The harbor was actually pretty small, barely large enough to fit the medium sized ship that had arrived just like the information said it would.
Tachihara and Sumio, who had finished swimming there about thirty minutes ago, were hiding in a corner of the dock while keeping their eyes out.
“We did it! Now we just have to get on that ship, right?”
It looked old, but it was more than sturdy enough to carry them across the harsh sea.
“Once they drop off the new guards, they’re gonna start working on refueling and maintaining the ship. That’s when we’ll take it. It’s gonna be a long trip, after all.”
Even he could start feeling his cheeks loosen up.
“I’ve been waiting so long for this moment!”
Five minutes passed, but not a single person had gotten off the vessel.
There was no sign of anyone coming to refuel the ship either, nor was any maintenance taking place.
Another three minutes passed.
“What now?”
“Don’t move.”
After stopping Sumio from standing up, Tachihara took another look around the area.
There hadn’t been a soul to be seen from the very beginning. Tachihara clicked his tongue in frustration over only just realizing it now.
The silent harbor was once again filled with the squawking of the sea birds.
“…It’s a trap.”
“Huh?”
A faint light could be seen on the right side of Sumio’s chest as he looked back at Tachihara with a confused look on his face. About the size of a coin, the light flickered from behind the detailed mandala-like tattoo etched on his skin.
“By trap, do you mean they know where we are?! Didn’t all your buddies die? Who could’ve ratted us out?”
The panicked Sumio started shouting.
The face of the prisoner who gave him the information floated up in Tachihara’s mind, but he doubted he had anything to do with it.
If anyone could have leaked their position, it would be the man currently in front of him.
Sumio followed Tachihara’s gaze and eventually noticed the flickering in his chest.
“…What the hell is this?”
“It’s a tracking device. If you don’t have any memory of it, then… maybe you got drugged up with anesthetics while getting your tattoo done, and…”
Sumio roared. His raging voice filled the area.
At the same time, he dug his nails beneath his collar, ripped the tracking device out along with his flesh, and crushed it.
Tachihara didn’t even have a chance to stop him.
Fresh blood squirted out as Sumio’s massive body violently shook.
“Don’t move!”
A dozen or so guards then showed up. They encircled around them with their guns pointed as they carefully closed the distance.
“That was a dirty move, you assholes…!”
The blood-covered Sumio staggered forward in a charge, like a wounded grizzly.
“Stop, Sumio!”
The barrage of simultaneous firing rang out like a bolt of lightning.
Sumio’s body was torn apart like a worn-out dust cloth as the bullets pierced through him.
“Sumio!”
Tachihara tried to rush to his side, but he was knocked down by the flood of prison guards and beaten heavily by their batons.
“I see now… You were planning on taking down the both of us at the same time. Would be a better way of setting an example than those breakfast executions, huh…?”
Tachihara glared at them while spitting out his blood.
Smirks crept onto the guards’ faces. Smirks meant to confirm his suspicion.
“You’re getting the confinement cell!”
That was the last thing Tachihara heard before he fell unconscious from the gun stock slamming against the back of his head.
“Fight, Tachihara… Tachihara!”
It was that same provoking voice as always.
“Fight, Garren! You must fight against Blade!”
But it was different from his usual nightmares.
He was being confronted with a strange being that wasn’t himself.
Garren? He must be talking about me, Tachihara asked himself within his dream.
Blade. I’m guessing that’s another one of his kind. But why do I have to fight him?
“Fight, Garren… Garren!”
A female voice then jutted in.
“Tachihara… Tachihara!”
Saeko had come to his confinement cell.
“I managed to persuade them to let me see you since you’re my patient. Are you all right? How are you feeling?”
She took the awakened Tachihara’s pulse and checked his blood pressure. After taking a quick look at his entire body, she applied medicine to his cuts and bruises and wrapped them up with bandages.
“…I feel awful, but I think I’m doing okay.”
Tachihara responded while trying to ignore the dull throbbing pain that tormented his body. He could feel a smouldering pool of emotions inside him that had nowhere to go.
“I bet. Look this way.”
Tachihara picked up the faint scent of perfume as Saeko examined his eyes, causing him to turn away.
“What is it?”
“Nothing, just… why do you work here, Doctor?”
Etched on the walls of the cell were the scribbles of past prisoners, ranging between writing and symbols presumably meant to keep track of the date. It felt as if they were saturated with the prisoners’ anger, hatred, and despair.
“As much of a hellhole this island is… it’s still where I was born.”
“I… didn’t know that.”
“Part of the land ended up getting sold to the organization running the prison. They really needed the money. The same goes for me. I needed the money, so I started working here every once in a while. That’s all it is.”
“…Sorry. Probably wasn’t worth asking.”
“Oh wow, that’s surprising. The pirate’s actually showing some consideration.”
After smiling from her little jest, she called out to the prison guard.
“I’m done.”
The guard poked his face in after unlocking and opening the door.
“Sorry, let me check one more time just in case…”
Saeko grabbed Tachihara’s hand as if she forgot something, checked his pulse, nodded with an “okay, good,” and then exited the cell.
The door slammed shut and was locked once more.
After listening and making sure the prison guard had left, Tachihara opened his clenched fist. Inside was a small metal file.
Starting from that night, Tachihara began planning his prison escape once again, all while wondering what Saeko’s true motives were.
It took three days to cut apart the three bars in his cell’s window.
He had spent every day slowly but surely wearing them down with his file whenever the guards weren’t patrolling nearby.
And then that night, three hours after lights out, Tachihara curled up his blanket to look like it was a person sleeping, and escaped from his cell.
He moved as silently as he could, jumping from roof to roof.
He took care not to step foot in any decaying areas as he proceeded forward.
He was aiming for the closest overhang of the outside wall to the north. He was confident that he’d have a good chance of reaching it if he made a running jump.
The three moons above his head gleamed with an unnatural sinister red.
Suddenly he was struck with the sensation of having ran into a wall.
The dramatic change in pressure felt like drills digging deep into his ears, causing Tachihara to groan with intense pain.
The very next moment, those immortal monsters he always saw in his dreams had appeared.
There were ten of them.
One after the other, they descended from high in the sky and attacked.
“Impossible…!”
Was that not a dream?
Then is this a dream?
No, it wasn’t a dream.
Those sharp fangs and claws that viciously lashed out at him couldn’t be seen as anything but reality.
Tachihara dodged them by a hair’s breadth and rolled across the roof.
He ended up rolling off the eaves, but he barely managed to stretch out both arms to grab them at the last moment, leaving him hanging off the edge of the roof.
The voice inside his head once again rang out.
“Fight, Garren! Defeat the Undead!”
The Undead. Is that what those monsters are?
You’re saying I have to fight and defeat them? Me?
How am I supposed to fight barehanded? This isn’t a dream, this is reality.
“Fight, Garren! Fight!”
Shut up, you’re annoying.
“Shut up, damn it!”
The Undead flying through the air headed straight towards Tachihara, who was defenseless as he hung from the eaves.
He noticed centipede-like Undead begin crawling up the walls from the ground as well.
Am I going to die here? Have I finally run out of luck?
The moment Tachihara halfway resigned to his fate, a mob of maroon creatures appeared.
“Beetles…?”
The large maroon beetles, about the size of crows, crowded around Tachihara as if to protect him, repelling any Undead that came his way.
If there were just one or two of them, they likely wouldn’t have stood a chance.
But they vastly outnumbered the Undead, with each Undead having about fourteen of them swarming around them. The beetles used their sharp jaws to jab at regions that were presumably the Undead’s eyes, noses, mouths, and ears.
Blue blood spouted from the Undead as they dropped down one after the other, dissipating upon making impact with the ground.
Tachihara was desperately trying to climb back onto the roof throughout all this, but he had now reached his limit.
His hands lost their grip on the eaves, sending him crashing down.
But after somehow withstanding the pain from the impact, Tachihara managed to stand back up.
The high-pitched sirens had been wailing for a while now, with searchlights frantically cutting through the entire area.
At first he thought that they found out he escaped, but that wasn’t the case. Judging from the cries and shouts that could be heard, it was likely that the guards and prisoners were being attacked by the Undead as well.
He had to take this chance to escape.
But while he was at least able to keep some semblance of direction on the roof, the darkness on ground level made him completely lost. The passageways were narrow, with the walls extremely tall, preventing the light of the three moons from reaching him.
As he only got increasingly lost as he ran in every direction he could think of, he ended up running into a guard who had probably ran from the Undead.
“You’re… Tachihara! You escaped again?!”
The guard pulled out his gun with his eyes wide open and reached for his radio.
“Don’t move! Move and I’ll shoot!”
This is bad. If more guards start running in, this’ll all be for nothing.
Just as Tachihara was about to charge forward in what would be an all-or-nothing gamble, bluish-white sparks flew into the air, and the guard crumpled to the ground with his limbs violently convulsing.
Standing behind him was Saeko with a stun gun in hand.
“This way!”
She then began running without even giving Tachihara the chance to act surprised.
“I’ve always had a feeling this would happen eventually.”
The fire illuminated the reflection of Saeko’s face in the window.
The entire prison could be seen from below the gondola on the ascending ropeway.
The fires that had spread all over the institution made it look like some kind of manifestation of hell.
Right outside the window were the swarms of maroon beetles that continued to persistently fight back against the approaching Undead.
Under Saeko’s lead, Tachihara had stepped into the old-looking gondola from behind the prison.
This was his first time learning that such a thing had even existed.
The wire stretching to the mountain tops was well hidden by the thick forest, and apparently the old castle that supposedly lied at the endpoint wasn’t at all visible from the prison.
“That place is… where I was born.”
Saeko’s words caused Tachihara to look up.
Suddenly his vision opened up, and a black castle could be seen towering before him.
Its majestic appearance, illuminated by the three moons, seemed to lean forward as they approached it.
It was dark, cold, and silent within the castle.
“Apparently a noble from some country originally had this built to be a resort. My ancestors went ahead and bought it along with the whole island.”
Saeko’s voice coldly echoed across the tall ceiling and long hallways along with the sounds of their footsteps.
Tachihara didn’t know the particulars of what period the castle was from or what style it was built with, but he was at least able to pick up on the extravagance it gave off.
Just like those walls of the cell he was once confined in, the hallways and rooms they passed through felt like they were embodied with the memories and emotions of all kinds of people.
“Not the most comfortable place, is it? I feel the same. I was born here, but I’ve only spent a small portion of my life here. I ended up leaving the island to study abroad during my early teens. But in the end, I came back. I’m not even sure why I did…”
I’m the same, Tachihara thought to himself. What kind of cruel twist of fate brought me here?
“And now just look at the state of this place…”
Both self-deprecation and resignation could be heard in her voice, but there was something else hiding behind them as well.
“…Why did you bring me here?”
Tachihara once again looked towards Saeko.
“I couldn’t just leave you back there. You would’ve been killed. Either by the guards, or by those monsters…”
The deafening silence of the castle made it feel like the turmoil that was most likely still persisting below them had never happened in the first place.
As if it was all just a bad dream.
“Do you know something about those monsters? Could it be that… you know something about my dreams as well?”
Tachihara could feel his voice rising.
“You don’t have to yell, I can hear you just fine. But yes… there’s something here that just might be related to your dreams. I suppose you could say I invited you here in order to show you that.”
“And what might that be?”
Suddenly the glass windows around them shattered into pieces as if a strong gust blew through them.
Those maroon beetles then flew inside, dropping to the floor and hitting against the walls one after the other as they writhed from flames that had engulfed them.
Following right after them were fire-breathing Undeads that rushed inside the castle, raising their monstrous voices.
The intense change in pressure caused intense pain to run through Tachihara’s ears.
“Over here!”
Saeko began running, and Tachihara followed.
After dashing up the spiral staircase, they charged into the room at the highest floor.
Saeko locked the door, and Tachihara jammed a large candle holder under the knob to create an impromptu barricade. It was at least better than doing nothing.
“That’s…!”
When Tachihara looked over the room, he ended up shouting involuntarily.
The crimson light of the three moons passing through the skylight illuminated the empty throne.
Lying on it was a familiar-looking belt and cards.
“So it wasn’t a dream!”
In those dreams I kept seeing again and again, I used that thing to transform into that strange form. I then used those cards to unleash all kinds of special techniques, defeating those monsters and sealing them.
“Why is this here…?”
Saeko had a faraway look in her eyes.
“I heard that it suddenly showed up here one hundred years ago… It was then passed down from generation to generation, and eventually into my hands. We’ve kept it here all this time, waiting for someone who could use it to show up…”
“And you’re saying that someone is me…?”
“I was surprised when I heard you talk about your dreams. And I was happy. It was worth waiting this long.”
“So you’re telling me to use this…? And then…”
That voice once again resurfaced in his mind.
“Fight, Garren! Fight!”
It repeated itself again and again with no end.
“But why? Why do I have to fight?”
“I don’t know, but… I want to see you fight. It’s… probably because I want to know who I am. Just like how you’re destined to fight, I’m destined to look after this belt. But why? How? That’s what I want to know.”
Those were Saeko’s true feelings.
“For as long as I can remember, there’s always been this hole I’ve felt in my life… Even after leaving this place, I was never able to fill that hole. No matter where I went, no matter what I did, nothing ever changed. But now…”
Upon seeing Saeko like that, Tachihara nodded. He felt like he understood what she was trying to say.
I might be the same, Tachihara thought to himself.
He would defy the shackles that bound him and simply live freely. That was what he thought he wanted, but in the end he was only able to do that because there happened to exist an enemy he was able to defy in the first place.
The truth was that there was a hole inside him that he wanted to ignore. Perhaps he was just trying to cover up that fact. Perhaps he had yet to fight the true enemy.
“But now things are different…”
“Huh?”
At that moment, a huge crack ran along the door along with a deafening sound.
The monsters then blew their flames into the gap inside the crack, incinerating the door in an instant.
“Tachihara!”
“Get back!”
Tachihara grabbed the belt and got ready.
The belt then let out a blinding light as it left his hand, wrapping around his waist of its own volition.
“Henshin!”
That word left Tachihara’s mouth instinctively.
The belt’s energy proceeded to pass through his body, transforming him into Garren.
Kamen Rider Novel Translations 