Do I Look Human to You?

Five hours after the Metropolitan Police Department's secret meeting ended, it was already past three in the morning. The night had grown deep.

Walking the streets late at night in an outlying part of Tokyo like Edo River Ward, one could see people every few blocks sleeping beside the road or sitting on the ground with their heads lowered.

These people without a place to sleep did not all look like vagrants. Some wore reasonably neat clothes and had clean faces and tidy hair. They looked more like office workers.

And that was exactly what they were. A third of Japan's population lived in the Greater Tokyo Area, and the commuting radius of that monstrous city encompassed the entire metropolitan region. It was unimaginably vast. Some people even spent four hours a day commuting.

Tokyo's corporate wage slaves often worked so late that they missed the last train and could not get home. With work waiting again the next morning, they were reluctant to spend money on a capsule hotel or cheap business hotel. Instead, they killed a few hours at an internet café or an all-night convenience store, then found some random spot to doze until dawn before returning to the office.

Fortunately, April nights in Tokyo were not too cold. They could bear it.

"Burrrp-"

In an alley in Komatsugawa Town, Edo River Ward, dim yellow light shone on a heap of garbage. A drunken middle-aged office worker with a necktie wrapped around his head opened his eyes as the night breeze blew over him.

"I... how did I get here? Right, after work, I blacked out at the third drinking spot... urgh!"

The middle-aged office worker struggled out of the garbage heap, then vomited violently into a trash can.

After he finished, he glanced around. Seeing no one nearby, he simply undid his belt and relieved himself.

That was how Japan's corporate wage slaves were. They might look respectable, but when alone, there was no telling what they would do to vent the stress built up at work. Visiting red-light districts and brothels was relatively normal. Plenty did things far stranger than that.

For instance, there were the train gropers who had become a disgrace to the Island Nation, or those who bought supposedly worn women's stockings online to ease their loneliness.

Urinating and defecating in public violated basic standards of decency, but for a middle-aged office worker usually hemmed in by work and family, it offered the thrill of trampling society's rules.

After vomiting his guts out and relieving himself, he had sobered up considerably. He fastened his belt, now caught somewhere between drunk and sober.

Remembering that he had work tomorrow, he decided to return to his rented room near the office first, wash up, and change into fresh clothes. At the very least, he could not go back to work reeking of alcohol.

He steadied himself against a utility pole, then staggered down the alley.

After only a few steps, he spotted a shapely, black-haired woman walking slowly away from him along another narrow lane at a fork in the alley.

The woman had thick, jet-black hair. Although her loose, flowing dress concealed her figure, he could still see her supple waist swaying like a water snake. She was just a little too tall, apparently over six feet.

"Hey, beautiful! What are you doing out here so late? Need a little help from an older guy?"

Alcohol gave a coward courage. Emboldened by drink and the deserted late-night alley, the middle-aged office worker dared to harass a woman, something he would never normally do.

Ordinarily, he would have settled for a few lingering looks to feast his eyes. He would never have dared say anything. If the woman caught him out, reported him to the police, and got his company involved, bowing on his hands and knees would not be enough to resolve it.

He had expected her to hurry away in fright at his teasing. Instead, she stopped, slowly turned around, and asked him in an eerie voice:

"Tell me, do I look human to you?"

That dark, chilling voice, neither male nor female, sent a shudder through him.

Though she had looked like a woman from behind, the sight of her face was far too strange. Her towering height aside, even her thick makeup could not conceal a stiff, deathly white face like a corpse's. Her features protruded unnaturally, as though something beneath the skin were pressing outward, about to burst through.

Her yellowish-white eyes were especially oversized, and her pupils were vertical slits like those of a snake or some other reptile. Just being watched by them made his skin crawl.

Had he run into something unholy?!

The middle-aged office worker snapped sober, the last of the alcohol seeming to drain out with his cold sweat.

"Hahaha... I've got work tomorrow..."

He gave a few dry laughs, then turned and ran!

His legs were unsteady after all that drinking. Within a few steps, he fell in a miserable heap, but he could not afford to care. Scrambling and crawling, he lunged toward the exit.

He swore he had never pushed himself this hard even at his high school sports meet. After wasting thirty years of his life, he was now running faster than he ever had. At this moment, not even Usain Bolt could catch him!

After he had run a dozen yards, an eerie voice sounded beside his ear again.

"Why are you running? Is it because I don't look human?"

He could not help turning his head, and found himself staring straight into a hideously deformed woman's face!

The woman's head opened its mouth wide, revealing two venomous snake-like fangs at its corners, and sank them into his neck!

With his neck caught between her teeth, the middle-aged man could only make rasping sounds. He could not utter a single word. His entire body felt paralyzed, unable to move.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a long, long neck connecting the head to a body several yards away.

A Rokurokubi?

The middle-aged man remembered this famous long-necked monster from Japan. According to legend, it was a beautiful female monster that could stretch its neck at night, float through the air, and reach through windows to devour men's internal organs.

But wasn't this one far too ugly?

That was the middle-aged office worker's final thought before he sank into eternal darkness.

The woman released her jaws, letting his body slam heavily onto the ground. Her head floated in the air while her body slowly approached from behind, drawing her neck back in.

"So I still don't look human? Even a drunk like this could tell something was wrong at a glance. And here I went to the trouble of choosing a beautiful woman, peeling off her skin, and fitting it over my face. If I could take this sorcery one step further, perhaps I could fool human eyes."

The "woman" hooked one hand into an eyelid, widening a python-like slit pupil, and tore away half the facial skin, revealing overlapping layers of white scales beneath.

"Never mind. Since someone's dead, I can't let him go to waste. I always eat every grain of rice on my plate. Fatty meat marinated in tobacco and alcohol has a flavor all its own."

The "woman" opened wide. Two seams at the corners of the mouth split all the way to the back of the head, and the jaw dropped as though dislocated. The mouth gaped at a horrifying angle, and those bloody jaws began swallowing the middle-aged man headfirst, inch by inch.

"Teacher, I apologize for interrupting your meal, but I have urgent intelligence to report."

Grayish-yellow branches resembling old tree roots emerged from the alley's gutter. They twisted and intertwined into a humanoid monster, with green leaves and vines covering its body, like a puppet haphazardly assembled from vines and tree trunks.

By then, the "woman" had swallowed the man's shoulders, leaving his arms dangling limply outside the mouth. The "woman" nodded slightly, signaling for it to continue.

"Your old friend at the Metropolitan Police Department sent an urgent message through a secret channel, Teacher. He says he has classified intelligence to sell us. He's asking ten million yen for the deposit alone."

Tilting the head back, the "woman" swallowed the remaining feet and finished the meal. A man weighing over seventy-five kilograms had been swallowed whole.

The "woman" spoke with a sneer:

"Ten million?! What an outrageous price. That fat pig is asking for money again. What major operation is the Metropolitan Police Department planning now? Another purge and sweep of Tokyo, or have they caught another monster with some special ability? Information like that isn't worth ten million."

"Teacher, forgive me for acting without your permission. I've already transferred the deposit to the secret overseas account his lover set up. After reading it, I judged this intelligence to be extremely important. It concerns human superhumans..." the wooden puppet monster said in a cold, emotionless voice.

"Human superhumans? The Metropolitan Police Department really won't give up. Haven't more than ten years of searching already proved that humans have no superhumans? Is this another fraud, or have the human experiments at Yokosuka Port finally made a breakthrough?"

"Neither. Last week, the Metropolitan Police Department finally found a genuine Superhuman! I've already sent the details to your email."

The "woman" frowned. The Adam's apple bobbed, and dry heaves began. A clearly defined, angular object bulged inside the throat.

"Urgh!"

The "woman" vomited up an iPad coated in slime. Holding it in both hands, the "woman" extended a long, slender tongue and deftly swiped across the screen.

After opening the email and skimming through it at speed, the "woman" returned to the beginning and read it carefully a second time.

The tongue tapped a video. Watching the mysterious young man dressed in black with red clouds breathe out a huge fireball, the "woman" fell silent.

"How much is our friend asking for the rest of the files?"

"Thirty million yen!"

"Transfer it immediately! I want the remaining files today!" the "woman" ordered without hesitation, voice firm and decisive.

"Yes, Teacher," the wooden puppet monster agreed.

From the way the two monsters spoke, such enormous sums might as well have been one thousand yen and three thousand yen-nothing more than a trivial matter.

"Kihara, do you think my dream can come true?" After a long while, the "woman" spoke in a quiet, eerie voice.

"If it's you, Teacher, then it certainly can!"

"To free monsters from human oppression and allow monsters and humans to live in peace, I must seize this country! I originally intended to accomplish it in ten to fifteen years, but now this unexpected 'human Superhuman' has appeared. Our dream may have to be delayed. Even so, Kihara, you will still follow me, won't you?"

"Of course, Teacher!" The wooden puppet monster prostrated himself on the ground, a trace of fanaticism entering his otherwise flat voice.

"Good! Go notify the other monsters. Although the scheduled date hasn't arrived yet, relocate our bases to safe zones B and F. We may have some trouble in the days ahead."

"Yes, Teacher!"