The Empty Box and Zeroth Maria
Book 6: Chapter 7

Kazuki Hoshino 09/11 FRI 10:15 PM

I shouldn’t let Daiya’s Subjects find me.

What should my next move be? I’m still in the process of deciding what course to take, but it won’t do for the Subjects to locate us. Haruaki and I put some distance between us and that tunnel under the elevated tracks. We can’t stick around when Iroha’s Subjects were just there.

We have no choice but to leave Iroha. Of course, it doesn’t feel great to do, but we’d just create a scene carrying her back home all covered in fake blood; plus, it would cost us critical time. So as much as we hate to do it, we have to leave her until this is settled—just under two hours more.

We leave the tunnel and walk down the night streets. Until we decide on our next move, we’ll go stay with Kokone.

“……Ya know, Hosshi, I wasn’t sure whether to say this…,” Haruaki begins, looking upset.

“Hmm? What’s up?”

“You’ve just had this scary look in your eyes for a while now, you know? I know you’re pissed at Daiyan. But you left Shindo back there, too. I’m okay with your reasons, but you didn’t seem to care about her at all when you were explaining…”

“Huh?”

Maybe I did come across as cold?

I didn’t even notice…but I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s hard to talk normally when your mind is busy screaming Give Maria back, you blind bastard.

“It’s totally normal to be upset about losing Maria, but if you don’t cool off, you’re gonna screw up, ya know?”

“Yeah.”

Calm down. Let’s calm down and really think about how to get Maria back from Daiya.

“Another thing. I know this one is going to be tough to pull off, but…I really want to save Daiyan.”

To be honest, that had slipped my mind. Everything had, except for Maria.

“…Yeah.”

Of course, I want to help Daiya, too, if he’s not beyond help already. But now, when I think of Maria, rage just boils up within me. I also can’t help but feel that misplaced sympathies will make freeing Maria that much harder.

But not considering the option at all could very well lead to another failure. Okay… Let’s think of something else for now. Think of something that’ll make me less angry with Daiya.

“……Kokone.”

Yeah.

My thoughts naturally turn toward Kokone Kirino.

It happened on September 9, two days ago.

Kokone asked me to come to her room.

I’d never been in her room before. At first glance, the black theme struck me as stylish and modern, but there was something weird about it, too. Nothing made it her own; its stylishness seemed like a facade, and Kokone herself didn’t really fit the picture. It was as if she was following trends, as if she believed this was the kind of room she was supposed to have.

Knowing what I knew about Kokone, I couldn’t help but think:

This room was meant to help her change.

To erase Daiya from her mind.

“…You don’t need to hide it anymore. Tell me what Daiya did.”

And yet, Kokone had given up on forgetting or ignoring Daiya. She had resolved to involve herself with him even more.

Seeing this, I thought:

What a relief.

I had intended to talk to her about Daiya even if she hadn’t invited me here… No, I never had any other choice. If I was going to challenge Daiya, it would be impossible to ignore Kokone. And I wouldn’t be able to keep it a secret from her anyway.

So I was grateful Kokone had prepared herself and let me know she was willing to hear me out.

After all, I would have kept the painful truth hidden from her if I could have, but I had no choice but to tell her.

—The past when Daiya was mistaken.

—The present when he was suffering.

—The future when he would be destroyed.

If she knew, Kokone would blame herself.

If she knew, she would be hurt.

If she knew, that pain would continue for some time to come.

I told her, though.

I told her everything about Daiya, no holding back.

Kokone couldn’t speak another word for the rest of the day.

After I finished saying my piece, all she could do was stare at the wall behind me in a daze.

She didn’t move, except for her chest rising and falling with each breath. I left the room, unable to do anything for her.

The next day, Kokone called me back again. Though her eyelids were a bit puffy when I came in and we said our hellos, nothing seemed out of the ordinary.

But the moment I closed the door, she undid the buttons of her shirt and started pulling it off.

It was all so sudden that I couldn’t react. Maybe I should have looked away, but I couldn’t even remember that I could. Dumbfounded, I just stood rooted to the spot in front of the door.

Kokone’s face was blank as she turned her back toward me, now wearing only a bra on her upper body.

“Look.”

At what? I was about to ask, but I spotted it before I could.

That “symbol” beneath the hook of her bra.

It was a burn mark, and not an accidental one. The scar looked like the kind you get by pressing a lit cigarette to your skin to prove how tough you are. And it wasn’t just one. It was as if someone had illegally dumped a bunch of bulky garbage into a virgin snowy field. That’s how many dozens of violent and painful burn marks there were.

These dozens of burns formed a symbol.

A symbol with connotations so obscene, you don’t even see it in public restrooms these days.

“....”

It was enough to crush me. My emotions shattered under the pressure. That mark had me reeling.

“Hic… Ngh…”

The weight seemed to wring the tears out of me, almost against my will.

The image brought me to tears completely by reflex, so it wasn’t until after I was already crying that I started thinking of how cruel it was, how painful, how she would most likely never be able to totally erase it, how this must have been the wedge that drove her and Daiya apart.

Kokone didn’t really react to my sobbing; she just turned back around and chirped, “Think of the perks. You got to see me and my E cups in a bra.”

As Kokone cracked a joke, as she normally would…she was crying.

Both of us were in tears throughout the rest of our conversation.

“My childhood friend Rino did this to me.”

Kokone began telling me about the symbol as she buttoned up her shirt.

“Daiya’s hot, obviously, and he had amazing grades, so all the girls loved him back then. He didn’t have the silver hair or earrings, and he wasn’t nearly as harsh, either. They even called him a prince. I wasn’t a good match for him back then. My hair was black and dull and super-heavy, and my bangs were bluntly cut straight across. I had boring thick glasses, too. I was the classic plain girl. You’d probably find it hilarious if you saw a picture, huh? …I can’t really laugh, though.”

I shook my head.

“Whether you were a good match has nothing to do with it. Daiya wouldn’t care about that in the slightest.”

“Yeah. It didn’t matter to him.” Having finished buttoning her shirt, Kokone looked at me. “But it did for the girls who were interested in Daiya.”

I began to pick up on where that symbol had come from.

“…So Rino or whoever was upset that you weren’t pretty enough for Daiya?”

“No, it didn’t really bug Rino that much.”

“So why?”

“Um, let’s take it one step at a time. First, there’s Rino. She was a year younger than me, and she was both my friend and Daiya’s from childhood. She’d had a crush on Daiya for a long time, too, just not as long as I had. She gave up on him, though, and started going out with a guy named Kamiuchi. The one Daiya…murdered, I guess.”

I was stunned. I never knew that sort of connection existed between Daiya and Koudai Kamiuchi. Daiya hadn’t seemed to pay him much mind even within the Game of Indolence.

But judging by the outcome, I couldn’t help but think, That’s why Daiya chose to end things the way he did.

“Kamiuchi did something horrible to Rino. I’m not really sure why he did it, but it hurt Rino a lot. So she started hitting on Daiya to try to heal, since she had liked him for so long.

“The thing is, by that time, Daiya and I were already in a relationship. Daiya liked me and not Rino. He was nice to her, but not any nicer than you’d normally be to an old friend. Rino picked up on this and got hurt even more. She just got worse and worse. She wasn’t herself anymore, and she decided I had to pay for scheming to take Daiya all for myself.”

Kokone had been crying the entire time, and she paused to blow her nose.

But her tears didn’t stop.

“Rino said she went out with Kamiuchi because of me. She told me that what had happened to her was my fault. That’s why she couldn’t forgive me. She really believed all her suffering was my fault.”

“And she did that to your back to punish you…?”

“Yeah. But if it were only Rino, I don’t think she would’ve gone this far.”

“Which means…”

“Yeah, it was more than one person. The problem wasn’t Rino herself, but all the people around her who hated me, too. I think the biggest factor is that nobody pointed out that she was being crazy, which allowed things to escalate.”

At last, the significance of what Kokone had said at the beginning dawned on me.

“You mean the people who were bothered because you and Daiya didn’t ‘match’?”

“Yeah. ‘Bothered’…doesn’t even begin to cover it. To them, it was the worst crime I could have committed. In their eyes, I was irredeemable for keeping their prince Daiya all to myself.”

…What the hell?

The worst crime? I didn’t get it.

Kokone and Daiya were going out because they liked each other—that’s all.

“That… That’s insane, any way you think of it. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Whether I was in the wrong didn’t matter. What it comes down to is that some people out there will decide they don’t like something, and they have to do something about it. It doesn’t matter that the feeling just comes from their own jealousy; they certainly won’t ever realize it. If you tell yourself a person you despise is the worst kind of monster, attacking them is easy.”

“How could they think of you as a monster when you hadn’t done anything bad?”

“It’s simple. All they needed to do was cook up some reasons. Like, I didn’t say hi to them, I always looked down on them, I always flirted with guys, I was flaunting my great relationship with Daiya, I seduced Daiya with my body, whatever. From there, they just bad-mouthed me in the group and kept agreeing with one another until the evil Kokone became an established fact in their minds. People can do it completely subconsciously. They built me up as a villain and then assaulted me to get it out of their system.”

I suddenly recalled the two classmates of ours who had been talking about Kokone behind her back.

Those two had seemed to be talking trash about her out of envy. They didn’t like Kokone for being popular with boys, so as that feeling had come to the forefront, they had started saying bad things about her to vent. It’s possible they didn’t like that Kokone was close with Daiya, either.

After what she had gone through, it’s no wonder she couldn’t let them get away with it.

“Rino had it in her to do this to me because she had been exposed to that atmosphere. They had no idea they were doing anything wrong. To them, baddies should have to suffer a little pain. Maybe they even thought it was just. They didn’t think it was crazy, at least, and that’s why they were able to do something so cruel.”

“But that’s… If they could look at themselves objectively, they would have to have realized they were nuts.”

“They had turned their minds off, so they couldn’t have.”

“…Turned their minds off?”

“Yeah. Daiya said it a lot. That they had turned their minds off.”

Yeah.

It’s what Daiya loathes.

He believes that people who stop thinking are the ones who destroy what they have. It’s why he’s even using a Box to eliminate those kinds of people. He’s trying to make a just world where things like what befell Kokone will never happen again.

“About a month or so after, I guess their minds started working again, because some people finally realized what they had done and apologized to me. But what was the point? It’s not like I was going to forgive them, right? ‘Sorry’ wasn’t going to make the scars go away. There was no meaning to it unless they’d realized what they were doing to me right then and there. It was so shameless, just apologizing so they could feel better about themselves… I told them so, and they came back with ‘Isn’t that a bit uncalled for? I’m here saying sorry?’ Oh, rot in hell, bitch.”

As she ranted and cursed, Kokone was, of course, still crying the entire time.

“Even if they apologized, there was no coming back for me. There was a time when I couldn’t hate anyone, but that’s gone forever.”

And then, she said it:

“There was no coming back for my relationship with Daiya, either.”

And yet—I didn’t understand.

“Why?”

“Hmm?”

“Why did you need to break up with Daiya? Didn’t he still love you even with that on your back? Didn’t he try to help you heal? Why did you have to call it off with him?”

Kokone fell silent.

Sniffling a bit, she stared at the ceiling. She must have been doing her best to put her thoughts in order.

I realized it only once the words were out of my mouth, but my question may have been cruel. Was there really a reason to ask her that?

I mean, the two of them had already split up. Explaining why they ended it would definitely not be easy for her. I regretted saying anything.

Eventually, Kokone asked, “Kazu, am I…cute?”

“Huh?”

She was suddenly talking as she always did; maybe she was avoiding my question because she didn’t want to answer it.

“Am I really all that pretty?”

But the look on her face was so earnest, it almost hurt.

I hadn’t the faintest idea why she would be asking me with such desperation. Her expression let me know that I had to be careful with my response.

“…You are.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. And you’re not making me say that; it’s my honest opinion. I’m not the only one who thinks so, either. It’s obvious you’re popular with the guys, isn’t it? Didn’t you say before that you’ve gotten so many love confessions, it’s in the double digits?”

“That’s true. I am a hottie, aren’t I? I am cute. I’m in the same league as Daiya now.”

“Out of his league, honestly.”

“Ah-ha-ha, you’re right. Daiya’s got that delinquent aura now, so I’m the hotter commodity! After all, I’m a sweet high school girl, and an E cup to boot! No one can top that!”

But after that confident declaration, her forced grin faded, and her lips trembled.

“……But it’s no good.” She’d held back her tears for a moment, but they spilled over again.

“N-no good…?”

“I…can’t get rid of this feeling that I’m ugly. This idea that I’m a worthless, subhuman animal won’t go away.”

“Wh-why? There’s no reason for you to—”

“I know! I know I’m pretty enough! I’m well aware! I’ve done everything I can to make sure of it! I’ve worked so hard, believing that everything would be okay if I could just be pretty!”

Kokone grabbed my arm tight.

“But it didn’t work…! That feeling won’t go away, even though I know it’s not true! I can’t stop thinking I’m ugly! I can’t shake the idea that I’m less than human, that I could never, ever be good enough for Daiya! Nothing helps! Not objective fact or subjective opinion!”

“S-so why is that?”

“Because that’s what happens! I mean, they honestly believed I was some sort of inhuman monster. Do you think that wouldn’t affect me? And I was a quiet, reserved girl back then, right? So that didn’t help. After they looked at me like I was trash, after they burned me with lit cigarettes, after they berated me and said things like ‘This is what you get for being a hag’ or ‘You’re a witch who’s no good for Daiya,’ how could I say with confidence that I was worth anything as a person? I couldn’t. It wasn’t possible. So many people came and did horrible things to me. They honestly believed I was worthless, so of course they treated me like I was, you know? I even started thinking they might be right. Maybe it was normal for something that awful to happen to me. It had to be, or else none of it made any sense. This mark robbed me of all my self-confidence and dignity.”

A belief that persisted even in the face of facts.

I think I had yet to understand that people could leave themselves so blind to the truth.

I did know one thing, though.

At that moment, Kokone was squeezing my arm so tight, it really hurt.

“I felt like if things didn’t change, my self-hatred was going to kill me. And so, and so—”

Kokone wiped away her tears.

“—I had to beat it!”

There was no other option for her. If she didn’t, she would break.

“I had to change! I had to throw away who I was in the past!”

That’s why Kokone started wearing contact lenses, colored her hair, and adopted the latest styles. She put on a cheery personality and tried to become popular. She even succeeded. By sneering down at those who began to recognize her worth, who’d envied and bad-mouthed her, Kokone attempted to recover her self-confidence.

And yet, those things that had taken root in her heart would not disappear. She couldn’t recover what the symbol had stolen.

So—

“I had to get rid of the me that cared so much for Daiya, too!”

If he was always going to be associated with what had come before, she would have to discard the part of her past that he embodied, too.

Kokone finally noticed she was squeezing my arm and let go of it.

“…Sorry, Kazu.”

I shook my head.

I’m the one who should feel bad for making you talk about it.

Kokone took a deep breath to calm herself down.

“It’s not like I wanted to break up with Daiya. It’s just that, well, it wouldn’t work. The truth is, a hug from him was already too much for me. The past would just come rushing back, all at once. Like a semitruck bearing down on me. I would get hot and start to hurt, just like when they jammed those cigarettes into my back, and it would remind me I had no worth as a human being. I can’t get rid of that feeling. That’s why being with Daiya…hurts.”

Quite simply, they just couldn’t stay together.

That was what ended things between them.

That’s awful.

It was the only thought that came to mind.

As my head hung with sadness, Kokone suddenly said something to me.

“Hey, Kazu, you said you liked me once, right?”

“Um, huh?”

Why would she ask me that now? I thought, looking at her. I couldn’t read the intentions behind her smile.

I…never said I liked her. That was something that person who had taken over my body did, not me.

But I hadn’t yet explained that to her, so to Kokone, I had confessed my feelings to her.

“I was confused. I was happy that you said you liked me. You were the first one who made me feel that way. I thought maybe going out with you would be for the best. You would probably accept me even after you saw the burns on my back, too.”

“…Look—” I started trying to tell her the truth, but Kokone cut me off.

“I thought if I went out with you, maybe Daiya would be able let me go, too.”

I swallowed.

I didn’t know the right thing to say, so I waited for Kokone’s reaction.

“Anyway, I never would have suspected that Maria started it!”

…Now that she mentioned it, we still hadn’t done anything to set the record straight, so the lie was still intact.

“S-sorry… Um, I can say this now, but that was actually the work of a Box. Maria fibbed to get the situation under control…”

“…Oh, I see. It was a Box’s fault. That finally explains why things felt odd back then. Man, those Boxes really do cause a lot of trouble… But maybe, in the end, it was a good thing, you know? I think I needed to seriously consider having a relationship with you.”

“That’s… Um, why?”

“Look, Kazu. Do you remember how I cried in the music room?”

“Yeah.”

That was when I came to, after Daiya had punched me. I heard later that the person trying to steal my body hadn’t been satisfied with just telling Kokone I loved her; she had tried to rush the answer.

“I sincerely thought it would be best for the both of us if we started seeing other people. I honestly believed I would if I got the chance. And I got that opportunity when you came along and said you had feelings for me. I imagined myself with you, and Daiya with another girl. Then, when I looked at Daiya—”

She smiled bitterly.

“When I did, I couldn’t stop myself from crying.”

The smile didn’t last long.

“That’s how I knew.”

Her face bunched up in genuine sadness and pain as she told me:

“I’m in love with Daiya.”

I don’t want to admit it. I don’t want to admit how I feel, she must have thought, over and over again.

That was the meaning behind the pain on her face.

“The truth is…I wanted Daiya to only have eyes for me.”

After all, once she admitted it, she wouldn’t be able to wish for Daiya’s happiness.

“Even if you and I started dating, my feelings for Daiya wouldn’t go away, I knew. And I could also tell that it would be the same for him. No matter what we tried, our problems would never be solved unless I became the girl I used to be. Nothing will be fixed unless I can accept him like I once did. I can’t see myself ever being able to, but it’s the only thing that would work.”

It’s a tragedy.

“It was more than Daiya could take.”

The world had changed, but they hadn’t.

They couldn’t accept reality.

“That’s why he turned to the Box. And no matter how you look at it—”

Unable to take it any longer, Kokone pressed her forehead against my shoulder.

“No matter how you look at it, everything that’s happened with Daiya is my fault!”

I couldn’t see her expression.

“That’s why I’ll do anything. If it’ll save Daiya, I will do anything. If a Box is what it takes to save him, then I’ll get one. I’d give my life as many times as it takes to help him.”

Something she said troubled me, and I repeated it without thinking.

“…Give your life?”

“Yes, I’m not lying.”

She was probably right.

It wasn’t a lie.

Kokone would give her life to save Daiya.

She already had.

If she had gotten ahold of a Box instead of Daiya, then a different, yet similar, disaster would have occurred.

Their feelings for each other are destroying both of them.

Their love is at once beautiful and horrific.

What if?

What if the incident that created that burn on Kokone’s back never happened?

If that were the case, there would have been no problem whatsoever in their love. It would have stayed an enviable, beautiful romance. No ugliness or anything of the sort. The two of them would have cared for each other and spent their days together in happiness.

Just a single unfortunate event ruined that framework.

If only one of those tiny details had been different. What if Rino weren’t their childhood friend? If Rino and Koudai Kamiuchi hadn’t gotten together? If Koudai Kamiuchi didn’t do those horrible things to Rino? If Kokone and Daiya had kept their relationship a secret? If Kokone’s personality were a little more forceful? If someone had been there to stop her mistreatment? If Daiya had noticed Rino’s alarming behavior? If Haruaki had displayed his affections for Kokone more openly? If I had been friends with all of them in middle school? All it would have taken was a tiny difference to change their fate so completely that they would have been smiling right about now.

Even I could imagine that. I wondered how many hundreds of times Kokone and Daiya had gone through those “what-ifs” in their heads.

They must have despised this world. It singled them out to experience so much malice and destroyed what they had, all without allowing them the opportunity for a single trifling “what-if.”

And that’s why Daiya began this reckless struggle to purify our heartless world.

…But what about Kokone?

“Kokone.”

“Yeah?”

She still had her forehead pressed against my shoulder.

“If you did get a Box, how would you use it?”

“I’d use it for Daiya. I’d wish for a world where he can smile and be happy.”

But that future no longer existed.

Daiya had already passed the point of no return.

That wish would never be fulfilled, and I was sure Kokone knew it.

“I wonder if it’d work, though? Could it come true without any weird, random thoughts being included, too?”

That’s why she said what she said.

Lifting her head up at last, Kokone smiled feebly and said something that made me certain she would never return to who she was before.

“Could I wish for it without thinking that everyone besides Daiya should die?”