Black Bullet - Volume 5 - Chapter 2.01

BLACK BULLET 5

CHAPTER 02

THE NEW WORLD CREATION PROJECT

1

He could hear droplets of water going plink-plink into a puddle at regular intervals. Some insects were faintly droning a fair distance away.

He could smell rusted metal. The air batting against his skin was humid, and he felt something hard and solid on his back and hips that made him wonder where they put him down.

How long had he been asleep? He needed to get up. He had important things to do. Something really important…

Trying to move his body, he realized that he almost couldn’t move his arms at all. Whenever he tried, all that resulted was some kind of jingling metal sound. His arms hurt.

Was he tied up somewhere?

—Where am I?

Finally, he came to the core question. His eyelids felt like they were made of iron, but he struggled through it, blinking several times until he could finally start to make out the environment around him.

The first thing he saw was a wall lined with light blue tiles. He was sitting on tile as well. He couldn’t move his hands. Something was hanging between his arms, keeping them aloft. He twitched his neck upward to look. Both of his wrists were cuffed, binding him to an orange, rusted metal pipe. It appeared Rentaro had been resting his back on the side of a bathtub.

Yes. That was the case: He was handcuffed to a pipe in a bathtub. It wasn’t a large bathroom, just big enough for the tub in question, and he couldn’t even stretch his legs all the way out. He guessed he was in someone’s private residence.

After a few more moments, he finally realized his predicament. He was being held. Beyond that, he knew nothing. Who was keeping him in here, and for what reason?

His mind was still hazy, but he felt he had a grip on at least two things. One, he was alive. Two, he probably wasn’t taken in by the police. If that were the case, he would’ve awoken on a hospital bed or something.

Looking down at his abdomen, he found several layers of bandages wrapped underneath his open shirt. It was basic, but he was receiving some treatment, at least.

The bathroom was dark and partitioned by a sliding door. It was bright on the other side of the opaque glass, but he could only discern faint outlines beyond it.

Forcing his body to shift position, he felt an intense pain shoot out from his side and course across his body.

“Is…anybody there…?” he called out haltingly. Then he repeated it a few times. At the third repetition, he heard heavy tramping as a shadowy figure came up to the glass and slid the door open.

“You’re awake?”

The first thing he noticed was her legs—too thin to be called supple. Looking up, he realized her thighs and arms looked just as thin, like easily snappable twigs. She had on short denim pants, a pink tank top, and an American Apparel jacket. Her cold eyes and bob-cut chestnut hair danced around in the air, a quiet anger burning behind her gaze. She was a girl as frigid as ice.

“Do you know who I am?”

Rentaro slowly nodded, trying to will his pounding head into kindling his memory for him.

I think her name was—

“Hotaru Kouro…right? Suibara’s Initiator.”

Hotaru slowly returned the nod.

“And do you know why I’m confining you in here?”

Rentaro took another look around the cramped bathroom.

“More or less.”

His memory served him up to the point when he was shot out of the air by a sniper and smashed into the river’s surface. Given that he wasn’t six feet under, he supposed that meant he was dragged out of the water at some point.

That, and he had an idea of what this girl who saved him wanted.

At that exact moment, the barrel of a gun darker than death dominated his sight. An automatic revolver, pointed right between his eyes.

“Got anything you want to say?”

“You’re the girl who flipped that van over, aren’t you?”

“Mm-hmm,” the girl murmured without hesitation, staring icicles at him.

“Why did you do that?”

“To get revenge for Kihachi. Is there any other reason?”

“You look pretty calm, considering.”

“Do you have any idea how long you were out? Three days. Three days is long enough for anyone to calm down a little.”

“Why didn’t you kill me before now?”

“I wanted to see you confess your sins,” Hotaru replied, eyebrows wholly motionless as Rentaro glared up at her.

“I didn’t kill Suibara, man.”

“Don’t give me that shit.”

The words were quiet, but Hotaru’s irises were a blazing shade of red. The gun’s hammer was cocked, her hand virtually crushing the grip. Silent rage enveloped her tiny frame.

“Don’t you care about your life at all?”

“I mean it. Seriously, I didn’t kill him—”

Then he took a teeth-shattering blow to his lower jaw, and the next thing he knew, he was looking at the ceiling tile. It broke a molar or two—he was gritting his teeth at the time. The metallic taste of blood filled his mouth. It took some time for him to realize Hotaru landed a straight kick on him.

“Gnh… Ahghh!”

He fixed his gaze on Hotaru as he spat out the tooth fragments. A ribbon of saliva mixed with blood hung down from the side of his mouth before falling. Hotaru watched from above like an executioner.

“I don’t think I heard you.”

“I already told you, I didn’t—”

The next kick was to the wound on his side.

“Grhh…nnh!”

She kept her foot on the opening, making him experience enough pain to make his brain explode.

Hotaru refocused her gun’s aim on Rentaro’s head.

“All right—I’m not into tormenting people like this, so this is your last chance. If you admit to your crime and beg for mercy, I’ll turn you over to the police instead of killing you. But if you lie to me, the next time your head hits the floor, it’ll have a hole right in the middle of it. Think it over before you decide—do you need to live, or do you need to die?”

Rentaro, still staring at Hotaru, nodded silently.

“Okay. Here goes: Do you feel any guilt at all about killing Kihachi? He said you were one of his best friends, and you caught him in that dirty little trap and killed him. Are you even a little sorry for that? Answer me.”

What a witch hunt this was. All she wanted was for Rentaro to confess to it. She didn’t believe he was even a little bit innocent.

But, perhaps because of that, the girl’s words were completely unadorned. They came from the heart. If Rentaro screamed his innocence, she was absolutely going to pull the trigger.

The voice of logic in his mind shouted at him to admit to it for now. He could make up for it later. This girl’s just like the cops. Why would he ever hesitate to deceive her?

His conclusion made, he gave Hotaru a defiant, resolute look. “Please believe me,” he said, elucidating every syllable. “I didn’t do it. Really.”

The gunshot blared across the bathroom. Rentaro’s body spasmed. With a tink, the empty cartridge bounced off the tile a few times before the silence returned.

White smoke wafted out from the gun barrel.

Gingerly turning his head to the side, Rentaro found a bullet lodged in the bathtub, millimeters from his nose.

Hotaru turned away from him as she took out a cell phone and dialed a number.

“Oh, hello,” she said after a moment, “is this the police?” She turned back to Rentaro for just a moment before continuing. “I came across the wanted fugitive Rentaro Satomi, so I placed him under citizen’s arrest… Right. No, this isn’t a prank. It’s true.”

After relaying her name and address, Hotaru ended the call and looked back at Rentaro. “They thought I was kidding,” she stated, “but they’re still coming. They said I wasn’t far from the nearest station, so it won’t even be five minutes.”

Hotaru leaned in, putting her eye level on the same height as her quarry.

“I’ll listen to what you have to say. But only until the police arrive. Once they do, that’s it. You’re going with them.”

“Why didn’t you kill me?”

“Because you’re not worth it anymore. Have fun getting strung up by the court.”

“Whoa, what did the police tell you?”

“They said you lured Kihachi over to you and killed him for money.”

Rentaro attempted a scornful laugh, but gurgled out a cough instead. He gazed at Hotaru as he spat out a mixture of phlegm and blood.

“The story they told me was, Suibara was blackmailing me for money and I killed him to shut him up.”

“…That’s a lie. There’s no way Kihachi would do that.”

“Of course not. He didn’t do that at all, and I didn’t blackmail him, either. So there, you see? Right from the start, our stories are contradicting each other. I think we’ve got enemies in the police, too. Don’t you think there’s something weird about all this? Nothing striking you as odd?”

“…You got four minutes.”

“There’s something I do need to apologize to you about. It’s that I couldn’t keep Suibara safe. He was a nervous wreck by the time he came to my office. I was fully willing to listen to his story so we could share the burden, but he was too freaked out to tell me. And I didn’t pursue it. I misjudged the situation, and for that, I am truly sorry.”

Hotaru kept her eyes away from him, twisting her eyebrows low as she anguished for her Promoter.

“Stop it.”

“Look, in a court of law, you’re supposed to listen to both sides of the story and then the jury or a judge or whatever makes the decision, right? You’ve already heard the police’s side. Now I want you to hear mine, but I can’t wrap that up in the course of five minutes. I want you to give me a chance.”

“A chance?”

Hotaru found herself leaning forward.

“There’s a group out there that framed me,” Rentaro continued, choosing his words carefully. “Not only did they pin the murder on me; they targeted everybody in the Tendo Civil Security Agency. I’m not some kind of innocent bystander here. I want to catch the guys that framed me. Can you help me with that?”

“You’re just gonna run away.”

“If that’s what you think, then go right ahead and hand me over. But, if you think even a little bit that I’m worth listening to, I want you to wait on that. I know you want to learn the truth about all this, if you can. I took a case from Suibara. He was keeping some kind of secret, and he said he wanted to go through me so he could reveal it to the Seitenshi. A day later, somebody killed him. There’s got to be something going on behind the scenes.”

“…Two minutes.”

“If it turns out there’s not anyone behind the scenes, you can go ahead and kill me then. Burn me at the stake, draw and quarter me, put my head on a pike; anything.”

“Are you…serious?”

Rentaro returned Hotaru’s stare and gave her a powerful nod.

“Suibara trusted in me. Now it’s your turn. Please.”

The two of them looked into each other’s eyes for several moments. Rentaro held his breath in silence. A drop of water from the tap fell with a splip onto the tile floor by his feet.

Just as Hotaru was about to say something, someone began repeatedly pressing the doorbell. It was the police.

Rentaro closed his eyes and tried to keep his body from shaking. Time’s up, huh?

Hotaru, all emotion quelled from her eyes, stood up and walked out of the bathroom. She didn’t close the glass door behind her, forcing Rentaro to watch the entire proceedings. The layout of this place meant that the main bathroom and the front door were extremely close to each other, so it took only a few seconds for Hotaru to undo the door chain and greet the person outside. He could see Hotaru, but not the policeman she was talking to.

“Are you the girl who called?”

A chill crossed Rentaro’s spine.

“Yeah.”

“All right,” said the clearly doubtful voice of another officer. There must’ve been two of them. “Um, so…let’s cut to the chase. Did you really capture Rentaro Satomi?”

Rentaro jammed his eyes shut, already imagining the next sentence. Oh, do come in. Want some tea? I have him in cuffs in the bathroom.

“I’m sorry, that…that was a prank call. I didn’t think the police would actually show up or anything!”

Watching Hotaru bow down deeply in a laudable act of apology, Rentaro had to stop himself from audibly saying Wha?

“Yeah, I figured,” said an officer, not sounding particularly angry about it. “The news said there’s a good chance he’s dead anyway. But you know it’s against the law to waste the police’s time like this, all right, kid?”

Hotaru continued to apologize. The policemen continued to give her a mild scolding. They exchanged a few more words. And then they left.

Her sorrowful expression immediately drawing itself back, Hotaru went expressionless once more as she briskly walked to the bathroom. Falling to one knee, she took a key out of her pocket, inserted it into the keyhole in Rentaro’s cuffs, and turned it.

“Why…?” Rentaro whispered, deeply moved as he heard metal rattling.

“You’re not the guy, are you?” Hotaru replied, refusing to return his gaze.

Of course he wasn’t. But how many times had he screamed that before? How many times had she ignored him? Hot tears began to well in his eyes. He wiped them away with the pit of an arm.

Soon, there was another clink, and the handcuffs fell to the floor. Rentaro tried to stand up as he checked his wrists. His knees refused to cooperate. He decided not to risk it, instead borrowing a shoulder from the suddenly cooperative Hotaru.

The moment he stepped out of the bathroom, the droning of the insects outside went up an octave in his ear. He was greeted with a tiny, cramped, and disorganized studio apartment. He didn’t realize it in the bathroom, but apparently it was the middle of the afternoon outside, the contrast between his poorly lit bathroom cell and the great outdoors reminding him more than a little of his own place.

Taking a closer look, Rentaro realized that all the newspapers and magazines strewn around the apartment had coverage of the Suibara murder in them. THE FALLEN HERO, began one. SATOMI ARRESTED, screamed another. It was like every outlet was falling over themselves to get more sensational with their headlines. Right after the Third Kanto Battle, it was almost as if they printed a new article every time he so much as ate breakfast. He couldn’t believe how far the tables had turned in less than a month.

Listening to the strange noises coming from the ancient, whirring air-conditioning unit, he was led to a creaky pipe-frame bed and felt a stiff blanket being pulled over him. There were stains from previous water leaks on the ceiling, bits of paper missing from the walls, and everything was a duller color than when it was first installed.

Suddenly, Rentaro began to suspect something. This apartment was clearly meant for one person. There was a lone single bed in this studio. So she didn’t live together with Suibara? Idly pondering this, he removed his shirt in bed, unwrapped his bandages, and examined his side.

The gruesome sight almost made him groan. It was no longer bleeding, but the wound was still a blaze of pain.

“Hey, how did you stop the blood?”

“I stuck a hot frying pan against it.”

“Oh, so that’s what I’m smelling? Were you making some yakiniku?”

Hotaru’s eyes widened for a moment. Then she let out a light sigh. “I’m amazed you have the energy to mouth off at me,” she said. “I dunno if it’s luck or not, but the bullet didn’t get lodged in you.”

“Sounds like luck to me.”

“Not to me,” she replied, chin stuck high in the air. Then she narrowed her eyes at him again. “That’s a pretty funny body you got.”

Rentaro followed her eyes down until they reached his cybernetic right arm and leg. They were still a dark shade of black. He had ripped the skin off them while he was trapped in the hotel.

“What is that?”

“Suibara never told you? It’s a set of armaments from the New Humanity Creation Project.”

That made Hotaru open her eyes even wider.

“Wait, so you don’t know anything about the New World Creation Project? Or the Black Swan Project, maybe?”

Hotaru gave him a clueless look.

Aha. Suibara must have kept any dangerous knowledge away from her to keep her safe. The fact she wasn’t as dead as Suibara was all the proof he needed for that. If she knew everything Suibara did, she would’ve been part of their hit list, too. There’s no way she’d still be alive.

Thus, Rentaro reasoned, whoever killed Suibara figured there was no harm in leaving her be.

He noticed a first-aid box tossed at him. It contained a tube of fibrin, a form of biological glue that Rentaro was well familiar with by now. Civsec officers turned to it first whenever they wanted their wounds to heal quicker. It wasn’t quite as insta-heal as some of the potions in the RPGs Enju liked, but it patched things up far more speedily than Mother Nature could.

Shutting one eye at the stinging pain in his side, he applied a fibrin glue pad and kept it fast with bandages.

He was over the worst of it. Or so he thought. Then his greedy stomach started to whine at him.

In a few moments, he was pestering Hotaru for some rice water, something that his stomach wouldn’t immediately reject. Soon, he was slurping up rice porridge. Considering he hadn’t eaten in three days, his gastrointestinal system hadn’t faltered on him that badly, enough so that he managed to keep down bread and soup well enough. The bread was only lightly toasted and he wouldn’t dare put any jam on it, but the wheat flavor that spread across his mouth with every bite almost made tears come out of his eyes. Before he knew it, he wolfed down the whole slice.

The food in jail wasn’t all that bad. But he couldn’t remember the last time he had anything resembling home-cooked food. He lay back in bed, his full stomach making him feel tremendously satisfied. The thick, starchy blanket and comically creaky bed seemed fit for a king to him. He could feel himself falling asleep, but there was no time for that.

Nothing had changed for the better at all.

His exploits at the Magata Plaza Hotel the other day seemed like ancient history to him, but the bitter, painful experience he was handed there filled him with impotent resentment.

More to the point, Tina was still with the cops, and Enju was still in the IISO’s hands.

Dark Stalker, aka Yuga Mitsugi, told him at the hotel that Enju’s new partner was a “buddy killer” and promised her a painful death. He was suddenly very curious about what the past three days were like.

“I still don’t trust you,” Hotaru said scornfully as she sat down on the edge of the bed. “Can you tell me what’s going on already?”

“Well, where should I start…?”

Staring straight up at the ceiling, Rentaro regaled Hotaru with the story of how he accepted Suibara’s job, got arrested, and found himself leaping off the roof of the hotel. By the time he was done, Hotaru was at rapt attention, chin resting in her hand and deep in thought.

“So Kihachi got rubbed out by this…group, because he knew a lot about these New World and Black Swan projects?”

“Do you believe me?”

“It’s too complex to be made up. Plus, I definitely noticed that Kihachi was hiding something from me. Never imagined it was something this immense, but…”

Seeing her accept this story the police dismissed as absurd gladdened him. It was almost anticlimactic for him. But Hotaru still glared at him coldly, the hostility still not entirely gone from her eyes.

“So what are you gonna do now?”

“What do you want to do?”

“That Hitsuma guy’s one of them, right?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Satomi,” Yuga had told him at the hotel, “we need you as a sacrifice. Tina Sprout’s going to be executed. Kisara Tendo’s going to be trained to destroy the Tendo family. Enju Aihara’s actually got her next Promoter assigned to her already. He’s a bad seed. A buddy killer. Worse than you’d ever imagine. And once you’re found guilty, the whole picture’s complete.”

Trained to destroy the Tendo family. That was what threw him. Kisara wasn’t stupid enough to let someone use and abuse her like that. But what about someone whom she’d opened at least some of her heart to? Someone with a clear gift for manipulating people’s minds? There was no telling, Rentaro thought. And in Kisara’s recent social life, there was only one man who filled that bill.

If Hitsuma was part of this criminal group, he could’ve easily ambushed Rentaro using what little information he gave his civsec boss about his whereabouts. Then he could’ve interrupted the orders from the police, put Yuga in place, and surrounded the hotel with police just in case. It seemed to fit the picture well enough.

He doubted Kisara would give up his location that easily, but if she did, that meant she was wrapped around Hitsuma’s finger.

Rentaro shut his eyes tightly, hands balling into painful fists.

I thought I could leave Kisara safely in your hands, Hitsuma. Kisara trusted in you.

He ground his teeth.

And you used her. You’ve gotta pay.

Hotaru lifted her head up from her thoughts. “I’m going to kill that Hitsuma guy,” she said. “And Dark Stalker, too, if he fired the shot.”

“Don’t.”

“Can you tell me why not?” replied a clearly peeved Hotaru.

“Because that won’t solve anything. Even if that went without a hitch, you’re still a criminal. You flipped a van; you injured three law enforcement officers; and if you did that, too, you’d be a double murderer.”

“It’s not like my enemy was playing fair. Why do I have to?”

Rentaro thought Hotaru resembled someone he knew. Now it finally dawned on him.

“Satomi, I just realized. You couldn’t punish the mastermind behind the Kagetane Hiruko Terrorist Incident, Kikunojo Tendo. You couldn’t punish the mastermind behind the Seitenshi Sniping Incident, Sougen Saitake. But I was able to punish the person responsible for the Third Kanto Battle, Kazumitsu Tendo. Do you know why?

“Don’t you understand? Justice isn’t good enough. Justice can’t oppose evil. But absolute evil—evil that goes beyond evil—can. I have that power.”

“No. You can’t do that. It’s wrong. If someone’s unfair to you, you have to be fair back at him. If you wind up turning into a criminal on me, how am I gonna face up to Suibara’s grave?”

“Don’t give me that lip service. What other choice do I have?”

“The choice of exposing the Black Swan Project, getting evidence, and arresting the perpetrators. That way, they’ll round up Hitsuma and everybody else involved in this.”

And it’ll clear his name if they arrest the real killer.

But it wouldn’t be that easy, of course. Suibara lost his life trying to reveal Black Swan to the world. Their dark tentacles had extended themselves not just to Rentaro, but to Tina, Enju, Kisara, and the Tendo Civil Security Agency itself.

He didn’t know how much of a bead his enemy had on his movements, but if they failed to fish his body out of the river, they’d be striking back soon enough. And now, there was more than Hitsuma and his police force pursuing him. There was that mechanized soldier, too, the New World update of his New Humanity self.

Frankly, he thought, I don’t like my chances much.

Surrounded on all sides. Completely isolated. The situation was nothing short of hopeless. If he could, he didn’t want to make Hotaru—Suibara’s only living memory—cross a bridge as dangerous as this.

“Look, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea…” Hotaru turned the cold eyes underneath her chestnut hair an infinitesimal amount toward him, face still blank. “But I need revenge for Kihachi. You’re just the bait.”

“The bait?”

“Mm-hmm. If the enemy finds out you’re alive and starts gathering around your blood, that’s perfect for me. All I have to do is take out the people trying to take you out.”

The sleeves of her jacket sprang up as she swung her hands to her hips. The next minute, she had a pair of jet-black pistols at the ready.

“This battle’s how I’m gonna be paying my condolences to Kihachi.”

Rentaro breathed an admiring sigh. She didn’t pull the triggers, but she’d drawn those guns so fast, you’d miss it if you blinked.

Even before this point, he had imagined she was pretty handy with a gun. This must’ve been how she fought in battle, then.

Her guns were both Gold Cup National Match models, one of the custom government pistol lines manufactured by Colt. They weren’t exactly suited for dual wielding, but gun collectors cherished them for ease of handling (even a small girl’s hands could wrap around them) and their sheer beauty, making them a world-renowned model. They came with a crisscrossing dual holster she kept behind her back.

Guns still at the ready, Hotaru turned her freezing gaze upon Rentaro. “So let’s keep this strictly business, all right? I use you; you use me. There’s nothing else to it. If you die, I won’t even take a look back. And if the opposite happens, feel free to leave me on the sidewalk.”

“No cooperation?”

“None.”

Rentaro grimaced. It was a blunt reaction, one that made him wonder if he hallucinated that single moment of empathy she showed in front of the police.

“…All right. Well, you can fight for whatever you want to, but if we run into anyone calling himself Dark Stalker, I want you to let me handle him. He’s this conceited little bastard in a school uniform with a pop-up collar.”

“Is he good?”

“Damn good. He’d be too much for you.”

“You mind not selling me short, please?”

Suddenly, something black and heavy flew toward Rentaro. He caught it just in time. It was a pair of nylon hip holsters—one with a gun, the other a knife. The very ones Rentaro confiscated from the SAT trooper in the hotel. The knife was a survival blade from Gerber. The gun was—

“—A Beretta…?”

It must have been a custom job owned by the trooper. It featured a reinforced “brigadier” slide, something that went out of production long ago. Kisara used a custom-line Beretta 90two as her choice of gun, Rentaro recalled. Beretta always devoted as much care to the look of their guns as they did their performance. It seemed like a match made in heaven for Kisara. But would it work for him?

“That’s not your gun?”

“Nah, I seized it along the way. My XD’s still in evidence storage.”

“An XD? That cheap piece of crap? You’ll hit more often with a Beretta.”

“Yeah, but doesn’t the sight system take some getting used to? I mean, say what you want, but I was pretty used to that XD.”

“That means you’re a cheap piece of crap, too.”

“I knew you were gonna say that!”

Then Rentaro realized he had yet to ask something important.

“Hey, by the way, what kind of Gastrea factor is in your blood?”

Hotaru gave him a sullen, silent glare as she turned her head.

“I don’t need to tell you.”

Man, she pisses me off. Rentaro decided to check how tight his holsters were instead of engaging her any further.

“I’m not done with you yet,” he heard Hotaru say.

“Jeez, girl, there’s more?” a fed-up Rentaro replied, only to find Hotaru’s index finger sticking right in his face.

“Do not call me ‘girl.’ My name is Hotaru.”

“…You’re the boss, Hotaru.”

“What should I call you?”

“Rentaro works.”

“Really? Well, great. Rentaro, then.”

Thus, their alliance to defeat their foes and uncover the truth was formed. They weren’t exactly the most steadfast of teams, but to Rentaro, she was the only ally he had in the entirety of Tokyo Area. The feeling was probably mutual, too.

“So what’re we gonna do now?”

“We start here,” Rentaro replied, looking around the room. “I meant to search Suibara’s place for evidence anyway. You can help me save some time.”

“This isn’t Kihachi’s apartment.”

“Huh?”

“I said, this isn’t Kihachi’s apartment.”

“So where are we?”

Hotaru gave an exasperated shake of her head. “Rentaro,” she said, “have you seriously not noticed yet? I don’t have a Promoter, but the IISO still hasn’t taken me away.”

“Oh—”

The vague feeling of discomfort stuck in the back of his throat suddenly made total sense. Enju was seized by an IISO agent practically the moment Rentaro surrendered his license. If Suibara was dead, Hotaru should’ve been expecting a visit from them, too.

“Wh-why’s that?” Rentaro dared to ask. Instead of answering, Hotaru pointed outside.

“Let’s go outside. It’ll be easier to show you.”

The moment they were out, Rentaro was greeted with eye-piercingly bright sunlight. The air conditioner that had so kindly kept him cool inside now blew hot, processed air at him, making him immediately break into a sweat. They went down the stairs, each step creaking in dangerous-sounding fashion, and went away from the building a bit before stopping to look at it.

The apartment was tilted to the side, boasting a simple corrugated sheet-iron ceiling and walls. Other similar-looking buildings surrounded it. The area must not have enjoyed the benefits of garbage pickup—piles of scrap iron and other junk were all over the place, and the ground was lined with a rainbow of colorful plastic trash. The stench made his nose wrinkle.

Feeling someone’s eyes upon him, Rentaro saw a sharp-eyed man staring at him before turning back into his hovel. Judging by his face, he obviously wasn’t Japanese. And it clearly was his home, judging by the sounds of daily life coming from it. But why would he leave that “house” of his in such terrible condition? Something told him the landlord probably had at least a couple gang connections.

He thought he was in the Outer Districts for a moment as he took a 360-degree look at his surroundings, but the Monoliths were far away from here. He was inland.

“Why’re you living in a place like this?”

“I had to stay in some illegal slum or another. It’s not like anyone else would take in a lone child without any parent or guardian. I had to get out of our place before the IISO got me. I knew they’d be coming.”

Again, Rentaro had to commend Hotaru’s coolheadedness and ability to take action. When she learned Suibara was killed, she barely spent a moment mourning him. She got to work. Enju was kind of mature for her age, yes, but that was because she had to experience everything from direct threats like frostbite and hunger to emotional ones like contempt and persecution. There was some truth in the idea that hardship and adversity could make a person stronger, but not even Enju could so sensitively pick up on unseen threats and flee this much in advance. Rentaro wondered what Hotaru must’ve gone through to reach that point.

“The police are staking out the place we used to live in.”

“Oh…”

Rentaro thought for a moment.

“Are you willing to risk that?”

“No. We better not, Hotaru. There’s someplace I want to go first.”

“Where?”

Rentaro looked at Hotaru.

“The place where Suibara was killed.”