“Time for our next piece of news, dish! ✩ This morning a man’s remains were discovered by the Sumida River. Riveer~! ✩”
An elderly woman sat in front of a television set, a colorful bandana wrapped around her head, watching as Azuma Sara gave a carefree delivery of some grave news.
Her grandson, Enta, was nearby, opening the box he worked so hard to retrieve the night before—the one that had Kazuki’s present nestled inside of it. At least that’s what was supposed to be inside of it.
“What the heck is thiiiiiis?!” he instinctively howled, backing away. “This isn’t my box… Wait, does that mean this is Kuji’s…?”
“Enta!”
“Eek! Sis, don’t scare me like that!” He hid the package behind his back as Otone eyed him suspiciously.
“What are you yelling about? And have you been ordering stuff online again?!”
“No! This is Kuji’s, I accidentally grabbed it,” Enta explained.
“Oh, wow. You two are getting along that well, huh?”
“The heck we are! That bas…I mean, Kuji’s a dangerous guy!” I can’t let that punk get any closer to Kazuki, Enta thought.
Inside the box behind him was a gleaming, silver handgun.
Scene 2
ENTA COULD BARELY FOCUS during the school day, and when it was over, he used the excuse of a stomach ache to skip out on club activities. Now, he was standing at the front gate. Frankly, he wanted to consult Kazuki about the gun situation sooner, but since Toi was seated directly beside Kazuki, Enta had lost his nerve every time he looked back to try. His only option now was to catch Kazuki on his way home.
“It’s not like I’m scared of Kuji or anything. It’s just awkward and inconvenient to have him sitting close by when I’m trying to talk. Last night I just went with the flow, but I never liked him in the first place. I need to make sure that Kazuki never hangs around him again.”
As Enta mumbled to himself in anguish, Kazuki passed right in front of him with a box cradled in his arms.
“Wait, Kazuki!” Flustered, Enta chased after the other boy, swerving around him so he was facing Kazuki.
“Enta?”
“Uh, hey, there’s something I want to talk to you about.”
“Sorry, I’m in a hurry right now. Let’s talk tomorrow.”
“Huh? Hey, w-wait!”
Kazuki began walking off, leaving a dumbfounded Enta behind.
“What the heck?! I thought we were supposed to be the Golden Duo?!”
Behind the wailing Enta, Toi exited the school gate and started walking in the opposite direction. Without, of course, sparing a glance Enta’s way.
One of Asakusa’s most famous tourist spots was Japan’s oldest amusement park, Hanayashiki. It was crammed onto a tiny strip of land and jam-packed with a whole array of attractions. Its main attraction was a roller coaster, the oldest in Japan. Although there were other roller coasters touted as “the fastest,” “the tallest,” and “the most fear-inducing,” this one was a contender for the most thrilling. Just stopping and thinking about how old it really was could induce an adrenaline high. But there was also one curve where the track pressed terrifyingly close to a wall lining the boundary of the park. It felt like one wrong move would send you crashing right into it.
This was the wall that Toi was walking along now.
The interior of the park, with its echoes of cheerful laughter, stood in stark contrast to the exterior, with its distinct, foreboding aura. Toi had his black hood pulled up over his head and his jacket zipped all the way shut as he navigated the maze of residential complexes to a certain building. Inside, he strolled up to the elevator entrance, bumping the button with the middle knuckle of his index finger. After the doors eventually slid open, he stepped in and immediately pressed the “close doors” button with the same knuckle. Then he pressed several of the numbers on the pad.
He’d seen his brother do the same long ago and asked the purpose of it. His brother responded, “This way, they won’t be able to follow you.” Now, he didn’t even have to think about it. His body just moved automatically. It was little habits like this that made Toi feel connected to his brother.
He disembarked from the elevator and walked soundlessly to a room at the end of the hallway. When he quietly tried the door, it swung open to reveal a room lit with bright, purple growing lights. Tall plants with broad, five-fingered leaves lined the floor. Others hung upside down along the wall, drying in front of the ventilator. A desk was squeezed into the space, atop which sat some powder, ground down from the plants’ buds.
Toi slipped on his usual mask and thin plastic gloves, now firmly in work mode. In this secret room, he began dividing the dried marijuana and stuffing it into bags. To further camouflage them, he then tucked several of the tiny packets into a bag with cat food packaging on it.
This was the biggest source of Toi’s income. His clients were all regulars he inherited from his brother. He never sold to the same person twice in one month. He never met them directly. Toi was careful not to rouse suspicion, and had taken several other meticulous measures to avoid notice as well.
And yet someone sniffed out his route, and he’d inconvenienced his brother as a consequence. Now he was desperate to try to recover from his failure.
The flip phone he used for business began to vibrate—an order from one of his customers.
“Yeah, no problem. I got some exceptionally high-quality stuff right now. The pickup will be at…”
If he made this work, he would be one step closer to living with his brother. No sooner had he thought that than—
Thunk!
—something heavy slammed against the top of his desk.
“Huh?”
“Mreeow?”
When he ended the call and looked back, Toi found a chubby orange tabby with one of the packages he’d just finished sealing—the word Fishtopia stamped across the front—clamped inside its mouth.
A cat?
The two stared each other down, but it was the cat who moved first.
“Mreow!”
Despite its chubby physique, the cat was unbelievably agile as it slipped past the plastic sheet hanging around the perimeter of the room, and then leaped out the small crack in the open window. And, of course, it took the cat food bag with the freshly packed weed still inside it.
“Dammit! Wait right there, you stupid cat!” Toi yelled loudly after it, scrambling noisily as he jetted out of the room.
“Strange, I don’t see a single cat around here.”
As was his daily routine, Kazuki was dressed as Azuma Sara and searching for the lucky selfie item of the day. He could usually complete a mission this simple immediately after school let out, but this one was proving to be harder than expected.
“I figured a cat would be a piece of cake to find—whoa!” Something slammed into his back, pitching him forward. “That hurt…”
“Mreow!” The culprit was an orange tabby.
“Nyantaro?! Don’t surprise me like that. Although…maybe the two of us can come to an agreement here.” As Sara-Kazuki approached, ready to snap a selfie, the cat began desperately screeching at him.
“Mreow! Mreeeow!”
“Huh? Where’d you get that Fishtopia bag from?” Kazuki wondered.
“I found you, you fat-ass cat!”
“Kuji?” Kazuki glanced back to find a ruler-wielding Toi standing there, looking absolutely furious. It felt like déjà vu.
Toi completely ignored Kazuki and his Sara cosplay, and swiped his weapon at the animal, ripping through the bag it was carrying. “Give it back! Or I’ll run you through!”
Panicked, Kazuki inserted himself between the two. “Knock it off! This cat is really important to Haruka and me!”
While the two yelled at each other, the cat in question began to sniff at the small packets that tumbled onto the ground.
“Just shut up and move it!” Toi shouted. “Huh?”
“Mreeeoow.” With a gulp, the cat swallowed up one of Toi’s precious packages of weed.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me! I’ll slice your stomach open!”
Toi began whipping his ruler wildly through the air. Sara-Kazuki struggled desperately to hold him back, yelling to the cat, “Nyantaro, run for it!”
“Mreow!”
“As if I’ll let you get away!”
Thus began the Great Asakusa Chase.
“Damn that Kazuki. How does he expect me to handle this all by myself?”
Elsewhere in the city, Enta walked down a street with Toi’s box in his hands, still fuming over being turned away by Kazuki earlier.
“Guess I should go to the police. That’d be the normal thing to do in this situation, right?”
Isn’t there a police box near the entrance to Kitchenware Town? I guess I’ll just go there. Just as he thought that, though, something reached out and snatched him by the ankle.
“Gah!”
Enta was yanked inside the Kappa Plaza, where he discovered Keppi, shriveled and covered in sweat. The deflated mochi was lying on his side on the statue’s pedestal, his arm outstretched, clinging to Enta’s foot.
“I’m dying of starvation… Save me, ribbit.”
“What do you think you’re doing, Keppi?! I don’t have time for this right now!”
Scene 3
“MREEEEOW,” said the cat. Behind her, the symbol of Hanayashiki Park, Bee Tower, jutted up toward the sky.
“Quit running all over the place and get down here!” called Toi, brandishing his ruler at the cat as it stood on a rail up above him.
Sara-Kazuki intervened once he caught up. “Nyantaro, run!”
“You jerk, quit getting in my way!” Toi barked at him.
“I will get in your way!”