Murder Machine and the Catastrophic Athletic Festival

by Mizuki Mizushiro

  Be that as it may—

  “Strength is also important, however. Maybe not so much when it’s one-on-one, but there are many instances when the target is accompanied by guards. Depending on the job, superhuman strength might sometimes be necessary. Actually, all the elite professional killers like Hijiri and Mr. Busujima have absolutely monstrous strength…and many other monsters like them exist outside of the killers employed by the organization.”

  For this very reason—

  Reiko lowered her voice.

  “When we want to control monsters in the making or eliminate monsters that are in our way, greater than monstrous strength is called for. And so they were born, the ‘killers of killers’—taking on the job of murdering and assassinating their peers… They’re monsters who kill monsters.”

  “Wha—?”

  Stepping away from the iron railing, Reiko approached Kyousuke, leaning close to his astonished face. “…Among them were born Renko and her brother, the Murderers’ Murderers, see? In search of ever greater power, the project to create killers from scratch got its start about six years ago. Renko was creation number seventeen, and Renji was number forty-eight. By the way, the name GMK48—”

  “W-w-w-w-w-wait a minute!” Kyousuke suddenly interrupted Reiko’s long speech. Something she had said demanded further explanation. “…Six years ago?! How does six years make any sense?! I mean, Renko is sixteen years—”

  “She has the body of someone about that age, yes, but in actuality she’s only three years old.”

  “—Huh?”

  ……Did she say three years old? Kyousuke was at a loss for words as Reiko dropped another bomb.

  “And her youngest brother, Renji, is not even close to one year old yet.”

  “…………Seriously?”

  “Yep. Well, they’re different from you and your friends, in a number of ways. Like—” Reiko hesitated a moment. She turned to face away from Kyousuke.

  “…Their lifespans.”

  “Eh—” Kyousuke did not know how to respond to Reiko’s ominous words. He absolutely did not want to believe it—he could not believe it.

  “…Think about it. If we could produce elite killers left and right, before long there would be no point to building academies like this one. There would be no need to go out of our way to get our hands on talented people like you…but the Murderers’ Murderers aren’t perfect yet. Oh, when it comes to their abilities, there’s not much to complain about, but there are some problems with their longevity… Since they’re artificially created beings, perhaps it’s some form of compensation for their extreme capabilities. At the earliest, we’ve had children die without making it through a single year. Among the forty-eight that have been created so far, seventeen have reached the end of their lifespans, thirteen have lost their lives on the job, and three have died in other circumstances. The whole first generation, numbers one through eight, are completely gone. From the second generation, numbers nine through sixteen, just one remains, and from the third generation only Renko and one other are still alive.”

  “Th-that’s…”

  —That’s less than a third, isn’t it?

  Reiko let out a sigh at the dumbfounded Kyousuke. She sounded completely exhausted. “Kyousuke. You asked me in the infirmary, right? ‘Why doesn’t Renko wake up?’ It’s probably because she used her Over Drive.”

  “…Over Drive?”

  “Yes, Over Drive is a secret weapon, so to speak, that allows her physical abilities to vastly exceed their normal limits. The stress it places on her body is immense…but originally the Murderers’ Murderers were treated almost like disposable goods. If one was lost, we could just make another, so it was all right if they went out in spectacular suicide attacks… The people who wanted to use Renko and her siblings as tools forced us to add that feature halfway through their creation. Even among the Murderers’ Murderers, Renko was a well-made child, and if she had continued on as she had been, I think she should have been able to survive until graduation, but…that girl used her Over Drive… I forced her to use it.”

  That’s why—

  Reiko’s voice trembled as she mustered up the courage to tell Kyousuke—who had just now begun to finally acknowledge his feelings toward Renko, feelings that he had been desperately holding back—the truth of the matter, a truth that even she did not want to acknowledge.

  “Sometime in the near future, probably sometime very soon, Renko is going to die.”

  “Murderers’ Murderers, huh…”

  The day after the athletic festival ended—inside the bright red limousine she used for domestic travel within Japan, Fuyou Akabane muttered to no one in particular. As she viewed the playback from the video camera she had carried around, she thought about “them,” the creatures she had observed during the final event, even as she watched her daughter’s moment of triumph.

  Their strength, endurance, speed, and ferocity truly set them apart from ordinary people. She wondered at the intelligence and technological power that could create such beings and couldn’t help but admire it. Even the family members of the Akabane branch struggled to keep up with the expertise of Fuyou’s house, but—

  “In the end, they’re nothing but inferior counterfeits and substandard creations. Heh-heh-heh… Even if we Akabane were to take the time necessary to refine their techniques, they would still not be without certain flaws and deficiencies. How presumptuous to produce children without troubling the womb. It leaves them without traditions or social standing—”

  A simple electronic tone rang out. Fuyou took a similarly plain cell phone from the sleeve of her kimono and deliberately pressed the call button.

  “Hello. It’s me.”

  “Lady Fuyou.”

  “Oh, if it isn’t Murasaki…”

  Fuyou’s eyes, the color of fresh blood, opened wide as she heard the young man’s voice. The person on the other end was the second son of the main Akabane family, who was currently overseas on a job—Murasaki Akabane.

  “I have safely made contact with the target,” Murasaki said curtly, skipping right to the important matter at hand. “What shall I do?”

  “…… Give him the phone.”

  “Understood,” Murasaki replied quickly.

  Fuyou paused the recording and took a deep breath—she pressed gently on her throbbing chest.

  Before long, a rough male voice answered. “Ah, hello? It’s me, Kamiya—”

  “Naoki?! It’s been so long! This is Fuyou!” Her deep, deliberate breathing had done nothing to calm her excitement. Fuyou’s voice bounced cheerfully as she spoke. “So you’re still alive. That’s wonderful… I thought for certain you would have dropped dead by now. Just how many years has it been? I haven’t seen you since Masato’s funeral, so…six years? It really has been a long time, Naoki! Are you still madly in love with Sanae? Ah, speaking of which, I’m sure you’ve heard from Murasaki, but the other day I met your children! Kyousuke looks just like you, Naoki, and Ayaka looks so much like Sanae, doesn’t she? Both are extremely good children, particularly Kyousuke, whom we would very much like to adopt as a son-in-law into the main Akabane family—”

  “Shut uuuuuuppp!” An angry roar exploded from the receiver, forcing Fuyou to pull her ear away from the phone. “Don’t just go squawking on and on like this is some kind of surprise attack. I’m seriously pissed off. You’re as awful as always… I feel real bad for Masato. But I guess he’s already dead.”

  Muttering, the man on the other end of the phone—Naoki Kamiya—laughed bitterly. “Okay, let’s leave off the talk of Masato… Is it really true?” he asked in a serious tone. “Our kids are in the criminal underworld’s—they’ve been tossed into some damn educational institution that gathers murderers and raises them into professional killers, did I get that right?”

  “……Yes.” Fuyou nodded and shifted in her seat. “Yours is not a particularly uncommon surname, so I thought that surely it could not be true, but…the other day when
I met them and saw their faces, I believed it. Kyousuke and Ayaka, even their names are the same, aren’t they? Well then, there’s no mistake. Your son is being held captive.”

  “Tch… You’re not supposed to be contacting me at all. So what are you saying? That the group that’s hunting us now is connected to that school, huh?”

  “Yes. However, it appears that it is not the academy itself but rather the main body of the organization, though it is quite a large firm. It also has many roots in the criminal underworld, so the usual methods of recovery will probably not be possible. Even we Akabane do not particularly wish to confront them, so.

  “But,” Fuyou continued, “I love my husband. I love him more than anything in the world—no, in this world and the next. If it’s for the sake of my beloved Masato or for the sake of our children, whom I created with my beloved Masato, and…if it’s for the sake of my beloved Masato’s former colleague and dear friend Naoki, then I am willing to lend my aid.”

  “—Are you serious?” On the other end of the line, Naoki’s tone had changed.

  Fuyou smiled and answered eloquently. “Of course I am. If you wish, we Akabane shall safely conceal the two of you and assist you in taking back your children from that organization.”

  “……………”

  Naoki was silent as he scrutinized Fuyou’s words.

  “—And the fee?” he asked after a long pause. “What do you want in return?”

  Fuyou’s smile grew wide. “Nothing.”

  “……What?”

  “I told you, I want nothing in return. I won’t accept a fee, so you needn’t concern yourself with such matters.”

  “No, no, hold on, I am worried about it, actually… Something’s not right. Like, you’ve got an ulterior motive… You’re Fuyou Akabane, right? The evil, sadistic, insane Crimson Cradle who hounded down Masato and forced him into marriage—nearly killing him in the process? You can say there’s no price attached, but I know you’re definitely scheming something—”

  “Naoki.” Fuyou spoke quietly but assertively. “Love means you do things free of charge. Price? Payment? Please put a rest to such boorish suspicions. This is why, no matter how much time passes, you’ll never live up to Sanae.”

  “”

  Naoki was silent. As Fuyou had expected, he was still entirely under his wife’s control.

  Why are all men such cowardly creatures?

  Concealing her disgust, Fuyou went on. “…So this is where you give thanks for my love and surrender yourself. After all, you must surely realize the reality of your situation?”

  Naoki sighed. “……I suppose so,” he admitted. The tone of his voice revealed a deep fatigue. A master assassin had been hunting him for more than half a year, so his exhaustion was understandable.

  It was quickly decided that Naoki would accept Fuyou’s proposal and the protection of House Akabane. When Fuyou lowered the cell phone from her ear after ending the call, her cheeks curved upward in smug satisfaction. On the screen before her, the suspended video footage showed the image of her beloved daughter and her future son-in-law joining hands during the athletic festival’s Seek-and-Destroy Challenge.

  “Heh-heh-heh. You wait, Eiri… I will separate your rival in love from Kyousuke for you. Working for free, what a joke!”

  Fuyou’s eyes narrowed.

  Women are liars, after all.

  With this business concluded, Naoki and Sanae Kamiya, who were now indebted to her, would not be able to oppose House Akabane. It would be a simple matter to garner their support for the relationship between Kyousuke and Eiri.

  The real problem was this conflict with the organization, but—it would not be too difficult to deal with one particular person and then clean everything up so that there would be no future trouble, she concluded.

  Fuyou smiled and pushed the restart button on the video player again.

  Psycome 5: Murder Machine and the Catastrophic Athletic Festival / End

  AFTERWORD Master of Ceremonies

  Hello, or should I say, “How do you do?” I am Mizuki Mizushiro.

  Did you enjoy Volume 5, which introduced quite a few new characters? If you include the ones who had so far been mentioned in name only, twenty-two new characters appeared. That’s a lot!

  And the number of new characters isn’t the only thing that’s gone up this time around.

  I have three pages for the afterword. Up until now I’ve kept it to exactly one page, but the book became somewhat bulkier, and something of its beautiful style was lost…

  Anyway, it’s in my nature to want to start with form in whatever I do, and I have a bad habit of wanting to be particularly precise about certain odd things.

  For example, sentences.—Yes, now! The periods affixed after “certain odd things” above and “sentences” in the previous line are sitting in exactly the same position. It all came together beautifully.

  —Yes, and now! The positions of the periods affixed after “came together beautifully” one line ago and “new characters isn’t the only thing” six lines before that, plus “I am Mizuki Mizushiro” three lines before that also come together, situated in one neat horizontal line. If they didn’t come together like that, then when I turned the text into a manuscript, the characters would likely be slightly out of alignment due to the inclusion of the extra text for phonetic guidance.

  …And, well, that’s how I am. Even petty things that would get a “whatever” from any other person—Okay, now! When the line changed, the word “petty” was cut off, but this is what I cannot stand the most. And now, the page changed in the middle of a sentence, but this I also absolutely cannot stand. On the other hand, take the section from “but” to “cannot stand.” It’s beautiful the way it perfectly matched up.

  And now, the period affixed after “beautiful” has formed one neat horizontal line with the periods nine lines, fifteen lines, and eighteen lines before. Whooooooah, I can’t stand it!

  The “I can’t stand it!” just now was in the same position as “a lot!” from nineteen lines ago… Okay, let’s leave it at that. In other news, when I stack up lots of vowels like in “whooooooah,” I always put the vowels in multiples of three + a small character, but since the aforementioned issues of matching up the ends of sentences and cutting off words are a higher priority, depending on the situation I may make adjustments and break the “multiples of three” rule. Case by case.

  Of course, there’s the idea that “Rather than carry on about things like that, how about worrying about the quality of the sentences themselves?” but it’s in my nature to want to start from form in whatever I do. No matter how beautiful the writing, I can’t be satisfied until not only the content but the format of the sentence is beautiful as well. It’s fine to polish the substance after polishing the appearance.

  To me, beautiful writing is not something to be read but something to look at. Neatly matching up the ends of sentences is connected to the beauty of the white space around the text, and the beauty of the white space is connected to the picture-like beauty of the text when looked at on a larger scale, and that beauty is connected to readability, I think.

  I have some other fixations besides these, but I probably started to notice things like this around Volume 3. If you feel like it, I bet it would be interesting to try to read the book while focusing on those issues. But matching up the ends of sentences is really difficult, so there are also plenty of places where the white spaces don’t form perfect concave and convex lines. Therefore, my best advice is to briefly look over the very last line of characters on a page, and where the page changes! Furthermore, there are also cutoffs that are beautiful and cutoffs that aren’t, and there is also a method around them…and so on. If I tell you all about it, there will be no end to it.

  The space reserved for this afterword has already been filled, so how about I move on to expressions of gratitude?

  To the person in charge, Ms. Gibu; the illustrator, Namanie; the designers at musicago
graphics; the proofreaders (it bothers me that they’ve been left out until now, so extend this to the previous volume and the ones before that); the PR team; my friends; my family; all of my relatives; everybody who participated in the publication of this book; and more than anything, the readers who have supported and cheered for the PSYCOME series:

  Truly, thank you very much!

  Expect Volume 6 around summer. As planned, it will be the final volume.

  I’m glad that I read all the way to the end—I will write on with the aim that you say that to yourself when you finish the series, so thanks in advance.

  Mizuki Mizushiro

  ~Written while listening to DEP~