Smack.
Minoru felt a strong force run through his right cheek. Yumiko’s arm had swung all the way through the punch and stopped. It was such a forceful punch that he could hear the grinding of her shoulder and elbow.
“Wha…,” groaned Minoru before railing at Yumiko. “What were you thinking?! If I had been a second later in deactivating my shell, right now your…”
“My right hand would have been broken. But that didn’t happen, did it?” Yumiko smiled and touched Minoru’s cheek with her open hand. She looked into Minoru’s eyes, which had opened wide, and whispered from a close distance, “You know, Utsugi? Before, you asked me if I really knew what it meant to be hated, right?”
“Well…yeah.”
“Well, the answer is yes. I know. I know what it means to be hated,” Yumiko said.
While the expression on her face was normal, the tone of her voice was tense and like steel. In front of Minoru, who couldn’t find any words to say, Yumiko suddenly lifted up her skirt. She lifted it up high enough so that the tops of the knee-high stockings she always wore with her uniform were exposed. In even the dim light of the parking garage, her white thighs shined bright, and Minoru quickly tried to look away, but at that moment…
“Look,” Yumiko whispered and pulled the stocking on her right leg down to her ankle.
“…!!” Minoru took a breath in shock.
Underneath Yumiko’s well-shaped knee was a frightfully long, large scar. Minoru could see the keloid scar tissue and traces of where stitches ran across it.
“You see, before I became a Jet Eye, I couldn’t even walk without a crutch,” Yumiko said, still smiling. “The ones who gave me this scar were the upperclassmen of my middle school track team. With wooden swords and metal pipes, they hit me until they shattered my knee. Their reason for doing so was because I was faster than them and had a bad attitude, apparently. They did it for only that reason.”
Being disliked was far too gentle to describe what had happened to her. Minoru felt that the incredible intensity of the hatred that Yumiko took on with her body exuded from every stitch mark.
Minoru, who had been running on the banks of the Arakawa River for five years, knew. He knew how precious a treasure a runner’s legs were to them. Legs that they had spent years training and refining. Even a small injury is enough to cause anxiety over whether it will properly heal…
“…How?” Minoru asked in a raspy voice.
“Hmm?”
“How can you still believe in other people after this horrible thing has happened to you?” Minoru asked in a raspy voice. “How could you believe that I would deactivate my shell just now? There was no way you could have known for sure.”
Yumiko didn’t say anything for a while. She wordlessly pulled her stocking back up to its original position and smoothed out her skirt before sitting down, hugging her knees in front of Minoru.
With their eyes on the same level, Yumiko finally said, “Because you’re not ‘just someone else’ to me anymore.”
Minoru looked down to avert his eyes from Yumiko’s strong, bright gaze.
“…I don’t understand. I can’t understand. I… I left even my parents and sister I loved so much for dead. To me, everyone but me is ‘just someone else.’ I couldn’t care less if they live or die, so…what meaning is there in me making relationships with anyone? I’m sure that in the end I will betray them.”
From Yumiko’s presence, her gaze, and her breathing, Minoru could tell that she felt pity for him. It made him only look down farther as he hugged his knees and muttered, “That’s…enough. I could never be as strong as you. In this world, I cannot believe that there would be anyone whom I don’t feel is an outsider.”
“You’re probably right,” Yumiko said in the cold air of the parking garage, her voice slightly shaking. “I could never like someone like you, to be honest.”
But as Minoru curled up even tighter, Yumiko put her hands on his shoulders and gripped tightly. “Even so, I’ll believe in you. I’ll believe in the you who came running to save me from Biter,” she said.
Just as she finished talking, the rumble of the elevator overlapped her voice.
Suddenly, a soft feeling and sweet scent wrapped around Minoru.
By the time Minoru realized he had been embraced, Yumiko had already started walking toward the black minivan.
It was midnight on Tuesday, December 17.
The minivan, driven by DD, headed north from SFD Headquarters in East Shinjuku and got onto the expressway at the Gokokuji interchange. They cut southeast across the center of Tokyo and headed down the Fukagawa line at the Hakozaki Junction. At the Tatsumi Junction they entered the Wangan line and got off at Ariake.
Ariake Heaven’s Shore was a large water park located to the west of the Yurikamome line’s Ariake Tennis-no-Mori Station. Its selling point apparently was that the entire facility was indoors, and even in the winter people could wear swimsuits and feel like they were at a tropical resort.
Minoru, of course, had not seen nor been there himself.
After exiting the expressway, they took a right at the first intersection and after driving straight for a little while saw the silhouette of the building.
Minoru had memorized the layout of the building during the pre-mission meeting, but after seeing the real thing, he thought that it was huge. The floor plan had an area of two hundred by three hundred meters, which, according to Olivier, was nearly as big as the entire east exhibition building of Tokyo Big Sight. That didn’t really help Minoru much, though. Anyway, they were going to have to locate one man covertly, somewhere within the entirety of this giant water park.
Currently, Professor Riri, who had hacked into the security camera network at the park, was trying to track down Igniter based on the footage, but they had not received word from her yet.
“Wouldn’t it be faster for us to just use our powers in the middle of the park and lure him out with our scent?” said Olivier from the front passenger’s seat as he held on to a long rodlike case, but DD shook his head.
“Igniter isn’t someone who’d fall for a clear trap like that. Plus, he’s got a national certification, so he’s probably one of the more intelligent Ruby Eyes we’ve ever fought.”
“Well, I suppose so, being an ex–company president and all,” replied Olivier as he made a “hmph” sound, just as the minivan started to slow down and stopped on the side of the road.
According to the car navigation system it was 12:50 a.m. There were still a lot of open lots in the surrounding area, so once the engine was cut, it was so quiet a person wouldn’t think they were in the middle of Tokyo.
Behind a fence on the right that extended on and on in either direction, there was a building with an elliptical dome. It looked like the clear tube that came out of the roof might be a waterslide. It was probably really busy during the day, but now it was as quiet as an old ruin.
Suddenly, a clear voice rang out over the miniature intercom attached to Minoru’s left ear.
“I see you’ve made it there,” Riri said. “I’m sorry, but I still haven’t been able to locate Igniter. However, I do know that he is currently there working. Please wait a little longer in the van on standby.”
“Gotcha,” replied DD. “…Hm?”
DD suddenly leaned forward.
“Wait a minute, I think… It’s really, really faint, but I think I can smell him.”
Tension ran high through the minivan. Riri’s voice also grew sharper.
“You sensed Igniter? Does that mean that he is using his power at this very moment?” Riri asked.
“No… The scent is way too faint for that… I’m sorry, I can’t tell exactly where he is. I do think he is in the southwest area of the building, though…,” DD replied.
“All right… I’ll focus my search using the cameras in that area. Wait a minute.”
A strained silence went on for more than thirty seconds.
“…I found him! There’s
no mistaking it. It’s definitely Igniter. But…what on earth is he doing…?” Riri said with suspicion in her voice, but she quickly changed her tone and snapped out orders.
“Let’s get him before he has a chance to change position. Do you hear me? His current location is in the center of an area called Coco Island. Since there is no proper entrance nearby, we’ll have Oli-V make a cut in the outer wall. Approach him from all directions and surround him on all sides!”
“Gotcha!”
“Roger!”
“Got it!”
DD, Olivier, and Yumiko all answered in sharp tones, but Minoru was just barely able to squeeze out a “G-got it.”
Feeling with his left hand, Minoru made sure he had his air canister securely in his school uniform pocket. Minoru still wasn’t sure whether his defensive shell would cut off the effective range of Igniter’s power. However, Minoru probably would never have the chance to test whether or not that was true. As soon as they got a visual confirmation on the enemy, Yumiko would dash forward and disable him with either her stun baton or knife.
There’s probably nothing that I’ll need to do this time, so there’s no reason for me to be scared, Minoru thought to himself and followed Yumiko out of the van.
After climbing over the blue-painted fence, they found themselves in a large parking lot. There were white lines drawn out as far as the eye could see, but of course right now there were hardly any parked cars.
DD took in another deep breath of air, pointed in one direction, and started running. DD, who was of small build and wearing his camouflage vest over a black tracksuit, ran silently and with hardly any swaying motion, so much that he looked like he belonged in a ninja movie.
Olivier followed in his blazer uniform with that rodlike case over his shoulder, and Yumiko, also in her uniform, ran beside him. At the end of the line, Minoru dashed along as silently as he possibly could, trying to keep up.
In less than ten seconds they cut across the parking lot and stood up against the exterior wall of the giant dome building.
Checking the map with his smartphone, DD pointed beyond the wall.
“Our destination, Coco Island, is about thirty meters behind this wall, let’s enter from here.”
Even though DD said “from here,” all Minoru could see in front of him was a thick concrete wall. As Minoru tilted his head in confusion, Olivier replied, “Got it, boss,” with no trace of nervousness in his voice and stepped forward.
Olivier unzipped the zipper on his rodlike case and stuck his hand inside. Upon seeing something very different from a fishing pole come out, Minoru opened his eyes wide.
It was a sword.
To top it off, it wasn’t a wooden sword or a Japanese sword, either. It had a black sheath decorated with silver, as well as a silver-colored hilt. It perfectly fit the description of a western long sword.
Beside Minoru, who was dumbfounded, Yumiko looked shocked and whispered, “Where the hell did you buy something like that?”
“Last time when we were sent to Kamakura I stopped by a weapons shop, you see,” said Olivier, the half-Japanese, half-French pretty boy grinning as he took the hilt of the sword in his right hand.
Shinng! went the vigorous sound of the sword as he unsheathed it, and the blade shined silver like a mirror. It was clear that it was the real thing.
“Be more quiet when you take it out!!” DD yelled.
“But the sound is one of the best parts!!” Olivier argued.
After arguing back and forth a little while, Olivier lifted up the heavy-looking sword with his right hand as if it weighed nothing and then… Fyu-fyu! went the sound of the rushing air as Olivier swung the sword so fast one couldn’t follow it with their eyes. With another ringing sound, he resheathed the sword and turned back around.
No matter how closely Minoru looked at the wall, he couldn’t see a single scratch on it. However, when DD took out a suction cup from his waist pouch and attached it to the wall and pulled, an eighteen-centimeter-square section of the wall came out.
Minoru gulped when he saw the smoothness of the edge of the cut. The thickness of the wall was more than twenty inches, including the concrete outer wall, insulation, and the inner wall. To top it off, there were also thick steel beams running from bottom to top and left to right, and yet the cut was glossy and smooth as if it were polished.
“Ah!” Minoru suddenly remembered that he had felt the same astonishment the previous Friday, when he saw Biter’s tooth in that glass petri dish. As soon as Professor Riri pushed on it with tweezers, it split in two halves, showing edges polished like mirrors.
Professor Riri had said that the tooth was cut using the power of one of the SFD members. Manipulating the van der Waals forces between particles, they were able to cut surfaces so that they were extremely smooth. The code name of that member was…
“So…Oli-V is ‘Divider’?” Minoru muttered, and with a twinkling in his eye, the bespectacled pretty boy struck a pose.
“…Again have I cut down something worthle—”
“That’s enough of that,” interrupted Yumiko, hitting Olivier in the side, so that he grimaced and got quiet.
DD gently placed the concrete block on the ground and removed the suction cup, placing it back in his side pouch.
“All right, then. From here on out, anyone who uses their power is going to have Igniter’s attention drawn to them. We will approach him without using our powers, surround him, and then attack while he’s off his guard. We’ll leave the first strike to Yumiko. As for backup…we’re counting on you, Isolator.”
“…What?” Minoru’s heart thumped loudly in his chest.
Olivier glanced at Minoru from the corner of his eye and said, “My power doesn’t match well with Igniter’s. After all, I can’t cut oxygen. Your shell’ll be a lot more effective, right?”
Olivier, the long-sword user, then stepped over to Minoru and put his left arm around Minoru’s neck and whispered, “If you’re still bothered about me smacking you, then come on and show us some courage, man.”
It’s not a matter of me showing or not showing courage or determination. I don’t have any to begin with, Minoru muttered to himself inside his head.
Yumiko then grabbed Olivier by his uniform and pulled him away from Minoru.
“What are you doing giving him unnecessary pressure? I’ll take care of Igniter in one hit, so I won’t be needing any backup. He’s my prey,” Yumiko said in a low voice, before crouching down and stepping through the square hole in the wall.
Following DD and Olivier, Minoru also slipped through the hole and into the water park, taking care not to catch the sharp edge on his clothing.
Green emergency lamps shined their light on a cramped walkway that continued left and right in a gentle curve. It seemed to be a passageway for employees, and piping could be seen on the walls and ceiling.
DD ran left without saying a word. After Minoru ran a few steps after him, he heard Professor Riri’s voice over the intercom in his left ear.
“…I have confirmed your entrance from here. Igniter still hasn’t moved from the Coco Island area. If you continue down the passageway and take the fourth flight of stairs on your left, you will enter the attraction area.…All right, I have a message from the other team. Listen as you go.”
Other team? thought Minoru, and a moment later after a short break of noise, he heard a voice he had never heard before in his left ear.
“This is Refractor speaking. I have successfully infiltrated Ignite’s, aka Ayato Suka’s, apartment.”
The voice was a girl’s voice, with a low and calm tone, but it still contained a bit of youthfulness to it. Minoru hadn’t heard her code name before. She must be a Jet Eye who Minoru hadn’t been introduced to yet, but still…
“Are you all right…doing something like infiltrating Igniter’s apartment?” Minoru asked.
What if Igniter had cameras set up in his apartment and was checking those cameras remotely? Minoru thought
, worried, but Yumiko who was running beside him gave him a short answer.
“It’s all right, you can’t see her.”
Can’t…see her?
Refract… The meaning of that word was, if Minoru remembered correctly…“to bend light.”
The girl’s voice continued. “The rooms are filled with ornamental plants, as well as a large aquarium… That too is filled with plants; there are no fish.”
“Plants, huh…?” Riri’s voice joined in over the transmission. “I see. Is there anything else you notice?”
“There is hardly any furniture… There isn’t a television or computer, either. Ah! On the living room wall there is a large map.”
“A map?”
“A map of the metropolitan area. There are lots of pushpins pushed in on the map.”
Minoru and the other three kept running and listening without saying a word. Doors and flights of stairs rushed past them as they ran.
“There are nine pins marking places on the map, and seven pins in the margins.”
“Tell me the locations of some of those pins,” said Riri.
“West Arai in the Adachi district, the west exit of Ikebukuro Station, West Shinjuku 1-chome.”
Minoru could tell over the intercom that Riri took a deep breath.
“So all of the locations where he has committed crimes up until now.”
“Wait. There are some places that are marked even where there aren’t any pins. If you connect the dots…it forms a large ellipse. A zero…? Or maybe an O?”
“An O? If the pins are… Nine plus seven makes sixteen, so sixteen O… That’s oxygen’s elementary number! So this is Igniter’s plan! He plans to leave this signature in the middle of Tokyo!!”
Clang! went the sound of a chair getting knocked back as Riri’s rushed voice came over the intercom.
“Tell me all of the places where there aren’t pins placed yet!”
“All right, most of the pins are to the north, and most of the marks are to the south. Jingu-mae in the Shibuya district… Kaki-no-ki-zaka in the Meguro district… Ariake in the Koto district…”
“There is a mark on Kaki-no-ki-zaka in the Meguro district? That’s where Yousuke Nakakubo’s residence is… There’s no pin there?”
The Igniter Page 15