Chapter 3: Clash!! The Pink Clinic!

There was a hospital known as the Pink Clinic. Despite the name, it was a proper hospital in scale.

What differentiated a clinic from a hospital was primarily the number of beds: a facility with twenty beds or more was called a hospital.

The official name was Mochizuki Gastrointestinal Hospital. It had 72 beds and specialized in internal medicine. People just called it the Pink Clinic because for some reason, a lot of nurses there ended up dating patients.

They could have just called it the Pink Hospital, but perhaps “clinic” just rolled better off the tongue.

The hospital had closed several years ago, and no one knew why. It may have been the strange name, or the overall creepiness of the place. The building had since become a dwelling for the homeless and a meeting place for local delinquents. The neighbors had long complained to the authorities to get something done about it.

“Hey... I thought we were going home. How did we end up in here?” Aiko murmured, crouched behind the sofa.

“You said you smelled blood, didn’t you?” Yuichi, positioned beside her, whispered back.

They were in the hospital’s first floor lobby, hiding behind the sofa in the reception area.

Yuichi and Aiko had decided to walk home together after club, but as they had passed in front of the abandoned Pink Clinic, Aiko had stopped abruptly.

“Well... I didn’t mean to imply that we should go inside and check...”

The entrance to the hospital had been locked, but perhaps owing to the building’s age, the lock was a simple enough mechanism. Yuichi picked it easily enough and they had made it inside.

“We couldn’t just call the police. Who would believe us if we said ‘we were walking in front of the hospital and smelled blood’?” he responded. “It could be urgent. And anyway, you didn’t have to come with me.”

“I know, but I didn’t want to walk home alone...”

Was it an accident, or violence? The smell of danger was thick in the air, but Aiko had followed him without a second thought.

“But the smell of blood, huh? Well, if you didn’t say that kind of thing now and then, I’d forget you were a vampire.”

“I sort of wish you would forget, actually...”

They both peeked over the edge of the sofa toward the back of the lobby.

The windows were blocked off, so no light made it in from the outside, but the fluorescent lights of the lobby were on.

Near the middle of the lobby, some mean-looking characters were standing around a girl.

Her cheek was swollen as though she’d been hit. Blood was dripping from the corner of her mouth.

“I’ve got a really bad feeling about this...” Yuichi said with a scowl. It was easy to imagine what was going to happen next.

“We’ve got to help her!” Aiko responded in hushed tones, her face pale.

“That’s right. The question is, who they really are...”

There were six of them, not too many for Yuichi to handle. He could probably take out a hundred if he had to; his big sister’s training had prepared him to fight large numbers of opponents. The real problem was what Soul Reader revealed to him.

It wasn’t about the girl, who simply had “High School Student” written over her head.

Four of the assailants were labeled “Delinquent,” which also wasn’t a problem.

The issue was the remaining two, who bore the label “Vampire?”

What? What does the question mark mean?! Yuichi was getting pretty fed up with his magic sight’s irresponsibility.

“Hey, any clue about the two who are holding the girl down?” he asked.

The two “Vampire?”s were holding the girl from behind. She was trembling in fear, seemingly incapable of resisting as the four delinquents jeered obscenities at her.

“Huh? Why do you ask?”

“They’re ‘Vampire?’s.”

“Why did you phrase that like a question?” Aiko asked.

“I have to. There’s a question mark at the end of their label.” It sounded ridiculous, but it was the simple truth.

“Uh? Um... I’ve never seen them before, but they don’t look like members of my clan...” She was probably referring to the cheap, hoodlum-like air about them.

“Then I probably don’t need to hold back. I doubt ‘Vampire?’s could be all that tough, anyway.”

“Hey, are you using me as the standard to base that on?” She puffed out her cheeks in annoyance. Well, she was right, he was. “Anyway, it’s no time to worry about that! You’ve got to hurry!”

“I know, but if we just run out there, they’ll learn who we are.” Yuichi had taken out a group of delinquents once before, but it had ended up as a huge mess, with his family getting involved. Guys like these didn’t think about consequences. Revealing his face to them could be bad in the long term.

“She keeps giving me weird masks and I always throw them away, but...” Yuichi began searching through his bag for something to cover his face. It was full of all kinds of things Yuichi didn’t recognize. Mutsuko must have put them in without telling him.

“Um... I’m not gonna ask about that one...”

“Ugh, why are there panties in here?!” Yuichi threw a pair of women’s underwear on the floor. They were pink and cute, and most likely Mutsuko’s.

Then Yuichi trembled in terror. Had she intended for him to wear them on his face? He recalled her telling him once about a superhero who wore panties as a mask...

“Isn’t there anything else?” Aiko asked.

As he continued searching the bag, he found a flesh-colored mask with “Meat” written on the forehead, a white mask with flames around the eyes, and a mask shaped like a butterfly. Yuichi threw them to the floor, one after another.

But there wasn’t a whole lot better to choose from. He pulled out a skull-like mask that looked vaguely like it was meant for bondage.

“It’s pretty middle school, but it’s better than nothing. Here.” Yuichi put that one on, and handed another mask to Aiko. This one had a rabbit motif.

“Huh? I need one, too?”

“Just in case. Take this, also.” Yuichi handed Aiko a stun gun. It was the type meant for self-defense, that opened with the push of a button. Mutsuko had taught them how to use them during class. “Wear this, too.”

He pulled out a raincoat and handed it to her. The Seishin High girls’ uniform was recognizable, so it could cause trouble if they saw it. The boys’ uniform wasn’t particularly noteworthy, so there was no need to cover it.

He pulled out several stones from his bag and gripped them in his left hand.

“What are those?”

“Oh, throwing 500 yen coins all the time would get expensive, so I made these out of lead.”

“Hey. That reminds me, you still haven’t paid me back...”

Yuichi recalled the ten 500 yen coins he’d thrown at the serial killer on that day at school.

“Okay. Well, I’m off,” he said, intentionally deflecting the issue of money. “Hang on to my bag. Oh, and it could get bad if they hear our names, so be careful not to use mine.”

This wasn’t the time to be arguing about something that happened weeks ago, he thought as he left his bag behind.

“...Is it just me, or are you really into this?” Aiko murmured.

Yuichi ignored that, too, and ran off.

Keeping low, he sneaked out from behind the sofa and got around behind the men. His first targets were the two restraining the girl. He gave them several swift kicks to the groin from behind.

“Huh?” The girl asked as she realized that the men were abruptly toppling over. Yuichi grabbed the girl’s shoulder and pulled her back roughly.

That left the other four. Yanking the girl behind him, Yuichi stepped closer to them, and held his right arm high and behind him.

His opponents hadn’t yet processed what was happening.

He planted the blade of his hand to two of the men’s necks and swung them downwards, slamming them both to the floor.

He let his momentum carry him into a turn, and chained that into a flying spin-kick that hit the third man in the back of the head and sent him flying into the ground.

The last of them finally seemed to realize what was going on, but Yuichi grabbed his hand and pulled him in closer, while striking him in the solar plexus with his elbow.

It was over in just a few seconds. The men all fell to the ground without even having the opportunity to mount resistance.

“U-Um...” the girl spoke up, slumped against the wall.

“Hey. Isn’t there a more peaceful way to do that? Like knock them out with a karate chop to the neck?” Aiko asked, catching up after it seemed everything was safe.

“You really think it’s that easy? If you want to disable someone, you’ve got to put them in a lot of pain.”

The men were currently disabled from their excruciating pain and fear.

“Are you okay?” Aiko asked the girl tenderly.

“Yes... um, who are you two?” The girl was clearly suspicious of the two people in their odd masks.

“What should we do?” Aiko asked in a low voice.

“We’ll just have to go on like this... Let’s see. We’re here to help, so there’s no need to worry about—” Yuichi froze up in the middle of speaking.

There were more people coming in from the entrance.

“There are a lot of ’em, huh?”

“There are a lot of them, yeah.”

Yuichi and Aiko exchanged a glance. There were ten of the men inside already, and more were coming in every second.

Many of their labels read “Delinquent” but about one in ten read “Vampire?” The delinquents wore a mismatched array of clothing, but the Vampire?s wore parkas despite the summer heat, with hoods hiding their faces.

They were probably comrades of the men currently sprawled on the floor. If so, then the minute they saw what was going on, they would react with hostility.

Yuichi looked around. He didn’t know the layout of the hospital, but the entrance seemed to be the only way out in their immediate surroundings. All the windows in sight were boarded up, and the same was probably true all around the hospital. Running around searching for a way out would just be a waste of time.

Break through them and make a run for the entrance, then?

Yuichi immediately gave up on the idea. He couldn’t do it while dragging both Aiko and the girl behind.

Yuichi saw the men beginning to murmur among themselves, pointing to the three of them.

“We’ll run further in! Follow me!” Yuichi shouted as he began to dash deeper into the hospital.

The sight he was waiting to see — the back entrance — soon came into view. He cast a glance over his shoulder.

The delinquents were pursuing, but there was still some space between them. They could make it out, Yuichi thought. But as he grabbed the doorknob, he immediately felt a sinking feeling in his stomach.

It wouldn’t open.

If it was just locked, he could pick it easily enough... But as he looked up at the door, his jaw dropped:

It was welded shut. There was no way he could open it quickly enough to get away.

“Not good. We’re cornered.” Yuichi turned back to face their pursuers.

The mob had almost reached them.

There was a definite air of malice around them as they fanned out across the hall to cut off any means of escape.

“Bzzt! Wrong answer. Too bad.”

“There’s no way out, dumbass.”

“What’s with those masks? You think you’re superheroes or something?”

“Is that a girl? That’s good, I thought one wouldn’t be enough.”

“I’m okay with the boy too, personally.”

The men had stopped, and began jeering crude remarks at them from a slight distance. Their leering grins were getting under Yuichi’s skin.

“You two hide in the bathroom over there,” he said. “Push up against the door, and if anyone tries to open it, stun gun the doorknob.” The girls’ bathroom near the back entrance had a door, which might help them buy some time.

Aiko and the girl ran obediently into the bathroom as Yuichi stepped forward.

He knew that if he waited for them to make the first move, he’d have to deal with a battle of attrition. Instead, he began dashing towards them swiftly, throwing the lead stones in his hand as he did.

When it came to the question of how best to engage with a large group of people, there were a variety of theories. Some believed that you should focus on the weakest-looking first, to deplete their numbers. Others thought you should defeat the strongest first, to break morale and get them to run away.

Yuichi’s strategy was something else.

Yuichi stopped in front of the closest man and spun around as he jumped, sending him flying with a whirlwind kick. The man bounced off the nearby wall and hit the floor in a heap.

Yuichi then landed and watched to see what effect the move had had on the others.

The crowd control tactic Mutsuko had taught him was to take out one opponent with the flashiest move possible, which was usually enough to cow the rest of the group.

The whirlwind kick was the perfect flashy move. Most people would be stunned into immobility after seeing someone deliver a leaping kick like that.

Indeed, it did seem to stun the delinquents for a moment, but then they fell on Yuichi, screaming.

If there had just been a few of them, the rest might indeed have run in fear. But their large numbers seemed to act as a shock absorber, the mutual peer pressure pushing back against any signs of timidity.

Oh, come on! Yuichi swore. As one of them rushed at him swinging a wooden sword, he pressed in closer and grabbed the man’s elbow, yanking it upwards to knock him off balance and throw him backwards. The fall sent him crashing into a few of the comrades coming up behind him, slowing their advance at the same time.

A bat with a nail in it swept through the air towards him. Yuichi ducked as far as he could go and slipped underneath it, grabbed his opponent’s leg and struck his knee. Then he dodged another blow from a hammer, and swept that attacker’s leg.

Another arm thrust at him, holding a knife. He grabbed the arm, twisted it, and broke it at the elbow.

“No knives!” Yuichi shouted. “I’m trying to show restraint, here!”

Bringing out a knife in a crowded battle like this was the height of foolishness. It wouldn’t hit Yuichi, but the man could have ended up stabbing one of his own.

Yuichi had no problem dealing with the unorganized horde, but the men soon seemed to realize they were making no progress as they were, and decided instead to form a wide circle around him and approach slowly. They must have realized that their best chance was to time it right and fall on him all at once.

Four of the men exchanged a look and then flew at Yuichi in a group.

If they came at him from all sides, he couldn’t get away, and even if he took down one or two, the others could subjugate him. Then once they had him held in one place, they could probably figure something out.

Such was likely their thought process. If so, they hadn’t realized that Yuichi still had one simple direction of escape: Up.

Yuichi kicked lightly off the floor and flew into the air, grabbing onto a lighting fixture in the ceiling to delay his fall.

As the men panicked at losing sight of their opponent, Yuichi plunged back down onto them with an axe kick.

In situations like these, the most important thing to do was to keep moving and not get caught.

Yuichi continued shifting his balance to avoid their attacks, distract them, and continue taking them down one by one.

It is said that it’s impossible to maintain a regimented fighting force once it’s suffered 30% losses. This gang hadn’t exactly been regimented to begin with, and the more they saw their numbers one-sidedly taken down, the more they seemed to awaken from their frenzy. They must have realized that if they kept going like this, they would end up on the floor like the others. Once half of them were down, their numbers gradually began to peel away.

“You... Don’t you realize who’s in our pack?” one man spat out at him, upon realizing he couldn’t win.

Yuichi just smacked him into the ground, head first.

Fortunately, his fall was broken by another man who was already on the floor.

All that remained was a lone “Vampire?” who stood there, seemingly unperturbed by the mayhem Yuichi had inflicted. It occurred to Yuichi that this was probably the gang’s boss.

“If you hadn’t been so strong, I might’ve shown you a real good time... but now you’re dead, okay?” the man said.

It just sounded like bluffing to Yuichi, though. This man wasn’t that different from the ones already on the ground. Once he beat him, this would all be over. But just as Yuichi was about to take a step, the man suddenly changed.

His face began to transform.

Yuichi stood there in surprise as the man’s nose and mouth began to elongate and jut forward. His face grew fur, and his ears wriggled as they crawled up to the top of his head. Just like that, his face was now that of a dog’s.

The “Vampire?” label turned into “Anthromorph (Wolf).”

The sight of a man’s face transforming into a dog’s face before his eyes was so unreal that it gave Yuichi pause.

But “pause” was all it was. Despite his surprise, Yuichi proceeded with his original plan, rushing towards the man and striking him on both sides of the face with his fists in a move similar to Tai Chi’s “Strike the Ears” technique.

The anthromorph hit the ground like a sack of potatoes. Yuichi was relieved to see it; the changing position of the man’s ears had left him a little uncertain of where to strike, but it seemed that it hadn’t mattered.

“Who is this guy?” Yuichi muttered to himself, looking down at the fallen man. The man’s face looked normal now, but he was sure he hadn’t just imagined it. He remembered the feeling of the fur on his fists.

It was certainly strange, but Yuichi didn’t have time to think about that right now. He looked around. None of the men around him were moving, and the ones who had run away showed no sign of returning.

“Jeez... what a mess,” Aiko said in exhaustion as she came out of the bathroom.

Yuichi hadn’t even broken a sweat; Mutsuko’s training had prioritized efficient use of stamina. He had taken down half of the group, about twelve of them, before the rest had run off. But even if he’d taken on them all on, it probably wouldn’t have worn him out too much.

The girl came out after Aiko and stood there, stock still, gazing in shock at the men who littered the hallway.

“Um... This is...”

“It’s a secret, okay?” Aiko offered of her own initiative.

“Anyway, we should get going,” Yuichi said. “The guys who ran away might come back.”

They stepped over the fallen men to return to the entrance.

It didn’t seem like anyone was waiting to ambush them outside, so they managed to escape the hospital without any trouble.

They headed for the Chinese restaurant, Nihao the China, under the assumption that they wouldn’t get too many questions about the injured girl there.

“So many customers!”

Tomomi Hamasaki was there in her cheongsam, sounding wholeheartedly shocked.

“There are only three of us,” Yuichi protested.

“No, no, no, Sakaki. To have three people come here at this time of night is impressive, you know? Yes, yes.”

“Hey, that was a pretty random ‘yes, yes.’ Shouldn’t it just be ‘impressive, yes, yes’?” Yuichi sighed, feeling a bit fed up with Tomomi’s inconsistent speech tic usage.

“I didn’t see a lot of customers here during the day, either...” Aiko murmured. She seemed worried about Nihao the China’s business.

She and the waitress seemed pretty close, Yuichi noted, as they headed for the round table.

They sat the girl down in a chair where Yuichi could examine her wound.

Fortunately, it wasn’t terribly bad; just a small cut in her mouth. At Yuichi’s prompting, Tomomi prepared a plastic bag filled with ice, which he put to the girl’s cheek.

“It should be okay after you cool it down for a while, but if you’re still worried, you should go to the hospital,” he said.

Once the girl seemed to have calmed down, Yuichi and Aiko both sat down, as well.

“Hey, Sakaki. Do you do this a lot?” Aiko asked, curiously.

“Well... if someone’s in trouble, and you’re there, you have to help them, right? Though I don’t usually see things on that scale in this area...” Yuichi racked his brain, trying to think of who might be behind something like this.

He was pretty sure he had cleared up most of the likely bad guys who lived in the area, though. If they had just been goons, that wouldn’t have bothered him. But seeing the “Vampire?” label, and the way it had suddenly changed to “Anthromorph (Wolf),” bothered him.

Yuichi asked the girl what had happened, but all she remembered was being suddenly attacked while she was downtown.

“So you didn’t know them, huh? They probably won’t bother you anymore, but if anything happens, contact me. I’ll give you my number.” Yuichi exchanged cell phone numbers with the girl.

“Hey, Sakaki. Do you do this a lot?” Aiko asked, exasperatedly.

“Huh?” He had a feeling she’d just asked him that, with a slightly different nuance this time.