The noonday bell rang.
“Box lunch!”
“Home cooked for me.”
Here and there the excited voices rang out as the unsociable teacher of Classics II stomped out of the classroom. For some reason, running around delivering orders, Poteko Toya flashed a V-sign and sidled up to Kyoya.
“What’s up, Izayoi-kun? You don’t look happy.”
“Buzz off,” said Kyoya, averting his eyes from her dumpling-like body, looking instead out the window.
“Aren’t you the rude one.”
“Take off. You’re smothering me.”
“Huh.” Toya frowned, but changed her mind. “Hey, want my lunch?”
“Not hungry. Git.”
“Specially made.”
Toya shook her enormous hips, body-checking the guys out of the adjoining chairs, and plopped herself down with a thump.
Kyoya glanced at her. “Don’t push it.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just get out of my face.”
“I’m not in it, honey.”
Toya waggled her butt again, shoving aside the desks in front and back, and ignoring the grunts of the students gored by the corners of the desks behind and to the side of her, she took a double-stacked lunch box from under her arm—the size of a shipping crate—and set it on her lap.
“Rest your eyes on these beauties. Glazed sweet potato, sweet potato cheese roll, sweet potato stir-fried in tomato sauce, picked sweet potato in olive oil.”
“There any rice in there?” the startled Kyoya asked. “Your family owns a bar, right? You can’t manage a little rice?”
Poteko’s big sister Junko ran a “bar” for underage kids and students in Mejiro called “Junko’s Jail.” Kyoya earned a little on the side as a bouncer at the place.
“Like hardly. Rice will ruin your figure, don’t you know. Hey, dig in. What do we got here? Ah, mackerel head, bigger the eyes, all the juicier. Sole of calves’ feet simmered in sperm whale bone broth. African vervet monkey testicles. That’ll get the blood flowing in the right direction, if you know what I mean. How about you and me, tonight.”
“I, uh, got places to go and things to do. I’ll leave you to enjoy such epicurean delights by yourself.”
“Oh please, spare me such effusive praise.”
Something in the pair of lunchboxes caught Kyoya’s eye. Pointing at the frightful cuisine he said, “What’s that sparkling powder? Smells like some sort of drug.”
“Vitamins,” she said, pushing out her chest.
“More like bigamins,” Kyoya said to himself. He got to his feet. “Live long and prosper.”
At that moment, somebody called out from a desk next to the window, “Hey, there’s some weirdo in the courtyard.”
A sea of uniforms surged across the room. Toya was slow to join them. Lunchboxes in one hand, grabbing the kids in front of her by the backs of their collars and flinging them out of the way with the other, she plowed her way through. This wasn’t a woman anybody wished to mess with once she got underway.
A slender youngster was standing in the center of the schoolyard. His dusky features had a melancholy aura and suggested a Middle Eastern background. His white shirt, rolled up sleeves and narrow-cut jeans balanced the intellectual mien with a touch of the wild side.
Everybody’s first assumption was that he was an exchange student. Everybody except one.
Kyoya raced out of the classroom and down to the courtyard. A PE class had just ended. They surrounded the kid at a distance and eyed him suspiciously. It wasn’t that unusual to see students from other schools there. So why was everyone crowding to the window? What were they looking at?
The PE instructor walked up to the kid as Kyoya ran onto the field, still in his slippers. The instructor said something to the kid. The kid turned away. The instructor clapped a hand hard on his shoulder.
The kid only turned his head and looked at the instructor behind him. Nothing else transpired.
The instructor’s body turned blue. A wordless scream echoed across the courtyard. The instructor’s face and chest glittered with a dull mineral luster. Beneath a bright blue sky, the young PE instructor turned into a stone statue, as if in ironic recognition of some hitherto unknown achievement.
By that time, Kyoya stood in front of the kid, Asura in his right hand. “You here to see me?” he asked in a voice brimming with a tension his classmates had never heard before.
“You understand me?” the kid said, suggesting a smattering command of Japanese.
“He wasn’t a threat to you. Put him back the way he was.”
“It is too late for that. Can you reanimate the dead?”
“No. I know of only one man who can do that.”
“My name is Ishmael. And you are Kyoya Izayoi.”
“Yeah.”
“I have something to say to you. After school, come to the Koma Theater in Shinjuku.”
“Why not settle things here and now?”
“It is all the same to me. Though there is no telling how many more people I might look at. Koma is in the ruins. Nobody will interfere.”
“Fine,” Kyoya readily agreed, cognizant of the threat implicit in Ishmael’s words.
“Well, then.” Ishmael nodded. “But having come all this way, I would like to see the differences between you and the teacher for myself.”
He raised his head. Kyoya stood stock still, school uniforms reflected in his black eyes. Ishmael as well remained frozen in place.
“What?” Kyoya asked in an expressionless voice.
Only his lips moved. The rest of his face could have been a Noh mask. This was the result of terrific mental concentration, that preceded the unleashing of his nenpo.
“If I’d taken a full hit of your power, I would have turned out like the teacher here. But to do that, it seems I’d have to turn around. Fine with me. Shall we give it our best shots?”
For a moment, the kid’s face twisted into a ghoulish form. A slight smile flashed for a split second. And then the calm countenance once again presented itself.
“I seem to have underestimated you,” he said graciously. “I did not think this world had another Semulia in it. But next time, I will have the sun on my side. There will be no turning your back on me then.”
“Sure.”
Ishmael strolled away. Kyoya didn’t relax until he had passed through the front gate. He was soaked with cold sweat. It was like his nen flowed out with his perspiration.
Ishmael hadn’t intended to kill him just now. He’d showed up here more for the fun of it, which was why he’d faced him head on.
Kyoya, though, was dead serious. Had they turned around and faced each other—even feigned doing so—he would have swung Asura at his head. Ishmael’s powers would have left him no other option. He had imparted all of his mental energy into the sword.
This time, the enemy had walked off, showing him only a faint smile. The next time, in the arena of his choosing, the gloves would be off. And Kyoya couldn’t be sure he would win.
He sensed the golden mask at work here. And he was making a war of it.
As Kyoya endeavored to focus his thoughts, his mood suddenly changed. With a skeptical glance at the students getting up their courage to approach him, he ran back to the school building. His hand was shaking when he pressed the speed dial button on his cell phone.
He reached someone on the third call. “Kawadacho Philanthropic Hospital.”
“Get me Rama in the surgical department. Make it quick!”
“And who are you, sir?”
“Kyoya Izayoi.”
“Kyoya-san?” the receptionist said in a friendly voice. Just about anybody living in Shinjuku was familiar with his name. “What are you calling about this time?”
“This time?” Kyoya felt a cold stab of fear down his back.
“We got a call from you a few minutes ago. Rama-san just left to meet you.”