Maohden Vol. 1

by Hideyuki Kikuchi

  “How is she, Doctor?” the mother pleaded. She was asking for the results of the previous examination.

  Mephisto looked at the wall. The wall again changed into a screen. He studied the paragraphs of the German text and the columns of numbers for a minute. Facing the two women, he said, “Unfortunately, the underlying cause remains elusive. Genetic analysis and regression therapy have yielded no satisfactory answers.”

  The voice relaying this information—contrary to the hopes and expectations of the patient—contained not one sliver of hope or hint of empathetic emotion. A harsher assessment in front of the mother, to say nothing of the patient, would be hard to imagine.

  The mother’s shoulders slumped. The stored-up tension seemed to evaporate from her voluptuous body. The back of the chair creaked.

  “Well—then—I guess I’ll have to take her to a hospital outside—outside the ward. But—the university medical center where I took her previously—I have connections there, you know, they said that there was no doctor in the outside world as accomplished in this field as Doctor Mephisto. If you can’t cure her, then nobody can—”

  “I will continue to treat her,” Mephisto said, as stone cold as before.

  The mother looked up. “You mean, you mean there are other procedures you can try?”

  “I haven’t exhausted all of my resources. Despite the unwelcome results of the work done so far, we shall start all over from scratch. Your daughter’s cooperation will of course be necessary. This calls for the tenacity to drag herself up, not from a mild depression, but from the depths of despair. To that end, I would ask that you entrust her to my personal care and keeping.”

  In any other circumstances, such a mother would have answered the request with rolled eyes. But under Mephisto’s watchful gaze, all such concerns would melt away.

  “I understand,” she said, bowing her head. “I appreciate all you have done for us.”

  “Don’t worry about the bill. As my own priority patient, I will cover all the expenses and assign her a full-time nurse. Clothing and personal belongings are fine, but please make any arrangements beforehand with the receptionist.”

  Mephisto spelled all this out in unhurried tones, then turned back to his desk. All during this time, the girl didn’t make a peep, only stared off into space. The mother finally got up and with a little urging, so did the daughter.

  After they left, Mephisto looked out the window and murmured, “So the dutiful daughter kills the father while in a drunken rage? I give the mother the results of the examination in her daughter’s presence and she barely stirs. It’s probably better that she be with a nurse unknown to her. The heart of a child is always a mystery to the parent. But somehow heaven has turned its face from this child as well.”

  Mephisto turned his gaze out the window with eyes that could look squarely at the darkest and harshest realities.

  Chapter Two

  The underground parking garage enclosed a hard and expansive space. The pipes and ducts and wires that lined the ten-foot-high ceilings performed no useful purpose, as the stale, unventilated heat and dim surroundings proved.

  Outside it was high noon.

  The garage was large enough to hold several hundred vehicles. The otherwise orderly concrete field was interrupted by a strange scene—a small mountain.

  From the angle of its smooth surface, the base must circumscribe an area two dozen feet across. The shape suggested that an intense force had pushed the concrete up from below, and then lost its structure and form and subsided, leaving this behind.

  Except that wouldn’t explain the unbroken surface that, looking more closely, appeared tawny brown in color.

  It was a mountain of dirt, stamped down to remove any irregularities. An oddity in a world covered with concrete. But all the more surprising was the naked body of a young man lying on top of it.

  That alone wasn’t so strange a sight in Demon City. In fact, it was rather charming that somebody would go to all the trouble of creating a pile of dirt in this location just so he could lie down on it. And yet there was something else, a kind of unnerving, eerie beauty about this young man, his face turned toward the heavy, gray concrete sky above him.

  This was Gento Roran. But the body to match that shining and well-proportioned face—

  The darkness wavered. Another presence entered the voluminous space and was moving about it. But in the depths of the gloom no physical thing stirred at all. Not among the concrete pillars. Not along the concrete walls. From whence came this whisper through the air—

  A quiet whoosh. The kind of sound everyone heard all the time and nobody remembered.

  It came from the ceiling, covered with a web of black hoses weaving around the bumps and protrusions in the concrete.

  Whoosh.

  Now the sound came from directly above Gento, where what looked like a black hose clung to the ceiling. Not wrapped around the pipes, but affixed directly to the concrete. Considering its length—twenty feet long at the bare minimum—and mass, that it didn’t fall to the floor was a testament to its adhesive properties.

  The bulbous head swung down, unpeeling its torso from the ceiling, and forming a hook—all without evincing even the slightest tremor. Blue-green eyes flashed on either side of its head. The red tongue flicked out. Fangs jutted from the sides of its mouth.

  This was a very large snake. A yard around and reaching thirty feet in length, it slithered along the ceiling. Its size alone suggested it was the lord of this large parking garage.

  Whether it viewed the sleeping young man below as an intruder, or a fresh supply of meat, whether anger or glee filled its gleaming eyes—it opened its fiery red mouth aiming to swallow Gento’s head whole.

  The air hummed like a plucked string.

  The snake’s mouth gaped open wider and wider, splitting its jaw and peeling back the skin a yard along its body. With a splatter like a dash of paint and a heavy thudding sound, it fell writhing to the floor.

  Slits ran through its torso, exposing the white fat and red flesh. Reverberations rang out as it twisted, struggled and reared back, and finally fled to where the invisible blades could not reach, slithering into the shadows in a manner more appropriate to its form.

  Gento hadn’t budged, hadn’t even opened his eyes. The rich scent of flowers bloomed in profusion about him. He resembled nothing so much as a young man indulging in a rose-strewn siesta in a faraway Garden of Eden.

  The stench left behind by the snake, the dark purple lines trailing away into the darkness, now corrupted that paradise.

  The shadow of a human form appeared, as if following that trail, Hyota’s oddly hunched over form.

  “You’ve arrived,” came the low voice from the mound of earth.

  “Yes,” Hyota answered, not moving from where he stood.

  “And you have come to tell me you missed the mark?”

  “Yes.”

  The result of the duel between Setsura and Hyota on a street in Kabuki-cho’s Golden Gai. Seemingly knowing the answer already, the questioner did not react with anger. Neither was the respondent surprised by this foreknowledge, nor did he quake in fear of punishment. The tone, rather, was that of an investigator confirming what he already knew.

  “Lay a single finger upon him, and it was impossible to fight back. I ran with all my might. He is a most frightening—genie.”

  “You did well to get away. I was not certain you would ever return.”

  The exchange sounded like nothing more than a heartless master addressing a lowly servant.

  Hyota answered with a tight-lipped bow. “He mingled blithely with ordinary folk in order to lure us out. But Setsura Aki-sama has not discovered the seal. Though after this, I suspect that only time will hold him back. We should make that our first priority.”

  “My father did not leave word of it behind. And neither did Renjo Aki. The two of them may not have even known themselves. In any case, Hyota, when will my abode be ready? Sleeping on dirt exhau
sts me.”

  “Soon.” For the first time, Hyota sounded abashed. “That particular place is in a miserable condition. It is unlikely that Gento-sama’s abode was destroyed, but transporting it without anybody finding out will take time.”

  “Does Setsura Aki know?”

  “It is not possible that he does.”

  “Then get the job done before resuming your search for the seal. Inflict two wounds for every one suffered. Whoever gives more than he receives will gain the advantage.”

  “I understand, but Aki-sama has a much greater knowledge of Shinjuku and access to information than we do. Turn all the gangs in the city against him, and he still can make the slightest gust of wind, the slenderest blade of grass his ally. Listening to every word they whisper, Aki-sama would surely take the greatest advantage of any lull in the battle.”

  “I can see the stars.” Gento’s tone of voice suddenly changed. “Even sleeping in the earth. The stars talk to me. They say that he will soon find my home. What will become of me then? I can’t say, but it should prove interesting.”

  Gento sat up on the mound of dirt. Stored somewhere out of sight, he wrapped a coat around him like the wings of a black butterfly. Calmly climbing down from his raised bed only took another second or two.

  “The seal and the transport of my home I leave in your hands. I am going to face my mortal enemy.”

  “Do you know where?”

  “No.”

  Not asking how he would go about finding him, Hyota bowed as the black shadow glided past him.

  Not a word was said about the snake.

  Setsura was in a corner of Shinjuku Gardens. Amidst the dirt and rubble, there remained not a smidgen of the groomed landscapes that had once offered the city’s urban residents a moment of respite from the mad rush. The lawns covering the area were given over to mosses of strange colors and unknown origins. These squirming mosses were “alive” in the faunal as well as the floral sense, throbbing in syncopation to the ominous beat of a telltale heart lurking beneath.

  Nor was it mere urban rumor that a sound accompanied each beat, or that each heavy pulse could be felt through the soles of the feet.

  Scientists from outside the ward studying these sounds using infrasonic analysis counted eighty to ninety beats a minute, a living sound, almost identical to that of a human being. But what kind of living thing, for its “body” reached a mile in length and covered three dozen acres.

  This conclusion had been drawn fourteen years before, and the location pointed to the very center of Shinjuku Gardens. But perhaps serving as a defensive perimeter, the earth was piled at a radius of several hundred yards around it, and thriving with mutant vegetation—not a place where a sane man ever ventured.

  The center of Shinjuku Gardens was said to be home to around thirty-five hundred different species, thirty percent of which were crammed into that cramped corner.

  This scientific mother lode had yielded not only botanical curiosities, but promising treatments for cancer and stroke and other incurable diseases beyond the reach of medicine. However, since several dozen adventurers and prospectors ventured in and disappeared, nobody else had tried.

  Setsura was standing in an area near Yotsuya on the outer edge of the inner ring. The twilight was falling. His shadow cut a graceful silhouette on the ground at his feet, the result of the thirty streetlamps installed by the ward government.

  There was one fifteen feet directly behind him. More than protecting the vagrants who might otherwise stumble into the Gardens at night, their primary purpose was to shed light upon whatever creepy-crawlies might be thinking of leaving.

  Here and there just beyond the penumbras of light lay the slumbering forms of the homeless and vagrant workers. Without a bed to call their own, the unknown vegetation inside the Gardens was preferable to the known risk of gangsters and monsters outside it.

  A slight frown rose to Setsura’s face. He sensed a presence and heard footsteps approaching.

  The figure appeared inside the cone of light three minutes later, as if pushing the veil of dusk aside. He was wearing sunglasses and a polo shirt and had a slightly shady air about him. Not a nine-to-five kind of guy.

  “Aki-san, I presume?” he asked warily.

  “And you are Sasaki-san?”

  Such a laid-back inquiry from the man who’d designated such a place and such a time set the reporter a bit at ease—the same one who’d shot Gento Roran in the interrogation room of Shinjuku police station.

  “You’ve got yourself some good connections,” Setsura said.

  Sasaki nodded. “I stopped by your place but it was closed. A waste of time if I hadn’t been familiar with the old lady at the tobacco store.”

  He must have put together a dossier on the grandma in Kabuki-cho’s old hotel district, said to be the very first information broker in Shinjuku—though that didn’t explain how he’d managed to touch bases with Setsura, who’d been up and about the city since leaving his safe house that morning.

  “At any rate, here we are. Hear me out—I’m not above rewarding useful information.”

  “How about as the reward, you tell me your side of the story?” Setsura said with a hint of a yawn. Hardly surprising, considering the deadly duel he’d gone through that day.

  “I’d like to find out what you know first. After that—”

  “Fine with me.”

  They stood there talking for a dozen or so minutes. Sasaki recounted what he’d told Gento.

  “You’ve done your homework. Unfortunately, I haven’t anything more to add. You seem to know more than I do about the subject.”

  “That’s too bad. That just leaves the two people at the heart of the matter. And if Gento-sama won’t cough up any details, that leaves you.”

  “Gento won’t?” Setsura stared at the reporter with evident surprise. “You mean you went to him looking for material?”

  “Ah, well—” Sasaki said vaguely. He’d kept mum about meeting with Gento, fearing that Setsura would clam up. Push come to shove, he’d catch him upside the head and loosen his tongue with a little electroshock therapy.

  He’d shown his cards too early, but there was no regretting it now. As if sensing something in back of him, he turned his face toward the darkness behind him, like it was the middle of the day.

  “A tail, eh?” Setsura said.

  Sasaki was the one amazed. “Don’t talk rubbish. Yeah, we talked, but he didn’t lay a finger on me.”

  “You can track someone without doing the tango together.” Setsura’s sharp words were a complete contrast with the languid look on his face. “Long odds, I thought, whether this was the wrong or right place to meet up—either way, if you think your life is worth saving—though trying would probably be a waste of time now.”

  With these ominous words hanging in the air, the flustered Sasaki barked, “Hey, what are you talking about? What the hell is that?”

  Setsura ignored him and raised his right arm in a graceful wave. What looked like a glimmering spider’s thread floated out from the cone of light at Setsura. On the verge of exiting the ring of light, another thread tangled with it. As if the mass had suddenly increased, it fluttered and fell to the earth.

  In the next moment, Setsura sprang off the damp ground with amazing speed and without making a sound. Not surprising, considering the lightness of his steps as he veered off the path and plunged into the center of the noxious undergrowth.

  “Hey! Wait up! Hey!” Sasaki called out behind him.

  Setsura paid no mind to the shining thread coiled after him like a persistent insect as the air rushed in the space where he’d just been.

  The scene around Setsura abruptly changed. The weeds around his ankles shot up to his waist, took on striped and spotted colors, and shook their petals in the disturbed air, coughing out a yellowish pollen. The outlines of Setsura’s body grew hazy inside the cloud of pollen.

  No sooner had the scene taken on a semblance of normality, but he flung
himself deeper into the thick foliage.

  Red and green and purple pollen and sap in unearthly hues, bursting with sweet and nauseous smells, rained down on his head and shoulders. Covered by the psychedelic colors, Setsura came to a halt amidst the shrubbery.

  Silence fell, interrupted by a moan like the moo of a cow. A frog-like creature hopped through the undergrowth, scales glittering in the moonlight. A foul miasma rose up from the ground like a bank of humid air, as if rising off a fetid tropic swamp.

  Stranger still, despite the profusion of plant life, there was not the single buzz of an insect. From further away came the sound of footsteps.

  “Hey!” called out Sasaki. “Aki-kun! Aki-kun!”

  “Idiot,” Setsura sighed.

  The footsteps approached, stomping through the grass. When they came within several yards, Setsura cut laterally through the undergrowth toward the narrow path Sasaki was on.

  “Yo, Aki-kun,” Sasaki said, like he was greeting an old friend. He stepped forward.

  Setsura caught the glitter of light out of the corner of his eye. A red line transected Sasaki’s neck, biting deeper in pace with each step. Only Setsura’s eyes could have perceived so fine a line, and it parted the flesh so effortlessly that Sasaki did not appear to even feel it as he kept on going.

  The red line passed through to the other side. Scattering fresh blood under the bright moonlight, his head toppled off his shoulders. Similar lines ran down the headless body, his arms severing at the shoulders, his torso neatly divided crosswise and lengthwise and tumbling in pieces to the ground.

  The scent of blood covered the ground. The head sitting there upright still sported the same pleasantly relieved smile.

  “Served his purpose, eh?” Setsura said to himself.

  The death trap that had taken Sasaki’s head must have already been set up and waiting for him when they met. Setsura had arrived expecting as much. Gento had probably tagged Sasaki when they met for exactly this purpose.

  But how had he nailed down this specific location? Gento could have easily planted a nanotech transmitter and tracking device on him the size of a poppy seed, though Setsura was inclined to believe that he would have relied on something far more particular to his target, and likely a lot more intimidating.