Against a Perfect Sniper (2 page)

“U-um… I…” Tsunehiro was at a loss for words. When he lifted his face, thinking he had to say something, he was interrupted by Kisara’s phone.

“Satomi, it’s been a while, but we’ve got some prey,” she said after she hung up. “A Stage One Gastrea was sighted in Tokyo Area District 23! It looks like it went astray from a high altitude.”

Rentaro looked fed up. “Wait, Kisara. We’re in District 11, right…? Will you get us a car or something?”

Kisara righted the bicycle, straddled the saddle, put her feet on the pedals, and turned around. “Don’t say stupid things. We don’t have money for that! You’re! Running! Right! Now!”

Looking down, Rentaro confirmed that he was still a magical girl from the neck down. “Then help me out here. The zipper’s broken on this thing, so I can’t unzip it from the inside.”

Kisara and Enju looked at each other and grinned wickedly.

“It looks good on you, Satomi,” said Kisara.

“It becomes you, Rentaro,” said Enju.

Rentaro hung his head dejectedly. “Give me a break……”

In the slowly growing darkness, Tsunehiro watched the young man in costume with a girl following him like a puppy fade away with their long shadows, and a young woman on a bike following them yelling into a megaphone.

People who accomplished their justice without wishing for anything in return. “That’s…a real civsec officer.”

The flame of longing was lit, and feelings welled up in his chest.
Making a fist so hard it hurt, he turned back to Shuri. “Shuri, I want to be a civsec officer when I grow up. So, um…if you’d like, I want you to be my Initiator!”

Shuri was surprised and widened her eyes for a moment, but then she shyly tilted her head. “If that’s what you want, Tsunehiro.”

Her smile was so bright that Tsunehiro turned red up to his ears. Averting his eyes in embarrassment, he gazed at the shadows that were growing smaller.

The year 2031. Earth’s surviving population: 750 million.

Officially registered International Initiator Supervision Organization (IISO) civsec officer pairs: 2.4 million pairs.

A declining world huddled inside the Monoliths, walking quietly down the path to destruction.

Initiators and Promoters. Fighting together in pairs.

Using the power cultivated in their bodies to fight the Gastrea—they are humanity’s last hope.

Kisara Tendo stood in the middle of the tatami-floored dojo filled with the cool morning air, wearing her black sailor-school uniform. The soft morning light sparkled on her straight, too-black hair, throwing small shadows behind her.

She stood with her eyes closed and her hips low, with her hand on the grip of her sword. She had already been in this position for ten minutes: The Tendo Martial Arts Sword Drawing Style, Nirvana Stance. The stance meant being in the midst of a state of constant change and existing freely in that state. It was a stance that encompassed all the offense and defense of the Tendo Martial Arts Sword Drawing Style.

She’s beautiful
, thought Rentaro from the bottom of his heart as he looked up at his fellow pupil, at the same time unable to suppress a shudder. There was not a single opening in her stance, and there was something about it that made Rentaro certain that the moment he stepped within reach of her blade, he would be cut down. Rentaro discreetly took his smartphone from his pocket and looked at its LCD screen. It was almost time to leave for school. She would move soon.

Just as he thought, there was almost no need for him to wait.

Kisara exhaled softly, and her clear voice rang out. “Tendo Martial
Arts Sword Drawing First Style, Number 1—” Her scabbard rang, and her sword was unsheathed with the speed of a lightning bolt: “
Tekisui Seihyou.
”

The slash made an extremely modest whoosh. But the top half of the target in front of Kisara—a carved wooden target wrapped in cloth—was blown off with a destructive blast, and pieces of it flew into the dojo’s walls. The most astonishing thing of all was that there was a distance of more than six meters between Kisara and the target.

Rentaro gulped. The striking distance of a sword catapulted by its sheath to accelerate when drawn was equal to the length of the sword plus the length of the swordsman’s arm and step.

However, the Tendo sword-drawing technique has something more than that. It was not like Rentaro had seen all of Kisara’s techniques, but he knew that she could slash up to three times her striking distance. And this was data from three years ago…

Standing up quickly, Rentaro clapped as he approached her, throwing her a towel. Kisara, whose face was haggard from the intense mental concentration this had required, said, “Thanks,” and wiped her face with the towel.

“That was incredible sword speed as usual, Miss Master Initiate President.”

Kisara stuck her chin in the air primly. “Don’t call me
President
when we’re not working. And if you think that, you should be more diligent, First Dan Satomi.”

“That was helpful. Even if the Sword Drawing Styles and Martial Arts Styles are different, they are all Tendo techniques, so there were a lot of things I could learn from that. You were seriously in a state of enlightenment just now.”

Kisara did not seem dissatisfied as she chuckled and lifted the hair above her neck. “You know, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but there is no enlightenment in the path of the sword. Apparently the moment you think you have reached enlightenment, deception and vanity are born and cloud your sword. And when I rose to master initiate level, Master Sukekiyo looked at me and said, ‘Your sword is so rusted, it’s sad. I will make you a master initiate taking that into consideration.’”

“……that demonic old man. He’s still alive?”

“He’ll be an active one hundred and twenty years old this year.”

“Damn, he should just commit seppuku already…”

“But thanks to him, I didn’t become too prideful. Now that I’m honing my mental spirit like this, I understand that there is still a lot that I can achieve.” A fearless look crossed Kisara’s face as she started to put away the target.

Watching her, Rentaro pouted, feeling pitiful. She didn’t need to become strong. He would protect her.

Then, he realized. Rentaro thought she had been using her usual sword-drawing practice sword, but although the black scabbard and base and red cord looked similar, this was a real sword. “The murderous blade, Yukikage, huh…?”

“That’s right.” As Kisara stopped working and looked at him, she dusted off the scabbard and held it up to the sunlight coming in through the window. Bathed in the morning sun, the wavy temper pattern on the blade scattered the light, filled with a charm that drew in all who looked at it.

Kisara looked at the blade absentmindedly and murmured, “Satomi, did I ever tell you what ‘murderous blade’ means?”

“No…”

“In Zen, it’s the opposite of the life-saving sword; it negates all human delusion. This…is the sword that will hunt down all the Tendos, Satomi.”

Rentaro made a fist where Kisara couldn’t see, his eyes flashing. Should he point out that Kisara, enthralled by the light of the murderous blade, also seemed to be possessed by delusions?

Kisara, whose failing kidneys meant she could no longer fight for long periods of time, recently gave up fighting on the front lines and shut Yukikage in a locker in the office. What did it mean that she was wielding it in the dojo again? Like Rentaro, who was using the recent terrorist incident as a chance to clear up the facts of his parents’ deaths, was there some sort of change in Kisara’s state of mind, too, or was he overthinking it?

A line from the
Hojoki
, a famous classical text he had studied in Japanese class, came to mind:
“Although the river flows unceasing, the water will never be the same as before.”

As Rentaro was just about to open his mouth, he heard loud footsteps, and the door of the dojo was opened violently. Enju bounded in,
looking just like a rabbit with her hair in swaying pigtails. “Rentaro! Today is the day you promised to assist me with my training!”

Had he promised to do something like that?

Rentaro released the slide lock of the toy gun and loaded the first round while keeping an eye on Enju ten meters ahead. “If you think you’re in trouble make sure to yell. Understand?”

Enju shouted, “I understand!” and waved her hand at him.

Rentaro and Kisara circled the back of the dojo by the lawn.

Rentaro took a deep breath. The tip of the gun Rentaro held was painted red in order to show that it was a toy gun that shot only BBs. Rentaro could feel Enju releasing her power as he took up his stance. “I-I’m starting.”

Rentaro aimed at Enju’s chest, then fired a bullet with a dry-sounding gunshot.

Huh?
thought Rentaro as the bullet grazed Enju’s side.

He thought he missed his aim and tried again, aiming and shooting, but this time it was even more clear that Enju moved out of the way in an instant.

“Y-you little…” Rentaro fired consecutive shots, and Enju avoided them all safely.

In fact, she scowled, obviously bored. “Rentaro, this is boring.”

“Idiot, battle training isn’t supposed to be fun.” But, if she was going to go that far…

Rentaro abandoned the toy gun and drew his Springfield XD. It was loaded with nonlethal rubber rounds, but they were fired with gunpowder, so their speed was the same as real bullets, and it would do more than just hurt if Enju was hit with one. Even if Rentaro knew that she had powers of regeneration, he didn’t want to make her use them.

He fired the first shot. As he absorbed the recoil, he predicted where Enju would cross paths with it and fired continuous shots into her possible escape routes. He could tell that Enju had gotten serious by watching the afterimages left by her sharp eyes. Using the dojo’s outside wall to do a triangle jump, she approached Rentaro while staying one step ahead of the bullets.

Amazed, Rentaro continued firing as he stepped back. He was
startled as Enju suddenly appeared in front of him. He tried to bring the gun’s barrel back to bear on her, but her footwork was overwhelmingly faster.

“Take that!” she said.

Rentaro felt the pain of the skin of his hands rubbing off as Enju’s kick came from below to send his gun flying.

“Match point!” Kisara, who had been watching the match with her arms folded, judged.

As Rentaro felt cold sweat running down his cheek, he slowly shifted his gaze to the side and saw Enju’s foot pushing against the side of his neck. Enju lowered her foot slowly and peered at Rentaro happily with her arms behind her back.

“Well, I guess I should say I have high hopes for you,” Rentaro said, making a sour face as he picked up his gun. At this rate, it was hard to say who was training whom.

During the last terrorist incident, he’d faced off against Kohina Hiruko, a dual-sword wielding Initiator, and was surprised at her speed, but fighting Enju like this, he could tell—the speed specialist Initiator, Enju Aihara, was even faster than Kohina. Enju could even be called the natural enemy of all gun users.

But this was not the only reason Enju was amazing. Initiators possessed enormous power, but in cases when they lost to ordinary people, it was because they’d seen swords or guns pointed at them in bloodlust and forgotten their reason for fighting. In other words, when the girls lost, it happened because their mental weakness as ten-year-old girls had been exploited.

However, Enju was not afraid of the muzzle of a gun. And that was an ability she had since before she met Rentaro. Enju was one of the Cursed Children, and someone who made the Stolen Generation, who ran the world ten years after the war, hate Gastrea even more.

It didn’t bother her, but just imagining the situation she was in before they met where she had to face the muzzle of a gun made his heart hurt. He was sure he couldn’t forgive a society like that.

Rentaro put the XD gun on the palm of his hand and took a long hard look at it. It had been a long time since the general public was allowed to carry guns in the name of self-defense. However, in Rentaro’s many brushes with death, he learned that a gun was an offensive weapon
that existed to allow you to aim accurately at your opponent, to pull the trigger a fraction of a second faster. The idea of “self-defense” was an expedient one that nobody would touch.

This was the technologically advanced country of Japan, broke and scattering weapons in exchange for money and taxes. In reality, it was because of this that large global corporations like Shiba Heavy Weapons were created, but on the other hand, Japan had also become a hotbed of gun violence, so there were pluses and minuses.

Rentaro could say with certainty that he hated guns. However, if he didn’t use one, he would not have been able to make up the difference between his abilities and those of his elder disciple Kisara, or strong Initiators like Enju.

Rentaro shook his head softly. There was the New Humanity Creation Project, where humans were operated on to turn them into mechanized human soldiers designed to obliterate the Gastrea. Rentaro hated that power as well. More specifically, he felt disgust for the large-caliber Super-Varanium alloy shells inserted into his right arm and left leg.

This was because bullets, whether they were used for both attacking or defending, killed people in the process. It would be better if things like that were erased from this world. Definitely. Definitely.

Just then, something pulled on his sleeve. When he turned around, Enju was beaming, pointing at herself enthusiastically. “Rentaro, how did you find my fighting?”

Rentaro closed his eyes and exhaled deeply through his nose. “You know, Enju, you shouldn’t do a bunch of high kicks in a row in a skirt.”

Enju blinked in surprise for a moment before holding down her skirt, embarrassed, but then smiled happily and said, “You speak of such even though you were happy about it.”

Breaking out in a cold sweat as he felt Kisara’s spearlike gaze on his back, he put his hand on Enju’s head and ruffled her hair. “Idiot,” he said, as Enju half-closed her eyes in pleasure.

“Satomi.”

Turning around, he saw Kisara with her right sleeve rolled up, tapping her wrist where her watch was with her left forefinger. It was time.

“Uh…Enju, Kisara and I have to go to school now.”

Enju suddenly froze for a second but then recovered immediately. “Right. Well then, be zealous in your studies!” Saying that, she stuck out her chest proudly.

Rentaro watched her with a conflicted expression on his face. “Enju, I’ll try to find a place that will take you as soon as possible, okay?”

“Take your time. It’s fine.” Enju laughed, but she sounded a little troubled.

After they left the dojo and turned a few corners to walk out onto a large street, they continued along that same street. It was still relatively early in the morning, so there weren’t very many cars, and people only appeared sporadically.

As Rentaro walked next to Kisara down the street lined with fresh-smelling poplars, Kisara spoke, still looking ahead. “You still haven’t found a new elementary school for Enju yet?”

“No…,” Rentaro mumbled as he looked at the granite tiles at his feet. During the Kagetane Hiruko terrorist incident, Kagetane had exposed Enju as one of the Cursed Children, and Enju was unavoidably expelled from school.

Enju pretended she didn’t care, but it was supremely embarrassing as her guardian to have her pretend for his sake, so in order to bring back her smile somehow, he had gone around to a bunch of schools trying to find one that would take her.

Rentaro kicked a pebble on the street as hard as he could. Of course, he had not gotten very favorable reactions.

It wasn’t something he was proud of, but even though he hid the truth about Enju’s identity and filled out the transfer applications as if she were a normal child, it seemed that nothing escaped the information net the schools had among themselves, and it had been passed along that Enju was one of the Cursed Children. Once, he was shockingly told upon arrival, “I hate Red-Eyes, and I think those who’re on their side have the Gastrea virus in their brains, too.”

Rentaro lifted his face and glared gloomily at the brightly shining sun. Enju got good grades, was really athletic, and could brighten a classroom with her presence. She was a student schools should have been trying to
convince
to attend. So why was it that—
Damn it.