“Hearing the beat of its own heart and the flow of its blood, it learns that sound exists in the world…”

Ker-crick… Girr-rack… Mk-kreek…

In the darkness of one of the city’s many crevices, sounds like these could be heard.

“…But Pearl, are you sure we really need to go that far?” A man’s voice interrupted the sounds.

“We can’t be too careful. Besides, it’s possible that our ‘samurai’ might have already ‘broken through’. We’d do well to be vigilant,” added a woman’s voice.

“Still… You think they’ll really fall for it?”

In response to the apprehensive man, the woman replied, brimming with confidence, “I know men like him all too well… When given the option to act or wait, his type will act. His pride in his ‘strength’ will lead him headfirst into our trap of his own will.

“………”

“Now then… How do I look?” As the bizarre sounds subsided, the woman stepped out from the darkness, and standing there was a young high-school girl.

“Well?” Her voice was now different from the one she’d had up until now, one with a more youthful timbre.

“…Practically identical.” The man took one look at her and heaved an audible sigh.

I, Taniguchi Masaki, a 15-year-old high-school student, had been in high spirits since morning.

My parents live abroad for their work so they aren’t at home. Instead, I live together with Nagi-nee-san; though, she’s not related to me. That said, there’s also supposed to be a friend of mine in Nagi-nee-san’s care living here as well, a girl named Orihata Aya.

“Tehehe…”

A grin crept onto my face. And so, I arrived at my abode, a detached house in a cozy corner of the residential district. However, as I touched the gate, I noticed something odd: the knob was unusually stiff. It felt as if it hadn’t been used for some time, like dust had clogged it up.

“………”

I had a bad feeling.

Cautiously, I continued up to the entrance and stood before it. The door was locked, which wasn’t particularly unusual. It was entirely possible that nee-san and the rest weren’t in. But I didn’t try to enter from there. Instead, I made my way ‘round to the back entrance. One may think me a bit too wary, but my childhood years abroad had, by all accounts, given me plenty cause to be cautious.

Naturally I had a spare key, so I was able to get in through the back without any difficulty. But in the moment I entered, I was lost for words.

“……Wha?!”

The back entrance was connected directly to the kitchen. It was the place where I made all my food before I’d been accepted into the dorm, among other things.

But now…I couldn’t smell anything. The sparkling clean sink indicated that not a drop of water had run from its faucet, and the chopping board that stood to the side of it was bone dry. And…there was nothing there. No cups laid out to dry, no sponge, no scouring brush, no salt, sugar or condiments, no spring onions that should have been bundled up for emergency seasoning… Nothing.

Plus, it was too quiet. There was no power to the fridge, and hence no humming noise from it.

…It was as if there wasn’t a trace of anyone living there. A vacant house. And there was one other thing that worried me…

W-what the hell is going on here…?

Mentally telling myself to calm down, I moved farther into the house. Muffling my footsteps, I left the corridor and headed toward the living room. I sensed someone’s presence that way. There shouldn’t have been anyone in there, and yet there was.

Don’t tell me it’s someone involved with Orihata…?

I’d thought that all the trouble with her was over…

But whoever it is, I’m not letting them do anything terrible to Orihata ever again…!

Coming to a kind of resolve, I steeled myself and approached the presence. But the moment I stepped into the room, I froze.

All my resolve and preparation were blown away just like that because the guy standing in front of me was so incredibly bizarre and surreal.

“…Are you Taniguchi Masaki?” he spoke out to me. But I didn’t know what to say.

“What the…” My voice slipped out.

If I had to describe him in one word, I’d have said he was…

A samurai?

He wore a kimono and hakama. It was the kind of getup everyone had seen plenty of times in period plays and Edo-themed theme parks and stuff. On top of that, despite being a huge jumbo-size of a man, his clothes were wholly too small and too short for him.

“I humbly request a lesson.” Much like his anachronistic appearance, his words were old-fashioned too.

“W-who the heck are you? How’d you get in here?” I tried to ask, but in the next moment he was already upon me.

“…Wah!”

I dodged to the side, avoiding him. The bokken made a heavy noise as it connected with the floor.

“W-what are you doing?!” I cried, and again he came at me.

I did my best to run, but the living room was hardly spacious. My avenues of escape were limited, and so he closed in on me, using his sword to strike the sofa, table, and everything in his way.

“…Goddamn it, what the hell is happening?!”

I finally snapped. Why? Because I was supposed to have come home in a good mood, happy to see Orihata again after a long while. But instead, there was some weird samurai attacking me for no reason!

I turned to face the damn samurai. He in turn abruptly shifted his stance to confront me. The bastard was grinning, which only made me angrier.

………

I glanced down to check my footing. And in that instant, he struck.

Except, having received several of his attacks now, I already knew.

Staying in position, I threw out my fist–not straight out in front, but diagonally downward. It caught my opponent’s sword mid-swing and drove it aside. As I’d thought, he was simply swinging it down from above with all his might, so that giving it a little ‘nudge’ would easily change its course and carry along the body of its wielder in the process.

“…Ah!” For an instant I saw the samurai’s face go rigid. He must have realized that with his arms extended, his abdomen was now totally exposed.

He was correct. But it was too late.

“…Fu-HOH!”

With an expulsion of air I drove my fist into the pit of his stomach, and he slumped slowly to the ground.

I picked up his collapsed body and looked around the room, deciding to tie him up for now with the electric cord of the floor lamp.

“…What a mess,” I said with a sigh, and tried once more to try and get a grasp of the situation.

Just who is this guy…?

What was clear was the fact that he was really a complete beginner with the sword. All he’d done was swing it around recklessly without a shred of skill. Despite that, his body itself was sharp and nimble. In that sense alone he was no amateur. But what did this mean?

Hmm…

As I was lost in thought, the phone in the living room began to ring and I almost leapt out of my skin. Even so, I decided to pick up.

“…Hello?” I asked cautiously. Suddenly, on the other end of the receiver…

“Oh, hey Masaki, is that you? I guess that means you won, huh,” came a familiar voice.

“N-Nagi-nee-san!” I cried.

“How many times have I told you, quit it with the ‘nee-san’! Sounds so damn childish.”

“W-what’s going on? Why is the house empty? Where’s Orihata?!”

“Oh, she’s staying in my apartment. The house is unoccupied right now.”

“B-but I never heard anything about this!”

“Yeah, ‘cause I never told you.” She stated it so casually my jaw dropped. “But Masaki, you’ve called Aya from school plenty of times, right? She still never mentioned it to you, huh? Anyway, that’s about the size of it.”

“…What are you talking about?”

I felt despondent. Orihata wasn’t the kind of person to chat about things from her side. She must have thought that nee-san was always telling me these things. That’s why she wouldn’t have told me. …At least, that’s what I’d like to believe.

“By the way, what happened to Takashiro-san?”

“Takashiro? …What, you mean the weird samurai guy?”

“Yeah, that’s him. You haven’t killed him, I hope?” said Nagi, casually throwing out an outrageous question.

“You know this guy, Nagi?” I said, raising my voice.

“Nah, I don’t know much about him. Just…”

“Just?”

“Seems like he really admired Sakakibara-sensei, so I figured I should introduce him to you, with you being his number one student and all.”

Sakakibara-sensei was my master; he’d taught me some stuff like karate and self-defense techniques while I was abroad. He was also a friend of nee-san’s.

“I-Introduce? The guy just launched himself at me for Christ sake!”

“Nah, that’s just ‘cause I told him he should try taking you on,” she said off-handedly.

Gob-smacked, I spoke with trembling words.

“S-so then…are you telling me all this is your fault?!”

She nodded with a succinct “Yeah.”

“I should also add that I was the one who gave Takashiro those ‘clothes.’ They’re Sensei’s old things. He was pretty keen on them. Though I don’t get why Sensei even had those clothes. Wonder if he was an extra in a movie or something,” she joked.

I remained silent; I was in no mood to laugh. I knew that sometimes nee-san could be a handful, but this time she’d well and truly…screwed me.

“…A-anyhow, I’m heading over there now, okay?!” I answered forcefully, collecting myself.

“Fine by me, but if it’s Aya you’re looking for, she’s not here today.” Her words came as a surprise.

“Huh? But she’s supposed to have time off on weekends…”

Orihata was attending a specialist cooking academy for professional training.

“Seems she was handpicked by the principal to assist him with pre-cooking preparation. It’s been hard work. She even had to go fetch some kind of ingredients yesterday.”

“I never heard about this.”

“You wouldn’t have, because I didn’t say a word to her about you ‘coming back.’”

“B-but why?” My voice, practically a pitiful cry at this point, was met with nee-san’s calm response.

“Okay, listen to me. This the perfect chance for her to study. I can’t just let her squander it because she’s thinking about you, can I? Aya’s doing the best she can right now. If you care about her too, you better keep yourself focused.”

“I…I get that, but there was no need to shut up about it entirely, was there?”

“That girl still hasn’t gotten out of her habit of getting super conscious about the things people say to her. Can you imagine how crap it’d be if she screwed up at a crucial moment because she was thinking too much about you?”

“………”

I had no room for argument.

I felt my feelings of happiness at being able to see Orihata wilt. Still…even so…

“…Then why couldn’t you have told me about any of this earlier, Nagi?” I grumbled.

“Eh, because I just felt like teasing you,” she admitted offhandedly.

I wasn’t in any mood to retort.

Just then, there was a groan from behind me.

“Ah…looks like he’s awake.” This “Takashiro-san” or whoever the heck he was that Nagi had gotten involved with had stirred from his unconscious state.

Takashiro Tooru heard a voice from the darkness.

“Hey you. Yeah, you. You hearin’ me?”

…What? Where is this? I can’t see a thing.

“Eh, who cares about that? You can hear my voice, can’t ya, buddy?”

What is this…? Err, what happened to me again? …Ahh! That’s right. I went toe to toe with the student of that “Samurai” and then…

“Can you quit babblin’ and listen for one second?!”

What are you talking about? I’m unconscious, aren’t I? So this must mean I’m in a dream, right? Pretty irritating for a dream.

“Dream? Heh, look at Mr. Know-It-All here. You don’t even realize you’ve ‘broken through.’”

Broken through? What?

“The name’s Embryo. And you were able to hear my voice… That means you’ve already been ‘infected.’ And that last battle just pulled the trigger. I mean hey, you just happened to come across your long-cherished desire. That beautifully fulfils the conditions in my book.”

…Hm? What do you mean?

“You ever wonder what people live for?”

What are you talking about?

“People live to ‘battle the possibilities within themselves’… At least, I was created as a weapon for that purpose. I exist to ‘draw out the dormant power within a person.’”

…Yeah, I still don’t get what this is about. You’re making about zero sense. If this is a dream, explain it to me in simple terms.

“A certain psychologist once likened the human heart to an egg… He said that it hides within its shell, fostering delusions, hatred–concepts like that–of its own volition. Now, exactly what it’s amassing, no one knows, not even the person themselves. But those things are there, no question about it, waiting patiently for the day they’ll eventually break out from that shell… One person even called it a ‘time bomb.’“

…A shell?

“Yeah. And I react to that shell, like a kind of wavelength? Something like that. You know those tuning forks? The ones that can shatter glass ’n shit by emitting a certain type of sound? Same sort of thing. By the time folks can hear my voice, their shell’s already fragile. With the right stimulus, you can easily break it…and come out to the surface.”

Wha… Huh…? Can you speak in Japanese, please? None of this is sinking in.

“You really ain’t the sharpest tool in the shed, are ya? All I am is an echo left in your head. That means I’ve already ‘sunk in.’ The only words I’m using are ones that you’d understand. And you’re telling me ya still don’t get it?”

…Hey, shut up. Though I’ll admit I’m not very smart.

“Unbelievable. ‘Course, you being such a fool’s probably the reason you were able to concentrate on one thing so single-mindedly and ‘break through’ so easily. But I gotta warn ya, that alone isn’t enough.”

Not enough? What’s not enough? What’s this ‘breaking through’ even about, anyway?

“You’re gonna have to come to my side one more time… That’s when your ‘talent’ will finally be complete. Yeah, it’s not enough to just break the shell… You gotta have the strength to come out, else you’re just gonna stay inside that shell with a hole in it and kick the bucket. What’s the first thing an animal does after it comes out of its shell? That’s right, they breathe. I’ll give you your first breath. Then–hallelujah!–your ‘talent’ will come to fruition. That is…on one condition.”

…What condition?

“That’s right. If you wanna become a true ‘samurai’… If you wanna gain that power, then after you find me…you gotta kill me.”

Kill…you say?

“It’s a promise, you got that? You kill me, and I make you a samurai. That’s the condition…”

“Urrgh…”

Takashiro Tooru awoke with a groan. He felt as if he’d been having a strange dream. But as is typical of dreams, his memory of it was hazy. He tried to stretch and then noticed.

“…Huh?”

He’d somehow been rolled up in an electric cord and his arms wouldn’t budge an inch.

“Ah, uhm…”

Hearing a voice, he looked up to see Masaki Taniguchi, the boy who’d given him a thrashing, looking at him with a worried expression.

“Ahh, you’re Masaki-san, right?!” Tooru’s eyes lit up. “I’m so sorry about before. I was just so desperate to have a real bout between us! I’m Takashiro Tooru. Sakakibara Gen-sensei once saved my life!”

His bright, cheerful words only served to furrow Masaki’s brow further.

“Erm, about that… I think you might be getting the wrong impression of me here. I’m not especially, uh, Master’s number one student or anything,” Masaki tried to reason things out, but Tooru wasn’t having it.

“Not at all! You displayed tremendous skill! Even as you took me out, you made it explicitly clear why I lost!”

Tooru wasn’t in the least bit bitter about his loss, speaking his true feelings with the utmost admiration.

“Hmm…” grumbled Masaki. Eventually, though, he sighed. “Well, I heard what the deal is from my sister just now… Um, I guess I should undo your bindings.”

“Oh, actually, I don’t really mind either way,” said Tooru calmly.

“…I mind. I don’t feel comfortable talking to someone who’s tied up when they’re smiling at me,” scowled Masaki as he loosened the cord that Tooru was bound up in.

“…What did you just do?” Again, Tooru inquired.

“Mm? I just undid your bindings.”

“But they were steel tight! You slipped them off like they were nothing.”

“Oh, well that’s kind of a thing I learned from my mas-”

Masaki shut his mouth mid-sentence as the realization dawned on him; but it was too late, Tooru was gazing at him with even greater admiration.

Uhh…

Though Masaki was bemused, deep down he admired the guy.

Master sure is popular in strange places… Even though when he was with me, all he did was fool around.

Before he realized, he was smirking.

“What is it?” Tooru inquired, eyeing him suspiciously.

“Oh, nothing. Anyway, what was it you wanted to ask me? If it’s something I know, I guess I can tell you about Master.”

Masaki’s mood had improved somewhere along the way.

…Having said that, I didn’t really know all that much about him so all my answers kind of ended up fragmented.

“Yeah, see, even if you ask me where he is, I couldn’t really tell you. He’s essentially a drifter.”

“But he has been in contact with you, hasn’t he, Masaki-san?”

“Occasionally, yeah. …Listen, Tooru-san.”

“Yes?”

“Um, could you quit being so polite? You’re older than me after all, and it’s totally fine if you just call me Masaki.”

“Mmm… You say that, but you are ranked above me as a student,” Tooru said straight up, without a trace of embarrassment.

“But that’s just it. From what you told me, Master met you before I met him. In that sense, that makes you my senpai.”

“Hmm… Well, if you say so. But in that case, I’d ask that you call me Tooru.”

“Sure, fine by me. Now, about what you were saying... In a lot of cases, there wasn’t much I could do. When Master contacts me, he always phones me from his end–that or he’ll send me a postcard or something. Given that I don’t know where he is.”

“So he phones you? What do you talk about?”

“A…daughter? Did he get married?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe he has a partner? I didn’t ask him about the details.”

Never mind the details–Master had gone on rambling so much about how auspicious an event it was, I couldn’t get a word in edgeways, and then he was like “Ah, I’m out of money. Later,” and hung up just like that. I figured there was nothing to worry about if he was that happy. I told nee-san about it, but she just feigned mild interest and that was that.

“A daughter, huh…” Tooru was deep in thought with a somewhat complex expression.

“Really though, like I was saying, Master’s not the serious kind of guy you make him out to be. Though I can’t deny that he’s skilled.”

“He is, isn’t he? I knew he would be…”

“At least that aspect is probably the way you’re envisioning it. But I think that might just be his talent. I don’t think he refined it by incorporating and carefully analyzing moves or anything. So I doubt he’s the type of guy who’d be good at teaching people anything. He never taught me any kind of secret arts, for a start.”

“But you’re strong too, aren’t you, Masaki?”

Tooru’s language was starting to show its true colors as he became progressively curter[6], but this just made him easier to talk to.

“Hah, hardly. I’m nothing compared to Master.”

This much was true. Master was incredibly strong, and I didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell against him. I’d faced him many times in the three years we spent together, morning, noon and night, but I could still clearly count the number of times I’d landed a blow on him.

“Then, what did you learn from him?”

“Hmm…”

I was stumped. Not because I was at a loss for words–on the contrary, it was the opposite. Master had been telling me things almost incessantly, but it was a little difficult for me to tell that to Tooru because he was sure to be disappointed–or should I say, confused.

“No killer techniques?” he asked with eyes a sparkle. As I suspected, he had high expectations.

“No, nothing like that… Though I guess there was something like a secret maxim.”

“Secret maxim?! P-please, would you teach it to me?!”

He drew closer. Reluctantly, I repeated what Master had told me exactly as he’d said it, word for word. Tooru’s eyes widened.

“…What?”

“That’s what he told me. It means… Well, he said it meant something like ‘think for yourself.’”

I shrugged my shoulders.

“………” Tooru just sat there with mouth agape.

“That’s just how it is with Master–he’s actually an intellectual who’s released a number of books. He always tells me profound stuff like that.”

“Books?” Again, his eyes lit up.

“Well, it was co-authored with Nagi’s, uh, late father. The name Sakakibara Gen doesn’t come up, though.”

“…I never knew there was something like that! Y-you don’t happen to have it, do you?”

“Not to hand, I’m afraid…”

If the house hadn’t been vacant, it would have been in nee-san’s room, though.

“Is it being sold in bookshops?”

“…I wouldn’t even be able to tell you what kind of book to look for.”

Tooru stood up.

“Huh? W-where are you-“

“To Nagi-san’s! Let’s head back right now!”

No sooner had he said that than he dashed off, still decked out like a samurai.

“H-hold on a second!”

Hurriedly, I chased after him, finding myself somehow unable to let him run off as he pleased.

Her parents hadn’t come back yet, so Akiko Honami was off in her own world, standing in the kitchen-diner of the apartment that was her home.

On the table before her lay her little brother’s portable gaming device. Tooru had left it with her after what had happened. The numbers on its clock feature were keeping the time on the tiny screen.

“………”

She was staring vacantly at it. The data entered onto it yesterday hadn’t been transfered onto the main game console because she hadn’t given it back to her brother yet. With everything that happened that day, he’d forgotten all about it, and so the small trinket was still in the same state it had been in.

“………”

“What’s up, nee-chan?” asked her little brother, Hiroshi, who was watching TV in the living room.

“………”

But she didn’t answer, still staring at the little egg-shaped device.

“Hey, nee-chan!”

“…Shut up! I can hear you just fine. It’s nothing,” said Akiko huffily.

“…Hey, Nee-chan. Who’d you think that Kirima girl was?”

“How should I know?”

“To be honest, I was a little scared of her. She a friend of yours?”

“I just told you, I don’t know her! She’s not exactly a friend.”

The sister was openly expressing her displeasure. The brother sighed and went back to watching TV. A soccer match was lazily going on. The announcer was commenting on narrowly missed shots and nice saves from the keeper and so on.

“………”

Against that backdrop, Akiko continued to stare intently at the table’s surface.

[Heh, heh, heh. Seems like your little brother can’t hear me, huh.]

There was a voice coming from the egg. It had been speaking to her for a while now.

“………”

Akiko stayed completely silent.

[Now then, I figure you’re thinkin’ something like this: ‘Have I started hearing things? My god, am I going insane?’ Well, sorry to tell ya, but you’re wrong… This is happening ‘cause our two wavelengths have matched up.]

“………”

[You’ve only got a ‘little more’ to go. Just a tiny l’il bit more, just a teensy push and you could make it somehow… I can break that shell for you.]

“………”

[But on one condition. You’ve gotta help me out and kill me. I’m so damn tired of ‘existing’ already.]

“………”

She’d first started hearing the voice just before she and her brother had been attacked by the mystery trio.

[…Please, kill me.]

Akiko was sure that was what it said. After the incident, she’d spent her time up until now unable to get her thoughts in order. But now…

“………”

[Hey…]

She grabbed the portable device—which was still talking at her—put the attached chain around her neck and, pushing it inside her blouse, stood up from the table.

She had indeed been listening carefully. It wasn’t just her who’d heard the “voice” back then. She was sure Takashiro Tooru had said there was a voice that came from the game… Maybe if she were with him, with Tooru, then they could puzzle out this bizarre situation together!

“…Huh? Are you going somewhere?” asked Hiroshi, to which she curtly replied “Work.”

“Whaat?! Then what about tonight’s dinner?”

“I dunno, just go eat whatever you want.”

“Wait, really? Can I go get pizza?”

“Sure, go wild,” she said, hastily ending the conversation, and left the apartment.

“…Well, that was kinda weird.” Hiroshi tilted his head at his sister’s behavior, but just then a voice from the TV shouted “Goooooooal!” and he quickly turned to focus on that.

And, after he’d engrossed himself in the match for a while, there echoed a metallic clink from the window that opened onto the veranda.

“……?”

He recalled his mother telling him that cats pooped a lot in the plant pots on the veranda and stood up.

“Hey! Stupid cat-” he began, swinging the window open hard. Before him stood a man wearing an electronics company uniform.

“Wha-” Hiroshi shrunk back immediately.

“Tch,” said the man, clicking under his breath, then the next moment he suddenly thrust out what looked to be a metal bar aimed at Hiroshi. It buried itself square in the pit of his stomach and sent him flying.

“…Guah?!”

Hiroshi rolled across the floor, upturning the living room table and TV. His whole body felt numb, and he couldn’t move.

“………”

Slowly, the man in worker’s clothes entered the room and proceeded to look around, then did the same for the other rooms before eventually returning to the immobile Hiroshi.

“…Where’s your sister?”

“…W-who the hell are you…?” he answered, his voice hoarse and unable to project.

“I said, where is your sister?”

The man took Hiroshi’s hand and lightly twisted one of his fingers. It was such a slight motion, yet it sent excruciating pain through Hiroshi’s whole body.

“……!”

He’d never heard of such torment.  This…was the work of a professional. Though he wore worker’s clothes, they were merely a disguise, and, in truth, he wasn’t from anything even remotely like an electronics company.

W-what’s going on around here…? First yesterday, now this…

Then mid-thought, it hit him. Was this guy associated with the people from last night?

“Your sister must have left during the few seconds I took to come down here from the roof. But you’re still here… That would suggest that this was a coincidence and that you weren’t especially planning to escape. So ‘Embryo’ must still be here.”

Again, the man levelled his metal bar at Hiroshi and pressed it hard into his side. It wasn’t a huge amount of force, but Hiroshi experienced a dull, heavy pain, like taking a direct hit to the side from a baseball. The man had to be hitting pressure point on his internal organs.

“Now, you’re going to speak… What has ‘Embryo’ possessed? What form has it assumed? And where would it be?”

“U-urrggh…!”

He didn’t have a clue what the man was talking about, and nor could he endure the pain he was being subjected to. Hiroshi was, at any rate, confused.

“You realize that if you don’t answer, you’re going to end up dead. If that’s how this is going to go, then so be it. Your sister’s bound to come back eventually–all I’d need to do is torture her as well.”

“…………!”

Hiroshi’s eyes, clouded with confusion, focused at once. What had he said? He was planning on killing nee-chan too…?

Just as the man began to frown at how the boy had suddenly and fiercely glared back at him, from within the house rang the cheerful “Ping pong!” of the intercom.

“……A visitor?”

The man assumed a guarded stance. The intercom rung again, this time multiple times.

Pingpongpingpongpingpong!

“Excuse meee! Got a delivery here!” came the sound of a young man’s voice.

But the man of course didn’t respond. Hiroshi wanted to call out, but he couldn’t do it; the man was constricting his windpipe.

“I said you’ve got a delivery here… Hellooo? Nobody at home?” The person on the other side of the door sounded frustrated. The man smirked.

“Yeah, no one here,” he whispered under his breath.

…………!

Just as Hiroshi’s face was contorting with agony…

“Hey goddamn it, don’t lie to me,” said a sharp voice in stark contrast.

And then the door, as if it hadn’t been locked up in the slightest, opened completely normally, just as any door might do.

“Wha-…?!”

The man’s eyes widened.

“Didn’t your mother ever tell you that it’s not good to lie?” the person on the other side of the door said quietly.

It was a boy. And yet somehow, there was an air of something that would make you think twice about calling him a boy, something menacing about him that suggested a grown man He was wearing pale purple clothes that fit tightly to his body, and he had his hands in his pockets. But in that case…how had he been able to open the door that should have been locked until now?

“W-who the hell are…”

Even as the man spoke, this person marched his way into the room. The man pulled out a gun fitted with a silencer and, without any hesitation, aimed it at him and fired. But he simply kept walking, without even bothering to dodge.

…Several bullets that should have been fired at him had somehow vanished before they got to him.

“……Huh?” went the man, unable to understand what was happening, and when the guy who’d boldly walked in casually swiped his hand to the side, the man’s head separated from his body and flew across the room.

There wasn’t a single drop of blood. But of course…his death was instantaneous.

“………”

Hiroshi, still lying on the floor, could only flap his lips in a daze at the events that had unfolded. Just what the hell had happened? Just when some kind of unknown assailant had barged in uninvited a moment ago, now a different guy had shown up for no apparent reason and…

Hiroshi turned his eyes to the man’s body lying on the ground. His neck wound was smooth, like clay cut with wire.

He’d simply crumpled with a thud and, of course, lain there motionless. The ba-tum sound he’d heard from the opposite direction was likely the sound of the flying head falling to the floor.

“………”

What the hell is going on around here…?

None of the events had set in as real for him yet. The words “Behead that man and stick his head on a pike” randomly came to mind.

“Hey there,” said the pale-purple man, turning to Hiroshi with a radiant smile. “You’ve had a rough time of it, huh. Err, you’re…Honami Hiroshi, as I recall?”

“………”

“Ah, my bad. It’s only manners to introduce yourself before you ask someone else’s name, right? I’m Lee Maisaka. But you can call me Lee. Or, if you’d like, you could even call me by my nickname, ‘Fortissimo.’ I guess that one’s harder for you to use, though, huh?”

For someone in his mid-teens, his way of speaking was uncharacteristically mature.

“Lee…?”

“I’d come here to warn you that you were in danger…but it looks like I was just a moment too late. I’m really sorry about that.”

The one who’d called himself Lee Maisaka put a hand on his chest and lightly bowed. Though his features were Asian, his manners and mien were rarely something you’d see in a Japanese person.

“Danger…” he began, and then Hiroshi suddenly realized. “T-that’s right! If I was attacked, then my sister…”

“Oh? Where’s your sister? Outside?” asked Lee softly.

Behind those seemingly tranquil eyes, for just a moment, there writhed something dark and chilling.

[1] The “small matter” was explained in Boogiepop at Dawn. Masaki was absent from school too much during the events of VS Imaginator, so he was confined to his dorm. This puts a more definite timeline on when these events take place compared to At Dawn’s present events and the events of VS Imaginator.

[2] Some may be wondering “what? I thought they were going out.” In Japan, there tends to be a certain order to these things. Masaki never properly confessed and asked to go out with her romantically, so they aren’t technically a couple yet.

[3] Literally a wooden sword. Normally, we’d just call it that, but this tends to resemble something specific at times. Plus, Takashiro is in a full samurai outfit, so it seems fitting.

[4] The closest thing to this I can find is a karate term that means “fore fist.” It seems to refer to the proper way of making a fist to punch someone.

[5] Chances are he was talking about Kit from Boogiepop in the Mirror: Pandora. Timeline matches up with that, given that the Gang of Six found Kit on a snowy day.

[6] Japanese uses many levels of respectful speech depending on who you’re talking to. This ties in to the conversation they had earlier about using “-san.” Basically, Tooru’s forgetting the respectful speech he was using earlier as they talk. In Japan, this is often associated with people becoming closer.