Chapter 74

SUB.22 Kagun Kihara. Originally, his realm of expertise had been the incomprehensible visions people saw during near-death experiences. In the process of looking into this, he’d ended up researching ways to safely stop someone’s heart from beating—and ways to safely get a heart to start beating again. So while he could bring people back to life as a result, the number of times he’d stopped someone’s heart was very likely first or second place among the Kiharas who were currently here. The man was a legend. Getting a read on his personality was an impossible task. Unlike most of the other Kiharas, he didn’t show his face to others, which was perhaps a boon to the rest of the world. The psychedelic thoughts were a curse. If they were visible, Academy City could have even transformed into something else entirely. That was how Kihara he was. His thoughts, his foul deeds, his accomplishments—all of them placed him in the top ranks of the Kiharas. Though he’d set new records for Kihara malignance during his teens, he’d also dropped all his research on near-death experiences before turning twenty. Nobody knew why (and even if he explained, people probably wouldn’t understand since he was a Kihara among Kiharas), and when asked, he had only this to say: “The results were there. But the price was too much to pay.” What were the results? What was the price? Even they were unknown. But those words had delivered a powerful impact to many other near-death researchers, bringing their determination to its knees. But apparently, someone had come out and speculated that the answer he’d given had been incredibly normal. According to that person, Kagun Kihara had merely realized the weight and value of the lives he was toying with. Did his many experiments finally deliver him to one simple answer? Or had they simply worn him down in the process, causing him to malfunction? One of the reasons for the baseless speculation was perhaps that after throwing away his research, he’d decided on an utterly normal teaching profession. Going back through his record would show that Kagun Kihara had worked as a student-keeper for a time. Student-keepers were a safety net in Academy City meant to bring truant students back to school so that their academic abilities didn’t lag behind—in essence, they went to dormitories and taught kids there. In fact, he had brought thirty-two children, both boys and girls, back to school. Many student-keepers found themselves unable to reach their students’ hearts, and so a single teacher bringing that many back was unprecedented. Some of the topics he brought up to make the students more comfortable were urban legends. But some said he only did so because of all the wild rumors surrounding them—and that he was actually giving the students implied warnings to keep them away from Academy City’s dark underbelly. The major event that had changed Kagun Kihara’s fate had happened during the spring of his third year on the job. He’d just successfully convinced an elementary student to return to their studies and had brought them back to school. It just so happened that a phantom slasher with a blade had passed by at that exact moment. The name was stricken from the records, but it had apparently been a boy in his late teens. School had just been about to start, with many students gathered outside the building. The Anti-Skill officers—peacekeeping specialists—couldn’t protect them all at once, as the kids were spread out over too wide an area. The phantom slasher hadn’t hesitated. And Kagun Kihara had been the closest one to him. And so the quietly respected teacher had unleashed his inner Kihara in an attempt to protect his student. He snatched a big shovel from the nearby flower garden. Without a second thought, he jumped straight for the slasher, delivering a light blow to his jaw to disrupt his consciousness, which had an effect similar to the hallucinations one saw just as they enter a sleep state, thought to be deeply connected with sleep paralysis and ghost sightings. For a brief moment, the defenseless slasher had indeed stopped moving. Just then, however… …a series of metallic strikes shot out toward him. The judicial autopsy had found five separate regressions in the skull. It was a perfect death, no pain involved, which had impressed the medical coroner so much he’d apparently said, Did you do this while looking at a human dissection textbook or something? Kagun Kihara had gone to Anti-Skill, still holding the bloody shovel, but the trial found him innocent by way of legitimate self-defense. They had said there was no further investigation or appeal, and they didn’t even take away his teaching license. But he never returned to the post. Before the day he was declared innocent without appeal was over, Kagun Kihara had sent an e-mail to his workplace informing them of his decision to quit. By the time a colleague visited his apartment, he was already an empty shell of a man. At the time, the students at his school had considered him a hero—one who had saved their lives without caring about his position. His colleague had said that perhaps in doing so, he’d prevented others from developing an inclination to kill. Kagun Kihara’s life after that was a mystery. Perhaps he went so far as to leave Academy City entirely.