S2E6 – The Rise of The Hero [#124 Truth Being Told]
5 0 0
X
Reading Options
Font Size
A- 15px A+
Width
Reset
X
Table of Contents
Loading... please wait.

Takemura Itsuki

“The darker parts?” I questioned with my narrowed eyes. We both were standing at one end of the four-lane intersection, looking at each other with our arms crossed in front of our chests. About fifty meters in front of us was a large group of about a hundred or two hundred women or more, who were raising slogans about democracy.

“Over with this tyranny! We want democracy! Over with this tyranny! We want democracy!” The faint noises of the angry mob were all around us.

“Yeah, kiddo,” He nodded with a little smile on his face. “This shit is deeper than you think it is.”

I continued looking silently into his eyes for a second. “… Tell me about it.”

Kurayami turned his smiling face to the front. “Now, let’s get to the main question which I wanted to answer you.”

“… It’s about the Surfurine Town Massacre.”

***

Yashiro Kiyoshi

“Just… lemme get it straight then…” Takemura Hiroshi said as he pinched his nasal bridge and bent his back a little frontward.

He was sitting in front of my desk in my office. From the window at my back, sunrays entered the room. My desk was scattered with paperwork, files, folders, and a black monitor of a desktop, with a keyboard and a mouse at the front. The fingers of my hands were crossed with each other at my table as I looked at him seriously.

After a second, he spoke, “… So what you’re suspecting is that my kid disappeared due to some… fantastical forces?”

I nodded. “I know it’s hard to believe, sir. But that’s… about the only conclusion we can make up until now.”

He turned his head up and continued looking at me disgustedly. “What has become of our law enforcement department?”

“Sir, don’t think that we’re dumb and we’re speaking in thin air,” I tried to explain to him. “You… literally forgot about your son. Completely. Do you think that it’s normal for parents to forget about their children, whatever the situation is?”

“See, I know that I’m at fault here, okay? But… that’s because I was there for so long. I-I’m just like that, Yashiro-san, so why—”

“Takemura-san, it’s not like it was your fault,” I explained. “And even if it were your fault, then too there are many aspects of this investigation that we just can’t explain.”

“I… came from India… to hear this?”

I took a deep breath from my mouth and exhaled it out. “Wanna hear why and how we reached to this fantastical forces theory?”

***

Takemura Itsuki

“Surfurine town…?” I looked at his serious gaze and smiling face as we both stood silent in the middle of the pavement. Some kids ran from our right, laughing heartily while playing around.

“It’s tough, right?” Kurayami said. “To keep on this ‘I don’t give a fuck’ mask on your face, even though you know that you’re not what you show people you are.”

My eyes were turning a little red as I controlled my emotions from overflowing. My throat was filled—about to break anytime. I gulped in. “H-How do you know this?”

“It’s evident from your face, kiddo.” He moved his head to the front. The sun had started to descend down, and it was turning into an evening soon. “But, I know you don’t wanna talk about this, so I won’t. But remember this thing: it’s gonna get alright soon.”

I took a deep breath and turned my head to the front.

“At last, every story has a happy ending. Every.”

“Y-Yeah.”

“And now listen to the truth about the Surfuring Town.” He moved his left arm on top of my shoulders. “Most of the truth… was never told.”

***

Yashiro Kiyoshi

“And see this—the photos!” I threw an open file in the front of Hiroshi. “These photos literally changed. We searched the whole house and neighborhood to find if they were forged or not, but we found nothing. We even found that it’s literally impossible to forge such a photo with such precision.”

Takemura Hiroshi dragged the file towards himself on the desk and started to read the Japanese text on the file, with two pictures of the same photo frame on the right side—the top one with a couple standing in swimming suit—standing about a step away from between—in the middle of a crowded beach, and the second one with a kid in between. “So…” He turned his head to the front at me with his wide open eyes. “Me forgetting about my son… was because my memories were intentionally erased?”

“Yeah,” I nodded. “And not just that, even the other kid, Shiratori Haruto, doesn’t remember anything about where he was all this time.”

“C-Can there be some k-kind of drug or something?”

I shook my head. “If there were, we would have raised our suspicion to that particular drug. Even though there are some drugs which can erase some parts of painful or traumatic memories, they’re still not available easily even for a medical practitioner, and they can’t erase memories to a large extent like this one.”

“Then… what are you gonna do now to fight these ‘fantastical forces’?”

“… We don’t know.”

***

Takemura Itsuki

“Yeah, most of the truth was never told to the public,” Kurayami said as he looked into my eyes with his serious gaze—not smiling this time. “Kabata-san never revealed how you guys defeated him.” He turned his head to the front. The sun was setting down and it was turning a little dark at the sky. “The story the king made was that the town was full of spies and terrorists. So, they decided to kill everyone.”

“So… Katsuki is roaming free, right?”

“Yeah.”

“We gotta tell everyone the truth.”

“People are already getting to know the truth,” He smiled a little. “The rumors about the prophecy are spreading, and people think that this was a secret massacre done by the king to kill the hero who was born in the town.”

“… And they know the hero escaped and he’s still alive.”

0