One Matter Settled, for Now
"Ghk—aaagh..."
The body hit the floor.
"That appears to be all of the information, Shrine Priest."
"Well done, Mina."
"Not at all. It was only my duty."
Mina, the kunoichi wrapped head to toe in black, lifted a hand to her ear.
"The other sites seem to be finishing as well."
"Good. From here on, I don't care how far your methods go. End it even one second sooner."
"By your command."
Mina bowed and was gone. True to a house that had served for generations as the Shrine Priest's shadow, he caught neither sound nor presence from her. When one remembered that the Shrine Priest stood as proxy of the Three Noble Gods, it was an extraordinary feat.
Tsukumi, the Shrine Priest, brushed off his sleeve. Droplets of blood clinging to the cloth fell to the floor.
"I must have idled far too long. Dust sticks to me even while I clean."
He turned a cold gaze on the cooling corpse. The man had worn a white lab coat, and his eyes were sharp and narrow. His hair, left untended for dozens of days, hung in a greasy tangle that stank of staleness, and his body was skeletal, as if he had scarcely eaten. His face was twisted shut with extreme agony.
He had been the director of this institute. An evil past words—the man who had led unethical, illegal research in a laboratory built by the Great Shrine Maiden.
Reigning from the Shrine Priest's seat, Tsukumi had met every species of human being. Rats who strutted about without knowing their place. Opportunists who did nothing but scheme. Old monsters so greedy they kept stepping over the line, again and again. If he ever wrote an autobiography, the stories bound up with people like that would fill dozens of volumes. He was sick to death of them.
Now one more line would be added.
A psychopathic scientist who took human experimentation as a matter of course.
Tsukumi barely pressed down the rage boiling up in him. Lose hold of his emotions here, and the institute would be blown away as it stood.
"Fifteen years, wasted... all of it wasted..."
He could not forgive himself.
This was a laboratory in Tokyo, a secret place of the Great Shrine Maidens, dug out to the bone from what Phantom had told him. When he first found it, self-reproach, fear, and joy had lived in him all at once: reproach for failing to discover a laboratory raised in the middle of Tokyo; fear of a Great Shrine Maiden who had run such a place while slipping past the Shrine Priest's eyes; and the vicious joy of finally being able to shove it down the Great Shrine Maidens' throats.
While the Great Shrine Maiden suffered through hell in Korea, the Shrine Priest finished his preparations and raided the site. The raid succeeded. Caught in a sudden assault, the institute collapsed without resistance. He drew enough information out of the director, then disposed of him.
Only then did the Shrine Priest come face to face with the facility's true nature. The first paragraph of the documents, laid out neatly on the desk, caught and held his eye.
Demonization Project
"...Just how far did you people reach?"
His gaze left the papers and shifted aside. A bubbling welled up, thick and slow. Inside a test tube as tall as a grown man, an unidentified liquid lit itself from within and put its glow on display.
Tsukumi's instinct sounded the alarm. An absolute conviction drove itself into his mind: he must not touch that thing.
...The gods are watching.
He knew at once where the compulsive thought had come from. The presence of the three gods keeping watch over this place was unmistakable.
"...A liquid that even the great gods are wary of. That something like this could exist..."
He turned his eyes to the fallen corpse. A thought brushed through him—had he sent the man responsible for all of this off too easily?
No. It wasn't a wrong judgment.
The man had not been worth keeping alive. Even if some important fact had slipped past them, he was so revolting that Tsukumi had not wanted to breathe the same air. If the judgment had been wrong, the gods would have stopped him. Which meant the man had not been particularly important.
"Shrine Priest."
Mina, who had left, was back.
"That was fast. Is the takeover complete?"
"Yes. It's all finished."
Tsukumi hesitated over the next question.
"...What became of the people who were held here?"
Mina's silence stretched unusually long. It was not that she was sentimental. A shadow, by nature, did not keep emotions. Those who had given themselves to the dark were not permitted private thoughts. The silence was nothing but consideration, a hope that her lord would first steady his heart.
Understanding that, the Shrine Priest armored his mind.
"...Tell me. What happened to them?"
"...We returned every last one of them to the sun's embrace."
"I see..."
Flame leapt up, feeding on trash for kindling. Embers scattered on the air, and still the documents showed no sign of catching.
"...So I'm the one who killed them."
"It is not your fault, Shrine Priest. The fault is ours, for failing to deal with this."
"How could this be your fault? I'm the one who commands you."
He let out an empty laugh.
"Human experimentation happened in the heart of Tokyo. Indiscriminate—adult or child, it didn't matter. And we couldn't seize a single lead. Does that make any sense?"
Mina did not answer. She only listened in silence to the Shrine Priest's lament.
"I thought I'd gotten on a time machine. Ah, so I've been dropped into the Second World War. I need to get out of here. It's too horrific."
Crackle. Crackle. The fire was dying, and shadow thickened across the Shrine Priest's face.
"But then I come to my senses, and—no? This is the present? Ha ha ha! The Shrine Priest's nothing but a blind little bastard who doesn't know a damn thing."
He ground the dead embers under his heel.
"Mina. Once we're out, don't leave a single one of them alive. Anyone tied to this. You may stake everything the Shrine has."
"By your command!"
The Shrine Priest pressed a hand to his head.
It won't be easy.
He had four years of life left, and no confidence he could settle this affair cleanly within them. The project was snarled in countless chains of cause and consequence, and that high officials and corporate men were bound into those chains hardly needed saying. With a former prime minister in the mix, what was there even to take issue with?
"...Hah. Before something fouler comes out of my mouth, let's go and receive our next Shrine Priest."
"Understood."
The Shrine Priest walked where Mina led him.
"Is the child all right?"
"...Her strength has failed, but she is alive. We are in a standoff at present."
"A standoff...? Not under protection?"
"Yes. You'll understand when you see."
Beyond a thick wall of glass, ninjas stood panting in a ring around a child.
"Indeed... I think I see why they called it the Demonization Project."
Tsukumi let out a low breath. Inside the room, a little girl with a horn on her forehead drooled and rolled her eyes wildly.
"Kraaaaaaah!!!"
It was not a human scream but a monster's wail, and it struck the ear. At that tremendous pitch the Shrine Priest shuddered for an instant. If he was like this, how must the others be? Only Mina bore it, her brow creased. The ninjas, hit head-on, staggered and clapped their hands over their ears on reflex.
"Kyaaaaaah!!!"
The child did not miss the opening. She lunged at a ninja, her legs bending at an uncanny angle before she kicked off the ground like a grasshopper.
"Kh—!"
The ninja endured the pain and barely managed to react. He drew his body back so the child would not be hurt, meaning to catch her and throw her upward. A sickening grind answered him.
"......!!!"
The attempt died before it began. The instant his hand touched her, the child's speed slipped out of perception. As if she had read that clumsy intention from the start, she seized his arm in both hands and crumpled it to ruin.
It was a miracle he did not scream. Bone tore through skin and jutted out into the open air, and still he moved as he had been trained. That venomous discipline deserved praise. The ninjas beside him rushed to tear the child off. Leave her, and a comrade might be folded in half.
A kunai flew at the child's forehead, its point mashed blunt, a weapon with no killing power.
Grk!
She caught the kunai in both hands. Receiving something seemed to please her; she broke into a bright, delighted grin.
"Over here."
"...Thanks."
While her attention was caught on the kunai, the ninjas swiftly restored their ranks. She turned the weapon this way and that, then lost interest and flung it behind her. One more kunai joined the heap of junk. Dozens like it were already piled there.
"...Was she like this from the start?"
"When we found her, she was clearly in her right mind. But the moment the restraints came off, she suddenly went berserk."
Was that what this moment had meant? The Shrine Priest turned the warning flickering through his mind over and over.
"Shall I subdue her?"
"Yes. I'll go in."
"Be careful."
Mina gave the order to the ninjas on the far side. As one, they opened a place for the Shrine Priest to enter.
"Hello, little one. What's your name?"
"Kraaaaaah!"
The Shrine Priest spoke with a smile. The child lit her horn and attacked, and his shoulder tore open on her teeth.
"Shrine Priest!"
He thrust out a hand and stopped the ninja.
"It's all right. It's over."
He soothed the child's back with his palm. Her eyes shone, and she set her jaw harder. A grinding rose that should never have been heard. It was not only the one shoulder. The opposite shoulder she clung to, and the forearm, were coming out of joint as well.
"It's all right. You're safe. No one is going to hurt you."
The Shrine Priest did not so much as blink. Above his head, three orbs of light glittered.
"Krrrk!!!"
"You don't believe me? Then I'll swear it."
The orbs descended onto the child's head.
"I will never do you harm."
And while he was at it, he would grant her the blessing of the Three Noble Gods as well.
"There now. Night-night."
The three orbs flared, bright as a chime of light, and the blessing of the Three Noble Gods settled over the child.
Her eyes grew hazy, and she collapsed where she stood. The horn that had shot up as if to pierce the sky shrank, as though it had never been, down to the size of a little bump.
"Stop the bleeding."
"I'm fine. Treat the child first. Her body was a wreck."
He passed the child to a ninja and looked at the heap of junk. Syringes and a doll, colored paper and gauze—at a glance, nothing but a trash pile.
"Take all of that as well."
"Understood."
Rubbing his aching shoulder, the Shrine Priest let out a long sigh.
"One matter settled, for now."
Watching the three lights fade little by little, he set one worry down.