OWARI NO CHRONICLE - Volume 13, 34: Signature of Reversal

Volume 13, Chapter 34: Signature of Reversal

 

As if there was a time of happiness

As if to say everything was right

You have gathered everything together and arrived at this evidence

In the library, Heo began her explanation of the world’s creation.

Ten black spheres had appeared in the projected blackness.

“In ’95, Noah was sent from Top-Gear’s Osaka and into the emptiness of the void. This created the impossible phenomenon of ‘something existing in a place of nothingness’, so Noah gained a contradiction concept.”

The ten activated negative spheres within Noah attempted to grow.

“Here, the ten positive concepts were reactively purified from the surrounding space. They attempt to restrain the negativity, but they are pushed back by the repulsive force.”

After reaching a certain distance from the ten negative spheres, the ten positive spheres began to orbit around the negative ones as if attempting to escape the power pushing them away.

“This allowed them to suppress the negative concepts, but some of the repulsive force remained.”

As the ten negative spheres gathered together to form Low-Gear, another Gear began to appear next to it.

This Gear contained ten positive concepts.

“And that force became a mirror image of Low-Gear. This…this is the true identity of Top-Gear. And because Noah formed the foundation of Low-Gear…”

The projected image changed to a map.

It displayed a portion of Japan’s Kansai region. Specifically, the Mt. Ikoma region.

“Babel is not a Concept Core storage facility that Top-Gear created in Low-Gear. It is the storage facility for the negative concepts that form the core of the entire world! It is Noah!!”

Heo’s voice penetrated the darkness.

At the same time, the lights above her and Hajji reactivated and she gave a shout.

“The world has performed a loop around Noah and Top-Gear is not the mother Gear! That is my objection!”

“I see.”

Hajji crossed his arms and nodded at Heo’s shout.

He then brought a hand to his chin and breathed out.

“An interesting theory. It is true we could view it that way if we use your interpretation of sending Noah into the void.” He shrugged. “But, 5th-Gear representative, while I am sure you simply could not bear to watch Low-Gear being criticized, I am sorry to say that your theory is nothing more than an amusing idea.”

“If we investigate the interior of Babel, we should find the truth. Babel is sure to accept anyone from Top-Gear and I think Sayama Asagi was let in because Shinjou Yukio added him to Noah’s approved list during the battle in Osaka.”

“It may have been mere coincidence that he was let in.”

Hajji refused to admit it. As their enemy, he insisted they produce the missing evidence.

“And…what about Professor Kinugasa? Why was he allowed inside Babel?”

Everyone fell silent because there was obviously no evidence to explain that.

However, Hajji heard Heo’s resolute voice from directly ahead.

“I-I don’t know about him. But I do have proof that Noah was sent into the past.”

When he heard that, Hajji’s expression changed to include some faint joy.

…Well done.

He hurriedly covered his mouth.

…As their enemy, I can’t be making an expression like this.

“And…and what is that? Are you claiming to have seen the creation of the world?”

Someone answered him, but it was not Heo.

The boy standing beyond her, Sayama, made a guess of his own.

Hajji heard the enemy display his key to the truth.

“Could you mean… Heo-kun, is it Georgius?”

“Yes,” said the girl with a nod. n𝑜𝚟𝓮)𝓵𝐛(1n

She turned toward Sayama and gave him an urging and pleading look, so a light shined on him as well and he opened his mouth.

He brought a hand to his chin to think about what he should say. After a short pause, he glanced briefly toward Hajji and they seemed to confirm something with each other.

“Listen. After the battle with Top-Gear, my mother had gained one half of Georgius, but she lacked the other half. Why, you ask?”

He pointed his thumb over his shoulder and toward the entrance to the preparation room.

“Because it is in there. Strange, isn’t it? After all, Georgius should be a pair, but it exists across two different eras.”

“Couldn’t you just assume the two halves were made separately in two different eras and two different places?”

“That is one way of viewing it, but there is another way.”

Sayama answered Hajji’s question as if they were solving Heo’s puzzle together.

“When Noah was sent to the void, my father gave the authoritative decree from the center of the barrier. The fall into the void began from the center and grew shallower toward the outer edges. So perhaps the areas toward the edges of the barrier never reached an absolute void and perhaps they were mostly thrown into the intervening time and gathered there,” said Sayama. “Noah initially fell somewhere other than Top-Gear – namely, Low-Gear – and then fell to the zero-point of time as something that ‘did not exist’. Artifacts have been found around the world in eras where they do not belong, so perhaps that phenomenon was the cause. And what if one of Georgius’s halves was caught in the explosion of the barrier?”

“Then, Sayama, is this what you are saying? It ended up in the past and was found by Kinugasa Tenkyou?”

Hajji crossed his arms and checked to see if Sayama’s claims were the truth.

“Then let me say this: Unfortunately, that is still not definitive proof.”

“Not definitive?”

“That’s right.” Hajji looked to Sayama. “What proof do you have that the Georgius stored in the back of this library came from Top-Gear’s Osaka in ’95? If you managed to bring it out, would you have some way of proving it is the pair to the one you already have?”

He took a breath.

“Or has Kinugasa Tenkyou signed something admitting to this? Does he claim it arrived from the future and was made in Top-Gear? Do you…”

Hajji spread his arms and realized this was likely going to be his final question.

“Do you have a signature like that?”

His definitive question caused Heo to shrink down.

“Well…”

She hesitated, so he gave her a nod of understanding and spoke.

“Unless you have some evidence like that, this is nothing but speculation, 5th-Gear representative.”

His words reverberated through the library and everyone fell silent and motionless.

…So it ends here, does it?

With that thought, he relaxed his shoulders and turned to Sf.

“Moderator, I believe this is the end of the questioning.”

Heo and Sayama looked up in surprise, but they had nothing else they could say.

They tensed but found nothing to say as Sf slowly stood up behind them.

She looked across everyone and then to Sayama and Heo.

“Sayama-sama, Heo-sama, do you have anything to say? Do you have any way of proving your theory as Hajji-sama has requested?”

But neither of them could say a word.

This settled it.

Their argument would end in uncertainty.

And that would not change as the trial and vote began.

But to put it another way…

…If they could prove their theory here, they could overturn everything about Top-Gear.

The Gear would lose the superiority alluded to in the word “top” and it would become just another Gear. It had possessed a great many concepts and that did give it an advantage, but it could also be called “another Low-Gear”.

It would be the Gear that spoke of emotion while being a mirror image of the Gear that had destroyed it.

That would be a decent Gear to stand up to Low-Gear and its representative that spoke of reason, but…

“If you have nothing, then we can bring this to an end.”

Hajji heard Sf speak and he heard nothing from Sayama or Heo.

As silence continued, Sf simply nodded and turned to Hajji.

“Tes. Then I declare Low-Gear and Top-Gear’s question-and-answer session comple-…”

Another voice prevented her from finishing her declaration.

“Objection!!”

Racing footsteps brought the speaker in from behind Hajji and Sayama spoke the individual’s name.

“Shinjou-kun!?”

Shinjou charged into the center of everyone while gasping for breath.

However, she did not stop there.

Her white armored uniform fluttered upwards and her black hair flowed through the air as she spun around toward Hajji as if protecting Sayama.

Her eyebrows were slightly raised as she stared directly at the man.

“We do have proof!”

She waved a report in her hand as if spreading it out.

“I have the signature that will change the world!!”

Sayama glanced at Shinjou’s report after an automaton handed him a copy.

It contained additional information on Heo’s world creation theory.

In front of him, Shinjou held just one page and spoke to everyone else.

“Listen. There is proof that Georgius fell into the past. It’s right here. …You said a signature would suffice, right?”

But Sayama saw Hajji tilt his head as he looked at the English report.

“Where does it say anything about that? It just looks like a report on Georgius and Kinugasa Tenkyou to me.”

“That’s what it looks like to me too,” said Heo with a nod.

Sayama agreed with them.

But then he saw Shinjou turn toward him with her face slightly pale.

…When she is pale, it almost looks like you can see through her. How beautiful.

Wonderful, he thought as she looked at him and opened her lips.

“Look more closely, everyone. Someone’s signature is right there.”

She smiled a little.

“And just like my mom, that person must have studied mythology and the bible to guide us all. And all while telling us he did not belong here in Low-Gear…while telling us he was a mirror image.”

“A mirror image? Who are you talking about?”

Shinjou answered Hajji’s question with a certain man’s name.

“Kinugasa Tenkyou.”

That name silenced everyone.

That man had been one of the national defense department’s founders, the one to notice the Concept War before nations around the world established their UCATs, and the one to find and investigate Babel.

…But what is she saying about him?

Sayama’s questioning gaze watched as Shinjou breathed in.

She closed her eyes just once and calmed herself by bringing the ring on her right hand to her chest.

“Listen. Professor Tenkyou’s name isn’t actually Tenkyou. Did you know that?”

“Yes,” answered Sayama. He had heard this from Siegfried before. “The same characters are apparently pronounced Amayoshi or Amayasu.”

“Yes. His encyclopedia’s publication data used Amayasu. Normally, when spelled out in the alphabet, that would make his name ‘Kinugasa Amayasu’,” she said. “But according to the publication data, even Kinugasa is pronounced differently. It’s actually Igasa. And for some reason, Amayasu is spelled without the final ‘u’.”

“…”

“Do you understand what that means?”

When he heard her final question, Sayama realized it all.

And she went on to explain for everyone else.

“Igasa Amayas.”

Or when read in reverse…

“Sayama Asagi. His name was the mirror image of Sayama Asagi.”

She raised her right hand which wore a man’s ring.

“I feel like everything is finally starting to make sense. This must belong to Sayama-kun’s dad!”

As soon as she made her shouted announcement, Sayama sensed motion on top of his head.

It was Baku.

The creature was showing them the past based on the evidence they had built up.

Everyone saw it.

Three people ran through the center of an artificial barrier of light.

A girl took the lead, a woman in a white armored uniform was next, and a man in a similar white uniform followed.

The man held an aluminum case under each arm.

They barely had a path to walk on and their surroundings resembled sand dunes.

The sky was painfully white and the very air seemed to glow.

And for some reason, a faint song could be heard in the light. It was the hymn Silent Night.

The woman looked back to face the man who followed a step behind.

“A-chan, will we make it out in time!?”

“We will. Yu-san smiled and saw us off, so we definitely will.”

But he supported the girl as she almost tripped and pushed her forward.

Five blue stones hung from the girl’s neck and they clinked together as they swayed.

“Um, these stones…”

“Yes, don’t worry. We’re adults, so we’ll be fine, Sadagiri-kun. So please wear them without worrying about us. If you do…you will be just fine.”

He turned to the woman.

“Make sure you look after her. Yu-san…and her husband left her with us. We have to get her out of here safely.”

At that point, more light appeared behind the three of them. That explosive pressure of the void resembled a wall of light.

The three of them gasped and simply ran. There was another wall of light ahead and a hill lay behind it.

“Everyone’s there,” said the woman.

However, the explosion of light approached them from behind.

At the same time, the barrier wall emitted its light and attempted to close in order to shut out the explosion.

“…”

It was closing, but the three of them were not going to make it in time.

“…!”

The woman embraced the girl from behind as if trying to protect her from everything.

But in that moment, the two of them were shoved forward from behind.

They were pushed by the man’s left arm which held one of the two cases.

He pushed on their backs to send them outside the closing barrier.

And a moment later, the girl and women were thrown outside and the barrier closed.

There was no sound and no voices. There was only motion as the woman fell to the ground, turned back while still holding the girl in her arms, and saw it.

“Ah…”

On their side of the closed wall of light, a left arm in a white armored uniform lay on the hill where it had been severed by the barrier. It still held the aluminum case.

“Ah…!!”

The woman opened her mouth and let out a scream.

And the girl saw what was on the other side of the closed white wall: an expressionless face with empty eyes.

But she finally lowered her gaze and saw something else: a ring on the fallen left hand.

Shinjou walked forward.

She held her left hand in her right, removed her ring, and arrived at the desk in the center of the library.

Below the light, she looked to Sayama and smiled for some reason.

…It’s like this place was made for this very moment.

She smiled and Sayama took her right hand in his left.

The two of them faced the preparation room.

She calmed her breathing and took the first step with him.

After a second and third, they finally reached the step up from the bottom of the library.

Sayama wore his suit and she wore her white armored uniform as they reached the top step while the entire world watched on.

The entrance to the preparation room lay before them, but someone stood in front of it.

“Sf-kun? Do you want to know why we have come here?”

“As moderator, it seems only natural to ask.”

“Indeed,” agreed Sayama. “The hidden door back here requires two people to insert their hands and turn them. It seemed ideal for Shinjou-kun and me, but it would not turn for us. However…”

The two of them held up the rings they had removed from their fingers.

“These belonged to my mother and my father, but we had the genders backwards.”

“I see.”

Sf cleared her throat quietly and then held out her hands.

“Then exchange your rings.”

“Right.”

Shinjou tensed her shoulders and held out her ring.

Sayama extended his left hand and did not hesitate to stick his ring finger into it.

She blushed and he began fiddling with the ring he had removed from his finger.

“Sayama-kun, why are you pulling out super glue?”

“Well, it would be a disaster if it happened to slip off your finger.”

She swiped the ring from him and almost put it on by herself.

“You won’t do anything weird?”

“How could I possibly do anything like that here?”

“You were just about to but I stopped you!”

She then held out the ring and raised her right hand.

He took the ring and held it gently.

“Ah…”

He pulled on her ring finger and put on the ring.

…Wow…

She blushed when she saw how perfectly the ring fit on her finger.

“Thank you…”

“And thank you, Shinjou-kun. …Eventually, I would like to put one on your left hand.”

They walked together toward the back of the preparation room and the study.

On the back wall, two holes were positioned next to the white door. Sayama stuck his hand in the left hole and Shinjou did the same with the right hole.

At some point, everyone had left their seats and gathered in front of the preparation room to peer into the dimly-lit space.

Brunhild was there, Kazami was smiling with her arm around Brunhild’s shoulders, Sibyl and Ooki were there, Hiba’s legs were still turned inward, Harakawa was lending him a shoulder, Heo was clasping her hands as she watched Sayama and Shinjou, the plant creatures and Messengers of Wanambi were there, Tsukuyomi was saying “my, my”, Kashima was with her, Izumo was crouching down and slapping Boldman’s head, Miyako was pretending she did not care while never taking her eyes off of them, and everyone else was similarly looking at the two in the cramped space.

“…”

It happened in an instant.

The white door opened and revealed a six square meter room filled with white light.

The impossible area was due to it being a concept space.

The two of them entered the room from either side like it was a theatre stage.

Inside, they found a wooden table that looked terribly out of place and on top of it…

“An aluminum case identical to the one we saw in the past just now.”

Shinjou detected a slight tremor in Sayama’s voice.

“So my father was waiting here.”

He slowly but surely spoke the words with his right hand on his chest.

“Waiting for someone to arrive at the lies two worlds made while thinking of each other.”

He picked up the case and Shinjou supported him because he seemed on the verge of collapse.

“It’s okay, Sayama-kun. You can ache.”

She was only looking to Sayama, but everyone heard her words.

“You know what? I don’t think the pain in your chest is the guilt you feel for not dying with your mom.”

She pressed her ear against his chest.

“I think it means you’re sad.”

“You mean…?”

“Yes. You don’t let your feelings show much, you can be stupid, you can be dangerous, you’re honestly a lot of trouble, you’re beyond saving, and I think saving you would just bring you back to a previous kind of crazy, but…”

“I can see you have been observing me very closely.”

“The most amazing part is that you don’t deny any of that. …But you know what? Despite all those things…”

She let out a breath that may have been a bitter laugh.

“But you feel sadness more than anyone else. You feel so much sadness that it hurts.”

So…

“It’s okay. It’s okay to ache, Sayama-kun. If it hurts, you can rely on me. So…”

She looked to everyone else with a troubled and blushing smile.

Finally, Sayama breathed out too and faced in the same direction.

And just as they faced everyone, Sf spoke to them all from her position closest to Sayama and Shinjou.

“I suppose this proves the relationship between Top-Gear, Low-Gear, and the entire world.”

Shinjou saw everyone slowly let out a breath when they realized what Sf meant.

They held Georgius and Sayama Asagi’s signature which were the proof of this world.

Sf faced the two of them, looked to Georgius’s case, and spoke.

“Low-Gear was created by Top-Gear’s Noah, but Top-Gear was created by Low-Gear’s presence. In that case, I suppose both can be called the mother of the world.”

No one argued.

And for that reason, Sf turned back to the others with her usual expressionless face.

“In that case, I declare Low-Gear and Top-Gear’s question-and-answer session complete.”

She raised her head, waved a hand, and lowered in a curtsy.

“After a short recess, I would like to begin the trial and vote.”