Tomobiki, the Mendō estate…
"Is there any sign of that bastard Ataru?!"
Mendō Shūtarō tried not to openly sigh on hearing that passionate demand from his classmate. "I have no idea where Moroboshi is, Satoshi-san," he answered as he gazed intently at Aisuru Satoshi. "Nor will I be sending out people to find him."
Silence.
More silence.
Still more silence.
And then…
"WHAT?!" the man also known as "Megane" howled as he bolted out of his chair and slammed his hands into the coffee table separating them. "WHY NOT?!"
"Because the Imperial Palace is now involved in this matter."
Silence.
"The Emperor…?!" the heavyset member of the Stormtroopers, Daremo Hiroyuki — also known as "Kakugari" — then demanded, his eyes wide.
"Hai," the scion of Japan's richest family answered. "I sent out my people to trace down Moroboshi almost within the hour of his vanishing from the street near the school. Within an hour, my father received a message from the Palace. It was a letter from His Majesty." A sigh. "In it, he requested we do nothing to disturb Moroboshi anymore, especially when it concerned Lum-san. In effect, he is under Imperial protection and any action done against him will earn His Majesty's displeasure." Another sigh. "Not even Ryōko will send her people out in the face of that!"
The other men in the room — atop the other core members of the Stormtroopers, Shitto Kōsuke a.k.a. "Perm" and Urayamu Akira a.k.a. "Chibi," there were several other male students from various classes at Tomobiki High School — all winced on hearing that. While the Son of Heaven had no official constitutional powers beyond his role as being the "living symbol of the people and the nation," he was seen as having unwritten powers that stemmed from his traditional role of being the equivalent of a pope to all the practitioners of Shintô across Japan. Atop that, given the high level of respect he was given, it was often seen as proper to NOT involve the Emperor in normal affairs so he could always remain "above the clouds." Now that he had been forced to descend from the clouds in the matter concerning what Moroboshi Ataru did a month ago…
"That explains what the Principal said when we asked where Ataru's records had been sent off to," Perm stated. "He wouldn't tell us where he transferred to, no matter what we tried to do to persuade him to tell us where he went."
"Bastard!" Megane hissed out.
"Satoshi-san, Moroboshi may be a bastard — I'll agree to that — but with the Son of Heaven now getting involved, any action that could be seen as threatening to Moroboshi will rebound BADLY on YOU! ANY of you!" Mendō warned as he glared intently at the other men in the room, all of whom winced on seeing that. "Regardless of what really happened a month ago, people outside Tomobiki saw those events this way: Lum-san WAS threatening the whole planetary ECO-SYSTEM with her making Rupa hold back his pigs until Moroboshi admitted that he loved her. Moroboshi effectively stopped it in its tracts…and even better, sent Lum-san back to wherever she came from! Where she will never harm anyone on Earth again!" As all the men in the room shuddered on hearing that, the scion of Japan's richest family sighed. "You've seen the news, haven't you! World leaders are praising Moroboshi for his actions! Even more so than what they said about him at the end of the First Tag Race last year!"
"So what can we do?!" Chibi demanded. "Lum-chan's gone and…!"
The smallest of the Stormtroopers shuddered before he began to weep. Megane sighed as he squeezed his friend's shoulder in reassurance. "Relax, Akira!" he urged. "Ataru'll be found! He'll be dealt with finally! And Lum-san will get her justice! Don't you worry about that! We just got to be patient, that's all…"
"Or be dead."
That sweet-sounding voice made all the men gasp before they turned to see the smiling raven-haired woman standing nearby. "Ryōko!" Mendō exclaimed.
"I'm sorry to bother you, Onii-san, but I have some news which might interest you and your friends," the younger child of the Mendō Clan of Musashino stated. "An announcement was made on al-Ǧazīrah just now. They received a message from the leaders of al-Qā'idah!" As all the men jolted on hearing the name of the infamous terrorist group, Ryōko added, "Their leaders have just issued a fatwā concerning what happened a month ago. It states — atop praising Moroboshi-sama for his invoking Divine Favour to remove the devil Lum and her demon allies from Earth — that all should be done to ensure the devil's allies here on Earth are thoroughly punished for their infidel support of the devil-woman. Which they demonstrated when the oil of Earth was stolen by the alien space-taxi company a year ago!" Her eyes fixed on the Stormtroopers — all of whom were now as white as ghosts — as she stated, "It appears that the heirs of Master bin Lādin bear quite the grudge against you people. Too bad."
And with a haunting laugh, she walked out of the room…
The Dobu Salada Inn, that moment…
"How are you holding up, Shinobu-chan?"
Miyake Shinobu shuddered, though she didn't flinch when the hand of her best friend from the Shakkyo Institute had reached over to give her shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "How am I supposed to feel, Yumi-chan?" she asked as the other girl sat down beside her. "He just left…and he didn't even bother to say good-bye…!"
"Except for what he wrote in his fake diary," Ogin Haneko, the leader of the "Rosebuds" — Mendō Shūtarō's town-wide fan club — stated.
Shinobu winced on hearing that. Within an hour of Ataru's disappearance from Tomobiki, she had gone over to the Moroboshi home to try to find him. Arriving there, she had found his parents relaxing in the living room, acting as if nothing had happened. Both had actually been shocked to hear what Ataru had done to Lum to ensure the Second Tag Race was resolved — though, like many, they had been pleased that Ataru had done something to get rid of the alien mushrooms that were threatening to encompass all of Earth in darkness — and they had come up with her to look into Ataru's room.
A room that had been stripped bare of everything!
Bar his diary.
A fake diary, Shinobu mused as she recalled the words she read on the last page:
Bet you never thought this diary was a fake! Pity for all of you!
Now, Baka Aho Kā-san, Baka Aho Tō-san, you got you wanted!
You'll grow old and die alone!
Just like you wished all the 2,139 times since I was six!
I kept count…in my real diary!
Tell the traitors to the human race that they'll never see Lum again!
"So how did he do it?"
Shinobu perked. "Eh?"
"How did Ataru-kun make Lum and her friends vanish like that?!" Marubeya Momoe asked. A classmate of Shinobu's from Tomobiki High School, the girl was also a fan girl when it came to Mendō…and she was also the chief bookie for a private operation run by a woman in Nerima named Tendō Nabiki, a sophomore at Fūrinkan High who was proving to be quite the sharp businesswoman in her own right. If she wouldn't evolve into becoming the perfect Yakuza, some believed. "What did he do?!"
A sigh. "Well, he never wrote anything about that in the fake diary," Shinobu confessed. "Still, whatever might have happened to him that allowed him to do what he did to Lum and the others must have been started in the two months he was missing from town after we ran into Queen Elle. We never asked him where he was…"
"And we can't ask him now," Ogin stated.
"Has anyone been able to get into contact with him?" the lead Rosebud from Butsumetsu High School then asked. "There's got to be someone…"
"Only possibility is Inu Chigaiko," Momoe stated. "But good luck in trying to persuade her to go along with it." A sigh. "Can't blame her, really…"
The others nodded. Inu Chigaiko, a member of Class 2-4 at Tomobiki High School, had been subjected to a weird curse ultimately inflicted on her by the mysterious "Red Cloak," a Tomobiki High alumnus from years ago who had visited his alma mater the previous Hallowe'en. Said curse — according to Sakurambō Sakura — had made all the students and teachers at Tomobiki High literally FORGET HER NAME. Save one person.
The most despised student at the school at the time: Moroboshi Ataru.
But now that Ataru was no longer a student there…
"Her friends tried to make up to her for forgetting all about her," Momoe then explained. "She seemed to go along with it for about a couple days…and then she just stopped associating with them. Quit the basketball team, too. Seems she wants nothing further to do with any of us." A sigh "Can't blame her, really…"
"You think she might know where Ataru-kun is?" a Taian Institute student asked.
A shake of the head. "I don't think so. She's been looking really depressed lately. Like that curse was still active on her…" Momoe then breathed out. "Maybe because Chigaiko-chan never made her interest in Ataru-kun known, when he left, he never knew she cared for him. So — unless someone does something to make it get out into the streets that Chigaiko-chan does care for him…"
"Can't understand why!" her best friend, Gekasawa Kumiko, grumbled.
Momoe nodded. "He won't come back." A sigh. "Atop that, what's to say that whatever he did to send Lum home isn't still available for him to use?"
The other girls shuddered. "Good point," Ogin muttered.
"Hey!"
People jolted on hearing that voice, and then they turned as a girl from Butsumetsu Girl's High School came to the upstairs lounge. "What is it?" Ogin asked.
The girl stopped, panting; she had clearly been running for a bit. "I just saw it on the news!" she declared. "Al-Ǧazīrah just got a message from al-Qā'idah!" As all the girls in the room gasped, she said, "They just put a fatwā out on all of Lum's supporters here in Tomobiki!" A deep breath. "That means…!"
All the girls there were now white-faced. "Mendō-san…!" Momoe gasped.
People exchanged looks…
The Moroboshi home…
"…shocking declaration by the leadership of al-Qā'idah, clearly demanding the deaths of all the 'allies' of the 'devil-woman from the stars,'" the NHK news broadcaster stated as she gazed on her notes. "Clearly, this message indicates that the infamous terrorist organisation founded by the late 'Usāmah bin Lādin now intends to unleash an attack in Tomobiki-chō, the town in the city of Nishitōkyō west of Tōkyō proper who had been the often-unwilling hosts of aliens — mostly from the planet Uru, home planet of the Oni warlord's daughter Redet Lum — that have been there for over a year until the end of last month, when Moroboshi Ataru, age 17, somehow discovered a way to drive them all off the planet. The Chief Cabinet Secretary, Fujimura Osamu-san, commented to the media that all efforts would be made to protect the people of Tomobiki-chō from such a threat. Furthermore, under no circumstances would Moroboshi-san — whose current place of residence is unknown at this time given his estrangement from his parents, salaryman Moroboshi Muchi, age 41, and his wife…"
"Why did he leave…?"
Hearing his wife's tearful moan, Ataru's father could only wince as he touched the remote to shut off the television, and then he sighed as he turned to gaze on her. "We pushed him too far," Muchi stated as he sipped his tea. "We were so desperate to have a normal life — even with Lum-chan and Ten-chan in our lives — that we forgot that all that was dependant on a successful marriage between Lum-chan and our son. And no matter what we did, he never wanted any part of it." A snort. "Remember when we all nearly got burned to death at the chapel on Lum-chan's home planet?"
Kinshō visibly winced on remembering that horrid incident. It had been a sheer miracle that whatever-it-was that had attacked the cathedral hadn't been out to really kill anyone. But they had been forced to spend nearly six weeks in intensive care getting their skin re-grown back; those that were in the building at the time that got at least second-degree burns were the lucky ones! And when they returned to Earth, they came back to an empty home and no son in sight . . . which had nearly driven Lum back to Uru in tears until he did return back two weeks later, whole and alive . . .
None of us asked him what had happened, Muchi then mused as he sipped his tea again. He came back, acting like he normally did…and we…!
He shuddered. Not a day after discovering an empty bedroom and a very ugly parting note from a son who clearly hated his parents enough to desire to have NOTHING to do with them anymore, a package had been delivered to the Moroboshi home from the National Family Registrar. In it were copies of the koseki of the elements of the Moroboshi Clan of Mutsu-no-kuni now living in Nishitōkyō…with Ataru's name absent from the list of children of Moroboshi Muchi and the former Yamaguchi Kinshō.
Somehow…
Someway…
…Ataru had renounced ALL legal bonds with his birth-parents.
You'll grow old and die alone!
Muchi winced again as he remembered what had been written in the fake diary that had been the one thing left behind in Ataru's empty room. An empty room that left NO clues whatsoever — not even metaphysical ones — as to how it had been possible for their son to VANISH like that. When they had examined the space later, both Sakurambō Sakura and her uncle Hayao — known more popularly as "Cherry" — had begun muttering dark tidings about the "dragon's fire freeing the phoenix to burn away the dreams of Tomobiki!"…and making them both withdraw from the home in considerable disorder. Even more so, Kotatsuneko, the giant mi-ke cat-ghost that had come to take residence at the Moroboshi home hadn't come NEAR the house since Ataru had vanished; when Muchi had seen the big fellow a week or so later, he had been sitting in Cherry's preferred empty lot, his favourite kotatsu beside him, looking lost towards the heavens . . .
"Is there any way to bring him back?"
Muchi sighed. Kinshō had asked THAT question time and time again since that day. Never once did she go into her usual "I wish I never had him!" tirades whenever something weird had happened and Ataru had been involved in that. Two-thousand, one hundred-and-thirty-nine times she's said that since Ataru was six, by the gods! he wondered to himself, stunned to have learned something like that about what had happened in their house for the past decade and more. It had been easy to conclude what Ataru had meant by his stating "You got what you wanted;" Kinshō had been publicly saying things like that since before their son had first gone to ELEMENTARY SCHOOL!
Child abuse…!
Muchi winced as that dark phrase echoed in his mind.
Did Ataru actually think…?
That…?
"Anata…?" Kinshō moaned.
Muchi blinked, and then he sighed. "We have to let him go."
Silence.
"Just like we have to let go of Kaeru-chan."
Kinshō shuddered on hearing HIS name spoken openly by her husband in so many years, and then she screamed out as she collapsed on herself. Immediately, Muchi moved to draw her into his arms as he held her close, his own eyes tearing…
A home in the southern end of Tomobiki…
"How are you holding out?"
Hearing that concerned voice, Inu Chigaiko took a deep breath. "I don't know, Onē-chan…" the girl who had been more alone than anyone alive at Tomobiki High School for the better part of a year then muttered as she pulled her legs closer to her. "I mean…I never did anything to make myself stand out to him…"
As a quiet moan escaped her, her older sister Fuchiko — a senior at Butsumetsu High School; she hadn't earned enough academic credits on the high school entrance exam to get into Tomobiki — slowly nodded. "I've got people out looking for him. We got friends from all over Tōkyō and the area. Gotta keep it low-key, of course; even if Mendō isn't acting like his normal arrogant self and sending his troops out to find him, Megane and his fools haven't given up at all." A smirk. "Shouldn't surprise me that old 'Usāmah's pals put out a contract on those idiots!" She sighed. "If I were you, you might want to consider getting a transfer out of that place."
Chigaiko blinked, and then she slowly nodded. She had seen the news when it had first come out. And while, in one sense of the term, it really did scare her deep down — what had happened on a late summer day in 2001 had, even if the Inu sisters had only been children when it happened, made quite the impact on people across Japan even if they hadn't personally experienced such an attack — on the other hand, it seemed to be natural. No one in this town ever thought about what people outside Tomobiki might have thought about what's happened here since that Oni came here and screwed up Ataru-kun's life like she did, she mused to herself. Especially the whole thing with that space-taxi company Megane and his idiots instigated right after the Tag Race…
"Have your friends spotted something?" she asked.
A shake of the head; Fuchiko led a gang of tough girls from Butsumetsu High that were probably the most dangerous people in all of Tomobiki…even if they weren't on the same scale as the elite martial artists that attended schools like Fūrinkan High in Nerima, the Tōdō Academy in Toshima or any of the Seven Battle Schools of Kantō and their affiliated institutions across the region. "No, not yet. But the instant I get wind of something, you'll be the first to know," Fuchiko promised.
Chigaiko blinked, and then she nodded while we…
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(Posted Wed, 29 Feb 2012 05:17)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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