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Section 1
# Traveling, Until the End That Destroys the World
## Illustrations
> https://www.bilinovel.com/novel/823/117662.html
Web translation, reposted from Sumisora Academy 2D Light Novel Club bbs.sumisora.net/thread.php?fid=60 Translators: ameaya; kawai_lucy; WF; leaf; Kumakichi; darkxh; Sansan; Xiaoya; A Certain T; Chestnut Proofreaders: ameaya; Junpei; Phantom Wound; Ed; Little Orange; Chestnut; Lingfeng; Xiaomi; Dreamscape Image edits: Magic Cat; Little R Polish: amemiya; Ruri ———————————————— Synopsis A boy and a girl's journey has begun. With a diary in hand, until the end of the world. The world is already sliding, little by little, toward the brink of ruin. As "amnesia" spreads, humankind is gradually vanishing from the world. Their own names, the colors of the world, even their own existence—lost, bit by bit, until nothing remains... And in a world like that, a motorcycle is still racing on. Its passengers are a boy and a girl. Like everyone else, they too have come down with this so-called "amnesia," and so they left school and home and set out on a long journey. Their destination: the end of the world. A going-forward with no goal and no meaning—and yet they have never once thought of giving up the journey. Even as they lose themselves without noticing, even standing on the edge of destruction, the two of them have never regretted it. In a world where memory is written down even as it is lost, a book that records the memories of a boy and a girl's travels. A story of a journey.
                 
## Prologue
> https://www.bilinovel.com/novel/823/36289.html
The world is already sliding, little by little, toward the brink of ruin. As "amnesia" spreads, humankind is gradually vanishing from the world. Their own names, the colors of the world—even their own existence—lost, bit by bit, until nothing remains... And in a world like that, a motorcycle is still racing on. Its passengers are a boy and a girl. Like everyone else, they too have come down with this so-called "amnesia," and so they left school and home and set out on a long journey. Their destination: the end of the world. A going-forward with no goal and no meaning—and yet they have never once thought of giving up the journey. Even as they lose themselves without noticing, even standing on the edge of destruction, the two of them have never regretted it. In a world where memory is written down even as it is lost, a book that records the memories of a boy and a girl's travels. A story of a journey. Could you throw everything away, and go traveling? Ask that, and there probably aren't many people who could answer right away. But I did answer. The scene from that moment is stamped in my mind as clearly as a photograph. Could you throw everything away, and go traveling? To a question like that, my answer—yes.
## Chapter 1: Dream
> https://www.bilinovel.com/novel/823/36290.html
"...Well? Think you can fix it?" Even as she asked, the boy had his rear stuck in the air, wrench in hand, straining at the bolt like someone who hadn't been able to go for a week. "You've been fussing with this thing since four days ago. Give it a little more work and, the way things are going, we ought to make it to the next town, right?" "Give me a break. The next town is still dozens of kilometers off." The girl couldn't help a laugh, sitting on the bench beside them. Only, that bench had been baked in the sun so long it was fuzzing and flaking. Sit on it with bare legs and it would scrape you raw for sure. Right now, though, sheer bodily exhaustion seemed to have won out over everything. The girl was wearing a uniform that looked something like a suit jacket, but it was so hot she had already taken the top off and was fanning herself with her hand without pause. "You really have no gift for fixing things, do you, Boy? This bike was already broken, and you still forced it another hundred and forty kilometers... What am I even supposed to say? Nobody's going to go out of their way to praise you for that, you know." "...You talk too much. All we can do is fix it as we go. If you want a full overhaul in one shot, that's flat-out impossible right now." The boy the girl called Boy gave the screw one more tightening with the wrench in his hand. He and that girl were students at the same school; he was wearing the men's version of the same uniform. Only he, too, had taken off his jacket and loosened his tie, and the whole open collar was... (Content failed to load! Please refresh or switch browsers)
## Interlude
> https://www.bilinovel.com/novel/823/36291.html
"...Hey, Boy." After they had gone some distance, the girl spoke up all at once. "What?" "...Just now, the chairman said that next May, the strawberries will be ready to pick." "Mm." "Think the chairman can keep some?" "...Don't know. Better to harvest them early than 'leave them to rot.'" "..." Silence fell between the two of them again. The girl sat behind him, arms tight around the boy's waist. Hang in there, Miss Secretary. Hang in there. The girl's voice was swallowed whole by the motorcycle's exhaust. No one would ever know what the last words were. All of it, carrying the breath of summer, seeped down into the asphalt behind them. * The motorcycle's engine kept turning, strong and steady, and before long the chairman's general store had vanished beyond the horizon. The bike ran lightly on. The scenery on either side of the road was no different from yesterday. The only change was the cool air the ever-faster motorcycle brought with it, a wash of freshness against the skin. The sun overhead was still pouring down a killing light, but the cool wind in their faces at least made it a little easier to bear. "Oh, right, Boy." All of a sudden the girl's voice went dark. "Mm, what is it?" "Why does your body smell like soap?" In a flash, the color drained from the boy's face. "That's weird... 'I' definitely didn't take a bath... (Content failed to load! Please refresh or switch browsers)
## Chapter 2: Wings
> https://www.bilinovel.com/novel/823/36292.html
The boy tilted his head back and looked at the murky sky. A moment ago it had been a clear, fresh blue. Somehow, without anyone noticing, the clouds rolling up behind them had caught them, and the sky had gone dark almost between one breath and the next. Thunder muttered with the lightning, and the sun that had been floating overhead was already nowhere to be seen. By contrast, the landscape streaming past around them was still the same unchanging grassland. Now and then, not far off, they could see farmhouses that looked as if a winter blizzard had wrecked them, but there seemed to be no chance at all of sheltering from the rain inside those ruined buildings. "...Ah... Looks like it's going to rain any minute. If only there were somewhere to get out of it..." "Relax, it's fine~ Because I'm the Clear-Sky Girl~~" "Then we're doomed, because I'm the Rain Boy." "Oh dear, oh dear~" The two of them chuckled, and the girl happened to glance back at the sky behind them. The clouds closing in already looked heavy with a good store of water. Getting soaked wasn't really the problem. What mattered was finding a house somewhere, a dry towel waiting for them, and a stove where they could warm their bodies. If the two of them had to warm themselves on their own, they would need fuel, and they would have to light the fire themselves, and dry their clothes themselves. Catch a cold doing that and it would be bad enough. The consequences were serious, but what came after was worse: if they stopped and didn't keep going, they would very likely go hungry. "If this keeps up, both of us are going to catch colds, and then... (Content failed to load! Please refresh or switch browsers)
## Interlude
> https://www.bilinovel.com/novel/823/36293.html
The sun leaned lower and lower and hid itself behind the horizon, and even so the boy kept the superbike racing on. Somewhere along the way they had taken a wrong road and swung a wider loop than planned, but the reason for that mistake was, in the end, something in the mind. Close his eyes and the Boss's face came back at once. But because of the loss, the shape of that face was fading bit by bit, until all he could recall of the Boss was a vague impression. Build, voice, verbal tics—every mark that he had existed was losing its outline like an ice cube dropped in hot water, melting thinly into the clutter of other memories. Whenever he tried to call back a memory touched by cognitive collapse, a feeling like déjà vu came over him. Push any further and the landmarks vanished, his thoughts began to twist and knot, and a nausea rose until he gave up. "Want to rest around here?" The same unchanging line, and it left him with no heart for it at all. For a while now he had been stroking the hand of the girl whose arms were around his waist. Someone right beside him had simply disappeared, and already he felt uneasy about the girl who had spent these three months at his side. If even she disappeared... Just thinking it sent a cold up his back, and all he could do was keep stroking her hand. He understood, in theory, that a girl still in the early stage would not vanish on a whim. But riding a motorcycle like this... (Content failed to load! Please refresh or switch browsers)
## Chapter 3: Journey
> https://www.bilinovel.com/novel/823/36294.html
"This is absolutely awful..." The girl in the passenger seat looked through the windshield at a sky like a layer of dirty cotton and said it slowly. "Yeah. Looks like even you, Miss Clear Skies, run out of luck sometimes." The boy gave a bitter smile, opened the door, and wrung out his soaked shoes hard. The rain outside showed no sign of stopping, and the clothes he had taken off didn't look as if they would dry either. It had been several days since they left the Boss's warehouse. Following the "next town" the Boss had pointed them toward, the two of them raced down empty roads. They had taken a wrong turn along the way and lost a little extra time, but it only put them a day behind schedule. That night, though, they ran straight into the rain. A downpour started all at once, and the boy and the girl were drenched to the skin. They weren't fools, of course. They carried proper rain gear, and a plastic sheet to stand in for a simple tent. In three months on the road, there was no way they wouldn't get rained on. This time, none of that gear did any good. You can't ride a motorcycle under a plastic umbrella, and the raincoats sold at convenience stores couldn't keep out a rain this hard. Even if they put up the makeshift tent, it would never hold in a wind like this. With no other choice, the two of them pulled on their raincoats, prayed to every god in earshot, and sent the superbike flying. For the two of them, the only road left was to search for somewhere that would block the wind and the rain. Whether it was or wasn't... (Content failed to load! Please refresh or switch browsers)
## Interlude
> https://www.bilinovel.com/novel/823/36295.html
Once the sound of the electric motorcycle's engine could no longer be heard, "...What a noisy pair." The doctor muttered under his breath. "Yeah. I really envy them." The doctor looked at the princess in surprise. She had always been a child who would never say she envied anyone, no matter how much she did. Whether that was consideration for others or a way of keeping herself from seeming pitiful, at least in these past months the doctor had never once heard the princess say anything like "I really envy them." He didn't know whether she had noticed the change in herself, but her expression was plainly different from before. What had happened between her and the boy last night, the doctor could not imagine. Just then, looking down at the princess, the doctor noticed a small slip of paper that had fallen at his feet. It looked like a narrow strip with writing on it, about the size of a bookmark cut from thick paper. There was a hole at one end, and through the hole a pink ribbon tied in a knot. The bookmark looked handmade, and a little misshapen, as if whoever made it had been in a rush. "Princess, what's this?" "?" She took the slip from the doctor's hand and read the words on it. It seemed to be something the boy had written; the handwriting closely resembled the hand he had seen in the diary last night—plain, clean letters. "...'To the owner of Diary No. 2: this is a secret technique bestowed by the two owners of No. 1. There is one thing you must always observe when writing in this diary'..." The text did not end there. The rest was on the back. And just what was this secret technique? The doctor beside her peered over with keen interest. Prin... (Content failed to load! Please refresh or switch browsers)
## Final Chapter
> https://www.bilinovel.com/novel/823/36296.html
Under a sun like fire, on a road that ran dead straight, a motorcycle raced. The body was silver. The seat that came with it had been modified, with a rack added front and back. Riding the electric motorcycle were a boy and a girl. The boy in the silver helmet with goggles was about sixteen, wearing a sports jacket. The girl in the red helmet, no goggles, was sixteen as well, dressed in sportswear. They had changed their heading from north to south, but the two of them rode on just the same, almost without speaking. The girl, who had still been puffed up with anger a moment ago, was now leaning quietly against the boy's back. The arms around his stomach and the warm body heat against his back were a little irritating, and a little dear. "...Hey, Boy." "Mm. What is it, Girl." The engine's unending roar melted into the wind, the noisy clatter turning into something like background music. "Hey, do you remember? When we asked each other to travel together." "Of course I do." At the old, familiar subject, a smile came out of him before he could stop it. It was something he was not supposed to forget. A boy who had lost his whole family to the loss, drifting through the high school he attended in a daze day after day. He expected nothing of the future, and yet he was not so wholly despairing as to throw himself away; he only watched the hour hand turn slowly and lived days that meant nothing. One day, a classmate spoke to him out of nowhere. A girl he could not even put a face to, let alone a name—someone he could fairly call a complete stranger—and the first thing she did was invite him to set out together... (Content failed to load! Please refresh or switch browsers)
## Afterword
> https://www.bilinovel.com/novel/823/36297.html
I started writing this work one month before the Dengeki Prize deadline. Up to that point, the piece I had spent a year on, the one I was supposed to submit to the prize, had hit a wall, and I had all but given up on entering. Friends around me kept bringing it up—"Hey, the prize deadline is only a month away, right?" "If you started writing now and still made it, that would be pretty impressive"—and that talk became the spark for this story. There wasn't much time left, no matter how you looked at it. I hadn't settled on a single story, and I didn't have a single character name. I simply wrote a prologue in which the protagonist and the heroine appeared one after another, and then, in a flash, it became "a novel with no character names." In a sense, this is a work produced while pinned against a deadline. "If you were going to die tomorrow, what would you do?" Questions like that reach your ears now and then. And then, "What if, after you were gone, not a single trace of you remained in the world?" And then—what do you do? The starting point of this work is more or less that. The boy and the girl set out on a journey to look for an answer. Not to find the answer by means of the journey, but to feel their way toward an answer through what they experience along it. I think that is the method the two of them chose. I still remember, clear as anything, the day I submitted this work. From the start I never intended to win the prize—not even a one percent chance (delusions aside). Honestly, I remember thinking that if it made it to the second round of judging, that alone would be something people talked about. I never really meant to enter a thing like the Dengeki Prize in the first place... (Content failed to load! Please refresh or switch browsers)