فتاة الغزو وحديقة الأكاذيب — Section 1

## The Turning Point

*The Invading Girl and the Garden of Lies*

Story synopsis:

Hayakawa Makio is a second-year student at K Junior High. With his childhood friends Yuuki, Yui, and Kotomi, he has been drifting through idle days. Then one day he is pressed into a fortune-telling game meant to find his "destined lover." Makio, who cheated in the reading, goes to the school backyard in search of a "destined lover" who should never have existed. The one who appears there is none other than the school's famous beauty, a proud and slightly uncanny girl—Nakayama Rie. Once Rie joins Makio's group, she sometimes insists on staying the night, and sometimes lies that everyone is going out so she can call Makio away. Things like this keep happening. The four of them, close since childhood and bound by an engagement, find their relationships slowly beginning to change—. A painful, tender fantasy story.

Chapter 1: The Turning Point

Somewhere in this city, there is a beautiful curse like this.

Her Highness the Princess is secretly recruiting warriors.

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"Absolutely not."

"Just this once. Say yes."

"Not even once."

"I was asked to do this too."

"Then you can turn them down."

"You know I'm no good at refusing people. Why don't you have Makio refuse for me?"

I'm not the one who was asked. Why should I be the one to refuse? Makio wanted to answer that way, but it would only turn into a quarrel little by little. He crossed his long arms over his chest and sighed.

"Of course I know that...

## Kira — Demon Nakayama

Chapter 2: Kira — Demon Nakayama

Under the pressure of Rie's gaze, Kotomi explained why they had come.

"...You're complete idiots." Rie shrugged. Fine strands of hair lifted, carrying a fragrance, and drifted down against her jaw.

"Complete idiots," she said again. Unexpectedly, she seemed in a good mood this time; a smile lay in her blurred voice... All right. They really did look like fools. On that point, he agreed. Makio looked angry on the surface, but in his heart he was with her.

Kotomi pursed her lips and lowered her head.

Yui frowned in distress, looked down at an angle, and sighed.

Rie glanced at Makio once more.

"What?"

"Nothing."

Her small lips curved up at the corners. She laughed—"heh heh heh heh heh"—but it was only a low laugh carried on her breath, on and on. Then she left at a quick pace.

Woven into the overwhelming drone of the cicadas, her laughter, to Makio's ears, was nothing short of a terrifying sound.

— On the way home

"Nakayama, huh!"

After hearing how it had gone, Yuuki was unexpectedly serious, frowning as if he had been struck.

"Is it that bad?"

"More or less."

Makio nodded vaguely. He had meant to laugh it off, but he could no longer laugh. "What am I even doing..."

Yuuki brushed the long bangs from his forehead and walked toward the low wall of the parking lot beside the road.

Makio, Yui, and Kotomi stopped around him.

This parking lot was where the students of K Junior High gathered after school to talk things over or confess in secret. There were four other places like it nearby.

"I'm not taking her side. The problem right now isn't—...

## The Heart (Part One)

Chapter 3: The Heart (Part One)

"Next we'll decide the second-term groups," the class representative said in front of the blackboard.

This was the topic for the first class meeting of the second term. It had been settled long beforehand.

"Groups of six, boys and girls mixed. Two boys and two girls make the basic set of four, as the class's mixed groups. If talking it out among yourselves doesn't settle anything, the groups will be decided by drawing lots." The representative explained while writing on the board. A group studied together as a team and took turns cleaning, and of course they also moved together for outings, the culture festival, and the like, so who you ended up with was a serious matter.

"So?" As everyone began discussing their own groups, Yuuki went straight to Makio.

Naturally, Yuuki and Makio were beyond question. Kotomi and Yui were a pair as well. If the four of them formed a group, they only needed two more girls, or two more boys.

"...I don't care. It doesn't have to be Mi and Yui," Yuuki muttered under his breath.

"Hey, let's still group with Makio and Yuuki, okay?" Kotomi pulled Yui over to them. Makio glanced at Yuuki beside him. "Fine." After a one-second pause, Yuuki nodded. Well, of course. He felt a little resistance toward the four-person grouping they were already used to, but he had no reason to turn down an invitation from Mi and the others. Makio understood that feeling of his very well, and in the end said nothing.

"Then, if we invite Kawamura and Yoshiike to join—"

"I'm planning to be in Makio's group."

"Eh?"

A line that cut in all of a sudden...

## The Warrior in the Courtyard

Chapter 4: The Warrior in the Courtyard

This is a curse.

The curse of a bad child.

The child who became a demon.

A bargain was struck,

and the heart turned to stone.

Somewhere inside him, there is an enormous clock hand.

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That afternoon, Makio spent the time at home as planned.

Facing the desk, sitting cross-legged on the chair, he quietly took the MS parts off to modify them. Following the theory in the book, he marked the places to be worked on, then cut in at an angle with a craft knife. That would widen the range of motion of the MS's wrist and its weapon. The cut had to go nearly into the body, so the technique was demanding. Afterward he smoothed the uneven spots with a small piece of sandpaper, careful not to sand too much and enlarge the cut. Only the marked places needed to be thinned as far as possible.

Building models was a good thing. It gathered one's thoughts and let you forget a great deal for a while... What had happened that morning was slowly sinking into some corner of his heart as well.

— Because it's a curse, is becoming a bad child simply something that can't be helped?

When the words left his mouth, Makio felt his mood had turned as foul as it could get.

"..."

He wanted to hear Rie say that it wasn't like that.

But she never spoke.

"Even if it is a curse, there ought to be proof. Like having watched a horror movie, or a suggestive message left on a phone. That sort of thing."

"Those are all movie plots." Rie's tone was just as unfriendly. The foul feeling Makio had been holding down...

## The Heart (Part Two)

Chapter 5: The Heart (Part Two)

The next day, Makio went to Rie's courtyard. The work of painting the MS's exterior had to be finished.

He also brought the toolbox marked with the star-shaped logo, the one he had not brought the day before.

"Don't you have church work to do?"

"It's already done. There's a service on Sunday, so it has to be finished ahead of time."

And the teacher was out now as well. The other children were being looked after by the teacher's wife, so it was fine. Makio accepted Rie's explanation and, as planned, began working on the MS.

"Isn't there a table here?" The chair had been carried over from the backyard yesterday.

"Just put up with it."

"Then don't complain about the finished piece... I was never good at painting to begin with. I don't like using a brush. I've always wanted an airbrush, but they're expensive." As he spoke, Makio opened the toolbox and took out a white marker.

"Why paint white over something that's already white?"

"So the suit takes color more easily. It's a pen made for painting." Makio waved the pen in his hand and began coloring from a place you could not see from the outside—the insides of the feet.

"Ah—" Sure enough, without a table there was no stability, and the ink ran past the lines. Makio had no choice but to pinch a tissue in his palm, cover the parts that were not to be colored, and paint a little at a time. White could still be done this way. What was he supposed to do when it came to blue? If only he could lay the ink down over a wide area instead of dabbing it on bit by bit...

"Your face is so serious right now."

Makio did not answer. He was right in the middle of the hardest place to paint.

"It really looks like a complicated operation."

Then be quiet, won't you...

## The Legend Continues

Chapter 6: The Legend Continues

"Excuse me."

Thinking, You're the one who was staring at me first, Makio walked toward the counter.

"Are you Mr. Oiwa?"

If the person before him had the distinctive air of an athlete or a performer, that would have been one thing, but no matter how you looked at him, he was only an ordinary student.

And yet at this moment, in Makio's eyes, he shone far more brilliantly than any of those famous people. Looked at closely, there was quite a sense of mystery about him.

"No."

The reply shattered Makio's tension in an instant.

"All this time, I've only been delivering things because someone asked me to."

"...I see... I'm sorry..."

Makio felt disappointed at once. He had finally worked up the courage to speak to a senior he looked up to, and this was the result... What rotten luck. So much for that mystery. He might as well go home.

"He's a regular here. He loves Mr. Oiwa's work very much. He's a fan of Mr. Oiwa's." Mr. Kobayashi introduced Makio from the side.

"Ah, you don't have to introduce me." Being introduced that way only made Makio a little embarrassed.

"Oh. Is that so." Mr. Oiwa's representative gave him a vague bow. Makio had no choice but to bow back.

"Still, this piece is really something. Makio, you come take a look too."

Makio had been about to say he would look next time, but when he glanced at the new work set on the counter, he froze.

Oh—incredible. A ZGMF-1001—the same mobile suit he had bought before! The paint was layered and distinct, the cuts just right. Work at this level was, as expected, the real thing.

Makio stared at the MS with a burning gaze. In his head there was only...

## The River of the Moon

Chapter 7: The River of the Moon

"It seems Nakayama ran off overnight."

This was the first piece of news Makio heard that left him stunned.

"Huh?"

Hearing Yuuki, Makio was startled before he knew it, and his raised voice echoed through the classroom.

It was the last day of the three-day midterms. Rie had been absent the first day and the second. Makio could not help wondering whether she was unwell, or whether she was being willful again. In any case, he had planned to stop by the church once today's exam was over.

"What's the reason? Is it money?"

Makio lowered his voice, bent forward, and asked Yuuki, doing his best not to draw attention.

"No. I'm not very clear on the reason either. I heard the pastor there is under suspicion of fraud and has already fled."

"Fraud."

"Yes. He took donations from the believers, from people back in his hometown he had dealings with, and from people who cared about charity work. He said part of the donations would go toward the children's education, and the rest of the money was invested in a company that failed, something like that... Whether there was ever an investment at all is still in question. Some also say it wasn't the pastor who misappropriated the funds, but a group of people connected to him."

Before Makio's eyes rose the face of the pastor he had met only once, a man with narrow, elongated eyes. If you asked whether he was the plain, honest sort, he seemed to be. Makio had no particularly deep impression of him.

"There were rumors before, too. They said he took in many children and looked after their lives, a pastor who left a very good impression, so a lot of people believed him. That's what my father said. The employees at that company my family often sends boxed lunches to said it was a big...

## Afterward

Chapter 8: Afterward

The classroom was as noisy as ever.

The sound of paper tearing, of desks being shifted, of plywood boards.

Under the windows, the girls were making ornaments to decorate the signboard at the school gate.

Classes were canceled for the day. Everyone was preparing for tomorrow's culture festival.

"Makio, stop slacking. Come and help."

Makio had tossed his chair aside and was sitting right on the desk, staring out the window the whole time. So Kotomi came over and spoke to him.

"What are you looking at?"

"Out the window."

"Not that. I mean the thing in your hand."

"—Ah."

Without realizing it, he had kept holding it and had started to drift. Makio picked up a sheet of white paper and laid it over the top.

"Oh. So it's a letter."

"...It's not."

"I'm so jealous—you even brought it to school to read."

"It's not. You're noisy."

Flustered, Makio shoved the letter into his pocket with one hand and pushed his glasses up with the other, trying to hide the embarrassment on his face.

"What did she write?"

"...She said she's been well lately."

Kotomi kept pressing, still unwilling to let it go.

"That would never happen."

Makio went down the stairs ahead of them, walked the length of the corridor, and headed toward the old school building.

What came after was something he could never let them see.

Looking back now, truly, no one could deny it. That time, perhaps, had not been brought about by a lie.

Fate, then.

"I mean, are the two of you really that close?"

No one had brought it up. That was no bad thing either. Letting things take their own course was fine.

Yuuki's gaze suddenly fixed on Kotomi.

To explain, Makio took out Rie's letter and showed it to the three of them...