The Central Cosmos Hotel was very conspicuously out of business. Its doors were locked, and several broken windows had been boarded over. It was an open secret, however, that a door around the back—the one leading to the boiler room—could be used to gain access to the building. Apparently, it was something of a local pastime for people to break in on weekend nights to explore.
The derelict hotel’s interior was unnerving, even at three in the afternoon on a weekday. The whole place was covered in graffiti and obvious signs of weather damage, and trash was scattered all over the place. Rukana could guess what many of the discarded items were, and the answers that sprang to mind did not please her. She wasn’t a sheltered, naive little girl, so it wasn’t hard to figure out. Apparently, some of the people who broke in were there for something a little more physical than an innocent ghost hunt. In any case, it wasn’t the sort of place most people would go in broad daylight on a weekday, so it seemed unlikely she’d run into any other trespassers.
Rukana passed through the boiler room into a hallway. She took a look around a storage room first, then checked out the kitchen. She did find signs of life in there, but on closer inspection, the only inhabitant was a very rotund mouse. The lobby was deserted as well.
Coming to a stop by the reception desk, Rukana picked up Cipher and cradled it in her arms, then looked around the lobby. She couldn’t make S wait, so she’d arrived before the scheduled time, but three PM was rapidly approaching. Was S already inside somewhere, or had they yet to arrive? Would they show up soon?
The masked man wasn’t S. Rukana was fairly certain of that. He was S’s messenger…or was he? Could it be that he’d tricked Rukana? And if so, for what purpose?
Rukana squatted down, still clutching Cipher to her chest. She couldn’t stop her imagination from drifting toward all the worst possibilities. The Central Cosmos Hotel was near the outskirts of the city, in one corner of a hot springs district. It wasn’t a place many people passed by in cars, much less on foot. And when Rukana had looked the place up, she’d heard rumors of corpses being discovered there several times in the past. They were just rumors, of course. Nothing had been proved. Still, the hotel’s atmosphere leant the stories an unnerving believability.
Maybe the masked man had lured Rukana there to murder her. It was an absurd thought, and Rukana knew it. The masked man—that monster—had been right there in her room that night. If he’d wanted to, he could have killed her then. But maybe he’d wanted a place to hide her corpse. Her parents had been nearby as well. If they’d woken up, they could have caused complications.
Here, though? It would be the weekend before anyone was around to stumble upon a corpse. Some group of kids breaking in on a lark would find the body of Rukana Shizukudani, already several days into its decomposition process.
Rukana stood up and turned. The monster was standing right behind her.
“Ah…”
What was supposed to be a scream came out as a strangled gasp. Rukana had every reason to run, but her legs wouldn’t move. The monster raised a massive hand—powerful enough to snap her neck like a twig—and beckoned her toward him. A moment later, he started walking. It seemed he wanted her to follow.
Rukana knew she should leave. She didn’t want to go with the masked man. And yet Rukana found herself obediently plodding along after him anyway. He led her from the lobby to the second floor, then up another set of stairs to the third floor, and then the fourth. They were now on the Central Cosmos Hotel’s top floor. They stepped into a hallway covered from floor to ceiling in graffiti with guest rooms lined up along the right hand wall. The monster led Rukana toward one of these.
The whole thing was terrifying, but Rukana’s ability to feel fear had already begun to numb. She followed the monster into the room, which turned out to be rather large—more like several interconnected rooms. Maybe it had originally been a suite, or some kind of deluxe accommodation.
There, with his back to a window blocked off by yellowish curtains, stood a man. The curtains were fairly thin and let in a lot of light, but because he was right in front of the window, the man’s face was cast in shadow and Rukana couldn’t make out his features very well. He was a man, though. She was certain of that. He wore an off-white shirt and tight-fitting pants, and his hair was long enough for his bangs to hide his eyes.
A table and couch were set up by the window, and Rukana assumed the room was meant to be a sort of lounge. The monster sat down on the couch, which creaked ominously under his weight. The man, however, remained standing.
“Hello, there,” he said.
His soft, deep voice shook Rukana’s eardrums. This was the first time she’d heard him speak, but his voice felt familiar. She tightened her grip on Cipher. She had to be mistaken.
S’s posts on Χ-fes, which were sometimes in Japanese, sometimes in English, were always like riddles, as though their author was challenging readers to decipher them. In Χ-lum’s chat room, Sullivan came across as an individual of few words. Their opinions were both concise and distinctly intellectual. All Rukana knew about them was that they were incredibly smart.
And yet, she’d always known the real S would sound like this. It was how she’d always imagined their voice, and how they’d sounded in her dreams. She hadn’t seen S in those dreams, but she’d heard their voice, speaking to her from somewhere unknown.
“I take it you’re Rukana Shizukudani?”
That was the voice. There could be no doubt about it.
“Master S,” Rukana said, inadvertently using her own private name for him.
S chuckled. “I wonder—how much do you know about me, exactly? Have you listened to my compositions?”
“Of course,” said Rukana, a fire welling up within her. “Of course I have! I’ve listened to them and watched the music videos. All of them, so many times. They were prophecies, weren’t they? You wrote about incidents involving zingai and worked them into your lyrics!”
“You followed the trail of my compositions to Χ-fes, where you learned a fragment of the truth,” said S. “Then, because you lacked the qualifications to enter Χ-lum, you chose to break in instead.”
S’s tone was gentle, but his words were harsh. He’d called her unqualified—and he was right. Rukana had been forced to hack her way in to Χ-lum.
“…I—I—I, I’m, I’m sorry! I, I…”
“Shh.” S raised a finger to his lips. “It’s all right. I don’t blame you. In fact, I’m rather impressed. I take it that the little one you’re holding is…?”
“I-it’s called Cipher,” Rukana explained, introducing her zingai before pausing to gulp. “Y-you can see it? You see Cipher?”
“I do,” said S. “Cipher, is it? Oddly enough, that’s exactly what we once called you.”
“I—I read that log. The one from your meeting. Before then, it didn’t have a name.”
“You two were so close, you didn’t need a name, huh?”
“That’s right!” Rukana shouted. She was moved nearly to tears, and her voice came out slightly nasal. S understood how she felt. “I didn’t need a name for it. Why would I? But when I saw the word ‘cipher,’ it felt like fate…”
“I’m the same way with my zingai,” S said, turning to the masked man on the couch. “He doesn’t have a name, really. I have to distinguish him from the others, though, so I’ve taken to calling him the Cleaner. He does like to keep things tidy. He cleans my messes up for me.”
“He cleans them…”
“That’s right,” said S. “You’re very quick on the uptake. It’s exactly what you think. ‘Cleaning’ can mean a lot of things. He deals with tasks I couldn’t manage on my own. I get the impression your relationship with Cipher is quite similar.”
Rukana hesitated, unsure what to say. She’d never told anyone else about these things, and it was difficult for her to admit, even to herself.
But she was speaking with S now. He probably already knew. The masked man—the Cleaner—had hidden under Rukana’s bed. He must have been watching them. He’d seen them at work and had told S all about it.
“…That’s right,” said Rukana. “I know a little about hacking and programming, too—the bare minimum—but I could never do any of the things Cipher does. I wasn’t the one who broke into Χ-lum. If it weren’t for Cipher, I never could have managed it.”
“And that,” S said, pressing his hands together, “is something exceptional. You and Cipher are truly special.”
Rukana’s breathing was shallow and rapid, like she’d just run a marathon. Heat was building in the core of her body, and her limbs tingled.
Exceptional.
If anyone was exceptional, it was S. He understood her completely.
Special.
That word, above all else, was what Rukana most desired. She’d always wanted someone to call her that. And now S himself had said it.
“Wh-wh-wh-what should… What should I d-d-do?” Rukana sputtered. “I-i-if th-there’s anything a-at all I can do for you, I, I…”
“Calm down, Rukana,” said S.
Not Shizukudani—Rukana. He’d called her by her first name, and she immediately understood what that meant. He had acknowledged her.
“You really are incredible,” he continued. “I brought you here for precisely that purpose—because there’s something I’d like you to do for me. I want you to become one of my allies.”
“I will,” Rukana agreed without hesitation. “I’ll be your ally. I’ll be anything you want me to be. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. Nothing at all!”
“If I hadn’t suspected you’d say that,” S replied, “then I suppose that would make me as great of a liar as a rainstorm falling upward.”
He was being deliberately obtuse with his wording, and his tone made it almost sound like a joke—almost. It was the exact sort of thing S would say in one of his posts on Χ-fes.
If S had asked her to, Rukana would have taken a knee and sworn fealty to him on the spot. However, that wasn’t what he wanted. He was looking for an ally, not a servant. And so, instead, she swore to herself that she would do everything she could to be the comrade in arms he desired.
She would do it all for him. For S, she could do anything.