As his fingers carved away, he walked further into the unfinished amusement park.
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He reached a strangely-shaped tower, like a spiral reaching towards the sky.
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The entrance was blocked-not only bolted shut, but also wrapped in chains.
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"............" Spooky E never even glanced at it. He took a short step backwards.
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And, just as he had the fence, he crouched down and took a flying leap all the way up to the third floor, through the empty window frame.
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The floor inside was covered in dust, and garbage carried by the wind was strung here and there. Kicking the mess out of his way, Spooky E stumped across the floor towards the inner staircase. The elevator was an empty shaft, and even if it had been finished, there was no power.
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He climbed to the top floor, which was the only one that had had glass placed into its window frames. Viewing this sight, it was as if the construction crew had been working from the top down.
✦ ✦ ✦
"....................."
✦ ✦ ✦
At last, Spooky E stopped picking at his wounded ear, and sat down in the middle of the empty floor, taking out of the plastic bag onigiri and a pair of sandwiches. It was his lunch, and he was starving.
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As if a thought had just struck him, he took one of the cell phones that hung at his waist, and dialed at an unsettling speed, all ten digits in less than a second.
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The phone barely had time to ring before a girl answered.
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“This is Kasugai.”
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“Command 700259,” Spooky E said, cramming an entire ham sandwich into his mouth.
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“Understood. Command accepted,” the girl’s voice became suddenly mechanical. “Preparation complete. Awaiting details.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Go to the city library and get the key hidden between the Hungarian Dictionary and the Hungarian Phrase Book.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Understood.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“The key is for a coin locker at the station. Take the medicine inside and pour it into the drinks at the fast food restaurant you work at. One tab for every three liters.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Understood.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“That’s all. Command 700259, transmission complete.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Understood. Transmission complete. Proceeding to action.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Spooky E hung up.
✦ ✦ ✦
He put the phone back on his belt, took off another one, and dialed another number.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Who is it?” snapped an angry-sounding boy.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Command 5400129,” Spooky E muttered.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Understood,” the boy said instantly, his voice turning mechanical, just like the girl’s had.
✦ ✦ ✦
“How many members are on your team currently?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Seven.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Not enough. Make it twelve. This week.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Understood. How?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“I don’t care. Threaten them, force them, just get them in your group.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Understood.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“When you have twelve, take to the streets, and cause a disturbance between Sixth Street and Eighth Street. Report who fights back.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Understood.”
✦ ✦ ✦
In this instance, “disturbance” meant extortion and theft.
✦ ✦ ✦
As he was speaking, a different phone on Spooky E’s waist began vibrating.
✦ ✦ ✦
Unhurriedly, Spooky E continued his conversation with the boy. Finally, he concluded with, “That’s all. Command 5400129, transmission complete.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Understood.”
✦ ✦ ✦
Only then did he finally answer the incoming call.
✦ ✦ ✦
“What?!”
✦ ✦ ✦
“FS450036 Periodic Report.” The voice sounded like an adult woman in her late twenties. But once again, it lacked expression, and was totally mechanical.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Any problems?”
✦ ✦ ✦
“70% of the spiked cream has been sold. 70% of all customers have come back to the shop, but there have been no noticeable changes.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Send the details like always. Begin stage two on the spiked customers. . .regardless of results.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Understood.”
✦ ✦ ✦
In this fashion, from this forgotten, deserted location, munching on convenience store junk food, Spooky E continued giving instructions to the' “Terminals” he had brainwashed and hidden throughout the city. He made a seemingly endless series of calls, while receiving an equally endless number. How many people had he brainwashed? Apparently, an unimaginable number. He was like a scalper with tickets for all the hottest gigs.
✦ ✦ ✦
They divided roughly into two camps-those who gave people drugs, and those who observed the results.
✦ ✦ ✦
But there were also a few unrelated calls.
✦ ✦ ✦
“They say he comes out near the expressway overpass.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Someone saw him running along the river.”
✦ ✦ ✦
“Rumor has it a shadow like him was seen on the Twin City roof”
✦ ✦ ✦
Calls like that.
✦ ✦ ✦
These calls always made Spooky E sullen. Especially the third one, where he shouted, “I know!” into the phone.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Shit!” he roared, once the flood of calls subsided. “God damn that Boogiepop!”
✦ ✦ ✦
He ground his teeth so hard that blood spurted out of his ear stub.
✦ ✦ ✦
He thrust his hand into the plastic bag, but it was empty, simply making a dismal rustle.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Son of a bitch!”
✦ ✦ ✦
He tore the bag to pieces.
✦ ✦ ✦
Flinging the garbage aside, he stomped up to the tower roof, footsteps echoing.
✦ ✦ ✦
(Unforgivable! I’m gonna tear him apart with my bare hands!!)
✦ ✦ ✦
On the roof, a strong wind was blowing, just like it had when he faced his ‘enemy.’
✦ ✦ ✦
(He mentioned the Manticore. . .that fugitive Tarkus was after.
✦ ✦ ✦
But it sounds like he already finished it off. . .but I’m not telling Axis about him! He’s my prey! Nobody else’s!) He glared at the seven cylinders that stood on the roof.
✦ ✦ ✦
They didn’t really stand out much among the other building supplies left abandoned here. Even if someone were to notice them, they would never guess they had been placed here much later. But inside each of them was a ‘disinfectant’ strong enough to bring ‘death’ to every living thing around.
✦ ✦ ✦
(If it comes to it, I’ll use these on him if I have to.) Blood spurted out of his ear stump again. He stopped it with his hands, and whispered, “But...but that other name he said. . . ‘Imaginator.’ What the hell is that?”
✦ ✦ ✦
Spooky E stood for a moment glumly, then his expression suddenly sharpened, and he glared down at the park below him.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Mm. . .?”
✦ ✦ ✦
Someone was standing at the locked gate at the entrance to the park.
✦ ✦ ✦
It was a woman. . .no, a girl. And it looked as though she was dressed in her uniform, on her way home from high school.
✦ ✦ ✦
She did something at the gate, and, surprisingly, the lock opened. She had a key.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Well, now. . .” Spooky E grinned as he watched the girl enter the park.
✦ ✦ ✦
“What am I doing?”
✦ ✦ ✦
She reached into her school bag and took out one of the car-toon rabbit decorated band-aids that she always had with her, and wrapped it around her wound.
✦ ✦ ✦
She felt very childish. Like she was three years old again.
✦ ✦ ✦
Nobody knew she had a key to the half-finished Paisley Park construction site. One of the countless companies with a claim on the ground belonged to her father, and when he brought the master key home, Kotoe had snuck out of the house with it and made a copy.
✦ ✦ ✦
Ever since, it had become her secret hideout when she was feeling depressed.
✦ ✦ ✦
The buildings in the park had been abandoned just after construction began, so they looked more like abstract sculptures than anything else, and the curved walking paths were all bare, waiting patiently for beautiful tiles to be laid upon them. But as Kotoe looked at the buildings as she walked, she felt as if she was about to cry a river.
✦ ✦ ✦
It was a very lonely place, and while she might have been a cheerful girl at home and at school, something about the desolate, deserted park tugged at her heartstrings. She had never told anyone about it, but...
✦ ✦ ✦
Part of her was convinced that she belonged in a place like this.
✦ ✦ ✦
Like there was something fundamentally missing inside of her-a draft blowing through the cracks in her heart.
✦ ✦ ✦
This place, where they had tried to build a spectacular amusement park, was now a forgotten, pathetic little dream-the kind of dream everyone has when they are young, but never achieves, only to become abandoned with time. Kotoe felt like she had never had that sort of dream at all.
✦ ✦ ✦
Of course, this seventeen-year-old girl was not consciously aware of this. But she indistinctly felt it, and this sadness remained inside of her, refusing to melt away.
✦ ✦ ✦
She walked on through the ruins, painted by the light of the setting sun.
✦ ✦ ✦
As she did, she thought about the only thing she ever thought about these days-her cousin, Asukai Jin.
✦ ✦ ✦
(Jin-niisan...)
✦ ✦ ✦
She first met Asukai Jin when she was five years old, and she remembered it clearly, even now.
✦ ✦ ✦
Jin’s father had come to borrow money from his younger brother, Kotoe’s father, and Jin had come along with him. He must still have been in elementary school.
✦ ✦ ✦
She had only seen him from a distance.
✦ ✦ ✦
Kotoe’s father had taken his wife’s name, Kinukawa, and he behaved like the rightful heir, much more so than Kotoe’s docile mother. He had thundered, “Stop begging,” to his brother.
✦ ✦ ✦
But Jin’s father had persisted, until Jin said, quietly, “Uncle Kouji’s right, Father. Nobody would lend money to someone who just wants it without any plan for using it.”
✦ ✦ ✦
When that clean boy soprano cut through the tension in the drawing room (decorated perfectly to her father’s tastes), Kotoe had the strangest feeling that this boy would take her away from everything-away from this life where she lacked nothing but could scarcely breathe.