Vengeance Is Mine (16 page)

Rentaro didn’t say anything as he closed his eyes and gritted his teeth. After encountering Kagetane in the forest and somehow or other working together to defeat Pleiades, Rentaro thought that maybe even someone like Kagetane could change his ways for the better. However, in the end, even as Tokyo Area was on the brink of destruction from the approaching Aldebaran, this pair was more concerned with pissing contests.

After glaring at Kagetane silently, Rentaro exchanged glances with Tamaki and nodded once. Tamaki lent a shoulder to his little sister, Yuzuki, and hurriedly took her to the relief squad. In the end, neither Enju nor Rentaro, nor the white-coated Shoma, had found an opportunity to join the fight.

Hmm?
Rentaro felt like something was off and looked around him, realizing that there was an Initiator he hadn’t seen this whole time. Casually looking around him, he walked to where Shoma was.

“Shoma, bro, where’s Midori?”

A startled nervousness spread on the faces of the members of the adjuvant, and Rentaro felt uncomfortable at that baffling answer. “Enju, did…did something happen?”

Enju looked down, not meeting Rentaro’s eyes.

“Satomi, there’s something I need to tell you.” Solemnly, Shoma opened his mouth slowly and spoke.

And then Rentaro understood why Enju had been silent.

“No way…”

Kisara shook her head gloomily. “Anyway, you should go see her. You’ll still make it. She was waiting for you to come.”

Rentaro went through the dense forest and came once again to Central Heights Hotel, careful as he went through the entryway with the collapsed ceiling and up the metal spiral staircase to the second floor. Relying on memory, he stood in front of room 201, stopping his hand just as he was about to knock.

Rentaro realized that he still did not have his feelings in order. What kind of face was he supposed to show in front of her? There was nothing more worthless than an adjuvant leader who wasn’t there when it really mattered. He couldn’t complain if she blamed him.

“Is someone there?” He heard a feeble voice call out from the other side of the door.

Rentaro prepared himself and exhaled from his nose. He twisted the knob and entered quietly, but the screech of a rusted hinge mixed with the stagnant air inside the room.

In the orange light of a silently burning lantern, he saw Midori Fuse lying in the bed on the right. Next to her was a water pitcher and cup. When she saw Rentaro, she hurriedly took the pointed hat from the side table and put it on to hide her cat ears.

The light was only shining on half of her face, but she was sweating profusely, and her cheeks were flushed. At first glance, it seemed like she had just caught a cold, but Initiators were protected from a variety of illnesses in exchange for the corrosion rate that bound their bodies, so of course that was not the case.

Rentaro brought over the stool in front of the vanity and sat down next to Midori. “How are you feeling?”

“I’m all right, Leader.” She tried to sit up and bow politely, but Rentaro hurriedly kept her down. The shoulder he held rose and fell with small movements, and she was panting, her pulse beating hotly. To Midori right now, even that small feat was difficult.

“More importantly, are you really…?” Rentaro asked as he helped her lay down again.

She smiled faintly, as if answering a question about the weather. “Yes, I’m sorry. I fell behind. The Gastrea got me, and now I cannot move my body as I would like.”

He couldn’t help but feel compassion for the conditions of how she fell in battle. Alone and unaided, surrounded on all sides with the enemy closing in…it would have been possible for her to survive if she and Shoma had been able to keep their usual formation and focus on defense, but…

Midori had seen an Initiator in trouble during battle. Apparently, they had only bumped into each other in the camp and exchanged silent bows, but because they were both shy, they had never actually
exchanged words. But when Midori found out that girl had gotten separated from her Promoter and had lost both her legs and was just abandoned in the middle of the battlefield, she didn’t think about anything else but rushing in to rescue her.

What was frightening was how elaborate the Gastrea’s tactics had been. At the very least, the Gastrea’s mind had been developed enough to calculate profit and loss beyond immediate kill of the prey it had brought down. They had waited for another to rescue their haul, and thereby get both at once.

Just as Midori rushed in to comfort the girl whose name she did not even know, the sandlike ground caved in under them and hollowed out into a funnel as they watched. At the end of the upside-down cone, a repulsive Gastrea with a snapping lower jaw appeared. It was probably an ant lion larva Gastrea, but its form had changed so much that she couldn’t be sure.

A minute passed. In that time, her arms and legs were being pulled down by the sand as she slipped down, and her movements were being stopped by neurotoxins as she was injected with the Gastrea virus.

Organisms that had turned into Gastrea grew something called a virus pocket somewhere in their bodies packed with the virus, and they injected it into their opponents in one way or another to turn them into Gastrea, too. There were, on average, over two hundred million Gastrea viruses in each milliliter of the virus pocket. A normal person would have been turned into a Gastrea in no time, but it was unknown what would have happened to Midori if Shoma had rescued her even a second later.

All that could be found of the Initiator Midori had tried to save on the battlefield were traces that looked like scraps of food, and there was no way to know exactly where she was. In addition, according to Sumire’s close inspection, Midori had a Gastrea virus corrosion rate so hopeless that she hesitated to even say it.

And Midori herself did not know this. “Leader, I’ll get better soon and be able to fight again, right?”

Rentaro looked down, unable to look straight at her face.

“Kill that girl.”
Involuntarily, the masked man’s baritone voice ran through his head. Those were the words of Kagetane, who had been eavesdropping when they were talking about the circumstances of Midori’s situation earlier.

“It’s over for her. Even if you kept her alive, she would just slow you down. No, she would definitely get in the way. You should send her off swiftly before she turns into a Gastrea. That is your first duty as the new commander.”

When Kagetane murmured that, Kisara flared up fiercely. “You can’t. I’m against it. If we keep Midori stable…at best, she could still live for another month.”

Kagetane shook his head in disgust. “This is ridiculous. Are you really going to face Aldebaran with the nonsensical illusion of friendship?”

Kisara turned once and glared sharply at Rentaro. “Satomi, you better not listen to what a guy like this says. If you kill Midori, I’ll scorn you forever.”

“Satomi, kill her. In the past, we fought because I wanted to throw the world into confusion, while you wanted to maintain world order. You won. This is the world you desired. You must deal with the consequences.”

The two of them glared Rentaro down, making him feel extremely conflicted as he left.

I will… I will…

“What’s the matter, Leader?” Midori’s voice brought him back to himself, and he shook his head listlessly.

“It’s…nothing…” Rentaro put his hand behind his back and checked the position of his XD gun.

Midori had no way of knowing Rentaro’s thoughts as she poured water from the pitcher into the cup and slid her finger around the wet brim. “Leader, I have a favor to ask of you.”

“A favor?”

“Yes. I’m having trouble feeling my extremities… Will you play along for a while?” Saying that, without waiting for an answer, she stuck her arm out horizontally, still lying down. And then, she slowly closed her eyes. “Leader, please take hold of any finger you’d like.”

Rentaro look suspiciously at the outstretched hand but gently took hold of her middle finger.

“Just now, did you touch…my thumb?”

Rentaro was taken aback. There were no uniform symptoms for Initiators whose corrosion levels were close to the borderline. There were those who turned into Gastrea while in a deep coma, but on the other hand, there were those who turned mad in the midst of agonizing pain, losing all emotion as they turned into Gastrea. There was also the unfortunate case of the girl Rentaro had helped die in the past, Kayo Senju, who looked on clearheaded as she watched herself helplessly turn into a Gastrea.

Rentaro closed his eyes and murmured, “God.” Midori’s encroachment was starting at her extremities in the most tragic way. And she would likely remain clearheaded like Kayo as her brain stopped being able to control her muscles and her motor neurons died out. Her whole body would become numb, but her cerebral function would remain clear and she could watch herself as she succumbed to the illness.

Now that it had gotten to this point, there was no way to save her. After this, the Gastrea virus could advance easily without using any more strength, and at the end of nursing her in vain, she would turn into a Gastrea. The Gastrea virus was called an invincible virus that did not respond to any interventions by modern medicine, so there was no way to escape inevitable death.

Rentaro quietly changed his grip to her thumb without her noticing. “You got it right.”

Midori opened her eyes slightly and tilted her head with a wry smile. “Really?”

“Huh?”

“Really? You didn’t cheat just now, did you?”

He felt a second of intense panic. He desperately controlled his gaze so that he would not look shifty-eyed as he squeezed out, “I didn’t cheat.”

Midori lowered her eyes, which had a tinge of pain in them. After that, she deliberately took off her hat, revealing the cat ears that grew on her head because of the Gastrea factor. “Because of these ears, no one ever needed me. Not even my mother, who gave birth to me.”

“Gastrea Shock, huh…?”

“Yes.”

He had guessed already, so he was not especially surprised to hear this. It was said that the development of a child’s personality was greatly dependent on environment. A child who was greatly oppressed while growing up would rebel. A child who was ignored would act up in order
to get attention. Midori’s timid and meek personality was probably because she was raised in a way that thoroughly denied her existence.

“But then, Shoma came to need me. And then, so did you…” Midori stopped talking for a while and looked up at Rentaro, a dignified look in her eye. “I can still fight. Please let me fight.”

Rentaro silently shook his head. “It would make me and Shoma the happiest if you rested and got better quickly right now.”

For some reason, the saddest smile he had ever seen appeared on Midori’s face. “I heard that you were promoted to commander. Congratulations, Leader.”

Rentaro looked down and dropped his gaze to his knees. “……I can’t do it.” It was something he couldn’t even confess to Enju, but for some mysterious reason, it came out honestly in front of Midori. “I can’t handle it. No one will listen to me.”

“Because you’re still young?”

Rentaro nodded, and Midori smiled faintly but broadly.

“Then you really must be the commander, Leader. You should be happy.”

“Happy?”

“Yes. If your age is the only thing that is being emphasized, then it could be said that you have fulfilled all the other requirements.”

“You’re giving me too much credit. I’m not who you think I am.”
That’s right. I even want to run away right now. I want to push the job of commander onto someone else.
Once he put it into words, the insincere voices curled up in his mind came gushing out one after another, and there was no end to them.

The fist he made on his knees shook slightly.

A warm hand came and gently covered his own. He looked at the girl in surprise, and found her looking at him straight-on.

She was a strange girl… He had never had a proper conversation with her, but unexpectedly, it seemed possible that she was not an Initiator who depended on Shoma one-sidedly.

“Hey, what was the scent divination you were talking about when we first met?” said Rentaro.

“Huh?”

“Remember? When you introduced yourself, you said, ‘my special ability is scent divination.’ What is that?”

Midori seemed to understand and put her hands in front of her chest, stroking them. “Oh, it’s because I’m a cat. So I have a pretty good nose.” Midori closed her eyes and showed him her nose twitching. “After smelling a lot of different people, I can tell each person’s unique smell. When I used that as a kind of fortune-telling, it got an unexpectedly good response from the people around me.”

“Really? Then, what kind of smell do I have?”

For some reason, Midori looked up at him timidly. “You won’t get mad?”

“No, it’s fine.”

“You smell like destruction.”

His heart leapt. “I smell…like destruction? Does destruction even have a smell?”

Midori also shook her head, bewildered. “I don’t know. This is just something instinctive, so it’s not like I’m thinking about it when I say it.”

Silence descended. Midori gulped down the water in the glass. The ice slid down inside the glass with a clatter. “Another thing, about Miss Tendo…”

“Kisara?”

Midori seemed to resolve herself as she looked at him. “Please be careful, Leader. She smells strongly of destruction. She seems to be easily drawn to darkness.”

Rentaro was at a loss for words. “What does that mean…?”

“But if you’re the commander, then I’m not worried. I’m sure you will do well. I am relieved.” Their conversation seemed slightly off, but Midori forced herself up, put her hat back on, and stuck her feet into her shoes.

“H-hey.”

“I’m just going out for a while. To the restroom. Don’t tell me you’re going to follow me?”

Rentaro groaned.

Midori smiled shyly, put her hand on the door, and turned her back to him. But then her hand stopped abruptly, and she suddenly turned back with an urgent expression on her face. “Leader! Um, I…!”

However, she didn’t finish the rest of her sentence, no matter how long he waited. She forced her emotions back, looking like she was in pain, and then her usual calm self returned.

Her profile had a quiet resignation to it. “I might take a little longer in the restroom.”

Saying that, she left the room.

She never returned.

“Hey, Midori…!”

“Midori!”

There were a number of thin bright bands of light from the flashlights cutting through the darkness, exposing the uneven terrain.

Enju and Kisara cried out earnestly, but there was no answer.

Rentaro felt his feet sink slightly into the damp, muddy ground as he called out to Midori, who was nowhere to be found.

“Would she really be in a place like this?” Kisara asked Rentaro in irritation.

“But this is the only place we haven’t looked yet.” Rentaro checked his watch and cursed. It was 11 p.m. They had already been searching for an hour. He heard voices and saw lights here and there in the distance; it was almost a mountain manhunt. He didn’t think that she would be in a forest like this, but since this was the only place left by process of elimination, he was hoping against hope.

A three-forked road appeared out of the darkness in front of him. “Enju, go left. Kisara, go right.”

They nodded at each other, and then Rentaro took the path in front of him. If Midori had already released her power, she could be long gone from their search area. But why in the world would she do that? Rentaro was filled with an unknown impatience and fear, and he practically ran as he called out into the dark, but his voice was almost immediately swallowed up by the darkness. His feelings of futility increased, and his side started hurting with a different kind of ominous premonition.

He was pushing his way through the deep grove of trees and halfway up the slope of the mountain when he slipped unexpectedly.

Cursing, his vision spun. He stretched out his hand, struggling to stop slipping somehow. He fell with a lump of earth, and when he finally stopped rolling, he stood as he spat the mud out from his mouth, looking around him. He had apparently fallen into a crater-shaped depression that was filled with a light mist.

And there she was.

“Midori!”

He hurried toward her, only to stop, immediately sensing that something was wrong.

Beyond the mist, the girl was sitting with her back leaned against the trunk of a white Japanese birch tree. Her head hung low, and she showed no sign of responding to his voice. She also did not look like she was sleeping. Her pointed hat had blown away, exposing the cat ears that she was so shy about showing other people.

Rentaro took one more step and noticed that something red had splattered on the white birch tree behind her back. “Mido…ri…?”

There was no answer. His arms and legs started shaking on their own. He didn’t want to see it or know what had happened. Fighting desperately against the feeling, his legs seemed to belong to something else as they moved toward the girl.

His legs stopped in front of the girl. Her sleepy-looking, half-closed eyes did not reflect anything of this world anymore. Her gaze was still, and even when he shined a light into them, he could see no reflex to prove that she was alive. From her mouth, red blood had mixed with her saliva, dragging a long thread down like a weight. From her mouth to the back of her medulla oblongata was a small, round hole. The impact of the sight completely overshadowed the automatic pistol that lay on the ground next to her, making it look small in comparison.

Next to her was a scrap of paper that said, “I do not want to be a burden, so I will die. Please take care of Tokyo Area.”

Rentaro fell to his knees with his eyes still open wide. “It’s…my fault…”

“Really? You didn’t cheat just now, did you?”
When he held her finger and realized that she had lost feeling in her left hand, Rentaro lied right away. But then, when she asked him this question, he panicked for a moment. That was when she understood from Rentaro’s reaction that she was beyond saving and resolutely decided to die.

What the hell was “
It would make me and Shoma the happiest if you rested and got better quickly right now
”? She had seen right through Rentaro’s empty lies. That’s why she had smiled at him so sadly.

He remembered the sight of the eight of them promising to return alive.

It seemed so far in the past.

When she had left her room, she had turned around and started to say something, but in the end, she left without finishing her sentence. What in the world had she wanted to say?

He could never hear her answer to that question now.

Come on, smile, Rentaro Satomi
.

With this, you were able to get rid of the baggage that was getting in the way of your adjuvant without dirtying your hands.

With this, you didn’t have to kill Midori and make Kisara scorn you, or be laughed at by Kagetane for not being able to kill her.

Isn’t this best conclusion you could’ve had? Come on, smile.

Rentaro hit the trunk of the tree as hard as he could with his fist and looked up into the sky.

“God damnnn iiiiiiiit!!!”

“…………”

Shoma leaned over and looked at her condition for a while, then gently closed her eyelids and used her hat to cover her face. He tilted his head back and faced the sky, pressing on his eyes with his hands. “…I was empty. When I met Midori, she was empty, too. We were the same. That’s why we worked together. It was a contract to fill each other’s loneliness.”

Rentaro couldn’t bear it any longer and cast down his eyes. He wasn’t sure if he should tell everyone in the adjuvant about her death or not. But in any case, he thought her Promoter at least should know the truth, so he had brought Shoma here.

Shoma looked at Rentaro. “Satomi, let’s tell the others she ran away and hide the fact that she died. Everyone would be too shaken.”

“Shoma, man…” He had been ready to accept any type of scolding. But what was with Shoma’s reaction? Rentaro’s heart would have felt lighter if Shoma had just told Rentaro off with all his might. If it had been Enju lying there in this transformed state, Rentaro would have killed whoever was there with him, even if he knew he was just venting.

But Shoma shook his head. “I really should have been the one to help her to die. I, her partner…”

“Shoma, what was the emptiness you were talking about earlier…?”

Shoma looked down, sorrowfully. “I quit the Tendo Style, remember? I was expelled.”

Rentaro was astonished.
Expelled? The brilliant student that Kisara and I looked up to was expelled?

“Satomi, you saw it, too, didn’t you? That time Kisara made a mistake and allowed a Gastrea to attack, and I jumped in to save her.”

“…Yeah.” The
Rokuro Kabuto
that Shoma had used had not only killed the pill bug Gastrea but had also made his opponent’s body explode and scatter in all directions.

The essence of the Tendo Style was to use a focused power to defeat and incapacitate the opponent, so destroying organs and other such cruel techniques were not expected. However, the technique Shoma used was obviously a killing technique to which he had modified and added his own style.

“I strayed from the straight path. That’s why I was expelled. I was betrayed by the Tendo Style that I had believed in and got lost by the wayside. That’s also why I disguised myself as a civil officer.”

Rentaro didn’t say anything.

“According to Master Sukekiyo, if I continued like this, I would use my power for evil. That’s why I’m actually forbidden from using the Tendo techniques themselves.”

“That’s ridiculous. Kisara and I both know that you wouldn’t do that.”

Shoma lifted the corner of his mouth just a little, looking happy. “I don’t know what’ll happen in the future. I don’t think God knows, either.”

“Shoma, man, I’m so sorry… This was my fault.”

“It wasn’t you who killed Midori, it was the Gastrea. If you want to grieve over her death, then swear right here, right now that you will defeat Aldebaran and save Tokyo Area.” Shoma silently stretched his arm out to Rentaro. “Stand up, Satomi. You’re the commander. If you don’t do it, then it’ll be Tokyo Area’s turn next. Midori’s death was no more than a sign. More gruesome deaths will be strewn around. You must stop Tokyo Area from becoming a sea of blood. You’re going to do it.”

Rentaro’s soul trembled. Even though Shoma had just lost his
Initiator, who was like a part of him, he had not been overcome by resentment or sadness; instead, he’d told Rentaro what needed to be done. He was the proper successor to the Tendo Martial Arts, after all.