Black Bullet - Volume 2 - Chapter 2.2

2

The hallways of Magata High School were as still as death on the weekends. As Rentaro took off his shoes and changed into indoor shoes, he looked around with a sense of novelty. In middle school, he hadn’t belonged to a club, and when he started high school, he started the civsec officer business with Kisara and hadn’t had time to join a club. So he rarely ever came to school on a weekend.

Rentaro headed toward the student council room, the sound of his shoes loud in the silent halls, doing his best to ignore the jangling sound of metal following behind him. Most of the students he came across occasionally were shocked after one look at him and would lower their eyes and quicken their pace to pass him. Well, it wasn’t like he didn’t understand how they felt.

Rentaro reluctantly turned around and saw the fully armed Kisara Tendo following behind him. She had two fierce-looking SPAS-12 shotguns slung crossing one over the other on her back, a Beretta 92 gun in her left hand, and the murderous blade, Yukikage, in her right hand as she walked. She had different kinds of grenades hanging off the leather belt she wore over her skirt, including fragmentation grenades, incendiary grenades, tear gas bombs, special stun grenades, and a variety of others, so when she walked, she made a loud metallic sound. Kisara, weighing about sixty kilograms all told, walked behind Rentaro without saying a word, increasing her concentration with a strange breathing method.

“H-hey, Kisara.”

“Be quiet for a minute,” she said curtly.

From the front entrance, they went up the stairs on the far west, turned right, and saw a sign that said STUDENT COUNCIL ROOM. Kisara pulled the slide of the Beretta and made the gun ready to fire, then quickly flattened her back against the right side of the door.

Rentaro cringed and was about to knock on the door when Kisara shook her head as if in disbelief. “Wait, Satomi. Are you planning on breaking through from the front? That’s too dangerous. Remember the exam to get your civsec officer license. After throwing in a tear gas bomb, the two of us can shoot Miori to death as she comes out, easy as pie. Two to the chest, one in the head, and we can make that woman say good-bye to this world.”

“H-hey, Kisara…… I didn’t come here to kill Miori. I came to ask her about the results of the analysis of the bullets found at the scene of the sniping.”

“That’s pretty much the same thing!”

“No, it’s not!” Rentaro was overcome with strain and rubbed the corners of his eyes. Even though Kisara never made any mistakes, why couldn’t she keep her cool when it came to Miori?

After saying good-bye to Tina in the park, he called the office to say he was going to stop by Miori’s place. The minute he told her, Kisara said, “I’m going, too,” and forced him to meet up with her, which turned into all this. He made a huge mistake in letting Miori’s name slip in front of Kisara, but he never dreamed that she would show up heavily armed and ready to kill.

“Hey, Kisara, I’m going to talk to her, so sorry, but you wait outside.”

“N-no way! I can’t let you and Miori be alone together.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t! You are never on any account to meet with Miori alone. When you meet, I must go with you. President’s orders.”

Rentaro shook his head, thinking he couldn’t go along with her any longer, and knocked on the door, turning the knob without waiting for an answer.

“Oh, wait, Satom—,” Kisara started.

Suddenly, a hand stretched out from the crack of the door and pulled him into the room, and then the door was closed and locked. Rentaro staggered a few steps and looked back.

Blinds were drawn in the dim room, and Miori stood with her back to the door as she locked it behind her back with a bewitching smile. His eyes were drawn to the brightly colored Japanese-style clothes she wore despite being at school.

“Welcome, Satomi dear.”

At that moment, Kisara started banging violently on the door behind Miori’s back. “Miori, open up this instant! If you don’t, I’ll break down the door.”

Miori closed her eyes and lifted her chin in the air. “You can if you want, but I’ll make sure to send the receipt to the Tendo Civil Security Agency.”

The sound of pounding stopped suddenly, and it was replaced by the sound of Kisara gnashing her teeth. Sadly, Kisara, who was so poor she went to Rentaro’s place to sponge dinners off him, did not have the financial means to pay for a door.

“Good job figuring out Kisara followed me here.”

“I didn’t know. But with all that noise y’all were making out there… Why don’t we go next door?” Miori pointed at the room next door with her index finger.

Guided by Miori, Rentaro entered her private room. He felt like he had been transported to another world. Besides chairs and tables in strong primary colors that twisted in avant-garde style, there were fifty holodisplays floating in the air.

When Miori swept the displays showing stock prices and economic news horizontally, the displays came together into one giant display, and an aquarium screensaver started up, the surround-sound system playing the quiet sounds of bubbles. The whole room started to glow a dim blue. It really felt like they were in the depths of the ocean.

Thinking of his own worn-out eight-tatami-mat hovel, he looked around the room again. It was hard to believe they were living in the same era. This was a room Shiba Heavy Weapons ordered especially for her. He wondered what she was planning to do with the room after stepping down as student council president next year.

Miori pointed her folding fan toward the display and said, “Seitenshi Sniper Incident Evidence,” and pictures from the scene came up on the panels one after another. Miori stretched her arm out in front of her and enlarged one image, that of the tip of a bullet. “The bullet used by the sniper looks to be one used for a .50-caliber Browning heavy machine gun, but I looked up the rifling, and it’s clean. There’s no record that it was used in a crime before.” Rifling, also called a gun’s fingerprint, referred to the helical grooves left behind on a bullet when it was fired.

Miori opened her fan and rotated it, and the screen changed a few times before settling on a miniature version of the scene of the crime with 3D modeling. Rentaro was unwittingly taken in for a second by Miori’s beautiful form, looking as if she were dancing a traditional Japanese dance.

Miori pointed out the roof of the problem building where the sniper was with her fan and dragged the fan toward the limousine. As she did so, a line showed up on the model image showing a distance of 991 meters. Miori rotated the model so Rentaro could get a better look. “Hey, Satomi dear, just checking… You’re certain the enemy shot from that building? And that the limousine was moving?”

“Yeah… What about it?”

“Satomi dear, how much do you know about sniping?”

“Not much.” He knew so little about the subject that he made sure not to choose it during his civsec officer license exam. On top of waiting in one place for the target to come and using finely honed nerves to pull the trigger, it required an enormous amount of patience and concentration. Rentaro wasn’t confident with either.

“The empty shell case that sank into the road at the scene was retrieved. Looking at the angle of the shot, it does seem highly likely that it was fired from this building, but…”

Miori sounded like something was stuck in her teeth as she spoke, but then lifted her face and continued. “Y’know, Satomi dear, in the year 2031, sniper scopes and rifles have gotten more precise, but in the end, the most important factor in figuring the accuracy rate is still the human factor. And humans’ hearts are always moving, and they have to breathe, so their hands shake slightly. If a sniper can hit a target eight hundred meters away, I consider them expert. A kilometer away is a miracle. From 1.2 kilometers away, it’s a stunt. More than that, and it’s a coincidence.”

Rentaro was shocked. “It’s that hard?”

“Try taking a hula hoop from the P.E. equipment room and using it in a ring toss to try to get a color cone twenty meters away. Sniping is different from a ring toss, but it’ll help you understand just how hard that is.”

“That…is hard…” Rentaro didn’t have to do it to imagine how impossible that would be. He finally understood what Miori was trying to say. She was suggesting that to pull off the feat of hitting a target a kilometer away three times was pretty much impossible.

Then, Miori explained the effects of temperature, humidity, angle, pressure, Coriolis force (how the bullet has a hill-like trajectory and is the highest at 55 percent of the way to its target), and the wind around the buildings that are the natural enemies of snipers.

Rentaro closed his eyes and thought back to the flames of the limousine, the people’s screams, and the glint from the roof of the building. There was no mistaking it. There really was a sniper there who shot from that building. It didn’t matter what Miori said.

Suddenly, Rentaro asked Miori about a suspicion that came to mind. “Hey, Miori, your company sells weapons wholesale to police and the self-defense force, too, right? Do you know someone called Takuto Yasuwaki?”

“No.”

“He’s the captain of the Seitenshi’s personal guard. Do the Shiba Heavy Weapons files have anything on him? Tell me what you know about him.”

Miori tilted her head and put her hands together, saying, “Search, Takuto Yasuwaki.” When she did, the search started at dizzying speeds, and in no time, the display called up a headshot of Yasuwaki. Next to it was a brief personal history.

“Takuto Yasuwaki. Age thirty-two, male. His rank is second lieutenant. Satomi dear, you’re a master sergeant, so he’s one rank above you.”

“Huh?” There was one phrase he couldn’t let pass without comment. “Hey, Miori, I’m not a soldier, so I don’t have a rank.”

More precisely, since the New Humanity Creation Project was started by the self-defense force, when Rentaro underwent the enhancement operation, he was forced to register as a solider, but his rank was supposed to be that of the lowest soldier. It definitely wasn’t anything as self-important sounding as master sergeant.

“Yes, you do. Even if it’s just a pseudo-rank, as your IP rank goes up, your top-secret information access key goes along with it. Your IP rank is 1,000, so you’re a master sergeant, Satomi dear.”

Now that she mentioned it, during the conferment ceremony, he thought did receive a top-secret access key and pseudo-rank to go along with his promotion to rank 1,000. The top-secret access key he got was so low level that he couldn’t get any valuable information. If Rentaro wanted to find out more about his parents and details of the Gastrea War, he needed a higher-level access key, after all. “Well, what can I do with that pseudo-rank, then?”

“Nothing much, really. Since you do roughly the same work as someone of regular rank, you have the right to give orders, but since at most yours is a pseudo-rank, you don’t have the authority to lead soldiers or have them follow your orders.”

The right to give orders without the right to lead, huh? “Then, what’s the point of those ranks?”

“Giving civsec officers those ranks makes them feel better, and that way they can make people think ‘The civsec officers still belong to the country.’”

Rentaro sighed. “Even though they’re civilian security agencies, they’re tied to the government, huh?”

“Well, it can’t be helped. The strongest civsec officer pairs are strong enough to change the world’s military balance, so countries want to manage them as much as possible. The civsec officer system was originally declared a privatization of military power with great fanfare at the beginning, but these were just empty statements.”

Looking at Miori smiling cynically, Rentaro suddenly remembered that he had had a similar conversation with Kisara in the past.

Miori opened up a paint program and used it to draw whiskers on Yasuwaki’s face and shave off his hair, starting to hum as she did so. “Anyway, the self-defense force said things like ‘The undrawn sword is the pride of peace’ to sound stoic and cool, but civilian control stopped working on members of the most aggressive group that had the best results during the Gastrea War, and they started doing things that the old army did. The Seitenshi’s personal guard is like a symbol of that.”

“Civilian…what is…?”

“Well, to put it plainly, they’re bad guys. Also, Satomi dear, guarding a VIP should really be the job of the police, but only the Seitenshi has personal guards at her own expense. But this isn’t all good. Do you know why?”

Rentaro looked Miori in the eye and nodded gravely. “They have no expertise.”

“That’s right.” Miori pointed her fan at his nose. “The Seitenshi personal guard is a young organization that just started its operations a mere ten years ago. Naturally they are less proficient than the Metropolitan Police Department’s security section guards and have not accumulated as much expertise. Above all, ten years ago, the Seitenshi’s personal guards did nothing more than serve as a wall to block the mass media.”

Rentaro was also concerned about that. Even if he was being kind, Rentaro wouldn’t say that the way they coped with the situation at the scene was in any way skilled. He sighed. He had to decide soon. Yasuwaki was more useless than expected. And even more alarming was that he hadn’t learned anything from the assassination attempt.

“To make a mistake and make it again is a mistake,” someone once said. The way things were going, a second assassination incident seemed likely.

Rentaro had to do something himself after all. “Miori, I have a favor to ask. Will you look into Sougen Saitake for me?”

“Why?”

Rentaro hesitated for a second, wondering how much he should tell her, but then shook his head and fixed his eyes on Miori. “He’s the one who hired the assassin. I’m pretty sure of it.”

Miori whistled happily, saying, “Satomi dear, what a thing to say!”

“But I have no proof. Will you collect some from your end?”

Miori said, “Hmm,” and put her hand on her chin. “I’m glad you’re counting on me, but you shouldn’t expect much. Even if it’s what you think it is, unless the head of state of Osaka Area gives some careless order that leaves evidence behind, I’m not going to be able to do much.”

“I won’t be any worse off. Please.”

“Hmm… All right.”

“Thanks.” With that, Rentaro figured he had done everything he came to do. As he thought that and lifted his face, he saw Miori’s face was unexpectedly close to his.

Miori sidled close to Rentaro with flushed cheeks, rested her chin on his chest, and purred. “Hey, Satomi dear, I did what you asked, and I don’t want to say I want this in return, but I want you to show me your real power, too, Satomi dear.” She was surely talking about his power as a soldier of the New Humanity Creation Project.

“Jeez, that has nothing to do with you. Anyway, it’s not something to show other people.”

“Satomi dear, do you like Kisara that much more than me?”

“D-don’t say that!”

Miori was a little put out. “If you forget about Kisara, you can do whatever you want with my body, Satomi dear.” Miori put her smooth hand on Rentaro’s chest and pet it, as if drawing circles on it. She put her body right up against his, and he could just see part of her chest from where the collar met, making him strangely excited. He unconsciously met her moist gaze, and Rentaro’s heart pounded as he turned his face away from hers.

“Please, Miori, stop messing arou—”

Suddenly, there was a roar as the door was kicked open, and Kisara panted at the door and then barged in. “What are you two doing?!” Kisara looked in surprise at Rentaro and Miori, looking back and forth a few times before lowering her gaze, putting power into her hand holding her sword, and making it shake so hard it clattered. Behind her back, the door had fallen inward, and it looked like she had ended up destroying the door after all.

Miori gave a small snort where Kisara couldn’t see, as if thinking of something bad, at the same time pulling the sleeve of her Japanese-style clothes in front of her mouth, posing modestly. “Patience, patience, Kisara!”

“Huh?” Kisara blinked, as if all the spite had left her.

“Dear Satomi and I really, truly didn’t do anything in this room. So don’t misunderstand, Kisara.” Miori fixed the collar of her Japanese-style clothes a few times even though it wasn’t messed up, cheeks flushed.

The sword and gun in Kisara’s hands fell to the ground with a clang at the same time. “No way………”

Miori looked back at Rentaro and said, “Well, Satomi dear, let’s move forward with that, okay?” and ran, departing.

“H-hey, what do you mean, ‘that’?” Rentaro stammered.

Miori stopped and looked back with teasing eyes. “I was talking about how if I give you my body, you would come join my company, Satomi dear. Oh, Kisara. It’s really nothing. Later.” Saying that, she really left the room this time. As she left, she stuck out her tongue where Kisara couldn’t see.

“No way………” Kisara stood with her eyes open in shock, not moving a muscle.

Rentaro pushed down the disturbed feelings in his heart and scratched the back of his head. “H-hey, Kisara, I think you already know this, but that’s just Miori’s way of teasing…… Hey, wait, are you listening?”

Even when he waved his hand in front of her face, her eyes and mouth stayed open, and she didn’t even blink. He wondered how long she had been like that. Finally, Kisara picked up her sword and turned on her heel, walking through the broken door with shaky steps.

“Damn it,” Rentaro cursed, pressing his temple. You really did it this time, Miori. Then, his cell phone vibrated. After he saw who was calling, he put his phone to his ear. “What is it, Doc? I don’t really have time for this right now…”

“Hey, Satomi. Do you have a little time after this? I need to talk to you about something important.” The Gastrea researcher, Sumire Muroto spoke disdainfully.

Rentaro kept his mouth shut and lifted his face, looking at the door Kisara had left through, mumbling, “I guess.”

“Then come now. I want to talk to Enju, too, so bring her with you. Later.”

“Huh? Enju, too?” As he said this, he could already hear the dial tone. Even though he wasn’t satisfied, he contacted Enju, and then looked aimlessly at Kisara’s name in his address book. What the heck? Why did she have to misunderstand like that?

He had an excuse to call her now with the pretext of reporting that he wouldn’t go back to the office but would go straight to Sumire’s. Normally, he wouldn’t think so much about it and would just call her, but for some reason, Rentaro lingered nervously in Miori’s room for a while before finally getting up the courage to call Kisara five minutes later.

After about twenty rings, just when he was about to give up, Kisara finally answered.

“H-hey, Kisara?”

“Who may I ask is speaking?” said an unexpectedly cold voice on the other end of the line.

“Huh? I-it’s me, Rentaro Satomi.”

“Which Satomi?”

“Wh-what?”

She seemed to be bent out of shape. He could easily imagine her on the other end of the phone with her chin lifted in the air, turned huffily the other way, with her arms crossed.

Rentaro scratched the back of his head hard. “Aw jeez, it’s me, the good-for-nothing, weak moron, Satomi! Damn it, that’s what you wanted to hear, right?”

“Oh, that Satomi. I remember now.”

Through the phone, he could hear Kisara chuckle slightly and the pressure in Rentaro’s chest let up just a little. “But you forgot ‘the perverted Satomi who was flirting with Miori,’ you stupid, stupid, stupid idiot.”

Just how stupid does she think I am? “That was a misunderstanding.”

“Liar.”

“I’m not lying.”

“Well, it’s not like I care. Even without you, I would be perfectly fine…”

“If I leave, you won’t have any employees.”

He heard a groan on the other end of the line. Apparently, she hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Oh, I’ll just hire someone new. Because then I won’t have to pay your salary anymore, Satomi.”

He almost retorted, “With that salary?!” but held back and tried to speak calmly. “Um, Kisara, I think you already know this, but most civsec officers are worthless guys who are former criminals or yakuza-types who have nothing to offer but violence, so you’d be in trouble if you ended up hiring someone like that.”

He heard another groan at the other end of the line. Apparently, she hadn’t thought of that, either. “I-I won’t let you have Enju!”

Rentaro was fed up. It was extremely hard to tell her, but Enju didn’t really like Kisara. Once, when he asked her, “What do you think of Kisara?” Enju replied bluntly saying, “Her boobs are an eyesore!”

He didn’t want to boast that Enju liked him more or anything, but if Enju was left to her own devices, he had a hard time finding a reason she would stay with the Tendo Civil Security Agency.

“What about food…? The food you make is gross, isn’t it? You come over to eat once every three days, don’t you? I mean, even on the days you don’t come over, all you eat are boxed lunches and snack breads and other things with unbalanced nutrition, right?”

“What are you talking about? I eat crusts of bread, too!”

Rentaro didn’t say anything. Apparently, she was eating crusts of bread, too.

“Besides, I won’t get fat eating the delicious food you make, so it’ll be a good diet, too.”

Rentaro started to become uneasy. If he quit the Tendo Civil Security Agency, it was possible Kisara would quickly die like a dog by the roadside.

“I mean, what? From what you’re saying, it sounds like I’m just a poor but haughty rich girl who can’t get by on her own and pays low wages while exploiting her employees.”

That was exactly what he was saying, but……

“How unpleasant. Now I’m angry. Even if you cry and shout that you want to return to the Tendo Civil Security Agency, it’s too late! Good-bye!”

With those last words, she hung up on him violently, but not even ten seconds later, she called him back. “……Satomi, you like bugs and animals and stuff, right?”

Unsure of where this new, calmer Kisara was going, he nodded. “Yeah, well…I liked Fabre’s Souvenirs Entomologiques, so I guess that just continued.”

“Then, I’ll tell you a fable so you’ll be able to understand easier. Once, there was a Satomi bug.”

“S-Satomi bug?” He was confused by the sudden appearance of a bug with a name that sounded too much like his own.

“It’s the scientific name. I’m sure it’s because there was a scientist named Satomi somewhere who discovered it first and named it after himself. It has nothing to do with you, Satomi.”

Rentaro didn’t say anything.

“I’ll continue. That Satomi bug was cute as a grub. He was a kind and honest bug who followed the Kisara butterfly, who’ll come out later, around everywhere. However, as he matured, he grew impertinent, and started saying foul things like ‘What the hell?’ Satomi, what do you think after listening to this story objectively?”

“That bug can talk…?”

“Yes, it’s fluent in Japanese.”

Rentaro had no words.

“I’ll continue. One day, the Miori bug appeared in front of the Satomi bug and started to seduce him. This bug was a relative of toilet crickets and cockroaches, a poisonous bug that serves as a carrier for smallpox, malaria, and the Black Death! Oh, but this has nothing to do with Miori.”

The story that was hard to comment on continued. Anyway, crickets were in the order Orthoptera with grasshoppers, and cockroaches were part of the order Blattodea, so they were actually completely different organisms and not related.

“Gallantly appearing on the scene was the Kisara butterfly you heard about earlier. To make a long story short, the Kisara butterfly was a Space God, a messenger of god. By the way, she was supercute, cuter than the Miori bug, at least. The only one who could save the Satomi bug from the evil clutches of the Miori bug was the Kisara butterfly. And to the Kisara butterfly, it was a little sad to think that the Satomi bug who had been with her since they were little would be taken away. In other words, the Satomi bug would become happy by being with the Kisara butterfly. Satomi, what do you think after objectively listening to this story so far?”

Rentaro was starting to get a headache. She wasn’t telling this story about bugs and butterflies because she wanted to say that last line, was she? “Just stop being mad already.”

“It’s not like I’m trying to make up, or anything.”

Rentaro was starting to get annoyed. “Hey, Kisara, will you stop already? I’m not going to Miori’s place, and I’m going to keep working at your place like I have until now.” He realized his slip of the tongue too late and gave a start.

“I don’t want you to work for me out of pity! Hmph!”

The angry sound of the phone being hung up made Rentaro think he messed up, and he slumped and hung his head. This wasn’t what he was trying to say. He seemed to have been in the student council room for a long time, and when he went outside, the setting sun was dyed a bright red.

Picking up Enju at the statue in front of the school where they had arranged to meet, he continued on foot to Magata University Hospital, where Sumire was.

“Enju, be careful.” As he walked past the reception desk and into the university hospital hallway, he looked next to him.

“Hmm? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know why Doc told even you to come. I have a bad feeling about it.”

“Really? It has been a long time since I have been able to see Sumire, so I am looking forward to it.”

Watching Enju swing her fists happily up and down, Rentaro sighed. He had a feeling that even if he looked all over the world, Enju would be the only human who looked forward to seeing Sumire.

Going down the clean, swept hall for a while, they went down the familiar staircase to the basement. As usual, it was dim and smelled strongly of room fragrance, but today, Rentaro could hear a piercing laugh on top of that. The voice that bounced off the walls and reached Rentaro’s earlobes sounded like the maniacal laughter of a witch, and even Rentaro, who was used to coming here, hesitated.

Fed up, he passed the demon-engraved people-warding objects and found Sumire spread out on top of the table laughing uncontrollably. As she moved about on the table, she pushed off test tubes and beakers, and they broke with a crash.

“Hey, Rentaro, look at this article! The yakuza were tricked by the April Fools’ joke about immigrating to the moon and started buying up land on the moon to sell. They’re such dreamers even though they’re yakuza! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Rentaro’s chest was already filled with the feeling of wanting to go home. The world-renown doctor, Sumire Muroto, had a side of severe necrophilia to the point where she expanded a morgue without permission just so she could live with the corpses.

“Sumire, we came to play!”

Enju waved her hand happily, and Sumire sat up, pushing up her hair, which had been allowed to grow as much as it wanted. And then she sat cross-legged on top of the table, brushing aside the hem of her lab coat, spreading both arms dramatically. “Welcome, Rentaro, Enju. Welcome to my nightmare.”

Sumire looked back and forth between Enju’s and Rentaro’s faces with an ecstatic expression. “Rentaro, you would be better mummified than stuffed, after all. Kisara would definitely be better stuffed than mummified. If she were mummified, then her boobs would stick out, so it wouldn’t look good. Enju……would be fine as a mummy. Yup.”

“Hmph, what part of me were you looking at when you said that?”

“I don’t care who it is, but won’t one of you die soon? I’m about to die from lack of corpses here. Oops, I almost forgot. It’s been a while, Rentaro. You have an unfortunate face, as usual. It’s depressing just looking at it. Sorry, but could you get some plastic surgery on that face by tomorrow? I can’t stand looking at it anymore.”

“Am I really that depressing?!”

Sumire stood up and stuffed coffee beans into the coffeemaker, put a beaker under it to catch the coffee, and turned it on. When she did, the room echoed the sound of the mill grinding the beans.

“More importantly, Rentaro, I heard you’re doing an escort job or something interesting like that?”

“Word travels fast.”

“I don’t know much about stuff like that, but I heard you’re up against a sniper this time? I always thought you knew a great deal about sniping. I mean, you are a man with the concentration to gaze at a young girl going to school through binoculars on the second floor, combined with the marvelous patience to wait until a dad brings his daughter into the hot springs. You should be called Love Sniper, you Lolita-complex bastard! Die!”

“There’s no truth in any of what you just said!”

Enju looked at Rentaro with excited eyes. “Is that true, Rentaro?”

“No! Stop it! Don’t give me that look! Anyway, Doc, thanks to you making up stories and spreading them around, Enju thinks they’re funny and broadcasts them to the people who live in our apartment building, which is problematic. You know, the other day when I went to take out the trash one of our neighbors suddenly spit on me! What are you going to do about that?!”

“Yeah, I calculated ahead of time that that would happen when I spread the stories to Enju.”

“You are scum!”

“Thanks, that makes me happy. Watching you get socially destroyed is the last piece of joy I have left.” Sumire laughed evilly.

Rentaro was speechless. Just how much was he supposed to let this person make him despair?

Just then, two beakers filled to the brim with coffee slid toward him on the table. “Well, come on, sit down,” said Sumire.

Watching Enju happily plunk herself down on a stool, Rentaro also grudgingly sat next to her.

Sumire, sitting across from them, put her chin on her hands and lowered the tone of her voice, making a solemn face. “Rentaro, it’s a little late, but congratulations. You defeated Kagetane Hiruko and moved up in rank. Now that you’ve moved up to 1,000th to join the ranks of the high-ranking pairs, I thought I should talk to you soon about things you should be careful about with the three geniuses other than me who exist in the world.”

“The three geniuses?” Rentaro shifted on the chair when he realized the conversation was heading from calm to cloudy.

“Rentaro, what kind of understanding do you have of me as a person?”

Rentaro knew this was a serious question, so he considered. “You were the person responsible for the New Humanity Creation Project.”

“I can only give you partial credit for that answer. I am the most brilliant mind in Japan, and I was responsible for the Japanese branch of a mechanized soldier project that spanned four countries: Japan, America, Australia, and Germany.”

Rentaro interrupted in his confusion. “What the heck is that…? Wait a minute, this is the first I’ve heard of it. Four countries? Then—”

Sumire explained solemnly. “The head of the Australia branch, Obelisk, was Professor Arthur Zanuck. The head of the U.S. branch, NEXT, was Professor Ain Rand, and the head of the Japan branch, the New Humanity Creation Project, was Professor Sumire Muroto—in other words, me. And the one who unified all of this and was in charge of everything was a German scientist, Professor Albrecht Grünewald. The four of us are the four people with expertise on mechanized soldier creation. We were called things like the Four Kings, or the Four Sages… How nostalgic.”

“‘Four Sages’…?”

“That’s right. The four of us were the great minds of the world, gathered in order to save the world from the invasion of the Gastrea. Now, Rentaro, do you think we produced great results working together hand in hand? Unfortunately, the answer is no. I’ll tell you from the end of the story. The four of us were jealous of one another’s ability and hid the results of our research from one another. I’m embarrassed to say that I was the same as the rest, too.”

“Why would you do that…?”

Pressed for an answer, Sumire just shrugged her shoulders. “Can you understand? For all of your life, there was not a single person around who could be called your equal, so you became conceited, but then suddenly three geniuses who threatened your existence appeared. I was frightened and extremely jealous at the same time. Coupled with the fact that my lover had been killed by a Gastrea around that time, and I couldn’t really see what was going on around me. You should remember what I was like back then.”

Rentaro paused. “I do.” He nodded, remembering Sumire all skin and bones, with just her glittering eyes. The Sumire now wasn’t the person responsible for the New Humanity Creation Project or the Sumire whose lover had just been killed by a Gastrea. She was half-forgotten by the world, but she seemed much happier now than she was back then.

“To continue, in the end, the four of us each used our individual expertise to the best of our ability and created mechanized soldiers.” Sumire laughed masochistically, shaking her head slowly. “My heart never connected with any of them during the whole process. Not once. And then, all the projects disbanded a little after the war. Do you know why?”

Casting a sidelong glance at Enju, whose body had tensed with nervousness, Rentaro opened his mouth to speak hesitatingly. “Because mankind realized the high-fighting abilities of the Cursed Children.”

“Exactly. Even though it took a huge amount of money to create a single mechanized soldier like you, these girls were born naturally equipped with power that was equal to that of the soldiers. It was only natural for the government to think it was ridiculous to waste money on building the mechanized soldiers, right?

“And so all the organizations were disbanded, and the soldiers were relieved of their duties. Where did they go? Did they decide to live as ordinary citizens to spend the rest of their lives in peace? The answer to this is also no. After the civsec officer system was born, most of the mechanized soldiers went out into the world as Promoters. For them, the disbanding of the organizations just meant that the place where they fought changed.

“The current government is trying to manage the civsec officer system as clients. Well, it’s just what those government types wanted. Since civil security agencies are civilian organizations, it’s cheaper than having them work for the country. Price wars and other market forces are also involved. Lucky for them, the mechanized soldiers are also part of these organizations, so governments can just have them form tag teams and make great use of them. And these days, strong mechanized soldiers paired with strong Initiators get great military results, and most of them sit in the seats of the highest ranks. Do you understand what this means?”

Rentaro nodded as he slowly licked his dry lips, and Sumire continued.

“Rentaro, if you have decided to go after your origins, I am not particularly opposed to it. However, if you are going to defeat the enemies in front of you and aim to be among the highest of the highest ranks to get the highest-level top-secret information access key, then you will soon run into mechanized soldiers made by the other three geniuses who have become Promoters. You should be careful. Their abilities may have evolved past what we can even imagine.”

Without noticing it, Rentaro found himself sitting up straight and holding his breath as he listened. Cold sweat dripped down his cheek. He had been holding his breath, and he shook his head as he felt released from an invisible pressure and slowly drew oxygen into his lungs. He could easily imagine how this could become a fearsome path of thorns.

“But Rentaro, it’s not something to be pessimistic about. You already defeated one of Mr. Grünewald’s mechanized soldiers.”

Rentaro looked up with surprise. “Don’t tell me he was…”

“That’s right, Kagetane Hiruko.”

Just hearing that name gave him the chills and made him feel sick to his stomach. Manipulating a repulsion force field with superior defense along with two sinister handguns, Kagetane Hiruko was, without a doubt, the strongest opponent Rentaro had ever faced in his short life. It was more or less a miracle that he had won.

“Only Mr. Grünewald did not have a research lab in his own country, so he had facilities in Japan, Australia, and America. Section 22, which you were in, was under my jurisdiction, but Kagetane’s Section 16 was under Mr. Grünewald’s jurisdiction. Also, it might sound like the Four Sages were equal in their abilities, but Mr. Grünewald’s genius was obviously a rank above that of Arthur, Ain, and mine. Once, I thought I’d try to steal the knowledge he had of mechanized soldiers and looked at his blueprints, but there was a portion that even I didn’t understand.”

Rentaro shook his head. Honestly, what she was talking about had gotten too big for him to wrap his head around. Next to him, Enju had her mouth half-open. She probably did not understand half of what she was hearing, either.

“Wait, Doc, are you really that amazing?” There was still a trace of fatigue left in his lighthearted words, but Sumire was indifferent and recrossed her legs.

“What, it’s not a big deal. The way you and Enju would read a single book is how I would read a single library. That’s the only difference. It’s simple, isn’t it? You might just think of me as a coroner, but I actually have no particular specialty. Everything is my specialty.”

“Then why are you doing autopsies on Gastrea now?”

Sumire hunched her shoulders and twisted her lips in a smile. “It’s because I like it. Corpses are great. No idle chatter from them. Oh, but the most unfortunate part about this job is that your patients never say ‘Thank you.’”

Rentaro was fed up.

“Just how old are you right now, Doc?”

“Fifteen.”

“You’re younger than me?! Have you no shame?”

“Silence, or I’ll dissect you while you’re still alive.”

“No, please. Anything but that!”

As if realizing something at those words, Sumire gave a smirk. “Hey, I’ve been wondering about this for a while, but you have school during the day, go to Kisara’s office after school, and then you’re with Enju at home, right? As a healthy male hominid, when do you take care of your pent-up frustrations? Tell me.”

“Now that you mention it…” Even Enju was starting to look interested.

Rentaro’s hips twitched unconsciously. “Hey—! Th-that has nothing to do with anything. Enju’s around, too! What are you saying, Doc?”

“Then don’t ask my age, idiot. Everyone has one or two things they don’t want people to ask about.”

Rentaro sat back down in his chair with a sour look on his face at that severe retaliation. “Doc, you really are a terrible person, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am. That’s why I have no friends. Did you only just notice?”

Disgusted, Rentaro looked at the large bookcases in the basement room. There was no sign of the person who was once the greatest mind in all of Japan on the bookcases filled with movies and adult video games.

“By the way, did you know, Rentaro? In the first dating sim games, the main character’s parameters were set, and if he wasn’t above a certain level in intelligence and looks, the girls wouldn’t even look at him. Even though it was a game, it didn’t contain any dreams or hopes, which kept it from being a great game, so other game companies went in a different direction.”

“What are you talking about?”

The enigmatic female doctor took a mechanical pencil from the breast pocket of her lab coat and tapped it on the table complacently. “Well, I was just wondering how far you got with Kisara. Kisara is wasted on someone like you with an unfortunate face obsessed with bugs. It’s strange that she hasn’t had a conspicuous boyfriend yet. You should be in more of a hurry. For all your rude talking, you can be a gentleman, but you lack the lust for conquest that will allow you to overcome a woman’s indecision and make her your own. That’s your weakness, you know. Have you noticed, Rentaro?”

“Sh-shut up. It has nothing to do with you.”

Seeing Enju looking discontented, Rentaro was startled and averted his face quickly. However, he smoothly slid just his gaze toward Sumire and asked, “Well, what would you do if you were me, Doc?”

“I’d probably slip a sleeping pill into Kisara’s drink.”

He shouldn’t have asked. Rentaro scratched the back of his head.

“Sorry, Rentaro, but you should go home first.”

“Why?”

“I have some things to talk to Enju about now. I don’t want you to hear it.”

“Hey, Doc, don’t tell me—” You’re not going to talk to Enju about her corrosion rate, are you? Rentaro glared.

But Sumire shook her head. “It’s not that.”

“I…see… Then, I’ll get going. Enju, can you get home by yourself?”

“Yes, no problem.”

Rentaro gave a small wave at Enju and left the university hospital reluctantly.