Black Bullet, Vol. 1: Those Who Would Be Gods (6 page)

“Let’s see.” Sumire started to play around, spinning in her chair and crossing and uncrossing her legs. “One possibility is that it opened the lid of a manhole and went underground, shutting the lid firmly behind it.”

Rentaro raised his eyebrows. “With those spider’s legs?”

“It’s got twice as many limbs as a human. Wouldn’t that actually make it easier?”

“‘Gastrea are not intelligent organisms. They are simply lower life-forms that act on their natural instincts.’ Isn’t that what the textbooks say?”

Sumire shook her head, as if saying “Oh dear” and spread her hands. “For some reason, it’s become the accepted theory in Japan that Gastrea are not intelligent, but it’s been proven that this is mostly wrong. In the West, the opposite is the accepted theory.”

“Well, that’s what I think, too…,” said Rentaro. “But while your hiding underground theory seems to be on the right track, I don’t think that’s quite it. Recently, even the sewer system has security cameras equipped with night vision. If it’s as you say and the Gastrea ran underground, it would’ve been caught by those devices.”

“Oh, when did Japan become so advanced? I suppose being down here, I don’t know enough of what’s going on in the world. Hmm, the DNA of the source of the infection this time was overwritten with that of a jumping spider, huh…?” She looked at him. “Now that I think of it, you know a lot about animals in general, don’t you?”

Rentaro scratched his head and looked down, muttering to himself. “Well, I just know a little about natural science and ethology, that’s all. It started because I liked Fabre’s
Souvenirs Entomologiques
, and it kind of continued from there…”

She laughed at him. “I get it. You were the type who had no friends, so you watched bugs instead, right? You were pleased when you submerged an anthill with water, weren’t you?” Her voice changed a little. “‘Hah, drown! It’s Noah’s great flood! Know the wrath of God!’”

“Is that supposed to be me? Don’t just make stuff up!”

Sumire rested her chin on her elbow, which was on the armrest, and grinned broadly. “Anyway, you’re a real wimp. With such a gloomy hobby, you won’t be able to catch Kisara’s eye. If you like her, you should make her yours by sheer strength.”

Rentaro scowled. Why’d she start talking about this? “Doc, didn’t you know? Kisara is a master of the Tendo Martial Arts Sword Drawing Style. I’m only at the beginning level, so I’d just be killed. Her kidneys are failing, though, so she can only move for short amounts of time and does mostly office work now.”

When they were little, Kisara often protected Rentaro, who was bullied a lot by her older brothers at the Tendo house, but he didn’t like
how she’d treated him as a servant ever since then. Even though he’d gotten strong enough to protect her now…

“Oh? Ah well, let’s get back to the topic at hand,” said Sumire. “Do you know the distinguishing trait of a jumping spider?”

“Its coloring, isn’t it?” said Rentaro. “And it’s famous for jumping to catch its prey.”

Sumire pulled out her own Tastee Wheat from the microwave and suddenly thrust a spoonful into her mouth.
Eww!
Rentaro thought as he watched her.

“That’s right,” she said. “You know, of course, that even if it became human size, the jumping spider, which uses its powerful jump to capture prey, would not be able to maintain the jumping distance of ten times its body size, right?”

“Yeah—uh, wait, really?”

“Hey now, get yourself together,” said Sumire. “They say that if a flea were human size, it would be able to jump as high as the Tokyo Tower, but if a flea were actually to become that big, never mind its jumping ability—it wouldn’t even be able to support its own body weight with those legs, and it wouldn’t be able to get enough oxygen through cutaneous respiration. It’s the same thing. Based on the law of gravity and the principle of scale, it’s pretty obvious that such a creature should not exist. But the Gastrea virus turns that idea on its head.”

The woman in the white lab coat stopped talking for a moment and smiled enigmatically.

Rentaro remained silent, urging her to go on. This wasn’t entomology anymore, it was physics. There was no place for the layman Rentaro to interrupt.

“When a Gastrea transforms, the hardness of its exoskeleton and its body functions increase to match its size. That’s why the larger the Gastrea, the harder and stronger it is. The Gastrea virus, which redesigns living organisms, is a threat. In principle, it is very similar to the reverse transcription of a retrovirus, but it doesn’t just replicate copies of itself—after analyzing its host’s DNA, it reconstructs it into its most suitable form.

“The problem is the speed at which this occurs. The corrosion speed of a Gastrea virus overwriting DNA is outside of the standard
of all the living organisms on the Earth. Dawkins would probably piss his pants. If you told me that that it’s not from this planet, I’d believe you.

“And once its corrosion exceeds fifty percent inside the host’s body, the host is no longer able to maintain human form, and goes through the process of shape collapse, resulting in the host becoming a Gastrea. Through that process, some individuals gain original abilities that should not exist. Get it? It’s an evolutionary leap through mutation.”

Before Rentaro knew it, Sumire’s plate was empty.
What in the world is wrong with her sense of taste?

“That was a long tangent, but the missing source could possess some sort of new ability, you know,” she said.

“Since we haven’t been able to find it, could it be some kind of optical camouflage?” Rentaro suggested.

“It could be a simpler mimicry camouflage, like a chameleon. If it really had the ability to distort light, Tokyo Area could be annihilated by a Pandemic tomorrow, even.”

“Don’t worry. Enju and I, as Initiator and Promoter, exist to prevent that from happening.”

“Enju, huh?”

“What is it?”

“I find the Cursed Children especially creepy. Especially once I found out about their origins. Ten years ago, at almost exactly the same time the Gastrea virus first appeared in the world, children in the womb with Gastrea-controlling factors were born, as if to oppose them. At first, a big deal was made of them being a gift from God to control the Gastrea, but in the end, that was completely wrong.”

Sumire looked like she was dreaming as she squinted in the air and let her gaze wander.

“The only way for an ordinary person to contract the Gastrea virus and become a monster is through the blood. Aerosol, or airborne infection, is not believed to occur. There were also many experiments that confirmed that infection did not occur orally or through sexual intercourse.

“However, when the virus entered orally, it did not die immediately, and if it happened to enter a pregnant woman’s mouth, then the child in her womb stored up the virus before it was born.

“The Cursed Children had red eyes when they were born, but appeared normal otherwise. In other words, even though they were infected with the Gastrea virus, the progress of the disease was extremely slow. If we think about the fact that normal people who are infected with a large amount of Gastrea virus at once change shape almost immediately, the fact that these girls’ bodies don’t change shape for years is miraculous. It is extremely interesting. See? I explained it without using a lot of technical jargon. Even an idiot like you can understand the gist of it, right?”

“Yeah, I wish you’d always talk like that…,” said Rentaro.

She’d stuck in plenty of nasty asides, but he was able to understand the general concept, thanks to her.
Mimicry camouflage, huh?
No matter what you might say about her, she was pretty amazing.

“Well, I’ll be going then, Doc.”

Sumire smiled as she gave a light wave to see him off. “Come again, FBI Agent Starling.”

“So we’re gender-bending now, Dr. Lecter?”

“Rentaro, you are late!”

When he returned to his dear apartment, the window of the second-floor bathroom suddenly opened, and out with the bath steam came Enju, leaning her upper body out of the frame. He was glad that she was welcoming him with her face wreathed with a smile, waving her hands, but he couldn’t condone her doing so while she was obviously naked and in the middle of taking a bath.

“Hey, idiot, what if someone’s looking?” he shouted back to her. “Close the window.”

“Don’t worry. My body belongs only to you!”

“Will you please try to understand what I’m saying? I’m saying it’s embarrassing for
me
!”

Rentaro ran up the stairs and thrust his key into the door of the corner room on the second floor. He flew into his eight-tatami, one-room home, and when he got to the changing room, he could hear the sound of the shower and see the silhouette of Enju’s slender body. It was a modest bodyline, but thin and supple and very beautiful.

He was flustered for a moment, but when he noticed the piece of paper that said “You can peek if you want” in Enju’s messy handwriting
taped to the bathroom door, his strength left him all at once and he sank to the floor.

He could hear a voice from the bath. “You are late. Were you doing something naughty with Kisara?”

Rentaro plunked down and crossed his arms. “Shut up. She beat me up and told me to get to work.”

Enju laughed. “She would. That’s what I thought happened, as well.”

“You’re an evil freeloader.”

“Anyway, is dinner ready yet? My stomach feels like it’s caving in.”

Okay, okay,
he thought as he picked up the clothes Enju had shed with abandon and put them in the laundry hamper with his own dirty clothes, then took them to the coin laundry on the first floor. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around, so he decided to use the machine that worked the best, the newest one in the back.

Rentaro thought that Enju wouldn’t want her clothes to be washed with his, but unexpectedly she had said, “Imagining you getting excited about wearing clothes that were washed with my underwear is fun,” and said it was fine. They were being washed with detergent, so there was nothing to get excited about, but it still meant he could wash them all in one load, so he let her believe what she wanted.

Thinking there was no way anyone would steal their clothes, he went back to the room and opened the fridge. He lined up the ingredients they had, including the bean sprouts they had bought, and thought for a moment.

Today, he would make egg-topped rice out of the eggs, braised burdock and carrot out of the burdock root and slightly old carrot, and fry the bean sprouts with the bit of cabbage that was left over. Once he figured out what to make, he knew the rest of the work would go quickly. He put a pink apron on over his school uniform and started cooking at lightning speed. Before he knew it, he was humming merrily away as he manipulated his long cooking chopsticks.

There was one time when Enju pestered him into letting her cook, but the result tasted so bad that he’d wanted to spit it out, so he had firmly sworn that he would never let her in the kitchen again. Sumire’s cooking not only tasted bad, but she also used unknown ingredients that gave it an unearthly feel. When Kisara cooked, the kitchen went up in flames.

Why did all the women around him completely lack cooking abilities? Just once, he wanted to meet a woman who could make a miso soup that tasted better than his.

With those thoughts floating around in his mind, the sauce of the last dish, the braised burdock and carrot, turned golden. He turned off the heat, removed his apron, and looked at the clock. It was eight p.m.

As he returned from getting the clothes downstairs, Enju had just finished her long bath. When she saw the kitchen, she said, “Ooh!” and jumped, reacting like the kid she was.

“Wait, don’t eat yet,” said Rentaro.

Enju turned to look at him like she was about to bite. “Why can’t I? When I came home, I gargled and washed my hands!”

“That’s not it.”

“I took the neighborhood circular next door like I was supposed to, and I didn’t doodle on it like last time.”

“I said, that’s not it.”

“I didn’t watch more than three hours of TV today!”

“That’s not it, either.”

“I’m not on trash duty today, am I?”

“That’s not it, Enju. Please, just notice!”

The small head couldn’t take it any longer and began to roar. “Just give me my food! Are you trying to starve me to death?!”

Enju seemed to notice something at that point, and her face turned bright red as she looked at him with upturned eyes. “Don’t tell me you were thinking that an empty stomach would exacerbate my lust, and that this was a roundabout way to tell me you desired to have an ultimate fight with me?”

Rentaro put both hands on Enju’s shoulders. “Just put on your underwear. We can start from there.”

“Thanks for the food,” said Rentaro as he put his chopsticks down and bowed.

“Thanks for the food!” said Enju, imitating him and giving thanks. “The food you cook is delicious, Rentaro. How is it that you can make such delicious food from such plain ingredients? You are like a magician.” Enju, who had changed into casual clothes, looked at him with her face bright.

Rentaro thought with a wry smile that she was overreacting. But it didn’t feel bad to be praised. “Well, yes, being imaginative and creative is important in every endeavor, Watson.”

“Who’s that? More importantly, will I be able to learn how to cook like you soon?”

“Uh, well, um, yeah…I’m sure you’ll be able to…eventually,” Rentaro answered, not meeting her eyes. “Everyone has their own strengths.”

“You said too much.” Rentaro poked her head gently, and she laughed with a “Tee-hee” and stuck out her tongue.

That was when Rentaro noticed a small cardboard parcel next to Enju. “Enju… What’s that under your arm?”

“Oh, it’s a new laptop computer! It just arrived.”

“How much was it…?”

“I found a cheap place, so the newest model was only 180,000 yen.”

“O-o-one hundred and eighty thousand…” Rentaro got dizzy and had to prop himself up with his hands.

Because Enju was also an employee of the Tendo Civil Security Agency, she received a salary that was way too much for a child’s allowance. To Rentaro, who was living hand to mouth, Enju cheekily buying expensive things and rubbing them in his face gave him stomachaches.

Seeing the greedy expression on Rentaro’s face seemed to make Enju realize something, and a smirk unbecoming of a child crossed her face. “I will lend money to you any time you wish.”

“Oh, you little devil. It’s your fault that I…”

One time in their poverty, right before they were about to be evicted from their apartment, he went crying to Enju and borrowed money to pay the rent they were defaulting on. However, the next day, Enju spread the story after dramatizing it to make it more amusing. Because of that, the people around him gave Rentaro the blunt nickname of “Lolita-complex pervo living off of a ten-year-old girl” (which spread to residents of the apartment, as well). After that, he made do with his own salary even if it killed him.

As he carried the dirty dishes to the sink, he glanced at the clock and remembered. From the dresser drawer, he took out a needle-less pressure syringe and flicked it open with his nail. “Enju, it’s time for your shot.”

“Drat, is it that time already?” she said.

He urged her to put her arm out. Enju hated shots, but she grudgingly stuck out her arm, her body stiff and eyes squeezed shut. Rentaro pressed the piston with a bitter smile. The girl’s frail body gave a twitch. The soft arm, thin as a small branch, sucked up the transparent blue liquid.

Once a day, it was the duty of all Initiators to get a shot of corrosion-inhibiting medication. If she neglected to do so, the corrosion percentage in her body would increase, and in the end, she would turn into a Gastrea.

The girls were born under special circumstances. Most mothers who gave birth to red-eyed children who were Gastrea factors went half-mad. For a time, there were a slew of infanticides where women would give birth to their children by a river and drown their babies in the water. Kids playing by the river could see the corpses of babies floating down the river. Rentaro also saw one once in the past, and it gave him a feeling of emptiness that was hard for him to describe as a child.

Before he knew it, Rentaro was looking intently at Enju’s face, eyes closed tightly, bearing the pain of the shot. Laughing, crying, angry Enju. It had taken a whole year for her to show him this much emotion. He thought about how she was when they were first introduced a year ago, and his heart was pained.

When he first met her through the mediation of the International Initiator Supervision Organization, or IISO, he’d been taken aback by her hostility and distrust of people, as well as her wild eyes. Rentaro had never felt such obstinate rejection in his life.