The parking lot of the Endou Dental Clinic in Yakatamachi was empty, and there was a sign on the automatic doors saying they were closed. Yet the doors still admitted Sousei into the clinic. There was nobody in the waiting room, nor anybody at the reception desk. The fluorescent lights were off, and the drapes were shut.
He went down the hallway next to the reception desk and found three consultation rooms in a row, all equipped with dental chairs. In the spacious room right at the back, a woman with hair dyed bright pink was waiting with her arms folded. She was wearing a white doctor’s gown under a long black coat. She didn’t quite look like a doctor.
“Welcome, kiddo.”
“…It’s been a long time, Dr. Magamo,” Sousei said with a bow.
Magamo Sakashiranami nodded toward the dental chair.
“Shall we get it over and done with right away?”
“Yes please…” Sousei put his bag down and sat in the dental chair.
Dr. Magamo turned her back to him as she prepared something. The room had an impressive desk, which must have been used by the director of the clinic, and arranged on top of it were a wide variety of ominous-looking items. Near the desk was a sturdy suitcase, which Dr. Magamo always carried with her wherever she went. Inside it were not only tools that violated the law, but some that were beyond the reach of the law.
“Things must be tough for you, too, huh?”
“…Ah, no. Not really. It’s nothing compared to you, Dr. Magamo…”
“I just do as I please, though, you know? Even if I get a job, I’ll refuse it if I don’t feel like doing it.”
“That’s…nice. Yeah. Or… How should I put it…?”
“You’re jealous?”
“…Yeah. Kinda…”
“It’s all right, you know?” Dr. Magamo’s shoulders shook as she laughed. “I won’t rat you out to Tohka, you hear?”
Magamo had a medical license. She was a highly respected doctor specializing in neurosurgery. She had gotten most of her experience in the United States and still received requests from hospitals both within Japan and overseas, performing dozens of surgeries a month.
However, she wasn’t just a doctor.
“Just so you know, I’m not giving you any anesthesia, okay?” Dr. Magamo took off her long coat and hung it over the director’s chair. There were black lines on her white doctor’s gown. It was quite short. Too short, in fact. She was wearing thigh-high stockings attached to a garter belt.
Sousei lay down on the dental chair and let out a breath.
“…You’ve never once given me anesthesia.”
“Dentistry isn’t my area of expertise, but I’ll try to make it as painless as possible, okay?”
Dr. Magamo had dental drills and other tools arranged on the instrument tray, and she pressed a button to make the chair recline. She adjusted the height, and a bright light came on overhead. Dr. Magamo had put on white medical gloves and was wearing a mask.
“Now, can you say ‘ah’ for me?”
“…Just straight into it? No gargling or anything…?”
“You’re so particular, aren’t you?”
“Aren’t you being a bit too careless…? You’re a neurosurgeon, after all, Dr. Magamo…”
“The family business is more of a hobby, you know?” Dr. Magamo smiled. “Well, kiddo, killing you doesn’t actually kill you, so you’ll be fine, right?”
Simply put, it was a red-light district.
There was no distinction between day and night there. Crowded restaurants and shops with protruding roofs, awnings, and waterproof sheets to protect against rain encroached the narrow streets, creating a dim atmosphere even in broad daylight. Many shops were open for business all day long, their lights never going out because there were always customers. As long as you could put up with the rats and bugs, you could fill your stomach and even have a drink for just a few hundred yen. There were clothing and shoe shops with unknown suppliers, thrift stores with mountains of dirty rags and pieces of cloth, and secondhand bookstores. You could easily get your hands on cheap moonshine, bootleg cigarettes, and counterfeit goods—things you’d never find in department stores, mass-market retailers, or regular shopping districts. If you saw a row of laptops in the dark, that was somewhere you could gamble. Online casinos were illegal, of course, but some things in this district were more important than respecting the law. As for what those things were, only the locals or frequent visitors knew.
The area had once been called Ochiudodani, which had then changed to Ochiya, but its name had disappeared from maps after the Act on Indication of Residential Address in 1962. Yet despite this, the area was still referred to as “Ochiya” or “Occha” to this day.
Although it was a district, nobody really knew where Ochiya started and ended. Some people said Ochiya had shrunk over time, while others said it had expanded. According to one theory, the area grew when the economy was in the gutter, and it shrank during times of global economic prosperity. Ochiya was just like a living thing.
…A can… It’s a can this time, huh? A can… It’s not a can of beer or juice… A can of what? Canned food…?
Tohru Hakayama had been hiding out in Ochiya for the past two days. He had heard the rumors about the place, but this was his first time setting foot there. He was sitting in the end seat of a food stall, eating a dark, lumpy dish that could only be called oden in name and drinking what seemed more like diluted rubbing alcohol than any sort of actual alcoholic beverage. The stall was surprisingly quite pleasant—if Hakayama didn’t count the awful, horribly uncomfortable stools that didn’t have a scrap of cushioning, the putrid body odor of the customer sitting next to him, who looked like he was on the brink of death, and the constant worry over where the chain-smoking, eighty-something-year-old store owner’s cigarette ashes might land.
All said, even if he was just having a drink to relax, Hakayama had chosen pretty much the worst place to have it in. Everything had given him a bad feeling, though, so he only had the foreign object in his head to blame.
Whenever he stepped into a proper town, where ordinary people tamed by society lived, a monster rampaged inside Hakayama’s head. The monster could destroy the world a hundred times over and still not be satisfied, and it brought on headaches, chills, nausea, stomachaches, and toothaches, all wrapped up in a single, overwhelming pain.
No matter which hideout Hakayama went to, the monster wouldn’t leave. He’d considered escaping to somewhere farther away, like Okinawa or Hokkaido, but even just thinking about it made the monster more violent, and the thought of fleeing overseas had caused it to roar in anger.
Hakayama had been at a complete loss as to what to do, when he’d suddenly remembered a certain saying:
If you descend into Ochiya, your life is over.
In that moment, the monster had broken into a wide smile—that is, assuming you could call an expression that makes a person’s blood run cold a smile.
Hakayama had thrown off his Scarecrow underlings who’d been following him and entered Ochiya alone. When he did, the monster in his head disappeared, but something he couldn’t quite put his finger on remained. The problem now was what that thing was.
Would Tohru Hakayama’s devil’s luck run out, leaving him to die in Ochiya?
Or would he narrowly escape with his life, as he had with the natto packet?
Either way, the only thing he could rely on was the ever-changing foreign object in his head. Hakayama had a decent amount of money, so even if he couldn’t eat B-grade gourmet fare, he wanted to at least eat C-grade food and drink korui shochu or the type of synthetic alcohol that was used for cooking sake. However, whenever he tried to choose a seemingly decent restaurant in Ochiya, the foreign object in his head would take on a threatening shape and begin to exude an ominous aura. Sometimes, it even brought about physical pain.
Canned food, huh…?
Hakayama took a small sip of the watered-down alcohol and grimaced.
The problem is what’s inside.
Hakayama had disposed of all his clothes and accessories before entering Ochiya, dressing instead in a hoodie, a jacket that had a shape he didn’t really know how to describe, a cap with a mysterious logo, denim jeans that didn’t look new, and cheap sneakers. He didn’t think he’d stand out, even in Ochiya. Still, he couldn’t help thinking he looked a bit too clean. The average age of the people in Ochiya was high. Hakayama was definitely on the younger side of the distribution, but there wasn’t much he could do about that. He wasn’t the youngest, and even children weren’t that uncommon. He’d heard stories of homeless orphans who lived by scavenging leftovers. Those Ochiya kids would soon scatter around the country as genuine criminals.