Slowly, the edges of his lips curled, taking the form of a smile. “This flavor… This is the real Mabu’s flavor!”
Reo raised his eyes to the heavens, like an epic hero claiming victory. Why was it, at times like this, that he even felt grateful to a god he didn’t believe in?
“Yes, this is it!! Finally, I-I have you back again…!”
Reo dumped the mountain of ningyo-yaki into his mouth and then threw his arms around Mabu. No longer would his hands hesitate to reach out for Mabu. He’d never dreamed they would be able to hold each other this tightly again.
A black shadow wriggled behind the two as they embraced. “Otterly…false-soiya!”
“I will succeed, dish, ✩” Sara said stiffly as she stood there in scrubs. Lined up on the operating table in front of her were the shattered shards of the man she loved.
“Scalpel.”
“Towel.”
“Scissors.”
“Glue.”
“Pepper.”
“Achoo! ✩”
Her mini-kappa nurses bustled about, following Sara’s stream of commands as they assisted in the operation. Hours and five whole tubes of glue later…
“This is the final piece, dish…”
She gripped the shard containing Keppi’s anus with her forceps and took a gulp of air. There was a clinking sound as his esteemed buttocks were completed.
“Now! ✩ Time to defrost him, dish!” All that remained was to pour the kettle of boiling hot water over him. Sara went about Prince Keppi’s revival the same way a person might cook insta-ramen. When it was finished, she exclaimed, “Prince, I am so glad you’re okay, dish!”
“Phew, I thought I was a goner, ribbit.”
“Hmm?”
Keppi stepped out of the rolling mists that consumed the air around him, standing in front of a full-length mirror where he could check himself out. “What the heck is this?!”
Due to Sara’s poor spatial reasoning, Keppi’s reassembled body now resembled a piece of avant-garde art.
“I love you no matter how you look, dish. ✩”
“Thank you. Merci!” Toi purchased a light meal and some lollipops from the convenience store by the Hinode Pier, and then headed toward the warehouses where Chikai and Masa were hiding out.
The only boats that used these docks were the round trip water buses or extravagant ferries. To go overseas, they were going to have to take a ferry from the neighboring Takeshiba all the way to the Izu Islands. Masa had been the one to make all those preparations, patiently waiting for Chikai and Toi to return. That was certainly convenient. Given how amiable the man seemed, his actions were unlikely to arouse any suspicion.
There was only one thing that bothered Toi about the man—his title. Chikai referred to Masa as being like his “little brother.” What the heck was that about? Sure, Toi realized the underworld had its own hierarchies. Still, his brother wasn’t too fond of forming tight relationships with other people.
He remembered how disgruntled his brother had been when Toi asked him to wait a day. Now, Toi felt the same way. He was forced to realize, once again, that he’d created his own, idealistic image of his brother.
Lost in that reverie, he’d somehow made it back to the edge of the warehouses.
“Your little bro sure has some guts!” Masa might have been amiable, but his voice was disastrously loud.
“…He’s special. He’s not like those other brats out there.” Chikai tried to lower his tone as he said that, but Toi could still hear the words clearly. His lips curled.
But the loud voice that followed froze him in place. “Well, he did kill the leader of YURIKAMOME at just ten years old!”
“Hey, I told you I’m the one who killed him!” There was a distinct hint of genuine anger mixed into Chikai’s voice.
Masa was either fearless or seriously stupid, but either way, he kept going. “Sorry! But the reason you are where you are now is ’cause you offered KAMOME’s head up to the boss as a gift! Man, you sure are lucky your little bro offed him!”
“Bastard, you really like shootin’ off at the mouth, don’t ya?!” Chikai’s exasperated voice was punctuated by a dull thud as he brought his fist down on his companion’s bald head.
“Ouch! I was just speakin’ the truth!”
By the time he realized what he was doing, Toi’s grip on the plastic convenience store bag in his hand had tightened so hard his knuckles were white.
He suspected the words of Chikai’s amiable “little brother-like figure” were right. It was true that Toi had committed murder. It was also true that Chikai was high enough up in his current organization that they entrusted him with control of a whole area. Toi’s crime had been his brother’s stepping-stone. He hadn’t expected Masa to know the truth of their lifelong secret, but then again, Toi had leaked it to his own two friends. He and Chikai were on equal ground in that regard.
The Tokarev in his backpack suddenly felt heavier.
Regardless, there was one thing he had to admit: if not for that gun, he wouldn’t have been able to take back what was important to him.
Just how long had Kazuki been sitting here on this waiting room bench? What was he even waiting for? Who was he waiting for? If they were going to deliver the worst news possible, he’d rather it never came.
A familiar plastic bottle popped into the edge of his vision. Otone was offering it to him, her eyes red and puffy. “Tonight’s going to be critical for him, they said. I called my parents too, but they may not make it in time…” Her sorrowful voice seemed to echo through the halls.
Seated beside Kazuki was Enta’s grandmother, her shoulders slumped forward.
“Kazu-kun, I’m sorry. I should be telling you to go home, but…please stay with him, talk to him.” Those were Otone’s true feelings, not what she was expected to say as a teacher. If there was any way to help Enta, she wanted to cling to it.
Kazuki understood that to a painful degree. Even so… “I don’t…even have the right to do that.”
Otone let out a weak laugh and shook her head. “That’s not true. In Enta’s eyes, you’ve always been a hero.” Surprised, he glanced up at her face. “Our family moved around a lot overseas, you know. Enta and I only returned to Asakusa four years ago. That boy, he just never seemed to warm up to his classmates. But then…”
She began recounting a story from their past, one Kazuki had forgotten.
“Hey, do you want to play with me?”
One day, a hero appeared in front of Enta as he sat at a corner of the schoolyard, hugging his knees. That hero was Kazuki.
“Um…me?” Not fully comprehending what the other boy just said to him, Enta squeezed the magazine he’d been holding tightly to his chest.
“You’re always sitting here watching everyone play soccer, right?” said the other boy.
Enta was a returnee—someone who had lived abroad for an extended period before returning to Japan. All the hopping around they did from place to place left him intensely shy, so he spent his days alone, gazing at soccer magazines. If he sat here, he could also watch his classmates as they played the sport.
“I-If you start hanging around someone like me, you’ll be excluded from the rest of the class and become a loner too. You’re better off pretending like you want nothing to do with—” Enta started.
“But I absolutely do want something to do with you! I mean it, I want to play soccer with you. If the two of us team up, I know we can become a Golden Duo!”
A Golden Duo…
Those words had a sweet ring to them. Enta peered up at Kazuki, who almost seemed to sparkle. Two contradictory impulses within him were battling it out: one wanted to take the hand in front of him, the other thought it was too scary to try. The deciding factor was the blue friendship bracelet tied around Kazuki’s left ankle. It seemed to infuse Enta with courage as he took to his feet, grabbing the hand in front of him.
“…I’m Jinnai Enta.”
“I’m Yasaka Kazuki! Let’s be friends, Enta!”
“Kazuki…”
“You probably had no idea how it made him feel when he squeezed your hand, back then. You held his hand when he was lonely. That made him so happy. Enta told me so, you know. He said he’d never, ever let you be all alone. No matter what, no matter when, he would be there with you, he said.”
Kazuki had only casually called out to the other boy on that day. He had no clue that it had such deep meaning for Enta until Otone told him as much.
“…What the heck,” he cursed under his breath, dashing off.
He clung to the glass window in front of the ICU. Behind it, the room looked so sterile, so cold. Enta was stretched out on a bed, his skin so white, his normal sunny vitality nowhere to be seen.
Kazuki cried, as if to drive off the overwhelming fear that threatened to consume him, “This isn’t like you! You always babble on and on about stupid stuff, but then you won’t tell me the things that really matter. And now you’re just lying there, injured! Open your eyes and smile at me like you always do! Enta…!” Slowly he sank to his knees.
Just then…
“You called?”
A familiar voice rang out behind Kazuki, and when he whipped around…
“Yo!”
There stood a freshly birthed Kappa-Enta.
“E-E-Entaaaa?!”
Enta immediately pressed his tiny mucus-covered hand over Kazuki’s mouth. “Shhh! Or my sister and grandma will hear you!” It would be bad if they realized a seriously injured patient had suddenly gone missing.
Kazuki nodded his head to show that he understood, and finally Enta withdrew his hand. “Pwah! But Enta, why are you here?”
“’Cause I swallowed him up and turned him into a kappa, ribbit.”
Keppi appeared beside them. It felt like forever since Kazuki had last seen him. “Keppi! Where have you been?”
“It’s a long story, ribbit…” Keppi replied with a shiver.
Tik, tik, tik, tik, tik, tik…
Kazuki could faintly hear a strange sound drifting up from somewhere. “What’s that noise?”
“Huh? Oh yeah, it does kinda sound like a ticking time bomb,” Kappa-Enta remarked thoughtfully. Its precise rhythm made him uneasy. Comparing it to a bomb seemed accurate.
“Oh, you know, it’s just a timer to display Enta’s remaining hours slipping away, ribbit.”
When Kazuki glanced at the plate on Enta’s head, he noticed it had turned into a timer with the words Life and Death written on it.
“What?! Seriously?! Whoa! I can’t see it! Eeeek!” Kappa-Enta began wriggling around as if trying to find some way to view it for himself.