2

It was past eight o’clock in the evening. The narrow streets of the lower city were filled with religious brothels with names like Deliverance of the Flesh and Ecstasy and Rapture. Their tacky neon signs were everywhere, and the air smelled of cooking oil and cheap perfume.

There were baskets filled to the brim with sickly sweet mountain yuzu and snake mandarins, shops selling mirrors and daruma dolls for good luck, cauldrons for mixing up hexes and demon-repelling incense burners, the authenticity of which remained very much in doubt. Next to them, a stall was packed with old manga volumes excavated from the ruins. On the front cover, a smiling boy leaped through the air, striking a powerful pose bursting with energy.

The voices of the vendors hawking the goods rang out over the street, and the bustling crowd was louder still. This place was a far cry from any semblance of civility. Yet Milo was rather fond of these boisterous streets all the same. With his hood pulled low, he made his way through the crowd with practiced ease. He passed by a couple of brothels before suddenly turning down an alley arriving at a food stall selling steamed buns. The smell wafting from the cart alongside clouds of billowing white steam got his appetite going. Milo caught his breath before checking the money he had in his pocket and sticking his head through the little curtain.

“Good evening.”

“Welcome. Oh, Doctor!” The proprietor stamped out the cigarette he was smoking and smiled at the familiar face. “You’re running a little late. I’ve saved two gators for you.”

“Today… Hmm, let’s see. I’ll take two mantis shrimp as well, please,” came the gentle, pleasant voice from beneath the hood. “My sister is feeling better today, and I’d like for her to eat while she can.”

“Well, that’s the most important thing,” replied the proprietor, opening the steamer and releasing a ripple of white clouds. “There’s no illness that can’t be cured with my steamed buns and your medical expertise. Here, two gator meat and two shrimp paste.”

Milo gave a lonely smile and took the bag containing the buns. Then he lowered his voice as if to make sure nobody heard and whispered in the proprietor’s ear.

“Do you have the…uh, stuff?”

“Yep. You sure are an odd one, Doctor. Well, not like I have any idea what to do with the stuff. I guess they’re best in your capable hands.”

The proprietor took several mushrooms from behind the counter and held them out. When Milo nodded, he wrapped them in paper and gave him the package.

“Don’t let ’em catch you with that. If you get pinched, this town’s done for.”

“Thank you! It’s not much, but here…”

“Keep your money, Doctor. You didn’t ask me for anything when you helped my daughter…”

Milo smiled and pressed his finger to his lips before placing the coins inside the proprietor’s breast pocket.

“Come back again when you run out of medicine,” said Milo. “On Wednesdays, after the council meeting…”

Before he could finish speaking, something small rushed out of the shadows toward him and snatched the bag of steamed buns from his hands. Milo was knocked aside and made eye contact with the figure as they turned to look back over their shoulder. It was a child, dressed in ragged clothes, with messy hair, but a burning look in their eyes. The child ran out into the main road, disappearing into the crowd.

“Wait a minute…!”

“Thief! Somebody stop that kid!” shouted the food stall owner. But before he had even finished, Milo sprinted into the crowd after them. He deftly waded through the sea of people, catching up to the child. Taken aback by the skill of his pursuer, the thief overturned an orange cart, sending fruit sprawling, before running along the top of the stalls and disappearing into a side alley. A little while later, Milo rounded the corner and stopped.

“A dead end?”

Milo narrowed his eyes and began peering around the dark shadows of the back street, when…

“Raargh!”

The child suddenly leaped down on him from above, smacking him on the head with a wooden pole. Milo reeled, crouching down and clutching his head in pain.

“Owwww…!”

“…! You’re…a woman?!”

The young child faltered, and Milo took advantage of the opening by reaching out and grabbing them by the arm.

“Nobody hits a lady and gets away with it,” he scowled, drawing his face closer, before pulling down his hood and breaking into a smile. “So it’s a good thing I’m a man, eh? Ah-ha-ha!”

He was a pretty young man, with cherubic features. His large indigo eyes were filled with kindness and wisdom, and he had pale-white skin and silky-soft sky-blue hair. He didn’t look much older than sixteen or seventeen, and with his lean build and gentle voice, it wasn’t surprising that the child mistook him for a woman. The only blemish on his beauty was a black mark around his left eye that gave him an unusual, almost comical appearance and earned him the nickname of Dr. Panda among the townspeople.

“You’ve been stung by a scorpion fly, haven’t you?” he said, lifting up the child’s bangs and revealing a blue swelling on their forehead. “I thought so. I caught a glimpse of it earlier. It looks like the stinger is still stuck in there. If the poison spreads, you could go blind. Come here a moment.”

“Hey, let go of me! What are you doing?” shouted the child, but Milo didn’t take no for an answer. He pulled the child close, flicking the switch on his thermal scalpel and lightly slicing into the child’s forehead, sending blood and pus dripping down it. Then he placed his lips over the wound and sucked out the scorpion fly’s stinger. When that was done, he took a small block of jellyfish oil, melted it on the blade of his scalpel, and wiped the black salve over the affected area before swiftly winding a bandage around the child’s head.

“There, all done!” he said, giving it a pat. “If it starts to swell again, come see me at my place. It’s the Panda Clinic; you go all the way down this street and turn right, and it’s next to the hardware store.”

Although nowadays, cities like these had begun to show some signs of reviving the old times, it still wasn’t uncommon for society to treat human lives as expendable and abandon those whose bodies had failed them. People with medical knowledge were highly valuable, and Milo was one of them, possessing excellent skills despite his young age.

“Mi-mister…,” said the young child, clinging to Milo’s pant leg and looking up at him with nervous diffidence. “Erm… H-here…” They held out the bag of steamed buns, but Milo pushed it back into their hands and patted the child on the head.

“The alligator buns are my favorite. You’ll love ’em. Now, go on, get out of here!”

Milo sent them off, the child looking back over their shoulder several times before disappearing into the crowded street. Milo watched them leave, gave a satisfied sigh, pulled up his hood, and turned around.

To see a pair of big black eyes staring intently at him from the darkness.

Milo jumped and took a step back in surprise as a gentleman stepped out into the light, adjusting the brim of his fedora. There was about two meters of distance between them, but the man was so imposing that Milo felt as though he had appeared right under his nose.

“…Generally, I find philanthropy to be a meaningless gesture of self-satisfaction, akin to a fat man removing the pickles from his hamburger and tossing them to the dog,” he said. “But you’re different, Milo. You give away things that you need, to people you have no relation to. It’s very admirable. A beautiful flower in an ugly world. If this were a movie, I’d go so far as to call it cliché.”

Surrounding him were several bodyguards, keeping a close eye on the corners of the alley. They wore masks of Immie, the city’s mascot, and even in the eccentric downtown streets of Imihama, those broad-shouldered men looked very odd all plastered with the same cartoon smile.

The man waved his hand, and the bodyguards all took a step back.

“Ah, I suppose it’s rather gauche of me to refer to my own city as an ugly world, isn’t it?”

“Mr. Governor…!”

“There’s no need to be so formal, Milo. Please, call me Kurokawa.” Kurokawa strode toward Milo and tore back his hood. “My, your beauty astounds me every time I see it. Have you ever considered quitting the medical profession and becoming an actor? Just a thought. By the way, how is the new medicine-mixing machine working out for you?”

“Ah… Very well, thank you…” Milo looked uncomfortable as Kurokawa stared him down. “Sorry, but I have to go; my sister’s waiting for me at the clinic…”

“Ah, but of course,” said Kurokawa. “I wouldn’t want to waste the time of the greatest doctor in all of Imihama. Nor would I dare overlook the importance of the health of the Vigilante Corps’ leader, Pawoo Nekoyanagi.”

He spoke in a low, unhurried voice, without ever breaking Milo’s gaze, and his face was grim despite his frivolous tone.

“It does raise a question, however,” he continued. “Which is the greater waste of time: sitting with me, eating peanuts and arguing over which comic book character would win in a fight, or working yourself to the bone trying to save a sister for whom nothing can be done?”

“…Gh!”

Kurokawa had crossed a line, and Milo glared into his pitch-black eyes with all the hatred in his soul. However, that anger was not even a drop in the sea of darkness that seemed to emanate from Kurokawa’s very being.

“It’s time to give up on the nice-guy act, Doctor.”

Kurokawa gave his first smile, if such a twisting of the lips could be called that.

“Your behavior is admirable but ultimately futile. No matter how hard you toil to save them, people will die without money. The same goes for that child. You’re only prolonging their suffering!”

Kurokawa grabbed Milo by the lapels and looked the good doctor in the eye. Milo seemed about ready to burst into tears.

“Come work for me, Doctor! With your skills, we can tend to many more patients, rich ones from beyond the city walls! There’s money to be made, enough for all the medicine you could need! Then you could…” Kurokawa spotted the doubt in Milo’s tearstained eyes. “…You could save your sister…”

Suddenly, the sound of screams echoed from the direction of the cinema on the neon-lit street. Just as a huge crowd of guests came spilling out the doors, there was a great Gaboom! as an enormous mushroom split the building open, smashing the large neon sign in two.

“Mr. Governor!”

“What was that…?”

Kurokawa’s bodyguards immediately crowded around him, pushing Milo aside. Mushrooms burst through the rooftops of the fishmonger, the junk shop, the brothel, one after another, their multicolored caps scattering spores everywhere as people ran about screaming. From cap to cap, a human-shaped shadow flitted across the sky. When people saw it, they stared up in the air and pointed.

“Mushroom Keeper!” “There’s a Mushroom Keeper in the city!” “Don’t touch the spores; you’ll get the Rust!”

Voices cried out in confusion. In the blink of an eye, the main street had been reduced to chaos. Out of the crowd came a number of the muscle-bound rabbit-headed men who served as Kurokawa’s bodyguards. They were holding another of their number, who was covered head to toe in soot. This one had a noticeably lighter build, and from beneath the mask came a high-pitched voice.

“Hey! Let go of me! I can walk, I said! Eek! Where do you think you’re touching?!”

The stranger managed to fire off a barrage of verbal abuse before the bodyguards threw her on the floor before Kurokawa.

“Owww! Be a little gentler, would you?! …Oh, Uncle Kurokawa! Ha-ha… My, you look dashing tonight; is that a new hat?”

Kurokawa’s face was devoid of emotion. He grabbed the rabbit head by the ears and tugged it off.

“Pwah!”

An explosion of braids fell about the girl’s face. The rest of her hair was cut short around her bangs and the back of her neck, resembling a pink jellyfish. She had a somewhat sly look about her, but her amber eyes were big and bright, like a cat’s, and from appearances alone, she seemed like a relatively sweet young lady.

“Erm, listen… It’s about that Akaboshi guy…,” she began, looking at Kurokawa with upturned eyes, though the pressure he emanated caused beads of sweat to drip down her slender neck. “You know how you told me to kill him? Well… He kinda got away…and then he kinda got into the city.”

“I can see that, you idiot. You had a warplane. How did you manage to mess up killing one man?”

“I—I got the old man he was with! I think… I mean, I shot him up pretty bad… Ack! Ack!”

Kurokawa motioned with his chin to a bodyguard, who produced a bottle of water. The pink-haired jellyfish girl downed it like her life depended on it.

“…Phew! But that Akaboshi dude, I tell you! You could have warned me about him more! You said he had a bow, not…whatever that thing was! It went straight through the Escargot Plane’s guts like…a bolt of lightning, or something!”

“…Hey, is that true? Akaboshi managed to bring down an Escargot Plane with a bow and arrow?” whispered a nearby bodyguard as Kurokawa stroked his beard with great interest.

“It appears he’s attempting to flee north toward the bureau,” said a guard. “He won’t get far.”

“I don’t want the vigilantes beating us to the punch. Get there first and kill him.” As Kurokawa spoke, he suddenly paused to think, then continued. “…Split into two groups. Seventy percent of you search the area around the office. The other thirty percent, search the streets.”

“The… The streets?” asked one of them nervously, but a glare from Kurokawa shut him up, and he gave a hurried bow and scrambled onto the rooftop like an acrobat, before leaving in pursuit of the trail of mushrooms.

“Erm… Mr. Kurokawa, sir? What about my plane? It was kinda expensive, you know…”

“Of course, my dear. I shall add it to your life insurance payout.” Kurokawa took a pistol from his inside pocket and handed it to her. “For now, take this and join the others searching the streets. There are around twenty of them in total.”

“Huh? Whaaat?! You mean, like, fight Akaboshi myself? With this little thing?”

“Remember who pays your wages, my dear. Of course, if you don’t want to, I could always have you hanged for breach of contract, instead. Which would you prefer?”

“What a crook…!” muttered the jellyfish girl, biting her lip, before hyping herself up and sprinting out of the alley. Several rabbit-headed bodyguards followed after her, flooring pedestrians in their wake.

“I must speak with HR about their hiring process…,” said Kurokawa, shrugging. “Now then, where has my favorite child gotten to?”

But Milo had managed to slip free of Kurokawa and escape into the crowd of people unnoticed. Before leaving, he gave one last look back, only to quickly pull himself aside as Kurokawa’s laser-like gaze swept toward him. Then he ran all the way to the end of the street and disappeared around the right-hand corner.

“Shall we pursue him, Governor?” asked a bodyguard.

“Hmm, no, I think not,” said Kurokawa. “I was just having a little fun with him today. But I mean really, now. Look at all this…”

He turned around to stare at the wreckage of his favorite movie theater, its roof infested with mushrooms, and gave a throaty laugh.

“You’ve really gone and done it now, Akaboshi. I was looking forward to the Star Wars marathon tomorrow.”

“…Is that a sci-fi movie, sir?”

Kurokawa didn’t even glance at the bodyguard trying to cheer him up with small talk. “Well, no matter,” he said, adjusting his hat and walking away. “It seems I will be quite occupied with work for the foreseeable future.”