The Innocent of Remembrance (Part 1)
The building was familiar. The hallway was familiar. The scenery outside the window, too, resembled her place of learning... Yet as she walked through the strange school, Chidori Kaname felt extremely unsettled.
She and Sagara Sousuke were walking through Komaoka Academy High School in the next town over on a Friday afternoon. As members of the student council, they were here on business for the Tajiren, the Tama Regional High School Government Conference. The Tajiren was made up of student councils from roughly forty schools in the western Tokyo area, whose representatives met up, discussed things, offered each other aid, and deepened their ties of friendship... or at least, that was the nebulous concept behind it.
The Tajiren was set to hold a two-day training camp next month, which was what they were here to discuss.
“Ah, so nervous,” Kaname whispered to herself as she headed for the local student council room. She was wearing the Jindai High girls’ uniform, a white blazer and blue skirt. The red ribbon that held back her hair provided a charming accent to the classic color scheme.
The Jindai High uniform was quite well known, popular among the local girls, and had even been featured in books and magazines. Ten years ago—the year after the design had been adopted—female applicants to the school had increased by 50%.
Meanwhile, the Komaoka Academy uniform was a boring brown blazer, its dullness unassisted by a maroon necktie. The school itself also had a strict dress code, which forbade them from wearing the navy blue skirt any higher than the knees. Students from other schools called the uninspired design ‘the German cockroach’ in mocking whispers. The students of Komaoka Academy knew about this and, forced to acknowledge the accuracy of the comparison, were mostly resigned about it.
Of course, none of them seemed happy to see the uniform of another school around their own—especially if the uniform was from Jindai High. Komaoka Academy, one of the top prep schools in the region. Confronted by a student from a school that was not only far less accomplished, but had cuter girls’ uniforms? The atmosphere they exuded towards Kaname wasn’t exactly hostility, but...
What’s she doing here?
Hmph. Show-off...
On the prowl for a man, is she?
Such were the thoughts their gazes seemed to convey.
Some of this might have simply been a persecution complex on Kaname’s part, but whether that was the case or not, the fact of the matter was that people all along the hallway were looking at her. And the natural result was that Kaname felt nervous.
Sousuke was feeling nervous as well. After all, he was in another school’s territory. He knew nothing of the building’s layout and makeup. If someone were to attack them, he couldn’t guarantee a strategically advantageous position or useful escape routes. In addition, he knew nothing of the school’s security protocols and political leanings. Could the school have a far right faction with an anti-Jindai bias? He didn’t know. Just walking behind Kaname as he accompanied her, he could feel the penetrating gazes of the students in the brown blazers.
What are they doing here?
Hmph. Filthy foreigners...
Here to steal our classified secrets, are they?
Such were the thoughts their gazes seemed to convey.
Some of this might have simply been a persecution complex on Sousuke’s part, but whether that was the case or not, the fact of the matter was that people all along the hallway were looking at them.
“I’m tremendously nervous,” Sousuke whispered.
Kaname nodded in response. “Same. For once, we’re in agreement.”
“You feel the same way? Remain on your guard, then.”
“Uh?”
“If trouble starts, drop your things,” he advised her. “I’ll lead them away, while you run with all your might. Understood?”
“I’m starting to think we’re not as ‘in agreement’ as I thought...”
Throughout that awkward exchange, the two climbed the stairs and arrived at the student council room on the second floor.
“Hello,” said Kaname, “I’m Chidori from Jindai.”
The student council room at Komaoka Academy, unlike the one at Jindai, had a strangely Spartan air to it. There was one desk, two bookshelves, a scattering of folding chairs... and nothing more.
A second-year boy was waiting for them inside. He had short-clipped hair and a haughty air about him. “I am the student council president, Shiohara,” he said quietly.
“A pleasure. Sorry to intrude on your time like this. Where are the others?” Kaname asked.
“Occupied elsewhere. It’s just me today.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Unlike your students, one hundred percent of ours will be advancing to university... Thus, they’re all busy studying. They don’t have time for games like you do.” Shiohara’s response suggested a serious degree of annoyance at their presence.
Kaname felt indignant, yet she dutifully pulled out the necessary documents and pamphlets for potential lodging destinations. “Then let’s get this over with,” she suggested politely.
The discussion of the training camp began. They went over adjustments to the schedule and the partitioning of various tasks. Kaname would make a proposal, and Shiohara would simply respond, “Do as you like.” If she asked for confirmation of any details, he’d respond, “You should be able to figure that one out on your own.”
Thirty minutes passed in this fashion. Kaname was annoyed by the man’s condescension, but she managed to suck it up to finish the checklist.
“Is that everything?” he asked.
“Yes, it seems so. Have a good day,” Kaname said.
Shiohara merely looked away and nodded, then quickly began his preparations to leave. He didn’t even say, ‘Same to you.’ He simply acted as if he had just bought some rolls from a convenience store and she was the clerk who’d said, ‘Thank you for coming.’
Kaname flinched. After she’d come all this way to see him, the treatment was infuriating. Did the man even understand the most basic social conventions? “Excuse me...”
“Yes?”
“Isn’t there something you’re supposed to say?” she asked him, icily.
Shiohara responded, not a hair out of place, “I have no idea what you’re talking about. We are finished, aren’t we?”
“I’m talking about basic manners! Don’t you know how to talk to a fellow human being? Where in the world were you raised?!”
Here, Shiohara sighed. “What an utterly proletarian question.”
“What?!”
“Do you think I care about remaining in your good graces?” he demanded. “I can think of no reason whatsoever why I should. Therefore, your objection is nonsensical. What right does an outsider like you even have to comment upon my upbringing? Please consider that before you comment further.”
His statement was so outrageous that Kaname was forced into silence.
Seeing this, Shiohara showed the first hint of a smile. “Well, as expected from students of Jindai... A certain class of school attracts a certain class of people.”
Kaname remained too outraged to speak.
But Shiohara wasn’t finished. “That student council president of yours—Hayashimizu-san. He attended Kousei with me. Quite a fall from grace indeed... but I’m sure he enjoys being a big fish in a small pond.”
This was the first Kaname had heard of any of this. By ‘Kousei,’ of course, he meant Kousei Middle School. It was a private school considered to be one of the best, even at a national level.
“I’m told he began falling in with a bad crowd,” Shiohara continued. “He began to make money by taking bets and dealing paint thinner, and the school became quite angry with him. Such a shame.”
Is he talking about the same Hayashimizu we know? Kaname felt slightly shaken by this but fixed her eyes on the other man. “Are you trying to pick a fight or something?” she asked.
“I’m simply expressing my condolences. Of course, if I’ve touched a nerve, I suppose I could apologize. Terribly sorry,” he said with utter indifference. Even the bow of his head that accompanied it, though deep, was a mechanical gesture devoid of any true emotion.
Kaname just looked on, flabbergasted.
When Komaoka Academy’s student council president looked up again, he said, “Are you satisfied now? I have a private lesson to attend. Therefore—”
Blam! There was a sudden gunshot, and Shiohara reeled back, hitting the floor hard. Sousuke had drawn a shotgun and hit him square in the face with a rubber slug.
“Sousuke?!”
“Sorry, Shiohara or whoever you are... You can’t fool me just by invoking the name of our president,” said Sousuke. He kept his gun cautiously trained on Shiohara, who was now writhing on the ground and foaming at the mouth.
“You... What in the world are you doing?!” Shiohara gasped.
“Keep back, Chidori. This man is an impostor.”
“Uh?”
“To my knowledge, the presidents of student councils are uniformly gentlemanly, wise, and personable. Thus, this man cannot be a student council president,” Sousuke explained calmly. “He is exploiting the fact that we have never seen the real president before to assume his identity, then leak our training camp schedule elsewhere. He’s likely already killed the real president.”
“That’s so unlikely!” Kaname scoffed. “Why would anyone even want our training camp schedule?!”
Sousuke furrowed his brow thoughtfully. “Don’t you realize? The Tajiren discussion camp is an important event, bringing together leaders from various schools. A hundred kilos of TNT planted in the meeting room would kill everyone in attendance. It’s a perfect stage for terrorism.”
“I’m pretty sure there are better targets out there...”
“Consider the impact if the entire student leadership were eliminated—instant discord among the schools,” Sousuke predicted. “A complete bloodbath.”
“Do you think the discussion camp is a yakuza meetup or something?”
“One way or another, I must find out who is pulling the strings. I’ll interrogate this man, and—”
“You little...” Slap! Having pulled out her fan from somewhere or other, Kaname used it to smack Sousuke on the head.
Rubbing his head, Sousuke responded. “I have been wondering for quite some time... where in the world do you hide that weapon?”
“Shut up!” Kaname retorted, refusing to answer his question. “The point is, you’ve got it all wrong! Zero points! This guy’s the real deal!”
“Really? But—”
“I’ve seen him at previous meetings,” she said. “He might be a jerk, but he’s definitely this school’s student council president!”
“Hmm...”
“Now, we’ve got to get him treatment. He’s out cold. Ahh... he’s twitching, too. And talking in his sleep in a really weird way...”
“Hrrrk... It’s bad... It’s bad, Mama... Bonta-kun... Bonta-kun, in Moscow... with Manager Nagashima...”
As Shiohara rambled on incoherently, Sousuke and Kaname did what they could for him, but even after he woke up, he seemed to be so disoriented that he didn’t even realize what had happened to him. After offering brief apologies, Kaname and Sousuke quickly left the school behind.
Despite that rather unpleasant visit, on the way home, Kaname turned to Sousuke, and said, “Well... for once, I actually liked seeing you take a pop at someone like that.”
“Did you?”
“Yeah. But don’t tell anybody I said that,” she said with a cackle.
Several days later, after class, Kaname sat in the Jindai High student council room, silently poring through some documents about the next year’s budget. The rain fell heavily outside, but other than that the school was quiet, with no particular chatter going on in the hallway.
Sousuke and their first-year equipment manager, Sasaki Hiromi, had set up camp in a corner of the table, messing with a plastic model of a robot. Sousuke was inspecting it carefully, letting out murmurs of awe now and then.
“What a surprise,” he hummed. “They even replicated the optical sensors and the automatic wash nozzles...”
“Right? Pretty cool, huh?”
“Indeed. It’s quite similar to the EMDs currently in the testing stages. Even though information on M9s is largely limited, even in the US military...”
“I hear they’ve got connections in Geotron,” Sasaki gushed. “You can’t beat Tamiya for AS kit detail!”
“If only the joints worked, it would be perfect.”
Kaname sighed as she listened to them go on enthusiastically about something or other. Meanwhile, Hayashimizu Atsunobu was sitting in his chair. As there seemed to be no urgent student council business today, he was simply sipping at his tea and leafing through a magazine. Kaname assumed it would be some kind of high-level economics magazine again, but it wasn’t. She caught a glimpse of the title: it was Weekly Gemstones. This was a men’s magazine, and not even the classy kind... this was the kind with nude pinups.
“Can I help you, Chidori-kun?” Seeming to realize Kaname was looking at him, Hayashimizu looked up from his reading.
“No, sorry...”
“It’s good timing, though. I have a question to ask you.”
“What is it?”
Hayashimizu nudged his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “Let’s say you very much wanted to study language abroad in Australia...”
“Right...”
“But you didn’t have the money to do it.”
“Right...”
“In order to earn the money to study, would you expose your naked form in a magazine with a print circulation of 500,000?”
“What the hell?!” Kaname yelled, turning red to her ears.
Hayashimizu quietly watched her reaction. “You wouldn’t, then?”
“Of course not!”
“I see. That does seem to be the standard reaction.” With what appeared to be a sense of understanding, he turned his eyes back to the magazine and fell silent with a scowl.
Sheesh... What in the world is he even talking about? The way Hayashimizu always acted as if he were above worldly concerns reminded her of Sousuke, to the point that she sometimes thought he was just your average idiot with a particular knack for debate.
But now, Kaname couldn’t stop thinking about the incident from several days earlier.
It wasn’t about their attack at Komaoka Academy. No one had pressed charges there—the school’s student council president, Shiohara, might not have even remembered that Sousuke had shot him. Or perhaps he had remembered but was simply too afraid of Sousuke to file a complaint. One way or another, it hadn’t become an issue.
But what Shiohara had said that day—his talk of Hayashimizu—had lingered in Kaname’s mind. What is Hayashimizu-senpai doing at our school? That was what she couldn’t stop thinking about.
Hayashimizu Atsunobu, with his slicked-back hair and wireframe glasses, was tall, slender, and fair—and had the intelligence to match his trim appearance. Not only did he serve in his role as president of their high school’s student council with competence, he was also tactful and strategic, and respected by everybody from the teachers to the delinquents.
His sheer breadth of knowledge, negotiation skills, intelligence, deportment, and willingness to take the good with the bad, made him evocative of a shrewd European politician. Or perhaps he simply had a sort of ‘ruling party’ image about him. Hayashimizu had an innate aura of superiority and almost bizarre levels of interpersonal insight. And he was exceptionally good at arguing others down.
It was this quiet self-confidence and competence, perhaps, that gave him a curious sort of affinity with Sousuke. It would have been easy to dismiss him as simply another weirdo were he not so academically proficient. He regularly placed at the top of the school in terms of grades, as well as on national mock exams. He was a shoo-in for a prestigious national university.
In other words, although Hayashimizu was definitely eccentric, he seemed almost too good to be a student at their school. He could easily have attended any high-level prep school he wanted. So why hadn’t he? That was what Kaname couldn’t figure out. It wasn’t exactly that she was in favor of a society that ranked people based on standardized test scores and academic performance, but she did accept the reality that how far you could go in life was based largely on your school credentials. Good or bad aside, that was simply how the world worked.
As far as that went, Jindai High School was just on the lower end of the top third. With a little bit of effort, most students could gain admittance. Yet here was Hayashimizu, at Jindai High School. When you really thought about it, it seemed unnatural.
Yes. It’s unnatural...
As Kaname quietly thought that over, Hayashimizu picked up his next piece of reading material. This one was a trucker magazine called Camion.
Another weird one... He’s so inconsistent.
He was probably just an insatiable reader, really... but in a way, it just made him even more inscrutable.
“And that’s what I’ve been thinking about,” Kaname said on the train home from school. “Do you think there’s some reason for it? Maybe when he was trying out for his preferred high school, he ended up laid up with a fever. Did he ever mention anything like that to you?”
She was speaking to two people on the train with her: Sousuke, who lived close to her house, and the student council secretary, Mikihara Ren.
“No, I haven’t heard anything about that.” Sousuke shook his head. “Until now, I always assumed that the president was scouted by Jindai High. He surely received a hefty signing bonus from the principal in order to boost the school’s standing—”
“You think he’s like a first-round draft pick in baseball?” Kaname asked speculatively.
“I never quite learned how our entrance exam system works,” Sousuke admitted.
“Ah, I see. You really are... Oh, er. What do you think, O-Ren-san?” Kaname asked, turning to the student council secretary.
“Well, I... I’m sure I never asked him about it,” Ren said quietly. She was a second-year—in other words, a peer to Kaname and Sousuke—but for some reason, she spoke in extremely polite language around them. She had a classic sort of beauty about her (hence the nickname Kaname had given her), with striking silky black hair that could have gotten her a spot in a shampoo commercial. “Hayashimizu-senpai rarely speaks of the past. He always appears to be gazing at the future. I find him extremely mysterious... and wonderful.”
Kaname and Sousuke just stared at her.
Realizing she must have said something awkward, Ren suddenly blushed a deep red. “Oh, what’s wrong with me... Is that not what you meant? I’m terribly sorry.”
“Well... no big deal,” said Kaname. “But if none of us knows, I can’t imagine anyone else does.” The three people present were the closest of anyone in the student council to Hayashimizu.
“But it certainly is concerning,” Ren went on. “What Shiohara said... at first, I thought it was merely a bluff, but...”
“Yeah. He said that he worked as a bookie and paint thinner dealer,” said Kaname. “It can’t possibly be true, right?”
“The president has many enemies,” Sousuke put in. “It seems entirely possible that someone would intentionally be spreading those illicit rumors.”
“Well, they’re still just rumors.”
As Ren listened in on what they were saying, a sorrow seemed to come over her face. “I do hope you’re right...” she whispered with a sigh.
“What do you mean?”
“Well... I... the truth is...”
They looked at her inquisitively.
Ren paused for a moment. Then, seeming to steel herself, she said, “You must promise that you won’t tell anyone else about this.”
“Sure.”
“Understood.”
“I... I saw it,” she told them.
“Saw what?”
“I saw... Hayashimizu-senpai... engage in illicit dealings with a group of ne’er-do-wells,” Ren clarified.
For a few seconds, neither Kaname nor Sousuke reacted. And then, in a tone that demonstrated little to no surprise... “Illicit dealings?” they both said, in unison.
“Yes, I saw—”
Ren went on to explain what she had seen. Last Saturday, she and Hayashimizu had gone together to Shinjuku. Their goal was to seek out some computer software for the student council, but while there, they had taken in the Egon Schiele exhibit at a department store museum and grabbed a cup of tea together.
“The time I spent with him was quite enjoyable, of course,” Ren said in a deliriously happy voice.
“Frankly, the date surprises me more than the so-called illicit dealings,” Kaname said, peering intently into Ren’s face.
The other girl smiled at this. “It wasn’t a date. It was student council business. And... a mutual taste in art.”
“Oh, yeah?” Kaname hummed. “What happened then?”
“Ah, of course. On the way back—”
Ren explained how they’d left the café and had been on the way to Shinjuku Station when someone had called out to Hayashimizu. According to Ren, these were the ‘ne’er-do-wells,’ complete with shaved heads, tattoos, and facial scars. There were three of them, and they quickly surrounded Hayashimizu to begin speaking with him in an exceptionally familiar manner.
“Been a while,” one had said.
“Hey, you’re still alive?” said another.
“So you’re preying on this woman next, eh?” said the third.
Hayashimizu had remained as calm as he ever did. After speaking with the three men briefly, he apologized to Ren, asked her to head off without him, and then walked off with the men.
“Wait a minute.” This was when Kaname interrupted. “What in the world did he mean by ‘preying on this woman’?”
“I fear I don’t know,” Ren confessed. “That ne’er-do-well seemed to be under the misapprehension that I was suffering in Senpai’s employ... Perhaps that he works me too hard at the student council?”
“Yeah, I doubt that was it...”
“And that’s when you went home?” Sousuke asked.
Ren shook her head. “No. I’m ashamed to say that I tailed them secretly instead. I was simply too worried about Hayashimizu-senpai.”
“That was a smart decision.”
“Thank you. And so—”
Ren explained that she’d tailed Hayashimizu for a while, cutting through the crowds. They had passed through Kabukicho and entered the basement of a small building close to a seedy-looking adult entertainment district. It was most likely the entrance to some kind of bar or club, but there were even more toughs loitering around outside of it, which kept her from approaching.
“I was forced to wait around a nearby corner for Senpai to emerge. But a man approached me while I was waiting. He invited me out to dinner, and I politely turned him down. Then, after several minutes, another man approached me. This one asked if I was interested in a high-paying part-time job. As curious as I was, I was forced to turn him down as well. I received several more offers of a similar nature in the remaining— What is the matter, Kaname-san?” Ren looked curiously at Kaname, who was sitting there, mouth flapping, cold sweat forming on her brow.
“Oh, uh, just felt a minor panic attack coming on,” Kaname replied. “You know that a girl like you really shouldn’t go to a place like that by yourself again, okay? I mean it.”
“I see...” Ren stared at her for a moment, then continued. “At any rate, while I was waiting, Hayashimizu-senpai finally emerged from the building unharmed. He left, and although I attempted to follow him, I was stopped by someone fervently asking me if I wanted to act in a movie. Then...”
“You said no, right?! You didn’t give him your phone number, did you?” Kaname interrupted urgently.
“Certainly not.”
Kaname breathed a sigh of relief. “Whew... so? You never found out how they were connected?”
“No, I’m afraid I didn’t. But—”
“But what?”
A grim expression passed briefly over Ren’s face. “When he emerged from the building’s basement, Senpai had given money to one of the delinquents.”
“Money?” Kaname and Sousuke said in unison, then exchanged a glance.
“Yes. Of course, I was too far away to see how much...”
It was then that the train carrying the three of them stopped at Chofu Station.
The next day, after class...
Kaname was swiftly packing away her textbooks and supplies. The weather outside was clear.
It was right after the end of sixth period, and there was still a lot of chatter around them. The students on cleaning duty were pulling out the cleaning supplies. Those preparing to go to club activities were bemoaning their hardships. Those who weren’t in clubs were laughing and exchanging jokes.
“Hey, Kana-chan! Kana-chan!” Her classmates, Tokiwa Kyoko and Kudo Shiori, called while running up to Kaname.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Hey, hey. Shiori-chan won a drawing in the shopping district for a free karaoke session. It’s free for up to eight people!”
“Wow! Talk about a lucky break!”
“We’re about to head over. Ono-D, Kazama-kun, Yuka-chan and Mizuki-chan are also coming. Invite Sagara-kun too!”
“We haven’t cut loose like this in forever! C’mon! Let’s sing the blues away!”
They both seemed to be extremely excited for some reason. Maybe it was because the weather had been bad for the last several days and they’d just finished up their extremely tedious math class.
“Oh, sorry,” Kaname apologized. “I can’t today. “
“Aww! How come?” Kyoko showed her disappointment with a full-body slouch.
“Boo. That stinks!” Shiori did likewise. “I was gonna ask you to do your Nakajima Miyuki...”
“I’ve got a little business to take care of. Sousuke?” Kaname called to Sousuke, who was in his seat by the window. He had also finished packing up for the day and was running his final checks on his automatic pistol.
“Are we leaving now?” he asked.
“Yes,” she responded, snapping the top shut on her bag.
“You too, Sagara-kun? Is it student council business?”
“Yes. I’m afraid so,” he told her.
“We really are sorry. We’re totally in next time, though. See you!” Kaname called, waving back to the girls who stared after her emptily as she and Sousuke left the classroom.
Kaname and Sousuke headed to Sengawa Station, the closest one to Jindai High. From there, they took the train in the opposite direction of their usual route—into the city, rather than out of it. They were on the train for twenty minutes before arriving in Shinjuku.
It was, of course, a bustling metropolis. Kaname scowled as she watched Sousuke gawk to an unnecessary degree as they moved through the crowds. “Sheesh, cut that out,” she reprimanded him. “You look like a country bumpkin.”
“Safety first,” he replied. “And I was raised in the country, so it’s not an issue.”
“Uh-huh... You mean the country in Afghanistan?”
“Yes. It was rich with natural beauty, despite the many landmines.”
“I’m not sure I would’ve wanted to grow up in the country there...”
While having that absurd exchange, they began their crossing of Yasukuni-dori. This took them to Asia’s largest adult entertainment district, Kabukicho, where they passed through streets full of X-rated shops until they reached a sparsely populated back alley. It was already growing dark around them.
“Is this it?” Kaname asked.
“That building there,” Sousuke told her.
They’d come to the building that Ren had told them about; the building that Hayashimizu had entered before. They’d come to learn more about Hayashimizu’s past.
Shiohara of the Komaoka Academy student council had talked about Hayashimizu working as a bookie and paint thinner dealer. Mikihara Ren had mentioned an exchange with ‘ne’er-do-wells.’ It all sounded pretty shady.
Kaname had always assumed that Hayashimizu was a truly benevolent person. Sousuke, likewise, admired him as a realist with a conscience. This was why, no matter how many ridiculous tasks he assigned them, they had continued to engage more or less in good faith.
However, recent events had begun to shake their confidence in him. Where there was smoke, there was fire, after all, and neither Kaname nor Sousuke were naive enough to continue to insist, ‘Senpai’s not that kind of person!’ A certain amount of skepticism was a healthy thing and a requirement for Hayashimizu to have put his trust in them in the first place.
It simply has to be some kind of misunderstanding... Kaname felt sure of that, yet she couldn’t completely shake her doubts. That’s why they had to come here and hopefully find someone who knew the whole story. It was a tacit agreement that Kaname and Sousuke had reached together.
“Hmm, it looks pretty normal to me,” said Kaname.
“It does.”
It was a gray multi-tenant building. The first floor was a pharmacy, the second a Taiwanese video store, and the third a consumer loan office. The fourth floor seemed to host some kind of business, but there was no sign hinting at its nature.
Next to the pharmacy entrance was a stairway to the basement level. The simple sandwich-board sign in front of it bore the writing ‘688 (I).’ That was all; there was no other explanation.
“I see,” said Kaname. “Feels kind of ‘members only’...”
“What kind of store is it?” Sousuke asked.
“I’m guessing it’s some kind of club.”
“What is a club?”
“It’s usually a place where people get together to drink and dance,” Kaname explained. “But I’m not quite sure that’s what this place is. It looks a lot more like a bar.”
“Your knowledge is impressive,” observed Sousuke.
“I’m just guessing. I don’t have that kind of money to mess around with.”
“Let’s enter, then.”
“Right.”
They descended the narrow staircase. The walls on either side were covered in wallpaper and graffiti. At the bottom, in front of the shop entrance, stood two young men who were jabbering on. They were sitting on cases full of empty beer bottles and smoking cigarettes. They were initially laughing and joking with each other, but when they noticed the arrival of the two outsiders, the smiles left their faces.
“Excuse me,” Kaname said to them. The boys simply stared at her suspiciously in response. But she refused to be cowed, pulled a photo of Hayashimizu from her change purse, and asked them, very politely, “I have a question for you. Do you know this man?”
One of them looked at the picture and sneered. “As if. Get lost, loser.”
Then the other man, staring hard at her, added, “Hmm. You know, this place is off limits, girly. You preppy kids better get out of here fast or else the two of us might have to **** your ****. Well? You get it? You got it, right?”
Kaname repressed the disgust rising up inside her, and said, “If you don’t know, I’m going to have to ask you to step aside.”
“We told you to get lost, lady.”
“Yeah. If you don’t make yourselves scarce, we’re definitely gonna have to **** your ****. You don’t want that, right? Right?”
The men stood up. Kaname, finding herself intimidated, took a step back.
Here, Sousuke stepped in. “She told you to step aside,” he reminded them. “I’m going to ask you not to get in our way. If you refuse... I will have to teach you a lesson.”
The two men’s expressions suddenly became dangerous. “Hmm... Sounds like a fun proposal, kid. How’s about I do this, then?” Suddenly, the man was holding a knife in his right hand, which he immediately used to slice into Sousuke’s face.
Kaname gasped... but it only looked like he’d sliced into his face. In fact, Sousuke had dodged the blow before it even started and was now twisting the man’s wrist.
The man cried out in shock, but before he could react any further, Sousuke used his open arm to elbow him in the face. The man went flying and landed with a loud crash as the stack of empty beer bottle cases came down around him.
“That was the lesson,” Sousuke said with his usual neutral expression.
The remaining man turned to them furiously. “You son of a...!” He drew a riot baton from behind his back. However...
Crash! The next instant, this man went flying, too, crashing through the door behind him.
This one happened so fast that Kaname hadn’t even seen what had happened. She just watched the man as he hit the floor of the establishment within, then let out a soft hum. “I kinda forgot you were actually pretty good in a fight,” she admitted.
“Yes, I tend to forget it myself these days.” With greasy sweat rising on his forehead, Sousuke stepped inside.
The shop, 688 (I), looked larger on the inside than it had from the outside. The smell of cigarette smoke stung the nose. The lighting was dim. Past the spacious entry hall, they could see low tables and chairs, as well as a bar. The aged walls were plastered with labels for whiskey, gin, and vodka, with loudspeakers mounted close to the ceiling.
There were also about twenty men inside, of the same make and model as the two boys Sousuke had just beaten up, all of whom were looking at them with open hostility. They were out of their seats and ready for a fight.
“What’s all this now?” came a voice from the darkness beyond the seating area.
The man laid flat by Sousuke said, “S-Sorry, Kusakabe-san. Looks like... Hayashimizu’s lackeys...” he croaked out.
“Hayashimizu? Did he send some assholes to pick a fight? Didn’t think he had it in him. Pretty dirty move. Dammit...” It was a haughty, imposing male voice.
Sousuke and Kaname turned towards it.
“Who’s there?” Sousuke asked sharply.
“Who are you exactly?” Kaname asked.
From out of the darkness came a man of average height and build. The dim light revealed a short-cut uniform jacket and crew cut, as well as tanned skin and almond-shaped eyes.
“You know Hayashimizu-senpai?” Kaname asked.
“Oh, listen to you. Right to the questions,” the man spat. “My name’s Kusakabe. A friend of the girl Hayashimizu killed.”
“What?” asked Sousuke.
“Killed? What?” said Kaname.
Neither of them could believe their ears as the twenty men, all with weapons in their hands, moved swiftly to surround them.
〈The Innocent of Remembrance (Part 1) — The End〉
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