The middleman

I had imagined that, when I wasn't around to see it, Yuanli was actually the sort of mother who couldn't stop showing off her child.

When she went out, she would find herself boasting to her subordinates: I have a daughter, and she's gorgeous.

Perhaps when she shopped for clothes, she would pull out her phone, show the sales assistant my picture, and ask whether they had anything that would suit this child.

For the sake of that fantasy, I secretly followed her for three days.

She did boast to her subordinates, except she pointed at that wreck of a car and said, "This is my beloved car. Pretty, isn't it?"

She did speak to sales assistants too, except she stood in a weapons shop, holding Quasar and asking in painstaking detail which stock wouldn't wear down the gun's body.

Once, I had craved recognition with a sick, almost obsessive desperation.

(1)

The man who had described Toji's appearance in detail was named Ikeda Kazumi. By the time I stood before him, he had stopped breathing.

The machine monitoring his heartbeat and blood pressure let out a shrill alarm. Nurses flooded the room, and the jostling crowd pushed me out into the hallway.

Megumi glanced at me from outside the door. I immediately shook my head to proclaim my innocence.

I wasn't holding Quasar. I wasn't carrying a controlled weapon. I hadn't even needed to open my mouth. This young man named Ikeda Kazumi had merely looked at me before his eyes bulged, he foamed at the mouth, and he passed out just like that.

Toji, the terrorists, the Mad Tiger Gang-everything grew more bewildering. The lead that went straight to the answer had snapped. Now only that foreigner remained.

I found his hospital room without having to ask around. Before entering, I considered it for a moment, decided to pull up my hoodie, and pushed the door open.

The foreigner's surname was Kong, his full name Shiu Kong, and he came from Seoul, South Korea. He was handsome, with a distinctly foreign air. Beyond the basic details on his patient information sheet, the back had secretly been covered with a young nurse's praises of his looks. Once I ignored all the compliments about his eyes, nose, and mouth, there wasn't much useful information left to infer.

He had more nerve than Ikeda. When he saw me, he merely froze, then used his left hand-the only one not in a cast-to pick up a cigarette and put it between his lips. "I don't know anything."

That wasn't a guilty denial, but a professional catchphrase. Since he wasn't some ordinary person, there was no need to use ordinary methods.

I drew Quasar and pointed it at him. "Are you sure?"

He paused, then suddenly sneered. "Heh. You really are a kid, waving around a toy gun..."

I was truly fed up. The anxiety of not being able to find Toji had nearly worn away all my reason.

I chambered a round and shot straight through his one remaining sound arm. As shock and terror spread across his face, I said, "Tell me everything you know, or this toy gun will blow your head apart."

The cigarette between his lips fell to the floor. Shiu Kong stammered,

"Okay. I'll tell you..."

(2) Them

By his tenth year in the business, Shiu Kong had completed his transition from a respected detective with the Seoul police to a middleman lurking in the shadows.

There had been turmoil in his heart.

But those stacks of money were like an ink-soaked rag. Every time he accepted one, another patch of white in his heart was wiped away. Gradually, as time passed, all that remained inside was an abyss of ink.

That abyss was also a black hole. It could never be filled.

Shiu Kong had met Toji Zenin because of a stolen job.

A job worth ten million had been forcibly snatched away by Toji Zenin, who was still unknown at the time. Anyone else would have demanded an accounting. Shiu Kong hadn't. His sharp eye, honed over years as a detective, had recognized Toji Zenin's potential at a glance.

To become a formidable middleman, he needed powerful mercenaries and assassins. And an assassin had to be ruthless enough, money-driven enough, and enough of a scumbag.

Eighteen-year-old Toji Zenin had met every one of Shiu Kong's requirements perfectly.

They had hit it off immediately, each profiting from the other. Shiu Kong had become the biggest middleman in Tokyo's black market, while Toji had become a legend: the Sorcerer Killer.

They weren't friends. Only money and mutual interests bound them together. So when Toji suddenly announced that he was getting married and retiring, Shiu Kong had accepted it quickly and found a new batch of mercenaries.

But none of them were as powerful as Toji, and those jobs gradually became death sentences from which no one returned.

What did a middleman live on? Commissions and referral fees.

When no assassin was willing to take a job, Shiu Kong's career was over too.

During that eight-year dry spell, Shiu Kong had considered returning home several times. But his years in the criminal underworld meant he could never return to the police. Just as he, too, was preparing to wash his hands of the business, a job arrived that would change his fate.

The price was two billion. The target was a monster.

After accepting the job, Shiu Kong hadn't given it much thought. After all, this world was full of wonders. If cursed spirits could exist, why couldn't monsters?

He recruited an above-average assassin and, to be safe, accompanied him to Kanagawa Prefecture. The client was a senior member of a criminal organization. They quickly made contact and obtained the information on the target.

There was only a blurry photograph taken from the side, but he could make out a black-haired child.

Shiu Kong had professional ethics. He couldn't kill a child. But the senior member told him this was a monster, not a child.

Shiu Kong had met plenty of employers who lied. He asked in return, "Do you have any proof?"

The senior member of the criminal organization thought for a moment and said that she was an ageless monster skilled at manipulating people's hearts. Anyone who had spoken to her would understand how terrifying she was.

The astronomical sum of two billion and a few flimsy excuses were enough to tempt Shiu Kong. He told himself that after this one job, he would retire, then donate a million to a temple to buy himself a conscience and peace of mind.

After taking the job, he had the assassin pose as a member of the organization and spent a fortune buying him a dagger.

The dagger was a single-use cursed tool crafted by a master bladesmith in Kyoto. Its ability was to kill a mid-level cursed spirit in a single strike.

The monster child's abilities were roughly equivalent to those of a grade 3 cursed spirit. This blade would be more than enough.

They struck on the afternoon the infighting began.

Shiu Kong watched through binoculars from a tall building opposite, while the assassin charged into the battlefield. From that distance, Shiu Kong couldn't see what happened. He saw only the result: the dagger shattered, and the assassin died.

Yet the child standing with her back to him amid the tangled figures remained unharmed, apart from a streak of blood across her lower back.

Shiu Kong couldn't accept letting two billion slip away like this. She was merely a frail, small child. Even if she was a monster, she was a fragile one.

Shiu Kong had no one left to call upon, but he still had one final possibility.

When he called Toji Zenin and told him the price of the job, Shiu Kong was honestly quite nervous. He wasn't sure Toji would accept. After all, that man had returned to family life eight years ago.

But to his surprise, Toji agreed. They arranged to meet at a fried chicken shop.

Toji seemed just as he had eight years ago, yet something about him felt different. Shiu Kong didn't dwell on it. All he could think about was the two billion.

They skipped the pleasantries and went straight to business.

"Toji, I know money's been tight for you lately. So I'll only take a thirty-percent cut on this one. The target is a monster in Kanagawa."

"Kanagawa has monsters?"

"Yes." As though something had occurred to him, Shiu Kong continued, "She's different from humans. There isn't a trace of cursed energy in her. It's a little like your situation."

"Interesting. Let me see." Toji's interest was piqued, and he reached for the document envelope on the table.

While Toji opened it, Shiu Kong added, "This monster's already been stabbed in the lower back. I doubt she can get far..."

Crack.

The sound of something breaking cut Shiu Kong off. He stared in shock as Toji smashed the table to pieces with a slap.

"Toji, you..."

"Who put out the job?"

Shiu Kong felt his hair stand on end. He swallowed and told the truth. "A senior member of Kanagawa's Mad Tiger Gang. Ikeda Ryūan."

"Who else took this job besides you?"

"No one. What's wrong? Do you know this mon-"

(3)

"Monster? And then?"

"There was no 'then.' I ended up lying here. Little girl, could you let me call a nurse? I think I've lost a bit too much blood."

Sitting on the hospital bed opposite Shiu Kong, I shook my head coldly. "No. You still haven't told me where Toji went."

Shiu Kong looked irritated. "Who knows? And what exactly is your relationship with him, anyway? Why are you asking me this?"

"...I'm his daughter."

The irritated man abruptly froze.

He looked me up and down, then asked in a slightly trembling voice, "You're his daughter?"

I nodded, pulled down my hood, and said with deliberate malice, "That's right. I'm also that monster you were talking about. You know, the ageless monster of Ka-na-ga-wa. So, are you still going to hire my father to kill me?"

After leaving the room, I called a nurse for Shiu Kong while I was at it. He wouldn't die, but I believed he would never work in this business again.

If this was the standard a middleman could sink to, Tokyo's black market must have been a cement factory that produced nothing but sludge.

"Yuanli, you didn't kill anyone, did you?" Megumi watched anxiously as a group of doctors and nurses rushed into the room again, carrying resuscitation equipment.

"No," I said, then added, "I promise I didn't shoot him anywhere vital."

By the time Megumi and I left the hospital, dusk was approaching. Beyond being moved by that story, I was still lost.

Shiu Kong had been in the hospital for three days, and the Mad Tiger Gang had been wiped out two days ago. None of this was still happening, so I couldn't deceive myself into believing Toji hadn't come home because he was avenging me, and that he would return once he was done.

What had I missed? Which piece of information was the key to why he hadn't come home?

I sat on a bench at the bus stop, thinking intently and going over every word Shiu Kong had said. Just as I was about to turn to stone, my phone suddenly rang.

It was an unfamiliar number, but I still answered full of hope.

[Hello? Is that Da...]

[Yuanli, dear, it's Auntie Komatsu.]

I froze with the phone in my hand for a long while before finding my voice. [Ah... Hello, Auntie.]

[Well, if you're not going to rent that house in the East District, could you stop letting people move into it? It really makes it difficult for me to find new tenants...]