Chapter 3: Trouble

“You’re healing quickly,” Kazuki said as he pulled the thread, dragging the cut flesh close in the process. He had said it like a passing observation, a fact that needed to be stated and required no response. He may as well have been telling Kei to drink vitamins.

As Kei lay reclined on the hospital bed, watching Kazuki suture his wounds, he was tempted to do just that. Ignore the implication and act as worn as he felt. If this had gone like his previous assignments, he’d have collapsed in one of the bunk beds in the building or perhaps been attached to an IV drip here in the infirmary under Kazuki’s care, peacefully asleep.

Yet he knew Kazuki would not drop it. If Kei did not address it now, Kazuki would hound Hanzo and, finding no resolution there, would escalate this to Yoshi. The wisest thing to do was to accept mercy while it was being offered.

“Akari offered me her blood,” Kei muttered, trying and failing to keep the shame off his voice.

Kazuki flicked his eyes up to Kei’s face. “Was it a medical emergency?”

“No. But I was in pain.”

“I’m asking as your doctor—did you feed on her blood often when you were together?”

Kei did his best to keep his face neutral, even as images of Akari slicing her finger and dripping blood into his mouth returned to him. Midnights in the back of his car, with her shoulder exposed and the blood trickling from the small incision she made with his push dagger. Bed sheets streaked with red, unusually bright in the morning light. Haunting reflections of himself in the bathroom mirror, with half his face brown and stiff with dried blood.

Asuka Ito, Aftercare’s manager, was the first to call them out on it two years ago. As Akari’s cousin, she reprimanded them privately and with familial affection. Still, the matter stung.

“I’ll take your silence as a yes.” Kazuki knotted the thread and snipped it with a pair of scissors. “Did she encourage it out of concern?  I understand that her blood has healing properties to people like yourself.”

Kei watched him inspect his other wounds. Kazuki was correct. Some of his cuts that would’ve required at least five stitches had dried up. The skin had not closed altogether, but the site was no longer bleeding.

“Not always,” he whispered. “A lot of times, it was recreational.”

“I appreciate your honesty.”

“Tonight was the first time in two years that I consumed blood directly. We’re thinking it had something to do with the spores and the unusual manifestation of spirits. You’ll see it in her report.”

“I’m sure I will. Akari writes the most detailed reports, especially when you’re the recruitment specialist involved.” Kazuki glanced at the door where Anzu learned to stay during Kei’s treatments. “I was wondering whether she’s as transparent with you about the effects of this particular…feeding activity.”

Kei shifted on the bed to alleviate his discomfort. “I’m not addicted, Kazuki. It just happened. We’re not doing it again.”

“Addiction would be the least of your worries.”

“What?”

“Asuka Ito approached me before your break up with Akari.”

“With all due respect, doctor, but this is old news. She indulged me this once because I was in agony due to overexposure to the liminal space. You cannot begin to imagine the—” He cut himself short and turned towards the door, where Anzu had perked up.

Her tail wagged in response to the echo of a small bark from the corridor. Soon, little Aya sauntered in with her tangled coat and small, smiling face. She was still a puppy, currently half Anzu’s size and possessing none of her threatening air.

Anzu blocked her path to keep her from going further into the infirmary, but Aya could not be stopped. Irked, Anzu pounced on her, pinning her to the ground with her paws and snarling at her face.

“Good girl,” Kei cooed.

Niri ambled into the infirmary in a daze, donning an oversized blouse and a plaid skirt. Her hair was in its usual twin ponytails but unkempt, as if a rogue wind had roughed her up on the way here. She had enough presence of mind to smooth down her bangs to avoid reprimand for her appearance, but she forgot all about it as soon as she spotted the dogs.

“Anzu, stop it. Aya might pee herself again,” she hissed.

Kei whistled, but Anzu wouldn’t listen. She wrapped her mouth around the back of Aya’s neck and began dragging her out.

Niri made an attempt to retrieve Aya, but Anzu was not having it. She stomped her foot. “Kei!”

“Dogs aren’t allowed inside, you know that,” Kei said. He snapped his fingers in the air twice to get Niri’s attention.  “Hey, when’s the last time you got eight hours of sleep?  You’re too young to look like you’re working the graveyard shift.”

“Schoolwork’s killing me. Ask mom.”

Kazuki finished bandaging up Kei. He pointed Niri to the yellow streak on the floor. “Clean that up. Make sure to deodorize.”

“Aya!” Niri screamed into her hands before marching over to the cleaning supplies at the back of the room. She returned soon after with a mop and a bucket of soapy water. “What’s the fuss about anyway? I thought Hanzo was determined to kill every witness to save us the trouble.”

“Young lady,” Kazuki said in a warning tone. “We’re not that kind of company anymore. I wouldn’t have allowed you to get involved otherwise.”

“I’m just saying. We’re singlehandedly raising the cases of PTSD and schizophrenia in this country, among other mental health diseases we have to diagnose these witnesses with to get away with our agenda. We should be able to make them choose whether they want to live with that or die.”

Kei would help Kazuki, but he didn’t want to be a hypocrite. He had almost killed the convenience store woman on the same principle.

“A person in distress is not in the right state of mind to decide between life and death.” Kazuki removed his gloves, the latex making sharp, snapping sounds as he rolled them off his hands. “If we can give them the tools to recover, then we will.”

Niri stopped mopping. She propped her chin on top of the handle and pouted at Kei. “Does she look like she’ll recover? Your witness, I mean.”

Kazuki shot him a look. It was a discreet one, something Niri wouldn’t have caught, but the message was clear to Kei. As Niri’s recruiter, he had received many lectures from her parents about instilling in her high moral values despite the nature of her job.

Sadly, Kei’s moral values had been grey since he was recruited at sixteen. They may as well have told him to fly to the moon with their high expectations.

Just as his silence was beginning to grow awkward, Hanzo walked into the room with a cigarette in hand. He regarded everyone—including the dogs—and motioned for them to follow him. “All of you need to see something.”

They crowded his colorful desk, all of them hunched forward and eyes squinted at his computer screen. The AC hummed steadily in the background, punctuated here and there by distant noises in the building, most of them coming from the infirmary’s direction.

Hanzo, like the showman that he was, presented Ninomae’s portal to them with a flourish. He made a show of logging in, searching for the convenience store woman’s profile, and revealing the error page to them. He refreshed the page, but nothing changed. Kazuki prompted him to try his mobile or restart his browser.

“We’ve done all of that,” Akari said. She showed them her phone. “I’m getting the same results on my portal, and my clearance is higher than Hanzo’s.”

Hanzo reclined on his chair, defeated. “I’ve never encountered this error before.”

“Have you contacted IT?” Kazuki asked.

“I sent an email,  but I doubt they’ll resolve this ASAP. I hope this is just a glitch.”

The error page seemed to glare at Kei with quiet foreboding. “What’s the alternative?”

“I don’t think it’s a glitch.” Niri squeezed herself between Hanzo and her father, with Aya awkwardly cradled in her arms to show him the screen. “It’s telling you not to search.”

“Niri, Aya isn’t a pet. How many times do I have to remind you?” Kei said.

“That’s why I’m keeping her informed. It’s her job to know these things.”

Akari bit her lower lip as she watched Niri and Aya, wanting to reprimand but struggling to find the words. Finally, she said: “Sweetheart, Recruitment Support will see you’re babying Aya and will appoint you another dog. It’s a miracle they allowed you to get a labrador like you requested. It might not happen again.”

“I’ll baby her.” Hanzo carried Aya over to his lap. The puppy settled against his chest immediately. “This dog’s the only reason I haven’t hanged myself yet in Yoshi’s office.”

Kei pulled out a chair and dropped on it. Anzu sat beside him, sniffing his bandaged chest. “Yoshi keeps the noose in his third drawer. It’s quality stuff.”

“Why does he keep a noose?” Niri asked.

 “Yoshi often threatens us that he’ll hang himself in his office for everyone to see if we don’t get our act together. He made a show of bringing that rope to the office, so we’ll know he’s serious.”

Akari touched Niri’s hand, motherly. “It’s a really dark, inappropriate joke. It’s not okay that he does that, but we’re quite an eccentric bunch.”

“Oh, that’s alright.” She shrugged. “I went with Kei to an assignment last month, and I saw this poor guy munching on his forearm. His possession was quite severe. If you were with us, you could’ve performed an exorcism and delivered him.”

“Alright, alright.” Kei nodded at the screen once more. He knew these stories upset Kazuki. “Let’s go over the possible explanations before we hang ourselves.”

Hanzo was about to speak when the elevator dinged. All of them froze, wide-eyed, waiting. Phlegmy coughs resounded from the corridor, marked by heavy footfalls and angry muttering. It made Kei slide down his chair and hide his face in his hands, the mere noises he associated with Yoshi enough to make him feel faint.

Akari noticed him and frowned. “Stop acting like he can fire you, Kei.”

Hanzo mimicked him, going as far as hugging Aya closer to him to use as a shield.  “Who the fuck called him? He’s never this early.”

Kazuki wasn’t paying attention to them. While they bantered, he restarted the computer and logged in to the portal with his account multiple times to no avail. “How many attempts have you made, Hanzo?”

“Lots.”

“I have a feeling we’re about to discover something new about Ninomae’s portal.” Straightening up, he raised his hand in the air. “Yoshi, we’re over here.”

Yoshi stood at the mouth of the cubicle, taking them all in with a blank expression. His tousled grey hair and crumpled dress shirt, mixed with the acidic scent of liquor hovering about him, suggested late hours at the bar with his army friends.

Kei imagined his boss had just passed out when whoever from hell alerted him of their troubles.

Akari stood and bowed. Yoshi acknowledged her and glanced at the computer to her left. In a voice so hoarse it was painful to listen to, he ordered everyone to log out of their portals—-pronto.

“I want everyone in the office. We have an emergency,” he said.

Kei stood at the far end of the room, leaning against the wall with his arms folded and his legs crossed at the ankles. A few feet from him sat father and daughter, nursing cups of steaming tea.

The door opened, and Akari entered with Hanzo. She gave Yoshi two tablets of aspirin, and he served him three water bottles and a sandwich. They reported that Ana would be there shortly and that the witness was still asleep.

Something about the eerie quiet of the office, the dim lighting, and the cozy camaraderie in Yoshi’s office made Kei long for Ninomae’s headquarters. There used to be a time when the intricacies of witness management were beneath him. He could drop by the office after a day in the field, accomplish the necessary paperwork, and move on.

Even the dogs there had a certain quality to their barking like they knew how to manage their volume so as not to disturb the many departments that oversaw the running of the business.

Since moving to Kanagawa and becoming a senior recruiter in a smaller branch, he felt the job was getting too hard and too tedious. He liked most of the people he worked with more than he hoped he would, but his heart was still set on returning to Kyoto.

There, everything was impersonal. Professional.

Here, Kei thought as he regarded the people in Yoshi’s office, he felt like he actually had something to lose.

The knock on the door jolted him out of his trance. Ana poked her head through the door, offered everyone a small smile, and entered. Shuto trailed behind her and sat by Akari’s feet. Taisei remained outside, a hulking silhouette near the pantry’s entrance, drinking coffee.

“The patient has no critical injuries, just grazes and bruises. I doubt she’ll wake up before dawn,” Ana said as she approached Yoshi’s desk. “I’m guessing we’re in trouble?”

Kazuki gave up his seat for Ana and stood behind her and Niri instead.

Yoshi waited for her to be seated, looked at everyone for dramatic effect, and started. “I would like to kick off this meeting by thanking Kei for digging us a deeper grave.”

Tired protests arose from the group, with Hanzo telling him to get to the point, Kazuki defending Kei, and Ana telling everyone to calm down. They only quieted down when Niri, in Yoshi’s voice, told everyone that he was sorry for being a drama queen and would now proceed like a professional.

“Hey,” Kei hissed, pointing his finger at her face. “I told you not to use your talents so casually.”

Akari wrapped her arm around Niri. “Maybe don’t be so grumpy?”

“I don’t manifest as strongly as you do. It’s fine,” Niri said.

Kazuki clapped his hand once. “Let’s not waste time anymore. Go ahead, Yoshi.”

Yoshi slurped his water and unwrapped his sandwich. “A very important government official called my personal number earlier.”

Silence descended on their group at once, thick and heavy. It made the crumpling noise of the wrapping paper in Yoshi’s fist unnaturally loud and abrasive.

“He was informed by a government sect that certain employees in our company were repeatedly searching for a specific individual. As you all know, we source our database from the government as part of our partnership, and—”

Hanzo winced, his reaction so exaggerated that it cut Yoshi short. “I have been working here for fifteen years, and nobody told me that they’re monitoring our searches this strictly. This is my first time encountering that error, and I’ve searched for thousands of names throughout my tenure.”

Yoshi raised his mayonnaise-stained hand to stop him. “The likelihood of encountering that error was slim. All I can tell you is that your witness—a Miss Suzu Sakura—could be a government-protected entity for reasons we are not privy to.”

“She’s a convenience store worker,” Kei said. It shouldn’t be this complicated.

“Is she supernatural?” Ana asked.

Akari shook her head. “No. I would’ve detected it.”

“She seems personally acquainted with the professor. He could’ve been hydrating her on Waiki water to suppress any talent,” Kei offered.

Akari turned to him. “Do you want to detox her to check?”

“I’m not questioning your skills. It’s just that there are few reasons why the government would bother with her.”

“We’ll detox her to be sure, but I have my doubts about it being related to anything supernatural,” Yoshi said, subtly shifting his focus from Kei to Akari. “Unless, of course, the government has dipped their toes in the supernatural without informing us. The Blood Families would’ve known by now, yes?”

Everyone made a conscious effort not to stare at her. With how casually she let them treat her, it was easy to forget how high up in the ranks she actually was.

Akari folded her hands on top of her knees, suddenly businesslike. “Our families made a pact with the government. The moment they break that, Ninomae will step back. They’re not stupid enough to risk it.”

“Can you imagine latent talents manifesting out of nowhere?” Hanzo chuckled. “The police force will be obliterated. I’d love to see Aftercare scrubbing blood off the streets, though.”

Ana raised her hand. “Can we uphold a higher standard of morality in this place, please?”

“Aftercare is mean even to me,” Niri said. “I never did anything to them.”

Kazuki patted her shoulder. “They’re overworked, and they deal with a lot of gruesome things.”

“So do I,” Kei said.

Yoshi wiped his lips with a napkin and leaned forward on his desk to address Niri. “Ninomae’s been around for a long, long time. That’s just the way it is between Recruitment and Aftercare. Regardless of how we feel about each other’s work, we cannot function without the other.”

“Because if we don’t create the mess, then they have nothing to clean up. No clean up, no cash,” Hanzo added with a grin.

Akari swatted his arm. “That’s not the point Yoshi was making, and has everybody forgotten that I’m from Aftercare? My family still runs that department.”

“You’re the only sane one in your family,” Kei coughed into his fist.

Akari snapped her head in his direction. “Excuse me?”

Niri gasped.  ‘Is that why you broke up with him?”

Ana tapped the table lightly to get everyone’s attention. “We’re getting sidetracked. Our problem is Suzu Sakurai and how we’re going to handle her.” Once everyone had fallen silent again, she gestured to Yoshi. “Please.”

Yoshi thanked her, knowing he was still too hungover to manage this meeting by himself, and checked his wristwatch. “Headquarters has scheduled a call with me in the next three hours, during which they expect to hear a resolution. We’ll base our course of action on a single fact: how we handle this woman could make or break our standing with HQ. We have to feel our way in the dark because they will not provide us with useful information about her background and her possible value. Do they want us to discard her? Or do they want us to make sure she’s untainted by the events of the previous hours?”

Ana noted the time as well. “I can wake her and conduct an interview. Worse comes to worst, we can play it safe and send her off to a rehabilitation centre. One of the fancy ones we’re affiliated with. Our budget for witness management is still hefty. We can afford it.”

Akari tapped away on her phone. She flipped it to show the photos they had taken of Suzu earlier. “Suzu Sakurai has tattoos. Maybe I can look into that in our family’s archives. I have staff I can call to do the work for us.”

“Tattoos?”

Ana found a pen and paper on Yoshi’s desk and sketched an outline of the human body. “It spans the back of her hand up to her neck.” In long, thick lines, she added the tattoos as she described them. “She has parallel ones beneath her breasts running to her foot. Same on the back of her legs. There’s also one along her spine, too.”

“Do they look fresh?” Kazuki asked.

“I’m no expert, but if I were to compare them to your tattoos, they look…aged and low quality. Unless, of course, the intent was a rugged design. I’m not sure with kids these days,” Ana said.

Kei picked up the paper and studied the lines. Suzu had come across to him as a sharp young lady who wasn’t afraid to stand up to strangers, even one of his stature and demeanor. Her bleached hair gave the impression of being free-spirited, but their brief interaction suggested otherwise. Small tattoos on a woman like her would’ve been a cliché, but a design this big and unusual?

Who willingly put these kinds of tattoos on themselves?

Hanzo stood. He was already twirling a cigarette in his fingers. “I’ll trace her through the professor and see if I can get a hit on her parents. If we can somehow break into her phone, that’ll help, too. Aftercare should’ve retrieved it.”

Akari stood. “I’ll fetch it for you.”

“I’ll see if I can wake her up and conduct an interview,” Ana said with a sigh. “It wouldn’t be optimal for her, but I guess we have no choice.”

“I’ll meet you all here again in one hour. Then we’ll decide what to do.” Yoshi bit off the corner of his sandwich, looking more sober now, and waved Kei over. “Everybody can leave except you. We need to talk.”

Suzu blinked. The familiar ceiling of her childhood home had not disappeared yet. She couldn’t remember exactly what had happened before she fell asleep, but she knew deep in her gut that this did not make sense.

Lifting her leaden arms, she saw that they were shorter and skinnier. Her fingernails, pink and glossy with a fresh manicure, had cheap stickers plastered all over them: hearts, Stars, Hello Kitty. Suzu shifted in the bed to test her surroundings and noted how lithe and small she felt in her body.

Rising slowly to a sitting position, she took several deep breaths and then looked up. Ahead of her, the mirror confirmed what she suspected.

She had travelled back in time again. She was in another dream that was waiting to morph into a nightmare.

Stripping off her pyjamas, she stood in front of the full-length mirror and studied the tattoos. It had been over a year since the last of her aches from its application had disappeared completely. Whatever sting she felt beneath her skin was only psychological, according to her father.

Still, it hurt.

She put on a training bra and the first shirt she found in her closet. The striped pink shirt was two sizes too big, which meant the cuffs fell past her hands and had to be rolled back. She wouldn’t have to apply makeup on her hands until later, if she decided to go out. Not that she went out a lot these days. The outside world was not the same one she had spent the first few years of her life in.

A shuffling noise within the apartment caught her attention. At once, she scrambled for the bat on her bed and tried to calm her breathing.

Her father would’ve yelled if someone attempted to break into their house. Also, it was broad daylight. Who would try to kidnap her in broad daylight? With one hand holding up the bat, she put on her pyjama bottoms and listened some more.

Now she could hear the sputtering of the coffee maker and then the sizzling of the pan. Indoor slippers slapped against the wooden floor. A lot of them all at once. Her trembling subsided as she remembered that today was her birthday, and they probably had guests.

Suzu talked herself into letting go of the baseball bat and then into leaving the room. The anxiety pulsing through her body abated a little when she reached the mouth of the corridor and saw who was making all the noise.

Her father’s childhood friends crowded the kitchen and argued in hushed voices. One of them protested the mess as he wiped the counter, and another complained about their collective cooking skills. Maybe they should just order the food. Maybe they should’ve invited their wives, but someone pointed out that they didn’t want Suzu to be conscious of her tattoos.

Her father peered over his shoulder, probably to make sure that she wasn’t up yet, and spotted her in the corridor. He yelped, and the rest of them reacted to her with varying expressions of surprise. To their credit, they quickly recovered by singing Happy Birthday.

Suzu smiled at her feet, her cheeks burning with both embarrassment and joy.  As they sang, they put a birthday hat on her and a cheap collection of party costumes like paper sunglasses and feathery shawls. They extended the song for as long as it took her father to bring out the birthday cake and light the candle.

Suzu observed them with a tight-lipped smile, too happy that it was beginning to be uncomfortable.

These men were her father’s university classmates. Most of them had been his friends since elementary school. They were in a literary and exploration club, where half the time they were discovering new things together and the other half they spent recovering from the inflictions of their bullies.

They hugged her and raced to give her presents. It was as if they were competing to see who could gift her the thickest book or the oldest edition. The Checkers played in the background. The smoke alarm went off, and one of them hurried to the stove.

Someone tapped her shoulder. She turned around, beaming, and saw Professor Kaede.

Blood dripped from his torn mouth to her face, startling her with its coldness. His teeth fell to the floor, and with a cough, his tongue followed. The wet flesh landed on her feet, rough and slimy.

Suzu opened her mouth to scream, but no voice came out of her. Everything had gone silent. She was expelling air from her lungs until her chest hurt, but she could not hear herself.

Apparently, nobody could.

Suzu blinked. The world changed. Above her was a ceiling she did not know. Had never seen before. The sound of her own panting scared her. Without moving, she took in the mellow light and the stiff white blanket that covered her body. She knew without checking that she was not wearing her own clothes and that her limbs were exposed.

Suzu sat up and braced herself.

Where was she? Did they manage to get her after all?