Tokyo, Osaka, and Nagoya were Japan’s three biggest cities even now at the end of the twenty-first century. For a time, Osaka had suffered from severe land subsidence, but with a radical decrease in physical distribution costs (centered around the removal of airport usage fees and a quick conversion of ports to a twenty-four-hour system), it recovered its status as a commercial city.

But tonight, it was not Osaka where an incident was about to happen, but Nagoya.

The time was almost 11:00 PM. The place was a promenade in Atsuta Park, in the vicinity of Horikawa.

“I must say, having a secret meeting at this hour in such a deserted place is like asking for people to be suspicious of you.”

Speaking softly and ignoring that she was also present at this hour and in this place—the thick brush beside the promenade—was a girl of fifteen or sixteen with long hair in soft waves, wearing a conspicuous outfit that made it seem she was coming back from a rock concert that had sold itself on extreme visuals.

“Gee, the way my big sister is dressed is already one step from actually being suspicious, what with the time and location, so I don’t want to hear that from you.”

The voice that responded was low for a girl’s, but high for a boy’s. One might not have been able to tell just from hearing it which the speaker was, but they were wearing a black, mini-length jumper dress and leggings in the same color, indicating the speaker was female.

Beneath the jumper dress, incidentally, was a black long-sleeved turtleneck, so the only skin being exposed was that of her face and hands, but the chest was visibly sticking out slightly. Additionally, her hair was done in a straight, short bob, ending about where her jawline was. Externally, she seemed like she was definitely a girl. She called the first girl her “big sister” despite appearing to be the same age, so she was either a slightly younger sister or a twin.

“You just don’t get it, do you, Yami?”

The younger girl, called Yami, scrunched up her face for a moment, but didn’t complain.

“If I’m wearing this, then I can walk around this late because people will just think I’m some random delinquent.”

The claim held a certain kind of persuasion, so Yami’s words caught in her throat. Still, the job they’d been given tonight promised some real action, and for that, a fundamental rule was to wear clothing that was easy to move in. The sort of clothes that would catch on every little thing, like what her sister was wearing now, were supposed to be unsuitable. And yet even though Yami had chosen her outfit with a mind for ease of movement—though certain circumstances dictated she still wear a dress—her sister had said she “just didn’t get it.” Yami wasn’t satisfied with that.

She wanted to argue, and she didn’t care how. She tried to find the words, but her futile thought processes were cut off by a message coming in from the receiver hooked onto one ear.

“It looks like our targets are here,” said Yami.

“I confirmed as well. I didn’t expect them to come by boat, though—and by houseboat at that. It sticks out like a sore thumb… Hiding must not be what they’re going for.”

The thick bandage covering her sister’s left eye was apparently an HMD, or head-mounted display, and she frequently rubbed the bandage surface while closing and opening her right eye. She didn’t seem to be totally comfortable using it. You didn’t have to use it, you know, thought Yami, instead giving voice to something more constructive (at least, so she thought).

“I don’t think hiding is the idea. Even if there are witnesses, claiming to be providing information to journalists would do the trick.”

“Journalists, huh…?” said her sister dubiously.

Yami shrugged her shoulders purposefully, though not so hard that it came off as exaggerated. “But we’ll leave your distrust of the media for another time, Yoru.”

“Yami…you’ve gotten really cheeky, you know that?”

Her indication that their pointless chatter was over seemed not to have been for nothing. Without sparing any thought for her older sister’s remark, Yami directed her gaze to the excursion boat about to come ashore. It was a houseboat, and one couldn’t see inside the rooms. The boat connected to a small pier that also served as a gondola platform, and two large men got off.

Greeting the two men was a middle-aged man of middling height and middling girth. At first, he appeared seedy-looking, but he didn’t fool the girls. He wore a suit one size too big in order to hide it, but he was significantly physically trained for combat. And the scent of smoke was drifting from him.

“Is that the journalist? Looks more like a mercenary, if you ask me.”

“Apparently he actually has mercenary experience, too. Didn’t you get the data before?”

Yoru looked away smoothly as her younger sister gave her a Didn’t you see? look. She’d gotten confirmation on the journalist earlier. The man seemed to think he was hidden, and he didn’t show any signs that he knew the girls were sneaking a peek. The visual data had made his profile clear.

“It says he’s a journalist with strong dissenter leanings.”

“Hmm. A paragon of journalism, then.”

“Yes, you can tell me all about your prejudices later.”

“Prejudices… Yami, you really are cheeky.”

“Let’s just go. The boat comes first. If you don’t mind…”

The indifferent evasion put a very unhappy look on her sister’s face, but though she was young, she was no amateur. She wouldn’t neglect her duty for personal feelings.

“Yeah, yeah.”

Yoru answered casually, but her face was all business. She removed the leather accessory covering her left forearm. A multipurpose CAD shaped like a bracelet appeared from underneath it. She pressed a function button slightly removed from its keypad and initiated an activation sequence.

“Time to blow them away!”

Yoru went around behind her younger sister. She had a clear view of the houseboat from the gaps between the trees.

Suddenly, Yami’s body disappeared.

A moment later, she was standing on the houseboat’s bow.

Pseudo-teleportation—that was the name of the spell Yoru had used. The spell canceled the momentum an object (such as a human body) possessed, created a cocoon in the air around it, then a slightly larger vacuum tube to move the cocoon through. It was made up of four processes: weighting, containment, convergence, and movement. It wasn’t a very complex spell. The flaw was that during creation of the vacuum tube, it created an air current as the air got pushed away from it, meaning an observer would sense where the object was moving to. If one had the skill to chain the spell and fly, one could use movement speed to dazzle the opponent, but that was seen as fundamentally unsuited for offense and more of an escape technique.

The pseudo-teleportation Yoru triggered, however, didn’t even make ripples on the water’s surface; she held even the air currents that emerged upon the vacuum tube’s creation under her control. It was proof that this seemingly flighty girl had an incredibly high level of magic skill.

Yami, sent straight into the midst of their prey thanks to her sister’s power, lightly kicked off the deck and dived inside.

Five men were in there. Like the mercenary-turned-journalist, they were all bulky, but unlike him, they didn’t give off an air of unruliness. In fact, they had an awfully single-minded and genuine light in their eyes.

“Who are you?!”

The voice asking her identity was somehow awkward. It seemed he’d been about to shout in his native tongue, then corrected himself and spoken Japanese. Still, there were North Americans, Europeans, and South Americans of Japanese descent as well, and there were even more East Asians you couldn’t physically tell apart from a Japanese person. Yami figured looking into their identities could wait until after she captured them.

Under the illumination, one could see that Yami was indeed pretty. Large, almond-shaped eyes in well-balanced positions, well-shaped scarlet lips, and a perfectly straight, modest nose. A girl like that had suddenly jumped into a cabin full of men late at night. It was no wonder the men were at a loss. But Yami didn’t have any obligation to watch them until they figured themselves out.

She stuck out her right hand. That was when the men first noticed that she was wearing a matte black knuckle-duster on it.

The act was intended to confuse the men even more. Knuckle-dusters were weapons for increasing the impact of a user’s punch. If she couldn’t reach them, it was pointless. Maybe it was some kind of roleplay, thought four of the men.

<“Hey, what’s wrong?!”>

All of a sudden, one of their number fell on his face, and his fellows finally realized something was happening that warranted a little more than jokes. One of them knelt by him and shook him. He probably didn’t realize he’d been speaking English. The other three didn’t have room to be conscious of that, either.

Before the kneeling man could confirm that the fallen man had lost consciousness, he felt like a blunt object had just slammed into him. He gave a yelp and fell down. Yami’s right hand was pointed at the two victims.

“A magician?!”

At this point, they at last conceived that there might be a connection between their comrades collapsing and Yami’s right hand. She pointed it, and one of them fell. There was enough distance between them that her hand couldn’t reach, and there were no traces of anything that had flown out of her hand. The only possibility left that they could think of was a magic-based attack.

The man who’d asked the question probably hadn’t expected an answer—he’d just yelled out of reflex.

Yami’s right hand stuck out toward that man, and he crumpled to the floor along with the previous three.

“Damn monster!”

With a hateful yell, two guns came up at Yami. She could have absorbed a scream of that level with the soundproof field she’d set up ahead of time, but she wasn’t confident it could block out the crack of gunshots. No suppressors graced the guns they’d pulled out, either—maybe they really didn’t have any intention to conceal themselves.

But Yami didn’t have any reason to wait for them to shoot.

She used her thumb to press a button on the end of the knuckle-duster. The main part of the CAD was the stick she held in her hand; the part covering her fist was mere decoration. The CAD, specialized for a single spell, expanded an activation sequence that would manifest her personal magic.

A spell that delivered pain directly to a person’s senses. Feeling as though their abdomens had been smashed by a pile driver, the men immediately blacked out.

After taking little time to suppress the inside of the boat, Yami easily disabled the three men on the pier as well. As Yami was using a radio she’d taken from the pouch at her waist to request support personnel, Yoru walked up to her, the frills of her tri-layered skirt fluttering. She’d removed the bandage on her left eye; maybe it had gotten to be an annoyance. With her whole face visible now, the older sister had very girlish features, and while Yami was pretty as well, Yoru was the one whose voice easily matched her gender.

“Yami, did you learn who they are?”

“I got a match using physiognomic recognition right away. The guys on the boat were members of a humanist group active in the USNA. Maybe if we bring them back and investigate them, we can find out who’s backing them.”

“And the journalist?”

“There was a call record on his terminal with an opposition party member famous for hating magicians. They didn’t try very hard, huh?”

“They didn’t… It feels anticlimactic.”

“Yeah. I don’t think you had to come out here with your little brother to begin with,” complained Yami, with a fair bit of seriousness, as Yoru gave a deflated frown.

“Hey, Yami!” she scolded. “Sister, remember?”

Of course, Yami hadn’t been complaining about the job itself. He groaned. “Come on, Sis.”

“No girl would ever call herself someone’s brother. You have to do what anyone else would do so you don’t draw attention.”

The phrase That’s funny, coming from you was standing by in Yami’s throat, but Yoru did have a point. He swallowed the retort back into his stomach.

However, Yami’s emotional conflict became meaningless when the black-suited personnel shuffled in toward them.

“We’ve prepared your transportation, young one.”

One of the people, who didn’t seem like a stiff no matter how you looked at him, addressed Yami as young one.

“You idiot! Not young one—young lady! Would you ruin all the effort the young one put into hiding his shame and cross-dressing like this?!” said another man, knocking the first over. He seemed to be their leader. “I’m terribly sorry, young one—er, young lady.”

“You…”

“Yes?”

“You’re ruining this even worse!” said the trembling girl, who was actually a cross-dressing boy, in a cleverly hushed but still angry voice. “And I’m not cross-dressing. I’m in disguise!”

“Y-yes, and a wonderful disguise it is. I assure you, none of us would even begin to think that you were actually Master Fumiya.”

“Stop blurting it out!”

“Yami, calm down.”

Yami, also known as Fumiya Kuroba, was having more and more trouble keeping his voice low, so Yoru, also known as Ayako Kuroba, saw fit to scold him. Incidentally, Yami was a reversal of the last two syllables of Fumiya’s name, and Yoru came from the character for “night” that was in the name Ayako.

“And the rest of you aren’t being cautious enough either. I wonder how our great leader would see fit to scold you if she saw you like this.”

The black-suits paled, and Fumiya’s head cooled in seconds. Fear of their “great leader” had been instilled in them quite heavily.

“There is no reason to stay long. Let’s withdraw.”

“Yes ma’am.”

The black-suits, their movements showing proof of good leadership, packed up the journalist and the foreigners, picked them up, and began to jog away.

Fumiya, left behind but still in the guise of Yami, bowed his head awkwardly. “Sorry, Sis.”

“I suppose you can’t help it, considering how you must feel right now.”

“…I’m glad to hear you say that,” he replied, shoulders drooping.

“It’s only for a little longer. Once you start hitting puberty for real, you won’t be able to cross-dress anymore. When that happens, we’ll just have to go put in the brain work to think of a different disguise.”

“Yeah…right…”

Fumiya nodded to try to encourage himself, choosing not to think about the fact that he still showed no signs of losing effectiveness at cross-dressing despite almost being in high school.

Gongjin Zhou, young owner of what was known to the public as a popular Chinese restaurant, had several other faces.

The relatively well-known one was that of a broker of defectors: He sent those stranded in Japan after fleeing GAA oppression to other nations. He didn’t just help with defections—he supplied funds for them to engage in anti-GAA activities wherever they ended up.

Almost as if to strike a balance, he also had a spy-like role with the GAA. More specifically, perhaps, he was a local assistant to spies. He’d been the one to guide the GAA Army’s saboteur team during the Yokohama Incident the previous October.

He’d also played a neutral role during the vampire incident that had occurred at the beginning of this year by arranging the parasites’ illegal entrance into Japan.

His shadowy actions seemed unprincipled at first glance, bringing boons and banes to both opposing powers—Japan and the GAA—but he had a reason for them, of course. His own belief that governments should be weaker obviously influenced him, but above that, he was in the service of a certain person conducting operations to weaken anti-magician state power.

Chinatown, at midnight. In a room in the basement of his shop, one that nobody but him ever entered, Gongjin Zhou now knelt. The person hanging over his head was a life-sized doll sitting in a chair, the doll itself adorned with Chinese clothing excessively embroidered in silver and gold. It was a spell tool: The internal organs had been taken out of a corpse, anti-rotting measures had been applied, and the brain had been repurposed into a sorcery booster. A cable stretched from the case of a giant communication device behind the puppet that was as big as a commercial refrigerator and was connected to the back of the puppet’s skull.

“Grand Minister.”

At the young man’s call, the spell tool corpse-puppet opened its eyelids. Wisps of light flickered on inside its empty eye sockets, the eyeballs having been removed.

“Gongjin. How did things turn out?”

A hair-raising voice emanated from the puppet. Its lungs were unmoving, yet it could produce a voice—because of ancient jiangshi magic from the mainland. By applying technology also used in CADs to convert psionic signals into electrical ones, it had made the corpse into a device whose communications couldn’t be intercepted.

“The humanists I summoned from America have, unfortunately, all been apprehended, along with the journalist.”

“Then our plan to mold them into honest witnesses has failed.”

Behind the fear-inducing voice, the words and tone the corpse produced were modern and everyday. It was indirect proof that it was no spirit borrowing the corpse’s mouth, but a living person.

“Master Hague,” said Zhou, respectfully bowing. The corpse-doll had no eyesight, but the feeling would get across. Zhou’s attitude, at least, was nothing slapdash. “Those men had a purely supporting role. Efforts to sabotage big media are proceeding apace.”

“How far along are they?”

“Forty percent in visual media, and thirty in print media, I believe.”

“Once the operation reaches fifty percent in visual media, set it up immediately. So that any politician who cares about votes will need to act.”

“As you command.”

As Zhou lowered his head deeply, the puppet almost seemed satisfied.

The wisps of flame in the empty eye sockets went out. When Zhou looked up, the puppet’s eyelids were closed.

He rose, then exited the underground room, backing away so as not to turn his back to the puppet. He opened the door behind him, then closed it from the outside. The moment the puppet was out of sight, he breathed a relieved sigh.

Zhou was a user of the ancient Chinese magic of Dujia, but he hadn’t dealt much with jiangshi techniques. No matter how many times he experienced a conversation with a cadaver, he never felt good afterward.

Still…perhaps it is a suitable vessel for a vengeful spirit of the Dahan, he thought, a disparaging monologue regarding the leader—but one that didn’t taint his alluring face in the slightest.