by Unknown
I touched my hands together. There was no blood on my skin. I felt around my face next. My hair was where I had left it after my morning routine. Even my bangs were in place, although I might have missed a few kinks from when I woke up. My blouse was clean and white, but my glasses were gone.
The only spot on my white top was a single red speck.
Somehow I knew it was Takumi’s blood. It was the first real, actual blood absorbed by the cloth.
Slowly, I figured out what had happened. This wasn’t hell. It was the real world. The classmates I thought I’d killed were really alive, and Takumi was really gone.
Did that mean that the battles were all an illusion?
Were they all delusions of a jilted mind?
Was Takumi fleeing somewhere right now on his own two legs, while my classmates desperately attempted to pacify the deranged girl who ran into school with a chain saw?
I charged in fueled by a once-in-a-lifetime conviction, slaughtered my classmates, and confirmed Takumi’s love for me … but in the end, could it all have been fantasy?
I can’t deny the possibility. Along the way, I saw many extraordinary things. I wish I could have stated with confidence that my mind was in perfect health, but I couldn’t. Even that hole in the wall could have been the product of a deranged mind and a chain saw.
My eyes searched for Kaoruko. She’d have the answers I need. She wouldn’t lie to me. She has always told me the truth, with every single word an honest one. That included what she said about Takumi. I don’t think that will have changed.
But when I found her, she said, “I’m sorry. I don’t know.”
She told me that her memory of the past few days was a jumble. She, along with the other teachers and students, had been trapped in a mysterious space in the empty adjacent classroom ever since that transfer student came.
I had killed their doppelgängers, which is why all the corpses vanished. After losing to me, the girl made a change of plans and fled, taking Takumi.
When I admitted to Kaoruko that I had killed her, she said, “That’s okay. I don’t mind it from you.”
Without another word, I stood and picked up my chain saw from the floor beside me. The eighteen pounds of machine weighed heavily on my exhausted muscles.
All Kaoruko asked was: “Are you going?”
I nod.
She’s my best friend. My companion from another incarnation. With my chain saw, I killed something that seemed to be her, and yet she still cares for me. I treasured her friendship like none other. I sensed that she’d be with me in the next life too, where she’ll find me alone and call me her friend.
But she was not Takumi.
She was not the one I love.
I didn’t give a damn about any galactic war or frontier butterflies or whatever. It’s not that I didn’t believe what Kaoruko told me. I just didn’t care. I didn’t care about any of it. This could all be an illusion as far as I was concerned. None of it had anything to do with Takumi and me.
What do I care if some missile is screaming its way toward ten billion people from somewhere out in space, or if the Earth and humankind are on the brink of disaster? If they’re going to die out they can go ahead and do it. A world without Takumi at my side is a world not worth existing. I’d rather, much rather, have some planet destroyer come flying from the edge of the universe to blow him and me into smithereens. At least that way I’d be saved the trouble of carving my path through any and all who would try to keep me from him.
With the chain saw my grandfather gave me, I’d cut through a line no student, no girl, and no human should ever cross. Even if everything I’d done was an illusion, I can’t take my actions back. I can’t deceive myself.
It’s time for me to step outside. My journey begins not from the front entrance with its proper door, but through a hole cut in the wall. I will follow my missing Takumi anywhere, no matter how far.
The sea of blood awaits me. I will bring him back, or I will die trying. A game of chicken without a target in sight awaits me, but my hand is already pulling at the starter rope.
The only reality for me is my solid, hefty chain saw.
Squeezing the grip tight, I take my first, firm footstep toward whatever world holds my beloved Takumi.
Introduction © 2015 VIZ Media, LLC
Foreword © 2015 VIZ Media, LLC
(.dis) © 2015 Genevieve Valentine
Sky Spider © 2015 Yusuke Miyauchi
Rough Night in Little Toke © 2015 Libby Cudmore
Outside the Circle © 2015 Ray Banks
Monologue of a Universal Transverse Mercator Projection © 2009 Yumeaki Hirayama
Best Interest © 2015 Brian Evenson
Vampiric Crime Investigative Unit: Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department © 2011 Jyouji Hayashi
Jigoku © 2015 Naomi Hirahara
The Girl Who Loved Shonen Knife © 2015 Carrie Vaughn LLC
Run! © 2013 Kaori Fujino
Hanami © 2015 S. J. Rozan
The Electric Palace © 2015 Violet LeVoit
The Long-Rumored Food Crisis © 1999 Setsuko Shinoda
Three Cups of Tea © 2015 Jeff Somers
Out of Balance © 2015 Chet Williamson
The Saitama Chain Saw Massacre © 2004 Hiroshi Sakurazaka
RAY BANKS is the author of ten novels, including the Cal Innes quartet and, most recently, Angels of the North. He lives in Edinburgh and online at www.thesaturdayboy.com.
Libby Cudmore is the author of The Big Rewind. Her short stories have appeared in The Big Click, Stoneslide Corrective, Big Lucks, and PANK. She blogs at www.libbycudmore.com, and tweets frequently @libbycudmore.
Brian Evenson is the author of a dozen books of fiction, most recently the story collection Windeye and the novel Immobility, both of which were finalists for the Shirley Jackson Award. His novel Last Days won the American Library Association’s award for Best Horror Novel of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain was a finalist for an Edgar Allan Poe Award and an International Horror Guild Award. Other books include The Wavering Knife (IHG Award for best story collection), Dark Property, and Altmann’s Tongue. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Slovenian. He lives in Valencia, California, where he teaches at CalArts.
Jyouji Hayashi was born in Hokkaido in 1962. After working as a clinical laboratory technician, he debuted as a writer in 1995 with his cowritten Dai Nihon Teikoku Oushu Dengeki Sakusen. His popularity grew with the Shonetsu no Hatou series and the Heitai Gensui Oushu Senki series—both military fiction backed by real historical perspectives. Beginning in 2000, he consecutively released Kioku Osen, Shinryakusha no Heiwa, and Ankoku Taiyo no Mezame, stories that combine scientific speculation and sociological investigations. He continues to write and act as a flag bearer for a new generation of hard SF. The first book of his science fiction AADD series, Ouroboros Wave, was translated into English by Haikasoru in 2010.
Born in Pasadena, California, Naomi Hirahara is an award-winning author of two mystery series. The third in her Mas Arai mysteries, Snakeskin Shamisen, won the Edgar Award for Best Paperback Original in 2007. Murder on Bamboo Lane, the first in her Officer Ellie Rush series, received the T. Jefferson Parker Mystery Award in 2014. Her books have been published in Japanese, Korean and French. A former editor of The Rafu Shimpo newspaper in Los Angeles, she has written nonfiction books and novels for middle-grade readers. Her short stories have also been featured in Los Angeles Noir and Los Angeles Noir: The Classics. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University in international relations and attended the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies in Tokyo.
Yumeaki Hirayama is Japanese mystery and horror author. He debuted as a novelist with the psychological thriller Sinker—Shizumu mono in 1996. In 2006 he won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award for short fiction with �
�Monologue of a Universal Transverse Mercator Projection,” and his collection of the same title took the first place in the 2007 Kono mystery ga sugoi (This Mystery is Great) ranking. His other works include Diner and Hitogoto (Somebody Else’s Problem).
Kaori Fujino was born and resides in Kyoto. She won the Bungakukai Prize for New Writers with “Iyashii tori” (“A Greedy Bird”) in 2006 and published her first short story collection of the same title in 2008. Her 2009 short story “Ikenie” (“Sacrifice”) was a finalist for Akutagawa Prize; she took home the Akutagawa for her novella “Tsume to mé” (Nails and Eyes) in 2013. Her recent collections include Ohanashi shiteko chan and A Final Girl.
Violet LeVoit is the author of I Am Genghis Cum and I’ll Fuck Anything That Moves and Stephen Hawking, both of Fungasm Press. She is also a film writer whose reviews and essays have appeared in the Baltimore City Paper, PressPlay.com, TurnerClassicMovies.com, Bright Lights Film Journal, FilmThreat.com and AllMovie.com, as well as the anthology Defining Moments in Movies (Cassell Illustrated).
Yusuke Miyauchi was born in Tokyo in 1979, and grew up in New York from childhood till the age of twelve. In 2010, he won the Sogen SF Short Story Award with his debut fiction “Banjo no yoru” (“Dark Beyond the Weiqi”). His first collection, of the same title, was nominated to the Naoki Prize and won Japan SF Taisho Award in 2012. His second collection, Johannesburg no tenshi tachi (City in Plague Time), was also nominated for the Naoki in 2013; he took home another Japan SF Taisho Award (special award) in 2013. In 2015, he published his first full-length novel, Exodus shokougun (Exodus Syndrome).
S.J. Rozan has won multiple awards, including the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony, Nero, Macavity, and Japanese Maltese Falcon. She’s published thirteen books and fifty short stories under her own name and two novels with Carlos Dews as the writing team of Sam Cabot. S.J. was born in the Bronx and lives in lower Manhattan. Her newest book is Sam Cabot’s Skin of the Wolf.
Hiroshi Sakurazaka was born in 1970 in Tokyo. After a career in information technology, he published his first novel, Modern Magic Made Simple. The first novel was quite successful and is now an ongoing series of seven volumes. It has also been adapted as a manga, in 2008, and as a televised anime series in 2009. He published All You Need Is Kill in 2004, earning a Seiun Award nomination for best science fiction novel, and forming the basis for the international box office smash Edge of Tomorrow. His 2004 short story “The Saitama Chain Saw Massacre” won the 16th SF Magazine Reader’s Award. His other novels include Characters (co-written with Hiroki Azuma) and Slum Online, released in English in 2010 by Haikasoru. Sakurazaka’s short fiction has also appeared in the English-language anthology Press Start to Play.
Setsuko Shinoda is one of most popular cross-genre fiction authors in Japan. Her work includes science fiction, horror, mystery, and literary fantasy. Since her debut in 1990, she has published over fifty books and won many important literary awards such as the Yamamoto Shugoro Prize for Gosaintan: Kamino za (Gosaintan: Seat of the Gods), the Naoki Prize for Onna tachi no Jihado (Women’s Jihad) and the Shibata Renzabro Award for Kaso Girei (False Rites). Her work is acclaimed for its focus on cotemporary social issues and rigorous research. Her recent works include Black Box and Indo-Crystal.
Jeff Somers began writing by court order as an attempt to steer his creative impulses away from engineering genetic grotesqueries. His feeble memory makes every day a joyous adventure of discovery and adventure even as it destroys personal relationships, and his weakness for adorable furry creatures leaves him with many cats. He has published nine novels, including the Avery Cates series of science fiction novels, the darkly hilarious crime novel Chum, and most recently a tale of blood magic and short cons, We Are Not Good People. He has published over thirty short stories, including “Ringing the Changes,” which was included in Best American Mystery Stories 2006, and “Sift, Almost Invisible, Through,” which appeared in the anthology Crimes by Moonlight edited by Charlaine Harris. He has also published the zine The Inner Swine since 1995, but the less said about that, the better. He lives in Hoboken with his wife, The Duchess, and their cats. He considers pants to always be optional.
Genevieve Valentine is the author of Mechanique: A Tale of the Circus Tresaulti, The Girls at the Kingfisher Club, Dream Houses, and Persona. Her short fiction has appeared in Clarkesworld, Strange Horizons, Journal of Mythic Arts, and others, and the anthologies Federations, Teeth, Fearsome Magics, and more; several have appeared in Best of the Year anthologies. Her nonfiction and reviews can be found at NPR.org, AV Club, The Dissolve, and The New York Times. She’s currently the writer of DC’s Catwoman.
Carrie Vaughn is the author of the New York Times best-selling series of novels about a werewolf named Kitty, the fourteenth installment of which is Kitty Saves the World. She’s written several other contemporary fantasy and young adult novels, as well as upwards of eighty short stories. She’s a contributor to the Wild Cards series of shared-world superhero books edited by George R. R. Martin and a graduate of the Odyssey Fantasy Writing Workshop. An Air Force brat, she survived her nomadic childhood and managed to put down roots in Boulder, Colorado. Visit her at www.carrievaughn.com.
Chet Williamson has written in the fields of horror, science fiction, and suspense since 1981. Among his many novels are Second Chance, Hunters, Defenders of the Faith, Ash Wednesday, Reign, and Dreamthorp. The Night Listener and Others, A Little Blue Book of Bibliomancy (both story collections), and Psycho: Sanitarium, an authorized sequel to Robert Bloch’s Psycho, appeared in 2016. Over a hundred of his short stories have appeared in such magazines as The New Yorker, Playboy, Esquire, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and many other magazines and anthologies. He has won the International Horror Guild Award, and has been shortlisted twice for the World Fantasy Award, six times for the Bram Stoker Award, and once for the Edgar Award. A stage and film actor (his most recent appearance is in Joe R. Lansdale’s film Christmas with the Dead), he has recorded over forty unabridged audiobooks, both of his own work and that of many other writers. Follow him on Twitter @chetwill or at www.chetwilliamson.com.
Haikasoru
The Future is Japanese
Great Anthologies Featuring Short Work From and About Japan
THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE
A web browser that threatens to conquer the world. The longest, loneliest railroad on Earth. A North Korean nuke hitting Tokyo, a hollow asteroid full of automated rice paddies, and a specialist in breaking up “virtual” marriages. And yes, giant robots. These thirteen stories from and about the Land of the Rising Sun run the gamut from fantasy to cyberpunk, and will leave you knowing that the future is Japanese. Featuring the Hugo Award-winning short story “Mono No Aware” by Ken Liu!
Pat Cadigan David Moles Rachel Swirsky
Toh EnJoe Issui Ogawa TOBI Hirotaka
Project Itoh Felicity Savage Catherynne M.
Hideyuki Kikuchi Ekaterina Sedia Valente
Ken Liu Bruce Sterling
THE BATTLE ROYALE SLAM BOOK
Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale is an international best seller, the basis of the cult film, and the inspiration for a popular manga. And fifteen years after its initial release, Battle Royale remains a controversial pop culture phenomenon.
Join New York Times best-selling author John Skipp, Batman screenwriter Sam Hamm, Philip K. Dick Award-winning novelist Toh EnJoe, and an array of writers, scholars, and fans in discussing girl power, firepower, professional wrestling, bad movies, the survival chances of Hollywood’s leading teen icons in a battle royale, and so much more!
PHANTASM JAPAN
The secret history of the most famous secret agent in the world. A bunny costume that reveals the truth in our souls. The unsettling notion that Japan itself may be a dream. The tastiest meal you’ll never have, a fedora-wearing neckbeard’s deadly date with a yokai, and the wo
rst work shift anyone—human or not—has ever lived through. Welcome to Phantasm Japan.
Nadia Bulkin Alex Dally MacFarlane Benjanun
Gary A. Braunbeck James A. Moore Sriduangkaew
Quentin S. Crisp Zachary Mason Seia Tanabe
Project Itoh Miyuki Miyabe Joseph Tomaras
Yusaku Kitano Lauren Naturale Dempow Torishima
Jacqueline Koyanagi Tim Pratt Sayuri Ueda
Visit us at www.haikasoru.com
