Chapter 9

He wondered what he was supposed to do if Yumiko and DD didn’t come out, but he didn’t have time to ask. Yumiko and DD caught each other’s eyes and— “Go!” On this brief signal, DD pushed off from the asphalt first. The underground parking lot was big, but it was laid out in a grid pattern with thick pillars standing in rows. He started running in a straight line, heading for the pillar to the left of the runaway Biter. The monster’s red eye swiveled around and followed DD’s small form. “Gruf,” it groaned, rounding its back like a beast about to set upon its prey. Aiming for its upper body, DD took one shot after another with the handgun in his right hand. With a scritch, scritch sound like something being clawed at, the fabric barely covering the Biter’s body burst here and there. “Groh,” the Biter groaned again. His countless teeth growing in concentric circles moved furiously, but he didn’t collapse. Scratching at the ground with both hands, he took a stance similar to a crouching start facing DD, who was running toward him from the right side. The moment the monster’s left side was exposed, that’s when it happened. Yumiko took a big step forward with her right foot, stepped on the asphalt floor, and pushed off. Although it was a casual step without a bit of force, Yumiko’s body vanished into thin air in an instant. It made a pop like the sound of an impact, and a large amount of air came rushing toward the space where Yumiko had been a moment earlier. “Gogwaaaaa!” The monster gave a rage-filled, thunderous roar, and Minoru hurriedly shifted his gaze in front of him. By then, Yumiko’s attack against the monster had already succeeded. The combat knife was stabbed deep into the left side of the monster, which had been chasing DD and trying to rush at him. Yumiko’s hair and skirt flew about furiously in the wind as she clutched the knife, telling of the fearsome power of her charge. Retreating cautiously while carrying Norie as he’d been instructed, Minoru thought inwardly, I see now. To borrow Yumiko’s words, the acceleration—that is, the kinetic energy—created by pushing off from the ground with her left foot was amplified dozens of times, sending her charging straight ahead at a furious speed. That was Yumiko’s ability. In that case, the knife was certainly many times more compatible than the stun baton. The speed of her charge simply added to the strength of the weapon. On top of that, after seeing that furious charge that could only be described as teleportation, it was probably impossible to escape even with the reaction time of someone who possessed the Third Eye. The monster seemed to have taken a deep wound in its lung, and another huge amount of blood spurted from its mouth. “Gagrooooo!!” it screamed in agony and rage. Still, without falling, it tried to cut Yumiko down with the fangs growing on its right hand. But right before the attack hit her, Yumiko tilted her body back and pushed off from the floor with a thump—then disappeared. A spray of blood that flew from the wound in the monster’s side was caught in the swirl of air that rose up, shooting around the room as a mist. Yumiko appeared about ten meters back, the soles of her sneakers making a scraping noise as she braked. Then she pushed off from the ground in front of her again. With a pop in the air, she vanished. She reappeared this time plunging the knife deep into the Biter’s back, retreating again in an instant. By the time her opponent responded and swung its arm around, she had already traveled far away. With deep wounds in two places, the monster reeled and fell to one knee. Even the runaway Biter, with its extreme healing ability, seemed unable to replenish the blood it had lost. It had bled a huge amount from Yumiko’s two knife attacks and from when its original head was blown off. For an ordinary person, that amount was probably enough to make them lose consciousness or die. The red light emitted by the Ruby Eye blinked irregularly like a badly connected electric light. Red mucus sprayed from its mouth every time it took another heaving, rushed breath. Finally, the monster fell to both knees as if it couldn’t endure the weight of its huge body. The mouths that had appeared on its palms raked the asphalt with crunching sounds, but it no longer seemed to have the strength to stand. The interval between the flickers of the Ruby Eye’s light grew longer and longer. What in the world are you? Minoru murmured in his mind, holding his breath as he watched over this scene. The Third Eyes came down from space, latched on to humans, and gave them strange powers. Even after the host lost its life because the power became too great, the Third Eye manipulated the unconscious body and tried to attack other living things. Just what meaning was there in that? What could be necessary about this kind of ugly and miserable conclusion? It seemed like Yumiko and DD were thinking the same sort of things. They both came to a stop, watching the monster with pained expressions. Finally, Yumiko clutched the knife in both hands and readied it on her right side. She put out her right foot and squatted down. The monster raised its upper body up high, seeming to sense something. Yumiko pushed off from the ground. The air crackled. A dust cloud swirled up. Charging through a distance of about ten meters in an instant, Yumiko drove the knife into the heart at the center of the monster’s chest, which was wrapped in thick muscle— There was a shrill metallic clang. Orange sparks rent the air. Minoru’s eyes widened. Inside the torn shirt where the heart should’ve been, a fourth mouth had appeared. The inside of the vertically torn skin was flesh colored like a pomegranate, and there was a row of sharp fangs around the edges. The mouth wriggled furiously, determined to bite through the blade of the knife it had firmly in its grasp. For just a moment, Yumiko wavered between letting go of the knife and retreating or plunging it in as it was. And the monster didn’t overlook this paralysis. It flung its left arm out furiously, smashing right down the side of Yumiko’s body. Without an ounce of resistance, her delicate body was sent flying and slammed into a concrete pillar a few meters away. “Ah…” At the same time, Minoru sucked in a breath… “Yumii!” DD readied his gun and charged. Yellow flashes burst one after another from the end of the silencer. But by covering its body with both its thick arms, the monster kept the bullets from hitting its trunk. A dry metallic sound rang out, and Yumiko’s knife held in the monster’s chest splintered from the middle. Just like that, the mouth ground up the thick blade like it was biting through a cracker. “Graaaaa!!” Possibly having regained energy from eating the metal, the Biter leaned back its massive frame and howled loudly. The one eye set in the main mouth glittered a deep red like the color of blood. DD pulled the trigger twice more. One shot missed and the other hit the monster’s right leg. But he wasn’t able to fire the next shot. The monster’s right arm stretched out more than five meters like a snake, bit into the barrel of the gun, and took it out of DD’s hand. The gun was instantly smashed, snapping sounds accompanying its destruction, and the mouth on the monster’s right hand swallowed it. DD instantly tried to jump back, but the monster dealt a heavy blow directly to his side with its left hand. “Guh…” DD went flying with terrifying force, slammed against a far-off pillar, and toppled to the floor. Without even glancing at the seemingly unconscious DD anymore, the Biter’s one red eye turned to Yumiko once again. She was still conscious but wasn’t yet able to stand. The massive body took a huge leap and landed right in front of her. It leaned far forward and stretched its round mouth more than five centimeters, mucus dripping on Yumiko’s gray skirt and getting it dirty. At this point, Minoru probably could have escaped the threat of the monster if he had run at full speed up the slope and gotten away from the arena as instructed. But that option didn’t even occur to him. Before he knew it, Minoru was already shouting loudly. “Stop—!!” When the Biter, who had been trying to eat Yumiko, twitched at the sound of his voice, it turned its strangely formed head 180 degrees around to face backward, the red eye inside the mouth looking at Minoru. The monster’s response was quick. After leaving Yumiko, it charged straight at Minoru with movements like that of a large primate, the fangs on both hands digging into the asphalt. The thick smell it gave off, the most brutal Ruby Eye smell he had ever encountered, was a direct hit to Minoru’s five senses. “Grrrrr…” The wet groan escaped from the hole in its trachea. Despite having lost its head, the body was now even larger than when it had been human. It was closing in on him right before his eyes. The fangs, which were growing in layers on the head, squirmed noisily. The mouths on its chest and hands clicked open and closed, over and over. Taking a determined breath and getting ready to activate the protective shell—Minoru shuddered violently. He couldn’t do it. If he used his power now, Norie would be flung from his arms and out of the shell. The four jaws moved in on Minoru, who was frozen in a half-standing position, and Norie, who was still slumbering. What amounted to many hundreds of fangs were glinting in turn. While time flowed slowly as if it were being compressed, Minoru suddenly recalled a certain scene three months ago. It was mid-September. A typhoon had passed through in the middle of the night, and there was still a strong wind when Minoru went out for his daily early-morning run. Minoru had run the wet streets from his house to the Arakawa River. As he looked up at the clouds that flew past in the sky with tremendous speed, he suddenly had an idea and headed for a bridge he never crossed. The state of the Arakawa River was completely different than in the daytime. True to its name, which meant “wild river,” the riverbed was filled with swirling muddy-brown water. He could almost feel in the soles of his shoes the pressure of the water that thundered as it struck the girders of the bridge. While he was staring down at the swirling surface of the water, a voice played inside his ear. You can’t do that, Mii. You can’t ever go near the river after a typhoon. It was a kind voice that had spoken to a young Minoru a long time ago, the voice of his older sister Wakaba. Why had he forgotten it? If he had remembered, he wouldn’t have come to see the river. He lost more memories of his sister every day. The only memories piled up in that place were bitter and painful and sad. If… If he jumped into that river now…then would the raging current wash everything away for him? Would it carry him to the place where his sister and father and mother were waiting? Minoru gripped the railing strongly with both hands. That’s when he had the feeling someone was calling him. Taking his eyes off the muddy-brown water, he looked up at the gray sky. At first he thought it was a bubble. The small grayish thing that looked like a bit of foam gently floated down. Finally, he realized that there was no way it could be a bubble. That was because there was a powerful southerly wind blowing from in front of Minoru. Whatever it was, it should have been blown apart in an instant if it were something light enough to float in the air. But the round object descended from above Minoru’s head, completely ignoring the wind. His eyes widening in amazement, Minoru lifted up both hands and cupped the object gently in his palms. When he brought it to his face, it was something he had never seen before. Shut inside the transparent gray orb was a pitch-black orb one size smaller. It looked similar to a marble, but it drifted lightly on his palms as if it had no weight at all. Finally, the orb rose up soundlessly, floated quickly through the air, and touched Minoru’s chest. The moment it slipped through the fabric of his running clothes and touched his skin, he felt a faint warmth. It was just as if someone had touched him gently with their fingertips. After standing there blankly for a bit, Minoru rushed to pull down the zipper and look at his chest. The orb wasn’t anywhere there, but the skin above his sternum was a little red. However, this discoloration also disappeared within a few seconds. What was that just now? Or was I dreaming standing up? Inclining his head, Minoru started to walk back along the path across the bridge. He had already forgotten the urge that had begun to swallow him earlier. Those were all the memories he had surrounding his encounter with the Third Eye. Minoru hadn’t seen the Third Eye itself for more than a few dozen seconds directly. Minoru felt something as he stared close-up at the runaway Biter’s “eye”—in other words, the first Third Eye he had seen in three months. He felt some sort of purpose concealed deep within the orb. It was something completely different from the malice, murderous desire, rage, and hatred that had dwelt in the Biter when he was human. An absolute logic of a different sort, far out of the reach of Minoru’s comprehension. Not the pitch-black eyes of the great white shark or the compound eyes of an insect with a metallic glitter, but eyes that concealed a much deeper, darker remoteness. Minoru just went on staring into the eye of the monster that was now truly trying to kill him. It came closer as mucus dripped from those teeth, which had been able to crush even a thick knife. The hole in the center of its mouth writhed and writhed as if it were starving. Although he knew he had to escape, had to just save Norie, his body didn’t move. The bottomless pool concealed in the red eye sucked in even fear and uneasiness. That was when— The monster’s gaze dropped a tiny bit. Minoru just knew that it had seen Norie in his arms. The inhuman light of the Third Eye flickered ever so slightly. It was just for an instant, but Minoru had felt something humanlike in the monster’s eye. It was the wavering a person felt simply because they were human during times when they were confused, distressed, or in pain. The monster stopped moving. A low groan that sounded like “grph” slipped from the depths of its grotesque mouth. It pulled its face back. It put down its hands, the teeth clicking away. The monster backed away little by little. When it was a few meters away from Minoru, whose eyes were wide with shock, the monster swung around. Then, changing directions completely, it released a savage war cry as it started to run. It was running toward Yumiko, who had just now finally stood up. She was pressing on her right shoulder with her left hand as if it was still damaged. She no longer had the knife in her right hand and was now unable to pull out the stun baton. She was powerless in the face of the huge beast that was about to attack her. And yet the power of the determination that dwelt in her black eyes still hadn’t disappeared. She quickly dropped down, putting one leg behind her and one in front. “Groff!!” The monster leaped at Yumiko as its starved howl thundered out. Right before its arms touched her with their exposed fangs, Yumiko pushed off from the ground with her right foot and accelerated. But the place where she appeared was a mere three meters away. On top of that, she failed to brake and sunk to one knee. The monster’s response was quick. Digging into the asphalt with the fangs on its left hand, it used the hand as a fulcrum to change directions, maintaining the power of its charge as it leaped. Yumiko barely managed to stand up and accelerate again, but she made it an even shorter distance than last time. Did Yumiko’s ability of amplifying her acceleration require a sufficient initial movement to travel a distance of dozens of meters? Yumiko charged by powerfully pushing off from the ground with the leg strength of someone who possessed the Third Eye, then creating intense acceleration. Was she limited to going only two or three meters if she launched herself with a stagger? The monster followed Yumiko and charged again. She narrowly slipped past its right arm, which shot out like a snake, but one tooth caught the ribbon on her school uniform, and torn fabric flew through the air like blood. That was when Minoru made up his mind and began to run. But he wasn’t headed toward the slope. Laying Norie in the shadow of a concrete pillar, he ran all out toward the runaway Biter. Even though he understood mentally that Norie’s safety was his top priority, he just couldn’t abandon Yumiko and DD to escape. He was never again going to sacrifice someone to survive. No way. Noticing Minoru’s footsteps, Yumiko spun around. Minoru couldn’t hear what she was trying to shout; she was probably calling him an idiot. Activating the protective shell, he ran right past Yumiko. When the monster’s eye caught Minoru’s approach, it didn’t waver in the least. The Ruby Eye glinted, containing only an inhuman determination to eliminate. It came at him from the left and right with palms that had sprouted fangs. Both hands bit into him from above the shell, but Minoru shoved down his fear and pushed off fiercely from the floor. He slammed his head into the Biter’s chest. The huge body lifted up. At the same time, Minoru shouted. “Whoooooooh—!!” Wrapping both hands tightly around the Biter’s torso, he gathered all his remaining strength into his legs and pressed forward. Run. He was going to run. Maybe all that running I did was for this moment right here. As he thought this, Minoru ran. Still lifting the Biter up, he dashed through the vast underground parking lot in a straight line. Finally, he could see one car in front of him. A large dark blue sports car. The car the Biter had probably prepared for his getaway when he was still human. “Come…oooon!” Minoru screamed as he slammed himself and the Biter’s body into it. The elegant line of the rear fender crunched in. The rear window shattered everywhere, and the trunk sprang open. Blood erupted from the Biter’s strangely formed mouth and the wounds made by Yumiko’s knife, raining down on the protective shell. But the monster didn’t stop moving. It tried to bite Minoru to death with the huge jaws on its head as it waved its arms around wildly. Minoru gritted his teeth and stared at the line of fangs gnashing over and over a mere three centimeters from his face. Judging by the size of the jaws, he wondered how much pressure was being put on the protective shell. This occlusion strength could be several times that of the human Biter as a Megalodon. The circles upon circles of innumerable teeth writhed as if they had minds of their own, trying to break the shell. Even if a tooth happened to break under the pressure, another one would immediately come up from inside to fill the hole. Minoru’s whole body was numb with a fear as cold as ice. His heart pounded so hard it was painful, and his breathing grew shallow. But Minoru did his best to endure it. He could endure it because of the heat of the small life in the center of his chest. The crimson Third Eye glowing right in front of Minoru had chosen the man called the Biter to kill people. In that case, why had the jet-black Third Eye sheltered in Minoru’s chest chosen him? Right now, he still didn’t know. That was probably something he would never be able to know. But just for the moment, he was going to trust it. To trust his own intentions, his wish to save someone besides himself. Gritting his teeth, Minoru balled up his cold, numb right hand into a fist—and threw a punch with all he had. The shell-covered fist plunged into the monster’s left side. He hadn’t really been aiming for it, but that’s where Yumiko had stuck her knife in deep. The runaway Biter leaned its massive body back, flailing both its arms wildly. Its fanged left arm sliced easily down the back of the sports car. In the next instant— A huge amount of transparent liquid gushed out from inside the car, soaking Minoru’s shell and the Biter’s body. Water? Did that guy have a bunch of mineral water piled up in his trunk or something? After thinking this, Minoru dispelled the thought right away. He couldn’t smell anything, but this wasn’t water. It was gasoline. “…!!” The idea that suddenly sprang to his mind took his breath away. The fear came first, telling him it was impossible, but then he shook that fear off, knowing he had to do it. But gasoline alone wasn’t enough. There was one more thing he needed. He raised his face. The Biter had released Minoru’s head from his mouth and struggled in anguish, as if maybe the gasoline had gone down its trachea. This was his only chance. Enduring the fear, he took a big breath and—deactivated the shell. Taking care not to breathe in any of the fuel that was probably evaporating in the air, he shouted one short, loud phrase. “Light it up!!” Having heard his voice, the Biter immediately made a fierce move to sink its teeth into Minoru. If Minoru had been just a tenth of a second later in putting on the shell again, he probably would have lost his head. Shuddering at the sight of the fangs that stopped with a bang right in front of him, he waited for that moment. Finally— Long hair flew into view on his right side. He looked over. Yumiko had teleported there and was standing about five meters away. The stun baton was in her right hand. But there was a hint of hesitation in her eyes. As he pinned down the runaway Biter with the strength of desperation, Minoru yelled, aware that she couldn’t hear him. “I’m fine, so just throw it!!” As if his words had reached her— With a nod, Yumiko turned on the stun baton and hurled it at Minoru and the Biter. Trailing an afterimage of sparks through the air, the stun baton slowly approached and— Minoru’s vision was dyed a bright orange. Rather than saying it caught fire, it was closer to an explosion. Minoru reflexively turned his face away from the flames that spread instantly with a roar. But the invisible protective shell perfectly blocked that intense heat given off by the blaze—and the radiant heat from the resulting electromagnetic waves. He unconsciously inhaled at the sight of the rampaging crimson brightness a mere three centimeters away. The runaway Biter’s body was also enveloped in bright red as Minoru pinned it down. The tatters of the Biter’s suit fabric burned up instantly. The bluish-black discolored skin was burned to a blackened crisp as he watched, too. Flames swallowed up the sports car, small explosions going off in succession. Holding down the incoherently raging monster with the power of desperation, Minoru shouted. “Just…stop already—!!” The mucous membrane inside of the enormous mouth started to grow inflamed. The hole of the trachea was probably shaking violently because the monster was screaming, but the sound didn’t reach Minoru’s ears. The Third Eye burrowed into the mucous membrane as if to escape the intense heat, but the blaze relentlessly scorched the flesh and turned it to ash. Originally, human bodies contained a large amount of water and shouldn’t burn easily even when doused in gasoline. However, possibly because of the transformations forced through by the Third Eye, the monster’s body burned intensely in a fierce column of flame as if the body itself were flammable material. Minoru could feel the sturdy flesh rapidly shriveling through the protective shell. The limbs burned up first, the exposed bone separating from the joints and tumbling to the floor. Suddenly, the almost entirely burned torso shrank drastically, and a tiny amount of mucus was expelled from the small hole in the place where the mouth had been. That was the final act of the monster’s life. All strength suddenly drained from the weakly moving body. Then Minoru saw it. No longer bright, the Third Eye broke like a piece of glass art. From inside it, a red ball of light flew up at tremendous speed. When the light hit the ceiling of the parking lot, it made a large hole with a diameter of about two centimeters and passed through it. It pierced through the floor above, and the floor above that—through every floor of Saitama Super Arena and through the steel roof, the red light climbed and climbed.