Chapter Text
That night, Yokohama City smelled of petrichor. The lights of the still-open shops reflected on the sodden asphalt. You glance up at the sky, now darkening with rain clouds and night.
The streets are busier than you're used to; you usually get home before this hour. You're stuck in rush hour foot traffic. The amorphous blob of returning commuters jostles and chatters, moving like an organism around you.
You hate it.
The anonymity, that is. You've always had a distaste for the ordinary. It puts you off the same way danger does for most—it makes you uneasy.
You move with the crowd, letting them carry you on, across crosswalks, down sidewalks, and around corners, until the group organism spits you out onto a salty, port-side street. It’s dim and dingy, not at all where you were headed. The streetlights are dimmed by old oil fumes, flickering like delicate candle flames. As you walk, bits of gravel crunch beneath your shoes, the sound echoing in the deadly quiet.
You turn down a narrow street, though it could barely be called that. It's unnamed, most of the asphalt cracked into a texture closer to cobblestone. A chill wind from the adjacent port bites at your fingertips, carrying the heavy scent of oil, brine, and something distinctly metallic.
Warehouses line your left side, their thin metal walls resting on cracking cement foundations, rusted from years of being battered by the salty wind. You flinch as another gust rattles one such wall, a grinding groan that vibrates into the soles of your feet.
The metallic smell grows stronger. It must be the rusted buildings.
You continue down the dilapidated street, your gaze lingering on the ocean. The sky has grayed on this cloudy night, and the water looks far more muted than usual. The rotting wooden fence along the port is dull as if something had washed the color out of the world, like an old photograph. A third gust of wind bites at your face, snapping you out of your reverie—you hadn't noticed you’d halted your walk.
You count the warehouses as you pass by—three already, then another. You count the narrow alleys between them, each one grimier than the last. By the sixth warehouse, your foot kicks something small and metallic. It’s too shiny and new for this place.
A bullet casing.
You stoop to pick it up and spot another brass glint under the grubby streetlights. Suddenly, the metallic scent and chill wind feel much more sinister. Your eyes scan the ground, and with every glance, more sparks of brass reveal themselves. There must be at least a few hundred casings.
The wind tears another groan from the warehouse walls. The metallic scent is overpowering now—you can’t smell the sea anymore, nor the oil or rubber.
You resume your slow pace, feeling more casing crunch beneath your shoes. You’re not sure when you started running, but the wind now rushes up your back like an ushering hand. The world feels too silent, even with the whistling wind, groaning walls, and the steady crunch of casings and gravel underfoot. Your lungs burn, and the taste of metal lingers in your throat.
A wet slosh stops you in your tracks. You’re almost afraid to look down, but you already know what you’ll see: a puddle of red, red, red blood. And your foot is standing right in it.
You force your gaze downward. You were almost right. This isn’t a puddle—it’s a pool, metallic red blood trickling down from the steps of an open warehouse door. A man in a simple black suit lies sprawled across the entrance. The blood in the pool comes from his back, his side, his arm—he's riddled with too many holes to tell.
You reach for your phone, halfway to dialing the emergency number, before stopping. Why? You don’t know this man. You don’t know what happened here. You don’t have any reason to care.
But you do have a reason to be curious. Against your better judgment, you take the steps into the warehouse one at a time, careful to avoid the pooling blood. The trail left by your toe is unavoidable, unfortunately.
The inside of the warehouse is worse. It looks like a massacre. The air tastes tangy from blood and gritty with gunpowder. Casings litter the floor like gold coins in a dragon’s hoard. Blood is everywhere—sprays, pools, and drips. Bodies litter the ground like the casings, bullet holes marking them and the walls. In the center of the open warehouse lies the most interesting thing: a boy, willow-thin and dressed like the other dead men.
You carefully approach his body, dodging puddles of blood and corpses. He’s pale as his white button-up shirt—young, too. Your age at most. His hair is stuck to his forehead with blood, staining the bandages wrapped around his face crimson. You amend your thoughts—he’s dressed slightly differently. His basic slacks and button-up shirt are the same, but he’s covered mostly by an oversized overcoat, making him look even smaller. The side of his shirt is ripped and dyed bright crimson.
In the thin strip of dim streetlight slicing in from the door lies a pistol, a few feet from the boy’s right hand. It’s shiny and black. Your gaze jumps between your hands and the pistol. You pick it up gingerly; it’s cold and heavy. There’s a switch on the side of the gun. You slide it down, flinching at the click.
How do you store a pistol like this? In movies, they usually tuck them into their waistband, so you slip the barrel into the waist of your uniform skirt.
You lean over the boy and, after a moment, muster the courage to poke his cheek. He’s still warm. It’s odd, you think, meeting someone just hours after their death. You barely missed another person, again. You lean closer, staring at his face. His eyes are round and a bit childish. You poke the tip of his nose, pick at the tape attaching a plaster to his right cheek—but there’s nothing. You push back the bandages over his eye, and again, nothing. No injuries.
You jump back when the dead boy suddenly grabs for the gun at your hip. The motion sends you sprawling onto your butt, gagging as someone else's blood soaks into your skirt. Your hands are slick, and you want to vomit. He makes another, more successful grab for the pistol.
Then it hits you: this is his gun, found near him in a warehouse that looks like a horror film set. And he’s still alive. It doesn’t take much for your brain to piece together the gory puzzle. He’s killed people, and you have something he wants—a weapon, something capable of deadly force.
You lunge for the gun in his hands, managing a slippery grip on his bandaged wrists. He struggles against you, your blood-coated palms making it hard to control his aim. In the struggle, a shot fires off near your face. The shock of it stills you, a warm drip of blood running down your cheek.
The boy stills too. He halts as if waiting, his rusty red-brown eyes blinking at you. You blink back.
Then, you turn and run, slipping on the blood pooling on the floor. You take corners fast enough to risk twisting your ankles. You care little for the burn in your legs and lungs from the frigid air you gulp down. All your brain recognizes is that you need to get away.