BLACK BULLET 2

CHAPTER 02
TINA SPROUT

1

“Here, I bought some.” Rentaro rushed back to the bench, handing over the tray he bought at the takoyaki stall.

Tina squinted in pleasure as she rubbed her sleepy eyes. “Thank you, very much.”

A day off. It was early afternoon and sunlight flooded the government-sponsored park, the grass and trees swayed comfortably in the wind. Inside the park was a small man-made waterfall, and the spray from the falling water felt refreshing on Rentaro’s face. Around them, they could hear the sound of families with small children laughing.

Rentaro plopped down next to Tina, opened his wallet once, and sighed, thinking of the hard times ahead. With the current condition of his wallet, he couldn’t even spare the expense of two people’s worth of takoyaki. Rentaro thought for a second that if Kisara continued to work him this hard for inhumane wages, he really would sell himself to Miori’s place.

Looking over along the bench, he saw that Tina was wearing a dress, trying much harder than when she wore the pajamas he saw her in before. However—and he wasn’t sure if these should be called the finishing touches or not—the buttons on her chest were off by one, and her hair tie was in a strange place. She had probably been too sleepy to try that hard.

Just as he thought that, Tina’s head drooped as she nodded off. She rubbed her eyes and rustled around in her pocket, fishing out her bottle of caffeine pills and sprinkling them on the takoyaki.

“Hey, wait! What are you doing?!” said Rentaro.

“Is something, the matter, Rentaro?” said Tina.

Looking at Tina moving leisurely and looking up at him with upturned eyes, Rentaro’s anger somehow disappeared, and he waved his hand and said, “Never mind.”

With a long toothpick, Tina awkwardly fished up a ball of takoyaki covered with pills and tried to bring it to her mouth. Rentaro watched her on pins and needles until, sure enough, her hand slipped. “Ah, ah…”

The takoyaki fell with a plop! Rentaro was about to scream. It cost four hundred yen for six of them!

Tina looked at Rentaro and lowered her eyes apologetically. It took a lot of work for him to wave his hand to show that he wasn’t angry. Ignoring Tina, who had started to grapple with another ball of takoyaki, Rentaro shifted gears and leaned back into the bench, looking up at the fluffy, cotton candy clouds.

One week had passed since the attempted assassination. Of course, immediately afterward, there had been a debriefing to decide what countermeasures to take. It would have been fine if it had been a useful meeting about finding the problem in the guard unit or looking back at the incident to see how to prevent it from happening in the future.

But Rentaro had been greatly disappointed in the meeting he attended. Because from beginning to end, all they did during the meeting was push blame on one another, focusing on the question, “Why would a sniper ambush the route the Seitenshi took home?”

Of course, the first people who should have been blamed were the Seitenshi’s personal guard, including Yasuwaki, who created the guard plan. However, at the meeting, Yasuwaki said, “This guy! He’s the one behind it!” spittle flying, pointing his finger at Rentaro, who was standing in a corner leaning on the wall.

Yasuwaki’s reasoning was that even though the Seitenshi had never been targeted before, as soon as Rentaro was hired, there was an assassination attempt. Therefore, Rentaro must be secretly communicating with the assassin.

This was strange for two reasons. First of all, when Rentaro called to say he would take the job, an office clerk told him, “Then, please come to the Seitenshi’s palace on the appointed day.” And then, when he went to the Seitenshi’s palace, he was put in a limousine, driven to the location of the conference, and then they were attacked on the way back.

In other words, even though Rentaro had been hired as a guard, he was never briefed about his role. This was probably done on purpose by Yasuwaki and the others to exclude Rentaro. Ironically, that was what gave Rentaro an ironclad alibi. Even if Rentaro allowed that he was in secret communication with the assassin, he didn’t know the route, so he had no information to give.

Secondly, and this was the most important point, Rentaro knew himself that he had not been in contact with the assassin. He explained this, of course, but Yasuwaki interrupted him numerous times while he was talking.

Yasuwaki would interrupt, saying things like, “Don’t be fooled!” and “Everyone, you can’t listen to his opinion!” trying to seduce those present at the meeting with his fast-talking. Yasuwaki was furious, and given how many rivals he’d taken down with his wiles, he was eloquent as expected and adept at stretching the truth and splitting hairs.

Summarizing Yasuwaki’s reasoning in one sentence, all he said was “I didn’t do anything wrong,” and did everything in his power to make Rentaro take the blame.

Rentaro, at a disadvantage during the meeting, was saved by the Seitenshi unexpectedly barging in. “I am the one who hired Satomi of my own volition. If you doubt Satomi, then that means you doubt my judgment. More importantly, Yasuwaki, are you treating the hero who saved Tokyo Area like a criminal? You should be ashamed!” she told him curtly.

Yasuwaki couldn’t say anything in response and returned to his seat looking frustrated. However, Rentaro could tell that Yasuwaki hadn’t given up with one look at the fight burning in his vindictive eyes. Smiling creepily and muttering, Yasuwaki’s gaze was more than enough to send chills up Rentaro’s spine.

Afterward, Rentaro heard from a sympathetic staff member that Yasuwaki misunderstood Rentaro and the Seitenshi’s relationship as being more than that of a civsec officer and head of state.

What a nuisance. Rentaro crossed his legs and put both hands behind his head, lost in thought again. He did his best to ignore the “Ah, ah…” plop! beside him that he was hearing for the second time today.

There was still a lot to think about. What was the assassin after? Looking at it from a historical standpoint, assassinations happened less because of conflicts of interest in political or religious matters and more because of feelings of unjustified resentment or the desire to monopolize a celebrity by a rabid fan. The Seitenshi was more beautiful than the average teen idol, so there was more than enough reason to think she would be such a target.

Since Rentaro took on the job, he did feel a certain amount of responsibility, so he asked a palace staff member to let him into the warehouse where threats and crime notices were managed, recorded, and stored for safekeeping. The threats ranged from the extremely simple, “I’ll kill you!” and “Anybody supporting Red-Eyes should die!” to absurd “You are mine, and only mine. I’ll bleep my bleep into Lady Seitenshi’s bleep pant, pant…” that made Rentaro want to say, “Don’t put a stamp on something like this and send it.” If the Seitenshi saw them, she would probably faint then and there.

Rentaro was flabbergasted at the sheer volume. Even in the year 2031, at the height of Internet use, there were this many analog threats. There were probably many times this amount sent through e-mail.

However, Rentaro had taken all this into account and figured he could ignore the ordinary fan in this case. This was because this incident had the additional element of being cold-blooded and calculating, from the deduction of the route to the long-distance sniping. A regular person who was carried away by his delusions would probably try to shoot the Seitenshi as she got on stage to give a speech before thinking of sniping.

Rentaro sharpened his eyes and rested his chin on his folded hands. This was a dangerous enemy. The Seitenshi couldn’t stand for her talks with Saitake to not make any progress, so she had no intention of canceling the conference. Soon, the second unofficial conference with Saitake would begin. Ever since that day, the existence of the assassin felt like it was growing bigger inside Rentaro day by day.

If only he had a hint about the enemy—

“Ah, ah…”

“Just how many are you gonna drop?!” Looking at the ground, there were three large balls of takoyaki on the pavement, which meant that there was no evidence that she had successfully brought a single one to her mouth.

After looking at the takoyaki on the ground for a while, she raised her face and made a very serious expression. “Rentaro, this takoyaki is trying to run away from my mouth. It’s possible that the octopus inside is still alive—”

“No, it’s not! Here, give me that!” Rentaro took the tray from her and stuck the toothpick into one of the balls, forcing it into her mouth.

Tina briefly made a surprised face, but as she started chewing, her face muscles relaxed, and her face looked very happy. “Rentaro, more please,” Tina said, her body hanging half off the bench, eyes closed, with her mouth open.

Rentaro’s heart skipped for a moment as it seemed like she was asking for a kiss, but then he changed his mind and decided that it actually felt more like feeding a baby bird.

Plop, close. Plop, close. It was so funny to watch Tina give off her aura of happiness and relaxation every time she ate one that before he knew it, Rentaro had given Tina all of his takoyaki, as well.

“Here, stay still for a sec.” As Rentaro pulled out his handkerchief to wipe her mouth covered in sauce, Tina narrowed her eyes and lifted her face, letting Rentaro do whatever he wanted with her.

Hearing laughter behind him, Rentaro turned just his head to see a family pointing at them and laughing cheerfully. Rentaro wondered how he and Tina looked to them. For some reason, his heart felt strangely warm.

Leaning back and putting a hand on his hip, he nodded, thinking that she was clean now, and Tina opened her eyes slowly, murmuring slowly and quietly, “I like you, Rentaro.”

“H-huh?”

He flinched from the suddenness of it all, but Tina seemed to have been looking forward to that reaction and put her hand on her chin.

“This is the first time in my life that anyone’s been so kind to me, I think.” Tina seemed to remember something distasteful and lowered her eyes a little, rounding her shoulders. “I haven’t really had any fun since my parents died.”

“Fun?”

“Yes, ever since then, my life has just been pain. That’s why, right now, I’m having my first fun mood in a while.”

Rentaro paused, not knowing what to say. “Hey, Tina, you said before that you didn’t have a guardian, but what did that mean? Why are you in a place like this in the first place? What do you do normally? Tell me more about yourself.”

Tina’s gaze wavered. “That’s…”

Today marked his fourth time seeing Tina. After their first meeting, she called him on the phone every other day or so. The last time, they went to an amusement park, and the time before that, she said she wanted to see the Outer District, so he showed her around Enju’s hometown, District 39.

To Tina, everything she saw seemed unusual, and Rentaro truly enjoyed watching that face of hers. However, there was also the mysterious side of her that thrust upon him the condition to not tell anyone that he was meeting up with her. Occasionally, if he put together all the information she let slip little by little, he could see that she did not seem to have led a very happy life, but he wondered what that had to do with the condition.

“Hey, Tina—”

At that moment, the cold ring of a cell phone interrupted him. Looking at the sender’s name, the girl’s face stiffened frighteningly for a second.

“H-hey.” Rentaro became worried and stretched out his hand, but Tina slipped away from it and jumped down from the bench.

“Rentaro, I have to go now.” She didn’t wait for an answer as she turned away from him.

For some reason, Rentaro was stricken by extreme uneasiness and called out to her, “Wait,” but she only half-looked back.

The wind blew hard, and the trees around them swayed, rustling their leaves. Tina smiled as she held down her blond hair. “Let’s meet again, Rentaro.” She gave a polite bow and left.

Rentaro kept looking at her back for a long time after that. Then, it was Rentaro’s cell phone that vibrated. He had a text from Miori. It said to come at once, and she included a geotag to show where she was. Apparently even though it wasn’t a school day she was still at school.

Rentaro raised his face again but Tina had disappeared from sight, and he couldn’t see her anymore.

As Tina walked through the government-sponsored park, she returned the call.

“You took too long,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

“I’m sorry, Master. I was in a place where I couldn’t answer the call.”

“Awaken your consciousness until you can hold a conversation,” ordered the hard, cold voice.

Tina took out the bottle of caffeine pills and poured the rest into her mouth, chewing violently. Grimacing at the bitter taste spreading through her mouth, she crushed the empty bottle and threw it away into a trash can in the park. After walking for a while, her consciousness cleared up to a certain extent. She was probably about 40 percent awake. Still far from a perfect condition. “Yes?” she asked.

“I have received the next Seitenshi guard plan.”

“That was fast.” She thought for sure that the second time, they would be more cautious and that the plan would not be leaked to them, so had given up on it, and this was a bit of a letdown. They must have some really incompetent people around the Seitenshi.

She could hear a small chuckle from the other side of the phone. “We must thank the staff member at the Seitenshi’s palace who’s been so cooperative.”

“What kind of person is our cooperative informant?”

“Just someone whose child was eaten by a Gastrea in front of them. Not an unusual story.”

Tina listened to that with mixed feelings. One of the Seitenshi’s political slogans was to give the Cursed Children basic human rights and coexist with them. Because of that, she seemed to have many enemies. It was ironic. What the Seitenshi was doing was more than correct as a human being. However, within the palace, there were those near her who would betray her, and Cursed Children like Tina were trying to assassinate her. It’s because you’re supporting Cursed Children like us, Tina thought.

“Our client wants to settle this while they are in Tokyo Area.”

“Master, that civsec officer will get in the way again.”

“I know who they are, too.”

“Really?” Tina pushed the cell phone hard to her ear.

“Apparently, they are part of the Tendo Civil Security Agency. There is still time before the next conference. We cannot allow them to get in the way again.” The girl’s master gave a short laugh.

She knew exactly what he was trying to say. Tina stopped walking. Her finely honed senses could tell.

“Tina Sprout. I will give you your next mission. Kill the president of the Tendo Civil Security Agency, Kisara Tendo.”

2

The hallways of Magata High School were as still as death on the weekends. As Rentaro took off his shoes and changed into indoor shoes, he looked around with a sense of novelty. In middle school, he hadn’t belonged to a club, and when he started high school, he started the civsec officer business with Kisara and hadn’t had time to join a club. So he rarely ever came to school on a weekend.

Rentaro headed toward the student council room, the sound of his shoes loud in the silent halls, doing his best to ignore the jangling sound of metal following behind him. Most of the students he came across occasionally were shocked after one look at him and would lower their eyes and quicken their pace to pass him. Well, it wasn’t like he didn’t understand how they felt.

Rentaro reluctantly turned around and saw the fully armed Kisara Tendo following behind him. She had two fierce-looking SPAS-12 shotguns slung crossing one over the other on her back, a Beretta 92 gun in her left hand, and the murderous blade, Yukikage, in her right hand as she walked. She had different kinds of grenades hanging off the leather belt she wore over her skirt, including fragmentation grenades, incendiary grenades, tear gas bombs, special stun grenades, and a variety of others, so when she walked, she made a loud metallic sound. Kisara, weighing about sixty kilograms all told, walked behind Rentaro without saying a word, increasing her concentration with a strange breathing method.

“H-hey, Kisara.”

“Be quiet for a minute,” she said curtly.

From the front entrance, they went up the stairs on the far west, turned right, and saw a sign that said STUDENT COUNCIL ROOM. Kisara pulled the slide of the Beretta and made the gun ready to fire, then quickly flattened her back against the right side of the door.

Rentaro cringed and was about to knock on the door when Kisara shook her head as if in disbelief. “Wait, Satomi. Are you planning on breaking through from the front? That’s too dangerous. Remember the exam to get your civsec officer license. After throwing in a tear gas bomb, the two of us can shoot Miori to death as she comes out, easy as pie. Two to the chest, one in the head, and we can make that woman say good-bye to this world.”

“H-hey, Kisara…… I didn’t come here to kill Miori. I came to ask her about the results of the analysis of the bullets found at the scene of the sniping.”

“That’s pretty much the same thing!”

“No, it’s not!” Rentaro was overcome with strain and rubbed the corners of his eyes. Even though Kisara never made any mistakes, why couldn’t she keep her cool when it came to Miori?

After saying good-bye to Tina in the park, he called the office to say he was going to stop by Miori’s place. The minute he told her, Kisara said, “I’m going, too,” and forced him to meet up with her, which turned into all this. He made a huge mistake in letting Miori’s name slip in front of Kisara, but he never dreamed that she would show up heavily armed and ready to kill.

“Hey, Kisara, I’m going to talk to her, so sorry, but you wait outside.”

“N-no way! I can’t let you and Miori be alone together.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t! You are never on any account to meet with Miori alone. When you meet, I must go with you. President’s orders.”

Rentaro shook his head, thinking he couldn’t go along with her any longer, and knocked on the door, turning the knob without waiting for an answer.

“Oh, wait, Satom—,” Kisara started.

Suddenly, a hand stretched out from the crack of the door and pulled him into the room, and then the door was closed and locked. Rentaro staggered a few steps and looked back.

Blinds were drawn in the dim room, and Miori stood with her back to the door as she locked it behind her back with a bewitching smile. His eyes were drawn to the brightly colored Japanese-style clothes she wore despite being at school.

“Welcome, Satomi dear.”

At that moment, Kisara started banging violently on the door behind Miori’s back. “Miori, open up this instant! If you don’t, I’ll break down the door.”

Miori closed her eyes and lifted her chin in the air. “You can if you want, but I’ll make sure to send the receipt to the Tendo Civil Security Agency.”

The sound of pounding stopped suddenly, and it was replaced by the sound of Kisara gnashing her teeth. Sadly, Kisara, who was so poor she went to Rentaro’s place to sponge dinners off him, did not have the financial means to pay for a door.

“Good job figuring out Kisara followed me here.”

“I didn’t know. But with all that noise y’all were making out there… Why don’t we go next door?” Miori pointed at the room next door with her index finger.

Guided by Miori, Rentaro entered her private room. He felt like he had been transported to another world. Besides chairs and tables in strong primary colors that twisted in avant-garde style, there were fifty holodisplays floating in the air.

When Miori swept the displays showing stock prices and economic news horizontally, the displays came together into one giant display, and an aquarium screensaver started up, the surround-sound system playing the quiet sounds of bubbles. The whole room started to glow a dim blue. It really felt like they were in the depths of the ocean.

Thinking of his own worn-out eight-tatami-mat hovel, he looked around the room again. It was hard to believe they were living in the same era. This was a room Shiba Heavy Weapons ordered especially for her. He wondered what she was planning to do with the room after stepping down as student council president next year.

Miori pointed her folding fan toward the display and said, “Seitenshi Sniper Incident Evidence,” and pictures from the scene came up on the panels one after another. Miori stretched her arm out in front of her and enlarged one image, that of the tip of a bullet. “The bullet used by the sniper looks to be one used for a .50-caliber Browning heavy machine gun, but I looked up the rifling, and it’s clean. There’s no record that it was used in a crime before.” Rifling, also called a gun’s fingerprint, referred to the helical grooves left behind on a bullet when it was fired.

Miori opened her fan and rotated it, and the screen changed a few times before settling on a miniature version of the scene of the crime with 3D modeling. Rentaro was unwittingly taken in for a second by Miori’s beautiful form, looking as if she were dancing a traditional Japanese dance.

Miori pointed out the roof of the problem building where the sniper was with her fan and dragged the fan toward the limousine. As she did so, a line showed up on the model image showing a distance of 991 meters. Miori rotated the model so Rentaro could get a better look. “Hey, Satomi dear, just checking… You’re certain the enemy shot from that building? And that the limousine was moving?”

“Yeah… What about it?”

“Satomi dear, how much do you know about sniping?”

“Not much.” He knew so little about the subject that he made sure not to choose it during his civsec officer license exam. On top of waiting in one place for the target to come and using finely honed nerves to pull the trigger, it required an enormous amount of patience and concentration. Rentaro wasn’t confident with either.

“The empty shell case that sank into the road at the scene was retrieved. Looking at the angle of the shot, it does seem highly likely that it was fired from this building, but…”

Miori sounded like something was stuck in her teeth as she spoke, but then lifted her face and continued. “Y’know, Satomi dear, in the year 2031, sniper scopes and rifles have gotten more precise, but in the end, the most important factor in figuring the accuracy rate is still the human factor. And humans’ hearts are always moving, and they have to breathe, so their hands shake slightly. If a sniper can hit a target eight hundred meters away, I consider them expert. A kilometer away is a miracle. From 1.2 kilometers away, it’s a stunt. More than that, and it’s a coincidence.”

Rentaro was shocked. “It’s that hard?”

“Try taking a hula hoop from the P.E. equipment room and using it in a ring toss to try to get a color cone twenty meters away. Sniping is different from a ring toss, but it’ll help you understand just how hard that is.”

“That…is hard…” Rentaro didn’t have to do it to imagine how impossible that would be. He finally understood what Miori was trying to say. She was suggesting that to pull off the feat of hitting a target a kilometer away three times was pretty much impossible.

Then, Miori explained the effects of temperature, humidity, angle, pressure, Coriolis force (how the bullet has a hill-like trajectory and is the highest at 55 percent of the way to its target), and the wind around the buildings that are the natural enemies of snipers.

Rentaro closed his eyes and thought back to the flames of the limousine, the people’s screams, and the glint from the roof of the building. There was no mistaking it. There really was a sniper there who shot from that building. It didn’t matter what Miori said.

Suddenly, Rentaro asked Miori about a suspicion that came to mind. “Hey, Miori, your company sells weapons wholesale to police and the self-defense force, too, right? Do you know someone called Takuto Yasuwaki?”

“No.”

“He’s the captain of the Seitenshi’s personal guard. Do the Shiba Heavy Weapons files have anything on him? Tell me what you know about him.”

Miori tilted her head and put her hands together, saying, “Search, Takuto Yasuwaki.” When she did, the search started at dizzying speeds, and in no time, the display called up a headshot of Yasuwaki. Next to it was a brief personal history.

“Takuto Yasuwaki. Age thirty-two, male. His rank is second lieutenant. Satomi dear, you’re a master sergeant, so he’s one rank above you.”

“Huh?” There was one phrase he couldn’t let pass without comment. “Hey, Miori, I’m not a soldier, so I don’t have a rank.”

More precisely, since the New Humanity Creation Project was started by the self-defense force, when Rentaro underwent the enhancement operation, he was forced to register as a solider, but his rank was supposed to be that of the lowest soldier. It definitely wasn’t anything as self-important sounding as master sergeant.

“Yes, you do. Even if it’s just a pseudo-rank, as your IP rank goes up, your top-secret information access key goes along with it. Your IP rank is 1,000, so you’re a master sergeant, Satomi dear.”

Now that she mentioned it, during the conferment ceremony, he thought did receive a top-secret access key and pseudo-rank to go along with his promotion to rank 1,000. The top-secret access key he got was so low level that he couldn’t get any valuable information. If Rentaro wanted to find out more about his parents and details of the Gastrea War, he needed a higher-level access key, after all. “Well, what can I do with that pseudo-rank, then?”

“Nothing much, really. Since you do roughly the same work as someone of regular rank, you have the right to give orders, but since at most yours is a pseudo-rank, you don’t have the authority to lead soldiers or have them follow your orders.”

The right to give orders without the right to lead, huh? “Then, what’s the point of those ranks?”

“Giving civsec officers those ranks makes them feel better, and that way they can make people think ‘The civsec officers still belong to the country.’”

Rentaro sighed. “Even though they’re civilian security agencies, they’re tied to the government, huh?”

“Well, it can’t be helped. The strongest civsec officer pairs are strong enough to change the world’s military balance, so countries want to manage them as much as possible. The civsec officer system was originally declared a privatization of military power with great fanfare at the beginning, but these were just empty statements.”

Looking at Miori smiling cynically, Rentaro suddenly remembered that he had had a similar conversation with Kisara in the past.

Miori opened up a paint program and used it to draw whiskers on Yasuwaki’s face and shave off his hair, starting to hum as she did so. “Anyway, the self-defense force said things like ‘The undrawn sword is the pride of peace’ to sound stoic and cool, but civilian control stopped working on members of the most aggressive group that had the best results during the Gastrea War, and they started doing things that the old army did. The Seitenshi’s personal guard is like a symbol of that.”

“Civilian…what is…?”

“Well, to put it plainly, they’re bad guys. Also, Satomi dear, guarding a VIP should really be the job of the police, but only the Seitenshi has personal guards at her own expense. But this isn’t all good. Do you know why?”

Rentaro looked Miori in the eye and nodded gravely. “They have no expertise.”

“That’s right.” Miori pointed her fan at his nose. “The Seitenshi personal guard is a young organization that just started its operations a mere ten years ago. Naturally they are less proficient than the Metropolitan Police Department’s security section guards and have not accumulated as much expertise. Above all, ten years ago, the Seitenshi’s personal guards did nothing more than serve as a wall to block the mass media.”

Rentaro was also concerned about that. Even if he was being kind, Rentaro wouldn’t say that the way they coped with the situation at the scene was in any way skilled. He sighed. He had to decide soon. Yasuwaki was more useless than expected. And even more alarming was that he hadn’t learned anything from the assassination attempt.

“To make a mistake and make it again is a mistake,” someone once said. The way things were going, a second assassination incident seemed likely.

Rentaro had to do something himself after all. “Miori, I have a favor to ask. Will you look into Sougen Saitake for me?”

“Why?”

Rentaro hesitated for a second, wondering how much he should tell her, but then shook his head and fixed his eyes on Miori. “He’s the one who hired the assassin. I’m pretty sure of it.”

Miori whistled happily, saying, “Satomi dear, what a thing to say!”

“But I have no proof. Will you collect some from your end?”

Miori said, “Hmm,” and put her hand on her chin. “I’m glad you’re counting on me, but you shouldn’t expect much. Even if it’s what you think it is, unless the head of state of Osaka Area gives some careless order that leaves evidence behind, I’m not going to be able to do much.”

“I won’t be any worse off. Please.”

“Hmm… All right.”

“Thanks.” With that, Rentaro figured he had done everything he came to do. As he thought that and lifted his face, he saw Miori’s face was unexpectedly close to his.

Miori sidled close to Rentaro with flushed cheeks, rested her chin on his chest, and purred. “Hey, Satomi dear, I did what you asked, and I don’t want to say I want this in return, but I want you to show me your real power, too, Satomi dear.” She was surely talking about his power as a soldier of the New Humanity Creation Project.

“Jeez, that has nothing to do with you. Anyway, it’s not something to show other people.”

“Satomi dear, do you like Kisara that much more than me?”

“D-don’t say that!”

Miori was a little put out. “If you forget about Kisara, you can do whatever you want with my body, Satomi dear.” Miori put her smooth hand on Rentaro’s chest and pet it, as if drawing circles on it. She put her body right up against his, and he could just see part of her chest from where the collar met, making him strangely excited. He unconsciously met her moist gaze, and Rentaro’s heart pounded as he turned his face away from hers.

“Please, Miori, stop messing arou—”

Suddenly, there was a roar as the door was kicked open, and Kisara panted at the door and then barged in. “What are you two doing?!” Kisara looked in surprise at Rentaro and Miori, looking back and forth a few times before lowering her gaze, putting power into her hand holding her sword, and making it shake so hard it clattered. Behind her back, the door had fallen inward, and it looked like she had ended up destroying the door after all.

Miori gave a small snort where Kisara couldn’t see, as if thinking of something bad, at the same time pulling the sleeve of her Japanese-style clothes in front of her mouth, posing modestly. “Patience, patience, Kisara!”

“Huh?” Kisara blinked, as if all the spite had left her.

“Dear Satomi and I really, truly didn’t do anything in this room. So don’t misunderstand, Kisara.” Miori fixed the collar of her Japanese-style clothes a few times even though it wasn’t messed up, cheeks flushed.

The sword and gun in Kisara’s hands fell to the ground with a clang at the same time. “No way………”

Miori looked back at Rentaro and said, “Well, Satomi dear, let’s move forward with that, okay?” and ran, departing.

“H-hey, what do you mean, ‘that’?” Rentaro stammered.

Miori stopped and looked back with teasing eyes. “I was talking about how if I give you my body, you would come join my company, Satomi dear. Oh, Kisara. It’s really nothing. Later.” Saying that, she really left the room this time. As she left, she stuck out her tongue where Kisara couldn’t see.

“No way………” Kisara stood with her eyes open in shock, not moving a muscle.

Rentaro pushed down the disturbed feelings in his heart and scratched the back of his head. “H-hey, Kisara, I think you already know this, but that’s just Miori’s way of teasing…… Hey, wait, are you listening?”

Even when he waved his hand in front of her face, her eyes and mouth stayed open, and she didn’t even blink. He wondered how long she had been like that. Finally, Kisara picked up her sword and turned on her heel, walking through the broken door with shaky steps.

“Damn it,” Rentaro cursed, pressing his temple. You really did it this time, Miori. Then, his cell phone vibrated. After he saw who was calling, he put his phone to his ear. “What is it, Doc? I don’t really have time for this right now…”

“Hey, Satomi. Do you have a little time after this? I need to talk to you about something important.” The Gastrea researcher, Sumire Muroto spoke disdainfully.

Rentaro kept his mouth shut and lifted his face, looking at the door Kisara had left through, mumbling, “I guess.”

“Then come now. I want to talk to Enju, too, so bring her with you. Later.”

“Huh? Enju, too?” As he said this, he could already hear the dial tone. Even though he wasn’t satisfied, he contacted Enju, and then looked aimlessly at Kisara’s name in his address book. What the heck? Why did she have to misunderstand like that?

He had an excuse to call her now with the pretext of reporting that he wouldn’t go back to the office but would go straight to Sumire’s. Normally, he wouldn’t think so much about it and would just call her, but for some reason, Rentaro lingered nervously in Miori’s room for a while before finally getting up the courage to call Kisara five minutes later.

After about twenty rings, just when he was about to give up, Kisara finally answered.

“H-hey, Kisara?”

“Who may I ask is speaking?” said an unexpectedly cold voice on the other end of the line.

“Huh? I-it’s me, Rentaro Satomi.”

“Which Satomi?”

“Wh-what?”

She seemed to be bent out of shape. He could easily imagine her on the other end of the phone with her chin lifted in the air, turned huffily the other way, with her arms crossed.

Rentaro scratched the back of his head hard. “Aw jeez, it’s me, the good-for-nothing, weak moron, Satomi! Damn it, that’s what you wanted to hear, right?”

“Oh, that Satomi. I remember now.”

Through the phone, he could hear Kisara chuckle slightly and the pressure in Rentaro’s chest let up just a little. “But you forgot ‘the perverted Satomi who was flirting with Miori,’ you stupid, stupid, stupid idiot.”

Just how stupid does she think I am? “That was a misunderstanding.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Well, it’s not like I care. Even without you, I would be perfectly fine…”

“If I leave, you won’t have any employees.”

He heard a groan on the other end of the line. Apparently, she hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Oh, I’ll just hire someone new. Because then I won’t have to pay your salary anymore, Satomi.”

He almost retorted, “With that salary?!” but held back and tried to speak calmly. “Um, Kisara, I think you already know this, but most civsec officers are worthless guys who are former criminals or yakuza-types who have nothing to offer but violence, so you’d be in trouble if you ended up hiring someone like that.”

He heard another groan at the other end of the line. Apparently, she hadn’t thought of that, either. “I-I won’t let you have Enju!”

Rentaro was fed up. It was extremely hard to tell her, but Enju didn’t really like Kisara. Once, when he asked her, “What do you think of Kisara?” Enju replied bluntly saying, “Her boobs are an eyesore!”

He didn’t want to boast that Enju liked him more or anything, but if Enju was left to her own devices, he had a hard time finding a reason she would stay with the Tendo Civil Security Agency.

“What about food…? The food you make is gross, isn’t it? You come over to eat once every three days, don’t you? I mean, even on the days you don’t come over, all you eat are boxed lunches and snack breads and other things with unbalanced nutrition, right?”

“What are you talking about? I eat crusts of bread, too!”

Rentaro didn’t say anything. Apparently, she was eating crusts of bread, too.

“Besides, I won’t get fat eating the delicious food you make, so it’ll be a good diet, too.”

Rentaro started to become uneasy. If he quit the Tendo Civil Security Agency, it was possible Kisara would quickly die like a dog by the roadside.

“I mean, what? From what you’re saying, it sounds like I’m just a poor but haughty rich girl who can’t get by on her own and pays low wages while exploiting her employees.”

That was exactly what he was saying, but……

“How unpleasant. Now I’m angry. Even if you cry and shout that you want to return to the Tendo Civil Security Agency, it’s too late! Good-bye!”

With those last words, she hung up on him violently, but not even ten seconds later, she called him back. “……Satomi, you like bugs and animals and stuff, right?”

Unsure of where this new, calmer Kisara was going, he nodded. “Yeah, well…I liked Fabre’s Souvenirs Entomologiques, so I guess that just continued.”

“Then, I’ll tell you a fable so you’ll be able to understand easier. Once, there was a Satomi bug.”

“S-Satomi bug?” He was confused by the sudden appearance of a bug with a name that sounded too much like his own.

“It’s the scientific name. I’m sure it’s because there was a scientist named Satomi somewhere who discovered it first and named it after himself. It has nothing to do with you, Satomi.”

Rentaro didn’t say anything.

“I’ll continue. That Satomi bug was cute as a grub. He was a kind and honest bug who followed the Kisara butterfly, who’ll come out later, around everywhere. However, as he matured, he grew impertinent, and started saying foul things like ‘What the hell?’ Satomi, what do you think after listening to this story objectively?”

“That bug can talk…?”

“Yes, it’s fluent in Japanese.”

Rentaro had no words.

“I’ll continue. One day, the Miori bug appeared in front of the Satomi bug and started to seduce him. This bug was a relative of toilet crickets and cockroaches, a poisonous bug that serves as a carrier for smallpox, malaria, and the Black Death! Oh, but this has nothing to do with Miori.”

The story that was hard to comment on continued. Anyway, crickets were in the order Orthoptera with grasshoppers, and cockroaches were part of the order Blattodea, so they were actually completely different organisms and not related.

“Gallantly appearing on the scene was the Kisara butterfly you heard about earlier. To make a long story short, the Kisara butterfly was a Space God, a messenger of god. By the way, she was supercute, cuter than the Miori bug, at least. The only one who could save the Satomi bug from the evil clutches of the Miori bug was the Kisara butterfly. And to the Kisara butterfly, it was a little sad to think that the Satomi bug who had been with her since they were little would be taken away. In other words, the Satomi bug would become happy by being with the Kisara butterfly. Satomi, what do you think after objectively listening to this story so far?”

Rentaro was starting to get a headache. She wasn’t telling this story about bugs and butterflies because she wanted to say that last line, was she? “Just stop being mad already.”

“It’s not like I’m trying to make up, or anything.”

Rentaro was starting to get annoyed. “Hey, Kisara, will you stop already? I’m not going to Miori’s place, and I’m going to keep working at your place like I have until now.” He realized his slip of the tongue too late and gave a start.

“I don’t want you to work for me out of pity! Hmph!”

The angry sound of the phone being hung up made Rentaro think he messed up, and he slumped and hung his head. This wasn’t what he was trying to say. He seemed to have been in the student council room for a long time, and when he went outside, the setting sun was dyed a bright red.

Picking up Enju at the statue in front of the school where they had arranged to meet, he continued on foot to Magata University Hospital, where Sumire was.

“Enju, be careful.” As he walked past the reception desk and into the university hospital hallway, he looked next to him.

“Hmm? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know why Doc told even you to come. I have a bad feeling about it.”

“Really? It has been a long time since I have been able to see Sumire, so I am looking forward to it.”

Watching Enju swing her fists happily up and down, Rentaro sighed. He had a feeling that even if he looked all over the world, Enju would be the only human who looked forward to seeing Sumire.

Going down the clean, swept hall for a while, they went down the familiar staircase to the basement. As usual, it was dim and smelled strongly of room fragrance, but today, Rentaro could hear a piercing laugh on top of that. The voice that bounced off the walls and reached Rentaro’s earlobes sounded like the maniacal laughter of a witch, and even Rentaro, who was used to coming here, hesitated.

Fed up, he passed the demon-engraved people-warding objects and found Sumire spread out on top of the table laughing uncontrollably. As she moved about on the table, she pushed off test tubes and beakers, and they broke with a crash.

“Hey, Rentaro, look at this article! The yakuza were tricked by the April Fools’ joke about immigrating to the moon and started buying up land on the moon to sell. They’re such dreamers even though they’re yakuza! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Rentaro’s chest was already filled with the feeling of wanting to go home. The world-renown doctor, Sumire Muroto, had a side of severe necrophilia to the point where she expanded a morgue without permission just so she could live with the corpses.

“Sumire, we came to play!”

Enju waved her hand happily, and Sumire sat up, pushing up her hair, which had been allowed to grow as much as it wanted. And then she sat cross-legged on top of the table, brushing aside the hem of her lab coat, spreading both arms dramatically. “Welcome, Rentaro, Enju. Welcome to my nightmare.”

Sumire looked back and forth between Enju’s and Rentaro’s faces with an ecstatic expression. “Rentaro, you would be better mummified than stuffed, after all. Kisara would definitely be better stuffed than mummified. If she were mummified, then her boobs would stick out, so it wouldn’t look good. Enju……would be fine as a mummy. Yup.”

“Hmph, what part of me were you looking at when you said that?”

“I don’t care who it is, but won’t one of you die soon? I’m about to die from lack of corpses here. Oops, I almost forgot. It’s been a while, Rentaro. You have an unfortunate face, as usual. It’s depressing just looking at it. Sorry, but could you get some plastic surgery on that face by tomorrow? I can’t stand looking at it anymore.”

“Am I really that depressing?!”

Sumire stood up and stuffed coffee beans into the coffeemaker, put a beaker under it to catch the coffee, and turned it on. When she did, the room echoed the sound of the mill grinding the beans.

“More importantly, Rentaro, I heard you’re doing an escort job or something interesting like that?”

“Word travels fast.”

“I don’t know much about stuff like that, but I heard you’re up against a sniper this time? I always thought you knew a great deal about sniping. I mean, you are a man with the concentration to gaze at a young girl going to school through binoculars on the second floor, combined with the marvelous patience to wait until a dad brings his daughter into the hot springs. You should be called Love Sniper, you Lolita-complex bastard! Die!”

“There’s no truth in any of what you just said!”

Enju looked at Rentaro with excited eyes. “Is that true, Rentaro?”

“No! Stop it! Don’t give me that look! Anyway, Doc, thanks to you making up stories and spreading them around, Enju thinks they’re funny and broadcasts them to the people who live in our apartment building, which is problematic. You know, the other day when I went to take out the trash one of our neighbors suddenly spit on me! What are you going to do about that?!”

“Yeah, I calculated ahead of time that that would happen when I spread the stories to Enju.”

“You are scum!”

“Thanks, that makes me happy. Watching you get socially destroyed is the last piece of joy I have left.” Sumire laughed evilly.

Rentaro was speechless. Just how much was he supposed to let this person make him despair?

Just then, two beakers filled to the brim with coffee slid toward him on the table. “Well, come on, sit down,” said Sumire.

Watching Enju happily plunk herself down on a stool, Rentaro also grudgingly sat next to her.

Sumire, sitting across from them, put her chin on her hands and lowered the tone of her voice, making a solemn face. “Rentaro, it’s a little late, but congratulations. You defeated Kagetane Hiruko and moved up in rank. Now that you’ve moved up to 1,000th to join the ranks of the high-ranking pairs, I thought I should talk to you soon about things you should be careful about with the three geniuses other than me who exist in the world.”

“The three geniuses?” Rentaro shifted on the chair when he realized the conversation was heading from calm to cloudy.

“Rentaro, what kind of understanding do you have of me as a person?”

Rentaro knew this was a serious question, so he considered. “You were the person responsible for the New Humanity Creation Project.”

“I can only give you partial credit for that answer. I am the most brilliant mind in Japan, and I was responsible for the Japanese branch of a mechanized soldier project that spanned four countries: Japan, America, Australia, and Germany.”

Rentaro interrupted in his confusion. “What the heck is that…? Wait a minute, this is the first I’ve heard of it. Four countries? Then—”

Sumire explained solemnly. “The head of the Australia branch, Obelisk, was Professor Arthur Zanuck. The head of the U.S. branch, NEXT, was Professor Ain Rand, and the head of the Japan branch, the New Humanity Creation Project, was Professor Sumire Muroto—in other words, me. And the one who unified all of this and was in charge of everything was a German scientist, Professor Albrecht Grünewald. The four of us are the four people with expertise on mechanized soldier creation. We were called things like the Four Kings, or the Four Sages… How nostalgic.”

“‘Four Sages’…?”

“That’s right. The four of us were the great minds of the world, gathered in order to save the world from the invasion of the Gastrea. Now, Rentaro, do you think we produced great results working together hand in hand? Unfortunately, the answer is no. I’ll tell you from the end of the story. The four of us were jealous of one another’s ability and hid the results of our research from one another. I’m embarrassed to say that I was the same as the rest, too.”

“Why would you do that…?”

Pressed for an answer, Sumire just shrugged her shoulders. “Can you understand? For all of your life, there was not a single person around who could be called your equal, so you became conceited, but then suddenly three geniuses who threatened your existence appeared. I was frightened and extremely jealous at the same time. Coupled with the fact that my lover had been killed by a Gastrea around that time, and I couldn’t really see what was going on around me. You should remember what I was like back then.”

Rentaro paused. “I do.” He nodded, remembering Sumire all skin and bones, with just her glittering eyes. The Sumire now wasn’t the person responsible for the New Humanity Creation Project or the Sumire whose lover had just been killed by a Gastrea. She was half-forgotten by the world, but she seemed much happier now than she was back then.

“To continue, in the end, the four of us each used our individual expertise to the best of our ability and created mechanized soldiers.” Sumire laughed masochistically, shaking her head slowly. “My heart never connected with any of them during the whole process. Not once. And then, all the projects disbanded a little after the war. Do you know why?”

Casting a sidelong glance at Enju, whose body had tensed with nervousness, Rentaro opened his mouth to speak hesitatingly. “Because mankind realized the high-fighting abilities of the Cursed Children.”

“Exactly. Even though it took a huge amount of money to create a single mechanized soldier like you, these girls were born naturally equipped with power that was equal to that of the soldiers. It was only natural for the government to think it was ridiculous to waste money on building the mechanized soldiers, right?

“And so all the organizations were disbanded, and the soldiers were relieved of their duties. Where did they go? Did they decide to live as ordinary citizens to spend the rest of their lives in peace? The answer to this is also no. After the civsec officer system was born, most of the mechanized soldiers went out into the world as Promoters. For them, the disbanding of the organizations just meant that the place where they fought changed.

“The current government is trying to manage the civsec officer system as clients. Well, it’s just what those government types wanted. Since civil security agencies are civilian organizations, it’s cheaper than having them work for the country. Price wars and other market forces are also involved. Lucky for them, the mechanized soldiers are also part of these organizations, so governments can just have them form tag teams and make great use of them. And these days, strong mechanized soldiers paired with strong Initiators get great military results, and most of them sit in the seats of the highest ranks. Do you understand what this means?”

Rentaro nodded as he slowly licked his dry lips, and Sumire continued.

“Rentaro, if you have decided to go after your origins, I am not particularly opposed to it. However, if you are going to defeat the enemies in front of you and aim to be among the highest of the highest ranks to get the highest-level top-secret information access key, then you will soon run into mechanized soldiers made by the other three geniuses who have become Promoters. You should be careful. Their abilities may have evolved past what we can even imagine.”

Without noticing it, Rentaro found himself sitting up straight and holding his breath as he listened. Cold sweat dripped down his cheek. He had been holding his breath, and he shook his head as he felt released from an invisible pressure and slowly drew oxygen into his lungs. He could easily imagine how this could become a fearsome path of thorns.

“But Rentaro, it’s not something to be pessimistic about. You already defeated one of Mr. Grünewald’s mechanized soldiers.”

Rentaro looked up with surprise. “Don’t tell me he was…”

“That’s right, Kagetane Hiruko.”

Just hearing that name gave him the chills and made him feel sick to his stomach. Manipulating a repulsion force field with superior defense along with two sinister handguns, Kagetane Hiruko was, without a doubt, the strongest opponent Rentaro had ever faced in his short life. It was more or less a miracle that he had won.

“Only Mr. Grünewald did not have a research lab in his own country, so he had facilities in Japan, Australia, and America. Section 22, which you were in, was under my jurisdiction, but Kagetane’s Section 16 was under Mr. Grünewald’s jurisdiction. Also, it might sound like the Four Sages were equal in their abilities, but Mr. Grünewald’s genius was obviously a rank above that of Arthur, Ain, and mine. Once, I thought I’d try to steal the knowledge he had of mechanized soldiers and looked at his blueprints, but there was a portion that even I didn’t understand.”

Rentaro shook his head. Honestly, what she was talking about had gotten too big for him to wrap his head around. Next to him, Enju had her mouth half-open. She probably did not understand half of what she was hearing, either.

“Wait, Doc, are you really that amazing?” There was still a trace of fatigue left in his lighthearted words, but Sumire was indifferent and recrossed her legs.

“What, it’s not a big deal. The way you and Enju would read a single book is how I would read a single library. That’s the only difference. It’s simple, isn’t it? You might just think of me as a coroner, but I actually have no particular specialty. Everything is my specialty.”

“Then why are you doing autopsies on Gastrea now?”

Sumire hunched her shoulders and twisted her lips in a smile. “It’s because I like it. Corpses are great. No idle chatter from them. Oh, but the most unfortunate part about this job is that your patients never say ‘Thank you.’”

Rentaro was fed up.

“Just how old are you right now, Doc?”

“Fifteen.”

“You’re younger than me?! Have you no shame?”

“Silence, or I’ll dissect you while you’re still alive.”

“No, please. Anything but that!”

As if realizing something at those words, Sumire gave a smirk. “Hey, I’ve been wondering about this for a while, but you have school during the day, go to Kisara’s office after school, and then you’re with Enju at home, right? As a healthy male hominid, when do you take care of your pent-up frustrations? Tell me.”

“Now that you mention it…” Even Enju was starting to look interested.

Rentaro’s hips twitched unconsciously. “Hey—! Th-that has nothing to do with anything. Enju’s around, too! What are you saying, Doc?”

“Then don’t ask my age, idiot. Everyone has one or two things they don’t want people to ask about.”

Rentaro sat back down in his chair with a sour look on his face at that severe retaliation. “Doc, you really are a terrible person, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am. That’s why I have no friends. Did you only just notice?”

Disgusted, Rentaro looked at the large bookcases in the basement room. There was no sign of the person who was once the greatest mind in all of Japan on the bookcases filled with movies and adult video games.

“By the way, did you know, Rentaro? In the first dating sim games, the main character’s parameters were set, and if he wasn’t above a certain level in intelligence and looks, the girls wouldn’t even look at him. Even though it was a game, it didn’t contain any dreams or hopes, which kept it from being a great game, so other game companies went in a different direction.”

“What are you talking about?”

The enigmatic female doctor took a mechanical pencil from the breast pocket of her lab coat and tapped it on the table complacently. “Well, I was just wondering how far you got with Kisara. Kisara is wasted on someone like you with an unfortunate face obsessed with bugs. It’s strange that she hasn’t had a conspicuous boyfriend yet. You should be in more of a hurry. For all your rude talking, you can be a gentleman, but you lack the lust for conquest that will allow you to overcome a woman’s indecision and make her your own. That’s your weakness, you know. Have you noticed, Rentaro?”

“Sh-shut up. It has nothing to do with you.”

Seeing Enju looking discontented, Rentaro was startled and averted his face quickly. However, he smoothly slid just his gaze toward Sumire and asked, “Well, what would you do if you were me, Doc?”

“I’d probably slip a sleeping pill into Kisara’s drink.”

He shouldn’t have asked. Rentaro scratched the back of his head.

“Sorry, Rentaro, but you should go home first.”

“Why?”

“I have some things to talk to Enju about now. I don’t want you to hear it.”

“Hey, Doc, don’t tell me—” You’re not going to talk to Enju about her corrosion rate, are you? Rentaro glared.

But Sumire shook her head. “It’s not that.”

“I…see… Then, I’ll get going. Enju, can you get home by yourself?”

“Yes, no problem.”

Rentaro gave a small wave at Enju and left the university hospital reluctantly.

3

“Why did you have Rentaro leave?”

“Because I thought you wouldn’t want Rentaro to hear this. That’s the kind of thing we’ll be talking about now.” Sumire sat back down into her chair, and it gave a sharp creak. “Enju, let’s make this brief. Have you ever felt sudden chills on the back of your neck when fighting a strong Initiator or when walking around town?”

Enju couldn’t tell where the question was going and was mentally tilting her head in bewilderment, but she answered honestly. “No.”

Sumire recrossed her legs and put a coffee-filled beaker to her mouth. “Let me rephrase the question. Enju, you’re an Initiator who specializes in speed, but has that speed continued to improve? Have you had trouble improving your speed? Where it suddenly stopped getting better?”

Enju put her hands on the table in surprise and leaned her body over the table. “Do you know something about that, Sumire?”

Sumire sank her body deeply into the chair. “It’s just as I thought. You’ve reached your growth limit point, huh?”

Growth limit point. Enju couldn’t help but feel chills at the sound of those words.

Sumire flipped a lamp switch and pulled out a binder from a pile of documents, flipping through its pages to find the document she was looking for. “Enju, will you tell me a little about that feeling in your own words?”

It was like a doctor interviewing a patient, and remembering that Sumire actually was a doctor, Enju righted herself on the stool and sat up straight. “Yes, well, it was not something I was aware of in the past, but the more I used my power, the faster I became. However, that has not been the case recently at all. How can I describe it—?” She couldn’t find suitable words and folded her arms.

Sumire said helpfully, “Is it like you’re running into an invisible wall?”

“That’s it! It feels like I am running into an invisible wall. No matter how much I practice, it does not feel like I am getting faster at all.”

“I see, it’s just as the report says.” Sumire threw the binder onto the desk.

“Sumire, what is this?”

“That is the growth limit point. After an Initiator’s abilities improve to a certain point, they reach a plateau. In conclusion, Enju, your speed will not improve more than this.” The words echoed gloomily in the basement room.

“No… Isn’t there anything you can do, Sumire?!” Before she knew it, Enju had pressed up against Sumire, breathing hard.

Through the curtain of hair that covered her eyes, the doctor looked back at Enju in amusement. “No, there isn’t. However, it’s not all bad. It means that God has proclaimed that you don’t need to get any stronger than this.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in God, Sumire!”

Sumire spread her arms. “It’s regrettable. I think every day that it would be nice if God did exist. However, there is so little evidence that God exists from an objective standpoint that I have merely deferred my opinion for now.” After saying that, she told Enju, “You can go home now,” and turned her back to the girl.

Enju looked at her and cast down her eyes, her mouth opening and closing until she suddenly murmured, “Sumire… What is Zone?”

Sumire turned back in surprise and looked at her sternly with narrowed eyes. “Who did you hear about that from?”

“I overheard rumors about it from Promoters and Initiators that we work with. Doesn’t it refer to very strong Initiators?”

“More accurately, it does not refer to the Initiator herself, but to the state of the Initiator. And, it has nothing to do with you.”

Enju practically threw herself on Sumire as she grabbed her lab coat and shook it. “Sumire, what is this Zone? Does that have something to do with how I can become stronger?”

Sumire showed a moment of indecision.

“Sumire, I must become stronger, whatever it takes!”

That was the last straw, and Sumire said, “Damn,” putting her hand to her temple and flopping into her chair in desperation. “Enju, I will answer your question from before. There is actually a way to overcome your growth limit point. It’s the Zone you were just talking about.”

Enju held her breath, waiting for Sumire’s next words.

“The wall you feel right now is also frustration born of the desire to rip through your growth limit point. It might be easier if you imagine pulling yourself up onto a horizontal bar. At first, no matter how many dozens of times you practice, you can’t do it at all, but one day, you are suddenly able to do it. Once you are able to do it once, there’s no going back. Apparently Zone is like that. And Initiators attain Zone, which breaks through their growth limit point through strict self-control and discipline. It is also called ‘Awakening Zone.’”

“Attain Zone…? Awakening……?”

“I’m not an Initiator, so I don’t really know the details, but from the literature I’ve read on it, only a small handful of Initiators can actually attain Zone. And of the super-high-ranking pairs, there are many Initiators who have attained Zone. You and Satomi are probably alive right now thanks in large part to the fact that you have not met anyone who’s reached Zone yet.”

Enju was startled. “Is this Zone thing truly that strong?”

“It is. There is a large difference in ability between those who’ve reached Zone and those who do not. It is said that those without Zone cannot beat those with Zone. When you encounter them, apparently you feel tingling at the back of your neck, so if there is an Initiator your instincts tell you is someone with Zone, you should definitely not get involved with them. You guys fought Kohina Hiruko, who was pretty strong, but since you beat her, she must not have had Zone. If she did have Zone, then there’s no way you two would have survived.”

It was hard to believe this all of a sudden. “If even after all that, I do end up fighting someone with Zone, what should I do?”

“Run away. Take Satomi with you and run as far as you can.”

“Is that the only way?”

“Yes. It would be a different story if you attained Zone, though.”

Not even Enju could hold back her gloomy feelings. The foolish expression about how the super-high-ranking pairs were strong enough to rock the world’s military balance single-handedly suddenly seemed to have a seed of truth in it.

Sumire looked at her with eyes tinged with compassion. “Rentaro and Kisara will probably both continue to become stronger. Enju, they’ll become stronger than you.”

“Stronger than I?” She laughed, thinking it was a joke, but Sumire’s face wasn’t smiling.

Enju crossed her arms and considered. During the fight against Kohina Hiruko, Enju had noticed several weaknesses with Rentaro’s artificial limbs. Rentaro’s artificial limbs relied on the propulsion provided by exploding cartridges built into them to provide an incredible attack power, but they also missed a lot. In actuality, when he fought the swordswoman with two swords, Kohina Hiruko, he used the function in his artificial eye to predict the trajectory of the enemy’s attack before he readied his fist for a counterattack. This was entirely to minimize the risk of missing. Also, because she herself was a speed specialist Initiator, even if she fought Rentaro, she thought she could easily lead Rentaro to miss.

Next was Kisara, and the truth was that she wasn’t sure how their matchup would be. To Enju, Kisara was almost a complete unknown, and Enju had never really seen her fight. According to Rentaro, she was “crazy strong,” but if Enju thought about it as the strength of a human, then it was hard to believe that she could be a threat to Enju. It was hard for Enju to imagine the two of them becoming stronger than her.

“Enju, do you know the story of the race between the turtle and the hare? The one where the hare falls asleep and is overtaken by the turtle? Enju, why do you think the hare lost to the turtle?”

“Isn’t it because the hare let down his guard?”

“No.”

Enju was surprised and looked at Sumire again. “That’s not it?”

Sumire nodded once. “The answer lies in what the goals of the turtle and the hare were. The hare’s goal was to pass the turtle, so after he passed the turtle, he let his guard down. The turtle’s goal was to finish the race, so he didn’t let his guard down until he was done. It was this slight difference in the way they thought of their goals that resulted in their respective win and loss. Enju, you’re the hare. I’m not just saying this as a joke. Your myopic way of looking at things will likely one day lead you to a definitive defeat.”

Enju opened her eyes wide and shook her head furiously, yelling, “Even if that’s true, it’s something that’s way in the future! It’s not now!” After she said it, she was surprised at herself. She didn’t know why she was yelling so loudly herself.

Before she knew it, Sumire had come in front of Enju and put both hands on Enju’s shoulders, looking her straight in the eye. “Enju, do you understand? Do you understand what it means to attain Zone? If I can give my personal opinion, I would strongly urge you to forget it. Try asking Satomi, too. There’s no doubt that he would say the same thing as me.”

Enju had some idea of why Sumire would be opposed to it. It was likely that once she achieved Zone, her body’s corrosion rate would increase faster than usual.

If she remembered correctly, her corrosion rate during her last exam was 24.9 percent. That was dangerous, but even if she were able to attain Zone, if she used it sparingly, it shouldn’t be a problem, right? Was it really something that should garner that much opposition?

Sumire looked sad that she was unable to deter Enju’s motivation and murmured, “Let’s leave it at that for today,” cutting their discussion short. “You should just prioritize the job you have in front of you right now. Let’s take our time to talk about this after you’ve taken care of your escort duties.”

Sumire waved her hand, seemingly done with this conversation. Even though Enju was not quite satisfied, she could do nothing but nod.

“By the way, Enju, what is the Lady Seitenshi’s guard like right now?”

Enju wasn’t sure how much she should tell her, but in the end, she told Sumire everything.

After Sumire heard everything, she put her elbow on the table and cupped her chin in her hand, making a troubled face. “Isn’t that…bad…?”

“Hmm? Why?”

“To be able to deduce the Lady Seitenshi’s guarded route means that the enemy has considerable ability to gather information. It’s likely that it has also been leaked that the Tendo Civil Security Agency has been hired to guard her. If I were the assassin, in order to make sure my second assassination attempt succeeds, I would crush the Tendo Civil Security Agency decisively. This is bad, Enju. Hurry up and tell the other two.”

4

“Master, will you give me more information about the Tendo Civil Security Agency?”

“What do you want to know?” The voice on the other end of the headset responded immediately after she asked.

Tina Sprout tilted her head, gazing at the half of the sun setting beyond the faraway building. The busy shopping district she just left had been filled with annoying oily smells and had a ton of vulgar people. It was hot enough during the day to make one sick, so she was quickly coming to hate Tokyo Area, but the setting sun was the only thing that was beautiful enough to touch her heart.

I do like the night, after all, thought Tina to herself as she waited for the light to turn at the scrambled intersection. “Master, I do not know much about Tokyo Area, but I think Tendo is the same as the last name of the Seitenshi’s aide, Kikunojo Tendo. Are they related in some way?”

“Yeah, the president, Kisara Tendo, is Kikunojo Tendo’s granddaughter. However, she is currently estranged from the Tendo family and is running the Tendo Civil Security Agency independently. Oh? Her personal background is pretty interesting—”

She suddenly felt eyes on her and looked back, seeing an elderly woman staring blatantly at what Tina was holding in her right hand. The woman was looking at a khaki-colored gun case. It was even thicker than the case she used for the huge antitank rifle she used last time, and even with her power released, it was still heavy enough to make her tired.

“—the president, Kisara Tendo, lost her parents when they were eaten by a Gastrea that strayed into the Tendo residence when she was a child, and she herself was so stressed from that time that she lost the function of her kidneys.”

“Her kidneys?”

“That’s right. On top of that, this incident appears to have been premeditated murder, and the culprit is said to be someone from the Tendo family. Obsessed with revenge, Kisara Tendo madly honed her swordsmanship and left the Tendo family. Even now, it is said that she is just waiting for the opportunity to kill everyone in the Tendo family.”

“That’s…” It was a very bloody story. On top of that, she was a master swordswoman, huh…?

“I don’t know if it’s because they have no money or if it’s because they value quality over quantity, but there is only one pair employed by the Tendo Civil Security Agency. These guys are the ones who got in our way the other day.”

Tina lifted her face in surprise. “What are their names?”

“The fact that their names don’t come up on the list means that their information is being protected by the government. Oh, but their names have been leaked onto the Internet.”

For some reason, Tina made a hard fist as she waited for his next words.

“The Initiator’s name is Enju Aihara, and the Promoter is—”

Just then, a truck cut in front of her blasting its exhaust loudly. Tina covered her other ear as she shouted, “Excuse me, Master, what did you say—?”

“Hey, how long are you planning on standing there? Will you please move?”

Tina turned, and the elderly woman from before was looking at her with an angry expression on her face. When she looked forward, the light at the scramble intersection had turned green, and everyone around her had started walking at once.

Tina made a hurried bow and lifted the case, cutting across the geometric pattern made by the white lines. Continuing on by turning into a few narrow alleys, she reached an area of drinking establishments. Probably because of the time of day, there were not many people around.

Following her master’s navigation, she soon saw a small building. It was a dingy four-story building. She twisted her neck to look at the height of the building. She had proposed sniping Kisara Tendo down beforehand, but her master rejected that idea promptly. She could see now that she would not have been able to secure a field of fire here. She had no choice but to barge in directly and shoot her down, after all.

The building in question was called Happy Building, and its tenants from the first floor up were listed as SPERRGEBIET, MA CHÉRIE, TENDO CIVIL SECURITY AGENCY, and KOFU FINANCE. Sperrgebiet meant “no trespassing zone” in German, and Ma Chérie meant “my love” in French. The sign did not say what kind of stores they were. Was Kofu Finance some sort of financial consulting company?

Tina dropped the gun case she held in her right hand to the ground with a heavy sound. She opened the case up left and right, and an enormous gun appeared. It was an M13 made by the General Electric Company. It was a Gatling gun that used the power of a battery pack to make a bundle of six barrels rotate, allowing for continuous fire.

She was not that good at using weapons other than sniper rifles, but as part of learning the conventions of killing, she had also learned how to use general weapons and explosives. Up until now, she had always sniped at her targets through an optical scope, so she was slightly nervous, but it was not enough to be a problem.

Tina put the bullet box feeder connected to the Gatling gun on her back. Passersby were giving her dubious looks as they passed, but because she was doing it so blatantly, no one screamed or called the police.

Tina was planning to ask her master for a vacation after the Seitenshi’s assassination was over. She was sure that her master would strongly oppose her staying in Tokyo Area after the assassination was completed, but she wanted to avoid leaving this place without saying anything to him.

Tina put her hand to her chest. It was strange. She had only seen him four times, yet she felt like she could do anything for him. Even though she had never done anything but kill people, she was amazed that her heart could still beat for someone else like this. Her heart was warm. She felt like she could do anything.

Tina closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and exhaled. “Master, could I lose against Kisara Tendo?”

She heard a loud laugh on the other end of the phone. “There’s no way. No way. According to my calculations, there’s not even a one percent chance that you will lose against Kisara Tendo. According to the information, Kisara Tendo is alone in the office. Make sure you get rid of her.”

“Roger, Master. Ending call now.”

Tina quieted her footsteps and entered the building. Perhaps to save on maintenance fees, there was no elevator, so the only way to get to the upper floors was to take the stairs.

Sperrgebiet on the first floor was a bar. It looked like they weren’t open for business yet, and the lights were off and no one was around. Compared to the bar on the first floor, it was much easier to tell what kind of store Ma Chérie on the second floor was. There was wallpaper pink enough to make a flamingo feel nauseated and a disco ball. They were also not open yet, but it looked like some kind of sex establishment.

Tina silently climbed up to the third floor. In order to use the Gatling gun in an indoor battle, the barrels were shortened as much as possible to make it more compact, so it did not get in the way of her movements much.

Tina quietly pushed open the shabby door with a sign that said TENDO CIVIL SECURITY AGENCY hanging on it. At a large work desk facing front, a black-haired girl that she thought to be Kisara Tendo sat with her shoulders squared, writing something.

Seeming to sense someone coming in, the girl put down her fountain pen, crossed her arms in a huff, and looked the other way, as if saying, “I’m still mad, you know.” It seemed as if she had Tina confused with someone else. It was a chance Tina would not get again.

“You are…Kisara Tendo…?”

“Huh?”

Seeing the girl lift her face and open her eyes in surprise, Tina prepared for the gun’s recoil by firmly placing her feet onto the ground. “Prepare yourself.”

Pushing the trigger button, the body of the gun started spinning from the battery power, and immediately after, there was an ear-splitting explosion, and the Gatling gun spit fire.

In the blink of an eye, Kisara crouched down reflexively, but the work desk and walls were all covered with holes, and ricocheting bullets destroyed the glass on the pictures and the glass water pitcher, penetrating the sofa of the lounge set and scattering feathers everywhere. This was the true value of the massacre weapon, the Gatling gun, a high-speed rifle that could spit a hundred rounds a second. Compared to the menacing threat of this rapid-fire weapon that could turn their target to pieces, the shots of a normal machine gun were about the same level as a fly landing on something.

After getting knocked backward from the strong recoil from the five-second salvo, Tina released the trigger button and looked around the inside of the office. Riddled with bullet holes, the inside of the office looked like a tornado had passed through it.

There was a sharp smell of gun smoke as papers drifted through the air, and at her feet was a pile of empty cartridges the gun had spit out and a mountain of belt links. A heartbeat later, a Klimt reproduction fell, frame and all, to the ground with a small sound, and Tina could see powdered mortar floating in the air in the diagonal shaft of light shining in from the window.

She was sure that Kisara Tendo had left the world without knowing exactly what had happened. Tina could only pray that the other name for this gun, Painless, was the truth.

Thinking to check the corpse, Tina stepped into the room. Just then, as if waiting for that moment, Kisara rushed out from the side of the ebony table with her hand on the handle of her sword. The cold eyes peeking out from under the long, disheveled hair were like carnage.

Suddenly, Tina’s master’s voice replayed in her head. Obsessed with revenge, Kisara Tendo madly honed her swordsmanship—

Tina got chills and reflexively bent backward, and there was a high-pitched screeching sound as something scraped right next to Tina at high speed. A lock of Tina’s blond hair that lagged behind was cut diagonally, along with the barrels of the Gatling gun, and there was a loud roar like artillery shells crashing into one another as the whole building shook. Behind her, the wall was split in half vertically. Tina looked at the unbelievable spectacle in shock.

Was she within range of Kisara’s sword attack? Tina thought it was impossible, but the glint of Kisara’s sword had just sliced the wall and a number of Tina’s hairs, and it cut the steel body of the gun like butter. Tina cursed her master who gave Kisara Tendo the too-low rating of a less than 1 percent chance of winning. She felt chills up her spine. It wasn’t a joke. Her abilities were unmistakably at the upper limit of what a human could achieve.

However.

Tina jumped left and right like she was doing a triangle jump and kicked twice, sticking to the ceiling, and then while her vision was upside down, ran past on the ceiling. She saw Kisara glare as her sword-drawing technique started to go out of control. Right after, the two sword-drawing attacks she unleashed as quickly as meteors landed far behind Tina.

They were too slow. Tina, who was looking down at the inside of the office upside down, ran until she was right above Kisara Tendo and kicked the ceiling, falling inverted down on her.

Kisara’s face paled, and she slid backward, but that was all within Tina’s predictions. Tina brought down the Gatling gun that weighed a little over twenty kilograms. She wasn’t aiming at Kisara but at the floor. The blunt and heavy steel weapon that was brought down with the fierce power of an Initiator destroyed the flooring. Not only that, but it also easily shattered the concrete block with a 24-Newton force, shattering the fragments and making them explode into Kisara.

To Kisara, it was like being shot with a shotgun. Even though she quickly raised her arm to block, she was showered with blows to her stomach and chest, and dropped her sword, thrashing against the wall.

Without hesitating, Tina calmly calculated the most efficient way to destroy the swordswoman in front of her and used the superacceleration of an Initiator to ram against her shoulder. With a roar, the wall collapsed, and Kisara was drained of strength against the wall. It was still.

This was it.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Tina swiped the sweat from her brow. Then her eyes became as cold as ice, and she decided to do what she had to do. She took the body of the Gatling gun that had turned into a soldering iron from all the shots it fired and pushed it against the limp Kisara’s stomach, forcing her awake.

Kisara let out a painful groan and brushed back her hair. Grinding her teeth, trying to bear the pain, she opened her eyes in slits and looked at Tina. “Who…are you?”

“There is no need for you to know.”

“Why is a child like you…?” Kisara started.

Tina’s thoughts were troubled by the anxious look in Kisara’s eyes. Even though Kisara had suffered serious damage, why was she concerned about Tina?

Tina was deeply irritated at the incomprehensible girl and made a hard fist, putting her face close to Kisara’s. “You will die soon. That has nothing to do with you. You are about to die. You will disappear from the world without becoming anything; you will not leave anything behind. I will now kill you in such a way that even those who love you will not be able to tell that the pieces are you. Do you understand? You are going to die now!”

Kisara shook her head slowly with a tired look on her face. “You are afraid to kill people, aren’t you?”

Tina’s eyes opened wide, and before she knew it, she was strangling Kisara’s thin neck. Her fingers sank delightfully into the girl’s smooth, white skin, and Tina could almost hear the grating of her bones.

Kisara shook her head slowly left and right without a sound, a sad expression on her face, but soon her expression turned into a grimace. Her body started to convulse, and her consciousness clouded. She squeezed her voice out forcibly through lips that had turned purple. “Help…me…Satomi… No……”

Tina was so surprised that the force in her hands let up for a second. What? Who’s Satomi?

“Tendo Martial Arts Second Style, Number 16—!” Suddenly, just as she heard a voice that could barely contain its anger come from the side, something rushed into her with the force of a bullet. “Inzen Kokutenfu!”

On instinct, she let the top half of her body spring backward, and immediately after, there was the sound of a roundhouse kick grazing her cheek. She jumped aside with a backflip.

Backup? Tina thought. She made sure to get enough distance between them and, with her hand still on the ground, lifted her face.

—And then, her world froze.

“No way…” Between the space between her cracked lips, a hoarse voice that didn’t sound like her own slipped out. “No way… No way, no way… No……… There’s no way…” Tina shook her head slowly and moved backward. The connections in her brain were shorting and getting ground down, and inside, her feelings were a stirred-up mess. Her legs shook, and feeling sobs about to leak from her throat, she hurriedly held them back.

Since he showed up at this time, she had no doubt that it meant that the enemy in front of her was the civsec officer employed at this agency who had interfered with her sniping. His compact and toned body was covered in a school uniform that looked like a black suit. Behind that brusque attitude was a stupidly honest person who was sincere and good at taking care of others. She had learned this from her short acquaintance with him.

She had liked him. She thought he was a good person. She had trusted him.

Tina ground her teeth in frustration as she held back her tears and screamed, “Why…! Why, Rentaro?!”

Rentaro was just as shocked.

The dark rage scorching his chest collided with the momentary charm and stopped Rentaro’s movements. “Why are you…?”

Tina looked down and shook her head, murmuring like she really did not want to say. “Because you will get in the way of my assassination.”

“I see, so you’re the……” Rentaro bit his lip hard and closed his eyes. And then he asked himself what he should do. He slowly opened his eyes.

Tina also looked like she was smiling and crying at the same time as she desperately put both hands on her chest. “But Rentaro, I……”

Rentaro used the Tendo step to close the gap between them and unleashed Homura Kasen, a straight punch with all his strength behind it. It scraped the shaken girl’s cheek. There was a short scream, and a sharp, cutting pain welled up in Rentaro’s chest.

However, Rentaro did not listen to Tina’s scream. He couldn’t listen to it. He thought he should take the Gatling gun she held and grabbed at it, but she resisted half-reflexively and pushed Rentaro away with the tremendous physical strength of an Initiator. The momentum pushed the trigger button, and the body of the Gatling gun pointed at the sky exploded. It took everything he had to suppress it.

In the midst of the sound of gunfire, Rentaro ground his teeth and screamed behind him. “Kisara! The floor… Cut it………!”

He could sense Kisara behind him suddenly leaping to action with the sword in her hand. “Tendo Martial Arts Sword Drawing Third Style, Number 8—” Her deep exhalation made the air in the room tense in a second.

With all the noise from the gunfire, he shouldn’t have been able to hear it, but Rentaro was sure he could hear the clear sound of steel sliding out of the scabbard. “Unebiko Yuusei—Go swiftly, Yukikage!”

The calamity that occurred immediately afterward could scarcely be called a physical phenomenon. It felt like Rentaro’s field of vision was cut into a number of pieces, and along with the cracking sound of an icicle being cleft in two, all around the room were cuts carved in every direction.

Suddenly, the world tilted in a way that made it impossible for him to continue standing. The floor had been cut off. Along with the nauseating floating feeling was a destructive collapsing sound. Bodies pulled by gravity, Tina and Rentaro were being dragged down as they grasped each other.

Seeing that Tina seemed confused about what had just happened, Rentaro saw his chance and positioned himself above her, keeping her below him as the floor of the next floor down approached with tremendous speed, slapping her down on it.

“Guh…” The air was knocked out of Tina’s lungs, and Rentaro readied a fist in order to knock her unconscious.

But his enemy was not one to go down easily. Just as he saw her leg spring up, he felt a sharp pain in his lower jaw, and there was a ringing inside his head as his vision started to black out.

He stumbled for a few steps, but then shifted to step firmly. Not yet.

“Tendo Martial Arts Second Style, Number 14—”

“Listen to me, Rentaro!”

“—Inzen Genmeika!”

He repeatedly aimed sharp kicks where he predicted she would move to avoid him. The kick that got a clean hit on the arm the girl put up to block blew the small girl away, and she broke past the window behind her and fell from the second floor.

Tears fell from Tina’s eyes, and they glittered, reflecting the glass of the window until they finally disappeared.

Rentaro drew the gun at his hip, not letting his guard down as he approached the side of the window. He looked down timidly but did not see any sign of her save the small dent on the hood of the car parked in front of the building.

She appeared to have run away.

“Satomi, did you win?”

Looking back, he saw Kisara in the midst of the thick dust, holding a handkerchief to her mouth as she climbed down to the second floor. Rentaro looked away from Kisara and looked once more past the broken window. A crowd had gathered nearby, and the police would probably show up soon.

“I didn’t win. She ran away from me…”

“I see…”

Kisara came to stand next to Rentaro and followed his gaze, then looked sideways at him anxiously.

“Did you know her?”

“Yeah…” Rentaro remembered Tina’s face when she was almost crushed by self-denial, and his chest tightened.

From the looks of it, she had not known who he was when she approached him. However, if she was the assassin after the Seitenshi, and if she was trying to take the life of the president of the Tendo Civil Security Agency that was trying to stop the assassination, then there was no room for discussion.

Assassin and bodyguard. Two absolutely incompatible positions. Despite that, Tina had obviously been trying to talk to him. And the one who had pushed away her outstretched arm and forced their parting was none other than himself. Rentaro gripped his XD with both hands and shut his eyes hard, holding it and praying.

How long did he stay like that? He tried to force himself to switch gears by surveying the damage inside, and then he scratched his head. “What are we going to do about this, Kisara?” Looking up, he saw a large hole providing nice ventilation between the second and third floors that couldn’t possibly be fixed. On top of the concrete dust irritating his throat, there was also the smell of paint thinner coming from somewhere in the building, which was starting to make his head hurt.

When Enju came back and saw that the office had turned into Swiss cheese, she would surely be surprised.

Fortunately, the cabaret on the second floor still had some time before they opened, so no one was around, but the proprietress would be coming in soon to get ready to open. Rentaro had no confidence that he would be able to explain the situation well. He shot Kisara a critical gaze that said, “You didn’t have to destroy everything so thoroughly.”

Kisara blushed, put her hand on her hip, and looked up at him through her lashes. “What? You’re the one that said to cut it, Satomi!”

“That’s true, but—”

“D-die, you scoundrel!” Suddenly, yakuza with long daggers in each hand rushed in shouting, nearly blowing Rentaro away.

When he looked carefully, Rentaro saw that they were the yakuza from the loan shark upstairs, Kofu Finance.

Looking left and right and seeing no sign of the enemy, they became restless and looked very strange. They must have been very confused, because some of them were using the lid of a pan as a shield, and some were even wearing the pot itself on their heads. All of them had shaking knees. The reason for their late appearance could be deduced somewhat by that attitude.

A representative came over to where Rentaro was, scratching his head in confusion. It was Abe, who had a surprisingly comical face when he took off his sunglasses.

“R-Rentaro, bro, Tendo, sis, what’s goin’ on here? It’s not a raid?”

Kisara took a step forward and spread her arms levelly. “This has nothing to do with you guys. I believe the police will come soon, so you should put away whatever you don’t want them to see. Come on, hurry on home now!” She clapped her hands, and the members of Kofu Finance reluctantly headed out the door, looking at one another.

Yakuza being pushed around by a high school girl. It was a strange sight.

“Satomi…” Saying that, Kisara, whose back was to Rentaro, suddenly leaned toward him as if about to fall.

He hurriedly caught her shoulder. It smelled sweet and felt too dainty and soft to be that of a master swordswoman. Rentaro felt his whole body heat up, and he was afraid Kisara would hear the too-fast beating of his heart. “H-hey, Kisara, this is no time to play aroun…”

Then, he suddenly realized.

While Rentaro had been rushing around, Kisara had been practically killed. Even though she was his boss, she was still a girl. After being met with such a dangerous situation, wouldn’t she want to cry on someone’s chest? With such sweet expectations, he held her and peeked at her face—and then the blood drained from his face.

Kisara’s handsome face was twisted in pain, and she held her lower abdomen as she bit her pale lips.

“Hey, Kisara? Kisara! Get ahold of yourself! Hey!”

Then a lightbulb flashed in his head, and he gritted his teeth. This wasn’t from the damage she sustained from fighting. It was her kidneys malfunctioning.

5

The sounds of regular and intermittent machinery echoed through the white hospital room.

“I never thought that our office would be targeted. We’ve been doing pretty well recently, so I let my guard down a little,” Kisara muttered as she sat down in a reclining chair, smiling weakly at Rentaro. “I don’t look that cute here, so I didn’t really want to let you see me in a place like this, though.”

“It’s too late for that. Just because I see you like this doesn’t really make me think anything special.” Rentaro was lying. Kisara usually looked unhappy, giving orders in her refined and energetic way. He couldn’t stand to see her looking like a puppet with its strings cut, sprawled with her arms and legs stretched out on the chair.

On her arm with the sleeves rolled up, there were needles sticking in her veins, which were connected to the dialysis equipment next to her. An artificial kidney called a dialyzer worked in the place of Kisara’s malfunctioning kidneys, filtering out the toxins from her blood.

Two or three times a week, she would spend four or five hours this way. And this was the reason she could not fight on the front lines as a civsec officer. Kisara had always strongly refused Rentaro’s attendance at her dialysis treatments. Knowing that she probably didn’t want him to see her bound by the dialysis equipment after all this time, Rentaro was embarrassed at himself for being inconsiderate. Now that he thought about it, Kisara also made sure to never show Rentaro or Enju when she took her insulin shot after meals.

The sun had almost completely set, and it was dark outside the window. The streetlights were giving off a dubious light. Earlier, there was announcement that it would be lights out soon.

After Kisara collapsed, Rentaro panicked, almost dropping his cell phone multiple times before he managed to call the ambulance and bring Kisara in.

“Again, Miss Tendo?” said the nurse in an unsurprised and angry voice. Watching Kisara apologize with a wry smile, Rentaro could tell that Kisara was not very assertive about going to her dialysis treatments.

A young nurse who seemed friendly with Kisara said, “Oh? So you’re the one Miss Tendo was talking about…” with a meaningful smile, walking around Rentaro to look at him. She finally turned on her heel and said, “When you’re done, press the nurse call button,” waving a hand and leaving.

Currently, only Rentaro and Kisara were in the room with the dialysis equipment, and the other three sets of equipment for patients to use were not operating. Rentaro sat quietly watching Kisara’s dialysis on a chair nearby. “Doesn’t that hurt?”

“I’m used to it…”

“You should get a kidney transplant.”

“I can’t find a donor that easily, you know. Besides, if it’s someone not related by blood, there’s a high possibility that my body would reject it.”

“Didn’t Doc say something about how there’s some IPS thing now?”

“Oh, you’re talking about induced pluripotent stem cells, right? Dr. Sumire doesn’t need to tell you about that. But I’ll refrain.”

“Why…?”

Kisara leaned back against the chair, stared at a point of empty space, and finally stretched out a hand as if grasping something. The hospital ward was quiet and a little chilly at night.

“This pain is mine and mine alone. I decided that my life would only be used to erase the Tendos from this world. If I forgot this pain, I’m sure I would forget my revenge, as well. That’s why I can’t.”

“Wouldn’t it be all right to forget, too? You have Enju now, right? You have me!”

Kisara looked bewildered for a second, gaping, but she then she lifted the corners of her mouth and smiled. “You’re right. Thank you.”

Rentaro looked down and gnashed his teeth in deep despair because he could tell that the second he yelled, Kisara’s true feelings, which had surfaced a little, sank underneath as a fake smile floated to the top in its place.

His words would not reach her. He could not stop her revenge. Rentaro’s chest tightened as he looked at Kisara and her pale beauty once more.

Tendo Martial Arts Sword Drawing Third Style, Number 8: Unebiko Yuusei. What in the world was that thing she used against Tina? Even Rentaro, who had been with her for ten years, had never seen that terrible move before. It was likely a special attack she’d polished through years of persistence, in order to obliterate the Tendo family.

Even thinking about it now, its terrifying destructive power gave him shivers. It was a move that cut an entire room to slivers in an instant. No matter how many times he ran a simulation in his head, Rentaro couldn’t figure out how he would deal with it if the attack was directed at him.

Was this the true strength of the Tendo-killing Tendos, Kisara?

“Kisara, aren’t you…” Aren’t you stronger than me with my power unleashed? He couldn’t ask this no matter how hard he tried. If the answer to that was yes, he didn’t know what kind of face he was supposed to make.

The buzzer indicating that the dialysis was finished sounded. Once Kisara knew that her blood was purified, she removed the equipment with practiced hands without pressing the nurse call button.

Those hands stopped suddenly, and Kisara looked at Rentaro hesitatingly. “Satomi, when that girl was attacking me…did you hear me calling your name?”

“Hmm? Did you say something?”

Kisara looked relieved and shook her head gently. “It’s fine if you didn’t hear it.” After another heartbeat, she looked at Rentaro with her eyes filled with resolve. “Satomi, there’s just one problem left that hasn’t been resolved. The incident with Miori.”

Rentaro slumped his shoulders, fed up. “Will you stop with that already?”

Just when they were finally able to talk normally, too.

Kisara stood up and brushed the dust off her skirt, then pointed her index finger at Rentaro’s nose. “No. I hate having things left ambiguous. I won’t ask about what amazing thing Miori did to you, and you don’t have to talk about it. I-I probably won’t be able to keep a cool head if I heard about it……”

She didn’t do anything! Please, just stay coolheaded! These words stuck in his throat.

Kisara unhurriedly twirled her black hair around her fingers, and seemed restless as she recrossed her legs. “Watching Miori’s actions, I also learned something. It’s true that the salary I pay is on the low side—”

His boss in her black sailor school uniform walked to the window and turned around, closing the curtains with her hand behind her. After a slight hesitation, she looked up at Rentaro through her lashes. “Th-that’s why, Satomi, you can…hold my hand.”

“Huh?” Rentaro raised his voice hysterically.

“My hand. I said that I would let you hold my hand!”

Rentaro paused. “Why your hand?”

“What, you don’t like it? You know, letting you hold my hand is a pretty big deal.”

“What part of it is?”

Kisara turned quickly to the side, pouting and muttering, “I mean… it’s…like we’re l-lovers or something, don’t you think?”

Rentaro was even more discomfited, so Kisara braced herself, making her muscles hard, and stuck her hand out at him with her eyes closed. “Satomi, hurry up…… I’m so embarrassed, I think I might die,” she urged.

A mesmerizing smell emanated from Kisara, and Rentaro started to breathe harder naturally. From her collarbone to her shoulder and waist, her feminine lines were beautiful no matter how many times he saw them.

Sumire’s words passed through the back of his mind.

“For all your rude talking, you can be a gentleman, but you lack the lust for conquest that will allow you to overcome a woman’s indecision and make her your own. That’s your weakness, you know. Have you noticed, Rentaro?”

“K-Kisara, I……”

“Satomi, wait, no way…… What are you touching…? That’s not my hand, that’s my chest…… W-wait… Satomi. I wasn’t planning on allowing you to go that far… Oh, but I may have Miori beat with these.”

“Hmm? The size, shape, elasticity… They are utterly faultless. It is vexing, but even I must give them a triple A-plus.”

“Huh? Vexing?” Opening one eye slightly, Kisara saw Enju grasping her chest tightly with a serious expression on her face and hurriedly jumped backward. “E-Enju? What are you doing?”

“I am the one who wants to know! After I got back to the office, I was surprised to find it full of holes. And then after I asked the police and had them show me where to go, I find you here with your breasts hanging out, tempting Rentaro!”

“They’re not hanging out, and I’m not tempting anyone!”

Rentaro stood with his mouth half-open at his wits’ end, watching their exchange.

Finally, Kisara gazed fixedly at Rentaro with wet eyes, trembling slightly. “Since Enju touched them, that means you, her guardian, touched them! With this, you’re mine, Satomi. I-I won’t let anyone else have you!” A single tear ran down Kisara’s cheek, and she ground her teeth as sobs threatened to escape, but she lifted her eyes sharply and somehow managed to finish her words.

If you were that scared, you shouldn’t have said you’d let me hold your hand. Could it be that all rich girls were extremely idiotic individuals?

Enju puffed out her cheeks and jumped over. “Rentaro, Rentaro. I have no idea what happened.”

Rentaro leaned over to her eye level and quickly explained the details of the attack on the office and how it was linked to the attempted assassination of the Seitenshi. He hesitated but hid that he knew Tina beforehand.

After she finished listening, Enju looked disappointed, like she had missed out on something. “What, is that what happened? Then, we just have to finish protecting the Lady Seitenshi, right?”

“Y-you know what…? That’s easy for you to say, but—” No, Rentaro stopped and shook his head. Now that he thought about it, she was exactly right. What Rentaro had to think about was not Tina’s or Kisara’s revenge. Enju had a simple way of thinking, but she never lost sight of what was important.

“Satomi, since that girl came to erase me because I was in the way, that means there will definitely be a second attempt.”

“Yeah.”

“The Lady Seitenshi is someone who will be necessary to Tokyo Area in the future. I know that you don’t like politicians, but you need to bear it and set your personal opinions aside for now.”

“I know.”

“Imagine, Satomi. In our current situation, with the fourth Seitenshi still unborn, if the Lady Seitenshi were assassinated, the resulting political vacuum would throw Tokyo Area into confusion. The fate of Tokyo Area rests in your hands. You cannot fail.”

At that moment, all the lights in the room turned off, and the room was wrapped in darkness. It was time for lights out.

Kisara adjusted her posture and brushed back her hair with the moon behind her. “I order you as president of the Tendo Civil Security Agency. Eliminate the sniper targeting the Lady Seitenshi and carry out justice!”

Rentaro closed his eyes, put his hand to his chest, and asked his conscience. “I will stop her. I will be the one to stop her.”

6

“For such a thing to happen…”

They were inside the car. The Seitenshi sat elegantly with her hands on her lap, hiding her face. “I’m sorry. I had good intentions when I asked you to take on this job, but I didn’t think it would come to this.”

“You do not have to worry about that! When we were offered the job, Kisara said she was so happy, it was like it rained on her drought.” That was Enju. It was a great response—if only she had said “welcome rain in a drought” instead of “it rained on her drought.”

Rentaro leaned his back deeply into the all-leather seats and followed suit. “It’s just like Enju said. We looked at the risks properly and are getting paid to do our job, so it’s nothing you need to worry about. The insurance looks like it’ll cover the building, too. The only thing is that Yasuwaki thinks I’m secretly communicating with the culprit, so it makes it harder to do my job.”

“He thinks you’re secretly communicating with the culprit?” The Seitenshi responded with a smile, and Rentaro had to keep his mouth shut. He wasn’t secretly communicating with her, but he knew her. But if he said that, what kind of face would the country’s leader make?

Today’s second unofficial conference would be at a restaurant for a change of scenery, and it would start at eight p.m. and was scheduled to continue late into the night.

Rentaro checked the time. It was currently seven thirty p.m.

Thinking of how the last conference went, it was hard to imagine that this conference would bear much fruit, but that was beyond the jurisdiction of a guard, and not something he had a say in.

“Rentaro, do you think this will go well?” Enju asked.

Looking at Enju’s eyes filled with a mix of expectation and anxiety, he checked that the decoy limousine was driving in front of them and finally turned his head back around to look inside the car. “I wonder,” he replied.

The van they borrowed from the staff at the Seitenshi’s palace had a worn-out suspension or something that made it shake terribly, and it was no comparison to the comfort of riding in a limousine, but the Seitenshi sat quietly and expressed no discomfort.

It was Rentaro who suggested switching cars at the last minute. Even that was sudden and only in the presence of the Seitenshi’s trusted personal aides. At first, the aides just stared at him in shock. Apparently, just the suggestion for a holy personage such as the Seitenshi to ride in a normal car was hard for them to believe. However, a clever scheme that followed the rules of common sense was not a clever scheme. The more absurd the idea, the more likely it would be to fool Tina.

The guard plan leak last time meant that it would make sense to assume that there was a traitor in the Seitenshi’s palace. If the traitor was part of the Seitenshi’s personal guards who wrote the guard plan, then it would be annoying, but if the traitor wasn’t, then they would be arrested sooner or later. There was already an internal investigation team that had started work on bringing to light who was leaking information. If they had caught the culprit, Rentaro would be able to relax a little more with his guarding, though.

There, Rentaro remembered the face of someone he disliked and hit his knee with a fist. “Sougen Saitake… I’m sure he’s the culprit.”

The Seitenshi’s head twitched, and she looked at him with a sad expression. “Satomi, that’s…”

“I know. I don’t have any evidence yet. But when I think about who has the most to benefit from your death, he’s the only person who comes to mind. Why is he sneaking around coming unofficially to Tokyo Area, anyway? That’s pretty suspicious by itself, and then you were attacked on your way back from that meeting. And there’s one more thing that’s suspicious.”

Rentaro stopped talking for a second and looked into the Seitenshi’s eyes. “Lady Seitenshi, all your personal aides are scum. All they did was lay blame on others for leaking the plan, but they didn’t even try working out a plan to prevent anything from happening. In the first place, why didn’t they talk about who ordered the assassination? It wouldn’t be hard to figure out if you just thought about it a little. But if they really expose Saitake as the leader behind the scenes, then one wrong step could lead to an outbreak of war between areas. Those guys are afraid to even think about it.”

The driver, who realized that the conversation was taking a turn for the worse, started to fidget in the driver’s seat.

The Seitenshi kept her eyes closed for a while. However, she eventually opened her eyes quietly and looked at Rentaro. “Satomi, I will keep what you said in mind, but only to myself. Please do not talk about it to anyone else.”

Rentaro understood there was more to it than she said and reflexively started to stand up, but the Seitenshi shook her head slowly. “I am still the ruler of this nation. I cannot cancel a conference without evidence. Satomi, this is something that cannot be helped.”

“You’ll be killed!”

“If that is the fate chosen for me by the heavens, then there is nothing I can do. I will follow the god inside of me.”

Rentaro suddenly felt a red-hot sensation, and before he knew it, he had grabbed the Seitenshi’s collar and raised a fist overhead.

“Rentaro!” Enju hurriedly tried to intervene, but Rentaro just barely managed to grit his teeth with his fist trembling.

The Seitenshi just let it happen to her and quietly looked into Rentaro’s eyes.

He squeezed his eyes shut. Rentaro didn’t know how long he stayed like that, but he thrust the Seitenshi away and sat down in ill humor. Why were all the women around him idiots? There was a limit to how mentally strong one could be. It was hard not to be envious. “I will protect you. I did not take on the job of guarding you just to have you killed before my eyes.”

“Thank you, Satomi.”

Before long, the van arrived at the first-class restaurant, Utoro. It was on a large plot of land, and the outer wall was very high. The guard unit that had arrived earlier to investigate and disinfect the inside of the restaurant guided the van to a stop next to the restaurant.

Rentaro pulled the sliding door open and stretched a hand out to the Seitenshi. “Now, let us go, princess.”

“I’m not a princes—,” the Seitenshi started to say reflexively, but then bashfully looked down and quietly took Rentaro’s proffered hand.

Exiting the car and exposing his body to the slightly cool air outside, Rentaro looked at the entrance of the restaurant and scowled.

An angry Yasuwaki had come out to meet them, looking like trouble. “Rentaro Satomi! What is the meaning of this? Why is the Seitenshi riding in such a shabby car?”

“We changed the car. I decided that a limousine would be too dangerous.”

“Why did you not tell me?!”

Rentaro glared at Yasuwaki silently. Because I couldn’t trust your abilities.

Yasuwaki kept grinding his teeth. “Bastard…… A big-headed grandstander like you will destroy the whole team! You scumbag!”

Because the angry Yasuwaki had moved a hand to the sidearm on his hip, Rentaro also put his hand on the XD on his hip to stop Yasuwaki if necessary. In the middle of the tense atmosphere of the explosive situation, Enju also made her eyes red and pawed the ground with her shoes. It had turned into a bad situation.

Suddenly, there was a buzzing sound, and Rentaro twisted his head back and forth but did not find anything. There it was again… The sound was the same as the buzzing that he heard during the last sniping incident. What in the world was it…?

Those tense nerves played a part in allowing Rentaro to anticipate a glint on the roof of a large building in the corner of his field of vision. He wasn’t mistaken in what he had seen. It was the same sniper muzzle fire as he had seen the other day.

As Rentaro yelled, he hurled himself against the Seitenshi to force down the upper part of her body. The next instant, there was a sharp pain in his body. Rentaro was sure he felt the hot tip of an antitank bullet graze his side.

A heartbeat later, the place became frenzied. A number of the guards who understood Rentaro’s intention quickly became a shield.

Rentaro pushed the Seitenshi into the van, rapped on the driver’s seat, and ordered, “Drive.”

The limousine that was blocking the front and the van they had gotten into started moving at almost the same time.

Rentaro put a hand to his side and felt something slippery as blood stuck to his hand. Unconsciously, one cheek twitched. Even with this, they were lucky. If he had been hit straight on with a bullet designed to pierce through armored cars, a frail human such as himself would have died immediately.

A small trick like switching cars was not enough to fool that sniper, after all.

“Rentaro!” said Enju.

“Enju, don’t worry about me! Keep watch behind us,” said Rentaro.

The Seitenshi’s face paled as she reached her hand out toward his wound, but Rentaro waved her away with just his hand. The danger wasn’t over yet. They had to break away to a safe area as soon as possible.

At that moment, Enju, who had been observing the roofs of the buildings behind them, gave a yell. “A glint!”

At almost the same time, the sound of screaming breaks and a crash flew into their ears. Ahead of them, the decoy limousine was fishtailing with a large hole in its roof.

Rentaro felt chills when he realized that the sniper had not missed, and the car tilted forward, softly scattering splinters of glass as it turned on its side. As it spun, it entered his field of vision, approaching with frightening speed. Then and there, he realized what Tina was intending, and gritted his teeth.

The driver of the van froze with his hands still gripping the steering wheel. Rentaro kicked up the steering wheel from the backseat. The tires screeched as the van slid sideways, narrowly avoiding the approaching limousine. Anticipating the driver returning to his senses, Rentaro leaned his body forward and yelled, “Go into the parking lot of that building, quick!”

The flustered driver turned the steering wheel hard to the left, and the inertia threw Rentaro hard onto the glass of the window. They rushed into the basement parking lot of the nearby building, scattering the shocked security guards.

The moment the van stopped, Rentaro and Enju jumped out and started running. They got out onto the street just in time to see the driver crawl out from the ruins of the limousine that was used as a decoy. Antifreeze and gasoline had spilled onto the street.

Rentaro’s mind was on the verge of panic. With this, the sniper had hit five out of five super-long-range shots, not missing a single one. Was this a coincidence, or…?

He tried to run toward the building Tina was sniping from, but he fell to his knees dizzily. His gunshot wound throbbed in pain.

Rentaro gritted his teeth and looked up at the giant building between the two tall buildings. But at this rate, he would let Tina get away again. What could he do?

Just then, something shook Rentaro’s arm hard. It was Enju. “Rentaro, I will go after the sniper!”

“Go after…? Will you make it?”

“If I’m by myself.”

Rentaro was surprised by Enju’s response, which was accompanied by serious eyes and a hard nod. In other words, the injured Rentaro would be a burden.

Rentaro hesitated. Enju losing was unthinkable, but he also wanted to avoid a situation where Enju wounded or killed Tina. What in the world was he supposed to tell Enju?

“I will return, Rentaro!”

Feelings rising up from deep in his gut pierced through Rentaro, and before he knew it, he had grabbed Enju’s arm. “Be careful. Make sure you come back.”

At first, Enju opened her eyes wide, but then finally smiled wryly and said boldly, “You are such a worrywart, Rentaro. Who do you think I am? The sniper does not have Zone. It’s fine.”

“Zone?” Rentaro said.

“I’ll be back shortly.” Enju unleashed her power, turned her eyes bright red, and jumped.

The onlookers pointed at Enju and started screaming, wondering what was going on, but Enju ignored them and jumped to the top of the building closest to them, and then soon disappeared.

After a while, Rentaro looked in the direction Enju had gone off. For some reason, even after hearing Enju’s words, his uneasiness didn’t let up one bit.

“Satomi, are you all right? The ambulance will be here soon, so please don’t worry.”

He looked back. It was the Seitenshi, looking pale.

“Get back into the parking lot, now!” is what he opened his mouth instinctively to say, but his words were swallowed by empty space, and he looked down, staying silent. That wasn’t what was occupying his mind anymore.

She was a little calmer and noticed the state Rentaro was in. “What’s the matter, Satomi?”

Rentaro hesitated, but before he knew it, he had told the Seitenshi about Tina. If he didn’t talk about it to someone, the uneasiness that had already risen up to the back of his throat would make him go crazy.

“Tina Sprout…?” After the Seitenshi heard what he had to say, instead of telling him what she thought, she repeated the name of the young sniper wonderingly, continuing as she quickly rushed back to the car.

Rentaro tilted his head questioningly at her mysterious words and actions, but those feelings were soon overwritten by different thoughts. Rentaro had a strong impulse to call Enju to make sure she was safe, but when he opened his address book, he gritted his teeth and stuck his cell phone back into his pocket.

Enju and Tina were sure to be in the middle of their fight right now. If he foolishly called her at a time like that, it would be a devastating state of affairs for Enju. If Enju won, there was no way she would not contact him. He had to wait until then.

He broke out in a cold sweat, and his vision lurched, forcing him to his knees. The dull pain was slowly but surely invading Rentaro’s body.

In his head, he remembered the training they had in the back of the dojo the other day. Enju had slipped past all of Rentaro’s rubber bullets in no time and was closing in on him. There was such a great difference in their strength that it could barely be called practice.

Enju had said she was bad against a barrage of bullets from a shotgun or machine gun, but she was strong against guns designed to shoot single bullets, like a handgun or sniper rifle. Sniper rifles were almost always used with optical scopes with high magnification used to enlarge the target.

This was something that was not that different in principle from the microscopes used in science or biology classes. Of course, with higher magnification, even though the target could be seen more clearly, moving just a little caused the target to leave the field of vision. There was no way a sniper could capture a girl who could move at superspeeds—a girl with the Rabbit Factor inside her. Since this was night sniping, there was probably also some sort of infrared equipment being used, but either way, there was no way Enju would fall behind the other girl.

It’ll be fine. Calm down. Rentaro chanted this over and over.

Thinking that about thirty minutes had passed already, he looked at his phone and realized that it had only been five minutes. It was irritating how slowly time was passing.

“Satomi!” Screaming, the Seitenshi came running toward him. “Get Enju back here right now!”

The girl who had been able to say it was her fate to be killed was in front of him right now looking pale, with her shoulders heaving as she panted.

“H-hey, what’s the—”

“I used my authority to do an International Initiator inquiry into Tina Sprout’s name. Her IP rank is 98. She’s an owl Initiator and one of the enhanced NEXT soldiers. I saw her specs, and her numbers are terrifying. Enju will be killed!”

IP rank 98. Just those words echoed over and over in Rentaro’s head. That was way above Kagetane Hiruko and his daughter. Rentaro recalled Tina’s face and shook his head softly. There was no way.

Then, he suddenly regained his senses and dialed his phone as if hitting it, pressing it hard to his ear. As it rang a few times, he shut his eyes tight and prayed desperately that Enju was safe.

It rang about ten times, and then there was the sound of the phone being picked up. “Enju! Is that you, Enju?!” he called desperately. “Ahh, oh good, get back here right now. We’re going to rethink our strategy.”

There was no answer.

No, he could hear faint breathing from the other side.

“Enju, what’s wrong? At least answer.”

Rentaro listened dubiously, but there was no answer after all.

“Enju…? What’s…the matter…? En…… Huh?”

Rentaro took the phone off his ear for a moment and stared at it fixedly.

“Is this……Tina………?”

There was a long silence.

That said everything.

The cell phone Enju should have been holding was in Tina’s hands. Then, what had happened to its rightful owner? All sound disappeared from his ears, and his blood froze.

No. No, no… No…!

Suddenly, there was a click, and the dial tone rang.

The cell phone slipped out of his hands, ringing dryly as it bounced. The blood running out of his side spread slowly on the ground, soaking the phone. Rentaro fell to his knees, shaking his head from side to side without a sound.

Enju had been…killed?