Fine. He could do as he pleased. Meanwhile, I made his meals, changed his clothes, and replaced the bandages on his body. We didn’t talk. He remained silent, but I wouldn’t exactly call myself a skilled conversationalist, either. Therefore, his taciturn nature was almost convenient. And yet, I couldn’t shake the eerie sense that I was adrift on a boat with no idea where the current was taking me. It was during a moment like this when the police decided to suddenly show up at my house. “Excuse me. We’re with the local precinct. We received a report of an injured man last sighted around here, and we would like to ask if you’ve seen anything.” A silhouette came into view through the decorative glass panel on the door. I froze in the middle of boiling water in the kitchen to make coffee. “Excuse me. This is the police. Is anyone home?” The pounding at the front door persisted, each impact reverberating through the apartment with growing urgency. I cast a questioning glance at the young man—this nameless occupant of my home—yet he still displayed no signs of human emotion despite the circumstances. My thoughts spiraled frantically: What would happen if they found him? He was most definitely a criminal; witnessing and committing crimes were probably as natural to his existence as drawing breath. Surely, he dwelled among the shadows of the underworld. Otherwise, he would have gone straight to the hospital after getting shot so many times. The police would probably treat him more like a prize than an injured victim. An easy arrest like this would be enough to pad their books. Meanwhile, I hadn’t actually broken any laws. All I’d done was tend to a wounded man I’d happened to find. Technically, a responsible citizen would probably alert the authorities upon discovering someone with gunshot wounds, but I could always play dumb. The city police would have no choice but to let it go. I could just say that I mistook the guy’s injuries for stab wounds or something. Gunshot wounds are pretty easy to identify, but there’s nothing illegal about not identifying them. Basically, I wouldn’t be blamed for turning this young man over to the city police. I moved toward the front door to answer it, already preparing a passable excuse to get the cops to leave us alone. After all, if I’d ever intended to turn this wounded man in, I wouldn’t have treated his injuries in the first place. But I never got the chance to achieve such feats of foolish self-sacrifice…because something entirely unexpected happened. The young man suddenly lunged toward the front door like a tightly coiled spring being released. He flung the door open and launched himself at the policemen in a blur of motion that no one could have anticipated. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect him to be this explosive. With speed that belied his injuries, he jumped onto the one wide-eyed policeman before the officer could react and began driving his fingers into the man’s face. The cop let out a brief, startled cry. He thrashed wildly, slamming the young man against the wall by the door, but still the young man clung to him like a child riding piggyback. He then drove his fingers deep into the officer’s ears as if he were trying to tear them apart. A feral howl erupted from the young man’s throat, and he yanked out his blood-soaked fingertips—only to plunge them back in an instant later. The officer immediately grabbed at his attacker’s body with his free arm, staggered forward, and toppled over in the entryway. The floorboards sharply cracked and splintered. Meanwhile, the younger policeman—the one who hadn’t been attacked—drew his gun as if he’d finally remembered he had it on him. It was a double-action revolver with a swing-out cylinder, and he aimed it at the young man without warning. A vision of the future flashed through my mind where the officer fired that revolver. I dashed forward, grabbed the gun, and slid my thumb between the hammer and the firing pin. This way, the hammer couldn’t strike the primer, thus preventing the bullet from firing. I looked at the policeman. Full of unconstrained wrath, he glared back at me. That was when I heard a light thud as if something had fallen onto the floor behind me. Something metallic, it seemed. I wanted to turn around, but I was in an awkward position. My right hand was gripping the gun while my entire left side was pushed against the wall. This was bad. I caught something white flickering out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t see exactly when it was thrown, but it was most likely one of the policemen who did it, since I didn’t have anything that dangerous sitting around in my house. It was a gas grenade. This single-use obsidian cylinder was designed to release nonlethal incapacitating gas. The discharge lasted twelve seconds, releasing up to 2800 liters of vapor. It was once used as a preoperative anesthetic, and anyone who inhaled it would become disoriented, losing consciousness generally within ten seconds, depending on the concentration. Inhaling a large amount could be fatal. I covered my mouth and nose, then tried to search for the young man. A gas grenade obviously wasn’t something a city police officer on patrol would have on him. In other words, these guys weren’t the police. But before I could find the young man, I noticed something suddenly move out of the corner of my eye. It was the younger officer; he’d let go of his gun and was charging straight at me. We tumbled onto the floor in a tangle, and the powerful impact to my chest knocked all the air from my lungs. White smoke twisted through my vision, and for a fleeting moment, it felt like I’d been dropped onto the pale ocean floor. But the fog didn’t last. I coughed, inhaling the gas directly and falling unconscious the next moment. There was a noise, cold and damp. It was so familiar that it didn’t even register at first. It was the kind of sound that skimmed the edge of consciousness, like the rustling of fallen leaves or the distant rumbling of a passing train. But it wasn’t just any noise. It was the sound of Sakunosuke Oda being struck. The deep sound was muffled and hardly sounded dangerous. It could have been a sandbag falling to the ground, but in reality, it was indeed something extremely dangerous. Dazai knew this. He had lived with that sound pressing against his throat for what felt like an eternity. “There’s something I need to tell you before we start,” a voice began—an older man. “I’m not a fan of violence.” He was holding a blackjack. Dazai saw it himself. He observed the man intently. His piercing black eyes kept watch from beneath the bandages covering his face. “I dislike both being subjected to violence and inflicting it myself, so I’d appreciate it if you could view this purely as a business transaction,” the older man added. He swung the blackjack upon the back of Odasaku, who was bound. Dazai watched intently. Dazai was in the corridor of the bunker, a place of absolute darkness. The space between him and Odasaku stretched over thirty feet, and in that black void, Dazai was completely invisible. Even if someone had passed close enough to brush shoulders, they wouldn’t have known he was there. He had melted into the shadows, indistinguishable from the darkness around him. Dazai watched—merely watched—as the blows landed. The blackjack rose and fell. Odasaku groaned. Despite the violence Dazai was witnessing, his eyes remained fixed and dry, as motionless and unreadable as a corpse’s, untouched by any emotion. And yet, with each strike of the blackjack, his fingers twitched. His joints snapped automatically, his muscles tensing. Each time, the pale, slender veins in his fingers rose to the surface of his skin, and his fingers curled, grasping something unseen as if he himself had been struck. He was one with the darkness, and thus no one would notice him. Yet the older torturer could still sense the pulsating surge of murderous rage emanating from Dazai’s body. “What the…?” The man looked back and peered into the darkness, but the darkness, thick and viscous like mud, offered nothing in return. He halted the beating and stepped forward, compelled to confirm whether there was indeed a person watching. Suspicion rooted in long experience stirred unease in his gut—the kind of instinct that had kept him alive more than once. He reached the spot where Dazai had stood—but no one was there, only darkness. It was as if no one had been there from the beginning. As if the darkness had taken Dazai’s form and then melted back into nothingness. The man was bewildered, for only the unchanging, eternal darkness of ages lurked there. The young former police officer had no idea what was going on. He had been abducted while patrolling the underground bunker, but he didn’t realize this until much later—until after he found himself in the darkness and unable to move a muscle. He was seated. Rather, he’d been forced to sit, like some kind of prisoner, at the foot of a pile of rubble atop a piece of concrete. Having just woken up, he still couldn’t comprehend what was happening, although there was one thing that was clearly discernible: pain. His body ached. A heavy, sharp pain ran through his entire being like an unpleasant signal; it made his skin prickle with goose bumps. But he couldn’t pinpoint what part of his body hurt yet, since his brain was still more than halfway buried in a muddy stupor. He was in the depths of the underground bunker, a forgotten second sector left to decay. There had been an accident about ten years earlier where the emergency oxygen tanks being stored there exploded, partially destroying the area. The scars of that moment still marked the bunker: Jagged cracks crawled through the ceiling and walls like living creatures while debris lied scattered in chaotic heaps. The rubble ranged from fist-sized to as large as a car, and steel wires protruded from their cracks like weeds. Deep in the dimly lit tunnel, in a narrow passage blocked by rubble, the young ex-cop sat—perched upon debris about the height of a tatami floor chair. Or rather, that was where he was constrained, unable to move on his own. His hands and feet were fixed in place. Both hands were sandwiched between enormous pieces of rubble while his forearms were firmly caught between cracked slabs of concrete shaped like partially closed mouths. The rubble wasn’t heavy enough to crush his arms immediately, but neither was it light enough for him to pull out his arms and free himself. “What…is…?” His voice was tinged with despair…because he had seen his feet. Thick construction stakes, each the size of a thumb, old and covered in rust, were piercing his leather boots, his skin, the flesh of his feet, and the soles of his shoes before sinking deep into the ground. Fresh blood blossomed in dark circles around his pinned feet, a gruesome testament to someone having deliberately, inexplicably, sewn him into place. But for what purpose? “You’re starting to feel pain.” A hoarse voice echoed from the darkness, drawing the gaze of the young former officer, his face filled with fear. “Pain is good. It’s proof that you’re alive. But there’s something even better about pain. Intense pain dominates a person, changes how they think, and at times, it can even erase their entire personality. Do you understand why that’s a good thing, Akihiko Toda?” The voice was menacing, assertive, and filled with raw danger like a blood-gushing wound. Though high-pitched, almost like a boy’s, it lacked the common humanity a boy would possess. The young man in the shadows…was Dazai. “Because it shows us that our personalities—our souls—are nothing more than a convenient, unstable hypothesis built upon primitive instincts like pain and fear.” A thin smirk made its way to Dazai’s lips. Although most of his face was hidden beneath bandages, his expression revealed itself through his narrowed eyes and the pale crescent twisting of his mouth, curved like the edge of a blade. “You’re the guy at the house…who was injured…,” the officer named Toda wheezed, now merely half conscious. “How do you…know my name?” “I know basically everything.” Dazai approached Toda with a gentle, soothing smile. “You’re a member of the crime syndicate known as the Forty-Eight. You started as a patrolman in a small town until one day a former, older colleague of yours invited you to join the organization. Your home is under an overhead line near the lower reaches of the Tsurumi River. Your parents and younger sister run a sake brewery in Shinshuu. You don’t go to the bank with the money you earn through illegal means; you hide it in a safe at a scrap metal yard. Smart.” “What—?” “Don’t worry. I’m not interested in hurting you. Just tell me everything you know about the painting,” Dazai said, looming over the pale ex-cop, his gaze icy. “What…? Painting…? Just who are you? How do you know my name—?” “Wrong answer.” With utter indifference, Dazai interrupted the man with a casual kick. It was no different from kicking a pebble on the roadside, yet it sent the former officer recoiling in agony. A scream escaped the man’s throat. “Gaaaaaah?!” The stake piercing the top of his foot hit his nerves and bones, shooting waves of unbearable agony throughout his entire body. “To be honest, I wish I didn’t have to waste my time having this conversation with you, either, so let’s skip the pointless chatter. Tell me about the painting. How did you know that Odasaku had it? In fact, how did you know that this painting was valuable in the first place?” “I…” The man’s face contorted. His was the face of someone with searing pain surging through them. “I don’t…know…” “Oh?” Dazai raised an eyebrow, but the rest of his expression remained completely flat and composed. “I’m serious! I’m a nobody! I just joined the organization, so I hardly know anything about what they do! All I know is that Oda guy is hiding a painting worth hundreds of millions!” “Toda.” Dazai approached the former officer, then rested an arm on a piece of rubble. “This is your organization’s secret hideout. There are plenty of people down here who could replace you. Feigning ignorance isn’t going to save you because I won’t feel anything if you die. It wouldn’t inconvenience me in the slightest, either.” The former officer felt cold sweat gushing from his entire body as he came to a certain realization: This young man wasn’t lying. He could tell by gazing into this stranger’s eyes. To him, the ex-cop was no more significant than a fly that had landed somewhere in the kitchen. “I watched you all torturing that man, and I was kind of relieved,” Dazai said, his smile as thin as paper. “Because it showed me that even though former police officers are experts of investigation, you’re complete laymen when it comes to torture. That little game you guys were playing wouldn’t even get someone to tell you the time on the clock in front of them…so allow me to show you what real torture looks like.” Dazai picked up a piece of rubble at his feet. It weighed only a few pounds, so he could lift it without much effort using both hands. “What do you think I’m going to do with this?” he asked. Dazai then lifted the jagged fragment of rubble. The former officer tensed involuntarily, knowing that a single downward motion would fracture his skull beyond repair. Escape remained impossible, since his limbs were secured, rendering him utterly defenseless. For several excruciating moments, Dazai regarded his prisoner with glacial detachment before his lips finally contorted into a cruel, sardonic smirk. “Nope.” He shook his head. “I’m not going to hit you with it. That’d just tire me out and hurt my hands. A real pro doesn’t use more energy than they have to. This is what I’m going to do with it.” Dazai placed the piece of rubble on top of the flat, massive piece that already had the former officer’s arm pinned. The heavy weight made the man wince. “That’s it,” said Dazai. “How do you feel? Pretty anticlimactic, huh? Torture, see, is something you start off gently. That way, you give the person being tortured time to imagine what’s going to happen next. After all, there’s no greater fear than the fear created by our own imagination.” He lifted another piece of rubble and placed it on top of the same flat slab. “One or two pieces isn’t a big deal, but what’s going to happen when I stack ten pieces of rubble? What about twenty? Your arms are fixed in place while weight is gradually being added. Right now, you’re probably only feeling a little pressure and some pain, but eventually, you’ll reach your breaking point. Slowly, over time, your bones will shatter, and both of your arms will be crushed. I’ll be increasing the weight gradually as well, so you’ll have plenty of time to imagine this sequence of events.” The color slowly drained from the former officer’s face. Complex thought vanished from his eyes, leaving nothing but extremely primal and simple emotions. “That’s what I wanted to see.” Dazai smirked and playfully tapped the man’s forehead. “That’s fear. It’s fear born from your own imagination, and nobody can rob a person of their imagination. Now, shall we continue?” More rubble was piled on top, pressing down heavily on the former officer’s forearms. Cold sweat trickled down his cheek. He knew exactly what was coming. His arms were going to be crushed. The bones bearing the brunt of the weight were his radius and ulna, followed by the lunate, scaphoid, and triquetral at the base of his hand, and finally the finger joints. The pressure would break them one by one, starting where the force was greatest. Compared to the pain of a flesh wound, the pain of a fracture was said to be literally unbearable. Furthermore, with ordinary fractures, bones broke at the single point where the force was the greatest. This situation, however, wasn’t going to be that simple. Here, when one part of the bone would break, stress would then concentrate on a new point until it shattered there as well. The fractures would chain together one after another until the bones were pulverized as if they had been put through a wood chipper. The man’s arms would become nothing but flat mattresses of flesh and blood but reaching that point was going to take an excruciatingly long amount of time. “Please! Don’t do this!” the former officer screamed. He tried to stand up and escape, but his struggle was essentially meaningless. He was only able to raise his hips slightly, since both of his hands were pinned under rubble, and both of his feet were skewered into the ground. He couldn’t even properly adjust his position, much less run away. “Then answer my question,” Dazai said. He leaned his weight against the slab of rubble. “Gyaaah!” As he leaned even more, the pressure intensified, eliciting an ominous creak from the man’s trapped limbs. “Tell me about the painting. That’s the only reason why I’m here. I could have easily crushed your organization, but I need to know about the painting. That’s the first step of my plan.” “The first step…?” the former officer asked in bewilderment, unable to grasp a single thing his captor was saying. There wasn’t yet anyone in this world who would understand. “I know everything about you, your organization, and what happens next.” Dazai’s voice cracked as if he was suppressing something from deep within. “All I need now is information on the painting because if I don’t get that, then Odasaku’s going to die. I need to know where that painting is to change the future.” “What are you saying?! None of this makes any sense! I’m just a low-level grunt! I honestly don’t know a thing!” “Oh, really?” Dazai placed more rubble on top. The former officer screamed as he summoned every fragment of his strength to pull his arms free in order to survive. Both arms stretched taut, his joints turning white and translucent. He held his breath, displaying an unnatural, almost superhuman strength. His arms shifted outward, but that was as far as they went. “You’re wasting your time,” said Dazai, his tone carrying an unexpected note of tenderness. “If you used every last bit of your strength, you could probably pull your arms out right now, but you won’t. The concrete is rough, and if you pull that hard, then the skin on your arms will tear right off. The more you pull, the less skin will be in contact with the concrete, thus increasing the weight on the remaining skin. In other words, you’d have to pull your arms all the way out while feeling your skin tear and your exposed flesh scrape against the concrete. So? Do you think you have it in you to peel off your own flesh until you’re free?” A flicker of fear crossed the former officer’s face, and his arms slowly relaxed. He hunched forward, struggling to catch his breath. “See?” Dazai smiled. “Your will—your soul—is telling you to pull your arms free, but your imagination is creating fear, which prevents you from doing it. I told you, right? Our personalities—that is, our souls—are nothing more than a convenient, unstable hypothesis built upon primitive instincts like pain and fear. Pain is your god right here and now, and that’s why you will talk. Trust me.” The former officer’s frame convulsed with pure terror—a fear stemming not only from physical agony but also from the darkness of his own imagination. And yet, transcending all this was the dread inspired by the young man before him—this architect of suffering, this sovereign ruler over the merciless kingdom of pain. “Just who are you? How are you able to do this?” the man demanded. “I’m a pro when it comes to pain,” Dazai replied, bringing his face closer as if sharing a secret. “All right… If you want an excuse, then I’ll give you one. I’m one of the five executives of the Port Mafia.” And with that, the former officer jerked violently as if seized by convulsions. A flash of regret flickered in his eyes. His entire body tensed, his muscles locking rigidly, and for a moment, he forgot all about the rubble crushing his arms and the stakes impaling his feet. “Okay. I’ll talk. I’ll tell you everything you want to know! I had no idea we’d be pissing off the Port Mafia when I took this job!” The man’s hair shook as he screamed. “If it’s money you want, I can get it for you! I’ll even sell out my friends! Just let me go! I beg of you!” Dazai smiled thinly at how easily this former officer had succumbed. “Where did you hear about the painting?” Dazai asked. “From an art dealer.” The former officer’s eyes were bloodshot as he desperately searched his memory, realizing that every word he uttered could determine his life and dignity. “He runs a small art gallery by the port, but on the side, he buys and sells forgeries,” the former officer explained. “He’s a gray market businessman for the most part, I guess you could say, but he botched a job last month and got arrested for selling paintings knowing they were fakes.” “Now we’re getting somewhere.” Dazai grinned and took a seat on the rubble nearby. “Anything else?” “Well…the local police started to look into his other offenses. Nothing significant turned up until he became the suspect in a really big case: dealing in stolen goods.” “Oh?” Dazai tilted his head. “Go on.” The ex-cop began to explain in a halting voice despite the pain he was experiencing. It had been the art dealer’s biggest job to date. The job was to secretly sell a stolen work of art that had flowed in from Europe. It was an enormous painting, barely transportable by two adults, depicting a farming couple in a medieval European landscape. The piece was painted by a nobleman who had been a great European monarch in the fourteenth century. Put simply, this was considered a masterpiece of that era. One night, however, it had disappeared from an international art museum in France. Soon after, the thieves—a gang of skill users—fled to Japan seeking to liquidate their prize. They approached the art dealer, and while buying stolen goods was nothing new to him, this particular venture far dwarfed his usual operations, since this painting’s historical significance posed a unique challenge. With news of the theft circulating throughout the international community, potential buyers had become scarce. Yet ultimately, the art dealer had pulled off the job. The canvas found its way to a domestic tycoon—a man whose wealth flowed from aircraft imports and whose passion for fine art was surpassed only by his love of owning expensive art. The tycoon had displayed the painting in the basement of his home with no intention of showing it to anyone, content to be its sole admirer. Therefore, when the authorities finally apprehended the dealer, his foremost anxiety centered on the painting, since its location had become the focus of global interest. Furthermore, should investigators uncover its trail, Europol would inevitably get involved. If that happened, the intensity of the investigation and the magnitude of the crime would be incomparable to when the Yokohama police had jurisdiction. It was then that the art dealer had requested the criminal organization the Forty-Eight to erase the evidence of this stolen painting. That had been one of the group’s specialties, after all. Through their collaborators within the city police, they could steal evidence from the station’s storage or even rewrite criminal records. The price fluctuated according to the severity of the crime being erased, but the Forty-Eight understood the investigation process inside out, which put them in extremely high demand in the industry. The Forty-Eight’s movements had been swift. They’d erased the travel records of the gang who stole the painting and rewrote surveillance video records around the warehouse used for the transaction. They applied expertise honed during their careers in law enforcement, coupled with a relentless thoroughness that defined their reputation. Even though they had fallen from day to night—from guardians of the law to outlaws—that persistence could not be taken from them by anyone. But that was as far as it went. Two problems had occurred: First, the tycoon who bought the painting had been killed, and second, the painting had disappeared. The tycoon had been murdered at his home, along with his family. No evidence revealed the killer’s identity, nor even the method of entry or execution. All investigators could establish was that the tycoon had died instantly from a single bullet to the head at close range. Forensic examination yielded nothing significant, either; the rifling marks on the bullet didn’t match any weapon in the database. This was clearly a professional hit, and the painting had disappeared as well. That meant only one thing: The killer had known the value of the painting and stole it. “That’s impossible,” Dazai muttered in bewilderment. “Are you saying Odasaku killed them and stole the painting?” “It had to be him,” the man replied, fighting through his pain. “The police reports state that the painting was already gone by the time the cops arrived at the scene of the crime. Of course, the tycoon could have gotten rid of the painting right before he was killed, but it’s a difficult painting to sell. And if he were to sell it, he’d likely use the same art dealer he bought it from.” Dazai stared at nowhere in particular, completely motionless. He leaned his weight against the rubble but didn’t speak a word, lost in contemplation. Though his eyes remained open, they registered nothing of the world before him. It was as though he had even forgotten how to breathe. “All right,” he said after an interminable silence, his voice completely monotone. Gone was the mockery from before, along with the cruelty and savage grin. Nothing remained. There was merely emptiness. In one fluid motion, he pulled out his gun, then leveled the barrel directly at the former officer’s temple. “W-wait! Why?! I told you everything! I betrayed my men and told you everything you wanted to know! Every last detail!” “You really don’t listen, do you?” Dazai’s voice was no longer cold. It was devoid of all emotion. There was no indication of him holding a gun, no indication of him even speaking to another human being. “I told you already: I won’t feel anything if you die. It wouldn’t inconvenience me in the slightest, either. There’s another thing I forgot to tell you, too.” Dazai bent his finger. “I hate the Forty-Eight.” Bang. I opened my eyes, unsettled by a vague yet undeniable sense that something was off. I was in a makeshift prison cell used to detain captives. It must have originally been a simple nap room within the bunker designed to protect against air raids. The space was about the size of a modest guesthouse room, with nothing more than the rusted frame of a bed bolted to one corner. The door had been replaced with a raw, crudely welded iron one. A thick mooring chain and an enormous padlock hung from the doorknob. Several black power cables ran along hooks lining the walls, leading to a murky cage lamp in the back, which was the only source of light. The lack of ventilation left the air thick and stagnant. I was restrained near the center of the room, with only the gloomy buzzing of the light fixture breaking the silence. Dreary time passed me by with a dreary expression. Eventually, I realized something was off: It was too quiet. I hadn’t heard any footsteps or voices for nearly two hours, and I didn’t sense any hostile or conciliatory presences like I did when I first got here. I stood up and put my ear to the door. No sign of anyone out there. That’s when I was forced to realize something. I was puzzled, unable to decide on how I should have interpreted this realization. The door’s padlock was undone. When I poked the chain, it dropped with a rattle, the padlock falling alongside it. I turned the knob and slowly pushed open the door, which creaked in protest. I found myself lost in thought for a few moments. Just because the door was open didn’t mean I had to leave. I could still wait here…but what would I be waiting for? Another opportunity to be tortured? Or perhaps a chance to congratulate the people who had kidnapped and restrained me? In the end, I decided to go outside. Although I was still handcuffed, it didn’t impede my movement. The underground bunker was long and labyrinthine, resembling the inside of some undiscovered subterranean creature’s body. Guided by only a dim light, I moved forward with my hand against the damp walls while black insects occasionally darted away from my approaching fingers. The sound of dripping water was echoing in the distance, and a faint breeze flowed by. The wind was cold and humid, carrying a gloomy odor like someone’s breath. I thought I might get lost, but that ended up not being the case. I soon discovered a marker: an enormous arrow crudely drawn on the floor where the paths branched. It was written in blood—still wet, indicating that the arrow had been drawn here recently. Looking ahead of the arrow made me instantly grasp what it was pointing to: a person lying on the floor. I understood that this person was probably no longer alive, but I rushed over regardless. He was on his side, and before I even got close, I could tell that his arms were completely destroyed. His skin had been peeled off, exposing the flesh beneath. His forearms and hands were stripped and torn on both sides as if they’d been crushed between something. But the rest of his arms were hardly damaged at all. What in the world had happened to this man? Furthermore, his feet had enormous holes penetrating through his shoes, and blood was still slowly trickling out. I was taken aback; corpses hardly bleed…which told me that he was still alive. I rolled the man onto his back and recognized his face. He was one of the cops who’d broken into my house—the younger one. “Hey, wake up,” I said. “Who did this to you?” I slapped his cheek, and the young police officer faintly opened his eyes. Though his face was pale and bloodless, his hazy gaze gradually fixed on me. It took several more seconds for his brain to process what he was looking at, though. “Stop!” he yelled. The police officer suddenly shoved me away and rolled backward. Breathing in short, rapid gasps, he desperately tried to flee with his almost useless limbs. “Hey, wait.” “Stay back! Please! Don’t—!” “Wait. Relax. I’m not going to hurt you.” I approached the man and grabbed his shoulder, pushing his flailing arm away and peering into his eyes. “Who did this to you? This is your organization’s base, right? What happened to the others?” The officer seemed to have regained some semblance of reason. His eyes gradually regained focus; he darted them from side to side, trying to get his bearings. “Where…? Where is he? I thought he was with you,” the man said. “Who?” I followed the officer’s gaze and quickly observed my surroundings, but there was nobody there. I was in a large storage room, likely once a vast space for keeping water and food supplies in case of evacuation. Now, however, it was empty and barren. Columns too thick for one person to wrap their arms around stood at equal intervals like ancient, inanimate soldiers. “He told me…there was nowhere to run.” The police officer sounded delirious. “He said I need to tell him where the painting is…or everyone here will die.” “Everyone?” I glanced around but didn’t see another soul. “Where are the others?” The officer, visibly shaken, shook his head and pointed toward the back of the room. I got to my feet and looked in that direction, but there was only darkness. In one dim corner was the entrance to a corridor that was enveloped in an even deeper void. I headed in that direction, guided by a vague premonition. Once I stepped farther into the corridor, I struck a match to dispel the darkness. Even before I took a good look at the floor, I already knew what I would find. A man was collapsed facedown, submerged in a pool of blood as comfortably as if he were lying on a cloud. Farther ahead rested another body, collapsed in an L shape with his arms wrapped around himself. The heavy scent of more blood drifted forth from the void. A sudden intuition struck me—had everyone in this underground hideout been taken down? I approached one of the fallen men nearby and checked for a pulse. Apparently, he was still alive, even after losing this much blood. He was breathing faintly, too. When I examined his body, I discovered that he had been slashed with a sharp blade in dozens of spots, yet the cuts ran perpendicular to blood vessels, ensuring that he wouldn’t bleed out. Arteries had been carefully avoided with the precision of a master painter’s brush on a canvas. Whoever did this wanted to keep this man alive and in pain. He hadn’t survived; he’d simply been forced to not die. This was first-class work, the skill of a craftsman in the underground world whose techniques were vastly different from my own. But these men must have been prepared for violence and raids, so who in the world could have done this to them? Who could have defeated them so easily? How did they manage to torture these people while ensuring that they wouldn’t die? And for what purpose? The officer from earlier had been threatened that if he didn’t reveal the whereabouts of the painting, everyone here would be killed. In other words, the torturer wanted information on the painting—info that only I knew. That made them my enemy. Suddenly, I felt like someone who had lost his way on a freezing mountain peak in just his underwear, with nothing for protection and no clear escape route. Beyond the white shroud lurked an unknown monster waiting to tear me apart. I hurried back to ask the conscious officer for directions so that we could escape together, hoping our departure might convince the torturer to spare the dying victims. However, before I could even make it there, the entire tunnel violently trembled with a roar. I had to steady myself against the wall while the surrounding concrete rumbled and debris rained down. “We’re…done for…,” came a voice—the young police officer I had first encountered. I turned toward him to find him trembling, his eyes swimming as if he were certain the world was about to end. I promptly helped him sit up, but he began rambling frantically, his eyes unfocused like a feverish hospital patient. “They’re coming. They’re coming. They’re going to kill every last one of us. He uses fear. He uses imagination. Nobody can win against their own imagination. All the exits have been surrounded, and they’re gonna cook each of us alive.” “Pull yourself together. Who are you talking about? What’s going to happen?” I asked. The police officer’s gaze met mine, radiating such profound dread from his core that it almost felt contagious. “He’s with the Port Mafia.” The Port Mafia… I wasn’t so naive as to not recognize the weight behind those words. They were like the nighttime wind that blew through this city’s shadows. These relentless hunters pursued their prey in the dark before sinking their fangs into their necks and ripping out their throats. They were messengers of death that no living creature could outrun—and they were here. There was another thunderous roar. The hall shook like the convulsing entrails of a giant, sending thin cracks across the walls. We apparently had even less time than I had imagined. “So let me get this straight,” I said. “Right now, this hideout is surrounded, and the Port Mafia plans on killing everyone here, but they’ll spare everyone as long as we tell them where the painting is.” “I…think so,” replied the officer, his face pale. “It’s not like he wants to take anyone’s life. To him, our lives are worth less than dirt. Come on, please help me. I’ll leave this organization for good. I don’t care about how much money I can make doing this. I just don’t want to live in a world inhabited by that monster for any longer than I have to, so please… I don’t want to die.” I looked at the young police officer. He was consumed by terror, so deeply afraid to the point that all traces of composure had vanished, leaving only a trembling shell of a human being. But behind the light flickering in his eyes, I saw it: the man who ruled through fear—the demon of the Port Mafia. It was as if he were pulling invisible strings made of dread to manipulate the officer into speaking on his behalf. Give me the painting, the demon was commanding me. “I’m not going to do it,” I replied. “I don’t like that he’s trying to control others, for starters. Secondly, that painting doesn’t belong to me. It belongs to someone else, and I don’t have the authority to trade it for people’s lives. Thirdly, the painting isn’t that valuable anymore. It’s nowhere near worth fifty thousand, let alone five hundred million. Plus, I really doubt they’d let us go even if I did tell them where the painting was.” “But…! If we don’t give them the painting, then—” “Fourthly,” I cut in, “they’re not going to kill me, since I’m the only one who knows where the painting is. The Port Mafia might surround this place and kill everyone inside, but they’ll have to keep me alive because they need the information in my head. However, if I tell you where the painting is now, I won’t be the only one who knows the secret anymore, thus diminishing my value. And if that happens, then whether or not they keep me alive is a coin toss.” “Wh-what are you trying to say?!” The man was basically shrieking at this point. “What about me? What’s going to happen to the rest of us?!” “You’re criminals,” I calmly replied. “It’s only natural that you’d be devoured by an even eviler criminal organization.” “You little…!” Still on the floor, the officer swiftly drew a handgun he’d been hiding and aimed it at me. I took a step back, observing the weapon—a black 9mm automatic pistol. There was no need to cock the hammer, either, since it was automatic, so he probably wouldn’t have trouble firing, even with his injured arm. “Were you listening to me?” I said, lifting my hands into the air. “If I die, then no one’s going to find the painting. You’re wasting your time trying to threaten me with a gun.” “Oh, I understand that. That’s why you’re being smug, acting like you’re better than us.” The young police officer’s eyes shimmered with a frenzied hue. “You think you’re safe and special, and I don’t like that. Me, though? I’m gonna die, regardless of whether you talk to me or not. I might as well shoot you so that I can at least feel a little better before I kick the bucket. So what now? Not so confident anymore, are ya?” I stared down at the man in silence. Raw desperation was etched into his face as if he were pleading for his life. If I waited long enough, he would shoot me without question, as certain as dawn always followed even the darkest night. “All right,” I heard myself mutter. “It sounds like you’ve really thought this through, so I guess I have no choice but to talk. I doubt that’s going to change anything, though. Seven years ago, I killed the man who owned the painting. It was the last job I ever took.” I began to tell a tale of my past. I explained how I’d killed that wealthy man simply because it was my job. I didn’t know why someone wanted him dead or what kind of person he was. I just aimed my gun at his head and pulled the trigger. That was it. The painting was apparently the client’s target, but that was something that I had learned much later. My contracted role extended solely to eliminating the wealthy man; other specialists had to handle the extraction and eliminating the evidence. They did their job, and I did mine. On my way out of the man’s home, however, I happened to notice a novel on a desk, and I decided to take it with me. It’s always the most trivial things that set everything in motion. This particular book, for example, was what led to a chain of events that made me stop killing. But around two years later, a spontaneous impulse to return the book arose within me. I was motivated neither by ethical considerations nor remorse but by a belief that by doing so, I might be able to properly face the novel itself. I’d already bought my own copy. Occupying the tycoon’s estate was his solitary heir—a fifteen-year-old boy. I later discovered that he wasn’t the man’s biological son but rather an orphan who had lost his parents in an underworld conflict. This wealthy man had taken the boy in as his own child. I must have been out of my mind back then because I wanted to meet that son. I could have easily sneaked into the house, left the book, and vanished without a trace. But instead, I confronted the boy and revealed that I was the one who’d killed his father. Just how furious the boy was requires no elaboration. His rage was entirely justified as well, since he had twice lost his family to the underworld. He lunged at me, threw whatever was nearby in my direction, and hurled every possible insult he could. While I easily evaded his physical attacks, there was no way to avoid his verbal ones. Only after his anger whittled him down to exhaustion did I detail the context of his father’s murder. The boy then demanded reimbursement—both for his father’s life and for my unauthorized rental of the novel. He told me to get the painting back. There was no reason I had to accept this task. I no longer knew where the painting was, for starters. It could’ve been with some other tycoon in a faraway land. Though I did have some connections I could use to look into the matter, it would’ve been a lengthy, troublesome, and unprofitable venture. In fact, I probably wouldn’t have accepted this job if it hadn’t been for the book. Long story short, I was right. It was indeed a lengthy, troublesome, and unprofitable gig, and extremely dangerous, to boot. Extracting the artwork required infiltrating a private military company guarded by nearly one hundred and fifty armed soldiers, navigating through a storm of gunfire without killing anyone. There was no way I would ever do it again, even if someone begged me. Most of the troubles in my life were ones I brought upon myself. Once I completed the mission and returned the painting, the tycoon’s son stared silently at it for a long time. Only after around thirty minutes went by did he finally begin to speak—slowly at first—about why he wanted it back. The painting, he explained, had something to do with a bet he and his father had made. The tycoon had wanted his son to become an even greater businessman than himself, and he’d promised to give him the painting if the boy managed to earn ten million yen by the time he turned eighteen. “My dad was such an idiot,” the boy had mumbled. The painting had been acquired through illegal means. It was tainted from the start. Did his father truly believe he would go to such lengths for something like that? And yet, the tycoon was right. His son had already earned 80 percent of that ten million all by himself. Nevertheless, he said it wasn’t the painting itself that drove him to try so hard. There was still one year left until he reached eighteen—the promised age. The young man asked me to hold on to the painting until then. The painting, however, had been tampered with. Secretly written in special ultraviolet-sensitive paint across a quarter of the canvas were the words You are my pride. Art enthusiasts around the world would likely faint in outrage if they ever found out, especially since that graffiti alone would wipe out the painting’s five-hundred-million value in an instant. Even after death, the tycoon was still causing trouble, but maybe that was the point. Maybe he meant to say the value of the painting didn’t matter, even if it became worthless, because his son was far more valuable. Perhaps that was why he’d gone out of his way to acquire it through illegal channels. Of course, no one would ever truly know, since I’d killed him. Ever since then, I’d been holding on to the painting just as the son had requested. It was in a storage box, kept in a cool, well-ventilated space under the floorboards beneath my bed. Its worth as a work of art was long gone, so perhaps there was little sense in preserving it with such care. But for that young man—for the son who lost his father—it still had value. That painting was a memento. It was his father’s final message, and in a way, it was the father himself. I was still protecting the painting. Not out of guilt or for atonement; I wasn’t that noble. It was simply something I had decided to do after an accumulation of various circumstances. “And once I make up my mind to do something, I plan on doing it, no matter what anyone says,” I stated while walking toward the officer. “Happy now, Bandages?” “What?” Before the police officer could react, I swiftly snatched the handgun from his grasp. The injured officer, unable to stand, no longer had the strength to take it back. “This isn’t a gun.” I brought the gun-shaped object close to my face. “It’s an eavesdropping device. You’re listening to this, right? You predicted this would happen, so you created a situation where I’d have to say where the painting is while you used this to eavesdrop.” “That gun…was bugged?” the man asked in astonishment. Apparently, he hadn’t been told a thing. “The first part I found odd was the fact that it was an automatic pistol,” I began, examining the device. “He was using a city police–issued revolver when he broke into my house, so I’m guessing this automatic pistol is what you probably used to threaten him, huh? Plus, people who make threats usually contact the person they want to threaten. But the only people here are injured officers, which led me to one conclusion. You created a situation where this officer would threaten me so that you could learn where the painting was without having to come here yourself. And to do that, you needed some way to listen in on our conversation.”
Chapter 122
42 min read