Volu 3, Interlude 4 (Part 1): The Dark Night’s Return
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Then if nothing else, we shall be the audience.
We will watch them dance to the very end.
We are going to watch the island dance.
Whether or not it becos the island’s very last show—
Even if it ends with us all sinking to the depths.
After all, that is the fate of those who surpass reality and beco legend.
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I wanted to be forgiven.
At least… I thought I did.
But I realized that that was a mistake.
So in my dreams, I let myself want forgiveness.
Even knowing it was futile, I sought what I wanted by escaping.
? ??
The young man was dreaming.
It was an uninteresting dream that recounted his past.
A dream, for that very reason, he could never escape.
Once upon a ti, the boy had committed a sin.
With that sin still upon him, the boy beca a man, and committed yet more sins to escape the first.
All the while, he saw his cris in his dreams.
Dreams of the childhood friend he killed as she cast the bla on him.
Dreams of escaping her voice by shooting her to death, again and again.
The dreams were more real than reality as they tightened around his heart.
After a certain incident, the young man had resolved to accept his past and left the artificial island to return to his hotown. He wanted to be punished for his cris. He wanted to find even a hint of salvation.
But the young man was never punished, and ca to see the reality of the island he had inhabited.
He ca to see how the events on the island were treated by the rest of the world.
When he turned himself in to the police, the police’s question was simple.
“Where’s your proof?”
The young man who confessed to murdering his childhood friend, among many other things, got nothing but the label of ‘delusional’ in exchange.
As though everything that happened on the island had been a fantasy.
As though the artificial island did not even exist.
The real world had denied everything about the young man—even his sins.
Shattered to bits, the young man began wandering in search of his friend’s family.
Supposedly they moved away the very year he went to the island—so the young man went from place to place, running after their trail.
As though that would be enough to redeem him of his sins.
Finally, he arrived at the family’s ho.
He pressed the newly-installed doorbell and waited. And waited.
To beg forgiveness.
Or to die. To be punished.
The true nightmare was waiting for him inside.
And because he knew that, the young man waited… and waited… for the door to open.
To move on from his past.
Or to accept his past.
But what awaited inside was—
? ??
Then, he opened his eyes.
Though he only just awoke, the young man with shadows cast around him understood that he was in reality.
To be specific, he knew that his dreams had just co to an end.
They were lucid dreams—but the young man chose rather to let the dreams unfold the way they did in his mories.
Perhaps he saw no point in resisting the past. Or perhaps he wanted to overco it.
But he opened his eyes just before the critical mont.
Perhaps his waking at that point was a coincidence—but the young man did not think so.
‘I ran away. I couldn’t even stand my own dreams… and escaped into reality.’
He rembered clearly what was beyond that door—what awaited him inside.
Though he despised himself, the young man did not even have the strength to chastise himself.
The lethargic air around him was interrupted then, by an energetic voice.
“We’re just about there, son.”
The voice belonged to a man in early middle-age. The young man slowly rose.
When the waves shook his foundations, the young man rembered that he was on a boat.
“…Thank you.”
The stars were already twinkling in the sky; the winter constellations shone ominously into his heart.
The older man, who seed to be a fisherman, chuckled in an attempt to dispel the darkness.
“I done used this route how many tis now? …Anyway, the missus runs a restaurant over yonder Westside, if you’re fixin’ to get so food in there. Ain’t no one who don’t know Iizuka’s restaurant.”
“I see… I’ll have to drop by soti.”
With that, the young man climbed down to the lower level of the island’s outer wall.
He said goodbye to the fisherman once more and silently began to climb the long ladder upwards.
With each step, he rembered the many things that waited above.
Most were mories he wanted to forget, but could not bring himself to.
mories of people. Things. And his own cris. They all tightened like chains around him.
But each ti his mories threatened to suffocate him, he found himself relieved.
Finally, the young man returned to the island.
To the island he never needed to co back to.
To the island he never should have co back to.
How long had he been staring out at the sea?
Behind him stood all the buildings from before, just as he rembered them.
Remnants of his dreams—symbols of the world he had once inhabited.
Lacking the courage to face them, he stood for hours at the wall with his eyes on the water.
Or perhaps he was recalling the events that took place just before he left the island.
He scrutinized the waves for several more minutes, but he still did not find the courage to turn.
If only sothing—anything—would give him a push.
And the mont that weakness surfaced, the cell phone in his pocket vibrated and dragged him out of the past, back to reality.
Kugi stared at the screen—‘Caller Unknown’—and slowly brought it to his ear.
As though he was afraid.
Or as though he was expecting sothing.
First was the voice.
A nostalgic voice that shook his very soul.
“…Inui!”
“”
The voice through the phone and the voice in reality overlapped.
Having experienced this before, the young man slowly turned to the voice with his phone pressed to his ear.
A gust passed over the island, and as though carried on that wind—
The rainbow-haired man appeared.
There was a mont of silence.
Another gust of wind passed them by.
And at that mont, a deafening noise shook the island and one of the buildings near the center of the island began to spew flas and smoke.
Even from a distance it lit up the faces of the two n, casting mirrored shadows on their faces.
And though the island of mories was on fire, the dogs Seiichi Kugi and Hayato Inui did not break their gaze.
Only the seabound wind passed through, as though nothing had ever happened.
As though proving that there was no mirror between the dogs.
The dogs who ca to the island on the sa day,
And left on the sa day.
They were back.
On the sa day, to the sa place.
Did their instincts lead them back to the island?
Or were they led back to one another like fate?
The island burned brightly like a torch.
As though mocking the returning dogs.
Or blessing their return.
The flas billowed, punctuated by small explosions.
Like the growling of a wounded beast.
Resounding far, far into the air.
They, and the island,
could only know their own existence by howling.
And as the dogs dance madly,
What do the girl and the ghoul cry out?
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