Chapter 20 - Daisuke KuroganeHollow NightChinami used to have a dog. He was a brown, good-natured cross between what we guessed must have been a Great Dane and Basset Hound.

  People often remark that their pets are “Great judges of character”, and thus become wary, should said animal react unfavourably toward you.

  ‘Scooby’, on the other hand, was more fond of strangers than any dog I’ve ever known.

  Unscrupulously he’d sniff, lick, and croon at just about everybody he met.

  Obviously, this meant that there were either more ‘good’ people in this world than I thought, or that Scooby wasn’t a particurly judicious assessor of someone’s temperament after all.

  Considering how affectionately he used to pounce on me in particur, I quickly concluded the tter.

  It was admittedly a real strange time to be thinking of the canine; I guess all this chasing was reminding of me the day he’d disappeared.

  “Get back here!” I commanded, though the coward was showing no intentions of following my instructions. As if it knew these streets like the back of its – I don’t know, paw? – it hopped rapidly through the wide, decrepit avenues of the Scramble Crossing.

  My lungs, the zy bastards, were starting give up on me. I needed to do something before this goose (well, rabbit) chase ended up being for nothing.

  Luckily, I had a pn.

  Halting my pursuit, I gred sharply at a Noise to my right in the form of some hyena-looking thing, that had seemingly just wrapped up digging through some trash.

  Instantly, it screamed and began to run.

  A few shes ter, I’d finally managed to steer it toward the Statue of Hachiko, and I was riding aboard it, soon taking an abrupt right into the West Exit Bus Terminal.

  As I bobbed up and down, my carriage practically pissing itself with fear, I kept my grip steady, and when the aforementioned rabbit-looking creature had now come into view, sniffing the ground for goodies.

  The pissant thought it’d escaped me.

  The hyena screamed when I sunk my kusarigama’s bde into its belly, and dismounting now, I extended the chain, swinging the anguished canine around like a yo-yo, until I let go, sending its carcass flying right into my target.

  The escapist, now having been rocked off-bance by the impact, careened into a wall on the left with a loud crash

  “Gotcha now.” I mocked, running to close the distance until it was in hunting range. Of course, this was no ordinary rabbit, much closer to the size of a rge dog.

  After having finished off the poor fucker who’d transported me this far, I turned my attention to my main target, who was now backing up into the corner.

  Damn, this felt good.

  “Any st words?” I would’ve said, if not for the pain of a solid, blunt impact smming against my side.

  Before my mind could register what had even went down, the world became a blur, and I then crashed through something gssy, shattering upon meeting my weight, for the second time this week.

  Muttering some expletives, I boriously got to my feet, the nding spot of that punch, or whatever it was, still throbbing. I swore to myself that when I id eyes on whoever did that to me I’d-

  Oh, fuck.

  My eyes weren’t deceiving me, if the suffering still tearing through my nerves was anything to go by.

  Before me stood – and I emphasize – two more fucking Noise, but completely unlike the first.

  In contrast to the smaller, yellow-striped cottontail I’d been pursuing, these two completely towered over me, easily surpassing the height of the dormant undromat they stood next to.

  To add to their differences, one of the newcomers took the form of a red, humanoid bull-looking freak that had clearly been benching skyscrapers before showing up here. It was probably – no, definitely the one who had sucker punched me a few moments ago, and if the ringing in my ears was anything to go by, I didn’t think I could take another one of those.

  How could I be so sure it was the bull, you ask? Easy.

  The other one it had arrived with had no arms.

  As much as I hate to admit it, this st one sent a shiver down my spine. As a juxtaposition to its glowing white eyes, which for some reason I felt were overflowing with hatred, the rest of its serpentine body was a jet bck.

  Stepping over the shattered window frame now, with my hand finding the cold brick wall for support, I had to think up a game pn, and fast.

  As much as I hated to admit it, taking on both of these mutants by myself wasn’t an option. I needed to find something I could exploit, take advantage of.

  After a few moments of observation, I had an idea. Well, more like a gamble. If I was wrong, I was probably dead. If I was right, then I had a chance, but was still probably dead. So, why the hell not?

  I bored my eyes into the bull looking one, who I deemed the more reckless of the two through analysis of his thuggish body nguage, et voilá. For once, the shit they had me learn in Biology actually came in handy.

  For the uninformed, when faced with a stressful or dangerous situation, the body prepares for action by releasing stress hormones like adrenaline.

  This response triggers physiological changes, like increased heart rate, rapid breathing, you get the picture.

  The individual is then ready to either confront the threat (fight) or flee from it (flight).

  As you’d imagine, this adaptive response is real useful for balls-to-the-wall situations like these, especially with an ability like mine.

  Unfortunately for this idiot’s accomplices, this was the first time someone had chosen to fight my illusions, and not very well at that.

  The wild, amateurish swings of its thick arms, targeted at non-existent apparitions, barrelled through the air, causing walls, streetmps, and other infrastructure unlucky enough to have been nearby to crumble into debris.

  As the other two emerged from the thick dust, visibly armed, it was far too te. I was already in position.

  “Get over here!” I grinned, and soon enough, the hook of my kusarigama had found its next meal.

  Giving its surprised serpentine fellow no time to respond, I yanked the chain back to my vantage point on the opposite rooftop, grabbed the sickle’s handle, and pulled it down until the critter’d been ripped clean in half.

  As its essence began to fade away, a familiar white gleam began to shine through at the dissipating corpse’s center.

  “This next upgrade better be fucking good.” I muttered, now noticing that the bck serpent had disappeared from view completely. I had an educated guess as to where it was heading to now.

  So you can imagine my surprise, and dread, when it was not an orb I had been rewarded with, but a book.

  I didn’t know how long I’d been running for. If we took into account the trembling in my legs, the heaving of my breaths, and the blurring of my vision, I’d say it had been long enough to colpse from exhaustion.

  However, as the roar echoing not far behind me affirmed, colpse wasn’t an option. Stopping wasn’t an option. Or else I’d just be proving Hoshino correct, and (yes, ironically), I’d rather die.

  It was the metallic crushing and clunking, I guess like the hammering of raw materials into a desired shape on a production line, that finally got me to turn around.

  Now, either Juno forgot to tell us something, or cars were able to fly in this shithole.

  I found it strange, considering I was pretty sure that a) There were no other human beings around aside from us, and b) The few vehicles that were parked around looked as soulless and dipidated as the rest of this pce, likely incapable of being driven, let alone able to catch the crazy amount of air that this one was.

  So, logically, I could only assume the worst.

  With the little strength I had left, I flung my chain to the right, miraculously finding a pipe hooked by the inside of its curved edge.

  One arduous pull ter, I flew into the dark alleyway, praying that my travel was masked by the car’s subsequent catching fire after crashing against the ground.

  Perhaps if I still had the mental faculty to do so in that moment, I’d have thought about the fact that that there was still fuel left in that car for the tank holding it to get ruptured by the crash, resulting in the gasoline igniting.

  But I didn’t.

  As I sat there like a useless turd, cowering behind a metal garbage container, the reality of my situation started to take hold.

  I wish I’d had the strength to wipe my eyes. To remove these useless tears from my face. What good were they?! What I needed was power, damn it! That’s all that ever mattered anyway. Friendship, money, love – they were all just piss-poor substitutes for someone’s powerlessness.

  My increasingly numbing arms had now exerted the st of their force, causing the tome I’d been carrying tumbling out of my hiding spot, into the centre of the pathway.

  It didn’t go unnoticed.

  In the corner of my eye, two tall shadows loomed over the dark backstreet, the backdrop of the fire giving them a demon-like quality. I scoffed.

  I’d always thought that shit about your life fshing before your eyes was some bogus Hollywood trope, yet as my final two arbiters enclosed on me, memories I thought I’d burrowed deep in the recesses of my mind decided to resurface, unable to resist the opportunity of humiliating me one st time.

  Eventually, I got to her, and her goofy little idiosyncrasies nobody else seemed to notice. Not like I did.

  I remember the way she looked as she would stare up at 104, and the sound of her voice as we’d follow the flow of the Shibuya River.

  “I heard that there’s a monster at the end of the river. An old, bitter kaiju that feeds on people’s brains!”

  “Then I guess you’re safe. You’d wouldn’t make a good meal for ‘em, after all.” I’d replied pyfully.

  I remembered how she’d put an ice cube in her miso soup, on account of her tongue being quick to burn. The eborate plot descriptions she’d give of whatever comic she was currently into.

  The way she stood beside me when I was depressed and didn’t know what to do – and the way it made her feel lost and uncertain, too. The way she held her tongue when I grew irritated and hurled angry words.

  The way, two weeks ago, after having not seen her for almost a year, she stood silent as her boyfriend and his cronies roughed me up for everyone at Tipsy Tose Hall to see.

  At times, she got quiet. At times, she got angry. She cried. She slept. She eventually grew tired of me and left me behind to start a new life at high school.

  And that was where it ended.

  Both my memories, and my life.