Adachi Ward,
Daishimaecho, Fourth Street.
Knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock.
After three quick knocks followed by two slow ones, the apartment door opened without a sound.
The visitor slipped inside at once. The door closed behind him, as if nothing had happened.
"Hase, have you gotten in touch with anyone else?"
The apartment was thick with smoke. The acrid stench of cigarettes and alcohol made the newcomer frown.
"Don't even ask."
"Kazehara, you should smoke less."
Hase glanced at the table, where the ashtray was packed with cigarette butts. Taking off his hat and mask, he frowned in annoyance.
"Trying to set off the fire alarm?"
"What does it matter? We're finished. All of us."
Kazehara dropped back onto the sofa. His scruffy face was framed by bloodshot eyes, as if he hadn't slept in days.
In truth, ever since the organization had suddenly collapsed, none of the Broken Tooth Gang members out in the field had been able to sleep peacefully. They'd tried contacting their superiors, fleeing Adachi Ward, and even calling the police, but every attempt had hit a wall.
That's right. They'd tried to turn themselves in, only to be chased out of the police station!
"This isn't normal. This is definitely not normal..."
Kazehara, who'd been smoking all day, trembled and muttered to himself. Curled up on the sofa, the two-hundred-pound man looked like a helpless young woman.
"Whatever's going on, we have to find a way to survive."
Hase sighed. He'd gone out to buy food.
He still couldn't make sense of the situation. He'd woken up one morning to hear that the organization's headquarters had been surrounded by a huge number of police officers. Soon, they couldn't reach any of the other members out in the field. When they tried calling their superiors for help, the moment the other side heard their voices, they hung up.
It was as if the whole world had turned against them. Whenever they tried to leave the street, fully armed police officers appeared to stop them.
With nowhere else to turn, the two had even tried to surrender. But then something bizarre happened.
The police told them to get lost,
threatening to shoot them on the spot if they made another "false emergency call"!
They weren't bluffing. The officers had actually drawn their guns.
In this island nation, where firing a single shot required pages of paperwork, they'd just brazenly pulled their guns!
Not wanting to be shot on the spot, the two had no choice but to hide in this rented apartment, waiting helplessly for whatever came next.
"Damn it!"
"What the hell is going on?"
Kazehara clutched his head on the sofa, feeling as if the whole world were filled with malice toward them.
"We were just bouncers at a hostess club, and sold a little dope on the side! Even if we went to prison, we'd get ten years at most. What the hell is happening?!"
"How should I know?"
Hase sighed and sank onto the sofa too.
Those police officers were bizarre. It was as if they only wanted to keep them "trapped" in this area, waiting for something to happen.
"Hey, Kazehara. Do you think—"
Crack.
?!
A sharp snap sounded nearby, and Hase spun around.
Thud.
Kazehara's neck had been twisted around, his face turned toward his back. He crashed heavily to the floor.
A tall figure stood behind the sofa where Kazehara had been sitting. No one knew how long he'd been there.
He wore a hoodie, and a thick, bushy beard covered his face and spilled down his cheeks. With his hulking frame, he looked like some beast that hadn't finished evolving.
A monster!
Wait. Could this be—
Was this why the police had surrounded them?
The figure's emotionless gaze fell on Hase. As Hase shot to his feet, a thought flashed through his mind.
He was going to die.
"...Sir, could I make a phone call?"
?
Facing the Broken Tooth Gang member's request, Tanimura Wataru made no move to stop him. What would it matter if the man called the police?
With his current abilities, he could easily slip into a sewer before the police arrived.
Tokyo was a vast city with a population of more than thirty million.
Beneath it stretched an immense network of underground tunnels, beyond the imagination of ordinary people. The pitch-black sewers might be dangerous to an ordinary person, but to Tanimura Wataru, who had become a "half-demon," they were a hunting ground he could roam at will.
"Hello, Kohei?"
"Your father has something to tell you—"
Under Tanimura Wataru's cold gaze, the thug opposite him took out his phone and made a call.
"Take care of your mother. And don't end up on the same path as me."
Schhk.
Claws slashed through the air.
A head shot skyward.
The headless body toppled backward onto the floor.
From the phone that had fallen with it came an urgent voice: "Old man, what happened to you?"
"Two."
That was enough.
Turning around, he leaped lightly onto the open apartment window and crouched on the sill. Tanimura Wataru surveyed the city beneath the night sky. The police hadn't spotted him. Good.
The next moment, he strolled down the apartment wall in a pose that could have made Newton rise from his grave.
All he had to do was concentrate his "demonic energy" beneath his feet, and he could walk anywhere with ease.
?
Killing someone was as easy for him now as eating or drinking.
He hadn't gone far when Tanimura Wataru's gaze sharpened beneath his hood.
"Roadwork ahead."
"Please use another route. We apologize for the inconvenience—"
A manhole cover had been lifted, and road barriers had been set up around it. A worker holding a glowing baton stepped forward, signaling that Tanimura Wataru couldn't go any farther.
This?
This had been his route "home."
Now it was a work site. Tanimura Wataru glanced over. Two workers were busy down in the sewer, and it was clearly already full.
There was no choice. He'd have to go somewhere else.
"Mm."
He nodded slightly to the worker in front of him.
Tanimura Wataru, hulking in his hoodie, walked away without a word. The electrical worker couldn't help wiping away a bead of sweat.
"What a terrifying man."
Just standing in front of him had made the worker's breathing stop without him realizing it.
"So tall and muscular. He must be a fitness fanatic, right?"
Maybe a boxer or something?
Shaking his head, the electrical worker went back to keeping watch, in case of a work-site accident.
But—
"Hello, headquarters."
"There's nothing wrong with the line."
"What? We still have to stay here even if there's nothing wrong?!"
From beneath the open manhole came the puzzled voices of the two electrical workers.
Their superior's voice crackled through the radio, ordering them to stop complaining and keep checking. The two workers looked at each other, then resigned themselves to staying in the stinking sewer.
What a joke!
Damn it.
He hadn't gone far before two police officers appeared ahead, walking toward him.
Tanimura Wataru kept himself in a "half-transformed" state. His towering, muscular body and the dog fur that formed a bushy beard on his face made him look less like a man in his twenties and more like one in his forties. Even so, he instinctively wanted to avoid the police.
It wasn't that these two officers were enough to frighten him. It was what they represented.
The state!
Killing two police officers would be easy for him.
But if that brought in the army, Tanimura Wataru would have no choice but to flee in disgrace. If he was unlucky, he might not get away at all.
His demonic energy had greatly strengthened his body, but he still wasn't "invulnerable."
With that in mind, Tanimura Wataru immediately turned around.
"Hey, you, big guy!"
"Wait—"
Maybe it was because he was so tall, or maybe the way he hid his face beneath his hood looked suspicious. Either way, the two officers had noticed him.
There was no time to think. Tanimura Wataru immediately quickened his pace.
"Stop!"
The two patrol officers instinctively shouted and ran after him.
For a moment, the pedestrians on the street watched the chase with curiosity.
On one side was a tall man with his face hidden by a hood, who clearly looked like bad news. On the other were police officers wearing peaked caps. In Adachi Ward, this sort of scene was actually pretty common.
So the pedestrians all stopped and calmly took out their phones.
This was trouble.
With Tanimura Wataru's physique, shaking off the two patrol officers would be easy.
But with so many cameras pointed at him, he couldn't transform on the spot and scale the walls. Even moving too fast could land him on the front page and bring down the army.
He needed to find a back alley.
He scanned the road ahead, keeping to an ordinary person's pace, then abruptly turned into a narrow alley.
"He went into the alley! Requesting backup!"
"After him!"
The two officers pursued him, calling for backup over their radios. Tanimura Wataru frowned as he sped up the moment he entered the alley.
Since when had there been so many patrol officers in Adachi Ward?
Right. It was all because of him.
Realizing he was the reason for the sudden increase in "patrol officers" on the streets, Tanimura Wataru sighed helplessly.
He didn't want to die.
Ever since gaining "demonic energy,"
he'd been captivated by the sensation of scaling walls and moving freely wherever he pleased.
If he could, he'd quietly kill the scum of society and use their deaths to extend his own life.
But that was impossible. The government would never let a "murderer" like him roam the city freely—especially after he'd killed so many American soldiers!
"...Copy that. We're on our way."
"Is it this way, senpai?"
?!
Just as Tanimura Wataru was about to reach the end of the alley, two young voices suddenly came from the other side.
Police officers!
The sound of hurried footsteps,
and the scent that reached him first, made Tanimura Wataru's pupils contract.
Fwish.
Sharp claws sprang from all five fingers.
"Huh?"
"Ah!"
Amid a series of muffled thumps, four police officers collided in the alley.
"Ow! What are you doing?"
"That's what we should be asking you! Didn't you see a tall man?"
The four patrol officers, who'd charged in and ended up sprawled on the ground, rubbed their noses and pushed themselves upright. One officer who'd come from the other direction angrily picked up his hat.
"What tall man? Were you the ones who called for backup over the radio just now?!"
"Damn it, are you sure you weren't seeing things? There's no one here. Want to see my bodycam footage?"
"Impossible!"
"Maybe we really did see things, Tanida."
"Actually, I've been meaning to say this. That man might not have gone into the alley at all."
A grown man couldn't just vanish into thin air. And yet their two colleagues who'd come from the other end of the alley hadn't seen a trace of him. The two officers who'd been chasing him began to doubt themselves. When orders came through the radio from their superior, they left the alley, still confused.
Above them, the curtains in a third-floor window stirred slightly.