Chương 258: 105. Welcome to Puni Puni Mouse Land

I woke to light the next morning. Not the soft, romantic kind you could score with piano music and call a mood. This was the business-hotel kind—the sort that forces its way through the gap in the curtains with all the joyless punctuality of a civil servant clocking in. Zero charm. Full persistence.

I lay there and spent three seconds confirming I was still alive: no surprise Imperial raid, no all-night message bombardment from Jess frying my nerves, no sudden death from thinking too hard, in the middle of the night, about things that had no business being that active. Good. The Federation didn't have to cut a condolence check to my next of kin. Not today, anyway. Then I turned my head and saw that Maki was already awake. No—strictly speaking, she didn't look freshly awake.

She looked like she'd gotten up at 0400, run a full morning combat-readiness check, finalized today's supply plan, walked the hotel's evacuation routes three times in her head, and only then, as an act of mercy, allowed herself to sit down and wait for me to open my eyes. She was already dressed. Hair done. Sitting on the edge of the bed with a terminal in hand, posture so straight it made this budget business hotel look like some kind of high-level operations room.

I was still in the middle of an emotional farewell to my blanket when she glanced over at me. I'd assumed she'd at least say "morning." She didn't. Her first line was:"Shimo. Pack your things. We're not staying here tonight." My body was still on the bed. My brain sat straight up.

"…What?" Maki's tone was as level as someone announcing that breakfast ended at ten—and that missing it was entirely your own problem.

"We're not staying here tonight." I pushed myself upright and looked at her, probably wearing the exact expression of some idiot recruit who'd just been handed unexpected transfer orders.

"Can I ask why?"

"The pipes are too loud," she said.

"And the bathroom leaks." I went quiet for two seconds. That was it? … That was it? The pipes are too loud? I nearly delivered a full academic paper, right there, on the subject of variance in human noise tolerance. She'd clearly never tried sleeping beside a municipal heating main. Never mind the years I'd spent half-homeless in places no sane person should live, where I'd picked up a whole suite of deeply unglamorous survival skills.

For instance— Pipe resonance, station announcements, drunks brawling, some guy delivering a political manifesto to an empty liquor bottle at two in the morning—none of it mattered. I could sleep through it. Sleep well, even. It's not a talent. It's the underclass version of evolution.

"Doesn't bother me," I said. I sat up, grabbed a comb, and went to war with the one strand of hair on my head that always had its own political agenda. It stood there anyway, like it was formally declaring war on the Federal Charter.

"So what's the plan for today?" Maki didn't answer right away. She just slid her terminal across toward me. A second later, mine pinged. I looked down. An ad flyer. The colors were bright enough to qualify as a war crime. The font was cute in the specific way that feels like extortion aimed at your childhood. And dead center of the whole thing was— I stared at it for three seconds. Then another three. Finally, in the most restrained voice I could manage, I read the headline out loud.

"…Puni Puni Mouse Paradise?" I looked up.

"An amusement park?"

"Mm." She said it like it was the most natural thing in the world.

"Found it online. Highest-rated recreational facility on Parker-6." I looked back down at the flyer. The so-called "Puni Puni Mouse" looked like a certain famous copyrighted rodent had been cross-bred, without consent, with several unrelated species from entirely different branches of evolution, and the survivor of that catastrophe—one that violated ethics, aesthetics, and basic genetics all at once—had been handed a mascot contract. Oversized round ears. Stubby, syrup-thick limbs.

A smile with the consistency of corn syrup. And a pair of eyes that didn't look like they were welcoming children so much as sizing up the next batch of sacrifices. I began to seriously question the aesthetic judgment of the entire population of Parker-6. Not mildly. The kind of question you'd want to bring to City Hall in person and demand a formal apology for.

"This thing…" I chose my words carefully.

"Is it just me, or is that ugly?" Maki glanced at it.

"It's fine."" It's fine?" I nearly choked.

"Maki. Are you serious? That thing looks like a joint venture between childhood trauma and an illegal gene-splicing lab." She stayed perfectly composed.

"The reviews are good."

"That just means this entire city collectively lost its capacity for visual judgment."

"Or you're heavily biased."

"This isn't bias. This is basic aesthetic self-defense." She ignored that and tapped open the info page beneath the ad. More details popped up—an enormous steel coaster, a water theater, a night light parade, limited-edition desserts, tie-in merchandise, a schedule engineered to strip a person of both sanity and savings in one pass. Worst of all, Maki was actually reading it. Seriously reading it. I watched her profile for two seconds and felt a small, specific wrongness settle in.

"…You're actually interested in this?"

"Looks good," she said. Looks good. Four syllables. Coming from her, they hit with the same force as Captain Tobita suddenly announcing he was taking the whole crew to a flower-arranging seminar. For a second I couldn't decide which part to be more stunned by—that Maki Kushima wanted to go to an amusement park, or that she'd looked at a rodent resembling crime-scene evidence and called it "good." I studied her face, hunting for a trace of a joke. Nothing. She meant it.

Which, on its own, was more disturbing than the mouse itself.

"Can I ask," I said, still wrestling the traitor strand of hair and fighting to keep my voice level, "why you want to go there specifically?" She thought about it.

"Yesterday was shopping, food, changing hotels. All practical."

"That sounds like a shore-leave logistics report."

"It was logistics."

"…Fair, I guess." She set the terminal down and looked up.

"Since we've got the day free, going somewhere with a simple purpose isn't a bad idea." I stopped brushing. On the surface, that sentence was nothing. But I understood exactly what she meant. Not shopping. Not restocking supplies. Not vetting accommodations. Not another line item off a checklist of real-world obligations. Just—going to have fun. Just fun. For most people, that's probably an ordinary thing to want. For people like us, it borders on extravagance.

I set the comb down and looked at that terminal, at that rodent whose ugliness carried real conviction, and something in my chest went complicated. It was still ugly. Indefensibly ugly. But if the whole reason Maki wanted to go was that the purpose was simple, it got a lot harder to write the entire thing off as psychological contamination. … Damn it. That's the most annoying thing about her. She never makes a speech. She just somehow leaves you feeling like the graceless one if you keep complaining.

Not that I've ever had a reputation for reading a room.

"For the record," I said, setting the comb down, holding onto the last scrap of my dignity, "if that mouse is as ugly in person as it is in this picture, I'm mocking it from the front gate to closing time."

"You can try."

"That sounded like encouragement."

"I'm not stopping you."

"That's encouragement by another name." Maki stood and crossed to where I sat. I thought she wanted something. Instead she just stopped in front of me and looked down.

"Hold still." I froze on reflex. She reached out and pressed the stubborn strand of hair flat. Her fingertips brushed my forehead—light, fast enough that you could argue nothing had happened at all. I still felt it. Clearly. Is this woman getting a little too comfortable doing these precisely calibrated, completely unnecessary things to me lately?

"There," she said. I touched my forehead. The strand had, for now, surrendered.

"…Are you treating me like some piece of unfinished equipment you're doing maintenance on?"

"No."

"Then isn't the frequency of these fix-ups getting a little high?" If you encounter this tale on Amazon, note that it's taken without the author's consent. Report it. She didn't blink.

"You always miss a spot."

"That's cruel."

"It's accurate."

"I hate your accuracy." She didn't answer—just turned and started repacking last night's things into our bags, movements so efficient it was clear she'd already mapped out the whole day, down to the exact minute I'd resume slandering the mouse. I got dressed, watching her back, and the absurdity of it all finally landed. Yesterday, live rounds on the bridge. Today, a place called Puni Puni Mouse Paradise. With Maki. On its own, that felt like some kind of cosmic-scale practical joke.

"Shimo."

"Yeah?"

"Breakfast out, or here?" I checked the time. Then the flyer, with its malevolently smiling mouse.

"Out," I said.

"Why?"

"If I'm going into direct confrontation with that thing today," I said, entirely serious, "I want real food first. Something to stabilize my mental state." Maki looked at me. Then, very faintly, she laughed. Not a wide, lip-curved thing. More like a thin ripple moving under a sheet of ice. Short. Light. Enough to strip a few words straight out of my vocabulary.

"All right," she said.

"Out, then." I looked away and did up the last button on my shirt. Wonderful. The day had barely begun and my cardiac cooperation was already substandard. At this rate, by the time we actually stood in front of that mouse, I might die of something entirely unrelated before I even got the chance to insult it. … Whatever. At least the cause of death on my file probably wouldn't read fatally startled by an ugly mascot. I hope. Checkout took about thirty seconds and delivered zero human warmth.

We handed back the key cards. The front-desk robot thanked us in a synthesized voice that sounded like it might lose power mid-word—"Wel… come… back… a… gain…" It didn't sound like a blessing. It sounded like the DLC pack bundled with some local urban legend. I stood at the counter with our bags from last night and couldn't help glancing back at the thing.

"Has it never considered retirement?" Maki put her terminal away, voice level.

"If it could think, it would've quit a long time ago."

"Harsh. Also accurate." I followed her out the hotel doors. The morning air still carried some leftover damp. Storefronts were flipping their signs open one by one; delivery trucks wove through the morning commute. The whole forward-port district ran like an adult who'd stayed up too late and still had to clock in, dark circles and all. And today, my fate was to follow Maki Kushima to a place called Puni Puni Mouse Paradise. Just accepting that fact earned three seconds of silent spiritual mourning.

We ended up eating two streets down from the hotel, in a narrow little place with paint peeling off the sign and more steam in the air than décor on the walls. Fried eggs. Bacon. Toast pushed a shade past golden. Coffee strong enough to double as industrial lubricant. A pot of potato soup that had clearly been simmering since some unknowable hour and smelled incredible anyway. Frontline breakfast. Not refined. Not curated. Nobody cared how you ate.

The calories landed, the flavor landed, and once you were done you could reasonably believe you'd survive another eight hours. I bit into toast and glanced at the flyer again—colors turned up to violence, Puni Puni Mouse beaming its sugar-overdosed, legally-questionable grin straight at my sanity. I flipped the terminal face down on the table.

"I still don't get it." Maki was cutting into her eggs. She looked up.

"What?"

"What exactly do you see in it?" I said, entirely sincere.

"That thing looks like childhood trauma, gene-splicing, and marketing-department malice got thrown in a blender and baked." She put a piece of egg in her mouth, chewed, swallowed, and only then answered, unhurried:"You already said it was ugly once."

"Some points bear repeating."

"Maybe it's cuter in person." I nearly inhaled my coffee.

"You still have hope at that level?"

"People should stay flexible."

"That's not flexibility. That's a failure to assess reality." She didn't argue. Just nudged her coffee cup a few inches toward me.

"You dropped your toast." I looked down. Sure enough, a crumb had fallen off the edge of my plate while I was busy being passionate. Wonderful. My hostility toward Puni Puni Mouse was now compromising my basic dignity as a person who eats food. After breakfast, we caught the regional line out to the park. The car was nearly all families and couples. Up front, a kid bounced in her seat wearing Puni Puni Mouse ear headbands. Behind us, a couple held matching park-branded thermoses.

Diagonally across sat a man at least a hundred and ninety centimeters tall, jaw thick with stubble, built like he could field-strip a machine gun one-handed—wearing a T-shirt with that same idiotically grinning mouse printed dead center on his chest. I stared at that, feelings extremely complicated. The war hadn't managed to destroy this world. Aesthetics had gotten there first. Every five minutes, the intercom replayed the park's promotional jingle, sweet enough to cause cavities through the speaker alone.

"Welcome to Puni Puni Mouse Paradise—on a planet woven from dreams and smiles, make your brightest memories yet!" I stared out the window, expression flat.

"Right now I'd settle for a clean medical file." Maki sat beside me, a projected park map open, genuinely studying the layout.

"We should hit the popular rides first. Lines get worse in the afternoon."

"You made an itinerary?"

"If we're going, there's no point wasting time."

"That sentence, from you, sounds like a tactical brief before an assault on enemy ground."

"Amusement parks require route planning too."

"No. Normal people say things like 'I can't wait.'""That's not how I talk."

"Yeah. I know." I looked over her projected map. The longer I stared at the ride names, the more convinced I became that whoever named this place should face criminal charges. Puchu Volcano Coaster. Fluffy Phantom Mansion. Puni Adventure Lazy River. Mousey Starlight Parade Avenue. I closed my eyes.

"Maki."

"Mm?"

"If my language centers suffer permanent damage by the end of today, the Federal military should let me file for a workplace injury claim." She finally glanced at me, the faintest trace of amusement showing in her eyes.

"You're talking a lot today. That means you're in good shape mentally."

"I'm using sarcasm to hold my personality together."

"Effective method."

"Thank you for the clinical assessment." About forty minutes later, the line pulled into the terminal station. The doors opened onto a scene so oversaturated with color it looked like reality had simply given up resisting. A massive gate. Banners. Fountains. Balloons. Music. Screaming. Laughter.

Food-stall smells, sweet popcorn, kids sprinting past, staff calling out greetings, and somewhere in the distance, the periodic roar of a coaster—everything hit at once, like someone had turned the concept of joy into heavy machinery and driven it straight through your sensory system. Then I saw it. No. Correction. I saw the actual thing. Standing in front of the main gate was a Puni Puni Mouse statue, at least four stories tall. That wasn't cute. That wasn't whimsical. That wasn't even ugly-cute.

That was an out-of-control public art disaster. Its head was bigger than in the ad. Its ears jutted out like two overcommitted black pot lids. Its eyes were made of some hyper-reflective material no organism should legally possess, and from any angle, they seemed to already know you'd be having nightmares about it tonight. The smile, blown up to this scale, was worse—the corners of its mouth pulled up at an angle that sat precisely between welcome and you're not getting out of here.

I stood there, silent, for a full five seconds. Then, in the ruined voice of someone whose soul had just taken serious damage:"… This thing actually exists." Maki stood beside me, looking up at it.

"Bigger than I expected."

"That's the issue you're focused on? The size?"

"What else would it be?"

"The issue," I said, "is that it looks like it's going to climb down off that base at midnight and go hunting for kids who won't go to sleep." She looked at it another two seconds, then said:"Right angle, that could actually be a good photo." I turned my head very slowly.

"Sorry—what?"

"A picture." Her expression was completely serious. Not joking. Not teasing me. Genuinely, plainly, in the most Maki Kushima way possible—thinking that this was, in fact, photo-worthy.

"…You want a picture with that?"

"Mm."

"With this one?"

"Mm."

"You're sure?"

"You're here too, aren't you?"

"I'm here as a victim." She looked at me. Paused a beat.

"Shimo."

"What."

"Take one for me." I nearly blacked out on the spot. In the end, I stood in front of that hellspawn mascot and took her picture. In the frame: Maki, expressionless, standing in front of Puni Puni Mouse's enormous, malevolent grin, making a gesture so understated it barely registered—not a heart, not a peace sign, just her hand lifted a fraction of an inch, like she was providing the bare legal minimum of evidence that this ridiculous outing had happened. Behind her, the monster smiled like it had already won.

I looked at the screen, deeply grieved.

"If this photo ever leaks, you lose ten percent of your authority in my personal ranking."

"Then don't let it leak."

"…Fair." Once that was done, she held out her hand.

"My turn." I blinked.

"Your turn what?"

"Picture."

"No."

"We're already here."

"That's not a reason."

"It's a good enough one."

"It is not." She skipped the pointless argument entirely. Just stepped in closer and flagged down a staff member passing by, offering up the terminal.

"Excuse me—could you take one for us?" I went completely rigid. The staffer, wearing Puni Puni Mouse ears, beamed.

"Of course! You two seem really close!" I nearly objected on the spot. But Maki had already moved up beside me—close enough that I could smell laundry soap under the morning air. For a second, I lost the ability to speak entirely.

"Shimo. Look at the camera," she said quietly. I looked up on reflex. A beat before the shutter clicked, Maki's hand landed naturally on my shoulder and drew me half a step in toward her. Click. Done. Roughly half my brain was still stuck on that half-step. The staffer handed the terminal back, delighted.

"That came out great!"

"Thanks," Maki said, taking it. I stared at her.

"You did that on purpose."

"Which part?"

"All of it."

"No." She said it so calmly there wasn't a single edge to grab onto. This woman is genuinely without shame. Inside the gates, the first ride Maki crossed off her list was the one called the Puchu Volcano Coaster. I stood at the bottom, looking up at the track. The whole structure looked like a metal snake that had suffered a psychotic break—climb, drop, twist, loop twice like it had personally given up on life, then blast out of a laughably fake volcano mouth.

I listened to the screaming drifting down from the top and felt a sudden, powerful urge to go sit on a bench.

"I think," I offered, very reasonably, "that the spirit of an amusement park shouldn't be built on voluntary cervical trauma."

"Reviews are good."

"Cemeteries get great quiet-environment reviews too." Maki already had two express passes in hand. I stared at them, feeling about the same way I had the first time we loaded live rounds on the bridge. Difference being, that time I still had some dignity. Once we were strapped in, I pulled the safety bar down and checked it three times. Maki sat beside me, calm as if she weren't riding a coaster at all, but inspecting a gravity simulator for shock-absorption specs.

"You're not nervous at all?"

"I'm fine."

"Do you only react if the world's actually ending?"

"If it does, I'll let you know." The car started its slow climb. Clack. Clack. Clack. Every notch upward added another unit to my resentment of Puni Puni Mouse. The wind at the top was strong. The whole park spread out beneath us—colorful, loud, absurd, a joy-trap built out of syrup and capitalism. Then— The nose dropped. I screamed. With zero dignity. Not some elegant, tasteful gasp. A genuine, unfiltered, career-destroying scream. Wind exploded past my ears. The track flipped. The volcano effects blasted hot air.

The whole car jerked around like a lunatic had picked it up and started shaking it. Somewhere between weightlessness and crushing g-force, I was fairly sure my soul had filed formal paperwork to separate from my body. Beside me, Maki. She didn't scream. Not once. The entire time. She just sat there, hair whipping back, eyes calmly forward, expression as steady as if she were field-testing shock absorbers. Somewhere around the second loop I managed to look over at her and felt a deeply misplaced sense of defeat.

Is this woman even human. By the time the car slammed back into the platform, I was basically in pieces. The second my feet hit the ground, I had the distinct sensation of having just been repatriated from another dimension. Maki popped her harness and turned to look at me.

"You okay?"

"No," I said, gripping the railing, voice thin.

"My whole life just flashed in front of me. It included a scene of me, as a kid, stealing a side dish out of someone else's lunchbox."

"Means it was intense enough."

"That's not a selling point."

"You screamed with a lot of energy, though."

"I hate that that's your feedback." Something flickered in her eyes—faint. Light. Exactly the right amount of infuriating. Then, as if trying to be fair about it, she offered:"Your turn. Something you're better at." I assumed she meant a carousel. Something where humanity was still intact. She took me to the haunted house. The haunted house was called the Fluffy Phantom Mansion. Those three words alone proved the park's naming department needed an intervention.

The entrance was a deliberately aged manor front, fake ivy climbing the walls, shadows flickering behind the windows. They'd actually spent money on the sound design—moans, creaks, the drag of something being pulled across a floor, audible even from the door. Standing there, I got a bad feeling.

"Just so we're clear," I told Maki, "the actually scary part of these places is never the ghosts. It's staff jumping out of blind corners with real professional enthusiasm."

"You want to walk inside or outside?"

"…Does it matter?"

"If you scare easily, inside's better." My hackles went straight up.

"Who said I scare easily?" She stayed perfectly calm.

"The coaster."

"That was physiology. Doesn't count."

"Sure." She agreed way too fast for me to believe she meant it. When we finally went in, I ended up on the inside track after all. That wasn't capitulation. That was tactical positioning. We hadn't gotten far before the first ghost popped out from behind a wall with a snap, face pale as someone who hadn't been paid in three days. My shoulders jerked on reflex. A second later, Maki said, perfectly calm, beside me:"Not bad makeup."

"You're critiquing the makeup right now?"

"Good layering."

"This is not a venue for art appreciation!" Further in, the floor shook, something resembling intestines dropped from the ceiling, and a woman in a torn dress lunged out screaming from the side. I nearly stumbled straight into a wall. Maki just turned and looked at her. At her shoes, specifically.

"She's wearing non-slip boots." I stared at her, unable to process this.

"What exactly are you looking at right now?"

"Practical consideration. This floor's slick."

"Do you have some kind of condition?"

"That doesn't constitute a valid critique." Just as I was building up to argue further, a burst of air hit us from ahead, an entire wall of skulls lit up with red eyes at once, low-frequency rumble under a sharp screech—genuinely a decent bit of atmosphere. I flinched sideways on instinct. The back of my hand brushed hers. Just once. Light. But in that dim, chaotic, everything-is-fake-and-none-of-it-is-as-calm-as-she-is place, that single point of contact was unreasonably clear.

I meant to pull my hand back like nothing had happened. Instead, Maki's hand turned and closed around my wrist. Not fingers laced together. Nothing that would send a person floating up to heaven. Just a steady grip. Like: more things are about to jump out, don't walk into a wall. Which was exactly the problem. The more reasonable she made it look, the less room my heartbeat had left to pretend it was about the ghosts.

"…I'm not scared," I said, low.

"Mm."

"That 'mm' sounded condescending."

"I'm not calling you out on it."

"So I should be grateful?"

"You could be."

"You have some nerve sometimes."

"A little cooler than your hand's running right now." … That's it. Game over. That line was worse than the skulls. For a second I genuinely couldn't tell if the chill down my spine was the haunted house's ambient temperature effects or just that sentence. By the time we stepped out into daylight, I realized she'd let go of my hand at some point. The faint pressure on my wrist stayed anyway. Annoying. We went on a few less lethal rides after that. The lazy river. A shooting gallery.

A spinning teacup ride that made me question whether my organs had collectively relocated. A parade far more elaborate than it had any right to be. The most ridiculous part: Maki actually won me a small Puni Puni Mouse keychain at the shooting gallery. I held the thing—still punchable, but small enough now that it barely qualified as an omen of the apocalypse—and felt a complicated mess of feelings I couldn't fully name.

"For you," Maki said.

"Can I decline delivery?"

"You kept staring at it."

"I was observing the enemy."

"Take it home and keep observing, then."

"… You have a real talent for forced transactions." She didn't answer, just pushed the thing into my hand. And, notably, I didn't throw it away. Which was more alarming, honestly, than Puni Puni Mouse itself. By the time we left the park, the sky had gone dark. On the train back, I leaned into the seat, mentally as drained as after a mid-scale sim exercise. The difference being: back then, what wore me down was gunfire, orders, the pressure of knowing one wrong move got someone killed.

Today it was an ugly mascot, a roller coaster, and Maki Kushima's various flawlessly deadpan attacks. As the transit line pulled into the station, the sky outside had already sunk low and heavy. The second we stepped off, the first drop of rain hit. Hard. Not the fine, literary drizzle poets like writing about. The kind where God's clearly been holding a grudge for a while and finally just tips the whole bucket over at once.

"Run!" I shouted it on pure reflex. Maki didn't waste a second—grabbed the bags and took off after me. The crowd on the street scattered instantly, sign lights fractured into streaks through the downpour, vendors scrambled to cover their stalls, pedestrians dove for eaves or covered walkways. Within three seconds the whole street went from a relaxed evening to a full-scale evacuation. We tore around one corner, then half a block more, our shoes kicking up enough water to raise a second litter of Puni Puni Mice.

Rain hammered my face, blurred everything to smears. Up ahead I caught a lit sign, an awning over a door.

"There!" I grabbed Maki and bolted straight in. The door slid open. Cold air and perfume hit at once. I wiped rain off my face, gasping, about to say we'd finally made it— Then I saw the wall decorations. Pink neon strips. Heart shapes. A glass display case holding certain items that had no business appearing in a standard business hotel. And behind the counter, a sign clearly meant to be discreet, and failing spectacularly at it:"Couples' Rest — 3-Hour Special Rate" I froze completely.