12:24 P.M.

12:24 P.M.

 

“Hmm, fair enough. Go ahead and start giving out lunches. Don’t let the crowd get angry. No telling what would happen. Thanks.”

I was watching a man in a suit talking on a phone outside the Moon Temple. Presumably to somebody inside. Didn’t seem like there was anything weird going on. Just some stuck doors.

“Still…”

I, Takeda Keji, looked up at the Moon Temple through the rain.

Touka had not shown up for our date, and when Touka didn’t show up, I had to consider that he’d show up again. And the situation in front of me seemed like the most likely cause.

I could hear Led Zeppelin playing somewhere.

“Hmm…”

Touka had asked me not to call her home, so I wasn’t going to do that. Yet. But I felt like if I did, she wouldn’t be there.

“Hmm…”

I’d been going back and forth between where we were supposed to meet and the commotion going on around the Moon Temple.

It was a huge mess.

People were coming and going. Cops, too. But only a few, and they seemed mainly interested in crowd control and traffic. Didn’t seem like they were even trying to bust the doors in.

There were a few technical types standing around, muttering to each other under their umbrellas.

“How do we not have any blueprints?”

“He deleted them himself. Wanted to make it so the same thing could never be built again.”

“The hubris… and this is the result.”

“Think this could be a time delay of some kind? Something he set before his death?”

“Don’t even suggest that!”

The others hastily shushed the speaker, and looked around nervously. I hastily feigned indifference.

“He” could only be the man who’d built this place, Teratsuki Kyoichiro. I didn’t know much about the Moon Temple, but I’d come across his name any number of times in my line of work. He was a legend.

Had he set a trap? Was there really nothing wrong inside?

And was Touka in there, too? Or…more likely…

“Boogiepop?”

I shivered, remembering the illusion I’d seen that morning.

He’d called himself the King of Distortion. Did he have anything to do with this?

Was this a danger to the world?

“Hmm…”

But there was nothing I could do except fret, get wet and stare up at this twisted black tower.

Then…there was a thud. And the ground shook.

“An earthquake? But that would be more…”

There was another thud, and another. Shaking everything around.