The motorway to Kagoshima had that specific length of roads one travels at night, when the darkness outside the car makes the interior feel smaller and more intimate than it does at other hours.
Kato drove with the same calm as always.
Yuna looked at the road from the passenger seat with her arms crossed and the expression of someone who has been thinking about something for a while and has reached the point where they have to say it or will keep thinking about it.
"You got lucky for winning that card game," she said.
Kato glanced at her sideways.
"If you hadn't, I would have killed you," Yuna continued. "I can't believe you were going to hand me over to that old man in exchange for information."
"Obviously Genzō wouldn't have accepted the prize," said Kato. "Or so I think."
Yuna turned towards him.
"Or so you think?"
"Or so I think."
"Or so you think?"
"I already said what I said."
Yuna looked at him for a moment with the expression of someone processing several things at once and none of them fully satisfying her.
Kato laughed.
Not the contained laugh of always but something more genuine, shorter, the kind that comes out when something genuinely amuses him even if he was not planning it.
Yuna looked ahead with the posture of someone who has decided not to give him the satisfaction of responding, but who cannot stop a small smile from appearing at the corner of her mouth before she can put it out.
"Where did you hear about the remnant that hunts remnants?" she said, changing the subject with the speed of someone who prefers that topic to this one.
Kato looked at the road again.
"Not long ago," he said. "I did a mission on my own, before my students arrived. A few weeks before starting as a teacher."
"And?"
"And while looking for information for the mission, I heard about a remnant that hunted remnants," said Kato. "That caught my attention. I wanted to investigate it after finishing the mission."
Yuna looked at him.
"And why didn't you?"
"Because otherwise Kana would get annoyed with me," said Kato. "I had to finish what I had started first."
Yuna looked at him in that way.
"What?" said Kato.
"Nothing," said Yuna, in the tone of someone for whom it is completely obvious and sees no reason why they should have to explain it.
"I had valid reasons to—"
"Kato."
"It's just that Kana has this tone when—"
"Kato."
"All right, all right."
"That's what I thought."
"I was going to look into it afterwards," Kato continued, returning to the thread. "But then Yūta and the others arrived, and I had to become a teacher."
Yuna looked at him for a moment longer.
"At least now that you've waited a while," she said, "we can go together. Because this remnant seems dangerous."
Kato smiled.
"I don't think so," he said. "If I'm being honest with you."
"Why?"
"Because I think it's a remnant that simply doesn't know what it's doing and kills the same ones as itself," said Kato. "If there are people who kill people, it's only natural there would be remnants who kill remnants."
Yuna looked at him.
She was silent for a moment.
"You're right," she said.
"I know."
"Don't say it like that."
"How should I say it?"
"With less of a face that says you know."
Kato smiled.
The journey took longer than either of them would have wanted to admit. There were service stations, long stretches of silence, music that neither was really listening to, and that kind of tiredness that accumulates gradually, not like sleep but like a thin layer over the shoulders. By the time Kagoshima began to appear ahead of them, night had fallen again.
"Finally here," said Kato, looking ahead.
Kagoshima at night had that specific temperature of the south: warmer than Tokyo even at that hour, with a humidity the body registered before the mind had finished processing that the car had stopped.
Five minutes after arriving, the car stopped working properly.
Not all at once. With the specific gradualness of something that has been holding on for too long and finally decides it is enough. A noise, then another, then the speed dropping in a way that did not correspond to the foot on the accelerator.
Kato pulled it over to the side of the street.
"It's about time you changed this car," said Yuna.
"This car is perfect," said Kato.
Smoke came out of the bonnet.
Kato looked at it.
"You might have a point," he said.
They got out. Kato walked around the car with the expression of someone assessing something they know well. There was no surprise in his face, only the tired register of someone who had already had this conversation with that car on other occasions and knew how it ended.
"If you help me push it to the car park," said Kato, looking towards the hotel about twenty metres away, "we can stay there tonight."
Yuna looked at him.
"You're one of the strongest hunters," she said. "It shouldn't be difficult for you to push a car."
Kato processed that.
"That's true," he said.
He pushed the car alone to the hotel car park with the specific ease of someone for whom pushing a car is not an effort but simply a task.
Yuna watched with her arms crossed.
"There's a hotel here," she said when the car was in place. "We could stay."
"Yes," said Kato, looking at the building. "I'll go and get the rooms. Stay with the car so nobody steals it."
Yuna looked at the empty car park.
"There's nobody here," she said. "And if there were, only a madman would steal a broken car."
"There are always madmen about," said Kato.
"Some of them even become teachers," said Yuna.
Kato laughed and went into the hotel.
Yuna was left alone in the car park.
She looked at the hotel. Then at the car. Then at the hotel again.
The thought arrived without being invited: the room, Kato, whether there would be enough rooms available or whether they would have to—
She went red before finishing the sentence that was forming in her own head and told herself it was completely ridiculous to go red over a thought that was not even a question yet.
"I don't want to," she said, quietly.
Then she breathed.
"Nothing is going to happen," she said. "There are enough rooms. It's a hotel. Hotels have rooms. That's what they do."
She ran a hand through her hair.
"Perfectly normal."
The man at the reception desk behind the counter was an old man who had the look of someone for whom enthusiasm was a theoretical concept he had considered at some point in the past and had discarded for reasons he no longer remembered.
He looked at Kato with the expression of someone who attends to people because it is their job and not because they find it particularly interesting.
"Two rooms," said Kato.
The old man looked at him.
Then at the keys on the board behind him.
Then he took two and placed them on the counter with the specific movement of someone doing exactly the minimum necessary for the situation to progress.
"Thank you," said Kato, leaving the money on the counter.
The old man did not respond.
Kato took the keys and went out.
Yuna was still in the car park when Kato reappeared.
She was looking at the sky with an expression suggesting she had been having an internal conversation and that conversation had not been entirely calm.
"Stop talking to yourself," said Kato. "So there are madmen about after all."
Yuna looked at him seriously.
Kato threw her key to her.
Yuna caught it and looked at it.
"How will we sleep?" she said, in a voice that carried more weight than the question objectively required.
"I got a room each," said Kato.
Yuna processed that.
"Ah," she said.
"What were you expecting?"
"Nothing," said Yuna, too quickly. "I need to rest."
And she went towards the hotel entrance with the step of someone who has a clear destination and does not want anyone to ask further questions about that destination.
Kato watched her go.
"What's got into her?" he said, to himself.
The room had that temperature of hotels that is neither cold nor warm, but the temperature of a place that does not know who is going to occupy it and has therefore not prepared itself for anyone in particular.
Kato lay down.
He looked at the ceiling for a while, with the darkness of the room and the noise of Kagoshima outside. It was different from the noise of Tokyo: quieter, more spaced out, with more silence between each thing.
He closed his eyes.
Sleep came.
And with it came what sometimes came. Not always. Not every night. But some nights, yes.
He saw it in first person.
Not as a memory, but as though it were happening in that moment.
The corridor of the headquarters.
The main hall.
The floor.
His mother.
The moment he had not arrived in time to change and which, all the same, remained the moment, even though he had not arrived in time to change it.
He watched her fall.
Unable to do anything.
Kato woke with a start.
He sat up in bed with a breathing that took a moment to return to the rhythm corresponding to someone lying in a bed in a hotel in Kagoshima and not to someone in any other place.
He looked at the room.
The darkness.
The neutral temperature.
The silence.
"I'm going for a walk," he said, to nobody.
The hotel rooftop had that specific view of the rooftops of small places: the roofs of the nearby buildings, the street lights below, the sky that in Kagoshima had more visible stars than in Tokyo because there were fewer things competing for the space.
And a figure leaning on the railing.
Yuna looked at him when he appeared through the rooftop door with the expression of someone who was not expecting company, but was not rejecting it either.
"Couldn't you sleep?" said Kato.
"I struggled," said Yuna. "I woke up in the middle of the night and wanted some fresh air."
Kato leaned on the railing beside her.
"The beds?"
Yuna took a little while to respond.
"Ryuichi."
Kato did not look at her immediately.
"That story tends to do that."
"It's not just the story," said Yuna, looking at the city. "It's having believed one version my whole life and finding out now that there was another one underneath."
Kato rested his forearms on the railing.
"There's always another version underneath."
"That doesn't help."
"I wasn't trying to help."
Yuna looked at him from the corner of her eye.
"Surprisingly honest."
"It comes out when I'm tired."
Yuna let out a soft breath that did not quite become a laugh.
For a moment they were silent with Kagoshima below and the sky above. The temperature was kinder on the rooftop than in the rooms, and the night seemed too peaceful for a city they had arrived in looking for a remnant that hunted remnants.
"And you?" Yuna asked at last.
"Me what?"
"Why couldn't you sleep?"
Kato looked at the street.
"Same thing."
Yuna watched him for a moment, with that attention of hers that registered what was said and what was not.
"It wasn't the same thing," she said.
Kato barely smiled.
"I never said it was."
Yuna did not press further.
The rooftop door opened.
Both of them turned.
The elderly receptionist was in the doorway.
He had the same expression as always: no enthusiasm, no particular energy, the face of someone doing what they have to do because they have to do it.
"Guests must sleep," he said.
Kato looked at him.
"I'm sorry," he said. "We couldn't sleep well."
He paused with the specific awkwardness of someone trying to make something not sound like what it was.
"It's not because the beds were uncomfortable or anything. It's just that—"
"Kato," said Yuna.
"What?"
"Look at him."
Kato looked.
The receptionist was still saying the same thing.
"Guests must sleep," he said. "Guests must sleep. Guests must sleep."
In the same voice. The same tone. The exact same rhythm, without variation, like something that reproduces rather than speaks.
"Are you all right?" said Kato.
The receptionist stopped speaking.
He went still for a second that had too much stillness to be normal.
And then it began.
The convulsion came first. Not the kind that comes from inside outward, but from outside inward, as though the body were being reorganised by something that had not asked whether it could reorganise it. The arms bent at angles that did not correspond. The back took a curvature no back should have. The face began the process Kato and Yuna already knew: the skin changing, the features shifting, the eyes losing what eyes have that makes them eyes.
What remained was not the old man at the desk.
It was still saying the same thing.
"Guests must... sleep..." it said, in a voice that was no longer the old man's voice but something using that voice as a frame for something else that had no form of its own to come out through. "Guests must... sleep..."
Kato looked at it.
Then at Yuna.
Then back at the remnant that had been the receptionist and was still repeating the same phrase with the consistency of something that does not know how to say anything else, or has chosen not to say anything else.
"And to think I was going to give them five stars," said Kato.