Tokyo Demons Book 1: Chapter 2

‬“Nothing?”

Jo shook his head. He’d checked the bathrooms, but with no luck. He watched as Sachi worriedly bit his thumbnail. Jo, getting bored with Sachi’s drama, lit up another cigarette.

“I think something happened to them,” Sachi said at last.

Jo rolled his eyes. I can’t believe I still have to spell it out for this guy, he thought.

“Sachi,” Jo murmured around his cigarette. “She ditched, all right? Kiyoshi probably took her home. Neither of them looked very happy to be here.”

Sachi shook his head. “She wouldn’t do that.”

“You don’t know her, Sachi.” Jo started to get annoyed. “I don’t know what your experience with girls is…” Probably nonexistent if I had to guess, he added silently. “…but if a chick’s uncomfortable on a first date, she reserves the right to sneak away.” He dragged, released. “Date rapes and all that. It sucks, but it’s not your call.”

“She wouldn’t leave without saying anything.”

“Why not?”

Sachi turned to Jo quickly. “Because she’s not that kind of girl,” he said bitterly. “Okay?”

“You don’t know what kind of girl she–”

“I just know!”

Jo sighed. “Whatever,” he breathed irritably. He dragged deep on his cigarette and let it out as Sachi pointed to somewhere behind him.

“Did you check that hallway?” he asked.

“No.” Smoke tumbled over lips. “It looks like it’s for employees or something.”

Sachi started off toward the hall. Jo was unimpressed with Sachi’s incredibly misguided chivalry, but Jo didn’t know his way back to school yet–so he was stuck with the guy. He followed his tall classmate with the hope that another failed search might force him to accept reality.

The hallway was long, and after a few turns Jo wanted to head back. It was a waste of time…and he didn’t trust it. Winding hallways at the back of clubs could lead to trouble–it was the kind of place where people got mugged or worse.

“Sachi.” Jo tapped the ashes off his cigarette. “They’re not here, okay? We should go.”

“We’re not leaving ‘till we’ve checked everywhere.” Sachi resolutely continued toward another turn. Jo felt a pang of anger and fear shoot off in his stomach, and he reached out and grabbed Sachi’s arm.

“Sachi,” he said, as calmly as he could, “come on.”

Sachi froze. He turned to Jo, a strange look in his eyes.

“Wait.” Sachi reached out and touched Jo’s shoulder. “What’s bothering you?”

Jo had to stop a second at that. He hadn’t…he hadn’t sounded that nervous, had he? Jo nudged from Sachi’s hold.

“Nothing,” he said, and he certainly sounded convincing in his own ears. “I just don’t think–”

“Are you lost?”

Sachi and Jo turned. A very, very large man stepped from around the corner and stared straight down at them.

Jo swallowed. The guy stood head and shoulders taller than Sachi, and his frame, clothed in a long-sleeve shirt and pair of cargoes, was clearly massive. His baseball cap and sunglasses all but confirmed the danger alarms ringing in Jo’s head.

I knew it.

“Sorry,” Jo muttered, nudging Sachi with a heel. “We took a wrong turn.”

“Have you seen anyone come down here?”

It took all of Jo’s willpower to not smack the determined look off Sachi’s face. What the hell is wrong with you?! his mind spurted. The man was trouble, and you didn’t ask trouble questions. Jo quickly pulled the cigarette from his mouth to negate Sachi’s comment, but Sachi continued before Jo could intervene.

“There’s a girl and a boy missing, about our age, both wearing tee-shirts.” Sachi reached out and touched the man’s arm. “Have you seen them?”

Jo froze. Touch the man? Touch him? He was too dumbfounded by Sachi’s stupidity to say a word.

The man irritably slapped Sachi’s hand off. “Nobody’s been down here,” he said darkly. “Now beat it.”

“Are you sure?”

The man’s eyebrows lowered.

“N-never mind,” Jo stuttered, his hand closing hard on Sachi’s arm. “We’re leaving.” I don’t want to get my ass kicked tonight, he thought as he started to pull.

Sachi, surprisingly, let him. Jo half-dragged his companion down the hallway as fast as he could walk; when Sachi leaned in, Jo didn’t have the patience.

“Jo–”

“Shut the hell up.” Jo kept his voice low. “Keep walking.”

Sachi shut his mouth for the first time since Jo had met him. When the two of them finally made it around a far corner and out of earshot, Jo whipped to Sachi.

“What the hell were you trying to do back there?” Jo hissed. “Sachi, that guy was dirty. Dirty. I don’t care what you’re looking for–you never, ever give a dirty man that big a hard time.”

Sachi furrowed his eyebrows. “I know he was iffy. But–”

“But nothing, asshole!” Jo couldn’t believe how honestly scared he was. It had been a while since he’d encountered danger–one of the perks of being a thief was the lack of confrontation. He fumbled through his pockets for a cigarette.

Sachi stared back in the direction they’d come from. After a moment, he looked down at his hand.

“You’re crazy,” Jo continued. “Out of your goddamned mind.” He shakily tipped the end of his lighter to his stick before snapping the flame away. “That guy could’ve palmed your head, dickwad.”

As Jo puffed nervously, he noticed that the hand Sachi examined was the one he’d used to touch the man. After a moment, Sachi pushed it at Jo.

“Does that look like blood to you?” Sachi asked.

Jo had had it. He flicked his cigarette and knocked Sachi’s arm away.

“Look, Sachi. I don’t know you. It’s great you wanna bond, and then be brave and badass and all that, but I don’t take a dump with my goddamned eyes closed. I know shit when I see it.” Jo pointed behind him. “That is shit. And I’m not getting involved in that for anyone, let alone a kid I met today.”

Sachi paused. “So you’re not gonna help me?” he asked, his tone careful.

“I’ll find my own way home.” Jo pocketed his sunglasses. “And believe me, Kiyoshi and that chick left. Get the hell out of here if you know what’s good for you.”

Jo angrily turned and started down the hall. Probably three seconds passed before he heard Sachi start to run.

Back toward the man in the shades.

Jo cursed the most creative swear he knew and took off like a bullet after.

****************

“You hear somethin’?”

“What? Where?”

“From the locker, man.”

“…It’s still locked. Who cares?”

Kiyoshi’s eyes slowly opened. They stared dazedly into Ayase’s own, then shot wide in shock.

“Wha–”

Ayase slapped a hand over Kiyoshi’s mouth. She shook her head furiously, half in a message and half to clear the blood flooding to her face. She quickly but carefully pushed him off her until his back was against the wall.

“Quiet,” she hissed in his ear.

She felt Kiyoshi swallow against the palm of her hand. He nodded, clearly confused.

That was close.

Ayase forced herself to calm down. Based on what she’d overheard, the people outside the locker were the enemy. She had to work fast.

Ayase carefully twisted toward the door and placed her hands against the cool metal. Pressing her eye to the grate, she could make out a few young men hunched over something.

She felt Kiyoshi squirm his arms; he was rubbing feeling back into his hands, assumedly. His knee knocked into a metal bucket and made more sound than she liked, so she whipped her head to him and pressed a finger to her lips.

“Did I kiss you?”

His whisper was sudden, and awkward. Even in the darkness she could see the nervous look in his eyes.

Ayase gritted her teeth. Not the time, her mind snapped. Willing to spare him no more than a few seconds, she leaned into his ear.

“Don’t worry about it,” she breathed. “Just be quiet.”

He looked pale in the dark. He half- bowed his head to her, raised his fingers to his nose, and mouthed an apology.

Despite having much more important things to worry about, she did feel a little better at seeing his embarrassment. She nodded and returned to the grate. At least he didn’t mean it, she reminded herself as her nerves settled a bit more.

Another person stood in the room now–a high schooler, it looked like, with short bleached hair. She listened carefully to the muted voices, but even without them she could guess the situation.

“…How much?”

“2,000 for the white, 3,000 for the blue.”

“That much?”

“Hey, take it or leave it.”

The student with the bleached hair scowled. He jammed his hand into his pocket and pulled out a wad of cash.

“Three of those. You sure that’s all you’ve got?”

Ayase pulled back from the door. Kiyoshi still looked more confused than concerned, but she couldn’t blame him–he hadn’t woken up with his hands tied. She wasn’t sure if she could explain their situation or not.

Muted yelling and a loud bang suddenly erupted from elsewhere. Ayase froze. She heard the men outside her door curse, and shuffle, and start running. She didn’t know where the distraction came from, but she recognized it as a potential opportunity…she quickly pushed her eye against the grate, then jerked back when she saw a man running right toward them.

She grabbed Kiyoshi’s hand. “Run,” she breathed. “When that door opens, run and call the cops as fast as you can.”

Kiyoshi blinked. “Uh…okay?”

The lock clicked, and the door flew open.

****************

Jo wished, not for the first time, that he had no morals. Sure, he was a pickpocket for a living, and half of Tokyo would donate to his cigarette fund if he had anything to do with it, but he wasn’t a monster. He could’ve left Sachi, for example. Left the moron to push his own luck and get his own ass dumped in an alley. Jo didn’t owe Sachi a thing–and it wasn’t like he hadn’t tried to help the guy leave well enough alone.

But no, something instinctual had pulled Jo back. He’d simply turned, and run, and jumped into action when he’d seen Sachi in the grip of the giant gangster. When a lucky dirty hit made the man stumble, Jo bolted with Sachi to whatever path wasn’t blocked–deeper into the club, unfortunately. And when Jo threw open a door to see Ayase and Kiyoshi being dragged out of a locker, a few guys throwing money back at a druggie, and a 20-something running straight at him with a bag of pills and a switchblade, Jo could think of only one word to describe it:

Fuck.

At least the man with the knife clearly didn’t know how to use it. Jo dodged the stab and grabbed the guy’s wrist as a friend had taught him once, then twisted it back and kneed his attacker in the belly. When the man dropped, Jo dropped with him and punched him as hard as he could to make sure he stayed down.

There were four more guys besides the druggie with bleached hair. Two of the guys and the blond fled immediately. The other two struggled with Ayase and Kiyoshi but didn’t do very well; Ayase dug her teeth into her attacker’s arm and made him scream, and Kiyoshi kicked the other guy in the crotch so hard the man’s eyes practically popped.

And then would have been a good time to leave, and then Jo could have snuck home with his nose blissfully clean–but no, he’d actually helped Sachi and the others knock out the surprisingly weak dealers. When the last one hit the floor, Jo wondered how the hell a drug deal could get busted by a few teenagers who didn’t know how to fight…but then he remembered the deal’s protection, the protection in the form of a giant man in a hat and shades, and all Jo could think was Get The Knife, We’re Gonna Die. He ran back to the switchblade and tried to think of how to fight with it, but he never ended up needing it. Within a few minutes he realized that the thug had fled.

Jo breathed the sweetest breath of his life and dropped the knife to clatter on the floor.

“Jo?” A hand rested on his shoulder. Jo turned to see Sachi and his rescued friends, bruised but more or less all right, watching him in guarded concern. He suddenly realized how long he’d been facing the door with a blade in killing position. Honestly, at that moment he didn’t care if he’d freaked them out or not. He shakily pulled a cigarette from his pocket and lit it with trembling fingers.

He dragged long. He breathed out, dragged again, and purposefully tilted his head up to blow smoke in Sachi’s face.

“You.” He tipped his ashes on Sachi’s collar. “You owe me the biggest goddamn carton of sticks ever made, assface.”

Sachi sighed. For once looking tired, he ran a hand over his face and rubbed a smear of blood from his cheek.

“What’s your brand?”

****************

Ayase didn’t sleep much that night. Her first nightmares involved losing that fight at the club, and the next set of dreams, predictably, involved everyone finding out about her little “insect problem.” It was the last nightmare that bothered her the most…because it followed slightly more than a kiss happening in that closet with Kiyoshi.

Kissing. She was dreaming about unwanted kissing on the night drug dealers had kidnapped her.

That upset her even worse. She was so disturbed by her subconscious that she lay in bed and stared at her ceiling for hours.

The night passed slowly. After the second nightmare Ayase noticed a body in the bed across the room; her roommate had snuck in at some point, proving that she actually did exist. Ayase hadn’t gotten a glance at the girl, but in the darkness she could make out bleached hair sprawled across the dark blanket. The room smelled more flowery than before.

Ayase sighed. She needed to go to the police station after school to look through mug shots. She didn’t mind, really, but she knew she was going to be hurting for a nap by that hour. She needed to sleep.

Ayase pulled her blanket up to her chin, failed to relax, and closed her eyes to see blue and white pills.

****************

“I’m not going.”

Sachi looked up from his notebook in surprise. A small bandage hugged the cheek where he’d taken a hit.

“What?” he asked.

“You don’t need me, right? You saw the guys who bolted and the guy in the shades.” Jo slumped back in his chair and pushed the rest of his mochi into his mouth.

“Well, yeah, but…why?”

Jo irritably wiped his mouth. “I don’t like cops.” He let his eyes roam over the room. “They profile me, and I hate it.” And you never know when they might search you, he added silently.

Sachi said nothing. Jo’s gaze finally rested on that kid in the back–Zombie, the one he’d seen in the club the day before. Today the guy was fast asleep on his desk, his head buried in his arms and his dark hair spilling over jacket-clad wrists. He’d been half-asleep in homeroom and fully asleep since lunch began.

Sachi followed Jo’s gaze. He frowned.

“Man,” Sachi said quietly. “Kado’s been a mess since school started, huh?”

Jo turned to Sachi. “You know that kid?”

“Uh…kinda. Why?”

Jo leaned in and lowered his voice. “Is it true?” he asked. “He was at the club last night, and they were dealing some pretty crazy shit back there.”

Sachi squinted his eyes. “People are still calling him a druggie?”

“Still?”

“Well…people were saying he got into drugs at the end of junior high,” Sachi explained. “I didn’t know anybody here was talking about that.”

Jo waited.

Sachi sighed. “I don’t think so.” He lowered his voice even further, then added, “He has some…problems. But he may’ve turned to drugs; I’m not sure.”

“What kind of problems?”

Sachi gently tapped his head.

Really. “So, what?” Jo whispered. “Is he crazy or something?”

Sachi’s expression hardened. “Knock it off,” he answered sharply. “That’s not funny.”

Jo was a bit surprised at Sachi’s shift in mood, but with the funk Jo was in, the change just aggravated him. Jo held his hands out in defense.

“I’m not trying to be funny,” he snapped in return. He slumped deeper in his chair, wallowing in the crappy mood that had gripped him all morning.

It wasn’t just that cops suddenly swarmed his life. Cops made Jo nervous for obvious reasons, and years of thieving success had made him extra sensitive to the fear of getting caught. No, he’d ditched before the police had come to question the night before, and there was no way in hell he was going to the station that day, but it wasn’t just that.

He’d lost another wallet in the club. Well…lost wasn’t the word. After he couldn’t find his classmate’s wallet in school, he’d started packing stolen goods more carefully on his person. He didn’t usually misplace anything incriminating, but even pros had their bad days. But now, after another wallet had mysteriously disappeared, he was ready to believe his sneaking suspicion.

He’d been robbed.

Someone had robbed his spoils.

You didn’t do that. It was…it was wrong, dammit. He was so pissed at his own carelessness and the nerve of whatever stalker had the itchy fingers that he couldn’t cheer up. He mumbled some sort of good-bye to Sachi and grabbed his book bag. He left the class to go to the bathroom and passed Ayase on her way back.

She looked like she hadn’t slept. She glanced at him but didn’t bother with a greeting, and Jo couldn’t have cared less. Like he needed Miss Boring’s acceptance–who the hell was she, anyway? She and that idiot roommate of his had started half of this crap by wandering too deep in a suspicious locale. Was Jo the only one on the planet with a survival instinct? His irritated thoughts rolled through his head as he pushed open the bathroom door.

The stoner with the orange hair nearly jumped. His cigarette fell from his mouth as he stumbled back; he clearly recognized Jo a moment later and clapped a hand over his heart.

“Shit on a stick.” He let out a breath and shook his head. “You scared me, man.”

Jo bent over and retrieved the boy’s cigarette. When the boy thanked him and reached out, Jo pulled it back.

“This bathroom is disgusting. Do you have a death wish?” Jo tossed the cigarette into a nearby sink.

Ugh, it was like he was suddenly everybody’s daddy. Jo wanted nothing more than to blow off the rest of the day and spend it smoking in a park far away from his idiot classmates.

He walked to the urinal and leaned over it. To his great distaste, the stoner followed.

“Your name’s Jo, right?” The stoner brushed a wild orange lock behind his ear. “You remember me? From yesterday?”

Jo tried to piss with a classmate hanging over his shoulder. “Could you give me some space?” he asked darkly.

The stoner bounced back a step. “Sorry, man.” He smiled. “Don’t mean to crowd. You gave me a cigarette yesterday.”

“I know.” Jo tried to keep his patience. “If you’re gonna smoke in the bathroom, do it in a stall so you don’t get caught.”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s stupid, but I’m claustrophobic. Y’know?”

Claustrophobic. Jo rolled his eyes and finished. The stoner followed him to the sink.

“I’m Seiya, by the way. Seiya Fujisawa.” He smiled to Jo’s reflection in the over-sink mirror. “And I heard you pounded Suzuki and some of his pussies last night.”

That made Jo stop. He turned to Seiya slowly. “What did you just say?” he asked.

“Suzuki. Y’know, skinny guy with the tattoo. Carries a blade but can barely open a can with it.”

The dealer with the knife. Thinking back, Jo did faintly remember the edge of a tattoo peeking out from beneath the dealer’s sleeve.

“Nice, man. Real nice.” Seiya flashed his slightly crooked teeth. “Suzuki’s a dumbass. Thinks he can deal and keep his lame cronies and get a rep for it, but half his money comes from daddy.” Seiya patted down his pockets, presumably for another cigarette. “He’s nothin’ but a bored rich kid.”

“Hang on.” Jo furrowed his eyebrows. “Why do you think I got in a fight last night?”

Seiya laughed. He gave up searching. “Don’t worry,” he purred. “You’re not in any trouble. Word spreads fast, y’know, after shit like that. New kid busts up Suzuki’s deal. Gives Suzuki the beatdown he’s been begging for.” Seiya knocked his fist into Jo’s shoulder. “Nice, bro.”

Jo sighed. He turned back to the sink and unscrewed the faucet. “It wasn’t like I planned it,” he murmured. “I don’t like trouble.”

“No, man, of course not. Who does? Don’t worry–nobody likes that dickhead.” He leaned over Jo’s shoulder, and Jo caught a whiff of Seiya’s smokey breath. “But that Sachi kid say too much to the wrong person or something?”

Jo stopped the water and turned around. “Look,” he said with lowered eyelids. “Does this have a point, or do you just want more nicotine?”

Seiya giggled and held his hands out in defense. “Sorry,” he cooed. “Don’t mean to bother you. You’re just getting some attention, y’know? We notice good guys like you.”

Jo paused a moment. “Who’s ‘we’?” he asked.

Seiya smiled. “Jo,” he murmured, leaning in and resting a hand on Jo’s shoulder. “Lemme ask you something. You ever think of joining…” He flashed his teeth again. “…an organization?”

Jo frowned.

‪****************

Ayase leaned back in her chair and stared up at the ceiling lights. Her seat had that pseudo padding that barely cushioned her tailbone from the hard plastic underneath. She sighed and rolled her shoulders.

No sleeping, she thought as she blinked her burning eyes. She would be home in an hour, so no sleeping. She had a tiny, stinging pain in her right temple that came and went, something that had bugged her since that morning and wouldn’t go away. The longer the day went on, the worse it got. It was stacking frustration on top of her fatigue.

“You okay?” Sachi’s hand suddenly rested on her own. Ayase was tired of her space bubble being popped, but she was also too exhausted to care much. She pulled her hand back.

“I’m fine,” she murmured. “Just didn’t sleep well last night.”

Sachi glanced at Kiyoshi, fast asleep in the chair beside him. “Apparently,” he said as he turned back to her and smiled, “neither did he.”

Ayase heard their names called. She looked up to see the police receptionist beckoning.

“That’s us.” Sachi shook Kiyoshi gently. “Hey. Rise and shine.”

It took a minute for Kiyoshi to start responding like an intelligent person. The receptionist busily typed at her computer as the three of them walked up.

“Down the hall,” she told them over the clicking of her fingers. “Last door on the right. Detective Nakajima should be there in a minute.”

Ayase yawned as she and the boys followed directions. That burning in her eyes grew a bit too strong to push away…she was so busy trying to dismiss her sleepiness that she almost missed a portly officer pass them on his way up the hall. He brushed shoulders with Sachi.

And they suddenly stared at each other.

It wasn’t a big deal, really; the eye contact between the two of them was brief, almost in that just-happened-to-catch-eyes way Ayase sometimes had with people on the street. The man continued down the hall without stopping, the only difference in his manner being that his head twitched and he scratched his neck with his fingernails.

But Sachi faltered. His brief pause left him a few steps behind, so Ayase stopped to turn to him.

“You okay?” she asked. He seemed taken aback, which was a new look on him.

He blinked and looked down at her. “Huh?”

She furrowed her eyebrows. “What’s the matter?”

Sachi smiled thinly. “Nothing,” he said. “I’ve just…never been in a police station before.”

Kiyoshi rubbed an eye. “Didn’t you take that field trip in 7th grade?” he asked. “We’ve been here.”

“I transferred here in 8th, Kiyoshi.”

Kiyoshi frowned. “Did you?” He rolled one of his shoulders back. “It was okay. They gave us doughnuts, and that was pretty cool.”

The three of them entered the assigned room in silence, taking in the small rectangular table and half-dozen chairs that awaited them. She and the two boys each took a chair and waited. Ayase winced as her right temple throbbed again.

A police officer with a few binders under her arm appeared in the doorway before long. She was thin, and older; silver streaked her very neat ponytail. She wasn’t particularly tall nor built, but there was something oddly fit about her small frame.

“You must be the Fukuhashi freshman.”

Ayase and Sachi nodded while Kiyoshi yawned. The officer joined them at the table and Ayase couldn’t help but notice the silken way she moved through the room.

She delicately placed the binders on the table. “I thought there were four of you?”

Sachi bowed his head in apology. “Our friend Jo couldn’t make it. But I was with him the whole time and saw what he saw.”

“Ah.” The woman pulled an index card from her breast pocket. “So…Sachi Ishida, Kiyoshi Honda, and Ayase Watanabe.”

The woman slid into her chair. “I’m Detective Nakajima,” she said as she placed her hand on a binder. “If you wouldn’t mind, we’d like you to go through these pictures and see if you recognize anyone from the little skirmish last night.” She flipped open a cover. “It was very responsible of you to report the crime so quickly,” she added with a polite smile. “We have a few problematic young men in our custody thanks to you. It’s hard to pressure a victim to go through the pains of legal processing, but without cooperation we can’t keep our streets clean. You understand.”

The three of them bowed their heads.

“Now.” Officer Nakajima leaned back in her chair and leveled cool eyes on Sachi. “From the reports, I understand three others fled the scene. But you mentioned a fourth, rather large man from the hallway, Ishida-san?”

“Yes.”

“Could you describe him for me?”

Sachi thought a moment. “He was a lot taller than 200 cm, whatever he was.” He scratched his head. “He wore a baseball cap, but it looked like he had really short hair beneath it, like a buzz or something. He had sunglasses and a little bit of an accent.”

Nakajima nodded. “And his clothing?”

“Green cargoes and a black top.”

“Long sleeve or short?”

“Um…long.”

Nakajima tilted her head and smiled oddly. It wasn’t unkind, really, nor sarcastic…but there was something very unsettling about that smile.

“Long sleeves?” she asked quietly. “Are you sure?”

Sachi looked almost as unnerved as Ayase felt. “Uh…yeah,” he blurted after a moment. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

Nakajima pushed her chair back. “That will do.” She carefully returned the chair to under the table. “If you all would take a quick look through those books and see if you find anyone familiar, we would appreciate it. You can take any notes,” she pulled a few more index cards from her pocket and placed them on the table, “on these. All of this shouldn’t take more than half an hour.”

“Okay.”

As Nakajima made to leave, something itched at the tip of Ayase’s mind. Something felt…wrong here. The fact that Nakajima was most interested in a perpetrator who wasn’t in custody was expected, obviously, but it was something more than that. Something more personal. A small thread of acid swirled in Ayase’s stomach.

“D-detective?” she called, almost despite herself.

Nakajima turned in the doorway. “Yes?”

Ayase cleared her throat. Was she overthinking things? Maybe it was the incident in the club compounded by her lack of sleep, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was following her. And Nakajima’s treatment felt like…a brush-off? Was that crazy? Ayase had never been interviewed by the police before–maybe a 3-minute talk was standard protocol.

The stinging in her right temple returned. Ayase winced and rubbed her forehead.

“I’m sorry, but…that man in the hallway.” Ayase tried to think of how to word it. “He didn’t really belong with the others, did he?”

Nakajima shrugged. “He’s someone we’ve been having trouble with for a while,” she replied. She gestured to the binders. “And you won’t find his picture in there, I’m afraid.”

Kiyoshi frowned. “What do you do about people like that?” he asked.

“Keep a sharper look-out for him. That’s about all we can do.” Nakajima smiled thinly. “Don’t worry,” she assured them. “He’ll be taken care of.”

And with that, she left. As Ayase watched Nakajima go, her small frame padding softly as a cat’s, she found herself actually believing that.

But it still didn’t make Ayase feel better. She rubbed her stinging temple.

Proceed to Chapter 2, page 3–>