“Doctor.”
Mephisto turned around at the sound of Yakou’s voice. The white doctor, the dappled sunlight playing across his frame, strolled through the forest behind the Crystal Pavilion. That combination made for a picturesque scene of its own. The surrounding woods were no less extraordinary.
The roots of the gnarled trees snaked across the ground, growing markedly more slender as they rose higher, creating the image, at a glance, of an upside down vase. The leaves of the trees were closer to black than green in color, lending the white light slanting through the branches a sublime tint.
“I’ve been looking for you, Doctor.” Yakou alit lightly on the ground in front of him and folded his wings across his back. “There is something I need to tell you.”
“What is that?”
“In fact—” Yakou’s voice dropped to a whisper. “I was just discussing things with Kikiou. To cut to the chase, he plans on ending your life by any means necessary.”
“Is that so?”
“As you know, I must act in accordance to Princess’s wishes. If Kikiou’s surmise is correct—that the Doctor does not intend to align himself with our objectives—I will have no choice but to participate in your extinction.”
Needless to say, Mephisto didn’t react in the least. “Is that all you had to say to me?”
“Yes.”
“Having committed himself to this course of action, no matter what I say, Kikiou will be bound and determined to kill me. The question is what you will do then.”
“There is something I wish to ask you,” Yakou said in a determined manner.
“What is that?”
“Why did you join us, Doctor? To what end?”
“You use your eyes to see the physical world. But contained therein is also the meaning that refers to the eyes of wisdom.”
In this doctor’s case, such a meaning was more than plausible. Which was why Kikiou hadn’t doubted Mephisto when he became a vampire with no other inducements.
“And as for any intentions to destroy this world?”
“No matter how beneficial the drug, an overdose may prove fatal. That doesn’t make the drug’s inventor a murderer.”
“What are you saying?” Yakou countered. “That your curiosity has reached a fatal concentration? It is hardly impossible to imagine a supposedly beneficial drug being designed from the start with murder in mind.”
Mephisto quietly looked back at Yakou. The meaning of “seeing” was at that moment stripped of what common sense might say. The beholder dismissed all such intentions, and entranced by a state of mind permeating body and soul, the beheld lost the ability to process all such thoughts.
Perhaps this is what it truly meant to see.
Only a superhuman exercise of will on Yakou’s part allowed him to even blink his eyes and break the spell. Mephisto turned around. “Wait,” said Yakou, blocking the way. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“You would only be as satisfied with my answer as you would be dissatisfied.”
“Then one more question. Will you and I come to blows in the end?”
“That all depends on you.”
“The prospect of us fighting does not disturb you?”
How many men had asked Mephisto that question before? The light dimmed. A shadow like a bird fell across Mephisto’s face in the shape of a wing. Yakou moved forward. The two silhouettes cast their outlines on the ground. And became one.
Then more quickly than before, Mephisto pulled back. “I do not think Princess put you up to this. Did Kikiou tell you to?”
“Forgive me, Doctor,” said Yakou, transfixed by the taste of sweetness on his lips. “Tell me your reason for becoming a creature of the night. Once I have understood that, I will not trouble you again. If the situations call for it, I will kill Kikiou and follow him in short order.”
“Such laudable aims.”
“Thank you.”
“I joined your little band because of Setsura.”
“Of course.”
“Can you kill me?”
“I don’t know,” Yakou moaned.
His allegiances were thrown into discord by the bewildering waves of desire. His loyalty to his sire, Princess, and his feelings toward the doctor in white before him turned his iron will into crumbling adobe.
“If that is your intention, then I must fight you as best as I can manage.”
“You needn’t be so humble. If Doctor Mephisto takes up the sword, I can’t imagine him yielding to the likes of me. However, we have Setsura Aki, and I—”
Yakou stopped. He bit his lower lip and cast his eyes down. Then raised them and looked at Mephisto.
“I don’t want to fight you.”
“Would that it were so.”
“I am not lying. You would kill me whenever. With that same beautiful face, without the flicker of an eyebrow. The only thing that concerns you in this world is Setsura Aki. He is the center of your world, Doctor. You would sacrifice anything to save him. This place and everything in it—including Princess and the rest of us—are no better than dust. What exactly is he to you?”
“He is Setsura Aki.”
“And who are you?”
“People call me Doctor Mephisto.”
“And what do you call yourself?”
Mephisto held his fingers up to his lips. Yakou felt something close to vertigo. All fingers were the same. For this doctor, such distinctions did not exist. In a word, these were beautiful fingers.
“This must have been the elixir on my lips talking. Forget everything said up till now.”
Yakou thought he might. He felt his lips moving. For reasons he didn’t understand, his own voice followed. “What manner of man are you, Doctor?”
The doctor in white turned his head in the direction of the manor house. “I shan’t forgive that, Kikiou,” he whispered.
Kikiou wasn’t there, but Yakou shivered. Something deep in his heart urged him to keep going. Now. The time to expose the truth about this doctor was now, while Kikiou’s drug was still effective.
“Who are you?”
“By which you mean me?”
“Yes.”
“Me?”
Mephisto’s eyes looked off toward an infinite horizon. Yakou felt as if an infinite amount of time passed. Who was this Demon Physician in the first place? The man every person in Shinjuku sought after, the taboo no one dared touch, was now about to be violated by this magical elixir from four thousand years of Chinese history.
But is this right? Yakou thought in a sudden flurry of anxiety.
“I am—” Mephisto said.
“No!” Yakou cried. “Stop!”
In that instant, the heavens shook. In that instant, the Demon Princess and Setsura sank down into the depths of the hot springs. But more than the nihilistic terror of being sucked into empty air was the strange sorrow of being separated from the white doctor.
Right after which, Mayor Kajiwara and his wife were tormented by the mythical beasts.
✦ ✦ ✦
“Ye gads! It’s happening again!” Kikiou muttered.
He was in a room surrounded by mysterious mechanisms and chemical instruments and gadgets. He’d been thrown to the floor.
“A big one this time. Something must be wrong with the defensive measures. Back when Setsura made the leap, I made some emergency repairs, but apparently they didn’t hold.”
He’d dredged up the bitter recollection of Princess being severed in half, Setsura losing consciousness and ending up in the care of a gang of yakuza.
“So my considerable skills cannot fully compensate for the corrective forces of natural law? It’s about time I double-checked the repairs. Well, then—”
Two seconds later came the sensation of being drawn through the air. The great warlock sprang to his feet. He grabbed his cane, leaning against the table, and carefully approached the window.
“What—!”
Within the “eternal” time he had conjured up here, how many phenomena could have aroused from him such an exclamation of surprise?
The green faded from the world below. And yet Kikiou quickly noticed that the trees had lost none of their vigor. Right now, the canopy of the forest must be reaching toward another sun, stretching out its branches, spreading out its leaves—in another unseen world.
What caught Kikiou’s attention in particular were the gnarled brown veins. These foundations of the forest sought after water in the pitch black, crushed rocks, bent and twisted themselves into every accessible nook and cranny. Now they seemed to draw in satisfied breaths beneath the deep blue sky.
It was as if this strange, sun-drenched world had turned upside down. Soaring up from the ground were the very roots of the trees.