Chapter 7

“…” At this, Yumiko gave Minoru an intense look as if she were trying to knock him out with her gaze in place of the stun baton. Then she let out a short breath. “…It’s kind of suspicious, but it’s a little bit interesting if it’s true. It really did look like the Biter couldn’t bite him even though he tried to…” “Let’s talk things over more peacefully on a new day. Welp, sorry for threatening ya, kid. So we’ll talk another day,” he said, lifting up his baseball cap slightly. But Minoru obstinately shook his head. “I don’t feel like talking to you two anymore…so I’ll leave Minowa to you.” Glancing at Tomomi, still in Yumiko’s arms with her eyes closed, Minoru started walking this time toward the south of the forest. When he was a few meters off, the two of them called out to him from behind. “I’m going to give you just one final warning. The Biter’s seen your face, too, not just the girl’s. The possibility of you being targeted isn’t zero.” “It’s the smell. Watch out for the smell of the Ruby Eye, kid.” After coming to a halt for a moment, Minoru started walking again as he answered, “I can protect myself.” Even so, as he left Akigase Park and headed for home, Minoru couldn’t help checking his surroundings many times. Just wondering if that man was lurking on the dim paths or behind cars parked on the road made Minoru’s breathing grow shallow. The feeling of his neck between enormous teeth in that storage shed still clung to his skin. But if he believed DD’s final words, Ruby Eyes including the shark man could be distinguished by smell. Now that he mentioned it, Minoru had originally approached the shed because he was concerned about that strange, foul smell that seemed to belong to a huge beast. That definitely had to be the smell of a Ruby. It was a smell bad enough that one would have to notice it if it was within ten meters—no, thirty meters. So at the very least, he wouldn’t be attacked by something jumping out of the shadows suddenly. But before that— He just couldn’t believe that everything, including nearly being killed by a strangely formed monster, wasn’t some massive piece of fiction. The Third Eyes were mysterious orbs that came from space. The people they took as hosts started to exhibit abilities that couldn’t be explained by known science. Ruby Eyes, who have red orbs living in them, were given not only an ability but also the desire to kill people. Jet Eyes, who have black orbs living within them, were trying to fend off the murderous Rubies. All of that was hard enough to believe, but what was even more mysterious was why such huge events weren’t known to the public at all. If Ruby Eyes attacked people, then shouldn’t everything be brought out in the open to draw widespread public attention? If Minoru hadn’t interrupted that twisted man the Biter, there was no doubt that he would’ve killed Tomomi Minowa. It seemed like Yumiko and DD had been tracking him, but they probably would’ve been a few minutes too late to rescue Tomomi unharmed. That’s exactly why Minoru couldn’t agree with the fact that their organization was trying to deal with this in secret. If there were already so many victims, they should mobilize the police or the military and tackle this on a large scale, not coerce Minoru alone into working with them. As Minoru thought these things with just a bit of resentment, he bit his lip slightly. Why was he unable to decide he didn’t care like he usually would have? Was it because Yumiko’s reproach was sticking with him more than he realized? That wasn’t like him at all. The more he got angry and went off like this, the stronger and larger his painful memories would become. That was all. I’m going to forget. All of it. If the Jet Eyes want to fight the Ruby Eyes in secret, that’s fine. It’s not something I need to know. Murmuring this on the inside, he glanced at the watch on his left wrist. The sky was completely dark, but it wasn’t even seven o’clock yet. When he got away from the Arakawa River and entered residential streets, he started to see teenagers on their way home from club meetings and salarymen carrying convenience store bags. The memory of having grappled with a fearsome monster with his life on the line just twenty or thirty minutes ago was gradually becoming surreal. I’m going to forget, Minoru muttered to himself again, pedaling his bike harder. 6 It was so cold that the joints in his extremities creaked. His whole face hurt as if it were scorched. Hunger twisted his insides. But with the energy of his boiling anger, Takaesu was able to silence those sensations. Nearly six hours had already gone by since he’d slipped into an abandoned building in the process of being demolished about two kilometers away from the park. After midnight passed, the date would change to Saturday, December 7, and there shouldn’t be construction either that day or the next. If he let his body rest here for two days, he should recover at least enough to be able to move again. On the first floor of the large abandoned building, which seemed to have been a warehouse originally, a frigid wind was blowing from all sides and the bare concrete floor was cold as ice. In place of a bed, he wrapped himself in dirty blue sheeting, nursing a bottle of juice that he had bought from a vending machine during his getaway. Usually he wouldn’t drink soft drinks with high fructose corn syrup even if someone asked him to, but he had no choice but to depend on one now. He couldn’t even go into a convenience store with his burned-up face, and after discovering that he was being pursued by that strange and dangerous bunch, he needed to lay low in this hiding place until he was able to operate as usual. He had to sleep and rest his body just a little bit. That’s what he thought, but when he made his thoughts a blank, a flame of rage would instantly start to flare up. “…Quiet now… Calm down…,” he whispered without moving his mouth. That’s when he decided to give up on sleep and at least do some quiet thinking. His long-awaited feast of bones had first been interrupted by the boy with the transparent shell. Then he had been attacked by the girl who could teleport. Although he had somehow managed to bite the girl’s stun baton in half, he had been unable to give either of them even a scratch and was forced to flee like some failure. In that situation, it was the best choice. Takaesu’s reasoning judged that to be true even now, but on an emotional level, it was impossible to accept. He had obtained the power of the strongest hunter, the shark. Wasn’t he the chosen one? Wasn’t he a proud predator who could bite through anything? No, it wasn’t as if I made some pitiful escape, not in the least. There were others apart from Takaesu who possessed the eye. The abilities bestowed by the eye varied widely. And there were people hunting those who possessed the eye, probably as an organization. Takaesu had simply given himself some distance for a moment to investigate all of this new information and rethink his plans. Like a man-eating shark slowly circling around its pitiful prey. Putting aside the boy, who seemed to be an acquaintance of the young girl he had so disappointingly missed out on biting, the teleporting girl had appeared to know from the start that Takaesu possessed the eye when she attacked him. But he didn’t understand how she had discovered where he was. If she had been tailing him the whole time, she should have attacked before he dragged the girl into the storage shed. And if she could use the power of the eye to track him, she likely would have appeared in this building a number of hours ago. If the tracking abilities of the girl or the girl’s companions were limited, they should be far away by now. But with his face like this, it would be difficult for Takaesu to even reach the hotel parking lot where he had his Maserati, let alone return to the hotel room he was renting in the new city center. If he only had the inflamed burns around his mouth, he probably could have covered them with a face mask or something. But his transformed shark’s jaws wouldn’t go back to normal, possibly because he’d taken intense electric shocks to the mouth. The fact that he’d been able to make it to this abandoned building without being questioned by passersby was already miraculously good luck. The reason he’d judged the teleporting girl to be a member of some kind of organization really came down to the effectiveness of that stun baton. The stun guns sold in military magazine advertisements and on the Internet often had taglines that jumped out at one about superhigh voltage products with tens of thousands of volts. They seemed to be extremely powerful, but in truth, what was dangerous for the human body was not voltage, but current—amperes. In stun guns that used transformers to increase battery voltage, the current strength fell proportionately to below one ampere. Although by appearances they sent bright sparks flying, they almost never caused serious damage to the body. But the stun baton that girl carried probably used a dedicated high-capacity battery, creating terrible burns in Takaesu’s mouth with high-ampere electricity. Naturally, something like that wasn’t openly sold in Japan. The only options were to import it from abroad or to buy something modified through illegal channels. No matter how one looked at it, it wasn’t something a simple high school girl could get her hands on just like that. The girl’s teleportation ability that allowed her to appear just when you thought she had disappeared was certainly notable, but it was actually that weapon that required attention. And that was because, put simply, there was some sort of organization backing the girl. In all likelihood, it was an extremely dangerous organization with multiple members who possessed the eye, and their goal was to eliminate others who had it, too. That’s right—dangerous. Even if Takaesu were surrounded by ten professional fighters it wouldn’t be much of a problem, but he couldn’t say the same for a group of people who possessed the eye. In reality, that girl had continued to narrowly escape his attacks—which were so fast that an average person wouldn’t be able to respond to them—and dealt Takaesu a severe blow. On top of having her physical abilities increased because of the eye, there was no doubt that she had also received some sort of combat training. If there had been just one more opponent like that, he probably would’ve been completely unable to escape. What would he do? What should he do? First, he had to get his wounds healed as quickly as possible and get away from this city. Then he would gather information. If possible, he would capture that girl or another member of her organization and get them to cough up as much information as they knew. After that, he would hunt them one by one. No matter how much time it took, he would continue to kill them until he alone was the chosen one. But before that… Momentarily forgetting the pain of his burns, Takaesu ground his teeth, which were still pointed like a tiger shark’s. Before that, just the boy— The boy, who had been the first to interrupt his meal, somehow seemed to be unrelated to the girl’s organization. The boy had been shocked when he looked at Takaesu’s transformed face, and he had come out with these innocent lines like, “Why would you kill someone?” Surely, Takaesu thought, he would be able to find at least one chance to attack the boy. He understood that the longer he stayed in the city the greater the danger became, but he just knew he wouldn’t be able to let the boy go. That was because that boy with his shell was the only one who could oppose Takaesu’s evolution head-on. The boy’s offensive power was far below that of the teleporting girl. Taking one punch had been Takaesu’s mistake, but the boy’s movements themselves were that of an amateur. He could easily avoid them if he was careful. But the problem was his defensive power—the terrible hardness of that invisible shell. “…Grr…” Just remembering it drew a growl like that of a wild beast from his transformed mouth. The unbelievable hardness that had come across when Takaesu had tried to bite the boy’s neck through the shell remained deep in the roots of his teeth even now. It wasn’t at all like the feeling he got in his mouth when he bit something. No matter what the substance, things should at least bend when Takaesu bit them in his tiger-shark mode. But the boy’s armor didn’t communicate even a micron of sensation to his transformed senses. Three months ago, when the red eye had descended from the sky to slip into his lower jaw, Takaesu had finally put aside his dentures as real teeth grew in. He had been wild with joy. He crushed a tankard full of ice. He devoured hard salami. He bit through as many rock-solid biscotti as he wanted. The more hard things he ate, the stronger his new teeth became. When he became able to eat a T-bone steak, bones and all, Takaesu became aware of the privilege bestowed upon him. And that was to bite. To swim elegantly through the city at night hunting his prey like a superior being, like a predator, and savor delicious bones to his heart’s content. That was why he had to bite the boy. It made no difference that he possessed the eye. There couldn’t be any humans who Takaesu wasn’t able to bite. Next time, he would bite through that infuriating shell. To do that, he had to heal as soon as possible. He was a shark. He would be a shark. For fish, sharks boasted an extraordinary ability to survive. They had a strong resistance to disease, and they could recover even from deep wounds that would kill other fish right off the bat. Their life spans were long; one male great white shark was identified as being more than seventy years old. Burns like these would be nothing to a shark. Picturing himself lurking in the shadows of stones on the seafloor, Takaesu continued to concentrate on enduring the cold and the pain. There was no way he would be getting a good night’s sleep. Minoru was a light sleeper in the first place. That was because he had a habit of forcing himself awake if what he was dreaming took on even the slightest nightmarish cast. He knew his efforts were pointless. Because the easiest state to dream in was when your body was asleep and your brain was awake—so-called REM sleep—he should sleep deeply if he wanted to avoid dreaming. If he continued sleeping lightly, that alone would raise his chances of straying into a nightmare. Even knowing this, dreams were something he couldn’t control himself. With a sigh, Minoru groped around for the alarm clock on his headboard and got ahold of it, bringing it in front of him. It was one o’clock in the morning. Normally, he’d already be falling asleep at this time. Tomorrow—no, today—was Saturday, but Minoru’s high school had Saturday school every other week. Unfortunately, he would have to go to class today. Four hours later, he would need to wake up and do his morning run. He did feel like it would be okay to take the day off just for today, since he had experienced all those things, but messing up his daily routine was its own sort of annoyance. Putting the clock back, he burrowed into his warm blankets up to his head. He felt just a bit drowsy when he closed his eyelids, but the moment he was about to fall right to sleep, he got the feeling he had heard the faint howl of a beast. His eyes shot open. He had actually gotten out of bed, walked to the window, and smelled the outside air from the gap in the slightly opened window frame more than once or twice. He told himself over and over that there was no way the Biter knew where this house was, but doubts clung to him persistently—was that shark man lurking in the darkness on the street in front of Minoru, staring up at the window of his room? The existence of that man probably isn’t the only thing scaring me, he thought as he curled up in a little ball on his side. The events of last night were a sign that the peaceful life he had so desperately protected since coming to this city was going to crumble and fall. That was why he felt so uneasy. The collapse had probably been happening since the day that orb…the Third Eye slipped into his body. But Minoru had kept averting his eyes from reality and denying it until today. With a single phrase, “It doesn’t matter,” he had disregarded the abnormal improvement in his running time and even the mysterious phenomenon that had kept him from getting so much as a scratch when he was hit by the bike. But that girl Yumiko’s words had mercilessly smashed Minoru’s world, and it was starting to transform so much that it would never be able to go back to the way it had been. Is this power a weapon for fighting the Ruby Eyes who attack and kill people…? Are there people being targeted by monsters like that shark man at this very moment, and do I have a duty to protect them…? In bed, he gave his head a slight shake and tried to gloss over everything with a wry smile, but his tense mouth wouldn’t move. He was genuinely glad that Tomomi Minowa was safe after having been attacked by the Biter, or at least he thought he was. If his power had helped save her, that should make him happy. But ultimately, that feeling was just a fringe benefit. It came along with selfish relief that he had avoided seeing her ruthlessly murdered right before his eyes and that things ended without him creating unpleasant thoughts. When all was said and done, it was the same as when he had given the five-yen coin to the boy who was in trouble at the convenience store. If Tomomi had been a stranger whose name and face he didn’t know, even if she had been attacked and killed by the Biter without Minoru’s knowledge, he probably would’ve just thought that it was scary and felt bad for her. That’s right… I just need to protect the small world around me. Whoever Yumiko, DD, and the organization they belonged to wanted to fight, wherever they wanted to do it, and whoever they wanted to protect, it had nothing to do with him. They could just hurry up and catch the Biter, then kill him or give him the surgery. I’ve had enough. He’d had enough of people close to him dying, too. And of those gut-wrenching memories repeating and repeating. He’d had enough of everything. Suddenly, Minoru shot up in bed. “Not here. I’m not here. I’m not anywhere,” he cried in a low voice as if casting a spell. The muddy waters of his nearly overflowing memories changed course at the last second, plunging back down to the depths of his consciousness. It was dangerous for him to question himself in the dark any more than he already had. He would relive that night eight years ago, and it would take away his power to go on living. He couldn’t make another suicide attempt. For Norie—and for Wakaba. When he turned around and looked at the hand of the dimly lit clock, it had only advanced fifteen minutes. School was a half day, and he could probably make it through even if he stayed up all night. As far as his running—he would make it five kilometers. Giving up on sleep for the night, Minoru turned on his bedside reading light and pulled out at random one of the paperbacks he kept piled on his headboard. When he scratched gently around his mouth with his right hand, pieces of discolored skin flaked off. The pain from his burns had lessened quite a bit, but in its place he was now tormented by an intense itchiness. The desire to dig his nails in and scratch all over his face as hard as he could was unbearable. But this itchiness was proof that his wounds were healing. The burning pain he had felt in his joints and muscles every time he moved was now just a stinging stiffness. Takaesu could feel the eye buried in his lower jaw pulsing violently, attempting to restore the damaged areas with all its strength. If his recovery continued to progress like this, his burns would probably no longer stand out within a day. “…I’m counting on you, compagno,” Takaesu whispered in a hoarse voice, flopping down on the concrete floor. The price of this drastic metabolic activity was that his body kept expending massive amounts of energy. When he tried touching his stomach through his training wear, his fat, which had never been ample, seemed to have been almost completely stripped away. He had long ago passed the stage of hunger; he was now periodically struck by the sensation of an iron vise squeezing his gut. He had drunk the whole bottle of juice a while ago. He’d put an energy bar in his tool kit pack… The moment he thought this, he ended up imagining the flavor of chocolate and his gut ached powerfully and noticeably. When he gazed at the Panerai watch on his left wrist, it was barely two o’clock in the morning. Dawn was far away, and even if the sun did come up, his face still wasn’t healed enough for him to buy anything. Now, he felt like he could eat a mountain of overboiled fettuccine from a platter. Speaking of that, his article profiling that restaurant needed to be sent out by Monday. He’d left his computer in his hotel room, so he obviously wouldn’t be able to write the draft. He should probably at least send an e-mail to the editing department, but he had removed the battery from the smartphone in his pack so he wouldn’t be tracked using the signal. If he had the chance, he’d use a pay phone to inform them that the draft would be late… “…How ridiculous,” he murmured, giving a throaty laugh. He could discard his position as a gourmet food critic anytime. After all, even that was one of the curses that woman had placed on him. And still he was hungry. He’d drunk all of the juice, but there could still be a fraction of a drop left at the bottom of the bottle. Taking just his right hand out of the blue sheeting wrapped around his body, he searched for the bottle that should have been rolling around nearby. Then his fingertips brushed against something small. He grabbed it and brought it in front of him. It was a metal hexagonal nut with a diameter of about two centimeters. After he brushed away the dust with his fingers, it gave off a dim glow in the darkness. Had it not rusted because it was stainless steel? After gazing at it vacantly for a bit, he leisurely put it in his mouth. He rolled the hard, cold, metallic-tasting lump around on top of his tongue. …Sweet? There was no reason it should be. But he definitely picked up on a faint sweetness inside his mouth. A somehow nostalgic sweetness, yet one that made him feel guilty. Roll, roll. Roll, roll. He absorbed himself in licking it, putting it lightly between his teeth on occasion. That’s right… This was the sweetness of hard candy. The flavor of a big, round black sugar candy. Hidden in the closet, he had licked intently at the piece of black sugar candy that someone had given him. He had to hurry and finish licking it before he was discovered. But it would be such a waste to just bite it. Experiencing happiness and anxiety, satisfaction and guilt all at the same time, he rolled and rolled the hard candy around his mouth. Suddenly, the closet door was ripped open. What are you eating?! A shrill, hysterical voice. That woman’s voice. She dragged him out of his hiding spot and forced open his mouth. She pulled the black sugar candy, wet with saliva, out of his mouth with fingers that reeked of makeup. This! This is what you’re eating?! It’s just a clump of sugar! Eating sugar will melt your teeth! Eating sugar will melt your teeth. The phrase he’d heard long ago repeated like a curse. Curling up like an infant without realizing it, Takaesu plunged into a pool of memories. Hikaru Takaesu’s mother was a famous food educator and critic. She was the author of many published books about nutritional education, and she had frequent exposure in all types of media. On television, she seemed just like the ideal mother: pretty and kind. But Hikaru had almost no memories of being praised by his mother. Do this. Don’t do that. Do this. Don’t do that. Those were all the words he got from his mother. Hikaru had probably been five years old when his parents divorced. He remembered his father as being kind. He was a salaryman at a trading company, and the only thing he could have called a hobby was playing pachinko on his days off. He would let Hikaru eat the chocolate and snack foods he won, telling him to keep it a secret from his mother. Even on the day he moved out, Hikaru’s father gave him a ton of candy. Hikaru tucked it away with care in a secret box hidden at the back of the closet in his room. Hikaru, his mother, and the maid were then the only ones living in that big house in Motoazabu. It was around that time that Hikaru’s mother started to get hysterical when she reprimanded him. At the same time that he started elementary school, he was forced to go to cram school to prepare for middle school entrance exams. Before long, swimming school and English conversation school were added to the list. He had absolutely no time for play, and when he said he wanted a gaming system for his seventh birthday, his enraged mother pinched his ear so hard he thought it would tear off. He was a good student but an outsider in class; he didn’t have a single friend. His mother was crazy about more than just education. She forced the maid to create menus based on her own nutritional theories and strictly forbade eating anything else. His mother’s pet theory was that the foundation of child rearing was to get calcium to kids before anything else for healthy teeth and healthy bones; their dining table was jam-packed with small fish and seaweed. Sweet things were completely banned, and he had to be sure to brush his teeth within ten minutes of eating. She even made him take a toothbrush set when he went to school. When she had discovered him secretly sucking on the candy, she had punished him harder than when he had wanted the gaming system. And why did his mother make him take such good care of his teeth? That was so she could put Hikaru’s picture in her books and magazine articles. Look how properly she was raising her child. Look how wonderful her theories were. She used Hikaru as material to show off like that. Funnily enough, young Hikaru with his shining snow-white teeth became popular with housewives, and he was even brought in to do a toothpaste commercial when he was eight years old. Soon, his mother had gone so far as to supplement her claims with the theory that chewing strength nurtures the brain, and even more reforms were made to their diet. For rice, they ate brown rice or rice with grains mixed in. They had small fish that could be eaten with the bones still in them. Their vegetables were all hard stalks. Even snacks were limited to salted beans, dried kelp, and dried sardines. Every time he ate something, his mother would tell him to chew it a hundred times. Chew it up well, Hii. Chew. Chew. Chew more. If you spit it out, you’ll get a pinch. There now, chew. Chew. Chew. Chew. Hii…you have to work hard and eat enough for her, too. So chew more, chew. Chew, chew, chew, chew. Even when he went into the higher grades of elementary school, Hikaru’s grades put him at the top of the class, and as usual, he didn’t have a single cavity. Hikaru became aware of a certain habit around the end of summer break in the sixth grade: grinding his teeth. Without noticing, he had gotten into the habit of rubbing his teeth together hard whether he was in class, studying at home, or going to and from school. Even when he tried to stop, he just couldn’t do it. His jaw just tensed up on its own, especially when he was thinking of his mother, and his teeth made a grinding sound. It was no big deal, or so he thought. But Hikaru didn’t know. He didn’t know that excessive tooth grinding was a full-fledged disease: attrition. A disease in which the enamel is abnormally worn away due to continual grinding of the teeth. He wore down his permanent teeth, which had just grown in then, enough to expose the dentin. Hikaru became unable to properly brush his teeth because it was too painful. He skipped brushing his teeth at school and fooled his mom by only pretending to brush at home. Then bacteria set in immediately in his weakened teeth. Cavities sprung up all over the place simultaneously and progressed with incredible strength. But he couldn’t even discuss it with his mother, let alone go to the dentist. His body went cold with fear just imagining…how harsh the reprimands and punishments would be if she knew he had several cavities. He had them stop the photo shoots for magazines and books for a while, saying that he wanted to focus on studying for his middle school entrance exams. But the truth was, studying was already out of the question because of the pain. Even when he sat down at his desk he was only desperately enduring the excruciating pain, and the days passed by with him unable to get enough sleep. Along with his teeth, all the words and formulas jammed into his head were dissolved by the Streptococcus mutans bacteria and disappeared altogether. The state of his second-semester finals was wretched. There was no way he could show his mother the answer sheets that had been given back to him. Hikaru hid them in a secret box in the closet. The excuse that the grading was running late didn’t hold up for even three days. His suspicious mother did a thorough search of Hikaru’s room right in front of him, discovering an ancient-looking rice cracker tin at the back of the closet. Raging at Hikaru, who was wailing for her not to open it, his mother pulled off the lid and found the bundle of answer sheets marked with grades that were far below average. His mother’s face went pale and her hands trembled. Then her gaze turned to the bottom of the box. There were the lovingly stored packages of chocolate, gum, and black sugar candy Hikaru’s dad had given him before moving out. His mother’s features changed. Her eyes quickly narrowed, her canine teeth were bared, and her hair even seemed to stand on end. There was the face of a demon. Pulling Hikaru down to the floor, his mother opened his mouth aggressively. The moment she saw Hikaru’s teeth, decayed with attrition and cavities, a scream burst from his mother’s throat that was difficult to believe came from a human being. That deep, rumbling, lingering voice sounded like the roar of a beast. His mother ran from the room and returned immediately. Hikaru’s mouth was frozen open from fear. His mother clamped down on his front tooth with the pair of pliers she held in her right hand and screamed, Eating sugar will melt your teeth! I told yooooou!! Takaesu leaped up, a muffled sound slipping out of him. For a moment, he didn’t know where he was. After hurriedly looking around in the total darkness in all directions, he remembered the circumstances that had led him to sneak into the abandoned building. Letting out a long, thin breath, he pulled the blue sheeting covering his body up to his mouth. It had been quite a few years since he dreamed of that woman. He wiped away the greasy sweat that was flowing down his forehead like a waterfall with the sleeve of his training wear. Sticking a finger into his mouth, he checked to make sure his teeth were where they should be. Everything was fine. That woman couldn’t do anything anymore. That was because, six years ago on the day he had graduated from college, he had taught her a lesson. Taught her how much she was hated by her own son. Taking over all of his mother’s name recognition and status, Takaesu made his debut as a gourmet food critic, keeping the fact that the majority of his teeth were fake a secret. There was lingering damage in his alveolar ridge because a layperson had roughly pulled out his teeth while he was still growing, so rather than get implants, he had no choice but to use partial dentures. He had always been afraid it would be discovered someday that he was a food critic with dentures who couldn’t chew hard things, but that life ended three months ago. The day that eye given to him by the heavens had settled in his flesh, he put aside his dentures for the new real teeth that were growing in. …That’s right. He couldn’t bite his mother anymore, but there was still a person he should bite: the dentist who treated a child that had obviously been abused and accepted a pile of money to keep it quiet. When he got back to Tokyo, he would pay a visit to that dentist, who was now the only person who knew that Takaesu had dentures. He would have her examine the teeth that had grown in and fully enjoy the shock on her face before he captured her. He would tie her up on the exam table, pull her teeth out one by one, and chew them up with a crunch as if they were ramune candy. There was no need for him to pay an extra fee to have maintenance done on his mouth in an exam room during the middle of the night anymore. But before that, there was the boy with the shell. During his brief slumber, the healing of the burns had progressed quite a bit. He didn’t feel much hunger, either. Just as if nutrients had seeped out of the stainless steel nut in his mouth. Roll, roll. After rolling the nut around inside his mouth a bit— Grind, grind. Crunch, crunch. Takaesu bit through the lump of metal and swallowed it. 7 The weekend passed by anticlimactically without a thing happening. Whether Minoru was doing his run early on Saturday morning, going to and from school, or going shopping with Norie on Sunday, the Biter didn’t show himself and Yumiko and DD didn’t make contact with him again. In just two days, the events at Akigase Park had rapidly lost their sense of reality. On Monday morning when he and Norie left the house together, it was starting to feel like everything had been a dream. The presence of the orb settled deep in his chest—the black Third Eye—was the only thing that didn’t disappear, but now even that seemed like a part of everyday life. At an intersection along the way he said good-bye to Norie, who worked at the Saitama prefectural office near Urawa Station, then sped up on his bike a bit. Even when he pulled his face out from under his scarf a little and inhaled the cold air through his nose, he couldn’t pick up on that unique beastly smell at all. But there was still just one thing—no, there were just two things that he couldn’t say weren’t bothering him, like little thorns in his side. The first was what DD had called out to him three days ago when Minoru had started to leave the park. Watch out for the smell of the Ruby Eye, kid. Even without being told, he went on checking for the smell in the air in that way. But he couldn’t get past the feeling that Yumiko and DD had said something important within the conversation about the smell of the Ruby Eye. He just couldn’t remember it. Maybe it was a result of Minoru’s conscious effort to keep the memories of those events at a distance. And the second thing was Tomomi Minowa, who they’d taken away to the hospital. He hadn’t seen her at school on Saturday. She shouldn’t have any major injuries, so if she was still being treated, was it for a mental issue? That wasn’t unreasonable, either; she had seen the terrifying face of the shark man up close. It would be good if she could somehow recover and come to school today, though. He stopped his bike at the signal to cross the Shin-Omiya bypass and let out a sigh. At least the incident itself was over. Knowing that he owed the terrible burns he had taken to that mysterious organization, the Biter had no reason to hang around this area for days. He had probably fled somewhere far away a long time ago and was being followed by Yumiko and all them. The signal turned green, and as he pumped the pedals of his bike hard, he whispered those words deep inside himself for the umpteenth time. It’s over, all of it. When morning classes ended and the bell chimed for lunch break, the classroom was immediately filled with clamor and the smells of boxed lunches. Minoru cut across it all smoothly and went out into the hall. Usually he would go straight and head for the cafeteria, but today he came to a halt and looked down the hallway on the right. Minoru’s class, sophomore Class One, was on the eastern end of the school building on the third floor. At the far-off western end was Class Eight—Tomomi Minowa’s class. Minoru had no idea what had happened to her after DD and Yumiko had taken her off to the hospital. If he knew her phone number, he could have at least worried about whether to send her a text, but they had never exchanged phone numbers or anything. He should be able to find out if she had come to school if he went directly to her classroom, but no excuse materialized for why he would be peeking into Class Eight at the end of the hall as he passed by. It also seemed like there would be trouble if the track team guys saw him or something. Disappointed with himself for thinking these things even for a moment, Minoru started walking not down the stairs, but toward the hall. Even if they saw him, he could be finished with all this if they called him out again. Next time, though, he’d have to be sure not to activate the shell the moment he got hit. With his shoulders drawn in, Minoru went against the tide of students headed for the cafeteria all the way to the other end of the hall. He furtively peeked into Class Eight through the classroom door that had been left open. He ran his gaze over the room quickly, but Tomomi Minowa wasn’t there after all. Was she absent from school today, too, or had she already gone to the cafeteria or the locker room? As he was turning these thoughts over in his mind near the door, he heard a low voice from behind him. “Hey.” Reflexively sucking in a breath, he wheeled around. Standing there was the shark man—no, it was one of the three guys who had summoned him to the back of the dojo. The sophomore from the track team who had seen Minoru and Tomomi talking. If he remembered correctly, they had called the guy Ogucchi. The only impression Minoru had of the guy from five days earlier was him chuckling in front of the upperclassmen, but now his eyes were sharply narrowed beneath his short hair and his mouth was twisted with displeasure. “What business do you have in our class, Utsugi?” he asked in a deep voice. The question made Minoru want to murmur, “Nothing,” and slip away, but he stood his ground, slowly letting out the air in his lungs. “Could we talk over there?” he suggested, looking toward the corner of the hallway. Although the track team member’s brow furrowed, creating vertical wrinkles between his eyes, he nodded. They moved in front of a window at the western end of the hallway and faced each other again. Come to think of it, I only know this guy’s nickname, Minoru thought. “Sorry, I don’t know your name,” he said as he made eye contact with the guy, who was about the same height as him. “…Oguchi,” he murmured. Giving the guy a slight nod, Minoru got right to the point with no preamble. “I was wondering if Minowa is at school today.” “…What’s it to you?” Oguchi said, his voice going lower still. Taking in Oguchi’s piercing gaze, Minoru had a belated realization. This guy liked Tomomi Minowa. That’s why he was wary of Minoru talking to Tomomi. Then how about me? he wondered momentarily. Since moving to this town, he had never felt interested in a particular girl or wanted to become close with one. He had gone on avoiding closing the distance between him and other people, not just girls. That was because he was always afraid that he would end up with bitter memories, painful memories, memories he would want to forget. Oguchi had surely been overtaken by dark emotions the moment he saw Minoru talking to Tomomi. That’s why he had told the upperclassmen and encouraged them to call Minoru out. But there was no doubt that he had regretted his actions afterward. After all, when he had seen Minoru laid out on the ground after being hit, Oguchi’s face had been completely contorted. And he was making the same face now as well. Gathering what little courage he had, Minoru answered, “…Because Minowa’s my friend,” without turning his eyes away. The reason he hadn’t uttered one of his usual lines—“it’s nothing,” “it’s fine”—was because a faint voice replaying inside his ear had returned. You have a duty to go on fighting. It was the voice of Yumiko, who he would probably never see again. He didn’t think that fighting the Ruby Eyes as a Jet Eye was something he could do. But Minoru felt like Yumiko’s words called into question his way of living itself—intent on always averting his eyes from everything these past eight years, saying that things didn’t matter or that they had nothing to do with him. Minoru had talked to Tomomi Minowa a bunch of times, saved her from the Biter, and told her that everything was okay now. After all that with Tomomi, it would be wrong to discard her, saying she didn’t matter. And the same thing probably applied to Oguchi, who was right in front of him. Oguchi heard Minoru’s response, and his eyes widened for a moment and his mouth went completely tense. Seeing his bony, athletic right shoulder twitch, Minoru wondered if he wanted to hit him. But Oguchi relaxed his body after a few seconds and murmured, “…Minowa’s gone today, too. She got hurt training on her own last week, and I guess she’s been in the hospital for a few days.” “…” After a brief silence, Minoru nodded and said, “Okay.” Yumiko and DD had probably taken Tomomi to the hospital, called her family there, and given them that explanation about the deviant and all that. Consequently, people had been told by the school that she was injured during independent training. Minoru knew that Tomomi wasn’t physically injured, but of course he couldn’t go and tell that to Oguchi. Minoru dropped his head and said, “Thanks. Well, I’ll go.” When he had turned in the other direction, he heard a tiny voice. “Utsugi. You…and Minowa…?” After considering this question with no verb, Minoru answered truthfully, “It’s not like that. But we’re friends, so I was worried.” “Huh. Well, see you,” Oguchi muttered, going into the classroom through the nearby door. As he set off for the cafeteria, Minoru suddenly wondered if he should go see Tomomi in the hospital. But he immediately realized he didn’t have that right. Since he had come late, the popular food items were sold out across the board. He wolfed down a Chinese-style rice bowl, which was unpopular but not something he personally disliked. The warning bell rang right as he was going back to the classroom. Since Tomomi Minowa had been on his mind all morning, he hadn’t exactly been paying attention to his classes, so he wanted to do his best in the afternoon. But his thoughts from the conversation with Oguchi kept resurfacing in fragments and disturbing his concentration. The reason he couldn’t get his mind off of Tomomi Minowa wasn’t because he had some affection for her as a member of the opposite sex. It was because while she was absent from school, he couldn’t yet say that his life was completely back to normal. It wasn’t as if he wanted to get closer with Minowa than he was now once she was discharged from the hospital. He just wanted her to get better and run as hard as she used to. She wasn’t injured, so she should definitely be back to school tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. He didn’t plan on talking to her, but this anxiety he was feeling should disappear if he spotted her in her workout clothes on the way to and from school or on school grounds. Minoru made it through fifth and sixth periods telling himself this. Quickly changing his shoes—there were no notes stuck in his shoe locker—he left the school building. As he headed toward the bike parking lot, he breathed in slowly through his nose. The only smells he could pick up on were the scent of dust that was unique to school and the odor of exhaust from cars. The book he had neglected to return to the city library on Friday was still in his bag. After wondering whether he should head straight home at a time like this, he dispelled the thought; there was no longer a reason to call it “a time like this.” When Minoru arrived at the large library near city hall and stepped into the heated building, the first thing he did was smell the air. Of course, there was nothing abnormal about it. He shrugged, and after dropping his book off at the return counter, he had a sudden realization and made his way to the computer lab. Minoru slid into the booth at the very end and grabbed the mouse. He started up the browser and entered “Third Eye” into the search bar at the top of the page. He did have a notebook computer in his room, but he felt a bit hesitant about searching at home for the many words he had heard from Yumiko and DD. He never expected it to happen, but he had the feeling that it wasn’t completely impossible for their organization to monitor even the Internet and to locate Minoru’s house based on search keywords. Of course, there were surveillance cameras in the library, too, but it was probably better than his house… He mulled these things over as he looked at the search results. He had expected this, but the hits he got were full of similarly named company websites and sites related to good luck charms and fortune-telling. He typed in “Ruby” and “Jet” as additional search terms, but the search results didn’t change much. Adding words like “eye,” “powers,” and “murder,” he started to check the sites displayed from the top down, but as expected he didn’t find even one site that seemed to contain relevant information. After dozens of searches, the only information he’d gained that could be called beneficial was about the jet gemstone that DD had mentioned. It was not a mineral, but a gemstone made of fossilized plant matter, and it was spelled the same as the jet in jet engine. If they’d wanted a black gemstone, they could have gone with onyx or morion. As he thought this, he erased the browser’s search history, took a wet wipe from his bag, and wiped down the mouse and keyboard. Of course, he was doing this to get rid of fingerprints, not for the benefit of the person who used it after him. He walked away from the booth feeling embarrassed by his actions and moved to the magazine reading section. Scanning the rack, he pulled out a monthly science magazine that caught his interest with the words on the cover: SPN Signal Special Edition. He took a seat on the nearby couch and opened the magazine, but the content of the articles just wasn’t sinking in. Whatever he did, his thoughts kept drifting back to the abnormal things he had experienced in Akigase Park. The two types of Third Eyes, Rubies and Jets, had come down from space three months ago, invaded the bodies of dozens or maybe hundreds of people, and given those people supernatural powers. On top of that, the humans who had been taken as hosts by red orbs, the Ruby Eyes, were even given the urge to kill and began to attack people like the Biter had. That’s why those who had the power to oppose them, the Jet Eyes, were fighting the Ruby Eyes. That’s what Yumiko, the girl in the black blazer, had said. It was a ridiculous story, but since Minoru himself had received the invisible shell ability, he couldn’t doubt it. Still, there was some part of it that didn’t make sense to him. After thinking a bit, he realized what it was. The Ruby Eyes had been given power and homicidal impulses. The Jet Eyes had only been given power. It was that imbalance. What if the homicidal impulse that drove the Ruby Eyes was something similar to hypnotism or brainwashing? Then could they really say that Jet Eyes like Minoru and Yumiko weren’t experiencing some sort of mental interference? My attitude today in front of Oguchi from the track team was really unlike me. Instead of speaking evasively and running away, I faced him, looked him in the eye, and said the things I thought I should say. And it didn’t even come to mind that I’d be increasing the memories I couldn’t get rid of if I did something like that. What if that was the result of mental interference…? Nothing about the real me has changed, but could I be getting more aggressive because of the Jet Eye…? He was putting too much pressure on the magazine he held in his hands, making a little crease in the page. The sound of it brought him back to himself and he hurriedly relaxed his hands. I’m overthinking this. Everything I do is my own choice. That’s what he told himself, but for a while he couldn’t bring himself to stand up. He gazed blankly at the feature story on the page he had open. Six months ago, there had been an uproar about whether the faint signal captured by the telescope on the moon was a message from an extraterrestrial civilization. That was because the signal repeated the same number of times as the seven prime numbers from two to seventeen. But no one could decipher the content of this important signal, and things quieted down. Nobody was talking about it at Yoshiki High School anymore, either, but Minoru still thought about the SPN Signal from time to time. Of course, that was because he had encountered the strange thing that had descended from the sky. Was there some sort of connection between the signal and the orb—the Third Eye? Or was it just a coincidence? Yumiko and her organization probably had some kind of information about it, but he wasn’t in any kind of position to ask. Depending on how things had gone, he probably could’ve been given a suspicious shot and had the Third Eye in his chest surgically removed. No. If he was even becoming afraid of mental interference, would it have actually been better to just let them do it? Should he have jumped at the chance to escape from that abnormal situation—people who possessed suspicious powers fighting each other—and return to his previously peaceful life? Taking his gaze away from the magazine, he shifted his eyes to the area around the second button of his uniform. With his thoughts, he approached the black orb that was probably deep inside his chest. Hey. Did you really come from space? Do you have some connection to the SPN Signal? What do you want to make me do…? Of course, he heard no voice answering him. But Minoru felt an incredibly faint throb deep in his chest. The sensation felt like he might be getting a question in return. Something like, Do you know what to do with the power you’ve been given? Once he had finished reading several magazines and left the library after visiting the bathroom, it was six o’clock in the evening. If he hurried a bit, he should be able to make it home right around the time Norie was starting dinner preparations. He sped down the dark residential streets on his bike. When he increased his speed, a piercingly cold headwind bore down on him. Wind was pleasant on his morning runs because his temperature was elevated, but peddling his bike wasn’t enough exercise to work up a sweat. Minoru’s favorite scarf, hand knitted for him by Norie, was hundreds of times better than something off the rack as far as the emotion it contained, but he couldn’t say that it was especially great at keeping out the cold. The wind penetrated the loose stitching unrelentingly and his ears stung painfully. If he activated the shell, this wind wouldn’t stand a chance… Although he considered it, he probably couldn’t pedal his bike while using his power. “…Huh, using my power…,” he said, voicing his thoughts quietly with a wry smile. It was a familiar phrase from all sorts of manga and novels, but he never thought the day would come where he’d say it in real life— “…Ah!” Minoru’s eyes instantly widened. That was it. The little thorn in his side that had been bothering him. The conversation between Yumiko and DD that he hadn’t been able to remember. Go sniff out the Biter or something. Can’t smell him if he doesn’t use his power. That’s what the two of them had said. He forcefully gripped the brake lever without thinking, and his bike came to a halt with a shrill screeching noise. If they weren’t using their powers, one couldn’t pick up on a Ruby Eye’s scent. When the Biter used his ability, his mouth and teeth were transformed into something like a shark’s and he could bite through anything. In other words, while he was transformed into a shark man, he was continually giving off that beastly smell. But to put it the other way, that meant that when he wasn’t transformed… When he appeared to be a normal human, he couldn’t be detected through smell even if he was just a stone’s throw away. Minoru quickly turned to look behind him. He looked to the left and the right many times, too. There was no one around the little residential intersection. Still, he couldn’t say that the man wasn’t lurking on the other side of the concrete block wall or that he wouldn’t notice that smell right when his head was already being bitten clean off. He nearly activated his protective shell in fright but thought better of it. Three days ago, he had lost the Biter’s scent the instant he put the shell on. Right now, it was more dangerous to block out the smell. The Biter would have to transform right before he attacked, so Minoru should be able to put the shell on in time after noticing that foul smell. First, he had to get home as soon as possible. He could think of a plan after that. Minoru was able to calm himself down somehow, and he pumped the pedals again. Forgetting the cold as he exhaled white puffs of breath, he raced down the road home almost nonstop. When he turned the final corner and saw warm light filling the living room window of his house, his whole body finally relaxed. Norie was probably beginning dinner preparations right about now. Tonight’s dinner was supposed to be the gyoza they had made and frozen five days earlier. He opened the gate, stopped his bike in its usual spot, and headed for the entryway at a jog. Switching his bike key for his house key, he came to a stop in front of the door. That was the moment. Minoru felt his heart constrict. The keyhole where he should have put his key in—it wasn’t there. Above the door handle in place of the keyhole gaped a large hole with a diameter of around ten centimeters. Minoru stared blankly at the hole; he could see right through it to the other side. The hole hadn’t been created with a tool like a drill. The edges of the hole that had been opened in the metal escutcheon plate were jagged, irregular, and sharp, but the cut edge of the inner cylinder shone smoothly. It was exactly as if a beast with a pointed mouth had chewed through it with sharp, strong teeth. Minoru gripped the handle with his cold, numb right hand and pulled gently. The door opened, gliding open without a bit of resistance. There were no people or animals anywhere he could see—the hall extending straight from the entryway, the stairs going up on the left, or the glass door at the end of the hall that led to the living room. He couldn’t hear a single sound. A slightly orange light poured into the hall from the glass door. His thoughts at a complete standstill, Minoru took off his shoes and stepped into the hall. After dropping his messenger bag, Chesterfield coat, and scarf in the hallway and taking a few steps forward, it finally hit him. The sound he always heard at this moment. He couldn’t hear the pitter-patter of slippers running toward him. His brain finally started up again, and two thoughts exploded from the center of his mind. The Biter’s here. Norie. The only one who could have conceivably bitten through the sturdy dimple key cylinder was that strangely formed shark man. In other words, there was a possibility that the Biter was lurking somewhere in the house at this very moment. But Minoru charged single-mindedly down the hallway and flew into the living room with enough force to smash the glass door. “Norie!!” As he shouted, he looked around the kitchen on the far left, then around the living and dining room on the right. The ceiling light shone brightly and the heater had been left on, but neither the Biter’s bulk nor Norie’s petite figure was there. When he wheeled around, wondering if they were on the second floor, he stepped on something mushy and soft with his left foot. “…!” Jumping back a step, he looked at his feet. The thing on the floor was a small, milky-white semicircle. Bending down, he picked it up with trembling fingers. It was one of the gyoza that he and Norie had made together five days earlier. When he had rushed into the kitchen, he saw that the silver tray was flipped over on the floor and dozens of gyoza were scattered around. It was immediately clear what had happened. Norie had taken the gyoza tray out of the freezer to prepare dinner when the Biter attacked her. Minoru’s eyes pored over the entire kitchen. He didn’t find anything that looked like a bloodstain. Next, he prodded the gyoza still clutched in his right hand with a fingertip. The outside was soft, but the ingredients inside were still half-frozen. With the temperature in the room, the gyoza probably would have thawed all the way to the center within thirty minutes. That meant that the attack had probably happened a mere twenty minutes ago or less. Dropping the half-raw gyoza in the sink, Minoru left the kitchen again to head up the stairs. When he did so, he noticed that there was a black rectangle placed ostentatiously in the middle of the dining table that hadn’t come into his line of sight earlier. It was the terminal for the tablet that they always had standing up on the edge of the kitchen counter. Rushing over to the table, he picked up the tablet and pressed the button. The notepad app was displayed. Minoru’s eyes pored over the lines written there. I guarantee that the woman is unhurt. Stay where you are and wait for the next communication. Surveillance cameras have been set up there. If you leave the room, try to contact someone, or try to disable the cameras, I will kill the woman. The words were clear and concise, which consequently made them surreal. But it felt like the Biter’s malice still remained on the glass surface of the tablet even a few dozen minutes after he had typed those lines. Minoru returned the tablet to the table and dropped into a dining chair. Norie was still alive. That was the only thing he should believe. If the Biter’s goal was to kill Norie, he could have killed her here rather than take the risk of kidnapping her. But what about the hidden cameras? The Biter had had twenty minutes at the most to attack Norie before Minoru came home. Would he have had time to set up the cameras and connect them to the Internet in those minutes? Still seated, he swept his eyes all over the living and dining room. It was clean and neat, but since it was far larger than Minoru’s room, there were tons of places where cameras could be hidden. And it wasn’t certain that the man was using a purpose-built hidden camera. If he had a smartphone running a surveillance camera app, all he would have to do is set it down somewhere. It was no good. Since the Biter was using Norie’s life as leverage, Minoru couldn’t leave this room or report this to the police using the landline next to the wall. He had no choice but to follow instructions under the assumption that he really was being watched. He at least needed to determine if there was a possibility that the Biter was hiding on the second floor while pretending to have moved to a far-off location. Focusing all his neurons on his sense of smell, he inhaled. It was faint… It was weak, but he had a feeling he was picking up on that smell. Was it a so-called lingering aroma from when he had kidnapped Norie? If that man was lurking on the other side of the ceiling just a few meters away, Minoru should be getting a clear signal even if the man wasn’t using his ability. The Third Eye in his chest was completely silent now as well. The Biter really was far away already. The initial shock lessened little by little as he became aware of the situation, and in its place a black, cold despair filled his chest. It’s my fault. I’m the one who drew the Biter to this house. And Yumiko and DD had warned him, too. He had tried to look tough by saying he could protect himself, but he’d only been paying attention to his own surroundings and hadn’t even considered the possibility that Norie might be targeted. If he’d taken their warning more seriously, he could have thought things all the way through. Then he definitely would’ve realized that the Biter would have ways of locating Minoru’s house. Where had the shark man set his sights on Tomomi Minowa? The most likely possibility was during her morning training or on her runs to and from school. If he had followed her, he would have easily located her house and her school. And it was natural to conclude that the high school guy who had barged in right before the man was going to devour Tomomi at Akigase Park—that is to say, Minoru—was an acquaintance of Tomomi’s, not someone passing by. In that case, if he watched Yoshiki High School’s gate, he could’ve found Minoru. Third Eyes not only bestowed unique abilities but also vastly increased the physical and perceptual abilities—meaning hearing and sight—of their hosts. He hadn’t precisely measured it, but Minoru thought that if he had an eye exam now, his vision would be better than twenty-ten. Naturally, the Biter probably also had sharp vision. It shouldn’t have been hard for him to pick out Minoru from somewhere a sufficient distance away from the school gate, like the roof of an apartment building, and follow him. Minoru was sure it had happened when he came home from school on Saturday. He hadn’t noticed the Ruby Eye smell, but he hadn’t known—no, he had forgotten—the important fact that the scent couldn’t be perceived when a Ruby Eye wasn’t using their ability. So Minoru had carelessly led the Biter right to his home. It’s…my fault. Once again, Minoru agonized over that realization. He couldn’t make any strange movements because the Biter could be watching him on camera, so he desperately suppressed the impulse to scream at the top of his lungs. It had happened again. He had put his precious family in danger. No, there was no guarantee that the Biter was letting Norie live like his message on the tablet had said. Right now, he could already be biting her with those shark teeth as her life slipped away. Just like eight years ago. Just like his father, his mother, and his sister Wakaba. Was everything happening all over again? Despite living these eight years thinking only of pushing people away and keeping himself from taking on bad memories, had he made the same mistake again? A faint wail he had failed to suppress slipped from the back of his throat. Me…me. Me. If you’re going to kill someone, make it me. Minoru raised his face. He looked around the living and dining room. He didn’t know the locations of the cameras, and he wasn’t sure if they even existed in the first place. But… If he got down on his knees and begged… If I plead as hard as I can, if I say that I’ll end my life myself right here, right now, as long as he returns Norie safely… Then maybe the Biter will listen to my request, since I should be the one he has a grudge with. There were plenty of knives in the kitchen right next to him. If he drove the one that seemed the biggest and the toughest—the butcher knife—into his chest, he could just die, no matter how many Third Eyes were inside him. Minoru once again scanned the living and dining room looking for cameras. Fixing his gaze on the area around the TV stand, which seemed like it would have the most hiding places, he took a deep breath. And he clenched his back teeth hard. This was the turning point. Was he going to turn his back on his duties and his responsibilities and walk away like he had always done? Or was he going to make the choice to battle fate himself this time? It wasn’t as if Minoru’s life was the only thing the Biter wanted. He wanted to bite people to death with those sharklike teeth. That’s why, if Minoru killed himself here, the Biter might take his rage out on Norie. If there was even the slightest possibility… If there was still a possibility that he could fight the Biter wherever the next message summoned him to and take Norie back… Yumiko’s voice was in his ear again. You have a duty to go on fighting. I don’t think I can fight as a Jet Eye against some indefinite number of Ruby Eyes to protect people. But to protect Norie Yoshimizu… To protect my second sister who’s more precious to me than anyone else, I know I can fight the Biter as Minoru Utsugi. I have to fight. After clenching his hands into fists one last time, Minoru slowly released the tension from his entire body and let himself fall back into the chair. All he could do and should do now was calm himself and wait for the next communication. He would keep down the consumption of his physical and mental energy to raise his chances of winning the fight, even just a little. Shutting his eyes, he called out to his two sisters inside his heart. Norie, hang in there. Because I’m definitely going to save you. Waka, please. Give me your strength. The time passed as long and heavy as that night had eight years ago. There was no way he could have an appetite, but he nibbled at a few of the biscuits in the kitchen cupboard and cleaned up the gyoza that had scattered on the floor. It would be a problem if he had to go to the bathroom later, so he had just a mouthful of water. He sat on the sofa, closed his eyes, and focused on waiting. When the phone rang at last, it was a little past one o’clock in the morning. Minoru sprang to his feet, and he had a realization when he reached his hand out to the landline. What was ringing was Minoru’s cell phone, which he had left inside his bag in the hallway. He had to leave the living and dining room to answer. For a moment he wondered what would happen if it was not the Biter but someone else… But he immediately dispelled this thought. The ringtone was from Norie’s cell phone. The one calling was probably the Biter, who had stolen the phone. Running out into the hallway and grabbing up the bag, Minoru took out the phone as he turned right back to the living and dining room. He slid his finger across the screen and put the phone to his ear. “…Yes?” he answered briefly. From the other end of the phone line, that man’s voice whispered, “Well, what a long time it’s been, boy. I apologize for the wait.” “…Is she safe?” “Don’t be in such a rush, ragazzo. I had her take some medicine that put her to sleep, so I can’t let you hear her voice, but I haven’t left a single bite mark on her. Of course, you know…that only lasts as long as you follow my instructions, boy.” There was no strange distortion or huskiness in his smooth tenor’s voice as there had been three days ago, maybe because his mouth wasn’t transformed at the moment. But Minoru could sense that it dripped with malice and appetite deep within. The Third Eye gave a sharp throb under his sternum. “I’ll follow your instructions. What should I do?” “Why, it’s easy. I want you to come to a certain location now. But it’ll be a bit troublesome if you get in touch with the police or that dangerous signorina along the way. You’ll come out now without hanging up the phone. If we get cut off because of problems with the signal, I’ll call you back immediately and you’ll answer right away. Are we clear?” “I understand. Where should I go?” Although he did ask, Minoru could predict what the man would say. That storage shed deep in the forest of Akigase Park— But the words that came from the speaker were unexpected. “First, you’ll head toward Keyaki Plaza near Saitama New City Center Station. You’ve got fifteen minutes. Hurry, ragazzo.” He was surprised by the unexpected instruction but had no choice but to follow it. “I’m leaving right now,” he answered. Minoru slid the phone into his pocket without hanging up and ran back out of the living and dining room. Coming out into the entryway, he shoved his feet into the running shoes that he wore on his morning jogs instead of the sneakers he wore for school. He slipped on a Windbreaker over his coat, left through the unlocked door, and climbed on his bike, completely oblivious to the deep winter cold. It was about five kilometers to New City Center Station. To get there within fifteen minutes, he would have to ride at an average speed of twenty kilometers per hour. Those numbers were really pushing it for a non-racing bike, especially when riding through an urban area. But the Biter had specified this barely possible amount of time knowing that Minoru possessed the Third Eye. …Norie. Just hang on; I’m coming right now. Since the call was still going, Minoru called out to her inside his head as he pushed down on the pedals as hard as he could. 8 The reason Minoru had put on a Windbreaker over his uniform was more to avoid the police than to keep out the cold. Most police officers doing rounds at one o’clock in the morning would try to stop a high school guy if they saw him flying past them in a school uniform. In reality, he only passed a police officer on a bike once, but no one called out to him, possibly because of the deep hood he had on. Although naturally, even if someone had tried to stop him, he would have sped up and shaken them off. Speeding through the hushed residential streets, he crossed the bypass. When he came out onto slightly wider roads, he got up from the seat and started pedaling standing up. Although he was on the highest gear of his three-speed bike, the resistance was too light for Minoru as he was now. The towering skyscrapers of the new urban center appeared ahead of him, piercing the night sky. As Minoru gazed up at them, pressing his right foot down on the pedal with significantly more force, it happened. Clang! After this impact, the resistance on the pedals completely disappeared. The bike seemed like it would tip over to the right, but Minoru just barely regained his balance and braked. When he peered down at his feet, the broken chain was drooping down to the surface of the road. He had neither the time nor the tools to fix it, so his only choice was to leave the bike there. When he glanced at his watch after leaning the bike against the side of the guardrail, there were three minutes and thirty seconds left in the fifteen-minute time limit. He would have to run the last kilometer and a half on foot. “…Norie…!” Minoru called to his adoptive sister in a hoarse voice, tearing off down the path in the dead of night. In the heart of Saitama’s new city center, there was a large sky deck called Keyaki Plaza. On winter nights it should’ve been illuminated with blue LED lights, but the time period when they were switched on had ended and only the weak light from a smattering of streetlamps shone. Minoru dashed up the stairs from the ground to the deck. He breathed heavily as he leaned up against one of the countless keyaki trees that were planted there. He looked down at his watch once again. There were twenty seconds left. This was the first time he had pushed his running skills to the limit since the Third Eye had come to live in him. Thinking in the corner of his mind that the world record for the 1,500-meter run was somewhere around three minutes and twenty-five seconds…he pulled the phone from his breast pocket and spoke in a small voice to the man still on the other end of the line. “I’m here.” After a pause, that voice answered. “Yes, I’m keeping a close eye on you, boy. What happened to your bike?” “…!” It wasn’t a bluff; the man really was watching. He quickly ran his eyes over the surrounding area, but it was long past the time when the last train of the night departed, so there wasn’t a soul in the plaza. “…It broke along the way, so I ran here.” At this answer, a low chuckle came from the phone. “That’s quite a disaster. But I’m impressed that you made it in time without having to come crying to me. She must be quite important to you.” “What did you expect?!” He felt like he was close to raising his voice against his better judgment but barely held himself in check. There was no one around, but there were probably police posted on the opposite end of the plaza. Taking his voice back down to a whisper, he continued. “I followed the instructions, so let my sister go.” “Hey, hey, boy. I told you this was the first thing you had to do, didn’t I? Naturally, I have your next instruction prepared. Look to the north side of the plaza.” “…” Suppressing his irritation, he looked in the direction he was told to. A wide footbridge extended to the north, crossing over a road and connecting to a sky deck of the same height. Right at the end of it, the shadow of a huge structure rose up like a hill. It was Saitama Super Arena, the largest multipurpose hall in Japan. At the same time as Minoru looked up at the arena’s roof, a voice came from the cell phone. “Head to the side of the Super Arena on your right. Don’t let any police or guards see you.” “…The right side…” The Biter’s intentions weren’t clear, but all Minoru could do was obey. After looking around the area once more and confirming that no one was around, he ran off, keeping his body low. When he had crossed the bridge and come onto the sky deck next to the arena, he moved eastward in the darkness alongside the wall. He reached the corner after a few dozen seconds, went around it, and looked to the north. There, wide stairs continued up along the side of the building. Putting the cell phone to his left ear, he said, “From here…” Minoru had started to ask what he should do, but the Biter interrupted him with the third instruction. “Go a little farther and there’ll be a door to the emergency stairs on the left. Open it and go up.” When Minoru went forward as he’d been instructed, he did see a metal door. Naturally, the door would have been locked most of the time, but the doorknob had been completely cut out. Just like at Minoru’s house, the Biter had eaten through it. Shuddering at the power it would take to get through that thick steel like it was nothing, he pulled open the door. The emergency stairs were right there in front of him, so he muffled the sound of his footsteps and went up. He came upon another door with a broken lock after going up seven floors, and when he passed through, it came out onto the top-floor terrace. He looked quickly to the left and the right, but there was no one here, either. Even when he looked up, there were only huge protruding beams that supported the roof high above him. “…Where are you?” he said into the cell phone in a subdued voice. Then, after a few seconds of silence that seemed meant to keep Minoru in suspense, a low voice answered. “Here’s your next instruction. If you come around to the back of the terrace there’s a ladder that will take you up to the roof. Climb it and come up.” “To…to the roof?!” “That’s right. It’s spacious and it feels great. Hurry up, ragazzo.” “…” Minoru looked up one more time, the cell phone still clutched in his hand. The roof of Saitama Super Arena sloped down from the front of the building toward the back of the building. In areas near the front, it was about twenty meters above even from the terrace where Minoru was, and probably more than sixty meters from the ground. Was the Biter really in that sort of place? Wasn’t this some kind of trap? He considered these things, but his only option was to keep obeying the instructions until he had taken Norie back. He ran to the southern side of the top-floor terrace. The end of the roof that stuck out above his head sloped down farther and farther. When he reached the back of the building, the roof was about five meters away from him. And when he turned the corner, there was an aluminum ladder there just as the Biter had said. He grabbed the ice-cold metal and started climbing at once. At last, he reached the top of Saitama Super Arena. The huge roof looked just like a massive glacier falling from the night sky. The slope, which rose slightly in the center, stretched upward from Minoru’s location toward the front of the building. The scale of it was overwhelming. The actual incline was probably less than ten degrees, but from Minoru’s location, it felt like a steep cliff. Minoru stood still as the cold moon showed its face from a tiny gap between the clouds in the faraway sky. The moon on December 10, 2019, was a waxing gibbous moon, just a little bit short of a full moon. Even so, Minoru’s eyes, strengthened by the Third Eye, were filled with bright moonlight. It made the large slope with a width of 150 meters and a length of 200 meters glitter silver. Then Minoru saw it. Near the highest point of the huge roof. A single figure standing upright in the center of the slope. The figure moved his left arm and held something close to his face. After Minoru did the same, pressing the cell phone to his head, a calm voice flowed out. “Here’s your final instruction: Come here.” Then the figure hurled the phone in his right hand far away. The call was cut off at the sound of the impact. Minoru flung off his Windbreaker and put his cell phone in the front pocket of his uniform. Tearing his right foot away from the stainless steel sheeting the roof was made from, he stepped forward. Next came his left foot. Right foot. Left foot. Steadily increasing his speed, Minoru dashed about two hundred meters up the slope in one go. When he was ten meters in front of the figure, Minoru came to a halt. That man—the Biter—was standing near the edge of the roof with the hint of a smile on his face. He gave a completely different impression than he had three days ago. He was wearing not training wear, but a dark-colored suit, and his shoes seemed to be of high quality as well. Most importantly, his face wasn’t transformed. Seeing the Biter’s bare face for the first time, Minoru saw he had a stylish and intelligent appearance. The skin around his mouth, which should’ve been burned black from the stun baton, had healed beautifully in just three days. Minoru had a feeling he had seen that face somewhere before, but before he could remember, the Biter spoke to him in his unfiltered voice. “How wonderful to see you. Quite a nice view, don’t you think?” The nighttime view of central Saitama would have been spread out behind Minoru, but he questioned the man in a tense voice without taking his eyes off of him. “Where’s my sister?” At this, the man shrugged and gestured diagonally behind him with his right arm. Six massive beam-like structures stuck out far from the southern edge of the huge roof. These protrusions were about three meters wide and stretched out into the open air. Close to the end of the third beam from the left lay a petite figure. In an instant, Minoru’s eyes confirmed that it was a woman wearing an apron who was bound with tape. She seemed unconscious. Norie!! he screamed in his mind. In that instant he felt as if he might run toward the beam, but he somehow managed to stay put. The smile on the man’s face grew bigger as he watched Minoru like this. “Don’t worry, boy. I’ve only put her to sleep with a strong sleeping medication. I said this on the phone as well, but I haven’t bitten even a single finger.” “…” Right now, he had no choice but to believe what the man said. But it was clear that Norie had been put in an incredibly dangerous situation. It was close to a seventy-meter drop from the tip of the beam to the ground. To fall from there would be certain death. No. Minoru alone might be able to come out alive if he fell. He had never tested it, but there was a possibility that his protective shell, which had staved off the Biter’s teeth, could withstand a fall from seventy meters high. But Minoru couldn’t cushion Norie’s fall. The shell was hard enough to bash in a metal door; if he screwed things up, he could damage Norie more than the asphalt would have. He understood all over again what a self-centered power this was. Minoru’s shell cut him off from the world, creating a physical solitude. He could block out all danger outside of the shell, but he couldn’t save anyone but himself. It was the ultimate self-protection, only concerned with his own safety. That’s exactly how I’ve been living. As he thought this bitterly, he was forced to make a decision. There was only one way to get Norie back safely. That was to rescue her from the dangerous tip of that beam and to bring her down the ladder behind him. But there was no way the man standing right there in his way would sit back and watch Minoru do that. There was nothing to do but fight him and take him down. Just as if he had taken a peek inside Minoru’s head, the Biter lifted the corners of his lips in a sneer. “Have you set your mind to it, boy?” Wordlessly, he moved his head up and down in a small motion. Things were as surreal as ever. He was standing on the roof of the Saitama Super Arena, which he was used to seeing on his way to and from school but had never looked at from the top. He was facing a fearsome monster who had already bitten and killed numerous people, and he was doing it alone. That monster and Minoru himself had received supernatural powers from mysterious orbs that came from space. Everything was like a poorly written joke. But there was just one thing he was sure of. He had to protect Norie. The man in front of him would probably kill Norie after Minoru. The man’s words and actions themselves were rational, but deep in his eyes, hatred and desire danced red like flickering embers. Minoru didn’t know if this was the mental contamination of the Ruby Eye as Yumiko had said or if it was something the man had always had—but at this point, it was the same either way. If Minoru was killed, Norie would die, too. The Biter watched Minoru as he focused his consciousness on the Third Eye buried in his chest, preparing to put on the protective shell whenever he needed to. The Biter’s smile deepened a bit further. “That’s good, ragazzo. Truthfully, when I saw you at the park, you yourself didn’t tempt me much… But that expression of yours is giving me more of an appetite.” His body swaying, the man rubbed the underside of his chin with the back of his right index finger. “Well, then, before we fight, I suppose I’ll have you answer a few questions. I’m the sort who likes to learn about my food in detail…” Why do I have to give that kind of special treatment to a guy who’s trying to eat me? Although his mind resisted the concept, he continued thinking things over, his mouth in a tight line. There was no guarantee that Minoru could bring down the Biter on his own, so it wouldn’t cost him anything to use up a little bit of time on this. That was because when the Biter had used his ability to break into Minoru’s house and the door to the emergency stairs at Saitama Super Arena, he should have produced that smell for at least a moment, even if Minoru hadn’t been able to pick up on it. “…Then I’d like you to answer a question for me first.” At Minoru’s answer, the man nodded with an air of generosity. “That should be fine. What would you like to know? I’ll answer what I can.” “Why did you choose a place like this?” It seemed that he hadn’t expected that question, and the Biter chuckled after blinking a few times. “I was convinced you’d ask me a personal question. Although I wouldn’t be able to answer those… One reason I chose to meet you here is because it’s a suitable place for my dining table. It’s spacious and actually quite extravagant, don’t you think? It’s just like being on the ocean floor.” It was strange to think that the top of a roof more than sixty meters above the ground was comparable to the ocean floor. Still, Minoru also had the sense that he could understand just a little. But he kept his comment to himself and pressed for more. “And the second reason?” “Simply because we won’t be disturbed here… Now then, it’s my turn, boy,” the Biter said as he gave a quick wave behind him. “Is that woman your real sister?” “…” Minoru was under no obligation to give honest answers to the guy who was trying to kill Norie. But he got the sense that he would be found out if he lied and the discussion would break down, so he couldn’t help but shake his head. “She’s not. She adopted me when I was a kid.” “Oh ho…” “Now it’s my turn. You said earlier that I ‘didn’t tempt you much,’ so why are you targeting my sister and me?” The Biter made another elegant gesture as he responded to the question. “To be precise, I said, ‘You yourself didn’t tempt me.’ However, your ability is intriguing. What is that transparent shell made of? How hard is it? And why did a power like that spring up…? I’d very much like to know.” He spread his arms a bit, then crossed them over his chest. “So tell me, ragazzo. Why did she adopt you? Did something happen when you were a child perhaps…?” The Biter leaned his upper body forward, practically licking his lips. The depths of his long slitted eyes were tinged with a pale red light. Minoru had a sensation as if the memories of eight years ago, shoved deep down into his consciousness, were cracking open slightly. He clenched his teeth hard. He was under no obligation to tell some guy like this the truth, but he felt like the man would see through a lie, and he had his reasons for needing to drag out the conversation for every second he could. Taking a few breaths, Minoru answered in a restrained voice. “Because a sicko like you…murdered my family.” In that instant, the corners of the Biter’s mouth twitched upward. His now-exposed teeth seemed to have a metallic luster. He had been leaning forward, but now his body sprang back forcefully like it was attached to a spring. The Ruby Eye let out a gale of laughter. “Ahah-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha! So that’s it, now I see, so that’s what it was! Your whole family was killed… And you’re the only one who survived. So that’s why you got that shell. Excellent… This makes me want to bite you more and more! I bet your bones must taste like tears!!” Crunch. The peculiar sound came from the jaws of the Biter, who was bent over backward. A foul, beastly smell that was savage and brutal and cruel made a direct assault on Minoru’s senses. The smell of the Ruby Eye. “Ah… It’s no use, I can’t hold back anymore. Let’s bring this Q-and-A session to a close. Well, then, let’s enjoy this until we’ve had our fill…” Crunch. Crunch, crunch. “A feast…for just…you and I!!” The Biter’s pointed lower jaw stretched and stretched up toward the sky, the bones making a crunch, crunch, crunch sound. When he sprang upright again, he was no longer human. The shark man that Minoru had seen three days ago in Akigase Park was there. Inside the savage smile playing across his massive mouth, rows of knifelike teeth glinted in the moonlight. “Well, then, to start, I’m going to test you one more time as a tiger shark!” the Biter announced in a strangely warped voice as he tilted his body forward even more. Thick bundles of muscle heaved under his straining suit. The shell. I have to get it on, Minoru thought, a heat coming over him like the core of his brain was burning up. But it wouldn’t activate. His breathing, his lungs, wouldn’t listen to him. He just panted in rushed, shallow breaths over and over. He couldn’t perform the movement that was the key to activating the protective shell: taking a deep breath, holding it in, and putting pressure on the Third Eye in his sternum. The Biter’s shoes pushed off from the roof’s steel sheeting. The tall figure was coming at him full tilt just like a shark. His triangular jaws popped open. Giving up on activating his ability, Minoru desperately dove to the right. The shark fangs passed only a few centimeters from Minoru’s left shoe. Diving in headfirst, the Biter had ended up biting the steel frame of about fifty centimeters thick that was holding down the stainless steel plates of the roof. Amid the huge crashing sound of the impact and the flying of bright sparks, the Biter chewed off a part of the steel frame as if he were biting into a pastry. “…!!” Minoru narrowly avoided falling and his eyes widened in shock. Since he had seen the bite marks left on his door at home and on the door to the emergency stairs of Saitama Super Arena, he had assumed that the Biter could bite through even metal. But still, he had never thought that the man’s teeth could be this sharp. Even for a large diamond cutter, it would take a few minutes to cut a steel frame of that thickness. If he were bitten without the shell on, even an arm or leg would be taken off in an instant. Calm down. Calm down and take a deep breath. No matter how much he thought this, his lungs wouldn’t listen to him at all. The air was forced back as if the very end of his trachea were blocked off. Having tottered back up to his feet, the Biter spat out a huge lump of metal and charged ferociously. This time he opened both arms wide as if to stop Minoru from escaping by jumping aside. “Shaaaa!” he cried as he drew near. Minoru dodged the shark’s teeth by dropping down. But if he stayed that way, he would be forced down onto the roof. Resolutely, he dove headfirst at the Biter’s waist, slipping behind him through his long legs. He did a forward roll and stood up just like that. He still hadn’t caught his breath. He needed to just start over again. But how? The Biter had those deadly teeth and those long arms. If he caught Minoru, it would be over in an instant. At that moment, the running shoes Minoru was so used to wearing rubbed against the stainless steel plate at his feet with a squeak. That’s right. That’s what I can do now. Something I might even be better at than the Biter. And that’s—running! Instead of turning to face his opponent, Minoru leaned forward and pushed off from the roof as hard as he could. He had a feeling that man-eating shark was right on his heels. With a shiver, he felt the sharpness of those pointed fangs on the skin at the nape of his neck. Kicking away the urge to cower, Minoru tore off down the vast roof of the arena in a straight line. Sprinting wasn’t really his strong suit, but he knew how to run. Keep one’s shoulders relaxed and really swing the arms with a good rhythm. Push off from directly below the center of gravity, staying aware of one’s core. Sprinting was anaerobic exercise, so he didn’t breathe. His diaphragm, which had been about to spasm, stopped moving. The carbon dioxide trapped in his lungs escaped. The sound of the Biter’s footsteps grew farther away. His thoughts, which had been overtaken by panic, gradually calmed. The jet-black Third Eye in the center of his sternum gave a throbbing shiver. It’s working! Suddenly braking with both his feet, he filled his empty lungs with cold air. Hold in. Push. His field of vision took on a blue cast, and all sound and temperature disappeared. His body floated up three centimeters. When he turned around, he saw the silhouette of the shark man flying toward him with arms outstretched, the skyscrapers that stood on the other side of Saitama Super Arena in the background. “Whoa… Whoa, whoa, whoa!” he shouted inside the shell. Turning to face the Biter, Minoru charged at him headfirst. Even when he collided with the Biter’s chest through the man’s suit, he felt almost no impact or recoil. It seemed that even the three laws of motion were bent by some kind of mechanism when the shell was on. Minoru was clearly the lighter of the two men, but the Biter was the only one who was sent flying. The shark man was thrown against the steel plate on his back. This time it was Minoru who came flying at him. Doing as he had seen on fighting shows, Minoru straddled the Biter and swung his clenched fists in turn. The first swing connected with the Biter’s shoulder. The second caught him in the throat—but the third punch with his right fist, which he had been aiming for the lower jaw, was stopped along the way. The jaws suddenly opened wide and took hold of the fist through the shell. This time Minoru felt a sharp, hard impact. On the other end of Minoru’s arm, which wouldn’t budge whether pushed or pulled, the Biter’s eyes gave off a red gleam. The right side of his chest where he had taken the head butt hurt like it was burning, and his left shoulder and collarbone twinged where he had been punched. He might even have cracks in the bone. He may have slightly underestimated the ragazzo’s physical abilities. Takaesu hadn’t expected the boy to outrun him, since he himself sweated at the gym every day training… And he hadn’t expected the boy to whip around and charge at him, either. Those weren’t the only events he hadn’t predicted. He hadn’t said this to the boy, but there was one more reason that Takaesu had chosen the roof of Saitama Super Arena for the fight. The entire roof was covered in coated stainless steel sheeting, making it easier to slip on than dirt or asphalt. The transparent shell the boy cloaked himself in had an unnaturally smooth surface and was fearsomely hard. The boy’s feet should slip on the metal plates, supposing it was a glass-like substance with an uncommon strength, leaving him unable to move properly. However, when he had braked suddenly and body-slammed Takaesu, the boy’s balance hadn’t been thrown off in the least. It seemed as if the boy had a more solid hold on the roof plates than Takaesu in the rubber-soled walking shoes he’d worn. He didn’t understand exactly how that could be possible. But the powers granted by the eye were out of the ordinary in the first place. Anything could happen. It was just like how Takaesu had managed to recover perfectly—no, beyond perfectly—in that abandoned building with no food or water. He had taken light damage from the unforeseen counterattack, but he had gotten ahold of the boy in any case. No, he had gotten him between his teeth. At this point, he wouldn’t let the boy go, and he wouldn’t let the boy do anything. Like this, he would first tear off the boy’s right arm along with the shell. Takaesu would enjoy his screams as he was writhing in agony, and then he would devour the left arm as well. Next would be the right leg. Then the left leg. Since the boy could run so fast, Takaesu would be able to get a taste of great, solid bone. Once the boy was unable to speak because of heavy blood loss after losing all four limbs, Takaesu would eat the woman in front of him, too. To keep her alive, he had gone so far as to use his stock of barbiturate sleeping pills that had been so hard to come by. She was apparently the boy’s adoptive sister, but that actually might give things a stimulating and emotional flavor… When he thought this, a strange stab of pain shot through a deep place in Takaesu’s head. Ignoring this, he pressed down on the boy’s body with his right knee as he simultaneously yanked on the arm in his mouth, dragging the boy down to the left. Of course, he didn’t open his jaws. After straddling the boy and blocking a blow from his left fist, Takaesu unleashed the bite strength of tiger-shark mode. “Gugururu!” The savage war cry escaped from his throat. The muscles around his jaws creaked. His fangs quivered under the terrible pressure. However… Just like three days earlier, the boy’s shell neither strained nor bent. With a hardness that went beyond that of matter itself, it resisted the power of the tiger shark and refused to break down. The feeling in his mouth told him that he probably couldn’t break it even if he went on biting it like this for dozens of seconds. But you know, boy…I’m not the same as I was three days ago, either, he whispered to himself with the arm still between his teeth, the right corner of his mouth lifting in a sneer. In the back of the frozen building, Takaesu had been near death. Although the burns around his mouth were healing, the overconsumption of energy could have killed him. What saved his life were the stainless steel bolts and nuts that had fallen on the floor here and there. According to common sense, humans couldn’t derive even a single calorie from metal whether they sucked on it or chewed it up. But there were living things in the world that consumed iron. These iron-oxidizing bacteria derived energy from converting bivalent iron to trivalent iron, and then they multiplied. Takaesu didn’t know if the same kind of mechanism was at work in his body. But the reality was that every time he ate one nut, his hunger subsided and the healing of his burns progressed. Crawling around the dusty floor in the dark, Takaesu picked up the metal lumps one after another when his fingers brushed over them. Then he brought them to his mouth and devoured them. Like an infant with no self-awareness or a wild beast. It was humiliating, yet at the same time it gave him a perverse sort of joy. This was actually what eating was. Artfully crafted cuisine and decorated tables were nothing more than affectation. At some point, the metal nuts had started to seem as sweet as candy and the bolts as appetizing as cookies. Takaesu went on devouring the metal like mad and fell into a deep sleep once again, his stomach full. He didn’t have any more dreams of the past. When before long dawn broke and he awoke feeling refreshed, his jaws were no longer transformed; they had returned to their usual shape. His injuries, which had probably been bad enough to call third-degree burns, had completely healed, and even when he moved he felt absolutely no pain. That wasn’t all. All of his teeth had taken on a silvery gleam as if the metal had been incorporated into his tissue. When he flicked a tooth with his finger, it made a clear ringing sound. Disguised as a jogger, Takaesu returned to his hotel and checked out after taking a shower. When he clutched the steering wheel of his Maserati in the underground parking lot, he already knew what to do next. He was going to find that boy and locate his house. He would follow him and attack in a deserted area, or if that was difficult, he would take a family member as a hostage to lure the boy out. Considering the girl with the stun baton and the organization looming behind her, Takaesu knew it was dangerous to stay in the city, but he couldn’t let this go until he’d settled things with the boy. He really was going to bite him this time. Because Takaesu had been reborn as a stronger, bigger, more beautiful shark. “Guh, guhg, guhgugooo!!” Takaesu roared with the boy pinned down and his right arm still held in Takaesu’s mouth. The red eye pulsed furiously in the center of his lower jaw. His teeth and the bones, tendons, and muscles of his jaw all grew as hot as a flame. With a strange crunch, crunch, crunch! sound, his jaws—no, his entire head—transformed. The burning pain and a pleasure many hundreds of times stronger pierced his body. At long last…in the end…he could finally become that shark. The biggest meat-eating fish in history. The absolute ruler that reigned over the sea. Takaesu’s second favorite shark. Scientific name: Carcharocles megalodon. English name: Megalodon. Minoru looked up in shock at the Biter’s face as it went through with its new transformation. The jaws, which had until now stuck out more than ten centimeters more than a regular person’s, grew bigger and longer. The bridge of the Biter’s nose merged with the end of his upper jaw, drawing a smooth curve from his forehead to the back of his head. His eyes moved to the sides of his face, growing small and round. His neck also became oddly thick, and his necktie and the buttons of his shirt tore and popped off. And his teeth, which had been double layered with a knifelike row and a sawlike row, became triangular like the points of huge, fixed swords. The creature holding Minoru’s right arm in his mouth was the perfected version of the shark man. From the neck down he was still a human wearing a suit, but all the skin visible to Minoru was dyed a bluish black.