Kyoya was ready to leave. He couldn’t explain to himself how things had gotten to this point. This had nothing to do with the efforts of Master Rai and Section Chief Yamashina to persuade him. In fact, after Master Rai disappeared, Yamashina and Sayaka left the room without saying another word.
To start with, he had plans. His path after graduation was already mapped out. He’d applied for and been awarded an athletic scholarship to the Earth Federation base on Phobos. He had a hard time believing a sorcerer’s curses could run after him all the way to Mars.
Then why?
Although he’d posed the question to the Master, Kyoya actually did understand where his father was coming from. The purpose of his training was as the Master explained. The reasons he’d kept mum about it were also becoming clear.
He didn’t want me carrying that burden all through my childhood.
Suppose that he knew that his son was predestined from the start—Kyoya knew perfectly well that his father wasn’t the type to keep something like that buttoned up because he figured his son would find out about it sooner or later.
He certainly understood Kyoya’s character—spill the beans just once, and no matter how contrary he might be, in the end he would always return to the scene of the battle. His father couldn’t bear his son living a life so utterly predetermined from the start.
Then why didn’t he slacken in his training until the day he collapsed? He must have felt the fever coming on as he practiced kenpo in the bitter cold of the mountains. A few hours after Kyoya found him, he died with the single word “Shinjuku” on his lips.
Because he believed in me. Not because it was something that he was fated to do, but because it was something he would choose of his own free will.
Though that wasn’t what now propelled him on his way. Her face rose up in his thoughts. Her long black hair—that translucent young lady—fighting back the tears. She must be sixteen or so.
Am I doing it for her?
He didn’t know the answer. Among all the reasons, it was probably the one closest to the truth. Well, good enough for him. Wracking his brains over it wouldn’t do him any good.
Every cell of his body was brimming with energy—his and his father’s souls fusing together in Asura, giving birth to psychic energies of unimaginable power. He had unfailingly taken a hundred practice swings morning and night in order to savor that sensation, as if his body was turning into a fusion reactor.
The question was how well he could control it.
Kyoya took another object from the back of the locker. A carved wooden doll a foot tall, of an African medicine man with a bow in his hand. The dark paint had worn away in places, exposing the grain beneath. It was clearly an antique, though it didn’t look particularly valuable. A rather odd touch was that the arrow notched in the bow was sticking into the man’s chest.
Kyoya set the doll in the middle of the floor and removed the arrow. He placed it in the empty hand and quickly backed away and once again assumed an en garde pose.
Several seconds passed.
The doll grinned. Simultaneously, the room transformed. Water erupted violently out of the computer display unit, met by a spray of fire from the wall opposite, resulting in an ear-splitting explosion that shook the air. The entire room shuddered. The rollaway desk and the bed danced through the air, along with the digital notepad and electromagnetic pen and trinkets and gifts from his girlfriends.
A poltergeist at work!
Amidst the ceaseless roar and madly flying objects, Kyoya stood there motionless, eyes half closed. The doll opened its red mouth and laughed a piercing loud laugh.
This was an African voodoo doll. When a witch doctor was asked to cast a spell on a bitter rival, he would secret the doll somewhere in his house. It would draw in the wandering spirits and trigger supernatural events. The poltergeist was one of them. Even after the phenomenon ended, the unleashed miasmas and noxious odors would render the place unlivable.
Actions of the evil spirits could only be countered by being sealed with stronger magic, or by destroying the poltergeist itself. Either way, an arduous task. If a medium were in the room now, it would witness a horde of elated apparitions whirling about.
The doll notched the arrow into the bow string. Kyoya raised Asura over his head. As if by previous arrangement, the mad dancers retreated to the corners of the room. In the middle of the bed covers, a huge mouth opened up and bared its fangs.
The arrow shot across the room, growing in midair to a yard in length, straight at Kyoya’s heart. The thing in the bed sprang at him as well.
“Yaa—!”
With a shattering cry that could tear the walls in two, Kyoya brought Asura down in a sweeping arc. The air trembled. A flash of silver light shot at the doll’s chest.
A moment later he stood alone in the room, as calm and quiet as the autumn night.
Everything was back to normal, the same as before the doll smiled. The only difference was that the doll had toppled over. The arrow protruded from its chest. What was odd about it was a slight twist about halfway down the shaft, as if it had ricocheted off something.
Kyoya wordlessly picked up the doll and put it back in the locker. Just to make sure, he opened the door and peeked into the hallway. There was no sign this late-night racket had disturbed his aunt and uncle. Not a single sound had leaked out of his room.
“Good enough,” he murmured to himself. He propped Asura against the bed and packed his bag.
He’d summoned the poltergeist to test his might, mind and intention, his nen. The doll had long been a favorite sparring partner in that regard.
When his and his father’s nen fused together, frightening results could spring from its misuse. A light jab against a human opponent could crush his skull. A tap with the pinky could shatter the heart. Kyoya had once knocked a truck running a red light into the river with a single swipe of Asura. When it was pulled out of the water, it wasn’t damaged. Nothing appeared wrong with it. But it never worked again.
When wielded as a physical manifestation of willpower, without the accompanying purification that nen inculcated, his thought could become nothing more than a crude, lethal weapon.
Kyoya wasn’t sure he had yet reached that stage. That was why he invited the poltergeists to take him on, testing himself, confronting the threat with a single blow and a minimal projection of nen, and then dispersing them without annihilating them.
When he said “Good enough,” he was referring to those possibilities of control.
After a few more minutes, he had everything ready to go. To allow him maximum movement, he put on a pair of stretch jeans and a training jacket. His only luggage was a nylon day pack stuffed with a change of clothes, towel, toothbrush and toiletries. He’d pulled five thousand yen out of the ATM on his way home. He didn’t imagine that a credit card would do him much good where he was going.
He wouldn’t mind carrying some Shorinji Kenpo hidden weaponry into the battle, such as shuriken and tetsugan iron pills, but he didn’t have any on hand, so that was that.
He left his aunt and uncle a letter stating that he’d be going on a trip for three days. He played hooky all the time to take off to parts unknown, so it wouldn’t be anything to worry about. But Kyoya wasn’t sure he’d be back in three days.
Not waiting for morning, Kyoya left the slumbering abode. According to the glowing face of his watch it was midnight, the tenth of September. Three days and three hours were left. He could drop by the Information Bureau and have a detailed knowledge of Shinjuku implanted via their auto-suggestion devices, but gave it a pass. He wouldn’t be doing himself any favors trying to take shortcuts at this stage in the game.
As he hurried down the midnight streets to the robot bus stop, Kyoya addressed Asura in his left hand.
He was committing himself to this course. Like you said, of my own free will. It was a little late to be sorry about being such an unreliable son, but right now, Dad, I’m going to need all the strength you can give me.
Then he shrugged. No matter what, he still had to wonder how an ordinary high school student ended up going to a place like that—Demon City.