“Kabuki-cho is home to every type of punk, roughneck and madman you can imagine. Come night, and it turns into a staging ground for murder and mayhem. We’re not quite there yet, so relax. I’m delivering you to a place with a guaranteed security perimeter.”
He still expected a ransom to change hands at the end of all this.
“Yes, thank you.” Sayaka bowed her head. She couldn’t speak for Kyoya’s state of mind.
At that moment, a crash and a bellow from the cabbie resounded simultaneously through the vehicle. One of the punks had leapt into the street and swung a plastic bag and its red liquid contents against the windshield. With a heavy slushy sound, the thick glass began to melt. That wasn’t tomato juice obviously.
“Bastard!” the cabbie yelled. The punk whirled around. The cabbie didn’t hesitate, but cranked the steering wheel hard over and chased him up on the sidewalk. The pedestrians screamed and shouted and scrambled out of the way. About to get body checked by the fender, the punk dove sideways to safety—and right into a dumpster next to a cafeteria.
“Serves you right, buster!”
The cabbie laughed in high spirits. “We ought to scrape all them punks together in one big pile and feed ’em to the coin purse and spit ’em out in the DMZ. Man, that’d feel good.”
He was still venting when Kyoya—dead to the world till that moment—popped up like a jack-in-the-box. “The coin purse. You mean that pan-dimensional thing floating outside the Waseda Hotel?”
He asked this question with a degree of seriousness that suggested a negative answer might cost him a limb. The cabbie paled a bit and didn’t contradict him.
Kyoya continued, “Everything it eats gets spit out in the DMZ? Did I get that right?”
“That’s what the rumors say. I haven’t seen it for myself.”
“Because nobody’s made it back alive, I suspect.” Kyoya fell silent for a minute, then said, “Let’s give Kabuki-cho a pass for the time being. Take us to this DMZ. I’ll get out there.”
The cabbie jerked the steering wheel and hastily corrected. Even Sayaka looked at him with wide eyes.
“Don’t be a fool, kid. I don’t care how much you pay me, I ain’t locking up the little lady in a place like that. And let’s get this straight too—stiff me and I’ll haul your ass straight back to your ma and pa.”
“Sorry, but we’re putting the kidnapping on hold for now. The treasure hunt takes priority.”
“Just a second!” the cabbie exclaimed.
“Take it easy. I’m not that stupid.” Kyoya pointed at Sayaka and said, “Take her outside Shinjuku, any police station will do. You can expect a more than generous tip from the Federation government.”
“You don’t say?” the cabbie said, clearly impressed. “So out there, I can return the kidnapped lady and collect a reward. I like that idea a lot better.”
But Sayaka said, rather like a whiny child, “Don’t go deciding things for me. I don’t want to.”
“I got no time to argue. Those monsters shouldn’t follow you outside Shinjuku. I will definitely get your shadow back. So sit back, have some tea, relax and wait for me.”
“I don’t care. I don’t like it. In the first place, why are you going to a dangerous place like that? What do you mean, treasure hunting?”
Now she was getting irritating. Kyoya hissed, “Don’t you get it? That business in the plaza, to start with. All you did was tie my hands. If those espers hadn’t stepped in, it would have been lights out for both of us!”
Sayaka hung her head and closed her mouth.
I’m sorry, Kyoya said in his heart. But you know that those espers lent their power on your behalf. After this, he was heading to a place no lady should go. When it came to the difficult, the dangerous and the dirty, a man had to step up by himself.
“I understand,” said Sayaka, in a voice almost too soft to be heard.
The taxi raced down Yasukuni Avenue and turned onto the Oume Highway and stopped in front of endless rows of razor wire. There was a gap in the fencing wide enough for a single person to sneak through. On the other side of the fifteen-foot fence was the old heart of Shinjuku, now the infamous no-man’s-land known as the “DMZ.”
The forest of skyscrapers, smugly disregarding the architectural carnage all around them, challenged the sky as they had in times gone by.
Kyoya got out of the taxi. He didn’t look back at Sayaka and instead said to the cabbie, “She’s in your hands. Keep the doors locked so she doesn’t bolt. Oh, and enough with the kidnapping business, okay?”
“Don’t worry,” the cabbie reassured him with a friendly smile. “Not to boast of my own moral fortitude, but that wasn’t nothing I could pull off on my own.” He stuck out his hand. “I don’t rightly understand it myself, but seems to me you’re risking your life for a good cause. It might not mean much coming from a loser like me, but I’m praying for you, kid. You leave her to me.”
Kyoya shook the man’s hand, a clasp rough and warm. Sayaka pressed her face against the window glass as the taxi sped off.
He turned his eyes toward the heavens. Twilight was falling. The shadows of the tall buildings drew dark lines against the rusty red sun, like tombstones rising to meet the young warrior. He briefly cast his mind back to the life he’d left behind in Tokyo, the buoyant faces of Shiratori and Kayama, his high school life where hope sprang eternal.
As if channeling their thoughts, Kyoya Izayoi said to himself: This is one hell of a mess you’ve gotten yourself into. But then he shrugged and walked towards the fence.