Handa continued to stare at the yokai corpse, and Chief Kobayashi turned to watch the mouth of the alley, hands clasped.
I slumped against the wall, trying to get my mind around how badly I’d failed my partner, churning through my mistakes one after another.
I should have known Handa would follow me down the alley—silently defiant, he was a master of acting like he’d oblige while still doing exactly what he wanted. He’d had no obligation to follow my order.
I should have known the yokai would attack him—compared to me, Handa was small, almost delicate, and diplomacy came to him more naturally than fighting. The yokai had obviously led us into a dead end alley so it could pick one of us off.
I should never have pursued it in the first place. Not while Handa was with me. I hadn’t wanted to give it an opportunity to take another victim, but I had served my partner up on a silver platter.
All day. All day I had mulled this case over, hashing through the evidence I’d seen of yokai activity. What a waste of my time. I should have gone right to my lieutenant and told him we couldn’t work this case. How? How could I be so stupid?
Handa leaned in close to me to whisper, “What the hell is going on?”
I couldn’t look at him, and if I opened my mouth, I’d choke. I could have gotten my best friend killed.
He continued to stare at me, but luckily, he couldn’t press me with the chief standing right there, and within a few minutes, the clean-up crew arrived. Numbly, I watched them breach the crowd and buzz down the alley with a gurney like a typical team of forensics experts, but they must be more than that. Specialists.
Among them, I picked out the bearish shape of Lieutenant Kudo Sora, one of the toughest, most accomplished yokai hunters in our squad. I’d never liked him. He was always so loud and rambunctious, barking orders and pushing buttons everywhere he went. Right now, I wished like everything I’d gone to him for advice and resigned this case.
“What are you kids doing here?” Kudo called out, with gruff cheer. He wasn’t tall, but he was husky, and he moved in an easygoing yet decisive stride. In his hand, he carried a stick with a pointed tip.
“Just keeping Tokyo safe,” Handa answered, with a ghost of his own devil-may-care attitude.
“Clearly.” As he reached us, Kudo rested the stick on his strapping shoulder. It looked like a stake. “But this is Naito-kun’s target.”
“Naito waited too long to pull the trigger,” Handa told him. “We got to it first.”
Lieutenant Kudo roared with laughter and pounded Handa on the back so hard he nearly toppled over. “You two. I can’t figure out if you’re real aces, or if you’re just always out of your depth.”
“Sugita’s an ace,” Handa straightened himself out. “He found this whack-job on a hunch.”
Kudo’s glinting eyes took me in. “That so, Sugita-kun? You sure you weren’t just sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong?”
My mind reeled. He must have noticed me talking to Naito this morning. Or Naito had told him about our conference. I wouldn’t blame him. He’d been the only one who knew we might be dealing with a yokai, and it was just too bad he hadn’t acted sooner. Possibly, if Kudo had gotten in my way, none of this would have happened. But then, that was probably just my mind trying to rid itself of the guilt, looking for someone else to blame. I’d decided to look into this, and very little could have stopped me.
“What’s that mean for you, then, Handa-kun?” Kudo pounded on him again, laughing. “You’re just out of your depth?”
“Apparently,” Handa coughed. He still didn’t understand the gravity of this situation.
“What are you here for, Lieutenant?” I practically snapped.
He merely grinned at me. “I came to clean up your mess, Sugita-kun.”
I couldn’t even argue. I’d made a classic rookie mistake, jumping into a situation without knowing the crucial details.
Chief Kobayashi finished his conversation with the forensics specialists, and then stepped up to murmur to the lieutenant, “It’s in your hands.”
Kudo saluted. “Not to worry, Chief. In a situation like this, the little ones are your priority.” With that, he flashed a grin at us, and then he strolled down the alley, brandishing his stake like a sword and rumbling, “Let’s get a look at this blood-sucker.”
Chief struck out the other direction, back toward the street. “Come along, then, please, boys.
We exchanged a look as we trailed him, and Handa asked, “Shouldn’t we stay here and give a statement?”
A horrible screech cut through the silence. I jerked around to stare, but even with the team’s lights illuminating the alley, all I could see was Kudo and the others gathered around the body, now hidden from sight, and everything was still.
“That won’t be necessary,” Chief assured us, not missing a beat.
Handa and I traded another look, and this time I found a demanding expression in his eyes, wanting answers. I didn’t have any. All I could do was lay a hand on his shoulder and guide him forward.
Near the mouth of the alley, the crowd had grown and hedged in closer, but the chief pushed his way through them, politely, doling out calm assurances that they could return to their lives, and soon we reached his modest, silver Suzuki, parked on the side of the road and gleaming in the rain.
Handa lurched for the passenger door, muttering, “Shot gun.”
“Both of you sit in the back, please,” Chief corrected, in a routine voice, but as Handa shot him another questioning look, I could tell he was starting to feel unnerved by our boss’s response to the circumstances.
“Where are we going, exactly, Sir?” he asked.
“To see the doctor, of course. You are hurt.”
“Isn’t the ambulance on its way?” He eyed the flashing emergency vehicles blocking the road.
“Not for you, Son. Now, get in the car, please.”
Reluctantly, Hideki climbed in, I followed like I was in a dream, and soon we’d started to drive.
The rain had settled back into a steady but miserable drizzle, and the streets had gradually emptied. I stared out at the neon lights, trying to comprehend.
Tokyo was regarded as one of the safest cities in the world, but from the perspective of a police officer, a detective, I found that hard to believe. As soon as one case closed, another opened. The domestic disputes, abductions, and acts of violence felt endless, and beyond the depraved things human beings did to one another, I’d gotten one or two tiny glimpses of the evil things that bred in the shadows, the horrors committed by creatures that saw humankind as little more than livestock. Naito and Lieutenant Kudo both thought I ought to be part of the yokai hunter division, but Chief Kobayashi had never pressured me, and I’d turned my back on that option.
Part of me would like to storm the underworld and show these monsters that this was my town—my world—but there was plenty of terror to go around. My first priority always had to be looking after my own, no matter what it took.
Struggling to hide the wince on my lips, I looked at Handa. “How do you feel now?”
Slumped heavily against the door, he grumped, “I’m tired,” like he always did when he didn’t want to admit something else might be bothering him.
“Thank you for all your hard work,” Chief acknowledged. “I must apologize again. I had no idea the two of you were entangled with a yokai.”
I clutched the door handle, seething. This whole thing had been a giant mistake. An accident.
“And I take it you mean that literally.” Handa leaned forward in his seat. “It’s not some new gang or a street name for a certain kind of drug user?”
“I wish that could be the case. But no. That creature was a demon from another dimension.”
Wide-eyed, Handa turned to me.
Guilt hit me full-force, and I croaked out, “I tried to tell you.” That felt like a lie, though. The idiotic things I’d told him earlier about aliens had been merely a cop-out. I amended with, “I wanted to tell you.”
“Better late than never, I guess,” Handa mumbled, rolling his window down, letting in the rain and starting yet another cigarette.
Chief Kobayashi went on.
“Imagine there are yokai everywhere.”
“I don’t have to imagine,” Handa told him, dryly. “I practice Shinto.”
“This should be easy for you, then.” Chief adjusted his glasses. “Many yokai live in the human world with very little fuss; some, however, get it stuck in their heads that we exist to serve or satisfy them. Kyuuketsuki in particular possess an insatiable bloodlust.”
“Stands to reason.” Handa rubbed the bite on his neck.
“Unfortunately, a common problem we run into these days is that some yokai are powerful enough to create a temporary portal into our world. Something like a gate.”
Again, my partner looked at me, hissing, “The elevator shaft? All those burn marks.”
“Probably so,” Chief agreed, easily. That much, I had managed to tell him on the phone. Evidence of an unofficial gate was supposed to be priority one. In fact, I should have stayed there to guard it rather than pursuing the kyuuketsuki. If I had, Handa would be okay.
But then, the monster might have run out into the street and bitten some innocent civilian instead.
My stomach roiled.
“That’s why I took the liberty of calling Lieutenant Kudo. He’s an expert in illegal gate cases. Nevertheless, the real trouble is that there’s no way to prevent undocumented yokai from entering the human realm. All we can do is keep the troublemakers in check. It’s a difficult job, not one I’d willingly pass off on two detectives who haven’t been properly briefed. Occasionally, though, catastrophes like this one do occur. It’s entirely my responsibility.”
Mine too. When I’d seen signs that an interdimensional gate had recently been torn at the abandoned mansion, I should have turned right around, walked out, and called Lieutenant Kudo. But no. I’d hesitated. Worse still, I’d led Handa downstairs, into the monster’s lair.
We’re lucky we made it out of there.
Uneventfully, Chief took a turn down an unfamiliar side road, and, from there, into a bumpy alley wher the car rumbled across potholes, and the walls seemed so close, I half expected to hear the sound of steel scraping stone.
Handa sat up in his seat and asked, “Is it all right for you to be telling us all this classified information?”
“It is top secret NPA business,” Chief agreed. “And if the public got wind of this reality, it would result in an uproar.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” Handa assured him, quickly.
“I appreciate that. However, your ability to keep quiet remains to be seen.”
Wildly, my partner turned to me, and even though I couldn’t make out his expression, I knew he was looking to me to vouch for him.
“Handa’s good at keeping secrets,” I told the chief.
The car jerked to a stop, and I peered out through the rain and the dark. It looked like we’d come to a dead end, with a building blocking us in on two sides and a fence on the third. “It seems that the two of you don’t fully grasp the situation.”
“What did you bring us here for?” Handa asked, lowly.
“Out of concern for your well-being. Now please come along.”
Not waiting for our response, the chief climbed out. I waited until his door had closed before I asked Handa, “What’s up? Don’t you trust the chief?”
“I trust the chief,” he agreed. “It’s the people he takes orders from I’m not sure about.”
On a night like this one, I shouldn’t be surprised his paranoia was starting to get the best of him, causing him to question everything.
“Do you feel that same way about me?” I wondered. “That I’ll turn on you if someone orders me to?”
Handa clicked his tongue. “Of course not, Stupid. You and me are…you know… Friends.”
“Chief knows that.”
Kobayashi Itsuki was much more than a suit following orders. When I saw him, ambling through the squad room, he talked to everyone as if he was one of us, and he took a personal interest in all his men. He’d been at my wedding. He’d brought me a housewarming gift right after Kozakura and I moved into our place. He knew my partner mattered to me as more than just a coworker; he probably even suspected some of the personal stuff between us. He’d never ask me to betray Hideki.
I couldn’t let his trust issues be the reason he didn’t see a doctor after getting bit by a yokai.
“Come on.” I tugged Handa’s arm, lightly. “Let’s go get some answers.”
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