Black Bullet - Volume 3 - Chapter 1.4

4

“I see, then there aren’t any particular problems there, huh? ……Yeah, I know. Sorry for the trouble. I owe you one…… Yeah, okay, I’m hanging up.” Rentaro pushed the END CALL button and sighed, moving off the wall he was leaning on.

“All right!” he yelled, lifting his head and looking with gloomy eyes at the field the soccer and baseball clubs were sharing as they ran around cheerfully. Rentaro was in front of the sports field of Magata High School. There were only four days left until the Monolith would be destroyed. That news still had not been made public, and Tokyo Area maintained a temporary peace. But when that was made public, this peaceful scene…

Rentaro stuffed his hands into his pockets, hunched his shoulders, and walked out of the shadows of the school building. When he did, the scorching sun shone down on him, and he longed for the shade of the trees. He pulled at his uniform to send some cool air to his chest, but the sweat pouring out of him showed no sign of stopping. He couldn’t believe they could do club activities under this blazing sun.

As he neared the statue in front of the school, he noticed a small crowd of people there and stopped in surprise for a moment, but as he got closer, he realized that it was nothing he needed to worry about.

“It’s a foreigner!”

“Her hair’s so smooth and pretty!”

“I want to touch it!”

“Her eyes are blue!”

“She’s like a doll!”

When Rentaro forcibly slipped through the opening in the crowd with difficulty and got to the front, he saw an uncomfortable Tina standing in the middle of the curious stares.

“Oh, do you want some candy?” and then more slowly, “Do you eat candy?” A group of three girls nervously offered Tina wrapped candies, representing the group.

“I do not want any.”

“She talked!” they exclaimed.

Of course she can talk. “Sorry I’m late,” Rentaro said aloud, using a loud voice on purpose, waving his hand as he got closer.

“Big Brother!” Tina rushed over to him and hugged him around the waist with both arms.

“Big Brother?” the three girls exclaimed in unison. Looking at the little chorus, Rentaro thought he had seen them before somewhere and then suddenly realized that they were his classmates. He couldn’t remember their names, though.

“Satomi, don’t you keep another young girl at home, too? Did you get another one?”

“I don’t keep her, she’s a freeloader!”

“Hey, introduce me to this girl.”

Everyone in the crowd around them seemed to be murmuring the same thing. Everyone wanted to meet Tina.

Rentaro sighed. He couldn’t stay here. “Tina, let’s go.” Without waiting for a response, he pulled Tina’s hand and ignored the cries of, “Hey, wait!” from the female students trying to stop them. He escaped with haste.

“They were interesting.”

“Sorry I was late. How was school?”

“Today was fun, too.” Tina looked shyly at Rentaro. “Did you call Mr. Matsuzaki?”

He glanced at Tina, who was walking next to him. Thinking there was no use hiding it, he nodded. “Yeah, I did.”

A few days had passed since the news report, but rather than calming down, the situation had turned into an even bigger deal. The Stolen Generation finally had a target for their anger, and their actions were quick, and their grudges deep. There was criticism against the Seitenshi, a supporter of the Children, and demonstrations at the Seitenshi’s palace. The news gathered fervor, and groups that had been dying down—like the anti-Children citizens group and ones even more extreme—instead increased their activities.

There were even groups that started interfering with the Outer District, which had been left alone by silent agreement before, so Rentaro could not just stand by quietly. And so, whenever he had a free moment, he would call Matsuzaki to ask about the conditions in the Outer District, because based on the report, it could directly affect the safety of Enju and Tina, who were going to school out there.

Rentaro and Tina went to Magata Station together, and Rentaro inserted coins into the ticket machine and bought two tickets. In the short time before the change and tickets were spit out, Rentaro glanced at Tina, who gazed at the train map as if everything she looked at was strange.

Tina had started addressing her nocturnal sleep cycle the day after sleeping over at Rentaro’s house. Even though it was the middle of the day, she did not seem sleepy at all, so she must have achieved some success.

Rentaro asked himself if he should tell her. Earlier, when he saw Tina surrounded by a crowd of people at the statue in front of the school, his heart almost stopped for a moment with worry.

In the past, he had seen a similar sight. Back then, it was Enju who had been surrounded, and it was because she had been exposed as one of the Children with the Gastrea virus inside her and was about to be expelled from school.

Rentaro did not know how Initiators were treated in America, but he knew they were not worshipped as gods. Which meant that even Tina must understand that she needed to hide her red eyes. It wasn’t something worth mentioning specifically, but because of the current situation, he couldn’t help but feel anxious.

“Rentaro, what is the matter?” Before he knew it, Tina was looking up at him with a wondering look on her face.

“Oh, it’s nothing,” he said.

The train going into the city wasn’t especially crowded or empty. Letting Tina have the seat he got, Rentaro grabbed the strap in front of it. His body swayed a little from the inertia of the train as the departure bell rang noisily. He allowed his body to move with the slight vibrations from the train tracks.

He raised his eyes casually, only to feel uncomfortable. A train ad with the caption VIOLENT ACT BY RED-EYES!!! ARE THESE GIRLS TURNING INTO GASTREA INSIDE TOWN LIMITS?! came into view. Rentaro quietly slipped his body sideways so that the ad would not enter Tina’s line of sight. If only the world could become a place where he didn’t have to do something like this, sooner rather than later…

“By the way, where are we going now?” Tina asked.

As they got off the train and walked into the throng of people in the city, Rentaro lifted his face from the GPS on his cell phone and looked at Tina next to him. “Didn’t I tell you? We’re going to invite some civil officers.”

“Invite?”

“I think I told you about this before, but adjuvants fight in teams. That’s why we need to gather people who will team up with us first.” Rentaro felt around in his pocket and pulled out the slip of paper Kisara had given him. On it was a list of names and addresses, and the top fifteen had already been crossed out. This was the list of possible adjuvants that Rentaro and Kisara had put their knowledge together to come up with.

Rentaro glared at the sixteenth name on the list. “Right now, we’re heading to a place called the Katagiri Civil Security Agency. I met them on the field once. They’re a small agency like us, run by siblings. Can’t say much about their personality, but they’re definitely strong.”

Tina gave him a dubious look in return. “You can’t say much about their personality…?”

“Yeah, you know. They’re kind of weird. But they’re definitely strong.”

“But why did you bring me?”

“Because otherwise I won’t have a chance to show you around Tokyo Area.”

Tina’s look turned to one of surprise and she looked down shyly. “A date with Big Brother,” she murmured passionately. Rentaro tried his best not to hear.

A lot of people were sitting at the edge of the bronze fountain in front of the station, and there were fresh leaves above them giving shade with their deep glossy color. There were sweet smells coming from the ice cream shop they passed, mixed with the fresh smell of summer coming from the watermelons near the entrance of the supermarket and the strong cinnamon scent from the fried bread store. They wafted over together and stimulated his nostrils.

Tina entwined both arms around Rentaro’s and cheerfully passed the department store. For some reason, Tina looked so funny acting like a new wife with her chin stuck up in the air as she walked that Rentaro let out a small laugh. He was chided with an angry look.

He wished that this time would continue forever. He really wanted to enjoy the time he could spend with Tina. But a part of him knew in his heart that this was all an illusion. The incident with the Family Register Revocation Law the other day definitely woke up the feelings of hatred Tokyo Area citizens had for Gastrea. He needed to be ready for the kind gazes those around him had for Tina to turn into ice once it was revealed that Tina carried something in her body that a normal girl definitely would not have.

As they approached a five-road junction in the middle of the city, Rentaro suddenly heard singing and stopped. It was the characteristic soprano of a young girl, and a hymn at that. Turning his head toward the sound, he soon realized that it was coming from the wide pedestrian bridge above. He could have just ignored it and continued on, but for some reason, Rentaro was extremely curious about the voice and urged Tina up the stairs of the pedestrian bridge. There was a rush mat spread out near the middle of it, and the voice was coming from there. It seemed different from a street performance, somehow. As he got closer and realized what it was, Rentaro soon regretted coming.

The singer was a beggar girl clad in rags. Even though she had good features, they were stained, and the cape she wore was greasy, giving an overall shabby impression. The girl held out a beggar’s bowl with both hands and sang at the people who were heading to the road. On a piece of scrap wood next to her were the words, “I am one of the Cursed Children from the Outer District. I need money to feed my little sister. Please give what you can.” Standing in front of her, even though it was rude to say so of a girl, he could smell body odor.

Rentaro became worried that Tina would be shocked, but she was unexpectedly calm. She just looked on with solemn eyes. There were surely slums in her country, as well, so other countries must have been in a similar situation as Tokyo Area.

“Hey, you…,” said Rentaro.

“Yes?” The girl stopped singing and smiled, lifting her face, and Rentaro thought something was strange. The girl’s eyelids were still closed. He suspected that she was blind, but soon realized that wasn’t it. The Cursed Children were protected from disease thanks to the Gastrea virus. “Hey, what happened to your eyes?”

“Oh.” The girl gently rubbed around her two eyes. “They were mutilated by the lead that was poured into them.”

Rentaro was speechless. Was this part of the beggar business? Where they try to make people feel sorry for them by having their eyes mutilated or doing something cruel to paralyze their arms or legs so that they could get money? Was that something that could be overlooked in this wide world?

The girl seemed to sense Rentaro’s hesitation with her skin and shook her head gently. “This wasn’t done to me by someone else. I did it to myself.”

“Why…?”

“Because I couldn’t think of another way to feed my little sister… And because the mother who abandoned us hated my red eyes.”

Rentaro muttered inwardly, had a bitter taste in his mouth. Gastrea shock. The eyes that shone red and were the same in all Gastrea. During the war, there were people traumatized by fear from seeing them, and the red eyes became the trigger for attacks of convulsions or cramps or other symptoms. It became the most widespread disease of society after the Gastrea War.

In cases where one of the Cursed Children was born to a family where someone had Gastrea shock, the family circumstances usually ended in tragedy.

“How can you smile?” Tina asked the girl hesitatingly.

Rentaro wanted to know, too. The girl seemed to smile persistently in the face of unimaginable adversity. Although this was a word used very rarely for a girl of ten, she was like a saint.

The girl did not answer the question but quietly stretched her hands out to Tina. Tina was surprised at first, but once she realized the girl meant no harm, Tina let her do as she wished.

In place of her unseeing eyes, the girl’s hands traced Tina’s features, from her hair and face to her neck, collarbone, and shoulders, brushing over them, until finally the girl lifted her face slowly. “Are you one of the Cursed Children, too?”

Rentaro looked around him hurriedly in surprise. The people coming and going on the pedestrian bridge passed quickly with indifference, and there was no sign of anyone finding fault with what she said.

“How did you know…?” said Tina, dumbfounded.

Facing Tina, the girl’s smile grew bigger. “You’re pretty. I’ll bet the boys can’t leave you alone, right?”

Tina glanced for a second at Rentaro before saying, “That is not true,” shaking her head dejectedly.

“You know, I can’t live without depending on others, so I naturally learned to smile. Besides, I don’t know what face to make other than this anymore.” After the girl’s face twisted in a bitter smile, she said, “But,” and slouched her shoulders a little. “Recently, I have been hit more and have had dirty words yelled at me more often, which is a little painful. Did something happen?”

Just then, a passerby threw something metallic into her metal bowl. The girl smiled softly and quietly made a deep bow.

Rentaro looked at the pull tab of a canned drink that had been thrown into her bowl and felt disgusted. He glared at the snickering man wearing a double-breasted suit, but the man soon disappeared from view.

Rentaro slouched and looked at Tina. “Actually,” he started, and he and Tina proceeded to tell the girl the circumstances of the murder of a civilian by Cursed Children.

“I see, something like that happened…” The girl nodded meekly.

“That’s why you shouldn’t beg in the Inner Districts until this settles down. Everyone’s bloodthirsty, so it’s dangerous for you to be here.”

Then, the girl stammered for the first time. “But…”

Rentaro put his hands on the girl’s shoulders and looked directly at her. “Promise me.”

The girl squirmed indecisively but finally faced Rentaro and said, “Okay” loudly.

Rentaro exhaled through his nose. He could rest easy for now. Rentaro put his hand in his wallet and pulled out a bill, putting it in the girl’s hand. “Is that enough?”

The girl took the bill and put it between her fingers. After rubbing it slowly, she lifted it to her nose and breathed in the smell deeply through her nostrils. “Wow, this much? Thank you!” As if to thank him, the girl crossed her hands in front of her chest and lifted her chin, then started singing low and quiet. When her voice eventually grew louder and went higher, the solemn and clear soprano pushed back the tumult of the city and spread gently through the air.

She was singing “Amazing Grace.”

Rentaro quietly put his hands on Tina’s shoulders to urge her on, leaving quietly so that the girl would not notice. After putting enough distance between them, Rentaro looked back a little, reluctantly.

The voice singing a blessing continued. But for some reason, it sounded a little sad.