Beyond the Horizon
The red light of the sun sinking beyond the horizon seeped out, staining the darkening sky. On the opposite side, in the complete darkness of the heavens, a certain street lay inside a city where light bulbs twinkled and glowed. People gathered in threes and fives, slipping into doorways, while others clustered together and moved off somewhere. They looked like fish swirling along a stream.
Between the shining lamps, in a shadow no one noticed, a lone figure stood leaning against a bicycle. So perfectly natural, like a utility pole simply existing there, that no one spared him a glance.
“Damn, this is good. What kind of meat is this anyway?”
I had arrived in an unfamiliar new city, not the protagonist’s neighborhood I’d grown used to. I kept pulling food from the rows of street stalls into my inventory and tasting it.
“Hmm. Is this takoyaki? Better stock up on more while I’m at it.”
The more information available on the target, the more clearly their location and direction can be sensed.
Thanks to the Tracking skill I could always feel which way Tokyo lay, where the protagonist was, so I wasn’t lost. I simply had no idea what the current place was called.
Still, I had already planned to give the protagonist a break after he showed such admirable spirit, so leaving him unsupervised for a few weeks wouldn’t matter. The thought relaxed me. I was sightseeing around the downtown area when I heard the familiar sound of someone getting beaten behind a building and decided to take a look.
A scrawny guy stood watch in the alley, so I hopped up lightly and swung my hand. A familiar grip met my palm.
Non-lethal aluminum bat obtained from the gacha.
Does not inflict injury. If the impact is strong enough to be fatal, the target will unconditionally faint.
No need to hit hard. A light, quick strike was enough to send them straight to dreamland.
Whoosh— Thwack!
The scrawny lookout spacing out in the dark alley saw me leap and only managed a pathetic “Egh!” before collapsing. I didn’t want him sleeping with his face planted on the ground, so I propped him neatly against the wall and peered past where he had been standing guard.
Several men were circling and beating a big guy, but the big guy was fighting back with decent resistance. Just another pathetic gang-up brawl, I thought, watching—until one of the attackers reached into his inner pocket and pulled out a pistol. The gun had a strange shape but clearly looked expensive.
“No time to hesitate!!!”
I charged in at once, low and fast. I slid under the gunman’s line of sight, swinging upward from below at a speed that cut the air—Shweeeeek—Thwack!
The crisp sound of the bat made the five attackers turn my way. I rode the rebound and chained the next strikes instantly.
Thwack! Shweek—Clang!
Before they could even fully turn around, four of them were already down. The last one stared at me in panic, mouth opening to say something, when the big guy who had been getting beaten rushed in, wrapped his arms around the man’s waist, and executed what looked like a German suplex. Slamming a person headfirst into bare concrete—his skull might actually be cracked. I felt a twinge of worry, but since these bastards had been trying to kill someone, it didn’t really matter if he died.
The big guy, who had pulled off a pretty advanced technique in the middle of a beating, spotted me looting the attackers’ pockets and flinched hard. “N-Ninja?!” he yelped.
I ignored him and picked up the pistol lying on the ground. The pistols I knew were square and boxy, but this one had a long barrel with a round, joint-like mechanism that looked interesting. The lever beside it seemed to be the safety.
Bang—!
I fired it into the sky. The action was far more fascinating than I expected. The barrel itself recoiled backward while the round joint on top folded and unfolded smoothly. It definitely looked expensive… I wondered if Kang Hae-yeon would buy it. She kept texting me that illegal deals were fine, but selling a gun in Korea would probably get me reported to the cops.
I was about to leave, ignoring the terrified big guy, when he spoke again. It looked like he was asking my name, so I answered jokingly.
“Yozo Oba.”
“Kyoto. Which way?”
While I was at it, I asked for directions to Kyoto. He started giving a long-winded explanation, so I lifted the bat. He instantly pointed with his finger.
Good. Follow the road in that direction and I’d get there.
“Hey. You. This city. What’s its name?”
“Eh, m-m-m-m Tenri m-m-m-masu—”
“Short.”
“Tenri desu.”
“Fuck.”