Empty Boundaries – Volume 1

Empty Boundaries: Volume I The Garden of Sinners by Kinoko Nasu (奈須きのこ) Stories by Kinoko Nasu Novels Empty Boundaries (空の境界) Series Volume I: Panorama, The First Homicide Inquiry, Lingering Pain Volume II: A Hallow, Paradox Spiral Volume III: Records in Oblivion, The Second Homicide Inquiry Decoration Disorder Disconnection Series Junk the Eater HandS Angel Notes Mage’s Night (魔法使いの夜) Ice Flowers (氷の花) Visual Novels Tsukihime (月姫) Series Tsukihime (月姫) Kagetsu Tōya (歌月十夜) Fate/stay night Series Fate/stay night Fate/hollow ataraxia Video games Melty Blood PUBLISHING HISTORY Part 1: Panorama (俯瞰風景); Part 2: The First Homicide Inquiry (殺人考察〈前〉); Part 3: Lingering Pain (痛覚残留); first serialized in the website Takebōki (竹箒, “http://www.remus.dti. ne.jp/~takeucto/”) in 1998. Collected and self-published by the author in hardcover on December 2001. Kōdansha hardcover edition published August 2004. Kōdansha mass market paperback edition published on November 2007. Cover art and internal art by Takashi Takeuchi (武内崇) Translation by “Cokesakto” This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the prodcut of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental. Empty Boundaries: Volume I Part I: Panorama/ page 2 Part II: The First Homicide Inquiry/ page 39 Part III: Lingering Pain/ page 84 Part I: Panorama That was the day when, led on by nothing except an impulse of curios- ity, I took the main avenue on the way home. It wasn’t a shortcut, and I didn’t plan on passing by any particular place there. It was just something I decided to do on a whim. This part of the avenue was full of skyscrapers and tall condos, some old, more of them new, while others were abandoned husks, all commingled into one crowded skyline. I’d wager everybody in the city, including me, was tired of looking at them day in and day out. While walking beside the buildings, I suddenly saw something fall from a roof to the concrete side- walk some distance ahead of me. It was a person. In the moment that that person fell, I heard a sickening sound. The wet, raw sound you associate with the kind of things you don’t want happening anywhere near you. The kind of sound you never really get to hear often. Judging from the height that the person fell from, it was clear that whoever he or she was died the instant it hit the pavement. As I drew closer to the point of impact, I was able to scrutinize what hap- pened more clearly. All that was left, all that my mind could take in, was the scarlet trail seeping slowly across the asphalt; the frail, bone-like limbs, and the long, black hair, which still retained some of its living beauty. And that dead face. The scene struck my mind with the image of a flower pressed between the pages of an old, musty tome. Perhaps because the corpse, with its neck twisted, looked like a broken lily to me. 4 • KINOKO NASU / 1 It is a night somewhere in the beginning of August, and Mikiya comes by to visit without any prior notice, as per his MO. Popping open the door, I see him standing idly in the hallway, facing the entrance like some sort of servant-in-waiting. “Evening, Shiki. You look as lazy as ever,” he says, with a smile on his face. A strange greeting is just the kind of thing I expected him to do. “Have you heard?” he continues. “There was another jumper today, actually. This time I was actually at the scene. There’ve been a lot of these incidents lately, but I never thought I would actually come across one.” He hands me a plastic convenience store bag. “Here, in the fridge.” He holds the bag, arm outstretched, while untying his shoes and talking to me. Mikiya is nothing if not a multi-tasker. Inside the bag were two cups of Haagen-Dazs strawberry ice cream. I guess he wants me to put them inside my fridge before they melt. While checking out the contents of the bag, Mikiya had already undone his laces and stepped inside. My home is just a small apartment in a low-rise. The first thing you see on opening the front door is the small entryway, not even one meter long, where you take off your shoes. After going through that mess, you arrive at my one-stop bedroom-slash-living room, where Mikiya had already started making himself comfortable. I follow him in, glaring at his back while doing so. “Shiki, you’ve been skipping class again, haven’t you? Your grades don’t really matter, but come on; you should at least attend your classes. Don’t tell me you already forgot our promise to go to college together.” “Wiser words were never before spoken,” I reply, feeling particularly caustic, “especially coming from someone who dropped college way before I did. And sadly, this promise we supposedly made ain’t ringing any bells.” “Don’t start being difficult again, Shiki.” Mikiya tends to be a bit more blunt when you’ve got him cornered in a conversation; a helpful tidbit that has only recently come back to me. I climb on top of the bed and lie flat, Mikiya choosing to sit on the floor while leaning on the bed, his back facing me. This young man named Mikiya Kokutō has been a friend to me since high school. At least that’s what my head tells me. My recollections have been a bit fuzzy lately. We live in an age where fashion trends and the accompanying models that people want to look like are as apt to change as often as you blink in a / 1 • 5 day. A rarity, then, to still find someone like Mikiya, who steadfastly refuses to budge from his student-like appearance. He doesn’t dye his hair or have it grow into an unmanageable mess, he doesn’t tan his skin or wear acces- sories, he doesn’t carry a cellphone, and he doesn’t even allow himself the simple pleasures of flirting around with women. His demeanor struck me as the kind of person you’d probably see more ordinarily at lazy English train stations. His 170cm height, considerate disposition, and large, black rimmed glasses certainly complete the image. Not exactly someone you do a double-take on when you pass him by on the street, though it mostly due to his own fault: if he actually took the time to dress nicely instead of wearing somber black clothes every day, he might even be noticed. “Shiki, are you listening? I met your mom today, too. She said you haven’t really contacted your family since you got out of the hospital two months ago. You should at least show your face at the Ryōgi estate, don’t you think?” “Mmm?” I reply, as listlessly as Kokutō said I was. “I don’t really have any business being there, though.” “Oh, come on, isn’t it about time you patched things up with your folks? It’s been two years after all, and you haven’t talked or met with them since.” “There’s no use in making a pointless house call or a pointless conversation with them when it’ll only make us grow farther apart. It still isn’t real to me. Not so soon after getting out of the hospital. I mean, talking to you is still weird; what’ll happen if I talk to those strangers?” My patience with the subject grew thinner every second. I wish he would just stop pushing it. “Things aren’t going to get any better if it keeps up like this, you know. It isn’t right for you and your parents to be living so close to each other and not even talk.” The sudden criticism makes me frown. What exactly is wrong with it? There’s nothing illegal going on between me and my parents. It’s just that I lost some of my memories in a traffic accident. We’re recognized as a family by the law and by our blood, so there really shouldn’t be anything to talk about here. Mikiya always has his head in a worry about any damn person and their life issues, even though to me it seems like a wasteful exercise. 6 • KINOKO NASU Panorama - I Shiki Ryōgi is my friend from high school. We studied together in a pri- vate school famous for putting a lot of its students on the fast track to a college education. On the day that I was looking for my name on the lists of people who had passed the entrance exam, I saw a name that caught my eye: “Shiki Ryōgi.” As names go, it was a pretty peculiar one, and our being classmates ensured that it would get stuck in my head. Ever since then, I’ve become possibly the only friend Shiki’s ever had. Due to our school having no uniforms, and a casual clothing policy, a lot of people dressed in a multitude of ways to express themselves. Even in that sort of environment, Shiki stood out from the crowd. Largely because of the kimono. At first, that particular wardrobe choice made it seem as if the prime minister himself walked in on the classroom, forcing everyone to silence. But once it became clear that Shiki wasn’t sparing any words for anyone except the queries of the teachers, which were uncommon, people started to stop caring.

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