Bungo Stray Dogs - Volume 4 Chapter 4 Part 4

Chapter 4 Part 4

Atsushi had a dream about someone.
He couldn’t tell which way was up or down. He didn’t know whether he was sitting or standing, whether he was hot or cold. Even the difference between one second from now and one hour from now was ambiguous.
Atsushi was having a dream about a boy he didn’t know. He was a kind boy with a lonely hue to his firm gaze as he quietly stared at the island alone. There were no tourist attractions. No windmills. Nothing. It was an untouched island with absolutely nothing but an empty landscape. In the middle of the island stood the boy.
Atsushi didn’t know what this dream was about or who the boy was, but for some reason, he knew the boy was lonely.
As he gazed at the sky and sea, he had the same light in his eyes as Atsushi. In the depths of his clear eyes was conviction—conviction that the world didn’t exist to be nice to him—conviction that hell was in the hearts of others.
The boy was the guardian of the island. He was lonely, noble-minded, and he didn’t even love himself. There was nobody by his side. His eyes were only fixed on what he had to do, and depressingly so. Atsushi tried to call out to the boy, but he couldn’t make a sound. When he tried to approach the boy, he moved farther away, and when he tried to look directly at the boy, he couldn’t clearly see him. Only loneliness painfully chilled his heart like a piece of ice sliding down the back of his throat.

“Wake up, young tiger.”
Atsushi opened his eyes to the sound of the voice.
I’m lying down somewhere—somewhere dark. I’m not dead. I’m alive.
“Are you conscious? Can you hear my voice?”
Atsushi looked around. It was a narrow, round cavern. The air itself was emitting a faint light, vaguely outlining the space. It didn’t appear to be a dream or the afterlife, but then…where was this?
“We’re in an underground cavern on the island,” said the voice as if they could read Atsushi’s mind. Nevertheless, he still couldn’t see where the voice was coming from.
“This cavern was all I could create using my remaining power, and it, too, will soon disappear.”
The air faintly emitted more light as it began to show the silhouette of a person. It was a tall, young man. He was perhaps slightly older than Atsushi. While he didn’t know the person, Atsushi felt as if he had met him somewhere before.
Who are you?
“I am Verne,” replied the man after reading Atsushi’s mind once more. “I am the guardian of this island and one of the Seven Traitors, Jules Gabriel Verne.”
Gab?
But that couldn’t be. He was far older than Gab. The young man dimly appearing before Atsushi could have been twice Gab’s age. His demeanor and voice were different as well. Unlike the short-tempered, ill-mannered Gab, this young man seemed like a quiet individual who’d enjoy working at a library.
Nevertheless, the color of his hair and eyes were the same. He appeared to somewhat share Gab’s meticulous, shrewd aura as well.
“First, just so there is no confusion, you won’t be able to leave this place,” Verne—Gab’s older self—clearly stated. “As long as he intends to keep you here, at least—for you are now inside him. I am deeply sorry, but I do not possess the power to save you.”
“He”? Is he talking about Gab? But I thought you were Gab, too…?
“Yes and no,” replied the young man in the same manner Gab did. “He is not human.”
Then what is he?

“A skill,” stated the young man. “Have you ever thought about what skills are?”
“What skills are”? Of course I have. There hasn’t been a day since I learned who the white tiger actually was that I haven’t thought about skills. What was that tiger? Why did I have the power of one? How much of me is me, and how much of the tiger is me? Why did people have to suffer because of my skill?
“I have something I want to show you,” said Verne. “I want to show you his—the island’s—memories. There aren’t many who know, and there are even fewer who speak of it, but it is something you must see, young tiger. Thanks to your friend—the man who can nullify skills—I was able to be here, although only temporarily. I believe you wish to save him, yes?”
Of course. No matter what it costs.
“Then watch the rest of the dream.”
The glowing light grew brighter. Atsushi once again thought to himself:
Is this part of reality? Or am I simply hallucinating, deprived of oxygen and on the verge of death underground?
“You will have to be the judge of whether this is a hallucination, just like everything in this world,” replied Verne from within the light. Atsushi could no longer see him. The quality of the air around him changed as well. The world blurred as Atsushi soon became unable to perceive what was outside and what was inside. Grieving as if he were being sent far, far away, Atsushi sank into another world—into a sea of information.
Jules Gabriel Verne was a quiet, timid boy. After losing his parents to the war, Verne shut himself off from the world. A cold loneliness was all he had, and he held no expectations in life. But when Verne was fourteen years old, he hit a turning point when a certain organization discovered his skill and took him in.
The Seven Traitors.
That was what they once called the criminals who ended the war among nations. They were seven individuals, each from a different country and of a different race. What they had in common, though, were their extraordinary skills and a firm resolution to end the war, regardless of how dirty their hands got—even if it meant ignoring all principles and morals.
Verne became one of the Seven. Jules Gabriel Verne—his skill was called The Mysterious Island. It was an extremely rare skill. Its range extended across the island he claimed as his domain, and it absorbed all the skills of the people who died there. Everyone thought Verne decided to fight to end the war that killed his parents, but that wasn’t the case. He genuinely just wanted to do something for the Seven. That was the turning point in his life. He finally had people like him—people who took him in and changed him—fellow criminals he could trust his life with—just like how Atsushi had the detective agency.
During that time, the Seven Traitors—including Verne—carried out their largest mission yet. They held a peace conference on the man-made island of Standard Island. They kidnapped the highest decision-making bodies of each country and brought them to this island to force peace among the overexhausted nations who had no plans of ever ending the war, despite the fact that the countries were already impoverished and incapable of continuing the fight.
Each of the Seven utilized their skill to kidnap the most prominent ruling and military leaders of each nation, then locked them inside the island’s secret zone. They persuaded, threatened, and in some cases almost brainwashed the leaders with their skills to get them to agree to peace. Once that was over, they kidnapped anyone who might have affected the continuation of the war, such as key members involved with public relations in each country and executives in munitions industries, then made them do the same thing.
During that time, countless armies and intelligence agencies smuggled themselves onto the island and tried to steal their men back, but they were no match for Verne’s skill. While it only worked on the island, he was essentially invincible against anyone who came. Verne defeated numerous special forces and assassins with skills, only to absorb their skills and become even stronger.
As a result, the signed treaty for peace became valid, aided by strong demand from the anti-war protestors, and thus ended the battle.
And just like that, Verne was alone once again. Some of the Seven Traitors died, while others disappeared, but Verne stayed on the island alone. The key countries needed a facility for negotiations and to communicate in secret, regardless of how tense international affairs became. Therefore, he decided to remain on the island. (The conference room on the fourth basement floor with the large screens and telephones that Atsushi saw was created for said purpose as well.)
Verne was alone, but he didn’t even attempt to abandon his duty to protect the island. He needed a place for his friends to return. He had to protect Standard Island—which was protected from the rest of the world— for when he was reunited with the other Seven Traitors. And just like that, Verne became the guardian.
Fourteen years peacefully went by with only a little trouble along the way. Eventually, the boy at the end of the war had become a young man and continued to put his energy into maintaining the island while living on it as one of the workers. However, peace is nothing more than a short break between wars. One day after those fourteen years had passed, a foreign object was brought onto the island unlike anything before:
Annihilation—the Shell. And not long after came the skill user who could manipulate time, Wells.
Verne, who took this matter seriously, immediately made a move. He took the name Gab, a tourist on the island, and made contact with Wells to see who she really was. After determining she was worthy enough to cooperate with, he promised to help her get the weapon back from the terrorist.
It wasn’t hard for the guardian of the island to discover where the weapon was hidden. The hard part was retrieving it. The terrorist—the colonel—was always surrounded by fully armed soldiers, but Gab couldn’t show them Verne’s skill, for it had strong ties to serious crimes during the war. Gab couldn’t let outsiders know of it, and he was far too kind to kill the colonel’s men.
Therefore, he devised a plan where he would use the thieves who had sneaked onto the island long before. They weren’t big shots. In fact, they failed every time. Then they would escape prison and try it all over again. However, the boss’s skill—the ability to walk through walls—was perfect for hiding and emerging anywhere on the island. Verne used a skill he absorbed long ago that allowed him to manipulate age and appearance to transform into a young teenager. Then, when he asked the thief if he could become his pupil, he was almost immediately welcomed into the group.
While borrowing the boss’s skill with the appearance of a boy, Verne easily reached the weapon and defeated the colonel. He was able to retrieve the weapon, but that was when the unexpected happened: Wells was hit by a stray bullet and died. She was a powerful skill user, but her abilities were not suited for battle. Being hit with a bullet meant death. Verne was devasted. Despite acting as the island’s guardian these past fourteen years, he couldn’t even save the life of a single woman. Fortunately, though, he soon thought of a way to rescue her.
Verne would absorb her skill once she died on the island, send himself fifty-five minutes into the past, and save her. The plan worked. Verne returned fifty-five minutes into the past and was reunited with Wells. He fought against the colonel and won once again. But that was when Verne realized something. If he were to absorb Wells’s skill again, couldn’t he return to the past again too?
Wells’s skill wouldn’t allow the same person to return to the past more than once, but if Verne used his skill to keep stealing hers, he would always be using the skill for the first time. In other words, he could ignore the skill’s condition that would only allow him to travel once into the past. Even though he prevented the weapon from being activated, soldiers still died, and he defeated the colonel without even learning of his motives. If he went back fifty-five minutes—if he kept going back fifty-five minutes in time—he would be able to create the best future. That was what he believed.
To make a long story short, his hypothesis was correct. Verne was able to countlessly go back in time and steal the weapon. Ten times. Twenty times. But every time, somebody got hurt, whether it be the captain, the soldiers, or even one of the thieves. Creating a perfect world was far more difficult than Verne had imagined. In addition, every time he succeeded, he thought, What if…? It was never enough for him; he always wanted more.
But during those trials, he realized something he never expected would happen.
The time was gradually getting longer. At first it was fifty-five minutes. Then it was fifty-six. Soon enough, he could travel fifty-eight minutes into the past, and eventually even hours. Skills had been occasionally observed to evolve as the user mastered them, but Verne never expected his to evolve

like this. To be honest, it was a thrilling miscalculation to make. He could redo more the further he went back in time and save more people. Verne went back hours in time—days, even, until he began to harbor hope. If he kept going further back in time, would he be able to be reunited with his friends? If he went even further back, would he be able to stop the war itself from ever happening?
It was a big dream—far too big for a single human. It never dawned on Verne that as the skill increased in power, something else was slowly building up as well, and it wasn’t necessarily something good. Skills themselves were neither good nor evil. They simply existed. And at times, skills led to results far more sinister than anyone’s ill intentions.
There was no way to name what was building up. Some may say it was something similar to experience points, while others may say it was something close to error. While traveling into the past, the skill got stronger, transformed, and eventually grew to have a will of its own.
It was just like Atsushi’s tiger skill. Even if Atsushi borrowed a portion of the tiger’s strength, he was not able to control the tiger itself. If Atsushi were to fully transform into the white tiger, he would wreak havoc, acting on instinct. He wouldn’t even be able to predict who he would hurt or what he would destroy. That was what made it powerful and infallible without intention.
That was the island in Gab’s case; and in Verne’s case, that was how much more powerful the island was. The island’s skill rid itself of Verne’s personality and robbed him of his flesh. That was when the living skill Gab was born. The consciousnesses of the skill Gab and the possessor Verne reversed. However, Gab’s consciousness was less stable compared with humans. Even Atsushi’s white tiger could only be expressed for a short period of time. If Verne stopped returning to the past and if time began to flow normally once again, he would soon cease to exist. The skill—Gab— was terrified. He didn’t want to disappear. It was unbearable to him to simply imagine that he wouldn’t exist—that he would sink into the darkness of the unknown.
Gab, the new life-form, decided to do the same thing as his master. In other words, he was going to repeat time. He would continue living inside the loop, never to go outside. Gab would never lose who he was as long as the future never came. By then, he was able to go thirty hours back in time.

Through preventing the future from coming and shutting himself within those thirty hours, he was able to avoid the fear of death.
On the surface, he continued to live in a loop just like Verne. He would go back into the past, steal the weapon, and return back into the past. What made him different from Verne was his reason. The guardian of the island, Verne, wanted to save everyone. Gab, on the other hand, didn’t care whether people died.
He repeated the past over and over again, gaining knowledge and wisdom each time along with becoming more clever and cunning as well. That was enough for Gab. He was happy. He just wanted to live, nothing else.
But while repeating the past thousands—hundreds of thousands—of times, sometimes a rare, unforeseen circumstance arose. A small miscalculation would greatly change the future. One time, the colonel committed suicide. Another time, Wells saw through Gab’s scheme. With each past, Gab would use the knowledge he had gained to deal with the situation and overcome the irregular circumstances. Then he would kill Wells once more in the end and return to the past—that is, until he made his greatest miscalculation.
Like most things, it started as a small difference. Worried about rumors of a weapon, the captain leaked the information to an outsider, and that rumor ended up reaching the Special Division for Unusual Powers—a secret department of the Japanese government that managed skill users. Since the island was within the territory of Japan, the Division immediately took action and sent the Armed Detective Agency to the island.
Gab’s natural enemy—Dazai—worked at the detective agency. Dazai nullified all skills he touched. Gab’s core was deep below the island, so there was no reason for him to worry about disappearing if Dazai merely touched the island. However, if Dazai was to touch his flesh, he would cease to exist. In addition, during the initial moment when Gab used his skill to steal the skills of all those who died on the island, the effects spread across the entire island. Therefore, if Dazai was on the island at that exact moment, his skill would cause Gab to cease to exist. In other words, he wouldn’t be able to steal Wells’s skill from her body and continue the loop as long as Dazai was on the island.
For Gab, the threat of Dazai’s skill was equivalent to having a knife shoved into his throat. There was only one way to remove the threat—kill Dazai so that his skill wouldn’t activate. But after checking outside information records, Gab knew that Dazai was frighteningly sharp. He had solved countless cases ever since he joined the detective agency. Gab grew even more concerned after actually witnessing Dazai’s cunning, which steadily brought him closer to the weapon. It wasn’t going to be easy. In addition, the guardian’s powerful defense wouldn’t work against Dazai. It was far too dangerous to fight him head-on. Gab needed a smoke screen to trick and kill him.
Gab came up with an elaborate scheme and executed it. He let the detective agency “retrieve” the weapon so they would let their guard down. He had to remain vigilant at all times, and he made sure not to have any direct contact with Dazai. Even something as insignificant as bumping shoulders with Dazai would destroy Gab.
Eventually, the opportunity arose. Gab waited for the moment when Dazai had just figured out the truth—the instant he let his guard down, he stabbed Dazai with his knife. There would be nothing left to fear once Dazai’s heart stopped. Gab would be able to use his skill once Dazai was dead, and he would be able to travel back into the past the moment Wells died as well. That alone would cement his victory.
He wouldn’t hold back the next time they met. He would kill the detectives the instant they stepped onto the island next time. That way, there would be no one else who could threaten him. He would be able to live on forever. That was the only thing Gab wanted. Gab wasn’t human. He didn’t understand human instinct. Only his soul’s cry for survival deeply carved itself into his heart, just like all other life-forms.