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 world was dark.
Somewhere deep in his ears, countless human screams tangled with a viscous, clinging laughter.
(So... I died.)
The cold press of the floor. A heat like something burning through his chest, and the taste of blood and gunpowder lingering at the back of his throat.
The wave of Impurity that had crashed against his back. Shizuku's finger-snap. And then—the gold and silver particles that had spilled, dry and scattering, from his own arms.
Melissa was gone.
To protect him, he had lost her—the very girl he'd never wanted to erase.
"...ngh, ah..."
Kai tried to move his fingertips.
But his body was heavy as lead. His muscles spasmed; every breath made something grind deep behind his ribs. If he closed his eyes now, he'd never rise again—he could just lie here, a corpse, forever. The perfect nothingness he had always wanted.
(...So this is the end...)
He was about to shut his eyes when—
—deep in his chest, a small "heat" burst open.
A throb.
Right beside his heart. At the bottom of the black mud of Impurity he'd swallowed down at the site, a single grain of light trembled quietly.
A burning gold. A cold silver.
The fragment of her soul Melissa had left behind the instant she vanished. The afterglow of her life wrapped gently around Kai's battered heart, from the inside.
*'...Clean it up.'*
Her last words. Haughty, mocking—and crying.
*'If you're my servant, then clean... to the very end.'*
"...gh, hh..."
A sharp light kindled in Kai's gray eyes.
The half-dead man spat bloody saliva onto the floor, dug his nails into the tatami, and forced his body upright by sheer will.
"...Who's your servant... ordering me around... like you own the place...!"
Blood spraying from his throat, Kai stood.
The room was a ruin. The tatami had turned pitch black, and on the walls, stains like the faces of the dead overlapped in layers, squirming.
But outside was far worse.
When he flung open the wooden door of the apartment, a city buried in death spread out before him.
—
Looking down from the corridor of Corp Grayguard, the night district of Haigami was swallowed in black mist.
The streetlights bent grotesquely, and from the asphalt oozed Impurity like black mud. From the back alleys, the voices of resentment and grief of all who had died in this city rose, mingling with the sound of the wind.
"Kamon-san...!"
The door of the neighboring room, 103, cracked open, and Hiyama Sumire came crawling out.
Her face was pale with terror, her ash-brown hair a tangled mess. She clutched both hands to her chest and reached toward Kai with trembling legs.
"What is this...?! The city's—wrong...! When I went outside, I heard my dead grandmother's voice...!"
"...Get back inside, Sumire."
Kai cut her off in a low voice without turning around.
"Huh...?"
"Go in your room and lock the door. Don't look outside, no matter what."
Kai's back was clad only in gray sweats—no work clothes—so thin his bones showed through. Yet the sheer, overwhelming aura of obsession radiating from him made Sumire gasp and fall silent.
Kai descended the stairs slowly.
On the first floor, he caught sight of the landlord in the corner of his vision—collapsed, incontinent, wailing—but he didn't stop.
When he stepped out the gate, a light van came sliding out of the shadows of the alley at breakneck speed.
A screech of brakes.
It was the Misogi Service van.
The one who climbed out of the driver's seat was Kiryu Koichi. The tradesman in his deep navy work clothes carried a large pressure-washer nozzle and a plastic tank of powerful deodorizing chemicals.
"Kamon Kai!"
Kiryu's voice rang out. Black shadows were trying to coil around his feet too, but with the guts of a man who'd faced death sites for years, he stomped through them and ran.
"The whole city's gone mad! The police and fire department are useless! What the hell is happening?!"
"...It's my fault."
Kai fixed his eyes on Kiryu.
"I let the filth from the sites build up too much... and it burst."
Kiryu's brow furrowed deep, and he stared hard at Kai's face. The bloodless skin, the blood-soaked mouth—and above all, the eyes of a mad beast determined to shoulder everything and fight.
Kiryu didn't press him. He didn't ask why or how. He just gave a short snort and threw open the back of the van.
"I don't know the logic. ...But if it's a mess, we just 'clean' it."
Kiryu dropped a bucket, a deck brush, and a can of the strongest special chemicals at Kai's feet.
"Help me, Kamon Kai. Our job is to put a site back the way it was. ...This whole city is our site now."
"...Kiryu-san."
"Let's go!"
—
The battle began.
It was nothing so gentle as combat with the supernatural.
It was overwhelming "cleaning" work.
Kai grabbed the deck brush, scattered high-concentration chemicals, and dove into the black Impurity clinging to the city's asphalt.
Scrub! Scrub! Scrape, scrape, scrape!
A ferocious sound of friction rang through the night alleys.
"Disappear...! Disappear—let me clean you!!"
Shouting like a curse, Kai slammed the brush down with enough force to tear the muscle from his arms.
Every time the brush scraped away the black haze, the grudges of the dead poured directly into his mind. The headache threatened to split his skull; the vomiting of blood wouldn't stop. But now, deep in his chest, Kai had the "gold and silver light."
The light Melissa left behind burned away the countless poisons flooding into him, converting them into strength.
Kiryu sprayed chemicals with the pressure washer; Kai scraped the mud away with brute force.
Before their two-man, grimy, penny-pinching cleaning operation, the black shadows filling the alleys screamed and vanished (were purified), one after another.
But the source where this city's Impurity was gathering was not here.
Kai raised his face and fixed his gaze on the deepest part of the city—the mixed-use building in front of Kitanuma Station.
The entire building was swallowed in a vortex of Impurity coiled around it like an enormous black serpent.
And on the rooftop of that building stood a man in a long black coat.
Kabuse Mamoru.
Around the old police notebook at Kabuse's chest, black Impurity swirled. Black veins extending from the notebook passed through Kabuse's body and spread throughout the city. Kabuse wasn't controlling the Impurity. He was being used as the medium through which Shizuku released it into the city.
"Splendid...! Splendid, Kamon Kai!"
Kabuse's mad laughter rang into the night sky.
"All the death and suffering of this city gathers in my hands! Convert it into real estate and information, and I'll have the money to move the world! Death is money! Grudges are the finest value there is!"
From Kabuse's body, countless tentacles of pitch-black malice extended, spreading to swallow the whole city.
Shizuku's will and Kabuse's greed had fused completely. While Kabuse tried to gather the Impurity to himself, Shizuku sought to spread it beyond the city—and eventually, to the world.
"...That's the one."
Kai regripped his bloodstained brush and broke into a run toward the building in front of Kitanuma Station.
"Wait, Kamon Kai! You're going alone?!"
Kiryu shouted.
"Kiryu-san, take care of the area around the apartment! Look after Sumire and... everyone in the city!"
Without looking back, Kai sprinted through the night toward the building where the black vortex churned.
—
The rooftop.
Kabuse greeted Kai with a cold smile as he came kicking through the door.
"So you've come, boy. ...You look half dead. Your body's at its limit, isn't it?"
Around Kabuse, black, viscous Impurity raged like a storm. At its center, Shizuku's slimy voice sneered.
*'It's useless, human. Do you think you alone can wipe away all the Impurity in this city? You yourself will soon be swallowed by it and break.'*
Kabuse raised a white-gloved hand, and the black tentacles sharpened like knives and launched at Kai all at once.
Thud! Thud!
The black tentacles pierced Kai's shoulder, his thigh, his stomach.
"Gah—!"
Fresh blood sprayed. Kai dropped to his knees and collapsed onto the rooftop concrete.
"Kuku... hahahaha!"
Kabuse approached, his footsteps echoing.
"See? This is reality. Human death and suffering—people like me squeeze it all dry in the end. What can a bottom-rung cleaner like you change, putting on a show all alone?"
Kabuse grabbed Kai's hair and wrenched his face up.
"Now, give up and become my tool. Hand me those eyes and that body of yours!"
Kai's vision stained red. His consciousness began to slip.
But—
Light fell across Kai's eyes.
The concrete floor. The blood Kai had dripped, and the filthy mud marked by Kabuse's soles.
(...Filthy.)
A hoarse sound leaked from Kai's throat.
(...All of it... so filthy...)
Kai reached out his left hand.
The burn scar from childhood. The memory of that night in the fire, clutching his mother's hand, nearly dying. The mark of the trauma that had bound him all his life.
With that left hand, Kai—wiped the rooftop floor. The mud at Kabuse's feet. With his bare hand, with all his strength.
"Wha... what are you doing...?"
Kabuse furrowed his brow.
Kai poured his blood, his sweat, and all of Melissa's light deep in his chest into his left hand, and began to polish the rooftop concrete.
No rag, no brush. Just his own bare hands.
Scrubbing. Wiping. Scraping away.
"Let me clean...!"
From Kai's eyes, the perfect void vanished, and a ferocious "will to live" exploded forth.
"I wanted to die! Every day I took my pills and waited to rot and die! But then... that woman came falling down on me! 'Clean it up,' she said... she ordered me!!"
Grk, grk, grk—the nails peeled from Kai's fingertips, blood gushing out.
But every time Kai wiped the floor, the black Impurity covering the rooftop burst violently into particles of light.
"Wha—what?! The Impurity... is vanishing?! It's being wiped away?!"
Kabuse's voice rose in panic.
*'Impossible...! To directly purify this much Impurity with a human body...!'*
Shizuku's scream rang out.
As the Impurity spread across the floor thinned, the black veins gathered toward the police notebook at Kabuse's chest. To Kai's eyes, that notebook looked like the core binding the flow of Impurity together.
Kai stood. Raising his blood-soaked left hand, he took a step toward Kabuse.
The light deep in his chest had swollen to its limit.
Gold light. Silver light.
Behind Kai, fantastical particles of light gathered and spread like a great pair of wings.
"Kabuse...! Your malice, the grudges of the dead... I'll clean every last bit of it!!"
Kai lunged at Kabuse's chest and, with his bloodstained left hand, seized the police notebook at Kabuse's breast—the core of all the malice—with all his strength.
"Stop it!!"
Kabuse's scream.
The black Impurity clinging to the notebook tried to crawl up Kai's arm. Kai didn't shake it off—still gripping the notebook, he slammed it against the rooftop floor and ground it in.
"Disappear!!!"
Fwaaaash——!!!
A blinding burst of gold and silver light pierced the night sky over Haigami.
Kabuse's scream, Shizuku's shriek, all the black haze covering the city—the wave of light washed it all away in an instant.
The Impurity Shizuku had meant to spread into the world was first pushed back from Haigami. The black mist peeled away from the alleys, from the buildings, from beneath the streetlights, and dissolved into the darkness of night.
Within the torrent of light, Kai saw her.
Standing at the center of the particles of light—a single girl.
Wearing a worn black hoodie, her waist-length golden hair streaming, the former princess looked at him with her right gold eye and left silver eye.
Melissa Ars Samal Flamme.
Her eyes widened in surprise—then slowly, she wore that same haughty, arrogant, beautiful smile.
*'So you can do it when you try, servant.'*
Her slender hand reached out and gently closed around Kai's blood-soaked left hand.
The fragment of Melis
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