PROLOGUE A The Raucous “You monster.” Before he graduated middle school, the boy had heard these words countless times. There was a remote hot springs town in the mountains of Akita Prefecture—a place prized for its underrated natural baths and blessed with visitors year-round—but it was unable to keep up with steady depopulation and slowly faded away into obscurity. The boy was born here fifteen years ago. Supposedly, anyway—there was a lack of concrete information in that regard. He was found at the doorstep of a hot springs inn, an infant wrapped in a blanket, just clipped from the umbilical cord. An elderly woman who ran the inn took in the baby, raising him as a foster child by her daughter’s family. He was raised with a proper amount of love and beautiful surroundings. He grew up in what felt like no time at all. But before his heart and soul could grow healthy and strong as well, he suffered the interference of others. It’s a story that can be found anywhere. People were jealous of the child being fostered by one of the wealthier families in town and tried to hurt him. Emotionally, and perhaps even physically. That was how the village learned he was different. He was a new student in elementary school when one boy, five years older and quite large for his age, picked a fight with him. This boy had a reputation for being a nasty troublemaker, and one day, he chose to make the newcomer his target. At this point, the little boy did not understand that he was a foster child, nor even what those words were supposed to mean. But when the insults didn’t have the intended effect, the older boy turned to more drastic means. He punched the child, then grabbed his collar. Everyone knew what kind of bullying this would turn out to be. And in fact, the fight that resulted was over quickly. But not in a way anyone expected. That was the moment he first exhibited his special power. He hadn’t been trained in some way to prepare for this. He didn’t have flesh like steel or the freakish strength necessary to lift a vending machine with one hand. But he did have one thing: something like an extra sense. Some carnivorous animals are born knowing how to bring down their prey; in the same way, as soon as the older boy grabbed the younger’s collar, the child turned that aggression back upon him. He grabbed his enemy’s ears, yanking them downward. The bully let go and crouched to create less leverage for pulling, his instincts screaming that his ears were going to be ripped off. Now it was even easier for the six-year-old to head-butt him on the bridge of his nose. The child did not know how to do this, of course. He simply tried to hit his opponent with the hardest part of his body as quickly as possible. Not that it was normal for a child so young to possess that instinct at all. Furthermore, he was too young to understand concepts like mercy or restraint. If the boy’s personality were to be described as succinctly as possible, it would distill into one word. Cowardice. He was a coward, and thus he hated being afraid. That was all it came down to. He was twice as sensitive to fear as the average person and twice as desperate to avoid it. So the combination of his cowardice and his “talent” gave birth to a monster. A much older boy threatening him and yelling about something he didn’t understand created enough fear to force him to respond in equal measure. Must avoid fear. Must eliminate it. Following his instincts, the boy kicked and kicked at the older child, who was now huddled on the ground. He aimed right for the face. Using the tip of his toes, he crushed the fingers that tried to protect the bully’s features. Even when the blood seeped through those fingers to drip onto the ground, he did not hesitate. On and on and on, he attacked without stopping. From that point on, the boy was feared by those around him. Immediately following that incident, he avoided consequences because everyone saw the older boy attack him first; plus, he was the child of a prominent family in town. However, that was just the start of the strain upon his life. Although, in a sense, this was also when the strain was lifted from him, as he lived in accordance with his abilities. The village population might have been dwindling over the years, but there were still people who wanted to mess with the kid. There were other older boys who wanted revenge for their friend and decided to teach this little upstart a lesson. Some of them were even in middle school. Once a gang like that jumped him, he wouldn’t stand a chance. Or so they thought. The first one of them landed a punch and straddled the new student—who then promptly thrust a finger in his attacker’s eye. He didn’t fully gouge it, but as soon as the other boys saw the blood from their friend’s eye and heard his screams, they were stunned. The little six-year-old picked up a nearby rock and moved to further incapacitate the screaming boy who was rolling on the ground. And when the rest of the group saw the intense, feverish look in the child’s eyes, they all had the same thought: Whatever this kid is, he’s not like us. He’s something else. He was merely a young boy, more than a head shorter than they were and well before his growth spurt. But to them, he fought as fiercely as any wolf or bear. If they had regrouped at once and several attacked the boy at a time, they would have stood a chance of winning. They weren’t some combat-ready group of delinquents or bikers, though. It was too much to ask of a rabble of elementary and middle school boys who thought they were tough. They knew the next person to attack would suffer the same fate. The sight of their friend getting his teeth broken by a rock kept them nailed in place. This time, he was reported as engaging in excessive self-defense, and despite being only six years old, the boy had to answer to the police, who contacted a child welfare agency. After that, no one in the town dared attack the boy until he started middle school. Other people from the wider region outside the town, having heard rumors from the local punks, began to check in and mess with him. Their reasoning was simple. All those older boys had grown up and left for other areas, where they made new friends and enemies—and at a certain point, some of them let slip the name of the little boy who had nearly killed them years ago. The trauma of their past had added extra details to the story as it existed in their memory. They spoke of the “six-year-old who ripped a kid’s ears off, then fought a group of ten without fear and broke all of one guy’s ribs with a rock.” And then, out of curiosity and for their own amusement, those delinquents from other areas tried their luck, too. They found out that, in the same way stories often grow legs of their own, the boy had also grown quite a lot in the years since. “Damn monster.” Soon after the boy had started middle school, he heard those venomous words from some half-dead sucker. At this point, the boy couldn’t remember the first time he’d heard that word. “You monster.” “Monster.” “You’re a monster.” They came to avenge their friends. They came to show off and build legends of their own prowess. All kinds of cocky fighters looking to test their mettle came to his town. The boy defeated all of them—only because he was afraid. He was just trying to live a normal life; yet, he was terrorized by constant threats and hostility that he did not deserve. So he began to work out. He wanted to protect himself from the regular visits of terror. In the meantime, the stories of his ability spread so far that ruffians began coming from other prefectures just to challenge him. He spent his days in combat. Strengthening himself to defeat his fears. And that was how his innate talent was augmented with experience and effort. Nothing about this was fair. He didn’t pick any of these fights. It was everyone else who antagonized him, yet they called him an inhuman monster after they’d lost. By the time he was in eighth grade and fifteen years old, he had given up on everything. At this point in his life, he knew he was an orphan. While he had nothing but gratitude for the parents who raised him, he had lost all hope for the world at large. As long as people called him a monster, his life would never be normal. This is what life and human society were like. It was cruel to him—cruel enough to make a fifteen-year-old boy feel this way. Even after these fights, the boy’s family did not abandon him. Because all the delinquents attacking him had metal pipes and knives, the police labeled his actions self-defense, which helped him avoid any trips to juvenile detention. That, however, did not stop the endless deluge of hatred and fear he lived within. If anything, the kindness of his family isolated him further. Being called a monster made him a burden on his ordinary, loving family. He felt guilty for holding them down. He was trapped in a vicious cycle, no longer hopeful for the world but not plunged into despair, either. His life felt like it had no proper substance. He assumed this was just going to be the state of things for the rest of his years. Until a major turning point arrived. One day, at the end of summer, a visitor from Tokyo arrived at their village. The man had come to see the famous Omagari fireworks show and stopped at the little town to enjoy its hot springs before returning home. He stayed at the biggest hot spring in the town, where he ended up witnessing a fight between the boy and his aggressors. The visitor watched this brutal melee with great interest. When it was over, he smiled and spared a word for the boy. “It’s always nice to see young folks being lively.” The boy looked skeptical. Tourists had witnessed his fights on several occasions, but people had only ever been afraid of him. Nobody had ever chuckled with delight before. The boy stood among the bruised and bloodied ruffians on the ground. The tourist continued, “When you’re young and overflowing with energy, it’s good to live true to your human instincts.” The man didn’t seem to have an inkling of morals about him. The boy asked, “What human instincts? Do I look human to you?” The traveler replied, “Those are odd things to ask. If you’re not human, then what are you?” He grinned warmly. “Yes, you’re a powerful fighter, but that just means you’re a person who happens to be good at fighting. There are plenty of people in the world who are far less human than you. And there are real inhuman creatures, too.” The boy was suspicious. This man said some very strange things. But he didn’t seem like he was lying. At the very least, the boy was taken aback that this man could have witnessed the fight and call him “human.” What sort of things had this traveler seen in his life? As the man turned to leave, the boy blurted out, “Where are you from?” The tourist turned back and beamed. “Ikebukuro.” He’d heard that name before. It was one of the famous areas in Tokyo, but the boy had barely traveled beyond the limits of his little village. It was only a name he’d heard, nothing more. Curious, he booted up the smartphone he rarely ever used and typed “Ikebukuro” into the search bar. It did not take long before he started seeing certain information about this far-off place: vivid video footage of a headless being and a man throwing a vending machine. He held his breath and tore through all the information he could find, as if he were possessed. The Headless Rider. The mysterious bartender. The Dollars. The street slasher. All these keywords seemed like things out of a comic book, but there they were, right on the screen of his phone. He could feel his heart beating faster. All along, he’d accepted loneliness—that he was a monster and nothing more. Now a new world was opening before his eyes. The boy lived and breathed combat. But through the tiny window of his smartphone, he saw the whole wide world. And yes, it was frightening. The cowardice that made the boy a monster had calmed somewhat as he grew up, but it was still a part of him. The Headless Rider was terrifying. The man who threw vending machines around was terrifying. The slasher was terrifying. A gang made up of hundreds of people was terrifying. But all these shocks to his system stimulated his mind. For once, curiosity outweighed the fear. Normally, he would be terrified of a headless being roaming the city. He would never, ever want to visit Ikebukuro. However, now he was becoming aware of his true feelings. If anything, the most frightening thing of all would be to give up on the idea that the world could be anything different—to live and die alone as a monster. Eventually, the information from that tiny little window wasn’t enough for him anymore. When it came time to decide his future path in life, he went to his foster parents and decided to speak his true desires aloud. All the fighting was something that happened to him, not something he sought out, but there was no denying its negative effect on his family. Some angry losers had once tried to get back at him by lighting the inn on fire, which ended up getting the police involved. Either out of guilt for causing that or out of indebtedness that they didn’t abandon him following the incident, the boy had never truly expressed his most selfish desires to them. His resignation toward the world and the rigors of all that fighting hardened him into a very upstanding person. He had never begged his parents or grandparents for anything. And now, for the very first time since his initial fight in elementary school, he was asking what his heart wanted. I want to go to high school in Tokyo—in Ikebukuro. It came out of nowhere to his parents. They were stunned. But the boy was proactively admitting that he wanted to learn more. The grandmother of the family, who had final say as owner of the inn, said, “C’mere, you. Siddan there.” He obeyed, and she stared him in the eyes and drawled in her thick Akita accent, “You were ta timidest boya ever saw…an’ look how grown, yuh nah?” It didn’t happen right away, but ultimately his grandmother’s vote of sympathy swayed the decision. And that was how the boy they called a monster came to Ikebukuro. He was ready to face the world he’d given up on. He was there to meet the true monsters he’d never seen before. The boy’s name was Yahiro Mizuchi. He didn’t know what he would see in the days ahead. Who was the cowardly monster going to meet on the streets of Ikebukuro? What would he achieve—or not achieve? No one could say, but one thing was certain: The city was not going to resist anyone who came to its borders, no matter who they were. A year and a half had passed since the demise of the Dollars. Ikebukuro was ready to welcome a new breeze.
Chapter 1
14 min read