The Igniter

by Reki Kawahara

  “Suka was single, and his parents were both already deceased. There wasn’t even a missing person’s report filed.…So I suppose this means that after Igniter recovered from nearly dying, he killed Suka in revenge and hid the body in the basement of his residence…”

  “But then, does that mean that there’s no information connecting these events to where Igniter is now?” asked Yumiko in a dejected voice.

  Minoru was also disappointed. Even though he had to go through such a frightening experience, it felt unfair that they uncovered zero clues. However, Minoru quickly caught himself, telling himself that it wasn’t completely in vain.

  No matter what the reason he was killed, this man Suka was still a victim of Igniter. There was meaning simply in the fact that his hidden corpse was found, Minoru thought. There was no way his soul would be able to properly leave this world if he was stuck, sunk in that deep, dark water…

  “Water…,” Minoru muttered, and Yumiko and Professor Riri both looked at him suspiciously.

  “Is there something that caught your attention, Mikkun?” Riri asked.

  “Ah no, it’s nothing particularly important, but I was just wondering why it was water this time and not fire. Other than the taxi driver, all of Igniter’s victims were burned to death, right?”

  “That is certainly correct…,” said Riri; tilting her head in thought, she immediately had an answer.

  “I think it’s safe to say that he wanted to hide the corpse. In terms of kerosene, the amount of fuel necessary to completely burn a person away is about eighty liters. It’s very hard to keep a giant flame like that out of sight from witnesses in an urban place like Tokyo. There’s also the issue of smoke… Unlike Biter, Igniter has never seemed to make an effort to hide his actions. But that begs the question. Why did he want to hide Suka’s corpse…?”

  Riri, in her lab coat, crossed her arms and closed her eyes.

  After a single second, her eyes popped open with such a force that Minoru almost expected them to make a sound, and Riri declared, “His reason for killing Suka was not simply out of revenge, nor was it a demonstration.”

  “Huh?” Minoru asked.

  “What do you mean?” Yumiko responded as well.

  With her back turned to Minoru and Yumiko, Professor Riri make more clicks with her mouse.

  What was then displayed on the screen was, astonishingly, an electric company’s customer data. Apparently the SFD was not subject to privacy laws. After making a quick search through the giant list, Riri snapped her fingers again.

  “Just as I thought. Suka, who should have been killed, is still paying his monthly electric bills and not on any automatic payment program. He’s just paying monthly at convenience stores.”

  “What?! But Suka died months ago…,” Minoru started to say before he finally realized what Professor Riri was trying to say. “…Do you mean that the one paying the electric bill now is…?”

  “Exactly. It’s Igniter. Igniter, aka Nakakubo, killed Suka; hid his corpse; and took on his identity,” Riri explained.

  After a few seconds of silence, Yumiko spoke up.

  “But…is it really that easy to do something like that?”

  “No. However, Suka was single, detained by the police, and the company he worked at dissolved. In other words his social environment was reset. If you can fake your age and have a new ID card issued, it’s not impossible to take on someone else’s identity in that case.”

  After searching again through the Basic Resident Registry Network System, as well as a number of other databases, Riri spoke up again with strong conviction in her voice.

  “Just as I thought. Three months ago, there are signs that he filed for a new resident card. And… Well, this is surprising… According to this credit card company’s data, he seems to be employed, working at a company called Ariake Heaven’s Shore… Now what could that be?”

  “Wait, you mean you don’t know?” said Yumiko, surprised.

  “I bet all of the kids at my school know. It’s a big water park that’s set to open this year. It’s completely indoors, so you can experience an endless summer, even in the winter…,” Yumiko continued.

  “Well, I’m sorry for not knowing,” Riri retorted in her cute voice, pouting. “Publicly, I’m a problem child who’s quit going to school. Not too long ago I received a ton of letters from the kids in my class telling me to ‘Get better soon and come back to school.’ If you’d like, I could read them out to you. How about it?”

  “N-no thanks…,” said Yumiko, shaking her head back and forth.

  Having received letters like that himself, Minoru felt a cold sweat coming on, just imagining what was written in them.

  “Putting that issue aside, we’ve discovered Igniter’s current address, correct?” Yumiko continued.

  “Yes. There is an apartment in Toyosu in Tokyo’s Koto district being rented in Suka’s name, but…I think it would be very risky to just rush into his apartment…”

  “Risky?” Minoru asked, tilting his head.

  “It’s very common for Ruby Eyes to have something prepared at their hideouts in case they are attacked. But of course, I mean, we do the same thing,” Yumiko replied.

  “Huh? What sort of…preparations do we have at headquarters?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough. Anyway, in a worst-case scenario the entire apartment building might go up in flames. At the very least, we’re at a disadvantage because Igniter’s power is effective at range,” continued Yumiko.

  “Therefore,” said Riri, picking up Yumiko’s explanation, “it’s best to target him when he’s on the move. We can observe him from afar and, if possible, attack him where there are few people around, but that’s no simple task, either… No, wait a minute.”

  With Riri controlling it, the content of the windows on the screen flitted back and forth. This time it appeared that she had broken into the network of the company that Igniter was working at.

  “Igniter, under the name of Ayato Suka, was hired at this Ariake Heaven’s something or another theme park to work as a janitor. His work time is from eight a.m. to four p.m. from Wednesday to Sunday, and on Monday it is from ten p.m. to six a.m. the next morning. Today is Monday, so he should be working the night shift tonight. At that time, there should only be a small number of security guards and janitors inside the park.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Yumiko said, gripping her right hand into a fist, and Riri nodded.

  “Tonight, we’ll storm Igniter’s workplace. I’ll infiltrate the security camera system and use it to pinpoint Igniter’s location. When he’s alone, we will surround him and quickly disable him. We’ll start our operation at one a.m. Participating members will be Yumiko, DD, Oli-V—”

  “I-I’ll go, too,” Minoru interrupted, dismissing the fears he had about Igniter’s oxygen-deprivation attack.

  Both Riri and Yumiko looked at Minoru for a moment, and then both nodded.

  “All right. If that’s the case, first we should all eat a solid dinner,” Riri said.

  “But if we get DD to start making dinner now, we won’t have time to rest before the operation… But I’m not sure frozen pizza will do much for our fighting spirits…,” Yumiko said, and both silently stared at Minoru.

  “…A-all right, I’ll do it, but I make no guarantees about the flavor, okay?” Minoru replied, getting the feeling that his position at the SFD was settling down in an unsatisfactory way.

  Moving toward the kitchen on the other side of the large room, he felt a clump of anxiety in his chest, like he was missing something important.

  The way Igniter’s face looked that day, when Minoru clearly saw him in Ikebukuro, that sunken mold-filled basement, and the fact that he was employed at a theme park just didn’t seem to match up. It was as if the edges of the pieces in a jigsaw puzzle were just slightly off.

  However, when Minoru opened the German-made refrigerator, he had his eyes taken away by the overflowing fresh ingredients and quickly forg
ot his anxiety. It looked like DD had just refilled the refrigerator, so Minoru set to work matching what ingredients were available with his repertoire of recipes.

  If I’m looking for a recipe that’s simple to make and can give you energy, it’ll have to be Chinese-style fried rice, thought Minoru. I’ll top it with a ton of vegetables in a sauce and add in egg drop soup on the side.

  As Minoru took out onions, carrots, and filleted pork, he concentrated on his recipe.

  The man who was sometimes Ayato Suka, Yousuke Nakakubo, and occasionally Igniter looked satisfied at the shine of the glass he had just polished clean and hopped off his stepladder.

  After landing firmly on the tile floor, he took his basket of cleaning supplies in his right hand and five-step ladder in his left and moved to the next pane of glass.

  From the bottom right corner, he sprayed the foamy cleaner and used a microfiber cloth to carefully wipe it away. The building was silent, in stark contrast to the hustle and bustle of the day, and only the squeaking of him polishing the glass could be heard.

  Many of his collegues hated the special cleaning that went on during the Monday midnight shift, but Nakakubo didn’t dislike it.

  Nakakubo, who used to manage the exterior design of large mansions and businesses as a first-rate landscaper, now called himself by the lowly name of Ayato Suka, and as he crawled around this theme park cleaning glass, he couldn’t help but feel a little self-scorn. However, ever since he was infected by this sphere in his right hand, he could hardly remember anything about when he’d been a landscaper.

  Nakakubo had always liked cleanliness and didn’t hate to clean, and as his body was tempered by his Third Eye, no matter how he pushed himself, he didn’t feel any soreness. Additionally, this name and identity he was using was only temporary. In actuality, Nakakubo was not a theme park janitor, but a cleanser of polluted human civilization. If he thought of it that way, it wasn’t exactly unfitting for him to be doing work like this.

  A wrinkly smile on his thin face, Nakakubo took one step back and looked at the glass he had just polished, regarding himself in the glossy reflection as if it were a mirror.

  He had lived with the name Nakakubo for fifty-nine years, and when he was reborn, he took on the name Suka and was called Igniter by both the red organization and the black hunters. However, in the near future, when his power reached its next stage, everyone would call him by a more fitting name: “Purifier.”

  “Heh… Heh-heh,” he chuckled in a deep voice, imagining the new world that was to come.

  That day was near. In order to further evolve his already advanced power to manipulate oxygen, he had picked this place of work. Here, there were vast amounts of oxygen for him to resonate with, and in a high concentration.

  One day, he would free all beautiful and proud of the elements of the sixteenth group from humanity’s filthy hands.

  He would keep the savages from performing any oxidation whatsoever.

  Heat-powered electric generation? NO.

  Gasoline engines? NO.

  Garbage incineration? Gas heaters? Cigarettes? NO, NO, NO.

  Breathing?

  “…That, too, of course, NO,” he said, chuckling to himself as he returned to polishing the glass, stepping up his ladder, and wiping away the smudges from the top corner.

  As he continued his simple work, his exhilaration faded and a faint worry popped up in the corner of his mind.

  His face had been seen by one of the black hunters.

  Was that enough to unravel his lifestyle of disguise? After he had attempted murder-suicide, the newspaper had put one picture of his face in the newspaper. If that black hunter had read that article and remembered the picture, it would be possible for him to track down the name Yousuke Nakakubo.

  If they did that, they might go snooping around his house in Meguro. They might find the entrance to his wine cellar he hid under his desk, and if they investigated under the water, they might even find the real Ayato Suka’s corpse.

  Was it careless of him to have left the corpse in his own house?

  However, Nakakubo couldn’t bear to only kill that lowly idiot of a traitor. Even with the level of power he had had then, if he had taken enough time, he could have burned away the body.

  However, if he had done that in that high-population density of an area, he wouldn’t have been able to hide the flames or the smell, and since he had lost his car after driving it off Ooi Pier, he had no way to transport the corpse, either.

  Therefore, in order to give that filth a proper cleansing, he sealed the body deep underwater.

  It would be soon. If he could just break through one thin layer still holding him back, he would reach a new stage of his power. Nakakubo could feel it right now, the wills of the large amount of oxygen wishing to join his cause.

  It wasn’t a problem. This disguise should hold for just a little while longer, Nakakubo thought.

  Even if they found the body, they shouldn’t be able to immediately realize that Ayato Suka, who should have died, was still out walking around. All he needed was one more week. One more week and he would have burned the number of humans he had originally planned and drawn his sign of purification in the city.

  Then, he would evolve. He would awaken to his true power.

  Nakakubo shook off his anxiety and laughed in a deep voice once again, and that laugh soon changed into a hum as he sang, “Oxygen… Oxygen…”

  Minoru was only able to get three hours of sleep in after dinner, but by the time his smartphone alarm woke him up, he felt completely rested.

  While Minoru waited for the other members in SFD Headquarters’ underground parking garage, he ran his fingers along the bandage at the edge of his mouth. His body felt light and his mind was clear, but he could still feel a little bit of pain left, and the memory that went along with that pain unfortunately had not disappeared, either.

  At dinner, Minoru wasn’t able to look Olivier Saito in the eye. Olivier, on the other hand, didn’t seem to care at all about what happened during the day and had wolfed down the fried rice Minoru had prepared at an incredible pace and also made fun of DD, who seemed as if he had been one-upped somehow.

  Yumiko, who sat next to Minoru, whispered to him to forget about the whole thing, but Minoru just didn’t have the courage to do so.

  In the end, Minoru didn’t say a single word to Olivier throughout the whole meal, so was unable to apologize and was still worrying about the incident now, even as they were just about to head off on their mission.

  Inside your head you think of it like it’s someone else’s problem, and that’s because you lack resolve.

  It wasn’t just the pain of the punch—Minoru also could remember Olivier’s words very clearly.

  Minoru knew that he lacked resolve. He didn’t join the SFD because he wanted to protect anyone or any righteous cause like that. He joined because of a very selfish reason, because he wanted Chief Himi to use his power to erase himself from the memories of everyone around him.

  However, the words You think of it like it’s someone else’s problem cut deep into his heart.

  Was there even once that Minoru seriously thought to use the power he received as a Jet Eye to save anyone or protect anyone? Minoru asked himself, and the answer to that question was most probably no.

  Even the time when Minoru had tried to protect Tomomi Minowa when she was attacked by Biter or tried to save Norie when she was kidnapped, he felt that the majority of his motivation was that he just didn’t want to have to go through experiencing that happening from his perspective.

  It was no different from that time in the convenience store when Minoru put on an act to help an elementary school kid who didn’t have enough money at the register. In the end, Minoru was only doing it for himself, simply because he didn’t want to have to muddy his memories with regret.

  So Minoru couldn’t save anyone. So long as it wasn’t directly his fault, he didn’t care. That was just the kind of person he
was.

  Even after Minoru was punched by Olivier, somewhere in his heart he kept thinking, Igniter was the one who killed that taxi driver. It’s not my fault.

  If that’s the case, then is that incident really not your fault as well? Minoru heard a voice asking him.

  When your mother and father…and your older sister Wakaba were killed, are you really not at fault for doing nothing, and hiding away, shaking under the floor? the voice asked.

  Leaning back against the cold concrete wall of the parking garage, Minoru desperately argued back.

  I was only a second grader in elementary school! It was all I could do just to hide! My sister told me that it was going to be okay. So I had to keep counting, even when those frightening footsteps came, I kept counting and counting and counting and…

  “…Uwaaaahhh!!” Minoru yelled out in a suppressed voice and forcibly cut off his train of thought. A switch flipped in the back of his mind and fell into an empty darkness.

  Minoru only realized that he had unconsciously activated his defensive shell when that strange low-frequency sound met his ears. It didn’t sound like it was mechanical or organic. The air had no scent and the light, no color. It was a world without anyone in it.

  Minoru huddled in the shadow of a concrete pillar and hugged his knees.

  But right before he closed his eyes, he saw mid-cut sneakers right in front of him on the floor.

  When Minoru raised his head, there was Yumiko, who had changed out of her riding jacket and into her blazer uniform, standing with a harsh light in her eyes. Her lips moved, and even though Minoru couldn’t hear her, he could tell what she was saying.

  “Come out of your shell.”

  “…I don’t want to,” Minoru said inside of the shell and tried to look back down.

  But when he did, Yumiko crouched down right in front of him, gripped her slender right hand into a fist, and lifted it in the air, aiming for Minoru’s left cheek.