The Destruction of the World by Fire

by Shiden Kanzaki

  Rentaro glared at the sixteenth name on the list. “Right now, we’re heading to a place called the Katagiri Civil Security Agency. I met them on the field once. They’re a small agency like us, run by siblings. Can’t say much about their personality, but they’re definitely strong.”

  Tina gave him a dubious look in return. “You can’t say much about their personality…?”

  “Yeah, you know. They’re kind of weird. But they’re definitely strong.”

  “But why did you bring me?”

  “Because otherwise I won’t have a chance to show you around Tokyo Area.”

  Tina’s look turned to one of surprise and she looked down shyly. “A date with Big Brother,” she murmured passionately. Rentaro tried his best not to hear.

  A lot of people were sitting at the edge of the bronze fountain in front of the station, and there were fresh leaves above them giving shade with their deep glossy color. There were sweet smells coming from the ice cream shop they passed, mixed with the fresh smell of summer coming from the watermelons near the entrance of the supermarket and the strong cinnamon scent from the fried bread store. They wafted over together and stimulated his nostrils.

  Tina entwined both arms around Rentaro’s and cheerfully passed the department store. For some reason, Tina looked so funny acting like a new wife with her chin stuck up in the air as she walked that Rentaro let out a small laugh. He was chided with an angry look.

  He wished that this time would continue forever. He really wanted to enjoy the time he could spend with Tina. But a part of him knew in his heart that this was all an illusion. The incident with the Family Register Revocation Law the other day definitely woke up the feelings of hatred Tokyo Area citizens had for Gastrea. He needed to be ready for the kind gazes those around him had for Tina to turn into ice once it was revealed that Tina carried something in her body that a normal girl definitely would not have.

  As they approached a five-road junction in the middle of the city, Rentaro suddenly heard singing and stopped. It was the characteristic soprano of a young girl, and a hymn at that. Turning his head toward the sound, he soon realized that it was coming from the wide pedestrian bridge above. He could have just ignored it and continued on, but for some reason, Rentaro was extremely curious about the voice and urged Tina up the stairs of the pedestrian bridge. There was a rush mat spread out near the middle of it, and the voice was coming from there. It seemed different from a street performance, somehow. As he got closer and realized what it was, Rentaro soon regretted coming.

  The singer was a beggar girl clad in rags. Even though she had good features, they were stained, and the cape she wore was greasy, giving an overall shabby impression. The girl held out a beggar’s bowl with both hands and sang at the people who were heading to the road. On a piece of scrap wood next to her were the words, “I am one of the Cursed Children from the Outer District. I need money to feed my little sister. Please give what you can.” Standing in front of her, even though it was rude to say so of a girl, he could smell body odor.

  Rentaro became worried that Tina would be shocked, but she was unexpectedly calm. She just looked on with solemn eyes. There were surely slums in her country, as well, so other countries must have been in a similar situation as Tokyo Area.

  “Hey, you…,” said Rentaro.

  “Yes?” The girl stopped singing and smiled, lifting her face, and Rentaro thought something was strange. The girl’s eyelids were still closed. He suspected that she was blind, but soon realized that wasn’t it. The Cursed Children were protected from disease thanks to the Gastrea virus. “Hey, what happened to your eyes?”

  “Oh.” The girl gently rubbed around her two eyes. “They were mutilated by the lead that was poured into them.”

  Rentaro was speechless. Was this part of the beggar business? Where they try to make people feel sorry for them by having their eyes mutilated or doing something cruel to paralyze their arms or legs so that they could get money? Was that something that could be overlooked in this wide world?

  The girl seemed to sense Rentaro’s hesitation with her skin and shook her head gently. “This wasn’t done to me by someone else. I did it to myself.”

  “Why…?”

  “Because I couldn’t think of another way to feed my little sister… And because the mother who abandoned us hated my red eyes.”

  Rentaro muttered inwardly, had a bitter taste in his mouth. Gastrea shock. The eyes that shone red and were the same in all Gastrea. During the war, there were people traumatized by fear from seeing them, and the red eyes became the trigger for attacks of convulsions or cramps or other symptoms. It became the most widespread disease of society after the Gastrea War.

  In cases where one of the Cursed Children was born to a family where someone had Gastrea shock, the family circumstances usually ended in tragedy.

  “How can you smile?” Tina asked the girl hesitatingly.

  Rentaro wanted to know, too. The girl seemed to smile persistently in the face of unimaginable adversity. Although this was a word used very rarely for a girl of ten, she was like a saint.

  The girl did not answer the question but quietly stretched her hands out to Tina. Tina was surprised at first, but once she realized the girl meant no harm, Tina let her do as she wished.

  In place of her unseeing eyes, the girl’s hands traced Tina’s features, from her hair and face to her neck, collarbone, and shoulders, brushing over them, until finally the girl lifted her face slowly. “Are you one of the Cursed Children, too?”

  Rentaro looked around him hurriedly in surprise. The people coming and going on the pedestrian bridge passed quickly with indifference, and there was no sign of anyone finding fault with what she said.

  “How did you know…?” said Tina, dumbfounded.

  Facing Tina, the girl’s smile grew bigger. “You’re pretty. I’ll bet the boys can’t leave you alone, right?”

  Tina glanced for a second at Rentaro before saying, “That is not true,” shaking her head dejectedly.

  “You know, I can’t live without depending on others, so I naturally learned to smile. Besides, I don’t know what face to make other than this anymore.” After the girl’s face twisted in a bitter smile, she said, “But,” and slouched her shoulders a little. “Recently, I have been hit more and have had dirty words yelled at me more often, which is a little painful. Did something happen?”

  Just then, a passerby threw something metallic into her metal bowl. The girl smiled softly and quietly made a deep bow.

  Rentaro looked at the pull tab of a canned drink that had been thrown into her bowl and felt disgusted. He glared at the snickering man wearing a double-breasted suit, but the man soon disappeared from view.

  Rentaro slouched and looked at Tina. “Actually,” he started, and he and Tina proceeded to tell the girl the circumstances of the murder of a civilian by Cursed Children.

  “I see, something like that happened…” The girl nodded meekly.

  “That’s why you shouldn’t beg in the Inner Districts until this settles down. Everyone’s bloodthirsty, so it’s dangerous for you to be here.”

  Then, the girl stammered for the first time. “But…”

  Rentaro put his hands on the girl’s shoulders and looked directly at her. “Promise me.”

  The girl squirmed indecisively but finally faced Rentaro and said, “Okay” loudly.

  Rentaro exhaled through his nose. He could rest easy for now. Rentaro put his hand in his wallet and pulled out a bill, putting it in the girl’s hand. “Is that enough?”

  The girl took the bill and put it between her fingers. After rubbing it slowly, she lifted it to her nose and breathed in the smell deeply through her nostrils. “Wow, this much? Thank you!” As if to thank him, the girl crossed her hands in front of her chest and lifted her chin, then started singing low and quiet. When her voice eventually grew louder and went higher, the solemn and clear soprano pushed back the tumult of the city and spread gently through the air.r />
  She was singing “Amazing Grace.”

  Rentaro quietly put his hands on Tina’s shoulders to urge her on, leaving quietly so that the girl would not notice. After putting enough distance between them, Rentaro looked back a little, reluctantly.

  The voice singing a blessing continued. But for some reason, it sounded a little sad.

  5

  Going through two more thoroughfares and into an alley, it seemed like they had arrived at another world; like the deep ocean where the light of the sun did not reach. The smell of perspiring grease, rust, and mold thriving in the humid twilight drifted through the narrow confines. When Rentaro pushed open the building’s iron door, creaking and thick with rust, he entered, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong with the GPS on his phone.

  However, he realized too soon that his feeling was wrong. After climbing the stairs of the run-down building with no elevator, he was at his destination.

  Even the sun, which was shining brightly when he left school, was now slanted, and threw orange light onto the ground. From somewhere off-site was the clang of heavy construction equipment, ringing hollowly through the building like the rumble of distant thunder.

  Rentaro and Tina stood for a while before the door that was beyond worn out and practically at “dilapidated.” The wall that was probably originally white was a completely different color, and there was graffiti on the lacquer in all directions.

  “Is this really the place?” Tina asked in shock.

  Rentaro, who could just barely make out the sign that said KATAGIRI CIVIL SECURITY AGENCY, responded with a “Probably.”

  From the information he got beforehand about how there were only two officers, Rentaro had predicted that it was not a large agency, but he had never imagined that he would find a civil security agency shabbier than his own employer in the entire universe.

  There was no doorbell, so he knocked on the door, yelling “Hey!” a few times, but there was no response.

  Just as he was about to go home, an energetic voice suddenly called out, “Oh, Rentaro Satomi the Pervert!”

  Turning to look, Rentaro saw a blond girl appear at the stairs they had just climbed up. Suddenly, she leapt back and bared her teeth, starting to growl.

  He knew this face. She was clad from head to toe in black pleather with a choker collar and engineer boots. Her dyed-blond hair was split in the middle and tied on each side. In the midst of all that punk fashion, the bright red backpack she carried looked extremely out of place. It looked like she had just gotten home from school.

  “Little Sister Katagiri, huh?” he shot back.

  “It’s Yuzuki, Rentaro Satomi! Fuck you! Don’t come near me, you letch! I’m gonna catch your pervy-ness!”

  Oh yeah, this was what she was like, he recalled with a touch of irritation, but getting angry here would be just what she wanted, so he chanted quietly to himself, Calm down, calm down. “It’s been a while, Little Sister Katagiri. Haven’t seen you since the manhunt three months ago, huh?”

  Yuzuki crossed her arms, feigning boredom. “Hmph, you were just a lowly low-ranking civil officer back then, but now you’re the savior of Tokyo Area who defeated a Zodiac, huh? What do you want? Don’t tell me you came to rub it in? If that’s why you’re here, then you can turn right around and go home, you letch.”

  “That’s not why I’m here. I came because I have work for your brother.”

  “We don’t need work from a perv!”

  Rentaro looked at the decrepit hallway and office door and knocked on the wall. The vibration made a corner of the plaster fall off. “Wouldn’t it be better to at least hear what I have to say?”

  Yuzuki looked annoyed as she pulled out the key from the back of her choker and put it in the door, stealing a look at Rentaro as she opened the door. “Big Bro! You have a guest!”

  Following the girl inside, he was first overwhelmed by the choking smell. All families had their own smell that permeated everything, but the Katagiri Civil Security Agency’s was the smell of a cloth that had wiped up milk and was dried in the shade. Scattered around the reception area were empty containers of instant noodles and junk food. There were shed clothes scattered everywhere, a hanging plant dangling from the ceiling, and tall piles of comics. From floor to ceiling, it was so messy that it seemed like it was done on purpose to make visitors shrink back.

  Just then, something moved a little. Rentaro looked to see a sleeping man sitting on a stool with his combat boots resting on the table.

  “Yo, Bro! Wake up!” said Yuzuki, shaking him.

  “What is it, my sweet?” said the man in a sleepy voice, pulling off the adult magazine covering his face and glancing at Rentaro. Then, he uttered “Whoa…” and put the magazine back on his face.

  “Hey, you! What do you mean, ‘Whoa…’?”

  “Try to understand, boy. Right after I wake up, a guy with a face so unfortunate that I feel like I’ll be cursed just by looking at it is standing right there. For a second, I thought the Grim Reaper had come for me.” So saying, he grunted and jumped out of the chair.

  Because of Rentaro’s height, he had to look up at the man just a little. He wore black cargo pants, a field jacket, and amber sunglasses. He had dark blond hair like his little sister, but with earrings and half-finger gloves. With his muscular build, he gave off an overbearing air. The words I am an American printed on his jacket were in such bad taste that the American girl next to Rentaro was clearly annoyed.

  Tamaki Katagiri. Even though he wore clothes that looked like they belonged to a thug, he was the president of the Katagiri Civil Security Agency.

  Rentaro looked around the messy office with distaste. “Well, what can I say? Looks like you’re doing well.”

  “Hmph, I don’t need your sarcasm, boyo.” Tamaki looked appraisingly at Rentaro and then flopped back into his president’s chair. “It’s been a while. What do you want?”

  Rentaro scratched the back of his head. “Actually—”

  “Shall I take a guess? The Monolith’s motherfucking destruction is drawing near, so you have no choice but to form an adjuvant, so you’re going around asking people to join you, but they’ve turned you down everywhere else, so you had no choice but to come here. Right?”

  Rentaro had nothing to say in response. He had gotten it exactly right. Rentaro thought back on the fifteen crossed-out names on the list of possible adjuvants and almost let out a sigh. In the two days since he informed the Seitenshi that he would accept the job, he had gone around knocking on the doors of various civil security agencies to gather strong allies, but his progress could not be called satisfactory by any means.

  Some got really angry, others had unpleasant expressions on their faces that looked like they had been insulted, he was turned away at the door of some, and there were even some others who just stole the advance and then ran away. He was at the end of his rope.

  Tamaki crossed his arms and looked so triumphantly proud that Rentaro couldn’t say anything in response. “Well, it’s only natural. Upstart brats like you are hated by civil officers around Japan.”

  “Shut up,” Rentaro said sulkily, but he had to agree with Tamaki on the inside.

  Rentaro and Enju’s IP Rank had been 123,452 just a few months ago. Among the civil officers, they were no better than the middle zone, who could neither hurt nor help. As a civil officer like that who had two consecutive and amazing successes, in short time he had risen to a rank of 300.

  Because he had risen in social status by his own abilities, Rentaro had also accumulated a number of interested stakeholders. But this was natural to any era, and, similarly, had the effect that most of the other civil officers disliked him. On top of that, another factor that made him hated was the fact that he was a sixteen-year-old high school student. Obviously, there were not many high schoolers who were constantly risking their lives as civil officers. The average age of a Promoter was around twenty-eight. And generally speaking, Japanese culture valued
years of experience over anything else, so from child to adult, those living beings called Japanese tended to stick to the outdated way of thinking that they did not want to take orders from someone younger than them.

  With just the combination of his age and the increased stakeholders, it was more than enough to make all fifteen of the civil security agencies he had visited before this turn him down spectacularly.

  Tamaki shifted in his seat, and the springs of his chair creaked. “Well, how much prey are we talking?”

  Rentaro said, “It hasn’t been put on the news yet, but there are two thousand. The head of the enemy is Aldebaran.”

  Yuzuki’s eyes widened, and Tamaki raised his sunglasses and rubbed the corner of his eye. “The exit is that way. Hey, Yuzuki, the visitor’s going home now.”

  “I’m not done talking yet!”

  “Stupid, idiotic boy. That’s called a suicide mission. It’s like a praying mantis threating a horse carriage by raising its front legs. It’s beyond pathetic. It’s funny.”

  “If we don’t do anything, then it’s over for Tokyo Area. You two will die, too.”

  “That news hasn’t been spread past the civil officers, right? If that’s the case, then the smartest thing to do would be to get my hands on some plane tickets to escape Tokyo.”

  “Then you guys can laugh cheerfully from another Area with a beer in one hand as you watch the Tokyo Area citizens who didn’t have time to run away get killed by the Gastrea.”

  Tamaki didn’t say anything.

  “If we had the assistance of civil officers like you two, we’d have the strength of a hundred men. Please lend me your strength, Katagiri.”

  Tamaki silently stood up from the chair and started to circle Rentaro menacingly. “The most important thing for us in deciding whether or not we take a job is if the returns outweigh the risks. That thing called Aldebaran is a monster of a Gastrea. The story of how it turned three cities into ruins with Taurus is famous. I don’t know how many civil officers the government is planning on trying to scrape together, but there’s obviously a slim chance that we’ll make it back alive. What is the government prepared to give us for that?”