“How ’bout it, huh? Nice and simple, but that’s what makes it so avant-garde, right? What do you think? Huh?! Wanna take one home?!”
“Master, you need that even less than the last thing! That bomb was a lot cooler than this!…Oh, also, what did you come here to buy in the first place?!”
“Oh. Yeah, the mouse. Let’s get it and go home.”
“…Master?”
Two quick jolts of vibration signaled her suddenly serious tone.
“No! Yeah, I know! The amusement park! I didn’t forget, all right? Uh, where’s the computer stuff…?”
I peeked at the signs hanging from the ceiling, pointing out all the assorted electronics available. They were a little too specific to help me find what I wanted.
“Computer goods, compu—Oof!”
I was so busy staring upward as I wandered around that I bumped right into a sales employee. It had been a very bump-into-guys kind of day. I wasn’t much of a fan.
“Excuse me! Uh…Could, could you tell me where the computer equipment is?”
I removed an earbud as I spoke, trying my best to sound apologetic to the employee while I did. Once I had a good look at her face, I realized that she was…well, pretty beautiful. She had to have a boyfriend. The sheer femininity she exuded told me that much.
“Umm…?” the employee said, confused for a moment. “Oh! Right! Computers! Just go straight down this aisle, then go right down the second-to-last aisle before the wall.”
“Oh. Uh…uh, th-thank you…”
My first decent conversation with another human being since time immemorial made me nervous, but the relief at pulling it off—and with such a pretty woman, too!—filled me with satisfied smugness. Yes. I like this store. I could feel my feet growing lighter as I traipsed down the aisle she pointed out.
“Umm, master?”
“Hmm? What’s up?”
My response sounded even more upbeat than I intended. Does talking to a woman really change a person this much? I felt like I had uncovered one of the great secrets of life.
“About this…”
Suddenly, I heard a stream of ambient noise broadcast into my ear.
“Huh? What’re you…”
Just as I was about to ask, I heard the murmur of background noise hiss in my headphones. Then—
“Ahhh…ex-cuuuuse me…?…Uh. Uhhh…C-c-could you tell me…Where…where the computer equipment…?…Is?” said the creepily hushed voice of a young man.
This was followed by a plainly confused (though still clear and refreshing) “Umm…” from a young woman.
Then the recording ended.
“That was how it sounded, master. No wonder it took her a second to understand you.”
The results of spending the past year engaging in mumbly conversations with a mysterious computer AI were now crystal clear.
I felt like someone had driven a cold, stonelike object into my stomach. I had to resist the impulse to scream at the top of my lungs.
“I’m pretty much used to it by now, you know, but for normal people, that’s gonna be pretty tough to decipher.”
“Let’s…let’s just go home.”
“No, master! We haven’t gone to the amusement park yet!”
“Oh, who cares anymore…? This whole thing’s been like a roller coaster to me anyway.”
I was afraid the tears would fall out if I looked down, so I kept walking with my head tilted upward. I was never coming back here again.
“Oh, don’t worry about it so much! If you want to talk, you know, I’m always happy to listen!”
“Great, ’cause once we get home, I’m gonna need some counseling. I want to die…”
“Hee-hee-hee! You got it! So just hang in there for now, all right, master? Look! We’re almost at the computer section, aren’t we?”
To my right, I was greeted with an array of Internet-ready headsets and cameras. They probably set up this display to cash in on the big video-streaming craze. It was so stupid. Why can’t we as a species all just stop talking to each other?
The aisle beyond was radiant with superthin notebook PCs and high-spec computers for online gaming, the sort of machines that would normally make me squeal with delight.
But now, I just wanted to get my mouse and stuff, get on the up-’n’-down thing, get on the roller coaster, and get home.
“I gotta get back home…”
“Master?!”
“All right, all right…ugh…”
I plodded on, toward the mice display, signs on both sides inviting me to GET ON THE NET QUICKLY AND EASILY! and CONNECT YOUR PHONE TO YOUR PC FOR VIDEO CHAT! and so on. It was honestly just tiring to look at.
Working my way through the gaudy showroom, I finally reached the mouse and keyboard section.
It was packed with all the latest gadgets. Wireless, trackballs, you name it.
“Sure are a lot of ’em. Guess it doesn’t really matter what I get, but I might as well go for a durable model—”
—It was so sudden.
With no advance warning, a loud boom echoed across the entire floor, even blaring through my earbuds.
It was a muffled, otherworldly kind of sound, but one I had heard before.
On cue, I heard screams all around me.
In an instant, my heart was racing.
I impulsively ripped an earbud out. It added a vital sense of realism to the shouting and the chaos that ruled showroom-wide.
“What the hell’s—?!”
I was in too narrow of an aisle to get the full picture. As I tried to reach the main aisle, the sound of something heavy and metallic thudding downward echoed across the floor once again.
I looked back toward the elevators, only to find the corridor I had just walked down blocked by a white metal wall.
It was as if the shutter was designed to cut the floor cleanly in half—the side with the elevators, and this side. I was completely sealed off, the shutter not touching a single merchandise shelf and not leaving a single exit.
Looking toward the shutter, at the far end of the now-blocked main aisle, I instantly realized what was making the noise. I could hardly believe it at first, but once I grasped the reality of it, the blood drained impossibly quickly from my face.
That thing must’ve caused the first blast, along with the screaming.
The female employee I had just asked directions from was lying there.
A red puddle was slowly expanding beneath her, from her healthy-looking thighs to the white tiled floor.
The twisted look of pain on her face contained not a trace of the cheerful smile that was once there.
A large man stood nearby. He wore a stubbly beard and the sort of sheer, body-hugging suit you see special-forces guys wear in the movies.
He had a pistol in his hand and grenades hanging from his hips—real ones, a far cry from the water heater earlier—and yet he acted strangely nonchalant, as if nothing was at all amiss.
Several other men were around him, all dressed alike. They encircled the stubble-bearded man, guns pointed at the shoppers stuck in each aisle. Mine was in their blind spot, and from it, I could hear the screams of the shoppers, along with the strident, shouted commands from the men keeping them at bay. The employees were apparently just as helpless as the customers. There were likely more men besides the ones I could see.
Everyone who heard the initial explosion and gunshot.
Everyone who actually saw it.
Everyone else who was running in a panic around the floor—all of us were corralled together at frightening speed.
It couldn’t have taken more than a few minutes.
This group had the showroom floor completely under their control with astonishing speed.
“…That all of them?”
“Yes, sir. That’s everyone on this side of the floor, including the shoppers.”
“Good. Aww, I suppose all of you were busy enjoying a little shopping on your holiday or whatever. Well, too bad. Guess you
’re out of luck today, huh?”
The stubble-bearded man bombarded those of us beneath him with his crass, unsettling voice.
Several dozen of us were gathered into a corner of the TV department on the far side of the seventh floor. We had all been made to sit on the ground, our hands bound with some kind of superstrong adhesive tape.
The glass windows the sunlight had been seeping through just a moment ago were covered in white shutters, the kind the employees lower down after the store closes. A cacophony of patrol sirens faintly whined in the background, and we could hear the voices of what we assumed to be police negotiators on the other side of the giant floor-splitting shutter.
Nine men stood in front of us, all of them dressed like walking definitions of the word “terrorist.” Three of them had their guns drawn upon us, three of them toward the shutter, and another two were close by the presumed leader, the stubble-bearded man, engaged in conversation.
“Thirteen hundred hours. It’s time.”
“Right.”
At the signal of his partner, who had been keeping a close eye on his watch, the stubble-bearded man took out his cell phone. He began to talk, the picture of calmness, like he was ordering a pizza.
Suddenly, the voice emanated not from the man in front of us, but from the building’s PA system at high volume.
“Uhh, test, test, test. Oh, can you hear me? Hello, officers. Another boring day on patrol, huh? I’m only gonna say this once, so pay attention.”
The moment he began to speak, the negotiators across the shutter fell silent.
The man took a breath, the faraway sirens the only noise we could hear.
“As you probably noticed, we’ve taken over this floor. We’ve got several dozen hostages, and, ah, they’re all right for now…for now. So let’s make this quick. We have one demand. We want one billion yen within thirty minutes.”
The man continued in his matter-of-fact tone, not giving notice to the reactions around him, as if he was simply asking for a side of cheese bread.
“The handover will take place half an hour from now, on the roof of this building. One of our men is already stationed up there. You will drop the money to him from a helicopter. Don’t bother with counterfeit bills or tracking devices or anything; you’ll be wasting your time. Also, and I’m sure you can guess this, but if I start hearing things like ‘We need more time’ or ‘Release the hostages first,’ we’re going to immediately kill everybody here.”
This caused an instant clamor from the captured customers, one that was just as quickly halted by the barrels of the three men’s guns. Several customers were quietly choking back their sobs.
“…Well, that about wraps it up. So try and act accordingly, all right? If you don’t follow what I told you, no matter what it is…ah, I suppose you know. Catch you later.”
After the man finished, his voice no more excited than if he were chatting with a friend, he sat down on a nearby bench, acting like this whole business was terribly annoying to him.
How many people ever become terrorist hostages in their lives? It can’t be that high a percentage.
Now, how about people who get taken hostage after stepping out of their home for the first time in two years? Anyone besides me?
I was disgusted with my utter and complete lack of good fortune. If today wasn’t the very definition of an unlucky day, then I didn’t know what was.
“Ugh. We have got nothing to do right now. You think I shoulda made it fifteen minutes?”
The man had a leg on one knee, playing with his cell phone, not a care in the world. I thought that the ringleader of a gang about to commit the crime of the century would be…I don’t know. Less lethargic?
“It’s only a little longer now, sir,” said one of his nearby cronies, trying his best to tactfully appease him.
They were already acting like they got away with the perfect crime…What were they planning to do after this? Do they have an escape helicopter coming? No way. They’d get tracked down and rounded up in one fell swoop. There had to be at least one more gang member, the guy who lowered the shutter and set up the PA announcement, besides the handover man on the roof. So much for that “state-of-the-art, maximum level of safety” crap. This is a total disaster! That fancy-schmancy system gave them exactly the tools they needed. If all the security equipment was controlled by computer, anyone who seized that computer could have this entire structure at their fingertips from the control room.
I had no idea how they did it, but judging by how calm they were, they must have been confident about their escape. They didn’t make it look perfect, but everything had been handled perfectly so far. They had to have something planned.
—But I didn’t feel like quietly waiting for it.
Will they release us? These men didn’t look like they cared about human lives any more than a stray bug on their leg.
And now they had our lives in their hands.
A situation as unstable as this could fall apart at any moment.
A catalyst.
If there was just some kind of catalyst, we could flip this completely over.
“Ngh!”
Suddenly, the stubble-bearded man stood up, his face twisted in pain, holding the back of his head.
“Hey…!”
“Huh…? Grhhh!”
The man approached one of his cronies and punched him full in the stomach.
“Don’t ‘huh’ me…Who the hell you think you’re punching in the head? Huh?! C’mon, tell me!”
He launched a swift kick at the crony, still writhing on the floor.
Everyone nearby tensed up at this odd turn of events.
Not even the men guarding us could fully conceal their agitation.
“What the hell’s going on…?” I whispered to myself.
“Heh-heh-heh…”
As the ringleader’s angry voice boomed across the floor, the man sitting behind me to the left suddenly began to snicker.
“Huh…?”
Surprised, I turned to look at the man who erupted in this sudden, incredibly inappropriate laughter.
“Mm? Oh, uh, sorry. Like, it was just so funny, I couldn’t help myself.”
I supposed he was a little younger than me. His large, catlike eyes were situated underneath short, light brown hair, his frame covered by a gray sports jacket.
“Something funny to you…?”
“What? Oh, sure, this and that. You know, I can’t help but notice you’ve got some very interesting-looking eyes. Lemme guess: You’re thinking about doing something, but, like, you haven’t spotted a good chance yet. Right?”
The shouting continued. Everyone, terrorist and hostage, was completely on edge, and yet this guy acted like he couldn’t care less, as if this were a movie and he was watching it on TV.
“How do you…?”
Our hushed conversation was drowned out by all the terrorist ranting. The man with the catlike eyes continued.
“Oh, just a hunch. But how about it…? You have some kind of secret plan, maybe?”
“…Guys like these, if I could get my hands free, I could make their eyes bug out in half a minute.”
“Yeah? Huh. Wow. You don’t look like you’re lying, either. So, like, what kind of chances are you giving yourself?”
“Um…not to brag…but 100 percent.”
He began to snicker derisively again.
“You don’t have to believe me. I doubt I can get this tape off anyway.”
“No, no, sorry. It’s not that I don’t believe you; I just love that crazy confidence you have. Yeah. Neat.”
He did not look like he believed me at all. In fact, he looked like this entire crisis was the greatest matinee show ever. But this wasn’t a crazed man, driven into a mad panic by the ordeal. His words were strangely soothing.
“You know, I think if we wait a bit, that guy’s probably gonna talk over the PA system again. You’d be, like, guaranteed to see a chance after that. And then…well, it’d b
e up to you, I guess. Good luck, okay?”
“Huh? What’re you talking about? Don’t you remember? I can’t even get my hands—”
“God, this is pissing me off. Hey, get me on the mike again. I got something I want to say to these idiots.”
“Y-yes, sir!”
Punching out his cronies, one by one, as they tried to plead their cases to him apparently failed to quell the stubble-bearded man’s anger. The veins on his forehead bulged visibly as he ordered one of his men to get him back on the PA.
It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes since the last announcement, and here we go again.
The cat-eyed man took in the scene, basking in every minute of it. Whether it was coincidence or not, he had predicted all of this. But will that give me a chance? And even if it did, unless I could get this tape off my hands, there was no way to take advantage of it.
After his minion reported back, the man took out his phone and began his second broadcast.
“Uh…You guys hear me? I’m taking ten minutes off the time limit. You now have ten minutes left. You start whining about how that’s not enough, I’m killing half the hostages. Got that?”
Once more, the hostages began to shout and scream. The terrorists guarding them, so quick to silence the group earlier, seemed just as nervous and confused at this sudden change of plans.
“Also, I’m gonna say this now, but after we get the money, we’re all leaving by helicopter. I’d advise against trying to track us. If we go down, the bomb we got in there’s gonna take a nice chunk of the city out with us. If we notice even the slightest hint of any pursuit, we’re gonna drop that sucker.”
A commotion rose up among the police on the other side of the shutter. I couldn’t blame them. They were taking the entire town hostage.
Whoever these men were, they were a tightly structured group, one with a scrupulously designed plan. They were willing to stake the lives of everyone in town to make their escape. And given how well armed they apparently were, no way the police alone could handle them. Not in this short a time.
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