K side red, p.7
K Side Red, page 7
“…will that happen to Mikoto, too?”
In response to the small girl’s straightforward question, Suou smiled self-depreciatingly.
“Who knows.”
Honestly, there were moments where he thought that wasn’t bad. Moments where he thought he would want to just use up all of his power.
But the sight waiting after that is what’s shown in this damned dream. This was Shizume City, having been completely destroyed by Suou’s power. And that, to Suou, was how the future would be.
Anna was silent for a while, looking straight at Suou. And then, she slowly opened her mouth.
“You have something you can’t throw away, don’t you.”
Suou frowned at her words. What a cheeky brat, he thought. Sometimes, he was assaulted by urges to destroy that were difficult to control. Sometimes he wanted to let loose the aching power within him, taste a moment where his blood could boil, and throw away all the shackles binding him.
However, Suou was aware of the things that he would lose if he were to end up doing that. And so, whenever he was assaulted by those urges, in order to kill them, he would chip away at his feelings and ambitions, becoming like a living corpse.
That was a way to protect the people around him from himself.
“Mikoto.”
Suddenly, Anna spoke.
“Mikoto is pretty.”
Being called something he had never been called in his entire life, Suou made a questioning face. Come to think of it, he remembered that Anna was only able to see red, and that she was able to see the red color of his powers. He sighed lightly.
“You’re a difficult brat, too, aren’t you.”
Upon opening his eyes, Suou saw Anna, who was sitting up on the bed. Still lying on the couch, he turned his face to look at her. After carrying Anna who had fainted to the bed, Suou had nothing to do and dozed off on the sofa. And then, they accidentally shared their dreams, most likely.
“…Are you feeling okay?”
Anna no longer had a white face like she did when she fell. To Suou’s question, she nodded a little.
“I see.”
What a weird kid, Suou thought as he closed his eyes again.
++++++++
Fushimi’s glasses reflected light from the monitor as he faced the computer. From behind, Totsuka and Yata peeked at what he was doing.
Yata and company had successfully invaded the Center’s research area and were breaking through the security of a computer to take a look at the data within.
“Hey, how much longer? If you don’t hurry, someone’s gonna come.”
“You’re annoying. Be quiet.”
Fushimi replied in an annoyed way to Yata, who was irritably rushing him. Kamamoto was keeping watch at the door to make sure no one would come. Several times, someone would pass through the hallway and make them nervous.
“…this, huh.”
Along with Fushimi’s small whisper, a search window opened. In it, Fushimi typed 'Kushina Anna’. Along with blinking words saying one had been found, Anna’s face appeared. Her doll-like photograph and profile were shown first. Within that profile was the matter of the day her parents died.
Kushina Tetsuya and Ayuri died in a traffic accident. They crashed due to a malfunction with their breaks. They both died instantly from cerebral contusion.
Yata scowled at the facts written. Remembering Anna, who was so expressionless despite her age, he almost started feeling bad, and quickly shook his head. Fushimi scrolled down more. What continued down the article was written in a difficult, jumbled up way, but even Yata could tell it was talking about Anna’s abilities as a Strain.
Anna’s abilities were 'high level empathic powers’. On top of that, it was labeled 'danger levels high. observation required’. Yata frowned.
“Is that kid’s power really something that dangerous? It’s just that she’s seeing lots of different things, right? How is that bad?"
To what Yata said, Fushimi snorted a bit as he ran his eyes down the screen.
"In other words, either there’s a danger that it’s not just something like clairvoyance, or they want to be able to use 'because she’s dangerous’ as an excuse.”
When Yata looked like he was about to question that, Kamamoto moved. Jumping back from the door he had been watching out of, he whispered 'someone’s coming!’. Fushimi clicked his tongue, closed the window with Anna’s information in it, and forcibly shut off the computer.
The four of them hiding themselves in the shadow of a desk and the room’s door opening happened at almost the same moment. Opening it loudly, a man in a white coat came in.
“Hm? Who left this mess out?” Saying that in a suspicious voice, the man approached. While the computer was turned off, they had ended up leaving a bunch of files open on the desk.
Watching the man’s face from the shadow of the desk, Yata thought. Should they run across the floor and escape? But if four men moved, then surely they’d be noticed. There wasn’t any choice but to use force.
When Yata began to stand up, having decided to beat the guy up and shut him up, Totsuka noticed it just in time and held him back. Without actually saying anything, they gave each other looks that said 'What are you doing!?’ and 'Calm down!’ silently, then Totsuka while still holding Yata down gestured at Fushimi with his other hand.
Fushimi sighed slightly, moved along the floor, and when the man came up to the desk he swiftly got behind him. Fushimi hit the back of the man’s neck with a chop. It was light, but the man in the white coat fell without a single sound. Yata looked indignant and turned to Totsuka who was holding him.
“Why’d you let Saruhiko do it even though you stopped me?”
“You were just going to beat him up like usual, right? I keep telling you it’ll be bad if we make a fuss.”
Yata looked away feeling sulky when Totsuka said that. That was true, so he couldn’t complain, but as it was, he felt like Fushimi was more trusted than him, so he didn’t like it.
“Though, now that this has happened, it’s only a matter of time until they find out we’ve sneaked in.”
Totsuka, who looked unconcerned about Yata’s sulking, folded his arms and said,
“If we had to say what else we wanted to check out, it would be…"
He looked at Fushimi, who said with a bored look,
"Of course, the place where they’ve actually got the Strains, right.”
+++++++++++
It was a surprisingly peaceful scene in the place they reached by following the map of the Center Fushimi had hacked.
Rather than a facility, it had an atmosphere more like a school dorm, and people who appeared to be Strains were loitering around. Coming this far, the four of them looked less out of place than they did in the hospital. If it was within the Strains who walked around freely, then there wasn’t a need for Yata and company to hide, and it was surprisingly simple for them to mix in.
“Things look unexpectedly free, don’t they. I thought it’d be a place more like a lab or something."
Said Kamamoto as he hurriedly looked around the area. Yata shoved Kamamoto’s head down with one hand.
"Don’t look around! They’ll think something’s up!"
"You’re noisy, too.” Fushimi said as he looked at Yata dully. Looking down at his terminal, Fushimi whispered like he was talking to himself.
“…the reason why this place is so open is probably just because the only Strains here are ones without particularly great powers. Guys with more important or dangerous ones would be more properly isolated… looking at this, that’s probably underground.”
Fushimi looked to the side at Totsuka.
“What do you want to do? If you want to get in there, then not making a fuss… I think it’ll be impossible.”
In response to Fushimi’s heatless, indifferent words, Totsuka smiled away in an unconcerned way.
“That’d be bad. I guess we can’t go that far. We need to do our best to stay out of trouble this time.”
Without going in any deeper, then what they could do to get as most information as they could would be…
As Yata folded his arms to think, someone spoke to them from behind.
“Hm? I haven’t seen you all around. New guys?”
The one who spoke to them was a friendly-looking Strain boy of about seventeen or eighteen. Just what they needed. Yata put on a smile. With an expression so bright it was fakey, he went up to the boy and threw an arm around his shoulders like they were good friends.
“Hey, sorry, but could you talk to us for a sec?”
The Strain boy’s face was drawn when Yata’s smile suddenly invaded his personal space.
“Sooo, basically, we came to check and make sure you guys aren’t being treated unfairly. Got it?”
In the deserted hallway they had taken the Strain boy to, Yata was saying that to him in a threatening way, arm still around his shoulders.
At a glance, it looked like they were in the process of shaking him down.
Yata who completely had the taste of a thug who was acting under the guise of friendliness, the huge-bodied Kamamoto who wasn’t saying anything but just standing there to the side, Fushimi who was boredly leaning against the window and looking outside with an unreadable expression, and finally, Totsuka whose thoughts were impossible to read under his smiley face.
The Strain boy was totally nervous.
“…um, no… there’s nothing particularly unfair… the food’s actually pretty good…”
“There’s something, isn’t there! Getting forced into human experiments called "check-ups”, or being treated like cows, or getting beaten up when you disobey at all!“
"No… not really…”
The boy scratched his chin with a completely troubled face as he looking from side to side as if to find a way to escape.
“In fact, since you can get some compensation if you cooperate with the examinations, some people come just because they want to… I mean, I’m one of them…”
“Aah?” Yata ended up letting out a threatening voice at this situation, where it seemed like the theory about the Center being the bad guys wasn’t matching up.
Strange. Even though the blues who appeared in front of Anna last night showed a bad atmosphere.
“Even if that’s true for you, do you know anything about how the Strains with stronger powers are treated?” Totsuka asked with a smile.
“Not really… well, there’s lots of weird rumors, though."
Yata leaped at what the Strain boy mumbled immediately.
"Hey, hey, there IS something! Try telling us.”
“No, but, it’s just a baseless rumor… that in the basement, there’s Strains who were caught committing crimes and they’re being secretly experimented on to turn them into something like living weapons…”
“That, that, that, that!” Yata got excited and his eyes shone. In contrast, the Strain boy got less and less excited.
“…it’s seriously just a rumor. There’s not many guys who take it seriously.”
“No, they’re totally experimenting on Strains. My intuition says so.” Yata folded his arms and nodded to himself.
“Have any other weird things been going on?” When Totsuka asked, the Strain boy tilted his head in a troubled way.
“Even if you say that, what’s weird and what isn’t… I’ve even gotten used to stuff like the 'Rabbit’s’ inspections even though they took me by surprise at first, so…”
“The rabbit’s inspections?” Yata frowned at the weird-sounding word.
“You don’t know about the 'Rabbits’? They’re the guys with the weird masks. They wear a creepy mask that’s got something like rabbit ears sticking out, and they wear something like kimono… they come at certain times and look around the center. It’s super creepy. Since they’re all wearing the same masks and kimono so you can’t tell them apart at all. Instead of a group of people, they feel more like different creatures…”
“…They’re personal guards."
Totsuka spoke.
"They’re a group who never show their faces and their identities are unknown. They wait on the golden king, and if they receive orders they’ll do anything… the reason why superpowered kings are able to exist without causing much of a fuss is thanks to the 'Rabbit’s’ information control unit. They show up when something happens that could cause a panic in society and make the memories people have related to dangerous things vague, apparently… I guess the 'inspections’ are them coming to check and make sure everything’s being run properly."
Yata went 'hmph’ as Totsuka spoke while looking off into space, trying to recall.
"If the personal guards’ examinations are that exaggerated, then even if this facility is under the Golden King’s reign, it doesn’t seem like he trusts them all that much.”
Totsuka nodded. Watching Fushimi and Totsuka’s conversation, Yata went 'hmm’ and let his voice spill out.
“Not being able to trust his own comrades or whatever, that golden king guy’s a weirdo.” He thought it was the kind of thing that would be unthinkable in Homura. Suddenly, he realized that Fushimi was looking coldly in his direction.
Totsuka smiled wryly as though to intervene.
“Well, the golden clan is so huge compared to everyone else you can’t compare them, so it’s completely different from us.”
“You guys, you’re red clansmen… huh.” Said the Strain boy as he looked at Yata and the others. Kamamoto stepped forward, cornering the boy.
“Don’t tell anyone about us, 'kay? …Anyway, when those 'Rabbit’? Guys come to inspect things, do the guys here act like they’re trying to hide something, or anything like that?"
The boy looked like he was desperately trying to think.
"Aah… well… the Center guys look kinda nervous before the 'Rabbits’ come. Come to think of it, Mizuchi-san also-”
Partway through what the boy was saying, Yata felt a chill run down his neck. Before confirming the situation, he followed his instincts and shoved the talking boy away before jumping back.
Where Yata and the boy had been standing a moment ago, along with a sharp cutting sound there was a silver flash. Yata’s cheek hurt. He turned around. To the side, he saw Fushimi get out several knives and get ready in the corner of his eye.
Behind Yata and company, there was a guy in blue holding an unsheathed saber. Thin eyes looking out from under a long black fringe, and thin lips. Cheeks that looked smooth.
“You…” Yata glared at the blue guy. He felt blood run down his cheek. His skin had surely been cut slightly. He had been cut at from behind with no warning.
“I didn’t think we’d meet again so soon.” On a face that looked like a Noh mask, the guy in blue wore a slight smile. It was the blue clansman Yata and Kamamoto had come in contact with last night.
“I said that the next time we decide you’re in the way of our mission, we’ll kill you, right?” From behind the black-haired blue guy, another blue guy with light brown hair and the exact same face appeared, saying this while mixing glee into his smooth voice.
“…Yata.”
“These guys are the creepy twins we met last night.” Yata said in response to Totsuka’s quiet question without looking away from the twins in blue. He had a cold sweat on his back. He had only just recently become a clansman and didn’t have much experience, but he was blessed in power. And yet he (and, as far as he could tell, Fushimi) hadn’t noticed the blues at all until the moment they attacked.
“Haha!” Laughed the black haired guy in blue.
“Fufu!” Laughed the brown haired guy in blue as well.
“You’re intruders, aren’t you?”
“You’re who we’re too elimate, aren’t you?”
Totsuka looked between the blue twins who spoke alternatingly with a smile that was starting to look a bit nervous.
“…if we surrender quietly, would you listen to what we have to say?”
“It’s no good, Totsuka-san. You should get back.” Yata dropped his skateboard to the ground and put on foot on it, getting into position. No matter how he looked at it, it didn’t seem like they’d be able to negotiate peaceably. They had killing intent leaking out.
