“Okay, okay, let’s call it a day,” the young man said, as if bored with the show.
The bear stopped moving, and slowly turned his head and growled, eyes flashing. This was no mere animal. Such a degree of loathing and anger could only be associated with the human species.
With a roar to wake the dead, the creature sprang apart from the woman with a wet pop, the sound made by something damp being pulled out of a tight space. The bear’s dark red manhood jutted out, the size of two fists, drenched with her come, not having come himself.
He rose to his feet, five foot eleven or so, the same height as the young man. His width though—the mass of his frame—its hulking presence—was another matter. He must’ve weighed over four hundred pounds. A swipe with a single one of his fingernails could disembowel a horse. A single bite with its row of dagger-like teeth could take a man’s head clean off. Though slow and clumsy standing on two legs, when running on all fours, he could easily reach a speed of twenty-five miles per hour. And climb trees like no other four-footed animal could.
An unarmed man coming face to face with this animal could only hope to stare it down and slowly back away. If it came to a fight, the only way out would be to win its confidence—and then hack out its heart with a hatchet.
But the man at the door didn’t appear to have a gun or a hatchet or a knife. Yet not a flicker of fear rose to his impassive face.
The bear answered with a growl that shook the window panes.
The young man smiled. “I don’t believe we’ve met,” he said with a slight nod, addressing the bear with the same insouciant attitude. He produced a photograph and compared it to the girl on the floor. “The very woman I’ve been looking for. She’ll be leaving with me. Please don’t interfere. That would only make things more difficult for all of us. I’ll be contacting you tomorrow with an account number to which you will transfer sufficient funds to compensate her for any pain and suffering. Good day.”
The bear had likely never been spoken to so brazenly in its life. It stood there dumbfounded as the young man strode unconcernedly toward him.
“Step aside, Terumoto-san,” he said.
Instead, the bear took a wicked swipe at him, fully intending to ruffle that unruffled face. A black swirl of wind, a death-dealing, knockout punch.
The wind split in two. The former half slid off the vector aimed right at his head and flew at an oblique angle and slammed into the wall with a loud thud! The claws of the paw dug into the wood paneling—sans the rest of the arm.
The bear howled. A shower of blood spurted from around the claws pressed against the miraculously-severed stump. The beast reared back. Changes arose in the outlines of its huge frame.
The fur grew lighter in color, shortened. The body shrank as well, turning into a different living thing.
“Son of a bitch!”
A shout mingled with pain and articulated after a very human fashion. The speaker launched a backhand blow at the young man with the hand covering the wound. It never connected. The arm from the elbow down tumbled through the air.
Ducking the arcing splash of blood, the young man knelt down next to the girl. She was lying on her back and gasping for breath. He’d pulled the red dress over her shoulders when a crash rang out behind him.
The bear toppled over in the genkan. The impact was much lighter than expected.
The young man picked up the girl and was getting to his feet when he reached out with his left hand and caught something falling through the air. The bear’s hand—though this was clearly a human forearm.
Drained of blood, it turned as gray as the concrete of the genkan. The young man tossed it aside. It landed in a big trash can in the corner of the room. It’d give the janitor a start to be sure, but refuse was refuse.
With even strides, he stepped down into the genkan. The bear paw sticking to the wall revealed its true form and dropped to the concrete floor.
“If you would excuse me,” he said, nudging aside the obstructing body in front of him with the tip of his boot.
The bear was gone. Lying in the round pool of blood was a small, thin man in his late thirties or early forties. The owner of the hostess club and boss of the Terumoto Gang, Ryo Terumoto. The ashen face suggested there was little chance of keeping the Grim Reaper at bay.
He lifted his head. His bloodshot eyes—the only part of him that retained any vestiges of the bear—shot a piercing glare through the younger man’s back.
“Bastard—wait—” A barely human voice suffused with bitter maledictions. “Too bad for you—I injected her with so much aphrodisiac—right where it counts—heh—no treatment can keep up with it—heh—didn’t know she had a man waiting out there—she’s dead to that world—a creature of this city now—”
The young man didn’t move for a minute or two, digesting what Terumoto was saying. Contemplating this final retribution, his face twisted into a wicked smile of death.
Like stop motion, the smile froze on his face. The young man looked back at him. Nothing about his countenance had changed in the slightest. Nevertheless, Terumoto’s consciousness, already starved of blood, awoke to a new sense of fear, his terrorized instincts confirming the impossible turn of events in front of him.
This was a different person.
“Too bad, then, that you have met me,” the young man said, the warmth of his voice alone growing icy cool. A me that was not him. “Death from blood loss would at least be a peaceful one. But you should leave this world with a clear view of hell.”
Before he’d finished speaking, the air hummed. Before the air stopped humming, the armless Terumoto’s body jumped up. Having already lost half of their functioning in the drowsy prelude to death, the nerves of the naked body lit up with a charge of pain like nothing in this world.
Being driven mad by the pain was reward enough. That in fact was what happened—he was sucked into the whirlpool of chaos—and a moment later the pain itself had restored him to “normal.”
The young man paused to gaze grimly upon the gangster, writhing wordlessly, weeping from the unending agony, and opened the door. The underlings from before were below him, still bound hand and foot. He said, “You are in my way.”
Whatever they saw, the sight erased the pain and stiffened their expressions in fear. One by one, those heads rolled onto the floor, throwing off pinwheels of blood.
The fountains streaked through the air, painting the floor and the walls. The blue air was filled with the golden dusk. The only sound amidst the quiet carnage came from that beautiful genie’s footsteps.
The footsteps stopped halfway down the flight of stairs. A woman clung to the wall like a pretty moth seeking the flame.
Noriko gasped, “You—you—pulled off—something like this—without a scratch—I felt it like—unbelievable—I—ahhh—” Her hands reached up her skirt, caressing herself with ecstatic gyrations, getting herself off on the death and blood and beauty.
Strange but true, a girl in her profession who didn’t trip out on blood and beauty in this city was the oddity. The young man continued on down the stairs without sparing her a second glance.
“Hey—you—” Noriko called out. Absorbed in her self-gratification, the pleasure flowing forth from her dripping fingertips, the sensations amplified all the more by the appalling scene surrounding her, her voice took on a heightened timbre. “You’re just gonna leave like this? For the love of God, kill me—like them—when I can feel it like this—and die like that—ahh—”
He reached the landing and started toward the back entrance. Behind him, the crimson fountains collapsed into streams and flowed down the stairs. If nothing else, the blood of the gangsters was beautiful.
With this accursed and bewitching scene as the backdrop, the man in black strolled indifferently into the sunset.
“Wait—wait—please—” Arching her back as her self-ministrations continued unabated, Noriko cried out in a strained voice, “Please—tell me—your name.”
The light streaming in through the door cast his long shadow on the floor. It was like the answer welled up out of it.
“Setsura Aki.”