Read Online Maohden Vol. 1 by Hideyuki Kikuchi - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Hideyuki Kikuchi
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that.”
“Let’s stop screwing around, okay? I’ve got to strike while the iron is hot. Mine is not the kind of job that can wait another day. I don’t have any qualms about pulling the trigger. Perhaps if I presented your head on a platter, the Aki clan will make me a better offer. Tell me what I want to know.”
“A good idea,” said Gento, not hiding the mirth in his voice.
Sasaki felt a burning in his gut, an anger born of holding the clear advantage in the showdown but being dissed anyway. His emotions snapped like an over-tightened string. It wasn’t hard shooting a person. Even with Gento dead, there was still Setsura Aki to deal with. But he couldn’t be as big a pain in the ass as this guy.
The six reports echoed off the walls and ceiling. Sasaki grimaced at the painful shock to his ears. Without a second glance at the body lying beneath the haze of blue smoke, he turned toward the door. The interrogation rooms were soundproof, but there was no point in overstaying his welcome.
A cold sensation crawled across his skin. He stopped. He looked back. Gento’s smile drifted up behind the fog of gun smoke like a flower.
“Want to give it another shot?”
Gento thrust out his hand in front of Sasaki’s face. A hard, metallic sound came from the tabletop. Sasaki looked down as the spent bullets spilled from his hand. The deformed slugs suggested they had all struck home.
Gento opened his hand and showed his palm to Sasaki. It was covered with metal. The skin shone with a black luster. Based on how smoothly he unfurled his fingers, it must be a very flexible foil. The condition of the bullets was evidence of its hardness.
But that wasn’t what struck Sasaki dumb. How had he snagged those bullets in midair? Those lumps of lead traveled at up to two thousand feet a second.
“What are you doing?” Gento asked with a perfectly straight face. “If you have to be on your way, then you’d better be on your way. Before my mood changes for the worse.”
Sasaki began his retreat only several seconds after Gento made this pronouncement. He was in way over his head in the weirdness. All he wanted to do right then was get out of that police station. He couldn’t help feeling a sense of brotherhood with this Aki fellow, whose face he wouldn’t even recognize.
Even after leaving the room and heading to the elevators, he kept his eyes focused on that door, practically running down the hallway backwards.
Part Four: Doctor Mephisto
Chapter One
It was one of those dreary, two thousand yen a night rooms, in one of those cheap hotels that could be found just about anywhere in Shinjuku. Hardly ten feet by ten feet, equipped with a metal-frame bed, a metal desk and chair—old, used, secondhand and bargain basement.
The ceiling lamps provided sufficient illumination, though the sterile white light did nothing to dampen that bleak sense of a winter landscape.
The reason was obvious. The bare concrete walls had the effect of enervating the human mind as soon as anyone stepped into the room. An organic person would never truly feel at home among the inorganic.
Through a flimsy plywood door in one corner was a toilet and bath. Nothing else. A cold, hard space that suggested nothing of the “life force” engendered by all living things.
But there was something living there, a black silhouette lying on his back on the white mattress. It would be no exaggeration to describe his youthful features as sculpturesque, perhaps chiseled from pale marble by the hands of an accomplished artist.
Light shone off him, a brilliant kind of beauty, brighter than the light itself. But calling it the “light of life” suggested that, contrary to the average man on the street, this young man was a kind of antimatter formed from moonlight. He breathed in air and breathed out moon dust. The touch of his fingers surely left behind traces of frost.
Such was the unapproachable beauty found in too perfect a mien. And in the countenance
“Let’s stop screwing around, okay? I’ve got to strike while the iron is hot. Mine is not the kind of job that can wait another day. I don’t have any qualms about pulling the trigger. Perhaps if I presented your head on a platter, the Aki clan will make me a better offer. Tell me what I want to know.”
“A good idea,” said Gento, not hiding the mirth in his voice.
Sasaki felt a burning in his gut, an anger born of holding the clear advantage in the showdown but being dissed anyway. His emotions snapped like an over-tightened string. It wasn’t hard shooting a person. Even with Gento dead, there was still Setsura Aki to deal with. But he couldn’t be as big a pain in the ass as this guy.
The six reports echoed off the walls and ceiling. Sasaki grimaced at the painful shock to his ears. Without a second glance at the body lying beneath the haze of blue smoke, he turned toward the door. The interrogation rooms were soundproof, but there was no point in overstaying his welcome.
A cold sensation crawled across his skin. He stopped. He looked back. Gento’s smile drifted up behind the fog of gun smoke like a flower.
“Want to give it another shot?”
Gento thrust out his hand in front of Sasaki’s face. A hard, metallic sound came from the tabletop. Sasaki looked down as the spent bullets spilled from his hand. The deformed slugs suggested they had all struck home.
Gento opened his hand and showed his palm to Sasaki. It was covered with metal. The skin shone with a black luster. Based on how smoothly he unfurled his fingers, it must be a very flexible foil. The condition of the bullets was evidence of its hardness.
But that wasn’t what struck Sasaki dumb. How had he snagged those bullets in midair? Those lumps of lead traveled at up to two thousand feet a second.
“What are you doing?” Gento asked with a perfectly straight face. “If you have to be on your way, then you’d better be on your way. Before my mood changes for the worse.”
Sasaki began his retreat only several seconds after Gento made this pronouncement. He was in way over his head in the weirdness. All he wanted to do right then was get out of that police station. He couldn’t help feeling a sense of brotherhood with this Aki fellow, whose face he wouldn’t even recognize.
Even after leaving the room and heading to the elevators, he kept his eyes focused on that door, practically running down the hallway backwards.
Part Four: Doctor Mephisto
Chapter One
It was one of those dreary, two thousand yen a night rooms, in one of those cheap hotels that could be found just about anywhere in Shinjuku. Hardly ten feet by ten feet, equipped with a metal-frame bed, a metal desk and chair—old, used, secondhand and bargain basement.
The ceiling lamps provided sufficient illumination, though the sterile white light did nothing to dampen that bleak sense of a winter landscape.
The reason was obvious. The bare concrete walls had the effect of enervating the human mind as soon as anyone stepped into the room. An organic person would never truly feel at home among the inorganic.
Through a flimsy plywood door in one corner was a toilet and bath. Nothing else. A cold, hard space that suggested nothing of the “life force” engendered by all living things.
But there was something living there, a black silhouette lying on his back on the white mattress. It would be no exaggeration to describe his youthful features as sculpturesque, perhaps chiseled from pale marble by the hands of an accomplished artist.
Light shone off him, a brilliant kind of beauty, brighter than the light itself. But calling it the “light of life” suggested that, contrary to the average man on the street, this young man was a kind of antimatter formed from moonlight. He breathed in air and breathed out moon dust. The touch of his fingers surely left behind traces of frost.
Such was the unapproachable beauty found in too perfect a mien. And in the countenance
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