Brave Story - Miyuki Miyabe [85]
Kenji’s face melted into a broad smile. Then he stood up, swaying unsteadily, and began to walk toward Balbylone. His gang remained behind, clinging to one another for dear life, unable to wrest their eyes from Kenji. Their mouths trembled.
“K-Kenji!” one said in a voice like a sob. “N-no! Don’t go!”
Kenji heard nothing. He saw nothing. He only stared stupidly up at Balbylone, walking until he stood right before her. There, he dropped to his knees, and spread his arms. “I’ll go…”
Balbylone lifted her shoulders. The movement spread down her arms, and then down to the tips of her wings, until her whole jet black body rippled and shook. Somehow, with utter confidence, Wataru knew what was going on. Ecstasy. She’s trembling with ecstasy. Like a beast of prey the second before it makes a kill.
Her wings extended outward with a taut snap, and like a switch had been thrown, the smile faded from Kenji’s face.
Then he screamed. It was a scream beyond conscious thought, beyond his ability to control—a raw, primal scream.
Balbylone launched at him. Two slender black arms writhed like serpents, encircling his body. For a moment, she seemed to be crouching before him, then her jet black head wavered and, like an amoeba, became formless, swelling to ten times its original size. Kenji, wrapped in her arms, was lifted into the air. Flipping him toward the top of her head, she swallowed him whole. Kenji’s scream cut off cleanly, as if snipped by a pair of scissors.
One of his sneakers rolled to a stop by Wataru’s foot.
Wataru’s eyes were stretched open wide. All he could see was the expression of abject terror on Kenji’s face the moment before she swallowed him, his last milliseconds of life replaying in crystal-clear slow motion, frame by frame.
After she swallowed Kenji, Balbylone’s head immediately shrank to its regular size and shape, and she was once again a goddess of ebony beauty. Her nails clicked and pointed at the remaining hoodlums in front of her.
“No way!” they screamed.
Balbylone flew soundlessly with a single beat of her wings, and scooped them up from where they huddled. Wataru could see their legs jutting out from beneath her wings, futilely kicking at the air.
A gust of wind like a cyclone passed over Wataru’s head. Even though he was lying down, Wataru closed his eyes and clung to the ground, feeling as though he might be lifted away at any moment. Then, just like that, it was over.
Fearfully, he opened his eyes and lifted his head to find everything around him in darkness.
From someplace far away, beyond the tarps, outside the haunted building, an intersection away, he heard someone gunning a car engine.
Then a flashlight clicked on only a few feet away from his hand. The bright light hurt his eyes. A hand touched him on the shoulder.
“You all right?”
It was Mitsuru. His face looked terrible. His lip was cut. A line of blood trickled from his right nostril. Yet he moved smoothly and competently, helping Wataru up.
Wataru sat up, and suddenly felt quite dizzy. Then he was lurching backward, sticking out his arms to catch himself. Every bone in his body ached, but the sensation of pain seemed somehow distant, like his body wasn’t entirely his own.
Beside him, Mitsuru sat on one knee, rubbing a fist below his nose.
“Wh-where’d they go?” Wataru managed to ask. There was an unfamiliar, acrid taste in his mouth. Maybe it was blood.
“They?” echoed Mitsuru, raising an eyebrow.
“Kenji…and his idiot friends,” Wataru said, looking up at him. He felt dizzy again, and his vision blurred. He tried to read Mitsuru’s expression, but he couldn’t get his eyes to focus.
“They went bye-bye. Hard,” he said with a wry grin. “Can you stand?”
Wataru’s legs felt like rubber. Still, he tried to get up. His sneakers scraped uselessly at the ground.
“What happened to them?” he asked again. “Where did they go? What was that just now? That creature—the dark woman.”
Somehow it all felt unreal. He heard himself saying things he