Chapter 26 - Liu KatoruHollow NightBetween you and me, I had no intention of letting this bastard bleed to death. That would be too quick – too merciful. I was going to torch it. Atom by atom. Molecule by molecule. I looked forward to hearing how high it can scream.

  But, first things first. I needed to defeat it first, and much to my annoyance, it looked like the sword I had hijacked wasn’t the only trick it was hiding up its non-existent sleeves. With those pesky knuckledusters, I assumed its already rapid movements would become even faster now. I inspected them, spiked and dangerous. Just one punch would be enough to put me in need of a blood donor.

  That said, if there’s one thing I’d been taught in my short lifespan, it’s that nothing is ever free. Not really, anyway. For what it had gained in speed, and perhaps strength, it had lost in range. If it only needed to nd a few blows to end the match, the same went for me. One touch was all these fmes would need to spread into an inferno.

  Of course, all that strategy shit was just a distraction from the killing I was meant to be doing. Thankfully, my body was two steps ahead, and quite literally at that. My legs had already started moving.

  As I’d hoped, the little bitch lowered into a defensive position, its palms spread out, and vision trained on the bde in my hand. Good. With my left, I stretched my arm backward before hurling a burning bck sphere in its direction.

  For the first time, I witnessed its eyes widen, likely in shock, and it made the split-second decision to duck. As the ball of fme flew overhead, I stretched my left arm backward and released a jet of fire akin to a fmethrower, and quickly began to gain speed. By the time it looked back toward me, I was right in front of it.

  I locked eyes with it prior to releasing the violent downward swing of my bde I’d been preparing. I was disappointed when the katana’s arc halted suddenly, and found that the idiot had opted to catch the bde in both of its palms. I felt a grin forming.

  “Let’s see if you can handle the heat!”

  The steely glow of the daitō soon became engulfed in bck fire, and the sound that came next was like music to my ears. It was the sound of a pained, anguished, visceral scream.

  “More.” My whispers crescendoed into cries – demands. “GIVE ME MORE!”

  With a strength that can likely only be summoned in the face of true, unfettered death, it pushed the fming edge upwards, giving it just enough time to roll for safety before I brought the bde down onto the ground. Bits of concrete debris flew up as it made contact.

  At this point, I wasn’t even upset that it survived. No, in fact – I think I felt relieved. Over and over in my mind, those sweet, shrill tones pyed. Oh, you couldn’t fake a shriek like that. It was guttural, fearful, animalistic. The kind that you couldn’t hold back.

  “Mmm.” I mumbled in delight. I want to say that something began to feel off, but that would be a lie. If anything, I felt more alive now than I had in the past 16 years.

  As I pulled the sunken bde out of the hole it had created, I gnced over to my victim. It was crouched, its body heaving up and down with desperate breaths. But what really stood out to me was the way it looked at me. Was it the helplessness? The despair? All I knew was that something was being done to me alright. Something entirely new was taking over, and I was loving every second of it.

  I wanted more. Or, to be more accurate, I wanted this ecstasy to st forever. I felt like I was still dipping my toes. I needed to dive in, to bathe myself and submerge in it completely.

  As I pondered the different ways I could rip it apart, piece by piece, to get it to replicate those delightful screams, I heard a noise. It seemed it wasn’t just me – the guys behind me, even my opponent, had spun in the direction it came from.

  I may have only heard that sound on TV, but I was pretty certain it was an explosion of some kind. It was coming from the southern part of the city, where the other splinter of our group would have been. Had they gone and died already?

  I expected my heart to sink at least a little, thinking about Arthur and Mizuko and Rusuban and Junko all turning up dead when we woke up again. The fact that I didn’t feel a thing both excited me and terrified me to my core. I let the former win the tug of war.

  “Oh, no no no no.” It was like my body had gained a mind of its own, with how quickly I’d begun moving. “Keep your eyes on ME!”

  It had just barely deflected my swing. It didn’t matter. It began to cock back its arm, as if having found an opening, but I had to hold in my ughter when it cowered backward after I’d brandished my left hand.

  On second thought, perhaps I’d spoken too soon. Truth be told, I did hear someone ughing. The giggles that were resounding through the space felt carefree, infantile, and unhinged.

  If there was ever a ugh that confirmed someone’s status as a future serial killer, I thought. This would be it.

  I wondered if my self-assessment would turn out correct in due time.

  Who would’ve thought? Turns out, when you break someone’s mind, get inside their head, and cause them to second guess their every move, you’ve already won. Is this what Dad had discovered too? I scoffed. He would get his own soon enough – I’d make sure of it.

  On and on and on and on, I stabbed and thrusted and swung and crashed my bde into it. With each dodge, parry, scamper, and scramble that it replied with, I could see it getting weaker. It was slipping into darkness. Or more like it was being pulled into it.

  I put all my strength into one final strike, I felt a so. Clearly, it didn’t put in enough strength, as I sent it tumbling backward, bouncing on the tarmac.

  “My, my.” I taunted, suddenly understanding how Rusuban must feel in the real world – like everyone and everything else is beneath you. “Want to take five? Trust me, I have all –“

  A look and a few movements were all it took to shut me up. I’d sent the fucker in the completely wrong direction and hadn’t realized it.

  “Twisted, remain calm,” Kozuki stammered, choked by the thick bck arm hooked around her neck, alongside the pointed edge of a spike.

  “I am calm,” I replied because it was true. “Though, now that we’re here…”

  I raised my bde.

  “You wouldn’t mind dying for me tonight, would you Red?”

  Her expression – no, even Robes and Hoshino – that shit was priceless.

  “Kidding.” I chuckled. “Well, this time anyway.”

  I raised the katana up to the sky with both my hands. Then, I pushed it down onto my knee, snapping the weapon into two.

  Wordlessly, I started to walk.

  All was quiet. For what may have felt like an eternity, the only sound reverberating through the space was that of my footsteps; slow, deliberate taps against the ground.

  The Noise tightened its grip onto Kozuki even further, as if warning me to stay back. To think it would be desperate enough to pull a stunt like this. I smiled, and shared a knowing look with the other two. They nodded gravely.

  Without warning, I set the two pieces of steel in my hands afme and threw them either side of Kozuki’s captor, in a wide arc. As it turned its head briefly to track the leftmost projectile’s trajectory, it was like somebody had thrown a fshbang; it became so bright.

  Recoiling in pain, the Samurai let go for a brief moment, and with their vision still in disarray, chucked out mindless blows in Kozuki’s st known position. All of them missed, of course, since Robes had gone and whisked her out of there, carrying her bridal-style with a speed and strength that was incongruous to his skinny frame.

  At any rate, the coast was clear for me to go in, and my heart was practically jumping with excitement. Just what kind of sounds would it make? I simply couldn’t wait.

  When the light had settled down, I would grab its arms and burn them off. That way it couldn’t fight back. Maybe I should turn one of its legs to ash too, and make it hop around on one leg for me! Oh, the possibilities were fucking endless! How much longer until I cou-

  Kozuki screamed behind me.

  That was strange. I’d definitely seen Furusawa literally sweep her off her feet. What the fuck is she shouting about now?

  And then I remembered what her ability was.

  See, that day I learned that you could definitely have too much of a good thing. Take light for example. Without it, you wouldn’t be able to see, right? Especially when it gets dark outside. Fair enough. But what happens when there’s too much of it concentrated in one pce.

  Your eyes hurt.

  You can’t see.

  And maybe if you’re a rascal like me and happen to be fighting someone at the time, it makes it very hard to track what they’re doing.

  When the light had settled, I was right in front of the Noise, but something was off. It took me a while to spot what exactly had changed about it, but ‘a while’ was already far too slow.

  By the time it’d brought down Kozuki’s rapier onto my upper right arm, I knew that I was in for a long night.

  A lot of things took me by surprise that night.

  The sound of a scream that, for once, didn’t belong to someone else. Blood all over the floor that I didn’t intentionally spill. Pain so immense, so engulfing I was fighting to stay conscious.

  Another fsh of light, and I felt the sensation of flying. Flying? Or was it spinning? I didn’t care. I just wanted this pain to go away.

  “F-FUCK!” My transporter excimed. The whizzing stopped eventually, and I was id down somewhere. I heard a lot of noises then. Tons of nervous – scratch that – terrified shuffling going on around me. Their voices were hazy, but I could make out the panic.

  “Kato ru! Ca n you - m e –“

  “C o m r a d e – s tay strong – we w ill – tog et her –“

  “ – bleed I n g out. F u r u s a w a , s n a p o u t – you need – h e a l – “

  “W h a t – n o i s e –“

  “R U N ! T A K E – A N D G O – “

  Was I flying again? If so, the turbulence must be real bad down here. I was rocking and jumping, not to mention whoever was carrying me was clearly at the end of their rope physically.

  There were some sharp noises in the distance. I didn’t know how else to describe them. It sounded like metal cshing against metal. Like concrete crumbling. It got harder to make them out the further away I was taken.

  The st thing I heard was a scream, before the world became wrapped in pure bck. It was then that I saw her. She was far away, real far, looking off somewhere in the distance.

  “Mizuo,” I called. “Is that you?”

  No response.

  “Turn around.” I commanded.

  No response.

  “Mizuo, am I going to die?”

  This time, she turned – ever so slightly, just enough for me to see the side of her face. Her cool hazel eyes hadn’t changed.

  “Are you afraid?” She asked.

  “Are you afraid of dying, Liu? Does it scare you?”

  What kind of question was that? Why was she asking me this?

  At my silence, her head returned to its previous position.

  “We’ll meet again soon. Have your answer ready by then.”

  I wasn’t given any chance to respond. As if sucked into a whirlwind, I tumbled and fell into a colossal bckness. In the midst of my spinning, a voice reached out to me.

  “Liu. Please wake up. Liu. Liu!”

  Feeling was returning to my tired body. The cold chill of the ground beneath me was at odds with a fuzzy, enticing warmth radiating from my left side. I opened my eyes to find an orange-haired boy knelt over my outstretched body, his skin glistening with sweat, eyes wide in desperation.

  “…Robes?” My voice was hoarse.

  He exhaled in relief, rivers running down his cheeks.

  “Thank god,” He looked up, as if to actually thank God himself for my survival. We both knew he didn’t exist – not down here, anyway. I didn’t have the strength to point that out.

  As he supported my shoulders and back rise into an upright seating position, I noticed a distinct ck of something I’d taken for granted.

  “I’m sorry,” Furusawa consoled as if reading my mind. “I…I don’t think I can bring it back. It took most of what I had to stop the bleeding and ease the pain.”

  I nodded silently, menting my new status as a single-armed individual. As he’d promised, the pain had dulled a lot, but I didn’t have the courage to look at the wound underneath what was left of my shirt’s sleeve. Not anymore.

  He id my back against a dingy wall, and only then did memories of what had just gone down begin to resurface.

  “The girls,” I groaned. “Where are they?”

  Akio held up his head and squeezed his eyes, as if trying to hold back tears.

  “They stayed behind.” He managed eventually. “They stayed behind so…so we could…”

  He couldn’t say any more. My breathing had become staggered and uneven. Why had this happened to us? What else was there to do but wait for death to come and collect us, as well?

  I closed my eyes, unable to bear darkness of this pce any further, with Akio’s quiet, strangled sobs as my only company.