Black Bullet, Vol. 1: Those Who Would Be Gods

by Shiden Kanzaki

  Kisara rested her chin on her knee and continued with a look of displeasure on her face. “And then all you bought were two bags of bean sprouts?”

  “Y-yeah! It was limited to one bag per person, so I brought Enju and bought two!” Wondering what kind of report he was giving, he searched for something else to talk about. “Do you want some, too?”

  A bag of bean sprouts flew right into his face.

  “Come on, Satomi, we’ve had zero income this month. Whose fault do you think that is, you useless, good-for-nothing fool? Besides, is the supermarket time sale more important to you than your report to your boss?”

  Suddenly, Kisara started trembling with her hand still in a fist. But instead of a punch, she put both hands on the table and stood up. “Most importantly, why didn’t you tell me about the limited-time sale?!”

  As if on cue, Kisara’s stomach growled, and the girl collapsed on her chair, holding her stomach. Her eyes were blank. “I can’t take this any longer. I want beefsteak…”

  “I do too, you know,” said Rentaro.

  Kisara was currently living on her own, separated from the Tendo family, so even though she looked rich, her wallet was empty. “Hey, Satomi,” she said.

  “What is it?” said Rentaro.

  “Get to work.”

  “Ugh, I’m getting spasms from my chronic disease.”

  “They’ll stop if you work.”

  Kisara looked down at the rush-hour traffic from the third-floor window of Happy Building, where the Tendo Civil Security Agency was a tenant. She shook her head gently and sighed. “Owning a business is harder than I thought it would be.”

  “Did you think it would be easy?”

  “Playing the stock market or foreign exchange is easier. Just moving things from the right side to the left side results in a profit margin. But a business is completely hopeless. That’s also because you’re an unreliable moron, Satomi.”

  “You don’t think it’s because the second-floor tenant is a cabaret and the first floor is a gay bar? The fourth is a loan shark, you know.”

  “You don’t get it, do you? Location doesn’t matter to a truly good company.”

  Was that how it was? Rentaro thought. “We should just pass out flyers or tissues and advertise on the streets,” he said aloud.

  “Boring. Doing average things will only bring average results. If we’re going to do something, we need something with more impact.”

  “Then why don’t you wear a maid outfit and pass out flyers?” He meant that because Kisara had extremely good raw material to work with, ten out of ten people would turn to look at her, but apparently Kisara did not get that. Her face turned red and the vein on her temple bulged.

  “I am a Tendo! Are you telling me to imitate those lowly waitresses and hostesses? I will do no such thing! You should run into a crowd and shout ‘Tendo Civil Security Agency is right here!’ while setting yourself on fire or blowing yourself up!”

  “That’s terrorism…” Rentaro was half-shocked as he looked around. “But, President, seriously, let’s hire another employee.”

  Even if it was small and cramped, the Tendo Civil Security Agency rented out a whole floor for its offices, and having just Rentaro and Enju as its only two employees was too much of a waste.

  “I will if there’s someone I think I can use,” Kisara said curtly and snapped her fingers to change the subject. “Satomi, make some tea.”

  “Do it yourself,” he said.

  “Oh my, what idiot was it that forgot to get paid again?”

  “Damn it. Okay, okay. I shall bring it directly, Miss.”

  Wondering how she could still put on such airs when she was so poor, Rentaro poured hot water into the teapot and put it on Kisara’s desk.

  “Oh, thanks,” Kisara said, but didn’t look as she continued typing on her laptop with her delicate white fingers, but when she looked up for a second, their eyes met. “Hey, the Gastrea you defeated was an infected, right?”

  “Yeah,” he said brusquely, and continued, answering what she left unasked. “We couldn’t find the source of the infection, but it was probably the same Model Spider Factor. Since it wasn’t a bird or winged insect type, another company probably found it and took care of it already. If it were above Stage Three, we would’ve been called in to help. Besides, the biohazard alarm didn’t go off, either.”

  The single-factor Gastrea that Rentaro had defeated was just a scaled-up version of an animal on Earth, so it was still almost cute. With two or more factors, and especially with four or more, the DNA was so mixed up that the resulting Gastrea could only be called a monster.

  For Gastrea in Stages One through Four, as their stage numbers increased, their strength rose exponentially. So even though the employees of the various civsec companies were by no means friends, if they were in a situation they felt was more than they could handle, they would work together to exterminate it. Because there was no request for help, the source Gastrea must have been easily exterminated.

  Dropping her gaze to the computer display, Kisara rejected Rentaro’s opinion. “There are no reports to that effect, or any eyewitness reports at all.”

  “What?” said Rentaro.

  Kisara turned her laptop 180 degrees. On the screen was a map. It was from the civil officer agency website, and it showed where there had been fights with and sightings of the Gastrea over the past ninety days.

  “This is…” Rentaro scowled and looked at Kisara, who nodded slowly.

  “There aren’t any reports, are there?” she said.

  “But there’s no way there wasn’t a single eyewitness report of a source, right?”

  “There isn’t one here.” Kisara brushed back her hair and looked at him provocatively with upturned eyes.

  Rentaro narrowed his eyes and looked at the map and the words on the website again. “Why isn’t the government sending out a warning to the whole region? This is a serious matter.”

  “Satomi, the government is not incompetent, but they hardly ever use coercive means like evacuation orders, so there’s no point in getting your hopes up. I mean, that’s why we civil officers exist.”

  It really is a terrible job, he thought, clucking his tongue. He shook his head lightly. “I need an expert opinion on this. I’ll go talk to Doc after this.”

  “I’ll also try asking other civil officers indirectly about it. We’ll be hunting the remaining source, too, as soon as possible.”

  “Roger.”

  Kisara lowered her beautiful eyelashes and sipped her tea. Rentaro looked sideways at his boss with respect. No matter what she said, she understood that human lives needed to be put first.

  Having no way of knowing Rentaro’s inner thoughts, Kisara finished working on her computer and closed it, clasping her hands together and stretching. Rentaro could hear her back cracking satisfyingly. He noticed that he was accidentally looking at her generous chest pushing up her sailor school uniform and hurriedly averted his gaze.

  “Oh, come to think of it, where’s Enju?” asked Kisara.

  “Huh?” said Rentaro. “Oh, she said she was getting sleepy, so I took her home first. If you’re going home soon, I can walk you partway.”

  “Sorry, I have hemodialysis today, so I have to go to the hospital.”

  “Oh yeah, I forgot.”

  Taking a sip of the half-cooled tea, she surveyed the inside of the office. Rentaro followed her gaze. The reception area furniture for meeting with clients faced the plain desk used by the only employees, Rentaro and Enju. Because there were times when they had to stay overnight, there was also a small kitchen to cook in, hidden behind a curtain. It was shabby and cramped and cold in the winter. It wasn’t comfortable by any standard, but strangely enough, she didn’t hate it.

  “It’s been almost a year, hasn’t it?” she said. “Since you became a Promoter and met Enju.”

  “It’s only been a year,” he replied. “We’re still not even halfway to our goal.”

 
Kisara tilted her head slightly to the side and smiled. “Satomi, you really have changed since you met Enju. You’ve started to smile more, and you can cook now. I never would have imagined you could turn out this way.”

  Rentaro turned his head sulkily. “I’m not that different.”

  “Hey, Satomi. What’s your goal now?”

  “Huh?” His heart suddenly skipped a beat.

  “To find Enju’s parents for her? Satomi, have you given up on your own mother and father? You said it a lot when we were kids, didn’t you? That your mom and dad were definitely still alive and that you’d find them. But I haven’t heard you say it recently. Do you really still believe it even now?”

  She wasn’t particularly angry or blaming him, she was just looking at him. But Rentaro couldn’t bear it any longer and shook his head. “It doesn’t matter, does it?” He tried to speak calmly, but a harshness remained that sounded like he was spitting out the words. “You just have to know everything, don’t you? It’s fine. I know that my parents are dead for sure.”

  Damn it, now I’ve done it, thought Rentaro as he trudged down the night streets.

  On the way, a lady from the cabaret on the second floor winked at him and said, “Stop by sometime.”

  Then, on the first floor, a brawny man with a shaved head and goatee from the gay bar winked and said, “You’d be the best ‘top.’ Stop by sometime.” (Rentaro wasn’t really sure what a “top” was, but it seemed to be a gay term.)

  And then a little ways from the building, the loan shark from the Hiroshima yakuza greeted him saying, “Yo, Rentaro, today was hot, huh?”

  But Rentaro could only give a halfhearted reply to each of them.

  When it came to his family history, he was never good at controlling his feelings, but he didn’t think that it would make him do something as dumb as taking it out on the people around him. Rentaro put both hands in his pocket and tilted his head as far back as it would go, gazing at the night sky sprinkled with stars. There was no helping it. Tomorrow, he would go back and apologize without becoming too emotional.

  Rentaro headed straight for the hospital that was part of Magata University. He had never seen the lights off in the lab building next door to it. Magata University had many departments, from computer science to farming, on its vast grounds. It made the school Rentaro attended, Magata High School, look like a miniature garden. Next to the main school building was the university hospital, although it was actually a slight distance of about three hundred meters away.

  The receptionist knew Rentaro and let him in without any questions. The front entryway was open, and the smell of disinfectant hung in the air. The people passing Rentaro in his school uniform (which, because of his chronic cash shortage, also served as his casual clothes and work uniform) all seemed to have unpleasant looks on their faces.

  What? You got a problem with me? Rentaro thought at them, but he still bowed silently as he passed.

  Once he got to the north side of the building, the number of people around dropped suddenly, and there was an abrupt dead end to the hallway where there appeared to be a square hole cut into the ground. At first glance, it looked like a pitfall, but when he looked carefully, he could see that there were steep stairs attached to it.

  As he walked down the stairs, he thought about the look people would have on their faces if they heard that a mysterious individual had added a morgue to the university hospital without permission and was living there alongside the corpses. He was sure that the slight chill he felt wasn’t just because the temperature had dropped.

  A strong mint fragrance wafted through the air as he pushed open the door engraved with grotesque demons with breasts that were probably meant to keep people away. Inside, it was dimly lit but surprisingly spacious. The whole floor was covered with green tile, and even though it was slightly eerie like an operating room, if he looked carefully, he could see underwear and lunch boxes and a chalkboard covered with German or some other foreign language, which gave it an overall lived-in feel.

  However, the person this space belonged to was nowhere to be seen.

  “Doc, where are you?” Rentaro called out.

  “Over here,” said a voice.

  Turning toward the voice, Rentaro gave a start. In front of him was a naked muscular body over 180 centimeters tall with sunken eye sockets. On the cleanly shaven head were fresh scars from where the skin had been extracted. It was the corpse of a man Rentaro had never seen before.

  “Woah!” he shouted. No matter how he thought about it, the voice seeemed like it was coming from this man, but he knew corpses couldn’t talk. Rentaro was not very good with scary stories of this genre.

  “Boo.” From behind the corpse was a woman in a white lab coat who he did know, and relief made his knees weak.

  “D-don’t scare me like that, Doc!”

  “Hey, Rentaro. Welcome to the Abyss.” She spread her arms wide to complete the performance. She was wearing a tight skirt with a white lab coat so long it dragged on the ground. Her skin was an unhealthy pallor, and her presence was so faint that she seemed like a ghost. She didn’t bathe and let her bangs grow so long that they covered one eye, but underneath it all, she was a beauty.

  Sumire Muroto. Head of the forensics lab and a Gastrea researcher. She was the queen of this dimly lit basement room and had severe social withdrawal to boot. If left alone, she would stay here for as long as her stockpile of food lasted.

  “Who is this man?” Rentaro asked her.

  “Charlie,” she answered. “I forget his real name. He’s my lover.”

  “Didn’t you have a woman named Susan here before?”

  “Unfortunately, she is no longer here. He is her replacement. Corpses are great. No idle chatter from them. They are the only ones who understand my feelings.” Saying that, she lovingly applied embalming liquid to the corpse’s cheek.

  Even though he had already given up on trying to understand her, Rentaro scratched his upper arm as he watched the scene with dreary thoughts. Because of her extreme dislike of coming into contact with other people, she was openly ostracized within the school. Her favorite motto was, “In this world, there are only people who have died and people who are going to die.”

  He needed to take care of his business and leave as quickly as possible. Rentaro started to open his mouth, but Sumire was faster.

  “The Stage One Gastrea you defeated was just brought to my lab,” she said. “Do you think you can kill a little more cleanly next time? The impact of the bullets injured the flesh. On top of that, the bullets were all over the place. Nobita is a perv and lazy and weak, but at least he’s a good shot. You’re a perv and lazy and weak and a terrible shot on top of that. You’re the worst. Honestly, why haven’t you already committed suicide? It’s not like you have a hope left in this world, do you?”

  “I’m not that hopeless!” Rentaro sighed. This depressing beauty was actually entrusted by the government with the dissection and research of Gastrea, and even though she didn’t look it at all, she apparently had a high IQ and was once the darling of the academic world.

  “By the way, did you eat dinner yet?” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “Dinner.”

  “Not yet…”

  “Then eat this, my culinary creation.” She stood up and took out a plate from the microwave, unwrapping it. At first glance, it looked like completely white porridge, but it was half-solid, or rather oatmeal-like, and when scooped with a spoon, the closest word to describe it would have been gloopy. Rentaro wondered how it had gotten to the point where it smelled like it had gone bad.

  Involuntarily, large drops of sweat beaded on his face. “Doc, do you know the food called Tastee Wheat from the movie The Matrix?”

  “Yeah, that looked delicious, didn’t it? Guri and Gura’s pancake, Laputa bread, and Tastee Wheat. You could call them the top three on my list of 2-D foods that I want to eat.”

  “Isn’t one of those things not like the others
?”

  “Huh? Wait, even though a TV screen is flat, The Matrix was a live-action movie, so should it be counted as 3-D? What do you think?”

  “Oh, I know! Let’s talk about work.”

  “Hurry up and eat. If you don’t eat it, I won’t tell you anything.”

  “S-seriously…?” Rentaro looked at the dim ceiling, then gazed at the Tastee Wheat, puzzled. A bubble rose to the surface and popped with a “glop,” almost as if it were sneering at him. Chanting a prayer, he put it in his mouth.

  It was unexpectedly good!

  No, that was a dream that could not be. Instead, the next instant, he felt a piercing pain and the collective outrage of his senses. “Gahhh, my throat itches!”

  “How is it? Is it good?”

  “Does it look like it was good?”

  Sumire used her thumbs and forefingers like a photographer to form a frame. Peeking through it, she gave a thoughtful nod. “If I were a photographer, I would call it ‘Anguish: Trapped Between Hell and Purgatory.’”

  “Ugh, on top of being sweet, there’s also a gross sourness. What the heck is this?”

  “Oh, it’s half-melted, but it started as a donut. It came out of the stomach of a corpse.”

  Rentaro pressed a hand over his mouth.

  “The sink is over there.”

  He tried to throw up all the contents of his stomach. Gagging, he said, “W-wasn’t that evidence?!”

  “No, the case was already solved. When I asked the inspector in charge if I could eat it, he gave his consent right away.”

  “That’s definitely a lie!”

  “You’re too concerned about the details.”

  “It is not! A detail! At all!”

  “Oh, I know,” she said, changing the subject, “since we’ve finally got three people here in these wonderful catacombs, let’s do something like the Oath of the Peach Garden from the Three Kingdoms! ‘Even though we were not born on the same day, when we die, let it be on the same day, at the same time.’ Oh, but Charlie is already dead.” She laughed, amused at her own joke.