I Trust You'll Do Well
Munch. Munch. Chomp. Chomp.
In a shabby motel room, with a collapsed mountain road visible through the window, two men were eating bread.
The one working through a cream bun shot his companion a sidelong look.
"Still nothing from upstairs?"
The man spreading peanut butter on sliced white bread sighed.
"Do you have any idea how many times you've asked me that?"
"I'm curious. That's all."
"Count yesterday and today together, and this is the thirtieth time."
Tanbo Oto, the man with the cream bun, furrowed his brow.
"Touchy, aren't you... Hey. Doesn't it drive you crazy too? Sitting here like a couple of idiots?"
Torimaru Masaoki, the man with the white bread, crammed a slice into his mouth, then gulped water from the glass beside him until he could swallow.
"Khk. I understand the frustration, but who can truly know the sorrow of an underling?"
"We're fluent in Korean, we eat the local food just fine, and we operate no differently from the people who live here. In what world does that make us underlings?"
Masaoki brushed off his senior's griping as if it were nothing.
"Same as before. Heavenly Punishment shows up, and any sane person would pull out — but no, they tell us to keep watching. It's not as if they're ordering anyone to die."
"The Tsukuyomi side is saying we ought to take this chance and capture the Heavenly Punishment."
"Those bastards really do need to die."
Masaoki and Oto belonged to the Shrine, and the Shrine was split three ways: Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi, and Susanoo. Weeks earlier, all three factions had been handed the same task — investigate the string of incidents that had broken out in Korea, and establish a branch of the Shrine there. Then, today, the Heavenly Punishment had come down on them like a natural disaster, and the mission had snarled beyond recognition.
"Aaah. When are they ever going to call us back to headquarters..."
Oto clicked his tongue. Watching the Heavenly Punishment was little better than an order to kill yourself, and their luck was worse than that: the sector they'd been assigned was precisely where the Heavenly Punishment's trail had gone cold. He was beginning to think it was time to walk away from the whole filthy business. Taking money for a job was one thing, once or twice. Living like this was another.
"Are you leaving?"
At Masaoki's question, Oto flinched.
"Who said anything about leaving? Don't say things that'll get us killed..."
"Well... if you were going to leave, I thought I might go with you..."
"Don't talk nonsense. Why would I die with you?"
The Shrine was worse than the yakuza. If you belonged to it, the only way out was in a coffin.
Can't trust this one either.
Selling out a colleague to climb was an everyday affair inside the Shrine. Framing someone was routine. Killing a man you didn't like and arranging the scene afterward hardly needed saying. You looked after your own life, or no one did.
Maybe I should just throw myself on that clan. Hand over what I know, ask for protection in return... I might actually live.
"Senior? There's something in the sky."
Masaoki made a circle of thumb and forefinger and set it to his eye. His ability kindled.
Farsight
"What is it?"
Oto lifted his binoculars toward the place Masaoki was watching. Over the mountain, a meteor was drawing a long curve across the sky.
"...A shooting star?"
"A shooting star, falling toward the city...?"
A faint unease stirred in Oto. Somehow it looked as if the star were coming down on the city itself.
"Uh... it's getting closer."
"...Hold on."
Oto pressed the binoculars harder to his eyes. There was a person inside the meteor. At the sight of that figure, the color drained from his face.
"Heaven—!"
The meteor struck the city, and the world went white.
A thin, high ringing.
"...Ghhhhk."
Pain stabbing through his body dragged Oto back to himself.
"Khhhhhh!"
He tried to rise. His legs wouldn't move. No — he couldn't move them.
"Damn it. Am I pinned..."
Rubble from a collapsed building lay across his lower half. Oto spat a low curse.
"Masaoki? Masaoki, you there?"
Coughing, he called for his junior. A faint light sifted down through the gaps in the wreckage and found a hand lying in front of him. Beneath it, a dark red liquid was spreading.
"Luck really is rotten to the bone..."
Oto let out an empty laugh. He wasn't going to find his junior. Not like this.
"A way out of here..."
Something punched clean through him.
"Koff."
"Mmm. Bugs, after all. Still alive, are they."
The impact speared Oto through the chest, and his vision flooded white again. Above him, someone was speaking Chinese.
"...Ha."
"This side looks finished. Shall we move on? Cleanup ought to be diligent."
The presence receded. With the last of his strength, Oto closed his hand around the one in front of him.
"...So we leave together after all."
At least I won't be lonely...
That day, the Heavenly Punishment annihilated a city. The estimated dead could not be counted.
"...Contact has been lost."
The man in black lowered the communicator from his ear.
"...I see."
Behind him, Yamadera Seigoro turned his head. His face had gone rigid.
"We have to withdraw."
"We cannot."
The voice was plaintive, and soft, and it twisted Seigoro's expression all the same.
"You mean to face the Heavenly Punishment? Now? With nothing but the strength we have here?"
He swept a hand at the people gathered in the headquarters. They were talents the Shrine itself would boast of, and set beside the Heavenly Punishment they were children.
"Orders from above are to be followed. Even if the opponent is the Heavenly Punishment, we cannot refuse."
Tsushima Kana, the shrine maiden in the yellow hakama, set his objection aside as if it had not been spoken.
"So your plan is to kill every one of us?"
Seigoro let his hostility show, superior or not. Kana met even that with silence, the silence of someone content to let him rant. At that arrogance, Seigoro's fist clenched tight.
"...You would do well to open that fist."
The shrine maiden in the black hakama gave the warning. At her waist, a sword had already come halfway free of its sheath.
"Do not forget why you were sent here. The mission has not been canceled."
Seigoro bit down on his lip.
Bullshit. They're blocking a withdrawal so they can pile up merit for themselves!
He swallowed, barely, the rage climbing his throat. These arrogant maidens didn't seem to understand the situation at all.
"Ha. You say it so grandly, there must be some grand design behind it. Remarkable maidens, aren't you?"
At the sarcasm, the eyes of the shrine maiden in the blue hakama narrowed.
"Impious. Yamadera. Rather than seek a proper course, you mean to pour out useless anger?"
"It's Acting Branch Chief Yamadera. Shrine Maiden...!"
Stripping his title off entirely — was she looking for a fight? The maiden in blue snorted.
"You aren't even the real branch chief, and you choke on a mere title? I see the caliber of Tsukuyomi."
"Your words go too far."
The maiden in black rebuked her, and the one in blue bowed her head.
"I apologize. I had no intention of insulting you."
"...I'll let it pass. This is an emergency."
"My thanks for the consideration."
They beat the drum, they beat the janggu, and they call the whole circus an apology.
Not a word of regret to the man she'd actually slighted — only a bow to the wrong person, and then she was done. Humiliation shook through Seigoro.
A bell chimed.
"You asked for a way. Acting Branch Chief Yamadera?"
A fan opened, and the sun of Amaterasu showed itself. Seigoro's gaze snagged on the emblem. There was something in the pattern that led the eye, that wanted to lead the mind with it. He bit down on his tongue.
"Yes. I'd like to hear it. If this grand design of yours holds up, I've no reason not to follow!"
"That bluster. You would do well to remember it."
Chime. Chime. As Kana moved, the bell at the fan's tip trembled, and when she rose, the maidens to either side of her rose with her.
"The Heavenly Punishment are enemies the world itself has named. Filth that ought to be judged whether they ever cross us or not."
She cast her gaze far off. Even in this moment, people who had done nothing were dying wretchedly.
"...What are you saying?"
Seigoro's instincts rang an alarm. What was this woman talking about?
Kana folded the fan.
"We will face the Heavenly Punishment."
"Don't talk nonsense!"
He slammed the table. It split in two and broke apart, and the veins stood out on his forehead.
"If you want to die, die alone! Don't drag the rest of them off to die with you!"
Steel whispered free.
"Yamadera. Just because that mouth of yours is open, you pour whatever you like out of it. Is it the oyabun at your back you're trusting?"
The point of the blade touched his throat. Seigoro never saw the moment the maiden in black had drawn.
Damn it. These monsters!
His teeth ground. If he'd only had the strength, he would have cut them down long ago.
"Lower it. Maiden of Tsukuyomi. He is the officer the Shrine itself appointed. It may displease you, but we cannot punish him as we please."
"Tch. Understood."
The maiden in black spat. Seigoro rubbed at the shallow cut on his neck.
"None of you are of any use in bringing down the Heavenly Punishment."
Kana was cold about it. This was the Shrine's strength, yes, but it was strength standing in someone else's country, and it had its limits. For an instant the people in the room surged with anger. They knew it already. Hearing it said aloud still cut at their pride.
"And we said we would face the Heavenly Punishment. We did not say we would kill them."
"...What do you mean?"
"Korea is a potential enemy. We can hardly do our enemy a kindness."
Kana's eyes narrowed.
"Killing the Heavenly Punishment would be a great achievement. We could set the Shrine's strength before the world. But set that against making enemies of the Heavenly Punishment in their entirety, and it is not a gain."
They were few, and they were strong. To take all of them on, even the Shrine would have to stake its life.
"If the Heavenly Punishment choose to settle in Korea, then we will have no choice but to make war on them or withdraw. If they do not, then Korea is nothing but prey, already wounded by what they have done."
She laid the design in front of Seigoro.
"While the Heavenly Punishment run wild, and while Korea's Guardian is absent — this is the moment. Acting Branch Chief Yamadera, you will kill Korea's heroes, and you will tear down the walls the Guardian has raised."
She pressed the fan down on Seoul.
"There is no time to watch the mood and muddle through. We finish this quickly."
"Then there's no need for you maidens to face the Heavenly Punishment at all, is there?"
"What are you saying, Acting Branch Chief Yamadera?"
The fan snapped open, hiding her mouth.
"Isn't it only natural that Japan's heroes should save a neighboring country?"
"...I'll follow."
Seigoro turned his own earlier words back over. What he had said, he would have to keep.
"I trust you'll do well."
The corners of Kana's eyes drew a gentle arc.
"Ooooooh! Heaven's energy lies thick over every corner of this place! I shall have to watch it for a long, long time!"
The Apostles — I must bring them, and quickly...!