Lily the Silhouette

A certain month in 1909, Nagasaki City


"You should stay away from me."

I wonder how many times I have said these words.

I was aware of this city. This strange city.

Unlike Third Kyoto City, there were not so many tall towers decorated with oriental architectural styles, and there are no large human figures, but the black and heavy streets with the impression of steel floating above the sea as an island can be described in one word: strange.

Engine Dejima. A strange island at the southern end of Nagasaki City.

It's funny.

I don't know much about Lily other than her name.

It was weird, I thought.

Somewhere, outside of my head, there may be some reference point. Maybe there's enough knowledge or experience to see things and decide whether they're decent or not. I try to imagine an external storage device attached to a computing machine, but it doesn't feel right.

You can't add a machine to a human being.

I don't know. Really?

Maybe there is a city somewhere in the world that connects living things with machines. I'm trying to imagine. It would be a very strange, strange, oh-so-strange city...I think.

There are so many strange things.

Everywhere you go, it was a city full of Engines and smoke.

Disgusting people who show up everywhere you go and talk to you.

It's as if my head is empty. And my shadow...

And then I meet this creature, an indeterminate shape shimmering dimly in the dark creeping about. It's not an insect. It's not a dog, not a cat, not something I can understand. Before I knew it, it was brushing up against my feet, purring sadly when I tried to move away.

"It's too dangerous to get close."

I can only whisper a warning to the creatures beneath my feet.

It's not safe there. It's no good.

Because I have a demon behind me.

Beneath my feet.

In the soles of my shoes.

In the shadows leading from the ground to the depths, there is a presence in the shadows that can only be described as a demon. Yes. It's a good thing to be cautious because that bright-eyed fellow in the dark-colored uniform will easily emerge and try to do everything in a hurry.

Compared to that, the wriggling creature flickering by my feet wasn't scary at all...

~   ~   ~

Who am I? Where do I come from?

I don't know.

The next thing I knew, I was in Third Kyoto City and I was on a steam bus. I bought a ticket with what little money I had in my coat, got on the bus without knowing where I was going, and looked out from my seat near the window for a long time. An empty bus. In the endless bus ride, oh, I was probably being talked to before I knew it.

"A Cracking Being. So you really do exist in the Far East."

I don't remember it well now.

Was it a Collecter from Wunderkammer?

Or a Synthetic Human from the Moon Beast?

Or was it a Blue Samurai from the Living Party?

Or a ninja from the Akushinkage?

"I'm glad I found you. This country hasn't taken root yet, and thanks to Onishigo's grand self-determination, the influence of the Society is small here. That said, there are some dangerous people like the Living Party, so it's really fortunate that we met."

Strange people pop up everywhere you go.

They always have complicated words to say.

They don't give me a straight answer when I ask them about it, and most of the time they just say what they want to say, which is really annoying to me. But that's okay. I'm not interested in them to begin with, so I don't mind.

Even if it were explained to me in detail, it wasn't something understandable that I could comprehend. 

I am Lily, the empty-minded Lily.

They talk to me, they try to touch me. I wish that talking to them was all I had to do, but that's not enough to satisfy them, so they make me feel terrible. No, it's not me. They're always the ones who hurt me, grabbing me by the shoulders, arms, sometimes even my torso with one hand--yes, some pale-skinned Synthetic Humans have large, big hands, so I get caught in their grasp.

But I never really got dragged away.

The demon protects me.

The demon tears them apart.

I would try to scream, "Don't kill me, don't kill me, don't kill me!" when the demon comes out. Sometimes I do it with a voice that rests on my tongue and comes out of my lips, and sometimes, when I can't speak properly, I do it like this, in my head, or in my chest, or whatever it is, in a voice that isn't sound. If you're on a steam bus and you're being attacked, you can scream properly, but if you get off the bus in Kobe City, you're taken to a place like the Moon Beast secret base, and after wrapping your body around a number of rubber-tube arms, they put something in your mouth, and so on... Because then you can't scream normally. Yeah, it was really close. That time was really close. The demon almost cut us all to pieces.

So far, I've managed to hold it off just in the nick of time, so I've been able to continue my journey I thought.

From Third Kyoto City, through the glamorous Kobe City, the Hiroshima citadel to Nagasaki City via the Simonoseki Steel Bridge.


---I have to head south.


Since when?

Maybe it was hearing from that Nukenin in Hiroshima that gave me this kind of purpose. It was a woman, a rare female ninja--a kunoichi or something like that, with long, tight black hair tucked behind her neck, who told me several times that she had a very important mission. I remember that she was unusual among the people who approached me in that she did not try to drag me away, but rather acted as if she was trying to protect me from the hands of the Blue Samurai and the Collectors.

"I have a job to do, just as you have to go to Ryuukyu. Others may sneer at me, but at least this is worth risking my life for."

"Your life?"

"My life."

No, I do not think that's what life is about.

I told her this.

I don't think she understands it. Not that I could see her. I did not know if she was alive or dead, but I didn't want to think about it because the thought of her dead made me feel very uncomfortable and hazy in my chest. No, I try not to think about it.

Nonetheless, I started to go down south since.

Ryukyu. Ryukyu...

It was the name of an island in the far south of this country.

What kind of place was it?

I didn't know what kind of island was it, or whether it was hot or cold.

But I want to go there. I have to go there.

From the moment I heard the name of the island, that was my destination.

"...Ryukyu. Do you know how to get there?"

I try this out by asking a strange creature that brushed by my feet in an alleyway in Nagasaki City's Dejima Island, but I don't get an answer. I don't think I'll get an answer, but it's no good. I don't have a ticket for the next steam bus anyway, and I don't have any money, and there's no way I'm going to have my own Steam car or carriage, so my trip was actually a dead end.

So what can I do?

What can I do to resume my journey?

I don't think I'll have as much luck as I had at Kobe and Hiroshima, and the Collectors and Synthetic Humans that keep popping up seem to be strangely absent since I entered Nagasaki City. I was about to conveniently think that someone kind could have gotten rid of them before I knew it, but I didn't think so. There are not many people who would try to protect me like that woman, the Kunoichi. According to my not-so-long life experience, the time between Third Kyoto City and here, I have more enemies than allies. A lot of them. So many.

"You should not stay here, Silhouette. You must leave"

"Quiet."

I coughed my voice to the sound that wasn't a voice echoing from beneath my feet.

Not to a vaguely glowing creature, but to a man's voice echoing from the soles of my feet, beneath my shoes, from the depths of the shadows---

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

A certain month in 1909, Detroit City.

It was the first time seeing action.

A hallucination. A dream.

Or is it still just a trivial matter to be recorded as a malfunction, a modest cognitive abnormality occurring in the extra regions of the pseudo-brain's interpersonal conversation program?

Even this emotion. My body, made of chrome, continues to act in battle with precision. The activation of the body's built-in enhanced reflexes accelerates my brain circuitry and nervous system throughout my body, and in conjunction with the on-board technical Engines, I was able to achieve perfect ultra-high speed operation. To be specific, it's past 3 a.m. on Detroit City Boulevard, wielding a large-caliber handgun that boasts more power and performance than any other modern rapid-fire pistol in the world, and I'm shooting. Shooting. Shooting. Shooting.

Specially armed bullets fired in three-point bursts shatter the heart of a prototype Special Attack Vehicle illegally manufactured and out of control by the Ford Motor Company's affiliate, a heavy machine weapon that violates a total of seven federal and state laws while attempting to launch an attack on me.

"This is the Detroit Police Department."

A synthetic voice rang out from me.

"Resistance is useless. Drop your weapons and surrender. You--"

What is this intent of mine?

Really, it's nothing more than a margin of error? My mechanic, a female Scholar, never stopped expressing her romanticism, and neither did my trusted colleagues in the police force. I was a machine, a piece of equipment provided to the Detroit Police Department by the Ford Motor Company, but I, and my fellow officers, had a different perception. Namely.

"You piece of shit."

Yes, just like a bloody policeman himself!

Like a man with an overflowing sense of righteousness to crush evil, I focus my attention strongly on my enemy, hurling fluent abuses at him, shaped by a synthetic voice. Execution of the function. No. Execution of a function. Affirmation. Mission, this would certainly be a mission, but I should still say this in this way. I will fight crime with violence for what I perceive to be a mission.

I am an Engine Cop in Detroit.

I covered my face with a chrome visor--

A guardian of the law and citizens.

Since I didn't have a running function, I couldn't move at high speed so I was inferior to combat vehicles with not only firepower but also maneuverability, but this is just a matter of looking at the ratio of performance on the type record. Close range, close range shooting from clinging to a vehicle's blind spot. Shooting. Firing. I slam my right steel fist into his visual sensors to stop the rampaging combat vehicle, crushing the surrounding vehicles and structures with heavy weapons while being shot through the center of the vehicle. The blow damages the manipulator function of my fingers, but what the hell, I don't care. Fist strike. Fist strike. Fist strike. Fist strike. Fist strike with blue light. The part of him that should be called "the head," which has a visual sensor, shatters. Something is seen in the back.

"I see. Let's correct that."

Pumping up from my right wrist, the connector which connects to a computing machine, which looks like a sharp, wild needle, was threw in with those words. My own words. The words of a guardian.

"You aren't a piece of junk. No, you're just a psycho."

The second center that exists in the depths of the crushed vehicle's "head" while lightly connecting the ultra-small hate bullets that are fired at me while sticking to the back of the fighting vehicle by tilting the head--I forcefully thrust the connector into the human brain covered with ultra-hard bulletproof glass. To relieve it. To kill it. To put a stop to it.

A weapon in which the nervous system of a brain-dead person, like me, was used.

It's ironic, but I didn't feel any of it.

"Successfully neutralized the current offender. Mission accomplished!"

In the distance, a fellow black policeman, wounded by a runaway vehicle and lying on the ground, cheered. Tonight we won again. The unforgivable crime of hurting civilians. To the malice of the city of Detroit, which continues to flood unabated at the foot of the great engine building towers.

I look up at the sky.

Tonight, there was no lone subway car hanging in the sky.

~  ~  ~

"Good night. Sleep well. I wonder what you will dream tonight, Engine Cop."

"I'm not so sure about that."

"It's still amazing. The pseudo-brain can dream."

"It's fine if you don't believe me."

"No, I believe. I believe in mathematics and Engines and the flying fortress theory, but I believe in miracles as much as I believe in their existence. If you are made in the image of a person and dream like a person, then it must have a meaning."

"That's not scientific, Doctor."

I was in the Detroit City Police Headquarters Building.

I cough as I lay on my private bed in a private room filled with Engine machine equipment. I haven't known the female Scholar in white for very long, but still, she's been maintaining it from my first activation to the present. According to my records, she is one of my designers, so she is perhaps the equivalent of my mother in my eyes?

When I mentioned this to her earlier, she broke into a puzzled look on her face, still in her twenties in terms of appearance. I'm sure that was a look of affirmation.

"Oh, my goodness. You could at least say that you have the guts to accept exceptions and anomalies."

"It was worth a shot."

"You're so mean."

She brushed her blonde hair out of her ears and--

"By the way, I have to ask. Are you sure you only dream when you're in a standby state, connected to the adjustment bed, while you're out of commission?"

"...yes."

I wonder if she noticed in a moment.

She is like my mother.

The fact that she could detect the abnormal situation of a child of steel so quickly.

That's right, I had a dream during the last battle as well. It's the first time I've seen it in combat, and although I couldn't record the information to the various on-board computational organs, my consciousness, which seems to reside in the excess area of my pseudo-brain, is accurately remembered. I had a dream of a girl.

It was a continuation of a dream I usually have.

A girl who is being chased by someone every day...

She had a traveling companion.

The one beneath her feet. Not a shadow that occasionally stretches up to protect her and tear apart her adversaries, but a small creature that cuddles up and trembles with a faint glow. It is like an illusion of a non-corporeal entity, but I clearly recognize it as a living thing. It is breathing. Warm and pulsating with life. Different from me. It may be different from humans and the animals that are widely known today, but it is still a living thing.

It was like a bird, which is invisible to ordinary people. It had a beak. It had claws.

A little bird of radiance that has lost its wings in the sky.

According to a search of the third group of information archives, which is always connected to the computing function of my knowledge, I can find a similar figure in the drawing of some kind of fairy or demon from the Far East, which is a coincidence, I guess.

As soon as it met her, the girl began to talk to the little bird a lot.

Amid the battle, I was greatly under the illusion that it was me.

That is to say, I was the little bird of radiance.

It was a strange dream.

Whereas yesterday's dream was supposed to be a silent, frightening image, today's dream was as if I had gained the perspective of one of the characters.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

A certain month in 1909, a certain place in Hakata


It was a miracle of luck that we were able to attract the former Satsuma clan members.

It is not only that, but also the fact that the Living Party with the powerful Blue Samurai refused to cooperate and work together any further with us, so we are extremely limited in our options, and many said that we would have to give up on this white lily, the exotic boy or girl who shakes the code name of "Shirayuri". It's a different story if the former Satsuma clan members can be used as pawns.

In addition, they were pariots who worked in the entourage of Osaigo.

It was perfect.

The ultimate goal is to secure the Shirayuri. But...

Given the circumstances, murder is inevitable.

Although we have not been able to measure the value of the Shirayuri, we should also consider the fact that it could lead to a crippling blow to our organization if it were to fall into the hands of another organization that already possesses its true value.

Therefore, the new pawns should be equipped with the best weapons.

Although it is one of the less powerful weapons left behind by the Society that had been active behind the scenes in Britain before the East and West split, it is said to be a very effective weapon for attacking metaphysical beings.

There is no exact record of this weapon, but it can be found at...

In this case, we'll just have to believe the legend that he played a role in the fall of the Mobile Fortress Goryokaku.

~  ~  ~

(Excerpted from the records of a secret organization)

"A fantasy?"

"Yes. I am the princess of fantasy."

"We should really about this. What will you say about Miyamoto Musashi, the one who killed Osakabehime?"

"Musashi? Fuu, so I need two swords then?"

"No need. A single blade is enough."

~  ~  ~

1909, Nagasaki City

It happened in a flash.

Early in the morning, I was walking through the gray dew mixed with fog and smoke, rolling my eyes with hunger, when I wandered near the wharf of Nagasaki City, and a very nice smell wafted into the air. As my stomach made an embarrassing chuckling sound, my eyes met the eyes of a man driving a self-propelled Engine stall. I was a little scared and was about to walk right past him, but he called out to me...and treated me to a glass of freshly made Nagasaki noodles...

The hot soup warmed me up.

I was in a happy mood.

But then.

Suddenly, a muscular-looking man dressed in Far Eastern garb attacked me with a katana, and I didn't have time to blink. A scream that was like that of a loud bird was cried out as the man jumped in front of me at great speeds. So completely caught off guard, I couldn't scream back.

No voice escaped my throat, nor did it escape from my heart or head.


---A shadow stretched out from the bottom of my shoes and rose up.


The demon who tore everything in half.

Revealing its form.

It manifested.

A tall, hat-wearing, bright-eyed demon.

"...slow."

The words were slow in reaching my ears.

The shadow with a suspicious mass immediately cut off the man's katana. A high-pitched sound may have been heard almost simultaneously with the words. I thought the man's body was going to be cut in half as it was, but I gasped and bit my back teeth to prepare myself, but no, it didn't come that way.

No, I'm not dead. He was not dead. No one is.

"Don't cry, human."

I know why.

These words, echoing from the shadow, could be heard only by me.

"...A men'you? It's the divine might of the Shirayuri's Ara-Mitama!"

The man coughed something and quickly turned himself around and disappeared into the morning gray of Nagasaki City. When I looked at the man in the stall, I had no choice but to look at him with a very pale face and left.

I troubled the old man who was kind to me.

I was ashamed and angry about it, and I--

He was thinking only of himself.

Maybe he was also angry that I hadn't eaten my Nagasaki noodles until the end. Maybe it was the shadow that wanted to cut through everything and kill someone right away, or maybe it was the demon that was loosening up because it hadn't killed anyone when I was slow to stop it. Whatever it was, I was so busy thinking and thinking about myself that I didn't notice any of the other things that mattered.

So.

So.

The fact that the little creature that had been cuddling at my feet all night, the one that looked like a wingless bird on closer inspection, was trembling weakly, the faint glow about to fade away--

If anything else, I was oblivious.

"Little birdie..."

Behind a warehouse near a landing, I pick up the little bird in my arms.

Is he shivering from the cold?

No, no, no!

It had a much, much worse reaction. It was convulsing.

"Why..."

"Looks like that samurai from before had a piece of a Green Stone"

"I don't know," I shook my head. "I have to go see a doctor."

"There is no human doctor that will be able to see it"

"Shut up."

I shook my head many times.

Shut up. Shut up. Shut up.

Everything you say is a lie. You usually just freak out and ignore my words!

"It is a radiant shadow that descended on the earth. Its faint light is invisible to the human eye, and it has reached the point of being a fading illusion."

What?

What are you talking about? Speak up so I can know!

"Then I will say this. I will not leave you, even if I am shattered..."

"...I, huh, what...?"

There was no reply.

But the little creature was trembling in my hand.

It was growing weaker and weaker.

"No."

I gave it a hug...


"Then you have no choice but to seek the Gold.
But you are a Silhouette. You can only dream, Lily the Silhouette.
For your wish will never come true."

(To Be Continued)