The Igniter

by Reki Kawahara

  Yumiko clicked her tongue and opened the faceplate of her helmet, whispering in a thick voice. “It looks like they’ve already completely cleaned this place out… Hey, what are you doing?”

  Minoru, who had been earnestly sniffing the air as soon as they entered the house, raised the faceplate on his helmet as well to answer.

  “What if Igniter’s lying in wait somewhere for us here? I wanted to check to see if I could smell the scent of a Ruby Eye…”

  “Look here, this house is already up for sale. There are interested buyers who are going to come to see the inside of the house, so there’s no way he’d be hiding out here.”

  “Well, I suppose that may be true, but…” Minoru nodded before taking another deep breath of air, making sure he could not smell that primordial beast–like smell of the Ruby Eyes.

  “Once you’re satisfied, meet me down on the first floor. If there’s a study that Igniter…that Nakakubo used, we might be able to find a clue there,” said Yumiko.

  “Umm… I don’t smell any Ruby Eyes, but…don’t you smell something else? Even though it looks like it’s been cleaned, there’s still this smell.”

  “Really?” asked Yumiko, making sniffing motions with her well-formed nose before grimacing. “…You’re right. I wonder what it is…”

  “It reminds me of…a wet rag,” Minoru said.

  “Do you think that one of the cleaning staff just left a mop out?”

  They continued their conversation as they opened the door and headed down to the first floor. The hallway was only lit by a small amount of light from the outside and was almost completely submerged in darkness. The damp smell grew stronger, and Minoru started to feel uneasy.

  “U-umm… Yumiko?”

  When they reached the end of the hall and Yumiko started to walk down the stairs, Minoru grabbed the sleeve of Yumiko’s leather jacket.

  “What is it?”

  “…Aren’t you scared?” Minoru asked.

  “Of what?”

  “Of… I don’t know…ghosts or monsters?”

  As soon as Yumiko heard those words, she looked at Minoru as if he were stupid and started to walk away when he grabbed her sleeve again.

  “Now look here!”

  “B-but…the family who lived here was killed in a murder-suicide, right? And now we’re breaking in, in the middle of the night. Doesn’t this completely follow the sort of pattern where they appear?” Minoru said.

  It wasn’t as if Minoru truly believed in ghosts, but despite the fact that he was uncontrollably nervous, Yumiko seemed just fine, so he couldn’t help but say something. But Yumiko didn’t flinch.

  “Of course they’re not going to appear. Ghosts and stuff don’t exist.”

  “Well…Third Eyes exist, right? And they’re these mysterious objects from outer space. Plus, they’re parasitic and infect humans. I mean, when things like that exist, can you show any proof that ghosts don’t?”

  “…I don’t know what you’re getting at,” she said, lifting her beautiful eyebrows high. “But what? Are you trying to scare me? I hate to break it to you, but if a ghost pops out, I’ll just accelerate my way out of here, so I have nothing to be afraid of.”

  “…That’s so unfair.”

  “You have your defensive shell, don’t you? Not that I know if it can block out ghosts,” added Yumiko, before walking off again, not wanting to deal with Minoru anymore, who had no choice but to chase after her.

  Since all of the windows on the first floor were shuttered with antitheft panels, it was completely dark. Yumiko took a small LED flashlight out of her pocket and the white light lit the hall.

  “I wonder if this was his study. It would be nice if a computer or some documents were left…,” Yumiko muttered and opened the door. Inside was a writing desk, cabinets, and shelves, but unfortunately, everything was empty.

  Yumiko let out a disappointed sigh as she walked into the room, but immediately held her hand to her nose as soon as she did.

  “…This smell…”

  Minoru, who walked into the room after her, almost choked on the thick stench that permeated the room.

  The smell of wet rags that they sensed on the second floor was much stronger in this room. However, there was no abandoned mop in the room as Yumiko predicted.

  As they searched the room for the source of the smell, they found a large air purifier in the corner of the room. It appeared brand-new and must have been set up recently.

  “I wonder if the reason this house hasn’t sold in three months is due to this smell. The real-estate management must have put in the air purifier. It doesn’t look like it’s doing any good, though,” Yumiko muttered, her hand over her nose as she started to search the cabinets of the desk.

  Minoru also went and opened up the glass cabinets, for lack of anything better to do, but it was clear that they were empty.

  A few minutes later, they were still continuing their fruitless search.

  “…Umm,” said Minoru.

  “Did you find anything?” asked Yumiko, turning around, but Minoru just shook his head.

  “No, I haven’t found anything, but…don’t you hear something?” asked Minoru.

  Though she had a suspicious look on her face, Yumiko paused to listen.

  Given that it was such a luxurious residence, the sound seemed to be fairly insulated from room to room, and they could hardly hear any sounds from outside the room. But in the middle of that deafening silence…

  …Drip.

  …was the quiet sound of a water droplet.

  Minoru and Yumiko looked at each other, their faces both stiffening at the same time.

  Drop.

  Yumiko suddenly jumped as if she had used her power. She ran behind Minoru and clutched his shoulders.

  “Wh-what are you doing?” Minoru asked in a raspy voice, but Yumiko quickly answered back.

  “What’s the problem?! You’ve got your shell, right? But who cares about that, what is that sound?! Where is it coming from?!”

  “…It sounds like water dripping, but… I wonder if there’s a leaky faucet somewhere,” Minoru said.

  “That can’t be it, this house is for sale! They should have shut off the gas and the water,” Yumiko replied.

  “…Oh…that makes sense,” said Minoru, listening for the sound once more.

  Drip.

  Drop.

  The sound that Minoru thought couldn’t possibly be any other sound than droplets falling into a pool of water sounded at regular intervals, but Minoru still couldn’t figure out where they were coming from. The sounds themselves were something that someone without the enhanced senses of a Third Eye host would miss, so they were very, very quiet.

  Forgetting the rotten smell, Minoru focused all of his senses on the sound of the water. He wasn’t listening with his ears, but rather feeling the sound’s vibrations in the air with his entire body.

  Drip.

  “…It’s coming from underneath us,” Minoru whispered, and with Yumiko still clinging to his back, he walked in front of the giant mahogany desk in the room.

  If there was a route from this room leading underground, then this desk would be the only way to hide it.

  Minoru grabbed the top edge of the reddish-brown desk and put a little bit of his strength into it. It was heavy. The desk seemed to be made of solid wood, instead of wood paneling over cheaper materials. However, it wasn’t so heavy that a Third Eye host’s strength couldn’t move it.

  Bending down and using his legs, Minoru lifted the edge of the desk a few centimeters off the ground and rotated it ninety degrees, using the leg on the far edge as a pivot.

  “There…,” Yumiko said from behind Minoru.

  A small hatch had appeared in a spot that was hidden directly under the desk. The floorboards were cut out in a rectangular shape and there was a metal handle to pull the hatch open.

  As Minoru put his face closer to the hatch, both the terrible smell and the sound of the water became clear
er.

  “…Good job finding something terribly unpleasant,” whined Yumiko.

  “…Should we pretend we didn’t see anything?” asked Minoru, but after a few seconds, Yumiko let out a sigh.

  “Well, we can’t really do that…can we? All right, let’s open it. Be on your guard.”

  “Got it.” Minoru nodded, and after making sure there were no security cameras, he took off his helmet and gave it to Yumiko.

  Minoru grabbed the handle and pulled the hatch open. From the darkness under the hatch, an unbearable stench rose and Minoru held his breath. It was the smell of mold and foul water. This was undoubtedly the source of the smell drifting throughout the house.

  Yumiko also took off her helmet, and holding her nose with her left hand, she pointed her LED light down the hatch

  A steep set of stairs led almost straight down the hatch, and at a certain point, the white light reflected back. Water. The hidden basement was completely flooded.

  “What…is this?” muttered Yumiko, moving the light around. However, the muddy water just reflected the light back, and it was impossible to tell what it was like under the surface.

  At least it was certain that this was not a place that someone could be hiding. There was only about one meter between the opening of the hatch and the surface of the water. The wooden steps were covered in black mold and had partially rotted. The sound of the water came from moisture that had condensed on the basement ceiling that was now falling back down in droplets.

  “…Hey, Utsugi?” Yumiko whispered to Minoru before the next droplet fell.

  “…What is it?”

  “It…was my first time.”

  “…What was?”

  “That kiss.”

  Minoru, sensing Yumiko’s intent behind that incredibly straight statement, rushed to object.

  “That doesn’t count; it was an emergency, a life-or-death situation…and didn’t you say not too long ago for me to forget everything?”

  “A maiden’s heart is not that clear-cut,” Yumiko said.

  Here, Minoru had to hold himself in and somehow was able to keep from arguing back, “What kind of ‘maiden’ rides around on an 800cc motorcycle and hides a stun baton in her skirt?!”

  Instead, he drooped his head.

  “…All right, I’ll go.”

  When he did, Yumiko, at least on the surface, showed an innocent smile and whispered, “I knew you would say that, I believed in you! I knew I could trust the one I gave my first kiss t—”

  “That’s enough! Now give me that light,” Minoru said, cutting her off and snatching her LED light before letting out a sigh.

  “…When I activate my shell, we won’t be able to communicate. If something happens to me down there, I’ll signal you by flashing this light.”

  “Understood. If that happens I’ll call someone to help you,” Yumiko said.

  “…” Minoru paused, unsure how serious Yumiko was, looking at her smile out of the corner of his eye.

  …It was my first time, too, you know? he muttered to himself inside his head.

  After taking a deep breath away from that hatch to minimize breathing in the stench, Minoru held his breath and activated his shell.

  The silence that fell around Minoru was enough of a difference that it made him realize that even that quiet mansion had been filled with various sounds.

  However, immediately after, he heard a low-pitched dunn, dunn sound. It was always there when he activated his shell, but Minoru still had no idea where it was coming from.

  Minoru pointed the LED light down, which he had held firmly in his hand so it wouldn’t be ejected, and after finding his determination, he headed down the steep stairs.

  In the blue-tinted light Minoru saw from inside his shell, the steps looked very slippery. However, Minoru was able to firmly plant his feet on the steps through his shell.

  On the fourth step, he sunk his left foot into the water. Confirming that his shell repelled the murky water, Minoru carefully continued walking into the basement. The water level reached his waist, then his chest, and then up to his neck. Even when he was completely submerged, Minoru strangely didn’t feel any buoyancy. Rather than sinking into the water, Minoru felt that he was passing in between the water particles and continued down into the water.

  The steps went farther down than Minoru had expected. When Minoru finally reached the bottom, he thought that he had come five meters under the floor. The murkiness of the water had only worsened and blocked the light of the high-brightness LED light. Minoru carefully advanced with his arm outstretched in front of him.

  After a few steps forward, a wooden shelf-like object appeared in front of him. However, the spacing between the compartments looked too small to hold books. Each compartment was square, about ten centimeters for each side, and there were several of them. After finding some old-looking glass bottles in some of the compartments, Minoru finally realized what this basement was used for.

  It was a wine cellar. Since wine was weak to changes in temperature and to light, Minoru had read somewhere that it was sometimes stored underground like this. However, there wasn’t much wine left on the shelf. A lot of the wine must have been sold to help pay down debt. Minoru understood that, but why…?

  Why was it flooded?

  Did some underground water seep through the walls? But if this was a wine cellar, they must have taken several measures to waterproof the cellar and prevent that from happening. To look at it another way, that was probably a reason why the water hadn’t drained out.

  Looking for clues, Minoru shined the LED light in all directions. The answer was close by, sunk on the floor.

  There was a bright blue curving line. It was a sprinkling hose, coiled up like a snake. Someone must have connected one end to a nearby sink on the first floor to intentionally flood the cellar.

  He had no idea how many thousands of liters it would take to submerge this cellar, but someone intentionally pumped in enough water for it to reach the roof.

  However, Minoru still couldn’t figure out a reason.

  Why would the owner of this cellar, why would Igniter, do something like that?

  In order to flood the basement, it was necessary to use the water line, so he had to have done it at least three months ago before the water was shut off. Then, was it before Igniter became a Ruby Eye? When he was Yousuke Nakakubo, president of a landscaping company?

  As Minoru stood lost in thought in the water, he felt someone from behind tap him on his right shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, could you give me a minute?” Minoru said and continued to think. After Nakakubo flooded his wine cellar, he had hidden the hatch with his desk and attempted to commit murder-suicide with his family.

  Still, Minoru couldn’t think of any logical reason someone about to commit suicide would do something like that.

  Then did he do it after he became Igniter? If it was immediately after his disppearance, the water may still have been running.

  Again, Minoru was tapped on his shoulder.

  “Like I said before, I’m in the middle of…,” Minoru started to say and then paused.

  …Wait, what?

  Minoru froze.

  It couldn’t possibly be Yumiko. Minoru was currently four meters underwater.

  “…”

  Gulping, with his eyes open wide, Minoru slowly turned around.

  What he saw, shining in his LED light, was the stark-white, bloated face of a corpse.

  Ashen eyes buried within the bloated skin of a face stared at Minoru, right in front of him.

  “Gyahh!!” went the sound of Minoru’s scream as it echoed within his shell.

  11

  Holding in both hands the mug of café au lait that Yumiko had poured for him, Minoru finally had returned to a normal state of mind and let out a deep breath that had been tied up in his chest.

  After returning to SFD Headquarters, he had used the shower in his room, 403, but the chill he had felt sinking deep in
to the marrow of his bones just would not go away. Naturally, Minoru had carried, through his shell, the corpse that he had found in the basement up to the first floor; deactivated his shell and taken pictures, fingerprints; and searched the pockets of its shirt and pants.

  Given the fact that during that entire time, Yumiko had cowered outside of the room, a café au lait was not enough to properly thank him.

  As Minoru sipped the drink, a little too sweet for his tastes, he had kept his gaze fixed right beside him, but Yumiko continued to ignore him and instead looked at the monitor Professor Riri was working on.

  “…Bingo!” Riri said, snapping her fingers.

  Riri had run the corpse’s fingerprints through the police’s AFIS (Automated Fingerprint Identification System) fingerprint database, and there was a match. Minoru took his gaze off of Yumiko and looked at the monitor.

  Displayed on the screen was the face of a relatively good-looking young man.

  “Wait, that corpse…was this man?” Minoru asked, and Riri nodded.

  “There’s no mistaking it. The corpse had begun to swell and the face has changed considerably, but not only do their fingerprints match, the shape of their ears is also the same. Due to the fact that the corpse was held in cold water for a long time, it seems that it grayed without rotting.”

  Holding in the feeling of disconnect Minoru felt from hearing a cute fourth grader’s voice explain the state of a corpse, Minoru asked another question.

  “But then… Who is it?”

  “He was a man who worked as an accountant for Nakakubo Green Earth, Igniter’s landscaping company. His name is Ayato Suka, and he was twenty-nine years old,” Riri replied.

  “Does this mean that Igniter killed his own employee?”

  “Exactly. Suka was fired from the company eight months ago and at the same time was sued for fraud. He was accused of taking ten million yen from the company, and this is why his fingerprint came up in the AFIS database. However, possibly due to the skills of his lawyer, he had his sentence suspended. If Suka was the reason Nakakubo Green Earth went bankrupt, that should provide an adequate reason for Nakakubo, the president of the company, to hate him.”

  As Riri continued with her explanation, she made several clicks with her mouse and opened a new window on the screen. Now she seemed to be looking at data from Japan’s Basic Resident Registry Network System.