Against a Perfect Sniper

by Shiden Kanzaki

  “Satomi!” Screaming, the Seitenshi came running toward him. “Get Enju back here right now!”

  The girl who had been able to say it was her fate to be killed was in front of him right now looking pale, with her shoulders heaving as she panted.

  “H-hey, what’s the—”

  “I used my authority to do an International Initiator inquiry into Tina Sprout’s name. Her IP rank is 98. She’s an owl Initiator and one of the enhanced NEXT soldiers. I saw her specs, and her numbers are terrifying. Enju will be killed!”

  IP rank 98. Just those words echoed over and over in Rentaro’s head. That was way above Kagetane Hiruko and his daughter. Rentaro recalled Tina’s face and shook his head softly. There was no way.

  Then, he suddenly regained his senses and dialed his phone as if hitting it, pressing it hard to his ear. As it rang a few times, he shut his eyes tight and prayed desperately that Enju was safe.

  It rang about ten times, and then there was the sound of the phone being picked up. “Enju! Is that you, Enju?!” he called desperately. “Ahh, oh good, get back here right now. We’re going to rethink our strategy.”

  There was no answer.

  No, he could hear faint breathing from the other side.

  “Enju, what’s wrong? At least answer.”

  Rentaro listened dubiously, but there was no answer after all.

  “Enju…? What’s…the matter…? En…… Huh?”

  Rentaro took the phone off his ear for a moment and stared at it fixedly.

  “Is this……Tina………?”

  There was a long silence.

  That said everything.

  The cell phone Enju should have been holding was in Tina’s hands. Then, what had happened to its rightful owner? All sound disappeared from his ears, and his blood froze.

  No. No, no… No…!

  Suddenly, there was a click, and the dial tone rang.

  The cell phone slipped out of his hands, ringing dryly as it bounced. The blood running out of his side spread slowly on the ground, soaking the phone. Rentaro fell to his knees, shaking his head from side to side without a sound.

  Enju had been…killed?

  BLACK BULLET 2

  CHAPTER 03

  THE COURAGE TO BE IMPERFECT

  1

  “Hey, you came, civsec. It’s kinda sudden, but I’ll have you look at the scene of the crime.” The square-jawed face of Inspector Shigetoku Tadashima of the First Investigation Division had a fleeing expression that looked like sympathy, but he tried to treat Rentaro as matter-of-factly as possible.

  When Rentaro touched his own face softly with a pale hand, he felt dry skin and cracked lips. What kind of expression did he have on his face right now? Rentaro shook his heavy head and looked left and right. There were no window frames or anything, and the undressed concrete floor was riddled with bullet holes. Rentaro was on the sixth floor of a building under construction. Around him, crime scene inspectors and people from forensics came and went hurriedly.

  Also jokingly called the homicide department, the First Investigation Division of the Metropolitan Police Department had long included all Gastrea incidents, which had a high probability of being criminal, in their operations. The work of the crime lab was also partially privatized, and things that required complicated calculations like analyzing the trajectory of a bullet were, after thoroughly preserving the evidence and ensuring confidentiality, entrusted to large corporations like Shiba Heavy Weapons.

  Rentaro shook his head. What was he thinking?

  He was putting off his thoughts, his mind secretly trying to desperately deny what he was about to see. Rentaro had seen a number of crime scenes with the police as a civsec officer, but it was the first time his stomach felt so heavy. It was because the victim was possibly someone he knew very well.

  His brain wouldn’t function properly. The fact that he was standing here breathing seemed like something on the other side of the TV screen and felt strangely like he was watching someone else.

  “Hey, are you all right, civsec?”

  Someone shook Rentaro’s shoulder, and he returned to himself with the pain of the wound in his side and shook Tadashima’s hand off.

  “I’m fine… Just, just show me the crime scene.”

  Tadashima looked at him questioningly but silently cleared the way for Rentaro. When they got to the back, the forensics people in blue jumpsuits noticed Rentaro and nodded uncomfortably.

  When Rentaro finally stopped walking, he stared at the ground. On the concrete floor, there was a spot that had an especially concentrated number of bullet holes, and like stepping-stones, there were countless bloodstains that had small round chalk marks drawn around them.

  Recently, there had been a number of days with record-breaking high temperatures, but today felt especially hot and humid, and Rentaro loosened his necktie.

  “This is where the victim was shot.”

  “It’s pretty intense,” Rentaro was warned, and when he looked at the photo, he had to cover his mouth to hold back the nausea he felt.

  “It’s been hot recently, so the flies gather. That’s why I said it was intense.”

  Rentaro swallowed the urge to vomit and looked once more at the bundled stack of photos, flipping through them. Most of the pictures were of pieces of flesh. The occasional pieces of white were probably bone fragments. Even though he was just looking at them, he felt like he could smell the choking stink of blood.

  The last picture was that of a pink smartphone that had been stomped to pieces. His eyes weren’t tricking him. It was Enju’s.

  Rentaro stood up and frowned, looking back and forth between the photos and the places marked by chalk circles. Enju Aihara was defeated by Tina Sprout here.

  “Strangely, the victim was shot from four different places at the same time,” Tadashima said.

  When Rentaro looked in the direction Tadashima pointed, he saw that Tadashima was referring to buildings in four directions on his right, left, in front of him, and diagonally to the right and above.

  “And from the rooftop of each building, we found the ruins of heavy machine guns from three different places. I don’t know if it was to keep any evidence from being left behind, but the machine guns used were destroyed with plastic bombs and abandoned. They have been sent to Shiba Heavy Weapons for analysis, but what we know right now is that the serial numbers and identifying information of the guns have been scratched off, and that parts that are not normally used on machine guns were equipped.”

  “Is Enju dead?” Rentaro absentmindedly raised just his gaze.

  “I don’t know… Right now, they’re checking the DNA of the scattered victim and your Initiator.”

  “It’s Enju. There’s no mistaking it. In the pictures, I saw scraps of Enju’s coat.”

  “I see……” Even Tadashima had a gloomy look on his face as he looked down and finally looked around the crime scene. “Don’t despair yet. They’re saying that the bullets probably hit her in the gut, and there was no body at the crime scene. On top of that, all the bullets that they gathered were made of regular lead, not Varanium. Initiators won’t die if they aren’t shot directly in the heart or the brain, right?”

  “Even if that were the case, this means Enju has been taken away by the enemy!” And the bullets that hit Enju were antitank rifle bullets. Like their name implied, these were extremely powerful bullets developed to pierce through the armor of a tank. Tanks had become stronger because of Chobham armor and the like, so antitank bullets were unable to bring tanks down anymore, but because they were such overkill when used against humans, their use was limited through war agreements. If shot at a human body, it would open a large hole on impact, and even if the person managed to escape instant death or death from shock, they would still feel a writhing pain.

  Imagining that much, Rentaro squeezed his eyes shut. Right now, at this instant, was Enju undergoing harsh interrogation or torture? There was no way a child could withstand severe tortur
e. In addition to having all the information she had pulled out of her, Enju was probably already—

  Rentaro’s fist shook. Why hadn’t I noticed? Idiot, idiot, idiot! Just as he was trying to anticipate the sniping and figure out a plan to deal with it, Tina also knew that someone was on her trail and had figured out a plan to deal with that.

  And Enju had fallen straight into her trap.

  How in the world did she defeat Enju? How did she get Enju, the natural enemy of snipers, with a sniper rifle?

  In the first place, that Enju had been shot from four places at the same time was hard to understand. Assassinations were really only done by the best of the best, so there were probably two perpetrators, Tina and her promoter, but was that not the case?

  No matter how hard he thought, he couldn’t find the answer. The only thing he knew was that Tina boasted battle power far above what he had imagined.

  Rentaro let out a shaky breath. The only thing left was a cold fear toward the professional killer named Tina. It was all his own fault for not being able to keep Enju back.

  In the end, the Seitenshi’s second conference was canceled. At this point, it was unclear whether or not there would be a third.

  His head was heavy and felt like it was filled with lead. His brain wouldn’t work more than this. Besides, in his innermost heart, he didn’t care anymore. Everything had lost its meaning. Rentaro turned on his heel and left the crime scene, not listening to the unmoving Tadashima’s voice.

  Rentaro went home dragging his feet. When he arrived, he put his key into the keyhole and turned. Unexpectedly, air cooler than that from outside touched the back of his neck.

  Rentaro stood stock-still in the entryway for a while. During the last terrorist attack, there had been the distressing incident of Enju running away from home, but compared to that, the situation this time was much worse.

  It was painful staying at home, so Rentaro went outside. After walking for a while, he realized he forgot to lock the door to his apartment and stopped but decided he didn’t care and continued walking. The sun was setting before his eyes, and it became dark.

  He didn’t know why, but Rentaro’s feet headed toward the downtown area with a lot of people. Perhaps he was looking for the company of others. However, what Rentaro wanted wasn’t there. Rentaro leaned against the guardrail of the pedestrian bridge and looked down on the town, but the dazzling lights were too bright and the happy laughter of the families was too loud and hurt his ears.

  One feels loneliest in a crowd. This was exactly how he felt. He felt miserable, like his heart was about to be crushed.

  Rentaro looked at one of the families. A child about Enju’s age was jumping at the father’s back.

  Why am I not them?

  Why are they not me?

  Questions with no answers swirled inside his head. Rentaro went home as if running away and fell asleep embracing his despair.

  The next day, Rentaro stayed home from school. He felt no will to leave his blankets. Though an eight-tatami-mat room was too small for two people to use, it was too big for one person.

  When he turned on his cell phone, he had several texts from Kisara, Miori, and Sumire, but he didn’t feel like looking at what was inside and left them.

  He had a hard time falling back asleep, and he felt dazed. He had a sense of loss like there was a piece of him missing, but his heart was numb.

  Waking up after sleeping for a number of hours, he was starting to have a hard time telling the difference between day and night. The day before, he had pulled back the dark curtains and put masking tape over the windows and cracks, so the space Rentaro was in now was filled with darkness.

  In his light slumber, Rentaro dreamed. The intercom rang, and when he went out front, Enju’s grotesque corpse had been left there. Another time, it was a burned body curled up like a fetus, and then a body that had been strangled to death with rope marks on the neck. A corpse with the head cut off. A half-dismantled body.

  All the Enjus were left in an unspeakable condition. “Why did you not come save me, Rentaro?” they asked.

  Rentaro pushed his face into his pillow and writhed, trying desperately to make the delusions go away.

  After another ten hours passed, he stopped seeing even the self-punishing destructive delusions that swirled in his head. His stomach had stopped telling him he was hungry. It had probably started consuming his own organs because it couldn’t take it anymore.

  He remembered what Sumire had once told him. When people live only on water, they will become skin and bones and die, but if people don’t even drink water, they will die from acute starvation, dying before they use all the nutrients in their body, not giving their bodies the chance to become thin before death.

  His consciousness became muddy, and various hallucinations came and went. Like throwing everything out of a toy chest, he was swallowed by the torrent of his thoughts as they flowed.

  Then, Rentaro felt odd, and his shoulders shook. The next thing he knew, moisture was running down his cheeks. The tears had finally come.

  If Enju was dead, then what was he supposed to do with himself from now on? If he was to take a step out of the house, should he go right? Should he go left?

  What should he do? Should he just do nothing? Should he live? Should he die?

  He didn’t even know the answer to that anymore.

  Enju, Enju, Enju, please come home. I miss you, Enju.

  Suddenly, he started to lose consciousness. He was probably faint from not eating. He didn’t want to think about anything anymore.

  There was a voice calling his name. He thought he was hearing things, but he wasn’t. Outside the door, a spare key was thrust into the keyhole, and the door opened vigorously, making Rentaro squint his eyes at the brightness.

  Kisara panted as she came in. With wet eyes and both hands on her mouth, she said, “Enju is… Enju is—”

  Rentaro rushed into the hospital room with enough force to run something down. There was baby’s breath in a flower vase, and the breeze coming in from the open window made the curtains flutter. In the middle of the hospital room, a girl was lying on top of the bulging bed. Her small chest went up and down, so he could tell she was breathing.

  He wasn’t imagining things.

  Rentaro kneeled by the bed with an expression of ecstasy on his face, and he prayed, putting both elbows on the bed and holding Enju’s hand.

  O God, God, God! Without words, he prayed thanks that Enju was safe.

  Suddenly, Kisara hugged him tightly from behind, and he smelled a sweet fragrance. “You’re so emaciated… Your injury isn’t fully healed yet, either, idiot… Why do you treat yourself so badly? If you and Enju are both gone, then what am I supposed to do…?” The end of her sentence half-disappeared in her tears.

  Rentaro put the palm of his hand on top of the palm of Kisara’s hand and closed his eyes. “Sorry, Kisara. I’m really sorry…”

  Guiltily, Rentaro rolled up the hem of Enju’s hospital gown and breathed a sigh of relief. Enju’s stomach was the pretty skin color of a normal child’s stomach, and the gunshot wounds had healed over nicely without even leaving a scar.

  “Is it all over, then…?” he said.

  The assassin had failed once and faced danger to try again. Surely there would be no third time…

  Kisara looked up at Rentaro with eyes shaking with uneasiness. “Satomi, I sent you a text. Did you see it? The date of the Seitenshi’s third unofficial conference was set yesterday.”

  “When?! What’s the date and time of the conference?”

  “Tomorrow night, at eight o’clock…”

  “Tomorrow…”

  Just then, there was the sound of a door opening. Looking back, Rentaro saw a doctor and nurse come into the room. He got up with a start to press them with questions. “Is Enju all right? Will there be any aftereffects? Where did they find her? I want to talk to her. Is it okay to wake her up?”

  The doctor looked at the nurse a
nd replied with a troubled face, “We will know for sure once she wakes up, but we probably do not have to worry about aftereffects. However, right now, it would be best not to force her to wake up. Many times the lethal amount of anesthetic was intravenously injected into her before she was left in a room in an abandoned building where the police received a report and took her into their care. The only reason she is still alive is that she has the Gastrea virus in her.”

  Many times the lethal amount of anesthetic…?

  The doctor and nurse exchanged looks, as if the next part was hard to say. “There is one thing we must tell you, Satomi. About your Initiator’s body’s corrosion rate… The process involved to heal the large wound from this time made it rise slightly.”

  Rentaro made a fist, grinding his teeth and looking down. It’s my fault, he thought. Finally, biting his bottom lip with regret, he lifted his face. “How long before Enju wakes up…?”

  “I’d like to keep an eye on her for two days.”

  “Two days…”

  Something was strange.

  As Rentaro tried to find the source of his discomfort, he pressed his temple, but suddenly his vision blinked, and his body swayed. The next thing he knew, Kisara was holding him up. Now that he thought about it, he was on the verge of death himself. Since he had remembered, he couldn’t figure out how he had been standing up. He felt languid and exhausted, attacked by the pain of his wound, and his vision faded into darkness.

  Rentaro sipped the rice gruel, but when he forced the porridge into his mouth, his stomach was surprised and started contracting. He wanted to recover as soon as possible, so he forced the food down through the nausea, consuming half of the hospital food in several sittings, and had them give him more saline in his IV drip.

  Holding Enju, he dozed off next to her, and when he woke up, he was feeling much better.

  The doctor said, “You need to be hospitalized, too,” but Rentaro smiled bitterly and left.

  Then, Kisara held her nose and pointed out, “You stink! Satomi, you have terrible BO!” So on his way home to pick up a change of clothes, he stopped by the public bath to wash his hair and wipe down his body.