The Eve of the Strange Ones (6)
“I don’t really get it, but... something big’s going on, isn’t it?”
“If you’d decided this was nothing, I’d have questioned your intelligence, Tenka.”
Akane sighed. Tenka had said it while rummaging through the popcorn on the convenience store shelf, and they had only come in to buy some—they were supposed to watch a movie at home tonight.
Who would have thought that little errand would be what kept them clear of the crisis. Watching the chaos in the street through the glass, Akane furrowed her brow.
The clerk, it should be noted, had abandoned the shop and fled some time ago.
“A riot? Terrorism? Or is this actually a zombie outbreak?”
“Whichever it is, I wouldn’t call any of them impossible.”
The hidden world was that kind of place. It was rare, admittedly, for the underside to writhe and crawl all the way up to the surface like this, but still.
“Phones are dead too, so the panic’s only going to get worse.”
Every kind of screaming drifted in from outside. Were the police even moving? What about the Church?
“...Hey. Where are you going?”
Lost in the thought, Akane caught Tenka heading for the door, and her expression soured further.
“I’ve got to go check.”
“Check where.”
Tenka turned her head just enough to meet Akane’s eyes, and grinned.
“I’ve got the strength. So I ought to save people.”
Run hard enough, and she could probably save one or two. The smile that came with those words was nothing short of proud.
“Haa. Fine. Do what you want. You’ve already made up your mind, so it’s not like you’ll listen if I try to stop you.”
“Yeah. Probably not.”
“You could hesitate a little, you know? Damn brat.”
Akaba Akane pressed a hand to her forehead. This girl had always been like this.
“Then I’ll head out— Akane?”
“Moron. You were just going to walk out like that?”
Hadn’t she agreed to let her go? Halfway to the door, Tenka turned back toward Akane wearing exactly that look—because Akane had taken the scarf from around her own neck, wound it around Tenka’s, and yanked it like a leash.
“The Secrecy Protocol itself can slide, seeing as it’s an emergency. There’s still nothing to be gained from your face getting out there. Keep it covered at least up to your nose.”
“Thanks, Akane-chan.”
Tenka’s eyes curved into a smile as Akane looped the scarf around her neck a few times more.
“Well then. I’ll be back.”
“Don’t you dare die, idiot.”
“Ahaha. I’ll do my best. Still, I’m pretty strong, you know?”
“Ha... Right. If it’s you, Tenka, you’ll manage well enough.”
Akane folded her arms and leaned lightly against the shelf, as if to say it was no longer any of her concern.
And so Tenka left the convenience store with a smile full of confidence and resolve. The sight of her back, throwing herself into danger to save strangers, looked beautiful. Noble, even.
“......”
And yet.
“...How do you not spare me a single word of worry, right to the end? You goddamn bastard.”
Akane muttered it in the empty shop, left entirely alone, in a voice that might have been lament, accusation, or resignation. There was no telling which.
She knew. She had always known. Tsunashi Tenka had been this kind of person since their school days.
The woman called Tenka was the prince of the girls’ academy, gentle with everyone, and a hero besides, when the moment called for it.
Only, it was never uncommon for one Akaba Akane to be struck from that “everyone.” A gentleness that simply did not extend to her all that often.
Not for any unkind reason. If anything, it came from goodwill. Tenka trusted her more than she trusted anyone else, and so she simply believed in her and left things in her hands—not someone to fret over, not someone who needed protecting, but a comrade who could stand beside her as an equal.
Akane stared at the door Tenka had walked out of.
“......”
“But just once in a very long while... even for me, like a prince...”
“...Bullshit.”
She’d lost it. What kind of nonsense was that. Akane swore at the brain that had produced so stupid a thought and clicked her tongue.
Then she dragged over the chair beside the register and sat. It looked as though the situation would take quite a while to settle. She might as well rest her legs.
“Damn it...”
Akaba Akane raked rough fingers through her hair and spat the irritation out. Even so, a thread of unease seemed woven through the voice.
“I should’ve just clung to her. Begged her not to go. Begged her to stay.”
Her face had gone rigid. Beyond that gaze, five or six blood-soaked figures were staring back at her.
“Hic— waaaaah...!”
“Hey. No. Quiet down, will you? They come when they hear you...”
She glanced over her shoulder and grumbled. The girl collapsed on the asphalt was crying as if she meant to bring the heavens down.
Akane pressed a hand to her forehead. Winter or not, the child’s pants had been rolled up and her legs left bare, a bloodstained handkerchief knotted around one knee. A hurt little kid who couldn’t control her feelings was, when you thought about it, only natural.
How in the world had it come to this. A sigh escaped Akaba Akane of its own accord.
By all rights she would have been waiting the crisis out inside the relative safety of the convenience store. If she’d wanted to be safer still, she could have forced the storeroom and hidden in there. That had been the plan. So when a child started crying near the shop, she hadn’t let it bother her.
Am I insane? Go outside in this?
Well. It had nagged at her a little. Not enough to risk her neck for a total stranger.
“......”
Mm. Enough to hesitate over, maybe. But unless I’ve completely lost my mind...
“...Damn it. I have lost my mind.”
Akane snatched a bottle of water off the shelf and strode out into the street, swearing as she went.
One block over. A narrow gap between buildings, the kind of slot a small car might or might not fit through. A child of three or four lay sprawled there, sobbing as if her heart would break.
She was not, it seemed, the only one the crying had called. Someone had arrived even before her. A woman lurched closer, one leg twisted, swaying with every step, her eyes fixed on the girl clutching her own leg.
Akane furrowed her brow and shoved a hand into her pocket. She drew out a wolf made of paper and hurled it. With a sharp pop, a wolf of ash-brown fur burst forth wreathed in smoke, opened its jaws, and latched onto the vampire’s leg. One kick sent it back to scraps of paper, but it bought her a little time.
She drew a talisman in the same breath. A blue-green flash flickered at its edge, and before long it was crackling, spitting lightning. She flung it into the vampire’s shoulder. The woman convulsed and toppled forward. It couldn’t have been stronger than a taser meant for subduing a human, and yet it had worked on a monster like that—the realization brought a flicker of relief. Still, you never knew. She rushed in and kicked the fallen vampire several more times, until even a twitch of a reaction had nearly ceased.
“...You okay?”
Only then did she have a moment to spare for the crying child.
“Hnngh. Mommy... Mommy...”
“Don’t cry. Just be quiet for now... Haa.”
She didn’t look old enough for a parent to have sent her outside alone. So at some point—in the middle of this chaos, most likely—she had lost whoever was looking after her.
Akane checked the child first. She must have fallen hard; blood was seeping through even over the pants. Akane rolled them up, washed the wound with the bottled water she had brought—grabbed, originally, to calm the crying girl and give her something to drink—and tied her own handkerchief around it. A rough measure, at best.
She tried to soothe the child into silence. The result, as anyone could see, was a miserable failure. Knowing perfectly well she had the kind of fierce face that frightened children, Akane sighed all the deeper.
Unfortunately, giving up did nothing to erase the consequences of that crying. Even as she stood there, five or six vampires drawn by the child’s voice closed in around her.
“...Ha. Shit. I’m fucked.”
Akane hauled up a shop signboard from nearby, slapped every talisman she had onto it, and muttered. Having brought only the bare minimum for self-defense now felt bitterly regrettable. Even so, accepting death without a fight was a fool’s choice. And throwing the child out as bait so she could run was, for anyone who still counted as human, not even worth considering.
“Goddamn it. Come at me, you rotten corpse bastards.”
Akaba Akane spat on the pavement, glared at them, and charged.
From that point on, she couldn’t properly remember how she had fought. Signboard for a shield, she had kicked and swung in a blank trance. An ache piled up in her wrist, and a horrible, clinging sensation lingered on her skin like an afterimage.
She drove the signboard into the ground and sagged against it. At the edge of her sight, several corpses lay strewn across the pavement, their breath already gone.
“Haa... ugh, damn it. I’m actually gonna die...”
She could barely force any strength into her limbs. From the voice alone—complaints spilling out between ragged breaths—anyone could have told how thoroughly spent she was. Still, she had managed to survive, somehow...
“Krrrk...”
“Oh, come on...”
Seeing even more of the freaks packed in around her than a moment before, Akane swayed on her feet. Even the curses wouldn’t come anymore.
This isn’t right, you bastards. Let me rest. The words rose as far as her throat. She didn’t let them out. She folded, and dropped to the ground.
Her body had already been moving past its limit by force alone. The moment that will cracked, she came apart with it. Asking her to scrape it back up, in a state like this, would have been too much. By then Akane had already accepted death. She could not see a single way through.
—Until one of the vampires drew a blade out of its own chest.
At first she assumed it had some special ability, the way certain zombies did in games. She understood almost at once that it didn’t. The sword had not erupted from the body. It had run the flesh through from the back.
Its owner caught the vampire by the shoulder from behind and shoved, twisting the wrist that held the sword, gouging through meat as the blade came free.
Splat. A slab of meat that had already died, and had now lost even its second life, dropped face-first to the ground.
Every eye in the place, the remaining vampires included, fixed on a single point. Even monsters stripped of reason had nothing to say. Only one person spoke.
“Miss Akaba, are you all right?”
Han Seoyeon. Apostle Bartholomew. A black one-handed sword in hand, she had asked it in a perfectly level voice.
She looked, for all the world, like a hero out of legend. Or like something that belonged in a fairy tale...
“Grrk...”
But unlike Akane, who could only stare blankly at the new arrival with her soul half out of her body, the vampires still had limbs in working order. So they moved.
“Kihyaaaak...?!”
“Gyeeck?!”
Watching the chase erupt almost at once, Akane caught herself thinking it. Wait... haven’t the roles gotten reversed?
For the record, the monsters’ valiant countercharge was put down in exactly twelve seconds.