Maohden Vol. 1 Read online

  The young man slipped inside the room.

  It was a ten tatami mat room, approximately a dozen feet square. The tiny concrete-lined genkan held a girl’s sandals and the owner’s very expensive black patent leather shoes. The shoes were polished to a shine and reflected the fluorescent lights in the ceiling.

  The thick smell of sweat assailed his nostrils. The walls were lined with utilitarian mirrors and lockers. In the front was a household Shinto shrine. The two other people in the room were right below it.

  Between the pair of white thighs waving back and forth through the air, an altogether stranger sight humped in and out of view—the bottom half of a wild animal covered with black, coarse hair. And the gray soles of his feet and the black claws of his toes.

  The beast’s lower extremities busily drove her forward and back, pressing the lithesome girl’s body hard against the tatami. Huffing ragged breaths while totally devoted to the task at hand was a bear.

  Not a man in a bear outfit. The bloodshot eyes, the gleaming snout, the yellow fangs protruding from the gaping mouth—this was the real thing.

  The slender face of the girl beneath him was painted with less a look of fear than a half-crazed expression, staring in a daze at the ceiling. Her breasts and chest were smeared with blood. The red lines crisscrossed her skin. Every time her body shuddered and shook, the bright red blood welled up and the stain spread.

  The bear’s claws had left their marks.

  Beside them, two outfits had been discarded on the floor—a red dress and a polo shirt and pants and underwear, the latter belonging to the bear.

  The girl raised a muffled moan. The bear’s snout covered her mouth, trying to kiss her. A feral maw accosting human lips.

  She shut her mouth and turned her face away. The animal pursued her, the pink tongue playing with her lips. The dripping jaws covering her face from chin to nose, she finally opened her mouth.

  The tongue dove in, swishing from cheek to cheek, the spit and spittle spilling out of the corners of their mouths.

  The girl coughed violently.

  “Okay, okay, let’s call it a day,” the young man said, as if bored with the show.

  The bear stopped moving, and slowly turned his head and growled, eyes flashing. This was no mere animal. Such a degree of loathing and anger could only be associated with the human species.

  With a roar to wake the dead, the creature sprang apart from the woman with a wet pop, the sound made by something damp being pulled out of a tight space. The bear’s dark red manhood jutted out, the size of two fists, drenched with her come, not having come himself.

  He rose to his feet, five foot eleven or so, the same height as the young man. His width though—the mass of his frame—its hulking presence—was another matter. He must’ve weighed over four hundred pounds. A swipe with a single one of his fingernails could disembowel a horse. A single bite with its row of dagger-like teeth could take a man’s head clean off. Though slow and clumsy standing on two legs, when running on all fours, he could easily reach a speed of twenty-five miles per hour. And climb trees like no other four-footed animal could.

  An unarmed man coming face to face with this animal could only hope to stare it down and slowly back away. If it came to a fight, the only way out would be to win its confidence—and then hack out its heart with a hatchet.

  But the man at the door didn’t appear to have a gun or a hatchet or a knife. Yet not a flicker of fear rose to his impassive face.

  The bear answered with a growl that shook the window panes.

  The young man smiled. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said with a slight nod, addressing the bear with the same insouciant attitude. He produced a photograph and compared it to the girl on the floor. “The very woman I’ve been looking for. She’ll be leaving with me. Please don’t interfere. That would only make things more difficult for all of us. I’ll be contacting you tomorrow with an account number to which you will transfer sufficient funds to compensate her for any pain and suffering. Good day.”

  The bear had likely never been spoken to so brazenly in its life. It stood there dumbfounded as the young man strode unconcernedly toward him.

  “Step aside, Terumoto-san,” he said.

  Instead, the bear took a wicked swipe at him, fully intending to ruffle that unruffled face. A black swirl of wind, a death-dealing, knockout punch.

  The wind split in two. The former half slid off the vector aimed right at his head and flew at an oblique angle and slammed into the wall with a loud thud! The claws of the paw dug into the wood paneling—sans the rest of the arm.

  The bear howled. A shower of blood spurted from around the claws pressed against the miraculously-severed stump. The beast reared back. Changes arose in the outlines of its huge frame.

  The fur grew lighter in color, shortened. The body shrank as well, turning into a different living thing.

  “Son of a bitch!”

  A shout mingled with pain and articulated after a very human fashion. The speaker launched a backhand blow at the young man with the hand covering the wound. It never connected. The arm from the elbow down tumbled through the air.

  Ducking the arcing splash of blood, the young man knelt down next to the girl. She was lying on her back and gasping for breath. He’d pulled the red dress over her shoulders when a crash rang out behind him.

  The bear toppled over in the genkan. The impact was much lighter than expected.

  The young man picked up the girl and was getting to his feet when he reached out with his left hand and caught something falling through the air. The bear’s hand—though this was clearly a human forearm.

  Drained of blood, it turned as gray as the concrete of the genkan. The young man tossed it aside. It landed in a big trash can in the corner of the room. It’d give the janitor a start to be sure, but refuse was refuse.

  With even strides, he stepped down into the genkan. The bear paw sticking to the wall revealed its true form and dropped to the concrete floor.

  “If you would excuse me,” he said, nudging aside the obstructing body in front of him with the tip of his boot.

  The bear was gone. Lying in the round pool of blood was a small, thin man in his late thirties or early forties. The owner of the hostess club and boss of the Terumoto Gang, Ryo Terumoto. The ashen face suggested there was little chance of keeping the Grim Reaper at bay.

  He lifted his head. His bloodshot eyes—the only part of him that retained any vestiges of the bear—shot a piercing glare through the younger man’s back.

  “Bastard—wait—” A barely human voice suffused with bitter maledictions. “Too bad for you—I injected her with so much aphrodisiac—right where it counts—heh—no treatment can keep up with it—heh—didn’t know she had a man waiting out there—she’s dead to that world—a creature of this city now—”

  The young man didn’t move for a minute or two, digesting what Terumoto was saying. Contemplating this final retribution, his face twisted into a wicked smile of death.

  Like stop motion, the smile froze on his face. The young man looked back at him. Nothing about his countenance had changed in the slightest. Nevertheless, Terumoto’s consciousness, already starved of blood, awoke to a new sense of fear, his terrorized instincts confirming the impossible turn of events in front of him.

  This was a different person.

  “Too bad, then, that you have met me,” the young man said, the warmth of his voice alone growing icy cool. A me that was not him. “Death from blood loss would at least be a peaceful one. But you should leave this world with a clear view of hell.”

  Before he’d finished speaking, the air hummed. Before the air stopped humming, the armless Terumoto’s body jumped up. Having already lost half of their functioning in the drowsy prelude to death, the nerves of the naked body lit up with a charge of pain like nothing in this world.

  Being driven mad by the pain was reward enough. That in fact was what happened—he was sucked into the whirlpool of cha
os—and a moment later the pain itself had restored him to “normal.”

  The young man paused to gaze grimly upon the gangster, writhing wordlessly, weeping from the unending agony, and opened the door. The underlings from before were below him, still bound hand and foot. He said, “You are in my way.”

  Whatever they saw, the sight erased the pain and stiffened their expressions in fear. One by one, those heads rolled onto the floor, throwing off pinwheels of blood.

  The fountains streaked through the air, painting the floor and the walls. The blue air was filled with the golden dusk. The only sound amidst the quiet carnage came from that beautiful genie’s footsteps.

  The footsteps stopped halfway down the flight of stairs. A woman clung to the wall like a pretty moth seeking the flame.

  Noriko gasped, “You—you—pulled off—something like this—without a scratch—I felt it like—unbelievable—I—ahhh—” Her hands reached up her skirt, caressing herself with ecstatic gyrations, getting herself off on the death and blood and beauty.

  Strange but true, a girl in her profession who didn’t trip out on blood and beauty in this city was the oddity. The young man continued on down the stairs without sparing her a second glance.

  “Hey—you—” Noriko called out. Absorbed in her self-gratification, the pleasure flowing forth from her dripping fingertips, the sensations amplified all the more by the appalling scene surrounding her, her voice took on a heightened timbre. “You’re just gonna leave like this? For the love of God, kill me—like them—when I can feel it like this—and die like that—ahh—”

  He reached the landing and started toward the back entrance. Behind him, the crimson fountains collapsed into streams and flowed down the stairs. If nothing else, the blood of the gangsters was beautiful.

  With this accursed and bewitching scene as the backdrop, the man in black strolled indifferently into the sunset.

  “Wait—wait—please—” Arching her back as her self-ministrations continued unabated, Noriko cried out in a strained voice, “Please—tell me—your name.”

  The light streaming in through the door cast his long shadow on the floor. It was like the answer welled up out of it.

  “Setsura Aki.”

  Chapter Two

  One particular group of tall buildings in Shinjuku had taken on a strange and abominable existence. This still-standing grove of skyscrapers was most famously identified by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Complex.

  Right now was the O-magatoki, that bewitched time of the day that lasted from four o’clock to five-thirty in the afternoon. The shadows of the skyscrapers reached all the further and fell on the earth.

  As a case in point, behind the Shinjuku NS building was the three and a half acre site of the former Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, soaring forty-eight stories into the sky. Its shadow fell across Chuo Park to the west and reached halfway across the Yonchome block in West Shinjuku.

  The sun setting in the west threw shadows across buildings further to the west—impossible anywhere but here.

  The air was thick with sprites and miasmas playing practical jokes on Mother Nature, altogether befitting to the Shinjuku dusk. If they could do that, what else might they have up their sleeves?

  This was the time of day when pedestrians quickened their pace. Here and there came the sound of shutters closing and doors locking. The old and established shops run by grumpy and stubborn old men were no exception.

  Panicked shouts rent the air, probably sightseers who hadn’t bothered to read the fine print in the Shinjuku Tourist Association’s indemnity clause. Now they had no choice at this point but to fork over a chunk of money and seek refuge in the closest shop or home—with only five minutes or so to conclude negotiations.

  Any longer and they’d stand a good chance of being robbed blind or else suffer a worse fate.

  The hems of his black slicker fluttering in the wind, Setsura Aki got home exactly three minutes after every other house in the neighborhood had battened down the hatches. The marquee on which the name of the establishment was written in the old cursive kanji style—Aki Senbei—shook as he brought down the shutters with a bang.

  In a corner of Yonchome in West Shinjuku, Mina Chiaki, the secretary for the Aki Detective Agency, said with a smile, “Nick of time. Though I suppose you would have been fine even if you didn’t race home in time. There’s always a room for you at the Hilton, double bed.”

  “Hard to believe such a pretty face can say such things,” Setsura said, lightly rubbing his hands together.

  Around twenty, as capable as she was shapely (which was to say, very), she’d hit him with her stinging rejoinders a mere two hours after he hired her. The patter hadn’t abated since.

  “How many do you think will buy it today?”

  Avoiding the pointed look directed at him, Setsura brought his face up to the peephole and opened the iris. Somewhere in the house, the HVAC system kicked on.

  “Well, looks like two are going down outside the White Tiger Sushi Emporium. Seems the owner’s going to take pity on them, but only because he’s a greedy SOB. If they’re lucky, he’ll settle for what’s in their wallets.”

  Checking to make sure the bald man had dragged the two sightseers inside the shop, Setsura snapped the fisheye lens closed.

  The temperature inside the house was maintained at sixty-five degrees. But outside, in the shadow of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Complex, the temperature could be expected to plunge to zero and colder.

  From four o’clock in the afternoon to five-thirty, the long shadows of the buildings fell on Setsura’s house and the rest of the neighborhood. In the span of five minutes, the temperature sank to ten below.

  When the morning broke, the same thing happened in the blocks opposite. This was no explicable weather pattern, but (it was theorized) a chemical change wrought in the air by a species of ghostly miasma that lingered there in the city center.

  In any case, during those hours of the day where the shadows fell, the man-eating dogs and carnivorous rats kept their distance as well. The mortality rate had been kept to zero for the past several years. Those who did freeze to death were already suffering from some unknown debilitating condition unrelated to the temperature of the air.

  Get caught for five minutes in the shadows and a man could be revived; ten minutes and it’d take a good six months of rehabilitation; twenty minutes and the mental and physical scars from frostbite were permanent; thirty minutes and the odds of recovery were slim to none.

  This strange phenomenon, confined to this part of Shinjuku, was known as the “Government Freezer.”

  “How did work go?” Mina asked in a singsong voice.

  Mina had the kind of finely-formed features that would make any man or woman take a second and a third look, easily mistaken for those belonging to the top fashion models. And yet in terms of simple aesthetics, it did not best those of her employer.

  “It went,” Setsura said with a nod. “I just came from the hospital. A nasty yakuza injected this girl with an aphrodisiac. It’s going to take some serious treatment to overcome. A bunch of chelation treatments and she should be able to resume a normal life.”

  “You mean you took her to see Doctor Mephisto?”

  “The same.”

  A flicker of concern showed on Mina’s Noh mask of a face. Only Setsura and their close friends could grasp the ominous nature of such a reaction. The smile on her employer’s face suggested he was amused by this reaction. He turned to a glass case on his left and opened the top.

  “No eating the merchandise,” she said, her hand reaching to his mouth.

  He bit into the hard-baked, five-inch wafer with a dry, crunching sound.

  “No problem. I’ll pay up. That’d be, uh—”

  The price tag on the case said “Eighty yen each.” The calligraphy used on the tag had a magical quality that drew the attention of customers who cared little for the art.

  He took silver and copper coins
from a black leather coin purse and tossed them into the register behind the display case.

  The fifteen foot by fifteen foot shop interior housed two rows of glass cases, each sectioned into thirds, and four glass jars on the shelves behind them. Including the cash register and checkout counter, there wasn’t much room left to maneuver.

  Considering the “work” he’d just been up to, it was almost unimaginable that he’d come home to a little place like this. And yet this was one of Shinjuku’s venerable old shops.

  It wasn’t listed in the visitor’s brochures distributed by the ward government or in handbooks published outside the ward, such as the Shinjuku Tourist Guide and Shinjuku Register of Historical Places. Nevertheless, they had a solid base of customers who appreciated the taste of homemade senbei.

  The shop had been established on the fourteenth of September, the day after the Devil Quake. This was its fifteenth year. That made it the oldest shop in Demon City. But including the time it’d been in business before the Devil Quake, the total came to a century and a half.

  “Any new jobs?” Setsura asked, crunching on the senbei as he stepped up from the shop to a small, six-tatami mat room.

  “None presently,” said Mina. She raised the small, Japanese-style teapot and filled a cup with a pale green stream.

  She’d just brewed it in the kitchen nook off to the left. There was, to be sure, the standard electric teapot. But the young proprietor would only drink fresh-brewed tea made the old-fashioned way, and the cool young secretary didn’t complain. It was all about harmony in the workplace.

  Mina, on the other hand, had between her lips a long straw, the other end of which was immersed in a glistening tall glass of orange juice. Hard to say which drink was more appropriate for the month of June in a place like this.

  “No jobs, but a few bits of interesting information.”

  “Oh?” His voice welled up as languidly as the steam rising from the teacup.

  “Something’s afoot in the upper ranks of Kurusu Real Estate. Seems the Munakata Brothers are on the move.”