Chapter 39

4 As he filled his lungs with cold air, Ryuu Mikawa felt a sharp pain from his left shoulder to the pit of his stomach. Enduring the pain, Mikawa pursed his lips and blew a puff of air. The long, thin stream of air glittered cold and white, coiling around the ice pillar before his eyes. This was Mikawa’s power as the Ruby Eye Trancer, which allowed him to freeze the moisture in the air instantly. The cold air turned into frost, then ice, adding another layer of thickness to the semitransparent pillar of ice hardened around OO. His work finished, Mikawa trod across the frosted floor, approaching the pillar. Removing the Gore-Tex-lined glove from his right hand so that only a thin inner glove covered it, Mikawa pressed that hand against the icy pillar. He would have preferred to touch it with his bare hand, but if he did that in this thirty-degree-below-zero room, the palm of his hand would stick to the surface, and he’d have to use his ability to melt some of the ice he’d worked so hard to build up in order to free it. Still, Mikawa could definitely feel OO’s presence through the polyester fiber. After stroking the ice over and over, he turned his back to it and leaned against the pillar. This was deep inside an antique F2 cold-storage warehouse in Tokai 6-chome, Oka district, specifically the southern part of Ooi Futo Park. The measurement of cold-storage temperatures was divided into seven categories, ranging from C3, meaning anything below ten degrees Celsius, to F4, anything below negative fifty degrees. The warehouse was used mostly to store meat, frozen food, ice cream, and so on. Mikawa had known about all this since he was in elementary school. His father had worked in the frozen-storage division of a major distribution company, albeit different from the one that owned this particular storehouse. And so, six years ago—in the winter of his fourth year in elementary school—when he found a key on the side of a road near this storehouse, he knew exactly where it could be used. There was a plastic tag attached to the key with the business name and warehouse designation. The friend who was with him at the time, OO, had suggested that they turn it over to the police, but Mikawa insisted on using it to check out the warehouse instead. More than anything, he wanted to see the ultra-low-temperature world in which his father worked. Mikawa managed to convince the reluctant OO, and the following Sunday, they donned their thickest clothes and headed to the cold-storage warehouse indicated on the plate. Because it was midwinter, there was nothing suspicious about their appearance. The frozen food–storage warehouses often took the day off on Sundays, since the city market was closed then. There was only one security guard at the main gate of the warehouse, which they avoided easily by creeping through the shrubbery that surrounded the grounds. The key Mikawa had picked up was for the break room on the side of the storehouse, not the truck entrance, but they were still able to enter the cold-storage warehouse through the double doors inside. For Mikawa and OO, who were both born and raised in Tokyo, seeing the negative-thirty-degree space for the first time was like entering a frozen area from an anime or video game. Above them, the high racks stacked with boxes were all covered in pure-white frost, and their exhaled breath gleamed in the air. That day, they were only able to handle the cold for a few minutes before bursting back outside through the double doors. Running along the road in the early afternoon, Mikawa and OO both laughed aloud. That single moment from that day might have been the very brightest memory in Mikawa’s sixteen years… “Hmm. So this is your little nest, is it, boy?” Mikawa’s eyes widened. He knew he’d been alone when he came in, but now a woman in a long fur coat stood inside the cold-storage warehouse. She was tall and slender, with her long hair gathered up in a twist bun above her cool, beautiful face. This was none other than Liquidizer, a veteran Ruby Eye from the Syndicate. Standing up shakily, Mikawa addressed her hoarsely. “…Master… Why are you here…?” A bewitching smile spread across his former teacher’s ruby lips. “Oh, please. As if I wouldn’t know about your little hideout?” “But… How did you get in? You didn’t melt the door, did you?” As a response, Liquidizer fished around in her coat pocket, pulling out a brand-new key in her leather-gloved right hand and giving it a little shake. “I wouldn’t resort to such a violent act. I simply had a key made while you were groaning over your injuries, boy.” “……I see.” Mikawa would’ve liked to shoot her a wry smile, but it was already taking all his effort just to hide his intense nervousness. Ever since he’d picked it up six years ago, Mikawa had constantly carried that key on his person as if bound to it. Quite literally, since it was always on a thin but strong titanium chain attached to a ring piercing on his left hip via a key ring. The only way to remove the key without cutting the chain would be to dismantle the segment ring–style body piercing, but that would be absolutely impossible to do without Mikawa noticing, even if he was asleep. Of course, he’d removed the plate with the company name that had been attached to the key and attached six dummy keys to the key ring, just in case. And yet, Liquidizer had discovered this warehouse without a problem and even went so far as to have a copy of the key made. “But how on earth did you…?” Mikawa trailed off as a possibility occurred to him and quickly pulled the key ring out of the left pocket of his jeans. Yanking off the inner glove from his left hand with his teeth, he traced the titanium chain connected to the skin of his left hip with a fingertip. Then, somewhere in the middle of the chain, he noticed that one of the rings was warped ever so slightly. “………Wow, you got me good. You must’ve melted the chain while I was sleeping, made off with the key, had a copy made, then liquefied it back on, right?” “Exactement.” Answering in flawless French, Liquidizer removed her left glove like Mikawa. Then she tossed the key from her right hand to her left, and instantly it turned to silver droplets of liquid, which hardened again due to the low temperature and fell to the floor as countless little metal balls. Liquidizer had melted the stainless steel key with her liquefaction ability. Again, she spoke with a smirk. “But I suppose I don’t need it anymore.” Unable to guess at the meaning of her words, Mikawa stared bluntly at his former master as he returned the key to his pocket and slipped his hand back into the inner glove. Liquidizer, on the other hand, simply looked around the warehouse with an utterly unconcerned gesture before she continued. “We Ruby Eyes do love to make nests, but yours is really quite a unique case, boy.” “……” Ignoring Mikawa’s lack of response, Liquidizer stepped closer, her long black boots pressing into the frost on the floor. “…Or is this not a nest but a grave? For that poor girl covered in ice over there…?” “Don’t come any closer, please.” On hearing Mikawa’s low voice, Liquidizer stopped with a smile. If there was any chance that Liquidizer intended to melt the pillar of ice in which OO slept, he would have to fight her—even if she was a fellow Ruby Eye and his former teacher. He knew he had little chance of winning. All the moisture in this warehouse was in a frozen state, and if Mikawa were to try to fight her with his ability, the most he could do was instantly alter that into steam. However, he absolutely couldn’t raise the temperature of this place. No matter what. Even without that constraint, Mikawa didn’t think that he could win in a real battle against his old master. Frankly, Ryuu Mikawa’s ability as the Trancer was only to manipulate the thermal vibrations of water molecules. Increasing the frequency would weaken the bond between molecules, changing ice to water, then water to steam. If the frequency was lowered, the opposite phenomenon would occur. In other words, all Mikawa could really control was the hydrogen bonds of water molecules. However, Liquidizer, whose real name he still didn’t know, had control over the bonds of all molecules. Aside from hydrogen bonds, this also included van der Waals forces, ionic bonds, covalent bonds, and metal bonds, all of which she could weaken to convert solids into liquids. Even the peptide bonds of proteins were no exception: The instant her hand made contact, the Liquidizer could turn a human body into a horrific soup. The only substances that she couldn’t liquefy were, of course, liquid, gas, and energy with no physical form. In the battle at Minami-Aoyama, Liquidizer had fought a boy with ash-colored hair who was a member of the Jet Eye group and had broken two fingers on her right hand when she attempted to liquefy his mysterious protection field. On top of that, she had been taken down by a high-powered stun gun wielded by a girl with an accelerating ability. It had only been three days since then, yet nothing about Liquidizer’s appearance or demeanor indicated any hint of injury. However, judging by the fact that she hadn’t removed the glove on her right hand, her bone fractures probably hadn’t healed, and she most likely had burns left where her body had been exposed to the high-ampere current. Even in that state, she had liquefied the ground itself to escape to an underground sewage tunnel in order to save Mikawa, who had suffered even more serious injuries. She had put aside her strong pride to carry the unconscious Mikawa through kilometers of sewage and bring him to the Syndicate’s safe house in Gotanda. Remembering that, Mikawa felt the wounds in his chest begin to ache again. Unconsciously grimacing, Mikawa repeated himself. “…Don’t come any closer, please. I don’t want to fight you.” Still smiling, Liquidizer tilted her head slightly. “Oh my. I didn’t know you could make a face like that, boy. Usually, you look as though you could hardly care less if you lived or died.” “…It’s not that I’m afraid of dying, I just don’t want to die here. If I die, my Third Eye will burst out of me and open up a huge hole in the roof of this warehouse. Then the ice inside would melt away…” “Hmm. I see.” Looking back at Mikawa, Liquidizer’s smile faded into a serious expression. “Does that mean you’d fight me as long as it’s somewhere else?” “……” Unable to respond immediately, Mikawa searched his heart. His claim that he wasn’t afraid to die was no lie. Six years ago, when OO sank into eternal sleep in this warehouse… No, to be more precise, it was exactly a year later, the instant that he knew she would never wake up, that Mikawa lost his reason for living. He stopped going to school in his second semester of middle school, but instead of shutting himself up at home, he spent his days gazing at the water in places like the Tokyo-Yokohama Canal and Tokyo Bay. He didn’t go to high school, either. If he hadn’t reached out his hand toward the red sphere that descended from the sky four months ago, Mikawa would probably be engulfed in ice with OO in this very warehouse right now. But now Mikawa knew. That there were still enormous mysteries in this world. And he thought. That perhaps if he used the phase transition power the sphere had given him, he could wake OO. Even if it was impossible, Mikawa had an important goal now…a dream that he wanted to achieve. So even if he wasn’t afraid to die here, he still preferred to live. “…Are you familiar with the Snowball Earth hypothesis?” Liquidizer blinked at Mikawa’s sudden question. “I believe I’ve heard of it. Something to do with the whole planet freezing over…?” “Global glaciation, yes. I’m not surprised you’re familiar… It refers to an ice age so intense that the entire earth would be covered in ice. In the end, it’s still just a hypothesis, but there are scholars who assert that it actually happened hundreds of millions of years ago. I want to see that.” “See it? In reality, you mean? Are you saying you want to freeze the entire planet?” Liquidizer’s eyes widened, and Mikawa nodded seriously. “That’s right. You said the Syndicate’s ultimate goal is the extinction of the entire human race, but that’s no easy task, right? We certainly can’t kill them all one by one. But if Snowball Earth were to be realized, humanity wouldn’t be able to survive. I think it’s worth considering as a means for that.” He had never voiced these words aloud before. He had planned on proposing it directly to whatever Ruby Eye was the leader of the Syndicate once he gained the organization’s trust. He didn’t particularly care about gaining status in the Syndicate. He just wanted to see it with his own eyes: the entire planet turned white with frost. Even after Mikawa stopped speaking, Liquidizer remained silent for several more seconds. “……Pfft…” Suddenly, a tiny snicker escaped from her crimson-tinted lips. “Heh…ah-ha-ha, ah-ha-ha-ha…” With each peal of laughter, a puff of white floated into the air. Mikawa would normally have suspected that she was mocking him. But there was something about the strangely childish, earnest undertone of her laughter that suggested otherwise. After a while of this, Liquidizer raised her right hand as if in apology and caught her breath. Finally, she wiped a tear from the corner of her eye, snapping the frozen bead with her finger. “…Whew… I apologize for laughing like that.” “It’s all right… I mean, it is a pretty ridiculous idea.” “It certainly is. However, I don’t dislike it. Especially not compared to our fellows like Norma, who kill people one by one, week after week.” Mikawa felt a bit embarrassed at her words. Global glaciation was certainly a grandiose dream, but at present, Mikawa was no better than Norma, since he committed such petty murder once a month. And rather than killing people he wanted to kill, he was simply giving in to the violent impulses of the Ruby Eye and the rush of intoxication after committing such indiscriminate murder. He was no better than an addict. It was only six days ago that he froze the downhill slope on the street in Aoyama, sending a huge trailer into the Akasaka intersection and killing seven people. The Ruby Eye inside his body was content for now, but after two weeks or so, he would be overwhelmed with a thirst-like sensation that could only be quenched by killing another person at the end of the month. “…What choice do we have about that? If you don’t kill people, the Ruby Eye will take over your mind and go on a rampage.” When Mikawa absentmindedly muttered these words as if to defend his colleague, Liquidizer gave another smile—this time with the usual subdued irony. “Heh, true enough. But going about killing haphazardly like Biter won’t do, either; we’re not animals. Even if we must kill, there’s still the matter of maintaining one’s dignity, is there not?” “Dignity…? Do you mean aesthetically? Like the way Igniter killed people who were generating excessive amounts of CO2?” “Hmm, not exactly, but…well, close enough. At the very least, I intend to choose the people I kill quite strictly. Which means I have no intention of doing anything to you here. Or the princess behind you, either.” At those words, Mikawa let out a little sigh of relief. Only now that the tension was leaving his body did he realize that his neck and shoulders had stiffened without his noticing. Although he doubted that Liquidizer was feeling the same relief, she did let out a rather adorable sneeze and belatedly start rubbing her arms. “At any rate, it’s awfully cold in here.” “Well, yes. It’s negative thirty degrees.” “Even if Ruby Eyes don’t catch colds, we’ll end up with frostbite if we stand around in here for too long. Would you like to come and get something warm to eat?” “……I-I’m not particularly hungry…” “Aren’t you wondering why I’m here? I came to talk to you about something that can’t be discussed over the phone. Come on, then, boy.” With that, she turned and walked toward the exit. After one last look at the pillar of ice, Mikawa whispered, “I’ll be back” to OO sleeping inside and followed his former master. At the exit, he moved ahead of her and held the heavy double doors open. Once his former teacher passed, he left as well, promptly locking the doors behind him. The small break room was empty, of course, since it was a holiday. Mikawa picked up the shoulder bag he’d left on the old sofa. As Liquidizer approached the exit to the outside, she paused and closed her eyes as if searching for something. A high-class Ruby Eye like her could detect an enemy’s presence even through a door, but Mikawa wasn’t that powerful yet. Apparently satisfied, Liquidizer opened the door herself. As he followed his former teacher outside, the cool January air felt somewhat warm. Leaving Tokai 6-chome and the cold-storage warehouses behind, Liquidizer drove the pair in a Suzuki Swift to Odaiba, where they entered an okonomiyaki shop in Aqua City. The shop was of Liquidizer’s choosing, not Mikawa’s. Mikawa ordered salted cabbage, minced cucumbers, oysters, and beef with green onions, then lightly clinked his mug of oolong tea against his former teacher’s. She had removed her long coat, revealing an ivory mohair knit sweater. With the first sip, he immediately thought the ice was of poor quality, but he was in no position to express this dissatisfaction. This was his first time dining out with Liquidizer. When Mikawa first became a Third Eye host, he’d been unable to handle the life of a cold-blooded murderer; his first kill had been on September 16 of last year. He had used his ability on two shady men who were wandering the streets on a drizzly evening and approached him to demand some money. At the time, he’d barely had enough power to cover someone’s face with ice, never mind encasing their entire body; so, on the news the next day, it was reported that the men had suffocated when their respiratory tracts became blocked up with ice, not that they’d frozen to death. There were no witnesses, but since the town was teeming with cameras, Mikawa was sure the police would come to arrest him at any moment. However, it wasn’t a police officer who rang the doorbell of his apartment two days later but the woman who now sat across from him, munching away on some minced cucumber. Mikawa had been infected with a Third Eye on September 7. It was September 18 when Liquidizer made contact with him. Apparently, the Third Eyes hadn’t dropped on Tokyo all at once but over a span of about five days at most, and yet, this meant that the Ruby Eye organization, the Syndicate, already existed only about ten days later. The SFD, a Jet Eye group, was apparently made in early October, so it seemed strange that this group had been formed more than half a month sooner than that. And Mikawa still didn’t know how Liquidizer had found him before the police. Mikawa—though he’d gone by a different name at the time—had been living on his own due to family circumstances since he finished middle school, though he’d only attended about half the time. Liquidizer was the person who gave him information about the Third Eyes and taught him how to live while diffusing his murderous impulses. On her recommendation, he moved out of his apartment, changed his name to Ryuu Mikawa, and occupied a room the Syndicate had prepared for him on September 22. From that point onward, his combat training using his abilities and firearms began, and on the evening of October 5, a night he would never forget, Mikawa participated in a Syndicate mission for the first time. This was also the first time that he met his archenemy at the SFD, Divider. “Thanks for waitiiing! Here are your oysters and beef with green onions!” The waitress’s energetic voice interrupted Mikawa’s reminiscing. She offered to make the okonomiyaki for them, but Liquidizer declined with a brilliant smile. As soon as the waitress left, looking a little disappointed, the smile vanished from Liquidizer’s face as she whispered to Mikawa. “Why would we want someone else to do the grilling for us when there’s a hot plate at the table for that very purpose?” “Y-yeah… I guess you’re right.” Mikawa nodded and picked up the bowl of beef with green onions he’d ordered. At that moment, he suddenly wondered how many years it had been since he last made the grilled pancake, but he couldn’t remember. He hadn’t even eaten out with anyone since elementary school. “Er, so, you mix this together, right?” Mikawa asked in a small voice as he stared at the heap of ingredients in the small metal bowl, and his former master nodded gravely. “That’s right.” “But the bowl is so small… Why don’t they use a bigger one?” “There’s a very good reason for its size, boy.” “What do you mean?” “It deliberately makes it harder to mix. If you stir the batter too much, excess gluten will be produced, and then what do you think happens?” “Erm……” Resisting the urge to ask whether a lesson was really necessary right now, Mikawa instead thought hard about the answer. He had studied the science of water’s phase transitions and molecular bonds out of necessity, but wheat proteins were outside Mikawa’s wheelhouse. But if he remembered correctly, kneading the dough for things like bread and udon was meant to produce gluten, so… “…It gets sticky?” Mikawa’s shot-in-the-dark response made Liquidizer’s smile widen a little. “Bonne réponse. And here is your reward.” Liquidizer used a spoon to scoop one oyster from her bowl and transfer it to Mikawa’s. “Th-thanks… Although I feel like that just made it a little harder to mix.” “But it’ll be all the tastier for it, no? …If too much gluten is produced in the batter, it won’t get fluffy when you cook it. This much should be plenty.” With that, Liquidizer stirred deftly with her spoon, revolving the heap of ingredients in the bowl just twice. Mikawa tried to imitate her movement, but the batter spilled over the edge of the bowl a bit. His instinct was to harden it with a concentrated breath, but he couldn’t go using his powers here, so he resisted the urge. “…You know, every time I go out for okonomiyaki, it gets me thinking.” Liquidizer spoke up abruptly as she gazed at her bowl. “Oh? About what?” “I can’t help but wonder… What would it taste like if I liquefied the contents of this bowl into a perfectly homogeneous liquid and cooked it?” “Wh…what?” “Of course, you’d lose the mouthfeel of the ingredients, but it would completely eradicate the gluten that’s inevitably produced no matter how carefully you stir, right? If you grilled that, I can only imagine that it would produce the ultimate fluffy okonomiyaki…” Liquidizer gazed intently at the bowl as she spoke, so Mikawa rapidly shook his head. “Y-you really shouldn’t use your ability in a place like this, master. What if one of the black ones was nearby?” “I know, I know. It’s just a thought.” With that rather petulant response, Liquidizer added some oil to the hot plate and effortlessly poured the contents of the bowl onto it. Steam rose from the plate with a sizzling sound. After expertly adjusting its shape and thickness with a spoon, Liquidizer made no further movement to touch the cooking okonomiyaki. “……Let’s try it at the safe house sometime, then.” Mikawa poured his own batter onto the hot plate and crinkled his face up in concentration as he spoke, and his former master looked up and grinned. “An excellent idea… Hey! Are you insane? Don’t push the batter around so much. The trick to grilling things like this is to touch it as little as possible while it cooks.” “…‘Insane’…?” My own father never even talked to me like that, Mikawa thought, but he kept that to himself as he put the spoon down in the empty bowl. After he heaved a little sigh and took another sip of his oolong tea, Mikawa finally remembered why they’d come here. “…So, master, what did you need to talk about that we couldn’t discuss on the phone?” “Oh yes…” Liquidizer looked up from the hot plate and quickly cast her eyes around the room. It was still early for dinner, but since it was New Year’s, the restaurant was already bustling with families at most of the tables. As long as they spoke at a low volume barely audible to their enhanced Ruby Eye hearing, it would be impossible for anyone at the nearby tables to listen in. Or so Mikawa thought. But nonetheless, Liquidizer slid over on the oblong sofa she was sitting on and patted the now-empty space. “Come over here, boy.” “Uh…a-all right.” Trying to argue with her over this would be a waste of time, so Mikawa meekly obeyed. As he sat down next to Liquidizer, he was struck by the fresh, woodsy scent of her perfume. It was then that Mikawa finally thought to wonder what his and Liquidizer’s relationship must look like to the people around them. They certainly couldn’t be mistaken for a couple, given the contrast between Liquidizer’s sharp, expensive-looking outfit and accessories and Mikawa’s secondhand zip-up coat worn over a faded T-shirt. Brother and sister, perhaps, or a boss and a part-time worker… At the very least, it was doubtful that anyone would suspect that they were murderers with supernatural powers. “You’re aware that the Keihinjima hideout in Oomisoka was attacked, correct?” Mikawa felt his skin go cold for a moment at the sudden whisper. “Y…yes. I heard while I was being treated.” He nodded, matching her low volume. “At first, all I was told was that it was a warehouse near Ooi Futo… I was terrified that something had happened to the cold-storage warehouse.” “My apologies. The hideout in question was being used to scout out Haneda Airport. That’s probably why they went after it so aggressively… But as of today, we finally have a damage report.” “They shot the place up with a machine gun from a helicopter, right? How many of our people died?” As Mikawa’s teacher, Liquidizer had repeatedly told him that a single handgun was more powerful than just about any attack-type Third Eye ability. So if a large-caliber machine gun was brought into the equation, there were probably very few Ruby Eyes who could counteract it, if any. Mikawa doubted that even he himself could survive a situation like that, unless there was heavy rain and he was able to make a preemptive strike. Liquidizer, whose power could liquefy even machine-gun bullets, might be the only one who would stand a chance. He only knew a few other Syndicate members’ faces besides Liquidizer’s, but Mikawa’s stomach still fluttered as he awaited a response. However… “Zero.” “What…?” “There were no casualties. The only physical losses were some equipment we’d been stockpiling for recon, a laptop used for communication, and a few beds and such. Some information may have been leaked from the PC, though…” “Is that all…? Judging by your face, I was sure someone had died.” Mikawa breathed a little sigh. Then Liquidizer’s right hand moved in a flash. With the silver spatula somehow already grasped in her hand, Liquidizer expertly flipped the two okonomiyaki, which were starting to give off a delicious smell. Mikawa wondered if her intense look had just been because she was watching for the perfect moment to flip the cakes, but her expression didn’t change when she put the spatula down.