Part 1 Story 7: Memory and The Future
Translator: Ririi Rain
On the night when Ringo ran away from the
hitman for his dear life,
Maybe it was a flashback caused by the fear in his heart, but he dreamed of a memory that he didn't want to remember.
It was of his uncle, aunt, and their son, which
was his cousin.
Their son was the same age as Ringo. After Ringo's parents died suddenly when he was 11, they became foster brothers and they grew up together like real brothers.
Eigo Hayashiki had always been aware that he was a freeloader, so he had been doing his best to be useful while he tried to fit in with his foster family.
Such as greeting them every day and helping out with housework.
His foster brother was taking the entrance
exam of a private all-boys school, and he invited him to take it as well. Ringo
was able to enter the school with the highest score, which meant that his
tuition would be free.
He thought that all of those brought delight to his family, or so he believed.
Everything was turned upside down on that day.
Ringo received a certain award from a
company for his graduation project at the science department of his junior high
school.
The award ceremony was held at a luxurious hotel in Minatomirai, Yokohama.
Then, at the party after the ceremony, he was sure that it was when he nibbled at a soft adzuki-bean jelly dessert.
"Mr. Hayashiki. Another guest has requested your presence."
The hotel staff told him so and he was
guided through the long carpeted corridor along with all his family members.
Then, he fainted on the way, and when he regained consciousness, he was at a hotel room where the curtains were already on fire.
What entered his vision was his body that had been tied to a chair and his foster family's members who were about to flee from the room where the temperature gradually rose.
"Uncle!!"
He breathed in the hot air and he was
becoming more suffocated. Straining his voice, he cried out. His uncle turned
around slowly. His eyes were terribly still and calm.
It was an unnatural calm that didn't match the emergency caused by the fire.
For a moment, he could see his aunt and his younger brother, who were beyond the door, directing cold gazes at him.
Without saying anything, his uncle turned his back again and the door closed, accompanied by the sound of dry wood.
——He had been abandoned.
A hard-to-believe reality that made him crestfallen, Ringo saw it.
His uncle's belt and his younger brother's tie were tying his legs to the chair. He can't see it himself, but his aunt's belongings may be wrapped around his wrists behind him.
(Ah, so it was all useless.)
In the end, Ringo was a stranger
throughout all the five years. All the efforts he had put in were meaningless.
No, rather, maybe they thought that those efforts were nuisances.
The fire alarm doesn't ring for some
reason, and the sprinklers also didn't work.
There were signs of people outside, but they seemed to be in a state of tumultuous panic because of the poisonous gas. Even when he raised his voice to ask for help, no one replied.
Having given up on everything, he closed his eyes and trembled due to the oncoming death.
I'm scared, I don't want to die.
His eyes grew hot and tears welled up in his eyes.
So
vexing.
Not rewarded for everything and dying by myself.
Water droplets quietly flowed down his cheeks and dropped down to the carpet in the room.
At that moment, the door was kicked open with great force.
"Y, you are?!"
Standing before the entrance where the hinges were about to come off was a woman with blue pair of eyes and long hair.
"Wow, I'm glad you're still alive. You're lucky, this place is not burning that much yet."
The woman doesn't answer his question and just approached him without minding the flaming fire. Then, she bent her knees in front of Ringo, took a survival knife out of her waist pouch, and broke his restraints with a practiced move.
"You have a face that says that you didn't know what's going on."
The woman said so with a fearless smile
while facing the boy whose face was soggy with tears.
The woman's smile was shining much brighter than the raging fire.
"I received a request and come to
help you. Nice to meet you, Ringo-kun!"
Four figures were surrounding the mahjong table.
"Suuankou!1"
One of them was Secret, who had just shouted
cheerfully. Perhaps it was just his imagination, but Ringo felt that she was
strangely good at Chinese pronunciation.
She was wearing the flashy work clothes today.
"Ahーfucking brute!"
The man who doesn't hide his frustration
was that man, the host as well the informant. When he was seen in the early
afternoon sunlight, he looked like he was in his mid-twenties.
The stream of smoke that puffed out from that man’s cigarette was swayed by the wind and went up.
"Nico, your face gave it away. Right?"
The two middle-aged uncles who answered "Rightー" to Secret and sat in front of her were people who they met when they wandered around the Doya District.
It seemed that the host aka the informant was called Nico. Nico was probably his professional name as a host, because although he was quite tall, he can only be seen as an Asian.
(Who are these old men?)
Ringo frowned at the situation of the
mahjong game. He had bad dreams lately, so he was a little short of sleep.
The pink-haired Nico and Secret had opened a carless garage at the roadside because they had a plan to talk about work.
Mahjong requires four members, but Ringo refused to participate because he doesn't know the rules. Therefore, as a stopgap measure, they gathered the mahjong-loving old men who were walking around the place.
"Ringo-kun can learn the rules in an instant, so you should do it〜. You can memorize hundreds of patterns of the winning method, can't you?"
Secret, who was forlorn, murmured dissatisfiedly as she bid farewell to the uncles who were leaving. They were going to see horse racing.
"What the hell is that? Does this cherry-boy have the Memorization Bread2?"
I feel like I've just heard a lot of bad words, but I will ignore them.
"That's not it, Nico. Ringo-kun has an instantaneous memory skill. Once he sees something, he'll never forget it."
"It's not a skill. Mine is just a case of hyperthymesia."
"Hoーu, that sure sounds like a convenient syndrome."
"Yeah, well..."
In fact, it was a very useful special ability.
It was all thanks to this hyperthymesia that he was able to enroll at the prestigious school as the top student, as well as being able to recite the damage amount of the Grand Lou Hostess Bar.
Secret received a request from someone to ‘protect Eigo Hayashiki's life and return him to the normal society’, and while the difficulty and the high risk of the job were worrying, she said that as he was under her care, she found his hyperthymesia useful.
Even if that ability had helped him so much, he was also condemned by the people around him for being unfair in terms of studying.
"It's because of Ringo-kun's special ability that we managed to escape from Mizari, you know. Well, physically, he's still a long way off, though."
Putting her elbows on the mahjong table,
Secret smiled like a naughty child. She urged Ringo to sit on the chair next to
her.
He was tired of standing during the mahjong game, so he tried to sit down, but he immediately froze and stopped moving.
"What the hell?"
"...It's, myalgia (muscular pain)."
Nico made a dubious look at the unexpected reply.
"I don't know the exact reason, but it seems that Mizari has targeted us, so I made him train him every day just in case of emergency."
"What 'training'? You practically forced me to run 10 kilometers and do muscle building every day!"
"Isn't that good? After all the danger that we've been through, we need to be ready for the next attack."
"How did you get away from that mentally ill woman? What did you guys do?"
Perhaps it was a compliment, but it doesn't convey well because the wording was too disturbing.
"It's easy. I used that child's thanatophobia."
"What the hell is that?"
"A phobia of death, right?"
Ringo looked it up at the dictionary in his brain and pulled out the answer. Secret responded with a "Yep!" while pointing at him to show that he had answered correctly.
"I don't know what happened to her in the past, but Mizari is extremely afraid of dying. That child is so strong that she rarely gets into a pinch, but if you bring her closer to death, she will freak out."
If
she's so afraid of death, why did she become a hitman? Ringo thought.
But that woman's every move was out of the ordinary, and there must be circumstances that he couldn’t understand.
"Hoーh. If I'm about to be butchered next time, I wonder if I should use that thanasomething. Ahーright, this is a request for you. It seems urgent."
"Come to think of it, we need to talk about work, huh?"
"Did you two seriously forget about that...?"
Crestfallen, Ringo’s shoulders sagged.
"... Okay, I'll take care of it. Fufu, seems like this is going to be fun."
While Ringo was showing a tired look,
Secret, who received the piece of paper, started pondering with an evil look on
her face.
1 a winning hand of four concealed pungs. Sorry, I’m not familiar with it. ↩
2 a gadget in Dor*emon that resembles a typical, single-loaf of plain bread. It allows the user to memorize any contents 'printed' on it.
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