9S:Volume1 Prologue
The room was her prison. There were no windows. The floor and walls were made of thick iron, and the only door to the room looked as if it were made to resist being opened. In a corner of the cold-permeating room, she sat hugging her knees.
For some reason, she did not appear to be affected by her surroundings. Even though the cold of the floor was transfused into her body, her eyes were unwavering, focused intently upon the floor.
With a composed expression, she looked as though in reality, she were a pretty, innocent Japanese-made doll, in a pitiable state, with no one to comfort her. She was the only one in the room.
How long had time passed idly by? The sound of a machine broke through the stillness surrounding the girl who was sitting as though made of ice. A part of the ceiling high above opened, letting light stream down into the room.
If she had looked above her head, she may have made out five or six silhouettes against the background of light. But she did not move even a muscle. She was still submerged in the depths of tranquility.
Within the light was a man of roughly middle-age, wearing a business suit. His appearance showed no concern for the situation of the girl, instead he looked down at her unsympathetically.
“One wonders if she's even alive.”
With a pounding noise one of the men struck the glass forcefully, awaiting the girl's response. Yet contrary to his expectations, her gaze remaned fixed upon the floor. He tried striking the glass more forcefully, with only the same result to show for it.
“She’s like this again today too? Will she even be usable?”
Shrugging his shoulders another man spoke.
“Shouldn’t we just dispose of her? If she won’t be of any use, all the more so.”
“No, we can’t just throw away all that information she has in her head.”
At that moment another make spoke up.
“She can be used when such a situation necessary of her comes.”
“That’s worrisome. What if she were to escape from this prison 1200 meters belowground?”
“But you really think ‘that’ will be useful? Isn’t ‘it’ the same as a cripple?”
“That’s not all that could become a problem. What happens if another country finds out the Japanese Government is holding her?”
“In that case we just change her location. If it comes down to it, we can abandon this base.”
“Are you saying you can dodge the American and European Nations?”
“Isn’t that your job? How much do you think I’ve struggled coming up with estimates on…”
“Wait a minute!”
Through the glass, one of the men was indicating the girl hunched in a corner of the room.
Upon looking, the girl who was supposed to be squatting showed a change. Her blank gaze had gone from the floor to the men standing beyond the glass window.
“It seems she’s alive after all.”
The man who had first tapped on the glass let out a pained sigh, fingering his lapel.
“Could she hear what we were just talking about?”
“Unthinkable. The room is completely soundproof. Isn’t that right, Kishida?”
A well-built man in a white research coat, who gave off the sense of a researcher, responded with a weak “That’s right.” Dabbing the sweat from his brow with a handkerchief only strengthened the image of timidity.
“Uhm, everyone please be more gentle. She’s only a seven year old child.”
“What in the world are you saying?”
“Child or whatever it doesn’t matter, she’s the daughter of 'that man' you know.”
“Is it all right? For this guy to be the one responsible for this facility?”
Being showered with such outspoken accusations, the man called Kishida bit his lip.
“Hey, it looks like it’s saying something.”
The girl’s lips were moving listlessly. It seemed she really was saying something, but the near perfect sound proof room prevented the men from hearing what it was. Though even if the room were not sound proof, her voiced seemed as though it would be swallowed up before it even reached their ears.
“It really seems as if she’s saying something. Is there any possibility of using a mic?”
Shortly thereafter, the girl’s words were picked up from a mic within her prison. However it was still hard to make out the meaning of her words.
“Isn’t she merely delirious?”
“Isn’t there a way to amplify her voice?”
After raising the volume of the speaker, the girl’s voice finally reached them.
“Isn’t there…a way to…amplify…her voice?”
Her words were monotonous. At first, the men had no idea what it meant. Yet after they realized that her words were the same as the man who had spoken previously, their expressions changed.
“Wait, wasn’t the room supposed to be completely soundproof?”
“Ye, yes…it is.”
Professor Kishida’s face also showed he had no idea how this could be happening. There should be no way for their voices to have been heard in the soundproofed room. Even the man who had tapped on the glass in the beginning, was supposed to have performed a wasted effort.
“Wait…wasn’t the room…supposed to be…completely soundproof?”
The mic again picked up the girl’s voice, proving that she was somehow able to pick up what they were saying.
“That settles it for me, she’s another one of Mineshima Yujiro’s ‘Legacy.’
The moment Mineshima Yujiro’s name was mentioned, fear was added to the unsettled feeling the men held.
“Just what happened? There was no report of any kind of an ability like this.”
“The Legacy of Mineshima Yujiro. After all, it really should be destroyed.”
“It’s not too late yet. Let’s just kill it.”
The fear grew, spreading as though it were a wildfire through the men. To them, Mineshima Yujiro’s Legacy was nothing other than the unknown, which was what lead them to their fear.
The girl looked at them in an absent-minded manner, before moving her lips, indicating she was speaking.
“In what way would you perform the disposal?”
After hearing her words the mic had picked up, the man's voice grew heavier. The man who had spoken those words, for a moment, had no idea what was going on. The other men, in their confusion, also had not realized what was actually happening.
“Hey, what I just said…”
The next words also took on new weight. It seemed the men around had finally realized.
“Just now, your words and those words…”
Another man had spoken out, but cut off his sentence mid-way. Because as he was speaking, the girl’s words heard from the speaker, were the same as his, spoken in unison. There wasn’t even the slightest difference in the timing when she and the man both stopped speaking.
There was no one else who would speak. Swallowed up in a fear they couldn’t understand, they looked down at the girl. They were met with an emotionless expression, gazing back up at them.
“We were careless. To have that conversation here in front of her, that is.”
As the fear of the men reached a critical point, a relaxed voice came from behind them. When they turned around, standing before them was a man in his mid-thirties, with a very calm expression on his face.
“Date, I presume? What do you mean by careless?”
One of the men spoke out to Date, but quickly stifled his words. However the girl’s voice couldn’t be heard from the speaker, causing the man to feel a great relief. Date drew close to the men with a rythmatic step.
“Date, that is after all Mineshima’s Legacy. We’re not sure how, but she knows what we are saying.”
“A reading technique?”
“No, there was no report of that from the research.”
“That Mad Scientist’s Reasearch can’t all have been discovered, right?”
The men once again fell into disorder.
“It’s not like ‘that’ can actually read peoples' minds. It’s just a type of reading one’s lip movements.”
Date’s two statements brought calm to the disorder.
“Reading lips?”
“Exactly. Among my subordinates, there are quite a number with this ability. Of course they can also perform similar behavior to what we have also seen previously."
One man spoke up to Date, who had his chin out indicating the girl.
“Yeah but she was speaking at the same time as I was. How do you explain that?”
“Experience with lip reading. If you listen closely, there is the slightest difference in timing, right? At least that is what I heard. What do you think?”
“Yeah, now that you mention it...”
“That’s exactly how it must be.”
“If you understand it, it really is not such a big deal.”
To the common sense presented by Date, all the men reached acknowledgement.
“As long as we proceed with extreme caution, this kind of situation can be predicted. The one in that cell is only a young girl, who is just playing around, making fun of us.”
With that Date switched off the mic to the room. With eyes devoid of light, the girl continued to stare up at him.
“By the way, how is your unit doing? It’s about time they get out into some real action don’t you think?”
“From here on out those criminals and organizations after Mineshima Yujiro’s Over Technology will only continue to increase. I think it’s been half a year too long for the Legacy crime prevention unit, Legacy Counter, to start operations.”
In the midst of the men who were calming down, only Professor Kishida maintained his dangerous expression. He was the only one who noticed the falsehood in Date’s speech.
Only Date and Professor Kishida had been able to quickly recognize the girl’s actions. However, the ability she had just displayed wasn’t some ability she had as one of Mineshima’s personal creations, or a mind-reading technique. It wasn’t an ability that other humans couldn’t possess. Yet upon contemplation, it really was quite a troublesome ability.
–These guys don’t actually know a thing.
Date laughed at the men silently, revealing none of his emotions. But turning his gaze to the girl on the other side of the glass, he felt a tightening in his muscles.
– The ability ‘that’ possesses to be feared isn’t the enourmous information her mind contains. Its her intelligence, and keen sense of observation which can utilize that information.
One such derived ability he had just been shown. She had observed their conversation, analyzed their personalities and thinking patterns, and had created the perfect strategy for dealing with them under those circumstances. Those men come to this place often. It was undoubtedly through those times, those interactions that she had analyzed them.
If this were a basic pattern for specific circumstances, it was easy to conjecture what could happen. First to read lips, in so doing create confusion among the men, and limit their conversation. After the conversation is limited, reading the next words becomes easier for the girl.
– Mind reading? Impossible. If there was an ability like that, we would be in serious shit. You were all deceived by that.
Date and the other men turned their backs on the girl, leaving the room. Professor Kishida gave a final, troubled look at the girl, before leaving the room after Date.
A thick, metal door closed shut behind him. The girl was of course left alone in the ensuing silence.
Before our story truly takes place, still another ten years are necessary.
