Chapter 63: Ayaka Takanashi
We reached the fourth floor, walked down the corridor, and stopped in front of our respective rooms.
“We’ll come over in a little while.”
“It would be better to wait together.”
That was true.
“All right.”
We nodded and entered our rooms.
Ours had two beds and wasn’t particularly large, though there was a small round table beside the window.
“Are all business hotels like this?”
“Probably. A luxury hotel would be different.”
Neither of us had much experience staying in hotels.
“I’d like to stay somewhere like that someday.”
“Me too.”
Ayaka and I let go of each other’s hands and sat on the beds.
I took the one by the window, and Ayaka the one closer to the door.
“Phew…”
Ayaka let out a breath.
“We’ve come a long way.”
“We started in Beppu, and now we’re in Shimane. It has been quite a journey.”
How many kilometers had we traveled?
“Things are going well, right?”
“We reunited with Mayumi and Hina, and now we have Elvis and Linda-san as allies on the demon side. We haven’t found any information about Minato, but we’re close to Riku. I think we can call that good progress.”
She was right…
“I can’t settle down until Riku and Minato—until all of us are together again.”
“It’ll be all right.”
Ayaka came over to my bed and took my hand again.
“Elvis was exactly right when he told me to look beside me. Without those words, I think I would’ve panicked completely.”
We had to put ourselves first.
That was what mattered.
“You can’t help it. You’ve been with Minato and Riku for ten years—or eleven, if you count your first year of high school. I think I’d feel the same way if I still hadn’t found Mayumi and Hina.”
Eleven years… That was a long time.
We’d spent all those years together.
At that point, we might as well have been family.
“I’m glad I was transported with you. I’m glad I reached out to you then.”
Facing this apocalyptic world alone would have been brutal.
I thought we’d made it this far so smoothly because there were two of us.
And I was truly glad the other person had been Ayaka.
More than simply wanting to be with her, if I hadn’t known where she’d been transported, I would have panicked beyond belief and probably made a serious mistake somewhere.
“Me too. I’m glad I did that.”
I hoped I could support Ayaka the way she was supporting me now.
As I thought that, someone knocked on the door.
I opened it to find Takamiya-san and Kitaura-san, and invited them inside.
“It really is the same kind of room.”
“It’s small. Still, it’s luxurious compared to the inns in the other world.”
Takamiya-san and Kitaura-san sat in the chairs by the round table.
“What should we do until Elvis and Linda-san return?”
Ayaka asked.
“There isn’t much to do…”
“Why don’t we check social media? We might find information about Riku, and we also need information about Minato and Jack the Ripper.”
“Let’s do that. Mayumi and I will look for Riku, Ayaka can search for Jack the Ripper, and Yuu can handle Minato.”
That sounded good.
We took out our smartphones and searched social media for information.
Since I’d been assigned Minato, I searched for incidents involving a spear and anything else that might point to him.
“Minato doesn’t have any distinctive features…”
Searching for spears only brought up the case involving Yamane, the spear-wielding man in Kumamoto.
“Neither does Riku… He should get a mohawk or something.”
I didn’t want him to have a mohawk.
He’d look like some post-apocalyptic thug shouting, “Hyah-ha!”
“He obviously wouldn’t. The dilemma is that if he makes himself easy for us to find, the rest of our classmates can find him too.”
Exactly.
“Could we bait them with a word only we would recognize?”
Ayaka looked up.
“Dropout.”
That had been my first thought too.
Then again, only Kitaura-san and I used it.
“I’ve searched that before. It brings up tons of results.”
Of course it did.
People used the word whenever someone quit something.
“Hmm… Names would be dangerous… What about the name of the town where we lived? You could post, ‘Life in the town of Reste sure was fun.’”
The town we’d lived in was called Reste.
“Wouldn’t our other classmates recognize it too?”
“Those who never made it that far won’t know its name. For the people who traveled farther than us, it was only one of the towns they passed through. Even if they remember it, they wouldn’t be searching for it.”
“That’s true. Then I’ll post it.”
Ayaka began operating her phone.
“Can we think of anything else?”
I looked at Takamiya-san and Kitaura-san.
“Minato and Riku would probably search for Takanashi-kun first. You’re their friend and the leader.”
“Yeah. I’d search for Mayumi first too.”
Takamiya-san had been the leader of the girls’ group.
Whenever anyone became separated or something happened, they gathered around their leader first.
That was how we’d survived ten years in the other world.
“Is there something about me that Minato and Riku would know, but the rest of our classmates wouldn’t?”
“There is…”
“Post that your boyfriend proposed and you’ve become Ayaka Takanashi.”
Wasn’t that wrong in several different ways?
“Why would those two search for that?”
Ayaka gave Kitaura-san a flat stare.
“They’d search your names first. Then they’d find the post, along with the one about Reste, and the combination would make them think of you two.”
“Our other classmates don’t know about Takanashi-kun and Ayaka’s relationship. Neither Takanashi nor Ayaka is especially rare, so I don’t think it would stand out too much.”
Hmm… None of the others knew that we’d met up and formed Team Dropout.
“I wasn’t exactly someone who stood out in class anyway.”
“Neither was I.”
I’m not so sure about you, Ayaka-san.
You were cute… No, to the rest of our classmates, that was ten years ago.
Even Yamane hadn’t recognized her at first.
“All right, Ayaka. Post it.”
“Sigh… None of this matters if those two don’t have smartphones in the first place…”
Ayaka sighed, but worked on her phone.
“Any luck with Riku?”
I asked Takamiya-san and Kitaura-san.
“No. Nothing useful comes up.”
“Searching for Izumo only gives us results about a huge shrine and soba.”
I see…
“It’s posted.”
Ayaka looked up.
“What about Jack the Ripper?”
“Nothing. Either he hasn’t moved recently, or Hiroshima is suppressing the information.”
Hmm… The best outcome would be for the Demon in Hiroshima to deal with him.