Alex prowled around the streets with a slight scowl.
His sister had kicked him out of the apartment and told him to get some sun or some other activity that involved going outside.
He didn't see the point, but he didn't want to get yelled at or be given the Disappointed Look.
So, he'd stayed out until it was dark.
It was about nine o'clock in the evening when, while he was walking back home, he saw a woman standing under the pooling glow of a streetlight. She was clearly Japanese, and incredibly beautiful by conventional standards.
He tried to ignore her, but there was an odd quality to her that made him pause. There were strange flickers of odd growths that he couldn't get a good look at, and a slight instinctive draw to her that made him want to be near her.
Upon that last observation, his first thought was to kill her, for she was clearly the cause, and chop her up into small pieces. His second thought was that he really shouldn't do that. He had no idea why he had the sudden urge to murder a random woman.
She clearly looked lost, in any case. He could help her, maybe. Helping other people was a thing humans did. Or, like a regular person, he could pass her by, ignore her. It wasn't like he needed to help a random stranger.
Of course, she managed to notice him staring at her. "Hello?" There was an accent, barely noticeable, but it was there.
Alex frowned. "Hey."
She strutted up to him, heels clacking on the pavement and her white dress fluttering with each step. "Do you know a place I could stay? My boyfriend dropped me off here after he dumped me and I have nowhere to go."
There was something wrong with this, but he didn't know what. "There's a hotel near here."
The woman smiled. "That's good. Could you walk me there?"
They started walking towards that hotel together.
A sudden thought, more a realization, struck Alex. "What's your name?"
"Tomie. Yours?"
"Alex."
***
Halfway to the hotel, Alex heard a woman's scream.
He decided to investigate. After all, he already started to help one person, why not help another?
The sound of Tomie's heels hurriedly hitting pavement followed him.
Alex ended up at an alley in time to see a murder in progress. A man was trying to cut to pieces what looked like a woman under all the blood. She was still screaming.
He most likely would be of no help here. She would die anyway.
Still, he walked up to the man and threw him aside with a light shove. The woman was still breathing, and the face looked familiar.
Looking closer, he saw the face of Tomie. But, back towards the street was the Tomie that had followed him to the alley. The two were identical; even the lengths of their hair matched perfectly.
"The hell?" Alex muttered. Out of morbid curiosity, he took a look at the woman's injuries and saw that the deep lacerations were closing up.
He straightened and backed away. "What the fuck."
The Tomie on the ground called out, "Ryan, kill this man for me."
The man had already gotten up, and now having been ordered, lunged for Alex and tried to stab him.
The knife bent.
He kept trying anyway, so Alex grabbed his wrist and squeezed gently.
Bones broke, and the man screamed and fell to the ground, then started mumbling Tomie's name over and over.
Tomie's voice came from a few meters back. "Oh, Alex. Are you hurt?" Oddly enough, she didn't sound concerned at all.
He looked back at her. "What is this?"
"Oh, it's terrible, any piece of my body that gets separated from me becomes another me." She wrapped her arms around one of his. "The only way to get rid of one is to burn it."
He shook her off and stepped away from her, silent.
Tomie frowned. "What are you waiting for? Burn her."
"Why?" Alex was seriously starting to consider killing the both of them and leaving it at that. Tomie clearly wasn't human.
The Tomie that was stabbed spoke up, "You're not like other men, are you?"
"You're not like other women," Alex answered.