I scream like a banshee and tumble all the way down the stairs. All the while, I hear the HMMMMMMMMMMM in my ear. It's quite bad not only because it's the creepiest tune ever but also because there's no light and not being able to see I need to rely on my excellent hearing to figure out the situation.

With the HMMMMMMM-ing that is going on, it goes without saying that I have no idea what situation this is. I try to cover my ears, and feel my hands scrape past something furry. Immediately all kinds of horrible images of furry monsters appear in my head, the most prominent of which being a gigantic spider, the size of Stephanie, but with tons more fur.

I begin to cry. Rolling down the hard stairs hurts and my waist is still sprained and I don't want to be attacked by a humming Stephanie with tons more fur.

And then a light flashes—Izumi to the rescue. It lasts for a moment brief enough for me to barely get a glimpse of the creepy hummer, and what I see makes me gasp.

It's so cute!

It's a gigantic tabby cat, with a huge swishing tail and intelligent yellow eyes and an adorable pink nose. I smile and feel silly for having been so afraid. There is clearly nothing to worry about.

"Hi," I tell the cat.

"HMMMMMMMMMM," it hums in my ear. He, I think, because I can see his, uh, balls.

"Hello cutie. What's your name?" I ask, knowing very well that I won't get a reply.

"I'm Moosie," the cat says amiably. I scream, and then calm down right away. I ought to know by now if spiders can break dance in someone's mind, it's perfectly possible for cats to speak as well.

"Hi, Moosie," I say. "I'm Tomomi, and I'm glad you've stopped humming. That was a creepy tune."

Moosie crosses his paws in front of himself daintily. "Is it? I like it. My human sang it to me when I died."

He died. I'm talking to a dead cat.

I hear Izumi walking over; I can tell it's her easily because she walks very lightly and surely, and also she wears serviceable loafers that no one else does because they're kind of ugly.

"Uh, Moosie, who's your human? And how did you die?" she asks, joining in my conversation with the giant dead kitty.

"I died of old age," Moosie explains sadly. "I don't know my human's name, but if I see him, I'll tell you. I don't think he's far away from here right now."

"You can smell him? Or you've seen him about?" I ask.

"He lives here. He might be somewhere else now but he will probably come back soon because his boxy is here."

The word boxy catches my attention right away.

"Boxy? Like a box?"

"Yes! His boxy is just the right size, so I like sleeping in it. Too bad it's a bit shallow! If it were a bit taller, I would like it even better, and I could curl up in the boxy all day and it would make me very happy. I like boxies."

He purrs contentedly, so I guess he must really like his boxies.

"A shallow box that's the size of a cat... wouldn't that be just like a pizza box?" I whisper to Izumi.

"Well, with the size of this cat, it must have been an awfully large pizza," Izumi whispers back.

I wish I had a large pizza, but we have more important matters to attend to.

"Moosie, can you show us where the boxy is?" I ask.

The tabby appears to be quite enthusiastic. "Yes! Yes! Boxy!" I hear him sprint off, soft paws padding away on the concrete floor, and I follow, pulling Izumi along because I know that her hearing might not be as good as mine. It's impossible to see and I keep tripping over things, until Izumi solves the darkness problem by capturing a sizzling lightning bolt in a glass bottle that I happen to have knocked over. It looks nice, like a little blue lantern.

When we arrive at our destination, we use the light of the blue lantern to illuminate the place, revealing a normal-sized room and a not-so-normal-sized box.

"That, uh, certainly is a large box," I say.

The cat agrees happily. "It is! Isn't it nice? This room is all box. No matter where you roll, no matter where you lie down, you're in a box. No worries, because all is box."

All is box. This sounds like a very appealing life philosophy.

"It does look like a very large pizza box," Izumi murmurs to me. "Can this be another, larger version of the data boxes Mr. Kobayashi talked about?"

"There's only one way to find out," I murmur back, and we join hands and step into the boxy.

–

I've never been in a data box before. I had no idea they could be big enough for humans to step into. In fact, I didn't even know they existed until Mr. Kobayashi told us about them. In classes, the data we're asked to retrieve are usually in clear files, in old-fashioned cassette tapes or videotapes, or random briefcases that are heavy but we can't open. All we have to do is place them on a transmitter and send them through, and our task is done. Data transmitters are cumbersome, cube-shaped, complicated-looking machines that have a flat surface for us to place things on. The teachers are usually kind enough to leave them scattered all around the place, sort of like saving points in old-school RPGs, and sometimes we're allowed to bring our own—Daisuke ends up lugging them around most of the time because he's the one who can shrink or enlarge inanimate objects.

Anyhow, clear files, old-fashioned cassette tapes, videotapes and briefcases are what I'm used to; not data boxes. Again I'm reminded of the cruel reality that our previous training hadn't prepared us for anything worthwhile—the teachers had on purpose shown us a dumbed-down version of how things really work, so that we wouldn't have any idea what they were truly trying to do, so that we wouldn't be smart or able enough to master their level of mindhacking, so that we would be powerless to stop them if we ever dared try.

Here we are, daring to try, and we've barely even started before running into something we'd never been taught about—a data box.

A very big data box, for that matter. If Mr. Kobayashi's words are anything to go by, then data boxes aren't supposed to exceed the size of an ordinary pizza box.

"You wonder why my boxy so big," a voice says and I stumble backwards, feeling as if I've been hit by a full gust of wind. Izumi catches me, seemingly undisturbed even though she is as skinny as a twig.

"It because my cat so big. Box is best friend of cat. Thus, as my cat big, my boxy is also must to be big. It is like, ah, nose holes—nostrils! Fingers, yes fingers, they are made to fit in nostrils, so can pick the nose. Thus, as my fingers big, my nostrils is also must to be big. It is same logic," the voice explains, and I feel like I'm on a merry-go-round. There's a deep, magnifying quality in the voice, which seems to swirl round and round, making me this close to puking. Izumi, my safe harbor and anchor, stands steady and lets me cling to her like a baby koala.

"I'm not sure I get your logic," she says bravely. Izumi likes everything organized and therefore cannot accept illogical things.

"Ah, but I not get logic either!" the voice, which I assume belongs to another version of Ikoma-san, exclaims. "Fooling with you, I was. In fact, it is other way around. Cat is big, because boxy is big. You get it? My mind is also big. So, so, so big! Everything about me is big. Big, like the sun! But sun is hot, I am not hot. I am big."

The voice trills and whirls and I feel too lightheaded to ask Ikoma-san number four whether his... certain body parts are big as well. This isn't quite the time for that kind of joke.

"It is why my city so big! I need to hold much information. So much. Ohoho... so much." The voice pauses and the wind stops and I catch my breath for a brief second, but immediately it trails on. "And! I bet there is lot of information is helpful for you, little ones. It all easy to find, all perfect, perfectly accessible, information you want—all you need do, baby hyenas, is type in search command."

"Baby hyenas?" I say incredulously.

"Search command? Like, we simply... google it in your mind?" Izumi adds, also incredulously.

"No, my children, you do not wear goggles!" Ikoma Four gasps in horror. "You type in! You search!"

"How type in? How search?" I ask, resorting to simplistic and straight-to-the-point Ikoma-esque grammar.

"Tomomi, there's a qwerty keyboard right here," Izumi whispers, and drags me forward to a small panel, which is indeed equipped with the kind of keyboard I'm used to.

"What do we type?" I complain frantically. "Like, yeah, we want to know how to get rid of Shun's virus thing, but we don't even know whether the relavant data is in this box since Mr. Kobayashi said it was in Mr. Yamada's, and besides we don't even know what the virus is called."

Izumi shrugs and her slender fingers glide over the keyboard. I see her type in "darkness", "revert to normal", "virus" and "violent tendencies".

We are greeted with a 360-page novel about the zombie apocalypse.

"That's not it," I groan.

I can't believe it. Here we are, so close to what we need.

Yet we are unable to do a thing because we don't know what keywords to google.