東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 3:The Revolution of Usami Sumireko

[𝐔𝐬𝐚𝐦𝐢 𝐊𝐚𝐨𝐫𝐮 - 𝐀𝐛𝐨𝐮𝐭 𝐌𝐲 𝐒𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐞𝐫 — 𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐞, 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟑]


—1—


Sumireko seems to have made a college-aged friend.

My sister is kind of famous among people who went to the same elementary school that we did. Some of those kids now go to the same high school that I do, so even now I occasionally get people coming up to me and telling me that they've seen her around town from time to time. It was as a result of one of those sorts of occasions that I heard about this.

"Hey, y'know that ol’ game center? There's some college girl that comes round there that’s wicked good at 𝐷𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑀𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑎."

"That's who my sister was hanging out with?" I had asked.

"Ayup, I saw ‘em both goin’ to karaoke roun’ there together."

"Sumireko was going to karaoke with a stranger? I could almost understand if she was going alone but with someone else...?"

I couldn’t help but be a bit surprised. It was difficult to imagine my sister having a good time at karaoke. It's not like she's allergic to fun or anything, but she's not the sort of person who would voluntarily seek out a group activity like that..

Ever since the first years of elementary school, Sumireko's report cards have always come back with comments like "Lacking in co-operative spirit" and "does not socialize well with others," so why is she now suddenly going to karaoke with university students? Could she be getting tangled up in some sort of conspiracy? Honestly that sounded more likely than her genuinely making friends with a stranger. I couldn’t help but sigh.

"I guess yer sister would think anyone younger ‘n that would be boring."

"Dude, you almost sound sad about that, please don't tell me you have a thing for my little sister."

"I may like the lolis in manga but I'm not gonna go after jailbait for real. ‘Sideswhich, my waifu is a 500-year old dragon. She's legal."

"You should be arrested for saying stuff like that with a straight face."

My friend and I continued ribbing each other and the topic of conversation was dropped. I made a note to ask Sumi about this friend of hers when I got home though.

—

I stayed late lounging around the PC lab with the rest of the club this evening. The sun had already gone down by the time I got home. When I got there, Sumireko still wasn't back yet. I asked Mom about as I got in the door.

"Sumi always gets home late on Thursdays now," she told me. "I'm hoping she's just hanging out with friends from school, but she never tells me anything."

"Well she’s in middle school now, it would be weird if she reported everything she was doing with her friends to you at this age, right?"

"Well if that’s what she’s doing then I just hope she’s hanging around with a good crowd." Mom sighed. Sumireko's lack of friends had been one of her worries for a long time.

"I don't think Sumireko is stupid enough to be getting tangled up with some weird guy, if that's what you're worried about."

"Probably not...But Kaoru, do you think you could maybe talk to her? Just make sure she's alright?"

I had been planning to do that anyway. I was about to try to say something reassuring when the door opened and Sumireko herself walked in.

"I'm home," she announced without enthusiasm as she dropped her school bag onto the floor.

"Welcome home, would you like some dinner?"

"Sure."

That was a bit of a surprise. Usually Sumireko would have said no.

Dad was working late as usual tonight, so the three of us sat down to eat without him. Throughout the meal Mom kept trying to engage Sumireko in conversation, but my sister didn’t seem to have any interest in conversation, answering every inquiry with half-hearted single-word sentences or grunts.

After dinner I went to my room and took a look at my bookshelf. Inventorying its contents in my head, I could see there were several volumes of manga and light novels clearly missing from my collection. It was as good a reason as any to go talk to my sister.

I walked down the hall and knocked on her door. "Hey, Sumi..." I began.

"If you're looking for your Index books, I'll give 'em back tomorrow." She said from the other side of the door, cutting me off.

"You borrowed others too, right? I want them all back."

"I’ll look for ‘em later."

"Well, if you're too busy to look I guess I'll just go spend the evening talking to Mom, then." I lowered my voice, so that it was just barely loud enough to be audible through the door. "Maybe I can tell her about how you're dating a college student."

Sumireko's door shot open to reveal her face glaring unhappily at me.

"Where did you hear that!?" she snapped. "Get in here."

At her invitation, I stepped inside. It had been a long time since I had been inside my sister's room, but it still looked almost the same as it had the last time I'd seen it, years ago. There wasn't a hint of anything at all in it that would announce 'this is the room of a teenage girl.' There were no colorful posters or dainty, cutesy trinkets. Instead, anywhere you might have expected to see anything like that there were instead bookshelves, filled with all manner of sketchy books, mostly dealing with magic, occultism and urban legends. She had one old stuffed panda sitting beside her pillow, but it hardly made the room look any more like a teenage girl’s.

"Alright, what kind of nonsense have you been listening to?" She asked, crossing her arms and glaring at me as I took a seat on her bed.

"I just heard from a friend that my sister had gotten into an age gap yuri relationship. I'm actually happy for you."

"It's not yuri. And why would you be happy about that, you freak?"

"Well, even if it's not, going to karaoke with another human is a huge step forward for you, little sister. I'm sure Mom will be crying tears of joy if she hears this. Though, if it turns out you're already sleeping with this girl she might cry a different sort of tears. Maybe I should try to introduce her to the wonders of yuri too."

"You've been reading way too many doujins, Kaoru. She's not my girlfriend. She's just someone I met once and sort of hit it off with."

"Someone you 'sort of hit it off with?' Since when does Usami Sumireko just 'sort of hit it off' with anyone?"

"Just what kind of person do you think I am, brother?"

"You know, I'd often thought to myself, 'I hope my sister is able to make at least one friend when she enters middle school.'"

"Kaoru, if I wanted to settle for friends of your caliber, I'm sure I could make a hundred of them. But then I’d be making friends with gross normies like you." She stared at me with a remarkable expression on her face. A typically arrogant and not-at-all cute response from my sister.

"Well then maybe you could tell me a bit more about this 𝐷𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑀𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑎 master who’s managed to capture your attention. She must be someone impressive to have earned the companionship of the great Usami Sumireko, right?"

Sumireko looked at me oddly when I said that, but after a moment's delay replied in a matter-of-fact tone. "Her name's Horikawa Raiko. She told me she's a second year student at Meiji University."

"A second-year at Meiji! I would have thought that you wouldn't have settled for anyone who didn't make it into Tokyo University."

"Who said anything about us being intellectual equals?"

"Well what’s your relationship then? Is it actually yuri? Has my sister’s heart finally opened itself to love? Perhaps the day is approaching when you may actually become a real, live human, Sumireko unit #28."

"Leave me out of your fantasies. Both the yuri ones and the my-sister-is-an-android ones."

"A lonely genius girl saved from a life of stagnant isolation by the endless tolerance and beautiful smile of an innocent angel. That's classic stuff."

"Seriously, quit it, you're creeping me out. If you were a little bit shorter I'd be worried that you'd try to sneak in here and try on my clothes so you could act out some sort of twisted yuri scenario."

"Forcefem and crossdressing are kind of a different genre, actually."

"Oh hurray, my brother's not a pervert, he's just a typical boob-obsessed guy. Yay."

"We've gotten slightly off-topic. So who is this college girl?"

"Huh? Well, she said that she's a drummer."

"A drummer? Like, professionally?"

"I guess so, she did mention that she's in a band."

"So a rockstar delinquent? You two don't sound like you have anything at all in common. What are you planning to do with her?"

"I'm not planning anything. I was just curious about her."

"Curious? About what?"

"I don't have to answer that. A girl's allowed to have some secrets, isn't she?"

I couldn’t believe it. My sister appeared to be genuinely interested in another person. Had Hell frozen over or something? Maybe this college-aged 𝐷𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑀𝑎𝑛𝑖𝑎 expert was really into the occult, or had something else in common with Sumi. Or maybe... No, it couldn’t be 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡.

"Look Sumi, maybe it's not my place to say this, but be careful, alright? Don’t get mixed up in anything weird with this girl."

"Are you worried about me, big brother? Are you imagining that your little sister is going to be dragged down into a life of vice and passed around by the members of a band?"

"Well I am your brother."

"That's touching, but I'll be fine. I can take care of myself, Kaoru."

'With your telekinetic powers, right?' —is what I wanted to reply. The words flashed through my head, but all that came out of my mouth was a sigh. She had to at least know that I suspected her. Why else would she so brazenly teleport out of my room? Maybe I should have confronted her about her psychic powers earlier. It never quite seemed like the right time though, and after this long avoiding the topic had become second nature to me.

"Be careful Sumi, in more ways than one." For now that was all I could bring myself to say to her.

Maybe I'm just a coward who doesn't want to deal with the fact that his sister really is an extraordinary person. Maybe I want to keep Sumireko as a part of my boring everyday life.


—2—


The first time I met Sumireko's... friend? was right before the end of summer break. We weren't introduced by Sumireko or anything, I just happened to be wandering around town with a friend and ran into my sister, who was walking among the shops downtown beside a woman who looked to be in her early 20's.

"Brother! What are you doing here?" She had asked me.

"Hey, Sumi."

"Brother?" The other woman had asked from beside her. She matched the descriptions that I had heard from my friends: an androgynous-looking red-haired woman who looked good in a shirt and tie.

"Yes, this is my idiot older brother. The 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛, light novel and Niconico otaku I told you about

"Ah, so you're the girl who my little sister's been hanging around with. Thank you for putting up with her. I'm Kaoru, her older brother."

"I'm Horikawa Raiko. Pleased to meet you. You're in high school, right?"

"Yes, I'm a second year student."

"Wow, Sumireko, I forget just how young you are sometimes. Even your older brother is still just a kid."

"If you say things like that you'll be old before you know it, Ms. Raiko. Just like the placebo effect, your self-conception has a physical impact on your body."

"Ooo, scary. It must be tough having a snippy younger sister like this." she said, smiling as she turned back to me.

"It's truly awful," I said with a solemn nod.

"Life's hard," she agreed.

After exchanging pleasantries for a little bit, Raiko pulled a flyer out and handed it to me. "My band is putting on a show tonight. It's free, so come and listen if you like." Afterwards, she left with my sister.

The flyer was an advertisement for a live show for what looked like a rock band. To be honest, the idea of going to a crowded place like that didn’t really suit me.

"Lookie atchu, actin’ all sweet and pullin’ in the ladies. What’s up with that? Was that for that smokin’ redhead or for yer little sister?" My friend nudged me with his elbow.

"I wasn’t ‘acting sweet.’"

"Whatever, man."

"For the last time, I don’t have a sister complex!"

"Ya sure?"

"Of course not!" I could only sigh as my friend leered at me. I hope he’s not about to start any weird rumors about me.

"So ya goin’ to that show?"

"Hmn, I guess I ought to. Do you want to come along?"

"Naw. I'd sooner listen to one of them anime radio shows than go to a show fer a band I ain’t never heard of. Sideswhich, ain’t places like that full a normies? Ya think you’ll fit in there?

"You're probably right...."

In any other circumstance I would have crumpled the flyer up and thrown it away. If my sister was going to be attending the show already though, then I couldn't exactly ignore it. Sumireko probably wasn't actually involved with the band at all, but just being invited was strange enough.

Just who was this Raiko girl? And what did she want with my sister? This was something I had to investigate for myself. I carefully folded the flyer in half and put it in my pocket for later.

—

I had made up my mind to go.

That said, I'm still an otaku. Going to a cramped club full of normies was well outside my comfort zone. Normies always talk about people going to the movies or even renting karaoke rooms by themselves as some sort of problem, but for an otaku like me having to attend a live event was much more daunting. Normies always seem to hate doing things by themselves. They’re obsessed with being part of a group at all times. If you think about it, maybe they’re the pathetic ones.

"I shouldn't be trying something I’m not used to doing." I muttered to myself.

I tried to go in the door, but the atmosphere of the venue and the people streaming into the club was too overwhelming and I ended up leaving almost immediately. Being surrounded by so many people in a tight space like that seemed like a certain recipe for suffocation. Of course I had been to more crowded events at anime cons and the like but the energy of those places was completely different.

Thus, my investigation into the identity of Miss Horikawa Raiko had suffered a devastating setback. Investigation is all about communication, meaning that detective work is incredibly poorly suited to the mentality of otaku like myself. If someone as eccentric as most famous detectives in stories tend to be were to actually try and infiltrate a scene like this one, I'm sure they'd stand out so badly that they'd blow up on Twitter, spawning a series of humiliating viral videos.

I sat myself down on a bus stop bench just outside the club with a sigh. There was still quite a while to go before Raiko's band's performance was scheduled to end. An older man would probably kill time by smoking cigarettes. I'm underage though and I don't like the way cigarettes smell. Instead I pulled out the light novel in my pocket, but I was already most of the way through it and I finished it long before the show let out. I decided to kill the remaining time on my smartphone.

Eventually, guests started streaming out of the club. It seemed the concert had finally ended. I scanned the crowd, trying to pick my sister out among the jumble.

"Brother? What are you doing here? Did you actually come to see Raiko’s show? " Sumireko had noticed me before I could spot her and had come over to the bus stop where I was sitting to glare at me.

"Yeah, sorta."

"Liar. You got freaked out by all the people inside and retreated here to just kill time, didn't you?"

It was hard to know how to respond to something like that. Sumireko crossed her arms and glared at me while I fumbled for words.

"I hit the mark, didn't I?"

"Shut up. How’d you manage to hang out in a place like that? I didn’t think this sort of thing was your scene either."

"It’s not. I spent the whole show hiding in the corner, drinking orange juice."

"That sounds about right. Even then, this isn't the sort of place a middle school girl should be going on her own at night. Let's get you home."

"Yeah, okay."

We walked toward the bicycle parking area beside the bus stop and took out my bike. Sumireko appeared to have gotten here the same way. The two of us rode back home side by side. If this were an anime we'd both be riding on the same bike for sure, but I wouldn’t want to be in the kind of anime that had me doing that with my little sister.

"Kaoru, really. Why did you come to the concert?"

"No reason."

"Yeah right. You were really worried about me, weren't you? You thought I’d get abducted by some punk and dragged away to a life of depravity."

"Shut up. No punk would bother with you. I was more worried you'd get lost or something and not be able to find your way home."

"You're such a jerk. I'm gonna tell everyone you tried to pick up a college girl you had only met for five minutes, but are such an otaku loser that you fumbled everything and couldn't even come in to see her show."

"Don't start rumors about me! Besides, who would you even tell? You don't have any friends."

"touché." She stuck her tongue out at me.

The truth of the matter is I had been worried, just not for the reasons my sister suspected. If my little sister really is a psychic, I'm sure she could get away if some random punk tried to grab her. Does wanting to keep my little sister safe from the predations of a stranger mean I really do have a sister complex? It's not like I fantasize about her sighing and calling me 'dearest brother' or anything.

Whatever, I don't have a sister complex. I pointedly changed the topic. "...So you weren't planning on sticking around after the show?"

"Raiko's interesting but I'm not into her music or that band."

"So it is a yuri relationship! I knew it. A cool tomboy college student seducing a sheltered middle school girl."

"God, you're a dork. It's not yuri."

"Then what is it? Why are you so interested in her?"

An odd expression passed over my sister's face then, but only for a moment. There was only a brief instant of consideration before her usual smug smile was back. "I guess you could say I see her as a kindred spirit," she said.

"A kindred spirit?"

"Like if you found someone who was as much of a 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 otaku as you are." Saying that, Sumireko pedaled harder, accelerating and cutting in front of me.

So this college girl was the same as Sumireko in some way. They didn't seem to have any interests in common. That had to mean that she was... could it be that psychics were naturally drawn to one another, maybe? Where you see one, there's thirty more in hiding? No, they're not cockroaches, after all.

It wasn't all that unreasonable an assumption. If my sister has these powers, then it would be reasonable to assume that there must be other people out there with similar abilities. Probably the only reason why abilities like hers weren’t common knowledge was because everyone has been conditioned to think of stuff like that as being weird occult mumbo-jumbo if not just pure fantasy.

Like anyone else, I'd seen specials on TV about psychics and just assumed they were completely fake. There were videos on YouTube and Niconico of people doing all sorts of tricks, but no one would ever assume that those videos were legit. Even if there were one or two videos of people with real power out there, they'd be drowned out by all the frauds who are no doubt much more common. Maybe there really were people like that out there, but the vast amount of noise drowned out the signal, so there would be no way for someone like me to tell which ones were real.

"So she's a psychic then..." I muttered to myself, too quietly for my sister to hear.

If this was the case, there wasn't much I could say about it. The two of them would have things to talk about that I would never have a frame of reference for. Unless some unforeseen circumstance were to suddenly unlock latent powers that I've been unknowingly suppressing all my life, I'd never know what it was like to be a psychic.

Maybe instead of college students or punks I should be worrying about my sister getting kidnapped by some shadowy organization of psychics who are secretly controlling the governments of the world from the shadows. That would be a little cliche to be honest, but cliche or not, as an otaku I couldn't pretend that it sounded a lot cooler then the idea that psychics were all just people who couldn't get any views on YouTube.

Either way though, one thing was certain. I needed to keep an eye on my sister.


—


[𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐤𝐨'𝐬 𝐃𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐲 — 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐜𝐡, 𝟐𝟎𝟎𝟕]

The first time I met a psychic other than myself was during spring vacation just after my first year in elementary school. My family had taken a road trip to Nagano.

Why Nagano? I can't remember. It wasn't the year of the Onbashira festival or the right season to see the Omiwatari, nor were we heading to any of the tourist sites in Karuizawa. I'd have to ask my parents what we were doing in Nagano that year.

Anyway, I guess I'm glad we went there, whatever the reason. It would turn out to be a very fateful trip for me. If I hadn't met her there on that trip, I probably would have ended up as an even more cynical and resentful person than I am now, abusing my abilities to just do whatever I wanted. If I had done that, maybe I would have been targeted by a secret cabal of shadowy psychics by now.

At the time that I had met her, she had seemed like a grown-up to me, but thinking back on it, I think she might have been a high-schooler. I never even learned her name. Just like with the woman who gave me the jewel when I was four, I've forgotten her face and many of the details about her. All that I can remember clearly is that she was a psychic like me and that she had a very strange hair ornament. It's certainly not much to go on, but those two details are indelibly etched into my mind, just like the presence of the woman who I met in the park when I was four.

—

At the time, my brother and I were bored out of our skulls. My parents had taken us to the Suwa Grand Shrine, but elementary schoolers have no taste for the quiet dignity of shrines or temples. My brother and I had been running around the grounds all morning, but now we were tired. My brother was playing Mario Kart on the DS or something, if I recall.

My parents decided that shrines were too boring for children and instead drove us all down to the shores of Lake Suwa and rented a swan boat for the four of us. My parents pedalled for us while my brother and I stared over the sides of the boat, looking for fish in the water.

At one point I saw a fish swimming beneath us, and I got the idea of trying to telekinetically lift it into the boat. I had realized by that point that I could move things without touching them, but I had never tried it on a living thing before. I thought if I could do it just right, I could make it look like the fish had jumped into the boat and surprise my parents.

My ability to manipulate objects with my mind has always depended on being able to clearly see the object I want to affect, so in order to take aim at the fish in the water, I had leaned way out over the edge. If that's all that had happened, I would have been fine, but when my brother saw me leaning out like that, he stood up and leapt over to my side of the boat, saying 'Sumi, that's dangerous!'

That's all it took. The movement of him shifting his weight around and hopping up was enough to rock the boat. Not a lot, but enough to throw a second-grader who hadn't been expecting it off of her feet. As I toppled over I released that I was about to be underwater and I braced myself for the shock.

The approaching danger made everything feel like time had stopped. The surface of the water looked completely still. And then I realized it really was still. Completely unmoving. I had overbalanced forward, way too far to catch myself, so far that I should certainly be falling, but I wasn't. I was stopped, just at the point at which I should have plunged over the edge, in a way that felt entirely unnatural. There was some sort of invisible force supporting my body.

It lasted only a moment. It can't have been more than a few seconds after that that my brother caught my hand while yelling "Be careful!" at me. My parents turned around at that point and quickly pulled us both back into our seats. I think they must have scolded me after that as well, but I don't remember at all. All I could think about was the force that had held me up. It had felt warm and soft, like I had been wrapped up in something. I was utterly convinced that someone had seen me about to fall in and reached out to catch me.

—

My parents were worried I might fall in again of course, so we had turned right around and gone back to the shore, even though there was time left on our rental. Kaoru and I had both wanted to stay on the boat, so as a replacement they bought us both soft serve ice cream cones once we got back. That had been enough to shut us up.

We were walking along the shore of the lake, licking our cones when the sight of someone walking ahead of us caught my eye. Maybe I'm misremembering things, but I swear she had suddenly appeared right where I was looking, without having been there a moment earlier. Nobody else seemed to notice her, but to me she seemed to be surrounded by a faint aura of soft, wavering light. A shifting veil of illumination, shining with the hue of compassion. I don’t know if the aura surrounding her was a trick of the light on that beach or something else, but the moment I saw her, I was at once utterly convinced she had been the one to save me from falling into the lake.

And so I ran towards her, running off even as I heard my family yelling at me to stop. I had almost made it to her when I tripped over something that had been half-submerged in the sand. Once again I lost my balance and pitched forward, and once again I was spared from hitting the ground.

There was no mysterious force involved this time. I was saved from faceplanting onto the beach only because she had turned around and caught me. I had been running toward her back, with her still a few steps away, but the next thing I knew she was squatting down and supporting me by the shoulders, the silver snake ornament twined in her hair gleaming in the sunlight.

It was definitely weird. I was a little kid, just seven. I was probably 120cm tall at the very least. If a little kid of that size was running behind your back, unless you knew they were about to fall over, there's no way you could get to them in time to catch them. It's just too fast.

Could I have unconsciously tried to grab ahold of her telekinetically? If she was a psychic like me, maybe she sensed that and realized that another psychic was nearby. That made her more sensitive tothe sound if a child running behind her. She already noticed I was there before she even turned around. As soon as I tripped, she held me up with her powers before turning around to grab me.

I wonder what it looked like to my family? Perhaps all they saw was a stranger reaching down to help me. I don't know if any of them were watching me before I fell. But as I relaxed into her arms and she lifted me back onto my feet again, the feeling of her touch was the same sensation I had felt protecting me from falling into the lake. There was no doubt in my mind that she had caught me both times.

"Are you alright?" she had asked me with a gentle smile.

I had only stared at her blankly as she lifted me to my feet and patted my head.

"Sumireko!" my mother called, running up behind me. "I'm so sorry about this, Miss."

"Oh, no harm done. I'm just glad she didn't fall."

Both my parents had rushed up and bowed to this stranger, who had shaken her head dismissively then squatted down next to me.

"Your name is Sumireko?" She had asked.

"Sumireko, say thank you," my mother had commanded.

"...th-thanks," I mumbled, meekly.

"You're welcome. Try to be careful when running from now on, okay?"

She patted my head again and drew close enough to speak, whispering in a voice low enough that only I could hear her.

"It's dangerous to lean out of a boat, and you should never use your invisible power against a living thing. Don't do that anymore," she had said.

She smiled at me, then rose up and bowed to my parents, then turned and left, walking away without another word. All I could do was stare blankly at her back.

"Whoa, Sumireko. You just about dived into the sand but managed to keep your ice cream completely safe. Glad you protected the important stuff, piggy," my brother said, catching up with my parents. I looked down to see the ice cream cone was still in my hand. I was almost certain I had dropped it, but it too hadn't fallen, it seemed. Thinking about that somehow made me not want to eat it any more, so I had offered it to my brother.

"Huh? You don't want it?" He asked.

"Take it."

He snatched the cone out of my hand. "Thanks, piggy!" he said with a grin. "More for me."

Hearing him say that, I wanted to throw the ice cream at his head. He already had it in his hand, though. I can't say whether it was a conscious decision or not, but I reached out with my mind, intending to shove the cone right into his face.

It didn't work. For the first time ever, I couldn't push it, even a little bit. I could see the cone, and I could feel its surface in my mind, but it wouldn't budge. It was as if my mental push were bouncing off of it. I had never felt that happen before. My brother ate the ice cream happily.

I looked down the shore, in the direction that the girl had walked away and saw her standing some distance away looking back over her shoulder at me. Our eyes met and she shook her head from side to side. I don't recall if I heard her say "I told you not to do that," or if it was merely clear from her look, but the impression of the words was unmistakably present in my mind.

'Did she just stop me from moving the ice cream with her mind?' I thought to myself. She had already turned and was walking away down the footpath at the edge of the beach. I never saw her again.

—

I never learned her name. I don't know who she was or where she was from. But she had nonetheless left an impression on me. She had helped me twice, probably using psychic powers like my own. I couldn't explain what had happened any other way.

Use your powers to do what you think is right. Don't use them recklessly. Don't use them when you don't have to. That was the lesson I had learned from her. I think that's what she had been trying to teach me.

Green hair the color of jade. The way her back had looked, standing on the shore of Lake Suwa. That shining silver snake in her hair. I can still see all of that in my mind, but her face has vanished. I wish I could see her again, even if just for a moment. If I could, I'd just want to know the answer to one question:

"Who the hell were you?"