Apparently she was the only one out of the group who noticed, but when Shigaki had his sleeve lifted up for that split-second, she saw something.
He must have been a fan of tattoos, because he had something that looked like one on his upper arm. Kind of a fancy design, too—a pentagram with wings on top of all five points. It was an odd mismatch with his otherwise conservative choice of wardrobe.
But Enju was never one to dwell on things too long. Kicking the observation out of her ever-curious mind, she darted up the stairs after Rentaro.
Senichi Shigaki, having safely made his fortune in the Varanium mining industry, owned a house in one of the poshest areas of Tokyo Area’s District 1. Inside the large residence, within a study that he forbade anyone else to enter, there was a bookcase half-recessed in the wall, one filled with old classics and dictionaries patiently waiting to be opened again.
If someone with architectural experience entered this study after giving the house an examination from the outside, he or she probably would have noticed that the room was far too small compared to the external dimensions.
Upon returning to this study, Shigaki turned not toward the handsome mahogany desk resting on one side of the room, but to the far end of this bookcase. He took out The Encyclopedic Guide to Weapons of the World, Vol. 3, then inserted a key into the hole that lurked behind the tome. This activated the Elecompack-branded mobile shelving. The shelf, laden with books, glided along rails on the floor. In an instant, the wall of books had fallen back, revealing a corridor to a new room.
With a practiced gait, Shigaki delved into the pitch-black hall and the inscrutable abyss. The dimensions of the space were only barely visible.
Then, out of nowhere, there was the whoosh of flame springing to life, followed by the floor lighting up a dim shade of blue.
It illuminated a large leather executive chair, which Shigaki promptly used. That was enough to energize the light, instantly brightening the entire room. A pentagram drew itself on the floor, adding intricately designed wings to each point with a single stroke.
“You’re late, you idiot. You think you’ve got enough clout with this group to keep me waiting?”
Looking up, Shigaki saw an executive chair much like his own at one of the star’s vertices. There sat a man with his legs crossed, his bushy beard and head of hair giving him the appearance of a lion. It was Sougen Saitake, the lone Five Wings Syndicate executive manager from Osaka.
Shigaki, Tokyo Area’s top manager, looked around the room. As far as he could see, only two points on the pentagram were occupied—his and Saitake’s. The other three chairs were empty.
“I suppose I can excuse Hokkaido for its absence, but where’s Hakata and Sendai?”
“How should I know? I’m fine with just the two of us handling everything, regardless.”
Looking closer at Saitake revealed that his body had a blue-tinged light coursing around it—the telltale sign of a holographic broadcast.
Shigaki was attending nothing less than a board meeting. One attended by the five most powerful people in Five Wings—the chosen vertices of the pentagram.
“I have just returned,” Shigaki solemnly began, “from a meeting with Rentaro and his people. The sheer enormity of what he destroyed, and yet he couldn’t have been more carefree with me.”
“Yes, I’m sure having your contacts purged from the police force must have been quite a setback.”
“Not exactly. We can replace them all anytime we like. If you call that a ‘setback,’ I think having a certain someone send an undercover assassin over to kill the Seitenshi was rather more of a setback for our cause, was it not?”
“Ah.” Saitake stared into space, looking somewhat embarrassed. “I am glad to see your snide remarks haven’t suffered at all. I thought eliminating the Seitenshi would be the most efficient way to move things along. I gave you all an ultimatum. You responded with this naive idealism, so I went through with it. You know full well that I have no time for those kind of people. Either you follow me, or you get the hell out of my way. That’s how I do business.”
“Saitake, you have no idea how Tokyo Area works. The Seitenshi is an indispensable symbol—government personified. We need her if the Area’s government is to retain any kind of public mandate. The chaos that would result from her killing could help us come to power, yes, but as long as the Tendo family has not been toppled, any effect would be fleeting at best. We have to get Kikunojo Tendo out of the picture first.”
“And that’s why you’re going through the incredibly circuitous route of securing Kisara Tendo? Shigaki, is that girl truly worth all this effort?”
Shigaki shook his head. Of course he had to bring that up. “You didn’t see the crime-scene photographs of Kazumitsu Tendo’s murder. You wouldn’t understand until you do. That girl is the most demonic offspring the Tendo clan has ever seen.”
“Oh?”
“Plus, I understand her ultimate goal is to kill Kikunojo Tendo as well. We both seek the same thing.”
“Hmph. And yet you failed to recruit her.”
“Oh, I’ve quite succeeded.”
“Mm?”
Shigaki’s lips curled.
“I said, I’ve succeeded.”
Saitake fell silent, attempting to gauge how true this was.
“By the way,” Shigaki continued, “how is Juzouji doing?”
“Hmph. The machine’s purring along, you could say. He thought you were the number-two of the group after me, you’ll be delighted to know.”
“Ha! You’ll be taking my ‘snide’ crown from me before long, you know.”
“Only because I’ve learned from the best.”
The two chuckled at each other across the darkness.
“So,” Saitake said, “Five Wings has taken the leadership posts of Osaka Area and Hokkaido Area. We have three left to go. Do not let our dream escape your memory. Our cause is just.”
“Glory to the Five Wings.”
“Glory to the Five Wings.”
The blue light disappeared. The room was wrapped in darkness once more.
The howl of a lonely dog echoed from some faraway point. The darkness was growing thicker as Rentaro Satomi dragged his sore feet across the brightly lit street, on his way back home. The smell of burnt explosives pervading his body gave him a headache; his arms were shaking so bad from all the recoil he was surprised nothing had gotten dislocated. Using chopsticks might pose a challenge for him later on.
He tried putting his hands over both ears, but the ringing continued. It was a pretty bad case. He had working ear protectors on—or, at least, they were supposed to be working; Miori’s new gun and ammunition must have generated too much of an explosive blast for them.
He had spent the entire past day running testing duty for Shiba Heavy Weapons’ latest products. Miori was busy developing a handgun that used powerful Initiator-specific ammo. Once it was complete, he was planning to ask Miori for the first one off the line so he could hand it to Tina.
Miori never said anything about Rentaro’s recent legal trouble. The closest she got to that was when she said, “Time to pay me back, Satomi dear,” after passing him at the gun range. It was just more of that weird sense of distance she liked to retain with him. He kind of liked it.
He was busy enjoying the sense of fatigue that racked his body as he tromped up the metal stairway and turned the doorknob to his apartment. The moment he opened it up, he was greeted by a girl in a black sailor-style school uniform and a frilly apron.
“Welcome back, Satomi.”
“Um…Kisara?”
She was all smiles, going behind Rentaro and pushing him into the room. He took off his jacket and loosened his necktie as he looked around. Then he realized the other girls in his life weren’t there.
“Where’s Enju and Tina?”
“They’re out watching the neighborhood fireworks show.”
Rentaro slapped a hand with his fist. “Oh! The one where they ask y
ou to pay five hundred yen to join the district association? That was today?”
Five hundred yen didn’t seem like it’d be enough to result in all that exciting a show, but the girls had yet to see any kind of fireworks this year. They were willing to bite at just about anything.
Kisara, reading Rentaro’s face, gently shook her head. “Oh, it’s fine. You have to be twelve or younger to participate, anyway. They’ll have a bigger show at the main festival soon enough. We can all hit that one together.”
Huh. So this is the first night I’ll be alone with Kisara in a while, then.
Rentaro noticed the assortment of colorful dishes on the low table. He could tell she had been using the kitchen. An ever so slightly foul smell wafted in from somewhere. The nervous sweats were coming already.
“Kisara, you didn’t…cook, did you?”
She smiled in response. Instead of answering, she simply pointed two thumbs at herself. She must have had nearly ten bandages wrapped around her fingers.
“Well,” she said, “it’s kind of annoying to have everyone pick on my food all the time, you know? I’m trying to improve a little bit.”
Rentaro flung his body down by the table, admitting defeat in the face of Kisara’s mangia, mangia aura.
An acrid, sour stench, like the contents of a dog’s stomach freshly unfurled on the carpet, stung his nostrils. “Oh, God,” he whispered, shutting his eyes tight.
The gel-like piece of organic matter on the plate ferried from the kitchen was done up in a horrid array of colors, like a crazed painter splattering a canvas with everything he had on his palette. Just looking at it gave Rentaro a crash course on what insanity truly meant.
The smell it emitted stabbed into his eyes. He tried to pass it off to Kisara as tears of joy while he scooped up a bit in the spoon. It was oddly springy, jiggling about in excitement. With one final, resigned motion, he brought it to his mouth.
For a single moment, he experienced nirvana. Across the river, he could see his father, Takaharu Satomi, beckoning at him.
“Gehh, this slop is disgu—”
“Dis-guh-what?” Kisara stared daggers into his eyes.
“It’s one of the most alarming creations of mankind!”
“Ooh, tell me more.”
“It’s like the food of some mad artist! It makes my very pulse stop!”
“Hee-hee! Thank you.”
Kisara, luckily, was stupid enough not to realize she wasn’t being complimented.
“—Stop treating me like an idiot!”
—Or not. He was hoping to string her along a bit longer than that, at least. His roommate stood up in a huff, running a hand distractedly through her hair.
“Ugghh, I just… All right, you teach me, Satomi.”
“Huh?”
Suddenly, Kisara was bashful, toes almost turned inward as she rubbed her thighs together.
“Satomi, you promised you’d teach me how to cook, didn’t you? Before all…that happened. Like, when we had those sweet potatoes?”
Oh. Right. He did say that to her. Maybe.
After a moment’s thought, he stood and rolled up his sleeves. “All right, whaddaya want to make?”
“…What’s the secret to your stir-fried vegetables?”
There wasn’t any “secret” to it. Vegetables, pan, oil, bam. But Kisara was ready to go, tightening her apron and chopping up some spinach from the fridge. Rentaro stood behind her in the director’s role. Or he meant to. But after just a couple minutes, he already couldn’t stand it any longer, taking her hands from behind.
They had to begin with how to use a kitchen knife. The knife tapped several times unsteadily against the chopping board. The TV wasn’t on. Several quiet moments passed.
“Um, Kisara?”
“Hmm?”
“Did you…like Hitsuma, or anything?”
Kisara silently kept her hands moving. The tap-tap continued swiftly.
Silence reigned for several moments. It was painful.
“I don’t know.”
“Oh…”
“But I don’t think it was love, or anything.”
“…You kissed him, though, didn’t you?”
Rentaro cursed himself. He should’ve known when to give up, and he didn’t. But the panic on Kisara’s face as she opened her eyes wide and said, “You saw that…?” was far greater than his.
“N-no!” she continued. “Not like that. I kind of had my palm up like this, to block it, and when Hitsuma came up to me, I kind of pushed…”
She must have realized she wasn’t being very convincing with her little hand-gesture show. Kisara tried desperately to figure out how to win Rentaro’s trust—but then he smiled at her. Paradoxically enough, seeing her act so serious convinced him that all his worries were for nothing.
“He…he didn’t do anything like what you’re thinking, Satomi. So I’m still a…a virgin and everything, too…”
“Uh, yeah.”
Something about the sudden introduction of bedroom terminology made Rentaro’s pulse quicken as he added salad oil to the frying pan and put the spinach on top. It shrank down with an audible sizzle.
“So, speaking of which, did you hear about the new prime minister of Hokkaido Area?”
He thought he was being ignored for a moment before Kisara softly replied. “Yeah, what a surprise. Pretty amazing, huh? Prime Minister Kiryu was fine one day, and then…poof.”
Both Rentaro and Kisara had met him several times during their time at the Tendo mansion. “Yeah, I was pretty shocked, too,” he added. “I figured he was gonna serve in that post until he was one hundred or so.”
“Did you hear the rumor, though?”
“What?”
“I heard that Kiryu ate breakfast, then started clutching his chest out of nowhere and fell off his chair. He never woke up after that. Like, apparently they found a lot of weird things during the autopsy, too. Supposedly they wanted to do some more testing on the body, but it got blocked and they reported it as death from illness. They closed up the whole investigation before it began.”
“The hell?” Rentaro asked, taken aback.
Kisara replied with a lifeless shaking of her head. “I don’t know.”
“You think the new prime minister’s an okay guy? Tsukihiko Juzouji?”
“They say he’s pretty sharp. He’s probably up to the job, I guess.”
Rentaro felt conflicted. He wasn’t really a fan of Souichi Kiryu’s style of governing. He always acted so self-righteous and arrogant in front of the cameras, like he thrived on public controversy. But maybe that was the kind of leadership it took to guide the island of Hokkaido from postwar ruin to a rebuilt local power in the course of a single generation. Either way, few actively cheered for his passing.
Plain spinach sauté was a little lacking by itself, so with Kisara’s permission, he filled a kettle with water and placed it on an adjacent burner. He turned the knob, and heat, along with the smell of gas, wafted as the blue flame ignited.
She worked her cooking chopsticks. The sizzling continued. In his role as teacher, Rentaro was giving Kisara instructions from behind her back. To an impartial observer, however, it might have looked like they were embracing each other.
Her hair smelled good. The apron looked good over her uniform, he thought.
“Hey, actually, Kisara, why do you always have some kind of uniform on? Are you trying to match me or something?”
“Because I can use it as workwear. It keeps me from having to change between here and school. I have my own clothes, too, but probably not as much as most girls my age. Probably a hell of a lot less, actually.”
There was something boastful, downright haughty, about the way she accented the hell in that sentence. It was like she was trying to put pressure on Rentaro with it. He scratched the back of his head as he stared off into the distance.
“Uh, you wanna maybe go clothes shopping sometime?”
“Ohhh? Sure. I’ll try to develop so
me expensive tastes between now and then.”
She brought a hand to her hip, lightly, as if she was about to start whistling with glee. Her short skirt swayed a bit in response.
“B-but,” a stammering Rentaro continued, “I just mean… You looked great in that kimono for the meet up, and you looked great in that wedding dress, too, but… Really, I think you look the best when you’re in that black uniform, in the end. I mean it. You’re beautiful.”
Kisara turned around. Her eyes were wide.
Why does love always have to be this asymmetrical thing? Every time, there seems to be this imbalance between everything I feel about someone else, and everything she thinks about me. The scales always tip one way or the other. What do I have to do to bring the ache in my heart across to her?
His voice failed him. It frustrated him immensely. Whenever he was in front of someone he liked, his vocal abilities plummeted to the point where he wanted to die.
Instead of relying on them, he took a step forward.
“K-Kisara!”
He brought his hand around her narrow waist, clutching it tight. Kisara’s chest pushed up to him with a yelp. Her unbelievably well-built face was right next to his, a sweet aroma filling his nostrils.
Her cheeks grew more and more flush. Her own heat was stirring a little.
“Whoa, hey, Satomi, where’re you—?”
“—Back at the visitation room…”
“Huh?”
Rentaro tilted his head down and brought his lips to Kisara’s ear.
“When I berated you and ordered you out of the room… I’m truly sorry. I was such an idiot that whole time. I never should have said any of that to you. I know I’m late saying this, but I’m so, so happy to be home. Thank you, Kisara.”
The edges of the surprised Kisara’s wide-open eyes filled with an onrush of transparent liquid. A single line ran across one cheek. She wiped at it with a knuckle. Then her broad eyebrows arched up as she looked at Rentaro, eyes soft and gentle. The tears were from a happy place. He could tell.
“Don’t be stupid. I was waiting for you to say that the whole time.”
“Kisara…”
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