“Hey…”
Suddenly raising her head, the girl dug around in her pocket and pulled out a bottle with an English label on it, took a pill out of it, and put it in her mouth. Rentaro thought she was eating something and stole a look at the label on the bottle and frowned. Apparently, they were caffeine pills.
“I’m…nocturnal, so if I don’t do this, I can’t stay awake during the day.” As she spoke, she tossed a large number of pills in her mouth one after another, chewed sleepily, and swallowed. Rentaro did not know much about this type of pill, but he could tell that this was more than a normal dose.
“Where did you come from? What’s your name? Where’s your guardian? Why are you wearing pajamas and house slippers?”
The girl looked down at her own clothes and tilted her head slowly. “Dunno…” It had taken her about ten seconds to react.
“What do you mean, ‘dunno’? Jeez… What about your name, then?”
“My name is…” For some reason, the girl’s eyes shifted for a moment, but then she seemed to give up and lifted her face. “Tina…… It’s Tina Sprout.”
“I’m Rentaro Satomi.”
“Call me Tina.”
“Then, you can call me Rentaro.”
“Rentaro…?” Tina looked at Rentaro absentmindedly with her mouth half-open.
“What is it?”
“I just…wanted to try it out.”
Rentaro slumped his shoulders. This was tiring. “Well, Tina, I’ll ask you again. Where’s your guardian?”
“I don’t have one.”
She didn’t? “Where did you come from? You can just tell me what you remember.”
With her eyes half-closed, Tina tilted her head front and back, left and right, stuck her forefinger on her chin, and started to speak slowly. “All I remember is that I think I woke up in my apartment today, took a shower, changed my clothes, and went out.”
“Don’t lie! Not only haven’t you changed or showered, you look like you just woke up!”
Tina opened her mouth and said, “Oh,” softly, her eyes still half-closed. “You know me better than…I know myself…don’t you?”
“Hey… The bike that was broken was yours, right?”
“Bike? Was I…riding something…like that?”
“Never mind. You should go to the police box and ask for directions.”
“I can’t…really…”
“Just do it. I realized now that I can’t deal with you.”
“Don’t…say that.”
Rentaro wrote his phone number on a piece of paper and handed it to her. “Here, if you get lost again, you can call me, so just go to the police box. Please.”
“Then, can I try calling you as a test right now?”
“Why do you have to do something like that…?”
“Because you might have given me a fake phone number.”
Rentaro had no words.
Tina turned her back on him and fiddled with her cell phone, and then Rentaro’s chest pocket started to vibrate. “I know this is sudden, but you are interested in ten-year-old girls, right?”
“Wh…what…?”
“I was keenly aware of you gazing at the skin peeking out from my pajamas.”
“Go see an eye doctor.”
“I was afraid to say it to you in person, but you really have an unfortunate face, don’t you, Rentaro?”
“Shut up.”
“I also didn’t get a chance to say this, but I know where my apartment is.”
Rentaro felt foolish. Then, what was I hanging out with this kid for?
Tina smiled faintly and folded her cell phone shut slowly. “Today was a very fun day.”
Apparently, in this girl’s mind, this farce was saved in her memory as a fun day.
It wasn’t fun at all for me, you know, he almost said, but kept it to himself after seeing her happy face.
Tina slowly slid off the bench and smiled. “I hope we can meet again.”
Rentaro scratched his head, then gave up and gave a big nod, shooing her off with his hand.
“Well then, good-bye, Rentaro.” The girl bowed politely and walked falteringly out of the park. Rentaro watched her go, not exhaling with relief until he couldn’t see her anymore. She didn’t seem like a bad kid.
Thinking he had another story he could tell Enju, he walked in the opposite direction of the girl.
3
Cars were passing by so quickly they made Tina’s ears hurt before going off into the distance. The temperature had cooled down, and it had gotten a little chilly. As Tina trudged down the highway, before she knew it, she had turned her face toward the cars with their headlights turned on.
The sky was dyed with darkness and the moon shone in stark contrast. Night is coming. It’s my time. One by one, the cells in her body started to awaken, her mind became clear, and her body became filled with energy.
Just then, Tina’s cell phone vibrated. Looking at the caller’s name, she put the phone to her ear. “Master?”
“Give your report.” It was a hard, businesslike voice.
“I have infiltrated Tokyo Area successfully. I will now return to my apartment and then head to the designated location to retrieve the items.”
“Anything out of the ordinary to report?”
“There was some trouble, but it was nothing serious.” Tina put her hand on her chest and closed her eyes as she continued slowly. “……a kind person helped me.”
The person on the other end of the phone spoke, sounding irritated. “I thought I told you to avoid contact with other people if possible. In order to avoid information leaks, make sure you give a false name if possible.”
“Yes, sir…… No problem.”
“Tina Sprout. What is your mission? Let me hear it again.”
Tina lifted her face and looked at the moon. She was completely awake now. “Do not worry, Master. I will carry out the assassination of the Seitenshi.”
Tina’s feet took her back to her apartment. The wooden apartment building was old, built based on old building standards with pillars that had been rebuilt time and time again in order to extend its life. The white paint was peeling, and there were cracks in the wall. Tina’s master probably thought this would make the best hideout for her because there were no conspicuous buildings around, and it was a quiet area.
Still, what was up with still using a pinfire gun in the year 2031? she wondered, remembering her classes on espionage as she put her key in the lock and turned.
The minute she opened the door, she was met with stagnant, moldy air. Just like the outside, the inside did not consider the comforts of its renter, but this was a temporary mission, so she just had to bear with it while she was here. Thinking that, she took off her slippers.
Tina blushed as she stood in front of the full-length mirror left behind by the previous occupant. I stood in front of that man dressed like this? If I dressed up a little, I would look cuter than this, she thought regretfully as she took off her pajamas and went to take a shower.
Changing her clothes, she replaced the battery pack of her cell phone with one that was fully charged and put a futuristic-looking spindle-shape wireless headset over her right ear. Then, she called her master back as she left the apartment.
She headed toward a seedy place where freight containers from the suburbs were stacked neatly together. They were a kind of rental boxes called trunk rooms. After the Great War, apparently, there were a number of people who started a business by simply installing freight containers on vacant land. Because of Tokyo Area’s chronic land shortage and with the price of land going up gradually, it was a practice that continued steadily until the land was sold off and the owners withdrew.
“Master, I have arrived.” Tina held an IC card up to the unmanned gate and went inside, looking for the container he was talking about. Before long, she found the number she was looking for on a conspicuously large container. Inserting the key in the lock, she entered the numbers into the padlock as sh
e was told and opened the door.
When she stepped inside, Tina was shocked.
“What do you think, Tina?” She could hear the pride in his voice over the phone.
The interior of the gigantic container, about the size of six tatami mats, could be called an armory. Of course, there were small arms and sniper rifles, but there were also rocket launchers, recoilless guns, antitank rifles, and other superior weapons overflowing from the walls and ceilings. It seemed like he had gotten one of everything that looked like it could be of use, just to be certain not to be lacking something.
Getting a peek at his neurotic eccentricity, Tina chose an antitank sniper rifle and put it in her gun case. However, as she tried to lift it up, it wouldn’t budge off the ground even when she used all the strength she had as a weak girl.
Left with no choice, she calmed her breathing and released her power. She could feel her whole body gradually growing warm and felt her five senses physically expanding. She didn’t have a mirror, so she couldn’t see for herself, but she was sure her eyes were red.
This time, she was able to lift the case easily, and she passed through the gate with her head down so her eyes wouldn’t be seen and walked quickly toward her apartment. All that was left was to get back home. Perhaps because of that self-conceit, she froze when high beams from a car suddenly shone on her from the side.
“Miss, where are you from? You shouldn’t be out right now. Do you know what time it is? Where do you live?” A door slammed, and someone came out of the car.
Promptly covering just her face with the palm of her hand and seeing the sirens on top of the car, Tina reported the situation very calmly. “Master, I’m sorry. There has been an unforeseen situation. I have been stopped by the police.”
Apparently, they thought she was a runaway.
“Have they seen your face?”
“No…”
“Oh, well…” The man seemed to nod on the other end, and then gave her the order coldly and evenly. “Kill them.”
4
“This is terrible…” Holding the spoils of the evening limited-time sale war in their reusable bags, Rentaro’s and Enju’s feet stopped. The police car sunk into the concrete wall was in a sorry state —it looked like it had been kicked by Godzilla.
The sirens were smashed, the hood was crushed, and the exhaust pipe was bent in a strange direction. Outside the cordoned-off area, a large number of onlookers were crowded around, taking pictures with their phones with one hand.
Rentaro approached one of them hesitatingly and said, “Hey, do you know what in the world happened here…?”
“Who knows? It looks like they haven’t caught the perpetrator yet. But aren’t the only ones who can do something like this the Red-Eyes?”
Rentaro ground his teeth in frustration at not being able to refute this presumptive reasoning. It was true that even though it wasn’t strictly speaking impossible for a human to do this, the probability that it was a human was low enough to ignore.
“There are no leads, and the officer attacked is still unconscious in critical condition.”
“Critical condition? He’s not dead?”
“Hmm? Yeah, what about it?”
“Nothing…” Rentaro felt bad saying it, but because the car had been so thoroughly destroyed, he had thought that the officer driving it would have left this world, as well. Rentaro gave a quick bow in thanks and returned to Enju.
Enju had covered her eyes, still holding her shopping bag. Rentaro stopped for a second and approached her slowly. “Enju,” he said quietly, “you’re not the one who did it. It was one of the other Children.”
Enju gave him a quick, bitter smile but then soon showed him a full smile. “Rentaro, you are too kind. Yes, I am fine now.”
“All right, let’s go home, then.” On the way home, he and Enju had a rambling conversation as she swung her shopping bags back and forth.
“And then, you know the new cartoon Go, Zengar! that just started…?”
As Rentaro snuck a peek at the side of Enju’s face, he wondered if he should say it. Should he just mind his own business?
Rentaro said diffidently, “Enju, don’t worry about it. You weren’t the one who did it.”
Enju tilted her head and looked at him like she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Hmm? Whatever is the matter, Rentaro?”
“You weren’t the one who did it.”
Enju’s gaze wavered, and she seemed flustered. “Wh-what’s the matter, Rentaro? You seem strange.”
Rentaro put his hands on Enju’s shoulders and turned her toward him, saying each word clearly and distinctly. “I said, you weren’t the one who did that, Enju…”
Enju made a perplexed face, but then unconsciously, her face crumpled and her expression wavered. Enju looked down and wiped her eyes quickly with her sleeve. “R-Rentaro, you’re amazing! How did you know that I was still concerned about that? Even though Kisara and Sumire wouldn’t have realized…”
Rentaro put his hand on her head and let out a long breath. “Because it’s you…”
“Why can’t everyone just get along, Rentaro…?” Enju’s voice was hoarse, and it sounded like it would disappear at any moment.
“I don’t know………” Even as Rentaro tousled Enju’s hair, he saw a bleak future for the Cursed Children. Born at almost the same time as the Great Gastrea War ten years ago, the Cursed Children were ten years old or younger. As such, it was probably too much to ask for them to possess wise judgment.
However, each time a crime like this was committed, the hatred the Stolen Generation—who already hated Gastrea—had for the Cursed Children grew stronger. The girls didn’t know. They didn’t realize that hatred would swing in the opposite direction of where force was applied, like a pendulum. Sometimes with far more force.
Each time one of the Cursed Children committed a crime, it was as if Enju’s neck was being strangled slowly with a silk rope, and it made Rentaro’s chest hurt to watch it. No, more accurately, it was as if the net trapping the Children was getting tighter, in a way they couldn’t see.
Rentaro narrowed his eyes and looked back once more at the scene behind them. He didn’t know who’d done it, but Rentaro doubted he could forgive the perpetrator.
Enju finally separated herself slowly from Rentaro and wiped her face one more time with her sleeve. “All right, this time—this time—I am surely fine!”
Rentaro smiled. “Yeah… Okay.” In order to dispel the solemn atmosphere, Rentaro exhaled deeply, puffing out his chest and laughing loudly, looking down at the shopping bags. “By the way, Enju, we got a good haul at the limited-time sale today, huh?”
Enju grinned mischievously. “I did not think we would be able to purchase meat so cheaply, either.”
Rentaro pumped his fist. “We’re having sukiyaki today!”
“Sukiyaki…!” Enju hopped happily.
As soon as Rentaro got back to their rundown eight-tatami-mat apartment, he put on an apron and went to the kitchen. As he cut the vegetables into bite-size pieces, Enju capered around Rentaro, chattering excitedly about the cartoon she was currently into, Go, Zengar! It sounded like it was based on those old shows about fighting squadrons and transforming robots.
“And then, and then, there’s the robot of justice, Zenin Zengar, and the evil robot, Akuin Akkar. And the storyboards for episode eighteen were—”
“Zenin zenga, like ‘one good turn deserves another’? And akuin akka, like ‘what goes around comes around’? Aren’t those Buddhist terms or something? That’s a pretty advanced cartoon.”
Enju proudly put both hands on her hips, as if impressed that Rentaro had noticed. “That’s right. And the most amazing thing is that the squadron consists of four chief priests and a Buddhist nun, and they are all bald, and their five temples combine to form one large transforming robot.”
“R-really……”
The cartoons you watch are so weird, Rentaro thought as he put konnyaku noodl
es, leeks, chrysanthemum leaves, and mushrooms on a bamboo draining basket and then unfolded a low table that was leaning against the wall. Putting on oven mitts, Rentaro moved the sukiyaki pot from the kitchen to the gas burner on the table and turned it on. Before long, the ingredients were boiling gently, and the warm steam was rising to meet Rentaro’s and Enju’s faces. As the sweet smell of the sauce filled the room, Rentaro started salivating. He couldn’t wait to eat. It had been days since he’d had such extravagant food for dinner.
After Rentaro chided Enju for putting her hands on the low table and jumping around, she switched to hitting the bowl with the egg in it with her chopsticks and yelling, “Is it time to eat yet?”
Rentaro gave a wry smile. Urging Enju to sit down, they had just started to chorus, “Time to eat!” when the front door’s intercom rang unexpectedly.
Rentaro scowled as he turned to look at the clock on the wall. Who could it be at this time of night?
“S-Satomi dear…” With a voice that was on the verge of death, a beautiful girl wearing Japanese-style clothes barged in. She had a large face mask over her mouth, her face was red, and she sounded like she had a bad cough.
Rentaro was taken aback. He knew this face. And it was a face that he wanted to avoid seeing if possible. “M-Miori?! What are you doing here?”
The girl in the kimono took cold medicine and nutritional supplement drinks out of the shopping bag on her arm and put them in Rentaro’s hands. She seemed to be making an appeal to him as she pointed at herself repeatedly.
“T-take care of me…while I’m sick…” Saying just that seemed to use up all her energy, and she fell with a thud to the floor of the entryway.
Rentaro’s mouth gaped as he was overcome with surprise. But, that was not the end of the situation.
Seconds after the girl in the kimono fell, Kisara Tendo came through the entrance, her face haggard. “S-Satomi…… I know it’s sudden, but take this…” Then Kisara handed him a tray of beef with a half-price price tag on it.
Against a Perfect Sniper Page 4