As he stared at the locked door to the bathroom, a voice called out from behind him. “Staying in this form isn’t going to do him any good,” said Toi.
Enta’s temper flared. “Like I need you to tell me that!”
Next, the three of them ventured to Sumida Park.
“There’s a perfect cucumber patch just ahead!” said Enta. “You love cucumbers, right, Kazuki?”
“Yeah!”
“What the heck is a ‘cucumber patch’ anyway…?” Kappa-Toi was certain there had to be some better excuse the other boy could’ve come up with.
Kazuki stopped dead in his tracks. Just up ahead was…
“Nyantaro! Come here!”
Haruka in his wheelchair, his father pushing him along from behind.
Domp, domp, domp, domp, domp…!
Kappa-Kazuki sped off into the distance, leaving the others in his dust.
“He ran…” Enta mumbled.
“I knew it.”
“Ribbit.”
Scene 3
“SORRY YOUR FOOD’S so late today, Nyantaro.”
“Mreeow.” Nyantaro chowed down greedily on the Fishtopia kibble, meowing back in response as if to say she didn’t mind at all.
“Hey, Nyantaro, Kazu-chan will come home, right?”
The cat didn’t have an answer for that. Nor did anyone else, for that matter.
Haruka pulled out his phone. Having finished her meal, the feline flopped over and began snoozing.
“I hope this reaches him,” Haruka whispered in prayer as he pressed the send button. Static suddenly flew across his screen, and a crimson red heart appeared. “Huh? I don’t remember downloading this app…”
A shadow was suddenly cast over Haruka. “And who is this naughty boy?”
He looked up to find a uniformed police officer in front of him. It was Reo, with his dark skin, sharply pointed teeth, and bold smile.
Haruka nervously asked, “A-am I in trouble?”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because I stole Kazu-chan’s smile from him.”
“Who is ‘Kazu-chan’?” asked Reo.
“My older brother. He hasn’t come home since yesterday,” Haruka confided, looking down at the ribbon headdress in his lap.
“Yeah? You’re just like me, then. My partner left me yesterday and hasn’t come back either.”
“Mr. Policeman, are you naughty too?”
Reo looked dumbfounded for a moment but soon smiled and dismissed the notion. “Hah, of course not! My partner’s the naughty one. He keeps a cool face, but he continues to betray me again and again. Like a doll, empty of all emotion.” Reo held in his hand a ningyo-yaki, a chilled sweet baked into the face of a doll.
“I just want my brother to smile…”
“Oh?”
Haruka could feel the other man’s gaze on him. He turned to find Reo’s eyes peeled wide open, staring over at him.
“In that case, show me. What lies behind your door? Desire? Or love?” Reo’s large hand covered the boy’s sight, and Haruka’s eyelids slowly closed. “Only those who can connect to their desires have the ability to grasp the future in their hands.”
Reo reached out his arms to cradle the slumbering boy, but Nyantaro leaped up, her fur standing on end as she hissed at Reo.
Reo spared her a brief glance and muttered, “Be gone.”
“Mreeeeeeow…!”
The words alone were enough to send the cat hurtling through the air.
Reo faced no further interference after that. He pulled Haruka into his arms and disappeared from the riverside.
“Enough, just be honest with him already!”
“I said I don’t want to!”
Kappa-Toi watched in exasperation as the other two repeated the same argument in an obnoxious, unending loop. Kazuki latched on to the side of a raised flowerbed at the riverside, trying to fend off Enta’s attempts to peel him off. “Let go already! I don’t want to see him, Haruka’s better off without me!”
“You know, Haruka’s always been worried about…gweh!” The loop ended abruptly when Nyantaro came crashing through the air. The cat landed squarely on top of Enta’s head, then started frantically licking at her ruffled fur.
“Nyantaro!” exclaimed Kazuki. “What the…what happened?!”
Kappa-Kazuki was aghast when he returned to the promenade. His little brother had been sitting there moments before, but now he was gone, his wheelchair left behind, empty.
“Haruka’s gone?!”
Their father was slumped over his table at the coffee shop on the terrace.
“Your dad’s out cold!”
“Tch, who the heck would’ve…?” Kappa-Toi was quick on his feet as well, racing around to see if they could spot anyone suspicious in the area.
As Kazuki stood frozen, his phone pinged to alert him of a new message. He whipped it out from the pouch under his shell—a space which existed in a separate dimension, ensuring anything left there wouldn’t be damaged by water—and looked at the screen in surprise.
“Rii-ii-ii-ing! Rii-ii-ii-ing!” The plate atop Keppi’s head transformed into a rotary phone and began obnoxiously mimicking the sound of an incoming call.
“Ugh, that’s just creepy,” commented Kappa-Enta.
“What the heck are you doing?!”
As Enta and Toi watched, Keppi lifted the receiver from the top of his head and answered. “Yes, good afternoon, ribbit. Yes…all right…very well, ribbit.”
The receiver gave an audible clang as he returned it to the hook. Then Keppi reported, “I’ve got information coming in from a reliable source, ribbit. Yasaka Haruka has been kidnapped by the imperial army, ribbit.”
“Seriously? The imperial army?! Wait, who are they?” Kappa-Enta asked, confused by the unfamiliar name.
“An army from the Empire that destroyed the Kappa Kingdom. Our enemies, ribbit.”
“And what will they do with him?” Toi asked, wanting Keppi to get to the point.
“…Kill him and turn him into a Kappa Zombie, ribbit.”
Enta and Toi sucked in surprised breaths when they heard that, but another voice cut in: “I won’t let them!”
They glanced back at Kappa-Kazuki, who looked like an entirely different kappa now. A light burned in his eyes that hadn’t been there before. “I will save Haruka!”
Scene 4
BY THE TIME Reo returned to the police box, Mabu was back from his maintenance run.
“Reo, where were you? And that child… We were told not to act alone.”
“Hmph! Like I need to hear that from you.” Reo didn’t even try to hide his irritation toward his partner as he placed Haruka on a folding metal chair. The boy was still lost deep in sleep. “Now, let us open a door…”
Mabu didn’t challenge him any further as Reo aimed his gun, just like he always did. “Is it desire?”
“Or love?”
A large taiko drum appeared above Haruka’s head.
“Desire Extraction!”
“The Otter Empire?!” Kappa-Enta’s cry of dismay echoed along the evening riverside. Kazuki and his kappa comrades were at an area beside the Sumida River encircled by a crescent-shaped railing and overgrown with shrubs.
“The war between us kappa and the otters has stretched on for many years, ribbit. Now…please follow me, ribbit.”
Ploop!
Keppi leaped into the pool of water by the shrubs. Diving down to follow, the boys soon realized that the wall of the structure stretched on indefinitely. The plate on Keppi’s head shone bright as he led the group, its light providing a dim illumination of the way ahead, though they still couldn’t see the bottom at all.
“How did we get wrapped up in all of this?” Kappa-Toi asked, voicing a question that had been circling his brain.
“The thing we were struggling over was the Desire Energy from people’s shirikodama, ribbit.”
A faded mural appeared along the wall. The images were records of the past, depicting what had happened between the kappa and otters.
“After the Otter Empire drained all of the Desire Energy from the Kappa Kingdom, it set its eyes on the human world, ribbit.”
“So, you’re a survivor of the Kingdom, then…” Toi realized.
At some point along their journey, the vertical channel shifted into a horizontal one, and they were able to break the surface once more. The only thing they could see in the darkness of the tunnel was the steady glow of Keppi’s head plate.
“I’m the only one capable of producing Wishing Plates, ribbit. If the Empire knew about me, they would be after my life, ribbit.”
They could see the light of an exit in the distance. Once they swam past it, they found themselves inside an enormous structure. Unfortunately, their momentum came to a screeching halt as they went tumbling down a seemingly endless waterfall.
“Waaaaaaaaaah?!”
The place’s white framework expanded around them. When they looked deeper within, they could see a countless number of boxes being transported across the space, almost as if this were an enormous warehouse for a distribution company.
“What in the world is this place?” Kappa-Kazuki asked in disbelief.
As they continued plunging through the air together, Keppi replied, “This is the Otter Empire’s secret base, ribbit!”
Tentacles stretched out from his body, wrapping around Kazuki and the others. In the next instant, Keppi transformed himself into a parachute and began smoothly gliding through the air.
“Where is Haruka?!”
“They put everything into boxes, ribbit.”
“So, we have to open all these boxes and check?!” Enta gasped.
“Like we’ve got the time for that!” said Toi.
“What did you say?!”
Kazuki ignored his two comrades as they began to bicker—now, of all times—and started to think. “Maybe…” He pulled out his phone from his shell and dialed a number.
Brrrrrring… Brrrrrring…
Enta and Toi both gulped as they watched.
“Please, ring…!”
Suddenly they heard the faint sound of an incoming call coming from somewhere.
Brrrrring… Brrrrring…
Where? Which box?