Boogiepop Returns VS Imaginator Part 1 (5 page)

“Heh. . . heh. . . that was stupid of you, Asukai-sensei. Even this country's pretty dangerous these days. I knew a sap like you would fall for it. . . . . . !” she sneered, breathing ragged.

“You were after me. . . ? Imazaki Shizuko, isn't it? You were in my spring course, weren't you?”

She had come to him for counseling once.

“Heh. . . heh. . . I'm surprised you remembered.” She was gasping for breath. Her eyes were red, bloodshot. It was clear she was on something, presumably some sort of chemical. “But it ain't gonna get you off. Give me all the money you got.”

“To buy drugs. . . ? What happened to you? You were such a good student. . .”

“My dad got arrested for tax evasion or something! Made everything so futile! But what do you care? Just hand it over!!!” The girl screamed, hysterical.

“ . . . . . . .. . “ Asukai looked at the tip of the knife. It was shaking. Her grip on it was so tight she couldn't keep it pointed at him. It would be easy to dodge it.

But he suddenly felt a turmoil of emotion welling up inside him.

Everything seemed so ridiculous -- directionless anger abruptly gushed forth from deep within his heart.

'No,” he said, crisply, before he even realized it.

“What?” The girl said, looking even fiercer.

“Go ahead and kill me,” Asukai spat.

“I'm serious!”

“So am I!” he roared. “You think you can escape by taking drugs? That doesn't do any good! No matter how high you get, there's no saving us!”

“Sh-shut up! You're just scared!” The girl moved the knife closer, touching Asukai's throat.

“Try it!” he yelled, and she put her anger into it, pushing forward.

The knife slipped past, his skin sliced open, and blood came out. She had missed his jugular by a hair's breadth, and he had nanowly escaped death, but Asukai was unaware of this.

The girl toppled over. She didn't have the strength left to keep her footing.

A number of little packets spilled out of her pocket onto the ground -- little packets of drugs.

“. . . . . . . . !” Asukai frowned down at them. This was hardly for her personal use. With this quantity, there was no reason for her to be trying to mug people. Which meant. . .

“. . . Exactly. These are for other people,” the girl said, rising slowly to her feet -- no, this was no longer the same girl.

Her eyes were laughing, but she had no expression.

“Y-you again,” Asukai glared at the thing inhabiting the girl, ignoring the blood dripping from his neck.

“Just to be clear, I took over only a few seconds ago. Most of your encounter was of her own free will,” she said coldly. “f you can call that free will. It's not like she wanted to do it. She's a girl. If she needed money, there are faster and safer ways for her to get it. But once her body's been torn to pieces like this, those options vanish.”

“Shut up!” Despite the fact that the girl had tried to stab him, hearing her insulted made him furious.

“Do you know what these drugs are for, Asukai-sensei?”

The thing inhabiting the girl's body pointed at the ground.

“She was selling them?”

“Exactly. The dosage is too weak for her now -- it's beginner's strength. If she wanted more drugs for herself, she had to sell these to other people. That's what they told her. But she couldn't bring herself to ever do that.”

She pointed towards her chest.

“Such a
sad
story. Didn't want to make any more people like her, but what else could she do? So she asked you, the only person she could ever remember being nice to her.”

“. . . . . . . . .”

“But, Asukai-sensei, either way, this girl was finished.”

“What do you mean?”

“The drugs have destroyed her body. She won't last out the month. She's going to die. Futile, pitiful, miserable and sad,” she sneered.

“. . . . . . . . .”

“But you might be able to do something,” she said, picking up the knife, and stabbing it deep into her own neck.

“. . . . . . . . !”

For a second, the girl's blood sprayed out, filling the air; and then she fell over.

“Aiiieeeee!” There was a scream.

At the end of the alley, a woman walking by had seen this. She quickly ran away.

Asukai rushed over to the girl.

She was gasping. Her face was back to normal. She was gone.

“Shit. . . !” Asukai pushed his handkerchief against the girl's wound, but half her blood had already emptied out of her in a massive geyser.

Eyes hollow, the girl whispered, “. . . . . . it. . . . . . t . . .”

Asukai leaned close, putting his ear to her lips.

“. . . mn it, damn it, damn it,” she swore. Cursing everything in the world. “Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, da--!”

Asukai stared down at the girl. She had no choice but to stay angry until the very end.

He grit his teeth, and put his hand on her chest.

It was so much easier than he'd thought.

***

“Let me get this straight. . . moments after she assaulted you, she suddenly stabbed herself in the throat? This is your story?” The detective asked. He was speaking to the key witness, who had stayed by the side of the body until the patrol cars arrived.

“Yes,” Asukai said instantly. There was a bandage around his neck, applied by the doctor at the police hospital.

“You say you knew this girl?”

“Yes. Her name is Imazaki Shizuko. She's about eighteen. I don't know her address, but it's probably still in the files at the cram school. I taught her last spring.” He answered smoothly, without faltering. No emotion.

“Did she have something against you? Any idea what?”

“Maybe. She came to me for counseling, but I guess I didn't help her much.”

“Well, from what we've been able to ascertain, her family situation was at the root of it,” the detective admitted. He'd decided Asukai's calm responses proved his innocence. “She had reason enough to kill herself.”

“Suicide?”

“Yeah. She wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway. The drugs had wrecked her system. The way she died was comparatively pain-free. Overdosing's a nasty way to go. Truth is. . . we'd had our eyes on her for dealing for a while now. I can tell you that she wasn't much good at it. Heart wasn't in it.”

“You knew about her?”

“She was low level for another pusher that we're after, but the big man's still hasn't shown his face.”

'You knew, but didn't save her?!' Asukai's poker face hid this thought perfectly.

“You'll be free to go soon. We've got a witness, so we know you didn't kill her. Soon as we wrap things up here, you can leave.”

“Thank you,” Asukai bowed his head.

The investigation was over soon enough, and he signed and stamped his statement as directed. Asukai rose to leave.

“Oh, Asukai-san. . . this is just my personal question, but. . .” the detective started.

“What?”

“While she was dying, did you say something to her?”

“What do you mean?”

“I don't mean anything. Just that girl, dying that way. . . her face was awfully peaceful. Like the thorns in her heart had all been plucked away. If something you said put her mind at ease, then you must be one hell of a teacher.” The aging detective nodded keenly.

“Sorry, I. . . I didn't say anything,” Asukai replied quietly, and left the room.

***

Soon, Asukai found himself walking through the evening streets again.

For every alley he found, he stopped, and peered down it looking for some sort of sign. His eyes never missed a thing, like the eyes of a hawk searching for its next target.

Then he heard a sound, like something falling over. Like the girl's moans, the sound was so faint nobody else around even noticed.

“. . . . . . . . .”

But he turned instantly, and went down the alley towards the sound's origin.

He found some people there. Seven in all -- six boys and a girl.

Something was clearly going on -- the girl's clothes were torn, her naked and vulnerable upper body exposed. Five of the boys stood around her, reaching towards her. One stood to the side, dazed, blood running from his mouth.

“Well,
this
is easy to figure out!” Asukai's voice boomed.

All the boys spun towards him.

“-- ! Wh-who are you?!”

“Just to make sure, I'd better ask. You there,” Asukai pointed to the odd boy out, the one who'd clearly been beaten. “Do you want to save this girl?”

The confidence in Asukai's voice brought the boy out of his daze. He quickly nodded, “Y-yes.”

“Then take her and run!” Asukai said, walking straight through the boys, taking the girl's arm, and pulling her out.

“Hey!” The boys said, lurching towards Asukai.

“Hmph,” he snorted, and
did something
to one of them, too fast for anyone to see.

The boy fell over backwards.

“----?!”

The others shrank backwards, surprised. Asukai pushed the unresisting girl towards the bleeding boy. “Go! Get out of here!!”

“Th-thank you,” the boy mumbled, scrambling away. He grabbed the girl's hand, and ran.

“Wait!” the others shouted, but when they tried to follow, they found Asukai between them.

“You wait,” he said, a fearless smile on his face.

“Oh, yeah?!” They shouted, pulling knives from their pockets.

Asukai didn't bat an eyelash at the blades. “I've got no grudge against you,” he said. “But I need a few more samples.”

***

One minute later --

Everyone else was sprawled on the ground. Only one of the boy thugs was still standing.

Strangely enough, all of their injuries were caused by each other's knives.

“Ah. . . ahhhh. . .” the last boy moaned, his teeth chattering together. Asukai came over to him, waving his right hand over his chest.

“Wh-wh -- wh -- what did you do to them?”

“You wouldn't understand. But I haven't hurt them. I've given them happiness.”

His words, his calm, scared the boy more than anything else in his short life.

“Wh-what the hell are you?”

“Mm? Let's see. . . what was that name?” Asukai looked behind him.

The girl hanging in the sky above him replied, “Imaginator!”

“Right. ..
that
,” Asukai grinned. . . and his right hand snapped out towards the boy.

There was a muffled scream.

Her name was Orihata Aya.

She had big striking eyes, with large pupils -- though, they almost never looked at you directly. Very beautiful, but an incredibly reckless personality, and she always spoke in a very terse fashion. She was the same age as me, which is, well, fifteen, but there was a sort of sobriety about her that most adults never managed to develop.

“Masaki, why are interested in me?”

“Um, I just thought we could. . . I dunno, be friends, you know?”

“You want me?”

“Hunh?!”

“Do you want to have sex with me?”

“Hey, Orihata -- !”

“'We can if you want to.”

Yeah, many of our conversations were a lot like this.

She seemed like she didn't even have friends at her school, and until she met me, I had my own doubts whether she'd ever had a normal conversation before.

Oh, right. . . my name's Taniguchi Masaki, and as you can probably guess, Orihata and I. . . we're complete opposites. It's funny, though; Orihata and I met in the most messed up kind of way.

At the time, I had just returned to Japan to get ready for high school after having lived abroad with my parents for a while, which was in this place called Phnom Penh. I was not really all that comfortable with my surroundings yet, and I'd heard horror stories from my parents about how other Japanese students had this tendency to keep their distance from returnees.

Luckily, I also have a sister -- who isn't actually related to me -- who's spent her entire life in Japan. She said, “Sadly, that's true. They're all pathetic losers, afraid of anyone who does something different or thinks about crap in a different way. You'd better be ready.”

So I was prepared for it, and just kept quiet.

Even when I didn't feel like it, I always tried to help people, and I was careful to always maintain an easy-going attitude. And somehow, I ended up getting really popular with all of the girls in class. If the girls had something they didn't understand, or something in the study guide that didn't make sense, they'd always come to me for help instead of the teacher.

“Oh, Masaki's so smart! Must be all that studying abroad.”

I hadn't really studied abroad in the traditional sense of the term, but for some reason, the idea stuck.

Honestly, I was a bit out of my league. I couldn't push the girls away, but the guys in my class -- in my entire school -- all started to look at me funny.

By this point, high school entrance exams were right on top of us, so I wasn't exactly bullied by anyone (not much, anyway), but when I left school grounds, things would get a little. . . argumentative. In school, lowerclassmen would never bug an upperclassman, but once school was over, that line just vanished. I got glares from all directions.