My Vampire Older Sister and Zombie Little Sister - Book 9: Chapter 1

Part 1

“Wow.”

The next morning, I was shocked to see the roof of our house.

Some excited elementary school kids ran by behind me. Even kids that age had phones these days. The prismatic effect of the snow falling on a sunny day was too amusing a sight to pass up, so they were snapping all sorts of photos with their phones.

Everyone wore masks whenever they went out like it was normal. They had become as much a necessity as food and water.

“Is that around 10cm?”

“No,” replied Maxwell. “It is 8cm at most.”

I held my phone up much like the kids to give Maxwell a look, but we were interested in the roof. We could see the natural(?) accumulation there, untouched by feet or tires.

“So is that about a centimeter per hour?”

“In this case, the microplastics are proven to be heavier than water, so the roof could still be in danger.”

The snow was not real, so it would not melt in the sun and drip off the roof.

My dad and stepmom had used their full grownup power to shovel the snow until yesterday, but now it would be up to us.

But we had to be careful.

Kukyou City was home to a surprising number of Archenemies like a Mermaid, a Dark Elf, and even a Siren, but they were laying low at the moment.

The police and fire department were not functioning properly and we could not rely on outside aid. Things looked relaxed enough, but the situation was actually pretty serious.

I could only guess, but the Archenemies probably wanted to keep a low profile in this isolated space where the rules no longer applied. The Colosseum that had pit immortal against immortal to reduce their numbers must have taught them just how frightening truly unrestrained humans could be.

For example, an Archenemy with ten or more times the physical strength of a human might be overwhelmed with people asking them to shovel their walk or knock the snow from their roof. Much like someone who just won the lottery. Then they would be left exhausted simply helping out other people. I was worried about our roof, but letting my sisters deal with it to ensure the safety of just our own house could be dangerous in a different way.

“The snow is still a problem once it is knocked from the roof,” said Maxwell.

“Yeah, I know.”

You couldn’t just knock it off and leave it there. It wouldn’t melt on its own, so leaving it in the sun wouldn’t make it drain away in the ditch. Piles had been carelessly shoved over to the edge of the road to clear the way as much as possible, but those piles were already growing taller than me.

“If only we could slap it with a label calling it some kind of valuable resource. Then people would fight over who got to take it away for us.”

“No. The multiple components carried by the cargo ship have been mixed together.”

“And the dust, dirt, and nitrogen oxide in the air has probably contaminated it too.”

“Sure. So you do understand. Going to the effort of separating out the components to recycle it would likely cost more than those components are worth.”

I guess wishing someone would do it despite the cost was a childish way of thinking. I still felt like it would be effective if some wealthy person paid for that service as a form of charitable donation.

Tokyo had recovered pretty quickly from being flooded in that bomb cyclone, so I really wanted to believe the tech was there.

Just then, the neighbor’s front door opened in a hurried fashion.

“Hyah! What are you doing there, Satori-kun? Am I really running that late today!?”

“That’s a lot of energy for so early in the morning, Class Rep. Did you oversleep?”

She had long black hair swept back and she had a decent figure, even if it was not quite on my sister Erika’s level. The always beautiful Class Rep was of course wearing a mask, but those good looks were cheating. When she wore a mask, it seemed to give her a charming mystique. With me, it only made me look like I was up to something.

“You saw the news last night, didn’t you? They’ve shut down the roads. I doubt we’ll be able to use the convenience stores or the cafeteria for lunch, so I had to make myself a lunch real quick. Argh, and I thought it would be so easy since I was using mostly frozen things!”

That was exactly what I would expect from her since she loved to plan everything out. Plus, this made her a source of handmade lunches made by the childhood friend next door. How was it possible for a simple lunch to sound more valuable than a bar of gold!? Was she trying to kill me with cuteness!?

“What are you going to do for lunch, Satori-kun? I imagine someone as online as you heard the news before I did.”

Worry not.

I came prepared.

“I brought some CalorieGates. Four is enough for a meal.”

“I can’t believe you! That’s just another name for hardtack! Why would you choose to suffer like that!?”

That was the kind of opinion you arrived at when you only followed the outdated information on TV. To be honest, I had to be better off than the people who trusted the talk shows and thought they would be healthy if they ate nothing but lean meat. Before all these snow-related problems, I had bought an industrial-sized box full of them to help me through my all-nighters and that had come in handy now.

The Class Rep, being a Class Rep, put her hands on her hips and glared at me. (She could really pull off the perfect Class Rep pose. It was a thing of beauty.)

“Satori-kun, give me half of that hardtack later on.”

“I know the maple flavor is good, but if you don’t watch what you’re eating, you’ll gain weight.”

“I’m saying I’ll give you half my lunch in exchange! You claim that stuff is healthy, right? Then it shouldn’t be a problem if I eat some of it too!”

!?

It took every ounce of self-control I had to avoid striking a triumphant pose. This is what I was talking about! Only our Class Rep would be so unnecessarily caring in a way that came completely out of the blue like this!!

“Oh, my! What a dreadfully uneven trade. My user is clearly the only one gaining anything from this!”

Maxwell, shut the hell up. I honestly don’t know how this happened either and I have no chance of reproducing it, so don’t you ruin this for me!!

“Y-you know?” The glasses Class Rep was fidgeting a little. “This is embarrassing for me too. Ahh, I can’t believe I’m sharing my lunch with the neighbor boy at my age.”

“Hm, this reaction does not look favorable for you, user. I sense no bittersweetness there. Is this similar to someone letting a filthy abandoned dog eat their dinner because they would feel guilty otherwise?”

“Shut up or I’m dumping your storage container in the sea, Maxwell. And I’m more than willing to play the filthy abandoned dog if it means the Class Rep will feed me her lunch in the middle of the classroom!! I just know she’ll considerately keep her left hand below the chopsticks in case the food falls!!”

“I-I never said I’d do that!!” she protested.

“She suggested it yet now she is blushing about it?” said Maxwell. “This glasses forehead Class Rep appears to possess some highly complicated thought processes. Is this what they call a tsundere?”

You’re wrong there, Maxwell. While she can be irritable and angry, she is throwing the doors of her heart wide open to reveal what she is truly feeling deep down, so it doesn’t qualify as tsun. You only call someone a tsundere when they can’t be honest about what they’re feeling deep down. Heh. You’ve started using a lot of emotional terms for a program – like bittersweet and guilty – but it looks like you still have much to learn. The internet is overflowing with cute girls, so go observe them as a form of training. And don’t stop until you finally understand that a Class Rep only needs to be a Class Rep. No extra additives like “tsun” or “dere” are needed there.

“Wait, this means I’m going to be walking to school with you, doesn’t it?”

“Eh heh heh. We can hold hands if you want, Class Rep.”

“…………………………………………………………………………………”

“Don’t look so disgusted with the idea! You’re supposed to raise your voice and get after me in a Class Reppy way when I make jokes like that!”

“That is what happens when you ask for an unearned reward, you fool,” said Maxwell.

I walked to school with that pure Class Rep.

There were signs everywhere of people having fought with the microplastic snow, but their methods varied. There were no established rules, so where the people preferred to stay at home or were just sloppier, the road tended to be blocked up enough that only one lane was clear. At least I didn’t see any homes collapsed under the weight of the snow. Yet, anyway.

“The city dump truck didn’t come by today.” The Class Rep sounded worried as she observed her surroundings. “The microplastics don’t melt, right? So they’ll block up the roads if no one takes them away. Can they not send out the trucks because they can’t get any gasoline delivered to the city?”

“You might consider reminding her that dump trucks generally use diesel.”

“Maxwell, are you trying to sabotage what I have going here?”

My childhood friend gave me a curious look, but I was not about to let her see my phone’s screen.

“The snow gets in my hair too.” She held a hand to her head. “Maybe I should wear a knit hat tomorrow.”

“No!! Cover up that glorious forehead and all you have left are the glasses, Class Rep!”

“It would seem you are perfectly capable of sabotaging yourself, user.”

It might seem surprising, but despite the state of the city, we saw quite a few boys and girls in the same uniforms as us. Once we arrived at school, a whole bunch of students were entering the school building which was wearing a thin layer of white makeup. The strange look of the city didn’t matter. Unless someone spoke up to stop it, the usual routine continued. That was just how the world worked.

We arrived in our classroom 5 minutes before morning homeroom began. The Class Rep had been worried about the time, but she still managed to arrive with time to spare. Like always. About 80% of our classmates were there. The rest may have hurt their back shoveling snow for the first time in their life.

And one other thing was different from normal.

“Quiet down, everyone. It’s time for morning homeroom.”

“?”

The teacher who walked in with that sharp statement was not our usual homeroom teacher. This young woman was invading our territory and acting like she belonged.

“Your usual teacher was caught in traffic and won’t arrive in time. It probably would have been faster to walk. Anyway, I am here as your replacement. My name is Saeki. I have to visit a few other classrooms too, so let’s get started, shall we?”

What a rip off. With our teacher gone, we could have had the day off and it would be the adults’ fault, but this unnecessarily motivated person instead delivered the day’s announcements with a smile.

She must have taught a different year because I didn’t recognize her, which made it a little hard to ask questions.

“There is still a lot we don’t know about the ‘snow’, but that is no reason to give into fear. This is a temporary problem, so it will work itself out in time. Oh, and one other thing.”

Once her businesslike overview of the announcements was complete, she started on something else.

“I know this is a bad time for it, but you have a transfer student joining your class today. That’s a reason for applause, don’t you think?”

Some of my classmates voiced their confusion about why someone would transfer in now, but the cargo ship fire only began three days ago, so it may have been too late for this new kid’s family to change their plans by then.

“By the way, the transfer student is a blonde-haired green-eyed girl. She’s 15, but she came from an experimental school that doesn’t use the standard 6-3-3 system, so her education level is identical to yours and she’s also especially talented. So rejoice, boys! Do you have your phones ready? Remember that it’s first-come-first-serve on lending her your textbook. Now, onto the introduction!”

I heard footsteps as a new element invaded the familiar scene of the classroom.

She had a small build and whitish-blonde hair. Instead of a standard braid, her long hair was only braided together at a few spots down its length. Her hair and skin created a stark contrast with her brand-new blue blazer uniform.

Then there was her identity.

“Hello, everyone. I am Umikaze Speechia.”

No, not her name.

Something else mattered more.

I had seen her before. I had seen her entirely nude on a spaceship of all places.

In other words…

“I am registered as an Archenemy Scylla. It’s a pleasure to meet all of you.”

Maxwell had called the city’s situation an attack as opposed to a disaster. The people who had intentionally flooded Tokyo were almost certainly involved and it was pinpoint targeted at the city I called home.

“Warning.”

In that case, what was this?

“We have too little information, so she should not rush to judgment,” said Maxwell. “That said, we of course should run a simulation based on the worst-case scenario. It is too late to consider that scenario once it has already dug its fangs into you.”

A girl who had been there during the previous incident had all of a sudden appeared before me for no fathomable reason. It would have been weird not to be cautious.

And if I’m being honest, the situation was awkward enough without that. I mean, I’d never actually spoken with the Scylla, but I had seen her naked. Because she had been preserved as a body double for that alien…well, that queen who thought she was an alien.

That would supposedly make her another abductee and thus harmless, but like I said, I had never spoken with her. She had looked an awful lot like a victim last time, but I didn’t actually know who she was on the inside. She may have been thoroughly “educated” after being abducted to turn her into their loyal soldier, or she may have volunteered to play that role. I didn’t know her, so I couldn’t say anything for sure about her.

So which was it?

On a more fundamental level, wasn’t it awfully weird to change schools with all this going on? Was thinking through all this even worth it when I had so little information? And could I just be overthinking all this in the first place?

“You can sit wherever you like, but with so many people absent, you’d have a hard time knowing which seats are open. What day is it today? Well, never mind. I’ll just do it by alphabetical order. Amatsu! Your ‘A’ name earns you the privilege of helping out our new student today. Umikaze, that means your seat will be the one right next to Amatsu Satori there!! A round of applause, everyone!”

I was still growing pale over this new development when our substitute teacher, Saeki, made that crucial decision for me.

That girl was approaching my territory.

She slowly pulled back the chair and sat right next to me. She was close enough to stick a knife in my side if she had one.

And then she scooted her desk over until it touched mine.

“I do have a full set of textbooks,” said the blonde girl with a smile, “but I wasn’t sure what optional reference books like an atlas to get. Can I share yours?”

“Eh? Um.”

I couldn’t seem to find my tongue, but she leaned in toward me and whispered in my ear.

“(You don’t need to be so nervous. Let’s be friends. Okay, Amatsu-kun?)”

Part 2

“Amatsu-kun, Amatsu-kun.”

How many times did Umikaze-san call my name throughout the morning?

As far as I could tell, she was just a girl who was not hesitant to ask questions. She wanted to know how far we were through the textbook, if an app was fine for a dictionary and encyclopedia, and other clarifications about the local rules.

“This is important. If I don’t get the basics down quick, I’ll fall behind.”

“Hm, if you say so.”

I had never transferred schools, so I had never had to switch to a different publisher’s textbook in the middle of the year.

“Also.”

The blonde girl had a small dolphin attached to the knock of her mechanical pencil and she pressed that against her lips while winking at me. But…wait. There was something more going on here. Was she grabbing the hem of her skirt below her desk!?

“You really stand out if your skirt is too long or too short, so I want to know what the standard length is here.”

“Bff!?”

“Not that I expect you to have the answer to that, Amatsu-kun. But just out of curiosity, it might be amusing to hear your preference.”

“Amatsu! Stop staring at the transfer student’s face and pass the printout back!!”

I quickly obeyed the male teacher’s instructions. Since he said I was staring at her face, he must not have noticed what I was really staring at. Umikaze-san herself was facing forward again like nothing had happened. She was toying with printout with the same fingers that had grabbed her skirt a moment before.

How could I even describe the day I was having?

I guess I could say I was used to having someone tug on my sleeve now.

But anyway.

“Sounds like you’ve gotten yourself into another mess, Senpai.”

It was lunchtime.

I didn’t see the problem myself, but the forehead glasses Class Rep didn’t like the idea of exchanging lunches in the classroom and we had finally found a nice private spot in the corner of the library when someone else arrived.

The short girl with short, fluffy blonde hair was everyone’s lovable underclassman, Itou Helen.

Also, her arrival had left the Class Rep frozen solid. The Class Rep’s mind had gone blank just like when someone happened to see her in the shower. Why do I know how she looks when that happens? Ask that Class Rep next door who has a bad habit of keeping the window wide open during the summer.

“No, um, it’s not what it looks like! It’s um, how should I put it!?”

“Are you saying it’s not two people eating lunch? Because that’s what it looks like to me. By the way, I brought sandwiches for lunch. If you want to trade some of your small rice balls for some, now’s your chance, Miss Glasses.”

“Miss Helen is being awfully outgoing today,” said Maxwell.

“(I want to believe she’s actually flustered. I mean, if that super introverted small animal of a girl is forcing her way into an established social circle, we should really assume it’s an emergency.)”

“Did you say something, Senpai?”

“Just that a sandwich sounds really good right now.”

We ended up engaging in a three-way trade. I only had four CalorieGates, so what I traded for was a major decision. Each trade was a full quarter of my lunch.

“By the way, Itou-san, how much have you heard?”

“That the new transfer student is a Scylla and that she’s been all over you for no reason. And it doesn’t look like she just feels lost and wants to rely on her guide. When you moved classrooms, she left on her own without issue. Senpai, keep in mind that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.”

“I know what you mean.”

It didn’t quite feel like I was being used, but maybe that was a testament to how skillfully Umikaze-san was doing it.

A mystery transfer student had arrived at the same time as the unnatural snow from the cargo ship fire.

Was assuming a connection from that alone no better than the superstition that hanging a Teru Teru Bouzu from your eaves had caused the sunny weather the following day?

And.

“I can’t believe her. I just can’t. You already have me, an all-encompassing Circe Witch, so why would you even need a Scylla? I can do the exact same things she can with my witch’s potions, so the individual creature is entirely unnecessary. And she’s the same age as me, so it’s not fair she gets to be your classmate and sit right next to you. Hmph.”

Itou-san began muttering to herself with a dark look on her face. Was this why she was being so outgoing? And come to think of it, how exactly was she monitoring what happened in our classroom? I wanted to believe the school’s windows were not crawling with geckos and frogs.

At any rate, the Class Rep finally joined the conversation with Helen-chan who wanted to relieve her anxieties. A true forehead glasses girl could judge the appropriate social distance from someone with a sort of radar that bounced off of ordinary conversational topics.

“Itou-san was it? From the look of this tuna salad and eggs, I take it you don’t use a food processor?”

“Th-those things will shred your chicken and vegetables and whatnot regardless of the grain. I know it’s faster, but, um, I can’t really trust them.”

Oh.

The more ordinary topic snapped Itou-san out of her weirdly high-energy state. She even scooted toward me as if trying to keep as much space between herself and the Class Rep as possible.

Meanwhile, the forehead glasses girl must have picked up on that distancing move. Instead of pressing further into Itou Helen’s business, she changed the focus of the conversation with a smile.

“I can’t manage that myself. Once I know something is easier, I can’t resist the temptation. For example, I don’t think I could survive without a dishwasher anymore. This lunch is the same. Half of it is made from frozen foods you only have to thaw out at room temperature. And the rice balls I made with a kit where you just have to stick the rice inside a mold.”

“That’s not…a bad thing. Um, I just don’t like to learn new ways of doing things.”

“Even though you made sure to cut off all the breadcrust before making these sandwiches? I’m impressed. I tend to skip those small details before long. Because I know it will taste the same either way.”

“N-no, it’s not about that. I’m just afraid what people will think when they see me open my lunchbox. It’s only for me to eat, but I still feel like I need to make excuses to people while I’m making it. I’m so pathetic.”

Itou-san had started off like she was peeking out the cracked door with the chain lock still in place, but now she was leaning out over the table and revealing her innermost thoughts. The Class Rep did not have an immortal body and she could not shoot flames from her hands, but this was a special “power” she had that Maxwell’s calculations could not reproduce.

That power had saved me a lot in the past.

Especially back when my first mom and my dad were fighting on a daily basis.

“Looks like the snow is picking up some,” said the Class Rep while looking out the window.

It would depend on the cargo ship fire, but the amount of snow generally shouldn’t change. Still, the wind could greatly affect how much was hitting one particular window.

“But isn’t all this originally the plastic materials loaded on that one 100 or 200m cargo ship? Isn’t it weird for that to cover the entire city and everything for dozens of kilometers around it?”

“The ship was only carrying the highly-concentrated base materials, so during the melting, cooling, and hardening process, it’s going to take in a lot of air and impurities, preventing a simple calculation from telling you how much there will be.”

I could explain all that like some kind of know-it-all, but that didn’t mean I had the slightest clue what was going to happen next. Nothing was blowing up and our houses were not being blown away, so we had just kind of let things play out. And now that the trains and roads were shut down, it was too late to leave the city.

“I wonder what’s going to happen,” said the Class Rep.

None of us had an answer.

Part 3

“Umikaze-san, are you in a club yet?”

“Um, a club? What kinds do you have here?”

“You really aren’t in one yet!? Um, we are from the cooking research club!”

“Hey, no fair! We want to snag her as our manager!”

“Hold on. Are you only interested in clubs? Because our school also has a committee system with the Student Council at the top.”

Once one of them got started, everyone else stopped just watching and a crowd formed around her. Such are the privileges of good looks, I guess. And since she’s so short, she was looking a lot like a timid small animal with so many people around her.

Our afternoon classes were over, but we still had one major task left: cleaning. No one was opening the windows with that unnatural snow outside, but the small grains still got inside with so many people moving in and out of the building. Think of it like the sand crunching underfoot at a busy seaside restaurant.

“A kid in the next class had their air conditioner break.”

“Really? What are they doing at home then?”

Some of the boys were chatting as they left the classroom, but Umikaze Speechia-san made sure to help push the desks to the back of the classroom and filled a bucket full of water.

“I did what you asked, but are you sure this is safe? The hallway faucet didn’t seem to have a filter attached.”

“These microplastics are around 0.5mm. Since they’re bigger than pollen, you can run it through ordinary gauze or a mask to filter them out.”

“That’s a surprise. Such a working class method.”

“Anyway, are you sure you didn’t want to go check out any of the clubs? We could’ve done the cleaning for you.”

“You want me to shove my work onto someone else on my very first day here? I don’t see that leading to a happy school life here.”

She was an Archenemy Scylla.

The Scylla was from Greek Mythology, right? That monster attacked ships, but I wasn’t familiar with the exact story.

“The Scylla is an Archenemy that looks like a beautiful girl with multiple animal heads added on,” explained Maxwell. “The number of heads differs between accounts, but the standard is 6. In the story in which the Witch Circe creates her, she has three dog heads. In other words, the details are unknown.”

“What’s your source for this?”

“A walkthrough site for that demon hunting action game everyone is playing these days. Let’s go hunting!”

Dog heads? That didn’t seem to have much to do with the ocean, but that’s just how legends are sometimes. A witch’s broom wasn’t originally designed for flight, for example. It’d be pretty cute if Umikaze-san was good with dogs, though.

But…

“(That’s not super helpful. It doesn’t tell me what kind of Archenemy she is. Is she good at swimming? Does she bite? Does she lure you into the sea with her song like a Mermaid?)”

“In the legend, 6 members of Odysseus’s crew are easily devoured right there on their ship. That means her victims are not ordinary people; they are the hero’s party.”

“For real? So is she like those enemies that hit the entire party with instakill magic?”

“I can only predict that she can be very fierce indeed when she needs to be…but it is true nothing mentions HOW exactly they are eaten. It says she used the dog heads like she was fishing for them, but the details are unclear. It could even be that the heads stretch out like a Rokurokubi.”

“Do you need something?” asked the blonde girl who was leaning down toward a bucket and wringing out a rag. The way she was leaning over with her hands occupied meant the view of her short skirt from behind was quite risqué.

“Well, um, uh.”

“You’re weird sometimes, Amatsu-kun. C’mon, we need to finish cleaning.”

Yeah.

Maybe it was due to seeing her naked back on that UFO, but I was having a hard time judging my social distance from this girl now that she would smile and wonder about things like normal. It didn’t help that she had no idea I had seen her like that. It was a lot different from when I would open the door and find Ayumi or Erika changing, so it made me nervous.

“Amatsu-kun, do you have any plans after this?”

“Why do you ask?”

“I only just moved here, so I was hoping you could show me around the city a bit too. I want to at least know the best places to go shopping and such.”

“In this snow?”

“Oh? The snow isn’t going to last forever, right?”

She was blonde, polite, and a Scylla.

Looking at it like that, I could see why Itou-san felt a weird rivalry there, but those two were so different in almost every other way.

If Itou-san was like a hard, not-yet-ripe fruit, then Umikaze-san had the sweetness of a fruit overripe to the point of nearly rotting. While she was never rude, I got this sense she liked to feel superior to the people around her.

“Is this good enough?”

“Yes, do it gently so you don’t whip up the wind.”

By the way, the step after sweeping was not to dust the floors with a cloth. The microplastics were small enough that dusting would send them into the air, so it was more efficient to just use a wet rag.

Once all the cleaning was done, we returned the desks to their normal positions and Umikaze-san pulled a new mask from her bag.

“Okay, let’s get going, Amatsu-kun. Show me around the city.”

“Sure, sure.”

People in the hallway were saying goodbye to her by name, so it didn’t look like she would have any trouble getting people to remember her name.

Then my phone vibrated.

“Warning,” said the social media speech bubble on the screen. “Have you realized it yet, user?”

“…?”

“The Archenemy Scylla was seen within Kukyou City during the extreme sisterly fight Miss Erika and Miss Ayumi fought in virtual reality. She was inside the Bright Cross lab hidden below the city. How she arrived there is unknown, but this means this is not her first time in this city. She has been here before.”

And that would mean…

“Whether or not she means any harm, she is almost certainly lying. You should assume she is hiding something.”

That supported the hunch I already had.

She gave off the sweetness of a fruit on the verge of rotting. She was never rude, but she liked to feel superior to the people around her.

Part 4

“If you need to shop, you can find most anything here.”

“The train station area? This is where I arrived in the city with my luggage in tow.”

“If you can’t find something here, online shopping is your best bet. The selection gets worse the further out you get.”

“Oh, you mean like Wild@Hunt? I honestly don’t use them much. There are other movie and music streaming services out there.”

Now, Umikaze-san seemed fairly popular in person, but what about online? My bet was she had made quite a few new social media friends today.

I was walking around town afterschool with the luxurious blonde transfer student. …When did I end up attempting a stage with such a super hard difficulty rating?

Our uniforms made us look like a couple in matching clothes. We were even both wearing masks.

“Isn’t there a harbor here? You have a lot of fancy stuff on land and sea, right?”

“You must mean the harbor sightseeing district. Visitors from outside the city gather there on the weekends and holidays, but we’re still a pretty regional city. There just aren’t that many well-developed areas. You’ll see what I mean if you check on a map app. Leave this area and there really is nothing at all. Not even a field or parking lot, just a bunch of solar panels.”

“Those maps just confuse me when I don’t have something specific to look up on them. They’re too big. I only use them for finding the shortest route to a restaurant or something.”

Maybe that was how some people did it.

There were so many reviews and ratings for restaurants I never had no idea which ones to trust. And if she was fine with just looking at a map on her phone’s small screen, I guess she wouldn’t have asked me to show her around in the first place.

“You can probably look around here for a bit and, if you don’t find what you’re looking for, check an online store. You won’t find much more than here even if you take a train to the next town over.”

“I see. I don’t claim to be an expert, but if the online stores have everything already, why not just go there first?”

“I normally would.”

But Kukyou City had been locked down. There was not much chance of any trucks showing up from outside. I also didn’t like using online stores for everyday items. For privacy reasons. Would you want the company server to flag your house as being in the top 10 consumers of tissues? Of course, you could say the same thing about those monstrous point cards at brick-and-mortar stores. They might be financially convenient, but they made up for it by extracting even more valuable information from your purchasing habits.

“Oh?”

We heard some shouting in the distance. It seemed to be coming from a fairly large discount store. We took a peek while keeping our distance and saw customers of all ages arguing with an employee at the entrance.

“Nothing you say will change that our delivery trucks have been delayed, so we’re running short on most everything.”

“Liar! You’re hiding them in the back! Show us what you’ve got in the back!!”

“The filters! Bring out the water filters! You can’t fool us. Everyone else is going after the electronics shops, but we’re smart enough to know you’ve got them here too!!”

“I have a child at home! Unlike you young people without a care in the world!!”

They were saying some awful things. They were abusing the idea that the customer is always right. Or did they even count as customers if they were only causing a scene without buying anything?

“What’s going on there?”

“They’re talking about water filters.”

Idiots.

There are a lot of different microplastics, but this snow is larger than pollen. That meant you could filter them out by placing a pollen mask over your faucet with a rubber band. If you were still worried after that, you could make your own filter with sand, gravel, and activated charcoal. Those overly effective commercial filters would wear out in no time.

“If you don’t have anything to sell, why are you even open!?”

“Why are they paying you if you’re not selling anything! What a scam!!”

“You dare lie in front of my child? Look her in the eye and say that again!!”

Chain stores like that had to follow corporate policy no matter what happened, so I did feel bad for them. Their 10-8 work schedule had to continue unabated. The individually run bakeries and cafes could choose for themselves to close up shop and lower their shutters.

“Do they really think there are filters there?” Umikaze-san’s hands wandered hesitantly in the air, but she ultimately chose not to intervene. “It feels more like they just want an excuse to release their pent-up frustrations on someone.”

“I have to admit, I’m kind of jealous that they get paid just for standing around with no merchandise to sell. If not for the people harassing them, my part-timer stepmom would probably be pissed to hear about it.”

“…”

Just then, I felt a tug on my right sleeve. I looked over to see Umikaze-san looking worriedly at the store.

She may not have realized she had grabbed my sleeve.

If the legends about the Scylla were accurate, she had the power to defeat a full party of legendary heroes.

“They look scary now, but I bet those people normally seem just like anyone else,” she said quietly.

I honestly had a hard time accepting that about someone who would drag their small child into the middle of an argument to have their way, but I could see why the Archenemy minority like her would be afraid. Bias and discrimination could be hidden behind any of the ordinary faces seen around town and it would rear its ugly head during emergencies like this where there were 10 survivors but only 5 spots on the lifeboat.

It might be best to keep an eye on how Erika, Ayumi, Itou-san, and the other Archenemies around Kukyou City I knew – like the Mermaid and Dark Elf – were doing. The fable of the ant and the grasshopper did not apply here. Even if the Archenemy minority carefully stockpiled water and food, the human majority would come and steal it from them after carelessly devouring all their own food.

And they would justify it by saying “they’re only Archenemies”.

Attacking people for such a nonreason was absurd, but the system of majority rule would allow the majority to get away with even the most horrific forms of oppression.

“I’m a human being and I deserve respect! Don’t think you can get away with this!!

“We’re all human here! Can’t we talk this out?”

“Don’t you have a human heart!?”

You could see it the words they chose. I was human and I even I felt caught in the crossfire by it.

Part 5

Night had fallen.

“Okay, that should about do it.”

“That was awfully kind of you,” said Maxwell.

I had spread old newspaper out on the living room floor to work on a somewhat outdated robot dog. The microplastic snow had gotten inside it and messed with the connections, so once I opened it up and blew some compressed air inside, it was good as new.

“Maybe it’s just a toy, but these things can keep your mental health up.”

“No, I mean that you were willing to repair it for free. That seems inefficient to me.”

“It’s fine. Fiddling with machines is good for my own mental health.”

And now the Elf named Sakai Iori could dry her tears. She was one of the Archenemies in the city, but since she was still in elementary school, I wanted to do what I could to help her out.

“Fuguu. Mom and dad still aren’t back,” said Ayumi while staring out the living room window.

Our parents had not returned today either. They had already told us as much with a social media message, but it felt different now that night had fallen and they really weren’t back. We were at home, but this was an emergency. Things clearly were not right.

Blonde ringlet curls Erika (a legit Vampire) had taken our stepmom’s place in the kitchen. She must have had some leeway in her attendance record because she had zero intention of attending her night school until this trouble was over. That aproned beauty only cared about getting credit for the class, so she viewed school differently from Ayumi and me.

“Tah dah! Today’s dinner is curry rice!!”

“Are you sure you should have cooked so much, Erika?”

“Curry keeps well and you can create a lot of variation with some minor adjustments. You just leave all the meal planning to your capable big sis, okay?”

Fair enough. I could survive for a while with my CalorieGates, but I had been craving something more flavorful.

In our house, you could eat in the living room or dining room. Today, we went with the former.

“Let’s eat, shall we?”

“Whoa!? Onee-chan, your curry isn’t spicy at all!”

Ayumi’s eyes went wide with surprise after her first spoonful, but Erika did not seem to think this was a mistake. How frequently she went for a sip of water suggested she thought this was plenty spicy.

We had left the TV on and nothing there suggested an emergency. It was playing a bland trivia quiz show where no one yelled at anyone else and it created a mood reminiscent of plastic melting in the hot sun.

“Wait, wait just a moment. …I remember seeing some fake news about this. It wasn’t that. W-was it the mail? I swear it was something like that, but what!?”

“Is he going to waste his Double Up round!? Keep in mind this man graduated from Setagaya faster than anyone else in the world! Did that higher education go to waste!?”

“Hey, I can work a cash register! No, wait, now isn’t the time to go for a cheap laugh. …Um, was it the mail!?”

They burst out laughing in a very “TV studio staff” kind of way.

This was all backwards. The scary stuff was supposed to be happening on TV while we watched it from the safety of our living rooms, right?

Just then, my phone vibrated on the table, sliding to the side.

“Warning.”

“Satori-kun, not during dinner.”

Erika gently stopped me before I could do anything.

It seemed wrong to me that the TV was fine but phones were poor manners, but since she had done all the cooking, it wasn’t my place to argue. Without lifting the screen up to check, I tapped the phone with my finger as if to say “calm down”. What happened next made it hard to judge whether or not Maxwell had understood my meaning.

A deafening disaster alarm blasted from the phone

“Max- you idiot!!”

“I said warning, did I not!? That should have been enough to know you needed to sneak the phone underneath the table to check.”

“Can’t it wait? Are you sure whatever it is is worse than getting Erika in a bad mood!? I mean, look: she’s bending that spoon and not with psychic powers!”

“It is urgent.”

I had no choice but to postpone dinner and walk to the dining room where I checked my phone with my back against the fridge.

“So what happened?”

“My online patrols have shown an unnaturally rapid spread of information over the last hour. This is what is known as fake news.”

“Is that all? There’s a disaster going on, so you can find idiots spreading misinformation everywhere! Anyone can make fake photos and audio these days.”

“No. This appears to be the work of an expert.” Maxwell displayed some strange things on the speech bubbles. “It is spreading through posts on social media and message boards, but the original poster went through dark web servers to make tracing them a challenge. Also, following the posts shows they were posted in several stages that were almost certainly designed to use psychology to rapidly inspire anger.”

“…”

“I am basing this on your digital copies of The Psychology of Winning Hearts and Counseling for Your Deepest Secrets. I have also seen similar methods in the cold reading business books that were popular a while back.”

Don’t ask why I decided to check out those books during some lonely nights. That’s not the issue here.

“How dangerous is this?”

“Extremely. At the very least, the person behind it has mastered the techniques more than the authors of those books had. Instead of simply intellectually understanding the ideas, the speed and accuracy seen here suggests they have built up a program based on a flowchart of the process. They must have created their own manual on manipulating people’s mental states, much like con artists. This was carefully planned.”

Now, then.

Fake news came in many types. You could say a dangerous animal escaped from the zoo, or you could say swarms of insects showed some unusual behavior before the disaster. Regardless, someone out there was spreading some kind of false information, but who and what kind?

“Give me a list of URLs for the posts. I’ll check them at my own pace.”

“Sure. I could provide a summary for you, though.”

Several speech bubbles appeared with alphanumeric strings on them. Those were automatically converted to links, so I only had to tap them with my finger to check the social media and message board posts. And afterwards…

“I see.”

“There were already rumors that large electronics retailers and discount stores were hiding water filters, but this has intensified it. It even references a specific store and the number of security guards they have. It might as well be asking people to attack.”

The posts also said inaccurate things about the law. Like that with a large enough demonstration or riot, the police couldn’t arrest everyone because there wouldn’t be enough holding cells, so you could do whatever you wanted without getting arrested. …Nonsense. Shoplifters and molesters tended not to see it this way, but an action didn’t become a crime once you were arrested for it. It was a crime from the beginning. Escaping for the time being didn’t mean you were off the hook forever. If the police used the security cameras, fingerprints, or whatever else to gather enough evidence, you could still be arrested later on.

“Maxwell, make a fake account and post a link to a site explaining how to make a simple filter using activated charcoal.”

“It was buried in three seconds. With this speed, I doubt it is just the original fake news poster. Enough of the general posters are invested enough in the lie that they may be refusing to accept any information to the contrary.”

“That’s a bad sign.”

“What did you think I meant when I said ‘warning’, you imbecile? The people are being manipulated into attacking Huge Camera Electronics in the harbor sightseeing district. An attack on the store is enough of a problem, but a riot also greatly increases the risk of a fire.”

“And the firefighters can’t do anything right now.”

“I will add that microplastics gather air between the fine particles, meaning they are highly flammable under the same conditions required for synthetic yarn. The microplastic substance people are calling snow covers the entire city and a fire is estimated to spread with a max speed of 80km/h or more. Depending on the wind, my simulations say a fire in that part of the city could even reach this residential district.”

That sounded ridiculous, but that was because I was used to Japan’s humid climate. In America and Australia, it was not uncommon for areas dozens of times larger than a domed stadium to be lost in a forest fire. In fact, they apparently had bad fires in Edo back when Japan had a lot of wooden buildings crammed in close together. Fires would continue to spread until something extinguished them.

“Maxwell, can you pick up any security camera footage from near that store?”

“I do not recommend viewing it. It would only make you reluctant to continue on.”

How many people were there? Was it like certain parts of Tokyo on Halloween?

“But if it is that bad, what can we even do? We can’t drive around those water trucks used by the riot police. And even if we could knock out the rioters, we can’t throw them in a holding cell.”

“Since this riot is artificially made, the person behind it needs to do more than spread oil. They must also throw on a match to ignite it. It is unknown if the online posts will be enough to trigger an actual riot.”

“You mean they’re on the scene themselves? Either to provide the planned ignition, or to come up with an adlib if their online posting isn’t enough?”

“Most likely. Plus, the posts they have already made contained a few photographs that would require being in the city. Whoever is behind this is here.”

The concept of an ignition for a riot might seem too abstract to imagine, but you can think of it like this: Imagine a tense situation where the police and some gang members all have their guns aimed at each other and then some unrelated third party suddenly pops a balloon. What happens then?

With an ignition, the explosion could be controlled.

They would use some method to scare the already on-edge group. It could be a fire, electricity, a camera flash, a loud noise from a speaker, or just shouting really loudly. On the other hand, if the crowd really did want those water filters, they had to be worried about their health to some extent.

So…

“Maxwell, you don’t need to locate them right away, but search the entire Halloween-level crowd with the security cameras and look for someone with pepper spray or a strong-smelling substance. They’ll be the ignition.”

“Sure. But are you sure that’s what it will be?”

“I am. They’ll want something obvious enough even an idiot will notice it. This is all meaningless if most of the crowd doesn’t get what’s going on. Just swinging a bat around at random in a crowd isn’t going to start a riot.”

Whether the crowd numbered in the hundreds or the thousands, we didn’t have to deal with them all. If we could eliminate the one or a few ignition people, we could prevent this from developing into a real riot.

We couldn’t let the city be enveloped in flames while the fire department wasn’t working. I was scared too, but I couldn’t ignore this when we couldn’t call the police.

This was my hometown.

“Erika! I swear I’ll eat that curry, so save some for me. Don’t you dare throw it out!”

“Wait, I’m supposed to be getting after you, but how can I be mad when you treat my cooking with such care!?”

“Fugu? The convenience store shelves are all empty. Where are you going, Onii-chan?”

Erika was panicking about something else entirely, but dumb Ayumi’s wild instincts were starting to tell her something, so I grabbed a mask and left the house before she could ask any more questions.

However…

“Satori-kun? What are you doing out?”

Ugh!?

A mere three steps out the front door and someone called my name. I saw the strict forehead glasses Class Rep holding a shovel out in front of her house. She was of course clearing the out-of-season snow.

This was all over if she realized what I was up to.

I couldn’t let her stop me and bringing our precious Class Rep to the scene of a possible riot was out of the question. I had to find a way to weasel my way out of this one!!

“Eh heh heh. You know I run a blog just for fun, right? I’m gonna top the trending charts by getting a ton of photos of this out-of-season snow! That way I can get a bunch of followers while avoiding the social media sites run by giant IT companies!!”

“…”

Oh, crap. She’s gonna hit me with that shovel!

She saw right through my lies and spoke to my phone instead of me.

“Hey, Maxwell?”

“No. I can only respond to commands from my registered user.”

“Then do it for Satori-kun. You have two options: spill the beans, or watch as I beat him over the head with this shovel and drag him back home.”

“Sure, guest user. If the impending riot downtown is not prevented, there is an extremely high risk of a fire covering hectares of land. I could provide plenty of facts to back this up, but I would prefer you simply trust me since I am a disaster environment simulator.”

Ah, you stupid AI!

I quickly tried to hide the screen, but it was too late.

“Satori-kun.”

“You can’t, Class Rep. The police might not show up if we call them, so I can’t possibly take you with-”

“Erika-saaan! And Ayumi-chaaaan!!”

“Don’t call them out here too! Okay, okay, I get it!!”

This Class Rep really did have my Achilles’ heel in her grasp, didn’t she!?

“(Maxwell, is there any way of losing her?)”

“No. Even if you managed it, she would only wander there on her own. She already knows we are headed downtown, so she will almost certainly head to the train station area first.”

And whose fault is that!?

I scratched at my head, but the cat was out of the bag. I had to treat her as someone who already knew the truth.

That meant changing how I thought about this.

“You can come, but you need to follow my instructions. We really are headed into danger here. A single wrong move could spell disaster and there are no second chances.”

“Fine, but are you really headed somewhere so dangerous with just a phone and no weapons?”

“…”

I had no answer to that one and she casually displayed the thing her hands.

That is, the snow shovel.

“Shouldn’t you at least have one of these with you?”

[Crawler Search] Air and Flammability [The Words You Need!]

Materials catching fire and burning refers to a chemical reaction where the material rapidly oxidizes. So even when in contact with a heat source of tens of thousands of degrees Celsius, nothing can burn without oxygen-containing air or another oxidant. Pre-LED lightbulbs are a good example of this. The inside of the glass is a vacuum, so the filament will not burn. Although it will still transfer heat energy, so this logic does not mean you could embrace the sun without harming yourself.

Also, fire or heat are not necessary for ignition. For example, materials can combust and turn to black charcoal when exposed to powerful acids. What matters is that oxygen is bonded with the target material over a short period of time.

Under special circumstances, the air gathered within substances like cotton, feathers, or wool can accomplish this. The greater the surface area in contact with the air, the greater the oxygen consumption and thus the greater the scope of the combustion. A well-known example is how fluffy cotton almost seems to explode when it is set on fire.

Even materials that generally burn slowly or that melt and scorch instead of burning can burn much faster when shaped in certain ways. For example, even metal and plastic can create a blazing pillar of fire if the conditions are right.

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