Chapter 1: Red Eyes
Chapter 1: Red Eyes
EVERYTHING was dark when she came to her senses. Attempting to rub the blurred vision from her eyes made it painfully obvious her arms were bound. Every wiggle caused her knees and elbows to scape against wooden walls with a bang as she struggled against the ropes.
Azusa Saito, age seventeen, was currently tied up and shoved into a box like a folded piece of laundry.
“Mnngh!” Confused by her predicament, she tried to shout for help, only to be muffled by the towel shoved in her mouth. In a panic she kicked the wall with all her strength, but it didn’t budge; it only brought more problems.
“Hey! Shut up back there!” a man threatened. A kick rattled the box and her in it.
Azusa gasped. The sharp intake of air brought with it a calculating calm and a rapid comprehension of her situation.
Am I possibly a victim of kidnapping? Are they after money? Or human trafficking? She shuddered in fear at the thought.
Azusa’s flaxen hair was just long enough to reach below her shoulders on her school blazer. Her biggest complex was her shorter than average height. It seemed unlikely she had been kidnapped for her looks. Money seemed far-fetched too—it should have been easy to find out her father was a town doctor who wouldn’t have enough money to pay for a ransom. They actually fell on the poor end of the financial spectrum since her kindhearted father rarely accepted payment for his work.
Azusa took over the family finances since the death of her mother, which always led to fights with her father. The fights were one-sided, with Azusa getting angry and lecturing her father, who evaded her ire every time like a slippery eel.
She wasn’t from a rich family and considered herself average looking. She had no idea why anyone would want to kidnap a normal high school girl who was extremely fond of sweets and all things cute, good at cleaning, penny-pinching, and kendo, but everything about her situation pointed to it being a kidnapping. At least to her.
The constant vibration she felt through the box and low-hum of an engine led her to believe she was in a car. She strained her ears to hear men talking. Likely two to three of them. She couldn’t remember the kidnapping itself. Her memories blacked out some point on her way home from her afterschool club.
Did they knock me out? My clothes aren’t ripped or dirty, so it’s unlikely I struggled. I don’t feel hurt anywhere either. I don’t know how long I was unconscious for, but it’s likely night now. The occasional light seeping through the cracks in this box looks like the artificial light cast by streetlights.
The best thing she could do in her current predicament was to calmly and accurately break down the situation in a way she could use every piece of information to her advantage if the chance to escape came up.
All of a sudden, she heard the screech of metal grating against metal. Her body slammed against the opposite side of the box, followed by an intense jolt that rattled the entire vehicle.
Did the car crash into something? An accident?
One of the car doors opened. Undaunted by the angry bellows of the men who had kidnapped her, Azusa strained her voice to scream through the cloth in her mouth. She kicked and slammed her body against the box. This was her only chance to be saved.
Someone notice me! Please!
“Mngh!” She frantically kicked the box and screamed despite the cloth choking her.
“Oh, looks like this is the package. Kou! I found her!” shouted a man who sounded younger than the gangsters she heard talking in the car. He easily opened the container with his bare hands as if he were tearing apart a prison cell made of paper, not wood. The wood shattered at his touch—a feat that couldn’t be written off as just being physically strong. But Azusa wasn’t in a state to pay that fact much thought. The strength and tension left her at her presumed safety.
“You all right, miss?” asked a young man who peered into the box with catlike eyes and a friendly smile. His luxurious hair was neatly held in place with gel. His gelled hair and suit combined to give the impression he was from some male host club.
“Can you stand? Are you hurt anywhere?” he asked in a gentle tone as he helped her up. He pulled the towel out of her mouth and undid the rope cutting into her arms. Azusa slowly got out of the car with his support.
But there were some things she should have realized sooner: the lack of her captors’ screams and the deep-red dyeing the hands of the young man smiling gently beside her.
Another man stood in the middle of three corpses, their blood pooling at his feet. He was clad in a black coat that reached his ankles. Red, almost ruby-like, eyes peeked through his black hair fluttering in the wind. Azusa stepped forward, drawn in by the unworldly scene before her. Something squished beneath her foot. She looked down, and as soon as she saw a dismembered ear, her vision gave way to darkness.
***
THE man smothered his cigarette into the car’s ashtray. He was burning through fewer cigarettes today—a good sign that he wasn’t agitated. From the driver’s seat he watched a colleague carry the wooden container through a rearview mirror.
“Today’s job is a breeze. And one where we’ll collect a hefty payment. I want more jobs like this,” smiled another colleague from the passenger’s seat as the container was shoved into the back of the minivan.
“Why don’t you try telling the boss that? He might negotiate with the group for you.”
“You make scary suggestions sometimes, y’know? Underlings like us complainin’ about our work will only get us killed and harvested for our organs.”
“No kiddin’,” the driver chuckled and started the ignition.
“Oi! We need to hurry! Not makin’ it to the meeting place on time is what’s gonna get us killed!” shouted the man with a shaved head in the back seat as he angrily kicked the back of the driver’s seat.
“Sure, sure. We need to be at Kisaza Port by 1:00 a.m., right? Piece of cake. We’ve got plenty of time,” the driver said and stepped on the gas.
The men were low-level members of the Yellow Dragon Syndicate that exercised its authority over the surrounding area. They were usually given jobs involving the sale of illegal drugs, collecting overdue debts, and setting up stalls at festivals. All they ever got assigned were extremely dangerous jobs with little profit or safe jobs with barely any profit.
But the job they were assigned this time had them kidnapping the girl in a picture and delivering her to a predetermined location. Not only were all the tools necessary for kidnapping her provided, such as the sedative to knock her out and the exact time and place she’d be alone, but the compensation was ten times their normal rate.
“I feel like this job is too good to be true. Way too good,” the man in the passenger’s seat grumbled worriedly.
“It’ll be fine! Just means lady luck is finally on our side!” laughed the driver.
“I also thought they could have done it themselves instead of asking us when they already had everything prepared,” the man with a shaved head voiced his suspicions from the back seat.
“You guys are serious worriers! I mean, isn’t this for the group’s regular customer? Probably works a job where he can’t get his own hands dirty. Maybe it’s for a politician?”
“I guess it could be.” The man in the passenger’s seat was satisfied by his explanation. He folded his arms and sat back into his seat. The driver looked through the rearview mirror at the man with a shaved head. He showed no signs of further argument.
BANG!
The container moved. The men heard a faint moan from it.
“Hey! Shut up back there!” the man with a shaved head kicked the container. Apparently, their target woke up.
There was no telling what the girl would do inside the box once she caught onto her situation and fell into despair. Her value would decrease if she tried to commit suicide or hurt herself.
“We need to quickly deliver the goods now that she’s up! What a pain!” The driver stepped on the gas. The silver minivan increased its speed to race down the freeway; few cars were in its way because of the time of night.
After thirty minutes at a high speed, the deserted port came into view. The driver sighed with relief at the sight—too soon to be relieved.
A black silhouette appeared right in front of the car. He was looking forward the entire time, but the silhouette came out of nowhere. The car and silhouette slammed into each other before the driver recognized it as a person. Yet the collision sounded nothing like running a person over.
It was no different from two cars crashing into each other. Without his seatbelt on, the driver crashed through the windshield and rolled onto the ground in front of the minivan. The intense impact to his body ripped the breath right out of his lungs. His arm bent at an impossible angle for the bone to be intact.
A man clad in a swaying black trench coat stood before him with one bare hand on the front of the car. The fender bent around his hand where he stopped it. His eyes were such a deep, glowing red they couldn’t be human. Every part of the driver’s instincts screamed at him telling him the man in front of him was not human. It was a monster.
The red-eyes turned and locked onto the driver. The man slowly walked toward him. Fear rendered him speechless. Every fiber of his body commanded him to run, but he couldn’t get up. He heard the guttural bellow of his colleagues then. From the corner of his eye he watched his two colleagues, one with a knife and the other a metal bat, charge at the red-eyed man.
“DON’T!” the driver screamed, unsure of whom he was trying to stop. Was he telling his colleagues not to charge at the monster? Or was he yelling at the red-eyed monster about to kill them?
Everything was over in an instant. One side-swing of the arm by the red-eyed monster severed one of the men’s heads from his body. He repeated the motion a second time to take off the other’s head. The driver saw blood dripping from the right hand that had ripped through his colleagues.
“Hey, Kou! You forgot one!” The driver heard someone say above him. He looked up to see a man of delicate features and light-brown hair. The man with feline eyes raised his fist and darkness consumed the driver.