Time to call on his reserves!
Kyoya’s thoughts were interrupted by an arrow of light. The chain broke apart, sending him tumbling across the ground. He absorbed the blows and turned his attention toward the source of the light beam.
Standing at the foot of the stairs was Sayaka, her right hand pushed out in front of her. The laser ring on full power melted the chain in two. Considering who was doing the shooting, he wasn’t surprised that she hadn’t aimed at the rider. Though her aim was remarkable.
The rider turned his attention from Kyoya and accelerated his machine at the new opponent. Sayaka couldn’t press the button on the laser, assaulted by the onrushing tide of malice. Drunk with the joy in slaughter, the monster bore down on her.
He was practically on top of her when his back bowed, his head flew back, and the bike zipped out from under him, banking to the left for several yards before spinning around uselessly as its innate ferocity drained away.
“Kyoya-san!”
Sayaka came back to herself and ran toward him. Observing Kyoya getting to his feet, apparently unharmed, she instead approached the rider. He’d been thrown from his bike. A bone was buried deeply through the black leather covering his back. With her life in the balance, Kyoya had imbued the bone of a nearby victim with his spare nen and flung it at him.
For the first time, the rider’s voice escaped the confines of the helmet. “Hit the ground and it’s curtains for me. But I cannot die. They won’t let me sleep. I will surely return.”
Sayaka felt a shiver down her spine, knowing the Sorcerer in his hideout had said the same thing. Nevertheless, she knelt down on the road and laid his head in her lap.
Kyoya came up to them.
“Kyoya-san, this man—”
“Yeah, he’s dead. He died a long time ago.”
Sayaka nodded. The previous dousing of malice from him told her that much.
“How did you get away from the taxi?” Kyoya asked under his breath. He wasn’t angry. He’d escaped a certain death thanks to her. If anything, he was too tired to be angry. He could barely manage a hoarse whisper.
“I had no intent of fleeing to safety by myself. So I melted the door lock with my laser.”
Kyoya shrugged. “I feel sorry for the cabbie. Well, water under the bridge. Let’s go.”
“Wait. We just can’t leave him here.”
“Hey, show a little discretion when it comes to spreading the love around. Take a look at those bones over there. That guy ran over anybody who came in here. The beast should die the death he dealt to others.” The skeletal remains of the children still lingered in his mind’s eye. “Heaven’s judgment.”
“And if it was you?” Sayaka quietly fixed her eyes on him.
Kyoya reconsidered his first retort and smiled wryly. “All right then. Go ahead.” He sat down on the sidewalk.
With a small smile, Sayaka touched the helmet. It was coated with dark red from the crown of the helmet to the bottom edge.
“It’s useless,” the rider moaned. “This helmet is stained with the blood of those I ran over and crushed to death. It won’t come off until they release the curse. Their anger burns. Kill him, they say. Drag him down, trample him underfoot—”
“You are an unlucky man,” Sayaka softly said. “Begrudging others, stealing away their lives, and now cursed by them in turn.”
Human emotion filled the rider’s voice. “How strange. When they hear your voice, they do not draw near. Stay by my side. Don’t leave me alone—”
“I’m here. Tell me about it, what is so painful and so sad.”
The rider explained. The day of the Devil Quake, he’d turned eighteen and could finally have the Kawasaki he dreamed of. He’d worked his fingers to the bone, barely eating even, to save up the money.
And on that fated night, racing along Tenth Street, the Devil Quake threw him to the street below, crushing his body and snuffing out his life. Astride his beloved bike, the happiest man alive, he could not accept the hand that fate had dealt him and cursed his death.
Then the haunted miasmas invaded Shinjuku, turning the skyscrapers into an ancient stone circle that in turn triggered more ghostly and occult phenomena. All those with lingering regrets and attachments to the mortal world—vengeful ghosts, the souls of suicides—gathered there in the heart of Shinjuku and began to curse and possess any who ventured there.
With his particularly strong regrets, he was transformed by the unearthly winds, becoming a physical manifestation of all those grudges and regrets, with his beloved bike mowing down everyone he found wandering there. In the end, possessed by maledictions of the slaughtered dead, the mad blood condemned him to hunt down new victims until the end of eternity.
“How tragic.” Sayaka’s tears fell onto the helmet.
A moment later, she gasped. Joy flooded her features. The bloody, immovable helmet loosened slightly. Kyoya stood up, a disbelieving expression on his face.
“They—they disappeared. All of them—gone.” Happiness suffused the rider’s voice. He grasped Sayaka’s arm with a hand clad in a worn leather glove. “Thank you. Thank you. Now I can truly die and leave this accursed place. You should leave quickly as well.”
“First there’s something I’d like to ask you,” Kyoya said, coming to his side. “Do you know where that pan-dimensional thing called the coin purse disgorges its contents in the DMZ?”
The rider gestured with his right hand toward Chuo Park. “The library in the forest. Near there. But be careful. The forest is home to nests of haunted creatures and angry ghosts far stronger than what you’ll find here.”
“Thank you,” said Kyoya, from the bottom of his heart. “I am very grateful to you.”
Strength seemed to seep out of the rider’s body. “No—problem. You—could I get your name?”
“Sayaka.”
“A name like a pleasant breeze. A good name. My name is—”
His voice stopped. His hand fell to the ground. The ghost rider had finally earned his eternal rest. His head in her lap, Sayaka hadn’t moved the whole time. Kyoya looked on with a sense of awe.
The espers in the market plaza—this vengeful ghost rider—the girl’s touch turned evil to good. Perhaps as much could be expected from the daughter of a “holy man,” but a valuable gem in any case. Perhaps her touch could transform even Demon City.
A little while later, Sayaka quietly got to her feet. “What if we removed the helmet?”
“The curse seems to have been broken. I think he would want to sleep like this.”
“You’re probably right.”
Kyoya’s eyes were drawn to the bike. At some point it’d become covered with red rust. The bike was following the rider to the grave.
“There’s some open space over there. We can bury him and the rest of the remains. After that, we’d better go back inside the building. The night around here is too dangerous to go running around. We’ll wait until morning.”
That was when Sayaka noticed their surroundings were wrapped in a falling dusk. The stars of autumn twinkled in the darkening sky. Unaware, the time had slipped past six.
Filling in the grave, Sayaka appealed to Kyoya, “Please don’t tell me to go again.”
“I couldn’t do that to the person who saved my life. Besides, I don’t think it’d do any good.”
“Thanks!” she said, throwing her arms around his neck.
“Yow!” Kyoya grunted. The bruises from the chain on his neck were still raw, as were the scrapes and road burns on his back.
“S-sorry. Those wounds look bad. They need to be treated.”
“I’m okay. Wherever we camp out tonight, we should be able to find a first aid station. Albeit thirty years old. So, where shall we stay?”
Sayaka looked in the direction that Kyoya seemed to be avoiding. “Isn’t that a hotel over there?” The Keio Plaza Hotel, the lingering effects of the auto-suggestion machine.
“Ah,” Kyoya said hesitantly.
“Let’s stay there. I’m good at lullabies.”
“Lullabies? Who’s gonna listen to them?”
“You.”
Kyoya glared at her. “You plan on sharing a room?”
An awfully prim-sounding question for a guy who’d cop a feel whenever it struck his fancy.
“Sure.” Sayaka nodded and smiled. “Shall we get going? No? If worst comes to worst and we’re in separate rooms, our actions would likely be compromised.”
“You’ve got a point.”
“Don’t worry about me. I can sleep anywhere. I don’t care if you snore or grind your teeth or anything. Won’t bother me.”
“And who exactly do you think’s gonna be doing those things?”
Sayaka pouted, looking positively crestfallen. Kyoya burst out laughing. The same girl who in the midst of a hotel turned into a demonic sea had laughed at his jokes now sulked at an inconsequential aside. He couldn’t resist the delightful juxtaposition of images in his mind.
Still looking clueless, Sayaka managed a small smile.
“Yeah, it doesn’t suit you. Well, the presidential suite? But separate beds.”
Hurrying along the darkening streets to the hotel, Kyoya felt a dark and growing gloom gathering in the pit of his stomach. Monsters and vengeful ghosts were waiting in the forest. And yet his nenpo would be fully constrained for the next day. What weighed on his mind all the more was the time he had left to save the president. Two days, max.
That night, they stuffed their stomachs with canned food from the restaurant pantries. And yet lying on the king-size bed in the five-room luxurious presidential suite, couldn’t sleep a wink.
The next morning, walking from the hotel to Chuo Park—only a block away—the two got an up-close look at why the no-go area of the DMZ was a place no sane person should go.
They set out from the ground floor of the hotel, heading straight to the park. Passing beneath Eleventh Street, they were suddenly assaulted by a fierce, cold wind. They raced through the shadows to the other side, but still practically froze to death. It seemed that the vengeful ghosts laid in wait where the sun didn’t directly shine.
Another thirty feet on, the earth caved into a sinkhole the shape of a grinding mortar. At the bottom, the giant jaws of an anteater-like creature snapped at them. It seemed a “normal” living thing, and when Sayaka shot her laser at it, it scurried deeper into the earth without putting up a fight. The prevalence of such animals was likely due to the destruction of the gene research laboratories in Ichigaya.
“We came through that okay!” Sayaka exclaimed with relief, as they climbed out of the hole.