Chapter 16

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Fourteen Years Old (Sixteen)

“How did things end up like this...?”

Tayano Kiku understood the reasoning behind it all, yet he still could not fathom how matters had come to their present state.

For now, he and Suehiro Tetchou had been reduced to little more than Utau’s lackeys, carrying her bags, while the blond young lady herself followed behind them alone, fiddling with her phone as she walked.

When she heard Tayano Kiku muttering under his breath, she raised one eyebrow slightly, then glanced ahead.

“Aren’t you my assistants now? Naturally, you should be doing things like this. This is an assistant’s job.”

Tayano Kiku: Absolutely entitled and imperious... Could she not show even the slightest courtesy?!

She truly was treating them as assistants and ordering them around.

In a sense, however, this could be considered the result Tayano Kiku and Suehiro Tetchou had sought, so naturally they had no grounds for complaint.

As if that were still not enough, Suehiro Tetchou added fuel to the fire from beside him. “She’s right, Tayano. We are her assistants now.”

Could you at least put up a little resistance?! We are the Military Police, for heaven’s sake!

If word of what had happened today got out, where would that leave their dignity as the Hunting Dogs?

“You’d better not say anything for the time being,” Tayano Kiku said, forcing out each word through clenched teeth. “I’m afraid I might lose control and stab you to death right now.”

“Oh.” Suehiro Tetchou did not understand why, but he had the good habit of listening when people advised him, so he obediently acknowledged it and truly did not say another word.

Tayano Kiku: In theory, he should have been happy about that, but somehow he was not particularly happy at all.

Stay calm. Be patient.

He reminded himself of that.

One should not lower oneself to the level of an idiot.

He opened his mouth again, but before he could actually say anything, his expression abruptly changed.

“Tetchou,” he said.

His voice was nearly inaudible, as though it were no more than the faint friction of his lips. Only Utau, standing right beside him, and Suehiro Tetchou, whose five senses surpassed those of ordinary people, could hear it.

“There’s something wrong with this station.”

***

When they had first entered this Shinkansen station, Tayano Kiku had not noticed anything amiss.

That was only natural. Even though his hearing was sharper and more extraordinary than that of the most advanced machines, a Shinkansen station was a place where crowds gathered in immense numbers. With so many sounds overlapping in chaos, it was instead difficult to hear anything clearly, and much important information was easily lost.

There was nothing to be done about that. For Tayano Kiku in particular, the heartbeats and breathing of everyone around him caused genuine interference. Unless a mission required it, he generally kept well away from crowded gathering places.

But after buying their tickets, just as they were about to board the Shinkansen, Tayano Kiku suddenly sensed that something was wrong.

Some sound was ringing out—beep, beep, beep.

It was an extraordinarily faint sound, all the more insignificant for being concealed within such a cacophonous environment. Yet even the faintest sound ceased to be faint when countless identical frequencies gathered together.

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To Tayano Kiku’s ears, it was nothing short of deafening.

Under what circumstances could such perfect uniformity occur?

He needed less than a second to find the answer.

Bombs.

Numerous bombs had been distributed and planted around them—or, more precisely, there were people carrying numerous bombs who were moving toward them!

And in a place as densely crowded as a Shinkansen station, if so many bombs were detonated, the resulting disaster would be nothing short of catastrophic.

As a member of the Military Police, Tayano Kiku could never permit such a thing to happen.

Yet his lost sight, something he had rarely cared about in the past, suddenly proved inconvenient.

Tayano Kiku could indeed use his hearing to determine the source of every minute sound others would overlook. But there were simply too many sounds all around them, coming from every direction. Combined with the fact that he could not see, this made it impossible for him to determine exactly where the bombs had been placed.

“...Tsk.”

Beside him, Utau clicked her tongue in displeasure.

It was like something out of a zombie film. The entire Shinkansen station seemed to have become an outpost under the enemy’s control. Everyone around them—whether passengers who ought to have been complete strangers, or employees who had originally worked here—now shared a single objective.

They gradually drew closer and closed in, using their bodies to form an inescapable wall.

Tayano Kiku’s hand came to rest on the hilt of his sword.

Too convenient.

They had not had any direct contact with Utau before this, merely lurking in the shadows and plotting something. Yet the moment they began to act, the Sanctuary had followed in perfect synchronization, like hyenas tracking a lion across the grassland.

It put Tayano Kiku in an exceedingly foul mood. This clearly meant that someone had been monitoring their progress the entire time, keeping a constant watch on Military Police intelligence!

They had been treating them as nothing more than an intelligence database.

The mere thought of it made Tayano Kiku uncomfortable. And when he realized that it probably meant a rat had infiltrated the Military Police, his expression grew even colder.

The faint smile that usually hovered on his face had vanished without a trace. Although he was no longer wearing the uniform that carried such overwhelming pressure, once every expression had been stripped from his features, that handsome face of his still made people instinctively want to avert their eyes.

Hunting Dogs that tore into and pursued their prey—the strongest, sharpest blade in the country. That was who they were, and it was also their duty.

Now that a traitor had appeared among their comrades, it was easy to imagine just how terrible Tayano Kiku’s mood had become.

Once this matter was over, he would return and conduct a thorough investigation!

And whenever Tayano Kiku was in a foul mood, someone was bound to suffer for it. These members of the Sanctuary who had delivered themselves into his hands, intending to take Utau away, were clearly the perfect targets for his frustration.

The blade flashed with a snow-white gleam. Tayano Kiku and Suehiro Tetchou moved like leopards that had locked onto their prey, plunging into the surrounding crowd.

Even if the enemy outnumbered them several times over, they were still merely ordinary people. Perhaps in their daily lives they could take pride in the guns and ammunition bestowed upon them, believing they possessed the power to inflict harm. But before true strength, that was plainly not enough.

And yet—

Before their blades could truly fall, the two of them stopped their movements by the narrowest margin.

Because the ordinary people standing directly before the blades—people without abilities and with no training whatsoever—not only failed to retreat in fear, but instead revealed strange smiles.

Then they showed their true trump card—

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Beneath their clothes and concealed by their bags, every one of them wore a bomb. The bright red timers glowed like bloody arrows capable of piercing straight into the eyes.

Even though they carried bombs and might lose their lives at any moment, a strange fanaticism still burned across their faces.

Their eyes were clear, and it was obvious that their minds were perfectly sound. In other words, their willingness to disregard their own lives was not the result of brainwashing or manipulation. They truly approved of this course of action and were willing to carry it out.

It inevitably brought to mind the absolute fanatics of religion—the same madness and fervent conviction, the same unyielding obsession.

Just like the organization they came from: the Sanctuary.

The station’s public-address system had been temporarily commandeered. Carried through the current, a slightly distorted and degraded voice rang throughout the entire station.

“First meeting, Miss Hoshina. I apologize for such an overly modest welcome.”

The voice had clearly been specially processed by some method. Trying to trace it back to its source and find even the slightest clue to the person behind it would be a complete waste of effort.

Yet even after such treatment, the speaker’s delirious delight could not be concealed. The emotion contained within the voice was so full and intense that one could not help but suspect that, if its owner were actually present, he might throw himself directly at Utau.

“Modest?” Utau swept her gaze around the station. Looking at the crowd of people wearing bombs as they gradually approached her, she could not restrain a cold laugh.

“If this still counts as ‘modest,’ I truly do not wish to know what ‘grand’ means by your definition.”

“Is that how you see it? What a pity.”

The voice came from the public-address system, yet no one present believed that its owner genuinely felt disappointed. On the contrary, the malice overflowing from that voice had reached an unpleasant intensity.

“Very well, then. Our not-quite-official meeting is over.”

The speaker’s tone shifted.

“Thank you for bringing the Saint before us. From this point onward, everything concerning the Saint will be handled by us.”

Tayano Kiku almost laughed.

“What makes you think we would hand her over to you?”

Sending an innocent civilian into a place known to be a perilous den of wolves and tigers was not something the Military Police ought to do.

If they truly did such a thing, Tayano Kiku felt he might as well commit ritual suicide before that, in penance for his own incompetence.

He had joined the Military Police and become one of the Hunting Dogs for the sake of justice and law. Everything they did represented the law of this country. They were the executioners of justice.

Yet the person behind the voice did not become angry at this outright refusal—or rather, this was most likely within his expectations.

Thus, the voice from the public-address system continued lazily:

“I am a man who loves peace. If you hand the Saint over to us, I can guarantee that no one here will be harmed today.”

“Otherwise...”

As though they had received some hidden signal, everyone surrounding them placed their hands on the switches of the bombs strapped to their bodies.

Clearly, all it would take was a single order for every bomb to detonate.

The voice over the public-address system continued.

“Then I will have no choice but to invite you to witness a rather ugly fireworks display.”