Maohden Vol. 2 by Hideyuki Kikuchi

Author:Hideyuki Kikuchi [Kikuchi, Hideyuki]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Horror
Publisher: Digital Manga Publishing
Published: 2012-08-28T04:00:00+00:00

Part 5: Bureau of Magical War

Chapter 1

Shadows covered the land, the shadows cast by the surrounding buildings. Wherever they fell, the residents of Kawadacho scowled, raised their faces towards the heavens and cursed their misfortune.

Not because these shadows aroused supernatural physical phenomena like those of the Government Freezer in North Shinjuku. But simply because they blocked the sun and presaged the inevitable night.

The longest reached almost two hundred feet, covering a stretch of land occupied by eight hundred people.

Nevertheless, as the earth revolved in concert with the sun, those who chose to abide in the kingdom carved out by these shadows turned their eyes skyward with disgust and spat contemptuously on the ground.

For the past ten years, a grotesque creature had made its nest there. Repeated eradication campaigns hadn’t exterminated or driven it away, and it stubbornly remained. An awareness of its presence alone left the residents of Kawadacho in a permanent state of unease.

Even when the car carrying Setsura Aki came to a halt on the street, wrapped in the wan darkness, they stared instead up through the dense damp fog.

“Thanks for the ride,” Setsura said to the driver with a friendly smile. The driver, of course, was one of the three assassins who’d assaulted him in his safe house. It was easier than calling a taxi.

Only his hands and feet could move freely. Every other part of him was immobilized by a stabbing pain penetrating down to his bones. These were the same devil wires that like a magic marionette had turned his gun on his fellow conspirators in Setsura’s safe house.

“Tell you what, escort me the rest of the way and you’ll be free to go.”

Setsura poked his arm out the window and pointed at a building of postmodern design perched on a slight rise, almost hidden behind the smoky haze.

The driver blanched. A fear separate from the pain froze the blood in his veins.

“Fine, then. You’d better beat a fast retreat and sleep it off while I am still me. Next time somebody asks you to do a job like that, you can tell them honestly that you’d rather die. I’ll be paying your boss a visit before long.”

He got out of the car. Sporting the face of a dead man, the driver sped off, twice as fast as when they’d arrived.

Setsura set forth, the rain drumming down. On the wide street before him, across Yasukuni Avenue, was the Akebono Bridge Station on the old Toei Shinjuku line. The gates yawned wide open.

He glanced to the right. There was only the bridge on East Gaien Street between Yotsuya Sanchome, Ushigome Yanagicho and Waseda Tsurumaki. And that was the Akebono Bridge.

The original span came down in the Devil Quake. What stood there now was built six months later. Forty-five men died laying the pilings, remembered by forty-five granite stones lining the footings of the bridge.

Setsura crossed Yasukuni Avenue. The traffic was light, people and vehicles alike. Now and then a hausfrau darted across, deliberately averting her gaze from some unknown quarter.

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