January 4th, 2044
08:25 PM
Central Ward
Horizon District
Nanbu Naoya
The rain fell into a sea of flashing red and white lights on the edge of Central Ward’s southern border. A small bridge spanned the river that separated it from Sin Ward, but a holographic barrier of yellow and black stripes had been erected at the mouth of the bridge, stopping all traffic from attempting the crossing. Only a few feet away from the foot of the bridge, there was a pit in the street where the pavement collapsed, where the remains of two broken vehicles lay intertwined, both barely recognizable.
The sinkhole was large enough that it completely blocked traffic moving in either direction, being nearly twenty feet across and large enough to engulf the twisted remains of the green box truck, with fissures of various sizes snaking through the cement and up into the sidewalk on either side of the pit. The endless rain falling from the dark sky above ran down across the street and streamed into the opening, turning the bore into a muddy puddy within minutes, leaving only a few crudely bent and broken fragments of the vehicles to poke out above the water.
Minutes after the collision, more vehicles had swarmed down the avenue from both sides of the bridge; white vehicles with a red ensign of all sorts and sizes. Dressed in white uniforms beneath transparent rain parkas, the members of Yōgai-shima’s Civil Services went to work blocking off traffic and coming to the rescue of the truck’s driver by pulling him out of the wreck. Even now, the man was being loaded into an ambulance on the Sin Ward side of the divide; his left arm and leg straightened with splints. Meanwhile, untouched by the collision, Naoya sat on the curb, his helmet on the road between his feet.
Still dressed in his black laminate coat with its leather texture and bronze circuitry, the rain fell down on Naoya’s head and matted his dark hair to his scalp. The red and white lights of the emergency vehicles blared at the edges of Naoya’s amber eyes, but he wasn’t looking at them. Instead, he fixed his stern features on the collapsed street, trying to find the remains of his bike among the flooded hole in the road. Even as he tried to find the familiar shape of the Bridge-Runner, his mind’s eye was consumed by images of the past.
He remembered the feeling of the bike beneath him beginning to swerve as a wall of wind collided with him. Then, the bike began to slide as it lost traction with the road. After, the lightning and thunder, followed by the blinding rays of the truck and its deafening horn.
“And then what happened?” Naoya had been asking himself that question for the last few minutes, but he could never come up with an answer, no matter how many times he relived the accident. He remembered the truck bearing down on him, and the lights and sounds filling his eyes and ears, and then, he was in the pit, pulling himself out from the rubble. He didn’t remember the collision with the truck at all.
“I must have blocked it all out,” Naoya decided, his eyes turning away from the scene of the accident to instead look down at the helmet still sitting between his feet. He looked down at the battered and partially melted piece of equipment and tried to wrestle with the events of the night. Everything had turned out wrong, somehow, and he resisted the urge to question whether or not it could get worse, if only because he didn’t want to tempt fate into another fickle act of spite.
“Nanbu Naoya,” a man’s voice spoke to him, and Naoya looked up to see a white-clad officer in a rain parka standing over him. The man reached up to adjust his cap by its polished black bill, holding a white Augur in his left hand. His eyes glanced between a soft blue holographic display from the device and Naoya sitting on the roadside.
“Yes, sir,” Naoya hastily stood, coming up from a sitting position to tower over the other man. The officer grimaced up at Naoya, perhaps surprised about how tall he was, and Naoya was careful to try and not loom over the officer or present himself in any way threatening.
“Can you tell me in your own words what happened?” the officer asked, holding up his Augur, or whatever the Civil Police called their devices.
“Well, I was coming back across the bridge,” Naoya chose his words carefully, suspecting that he was being recorded. He turned to look towards the bridge where the yellow and black banners blocked off traffic and gestured towards it with an open hand.
“From Sin Ward?” the officer asked, keenly.
“Yes, sir,” Naoya answered, keeping his face and voice placid.
“I see,” the officer murmured, almost too low for Naoya to hear, but he got the sense the officer’s interest wasn’t abated. “Go on.”
“Well, after I crossed the bridge, my bike started to slide, and I had to hit the brakes—,”
“How fast were you going?”
“I don’t remember,” Naoya avoided an answer, knowing that he had been going faster than he should have immediately prior to the collision.
“And you slid into the truck, is that right?” the officer was staring into his Augur, not even looking at Naoya as he tried to rush the investigation to a conclusion.
“No,” Naoya’s stern insistence brought the officer’s eyes back to him, though Naoya could tell the man was wary. “I came to a complete stop before the accident.”
“In the middle of the road?” the officer’s eyebrows raised in surprise.
“There was no one else around,” Naoya assured him. “My car hit an oil slick or a puddle and started to slide, so I hit the brakes before I lost complete control.”
“And you ended up in the middle of oncoming traffic?” the officer asked.
“No,” it was clear that the officer was trying to railroad him, and Naoya struggled to maintain a deferent composure. “I was in my lane, and the truck hit me.”
“And how did that happen?” the officer asked, clearly skeptical.
“It was hit by a lightning bolt,” Naoya supplied the truth, though it sounded like a weak lie in the moment.
“I’m sure,” the officer looked away, giving a slight shake of his head, his voice filled with sarcasm.
“It’s the truth,” Naoya protested, frustration tainting his voice. “Check the surveillance cameras; you’ll see.”
“Cameras are out,” the officer brushed off Naoya’s objection with a matter-of-fact explanation, looking back at his Augur. “We’ve had periodic outages thanks to the storm.”
“Of course,” Naoya scoffed, seeing that misfortune had chosen to play an additional prank on him.
“You said you were coming from Sin Ward?” the officer asked, his eyes returning to Naoya’s face.
“Yes,” Naoya agreed. He had no reason to lie, and there was no other explanation he could give, but he felt that was going to be used against him somehow.
“And what were you doing there?” the man in the white uniform fixed Naoya with an intense look.
“I was there on business.”
“Business?” the officer repeated as though he were hard of hearing. “What kind?”
“How is that relevant?” Naoya challenged the officer, though he knew that wasn’t a good tact to take.
“Have you been drinking tonight?” the officer asked, his voice sterner and his tone more direct.
“No,” Naoya answered, his own tone becoming brusquer. “Do I look drunk to you?”
“Will you submit to a blood-alcohol test?” the officer asked suddenly, and Naoya balked.
“No,” Naoya protested. “I haven’t taken a single drink tonight.”
“We ran your plates through the Civil Database,” the officer tapped his device, his eyes flicking back and forth between the screen and Naoya’s face. “We’ve got footage of you hopping between every bar between Sin and Foundation. Street cameras also clocked you going 80 MPH on the other side of the bridge.”
“Of course, the cameras in Sin Ward are working,” Naoya cursed his ill-luck. “I’m not drunk. I was just doing my job, and I’m trying to get back home. I didn’t do anything wrong.”
“Let me ask you again,” the officer spoke slowly and bluntly. “Will you submit to a blood-alcohol test?”
“No,” Naoya insisted.
“Then I have no choice but to take you down to the station,” the officer explained, placing the Augur into his chest pocket.
“Am I under arrest?” Naoya demanded.
“That depends on you,” the officer answered. “I have reasonable suspicion that you were speeding and drinking tonight. You can either comply with my request for a blood test, or I can place you under arrest under suspicion of driving under the influence of an intoxicating substance and administer the test down at the station. This is the last time I’m going to ask you; will you submit to a blood test, or will I have to place you under arrest?”
“You don’t have the authority to arrest me; I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Alright, then,” the officer took Naoya’s words as a refusal and he reached into the back of his belt to withdraw a pair of handcuffs. “I’m placing you under arrest under suspicion of driving under the influence.”
The man paused to look at Naoya, trying to gauge whether or not the larger man would resist. The thought had crossed Naoya’s mind, but he was quick to remind himself that this wasn’t a back-alley brawl; raising his hands against the Civil Police wasn’t an option. Reluctantly, Naoya allowed the officer to hook his wrists with the cuffs, letting the white-clad officer throw his weight around. The cuffs clicked as the officer slid them on, but another noise came to Naoya’s attention.
There was a rumble in the distance; it was loud enough to be thunder, but it was persistent, and it grew louder with each passing moment. In a matter of seconds, the noise grew into a roar, and all the Civil Personnel on the street paused to listen, anticipating a new arrival Around the corner at the far end of the street, a sleek black vehicle drove into view, coming towards the scene of the accident.
“How?” Naoya asked himself, immediately recognizing the Survivalist. “How does she always know?”
The white uniformed members of the Civil Services, be they police or EMTs, all froze at the sight of the Bureau vehicle that rudely intruded on the scene. The machine came to a halt some twenty feet away from Naoya and the arrest officer, the Survivalist’s headlights bathing them in bright rays. The engine cut off, but the headlights lingered on for a few moments, forcing Naoya to squint as he watched the driver’s side door open and a tall, slender figure stepped out. The driver stepped forward, and the vehicle’s headlights automatically switched off as she approached, allowing Naoya to get a better look at the approaching woman.
She was tall for a woman, being nearly six feet. Her hair was a blue-black gossamer curtain that fell to the middle of her back with her bangs neatly parted to leave several locks dangling over her right eye. She had perfect porcelain skin, and delicate features with full lips and a beauty mark under her left eye, though her crystal blue eyes were cold and hard. She was dressed in a dark three-piece suit, with a black coat, an equally dark waistcoat, and a pair of women’s slacks with black pumps and a pair of leather gloves. Her button up shirt was an aqua color, with a contrasting red tie. The suit was decorated with polished silver zippers across the lapels of her coat, her waistcoat, and on her pockets. On her right thigh was a dark brown leather holster which had a silver Augur, and several slender silver darts beside it.
Of the ten or so men on the street, none of them spoke or even moved. Everyone froze like they were animals that had become immediately aware of an apex predator in their midst, and they weren’t certain how to react. The Inspector walked forward with a straight-backed confidence, ignoring the gazes of the men around her while she only had eyes for Naoya.
As she approached, the woman’s eyes traveled from Naoya’s face down to the pair of handcuffs. She raised her right hand, gesturing with her gloved fingers, and Naoya felt something invisible pull at the cuffs. With a clicking noise, the cuffs unlocked themselves, and the officer turned his head to stare at the metal device in shock. The cuffs floated into the air and hovered there for a moment, and the officer reached for them.
“Hey!” the officer cried out as the pair of cuffs shot through the air before he could grab them, flying away from him and into the hand of the approaching woman. She took a moment to consider the rudimentary restraints, then turned her head to take in the scene. Her eyes jumped from the sinkhole in the street and the vehicles left entangled in it to the Civil Personnel, then to the ambulance. She surveyed the scene with a practiced eye, committing every detail to memory in a single glance. Finally, her eyes returned to Naoya.
“Senior Inspector Sumitomo Suzume,” the woman introduced herself with an aloof, clear voice as she reached into her coat pocket with her right hand and withdrew a leather wallet. She held it up in one hand and flipped it open, revealing her Civil ID card and the silver badge of the Bureau, which depicted the Chesire moon of the organization’s emblem. “I was called here on the report of a traffic collision.”
Suzume’s words seemed to jolt the officer out of his stupor and he cleared his throat, as if he only just remembered where he was. He stood up straight and glanced at Naoya and then looked towards the Inspector.
“This gentleman here was coming across the bridge from Sin Ward and ended up colliding with a delivery truck coming the other way,” the officer reported to the woman as though she wore his superior, which she was in a certain sense, Naoya supposed. “Cameras on the other side of the bridge picked him coming in and out of bars earlier tonight, and he was recorded speeding just before he crossed the bridge. I’m taking him down to the precinct to get his blood-alcohol tested.”
“I haven’t taken a single drink tonight,” Naoya reaffirmed, making sure the Inspector heard him say it.
“What about the truck?” Suzume inclined her head towards the wreck.
“Both vehicles are totaled,” the officer reported, though he awkwardly looked back and forth between the wreckage and the Inspector, as if it only occurred to him now that he didn’t need to tell her anything. “The scene looks like a bomb went off; we pulled the driver out with a broken arm and a laceration on his left leg, but this guy got out without a scratch.”
The officer gestured towards Naoya, and Suzume’s eyes searched his body, as if it was of dire importance to see that the officer’s assessment was right.
“The EMTs have checked and triple-checked the truck driver,” the officer went on, taking Suzume’s attention back to him. “There are no irregularities, no reason to involve the Bureau.”
“I see,” Suzume firmly placed the pair of handcuffs into the officer’s outstretched hand. “Be that as it may, I’m afraid I can’t allow you to place this man into police custody.”
“Yes, ma’am, I see—,” the officer did a double take. “Pardon?”
“This man is an integral to an ongoing investigation I’m conducting,” the Inspector explained. “I can’t allow him to remain in your custody. He’ll need to come with me.”
“Inspector, as I’ve said, this is a civil matter outside of the Bureau’s jurisdiction,” to his credit, the Civil Police officer didn’t immediately flinch from his duties. “I’ve already placed this man under arrest. He will remain in my custody until—,”
“Officer,” the Inspector spoke up, her voice clear and authoritative. The slender woman took a step forward and there was an unseen tremor that flowed across the street, like a pulse. The streetlights flickered, and the headlights and sirens of the emergency vehicles failed for a moment as some invisible power was exercised. The officer blanched, looking into the face of the Inspector standing less than a foot from him, reminded of the fact that she was not conventionally “human.”
“I didn’t come here because of a traffic collision,” the Inspector tilted her head back, and fixed the other man with an austere stare down her nose. “I came here for this man. The man you are ignorantly trying to place under arrest is much more dangerous than you might think. If aggravated, he would become a force beyond the capability of the entire police force to restrain.”
“Really?” the officer seemed unsure whether he believed the Inspector’s description and he turned to look up at Naoya. In response, Naoya flashed an awkward smile and shrugged his shoulders.
“Do you think an ordinary man drives headfirst into an oncoming vehicle and walks away from a crash like that without a scratch because he’s ‘lucky?’” the Inspector demanded, drawing the officer’s attention back to the collapsed street and the pair of vehicles tangled up in the sinkhole. The officer’s lips pressed together in a thin line, and he looked back at Naoya again.
“I suppose that taking him down to the station isn’t strictly necessary,” the officer admitted, bashfully tucking the handcuffs into his belt again.
“Thank you for your understanding, officer,” the Inspector gave the officer a small bow in recognition of his wisdom.
Naoya glanced back and forth between the officer and the Inspector and then took a step away from the man who’d been trying to arrest him a few minutes before. The officer watched him sheepishly, but didn’t say anything, and Naoya took his silence as consent to leave. He walked away from the officer and the white police vehicles with the flashing red lights, pausing only to look remorsefully at the open crater in the cement where his loyal Bridge-Runner lay in ruins.
“Let’s go,” Suzume voice urged Naoya from behind and he reluctantly continued towards the Survivalist, opening the passenger side door to climb in. In contrast to the dated bike Naoya rode, the Survivalist Suzume drove was the height of modern technology and luxury. The interior of the cabin was bone dry and temperature controlled, and the storm outside became a distant thought as soon as the door closed. Naoya leaned back in the familiar leather seat, looking at the glossy silver dashboard and controls that reflected Suzume’s own sense of aesthetics.
Suzume climbed in afterwards, drawing the silver Omen from her hip holster as she slid behind the wheel. She swiftly started up her car, and pulled away, turning about to head further into Horizon District. They drove away in silence; even the pitter-patter of the rain was muffled by the sound-dampening cabin of the Survivalist.
“She hasn’t said anything,” Naoya thought to himself as the trip wore on. “She must really be in a mood. I’d better try and get ahead of it.”
“Thank you for your help, Mrs. Inspector,” Naoya broke the silence, and adopted a coy tone. “But I really need to get home, and I’d do anything, and I mean anything, if you’d let me go.”
“Stop it,” Suzume immediately shut him down, but Naoya was certain he’d seen the traces of a vanishing smile on her lips. “This isn’t the time for jokes.”
“I mean it, though,” Naoya dropped the teasing voice. “Thank you. You really saved me back there.”
“You owe me a lot more than a ‘thank you,’ at this point,” Suzume observed, cooly.
“On the subject of owing you,” Naoya ventured and Suzume shot him an exasperated look.
“What is it now?” she sighed.
“My bike,” Naoya offered without further explanation.
“Right,” Suzume clicked her teeth. “I’ll have Kaminari order a tow truck to drag it to a repair shop.”
“Have it sent to Sukaku’s,” Naoya insisted. “He owes me one.”
“I don’t suppose he’s grateful enough to patch your bike together for free, is he?” Suzume asked, though she already knew the answer.
“Sukaku’s a good guy,” Naoya tried to mollify his lover. “He’ll put the bike back together and let me pay him back later.”
“I’ll cover it,” Suzume corrected him, sternly. “You’re not even going to make rent this month as it is.”
“I’ll pay my half of the rent,” Naoya returned, pridefully. “And I’ll pay you back, too.”
“I’ve heard that before,” Suzume observed, and Naoya knew she was right, to his shame.
“I’ll square things. I mean it.”
“This is the last time, Naoya,” Suzume gave him a hard look from the corner of her eye. “I’m not going to keep paying for that damn motorcycle year after year when we’re struggling to make ends meet. I never should have let you keep that thing.”
“It’s my bike, Suzu,” Naoya felt a sting in his pride, and he tried to push back. “You didn’t let me do anything; I chose to keep it.”
“You blew your entire savings account on that bike when I told you not to,” Suzume reminded him, sharply. “And since then, I’ve paid three times that amount fixing it after you managed to wreck it. As far as I’m concerned, that makes it mine.”
Suzume’s logic was as inarguable as it was cruel; the reminder that he’d failed to provide for himself and had been entirely reliant on the good graces of his girlfriend for the past few years cut deep, and he was forced to look away in shame, staring out the passenger window while Suzume continued her verbal offense.
“After all the promises you made me about how that bike was going to let you earn a living and how well you were going to take care of it, what happens?” Suzume demanded. “You end up joyriding drunk around Sin Ward and crash it into a truck.”
“I’m not drunk,” Naoya protested, upset by the accusation.
“Really?” Suzume gave Naoya a quizzical look.
“I haven’t had a single drink,” he assured her, folding his arms obstinately. His answer prompted Suzume to shake her head again, and she gently rubbed her left temple with one hand.
“Then why didn’t you just take a breathalyzer?” Suzume demanded, audibly annoyed.
“Because I don’t have to,” Naoya insisted. “He had no right to try and blame me for the accident.”
“He also said you were speeding,” Suzume’s observation made Naoya curse the woman’s impeccable memory. “Was that true?”
“The truck hit me, Suzu,” Naoya insisted. “I was at a dead stop.”
“You don’t think anything through, do you?” Suzume sighed heavily, ignoring Naoya’s protestations. “How long are you going to just keep making the same mistakes? If I had to work late tonight, I wouldn’t have been here to bail you out. Have you thought about that?”
“I already thanked you,” Naoya rolled his eyes.
“It’s not about thanking me, Naoya!” Suzume snapped. “It’s about you being able to take care of yourself! You’re a grown man, but you can’t hold down a job, you can’t earn a living, and you can’t even take care of your bike!”
“It was an accident, Suzu!” Naoya snapped back, galvanized by his own embarrassment. “A freak accident! There was nothing I could have done to stop it!”
“What happened?” Suzume asked him, her voice low and her eyes keen.
Naoya felt Suzume’s scrutinizing eyes on him and struggled to find words for a few seconds.
“I was crossing the bridge when the wind picked up all of a sudden,” Naoya began, knowing how strange his story was. “It started blowing the bike all over the place, so I tried to slow down. Then, the front wheel hit an oil slick or something and it started sliding all over the road and I had to really struggle to get it to stop. I was right in the middle of the road, but the only other vehicle was the truck going in the other direction, so I thought it was going to pass me by, but then. . .,”
“But then?” Suzume prompted him with clear interest.
“A lightning bolt hit it,” Naoya answered, sheepishly.
“A lightning bolt,” Suzume repeated, her tone neutral.
“The truck went out of control and the last thing I remember was it bearing down on me,” Naoya lapsed into silence after his story.
“What about the sinkhole?” Suzume asked. “When did that happen?”
“I. . . don’t remember,” Naoya admitted, rubbing the back of his neck, awkwardly. “I don’t even remember the crash. I just remember the horns and the headlights of the truck, and then I was sitting on the side of the road.”
“I see,” Suzume murmured, more to herself than Naoya.
“I know how it sounds,” Naoya assured her. “But that’s what happened. You know how I have crazy bad luck sometimes. It was like that crash was destined to happen: everything that could have gone wrong did at the precise moment it needed to. There was nothing I could have done.”
Suzume didn’t say anything right away. Instead, Suzume guided the Survivalist to the side of the road and parked it. She’d turned to look at Naoya before he’d managed to say more than a single word.
“Why—?”
“The talisman I gave you this morning; where is it?” Suzume held her left hand open for Naoya to fill.
“Why does that matter?” Naoya asked but Suzume didn’t answer.
“The talisman,” she repeated.
Reluctantly, Naoya unzipped his jacket and reached into it, yanking out the paper sutra forced on him. It was a slender script, maybe as wide as two of Naoya’s fingers and half an inch longer than his hand. As his fingers closed on the talisman, he noticed that something was different about it. He pulled the object out and stared at it; the small paper sutra was withered, and partially scorched, and the ink incantation upon its surface was smudged. Naoya only had a brief chance to inspect it before Suzume plucked it from between his fingers. She held the small, good luck charm in her open hand, inspecting it in sober silence.
“I guess it must have been damaged in the crash,” Naoya tried to offer his own explanation for the damage. “That, or it happened when Nishijima shocked me.”
Naoya kept that part to himself, but Suzume seemed to sense the fact that he was withholding something.
“What did you do today?” she asked, with marked interest.
“A couple of deliveries,” Naoya answered. “Just the usual.”
“For the past twelve hours?” Suzume demanded, clearly not taken in by the half-truth. “Tell me you did more than that.”
“I got a few odd jobs done this morning,” Naoya admitted, and breathed a heavy sigh. He hadn’t intended to tell Suzume about the night’s events and had instead promised himself he’d make up for time lost the next day. Clearly, the universe wasn’t keen on that plan. “But I got another job offer from Ichinose.”
“The soapland guy?” Suzume’s voice held a particular disdain for the man in question.
“He wanted me to find someone,” Naoya went on. “He said the guy owed him and everyone in Sin Ward a small fortune. He promised me the moon if I happened to find him.”
“And did you?” Suzume pushed him to continue.
“Yeah,” Naoya sighed through his nostrils and looked away.
“And then what happened?” Suzume didn’t let the matter drop.
“He lied to me, alright?” Naoya answered more harshly than he intended. “The guy wasn’t who Ichinose said he was. I’m not even certain what the truth was, or if I’d have even gotten paid at the end of the day. I dropped it, and I told Ichinose to go fuck himself.”
“Sounds to me like you should have done that at the very beginning,” Suzume remarked.
“Very astute observation, detective,” Naoya replied, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “Have you thought about a career in law enforcement?”
Suzume ignored the jibe; she never appreciated Naoya’s wit.
“And that’s all that happened?” whatever sixth sense Suzume possessed, it was clear it was telling her that Naoya was still withholding something, but he couldn’t say more. He hardly remembered the confrontation with Nishijima, and he didn’t want to worry Suzume by telling her he’d been in a fight. More than that, he didn’t want to give her another excuse to strip him of any more autonomy.
“That’s it,” he lied, and immediately felt a pang of guilt for doing so. Suzume gave Naoya a lingering side eye, but if she had any further suspicion, she didn’t share it. Without saying another word, she put the car back in drive and merged into traffic. The rest of the trip home went by in restless silence, with neither party saying a word.
Suzume drove with a forceful precision, effortlessly moving back and forth across the road to keep the Survivalist in continuous motion, dodging slower vehicles and chokepoints in the process. Under her direction, the Survivalist forced itself between other vehicles, relentlessly pushing forward despite the slow traffic the congested the road into Horizon. Many times, Naoya’s own judgement told him that Suzume was trying to force the car into a space too small for it, but, somehow, the Survivalist always seemed to avoid any possible collision. To someone that had never met Suzume, her behavior might seem reckless, but Naoya had been her passenger enough to know that she was in complete control, even if he couldn’t rightly explain how she made the vehicle move the way it did.
The streets of Horizon were a welcome change from the city’s eastern half. Outside of the Golden Mile, Horizon lacked the headache-inducing neon glamor of Sin Ward, but it was far from the quiet desolation of Foundation. The buildings of Horizon were tall, and pressed together, like the rest of Yōgai-shima, but they were modest and homey compared to the rest of the island.
The tight-knit buildings had laminate skins of grey brick, plaster, and wood to conceal their concrete bones, and they never ventured into anything more garish than that. The occasional storefront or business they passed on their way home also eschewed the bombastic and prismatic holographic displays of Sin Ward, at most having a glowing sign in the window, or a flickering luminescent menu standing outside the doors of an open restaurant. Looking out the passenger side window as the city rolled by, a sense of relief settled in Naoya’s chest.
He felt safe, and the realization surprised him. He only just realized that he’d been holding onto a sense of pervasive anxiousness all day. Now that he was back in Central, or perhaps because he was with Suzume, that anxiety seemed to have vanished. Turning his eyes away from the city outside, Naoya looked down at his hands. His knuckles seemed to throb, and for a moment, the red light of a passing sign cast a red light on Naoya’s hands, and he immediately thought of blood.
“I’m done with Ichinose,” Naoya swore to himself, reflexively folding his hands to conceal the imaginary stains on his fingers. “I’m done with Sin Ward, I’m done with Foundation.”
“You’ve never been in a bigger bind, Naoya,” he lectured himself as he settled back into his seat. “You can’t keep treading water doing small jobs. You’ve got to rally. You’ve got to think. Otherwise. . .”
Suzume seemed to watch Naoya from the corner of one eye, observing him as he stewed in his own frustration. However, if she was able to discern the thoughts going through his mind, she still chose to say nothing. Instead, she continued to drive in silence.
The Survivalist momentarily emerged from the cramped buildings of Horizon, enabling Naoya to see beyond the structures that crowded his vision in all directions. Through the gap in the cityscape, Naoya was finally able to see the Dawn Spires, the largest set of skyscrapers in Horizon. The Dawn Spires were a quartet of identical buildings arranged in a diamond formation that reached up some one hundred and twenty floors. The first forty floors were the widest part of each tower, creating a massive footprint that dominated the streets of Horizon. The middle span of each tower was considerably smaller and slimmer than the bottom third, and the final third of each tower was sleeker and narrower still, with the peaks of the spires narrowing into a slender spear aimed at the heavens. There were skybridges that connected each of the buildings to one another, positioned at the fortieth, sixtieth, and eightieth floors. The four buildings were absent any exotic smart-skin coating or holographic décor; instead, the Dawn Spires were decorated with a burnished bronze exterior that made them shine in the daylight.
The set of skyscrapers vanished momentarily behind another cluster of nearer buildings, but Naoya could tell that the Survivalist was growing closer to them. He caught sight of the four towers more and more as Suzume drove. Soon, the car emerged onto the streets that wound around the base of the four City Towers and Naoya felt a restless anticipation to be home.
Rather than go around the massive modern fortress sitting in the south end of Horizon, Suzume went under it, driving the Survivalist into the underground parking garage entrance near the eastern tower. The vehicle descended into darkness at a sharp angle, the tunnel ahead only lit by the occasional light that clicked on as the Survivalist approached. The tight concrete walls of the dim tunnel reminded Naoya that he was positioned beneath a hundred million tons of steel and concrete, though he tried to push the unwelcome thought to the far corners of his mind.
“Breathe, Naoya,” Suzume tried to soothe him, sensing his discomfort.
“I’m fine,” Naoya insisted, stubbornly.
Suzume guided the Survivalist through the maze of the Spire’s underground parking lots, navigating towards the space below the west tower while Naoya leaned his head back and stared at the roof, preferring to distract himself from the underground maze. Eventually, the machine was brought to a stop, and Naoya scarcely waited for Suzume to put the car in park before he sprang out. The dark grey parking garage was filled with a thousand cars of every type and color spreading in every direction, and the sound of rain and wind roared somewhere in the distance.
Naoya navigated quickly through the assortment of parked vehicles, leaving Suzume behind as he made for the elevator. He slapped the button and impatiently waited for the car to arrive, Suzume coming up behind him. As his anxiety increased, time seemed to stretch itself, and the moments dragged themselves out. The tension formed into a fiery pressure in Naoya’s stomach that threatened to surge up his throat and burst through his head like a volcano blowing its top.
Still looking at the sliding steel doors of the elevator, Naoya felt Suzume place a hand gently on his back. The gesture was gentle, and passive, but it silently reminded him that he wasn’t alone. He felt his breathing slow and his heart slowly stopped racing, though he could scarcely remember when the panic attack began. As the pressure inside subsided, Naoya glanced at the woman behind him, and flashed her a smile.
“Thanks,” he expressed his gratitude with a little embarrassment, feeling foolish that he was so easily knocked off balance while Suzume was always effortlessly confident.
“It’s nothing,” Suzume brushed the moment aside as a mechanical chime rang, and the doors of the elevator slid open, ushering them inside. As the doors closed and the car surged into motion, Naoya tried to think of being somewhere else, somewhere more open, and he distracted himself by staring at the small screen in the elevator that depicted the car’s rise up the different floors.
The first five floors of the City Towers were a massive department store divided across the four buildings. Near enough anything could be found inside the Dawn Spires, be it clothes, food, or entertainment. The shopping center was open to the public, which turned the Spires into a hub of local activity, but Naoya imagined the true intent of the shopping district was to disincentivize the residents from ever leaving. Many people worked, lived, and shopped exclusively in the tower; Naoya did enough shopping inside the Spires himself, but he couldn’t imagine never going back outside.
The floors above the shopping arcade were a mix of utility rooms and apartments, with those in the “bottom forty” being the cheaper of the rooms that the Spires had on offer. The forty floors that took up the center had more amenities, while the top forty was the most luxurious, but Naoya had never actually seen them for himself. He wondered if living on the higher floors would make life a little more bearable, but he knew that he and Suzume would never be able to afford that.
The elevator finally came to rest at the fifty-fourth floor, and when the doors slid open, Naoya felt a palpable sense of relief. Suzume stepped out first, leading the way home through the halls of the Spires. The interior décor of the Spires were never to Naoya’s liking; the halls were shimmering a golden color, contrasting the polished blackwood of the floor. Bronze sculptures were mounted on the walls depicting human figures wrought of metal traveling beneath the setting sun. Every floor Naoya had seen leaned into the sun theme too much for his liking, which made the Dawn Spires feel too much like a theme park rather than a living space. Suzume led the way into their shared apartment, scanning the badge reader positioned to the right side of the wood-laminate door, causing it to slide open. Naoya followed Suzume into the apartment, taking a moment to take in the familiar sight.
Naoya and Suzume’s apartment was fairly typical, or so he imagined. The entrance opened into a small hallway that led into the living room, where Suzume had set up a two-seater couch, and a third reclining chair around a small coffee table. Naoya wasn’t sure who the third seat was meant for; Suzume and Naoya always sat together on the loveseat, and she never allowed any guests in the apartment under any circumstances. He’d never asked her about it, imagining that he wouldn’t get an answer, and supposed it was just a matter of Suzume’s feminine sense of Feng Shui.
To the left of the living room was the kitchen, which was partially separated from the rest of the room by a kitchen island. The kitchen and its assorted tools, appliances, and all the food in the pantry was meticulously organized by Suzume, who cleaned and maintained them to perfection. Despite that, Naoya found himself spending far more time in the kitchen than Suzume did; Naoya had taken a few jobs here and there as a short order cook, while Suzume’s twelve hour shifts at the Bureau often left her without much energy to use the stove. Opposite the kitchen was a hallway with doors that opened into the interior bathroom, shower, and laundry room, with the far door leading into the shared bedroom.
The interior of the apartment was decorated according to Suzume’s tastes. The floors were the same dark hardwood, though Suzume had placed down dark blue rugs to prevent the laminate flooring from being scuffed or dirtied. The walls were a neutral ivory, and Suzume had put up paintings here and there, all of them emulating art styles from Japan’s past. Along with the old inkbrush canvases, Suzume had various potted plants, most of them bamboo shoots. As soon as the pair stepped through the door, the lights in the apartment clicked on, and the ventilation turned on, adding a slight breeze that smelled of pine. The apartment felt less like a house, and more like a lonely arboreal forest on a mountainside.
Everything about the apartment screamed of Suzume’s own personal sense of taste. Naoya was scarcely allowed to openly display any of his own possessions, and Suzume forced him to keep the items that belonged solely to him either in their bedroom or in a small space at the bottom of the closet. Naoya didn’t allow Suzume’s totalitarian control over their living space to bother him; she was the breadwinner of the two, and tonight was just one of the many times she’d gone out of her way to help him. No, instead what really bothered Naoya about the apartment was that it was just too small.
The top of the apartment’s door frame always seemed to loom low whenever Naoya entered, causing him to reflexively stoop as he stepped inside. It was an illusion, and Naoya knew it, but whenever he was in the apartment the ceiling seemed to press down on him. The walls joined in with the ceiling, pushing on Naoya’s sides. Further complicating things was Suzume’s taste in furniture, and a delight in delicate décor, which often disagreed with Naoya.
“It’s not that the apartment is too small,” Suzume would tell him whenever he complained. “It’s just that you’re too big.”
The small confines of their apartment were hard for Naoya to live in sometimes. The only thing that helped him stay sane was the view of the city. Opposite the entrance, the far wall of the apartment was a floor to ceiling window that looked out on the city. Whenever Suzume was home, she used the laminate composition of the window to alter it to look like a wall or a large tapestry, but whenever Naoya had an opportunity, he left it transparent.
When he found himself feeling anxious, he would often seat himself in front of the window and stare out towards the western part of Central. From his vantage in Horizon, Naoya could see the labyrinth of Iron District, and sometimes, he could see the massive holographic displays that spread over the distant skies of Arcade Ward. He would imagine himself down in the streets below, somewhere out in the open, seeing something new. Being free.
“I’m going to take a shower,” Suzume announced as she slipped off her shoes and strode into her apartment, leaving Naoya to struggle to take his boots off. It was hard to believe that Naoya had been in a near death accident less than an hour before the way Suzume went right back to normal. Come to think of it, Naoya realized that he’d barely thought about it twice.
“I’ll get dinner started,” Naoya called after her. After removing his boots, Naoya stripped off his jacket and made to throw it over a chair, but he paused when he felt something in his jacket. “What’s this?”
He felt a boxy kind of shape hidden inside the smart-fabric, and he spent a few moments searching through the jacket to find out what it was, meanwhile he heard the sound of water running as Suzume began to bathe. Inside the lining of his jacket, Naoya found a rarely used and frequently forgotten pocket: inside he pulled out a small plastic case. The label on the front of the case featured a man and a woman standing back to back beneath a lunar eclipse, a single word spelled out above them
“Collision.”
“I forgot I bought this,” Naoya considered, holding up the movie case. “It’s miracle this thing survived in one piece.”
Laying his jacked over the back of a chair, Naoya looked over the film case with a certain curiousity.
“What did Conbeni-chan say about this?” Naoya tried to recall. “That it was a ‘litmus test for relationships?’”
He tossed the film case down onto the table, his curiosity only growing. However, he had other things to do, and he put his thoughts of the mysterious movie to the side and repaired to the kitchen. He searched through the refrigerator, looking for something that would be quick to make. Ordinarily, Naoya would have been home a few hours earlier, and he would have had something fresh for Suzume, but today’s goose chase prevented that.
Searching through the fridge, freezer, and cupboards, he found them surprisingly sparse. The months rations hadn’t been delivered, and neither Suzume nor Naoya had done any independent shopping. They had some rice, some fish, some beer, and not much else that could be quickly prepared so late at night. At the back of the fridge, hidden beneath a covering of aluminum foil, was a bowl of curry. It had likely been there for at least a day, if not two, but curry was a Japanese staple, and Naoya didn’t have any better options.
He hastily unwrapped the leftovers and put them into a pot, reheating them as quickly as he could while also getting the rice cooker set up. He used what ingredients he could to thin out the leftovers to make a single serving for two people, while also trying to keep it palatable. He popped open a beer can and took a sip as he cooked. Savoring the flavor for a moment, Naoya decided to throw caution to the wind and poured half of the can into the curry.
A few moments later, he carried out two plates of curry, finding Suzume had already finished showering. She was standing at the table with her hair tied back into a loose ponytail, dressed in a loose white t-shirt and a pair of dark denim shorts. She was holding up the movie case that Naoya had left on the table, scrutinizing it with a keen eye.
“What’s this?” Suzume asked, holding up the movie.
“Oh, that?” Naoya placed the two plates down on the table, glancing at the movie held in Suzume’s hand. “That’s a movie recommended to me by, uh, a friend.”
“Who?” Suzume asked, sensing the trepidation in Naoya’s voice. “It wasn’t that pimp, was it?” She held the movie away from her, as though it had suddenly become dirty.
“No, no,” Naoya was quick to dismiss that idea. “It was a recommendation from someone I bump into every once in a while.”
“What’s it about?” Suzume asked, tossing the movie down onto the table.
“I don’t really remember,” Naoya admitted, awkwardly. “Though, I take it that it’s a romance.”
“I didn’t think you were into those kinds of things,” Suzume observed, taking her seat at the table.
“I’m always willing to try new things,” Naoya shrugged, taking his own seat. “It might be fun to watch it for a few minutes.”
“I just want to eat and go to bed,” Suzume announced, her voice heavy with rare weariness.
“Come on, it’s supposed to be a movie about relationships,” Naoya tried to coax her. “We have so little time together these days as it is. We should try and enjoy it.”
Naoya felt Suzume’s eyes on him, appraising him with reluctance. He tried to smile even as he knew he was brazenly treading on thin ice. He was gambling on Suzume’s goodwill, and he’d drained a fair amount of it already in the past couple of hours. The seconds dragged on as Suzume silently considered him, and Naoya was a hair’s breadth from folding.
“Alright,” Suzume sighed, sounding as though she was already regretting her choice. “But it had better be good.”
They finished the rest of their meal in relative silence, forgoing the chit-chat in the strained atmosphere. Naoya took the dishes and brought them to the kitchen, rinsing them off while Suzume fished a fresh pair of drinks from the fridge and went to wait for him on the living room couch. After rinsing off the plates in the sink, Naoya set them aside to dry before moving to the television. He picked up the movie case and stared at the front cover.
“Okay, Conbeni-chan,” Naoya thought to himself. “This is my last chance to make tonight good. Don’t let me down.”
Popping out the disc, he slid it into the movie player and hurried back to the couch as the movie began.
“I can’t stop,” the line came from one of the film’s two protagonists, a young woman named Hiruko. She was a slender woman with short brown-hair that was more cute than beautiful and played by an actress Naoya was half-way certain died in Tokyo years ago. She sat in the interrogation room of a police station, her blue bubble jacket torn, her face puffy and red from crying. She clutched herself, staring off into the middle-distance.
“Every time I think about what happened, it eats away at me a little more. I can’t get it out of my head.”
“This isn’t a fight you’re going to win,” said her co-star, the infamous Shimono Kojiro. He was dressed in a slick black suit with a pin on his collar, signifying him as a lawyer. He leaned forward, trying to get the young woman to look him in the eye. He smiled, an attempt at a reassuring grin, though it came away as something oily and awful. Was Kojiro that good an actor, or was it just life imitating art?
“You need to stop thinking about what happened to your father and start thinking about yourself.”
“You think I can do that?” the girl at first seemed shocked and stupefied, but her eyes grew hard even as tears formed at their corners. “My father was murdered and the man who killed him is still out there! I can’t do that. Not when I’m the only one that can do something about it.”
The first act surprised Naoya: it wasn’t a straight up romance, but rather, a romance couched inside a crime drama. A trouble-making politician famous for his tough-on-crime platform was killed in a hit and run on an ordinary Tokyo road. A simple, unsolved accident that would have gone uninvestigated except for one thing: the politician’s adult daughter had been in the car with him, and she’d miraculously survived the whole ordeal and come away with a testimony to not only identify the other driver but also prove that her father was the victim of an underworld hit.
Her lawyer, a sleazy, paranoid sort, spent the entire opening of the movie counseling her not to speak to the police and to keep her story under wraps. It was no surprise when a secret phone call revealed that he was an inside man for the yakuza sent to try and scare the female lead into silence. However, when it was time for them to part, the lawyer insisted on driving her home rather than letting her take the taxi arranged for her.
“Why’d you do it?” Hiruko sat in the passenger’s seat of her lawyer’s car, listening to the radio report of a fatal crash across town. “If you had let me get into that car. . .”
“You see a lot of things in this line of work. No matter which side of the law you think you’re on, no matter what reasons you’re fighting for, in the end, we all have a mountain of regrets,” Kojiro kept his eyes on the road, casually flicking off the radio as he drove. “If I’d let you go, I think that’d be one mistake too many for me.”
“Why do this if it bothers you so much?” the witness made an impassioned plea, laying a hand on her lawyer’s arm. “Reach out to someone and get help. There have to be countless people willing to help you get free from the yakuza. The police. The mayor. You’re not alone.”
“The truth is, young lady, I was in with the mob from the start,” the lawyer somehow smiled, as though admitting the truth was cleansing his soul. “They paid my way through law school all so they could have a lawyer in their pocket. I get their boys out on bail and sometimes, I scare people who know too much into not testifying. You’re braver than most, you know that?”
“Bravery doesn’t mean much if I die before the trial starts,” the witness sighed, looking up at the ceiling of the car with a forlorn stare.
“You’ll make it,” the lawyer swore. “I know a place.”
Naoya felt Suzume press up against him as the movie reached its halfway point and she leaned her head against his shoulder. The two main characters pulled into a safehouse and spent the night lying low. As they sat on the bed, sharing stories about their life, the two opposites began to attract, drawing together in a steamy scene. The lawyer was woken in the middle of the night by a call from his boss in the criminal underworld, demanding that he give up the girl. He looked down at her, still sleeping and half-covered by the blankets as he held the phone in his hand. The next morning, they had one final argument.
“There’s no going back after this,” the lawyer told her.
“There’s nothing for me to go back to,” the witness spoke firmly. “My future lays ahead and I’ll walk toward it alone, if I have to.”
“There’s no place for me on the road you’re walking,” the lawyer took her by the shoulders, staring deeply into her eyes.
“Then maybe our worlds were only meant to collide this one time,” the girl smiled a sad smile and touched her lawyer’s face.
“I don’t want that to be true,” the lawyer told her. “I don’t want this to be the only moment we have.”
“Then let’s say goodbye for now, and promise each other it won’t be forever,” the witness held her hand out, her pinky extended, and the lawyer gave her a melancholy look, hooking her little finger with his own.
The lawyer took off after the emotional climax, leaving the witness alone in the hotel room with nothing more than promises she’d be safe and that he’d be back for her. He called his boss and got in his car; the scene juxtaposed with shots of ominous men in suits climbing into a car somewhere else in Tokyo as the lawyer drove off. Naoya felt the tension build as the two cars raced across town. Where was the lawyer going and who were the men in the other vehicle? He had to know.
The two cars pulled up to their destinations simultaneously, the lawyer arriving at an office building while the second car pulled into the hotel parking lot. The lawyer pushed in through the front doors and blew past the front desk, the scene transitioning back to the hotel as a group of men went up to the hotel’s check-in counter. After a muffled conversation the audience wasn’t allowed to hear, the suited men went toward the elevators and hit a button, causing the elevator door to open with a chime, revealing the lawyer standing inside as the scene abruptly transitioned again. The lawyer strolled through the building, ignoring the glares of men in sharp dressed suits with tattoos creeping up their necks as he took hold of a door handle and twisted.
The door swung open, revealing the witness sitting on the bed, who looked up in surprise. Four men entered the room, led by a clean-cut man with brown hair and a grey suit. He gestured to the pin on his lapel, revealing himself as her lawyer’s strait-laced partner. He escorted her out of the room with three policemen in tow, closing the door on their way out, transitioning back to the office building.
The lawyer stood in front of a desk. Behind it sat a wide shouldered, leathery skinned yakuza with his shirt unbuttoned to reveal part of the tattoos that covered most of his upper body. Without saying anything, the lawyer reached up to his lapel and pried loose his pin, tossing it down on the desk with disdain. The yakuza boss caught it and glared up at the lawyer with outrage, though by that time, the former lawyer was already walking away.
The movie ended with a shot of the lawyer talking to his partner as the police escort arrived at the courthouse. The lawyer lit up a smoke as his partner spoke, though it was clear that most of what was being said was being ignored. Constantly checking the car’s mirrors, a look of fear crossed Kojiro’s features as a vehicle that had been parked in front of the yakuza’s office building rounded the corner, now hot on the lawyer’s tail. He tried to keep calm and drive slowly, abruptly ending his call to his partner.
After thirty seconds of slow-motion driving, the lawyer’s eyes constantly darting between the road and the mirror, suddenly the tailing car had disappeared. The lawyer checked his blind spots, desperate to find the man pursuing him before allowing himself a relieved smile. Before he could react, a car sped out of an alley ahead of him, catching him off guard. The film cut to black as the sound of squealing tires was heard, followed by grinding metal. Abruptly, the credits began to roll.
While the names of the film’s crew ran over a black screen, Kojiro crooned his hit single “We Only Have Tonight” in a soft, breathy voice as the words of the lead actress spoke over him, giving her testimony about the men that had killed her father in a premeditated vehicular homicide. More than once, the young woman’s voice broke, and she could be heard crying. As the last of the credits disappeared into darkness and Kojiro’s words trailed into silence, the judge in the courtroom announced that a verdict had been reached in the trial, though the audience would never hear it.
“That’s how it ends?” Suzume complained, sitting up straight. “They don’t end up together?”
“I guess they were going for a bittersweet ending,” Naoya scratched his head as the movie ended. Had he been pranked after all?
“I hate endings like this,” Suzume complained. “They didn’t even have the decency to film a proper conclusion.”
“Maybe they wanted to leave it up to the audience to decide?” Naoya ventured.
“That’s even worse,” Suzume hissed. “It’s so indecisive. After an hour and thirty minutes of story-telling, the director just gave up and left everything unresolved, so the audience can decide if they want a happy ending or not. It makes the entire narrative pointless, in my opinion.”
“Okay, so the ending wasn’t good, but it had me going through the second act,” Naoya tried to put a positive spin on things. “I was hooked.”
“It sucked,” Suzume shook her head, decisively handing down the film’s fate. “I’m going to bed.”
Without missing a beat, Suzume got up and strode away, disappearing into the bedroom, leaving Naoya in the dark as the television screen faded to black. He leaned against the armrest of the couch, slowly rubbing his head in frustration.
“Thanks for the suggestion, Conbeni-chan.”
Soon, the World Will End 