Against a Perfect Sniper

by Shiden Kanzaki

  “No, it’s not! Here, give me that!” Rentaro took the tray from her and stuck the toothpick into one of the balls, forcing it into her mouth.

  Tina briefly made a surprised face, but as she started chewing, her face muscles relaxed, and her face looked very happy. “Rentaro, more please,” Tina said, her body hanging half off the bench, eyes closed, with her mouth open.

  Rentaro’s heart skipped for a moment as it seemed like she was asking for a kiss, but then he changed his mind and decided that it actually felt more like feeding a baby bird.

  Plop, close. Plop, close. It was so funny to watch Tina give off her aura of happiness and relaxation every time she ate one that before he knew it, Rentaro had given Tina all of his takoyaki, as well.

  “Here, stay still for a sec.” As Rentaro pulled out his handkerchief to wipe her mouth covered in sauce, Tina narrowed her eyes and lifted her face, letting Rentaro do whatever he wanted with her.

  Hearing laughter behind him, Rentaro turned just his head to see a family pointing at them and laughing cheerfully. Rentaro wondered how he and Tina looked to them. For some reason, his heart felt strangely warm.

  Leaning back and putting a hand on his hip, he nodded, thinking that she was clean now, and Tina opened her eyes slowly, murmuring slowly and quietly, “I like you, Rentaro.”

  “H-huh?”

  He flinched from the suddenness of it all, but Tina seemed to have been looking forward to that reaction and put her hand on her chin.

  “This is the first time in my life that anyone’s been so kind to me, I think.” Tina seemed to remember something distasteful and lowered her eyes a little, rounding her shoulders. “I haven’t really had any fun since my parents died.”

  “Fun?”

  “Yes, ever since then, my life has just been pain. That’s why, right now, I’m having my first fun mood in a while.”

  Rentaro paused, not knowing what to say. “Hey, Tina, you said before that you didn’t have a guardian, but what did that mean? Why are you in a place like this in the first place? What do you do normally? Tell me more about yourself.”

  Tina’s gaze wavered. “That’s…”

  Today marked his fourth time seeing Tina. After their first meeting, she called him on the phone every other day or so. The last time, they went to an amusement park, and the time before that, she said she wanted to see the Outer District, so he showed her around Enju’s hometown, District 39.

  To Tina, everything she saw seemed unusual, and Rentaro truly enjoyed watching that face of hers. However, there was also the mysterious side of her that thrust upon him the condition to not tell anyone that he was meeting up with her. Occasionally, if he put together all the information she let slip little by little, he could see that she did not seem to have led a very happy life, but he wondered what that had to do with the condition.

  “Hey, Tina—”

  At that moment, the cold ring of a cell phone interrupted him. Looking at the sender’s name, the girl’s face stiffened frighteningly for a second.

  “H-hey.” Rentaro became worried and stretched out his hand, but Tina slipped away from it and jumped down from the bench.

  “Rentaro, I have to go now.” She didn’t wait for an answer as she turned away from him.

  For some reason, Rentaro was stricken by extreme uneasiness and called out to her, “Wait,” but she only half-looked back.

  The wind blew hard, and the trees around them swayed, rustling their leaves. Tina smiled as she held down her blond hair. “Let’s meet again, Rentaro.” She gave a polite bow and left.

  Rentaro kept looking at her back for a long time after that. Then, it was Rentaro’s cell phone that vibrated. He had a text from Miori. It said to come at once, and she included a geotag to show where she was. Apparently even though it wasn’t a school day she was still at school.

  Rentaro raised his face again but Tina had disappeared from sight, and he couldn’t see her anymore.

  As Tina walked through the government-sponsored park, she returned the call.

  “You took too long,” said the voice on the other end of the line.

  “I’m sorry, Master. I was in a place where I couldn’t answer the call.”

  “Awaken your consciousness until you can hold a conversation,” ordered the hard, cold voice.

  Tina took out the bottle of caffeine pills and poured the rest into her mouth, chewing violently. Grimacing at the bitter taste spreading through her mouth, she crushed the empty bottle and threw it away into a trash can in the park. After walking for a while, her consciousness cleared up to a certain extent. She was probably about 40 percent awake. Still far from a perfect condition. “Yes?” she asked.

  “I have received the next Seitenshi guard plan.”

  “That was fast.” She thought for sure that the second time, they would be more cautious and that the plan would not be leaked to them, so had given up on it, and this was a bit of a letdown. They must have some really incompetent people around the Seitenshi.

  She could hear a small chuckle from the other side of the phone. “We must thank the staff member at the Seitenshi’s palace who’s been so cooperative.”

  “What kind of person is our cooperative informant?”

  “Just someone whose child was eaten by a Gastrea in front of them. Not an unusual story.”

  Tina listened to that with mixed feelings. One of the Seitenshi’s political slogans was to give the Cursed Children basic human rights and coexist with them. Because of that, she seemed to have many enemies. It was ironic. What the Seitenshi was doing was more than correct as a human being. However, within the palace, there were those near her who would betray her, and Cursed Children like Tina were trying to assassinate her. It’s because you’re supporting Cursed Children like us, Tina thought.

  “Our client wants to settle this while they are in Tokyo Area.”

  “Master, that civsec officer will get in the way again.”

  “I know who they are, too.”

  “Really?” Tina pushed the cell phone hard to her ear.

  “Apparently, they are part of the Tendo Civil Security Agency. There is still time before the next conference. We cannot allow them to get in the way again.” The girl’s master gave a short laugh.

  She knew exactly what he was trying to say. Tina stopped walking. Her finely honed senses could tell.

  “Tina Sprout. I will give you your next mission. Kill the president of the Tendo Civil Security Agency, Kisara Tendo.”

  2

  The hallways of Magata High School were as still as death on the weekends. As Rentaro took off his shoes and changed into indoor shoes, he looked around with a sense of novelty. In middle school, he hadn’t belonged to a club, and when he started high school, he started the civsec officer business with Kisara and hadn’t had time to join a club. So he rarely ever came to school on a weekend.

  Rentaro headed toward the student council room, the sound of his shoes loud in the silent halls, doing his best to ignore the jangling sound of metal following behind him. Most of the students he came across occasionally were shocked after one look at him and would lower their eyes and quicken their pace to pass him. Well, it wasn’t like he didn’t understand how they felt.

  Rentaro reluctantly turned around and saw the fully armed Kisara Tendo following behind him. She had two fierce-looking SPAS-12 shotguns slung crossing one over the other on her back, a Beretta 92 gun in her left hand, and the murderous blade, Yukikage, in her right hand as she walked. She had different kinds of grenades hanging off the leather belt she wore over her skirt, including fragmentation grenades, incendiary grenades, tear gas bombs, special stun grenades, and a variety of others, so when she walked, she made a loud metallic sound. Kisara, weighing about sixty kilograms all told, walked behind Rentaro without saying a word, increasing her concentration with a strange breathing method.

  “H-hey, Kisara.”

  “Be quiet for a minute,” she said curtly.

  From the front e
ntrance, they went up the stairs on the far west, turned right, and saw a sign that said STUDENT COUNCIL ROOM. Kisara pulled the slide of the Beretta and made the gun ready to fire, then quickly flattened her back against the right side of the door.

  Rentaro cringed and was about to knock on the door when Kisara shook her head as if in disbelief. “Wait, Satomi. Are you planning on breaking through from the front? That’s too dangerous. Remember the exam to get your civsec officer license. After throwing in a tear gas bomb, the two of us can shoot Miori to death as she comes out, easy as pie. Two to the chest, one in the head, and we can make that woman say good-bye to this world.”

  “H-hey, Kisara…… I didn’t come here to kill Miori. I came to ask her about the results of the analysis of the bullets found at the scene of the sniping.”

  “That’s pretty much the same thing!”

  “No, it’s not!” Rentaro was overcome with strain and rubbed the corners of his eyes. Even though Kisara never made any mistakes, why couldn’t she keep her cool when it came to Miori?

  After saying good-bye to Tina in the park, he called the office to say he was going to stop by Miori’s place. The minute he told her, Kisara said, “I’m going, too,” and forced him to meet up with her, which turned into all this. He made a huge mistake in letting Miori’s name slip in front of Kisara, but he never dreamed that she would show up heavily armed and ready to kill.

  “Hey, Kisara, I’m going to talk to her, so sorry, but you wait outside.”

  “N-no way! I can’t let you and Miori be alone together.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just can’t! You are never on any account to meet with Miori alone. When you meet, I must go with you. President’s orders.”

  Rentaro shook his head, thinking he couldn’t go along with her any longer, and knocked on the door, turning the knob without waiting for an answer.

  “Oh, wait, Satom—,” Kisara started.

  Suddenly, a hand stretched out from the crack of the door and pulled him into the room, and then the door was closed and locked. Rentaro staggered a few steps and looked back.

  Blinds were drawn in the dim room, and Miori stood with her back to the door as she locked it behind her back with a bewitching smile. His eyes were drawn to the brightly colored Japanese-style clothes she wore despite being at school.

  “Welcome, Satomi dear.”

  At that moment, Kisara started banging violently on the door behind Miori’s back. “Miori, open up this instant! If you don’t, I’ll break down the door.”

  Miori closed her eyes and lifted her chin in the air. “You can if you want, but I’ll make sure to send the receipt to the Tendo Civil Security Agency.”

  The sound of pounding stopped suddenly, and it was replaced by the sound of Kisara gnashing her teeth. Sadly, Kisara, who was so poor she went to Rentaro’s place to sponge dinners off him, did not have the financial means to pay for a door.

  “Good job figuring out Kisara followed me here.”

  “I didn’t know. But with all that noise y’all were making out there… Why don’t we go next door?” Miori pointed at the room next door with her index finger.

  Guided by Miori, Rentaro entered her private room. He felt like he had been transported to another world. Besides chairs and tables in strong primary colors that twisted in avant-garde style, there were fifty holodisplays floating in the air.

  When Miori swept the displays showing stock prices and economic news horizontally, the displays came together into one giant display, and an aquarium screensaver started up, the surround-sound system playing the quiet sounds of bubbles. The whole room started to glow a dim blue. It really felt like they were in the depths of the ocean.

  Thinking of his own worn-out eight-tatami-mat hovel, he looked around the room again. It was hard to believe they were living in the same era. This was a room Shiba Heavy Weapons ordered especially for her. He wondered what she was planning to do with the room after stepping down as student council president next year.

  Miori pointed her folding fan toward the display and said, “Seitenshi Sniper Incident Evidence,” and pictures from the scene came up on the panels one after another. Miori stretched her arm out in front of her and enlarged one image, that of the tip of a bullet. “The bullet used by the sniper looks to be one used for a .50-caliber Browning heavy machine gun, but I looked up the rifling, and it’s clean. There’s no record that it was used in a crime before.” Rifling, also called a gun’s fingerprint, referred to the helical grooves left behind on a bullet when it was fired.

  Miori opened her fan and rotated it, and the screen changed a few times before settling on a miniature version of the scene of the crime with 3D modeling. Rentaro was unwittingly taken in for a second by Miori’s beautiful form, looking as if she were dancing a traditional Japanese dance.

  Miori pointed out the roof of the problem building where the sniper was with her fan and dragged the fan toward the limousine. As she did so, a line showed up on the model image showing a distance of 991 meters. Miori rotated the model so Rentaro could get a better look. “Hey, Satomi dear, just checking… You’re certain the enemy shot from that building? And that the limousine was moving?”

  “Yeah… What about it?”

  “Satomi dear, how much do you know about sniping?”

  “Not much.” He knew so little about the subject that he made sure not to choose it during his civsec officer license exam. On top of waiting in one place for the target to come and using finely honed nerves to pull the trigger, it required an enormous amount of patience and concentration. Rentaro wasn’t confident with either.

  “The empty shell case that sank into the road at the scene was retrieved. Looking at the angle of the shot, it does seem highly likely that it was fired from this building, but…”

  Miori sounded like something was stuck in her teeth as she spoke, but then lifted her face and continued. “Y’know, Satomi dear, in the year 2031, sniper scopes and rifles have gotten more precise, but in the end, the most important factor in figuring the accuracy rate is still the human factor. And humans’ hearts are always moving, and they have to breathe, so their hands shake slightly. If a sniper can hit a target eight hundred meters away, I consider them expert. A kilometer away is a miracle. From 1.2 kilometers away, it’s a stunt. More than that, and it’s a coincidence.”

  Rentaro was shocked. “It’s that hard?”

  “Try taking a hula hoop from the P.E. equipment room and using it in a ring toss to try to get a color cone twenty meters away. Sniping is different from a ring toss, but it’ll help you understand just how hard that is.”

  “That…is hard…” Rentaro didn’t have to do it to imagine how impossible that would be. He finally understood what Miori was trying to say. She was suggesting that to pull off the feat of hitting a target a kilometer away three times was pretty much impossible.

  Then, Miori explained the effects of temperature, humidity, angle, pressure, Coriolis force (how the bullet has a hill-like trajectory and is the highest at 55 percent of the way to its target), and the wind around the buildings that are the natural enemies of snipers.

  Rentaro closed his eyes and thought back to the flames of the limousine, the people’s screams, and the glint from the roof of the building. There was no mistaking it. There really was a sniper there who shot from that building. It didn’t matter what Miori said.

  Suddenly, Rentaro asked Miori about a suspicion that came to mind. “Hey, Miori, your company sells weapons wholesale to police and the self-defense force, too, right? Do you know someone called Takuto Yasuwaki?”

  “No.”

  “He’s the captain of the Seitenshi’s personal guard. Do the Shiba Heavy Weapons files have anything on him? Tell me what you know about him.”

  Miori tilted her head and put her hands together, saying, “Search, Takuto Yasuwaki.” When she did, the search started at dizzying speeds, and in no time, the display called up a headshot of Yasuwaki. Next to it was a brief persona
l history.

  “Takuto Yasuwaki. Age thirty-two, male. His rank is second lieutenant. Satomi dear, you’re a master sergeant, so he’s one rank above you.”

  “Huh?” There was one phrase he couldn’t let pass without comment. “Hey, Miori, I’m not a soldier, so I don’t have a rank.”

  More precisely, since the New Humanity Creation Project was started by the self-defense force, when Rentaro underwent the enhancement operation, he was forced to register as a solider, but his rank was supposed to be that of the lowest soldier. It definitely wasn’t anything as self-important sounding as master sergeant.

  “Yes, you do. Even if it’s just a pseudo-rank, as your IP rank goes up, your top-secret information access key goes along with it. Your IP rank is 1,000, so you’re a master sergeant, Satomi dear.”

  Now that she mentioned it, during the conferment ceremony, he thought did receive a top-secret access key and pseudo-rank to go along with his promotion to rank 1,000. The top-secret access key he got was so low level that he couldn’t get any valuable information. If Rentaro wanted to find out more about his parents and details of the Gastrea War, he needed a higher-level access key, after all. “Well, what can I do with that pseudo-rank, then?”

  “Nothing much, really. Since you do roughly the same work as someone of regular rank, you have the right to give orders, but since at most yours is a pseudo-rank, you don’t have the authority to lead soldiers or have them follow your orders.”

  The right to give orders without the right to lead, huh? “Then, what’s the point of those ranks?”

  “Giving civsec officers those ranks makes them feel better, and that way they can make people think ‘The civsec officers still belong to the country.’”

  Rentaro sighed. “Even though they’re civilian security agencies, they’re tied to the government, huh?”

  “Well, it can’t be helped. The strongest civsec officer pairs are strong enough to change the world’s military balance, so countries want to manage them as much as possible. The civsec officer system was originally declared a privatization of military power with great fanfare at the beginning, but these were just empty statements.”