Kamon Kai has stopped waiting for death—he simply hasn't gotten there yet. Six months behind on rent, out of pills, and buried beneath the garbage of a life he no longer wants, he exists in a rotting six-mat room in the forgotten corner of Tokyo known as Haigami Ward. Every morning is the same: the stain on the ceiling, the ache of hunger he refuses to answer, the quiet hope that today might finally be the day his heart stops on its own.
Then the ceiling tears open.
A girl falls from nowhere—g
The alley air was heavy, sunk under a mix of post-rain damp and the stench of rotting garbage.
Kamon Kai hitched his toolbox higher and started walking. The strap bit into his shoulder, leaving a dull ache. His right fingertips were still trembling faintly. How long had it been since he'd wiped away the Impurity in that room? His sense of time had gone fuzzy.
An old wooden apartment in the southern part of Haigami Ward. In a corner unit on the second floor, a man had died. Ten days before anyone found him. The stain on the ceiling had spread black, and a human-shaped shadow clung to the wall. Kai had spent hours wiping that Impurity away. He'd changed the bucket water again and again, wrung out the rag again and again. Even as his arms grew heavy, his back ached, and nausea rose in his throat, he never stopped.
Only while he was cleaning did the voices in his head go quiet.
Melissa's voice, that clinging static—all of it vanished.
He could focus on nothing but scrubbing the filth away.
(This is enough for me.)
That was what Kai told himself.
He emerged from the alley onto the back street of an old shopping arcade. Shuttered storefronts lined the way, and the dim evening light crawled across the ground. No sign of anyone. A single cat watched him from beside a garbage bag.
That was when it happened.
A black car slid to a stop beside him.
The rear door opened.
"Hey there, Kamon."
A man leaned out from inside.
Kabuse Mamoru. Forty-two. Former police officer. He wore a long black coat, and at the collar of his white shirt peeked a worn leather wallet that looked like a police ID. Tall and lean, his narrow black eyes—eyes that seemed to swallow light—fixed steadily on Kai.
Kai stopped walking.
"What do you want?"
His voice came out low and hoarse.
Kabuse smiled.
"Just a little talk. Get in."
"No."
Kai started to walk on.
In that instant, a man climbed out of the driver's seat and seized Kai's arm.
"Whoa there. I'm not letting you go."
All the warmth drained from Kabuse's voice.
Kai's body was shoved into the car. His toolbox clattered to the floor. The door shut. The click of the lock. The car pulled away smoothly.
The interior was thick with a strange smell.
The smell of scorched paper. And beneath it, something like disinfectant mixed with old blood. The smell of burned records from a stigmatized property—Kai understood that instinctively.
Something rose from the pit of his stomach.
He bit his lip and forced the nausea down.
"No need to be scared. This is just business."
Kabuse spoke without turning around.
"Your cleaning skills, and those eyes that can see Impurity. I want to buy them."
Kai didn't answer.
Outside the window, the streets of Haigami Ward streamed past. Old apartments, rusted factories, shuttered shops. The twilight dyed everything gray.
(These eyes that see Impurity.)
Kai looked at his own hands.
The trembling had stopped.
――――
The car stopped in front of a high-rise in southern Haigami Ward.
A fourteen-story tower, built relatively recently. It might as well have been another world from the old wooden houses around it. Kabuse pushed Kai into the elevator and pressed the top-floor button.
When they stepped out onto the roof, a strong wind was blowing.
The setting sun dyed the streets of Haigami red. In the distance the surface of the Arakawa glinted, and beyond it the high-rises of Tokyo blurred into haze.
"Quite a view, isn't it."
Kabuse said, approaching the edge of the roof.
Kai stayed silent.
Kabuse set the wooden box he'd been carrying on the ground.
He opened it. Inside was packed a mass of documents. Records of stigmatized properties. Names of the dead, causes of death, the circumstances of their discovery. Photographs mixed in, too. Discolored tatami, blackened floors, the last traces of people who had died alone.
"These are the tools of my trade."
Kabuse picked up a single sheet from the stack.
"Stigmatized properties carry a disclosure obligation. You know that? If a place has had a suicide or a solitary death, you have to tell the next tenant. But you see, Kamon—"
Kabuse's narrow eyes narrowed further.
"There are plenty of loopholes. For instance, once you've had someone live there, the disclosure obligation disappears for the next contract. Or you rewrite the cause of death as 'illness.' A solitary death is an illness, after all. And a suicide, depending on the circumstances, can be processed as an accidental death."
Kai was watching Kabuse's hands.
The fingertips turning the pages were strangely long. Fingers in white leather gloves, moving the way one counts money, peeling the paper back sheet by sheet.
"I sell that judgment to real estate agents. Consulting work, to help them unload properties as no-disclosure-needed and sell them high. But lately I've had a problem."
Kabuse turned toward Kai.
"I can't tell whether there's Impurity or not. I can't see it, you understand. But you can. Isn't that right?"
Kai didn't answer.
Kabuse took a step closer.
"If you can tell whether Impurity is present, I can manipulate the value of any stigmatized property at will. Say there's Impurity, and I can buy it cheap. Say there isn't, and I can sell it high. Your eyes make money."
The wind blew hard.
The documents fluttered and danced.
Kai looked into Kabuse's eyes.
They were eyes without warmth.
"No."
Kai said it clearly.
Kabuse laughed.
"No? You think you have a choice?"
Kabuse's hand clamped hard on Kai's shoulder.
"You're already in my net. Don't think you can run."
That was when it happened.
A single slip of paper fell from Kabuse's bag.
It fluttered in the wind.
Kai's gaze followed it.
—And in that instant.
Beyond Kabuse's shadow, something swelled.
A black mass.
Opaque, viscous black.
It seemed to take human shape, and yet had none.
(What is that—)
Kai's body went rigid.
—Then a voice poured into his head.
A mucous, damp voice.
"Taint it all."
Kai's vision warped.
"Wiping Impurity away is not enough. Deeper. Further in. You must step into Impurity itself. Take the Impurity you gather through cleaning into your own body, and in time release it upon the world. If you become a vessel of Impurity, you can cover this entire world in it."
The voice echoed inside his skull.
Not through his ears—it poured directly from the center of his brain.
The moment the words resonated in his mind, Kai understood: this was the "other will" that had been shaved away from Melissa's soul.
(Cover the world in Impurity.)
"If you keep cleaning, I gain Impurity. Take in more. Until you yourself become a vessel of Impurity."
Kai's heart pounded violently.
Something was thrashing deep in his chest.
—Release the Impurity gathered through cleaning upon the world.
Those words drove deep into the bottom of Kai's heart.
Kai looked at Kabuse.
Kabuse had noticed nothing.
"What's wrong? You look pale."
Kai scolded his trembling legs and opened his mouth.
"...I'm not taking your job."
Kabuse's eyes narrowed sharply.
"Oh? And why not?"
"Your money is made from the suffering of dead people. I don't want to touch anything like that."
Kabuse stared at Kai for several seconds.
Then, slowly, he smiled.
"Pretty words. But I'll enjoy watching how long those pretty words last."
Kabuse closed the wooden box.
"I'll let you off for today. But don't think there'll be a next time."
Kabuse walked toward the roof exit.
On the way, he turned back once more to look at Kai.
"Those eyes of yours—I will have them, no matter what."
The sound of the door closing.
Kai was left alone on the roof.
The wind was blowing.
The sun was nearly set.
Kai stood at the edge of the roof.
Below spread the streets of Haigami Ward.
Old apartments, narrow alleys, shuttered shops. All of it sinking into the dusk.
(The place I live is down there at the bottom.)
That was what Kai thought.
(Kabuse's place is deeper still. He makes his living turning people's misfortune into money. If I get involved with him, I'll fall to the same place.)
But.
(I've already fallen far enough.)
Kai looked at his own hands.
His left hand, scarred with burns.
Memories from childhood flashed back.
—Hot.
—It hurts.
—Help me.
Kai closed his eyes.
Then he heard the voice again.
"Your loneliness is the same as that woman's."
Kai opened his eyes.
A scene spread before him.
—A library.
An old stone chamber. A high ceiling. Bookshelves covering every wall.
By the window sat a small girl.
Golden hair reaching to her waist. Eyes of two different colors—gold on the right, silver on the left.
Melissa.
Melissa as a child.
She was gazing out the window.
The sky was overcast, gray.
"No one looks at me."
The small voice resonated directly in Kai's heart.
"The people hate the royal family. Whatever I do, no one turns to look. Even when I shut myself in the library, no one comes to find me."
Melissa reached her hand toward the sky outside.
"I want to burn that sky away."
Her fingertips touched the window glass.
—In that instant, the world was engulfed in flame.
The royal capital of Brenahart. A fortress city ringed by walls. The flame-core furnace of Evagrants Palace blazed red. People fleeing in panic. Screams. Buildings crumbling.
At the center of it all, Melissa was laughing.
Tears streaming down her face.
"Everything should just burn. The country that abandoned me, the people who hated me—all of it."
Tears spilled from Kai's eyes.
Independent of his own will.
They wouldn't stop.
(This one—)
Kai laid Melissa's loneliness over his own.
(She's the same as me.)
Unseen by anyone, needed by no one, utterly alone—and cursing the world.
Kai looked at his left hand.
The burn scars.
(Did I want to destroy something with this hand, too?)
He didn't know.
But the tears wouldn't stop.
"That woman hated the world. And you believe the world abandoned you, too. So turn that hatred into Impurity. Release the Impurity you've gathered through cleaning upon the world, and cover it all."
Kai stepped forward on trembling legs, toward the edge of the roof.
The wind pushed against his body.
Below, the streets of Haigami Ward.
(I won't become the vessel this thing wants.)
Kai faced the mass of Impurity head-on.
The black mass was still there.
Where Kabuse had stood, the black mass still writhed.
"...I'm going to keep cleaning."
Kai said it aloud.
"Whatever you whisper to me, I'll do things my own way."
"That's fine. As long as you keep cleaning, Impurity will flow into you. You'll be dyed in it, more and more. And in time, that Impurity will spread into the world through you."
The voice laughed.
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