Boogiepop At Dawn

by Kadono. Kouhei

  Shinpei looked serious but said nothing.

  “I hate thinking about stuff this way, but were you trying to win me over?”

  “What if I was? Tell me to scram, and you'll never see me again.” He shrugged.

  “............” Nagi fell silent for a moment, then seemed to make up her mind.

  “Kuroda-san...I don't understand.”

  “What?”

  “What I should do. Even if I get better, what kind of person should I be?” Her tone was somewhat disconnected.

  Shinpei matched it.

  “What do you want to be?”

  “Maybe a writer? Like my dad? Meet a great guy and get married? Use all that money and start a business? I don't know. None of those sound right.”

  She was completely calm, speaking as though she were discussing the dissection of a frog. This girl was much too smart -- she saw the deceit that lay behind the promise of each potential destiny.

  But she had not yet been convinced that she had no future. She may have considered the possibility, but she had no intention of becoming the heroine of a cheap tragedy.

  Even if she knew the truth, she would probably stay that way.

  “I don't believe anyone manages to live a life that 'sounds right,’” Shinpei muttered.

  “Not even detectives? You don't think your job is worth it?”

  “Nah. Detective work's a dirty business.”

  He saw himself as an informant, forced to spy on people who should have been on his side.

  “Really? I was thinking I might want to be a kind of detective...” she said, flopping back on her pillows.

  “Maybe I should reconsider. Kuroda-san, you ever want to be anything besides a detective?”

  “Hmm... maybe something like... a superhero?”

  Nagi snorted,

  “Please.”

  'No, really. I mean it. Detectives get tied down by all kinds of boring stuff but superheroes get to solve crimes without dealing with any of that other crap. I wouldn't mind doing that.”

  He was half joking, but Nagi became oddly serious.

  “Hmm...” she said, nodding. Then she looked up again, eyes glittering.

  “You should go for it. You'd make a good one.”

  “But how?”

  “I'll sponsor you. You decide the rest!”

  “Woah,” Shinpei grimaced.

  “Think about it!” Nagi said, eyes gleaming, leaning toward him.

  “You shouldn't say things like that so easily. People will take advantage of you.”

  “Screw it; I've never been too fond of my money anyway. If it was you doing it, I wouldn't mind being cheated out of every last yen,” she said, looking him right in the eye. He was reminded again just how young she really was.

  “Nah, I wouldn't...” he started to say, and then he noticed something was terribly wrong. Nagi's face had suddenly crumpled, and she collapsed onto the sheets.

  “...unh!” she groaned.

  Shinpei's eyes widened. This must be the pain she had mentioned.

  “Oh no! I'll call a doctor... !”

  He reached out for the call button next to the bed, but Nagi suddenly grabbed his hand.

  He looked toward her with a start, and she was glaring directly into his eyes, grimacing in pain. Her voice strangled, she rasped,

  “Really...think about it. Please.”

  Shinpei could say nothing. He just pressed the call button.

  The doctor came running. It was not Dr. Kisugi, but a male doctor. Several nurses came in as well, and Shinpei was driven out of the room.

  Even in the hall he could hear her groaning in pain.

  When he saw the desperation in Nagi's eyes, Shinpei had realized something. She knew instinctively that she would never be cured.

  He opened his hand, the hand Nagi had grabbed a moment before. Smoke rose from his palm. It was burning.

  Because Nagi had grabbed him.

  There was no doubt about it now.

  She was experiencing growing pains, but it was not any normal kind of growth. She was evolving. She was definitely one of the MPLS the Towa Organization was working so hard to find.

  What's more, he knew her evolution was destroying her body. She was destined for failure, unable to survive the change. She was an evolutionary dead end. No matter what any of her doctors did, she had no future.

  “…………”

  He stared down at his burned hand.

  I've done it at last.

  He had finally fulfilled his mission. He had found an MPLS. It was a huge success for his primary function. Even if she was a broken sample, every MPLS was valuable, worth securing for the research potential.

  She would be taken to a facility, subjected to countless tests, and after they had finished experimenting with her while she was alive, her lifeless corpse would be dissected.

  I've done it. All this time spent disguised as a detective has finally paid off. All those shoes worn away investigating love affairs was not for nothing.

  He should've felt the bliss of success earned after so many years of empty results. But why did he not feel happy?

  “...ha.” Suddenly, face twitching, he started to laugh.

  “Ha ha ha ha, ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha...”

  It was a hollow laugh that shook the air in the hospital, causing the temperature to drop. A cold echo spread out around him.

  4

  Mo Murder received emergency orders.

  Publicly he was an ordinary salaryman named Sasaki Masanori, but in truth, he did not work for any company. There were records that could prove his employment at a major food manufacturer, but those were fakes provided by the Towa Organization. His real career was in a different field.

  He was an assassin.

  Mo Murder was a simple combat-type synthetic human, and it was his job to dispose of anyone who might harm the Towa Organization.

  This time the call came to his cell phone while he was walking the streets as always, pretending to be a normal businessman while actually searching for signs of an MPLS.

  “Sasaki here.”

  “...D3 in progress. Accept order at NH33W,” a voice said in lightning-fast Hungarian, and then hung up.

  He quickly headed to the specified location, an ordinary coffee shop named Changlese.

  A contact was disguised as a waitress there, and she gave him further information which he immediately proceeded to act upon.

  “...name of Scarecrow, human name Kuroda Shinpei. Kill on sight for treacherous actions. Namely, an attack on facility RS22TTU...”

  Why the hell did he do that?

  “Destroyed the facility, reasons unknown. . . damage concentrated on drugs and equipment.”

  Was he trying to get some sort of medicine or related equipment? What’s he going to do with them?

  He checked over his target's combat abilities, made a few educated guesses at his mental state, analyzing the data as best he could. But his conclusions were inadequate, based on insufficient data, so he was forced to decide his best plan was to exercise extreme caution and attack at full strength.

  From the data, he chose an escape route that seemed likely. His plan was based more on his finely honed instincts as an assassin than the unreliable data.

  Mo Murder pursued Scarecrow like a hound dog.

  ***

  “Mm?”

  On her way back from the restroom, Kisugi Makiko noticed the hospital window was half open. She frowned.

  She was on duty in the psychiatric ward that night. She was a new doctor, having just completed her residency, and was often given the unpopular jobs.

  “That's strange...” she muttered, closing the window. Burglary seemed unlikely. This was the seventh floor. No thief would climb this far up.

  Had someone simply forgotten to close it? That certainly seemed to be the most probable scenario. She turned and began to head back to her office.

  Then she heard something clink.

  She stiffened, and call
ed out toward the sound,

  “Is someone there?”

  From a different direction she heard a loud pounding, and someone swearing. Kisugi Makiko ran toward the noise.

  The door to the room of one of the patients she was counseling, Kirima Nagi, was half open and still moving. Yet, there was no sign of anyone inside.

  “Wh-what...?” she stepped hesitantly into the room.

  The window here was also open. She looked outside, but saw nothing but darkness.

  The patient was sound asleep. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Perhaps she was hot -- both of her arms were outside of her blanket.

  “Mm?”

  There was a small bottle under the bed.

  It was a medical ampule, with the seal broken. About half-fuIl, the contents had been carefully measured into a syringe. But used ampules were usually disposed of immediately.

  It was very strange for one to be lying around like this.

  And she had never seen this particular ampule being used in this hospital. Not only this hospital---+he had never seen anything shaped quite like it in med school or in her years as a resident, either...

  “…………”

  She found herself reflecting on the contempt she received from the head doctors on account of her gender, on the sneers of the older nurses because she was new, because she hadn't graduated from a particularly prestigious school.

  Before she knew it, she was lowering the ampule into her pocket, careful not to spill any of its contents.

  A moment later a security guard came running-he must have heard her voice.

  “Dr. Kisugi, something wrong?”

  Careful not to let him see how fast her heart was beating, she said quietly,

  “No, it was nothing.”

  The half-filled ampule was carried away unseen in Kisugi Makiko's pocket, moving to a place unrelated to the present situation.

  ***

  Damn it! Like an amateur!

  Mo Murder ground his teeth.

  Scarecrow was fleeing through the nighttime streets. If Mo Murder had not let himself be so overcome with surprise that he made a sound and attracted the attention of that woman doctor, he would have been finished long ago.

  But the hospital room Scarecrow had probably chosen at random to hide inside...Mo Murder had recognized the name of the patient, and it had rattled him.

  Kirima Nagi -- that man's daughter. The daughter of Kirima Seiichi, the man he had killed four years earlier.

  Of all the places for him to hide...

  Scarecrow had only gone to the hospital to acquire nourishment. Mo Murder had seen him stealing glucose. He was also injured, so he must have been looking for pain killers, as well.

  He had probably ducked into that room to inject himself without anyone noticing. But for that room's occupant to be one of the few people who could ever have slowed Mo Murder down...it was a staggering coincidence.

  But it was a coincidence. This has nothing to do with that man. My fate is not still tied to his!

  Mo Murder shook his head, desperately trying to stop himself from thinking about Kirima Nagi. Scarecrow was fast, but he was wounded, and could not run forever.

  Mo Murder cleared his head, and put aside his blunder, like an athlete trying to achieve a come-from-behind victory.

  Quietly and unerringly, he pursued his target.

  5

  As Shinpei ran, he asked himself,

  “Why?” over and over.

  The assassin's attacks were astonishingly precise and swift. They were over in an instant, the assassin gone before he even had a chance to fight back. His assailant wasn't trying to finish him off directly; instead, he was just picking away, gradually weakening him.

  It was working. Shinpei was beginning to believe he would not make it out of this alive.

  But questions were still spinning around inside.

  Why did I do that?

  She was just a kid -- he'd spent a couple of hours with her at most. Why would he go and throw his life away for her?

  He had stolen a powerful drug called the “Evolution Medicine” from a Towa Organization facility. Then he had injected Nagi with it (his hands had been shaking, so first he had taken some pain-killers as a sedative).

  The medicine would accelerate the evolution of any human, but in Nagi's case, since she had already started to evolve, it would act as a vaccine against the possibility lurking within her body. At least, in theory. If all went well, her body would become that of an ordinary human again, and she would avoid being killed as an incomplete possibility.

  He had carefully chosen the amount to inject, but even so, it was very risky. It might have no effect, and its potential side effects could easily kill her instead of saving her. If that happened, all of this would be in vain.

  He knew that. So why had he risked everything on a gamble that might save her?

  Honestly, what was I thinking?

  The assassin's attacks came persistently. Eventually Shinpei was so badly injured he could barely stay on his feet. He had lost a lot of blood, and his eyes would not focus.

  The assassin jumped out of an alley and struck him hard on the head.

  But Shinpei still wore his hat, under which he had hidden a metal plate. The assassin's knife was deflected, twisting his assailant's hand awkwardly.

  “Ack!”

  “Ha! Gotcha... !” Shinpei cried, attempting to flee, but there was nowhere to run.

  He staggered around the back of a building, across the grass, and collapsed to the ground.

  “.....ah.......”

  All his strength left him.

  He looked up at the sky. It was morning now, and the sky was clear and blue. He hadn't noticed the transition from night to day.

  There were a lot of people behind him. He wondered where he was, and then heard a voice over a loud speaker:

  “Mourners attending the Miyashita funeral, please come to the main hall.”

  He could just make out a tall pipe rising to the sky, with smoke coming out.

  A crematorium...huh...the perfect place...

  He wasn't getting up again. No force of will could make him move -- his body was dying. It was surprising enough that he'd managed to run this far.

  “Really? Promise?”

  “You should go for it.”

  Girls' voices were in his head.

  But at the same time there was something unpleasant rising up inside him, an agonizing pain.

  Oh God. Even with all this, I'm still not...

  But his thought was interrupted as he noticed the black shadow standing in front of him.

  His eyes were too weak to see anything clearly, but he could tell it was not the assassin. It was too small. A child, perhaps?

  In his blurred vision it looked less like a person and more like a pipe rising out of the ground.

  “What are you doing?” it asked.

  The voice was clear but he could not tell if the shadow was a boy or a girl.

  'Not a lot,” he tried to say, but his lips would not move properly, his voice barely made a sound. It felt like he was talking in his mind.

  But the shadow seemed to have no problems understanding him.

  “But...you're dying,” it said.

  “Apparently.”

  “You aren't scared?”

  “...sure I am.”

  “Then...then why are you so calm?”

  It seemed like the tone of the voice changed suddenly in mid-sentence. It became somewhat mechanical-automatic.

  “l am scared, but...I'm also really angry so I guess that stops me from thinking about dying.”

  “You're angry?”

  “At how lame I am.”

  “. . .you refer to your clothes? A strange hat, a dark coat...why do you dress like that?”

  “....nothing to do with my clothes. I'm a scarecrow you see. I like black things, like crows.”

  “Hmm.”

  “And what are you? A shinigami? Wait a minute longer, I'm
almost ready for you.”

  “Shinigami?”

  “I'm a lot like you, you know. A scarecrow and a crow together are a very bad omen...” he tried to smile, but couldn't quite manage it.

  “Why are you angry?” the shadow asked, its tone oddly mocking.

  “...guess I can tell a shinigami. You see, I tried to save a girl. In exchange for my life.”

  “Isn't that a good thing?”

  “Yeah, but now...at the last minute...I'm kind of wishing I hadn't bothered. I'm thinking I did something stupid, something I shouldn't have done.”

  He gritted his teeth. He could barely talk, but somehow he continued the conversation -- partially thinking it, partially muttering it.

  “It would've been better to have done nothing rather than end up all pathetic and lame...and it's like a bad joke...I'm the one, I'm the one who blathered on about superheroes, so cocky. But I'm nothing like that...there's no excuse for it. She said I could be one, but...”

  This was awful, incredibly awful.

  “…………”

  The shadow listened quietly.

  He groaned,

  “l should be punished for this. Someone should pass judgment on me...but there's no time. I'm dying. It'll all be over soon. With me still stuck here, undecided...”

  The shadow interrupted him.

  “You want me to judge you?”

  “...eh?”

  “If I do that, will you become the superhero you want to be?”

  “…………”

  “Would you wish for the regret in your mind to be cast aside? Would you want your mental state to once more be one she can be proud of? To return to the moment when your mind was a beautiful thing?”

  The shadow's voice was emotionless. It was mysterious, unfathomable.

  “…………”

  For a long moment, he did not respond, but at last the conversation in his mind resumed.

  “What are you?”

  “You called me a shinigami.”

  “...you're probably just a delusion, an illusion you see and hear as you die. A fragile hope, like a bubble, that will pop and vanish in a moment...you're kind of a creepy one, too.”

  “You think I'm nothing more than some kind of...sinister bubble?”