According to Kurojima, even if it was called “test-firing,” you couldn’t tell if a gun was good or bad just from shooting at a target—for hunting guns, you should shoot an animal. For combat guns, you should shoot a person. There was no point in shooting people who were tied up and couldn’t move, as you wouldn’t know whether the gun would actually be useful in a fight, whether it could incapacitate an enemy, and whether, if necessary, it could shoot to kill.
Kurojima was an extreme gun enthusiast. He’d been born in the wrong country, so he had no choice but to break the law to pursue his love of guns. Modifying guns and making bullets cost money, which had led him to getting involved in illegal sales, and he’d also played at being an assassin to test-fire his guns. He used to live with his parents, but when they tried to turn their son in to the police for his illegal activities, Kurojima had apparently shot them dead and buried them.
Before long, he’d become well known in the underground world. Hakayama had also dealt with him a few times before. When Hakayama had formed the Scarecrows, he had invited the man to join despite thinking it was a long shot—and to his unbelievable surprise, Kurojima had agreed.
Why had he done that?
Hakayama was truly curious, but he hadn’t asked. When they met up, he’d shaken Kurojima’s hand, given him a hug, and whispered in his ear, “You’ll add the strength of a hundred people.” Kurojima had just responded with a murmured “Yeah,” his face going a little red. He was clearly a useful man, yet he was also a typical lone wolf. Hakayama thought he was probably suffering from loneliness.
Kurojima was an unattractive, eccentric person, but there was also a cute side to him.
“Poraigon, huh…?” Benny muttered quietly with his eyes slightly open. Unlike Kurojima, there wasn’t anything charming about him. “It was such a boring job, huh? There wasn’t anyone worth cutting down.”
Benny had long hair and a beard. He was wearing an aloha shirt, shorts, and low-top sneakers. Apparently, his face and figure had been slimmer in his younger days, but everything had started to sag once he passed forty. He seemed to be trying to act like a cool middle-aged man, but instead, he just came off as an old man who didn’t act his age. However, his thick, monolid eyes didn’t give off that same impression, and he had a piercing gaze. His big, brawny build gave him an intimidating physical presence.
Benny always made sure to have his two beloved swords within reach: a long uchigatana and short wakizashi, replicas of the famous Yamanbagiri Kunihiro and Honebami Toushirou made by a contemporary swordsmith. According to Benny, he’d had them made by an exceptionally skilled master craftsman.
“It doesn’t really matter if it’s boring,” Kimokawa said, flippantly holding up his cocktail glass. “The most important thing is profit, after all. Last time, we each got sixty million, and the rest we gave to the underlings. If you think of it as a job we do once every two months, it’s not so bad that we should be pessimistic, yet it’s not so good that we should be satisfied with it, either. This time, I want a big score.”
“More than cash, I wanna crush someone strong!” Shiro said, loudly thumping his right fist into his thigh.
Midori started waving her whip around from the roof of the Corvette. The look in her eyes was dangerous. It always was, but it was even more intense than usual. Wild.
“I neeeed to get laid sooo baaad! I wanna fuck, fuck, fuck like craaaaazy…!”
Midori didn’t use any drugs. She hardly even drank alcohol. She claimed she didn’t need it, since every time her mood improved, a huge amount of endorphins were released in her brain, making her extremely high.
She kept swinging her whip around, violently thrusting her hips back and forward.
“While we’re at it, I wanna get money, too, yeeeah…! Moneyyyy! Money, money, moneyyyy! Gimmeee! Aaaaaah, I wanna live somewhere like Macao and get serviced by men and women and just keep goin’ at it till I’m a goddamn mummy husk…!”
“But wouldn’t you get fed up of that kinda thing pretty quickly?” Kimokawa asked.
“Probably, yeeeeeeeeah…!” Midori cried.
“You’re so noisy…,” Kurojima grumbled, gazing at the Glock 17 he’d just finished putting back together. Midori used the handle of her whip like a microphone and started singing horrifying death metal vocals while head banging. Kimokawa danced, and Shiro cheered Midori on from where he stood. Hakayama and Benny were likely the only ones who’d heard Kurojima’s quiet voice.
Benny looked at Hakayama as if he wanted to say something like, “You’re the leader; do something about them.” While he understood Benny’s feelings, these weren’t the kind of people who’d quietly obey if Hakayama tried to get them under control. Besides, Midori, Shiro, and Kimokawa were different from Kurojima, who was generally happy as long as he was fiddling with his modified guns, and Benny, who as well as being a master swordsman, was also a dissolute playboy. The multiple changes to the meeting had stressed the three of them out, so it was better for them to horse around a bit and let off some steam. Hakayama didn’t want to get dragged into it, but he could tolerate just leaving them be. At any rate, the thing he was bothered by was the foreign object in his head.
Natto. There’s no doubt about it—the thing inside my head is a packet of natto.
As long as there was a foreign object in his head, there was a high probability that something bad was going to happen. The question, however, was what.
Hakayama hated natto. It made him want to throw up. That said, he hadn’t had it in a long time. His tastes had changed quite a lot from when he was a kid; he didn’t dislike bitter things like bitter melon and ginkgo nuts, and more pungent foods like Camembert and blue cheese were some of his favorites. If he tried natto, he might be surprisingly fine with it. It would be a lie to say that he never felt even the slightest temptation to give natto another chance.
Was the packet of natto really a threat? Or before that, should he be questioning whether the contents of the white packet was actually natto?
In any case, the existence of that foreign object in Hakayama’s head was undeniable. It was a kind of bad feeling. If he was to take every possible precaution, they probably shouldn’t even be having this meeting, but they couldn’t keep putting off preparations for their next job if they wanted it to be successful. They did jobs only once every couple of months. They didn’t want to mess it up, and they couldn’t cancel it. Kurojima and Benny might not have been too bad, but Midori and Shiro probably wouldn’t have accepted it. If Midori and Shiro decided to make an example of Hakayama, Kimokawa would likely side with the two of them.