thought I saw Miyaki's shoulders tremble slightly. She inhaled quietly and exhaled like a sigh.
"You've lived a long life, huh?"
"Of course. I'm a Celestial Being, after all."
Amid the blue and white world below, a red Tokyo Tower pierced the sky like a needle.
"Looking down from here, we're the same. No matter what happens down below, it doesn't bother us. Tokyo always looks unchanged from up here."
"'The god reigns in heaven. All is well in the world,' huh?"
"I've had enough of gods."
In a world made only of sky and earth, no trace of humans could be seen. It was truly the view of a god indifferent to people.
I may be fed up, but as long as people exist, so will gods. And we'll continue to be needed.
This country, the village on the edge, and Tokyo—none of it changes.
<Territorial Divine Offenses, Part One: End>