Chapter 4

“It’s time to give up on the nice-guy act, Doctor.” Kurokawa gave his first smile, if such a twisting of the lips could be called that. “Your behavior is admirable but ultimately futile. No matter how hard you toil to save them, people will die without money. The same goes for that child. You’re only prolonging their suffering!” Kurokawa grabbed Milo by the lapels and looked the good doctor in the eye. Milo seemed about ready to burst into tears. “Come work for me, Doctor! With your skills, we can tend to many more patients, rich ones from beyond the city walls! There’s money to be made, enough for all the medicine you could need! Then you could…” Kurokawa spotted the doubt in Milo’s tearstained eyes. “…You could save your sister…” Suddenly, the sound of screams echoed from the direction of the cinema on the neon-lit street. Just as a huge crowd of guests came spilling out the doors, there was a great Gaboom! as an enormous mushroom split the building open, smashing the large neon sign in two. “Mr. Governor!” “What was that…?” Kurokawa’s bodyguards immediately crowded around him, pushing Milo aside. Mushrooms burst through the rooftops of the fishmonger, the junk shop, the brothel, one after another, their multicolored caps scattering spores everywhere as people ran about screaming. From cap to cap, a human-shaped shadow flitted across the sky. When people saw it, they stared up in the air and pointed. “Mushroom Keeper!” “There’s a Mushroom Keeper in the city!” “Don’t touch the spores; you’ll get the Rust!” Voices cried out in confusion. In the blink of an eye, the main street had been reduced to chaos. Out of the crowd came a number of the muscle-bound rabbit-headed men who served as Kurokawa’s bodyguards. They were holding another of their number, who was covered head to toe in soot. This one had a noticeably lighter build, and from beneath the mask came a high-pitched voice. “Hey! Let go of me! I can walk, I said! Eek! Where do you think you’re touching?!” The stranger managed to fire off a barrage of verbal abuse before the bodyguards threw her on the floor before Kurokawa. “Owww! Be a little gentler, would you?! …Oh, Uncle Kurokawa! Ha-ha… My, you look dashing tonight; is that a new hat?” Kurokawa’s face was devoid of emotion. He grabbed the rabbit head by the ears and tugged it off. “Pwah!” An explosion of braids fell about the girl’s face. The rest of her hair was cut short around her bangs and the back of her neck, resembling a pink jellyfish. She had a somewhat sly look about her, but her amber eyes were big and bright, like a cat’s, and from appearances alone, she seemed like a relatively sweet young lady. “Erm, listen… It’s about that Akaboshi guy…,” she began, looking at Kurokawa with upturned eyes, though the pressure he emanated caused beads of sweat to drip down her slender neck. “You know how you told me to kill him? Well… He kinda got away…and then he kinda got into the city.” “I can see that, you idiot. You had a warplane. How did you manage to mess up killing one man?” “I—I got the old man he was with! I think… I mean, I shot him up pretty bad… Ack! Ack!” Kurokawa motioned with his chin to a bodyguard, who produced a bottle of water. The pink-haired jellyfish girl downed it like her life depended on it. “…Phew! But that Akaboshi dude, I tell you! You could have warned me about him more! You said he had a bow, not…whatever that thing was! It went straight through the Escargot Plane’s guts like…a bolt of lightning, or something!” “…Hey, is that true? Akaboshi managed to bring down an Escargot Plane with a bow and arrow?” whispered a nearby bodyguard as Kurokawa stroked his beard with great interest. “It appears he’s attempting to flee north toward the bureau,” said a guard. “He won’t get far.” “I don’t want the vigilantes beating us to the punch. Get there first and kill him.” As Kurokawa spoke, he suddenly paused to think, then continued. “…Split into two groups. Seventy percent of you search the area around the office. The other thirty percent, search the streets.” “The… The streets?” asked one of them nervously, but a glare from Kurokawa shut him up, and he gave a hurried bow and scrambled onto the rooftop like an acrobat, before leaving in pursuit of the trail of mushrooms. “Erm… Mr. Kurokawa, sir? What about my plane? It was kinda expensive, you know…” “Of course, my dear. I shall add it to your life insurance payout.” Kurokawa took a pistol from his inside pocket and handed it to her. “For now, take this and join the others searching the streets. There are around twenty of them in total.” “Huh? Whaaat?! You mean, like, fight Akaboshi myself? With this little thing?” “Remember who pays your wages, my dear. Of course, if you don’t want to, I could always have you hanged for breach of contract, instead. Which would you prefer?” “What a crook…!” muttered the jellyfish girl, biting her lip, before hyping herself up and sprinting out of the alley. Several rabbit-headed bodyguards followed after her, flooring pedestrians in their wake. “I must speak with HR about their hiring process…,” said Kurokawa, shrugging. “Now then, where has my favorite child gotten to?” But Milo had managed to slip free of Kurokawa and escape into the crowd of people unnoticed. Before leaving, he gave one last look back, only to quickly pull himself aside as Kurokawa’s laser-like gaze swept toward him. Then he ran all the way to the end of the street and disappeared around the right-hand corner. “Shall we pursue him, Governor?” asked a bodyguard. “Hmm, no, I think not,” said Kurokawa. “I was just having a little fun with him today. But I mean really, now. Look at all this…” He turned around to stare at the wreckage of his favorite movie theater, its roof infested with mushrooms, and gave a throaty laugh. “You’ve really gone and done it now, Akaboshi. I was looking forward to the Star Wars marathon tomorrow.” “…Is that a sci-fi movie, sir?” Kurokawa didn’t even glance at the bodyguard trying to cheer him up with small talk. “Well, no matter,” he said, adjusting his hat and walking away. “It seems I will be quite occupied with work for the foreseeable future.”