Editing Mushi Uta:Volume 11 Chapter 1 (section)

== 1.05 The Others ==

Kashua Artines became an exchange student.

On weekdays he’d commute to the famous school called Horusu Seijou Academy, but today he was on sick leave.

The time was evening. Normally this was about the time he’d go home from school, change to house clothes, and eat his dinner alone in the house he stayed in as an exchange student.

However, today he had an errand to take care of.

“A lot have black hair, so they’re probably from Central Asia… and so many of them, too. From how they’re shriveled, it looks like it happened a while ago, though…”

Kashua was crouching in this rectangular space wrapped in darkness. He put a penlight in his hair and mumbled to no one in particular.

“The stowaways were trapped here. And what are these bullet holes…? There’s also blood. What happened in this warehouse that caused the stowaways to vanish…”

While mumbling this, he exited from the double doors outside.

“Looks like there’s a need to investigate the owner of this container. —Oh, crap.”

Illuminated by moonlight, Kashua’s slim outline became visible.

With his vivid blond hair and brown eyes, slim figure and small face, he was often seen as older than his 17 years of age. Wearing a hoodie and jeans, he chose to look like a boy going out for jogging. The goggles hanging from his neck were cheap ones he bought from a bike shop.

“I forgot to do my homework for tomorrow.”

The sighing Kashua was caressed by the salty wind.

He was at a certain pier in the suburbs of Akamaki City. In its corners was a place for containers, and there were no human figures other than him. This scenery of the lines of innumerable containers could perhaps be compared to a forest.

“Last week’s midterm test was bad. My math grade was too high, and my Japanese was horrible. I need to strike up a balance to not stand out…”

Muttering with his hood lowered down, he operated his cellphone’s mail function.

—He found the place likely to supply his target.

He sent an e-mail written in a foreign language. That was converted to numbers, and it would be sent to a certain country not through the mobile company but satellite.

“There was the report that the test subject escaped from a facility connected to the Round Table and there was a happening in town today. Was it just a coincidence, that route leading here? If, perhaps, the test subject was acquired here and would try to come back… it’d be very good for my hunt.”

While walking among the containers, Kashua exposed his well-treated hair to the moon.

“They’re completely shriveled up. I can’t even imagine how starved that test subject must have been.”

Walking for a while, he arrived near the entrance to the bay. On the other side of the pier the city’s neon lights were blinking.

“If she ran from the city, she’d definitely cross there. I can try waiting for a few days. …If I’m not going to go to school tomorrow, I don’t need to do my homework.”

As he wondered where to hide around, it happened.

“—So you really want me to do my homework that much, you monster?”

With the city’s lights to its back, a dark figure approached with unsteady gait. Wrapped in a dirty robe, its long black hair dragged behind it.

His target appeared as if on cue. He hid in the shadows of the containers.

He removed the device around his belt buckle and brought out a small syringe. It was thinner than a cigarette and looked like a toy, but had enough power to put large animals to sleep within moments.

“I’ll wrap this up before the day fully ends.”

The surroundings were already gloomy.

This happened just the moment before Kashua leapt from behind the containers.

“…!”

A bright white light lit his vision.

He heard violent engine noises and several semi-trailers rushed into the docks. Blinding high beams illuminated the dark figure.

Limbs and neck that were nothing but bones, and goggling, red eyes.

She was clearly forced to abstain from food not just for one or two days, but for a long, long while. He could tell she was a woman from the way some roundness was just barely retained on her body.

“What…?”

As Kashua narrowed his eyes from the blinding light, he could see that the semi-trailers immediately surrounded the dark woman.

The doors opened with bangs and many large men flew out. They were clad in camouflage clothes and equipped with helmets and face masks.

“The JSDF—no, that’s wrong. Who are these—”

The man in camo all brought out something like guns and pulled the trigger.

“—…!”

Shot from all directions, wired bullets squarely hit the dark woman. Her shrill, choked voice echoed in the pier. These were apparently some kind of stun guns.

The dark woman howled. Tearing off the electrical wires stabbed into her, she assaulted the camo men.

“Don’t look her in the eyes! You’ll get ‘eaten’!”

Commanding these camo men was a youth clad in an expensive-looking suit. Kashua couldn’t see him well due to the backlight, but he looked to be still young—approximately twenty years old.

With superhuman arm strength, the dark human struck the camo men. She easily broke through their ranks and danced toward the suited youth.

“What the heck, don’t make me work.”

Both arms of the dark woman that tried to grab him slumped to the sides.

With flowing movements, the youth fended against the woman’s arms. As she leaned toward him, he struck her medulla oblongata directly above with a nimble hand blade. Flipping back, the dark woman stopped moving as though paralyzed.

It seemed quite old-fashioned, but these trained movements—was this budou, Japanese martial arts? Kashua saw this hand-to-hand combat technique for the first time.

“Fire! Keep firing!”

Quickly leaving the woman’s side, the youth ordered.

Gunfire echoed. The dark woman’s entire body became a porcupine full of stun gun needles.

And she finally stopped moving.

Immediately the camo men took the next action. They wrapped tape around the dark woman’s limbs and stuffed a large bag over her head, throwing her inside a semi-trailer.

Within only a few minutes, the capture ended as a huge success.

Riding on the semi-trailers, the camo men retreated from the pier in the blink of an eye.

Remaining there leaning against a luxury car and smoking a cigarette as if to celebrate his victory was the youth.

“So there were ‘hunters’ other than me? —Looks like there’s a need to make him spill the beans about who he is.”

Although his prey escaped, it seemed like his syringe would end up useful.

Kashua leapt from behind the containers. Killing his footsteps, he approached the youth from a blind spot.

“Ah, there’s someone there! I can ask him about it!”

''Twitch'', Kashua stopped moving.

Three shadows appeared from the direction of town.

“And another one on the other side!”

The youth twitched. He turned around and noticed Kashua’s existence as he instantly hid the syringe.

“I’m curious about that semi-trailer just now. It wasn’t the type of car to move containers.”

“Are you trying to show me how sharp you are? So shamelessly exposing your shallowness with such an obvious piece of reasoning is a fault of yours. However, even if you are like that, I still—ow.”

“Wha! Why are you hitting a girl! You’re the worst!”

“Stop acting like some frail girl—ow. A-and now even Kii-kun hit me…”

“Sorry, I dunno why, but I get really angry when I look at you.”

Civilians?

Kashua dropped his hidden syringe to the ground and stealthily crushed it underfoot.

Two boys, a girl, the expensively-dressed youth, and Kashua.

These five people gathered under the lights of the pier.

“Kids shouldn’t come here at this hour.”

The rich youth laughed to break the ice. He was a good-natured young man—or that was the air he gave, but after seeing what happened just before, Kashua couldn’t help but feel suspicious.

“They’re suspicious. They’re probably not unrelated to all of this.”

Glancing at the youth and Kashua, one of the boys spoke. —He had such an average appearance that he could serve as reference material. Other than the band-aid on his cheek he had no distinguishing features.

“H-how come you understand that sort of thing, Daisuke?”

“Somehow.”

“I’m not suspicious.”

Kashua clearly spoke. No matter where one looked, he was just a boy in the middle of jogging. There was no basis to call him suspicious at all.

For some reason, silence fell.

“Let us first introduce ourselves. It would be much easier to question each other if we know each other’s names, after all.”

No counterargument to the girl’s suggestion came from anyone.

“Mikko.”

“…Daisuke.”

“K…Kii-kun.”

“I’m Rui.”

“Kasshi.”

No one was going to give themselves away easily, it appeared. Kashua also used his school alias.

Those names had no meaning at all—

Kashua thought so, but he didn’t miss the change in expression in just one of them.

Only the boy called Daisuke grew stiff upon hearing their names.

He didn’t know why that was so, but there was one thing for sure; he didn’t welcome the meeting of these five.

“I’ll ask just in case… but do you know each other?”

At Daisuke’s question, the four people exchanged glances—

“Nice to meet you.”

Everyone spoke together.

[[File:Mushi Uta 11 p071.jpg|thumb]]


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