“My father did not leave word of it behind. And neither did Renjo Aki. The two of them may not have even known themselves. In any case, Hyota, when will my abode be ready? Sleeping on dirt exhausts me.”
“Soon.” For the first time, Hyota sounded abashed. “That particular place is in a miserable condition. It is unlikely that Gento-sama’s abode was destroyed, but transporting it without anybody finding out will take time.”
“Does Setsura Aki know?”
“It is not possible that he does.”
“Then get the job done before resuming your search for the seal. Inflict two wounds for every one suffered. Whoever gives more than he receives will gain the advantage.”
“I understand, but Aki-sama has a much greater knowledge of Shinjuku and access to information than we do. Turn all the gangs in the city against him, and he still can make the slightest gust of wind, the slenderest blade of grass his ally. Listening to every word they whisper, Aki-sama would surely take the greatest advantage of any lull in the battle.”
“I can see the stars.” Gento’s tone of voice suddenly changed. “Even sleeping in the earth. The stars talk to me. They say that he will soon find my home. What will become of me then? I can’t say, but it should prove interesting.”
Gento sat up on the mound of dirt. Stored somewhere out of sight, he wrapped a coat around him like the wings of a black butterfly. Calmly climbing down from his raised bed only took another second or two.
“The seal and the transport of my home I leave in your hands. I am going to face my mortal enemy.”
“Do you know where?”
“No.”
Not asking how he would go about finding him, Hyota bowed as the black shadow glided past him.
Not a word was said about the snake.
Setsura was in a corner of Shinjuku Gardens. Amidst the dirt and rubble, there remained not a smidgen of the groomed landscapes that had once offered the city’s urban residents a moment of respite from the mad rush. The lawns covering the area were given over to mosses of strange colors and unknown origins. These squirming mosses were “alive” in the faunal as well as the floral sense, throbbing in syncopation to the ominous beat of a telltale heart lurking beneath.
Nor was it mere urban rumor that a sound accompanied each beat, or that each heavy pulse could be felt through the soles of the feet.
Scientists from outside the ward studying these sounds using infrasonic analysis counted eighty to ninety beats a minute, a living sound, almost identical to that of a human being. But what kind of living thing, for its “body” reached a mile in length and covered three dozen acres.
This conclusion had been drawn fourteen years before, and the location pointed to the very center of Shinjuku Gardens. But perhaps serving as a defensive perimeter, the earth was piled at a radius of several hundred yards around it, and thriving with mutant vegetation—not a place where a sane man ever ventured.
The center of Shinjuku Gardens was said to be home to around thirty-five hundred different species, thirty percent of which were crammed into that cramped corner.
This scientific mother lode had yielded not only botanical curiosities, but promising treatments for cancer and stroke and other incurable diseases beyond the reach of medicine. However, since several dozen adventurers and prospectors ventured in and disappeared, nobody else had tried.
Setsura was standing in an area near Yotsuya on the outer edge of the inner ring. The twilight was falling. His shadow cut a graceful silhouette on the ground at his feet, the result of the thirty streetlamps installed by the ward government.
There was one fifteen feet directly behind him. More than protecting the vagrants who might otherwise stumble into the Gardens at night, their primary purpose was to shed light upon whatever creepy-crawlies might be thinking of leaving.
Here and there just beyond the penumbras of light lay the slumbering forms of the homeless and vagrant workers. Without a bed to call their own, the unknown vegetation inside the Gardens was preferable to the known risk of gangsters and monsters outside it.
A slight frown rose to Setsura’s face. He sensed a presence and heard footsteps approaching.
The figure appeared inside the cone of light three minutes later, as if pushing the veil of dusk aside. He was wearing sunglasses and a polo shirt and had a slightly shady air about him. Not a nine-to-five kind of guy.
“Aki-san, I presume?” he asked warily.
“And you are Sasaki-san?”
Such a laid-back inquiry from the man who’d designated such a place and such a time set the reporter a bit at ease—the same one who’d shot Gento Roran in the interrogation room of Shinjuku police station.
“You’ve got yourself some good connections,” Setsura said.
Sasaki nodded. “I stopped by your place but it was closed. A waste of time if I hadn’t been familiar with the old lady at the tobacco store.”
He must have put together a dossier on the grandma in Kabuki-cho’s old hotel district, said to be the very first information broker in Shinjuku—though that didn’t explain how he’d managed to touch bases with Setsura, who’d been up and about the city since leaving his safe house that morning.
“At any rate, here we are. Hear me out—I’m not above rewarding useful information.”
“How about as the reward, you tell me your side of the story?” Setsura said with a hint of a yawn. Hardly surprising, considering the deadly duel he’d gone through that day.
“I’d like to find out what you know first. After that—”
“Fine with me.”
They stood there talking for a dozen or so minutes. Sasaki recounted what he’d told Gento.
“You’ve done your homework. Unfortunately, I haven’t anything more to add. You seem to know more than I do about the subject.”
“That’s too bad. That just leaves the two people at the heart of the matter. And if Gento-sama won’t cough up any details, that leaves you.”
“Gento won’t?” Setsura stared at the reporter with evident surprise. “You mean you went to him looking for material?”
“Ah, well—” Sasaki said vaguely. He’d kept mum about meeting with Gento, fearing that Setsura would clam up. Push come to shove, he’d catch him upside the head and loosen his tongue with a little electroshock therapy.
He’d shown his cards too early, but there was no regretting it now. As if sensing something in back of him, he turned his face toward the darkness behind him, like it was the middle of the day.
“A tail, eh?” Setsura said.
Sasaki was the one amazed. “Don’t talk rubbish. Yeah, we talked, but he didn’t lay a finger on me.”
“You can track someone without doing the tango together.” Setsura’s sharp words were a complete contrast with the languid look on his face. “Long odds, I thought, whether this was the wrong or right place to meet up—either way, if you think your life is worth saving—though trying would probably be a waste of time now.”
With these ominous words hanging in the air, the flustered Sasaki barked, “Hey, what are you talking about? What the hell is that?”
Setsura ignored him and raised his right arm in a graceful wave. What looked like a glimmering spider’s thread floated out from the cone of light at Setsura. On the verge of exiting the ring of light, another thread tangled with it. As if the mass had suddenly increased, it fluttered and fell to the earth.
In the next moment, Setsura sprang off the damp ground with amazing speed and without making a sound. Not surprising, considering the lightness of his steps as he veered off the path and plunged into the center of the noxious undergrowth.
“Hey! Wait up! Hey!” Sasaki called out behind him.
Setsura paid no mind to the shining thread coiled after him like a persistent insect as the air rushed in the space where he’d just been.
The scene around Setsura abruptly changed. The weeds around his ankles shot up to his waist, took on striped and spotted colors, and shook their petals in the disturbed air, coughing out a yellowish pollen. The outlines of Setsura’s body grew hazy inside the cloud of pollen.
No sooner had the scene taken on a semblance of normality, but he flung himself deeper into the thick foliage.
Red and green and purple pollen and sap in unearthly hues, bursting with sweet and nauseous smells, rained down on his head and shoulders. Covered by the psychedelic colors, Setsura came to a halt amidst the shrubbery.
Silence fell, interrupted by a moan like the moo of a cow. A frog-like creature hopped through the undergrowth, scales glittering in the moonlight. A foul miasma rose up from the ground like a bank of humid air, as if rising off a fetid tropic swamp.
Stranger still, despite the profusion of plant life, there was not the single buzz of an insect. From further away came the sound of footsteps.
“Hey!” called out Sasaki. “Aki-kun! Aki-kun!”
“Idiot,” Setsura sighed.
The footsteps approached, stomping through the grass. When they came within several yards, Setsura cut laterally through the undergrowth toward the narrow path Sasaki was on.
“Yo, Aki-kun,” Sasaki said, like he was greeting an old friend. He stepped forward.
Setsura caught the glitter of light out of the corner of his eye. A red line transected Sasaki’s neck, biting deeper in pace with each step. Only Setsura’s eyes could have perceived so fine a line, and it parted the flesh so effortlessly that Sasaki did not appear to even feel it as he kept on going.
The red line passed through to the other side. Scattering fresh blood under the bright moonlight, his head toppled off his shoulders. Similar lines ran down the headless body, his arms severing at the shoulders, his torso neatly divided crosswise and lengthwise and tumbling in pieces to the ground.
The scent of blood covered the ground. The head sitting there upright still sported the same pleasantly relieved smile.
“Served his purpose, eh?” Setsura said to himself.
The death trap that had taken Sasaki’s head must have already been set up and waiting for him when they met. Setsura had arrived expecting as much. Gento had probably tagged Sasaki when they met for exactly this purpose.
But how had he nailed down this specific location? Gento could have easily planted a nanotech transmitter and tracking device on him the size of a poppy seed, though Setsura was inclined to believe that he would have relied on something far more particular to his target, and likely a lot more intimidating.
The miasma parted in front of him. Somebody was coming down the path. Bathed in the white moonlight, Setsura calmly waited for the enemy to arrive.
A pale face rose up in the mists a dozen feet away from him, about the same height as his own.
The word “cherubic” sprang to mind, meaning angels mingling among humans disguised as children. Amakusa Shiro, the teenaged samurai who led the Christian rebellion at Shimabara in 1638, was often described in similar terms, a person possessed of a disposition, intelligence and appearance that, at a glance, were obviously not of this world.
The countenance in front of his eyes had all of those qualities. Though whatever angels sent him down from heaven were surely in league with the devil.
Setsura and Gento Roran. The world knew nothing of the menace lurking in any showdown between these two. Fifteen years condensed into a single moment as these two beautiful genies came face to face.
“Sorry if it sounds trite, but long time, no see.” Gento gazed around him, deeply impressed. “Shinjuku Gardens has certainly changed.”
“I met Hyota,” Setsura said, as if talking about time gone by with an old friend. “He’s getting on there.”
“He says he couldn’t get the upper hand. The same as fifteen years ago.”
“Aw, you’re making me blush.” Setsura scratched his head.
Sasaki’s severed limbs and head lay in a sea of blood at their feet. The odor of his ruptured entrails wafted up.
This was a conversation between two genies. “By the way, Setsura,” Gento said, stepping forward. The moonlight revealed him to be about the same height as Setsura. He was also wearing a black slicker. “Dig up any leads about the seal?”
“Nope.” Setsura shook his head, sending the kaleidoscopic pollen flitting through the moonlight like the scales of a fish. “Not a clue. But I haven’t looked. My father only told me to keep you and yours from laying your hands on it. That raises a good question—how to guard something I’ve never seen. He must not have known either. What about you? Hyota seems to think it was in a good place.”
“I don’t know what he’s been telling you, but it looks like you are no better informed than I am.”
“My father said with his parting words that you guys buried it somewhere.”
“Come to think about it, it is odd. Somewhere out there for the taking, and you determined to protect it. But what is it? And where? And why do the two of us remain in the dark?”
“One more thing to add to your puzzle box,” Setsura said, raising a finger. “What happens when the seal is opened?”
“Quite right,” Gento said with a faint smile.
Stranger still, these two were prepared to launch into yet another death match over something without knowing what it was and what it was supposed to do.
“Though my father said that the two of us being roused to action would affect the seal in some way. We should be seeing its omens and portents already.”
“You mean, giants clawing their way out of the earth, words written in blood across the sky, that sort of thing? Or maybe one day all the dogs bark an octave lower.”
“Well, that would be something to keep our eyes and ears out for,” Gento said quietly. He shifted his stance. A croak arose from his feet as he stepped on the big frog-like creature. The wriggling webbed feet stuck out from beneath black soles.
“Gross,” said Setsura.
“Listen,” Gento said with a scowl, “No matter what happens, is there any reason for us to be enemies? What good comes from the one of us shedding the blood of the other?”
“I’d say that was a self-evident truth. I’ve got a
senbei
shop to run. It’s grossing thirty million a year. Makes me wonder about continuing to moonlight as a P.I. Opening branches outside Shinjuku would be a lot more profitable. This is just a little side business I indulge in when I’ve got a few hours to kill.”