Chapter Ninety-Three: The Day of Descent

On the morning of May 6, at six o’clock, Arthur Alfred opened his eyes and began a new day.

He was grateful he could still open them at all. Ever since the day he chose to help Oda Momiji, his life had been accompanied only by the flare of gunfire and the acrid smell of blood. These days had been no different from walking side by side with death.

Fortunately, after that battle at the tavern, he and Momiji had gained a companion named Zhao Tianxing.

“Miss Oda, today is the last day,” Arthur said, forcing out a smile, only to tug painfully at the wound on his cheek.

Today was the day the plane arranged by Berret was due to arrive for Oda and her daughter. So long as Oda Momiji, under the alias Koizumi Ryoko, boarded that Boeing 787 bound for Oslo with the child, everything would be over.

That morning, after Zhao Tianxing drove them to the airport, he left. They had wanted to say something to that companion who was cold in manner yet kind to others, but Zhao Tianxing departed without warning. After Arthur and Momiji got out of the car with the child in her arms, he lowered the window only long enough to say, “Take care,” and then drove off.

Momiji’s thanks never even made it out of her mouth before Zhao Tianxing had vanished from sight.

At noon they ate some quick food in the airport restaurant, then waited there until dusk.

In the end, the thing Arthur feared most did not happen. As boarding time arrived, he sat in the airport hall watching Momiji disappear into the distance, and a weariness unlike any he had ever known suddenly swept over him. At last, it was all over. He should take the next flight to Venice and rest for a while; perhaps he would even land before Oda Momiji and her daughter did.

Arthur took out his phone and booked the next flight to Venice.

“QR807. I wonder when Momiji’s flight will arrive.”

But when Arthur entered the flight number Berret had given him, he discovered that the plane had issued a suspension notice five minutes earlier. A foreboding feeling rose in his chest.

He hurried to the airport service desk. “Hello, may I ask whether there is a flight from Tokyo to Oslo today, flight code QR807?”

“I’m very sorry, sir. The flight you mentioned has had a problem during a temporary inspection of the fuselage and requires emergency maintenance. It has been suspended. We apologize for any inconvenience caused to your travel...”

Arthur did not know how he dialed the number. “Berret.”

The voice on the other end sounded at once so familiar and so strange. “Arthur.”

“Why?”

“I’ve also been trying to find a reason for myself to help you.”

“They were only a mother and a child.”

“A mother who is not human, and a child who is not human.”

“What did they do wrong? They only wanted to live. What crime is that?”

“Arthur, in this world there are many things that need no reason at all. One is enough. They are not human.”

“Do not being human mean they have no right to live?”

“Even humans do not necessarily have the right to live. Arthur, stop behaving like a child. You cannot change them, and you cannot oppose them.”

Arthur hung up.

People came and went through the airport. Some boarded flights home with hope in their eyes; some departed in tears. No one cared about a silent man, though his heart was in upheaval. He wanted to ask everyone here why so many things in this world were so meaningless. The loneliness that had followed him for twenty-seven years seized its opening once more, and he was dragged back into the same endless pain.

Arthur Alfred sat in the departure hall, helpless as the child who had fallen into a mud pit seventeen years ago.

The moment Momiji stepped onto the plane with her daughter, she sensed something was wrong. The sealed cabin door confirmed her grim suspicion. Those captors disguised as passengers did not hide the naked malice in their eyes.

She looked tenderly at her daughter, whose eyes were wide with curiosity as she kept turning to look around. “Shiori, live well.”

She kissed her child one last time. A streak of blood ran from her forehead downward, and the arcane energy accumulated within her over thousands of years caused the space around her to distort faintly.

“Get out, she’s going to detonate the arcane energy inside her!” The agent closest to Momiji immediately realized her intent. Before taking part in this mission, he had been told the target might self-destruct, but he had never imagined Momiji would be so resolute, with not even a trace of hesitation. Before the preset sealing barrier could even lock onto her, and before he saw the arcane energy condense in the air like blood, it was already too late.

Space distorted briefly, and the scattered arcane energy vanished into nothingness through rifts in the void. What should have been a cataclysmic explosion instead looked like a silent film being played.

Momiji used her own life to drive forth all the power within her. This monster, born in the age of Emperor Suzaku, had in her final moments only one identity: not avenger, not fugitive, but mother.

She poured every bit of arcane energy she could control into creating a brief passage for teleportation.

A child’s crying suddenly rang out with unusual clarity in Narita Airport. In this country, where not disturbing others was considered the highest etiquette, it was rare to encounter such a scene in public. As everyone looked up to see which young mother it might be, Arthur stared helplessly at the child in his arms.

The moment he saw the child, Arthur understood everything. He had no time to think about whether he could bear this burden; he only wanted to take the child away, as far from here as possible.

Arthur rushed straight out of the departure hall with Shiori in his arms. A man who was saying goodbye to a friend while opening his car door became his target. Arthur pulled the man from the driver’s seat and stepped on the accelerator before the door had even been closed.

But when he drove the Subaru onto the street, a gaze met his in the rearview mirror. Kuichi Shogawa, head of the investigation section of the Tokyo branch of the Global Occult Coalition, wearing samurai garb, narrowed his eyes.

The accelerator went down, and the black SUV shot forward like an arrow loosed from a bow, setting out on its escape. Kuichi Shogawa looked up at the full moon hanging high in the sky, then donned a crimson Tengu mask and murmured, “When the whole city is engulfed in flames, where can you flee?”

From the moment the arcane energy across Japan began to grow chaotic, Kuichi Shogawa had already made his choice behind the screen. Given everything humanity now possessed, technology had long since surpassed the mystical. If necessary, this would be a war of annihilation, a war to erase an entire race.

Arthur had no mind to think about Oda Momiji. He only wanted to get this child away.

The little girl named Shiori cried herself tired and fell into deep sleep against Arthur’s chest, and only then did he place her in the passenger seat. While keeping his eyes on the road ahead, he used his free left hand to fasten the child’s seat belt, then slammed his foot down again. The black Subaru roared like a furious beast and charged forward.

Kuichi Shogawa gave no order to his subordinates to capture Arthur, because he had complete confidence. As one of the principal figures of the Tokyo branch of the GOC, he had reached this point by strength alone. Before taking this position, he had already been a top-class agent known as the Shikigami Tiger. Though no longer young, the blood surging through him had never allowed the fire within to die.

Beyond confidence in himself, there was another, more important reason.

Killing or capturing Arthur was not his goal. The child was.

Though the child was not human, she was in truth no different from a human child. Morality and compassion might lead some of the younger agents to make mistakes, so he decided to do it himself. After all, for most of his career he had played the role of executioner.

Arthur watched the rearview mirror. Though he had not seen Kuichi Shogawa since he pressed the accelerator, an uneasy feeling remained in his heart. Although Shogawa had always appeared before him in a bureaucratic role, that single glance just now had made Arthur keenly aware of a primal fear.

When the Subaru sped across the Tokyo Bay Aqua-Line bridge, the road was already deserted, as though someone had anticipated what was about to happen here and cleared away the ordinary people in advance.

Before Arthur could even notice anything amiss, he instinctively felt a piercingly cold gaze. He looked up and saw a man wearing a Tengu mask sitting cross-legged on a sign ahead. Two hundred meters could not diminish that overwhelming presence. The instant Arthur saw Kuichi Shogawa, Shogawa did not even give him time to react. In Arthur’s vision, the figure flickered like a trick of light, and after a few flashes he was suddenly directly in front of the racing Subaru. A great sword five feet long came crashing down toward Arthur’s head.

The engine shrieked like mad. A violent force shoved Arthur hard against the seat. The alloy shell, cast like some painted tofu, offered no resistance at all. The great sword sliced from the sunroof straight down to the undercarriage, cleaving the braking Subaru in two. But Kuichi Shogawa did not sheathe his blade. By instinct alone he knew this hunt was not over.

Dust-covered and battered, Arthur clutched the child in his arms tightly. Though he had already hit the brakes, the moving car still carried enough speed to leave him in a miserable state. The tremendous inertia allowed this battle-hardened agent only enough time to seize the child in the passenger seat before he was thrown, unguarded, with the left half of the car’s carcass into a violent roll against the ground.

A trace of blood ran from Arthur’s lips. He felt as if his organs had been struck by a heavy hammer, the pain so intense that he had no choice but to collapse to the ground. He looked down in despair at the child in his arms. A pair of jade-bright eyes was staring at him. The child named Shiori radiated a faint glow all over her body, and Arthur let out a long breath. The arcane energy her mother had left behind still lingered within her.

“Hand over the child, and your sins will be wiped clean.” Kuichi Shogawa dragged his long blade as he walked slowly up to Arthur, the crimson Tengu mask hiding every expression.

“If I handed her over, wouldn’t all these days of effort be wasted?” Arthur forced the corners of his mouth upward, trying to make himself look less wretched.

Kuichi Shogawa crouched down and looked at the young man. “Being young is indeed a blessing. It lets one make most mistakes. But some mistakes require a life to atone for.” He no longer listened to Arthur’s reply. He had seen too many people in his life, and long ago learned that the most futile thing in the world was trying to change another’s convictions. It was already evening, and the great sword rose high, towering above the setting sun.

Perhaps the goddess of fate had finally decided to show Arthur mercy. The instant before the great sword fell, darkness swallowed the world whole. Even Kuichi Shogawa, with all his experience, could not help but be startled. He crossed his sword before his chest, wary of some unknown attack hidden in the blackness.

That sudden darkness was not merely visual; it seemed to rise from within the mind and spread outward. Kuichi Shogawa’s world was plunged into chaos.

Arthur was swallowed as well by that boundless dark. The sudden twist of fate reignited his will to survive. Relying on memory, he clutched the child in his arms and lunged to the right. After striking the guardrail with a muffled grunt, he rolled over it and fell toward the sea in the grasp of gravity.

The darkness lasted only a dozen seconds, but when Kuichi Shogawa saw light again, his heart could not help but tremble. The moment his sight returned, he sensed a vast surge of arcane energy gathering in Tokyo. That immense power far surpassed Oda Momiji’s earlier self-detonation. The difference was like fireworks compared to an intercontinental missile. Kuichi Shogawa did not waste time. More important than the vanished Arthur and child was the source of this energy, one capable of destroying all of Japan.

All of Japan had already been steadily laid under a vast net. Every hunt and capture of monsters was proceeding methodically. The airports were shut down, customs closed, even the rail lines had all been halted. He had merely granted Arthur a final mercy. All those desperate gamblers thought they could truly escape.

But when the whole city is consumed by fire, where can you flee?