The city late at night, the ruins of East Gokencho.
Any number of restoration efforts had ground to a standstill. The pleasure quarters around the subway station had returned to their past glories, and perhaps now surpassed them. But the surrounding areas were left to their own devices, and the residents who lingered there poured their efforts only into their own yards and gardens.
Look closer, and here and there beneath the moonlight, the silhouettes of a building or two or three could be seen. Beyond them slumbered rows of houses.
The mortuary on the street bordering West Gokencho was one of them. It’d opened for business just three days before, a two-story building sitting on a sixty square yard plot of land.
Three wreathes hung from stands in front of the shuttered entranceway.
A tall, sensual shadow approached the establishment. An alluring woman with short-cut hair, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses. Practically bursting out of her hot pants and bikini top, she possessed a ripe youth that betrayed the maturity her body otherwise suggested.
Azusa, the little sister of the reporter killed by Gento Roran.
“So this is the place. Nothing else suspicious around these parts. But if Setsura said so, there must be something afoot.”
She’d come here right after Setsura Aki had flown straight from San’eicho to the Shin-Okubo Coliseum. The mention of his name, and corresponding image in her mind’s eye of that comely face, made her blush. She quickly composed herself and turned her gaze toward the street. A tweak to the frame of her sunglasses engaged the night vision sensors.
“Still digging in the earth behind that convenience store. Awful strange. Hmm, where to start first?”
After a moment’s thought, Azusa made her way to the big pile of rubble behind the mortuary. Despite her blue ankle boots—the high heels suggesting a bias to fashion rather than practicality—she climbed the bricks and stones without a hesitant step, and without the mound collapsing beneath her.
A minute later, she was in the midst of the ruins, the remains of a sizeable building. Here and there were the rusty remains of binding and packaging equipment. This was what was left of the Tohan Corporation.
Azusa looked back at the mortuary. And then turned a hundred and eighty degrees. There was the convenience store where she’d asked about local love hotels that afternoon.
Azusa had led Setsura to the midwife who’d brought him into this world. But he still hadn’t held up his side of the bargain—namely, spending a night with her. So she’d taken the initiative. That was when a middle-aged lady appeared, her apron turned inside out, and mud where it shouldn’t have been.
She’d been interrupted in the act of digging something.
Setsura didn’t react when she’d explained this, and instead had Azusa drive her street buggy all about the ruins. Before splitting up in San’eicho, he told her to keep an eye on the convenience store and the mortuary, and flew off toward Shin-Okubo.
Azusa didn’t ask why. From the first time they’d met, she’d been transfixed by his beauty. He was more handsome than any man she’d known, an Adonis sent down by the gods.
Like the moon glittering in the sky, a moon lily glimmering in the grass. And not only that. Behind that indifferent, naive mien, that might even fall for a child’s machinations, lurked a cold-hearted, even gruesome, silhouette.
He cast a shadow that wasn’t human. It took hold of Azusa’s heart, her womb, her soul, and made her a prisoner of his will. Every time she pictured his face, her hand started slipping south of its own accord and it was her own face that flushed.
He and Gento Roran had somehow become mortal enemies. This enmity not only involved a struggle for the soul of Shinjuku, but reached into the greater mysteries of their own beings. The midwife had told Setsura that the seal was the key to unraveling it, and the seal was a living person.
While she’d been pestering the lady at the convenience store for the location of a hotel, Setsura had been on the phone, no doubt touching bases with people who had a connection to the seal.
A person at the hospital, Azusa had concluded. The midwife had said that when the seal awakened, signs and omens would show the way. Setsura’s father, Renjo Aki, had been present at the birth and had told her as much.
If the seal was a human being, it stood to reason that those signs and omens should manifest themselves in a psychological or physiological form. If the seal did not realize what was happening, a hospital would be the logical place for it to end up.
Setsura must have gotten word from a hospital informant that such a thing had indeed happened. A patient with a most unusual ailment.
That’s why he had proceeded to Kikuicho with Azusa to a small bar. The place was swarming with cops. A bystander said that the manager of the place and her lover had been murdered the night before. Their daughter should be around, but she was nowhere to be found.
Rumors were the daughter had done the deed. Other rumors said she’d been kidnapped by a biker gang. After that, Setsura made a call and they’d proceeded to the gang’s crib in San’eicho, in the ruins of the old Shinjuku Technical High School.
That call had been to one of his informants.
In the face of Setsura’s wire-wielding martial arts, the gang members turned on each other before confessing that the girl had been sold to the organizers of the Death Match at the Shinjuku Coliseum in Shin-Okubo.
Setsura left things in East Gokencho in her hands and soared off to Shin-Okubo. The hems of his black slicker flapping like the wings of a bird, he’d disappeared into the night sky.
Leaving Azusa here, standing on the diagonal of an almost perfectly square lot between the mortuary and the convenience store in the midst of the Tohan ruins.
The way Azusa saw the situation, Setsura hadn’t said it out loud, but whatever the deal was with this Gento Roran chap, something was buried here that was damned important to the both of them. The employees of the convenience store had been tasked with digging it up.
Otherwise, no way would he have left her behind to keep an eye on things.
It was time to do a little detective work on her own. The question of what it was piqued her curiosity. She also wanted to stay in Setsura’s good graces. And was additionally intrigued by the mystery of what was going on between him and Gento.
Azusa bent over and pressed her ear to the ground. She couldn’t hear a thing. Wherever they were digging, it must be deep underground. And the earth had to go somewhere. Probably to the mortuary.
That was a lot of work and a lot of wariness. Why all the secrecy? What were they keeping secret? Azusa quickly tired of theorizing. It was time for a little breaking and entering. She got to her feet.
Something moved behind her.
She whirled around. It vanished without a sound. The night was hot and heavy and deathly quiet.
And again.
Azusa seized a small stone and flung it square at the center of the target. Whatever had been there wasn’t. The darkness flowed back undisturbed.
A foe who could manipulate its “presence” possessed a most frightening ability. An intrigued smile rose to her lips. The challenge of a good fight stirred her blood. She reached for the Smith & Wesson Model 29 tucked into the holster fastened around her hips.
She didn’t cock it. No sense in showing her cards too early. She estimated the distance between herself and the street buggy. About forty yards. The question was whether she could make it.
Her arms and legs reacted before her brain answered the question. She sprang away, weaving between the mountains of rubble. That presence appeared on her right. She glanced in that direction. There was nothing in her line of sight.
She looked down.
There he was. A small shadow on the ground. At first, she thought it was a wild dog. He was dressed in rags, long hair fluttering in the wind. Human. His hands dragged on the ground aside his feet as he galloped along like a great ape.
More than fear, Azusa felt an almost sexual thrill. Her loins trembled. A hot surge of excitement welled up from deep within her soul.