東方プロジェクト二次小説・オリジナル小説サイト
Chapter 4:The Revolution of Usami Sumireko

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

Otaku—as far as I can tell from observing the ones I know, anyway—are easily swayed. As someone who's been into 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 for five years, I'm sadly used to being mocked for changing which girl is my favorite waifu every season, but I suppose that’s what I get for having friends who are all anime otaku.

They say that long ago, when the word 'otaku' was first coined, it referred to people who obsessively sought out all available information on a given topic or series. With that in mind, I would consider myself to be one of these old-school sorts. I regularly scour Niconico for any sort of fan content related to 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 that I haven't seen before, and I always feel like it's a personal failing on my part, mostly because the total amount of content for a niche series like this is small enough that someone like me could see it all. At least in theory.

There was a time before the Internet existed, but it's hard to imagine. There must have been otaku back then too, but what did they do without Google or Wikipedia, or Twitter or websites like that? Getting by like that almost seems superhuman to me. Back in the stone age there was probably way less subculture in general than there is nowadays. It probably would even have been possible for one person to be up to date on absolutely everything that was going on in the subculture scene at the time, whether it was games, movies, anime, manga or whatever.

For the modern otaku living in 2013, the problem is just the opposite: there are so many different series going on at the same time that following everything at once would be impossible. Nowadays we have an endless ocean of anime being broadcasted while an avalanche of manga and light novels bury us under a mountain of content. If you're into series that include video games, then there’s multiple different console versions,smartphone apps, flash games and the like to worry about too. Even if you just stick to one series, taking in absolutely everything released for that series would be almost impossible.

As a result, the modern otaku can't afford to look to the past. We’re so busy looking at what’s new that no one has time for anything from the past. Who cares about stuff that was popular back in the 90's or even earlier anyway? That stuff is mostly for old guys.

I've gotten off-topic, what was the point of this rant? Oh yes.

The point I was getting at is that although we otaku may be easily swayed, that doesn't mean that we're the sort of people to easily become bored. Even if we did get bored, we’d be more likely to get bored of trying to keep up with multiple series at once than we would be to get bored of the series we truly love. When we really get into something, we stay interested in it. It is because of this phenomenon that I know someone at school who picked up a bass guitar and learned to play as a result of watching 𝐾-𝑂𝑁! It was him who I asked about Horikawa Raiko and her band.

—

"'Thunderbolt?' Yeah, I know it."

"Oh, I'm surprised. It's sort of a common name, so it's hard to find any info about them on Google."

"Well you know Hatsune Miku, right?"

"Um, I know 𝑜𝑓 her."

"Well this was originally one of her songs. This band you're asking about was just covering it. It's by a pretty famous producer, actually."

"Really?"

"Yeah man, it hit a million views on Niconico. You’ve probably heard it before too. Here."

The song that my friend played on his smartphone was one that I definitely remembered seeing on the Niconico rankings at one point. A rock duet with Miku and Luka, it had a fully animated PV to go with it. Overall, it was a pretty good song.

"Huh. I'm glad I asked you about this."

"Are you interested in this sort of music now?"

"Not so much me, but I think my sister's getting into it."

"Your sister? Oh yeah, she's the weirdo, right?"

"Yeah, she's a weirdo alright. She went to see one of this band's live performances the other night though. Are there any rumors about this band? Have they been wrapped up in drug deals or accused of sleeping with their fans or anything?"

"What? Nah, we should be so lucky, man. It's an all-girl band."

"...Really?"

"For sure. Were you seriously worried that some dude from a rock band was gonna steal your sister away? You must have some sort of sister complex or something."

"Shut up, it's not like that."

You'd think that Sumireko would have mentioned a detail like that from the beginning. How embarrassing. I’ll have to complain to her about forgetting to mention that detail later. With that out of the way, my friend and I spent the rest of our lunch break chatting about vocaloids.

—

When I got home today, that conversation was still floating around in my head. I pulled up the vocaloid 𝑇ℎ𝑢𝑛𝑑𝑒𝑟𝑏𝑜𝑙𝑡 video on Niconico and was watching it when Sumireko suddenly appeared in my room.

"Hey, brother?" Sumireko asked, suddenly coming into my room without warning.

"Hmm?" I asked, tilting my head.

"I was about to ask why you were listening to Miku, but that's Raiko's song! Are you still obsessed with her?"

"Nuh-uh, this is just a coincidence."

"Uh-huh." Sumireko scowled skeptically at me then started perusing my bookshelf as usual.

"I don’t know much about Vocaloids, but they seem to be pretty popular."

"Yeah, it seems that way. I don’t know much about them either. There’s a few kids in my class who are 𝐾𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑃𝑟𝑜 otaku though."

"So then you're not into vocaloids or this sort of music?"

"Brother, your sister complex is starting to get creepy."

"Shut up."

I sighed. It would be easier if I could just ask her directly. Open my mouth and say 'Is Horikawa Raiko a psychic? Like you?' If I were to say those words, there'd be no going back though. The relationship between me and my sister would be certain to change after something like that. If I ended up proving that my sister really does have psychic powers, then… All I wanted was to help her. To keep her safe and protect her.

Ugh, that really does sound like something someone with a sister complex would say. Hmm...

"Hey Kaoru?"

"What?"

"Why are you such a wimp?"

"You can't just walk into my room and slander me."

"It's not slander if it's a verifiable fact."

"Defamation of character then."

"You'd have to have a reputation for me to ruin for that to be the case."

"Why you…"

"...I’m mostly joking, but seriously. If all you do is sit at your PC and grumble at people on the internet all day then you’re going to end up becoming the sort of person who just sits online grumbling about how normies should drop dead all day."

"I don’t grumble! And I’m not jealous of normies. I use my computer to look at yuri, not to tell normal couples to go die in a fire."

"Ugh. Are boys who are into yuri all the world's lamest losers or is it just you? You threatened to tell mom about Raiko, but I think she'd cry more if she really understood just how pathetic you are."

"Appreciation of yuri is a mark of distinction. Call me a ‘gentleman’ not a ‘loser’"

"'Pervert' sounds like a more appropriate term. If you’re going to be into something like yuri could you at least try not to be embarrassing about it? If you were able to make a living off of something like this that would be one thing, but as it is, you’re just pathetic."

"Why are you ragging on me about this? Was there something you wanted, Sumireko?"

"See? Reading stuff like this has left you completely hopeless. You can’t understand what girls are thinking at all."

"Do middle-school brats who don’t have any friends and are obsessed with the occult even count as girls?"

"I don’t want to hear that from a high school 𝐺𝑒𝑛𝑠𝑜𝑢 𝐶𝑜𝑙𝑙𝑒𝑐𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 otaku who's never had a girlfriend."

I sighed. We had gotten caught up in our usual sibling bickering. While it was a comforting situation, I hadn't gotten any closer to the questions that were still weighing on my mind. Maybe I should just spit it out. Cut right to the chase and ask ‘Are you psychic?’ I’m not sure if I can do that though…

"—Hey, Sumireko..."

"What?"

"If God were to grant any single wish to you right now, what would you wish for?"

"You mean like I had just collected the dragon balls or something? I’m not going to wish for panties like Oolong if that’s what you’re thinking." She looked at me for a moment, then cocked her head to one side, looking up in consideration. "I guess... I would wish for the world to be a bit more interesting," she said, finally.

"Yeah, that sounds like the sort of thing a genius would wish for."

"You wouldn't get it brother. You can't understand."

"Why not use your genius to make the world a more interesting place on your own?"

—Even asking that much felt risky. She wasn't shaken by the question at all though. She just snorted derisively.

"You don't get it. Even if I could make things around me more interesting, if the world stays the same, what's the point? I'd get bored of it eventually. In order to make the world less boring we'd have to destroy the possibility of boredom. And that would probably require the complete destruction of humanity."

"Don't say stuff like that. You're a genius, Sumi. You could change the world however you want."

"I'm just a middle-schooler, Kaoru. Children can only change the world in fiction." Saying that Sumireko sighed and flopped onto my bed.

That’s my sister, the self-described genius, giving up without even trying. I let out a frustrated sigh. "Sumireko, look. If you want to change the whole world, then you've got to throw common sense to the wind."

"Huh?"

"You think a middle-schooler can't change the world. Why accept a common-sense belief like that? Why are you quitting here!? You have to just try! There are people out there harvesting clams in freezing waters! Never Give Up!"

She sat up on the bed and blinked at me, silence hanging in the air between us for a moment before she suddenly burst out laughing. "You’re quoting memes at me? I suppose you do actually have a good point though."

"Shut up."

"To start with, I'll need to find something capable of changing the whole world."

"Like the dragon balls?"

"Something like that. If I found them, I'd wish for the power to revolutionize the world."

"'The power to revolutionize the world?' What do you mean by that, like ultimate strength or something?"

"It's from 𝑅𝑒𝑣𝑜𝑙𝑢𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑟𝑦 𝐺𝑖𝑟𝑙 𝑈𝑡𝑒𝑛𝑎. It’s an old anime, directed by Ikuhara."

"You watch stuff like that?"

"You should watch it, it's quite interesting."

Sumireko stood up then and walked out of my room, actually bothering to open my door for once.

"Hey Kaoru?" she said, turning back toward me as she stood in the hallway.

"Yeah?"

"Thanks for worrying about me. You're a good big brother. I love you too."

"Don't say stuff like that, people are going to start thinking I have a sister complex."

I sighed, I still can't for the life of me imagine what sort of thoughts were going through her head.



—


[𝐒𝐮𝐦𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐤𝐨'𝐬 𝐝𝐢𝐚𝐫𝐲 — 𝐀𝐮𝐠𝐮𝐬𝐭, 𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟑]

[𝟖 / 𝟐𝟖]

Summer vacation is almost over.

While all of my classmates are busy rushing to the beach, or to go on dates or watch fireworks I am dedicating myself to more important tasks. Besides, I don't have any friends or anything to do, so I’d just be wandering around town all day by myself if I wasn’t so busy. How sad.

I can't be depressed though, stay strong, Sumireko!

I have an obligation to make the world a more interesting place! With my brains and superpowers I should be able to remake reality any way I want, right?

...Okay, I'm done. I'm not writing like that anymore. That's what girls' diaries look like in old and outdated light novels, but even as a joke I can't do that.

I’ve decided to write another novel-like diary entry since something extraordinary happened today and I want to fix the details in my mind so I don’t forget.

It was so exciting, I never saw I'd actually see something like that.

I'm getting ahead of myself. Even if I'm going to write a novel-length entry, I can't use old novel-style conventions like spoiling a story by saying 'if only XX had done YY here, then ZZ could have been avoided.' As a 21st-century girl, I don’t need to bother with those sorts of unnecessary flourishes and can just write something more modern. I'm just going to write down what happened in a logical, chronological order.

So.

It started when I got a phone call from Raiko.

—

"Well this is unusual, what's the occasion, Miss Raiko?" I had asked when she walked into the McDonalds we had agreed to meet at.

She nodded in acknowledgement as she sat down, but overall she looked a little distracted. It was the first time I had seen her wear an expression like this, not worried or sad really, just a little troubled, maybe. At the very least she didn’t look like she was about to tell me something earth-shattering.

"Umm, Sumireko..." she began.

"Yes?"

"Do you have any other powers? Besides telekinesis, I mean."

It was a bit of a sudden question. I had never mentioned any other abilities to her, and being as she was the first other psychic I've ever really had a chance to talk to, I had been wary about how much to reveal about myself.

"Well I don't have telepathy, so I can't read your mind."

"That's not what I meant... You asked me once before if I could remember where my abilities came from, right?"

"Yeah..."

"Well I don't, but I think maybe a new one just awakened. Recently."

I leaned forward before I could think to conceal my excitement. Could psychic abilities awaken in your 20s? That would certainly be interesting to know.

"Really?"

"Well, I don't know, but it's the only explanation I can think of for what's been happening."

"What sort of power are we talking about?"

Raiko looked at me, but somehow her eyes looked like they were looking through me. "I guess you would call it 'clairvoyance'"

"Clairvoyance?"

"Well... maybe," she said, looking uncertain.

"You don't sound certain. Is it clairvoyance or not?"

"Maybe... sometimes I've been seeing things."

"Are you seeing things right now?"

"No, no." Raiko shook her head, looking a little worried. "I don't know why, but I only get these visions or whatever they are when I'm playing my favorite drums."

"You get visions while drumming?"

"Lately, yeah. What do you think it means?"

To be honest, I didn't have the faintest idea. But I couldn't just say that. "Can you tell me anything else about it?"

"Maybe it would be easier if I showed you. Do you want to come back to my place?" she asked, standing up.

Of course I immediately nodded and stood up as well.

—

And so, I ended up following her across town to her apartment. The building she led me to was an opulent tower downtown. I couldn’t help but pause to stare up at it for a moment before following her through the doors.

"Do you really live here? This is a pretty high-class apartment building."

"Oh yeah. I guess I never mentioned that. My dad is a singer-songwriter who made a bunch of money in the 80's and 90's. I guess you're so young that all of his hits were out before you were even born" she said, giving me a name. It sounded vaguely familiar, but I've forgotten it now with all that happened after.

"You have no idea who he is, do you, Sumireko? I get it, I was born well after the time when he was at his most famous too."

"Was he really that big a deal?"

"He had a few singles that sold about a million copies, and composed songs for other artists that had sold three or four million as well."

"You said he was a drummer too, didn't you?"

"He played drums in his first band, but that was before he got famous. He can play keyboards too and he got in with a band that went big doing that, before he eventually went solo and then later he started writing and producing songs for other people."

I tried to imagine what the music scene must have been like back then, with people going out of their way to go to physical stores to purchase CDs. Nowadays, CDs barely sell unless they include some sort of promotional item. I can’t imagine things ever being any different, really.

"Anyway, being the secret love child of a pair of famous musicians means I'm able to live in a place like this."

"Wait, what? Are you revealing some sort of celebrity gossip out of the blue?"

"The entertainment industry's full of dirty little secrets,"

Sorry for writing it down here, Raiko. I didn't include any names though, so it should be fine, right? I hope so.

The apartment she showed me to was far too large for one college student living alone. A small family could have lived comfortably in the rooms of that space, a clear sign of the inequality rife within modern society. While most of the up-and-coming adults of today are working poor who can only dream of someday owning a modest home, those lucky enough to benefit from their parents' involvement in the bubble economy sip wine and watch from lofty heights like these. I guess that’s capitalism working as intended. Not that I consider myself a communist or anything.

"My dad always loved being a drummer. I don't think he was ever really satisfied with being famous as a singer-songwriter. When I told him I wanted to play drums, he was overjoyed. He bought me this place because it has a soundproofed room, so I can bang away as much as I want."

"So it's kind of like a baseball player who never made it to the big leagues signing their kid up to play?"

"Yeah. He was so busy for years that he never really got a chance to play, especially now that the set of drums he had when he was in his first band has gone missing."

Raiko had mentioned something about this to me once before. Apparently, a while back her father had discovered that the drum set he had been keeping in storage since his time with his first band had gone missing. It was unclear if they had been stolen or simply misplaced at some point.

"That's just dad's dream though," Raiko continued. "I'm not planning on becoming a drummer professionally."

"Why do you play the drums then, Miss Raiko?"

"I guess I like control. The drummer gets to control the stage, the music, even the audience." She led me into her practice room, where she sat down behind her drum set, giving the instruments around her a few light taps, as if to tune her senses.

"Control, eh?"

"Absolutely. Who do you think is the main character of a band, Sumireko?"

"The main character? I don't know. I guess the vocalist or maybe the lead guitarist?"

"Nah, that's just the one who's the most conspicuous. The drummer's the one in control though. The drummer chooses when the song starts, and how fast it goes. Keyboard, vocals, guitar, bass, they all just follow the rhythm of the drums. The drummer sets the energy level of a song and controls how fast everyone plays. Try and remove the drums from any rock song you can name and it'll sound incomplete. The pristine beats of the drums are a primordial form of music, casting a spell over the whole stage."

"So in the beginning there were drums. And the drums were of the music and the drums were music. Is that what you’re saying?"

"What’s that from? Genesis?"

"It’s closer to John 1:1, I guess."

"Well, that’s one way to put it. Let me show you what I meant by 'clairvoyance' though."

With that, she closed her eyes and began to drum. I had a seat in one of the chairs sitting nearby in the soundproofed room while she played her solo. With her eyes still tightly closed, Raiko continued to hammer away, seeming to move by instinct. She finished the solo by exploding onto the cymbal with a final crash. She let out a sigh, her solo concluded.

"Did it work?" I asked.

"Yeah, I saw it, just as usual. Someplace far away..."

"What was it like? Can you describe the scenery?"

"It's hard to describe. I was up on top of a huge mountain, playing drums or... maybe it wasn't me playing, I don't know. But when they played or I played... whoever was playing. With every beat of the drums, thunder rolled across the sky and lightning came pouring down."

"That's like something out of a video game."

"I wasn't just imagining it though, at least, I don't think I was. I keep seeing it. I’m always on top of a mountain, looking down at the scenery around me. At the foot of it there's a lake with a big red house visible on the shore. Further out from that, there's something like a village. Almost everything else is forest though. And there's..."

"There's what?" I asked.

"There's clouds all around me, but there's something else in the sky too. Something that looks like the roof of a big feudal castle, but upside down."

The moment I heard that, I believed her. Anyone could make up a story about a mountain. The red mansion on the lake was a relatively tame addition. A castle floating upside down in the sky though —that was downright ludicrous. It was like something out of 𝐷𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑜𝑛 𝑄𝑢𝑒𝑠𝑡. It was the sort of utterance that would instantly make the speaker seem insane. Paradoxically, that meant it had to be true.

"Do you think I'm going crazy?" she asked.

"No." I said firmly.

"...I didn't expect you to answer so quickly."

"Assuming you really saw something like that is a lot more interesting," I said with a shrug. "I mean, isn't it more fun to at least try to believe it? Any occult or conspiracy theory is going to end up discarded if you start out with the assumption that it's fake. We can't ignore the possible counter-argument that an utterly ridiculous conspiracy could have been set up that way because its overwhelming ridiculousness would make anyone with good sense convince themselves it couldn't possibly be real. It's a very high-level tactic to make it so that anyone who tries to take it seriously is seen as the idiot instead.."

Raiko blinked at me. At some point during my speech I had risen to my feet without noticing it. I lowered my hands, which had both balled themselves into fists.

"You know, you're a pretty strange kid, aren't you?" she asked, resting an elbow on the drum in front of her and leaning her chin on the back of her hand.

I walked over to have a look at the drum set. They didn't look like anything particularly special. The whole kit was neither notably new nor old, and it was hard to imagine that in and of itself it might be anything of occult significance. So if the drums weren't supernatural in any way then...

"Miss Raiko, were you using your telekinesis to play the drums just now?"

"Yeah, a little. It makes stick handling easier, so I tend to do it without even thinking about it."

"I see. That might have something to do with it. Can you try drumming without it?"

"Let's give it a try."

Raiko closed her eyes and began to tap out a simple beat, first on one drum then slowly moving on to include more of the kit. She played for maybe five minutes before smashing the cymbal in frustration and sighing.

"You're right, I can't see anything at all."

"I thought so. Try to play like you normally do again."

Raiko nodded and again closed her eyes. She started to drum, and I didn't need her to tell me the visions had returned. I could see it from the look of quiet exhilaration on her face. Afterwards she told me she had seen the vision of flying through a lightning storm while drumming, with the roof of an upside-down castle poking down through the clouds above her.

"So it must be the telekinesis."

"...Why would drumming turn telekinesis into clairvoyance?"

"I don't know. I don't even know if it's really clairvoyance. You could even be seeing someone else's dreams. What do you think it is, Miss Raiko?"

"I’ve got no idea."

"Well maybe if you see more of it you'll notice something identifiable. C'mon, try it again!"

"Actually, why don't we try this..." she said, and handed me her drumsticks. "If telekinesis is how I'm able to see these things, then you should be able to see them too, Sumireko."

"What? I don't know how to play the drums."

"You just hit them. Our aim here isn't to play music or anything, we're just trying to see if you can see the visions, right?"

"I guess..."

I've always been terrible at instruments to tell the truth. I might be able to cover for my lack of hand-eye coordination with telekinesis like Raiko did, but I don’t have nearly the level of finesse that she does and trying to do something finicky like that would take a lot of concentration. I’d have a much easier time doing something like threading a needle using my fingers than I would trying to do it with my mind.

"I promise I won't laugh."

"I'm kind of worried I might break something if I hit it wrong."

"Well then let's play together then. Just follow my lead."

"Huh?"

"Like this. You just use the cymbal to start." Saying that, she tapped out a simple rhythm with her drumsticks. Seven beats on the snare drum finished with the cymbal. Ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-JASH. She stilled the quavering brass and looked up at me. "Just hit the cymbal on the beat with your mind."

"...Okay."

She proceeded to tap out the rhythm again, turning to me expectantly as she struck the seventh beat. I looked at the cymbal and imagined slapping it with my hand. A crash rang out, but I was still uncertain about the whole thing.

"Okay, let's try again, just like playing a rhythm game right? Just hit on the beat."

Raiko started tapping out a precise rhythm. I followed with the cymbal on cue, focusing on keeping my mental slap light.

Ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-JASH. Ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-dum-ba-JASH. It looks silly when I write it out, but honestly it was kind of fun. Maybe all of those hours playing 𝑀𝑢𝑠𝑖𝑐 𝐺𝑢𝑛𝑔𝑢𝑛 weren't just a waste of time. I think my sense of rhythm is pretty decent at least.

As Raiko kept up the beat It felt like something was happening in my brain. Like some strange drug was being released. Things were distorting. My sense of distance seemed stretched and twisted. What was going on?

All of a sudden I couldn't think about it any more. I couldn't speak. I could only watch and feel as a sensation washed over me. I stared straight ahead, into that distortion in the fabric of the world as it swallowed me up.

It’s almost bedtime now and I haven't finished writing yet, but that scene was really vivid, so I'm sure I'll remember to write out the rest of this tomorrow.


—


[𝟖/𝟐𝟗]

Alright. It's morning now and I want to finish relating yesterday's events while they're still fresh in my mind but... it's not actually easy to describe. It would have been perfect if I could have taken video with my phone, but I don’t think it was really the sort of thing that could have been recorded, so I have no choice but to rely on my own memory. What a pain.

—

The first thing I saw was a dark cloud. I was—or rather, my point of view was floating in the air. Somewhere nearby there was a rumbling, like the sound of thunder, but with a distinct audible rhythm to it, as if someone was playing a drum.

Was it Raiko? I tried to look around to see her, but my perspective was fixed. This vision, or whatever it was, didn't seem to be interactive.

A flash of light cut across my field of view then, just as a deafening crash washed over me. It was a lightning bolt, streaking down directly in front of me. Somehow, it wasn't scary. In fact, it almost felt strangely comforting.

I saw a pair of hands that, from their position, must belong to me, or to the person whose vision I was sharing. They were playing drums. Not the ones I had been sitting at with Raiko moments ago, but a much older drum. The drums were beating out a heavy, thunderous rhythm.


Another blinding flash of lightning exploded nearby. I watched the sticks beat harder and faster against the drum as the lightning rolled and leapt with the beat, blending into one. Whoever these hands belonged to was trembling with joy. A joy that bled into me as well, filling me with delirious excitement. I wanted more. More! More beats! Faster!

Beyond the rapidly drumming hands, I could make out the shapes of some sort of settlement far below. It looked like something you might see on the set of an old samurai movie, wooden frames clustered together, making up the outlines of a small village surrounded by a high wall laid out in miniature. All around the village was a massive forest, and beyond that a huge mountain loomed over everything. It was as if I was looking down on a hidden village, tucked away deep within some lonely mountain valley, where pristine forests had gone completely undeveloped.

There was another intense flash. A tremendous, deafening thunderclap, louder than any before it, and then my vision went dark.

—

When I came to, I was back in Raiko's practice room.

"Did you see it?" Raiko asked excitedly.

"I definitely saw something..." We both held our breath for a moment, looking down at the now-silent drums. "What the hell was that?"

"I don't know. But..."

"But?"

"You saw someone playing the drums, right? Old drums."

I nodded. "Yeah, not like yours."

"Those were my father's drums. The old ones that went missing recently, I'm sure of it."

—

After I got home, I immediately went on Google Earth and started searching for anything that could have looked like the village I had seen, but wherever I looked it seemed like no one had bothered with taking high-resolution images of remote forests. If there was really any place like what I had seen, I didn't find it.

It couldn't have been a real place though, could it have been? If it was, then someone would have been flying above it in the midst of a thunderstorm, playing the drums in time with the weather. I looked up yesterday’s weather reports for the whole country but I didn't see anywhere with reports of a thunderstorm as intense as I had witnessed. Just what had Raiko and I seen?


—What is this mystery I've stumbled upon? Just what is this supernatural phenomenon? This truly is the most eventful summer vacation I've ever had. What was that scene? How did the two of us see it together? I have to find out. This is my chance to make the world more interesting than it is now. This is the power to revolutionize the world that I've been seeking!