5

Real Name:Sumihiko TSUJIIE

Born: August 8

Height: 140 cm

Weight: 40 kg

Sumihiko used to be an arms dealer who only frequented war zones to make his sales, but after repeatedly getting caught in the flames of war, he began to distinguish himself as a fighter. Eventually, he caught the eye of a daughter in the family of one of his clients, the Tsujiie clan, and he was married into the clan.

The days when he traveled far and wide selling arms are long past, as is the fighting; for some time now Sumihiko has remained away from the front lines. But when he learned that his beloved grandchild was going to be chosen for the Zodiac War, he volunteered himself first.

This is his second Zodiac War—his previous being the ninth—and he was, obviously, the winner. (His wish: to see his grandchild.) In his active years, he wielded all manner of heavy weaponry to terrific and destructive effect, but lately he’s taken to grenades. He oversees the manufacture of his own custom grenade, Shūkaiokuri, the Old-Timer, which he boasts of as more of a work of art than a weapon.

Though the habit is unseemly for one his age, he is addicted to smartphone games and often tops the biggest spender lists of the most popular games. Through his online persona, the old man has once again found fame as a highly respected warrior.

Hitsujii, the Fighter of the Sheep, thought, If the twelve fighters participating in this battle were ranked by overall strength, even the most charitable assessment would place me at tenth or worse. After all, youth is strength. Damn, how I wish I could stop getting older.

But age alone wasn’t the whole of his problems. As times changed and new generations came to prominence, fighting styles and tactics changed in equal measure. In the high-rise, he had observed the other eleven fighters one by one and was struck by how many seemed alien to him and unlike any warriors of his day—of course to one another, they were nothing unusual. He was a relic from another time; not just aged but old. In the intervening years, fighters had evolved and left him behind. That was the way of the world.

But he didn’t believe this put him at a significant disadvantage—just as the others were inscrutable to him, he was as inscrutable to them. Likewise, if the others possessed advantages he lacked, so too did he possess advantages they lacked.

Of those, I have more than I could count, but the foremost is experience.

Monkey might have saved more lives than any other combatant there, but none had seen as many battles as Sheep. He had escaped death so many times that he’d have liked to tell the organizers a thing or two about the tame rules they cooked up for this Zodiac War. That sentiment only reinforced the feeling that the times had changed.

I won’t make that tired complaint, “The old days were better,” and all that—the present is better as a matter of course. For one thing, soldiers have fought hard to make the world a safer place.

As long as humans walked the earth, war would never cease. A mercenary would never be without employ. But the kinds of battlefields Sheep saw on the front lines of war—or before that, when he worked as an arms dealer—with mountains of corpses and rivers of blood, were nowhere to be found anymore.

This was a good thing, but thinking about it made him feel lonely. Over the course of his long life, he had come to see the passing of time from a more distant perspective, as if gazing upon a landscape. This too was an advantage exclusive to Sheep.

Another was information, which in the Zodiac War was practically life. Sheep knew who his eleven rivals were. He knew exactly to which houses they belonged—actually, that wasn’t quite true. He knew of ten, but the last was a simple process of elimination. The only combatant about whom he hadn’t managed to dig up any information was the Fighter of the Rat, who must have been the kid.

Well, some wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper won’t have any history on or off the battlefield for me to find.

Now that he’d observed his opponents in person, he didn’t merely rely upon his research, but fine-tuned his mental dossiers.

Of the competitors this time around, three stand out as unquestionably the top fighters in the world: the Fighter of the Monkey, Sharyū; the Fighter of the Rabbit, Usagi; and the Fighter of the Ox, Ushii. When you assemble twelve people together, some are bound to possess talents far surpassing the rest—but these three are just beyond.

Sheep didn’t know if the trio had been brought here by chance or by purposeful design—but whatever the case, Sheep knew he mustn’t face them head on.

I’m just skin and bones—I wouldn’t last ten seconds against them. But if I can arrange it so they destroy one another, even a feeble old fighter like me would have a real shot at winning.

According to Sheep’s analysis, after taking his opponents’ personalities into account, Ox stood unsurprisingly at the top. Nearly as dangerous at number two was Rabbit, and the pacifist Monkey ranked third. If he hadn’t factored in her character, Monkey would likely have claimed the top spot, but Sheep couldn’t imagine that a hero like Monkey would ever betray her pacifist ways.

Boar, of the previous winning house, is fourth, and Horse and Dog, who both seem the up-close-and-personal types, share fifth and sixth. In seventh and eighth are the twins, Dragon and Snake—or at least they were, when they came as a set. With Snake as the first dead, Dragon’s placement will surely drop. For now, I’ll slot Chicken in ninth.

At the starting point, only Chicken had observed the other fighters with the same eye as Sheep. She recognized that she lacked strength and was seeking to turn her weakness into an advantage. The woman was making the necessary effort to turn her weakness from the reason she wouldn’t win into the reason she could win.

She would likely rank herself at the very bottom, though I would never agree. For now, I’ll give myself tenth place, leaving the only two I can say for a fact are weaker than me: Rat and Tiger. Tiger is so lacking I can’t even fathom what she’s doing here.

Rat was young—too young—and even if he could have somehow squeezed Sheep’s life experience into his own, the child would have been prone to making careless misjudgments, and as such, the old man didn’t see much hope for him. But Tiger didn’t even seem like she belonged here. Of course, there must have been something about her that earned her a place in the Zodiac War. That might have been enough cause for Sheep to reassess her threat, but he dismissed it. He needed to look toward those above him, not those below. How could he surpass the nine who ranked higher than him? How could he close the gap that separated him from them? Those were the questions he asked himself.

With my experience and the knowledge upon which it’s founded, that’s how. And … if I have another advantage, it’s this.

In the palm of his hand, he idly rolled the murky-black jewel—the so-called beast gem, the poisonous crystal he had never swallowed.

To be young was not to know fear—and to be obedient. When told to take the jewels, they took; when told to swallow the jewels, they swallowed. If courage and open-mindedness were to blame, then Sheep had discarded those concerns a long time ago. He knew that to live was to be cautious, and to survive was to avoid taking risks—and to live was to win.

Sheep wasn’t a master poisoner and hadn’t recognized the jewels for what they were, but precisely because he couldn’t identify the objects, he let the other fighters take theirs first, and no matter the orders of that silk-hatted judge, Sheep didn’t swallow his jewel. The moment the Duodecuple said, “However, I’m going to have to ask you to swallow only one,” Sheep concluded that those little orbs were dangerous.

And so he only pretended to swallow his, instead stowing it in his breast pocket. Compared to some of his competitors’ actions, like Chicken’s Eye of the Cormorant and Sky Burial, which technically speaking called in the help of outside actors and might have been considered by some as a breach of the rules—or at least as occupying a gray area—Sheep’s disobedience was a clear and flagrant violation. Even Dog, who neutralized his poison within his body, was a different story. If anyone had noticed Sheep’s actions, he would have been immediately disqualified. In other words, Sheep, informed by his life experiences, determined that the risk of obeying the instructions and swallowing the jewel outweighed the risk of getting caught.

If I had to identify the tipping point, Sheep thought, it was that the jewel’s cut seemed unnatural. The murky-black color had a beauty to it, but the cut did not.

Call it a sense for aesthetics cultivated over his long life. He had been right; the jewel’s cut wasn’t for appearance’s sake but to prevent the fighters from regurgitating the crystals. By not panicking when told they had just swallowed poison, his opponents showed themselves to be warriors—but as far as Sheep was concerned, a true warrior would never swallow poison.

This means that I alone am free from the time limit. But I can’t let this advantage tempt me into remaining frivolously idle.

Dog, having neutralized his poison, had decided to keep himself hidden until his foes were nearly out of time. Sheep was not clairvoyant, nor did he have the Eye of the Cormorant, and had no way of knowing Chicken had upturned Dog’s strategy. Nevertheless, Sheep chose to pursue a different approach. Unlike Dog, who possessed absolute faith in his strength in combat and the power of his fangs, the old man ranked himself in tenth place or below. A poor fighter in perfect health was not guaranteed a victory over a top fighter weakened by poison—or at least that was how Sheep saw it.

Also, unlike Dog, Sheep had committed a serious violation of the rules. If he waited out a prolonged battle, he risked exposing his transgression, which would mean immediate disqualification. Even if his strategic goal remained the same as Dog’s—to let the stronger fighters kill each other off—he couldn’t merely sit around and wait for it to happen.

That’s why I need to put this advantage to work in another fashion. I have in my hand a jewel that everyone else has swallowed. I can use it as a bargaining chip.

He needed to go after someone in the middling ranks—ideally somewhere around fourth, fifth, or sixth place—someone not particularly worried about losing, but who must have also devised a strategy to compete with the top three who stood so far above the rest. A fighter in that position would be seeking an ace in the hole. By offering that ace, Sheep might be able to secure himself that thing that every fighter wanted but only rarely seemed to find—an alliance.

Of course it’s clear to see that as long as there can be only one winner, any alliance, and any form of cooperation, will collapse at the end. But I know of a way to preserve that relationship until the last possible moment.

Sheep might have been the only fighter who could use that method. When he decided not to swallow his jewel, he paid close attention to the other fighters to see who swallowed theirs—and all, save for the already dead Snake, had indeed ingested the poison.

And no matter how calm and collected these people may try to act, I know they’re anxious—even if they might be a natural, like Ox, or a hero. Not only do they have to battle one another, they are fighting against the pressure of knowing they must win before the poison kills them. Maybe, due to some blunder on the part of the organizers, their poison will act more quickly than intended. Or maybe, rather than just react to the poison, their bodies will have an allergic reaction to the foreign objects. No matter how resolute the fighters may be, once that poison is waiting in their stomachs, there’s no end to the doubts and worries.

The poisoned fighters wouldn’t be able to remain sound in mind or body—well, except for the ones who weren’t sound in the first place, like Rabbit, but aside from such exceptional exceptions, some crack would appear. And into that crack Sheep would strike—but with a gentle touch.

Sheep ran through the scenario in his mind.

First he would establish contact with a fighter in fourth place or below on his list, and then he would attempt to make a deal—while displaying the poison gem in his hand. He already knew what he would say.

“With my special power, I can manipulate quantum tunnels at will and enable objects of my choosing to pass through solid matter.”

This, of course, was a complete lie. Whatever special combat powers he might have once possessed had faded to nothing over the years—no necromanticism or Eye of the Cormorant for him—but pretending he had something he lacked was easier than pretending to lack something he had. After all, he held an object that was supposed to be in his stomach—convincing his mark that he had reached past his skin, flesh, and organs to pull out the jewel was entirely possible, if he sold it right.

Because Sheep had encountered a soldier with a similar ability in the past, he could bring a certain air of truth to the lie. This was where he needed to put his life experience to work—otherwise, if his target began to have an inkling of doubt, his tale would fall apart.

But this was merely his lead-in. To simply announce that he was free of the poison would earn him only animosity, but if he were to offer, “I can remove yours from your body without causing you any harm,” then a negotiation could start.

Of course, he wouldn’t be removing the jewel from anyone’s stomach—for one thing, such a feat was impossible for him, and for another, he didn’t want to. But regardless of his actual intent, the offer would be too tempting for anyone to resist.

The key factor here was that the mark wouldn’t likely say, “All right, go ahead and take my jewel out.” After all, a stolen crystal meant a stolen victory. As long as the time limit wasn’t a concern, where better to safeguard their jewel than inside one’s own body? Because of this, Sheep’s offer would be seen as insurance to be used only when necessary.

His target might try to test him in other ways, like by asking him to use his ability to steal the jewels of other fighters, but Sheep would just have to do his best to handle that as it came—and, as the dominant partner in any arrangement, he’d have some room to maneuver.

Sheep also wouldn’t be seeking to expand his team beyond one partner. He needed to inveigle one person to his side; no more and no less. Even two would be inviting danger. Had his made-up superpower been real, the size of his alliance wouldn’t have mattered, but it wasn’t real. If he tried to lie to two people, and they talked, the incongruities in his story would be irrevocably revealed. It was a strange but true fact: those incapable of seeing when they were being deceived were still perceptive of deception against others.

This lie was, after all, an attempt to skate on thin ice—one that could be exposed by a single cautious demand: “Prove it by using your power on something else.” He needed to minimize every possible risk.

But Sheep figured a team of two would be enough. With Snake and Dragon split up at the very beginning, the only fighter left capable of assembling an alliance was Monkey—and even if she managed to put a team together, an alliance of pacifists gave him no cause for concern. Numbers alone were just that—numbers.

If I could have my way, I’d aim for someone in the middle ranks, like fourth through sixth—but under the right circumstances, I might need to approach someone weaker.

It’s been three hours since the Zodiac War began. The time should be right for me to stir things up.

Having waited for the right timing, Sheep decided to set out in search of his mark. At almost the same time, in another place in the ghost city, the top-ranking fighters were indeed clashing. In that sense, his timing was as right as he figured it to be. But the results of that clash—a zombified Monkey teaming up with the decidedly non-pacifist Rabbit—was not in accordance with his wishes. No amount of life experience would ever have led Sheep to predict the emergence of such an alliance.

Before Sheep was a soldier, he had been an arms dealer and excelled at clandestine operations. He might have been even better at hiding than he was at fighting. Dog had failed to remain hidden, even though he stayed in his hiding place, but not even Chicken’s Eye of the Cormorant would have easily tracked Sheep’s movements as the diminutive old man dashed from shadow to shadow. He was careful not to allow himself to be seen from any angle, including from above—not because he knew of Chicken’s power (his investigations never revealed that) but because that was how he always acted as a matter of course. At this moment, Chicken was being given her own Sky Burial, but that was beside the point.

In any event, only ten minutes after beginning his search, Sheep stopped and ducked into the shadow of a tree. The old soldier was an excellent tracker, but such swift results came as a surprise even to him. He didn’t think it would be this easy to find another fighter. He’d assumed that after the floor fell out in the high-rise and the eleven combatants scattered, each would go into hiding and would wait for the chance to strike, as a tiger waited out its prey. He had expected to find the contest in an eleven-way deadlock, with each fighter hiding to the best of their abilities, and had steeled himself for a long and painstaking search—but no such grand effort was required to find this one.

She was not one of the necromanticist’s walking corpses—the difference between someone living and someone dead was apparent enough even without a seasoned soldier’s eye. Though Sheep didn’t know about Rabbit’s special ability, if the old man had come across one of the zombies, he would have at least sensed that something was odd—and he got no such sense from the woman drowning herself in booze on the park bench. There was an oddity to the situation, of course—a fighter going on a drinking binge in the middle of a battle was certainly no normal sight, and even less so when that fighter was a young woman.

It was the Fighter of the Tiger.

The one I listed at the very bottom. Teaming up with her might not be what I’m looking for, to say the least.

He thought about leaving and pretending he’d never seen her. Not only was running across her a minor disaster by itself, but he also felt like he was watching something illicit. Surrounding her bench was a massive pile of sake bottles—likely plundered from some abandoned liquor store—and a majority of the bottles were already empty. The drunk, scantily clad woman sat splayed across the bench with her legs spread wide. Red-faced and humming, enjoying herself, she tossed aside an empty bottle, then picked up a new one, removed the cap, and guzzled its contents straight from the source. These were the actions of a bum, not a warrior.

This is no tiger waiting for its prey—she’s just going on a bender.

The vast divide between her namesake and actions provided a surrealistic effect. Although, back in the day, raging drunkards used to be called “big tigers” in some parts—not that a woman young as Tiger would have known such dated lingo.

I’d already ranked her at the bottom—I never expected to have to revise my opinion even lower. She doesn’t feel anything like a threat—in fact, the only thing I feel for her is contempt.

Even had it made sense to ally with her, he wouldn’t have wanted to. Sheep might have generally avoided saying, “Things used to be better,” but he’d vowed never to start a complaint with “Kids these days …” Seeing Tiger, he almost broke that vow—even though, from a certain viewpoint, her behavior was a product of the peaceful times he otherwise appreciated.

If they weren’t in the midst of a battle royale, he’d have liked to walk up to her and give her a good scolding—not as a warrior, but as a human being—but of course that wasn’t an option now. This was no time for some old man’s sermon. He needed to discard his emotions and remain focused on the battle.

But if I leave here and search out another warrior, I certainly won’t just stumble across one so easily as I did this time—and the next might not be easy to bargain with.

The alternative was to prioritize urgency and to regard her with a more positive attitude—weak also meant easily coerced. Having her as his puppet might make for a valid strategy. Plus, he was not looking to form an alliance, but rather to devise a partnership under pretense, and a stupider target would be an easier mark—and would pose less risk of asking any tough questions. But even with that in mind, there were limits.

I’m not sure I could convince someone that drunk of anything—and she’s so far gone, I’m not sure we could even converse.

That being the case, he considered whether attacking her might be a better option. Ambushing someone that vulnerable would wound his conscience—or at least, his warrior’s pride—but battle itself was a disgrace all warriors had to bear.

She had made herself so defenseless, she was almost begging him to kill her. If Sheep spared her, another fighter would just come along and kill her instead. However little he cared about her fate, the jewel inside her body had real value. If he killed her and retrieved that sake-soaked jewel, he could use it for extra leverage when it came time to make a deal with someone else.

Since all twelve gems were needed to win the Zodiac War, logically it didn’t matter who possessed any jewel in the meantime—but if someone told him to take one, he’d have heard worse suggestions. He could also use it to imply his strength and standing in the game—as long as he could hide the fact he stole it from someone so soused.

So that’s it then. I’m not the warrior I used to be, and I’d hoped to avoid any fighting until the very end, but …

His thoughts ever humble, Sheep resolved himself to action. He reached for a grenade—the Shūkaiokuri he’d developed to give him the edge he needed to win—when the drunken tiger said gruffly, “I know you’re there. Quit your peeping and get your ass out in the open, old man.”

Dwarfing Sheep’s initial surprise at being detected was the bigger shock that Tiger could still form complete sentences even after emptying that many sake bottles. He had assumed she was either at or near blackout-level drunkenness.

The woman said, her voice a low growl, “Aren’t you a little old to play hide-and-seek? If you want to play, I’ll play with you, tiger. Tiger, get it?”

Maybe she could talk, but it was still the words of a lush. Sheep had raised his guard for a moment, but that seemed unnecessary now. Drunks could notice the most peculiar things; maybe he had just happened to stray into her field of view.

“Well then, miss,” Sheep said, “I’ll play your game. It would be rude of me to turn down a young lady’s invitation.”

Making himself appear larger than he was—even a small man could seem bigger with the right stride—Sheep stepped from the shadow of the tree where he had been hiding. In response, Tiger stood from her bench—or at least, she tried to stand and then toppled over. Sheep wondered, albeit warily, if he had won without a fight.

Instead, she got on all fours. That she didn’t stay down was all right with him. Had the fight been settled there, before they could even announce their names, it would have been too much of a letdown.

If this form—on her hands and knees—was how she typically fought, Sheep was impressed that she had survived as long as she had in life. From that stance, her first move was restricted to scratching with her claws. A skilled hawk hid its talons, but apparently this Tiger hadn’t the same sense. With this approach, she might have been stone sober and the result would be nearly the same.

She growled—not very ladylike at all—and said, “Whoa, your mirror image technique is incredible, old man. You can make there be three of you.”

Sheep didn’t know what she was seeing, but he knew what he saw—a red-faced, miserable excuse for a warrior. It was time to put an end to this. For a moment there, he had thought he might get some thrill out of his first real fight in a long time, but it looked like he was wrong.

“Huh?” Tiger slurred. “Wait, when did there get to be four of you?” Another growl. “Oh, I get it, one sheep, two sheep, huh? You’re trying to put me to sleep, is that it?”

“Perhaps we should introduce ourselves once you’re a little less drunk, miss.”

He’d offered her a way out on reflex, so lackluster an opponent was she. If she really did fall asleep on the spot, he wouldn’t have been surprised.

“Shut up, I’m not drunk,” she said, exactly as a drunk would. “I’m not drunk, I’m not. Just a little bit drunk. I can drink all the sake I want and be just fine.”

Whatever pity he still had for her wouldn’t have filled a single sake cup. With his Old-Timer Shūkaiokuri grenades, he’d obliterate any traces of her except the contents of her stomach. The grenades’ destructive power was absolute—back in the high-rise, when he had decided to utilize the explosives to end the Zodiac War as soon as it started, even Monkey had to crumble the floor to escape.

But Monkey was one thing—this half-asleep woman was another. He wouldn’t misfire this time.

“I am Hitsujii, the Fighter of the Sheep. I kill with deception.”

“I am Tora, the Fighter of the Tiger. I kill with drunken power.”

Drunken power? he began to question, but it was already too late. Her clawing attack—the obvious move—should have been easy to dodge. But the next thing he knew, all ten of her nails raked his little body, ripping off his skin, shredding every part of him except his stomach.

What? Sheep thought, too lost in confusion to realize these were his dying moments. What? She was supposed to be at the bottom. Even when she announced her name, nothing changed in her—no surge of power or anything. From the top of her head to the tips of her toes, she was just a drunk. Wait … a drunk? Could it be?

From somewhere behind him, she said, “I see you’ve heard of the Drunken Fist. You know, that same old standby—the more I drink, the stronger I get. But you know what, old man—you fit the visual better than me. Funny thing.” She punctuated it with another growl, then fell to the ground even before Sheep did.

This time, she didn’t try to get back up. Instead, she licked her blood-soaked nails, and her face took on a look of insatiable ecstasy.

“In my case, human blood gets me much drunker than sake. But one little old man won’t be enough to satisfy me.”

Tiger went on the move.

Tiger vs. Sheep

End of the 5th battle