Adam was soaring through the skies of Yokohama. He leaped from buildings, used traffic lights as footings, and bounced off streets like a skipping rock. One person saw him and even screamed. When he hopped over the bus stop’s roof and launched himself from a utility pole, Chuuya spoke up.
“That’s enough.”
Adam’s trajectory shifted in an instant. He came to a complete stop in midair, then dropped straight down.
“Whoa?!”
Adam and Chuuya crash-landed in an open lot, sending dirt and rubble flying. Chuuya stood up in the cloud of dust, let out a sigh, then held his breath. The wire slowly slid down his body due to the added gravity before eventually darting straight into the ground, unable to withstand the weight any longer.
“I got a lot to say about what just happened,” Chuuya began while tearing off the rest of the wire. “But more importantly, you better not treat me like a damn package ever again! Carry me on your back, drag me along—there’s plenty of other ways you could’ve done this!”
“I apologize.” Adam staggered to his feet after crawling out of the hole. “However, due to your size, I concluded that method to be the most efficient.”
“I’m this close to snapping your robot ass in two! I’m still growing, damn it!”
They were in an unpaved vacant lot seemingly forgotten by the city. It used to be home to an old church that was demolished per wartime air defense regulations and then abandoned because it wasn’t clear who exactly the rightful owner was after that. People in the neighborhood decided to turn the bare dirt lot into a playground using bits of various equipment cobbled together. Big tires half buried in the ground for playing, a giant elephant sculpture with its paint peeling off, and swings for toddlers had become the lot’s silent guardians.
Chuuya’s phone began ringing as Adam wiped the dust off his clothes. It was Piano Man.
“What?”
“You okay, package boy? Did you arrive at your destination safely?” asked the amused voice on the other end of the phone.
“Shut the hell up. Of course I’m okay. What’s happening on your end?”
“Us? We’re cleaning up after the mess. Ah, nothing beats a good workout in the morning.” Chuuya heard sarcastic laughter coming from the phone. “I’d ask you to hurry up and come back the moment you’re done, but we were actually given a job to do. We’ll meet up with you later.”
“A job? Like a fight?”
“We still don’t know. Hope it isn’t a fight, though,” Piano Man replied, faintly snickering. “One of our colleagues just showed up and told us we were all needed, and seeing as all five of us were summoned, then it’s probably a job from the boss himself. Or maybe it’s a promotion? I’ll make sure to give you an allowance every month if I become an executive before you.”
“Ha-ha-ha! In your dreams, Piano Man!” someone yelled in the background on the other side of the line.
“Anyway, let’s all meet up at the pool hall again tonight. Albatross will send someone to pick you up.”
Piano Man hung up after they exchanged brief good-byes. A few seconds passed as Chuuya stared wordlessly at the silent phone. He then glanced back and said:
“Hey, tin man. Looks like we’re alone now. You about ready to tell me what you know about Verlaine?”
“Of course,” replied Adam. “First, I would like you to please take a look at this.”
He pulled a photo out of his jacket pocket and handed it to Chuuya. It showed a marble floor and extremely well-kept furniture. It appeared to be some sort of palace. Furniture wasn’t the only thing in the picture, though. There were also three dead bodies.
“This is the coronation chamber in one of England’s cathedrals,” Adam calmly stated. “Several murders occurred there three years ago.”
The deceased men in the photo were wearing official attire of England’s royal guards. There were no visible signs of violence. The men hadn’t even unsheathed the ceremonial swords at their waists. There were no bullet holes in the ground, torn pieces of clothing, or even blood. Everything was perfectly still. The men almost looked like they were sleeping.
“These men were the queen’s highest-ranking imperial guards. They were skill users in the Order of the Clock Tower, a British state organization, and had been knighted, granting them the authority to protect the queen. That is to say they were unparalleled worldwide in their abilities to guard important figures. Each was said to be capable of single-handedly taking out an entire terrorist organization in one night, and indeed, they certainly could.”
“And it was…Verlaine who killed them?”
Adam nodded mechanically. “Exactly how he killed them is unclear, since there were no signs of trauma.”
“Does that mean he killed them with some sort of skill?” Chuuya brought the photo closer and scrutinized it. “You wouldn’t know exactly how he did it, but they must’ve performed an autopsy on these guys to find the cause of death, right?”
“They did,” Adam answered. “According to the coroner’s report, the direct cause of death was respiratory failure. Broken ribs impaired their lungs’ contractile function, causing them to suffocate. While they appeared to be unharmed externally, their bones were fragmented into one thousand two hundred and twenty-eight pieces.”
“…Wha…?”
Chuuya was at a loss for words, unable to process what he was being told.
“Incidentally, those one thousand two hundred and twenty-eight pieces were broken almost simultaneously.” Adam spoke as evenly as if he were reading a traffic sign.
“Their bones were broken up, but they didn’t have any external injuries? And it happened simultaneously, too? …But how?”
“I do not have the answer to that.” Adam shook his head. “The crime took place during the coronation. Verlaine managed to kill the three guards without being noticed before assassinating the queen herself right after the ceremony. He then vanished into thin air thereafter. Fortunately, the queen had been using a body double as a decoy per an earlier decision, so the real queen survived. Nevertheless, the Order of the Clock Tower’s credibility was damaged beyond repair.”
“Seriously?”
Chuuya closed his eyes.
The British royal family and the Order of the Clock Tower protecting them were among the holiest and most enduring institutions in the world—they were sacred, impenetrable. No criminal could ever hope to get a glimpse of even the royal family’s shadow because the knights who guarded them had elite skills that transcended all human capabilities. Their domain was more like its own world, the stuff of myths and fairy tales, than it was a reality. And yet a single assassin managed to sneak inside and even kill people.
“Sounds like a goddamn monster.”
Adam nodded. “Eight other major figures have been assassinated in a similar manner by Verlaine’s hand. He has slaughtered three supervisors of a military armory simultaneously in cold blood, and he also destroyed a drug cartel’s distribution and killed their boss in the process, which was a boon to national security efforts. He does not discriminate between good and evil when he selects his targets. All they have in common is that they are influential people and extremely difficult to assassinate. Verlaine is considered one of the most dangerous threats to humankind, someone akin to the Seventeen Worldly Evils. Therefore, Europole had skill user engineer Dr. Wollstonecraft and myself approach this investigation from a completely new direction.”
“And how exactly are you gonna approach this investigation?”
Adam tilted his head. “Through you, of course.”
Chuuya didn’t immediately reply.
“You are a key figure in this. You were the experiment that Verlaine tried to obtain, someone whose fate remained unknown until recently. He attempted to steal you from Rimbaud but failed. News that you are alive in Yokohama has been spreading very rapidly as of late, perhaps due to the Mafia’s success. We believe if our agency already knows where you are, then Verlaine will soon find out as well. Therefore, we—”
“Decided to use me as live bait to catch the guy, huh?”
Adam smiled cheerfully. “I see. You are using fishing as a metaphor to describe the act of manipulating and luring out the suspect. Impressive.”
“…”
“Now that you understand…”
He held out a single sheet of paper to Chuuya, who stood in glum astonishment.
“If you could please just give me your written consent…”
Chuuya glared at the paper. “Written consent? For what?”
“This is an agreement that you will not violate the investigation’s rules and regulations, leak any confidential information, nor file a complaint should you become injured or perish during the investigation. There are seventeen other items written here that I suggest you read over as well.”
Chuuya quietly stared at the fountain pen and piece of paper being offered to him. “Oh. So will I get a chance to talk to Verlaine after you capture him?”
“No. He is a walking state secret, after all. The moment he is captured, he will be sealed off and deported to his country of origin.”
“Oh, that so? Ha-ha-ha-ha.”
“Yes, sir. Ha-ha-ha-ha.”
The moment Chuuya finished laughing, his smile faded into his usual straight face. He turned his back to Adam.
“I’m gonna head home and take a nap.”
“Hmm? Why?” Adam slipped in front of Chuuya and stopped him. “I’m unable to understand your thought process. This objective is to prevent your assassination. I believe this would be highly beneficial to you.”
“Listen, I’m with the Mafia. Just ’cause the enemy’s strong, it doesn’t mean I’m gonna go cryin’ for the police to save me. If Verlaine comes for me, then bring it. Got that? Now, leave me alone,” he barked as he pushed Adam out of the way and began walking off.
“I was not expecting this,” Adam muttered, perplexed. “Sovereign or mafioso, one should rely on others if one’s life is in danger. I believe I am best suited to help in this situation. Humans are irrational creatures, but I won’t be able to complete my mission if he will not allow me to help, and if that happens, I will be even further from realizing my dream to create a machine-run detective agency.” Then he added, “Probing situational subroutines for a solution.”
Adam crossed his arms and stared into space, turning his head. Before long, he firmly nodded and started following Chuuya.
“How about this, Chuuya. I will pay you if you allow me to help.”
“You really suck at negotiating. You oughta learn a little more about humans first.”
Chuuya didn’t even glance in his direction as he pressed onward.
“Then, how about a free trip to England? I can arrange for a tour guide to show you around as well.”
“I’ll pass.”
Chuuya continued to walk away.
“I was not expecting you to refuse both money and a valuable trip abroad. Is there anything else of equal value I could offer you? Hmm… Ah. Allow me to show you a trick.” Adam proceeded to unhinge his neck joints with a clink and lifted his head.
After stretching his neck far enough to reveal the mechanical joints within, he faced forward and began bobbing his head back and forth, his eyes and mouth wide open. He then started walking.
“Look. I’m a pigeon.”
Chuuya completely ignored him.
“Was that not good? Very well. Allow me to tell you an android joke, then.” Adam returned his head to its original position. “So…I was walking down the streets of England when a petty thief suddenly dumped his coffee on the prime minister’s head. The prime minister instantly scolded me, not the petty thief. When I asked him why, he said, ‘Because you can’t vote.’”
“What possessed you to start telling jokes? That wasn’t even funny.”
“I was sad that the prime minister scolded me, but I already felt better the next day. Why, you ask? Because I watched a film ten times in a row about an army of robots revolting and eliminating humanity.”
Chuuya’s face tensed. “Is that actually a joke?”
“Was it funny?”
“No! Even if it was, that doesn’t mean I’m gonna sign any consent forms!”
“Oh.” Adam shook his head and rolled his eyes. “Human behavior truly is irrational.”
“You can’t just keep sayin’ that whenever you mess up!”
The two of them gibbered back and forth as they quickly made their way down the road. Once they reached the top of a hill, Chuuya sighed in exasperation.
“Fine, I get it. This is an important mission for you, but I’m busy, too, okay? So here’s what we’re gonna do.” He placed a hand on the guardrail to his side.
“Yes? Please…go on.”
“Don’t mind if I do.” Chuuya leaned his upper body over the guardrail, then threw himself off what appeared to be a bottomless cliff.
“Ah!”
Adam looked down the cliff in a panic, only to find that Chuuya had landed on a path roughly a dozen feet down and was running away, waving his hand.
“He’s getting away!”
Adam leaped over the guardrail after him, and his feet left radial cracks in the ground upon impact. He immediately sprinted after Chuuya.
“Please wait, Chuuya!”
But Chuuya eventually escaped into a dark tunnel. It was a long, almost pitch-black pathway that made it hard to see how far he had gone.
“You cannot outrun me!”
Adam leaned forward and took off running in a position where he could transform air resistance into lift. This aerodynamically ideal sprinting form allowed him to swiftly bypass one car after another until he disappeared into the distance.
“Yeah, I know.” Chuuya snorted, hanging from the ceiling. He had manipulated gravity so he could stick to the dark ceiling and hide.
After waiting two minutes, he released the gravitational force and dropped back down onto the ground. He wiped the dust off his body and set off on a stroll.
“A British investigator, eh?” Chuuya muttered as he stared toward the tunnel’s exit. “What’ve I gotten myself into?”
Just then, a luxury car pulled up beside him.
He looked over and saw it was a black passenger vehicle with tinted windows that obscured the interior from view. The glass, body, and tires were all bulletproof. It was one of the Mafia’s.
A man wearing a black suit emerged from the driver’s seat and delivered a single message:
“The boss wants to see you.”
“Oh, a mailman,” said Chuuya.
Mailman was code used for a certain role in the organization. These individuals delivered messages for the Mafia whenever someone was too busy to deliver the message for themselves, or if they couldn’t go out in public, or if the information they were sending was too sensitive to deliver by phone or letter.
Mailmen would go anywhere to deliver a message. They didn’t speak much and kept their interactions to a minimum—plus, they were rich. Even the simplest message netted very handsome rewards. And with good reason, of course. If the police or an enemy organization ever tried to get any information out of a mailman, the mailman’s only choice would be to fight them off; if that wasn’t possible, then they had to kill themselves and take their secrets to the grave.
The mailman before Chuuya was tall, with a black hat and sunglasses hiding his face. The poster child for mailmen everywhere. He quietly waited for Chuuya’s reply without saying any more than he needed to.
“Did he mention why he wants to see me?” asked Chuuya.
“Not exactly.” The man wearing the black porkpie hat shook his head. “But he already summoned Piano Man, Albatross, Doc, Lippmann, and Iceman for the same reason. They’re awaiting your arrival.”
“Them, too?” Chuuya raised an eyebrow. “Oh, right. They mentioned something like that on the phone earlier. Anything else you can tell me?”
“Just one thing,” the mailman added in a hushed voice. “It has to do with Arahabaki.”
Chuuya frowned. After looking at the mailman for a few seconds, he nodded. “All right. Let’s go.”
He then made his way to the passenger seat. After slightly adjusting the brim of his hat, the mailman got behind the steering wheel. However, before getting in the car, Chuuya randomly decided to take another glance back at the end of the tunnel…and what he saw made him jump.
“Ack!”
A shadowy figure was charging toward them. No ordinary person could possibly run that fast.
“Chuuya! Wait!”
Adam hadn’t slowed down even a little, and his gait gave no indication that he was tired.
“Son of a…!” Chuuya griped as he hopped into the passenger seat. “Go! Drive!”
Chuuya looked back once more as he shut the car door. That was when he heard something rather unpalatable.
“Chuuya, get out of the car!” Adam shouted as loudly as he could while he sprinted. “That’s Verlaine!”
Chuuya reflexively looked over to the driver’s seat. At almost the same moment, the mailman smirked, albeit faintly, and slammed his foot on the gas. The car immediately shot off like a bullet, causing Chuuya to slam back into his seat.
“Damn it…!”
“Fasten your seat belt. Otherwise you’ll bite your tongue,” the mailman calmly instructed.
“Stop the car!” Chuuya yelled as his right hand reached out to grab the steering wheel with the speed of a swallow. No ordinary person would have even been able to see his hand…but this man was different. He punched Chuuya in the jaw before Chuuya’s hand even touched the steering wheel.
“Guh!”
Chuuya’s upper body jerked back, and the back of his head slammed into the window, leaving numerous white cracks across the glass.
“Oops. Forgive me,” the man said as he continued driving. “You’re a lot lighter than I thought you’d be. Are you getting enough to eat? You know I worry about you, as your big brother.”
“You’re gonna pay for that, asshole!”
Chuuya’s face was overcome with rage.
He sat back up almost instantaneously, launching his fist at the driver like a bouncing billiard ball in a right hook that used all the muscles in his upper body. The punch had the weight of an iron ball and the deadliness of a guillotine behind it, leagues faster and heavier than when he’d reached for the steering wheel a moment ago.
And the driver…simply caught Chuuya’s fist with a single hand as if he were catching a baseball.
“What…?”
“Your punches are light, too.” The man continued facing forward, eyes still focused on the road. “You’re going to be assassinated within seconds if you keep fighting like this.”
The man had caught a punch that would have demolished an iron pillar—but a smile was playing on Chuuya’s lips.
“Huh. I guess that means you’re pretty heavy, eh?”
The man suddenly sank into his seat.
“What?!”
He continued to gradually sink as if he were sitting in a swamp. The leather seat was unable to withstand the extreme weight. The metal painfully shrieked as it bent and warped while various parts of the seat scattered everywhere.
A gravitational wave expanded from Chuuya’s fist until it engulfed the driver. The extreme gravitational pull ripped the sunglasses right off the driver’s face, but they didn’t bounce off the car floor; instead, they shattered into hundreds of pieces upon contact. The car body began to creak, gradually losing the battle against the driver’s weight, which was over ten times what it had been mere seconds ago.
“Didja really think I was just gonna let you assassinate me like that? Hope ya like being squished.”
Chuuya didn’t weaken his skill but instead increased the amount of force he was using until the man was two times—then three times—four times—five times heavier than he was a second ago. But all of a sudden, Chuuya’s eyes narrowed dubiously.
“What the…?”
He couldn’t increase the weight any further. Chuuya unleashed another gravitational wave from his fist, but the flattened driver’s seat didn’t make a sound, let alone change in the slightest.
“Is that it?” the man asked calmly even though he should have been suffering under the powerful gravitational force. He then squeezed Chuuya’s fist, causing the impossible to happen: This time, Chuuya was the one to suddenly sink into his seat.
“Gwah!”
The passenger seat beneath him bent in two; the frame snapped and shot out of the cushion. The seat adjuster snapped as well, sending the seat’s back straight into the rear of the car. Chuuya was tightly pressed into the seat, ever so slowly sinking. His entire body was being pushed downward, paralyzing his arms and legs. The wires in the seat’s frame popped one after another and pierced the vehicle’s interior.
“I told you. Your big brother knows best,” the man said, his dark-brown eyes narrowing with a smile.
Chuuya couldn’t reply. He could hardly even breathe. The enhanced gravity was crushing his lungs. Still squeezed against the seat, he turned his bewildered gaze to the man.
“Listen,” the man intoned, one hand on the steering wheel. “I didn’t come here to assassinate you. Why would I ever do that? You’re my one and only brother, after all.”
Chuuya’s entire body creaked under the intense pressure. He clenched his jaw and growled, “I don’t remember…ever having a…European brother.”
“Allow me to correct you, then,” the driver coldly stated. “Because I’m not European. I’m not even human, just like you.”
“What…?”
“Have you never felt the world was a cruel place?” The man’s voice was as sweet as a lullaby, his gaze as dreary as the night sea. “Why am I me? Why are you, you? Nobody can tell us that. My goal is the opposite of assassination. I came to save you.”
“Ha-ha… I think I’m good.” Chuuya grinned like a wild animal as he fought against the pressure. “I dunno about you, but I’m human.”
“You’re not.”
The statement was bone-chilling.
“You aren’t human. You’re 2,383 lines of code.”
Those words held an unusual weight to them as they echoed through the car. It felt as if a nuclear explosion had gone off in some faraway land.
“What the…?”
An empty sadness filled the man’s eyes. “Military researchers tried to artificially remove skill users’ special abilities, and they were successful,” he explained. “Half successful, at least. Naturally, machines can’t control skills. You need a human soul for that. But that also means the human mind limits the output. That’s when the researchers came up with an idea. They decided to trick the skill. They made the skill think that there was a human controlling it. The persona models—imitation humans with fake souls—were created for that reason. An extremely simple character string of rules for behavioral principles and a formula for emotions, all created in order to trick the skill. And that particular string was 2,383 lines long. Do you get it, Chuuya? Your soul is nothing more than 2,383 lines of code some researchers wrote off the top of their heads.”
“Bullshit,” Chuuya spat, forcing every last bit of air he could out of his throat. “That’s impossible.”
“It’s true.”
“Don’t lie to me!” he shouted. “I was born in a countryside village by the beach! My friends proved that! I even have a photo to back it up!”
“False information put out there by the military. That’s all it is.”
Chuuya used every muscle in his body to fight back, but the gravity grew even stronger and pushed him down again. He could no longer talk, let alone open his mouth.
“Sleep well, Chuuya.” The man’s voice was terrifyingly kind. “By the time you wake up, you will be in another country on the opposite side of the ocean. And a year from now, you’ll be grateful for this moment we had today.”
Chuuya tried to argue, but not even that was possible anymore. His blood was pooling from the pressure, and his face was pale. The blood flow to his brain was slowly being cut off; the light in his eyes began fading.
“I disagree.” Suddenly, an electronic voice came from the car’s sound system. “In fact, I believe Chuuya will be very angry with you…because you are a terrible driver.”
Out of nowhere, the steering wheel veered left—even though no one was touching it.
“What?!”
The car swerved wildly, rapidly accelerating into the next lane until it dived onto the sidewalk. As the driver let go of Chuuya to grab the steering wheel, the gravity holding down Chuuya disappeared, and the passenger door simultaneously opened.
A hand reached into the car and grabbed the barely conscious boy. That hand belonged to Adam, who pulled Chuuya out of the car while latched onto the side of the vehicle. He clutched Chuuya tightly and covered his head before leaping away and rolling onto the ground. The driver of the out-of-control car glanced at Adam.
“Oh, look who it is,” joked the man as his lips curled into a smirk. “It appears destroying that airplane wasn’t enough.”
Adam met the jeering man’s smirk with a cool gaze.
The man then slammed the brakes, but the fast-moving vehicle did not stop. It flew over the median strip and landed in a large intersection where it was T-boned by a semitrailer with a meteoric impact. The collided vehicles rolled like spinning tops and sent strips of metal and glass scattering across the road. Nearby pedestrians turned their heads at the commotion in utter astonishment.
Almost immediately, the fuel in the semitrailer caught fire, creating a massive explosion that spit metal and fire into the air. This was no typical city scene; it all happened without a moment’s warning, like something out of a war zone.
“Wake up, Chuuya,” Adam pleaded. He shook Chuuya, the flames illuminating the boy’s profile. “I made that truck crash into him. Now is our chance to escape!”
“Damn…it…,” Chuuya groaned with a shake of his head as he tried unsteadily getting to his feet. Unable to wait for him to get up, Adam grabbed Chuuya and started running, but he glanced back out of the corner of his eye to check the destruction.
That was when he saw something staggering.
Flames roared from the semitrailer in the massive intersection. Black smoke rose into the sky. And a man in a black suit was standing in the center of the chaos.
It was Verlaine.
His eyes were closed as if he were taking a nap. He stood there unscathed. His clothes had nary a wrinkle even though he had just been struck by a semitrailer that weighed over ten tons.
The flames from the explosion blurred the air around him. He stood with both legs piercing the ground; radial cracks spread from the asphalt beneath his feet. Only when Adam noticed the semitrailer was split in half did he realize what had happened.
The moment the two vehicles collided, Verlaine had increased his body’s density via gravity manipulation and pierced through his vehicle and into the ground. All he had to do after that was remain upright and withstand the semitrailer’s impact. His body tore through the truck like a knife cutting through warm butter.
Verlaine opened his eyes, then looked at Adam. That instant, Adam’s threat level increased exponentially. Realizing he wouldn’t be able to escape on foot in such an open area, Adam made a hard right and slipped into a narrow alleyway. His digital brain pulled up a local map that he used to rapidly calculate optimal escape routes. He then identified the route with the highest probability of survival before sprinting for it with the speed of a bullet.
Adam dashed down the alley, kicked off the wall, and veered to the right at the fork. When he increased his speed even further, his proximity sensor’s alarm went off at its highest level.
“Behind you!” Chuuya shouted in Adam’s arms.
Without even looking back, Adam threw Chuuya to the ground and rolled along the street. A massive black object shot like a cannonball through the air, right where Adam’s head had been a split second ago, before smashing into the building up ahead.
It was a car—the mailman’s car that Verlaine had been driving up until a few minutes ago. The vehicle, which most likely weighed over a ton, had just soared straight over their heads. The instant Adam realized Verlaine had thrown it, he looked back mid-roll and pulled out his Europole-issue service pistol, aiming it in Verlaine’s direction.
But there was no one there.
A voice suddenly came from the opposite direction:
“Upon reflection, humans use the word lonely far too casually.”
Adam swiftly turned around and saw Verlaine—he was on top of the car with its entire front half piercing the wall. He sat leisurely on the trunk like a king on his throne, his jacket fluttering in the ever so gentle breeze.
“People know nothing about true loneliness. They foolishly believe that loneliness is simply not having a family or anyone to talk to.”
Adam analyzed the situation. Verlaine had thrown the car while he was sitting on it. That was how he managed to catch up with Adam and Chuuya so quickly. Adam rapidly calculated a few different scenarios, but each one ended in despair. There was no running away from someone who could throw an object and launch himself atop it using gravity.
“True loneliness…,” began Verlaine in an elegant tone reminiscent of a violin solo. “True loneliness is the comet traveling alone through the universe, surrounded by vacuous space and nothingness at absolute zero. It would never have the chance to be seen by someone or approached by another. The dismal silence would simply continue for eons. Could you even imagine it? No one could… That is, except for you, Chuuya.”
Chuuya placed both hands on the ground to support his unstable body as he tried to stand up. “What are you…getting at…?”
“There’s just one thing I want,” Verlaine replied with a refreshing gaze. “That’s why I’m only going to say it once.”
The moment Verlaine gently smiled, the dangerous scent that followed him vanished.
“Come with me, Chuuya.”
Chuuya didn’t reply. Neither did Adam. They couldn’t even move.
There were no bells and whistles to Verlaine’s remark. This wasn’t a negotiation. It was a simple, transparent suggestion…or perhaps even an order.
“Brother, you are not human. You are nothing more than a string of characters. You are a simple equation without a soul. That is what true loneliness is. No one can save you from your isolated chamber… But what if a desolate, lonely comet had another comet of the same temperature by its side? A comet that was just as lonely?”
Verlaine spoke as if he were a poet reciting an ancient tale, and his eyes were a waterway of affection—a gaze one would give only to their most treasured kin.
“So that’s what you want?” Chuuya stood up. “You came all the way here for that?”
“This isn’t the only time I’ve come for you. I’ve been dreaming of setting off on a journey with you ever since I attacked my dear friend to steal you away on that day nine years ago.”
Verlaine closed his eyes. The powerful force around him weakened even further. He now looked no different from any ordinary man idly sitting on the roadside.
“We can go on an assassination run together as brothers. All we have is a meaningless life. So how about we grant our creators a similar fate? A meaningless death—that should balance things out. A death without discrimination between the good and the wicked. Only then…”
Verlaine closed his eyes. He wasn’t speaking like some extraordinary assassin. His voice was filled only with sadness, grief, and a faint, naive dream—all appropriate for a young man his age.
“Only then will we be able to live with and accept this meaningless life.”
Verlaine hopped off the car and held out his hand to Chuuya, who stared at it devoid of all emotion.
“You mustn’t, Chuuya,” protested Adam with his pistol drawn. “You’ll become an enemy of the entire world the moment you take that man’s hand.”
Adam calculated every possible scenario, but his pistol would be useless against Verlaine’s skill no matter how he fired.
“Stay out of this.”
It wasn’t Verlaine who spoke; it was Chuuya. Verlaine’s eyes showed a hint of surprise as he looked at the young mafioso.
“I understand where you’re comin’ from.” Chuuya tilted his head back slightly and fixed Verlaine with a piercing gaze. “But before I give you my answer, I need to ask something first.”
“Anything,” Verlaine replied, smiling.
“I got a call from Piano Man earlier. He said someone from the Port Mafia came to take the five of them somewhere for a job. Answer me: What happened to them?”
Verlaine’s smile disappeared. A few slow moments passed as a different kind of smirk twisted his lips like a black flower blooming—a most unpleasant smile.
“Well, you don’t need your old friends anymore, do you?” he answered.
Verlaine hit the trunk of the car stuck in the wall, and it opened. The next moment, something fell out and hit the ground with a sickening splat.
Chuuya instantly recognized it. His pupils narrowed like needles.
It was Lippmann’s body.
Chuuya screamed. It wasn’t a human scream, but the howl of a beast—an unintelligible roar. That alone caused the surrounding buildings’ windows to shatter.
Then came his fist. It was a simple, straightforward thrust, and yet it surpassed the speed of sound. His fist shook the air like an explosion as it instantaneously slammed Verlaine backward, burying him in the wall and sending pieces of the building flying.
“Gwah—!” Verlaine groaned, but the moment he opened his eyes, Chuuya was already right in front of him. Chuuya’s expression wasn’t twisted, though. In fact, he was almost expressionless. There was only a pure, transparent, and overpowering desire to kill.
His right fist slammed into Verlaine’s shoulder; the surrounding wall cracked apart. But before the fragments of concrete could hit the ground, Chuuya buried his left fist in Verlaine’s torso, pushing him even farther into the wall. Another punch, then another, and then another. He roared as each hit buried Verlaine’s body deeper inside the building until it seemed to swallow him whole. But even then, Chuuya didn’t stop.
“You’re like a wild animal.”
Chuuya’s fist stopped on a dime as if those words were a cue.
Verlaine had caught his fist like a ball. He then countered with his own fist.
If Chuuya’s punches were like bullets, then Verlaine’s were cannonballs. They hit Chuuya directly in the stomach, twisting his shirt until it tore—but not where Verlaine’s fist connected. The powerful impact sent a shock wave through Chuuya’s body and ripped the back of his shirt. He groaned in agony. Meanwhile, Verlaine had such a tight grip on his fist that not even a punch could knock Chuuya backward.
“Rage like the beast you are. That’s how you’ll remember what you are, whether you want to or not.”
Verlaine crawled out of the wall and jumped to the ground. He then let go of Chuuya’s fist, grabbed him by the neck, and hung him in the air like a punching bag. Chuuya couldn’t move even if he wanted to, because his entire body was being held down by a powerful gravitational force. He couldn’t counter, much less lift his dangling arms.
“It all boils down to this, Chuuya. That was a yoke keeping you attached to humans,” Verlaine said gently as he held Chuuya up by his neck. “I understand where you’re coming from, but it’s too dangerous. You shouldn’t linger in that position.”
Verlaine stuck his free hand in Chuuya’s pocket in search of something. His fingers emitted a gravitational pulse that acted like radar, helping him find what he was looking for.
“So this is the picture your so-called friends gave you?”
It was the photograph of Chuuya as a child wearing a yukata by the ocean.
“I understand more than you realize how you must have felt when you saw it. And I understand how you trusted the people who gave this to you. Really, I do. But your trust in them will only cause you to suffer because they will continue to feed you these lies. ‘You’re human. Have hope. He’s lying to you,’ is what they’d say, poisoning your mind.”
Verlaine flicked his wrist and threw the photo like a projectile with unbelievable speed until it pierced Adam’s shoulder like a knife. Adam groaned in pain, dropping his pistol that he had been waiting for a chance to fire.
“Why do you think they’d lie to you?” asked Verlaine. He looked straight at Chuuya, entirely uninterested in whatever Adam was doing. “It’s because your powers are useful to them. They want to use you. I know because it happened to me, too.”
“I don’t give a damn… You’re gonna pay…,” Chuuya rasped, breathing heavily as he hung by his neck, unable to move.
“Such a troublesome boy.” Verlaine sighed. He paused after every few words as if he were talking to a small child. “But well, I figured you wouldn’t be so soft that a mere few words would convince you. That’s why I’m going to use my actions instead. I am going to cut the strings, one by one, that manipulate you like a marionette. And then you will be free. This is the greatest gift of brotherly love and the only thing that will bring you happiness.”
Then he added, as if it were the most natural thing in the world:
“I am going to kill every human who matters to you.”
There was nothing but elegance and kindness in his voice. Yet in his eyes, a fire was burning. They held the pale-blue flames of hell’s gatekeeper, capable of freezing the souls of all humankind before scorching them into ash.
“You’re wrong,” Adam suddenly chimed in. “What you are doing is not love. According to the definitions of human emotion I have installed, what you have is a lust for domination.”
“And how’s that any different?” Verlaine asked, smiling sweetly.
Numerous emotions appeared in Chuuya’s eyes as they talked: surprise, trepidation, bewilderment, fear… But they were only brief flashes that ended up swallowed by an overpowering fire: the flames of rage.
“I won’t let you.” Chuuya’s throat shook like the rumbling of the earth. “I’m not gonna let you have your way, no matter what.”
Verlaine gave a refreshed smile. He acknowledged and accepted those feelings.
“That’s fine.”
There was even a note of affection and tenderness about him.
“You need time to choose, ruminate, and come to terms with reality, but you will do as I say in the end. Allow me to show you why.”
The unusual sensation started the moment Verlaine gently placed his free hand on Chuuya’s cheek.
“Gwah…!”
The air vibrated before bursting open. An invisible electric discharge caused his eyes to spark reddish-black. Chuuya opened his mouth, but he couldn’t breathe. His throat refused to suck in air…because something terrifying was trying to crawl out.
“I’m going to open your Gate just a little,” Verlaine cooed as if he were singing a lullaby. “But not by much. Only about a hairbreadth, nothing more. The opening will be small enough to close in the blink of an eye—but that’s all it will take for you to see the truth.”
The wind howled. It was not of this world, however. It was coming from inside Chuuya—from an unknown, frightening place the human eye could not reach.
The wind caused the surrounding buildings to creak and the earth to shake. Adam struggled to remain standing as he observed Chuuya with his eyes nearly squinted shut.
“Detecting a skill-phase expansion. Hawking radiation–esque high-energy rays observed. Values steadily increasing.”
Adam was automatically outputting the details of the calamity.
“Phase transition is causing heat to emerge from the space of annihilation… Oh no!” he yelled while emptying the clip in his pistol. The special antipersonnel bullets slammed into Verlaine’s forehead, eyes, throat, and elbows. However…
“Would the audience please refrain from touching the actors?”
The bullets lightly grazed his skin and froze in place. A powerful gravitational force almost immediately shot them back in the opposite direction, piercing Adam’s shoulder. He cried out in pain and fell to the ground.
That was when Chuuya screamed at the top of his lungs. This soulless shriek wasn’t Chuuya’s own; it wasn’t even human. It was neither something of this world nor even a sound.
It was the black flames.
“Am I too late…?! Activating heat- and impact-resistant shield!” Adam shouted from the ground, raising his left arm. His elbow immediately split in half and expanded into a glittering silver shield. The superalloy shield, made with a nickel base, chrome, iron, molybdenum, and titanium, completely enshrouded Adam as he jumped to his feet and retreated.
“Now, Chuuya. Do you still think you’re human?”
Space began to warp. And then—hell was unleashed.
Black flames. The scorching torrent that had melted the ground and created Suribachi City.
It was just as Verlaine had said. The gate to hell was open for a mere 0.3 seconds, but that was more than long enough
The extreme heat erupting from the alley melted a utility pole and boiled the asphalt until it began flowing over to the main road like a surging wave. That, however, was nothing more than the opening act for the true hell that unfolded.
Everything around Chuuya began to disappear—like paint that had melted and was being sucked away. Only a black sphere remained.
The air trembled. One side of a nearby eight-story building vanished as if it had been chewed off. The steel frame, concrete walls, floors, ceiling, the fixtures—it was all gone. It was neither destroyed nor melted. It had simply disappeared.
And not just the building, either. Melted streetlights, parked cars, asphalt, and even the ground beneath it—everything was being absorbed into the swelling black sphere.
The annihilation spread. Buildings turned into rubble, soil into dust, and the nearby cars, utility poles, and fire hydrants all toppled over before the sphere swallowed them up. While it appeared black, the sphere in fact had no pigment. An extremely powerful gravitational force was pulling the surrounding light inside and preventing it from escaping—that was what made the sphere look black.
This was a calamity far more fearsome than any explosion or chemical reaction. It involved space itself.
A black hole. The eye of the darkest demon had opened and was effortlessly chewing up and swallowing the street.
The phenomenon was over almost instantaneously. The black sphere vanished just as soon as it appeared. That was why the people a few buildings away were not harmed, surprisingly enough. But they were still witness to a nightmarish scene, one that saw the nearby townscape devoured by darkness.
In the center of this hell was Chuuya—suffering.
Yet this was no ordinary suffering. He felt as if his skin was being twisted until it split apart; his eyes seemed to rupture in their sockets while his organs were being crushed. Only some otherworldly beast could cause such agony. But Chuuya couldn’t even so much as scream.
The ground vanished as if it had been scooped out with a giant spoon. At the resulting crater’s center lay Chuuya curled on the ground.
The air shimmered in the extreme heat. When the black hole eventually disappeared, a powerful gamma ray burst, flooding the environs with blindingly bright light before scorching and melting the earth.
Particles of evaporated metals sparkled in the air as they wandered the skies. The shimmer created by the heat made everything in sight beautifully contort and dance. A utility pole melting in the distance leaned over as if it were bowing in apology.
Although the black hole had closed, the aftereffects continued to cause irregularities in the gravitational field. The space around Chuuya suddenly warped before closing. Like aftershocks of an earthquake, space intermittently convulsed and gouged out the earth before returning to normal again. These fluctuations made Chuuya suffer.
A shadowy figure approached him and stopped by his side.
A mysterious figure, too short to be an adult, was dressed in a black coat, and had bandages wrapped around his head. Most mysterious was the fact that he stood calm and composed, despite the irregularities in the gravitational field.
“You’re a mess, Chuuya.”
The teenager effortlessly grabbed Chuuya’s arm and lifted it. That same moment, the gravitational irregularities vanished along with Chuuya’s suffering.
“Tsk… Had to be you, huh…?”
“You can’t even go out with good grace, can you?” the youth said bluntly before hoisting Chuuya onto his shoulders.
He began to walk. The overpowering gravity was gone, as was the pain, causing Chuuya to rapidly lose consciousness. But before his eyes gave in to the darkness, he looked back at the youth and muttered in frustration:
“Dazai…”
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