novelraw Chapter 408: Mikhail (6k)
Chapter 408: Mikhail (6k)
An unconscious Asuka Karasawa felt like she had a very, very deep dream.
In the dream, the scent of Buddhist incense, to which she seemed to have grown accustomed for a long time, permeated the tip of her nose. Wearing a black girls' high school uniform, she knelt with a somewhat vacant gaze in an antique-looking room.
"Dong! Dong! Dong!"
Beside her ears, the light tapping of a wooden fish came from outside the room. Accompanied by the peace-inducing burning incense, it was as if she finally regained a bit of her senses. Yet, she remained in a daze, kneeling beside a paper-pasted wooden sliding door. In front of her sat a compact table, and lying beside the table was her open, completely empty schoolbag.
Scattered on the wooden table were the homework assignments handed out by her teachers. If it were other high school girls, they would definitely be hanging out with friends in clubs or strolling outside, finishing their homework along the way. However, Asuka Karasawa hadn't joined any clubs. If nothing unexpected occurred, she would return to her home—a temple called "Senju Temple" in the suburbs of Kyoto—as soon as school ended in the afternoon.
"Dong! Dong! Dong!"
Asuka Karasawa sat blankly in place. The sound of the wooden fish beside her ears continuously beat with an unchanging, eternal tone. Continuously... continuously beating, neither fast nor slow.
Is dad performing a Buddhist service?
"Thus have I heard: At one time, the Buddha was in Shravasti at the Jeta Grove, in the Garden of the Benefactor of Orphans and the Solitary..."
"At that time, the elder Subhuti was amidst the great assembly...""..."
From beyond the tightly closed sliding door beside Asuka Karasawa, the chanting of Buddhist scriptures by a gentle, loud male voice could be heard from afar. Ever since Asuka Karasawa returned to Kyoto from her mother's place in Tokyo two years ago, she had heard her father chanting scriptures and striking the wooden fish every day. To Asuka Karasawa, who had grown up living with her mother since childhood, this was indeed a troublesome matter.
I don't seem to be doing my homework...
What am I doing?
In her dream, she felt her consciousness was incomparably heavy. Even the action of lowering her head to look at the wooden table was terrifyingly slow. Only after several seconds passed did she finally see the scattered homework on the table. However, resting open upon that homework was a Buddhist scripture. The text on it was entirely Japanese hand-copied by her father; merely looking at it gave Asuka Karasawa a headache.
Her academic performance was very poor, and she had an unsociable personality, basically having no friends...
What am I doing?
She seemingly wasn't... reading the Buddhist scripture.
Why would I be reading the Buddhist scripture?
I hate these things the most. Every time I hear it, I feel annoyed. It's almost the 21st century, yet he's still acting like an old antique chanting scriptures and being a monk...
This is truly too strange.
Then, what exactly am I doing?
"Dong! Dong! Dong!"
Outside the door, the incessant sound of the wooden fish continued to ring out. Asuka Karasawa's sluggish consciousness slowly raised her head from this spot. She then saw that not far ahead of her on the tatami mat, there was a small television placed there. The television was currently broadcasting the anime "Neon Genesis Evangelion" produced by TV Tokyo...
"The injured pride, I will return it tenfold!"
Looking at the beautiful appearance of the female lead wearing a tight red combat suit on the television, her signature line was also heard crystal clear beside her ears. Only then did Asuka Karasawa unconsciously snap out of her daze.
That female lead seems to have the exact same name as me...
Right, I seem to be watching anime.
I am watching anime...
"Dong! Dong! Dong!"
"The Buddha said, 'Excellent, excellent! Subhuti! Just as you have said, the Tathagata is deeply mindful of the bodhisattvas and skillfully entrusts the bodhisattvas...'"
The sound of the wooden fish continued endlessly outside the hall, and the sliding door of the room remained tightly shut. On the small television in front of her, the scene of the anime protagonist who shared her name also kept repeating on loop...
Asuka Karasawa tilted her head blankly, still kneeling in place like a statue, completely motionless.
"Ugh... my head hurts so much..."
Asuka Karasawa clutched her head very uncomfortably, as if she had suffered some heavy blow there. She rubbed her eyes, and then with difficulty, saw a blurry silhouette in front of her.
"You're awake, little girl?"
"Mr. Gou Wen...?"
"Mm, looks like you're mostly lucid. You were hit earlier by the shockwave from Angel Michael forging a Gospel Relic. Even though you bumped your head, since you're just an ordinary human girl, this is already the sole misfortune amidst immense fortune. How do you feel now?"
"Eh? I have a slight headache... and just now, it feels like I had a dream."
"A dream?"
"Ah, but it's fine now. Thank you. Where's Mr. Fisher?"
Asuka Karasawa's consciousness grew increasingly clearer. She rubbed her head and sat up, discovering she was lying on the floor of a spacious room with the Whale-kin Gou Wen squatting beside her. Hearing her question, Gou Wen smiled helplessly and puckered his lips toward a direction, saying,
"Him? His expression has been sour over there for a while..."
Following the direction Gou Wen indicated, Asuka Karasawa saw Fisher sitting by the window in the room with his arms crossed and an icy expression. His handsome face was covered in bruises, looking like he also sustained quite a bit of injury in the previous shockwave.
But strangely, Gou Wen looked completely unharmed.
Asuka Karasawa expressed her query to Gou Wen, but he merely shook his head and explained,
"Originally, he wouldn't have been hurt either. But who told him to meddle in other people's business and go pull on that Angel Helaire... Alright, I've already treated your wounds somewhat; it shouldn't be anything major. We've all just been waiting for you to wake up."
"Eh? Waiting for me?"
"Yeah, you're a Transferred Person, and you come from the same world as that gentleman. We wanted to talk to him earlier, but he seemed to not trust us one bit, saying he wouldn't talk until you woke up."
"I see... Oh right, it seems we saw a Russian person just now."
Asuka Karasawa immediately sat up. Fisher also rubbed the wounds on his face, walking over from the window and saying to Asuka Karasawa,
"Angel Michael is still forging something, so it's very difficult for any of us to get close. That guy is watching from below, waiting to call him once Michael finishes forging... That Transferred Person isn't simple. This entire building was given to him by Michael. He seems to be helping Michael forge something. Unfortunately, he has completely zero desire to converse with us. We can only rely on you."
Yes, ever since being stealthily attacked by Helaire just then, Fisher's form of address for her changed from the original "Angel Helaire" to "that guy." Of course, this was only in private. After all, they were still on the Sanctuary's territory, not to mention Helaire was a Mythical Species with a significantly higher Tier than them.
"Alright, no problem!"
Hearing this, Asuka Karasawa immediately nodded her head, feeling somewhat excited in her heart for some unknown reason. Ever since she transmigrated to this world, she had practically been zero help. Luckily, Fisher and Gou Wen had been helping her all along. Perhaps she was just an ordinary high school girl, but she still understood the basic principle of returning favors. Helping them communicate with the Transferred Person was probably one of the very few things she could assist with.
Moreover, she also somewhat wanted to talk to the other party. Though perhaps just a few days ago they were merely two people from different nations who had never met before, arriving here, they could probably be considered "compatriots of Earth."
She took a deep breath and looked around, only to discover in surprise that there were quite a few extremely complex angel tools of unknown purpose placed inside this room. Furthermore, on tables scattered about were many scattered components and devices. And this was the second-floor room where that Russian man had stood earlier.
Gou Wen pointed deep into the room toward Asuka Karasawa. Asuka Karasawa walked a long distance in that direction before finally noticing another smaller room in the corner of this spacious room. This room had a bed laid out, seemingly the private resting area for that Russian man.
At this moment, he was squatting beside the bed, single-handedly fiddling with a pile of weird parts scattered on the ground. Hearing Asuka Karasawa's footsteps behind him, he didn't even turn his head, merely speaking in Russian to Asuka Karasawa,
"Are you alright? The strength of many creatures here exceeds human imagination. Since you are still a 【Pure Human】, not being dead is already quite good. 【Mikhail】, that is my name; what about you? Are you the daughter from Mitsui Corporation or Guard Corporation? Your entirely Pure Human body is simply too obvious."
Neither Fisher nor Gou Wen understood what the other party was talking about, so they both looked at Asuka Karasawa. However, they found the confusion on the young girl's face was even thicker than theirs, seemingly completely clueless as to what nonsense the other party was spouting.
"N-no, um... Mr. Mikhail, my name is Asuka Karasawa, just an ordinary Japanese high school student from Kyoto. You... I completely don't understand what you're saying... Guard... Pure Human or whatever..."
Mikhail's action of fiddling with the parts froze slightly. With his only remaining right hand, he set down the pitch-black strange part he held. Then, he slowly turned his head round and scanned the Asuka Karasawa before him up and down with his single eye. Suddenly, he asked,
"What year is it for you?"
"Eh? This year, in this world? I don't know either, I also just arrived a moment ago..."
"I'm asking for the time in the world you came from."
"Oh, 1996..."
Mikhail's expression finally revealed a hint of visible astonishment. Subsequently, the corners of his mouth curled into a mocking smile, and he turned back to fiddle with the parts at his feet.
"So that's how it is. Then your luck is pretty good, living in a relatively decent, good era. So, are these two your friends as well?"
"It's not a good era at all..."
Hearing this, Asuka Karasawa's face darkened slightly as she muttered in a low voice. However, Mikhail chuckled and said,
"That was indeed a good era. At least you hadn't experienced nuclear war yet, nor experienced how those mega-corporations snatched everything away and used humans as cogs and scrap materials. In people's hearts, hope outweighed despair most of the time... Didn't you just ask me what a Pure Human is? A Pure Human is an unadulterated human who has never had any cybernetic prosthetic body implanted. Complete humans like you."
"Eh?"
Mikhail's single eye glanced at the wall nearby. Following his gaze, Asuka Karasawa and Fisher both looked over, only to realize that resting on the floor beside the edge of his bed was a moderately-sized workbench. Placed atop it were a few oddly shaped prosthetic arms, mechanic spines, and eyeballs...
Which seemed to exactly correspond to the missing parts on the body of this weird man before their eyes who called himself "Mikhail."
Gou Wen narrowed his eyes, sweeping his gaze across the various cybernetics on the wall before turning his head back and carefully observing the person before him, as if seeing him for the first time. Then, with considerable astonishment, he said to the Fisher beside him,
"Hiss... Mr. Fisher, this guy isn't just missing a hand or an eye. His respiratory rate and metabolic rate are both wrong, and other organs inside his body have been replaced, highly likely the lungs. Not only that, his skeletal proportions are wrong as well, unless he was born deformed..."
Mikhail turned his head back to look at Asuka Karasawa, a glint of blue light shining in his single eye.
"I come from the year 2156... A New Russia entirely controlled by a weapons corporation named 【Novosibirsk Wind】. In that era, people had to implant all sorts of cheap, illegal cybernetic prosthetic bodies in exchange for precious job opportunities, even including many minors whose bodies hadn't fully developed. You should be able to imagine the twisted, agonizing visage when their original bodies began developing, with flesh and cybernetics intertwining and rejecting each other."
"And even if you ignore the rejection reaction between the human body and the cybernetics, the implanted cybernetics would corrode human nerves bone-deep like a virus. With every activation and use, their coldness would ultimately seep through a person's thoughts until they're driven completely mad..."
"But even so, the reward most people desperately fight tooth and nail for is merely enough to scrape by. Organ trafficking, drugs, turf wars—these play out every single day in a world entirely commercialized by corporations, taking away batch after batch of lives as easily as cutting grass or pulling out screws. In comparison to this, does the Japanese society that just suffered the bursting of the economic bubble look like a paradise?"
Asuka Karasawa opened his mouth, seeming to have once again encountered a matter that breached the limits of her life experience, leaving her completely speechless no matter what. She just pursed her lips and very sincerely uttered an "I'm sorry." However, Mikhail shook his head and continued,
"I don't mean to blame you, nor do you need to apologize for this. In any case, talking about our original worlds is basically pointless now. I just didn't expect to meet a human from Earth here as well... even if you're a bit too ancient."
Asuka Karasawa would never have imagined the word "ancient" being applied to her. But considering the gentleman before her was from a world over a hundred years in the future... hey, wait.
"Wait, Mr. Mikhail... is it possible that our worlds are actually not the same one, and it might be a parallel world or something."
"It's possible, though probing into that is unnecessary. I can understand the language you're speaking, and you also know about the economic bubble I mentioned earlier. Even if there might truly be some differences, I can't be bothered to investigate them... Also, concerning these two..."
Mikhail raised his eyebrows and looked at Fisher and Gou Wen behind Asuka Karasawa, the distrust practically written on his face. Seeing this, Asuka Karasawa immediately opened her mouth and said,
"These two are Mr. Fisher and Mr. Gou Wen. Although they are people from this world, they've also been captured by the angels and are standing together with us. Especially Mr. Fisher, he has a certain understanding of our world. They are all good people."
"...Let's hope so."
Mikhail withdrew his scrutinizing gaze from Fisher and the other and began lowering his head to mess with the parts in his hands again. Asuka Karasawa was fresh out of words. Fiddling with her fingers, she thought for a long time but failed to squeeze out a single syllable. Fortunately, Fisher beside her had beforehand glanced at the weird contraptions outside, and asked Mikhail,
"Mr. Mikhail, the things outside probably aren't the masterpieces of angels, right?"
"Mm, those are all technologies from our world. I don't possess the exaggerated power of the angels to even utilize the sun to forge items... But that angel named Michael is deeply fascinated by technology, any technology, which is why he kept me around to replicate some items for him in exchange for my eventual freedom. It's just that the things you see outside aren't finished products, but simple machine tools built for manufacturing. It took me half a year just to build these things, and Michael never rushed me, only occasionally coming over to take a look."
Hearing this, Asuka Karasawa looked at Fisher in surprise and said,
"From the looks of it... that Angel Michael doesn't seem to be as bad as the other angels claim him to be?"
Gou Wen smiled and shook his head, but didn't speak. It was Fisher who looked at Asuka Karasawa and explained,
"Good and bad don't apply to angels. Even Sariel and the others who loathe Michael don't do so on the grounds that he's 'bad'. As for why he is so tolerant toward Mikhail and us, it's entirely due to his insolence. He simply doesn't put us in his eyes at all; our lives and deaths inherently mean nothing to them."
Gou Wen picked up Fisher's train of thought and added,
"Unlike the Elves who worship 'Myriad Destinies' and the World Tree, angels worship the creation that resembles merging with the Dao and the Chain of Heaven. This causes them to show profound indifference to essentially all other living beings."
Hearing Gou Wen's words, Fisher suddenly thought that since Chain of Heaven, the World Tree, and Fafnir should all be children of the little hydra Ramastia, why would each of them possess characteristics leaning towards other gods?
The phoenixes' ability to foresee the future was originally gained from gazing upon the World Tree, and its roots also possessed the ability to distort space. This already proved that the World Tree was intrinsically linked with the God of Fate, Anabatos. As for the angels' intense love for forging, it seemed to be connected to the legendary god of creation and matter, Ouyun.
Fisher stroked his chin, still deep in thought. Meanwhile, Asuka Karasawa looked at Mikhail's back as he lowered his head to single-handedly fiddle with the parts, and suddenly failed to control herself from asking,
"Um, Mr. Mikhail. If the time comes when you gain your freedom and can leave the angels, what are you going to do next?"
Perhaps this question was also whatever she wanted to ask herself. Even though she was now forcibly swept into this whirlpool of survival, deep down, she was ultimately lost.
Suddenly coming from a familiar world to a dangerous, entirely alien world. It was fine when she didn't think about it, but once she did, thinking of the world where she vanished, where her father still lived... He would definitely be worried if she was gone...
Hearing this, Mikhail froze slightly, casting a mocking smile at Asuka Karasawa and said,
"You haven't even resolved the immediate matter before you, and you can't even guarantee your own life a hundred percent, yet you're already starting to ponder over the distant future?"
"...I'm sorry."
Asuka Karasawa immediately apologized again, shrinking back like a little child being scolded by an elder.
Mikhail was still playing with the parts on the ground, but if one looked closely, they would realize he was merely endlessly repeating the same meaningless action.
After a long silence, he didn't turn his head, merely lowering it and saying,
"I will try to find a path back..."
"...Eh?"
Asuka Karasawa hadn't expected the other party to suddenly answer her. Overjoyed upon hearing this, she looked up in surprise, and only then smiled and said,
"I thought... after all, Mr. Mikhail said 2156 is terrible, terrible. I thought you wouldn't want to go back."
"Heh, I actually don't want to... But you know, there are still people over there worrying about me and waiting for me, plus some promises I made that I haven't fulfilled. Therefore, if there's a chance, I might still go back."
Looking at Mikhail's back, Fisher suddenly felt a sense of familiarity.
It felt as if he had seen heavily similar words in Caleb Uz's Soul Completion Handbook.
It wasn't ridicule, because considering it from another perspective, if Fisher suddenly appeared in another world, the thought of someone still waiting for him and longing for him over there would probably make him want to return here as well.
"Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap! Clap!"
Right amidst this extremely quiet, contemplative atmosphere, a round of crisp applause suddenly rang out from behind them, scaring Asuka Karasawa so badly she almost jumped in the air. Gou Wen raised an eyebrow and turned to look with Mikhail. When Fisher turned back, his face was instantly covered in black lines.
Behind them, that utterly beautiful angel with short golden curls, her entire body flickering with a faint glimmer, was deeply touched, wiping the moisture from the corners of her eyes while simultaneously clapping. Choking with emotion, she said,
"Well said, this truly touched me too much... The prayers of guests from a foreign land yearning to return home, this heartwarming sensation of everyone thinking together truly makes one reluctant to interrupt... I am far too deeply moved. Everyone, rest assured! I will definitely help you to the very end!"
"...When did you arrive?"
Seeing weeping Helaire shedding tears before their eyes, everyone was instantly speechless. It was Fisher who was the first to not hold back from speaking, asking Helaire this question.
The moment she heard Fisher's query, Helaire's weeping vanished without a trace, and her flawless face was instantly covered with that familiar smile once again. Tapping her chin, she beamed and said,
"Oh, right when you first started talking... It's fine, it's not like it's some shameful secret. I won't tell anyone else either. Perhaps I might even offer a bit of friendly advice for your goals, if you don't mind. This way, you gained an understanding of each other, and I witnessed such an interesting event. Isn't this a win-win?"
Fisher sighed, looking at Helaire and asking,
"So, you came up originally to...?"
"Ah, about that..."
Helaire's smile gradually faded. Pointing outside towards the direction below, she looked at Fisher and said,
"Lord Michael has finally freed up some time. Next, he will activate the Sun Ring again, and during that time none of you will be able to stay in the entire Fifth Heaven. So he wants to meet you now, Fisher."