Chapter 5 – Rebellion 1
Amane was crying.
I wanted to call out to her, but I couldn’t.
Because I knew that I was the cause behind the sadness that drove her tears.
I always knew I had to leave eventually.
Otherwise she would have found out.
She would have found out that I was the enemy that caused her sadness, that I was deserving of her hatred, and most of all, that time had come to a stop for me.
Amane was in her mid-teens when I left her.
When I met with her once again a few decades later, she rejected the idea of us living together again.
Was it because she knew the truth? Maybe not.
That all happened a long, long time ago.
Ever since then, time had truly come to a stop for me.
I now realize that at least when I was with Amane, time was actually moving, and I felt alive.
Ever since then, my time had perished, despite me continuing to live. This whole three hundred years, I’ve simply lived on with a life that couldn’t die.
Living amongst humans…
I had no idea it drawn out and painful it could fee.
The only one who could possibly understand my pain would probably be you, Kenzaki.
But I can’t meet with you. No matter what, I can’t meet with you.
Kenzaki, where are you right now?
Kenzaki, what are you thinking about right now?
Kenzaki, am I weak for wanting to see you again? Am I wrong for thinking that way?
Hajime opened his eyes within the white space.
The ceiling, the walls, the floor, and even the bed were all white.
He couldn’t move his arms or legs. He was clearly restrained.
Surrounding his bed—which was right in the middle of the room—were numerous electronic devices connected to Hajime’s body with tubes and electrodes.
The room felt like it belonged in a laboratory rather than a hospital.
There was a wide horizontal window high up on one of the walls, from which numerous faces could be seen.
Amongst the men and women wearing white coats, who were most likely staff, Satsuki stood there as well.
The expression on his face looked both angry and sad at the same time.
Next to him was a man with feminine features. His long bangs covered half of his face.
There was no doubt that he was the absolute leader of the Domed City, the Admiral. Hajime’s intuition told him that.
“I don’t like wasting time, I’ll get straight to the point.”
The Admiral spoke towards the mic from behind the glass.
“Hajime Aikawa, I want to know how you’ve been able to stay alive for over three hundred years. We’re going to investigate that right now.”
I’m surprised. I had always thought there wasn’t a single person in the Domed City that knew my secret. How in the world did he find out? I must have been careless.
“Look at my face.”
The Admiral casually brushed aside his bangs, revealing his dark purple scar-like bruise.
“This is a tumor. A progressive one. I’ve been told that I only have a year left to live. That’s why I want to know your secret. But that’s just one reason. I don’t mind if I don’t make it in time. I’ve come to grow far more fascinated in you as a person rather than my own life.”
For some reason, Hajime momentarily felt a piercing gaze on him from Satsuki.
And then Hajime noticed Satsuki glanced at the Admiral from the side. It felt chilling and unpleasant to him.
After excusing himself from the lab, Satsuki headed towards the Guardians’ building and entered the interrogation room that lied at the far end.
There was a disgruntled Azumi in front of two subordinate Guardians. She looked to have been roughed up by a considerable degree, judging from the torn and bleeding skin under her handcuffs.
Satsuki took a breath and instructed for someone from the infirmary to be called.
“Don’t cause any trouble, Azumi. The more you struggle, the more pain you’ll be in for.”
“Hmph! Look at you, the great Satsuki, trying to act like you’re hot shi-”
The subordinates violently held down Azumi, who was trying to lash out. Satsuki then grabbed her handcuff in order to put her under control.
“Ow!”
The pain was enough to make Azumi stop moving, but she still glared at Satsuki.
“If you promise not to struggle any further, then I won’t mind taking these off of you.”
“…Where’s Hajime? Are you doing something to him?”
Satsuki averted his eyes from Azumi’s straightforward gaze.
“…What is he to you?”
“He isn’t one of us. He has nothing to do with you guys, so let him go.”
“Like I said, what is he to you?”
“Heh… Don’t tell me you’re jealous.”
“Don’t be ridiculous!”
“You already realize it, don’t you? Everyone that grows up in the hole has the same distinctive scent to them. Both me and you, included. Hajime doesn’t have that, but he doesn’t smell like the city folk, either. He’s got a completely different scent…”
The same scent. The scent from growing up in that hole. She’s right.
Both Azumi and I grew up there.
Life at the very bottom. Overbearing heat and humidity, the smell of oil and sulfur.
Satsuki could remember it well whether he liked it or not.
Satsuki’s parents died from illness almost soon after he was born. Needless to say, he didn’t remember their faces. Instead, he was raised by the old ladies down there. There were plenty of other kids like him.
Azumi was the same.
She was a childhood friend, and they grew up eating the same food and breathing the same air together.
They never had it hard. Every day was fun. Their lives were filled with smiles and energy.
Everyone there felt the same way. The poverty and oppression they had to face only fueled their pride. They were living honest and earnest lives, and in their eyes, that was how humans should live.
But at one point, Satsuki suddenly grew fed up with that.
He began to see that outlook as nothing more than a coping mechanism for their inferiority complex.
Looking back, that righteousness and pride I once had were nothing but boyish ideologies, but I still believe those refractions are representative of my true self.
I won’t stop here. I swear I’ll leave this place.
That floating garden whose presence remains dominant over my head whether I look up at it or not… I’ll become a resident of that place one day. I’ll make my way up. Keeping true to those words, in the last summer of his teen years, he left the hole.
Keeping it a secret from Azumi, he stepped foot alone into the Domed City.
But it wasn’t as if anything changed because of that.
Satsuki wandered the back streets of the Domed City like a stray dog. The main streets were too bright and clean for a stray dog like him.
The back streets were small and narrow. Naturally, he was reported as a suspicious individual and eventually arrested.
Not even three days after leaving the hole.
That was when the stray dog, waiting to be put down in his cage, met the Admiral for the first time, who had come for inspection. The Admiral brought the dog back with him, put him through the necessary grooming, and made him his servant.
And that was exactly what the stray dog wanted. He had lived his whole life to become his servant.
That was who Satsuki was.
Satsuki was currently thinking about that dream.
Maybe it was representative of his circumstances of growing up in the hole.
But he didn’t remember being trapped in a cold, stainless steel cage. Right, that can’t be my dream. Satsuki then decided to confirm his belief once and for all.
It had been quite some time since he visited the hole, and it was the same as he remembered.
Satsuki avoided the eyes of the people as he walked in plain clothes, but he was soon found out by the old ladies, and people began calling out to him one after the other.
“How’ve you been doing, Satsuki!”
“Azumi’s not with you?”
Satsuki kept a smile on his face as if he had never left the hole in the first place, but it was obvious to everyone that he hadn’t returned for the sake of visiting his hometown in nostalgia.
Everybody knew what position Satsuki was currently in.
Satsuki headed towards the lower area that he used to live in while responding to the old ladies’ greetings as neutrally as possible.
The smell of sulfur grew stronger. A smell he was used to ever since he was a child. For just a second, he let his guard down.
The next thing he knew, he was surrounded by youngsters pointing guns at him.
“Where’s Azumi? Where’d you lock her up?”
One of the youngsters yelled and pressed his gun into Satsuki. From those words, he was able to deduce that they were Azumi’s comrades from the Anti-Admiral Faction. There were around seven or eight of them.
“Can you shoot? Have you ever shot a person before?”
Catching him flinching, Satsuki turned himself around, seized the youngster’s gun, and thrust it at him.
“Get out of the way, unless you want his head blown off!”
The youngsters gulped and spread apart.
Standing in their place were the old ladies with ancient-looking shotguns in their arms.
“What about you, Satsuki? Have you ever shot someone before?”
“Granny…”
“Both you and him are adorable children of ours, but Azumi is our precious leader. If it means Azumi can be saved, then I’d kill anyone.”
She loaded her pump action shotgun with a practiced manner.
“Eek!”
The youngster being put up as a shield squealed, and Satsuki lowered his gun while clicking his tongue.
“Now where’s Azumi? Answer me, Satsuki!”
Suddenly a gun shot rang out within the hole.
Screams and angry shouting followed afterward.
“It’s the Guardians!”
Numerous ropes came falling down along the hole’s inner walls, and fully armed Guardians could be seen rapidly sliding down and gunning down each floor along the way.
“I can’t believe you…”
“How rotten can you be?!”
“Wait, this isn’t me… I gave no such order!”
At the very same time Satsuki shouted, the old ladies were blown away by gunfire.
“Granny!”
Not even a second later, Azumi’s comrades were mowed down as well.
Right afterward, the Guardians jumped off their ropes and saluted Satsuki.
“What the hell is going on… Who ordered you to-”
He found himself snapping at them in a fit of rage.
“They were the Admiral’s orders.”
One of them responded as if interrupting him.
“The Admiral? But why…?”
“The eradication of the Anti-Admiral Faction.”
“Impossible… Does he actually think this kind of method would work on them? He’s underestimating them too much! Suspend the operation right now!”
When Satsuki attempted to step forward, the Guardians pointed their guns at him from all directions.
“As I said, these are the Admiral’s orders.”
Throughout all of that, the gunshots, explosions, screaming, and yelling continued to persist.
“I guess in the end, Satsuki was just another hole-born.”
The Admiral smiled as he examined Hajime. He wasn’t behind the glass anymore, now standing next to Hajime’s bed in a white coat and mask.
“I wasn’t going to keep him as my servant forever. I’ve been receiving reports stating that he’s seemingly distracted by something lately. I was thinking that I’d only keep him until I captured you.”
It didn’t seem like he expected Hajime to actually respond to him.
“But more importantly, let’s talk about you. It seems like you aren’t human. The reports state you transformed into some kind of creature in order to fight those so-called Undead monsters. So what is that form exactly? It doesn’t look like I’ll be receiving that answer from your mouth, at the very least.”
Hajime didn’t respond. He could have responded, but he knew they wouldn’t understand. And even if they did, it wasn’t as if there was anything they could do about it.
The Admiral smiled. It looked even crueler than the last one.
“I do not take joy in announcing things beforehand, but a goodbye is a goodbye. Allow me to say farewell. Once you fall asleep, we’ll begin thoroughly inspecting your head and body, and I plan on seeing it all for myself firsthand.”
He couldn’t hear half of what he said.
His eyelids had grown heavy midway as the lulls of relaxation took over him. It seemed that his fixated arms had been injected with some kind of anesthetic. The Admiral’s face and the white room gradually shifted to grey, and eventually was covered with black.
He didn’t have any desire to fight back or stay awake. Hajime prayed that he would fall into an eternal slumber, never to open his eyes again.
He was unsure how much time had passed.
He couldn’t tell if it was day or night. Realizing that he was conscious of not knowing something, Hajime understood that the anesthetic had worn off.
He was alive.
He hadn’t been cut up, nor had he been made a specimen.
He still couldn’t move his limbs. He was still strapped to the bed with leather belts.
The electronic devices connected to him were still silently operating, but neither the Admiral nor any of the staff could be seen.
His hearing then suddenly returned, and he noticed that the siren was ringing.
It was mixed with the sound of disorderly footsteps and yelling voices.
“It’s a riot!”
“The hole’s rioting!”
“The rioters have reached the city……”
Kamen Rider Novel Translations 