Demon City Shinjuku: The Complete Edition

Author's Bio

Hideyuki Kikuchi was born in 1949 in the city of Choshi in Chiba Prefecture. He graduated from Aoyama University. His debut novel,
Demon City Shinjuku
, was published in 1982, followed by a creative outpouring that included
Vampire Hunter D
,
Demon City Blues
,
Youma Battlefront
,
Demon Physician Mephisto
and many more manga and novels. He is a member of the Japan Mystery Writers Association, and is a well-known fan of science fiction and horror movies.

Artist's Bio

After graduating from Musashino Art University in 1983 with a degree in oil painting, Jun Suemi devoted himself to
oshie
, the traditional Japanese craft of raised cloth art. He has gained a following for his book covers, book bindings, and game character designs. In 1988, he received a “best artist” Nebula Award (Japan) for his work in science fiction and fantasy.

Starting with his compilation of illustrations for the
Wizardry
game platform, he has released
Labyrinth
(CD-ROM),
The Guin Saga
,
Deep
,
Spirit
,
Witching Moon
and other art books and collections.

Demon City Shinjuku: The Complete Edition

Demon City Shinjuku/Makai Toshi Shinjuku Complete Edition (c) Hideyuki Kikuchi 2005. Originally published in Japan in 2007 by ASAHI Shimbun Company. English translation copyright (c) 2011 by DIGITAL MANGA, Inc. All other material (c) 2011 by DIGITAL MANGA, Inc. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the copyright holders. Any likeness of characters, places, and situations featured in this publication to actual persons (living or deceased), events, places, and situations are purely coincidental. All characters depicted in sexually explicit scenes in this publication are at least the age of consent or older. The DMP logo is Є of DIGITAL MANGA, Inc.

Written by Hideyuki Kikuchi

Illustrated by Jun Suemi

English Translation by Eugene Woodbury

English Edition Published by:

DIGITAL MANGA PUBLISHING

A division of DIGITAL MANGA, Inc.

1487 W 178
^th
Street, Suite 300

Gardena, CA 90248

USA

www.dmpbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available Upon Request

First Edition: July 2011

ISBN-13: 978-1-56970-208-6

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in Canada

The hour grew nigh.

It was the thirteenth of September, a night early in the opening decade of the twenty-first century. In the police box near the entrance to Shinjuku station, a young officer finished his paperwork, got up from his desk, and stretched mightily.

A great feeling of relief flooded his body. The cop was clad in a reinforced ballistic helmet and thick Kevlar vest. One way or another, he'd made it through another day.

His eyes were drawn to the digital clock on the desk. Two fifty-nine in the morning. The shopping district in front of the station was wrapped in darkness. The stores had shuttered their doors and rolled up the sidewalks. The foot traffic was sparse. Taxis were few and far between.

This time of night, the only hustle and bustle was in the direction of Kabuki-cho.

Even so, there was no letting down his guard. In this town, anything cop-related was bound to end up in somebody's crosshairs, no matter what the time of day. A terrorist or just a bunch of juvenile delinquents looking for a thrill could come calling with a black market Tokarev semi-auto or handmade grenades.

His mind flashed back to the night's logbook: 29 injuries or accidents, 34 muggings, 23 robbery-assaults, 80 cases of larceny and 17 homicides. These last three or four years had turned the new millennium into a real doozy.

Comparably speaking, though, it'd been a relatively quiet day.

He went outside to get a breath of fresh air. The cool night was an early harbinger of fall. The stars twinkled in an unusually clear sky. A thought came to him out of the blue—
what was this time of night called again?

The clock silently flipped over to three o'clock. The cop was overcome by a strange feeling of disquiet. Studio Alta and Mitsui Sumitomo Bank jutted out of the blackness before him, steadily reaching into the sky.

No—
the buildings weren't rising up. He was sinking down into the earth.

That was when his previous question came back to him. The
witching hour
, the time when the devil held sway, and humans and monsters crossed paths. The police officer wasn't exactly right about the time, but he was nevertheless correct—this moment was a meeting between man and magic.

After the swaying came the roar.

The eight stories above the “My City” subway station mall leaned way over. Unable to absorb the violent shaking and pitching, the pillars and steel beams bent and broke. The tearing of pipes and rebar drowned out the screaming alarms.

The bedrock-like concrete subfloors pancaked. The display windows and showcases, piled high with garish goods, crashed down like an avalanche.

An earthquake like none before struck without the slightest warning.

The night clubbers wandering down Shinjuku Avenue didn't have a chance. No sooner did they feel the ground shaking beneath their feet, than they were thrown dozens of feet into the air. And then hurling to the ground like trampoline artists missing their marks before they knew what had happened.

The street filled with screams. Rolling on the ground as if bucked from the backs of wild stallions, the young men and women watched as Takano, Mitsukoshi, Isetan—the very edifices that symbolized their vibrant and beautiful lives—came crashing to the ground.

No earthquake-resistant construction existed that could resist such plutonian forces. Razor-sharp shards of window glass rained down, as if taking aim at their bodies. Thousand-ton blocks of concrete delivered the merciful
coup de grace
.

This late at night in this commercial district, around the station the human carnage was relatively light.

The clubs and bars in Kabuki-cho—the town that never slept—were packed. The military personnel at the Ministry of Defense barracks in Ichigaya were coming off a hard day of training and slumbering peacefully. The student housing in Takada no Baba and Waseda, the quiet residential neighborhoods of Ochiai and Yaraicho—most were swallowed up by the earth.

Before becoming the slightest bit aware of their impending fate, they were crushed by great volumes of weight into another geological sedimentary layer.

The earthquake lasted all of three seconds.

Just as there were no preliminary tremors, there were no aftershocks. Shinjuku was destroyed in a single shrug of the earth's crust.

But it would still take a long time until it drew its last breath.

Flames from the stoves in the all-night restaurants and taverns ignited the gas pouring from ruptured lines. Petrol flooded from gas stations onto the streets and added another conflagration to the blood and cries. Every way out was blocked by high-tension wires sparking like fireworks and the smoldering remains of houses and shops.

The poisonous flowers of flame sprang open as if after a spring rain. The sooty black smoke wrapped itself like a blanket around the barely living as the screams and shouts went on, it seemed, forever.

A magnitude 8.5 earthquake had struck directly beneath the city center. The epicenter was pinpointed at five thousand meters under Shinjuku station—at least that's what was recorded in the files at the Japan Meteorological Agency. Along with a stamp that simply said:
Estimated
.

But even though Shinjuku was leveled, its adjoining metropolitan neighbors — Shibuya, Minato, Chiyoda — suffered no damage whatsoever. That night, the seismograph in the basement of the Imperial Palace barely budged.

This strange phenomenon came to be known in later years as the “Devil Quake.” It remained a puzzle to geologists and seismologists the world over. In time, the Great Shinjuku Earthquake was simply one more item added to an already long list of unexplained phenomena.

The ninth of September, the year 2030, 5:05 in the afternoon.

“Ahh, I don't believe it!”

“Oh,
gross
, not again!”

The two high school students cried out in shrill dismay as they passed through the darkening school gate. The black wind had stealthily whirled up behind them, lifted up the skirts of their sailor uniforms, and even rudely slapped their asses.

“Stop!”

“Perv!”

They stamped their feet in outrage. But the whirlwind—carrying a black school satchel—sprinted down the dusk-drenched hill towards Mejiro station. In his wake, from around the two girls came the sound of cheers and clapping.

“Good one!”

“That's my man!”

“Did'ja see? Yuko's are white!”

The bystanders were guys from their school. The girls glared back at them, and then at the evaporating trail left by the departing whirlwind. The cheeks of the offended parties reddened a bit, along with a pained expression that could even be interpreted as unrequited affection.