Black Bullet, Vol. 1: Those Who Would Be Gods (10 page)

As the morning light filtered through the clouds in beltlike shapes, the sparrows chirped and frolicked on the branches. In the vacant lot behind the apartment building where Rentaro and Enju lived, eight boys and girls were gathered, looking up at Rentaro with bright eyes. Rentaro thought they looked familiar, and it turned out that they were all Enju’s classmates.

Stifling a yawn, Rentaro stood stock-still in the vacant lot with his bed hair. Uncomfortably, he fidgeted and moved his body, sending his gaze to the heavens. “What, so basically you want to be my disciples?”

“That’s right!” said the kids.

Looking askance at the kids who responded with voices loud enough to overpower him, Rentaro, at a loss, started at Enju, looking pleased with herself next to him. “Hey, Enju… I want to politely send these kids home, so what should I do?”

“Aw, don’t be like that,” she said. “You can train them a little.”

The disheartened Rentaro sighed. Apparently, this had all started when Enju had spread word around her school that Rentaro was a martial arts master. Thanks to that, Rentaro had been shaken awake early in the morning, and he had to give up the morning of a rare day
off. Normally, this was the time when he could stay in bed and try to go back to sleep.

“Master! Is it true that you can shock a grizzly to death with just your eyes?” said one child. The truth had been embellished with surprising momentum.

“Master! Is it true that you annihilated a whole marine battalion with your bare hands?” said another child. Apparently, he also killed marines.

“Master! Is it true that you stopped a nuclear warhead and threw it back?” said yet another. Rentaro shot a reproachful look at Enju.
Just how hard are you trying to make this?

When their eyes met, Enju gave him a thumbs-up and an earnest look with complete faith in him that said, “Rentaro can do anything!”

Rentaro wanted to sigh again. The problem with Enju was that part of her seriously believed that he could do anything. Rentaro scratched his head. Everyone went through a phase where they projected themselves onto their favorite superheroes. It wasn’t like he didn’t feel the need to protect the dreams of innocent boys and girls. He nodded decisively and prepared himself. First impressions were important in times like these. Anyway, kids were no problem. Easy. “All right you guys, thanks for coming. I am the great Rentaro Satomi!”

Silence.

Rentaro couldn’t take it anymore, and he blinked his eyelids rapidly, sending a call for help to Enju.

Enju grinned and waved at him. It was almost refreshing how the message didn’t reach her at all.

“Um, well, you guys, the concept of Tendo Martial Arts was created by the originator, Sukekiyo Tendo. To put it simply, the basics of Tendo Martial Arts are the First Style punches, the Second Style kicks, and the Third Style that covers everything else. Sorry to dash your expectations, but I’m only a beginner and can’t do that much. There are many hidden secrets that I can’t teach you yet—”

“Master! We don’t care about that. Just teach us your special move!”

“Dang it, I guess I have no choice.” Disconcerted by the children’s short attention spans, Rentaro went to stand in front of the single maple tree in the vacant lot. He lowered his hips, shifted into the basic Infinite Stance, and inhaled deeply. “Tendo Martial Arts First
Style, Number 3”—he exhaled sharply and dispatched a punch with a twisting circular motion—“
Rokuro Kabuto
!” His fist hit the tree with a heavy thud, and the maple shook as leaves fluttered down. Rentaro exhaled and returned to his stance. Then, he turned around abruptly. “H-how was that?”

“What? It was too fast. I couldn’t see what was going on!”

“It was just a punch.”

“Seemed kinda lame.”

“Right?”

“Make the tree fall down!”

“I want my money back!”

“
Asshole, asshole!
”

Rentaro was at his wits’ end.
What should I do? I just wanna punch these kids.
“W-well, you know. This was just a warm-up. I have a technique I’ve been saving. One of the Tendo Martial Arts hidden secrets, Second Style, Number 11:
Inzen Kokutei
.”

“Ooh!”

“That one sounds a little cooler.”

“It’s just the name, idiot.”

“We won’t be able to tell until we see it, right?”

Thinking
, I’ll show them this time,
Rentaro turned back to the tall tree, jumping with enough spirit to kick down the tree. “Tendo Martial Arts Second Style, Number 11—”

Abruptly, Rentaro’s consciousness was drawn back to the incident in the meeting room the day before. Going around and around in his head was one of the phrases Kagetane had let slip.
New Humanity Creation Project.
Questions filled his mind.

The Seitenshi had said, “As I am sure you all know, currently, Tokyo Area is protected by the barrier of the Monoliths. I will omit the details for now, but if the Inheritance of the Seven Stars is misused, it could create a large hole in a corner of a Monolith. If that happens, Tokyo Area will be overrun by a storm of death. Time is of the essence. You must retrieve the Inheritance of the Seven Stars.”

Rentaro narrowed the corners of his eyes. No matter what, he could not lose to that man—to Kagetane Hiruko.

Tightening his lower abs, he fixed his glare on the trunk. “Here I go. Hidden secret—” At that moment, out of the corner of his eye, he
could see a boy who had gotten bored and was playing with a soccer ball kick the ball right for Rentaro. “Argh!”

The start of his move was easily shut down, and Rentaro fell out of position and into a ditch headfirst. The sound of laughter filled the air. He couldn’t meet Enju’s eyes as he held his temple and shook his head.

“Lame! Super-lame! He couldn’t kill a beetle with that weak kick.”

A beetle…?

“I’ve had enough. Let’s go home and play Playstation.”

“Yeah!” the other kids chorused.

“H-hey, wait, you guys—” Rentaro’s pose was in vain, and Enju’s classmates left one by one, leaving Rentaro and Enju by themselves.

Enju started stamping her feet too late. “Drat it, come back! Rentaro really is amazing! He’s amazing at night, too!”

“G-give me a break…” Checking the time, Rentaro saw that it was still morning. But after all that, he didn’t think he could go back to sleep.

“Enju, is there anywhere you want to go?”

Enju’s face brightened in an instant, and she jumped up and down with joy. “Shopping!”

“Okay, okay. We’ll go, we’ll go!”

Getting off the crowded train that smelled of sour sweat, Enju pulled Rentaro’s hand and he stumbled forward as she dragged him to the toy store. And it wasn’t just any toy store—it was a large-scale toy store that rented out a whole floor of a large electronics store. Because it was a weekend, it was crowded, and there were many people who brought their families.

Looking at a child who screamed coquettishly sandwiched between her parents, who were holding her hands, Rentaro wondered how he and Enju looked to other people.

Rentaro played around with a toy block puzzle sample, and as if his hands remembered the sensation, he was gradually filled with a sense of nostalgia. “It was a long time ago, but I used to play with stuff like this with Kisara. It’s kind of unexpected that you’d like this sort of thing, too.”

“My business is with these things over here.” As she said this, she pointed her finger at the cartoon merchandise section where an extra-large IMOD display stood.

Rentaro could read the words
Tenchu Girls
written in a decorative font. Now that he thought about it, wasn’t Enju talking to her classmate about this show yesterday?

“What’s this show about?” he asked.

He then regretted asking about the show even though he wasn’t actually interested because Enju turned to him and said, “Wanna know?” with glittering eyes.

Summarizing what Enju told him triumphantly, the story was about Oishi Kuranosuke Yoshiko (magical girl), whose foster father, Asano, was killed. Swearing revenge, Yoshiko gathered forty-seven warriors (magical girls) from around the country to raid the Kira estate. Apparently, it was an epic, long-running cartoon.

He had heard something about how “Ako samurai magical girl shows” had become popular recently. “Even though it’s a magical girl show, it’s a story about revenge?” he said.

“Aha, but that is what’s good about it,” said Enju.

“I-I see…” He looked toward the sword in the special section. It was a sharp, silver Japanese sword where only the handle had been made to look like a magical stick. Apparently, it was called the Stick Blade. Watching the trailer, he saw the atrocious face of the heroine, Tenchu Red, as she screamed, “Dieeeee!” and swung her large war sword.

Rentaro couldn’t tell what they were going for. Besides, they didn’t use magic at all. Looking at the price tags of the Stick Blade and magical girl costumes in the most prominent part of the display, he involuntarily let out a groan. “Why are they so expensive…?”

“Expensive? They seem normal to me. I will buy it with my own money, so you do not have to worry about your wallet.” Enju said just that over her shoulder and then started looking through the large piles of merchandise.

“What do you think of this?” What Enju eventually brought to show Rentaro was a bracelet. It had chrome silver-plating over an engraved design. It was probably made of aluminum or something, since it felt very light when he held it.

“What’s that?” he asked.

“It’s the bracelet that the Tenchu Girls wear. It’s proof that the forty-seven warriors are friends, and it cracks when a friend tricks another friend or lies to them, so they can tell when a friend is lying.”

“Oh? Sounds like the folktale of the broken mirror.”

“What’s that?”

Rentaro explained. “It’s a story I heard from Doc a long time ago. It’s a folktale about a couple who lived apart, so they broke a mirror in half and each took a piece as proof that they would meet again. However, the wife broke her vows and cheated on her husband. And so, the mirror broke and turned into a bird that flew to where her husband was, and in the end, they divorced. Now, Aihara, what is the moral of this folktale?”

“It’s to not get caught cheating, sir!”

“Huh?”

Enju put her chin in her hand. “But they are kind of similar. That broken mirror thing must have stolen the idea from Tenchu Girls.”

“It doesn’t matter who stole the idea from whom. By the way, how much is that?”

“6,980 yen. It’s so cheap!”

“That’s expensive! That’s two months’ worth of food for me.” Rentaro didn’t even have a chance to stop her before she went to the register and bought it.

“Here, Rentaro. Put this on your arm, too.”

“What, me, too?”

“It’s a pair of bracelets. Who will wear it with me if not you, Rentaro?”

Seeing that Enju put it on her right wrist, Rentaro also started putting it on his right wrist, but then changed his mind and put it on his left.

Enju smirked as she looked at him.

“Wh-what?” he said.

“We match now, like a couple. Now you cannot deceive me or lie to me. Cheating with another woman is forbidden. If you become charmed by Kisara’s breasts, the bracelet will crack, as well.”

“What? I, Rentaro Satomi,
love
Enju Aihara…,” he said sarcastically. “It didn’t crack.”

“That’s because it’s the truth.”

“Damn it, is that how you’re gonna take it?”

After they left the department store, they walked hand in hand talking about nothing in particular. It was mostly Enju nattering on about something, and Rentaro nodding and agreeing with her, but he felt the gloom from the day before lift just from talking to her.

Rentaro stopped suddenly, seeing the Seitenshi on one of the TVs in the street. It looked like recorded footage from a news show, and her stern expression was completely different from the day before. She was talking about how she was planning to propose another bill to respect the basic human rights of the Cursed Children, the much-talked-about New Gastrea Law.

Rentaro wondered if the bill would pass. He fervently hoped that it would. Rentaro squeezed Enju’s hand, which was still in his.

Just a short while ago, it was normal for Cursed Children to be delivered in secret alongside a river, then killed before they could even open their eyes, and because of their incomplete regeneration abilities, they often became the target of their parents’ extreme abuse. It was also said that parents with Gastrea shock—an aftereffect of the war where a person would go into shock if they saw red eyes—could not even look their own children in the eyes. Also, because the shape of their DNA was contaminated by the Gastrea virus, even if a paternity test were conducted, it could not be proven that they were related by blood. Because of this, there were those who even went so far as to wonder whether or not they were human.

Since pretty much all of the generation that experienced the Great War, the Stolen Generation, had the potential to practice prejudice against the Cursed Children, there were extremely few who could be called these girls’ allies.

Honestly, Rentaro thought the problem was more than he himself could bear. If the top official of Tokyo Area was a person who understood their circumstances, he wanted to welcome her with open arms. In fact, he would rather just leave everything to the Seitenshi.

“Oww, Rentaro. Let go of me,” said Enju.

He suddenly came back to the present and let go of the hand he had been holding. When he looked, the news had already moved on to the next topic, and Enju was looking up at him with a confused expression on her face. “Sorry, I was out of it. Let’s go.”

As he turned, he noticed a crowd had formed on the other side of the street. As he tilted his head, wondering what was going on, he heard an angry roar from the other side of the street that made the ground shake, and the thirst for blood emitted by the gathered onlookers drifted over to where he and Enju were. He didn’t know why, but he had a bad feeling about this and stood, unable to move.