The rain didn’t let up towards evening. The streaks of silver only seemed to multiply.
Even in this corner of Takada no Baba Ichome near Waseda University, where the damage from the Devil Quake was comparably light, were remarkable patches of destruction. Here and there among the heaps of rubble were rows of prefab houses and shotgun shacks.
From a distance and at a glance, it appeared as a street of stores and houses immediately following reconstruction.
But those who took one step down that street without a clear purpose or resolve were likely to furrow the brows and pinch the nose. And realizing the true nature of their surroundings, frown and return the way they came, muffling their steps so as to not arouse the attention of those who lived there.
The tails of his black Inverness topcoat flapping like a pair of folded wings, Gento Roran visited the street that evening, shortly before those five yakuza showed up at Mephisto Hospital.
The gnarled gas street lamps cast curious shadows where his black leather boots tread the worn cobblestones.
The shades were closed in the windows of the houses lining the street. The light leaking out from the cracks in the curtains at times turned blue or multicolored, like the sidelong glance of a seductress, revealing a glimpse of the mysterious experiments being conducted inside.
In front of Gento, a team of six horses drawing a carriage appeared out of the darkness. Their hooves tread silently on the cobblestones. The wheels raised nary a creak of sound. And yet it drew closer and passed by with a rush of wind, the falling rain splashing off the horses and carriage.
The coachman waved his whip. Through the windows of the carriage could be seen what appeared to be four children, all wrapped in a phosphorescent glow.
A rich scent wafted on the disturbed air.
“Ah,” Gento murmured with a keen sense of satisfaction. Aurum Potabile, philosopher’s tincture, quintessence of bat liver, pickled lung of tarantula—the glories of Prague surely thrived here.
All would be found in any witch’s medicine cabinet, the stock and trade of alchemy.
Speaking of which, etched into the doors of these prefab dwellings were fire-breathing basilisks and unicorns. The weather vanes spinning on the roofs sported creepy-looking lizards instead of roosters. From parts unknown came the muttering of spells spoken in Latin.
This was Magic Town.
Not only criminals and outlaws came to Shinjuku after the Devil Quake. Headlong iconoclasts, parlor revolutionaries and practitioners of the dark arts mingled together there, along with a considerable number of witches and warlocks from every corner of the globe.
They needed a place where true magical research could be conducted, where the equipment and the tools and the funding could be brought together, a place drenched in the psychic elements. There wasn’t a better place than Demon City Shinjuku.
And so men and women wrapped in black cloaks filled the main street, the corners and the back alleys. Day and night came the heavy smell of sulfur and the whispering of strange spells, turning this little corner of the city dark as a caldron.
Gento came to a halt in front of a ramshackle building. Water as thick as paint poured into the ditch from a drainage pipe. There was a clay tablet next to the wooden door in the shape of a circular astrological chart. He pressed on the center. A metallic gong rang out on the other side of the door.
Next to the jamb, a vertical line of light emerged and grew wider. Bathed in a brilliant flood of light, as if the whole house itself was incandescent, was a girl of seven or eight with golden hair and blue eyes. Her face showed her Slavic features. Her skin was an almost transparent white.
Perhaps in keeping with the neighborhood, she was wearing a black satin dress. In fluent Japanese she said, “How may I help you?”
“My name is Gento Roran. Would your grandmother happen to be in?”
“She is in, but she is not. You have twenty-six ribs.”
“I do.”
The door opened wider and he was shown in.
The living room was graced by old-style furniture. The fixtures in the cupboard, the coat hooks on the wall were all made of brass. The air was pleasantly cool, though there was nothing like an air conditioner in the house. Despite the light pouring forth, no oily flame burned in the glowing brass lamp in the ceiling.
“This way.”
Without a moment’s hesitation, the girl showed Gento to the door in the back. Gento stepped into the square dark space. As soon as the girl closed the door behind her, a blue flame flickered to life in front of them.
The burning blue candle sat on the round black table. The girl stood on the other side. The pale ring of light revealed a room filled with a potpourri of bizarre objects.
“Please sit down,” said the girl.
Gento took note of the chair behind him and sat down. A wooden chair with a firm cushion.
“I apologize for the age of the furnishings,” she said. “The seat must be hard.”
“Oh, it’s fine. Where has your grandmother gone off to?” Gento asked, becoming aware of a strange essence suffusing the air.
“There was something she needed to get done. But I will listen to whatever our curious visitor has to say, this man without an astrological sign.”
She spoke in the manner of a presumptuous child, sounding oddly beyond her apparent years.
Gento neither took affront nor regarded her with any doubt or suspicion. “I would like you to investigate a young woman. An entirely ordinary person, she would seem. Doctor Mephisto has detected nothing unusual about her. However—”
“You had Doctor Mephisto examine her—” Something akin to a grimace rose to the girl’s glassy doll-like face. “In that case, I’m afraid I have nothing more to add.”
“That is what everybody says. The witches and warlocks elsewhere as well. The only person who might examine a patient of Doctor Mephisto’s and come to a different conclusion is your mistress, Galeen Nuvenberg.”
“So what troubles this young woman?”
“I do not know.” Asked the same question Mayumi had asked Setsura at the hospital, Gento gave her the same answer. “But if the powers of your mistress are anything close to what the rumors say, I’m sure an explanation will be forthcoming.”
“We accept.” The girl nodded her head. Her hair spilled around her face like a wave of golden threads.
“Are you sure? You don’t want to discuss the matter with her first?”
“When Grandmother is not in, she leaves everything in my care. Her wishes are mine and mine are hers.”
“Understood.”
“But first—”
The girl got up and walked to the wall behind her, where the stuffed heads of a deer, bear, owl, anaconda, goat and bat were mounted. Also on the wall was a curved scimitar, six feet long and sans the scabbard.
The girl retrieved it and held it up to him with both hands, as though it wasn’t any heavier than a shaft of bamboo. Gento grasped the sword by the hilt. The wavering light of the candle stained the blade with blue foxfire.
“With a single stroke, cut off my head with this sword.”
Gento simply looked back at her.
“You cannot? You cannot do something as simple as cut off a child’s head, and yet you call upon my grandmother’s services—”
The rest of the sentence evaporated into a whish of air. Showing hardly any resistance, the head soared toward the dark ceiling. Holding the bloody sword in one hand, Gento Roran followed its trajectory with his eyes.
He arose and looked down at the body at his feet. Lying face down, her hands planted on the floor, the girl raised her torso. With a small smile, Gento slashed with the scimitar at the level of his eyes. The microscopic strings severed, the headless body slumped back down and didn’t move.
The doll-like girl with the ceramic skin was in fact—a doll.
“A man most befitting his horoscope,” came the girl’s voice from the door, accompanied by a flood of light.
Gento whirled around. The slight figure painted a silhouette against the shaft of light. A gentle draft wafted the golden threads like a halo around her face.
“You definitely accepted my commission. Let us cut to the chase and make our introductions.”
“I’m sorry, but I cannot reach her.” The girl raised her hand to her mouth and smiled. “Hoh. Who do you think my mistress is? She is Galeen Nuvenberg.”
“I know,” said Gento, brushing past her and through the door. Crossing the living room he said, “How soon will your grandmother be done with her present business?”
“I cannot say. This business, not to mention our patrons, are a tad out of the ordinary.”
“Oh?”
“She is presently on her way to see Doctor Mephisto.”
Gento stopped in his tracks. Then, “Could you tell me on whose behalf?” he said, resuming his pace from before.
“Alas, but no.”
He could have pressed the matter, but doubted it would have any effect. Besides, he was on the girl’s home ground.
Gento went outside. The door closed behind him. A light rain was falling. Faint tendrils of smoke rose from the surrounding chimneys. The residents here were hard at work mixing elixirs and conducting alchemy.
All this concocting of murderous curses, illegal opiates and precious metals made Magic Town a frequent destination for the criminal element. And one of them had made it here ahead of Gento. Furthermore—
“With the same goal in mind? The number of my troubles has just increased by one more.”
As Gento strode off into the darkness, his eyes burned with the dark fires of a deep and dogged determination.