Chapter 104
Miyabe Kuniaki had spent his entire life being compared with his older brother.
By the time he was old enough to remember, his older brother was already loved by his classmates, who called him "Monster-kun."
He was called Monster-kun because he knew so much about monsters.
Monster-kun was good at drawing monsters. In class, he was always the class's monster specialist; in elementary school, he always got perfect scores on tests about "monsters." In middle school, he got perfect scores in "Monsters." In high school, he got perfect scores in Monster Studies.
On the margins of his university entrance exam answer sheet, he once wrote a column based on his own fieldwork and scored 110 out of 100, setting the highest score in history.
Until Kuniaki was in elementary school, his brother was his pride and joy.
This was around the time an article appeared in the local newspaper: "Middle School Student Scores Big! Discovers Cause of Fukurosuzume Disease!" Kuniaki proudly showed off his brother without reservation, puffing out his chest. "My big brother's amazing!" He was as proud as if it were his own achievement.
But once Kuniaki entered middle school, his brother began to weigh on him.
Kuniaki stopped being Kuniaki and became "Monster-kun's little brother."
Driven by his overflowing love of monsters, his brother became increasingly famous. It wasn't that he was working hard to appear in the media to become famous. If anything, his popularity temporarily declined when he started wearing a kappa mask.
But his brother was so amazing that it more than made up for the bad impression left by that bizarre mask.
His brother was a demon in the first place. His future success was assured. On top of that, he pursued what he loved wholeheartedly and achieved results while still a student. There was no way he wouldn't become popular.
Kuniaki, on the other hand, was unremarkable.
He wasn't a demon or a Transcendent, just an ordinary human.
He had trained his magic power to 6K. That was on the high side, but not enough to brag about.
He was average at sports and reasonably good at schoolwork.
When he was in elementary school, he could laugh from the heart as he went to visit their grandfather in the countryside with his brother, carrying bug nets during summer vacation.
In middle school, he had to work at laughing.
Once he reached high school, even fake smiles became difficult.
Kuniaki was a reasonably capable person. If he built up steady, honest effort, he could achieve results.
But in the presence of his far-too-amazing brother, everything faded into the background.
"So you're really Monster-kun's little brother." "Did your big brother teach you?" "I want to talk to Monster-kun. Could you introduce me?" "I always wished I had an older brother like Monster-kun." "How much of what they say about Monster-kun is true?"
The teachers' and classmates' many innocent words, entirely free of malice, became sharp knives that stabbed Kuniaki over and over. They had no intention whatsoever of hurting him. That was what made it the most painful.
It was as though Kuniaki himself didn't exist, and the only value anyone could see in him was that he was "Monster-kun's little brother."
He almost wished they would let him hate them.
He could have flaunted and bragged about everything—being a demon, excelling at monster studies, overflowing with initiative, being famous—and looked down on Kuniaki.
If he had, Kuniaki could have hated and resented him, and denied everything.
His brother was always kind. When Kuniaki caught a cold, he canceled his fieldwork plans and nursed him. When Kuniaki got bad grades and had his allowance cut, his brother took him to the movies without telling their parents.
His considerate brother noticed the frustration Kuniaki was silently bottling up alone, and took off his mask at home, becoming not Monster-kun but simply Miyabe Masakuni.
Their parents never once compared him with his brother, either. They always looked at Kuniaki and tried to find the things he liked and was good at.
But the curse was a heavy one.
The warmth of his family alone couldn't block all the blades the people around him unknowingly thrust at him.
After much anguish, Kuniaki chose a career in livestock farming. It would have been better if he could have gone down a path completely different from his brother's, but ironically, Kuniaki too had an aptitude for monsters, much like his brother. He could have ignored that aptitude and pursued music or theater, but he also genuinely took pride in wanting to be "a little brother who wouldn't embarrass his big brother."
After graduating from university, Kuniaki found a job with Kuranomu, a company on Oshima, one of the islands of Tokyo Metropolis.
Kuranomu was a foreign-owned company, and its Oshima research facility was a place for safely studying monsters native to Japan.
Oshima was an isolated island far out at sea, more than twenty kilometers even from the nearest mainland, the Izu Peninsula.
Kuranomu had bought up all the land on the island, and everything from company housing to the store was under the company's control.
This precaution—to ensure that any problem would not spread beyond the island if something happened—paradoxically meant they were handling a problem serious enough to require such precautions.
Kuranomu was researching Class 1 monsters on Oshima.
It was illegal research.
Kuniaki, who had joined the company thinking it was merely a foreign-owned corporation, learned a year after joining why its nondisclosure requirements had been so unusually strict.
Tiamat, the Four-Headed Dragon. An unmistakable Class 1 monster, it slept in the crater of Mount Mihara at the center of Oshima.
It wasn't that a monster research facility had been established on Oshima. A monster research facility had been established on Oshima because Tiamat was there.
Tiamat could manipulate gravity. Gravitational anomalies were observed near the crater where Tiamat slept, and even the scales it shed retained the power to manipulate gravity.
If it awoke from its sleep, it would become a great calamity, but as long as it remained asleep, it was a vital research subject that could greatly benefit humanity. In fact, Tiamat's scales and blood, sent to the home country, had produced several technological breakthroughs.
Though he had been made to participate in illegal research, Kuniaki did his best to ignore his pangs of conscience.
Researching a Class 1 monster was not an opportunity one could get simply by wishing for it. Even his brother would weep with envy over a major undertaking like this.
If he surpassed his brother through this research, no one would ever call him "Monster-kun's little brother" again.
His brother would come to be known as "Miyabe Kuniaki's older brother."
Kuniaki rapidly distinguished himself among Kuranomu's researchers. He was granted access to important information, deepening his understanding of Tiamat, the Four-Headed Dragon.
Tiamat, a Class 1 monster considered the strongest species short of the Demon King, had fallen into a deep sleep and allowed humans to study it because of a fatal wound it had suffered long ago.
Oshima still held legends from the chaos immediately after the Gremlin Disaster, along with evidence to support them.
Long ago, a giant monster was born on Oshima. Oshima was the birthplace of the giant monster that turned Tokyo into a sea of fire and killed famous figures from history.
One day, Tiamat came from beyond the sea and attacked the giant monster. After a fierce battle that altered the terrain, the two fought to a draw, and Tiamat entered dormancy in the crater.
Having suffered a fatal wound, Tiamat was forced into a long sleep, while the less severely injured giant monster avoided fighting Tiamat a second time, left its homeland, and disappeared into the sea.
In other words, Tiamat's strength was comparable to the giant monster's.
Tiamat was the one that had suffered severe wounds, but it was also Tiamat that had won the territorial dispute.
Three stakes of magical metal had been driven deep into Tiamat's old wound, preventing it from fully recovering and awakening.
The research proceeded smoothly.
With his keen powers of observation and profound knowledge, Kuniaki became a favorite of the higher-ups, was entrusted with important duties, and rose rapidly through the ranks.
The change occurred one day in early summer.
It was hot from early morning. On this unusually early summer day, Kuniaki loosened his tie as he arrived at the research facility built in the crater area, and noticed that the Fukurosuzume kept in the entrance hall were acting restless.
They paced around their cage, busily putting nesting material into their pouches, then taking it out again.
Miyabe stopped, furrowing his brow as he watched the Fukurosuzume.
If an earthquake were about to strike, the Fukurosuzume would completely dismantle their nests. Could they simply be moving? No, this wasn't migration season.
As Miyabe pondered what could be happening, his direct superior called out to him, bringing him back to himself.
"Good morning, Miyabe-kun."
"Good morning, Dr. Ashizawa."
"What's the matter? Feeding time?"
"No. The Fukurosuzume are behaving strangely."
When he said that, Dr. Ashizawa stood beside Kuniaki and observed the Fukurosuzume.
After watching the restless Fukurosuzume for a while, Dr. Ashizawa extended a finger through the bars of the cage. The Fukurosuzume dutifully gave it one gentle nip before returning to moving nesting material in and out, and Dr. Ashizawa's expression grew grave.
"Something's going to happen. Not an earthquake. But something similar... Something on a large scale, accompanied by tremors—the kind with a precursor...!"
"An eruption?!"
"That's what I think, too. We need to warn the maintenance department."
Dr. Ashizawa and Kuniaki realized almost simultaneously what had caused the Fukurosuzume's abnormal behavior and hurried to deal with the situation.
A shrill alarm rang through the research facility, and the staff ran about in a panic. Before long, the ground began to rumble, and confusion turned to frenzy.
Amid shouts and orders, with the smell of scorched material and sulfur in the air, Kuniaki ran as Dr. Ashizawa ran ahead, pulling him along by the hand and clutching a folder of documents.
"Max out the Mamono Basami's output!"
"Agh, that's like throwing water on a hot stone!? Shut up and keep casting freezing magic—it's your job!"
"Tiamat's activating! The second and third watchtowers have collapsed!"
"Hey, Tiamat opened its eyes!? It's over! There's nothing we can do!"
"No evacuation order has been issued! Hold it down! Don't leave your posts! Don't run—don't run!"
With every passing moment, the color of despair deepened, and amid the rumbling of the volcanic activity, tremors from something enormous beginning to move shook the earth.
Turning his back on it all, Dr. Ashizawa reached the airport, shoved the documents at Kuniaki, stripped off his clothes, and began chanting.
"Play upon the rainbow; breathe fire, and even a lizard is a dragon!"
"Release heat and emotion, O bloodline of the clan!"
Dr. Ashizawa chanted the roundabout spells for dragon transformation and self-enhancement, transforming into a small dragon about one meter long.
There was no time to spare. A dazzling beam of light like golden flames twisting out of the crater shot into the sky, and the air vibrated from a metallic roar.
The crater collapsed. Cracks spread across the airport as well.
Before all of Oshima was reduced to nothing, Dr. Ashizawa took off with Kuniaki clinging to his legs.
Kuniaki barely managed to grab hold of the little dragon and rise into the sky, then looked back in terror.
The golden Four-Headed Dragon Tiamat emerged from the smoke-belching crater of Mount Mihara, spewing grotesque golden flames with a hair-raising roar and sending up a ghastly signal announcing its resurrection.
"Dr. Ashizawa! Where are you going?! We can't just leave Tiamat...!"
He shouted loudly enough to be heard over the howling wind, and Dr. Ashizawa shouted back.
"The Oshima research facility is finished! We're going to Tokyo!"
"Tokyo?! Why? What for?!"
"The Four-Headed Dragon Tiamat, famished after its long dormancy, will devour every living thing on Oshima in no time!
But Oshima alone won't satisfy its hunger!
The man-eating monster Tiamat will inevitably attack a densely populated area to sate its hunger!"
On hearing Dr. Ashizawa's prediction, Kuniaki went pale.
It wasn't that he had never considered Tiamat awakening.
But unconsciously, he had complacently assumed that "even in the worst case, the damage could be contained to Oshima."
Kuniaki tested the doctor's prediction against his own knowledge and experience, but frighteningly, he could find no grounds for a rebuttal.
It was true that Class 1 monsters were beings humans could deal with.
But if tens of thousands died before that could be accomplished, could it really be called dealing with the monster?
Those fleeing Oshima reached Tokyo in just under an hour.
After setting Kuniaki down at the wharf, Dr. Ashizawa repeated and stressed the plan they had discussed en route.
"I'll go straight to the Ministry of Defense! Miyabe-kun, you go to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Do whatever you can to control the information and make the necessary arrangements to keep the uproar to a minimum! If it becomes known that Tiamat came from the Oshima research facility, we're finished. I'm counting on you!"
"Yes!"
Kuniaki nodded, and Dr. Ashizawa hurriedly took off again.
There was no time even to see him off. Kuniaki immediately hailed a tiger taxi and told it to take him to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Riding on the back of a magical beast, Kuniaki looked out over Tokyo's cityscape.
He looked out over the peaceful city that would soon be transformed into a sea of fire and claim countless lives before Tiamat was defeated.
Kuniaki knew of the unprecedented devastation caused by the Class 1 monster that had once landed in Tokyo, the giant monster, only from textbooks.
But now he could vividly picture the hellscape.
The conscience he had kept buried began to throb painfully.
He should never have meddled with a Class 1 monster. He should have urged them to halt the research much earlier. He should have reported it. But he hadn't.
He felt nauseated by his own thoughtlessness and foolish desire for fame.
"...Excuse me. Could I ask you to change the destination? Please take me to Wakaba City."
Unable to bear his remorse, Kuniaki gave the driver his brother's address.
As the tiger changed direction, Kuniaki clung to its back and apologized to his superior in his heart. But surely this was what he ought to do.
Dr. Ashizawa had ordered him to cover up the incident. It would be impossible to conceal all the information, but they could falsify the cause and use back-channel arrangements to suppress criticism.
But was this really the time for that?
Wasn't there something he had to do before protecting himself?
Kuranomu—and Kuniaki and the others—had caused this situation.
They had a responsibility to minimize the damage before worrying about criticism.
Kuniaki dreaded facing his brother, but he had no one else to rely on. The doctor was going to the Ministry of Defense.
The only person Kuniaki knew who would believe an unbelievable warning from an ordinary researcher, quickly formulate an effective response, and take action was his brother.
By paying extra for an express ride, Kuniaki reached the front of his brother's house in a relatively short time.
Kuniaki climbed down from the tiger and, after taking a deep breath, was about to knock on the gate of Kappa House when his brother burst out and they collided head-on.
"Whoa?! S-sorry... Kuniaki?!"
"B-Big brother."
Holding his battered nose, he answered with tears in his eyes.
His brother was still wearing that kappa mask, but its quality had improved even further, making it look more lifelike.
Kuniaki had reservations. Far too many.
But his personal issues had nothing to do with the present. This was the time to bow his head and beg his brother for help, even if he had to prostrate himself.
Kuniaki lowered his head and was about to ask his brother to clean up after his folly, but before he could, his brother himself came pleading, half in tears.
"Please, Kuniaki, help me! The Gazer-kun I was keeping in the basement... A Class 1 monster escaped...!"
"!!?"
Kuniaki was stunned by the unbelievable words his brother had uttered.
He had been keeping a Class 1 monster? His brother?
He had let a Class 1 monster escape? His brother?
His brother—the talented, well-liked one, unlike his inept little brother?
It might have been even more shocking than Tiamat's awakening.
Yet as he saw his brother more flustered than ever before, clinging to him for help, Kuniaki also felt all the resentment that had built up over the years melt away.
He had understood intellectually that his brother wasn't a perfect superhuman, but only now did he finally understand it in his heart.
Once the initial shock passed, he could almost accept it. He had always thought his brother would do something like this someday.
Just as his brother could read Kuniaki's feelings, Kuniaki could instinctively read his brother's.
Just as Kuniaki was desperately seeking help, his brother was desperately seeking help too.
By an ironic coincidence, the two of them were dealing with the same Class 1 monster problem.
They were brothers.
Kuniaki took his brother's hand and, amid the extraordinary situation in which one major problem had doubled, nodded without the slightest hesitation for the first time in ages.
"I understand. I'll help you, Big brother. In return, I have one favor to ask."
"You will?! Ahh, what a relief! Ask me anything!"
"Actually, I came to ask you about a Class 1 monster, too. The Class 1 monster at our research facility—the Four-Headed Dragon Tiamat—is heading for Tokyo right now. Please help me."
"!!?"
The situation was descending into utter chaos.
The Miyabe brothers set out together to solve the problem that had doubled in size.