Mardock Scramble

stairway to heaven—to Mardock.

Oeufcoque, too, had taken a step up that spiraling stairway. He had heard Balot crying out that she didn’t want to die and accepted it. He had repudiated his former user, transcended his own existence as a mere tool, and voluntarily taken it upon himself to kill. In order to keep Balot safe. In order to stop Boiled from killing her.

In order to stop anyone from killing Balot.

Balot heard waves. She could smell the sea spume. The air was heavy, and she caught a whiff of all sorts of other smells mixed in. The giant industrial machines in the factories were creaking, cradled by the stagnant air.

The red convertible sped down Sea Street—the breakwater that the city had used to declaw the ocean, to tame it to the city’s needs. The car moved as if it were making a dash to freedom, away from something that wanted to press in on it and smother it.

I’m just a tool, Oeufcoque had once said. A tool designed to protect its user. And a tool that was kind and gentle and patient and taught her so many things. Balot searched for the words that would call him back, but they disappeared from her mind as soon as they appeared. The Doctor had asked Balot to comfort Oeufcoque, but all she could do was what she was doing at the moment. Hold him tightly to her chest.

Tears flowed from her eyes, dried, and then flowed again. She cried for herself, and then she cried for someone else.

Suddenly she felt the steel in her arms grow warmer. She sensed Oeufcoque. But even though she waited, he didn’t stir. It was as if he really had become an egg. He stayed hidden inside his metal shell. But he was definitely there.

–Oeufcoque?

Balot called out to him quietly. There was no answer.

She unfolded her arms in order to examine the gun more closely. That was when it happened.

“Keep holding me like that,” Oeufcoque said in a little voice. “I want you to hold me for a little longer.”

Balot felt something warm spread out within her chest.

When she held Oeufcoque, he could feel her too. Her heart pounded at the thought. Oeufcoque had been sensing Balot all along. Her body heat, her feelings, more. Not just now, but always. This was much more than just looking at each other from opposite sides of the mirror, never to touch the other.

People touching her, feeling her—this had always been Balot’s curse, the bane of her life. It was the source of all her fears. To be taken, to have done to her as others wished. In order to protect herself against that, her only strategy had been to hide inside a shell, to look on at the world from the other side of the mirror.

But now her curse was lifting. She had been cleansed. The final piece of the jigsaw puzzle in her heart had been filled in, without her even realizing it.

I’m going to make you clean. I’m going to clean you up. The insidious whisper that had followed her around and dogged her at every turn was now detaching its claws from her mind. Before long it became just a set of meaningless words and disappeared into the ether.

All at once Balot’s eyes began to overflow with more tears. This time, though, they were a different type of tear.

–Let’s cry together, Oeufcoque. Let’s cry so that our sorrows will disappear, just a little bit.

Balot hugged the gun with no trigger.

Then, with her eyes turned up to the sky about to break dawn, Balot wondered what she could do. What she should do. She wanted to stay embracing the half-baked little egg forever—this gun with no trigger. She knew that this was what she wanted. However bad things got, however burnt-out her life became, she wanted always to remain as someone who could do that. Right now, that was what she desired. It was what she could do. And it was what she should do.

The car had finished its tour of the coastline, and before Balot knew it they were heading back in toward the city.

The skyline was approaching, with all its tall buildings and numerous roads threading in between them.

In the city there would be setbacks, discouragements, and the hands that emerged from dark graves to hold people perpetually back.

The specters of the past would no doubt continue to rise up and rend the silence with clamorous gunfire.

As she gazed at the view of the city, Balot remembered the name of the man who had died and nodded softly.

To stay by someone’s side—to be with someone you wanted to do that with, and who wanted to do that with you in return—that was the last bastion of hope. It made the city bearable.

In the same way that Balot now embraced Oeufcoque, the morning light of Mardock City gently caressed Central Park—that grand junction where all paths crossed. The Spot of Spots.

Balot returned there.

To the place where she had once died.

In order to live.

FIN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Photo by Ichiro Fujisato

Born in Gifu Prefecture in 1977, Tow Ubukata was exposed to a blending of cultures from early childhood until the age of fourteen, having lived in Singapore and Nepal due to his father's work. In 1996, while in college, Ubukata won the first Sneaker Taisho Gold Prize for his light novel Kuroi Kisetsu (Black Season) and thus debuted as a writer. In 2003, he won the Japan SF Award for Mardock Scramble, originally published as a three-volume series. He is involved in a wide range of projects including anime production for Fafner, video game production, and original content writing for comics such as Le Chevalier D'Eon. His other works include the Bye-Bye Earth and Spiegel novel series. In 2009, Ubukata published his first historical novel, Tenchi Meisatsu, focusing on a mathematician of the Edo period. In 2010, the novel hit the bestseller lists and was awarded the Honya Award (voted on by book retailers).