“Done. Straight-up fire, right?”
“Eh? That’s lame, man. What’s it supposed to be, a pig?”
“Shut up.”
The sun had long since dipped below the horizon, plunging the town into darkness.
Five delinquents were spray-painting a trash-strewn tunnel beneath an overpass. Their psychedelic art on the walls wasn’t unskilled, but it was clearly damaging the tunnel’s aesthetic.
Holding a cigarette between his teeth, a young man wearing a knit cap raised his spray can to start his next piece. He quickly froze, surprised to find that someone had beaten him to the spot on the wall in front of him.
The picture looked like a person drawn in black magic marker. Only their top half had been drawn; their arms were complete down to the fingertips, but the artist hadn’t bothered with anything below the torso.
Creepily, the face was blank other than the right eye. This was made all the more unsettling by the painstaking detail of the eye, which stood in stark contrast to the crude outline of the rest of the body. Yet, even in its simplicity, the detailed curves and depressions of the fingertips revealed the skill of the artist.
The young man wasn’t happy.
“What the hell?! Some asshole spoiled our canvas! This crappy drawing’s gettin’ in the way of my art.”
“Ha, art, my ass. Just spray over it, man.”
“Oh, right.”
Laughing with his friends, the youth covered the drawing with spray paint. He decided to spray over it with white first, then draw on top of that. But when he was almost done covering it up, something in the corner of his eye caught his attention.
“Huh?”
Next to his white paint was the same exact drawing of a person’s upper body.
“Another one? Wait, was that there before?”
He went to paint over it when—
—a hand reached out of the concrete and stabbed him through the arm.
“Aaaaagh!”
Blood spattered. A cry echoed through the tunnel.
His friends watched on in dumbfounded surprise.
First was the bloody arm, but now, something was dragging itself out of the wall.
It was the drawing of the upper body come to life—a half-man made of concrete.
The torso thudded to the ground, and the youth who’d been stabbed was dragged down with it, his face smacking into the pavement.
“Wh-wha—?!”
The young man began to panic, but before his mind could process what was happening, a merciless transformation began. His stabbed arm stopped bleeding, then lost all its hair and wrinkles, and turned completely flat, just like the torso from the drawing. This change radiated out to the rest of his body before he even had the chance to scream—his clothes vanished, his face changed, and before he knew it, there were two one-eyed concrete monsters.
“Eek…”
Once comprehension dawned, the other men began to shrink back. The thing before them was watching them with its one eye, then began to drag itself noisily toward them.
“AAAAAAAHHH!”
The men ran for their lives.
With the Untitled incident in the rearview mirror, Karamori, Archive, and Fujinaka were enduring a bumpy helicopter ride to the Noary base.
Though it was a private helicopter, it was designed for military use and deployed for Canary missions, so the interior was plain and functional with exposed steel bars. A row of cloth-covered seats on either side of the hull offered the only seating.
The three of them were all sitting on the same side, with Karamori in the center. They were all focused on their own activities—Archive was sitting straight-backed and playing cat’s cradle, Fujinaka was using her mobile device to contact her friends, and Karamori…was doing his school homework.
Fujinaka pried her eyes from her device and looked at Karamori. They had no desks, so he was doing his homework on a thin sheet of paper attached to a clipboard. He had a textbook open on his lap—Japanese language, a subject that concluded a week ago at Fujinaka’s school.
“Wow. You really are a high schooler, Karamori,” she said.
“Huh? Oh, yeah. I try anyway,” he replied with a strained smile.
Fujinaka figured he had his reasons for living a double life, but it was clearly difficult for him.
“That’s gotta be hard… Oh, that one’s wrong. It looks like the passive voice, but it’s actually the polite form of the word.”
“Huh, really? …Are you actually smart, Fujinaka?”
“Hey! You thought I was dumb because of my appearance, didn’t you?!”
Fujinaka scrunched up her face in anger. Her looks and attitude often led people to that misconception, but she’d actually been in the top ten of her grade at her last school.
“No, not at all! I swear I didn’t think that!”
“Reeeally…?”
Fujinaka glared at him, but Karamori brushed it off with a friendly smile.
“Well, actually, I have to translate this section by tomorrow. Do you mind helping me out if I get stuck?”
“Tomorrow?” Fujinaka asked, cocking her head.
“Tomorrow is Sunday,” Archive said, still playing with her string.
“Huh?!”
Karamori dropped his mechanical pencil. He and Archive had taken the previous day, which was Friday, off school to handle the Untitled case, and he’d been thinking this whole time that they’d spent one day working the case and another recuperating, making today Sunday.
Karamori turned his head to look at Archive.
“You should’ve told me that earlier!”
“Fate did not say that I would,” replied Archive. “Besides, I assumed you were being diligent and using this bit of free time to study even though tomorrow is the weekend.”
“You’re not serious…”
“More importantly, please look at this. I have a new creation.”
Archive held up her string, which she’d tied into an unbelievably complex shape.
“It is Oda Nobunaga, based on the portrait at the Kobe City Museum.”
“I gotta admit, that’s insane! Just gonna change the subject, are you? Wait… Have you developed a thing for old men or something?”
Archive’s ability to form just about any shape with her string was truly amazing. She clearly had more string than usual, though, which made Karamori wonder if she was cheating with Distortionism.
Now that he knew he didn’t need to finish his homework this instant, he sighed and started putting his textbook and clipboard away. Archive, who had been watching him, looked up. Her scarlet eyes stared off into the distance.
“…In our line of work, it’s best to take care of things while you have the opportunity. Especially on days like today.”
“What?” Karamori said, looking at her suspiciously.
Archive’s eyes flicked toward him.
“In three minutes and twelve seconds, we are going to receive two emergency missions.”
“You’re kidding…”