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

by Shiden Kanzaki

  “It was just a punch.”

  “Seemed kinda lame.”

  “Right?”

  “Make the tree fall down!”

  “I want my money back!”

  “Asshole, asshole!”

  Rentaro was at his wits’ end. What should I do? I just wanna punch these kids. “W-well, you know. This was just a warm-up. I have a technique I’ve been saving. One of the Tendo Martial Arts hidden secrets, Second Style, Number 11: Inzen Kokutei.”

  “Ooh!”

  “That one sounds a little cooler.”

  “It’s just the name, idiot.”

  “We won’t be able to tell until we see it, right?”

  Thinking, I’ll show them this time, Rentaro turned back to the tall tree, jumping with enough spirit to kick down the tree. “Tendo Martial Arts Second Style, Number 11—”

  Abruptly, Rentaro’s consciousness was drawn back to the incident in the meeting room the day before. Going around and around in his head was one of the phrases Kagetane had let slip. New Humanity Creation Project. Questions filled his mind.

  The Seitenshi had said, “As I am sure you all know, currently, Tokyo Area is protected by the barrier of the Monoliths. I will omit the details for now, but if the Inheritance of the Seven Stars is misused, it could create a large hole in a corner of a Monolith. If that happens, Tokyo Area will be overrun by a storm of death. Time is of the essence. You must retrieve the Inheritance of the Seven Stars.”

  Rentaro narrowed the corners of his eyes. No matter what, he could not lose to that man—to Kagetane Hiruko.

  Tightening his lower abs, he fixed his glare on the trunk. “Here I go. Hidden secret—” At that moment, out of the corner of his eye, he could see a boy who had gotten bored and was playing with a soccer ball kick the ball right for Rentaro. “Argh!”

  The start of his move was easily shut down, and Rentaro fell out of position and into a ditch headfirst. The sound of laughter filled the air. He couldn’t meet Enju’s eyes as he held his temple and shook his head.

  “Lame! Super-lame! He couldn’t kill a beetle with that weak kick.”

  A beetle…?

  “I’ve had enough. Let’s go home and play Playstation.”

  “Yeah!” the other kids chorused.

  “H-hey, wait, you guys—” Rentaro’s pose was in vain, and Enju’s classmates left one by one, leaving Rentaro and Enju by themselves.

  Enju started stamping her feet too late. “Drat it, come back! Rentaro really is amazing! He’s amazing at night, too!”

  “G-give me a break…” Checking the time, Rentaro saw that it was still morning. But after all that, he didn’t think he could go back to sleep.

  “Enju, is there anywhere you want to go?”

  Enju’s face brightened in an instant, and she jumped up and down with joy. “Shopping!”

  “Okay, okay. We’ll go, we’ll go!”

  Getting off the crowded train that smelled of sour sweat, Enju pulled Rentaro’s hand and he stumbled forward as she dragged him to the toy store. And it wasn’t just any toy store—it was a large-scale toy store that rented out a whole floor of a large electronics store. Because it was a weekend, it was crowded, and there were many people who brought their families.

  Looking at a child who screamed coquettishly sandwiched between her parents, who were holding her hands, Rentaro wondered how he and Enju looked to other people.

  Rentaro played around with a toy block puzzle sample, and as if his hands remembered the sensation, he was gradually filled with a sense of nostalgia. “It was a long time ago, but I used to play with stuff like this with Kisara. It’s kind of unexpected that you’d like this sort of thing, too.”

  “My business is with these things over here.” As she said this, she pointed her finger at the cartoon merchandise section where an extra-large IMOD display stood.

  Rentaro could read the words Tenchu Girls written in a decorative font. Now that he thought about it, wasn’t Enju talking to her classmate about this show yesterday?

  “What’s this show about?” he asked.

  He then regretted asking about the show even though he wasn’t actually interested because Enju turned to him and said, “Wanna know?” with glittering eyes.

  Summarizing what Enju told him triumphantly, the story was about Oishi Kuranosuke Yoshiko (magical girl), whose foster father, Asano, was killed. Swearing revenge, Yoshiko gathered forty-seven warriors (magical girls) from around the country to raid the Kira estate. Apparently, it was an epic, long-running cartoon.

  He had heard something about how “Ako samurai magical girl shows” had become popular recently. “Even though it’s a magical girl show, it’s a story about revenge?” he said.

  “Aha, but that is what’s good about it,” said Enju.

  “I-I see…” He looked toward the sword in the special section. It was a sharp, silver Japanese sword where only the handle had been made to look like a magical stick. Apparently, it was called the Stick Blade. Watching the trailer, he saw the atrocious face of the heroine, Tenchu Red, as she screamed, “Dieeeee!” and swung her large war sword.

  Rentaro couldn’t tell what they were going for. Besides, they didn’t use magic at all. Looking at the price tags of the Stick Blade and magical girl costumes in the most prominent part of the display, he involuntarily let out a groan. “Why are they so expensive…?”

  “Expensive? They seem normal to me. I will buy it with my own money, so you do not have to worry about your wallet.” Enju said just that over her shoulder and then started looking through the large piles of merchandise.

  “What do you think of this?” What Enju eventually brought to show Rentaro was a bracelet. It had chrome silver-plating over an engraved design. It was probably made of aluminum or something, since it felt very light when he held it.

  “What’s that?” he asked.

  “It’s the bracelet that the Tenchu Girls wear. It’s proof that the forty-seven warriors are friends, and it cracks when a friend tricks another friend or lies to them, so they can tell when a friend is lying.”

  “Oh? Sounds like the folktale of the broken mirror.”

  “What’s that?”

  Rentaro explained. “It’s a story I heard from Doc a long time ago. It’s a folktale about a couple who lived apart, so they broke a mirror in half and each took a piece as proof that they would meet again. However, the wife broke her vows and cheated on her husband. And so, the mirror broke and turned into a bird that flew to where her husband was, and in the end, they divorced. Now, Aihara, what is the moral of this folktale?”

  “It’s to not get caught cheating, sir!”

  “Huh?”

  Enju put her chin in her hand. “But they are kind of similar. That broken mirror thing must have stolen the idea from Tenchu Girls.”

  “It doesn’t matter who stole the idea from whom. By the way, how much is that?”

  “6,980 yen. It’s so cheap!”

  “That’s expensive! That’s two months’ worth of food for me.” Rentaro didn’t even have a chance to stop her before she went to the register and bought it.

  “Here, Rentaro. Put this on your arm, too.”

  “What, me, too?”

  “It’s a pair of bracelets. Who will wear it with me if not you, Rentaro?”

  Seeing that Enju put it on her right wrist, Rentaro also started putting it on his right wrist, but then changed his mind and put it on his left.

  Enju smirked as she looked at him.

  “Wh-what?” he said.

  “We match now, like a couple. Now you cannot deceive me or lie to me. Cheating with another woman is forbidden. If you become charmed by Kisara’s breasts, the bracelet will crack, as well.”

  “What? I, Rentaro Satomi, love Enju Aihara…,” he said sarcastically. “It didn’t crack.”

  “That’s because it’s the truth.”

  “Damn it, is that how you’re gonna take it?”

  After they left the department store, they
walked hand in hand talking about nothing in particular. It was mostly Enju nattering on about something, and Rentaro nodding and agreeing with her, but he felt the gloom from the day before lift just from talking to her.

  Rentaro stopped suddenly, seeing the Seitenshi on one of the TVs in the street. It looked like recorded footage from a news show, and her stern expression was completely different from the day before. She was talking about how she was planning to propose another bill to respect the basic human rights of the Cursed Children, the much-talked-about New Gastrea Law.

  Rentaro wondered if the bill would pass. He fervently hoped that it would. Rentaro squeezed Enju’s hand, which was still in his.

  Just a short while ago, it was normal for Cursed Children to be delivered in secret alongside a river, then killed before they could even open their eyes, and because of their incomplete regeneration abilities, they often became the target of their parents’ extreme abuse. It was also said that parents with Gastrea shock—an aftereffect of the war where a person would go into shock if they saw red eyes—could not even look their own children in the eyes. Also, because the shape of their DNA was contaminated by the Gastrea virus, even if a paternity test were conducted, it could not be proven that they were related by blood. Because of this, there were those who even went so far as to wonder whether or not they were human.

  Since pretty much all of the generation that experienced the Great War, the Stolen Generation, had the potential to practice prejudice against the Cursed Children, there were extremely few who could be called these girls’ allies.

  Honestly, Rentaro thought the problem was more than he himself could bear. If the top official of Tokyo Area was a person who understood their circumstances, he wanted to welcome her with open arms. In fact, he would rather just leave everything to the Seitenshi.

  “Oww, Rentaro. Let go of me,” said Enju.

  He suddenly came back to the present and let go of the hand he had been holding. When he looked, the news had already moved on to the next topic, and Enju was looking up at him with a confused expression on her face. “Sorry, I was out of it. Let’s go.”

  As he turned, he noticed a crowd had formed on the other side of the street. As he tilted his head, wondering what was going on, he heard an angry roar from the other side of the street that made the ground shake, and the thirst for blood emitted by the gathered onlookers drifted over to where he and Enju were. He didn’t know why, but he had a bad feeling about this and stood, unable to move.

  The only reason Rentaro, who was completely average in athletic and shooting ability, had been able to survive this long as a civil officer was that his hunches were never wrong. That hunch told Rentaro to get away from this place as quickly as possible. “Enju, it’ll take a little longer, but let’s go home from the other side—”

  “Catch her!” At almost the same time a rough voice screamed these words, the crowd broke apart and a single girl ran out. The girl was carrying a supermarket basket full of food. The logo on the basket was from a large chain that Rentaro had also been to before.

  When the girl looked at Enju and Rentaro standing in her way, she stopped suddenly. Rentaro couldn’t move, feeling as if he had been bound hand and foot. She was wearing a denim skirt with a leather belt and a tasteful white tunic. However, her face was sooty, and her clothes bore similarly sooty stains that made it unclear when the clothes had last been washed, and there were signs of repairs in many places. Like the food she was currently hugging close to her, they had probably also been stolen.

  He could tell at a glance that she was a child who lived in the Outer District. In addition, the girl’s eyes that reflected Rentaro and Enju were wine-red. Like Enju, she was one of the Cursed Children.

  The countless hands that reached out from behind ended their long face-off. When the grown men and women used their hands to violently push down her back, even Rentaro could hear the sad creak of her bones clearly. The fruits and vegetables fell out of the basket around Rentaro’s feet.

  “Let go!” The girl’s handsome face, which had been forced to lick the asphalt, twisted, and she bared teeth like a tiger’s as she thrashed and raged. Not a single onlooker had pity for her.

  “You thief! You’re the trash of Tokyo Area.”

  “All right, good job! Take that, you stupid Gastrea.”

  “Shut up! Stop screaming, you murderer.”

  “If only you Red-Eyes didn’t kill all my relatives…”

  “Go to hell, you Red Devil!”

  Rentaro tapped the shoulder of someone near him. “Hey, why is she…?”

  “What do you mean, why? That brat stole food and then half-killed the security guard who tried to stop her!”

  Looking at Enju’s face, it was pale, as he expected, and she was shaking. At that moment, the girl whose name they didn’t even know looked at Enju.

  As long as one of the Cursed Children hid her red eyes, she looked just like a normal girl on the outside. That was why there was no way she could have known that Enju was one of the Cursed Children by looking at her. But for some reason, the girl looked at Enju and reached out her freed hand, asking for help.

  Rentaro quickly brushed that hand away and glared at her. Stop it. Don’t get Enju involved.

  The girl drew a sharp breath and looked at Rentaro’s expression, her fear clearly showing.

  “What in the world are you all doing?” At the moment, police officers cut through the crowd to settle the situation. The pair consisted of a skinny man with glasses and a well-built man with a crew cut. Rentaro calmed his heart, thinking inside that this lynch-mob-like situation would finally end. However, the police officer with glasses let out a cold “Oh” as he saw the now-silent crowd holding the girl down and lording it over her. Forcing the girl to her feet, strangely without even really asking the people around what had happened, he put handcuffs on her wrists.

  Giving the dumbstruck Rentaro a sideways glance, the man with the glasses saluted a representative of the crowd with thanks, pushed the girl into the police car, and drove off. Did that police officer really know what crime the girl had committed?

  After the girl disappeared, the onlookers dispersed in twos and threes after grumbling to themselves. It all happened in a flash. Afterward, only Rentaro and Enju remained. There was no helping it. There was nothing he could have done about it. Feeling uncomfortable, he pulled Enju’s hand to go home. As he did, he looked to his side, surprised. Enju had her hands in fists and was glaring at Rentaro.

  “Why didn’t you help that girl, Rentaro?!” she shouted at him.

  Rentaro was overpowered. Her eyes had turned a pale red. The people who were scattering looked back their way with suspicious expressions on their faces. Rentaro felt shaken but forced it down inside. “It’s nothing,” he said, willing them to believe him.

  Rentaro took Enju’s arm and pulled her into an alleyway between two buildings. From the exhaust pipe came a smell that bothered him. “It couldn’t be helped, Enju. Under those conditions, if they found out your identity, they would have lynched you, too.”

  “But you hit away the hand of someone asking for help!” she said.

  “There are things that I can and cannot do! Besides, what she did was definitely a crime! Even if the environment of the Outer District is bad, it’s still illegal to commit a crime.” Without thinking, he replied with logic even though he knew it would only put fuel into the fire of Enju’s anger.

  Enju shook her head fiercely. “That’s just an excuse. If you wanted to save her, you would have been able to. You are a champion of justice. There is nothing you cannot do!”

  “Don’t force your childish illusions on me. I can’t do anything… I can’t do a single thing.” With that, Rentaro suddenly returned to himself. Enju was holding back her sobs as she cried. As he reached out his hand to her shoulder, she stepped away from him.

  “Hey, Enju… Could it be… Did you know her?” he said, unsure.

  But Enju nodded as she cried. �
�When I lived in the Outer District, I saw her around. I never talked to her, but she remembered me, too.”

  “I can’t believe it. But… But when I hit her hand away, I was desperate. I wasn’t thinking that deeply into it…” Rentaro couldn’t talk anymore after looking at Enju’s eyes. He asked the conscience in his own heart. He didn’t need much time to make a decision. “Enju, can you go home by yourself?”

  “Huh?” she said.

  Before he knew it, his legs were moving on their own. He dashed out of the alley, and looking quickly left and right, his eyes rested on a boy riding a scooter waiting at a traffic light. Tapping him on the shoulder and making him turn around, Rentaro immediately flashed his civil officer license. “I’m a civsec officer. A Gastrea has appeared in the area, and I need to borrow your scooter.”

  “H-hey, wait. What’re you talking about?” said the boy.

  “Looking at your build, you’re still in middle school, aren’t you? Think we can settle this peacefully?” Getting agreement from the flinching boy, Rentaro took the scooter from him violently. With a roar of the engine, he made a U-turn and turned it to face the direction the police car had gone earlier.

  He didn’t put on a helmet, and he ignored the traffic laws. If he were stopped, he could thrust his civsec license in their faces and make them understand the situation, but he would lose a lot of time.

  Weaving dangerously through traffic, Rentaro’s heart was beating hard with nervousness about a danger worse than a collision. Why did the police take the girl away without asking the girl or the victim a single question? What was behind the excessively simplified procedure? Also, it looked like where Rentaro was heading now was not an important police station or even a local police station. If he kept going this way, he would get closer and closer to the Outer District.

  Rentaro prayed to the god he didn’t even believe in. Please let me be worrying needlessly. Even as he thought this, the Monolith barrier that had looked so far away grew larger and larger, and there were traces here and there of buildings that had been destroyed and abandoned. The dark side of the flourishing Tokyo Area, the Outer District.