.

.

.

"In those days, I didn't understand anything. I should have judged her according to her actions, not her words. She perfumed my planet and lit up my life. I should never have run away! I ought to have realized the tenderness underlying her silly pretensions. Flowers are so contradictory! But I was too young to know how to love her."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

7 / 24 / 2016

「4LI8484:」YOU'RE CURRENTLY AT SHIBUYA STATION. GET GOING TO THE COORDINATES I'VE SENT YOU, AND TELL NO ONE OF THIS.

「Kazuya Hikawa:」you're watching me?

「4LI8484:」YOUR PHONE ISN'T ENCRYPTED AGAINST ANYTHING I'VE GOT IN STOCK, YOU DUMB SHIT.

「Kazuya Hikawa:」who is Kana Kohaku to you? what do you want from me?

「4LI8484:」DO AS YOU'RE FUCKING TOLD, OR YOUR FRIENDS GET THEIR BANK ACCOUNTS BLOCKED FROM THEM, TOO. THAT GIRL YOU WERE OUT ON A DATE WITH? EXPECT HER TO LOSE TEN THOUSAND YEN EVERY MINUTE YOU DON'T GET OFF YOUR FUCKING ASS.

Helluva motivator, isn't it.

Part of me considers my options. I could tell Niijima, Maruki, and everyone else about this hacker piece of shit and we could work together to extract their Treasure from their Palace and/or Kingdom. But that would assume they have either to begin with. Which they probably do. Takes a special kind of fucked up to hack into and seal off someone's bank account from them.

But we don't have the slightest hint as to who this person is. Their name's a mystery. And if their name's a mystery then everything else is a mystery, too. If I have the shittiest luck in the world, I in all likelihood already have their name. But their everything else is still in the aether.

Can't call Niijima. Can't call Maruki. And it's not like the prosecutor will give enough of a shit to help me out.

So I have to go wherever they tell me to.

Kana laughs at me, she laughs at me a pure laugh, spiteful to the nth degree. I feel her hairs wrap around my arms, her fingers claw at the gaps in my ribcage. Just recalling her causes my insides to scream in pain. It's the sickest joke you could ever imagine, so of course it has to happen to me, because I deserve it, I've deserved it since the day I killed her.

And I'll be damned a thousand more times before I let Niijima get fucked over because of my mistakes, too.

You've already fucked her over, you stupid cunt.

If she'd never have met you she'd never have gotten in this mess. Everything you touch dies. How could you be so stupid to even talk to her, you knew this would happen, you knew and you fucking did it anyway. You look at her and you see someone beautiful and you lose your fucking nerve because you're a sad piece of shit who still clings on to the idea that you deserve happiness when all you deserve is to die-

「4LI8484:」GET MOVING. WHAT ARE YOU STANDING AROUND FOR?

Suddenly my phone buzzes with a new email and I check it and I find that I've taken out five thousand yen from my fucking bank account except I haven't-

「Kazuya Hikawa:」you motherfucker.

「4LI8484:」I CAN'T STUTTER ON A FUCKING TEXT MESSAGE, CAN I? SO WHY'RE YOU ACTING SO SURPRISED WHEN I KEEP MY PROMISES? GO WHERE I TELL YOU TO OR ELSE I SEND ALL YOUR THERAPIST'S SAVINGS TO THE RED CROSS.

「Kazuya Hikawa:」this is between me and you. leave them alone.

「4LI8484:」I WILL IF YOU STOP BEING A PUSSY AND MOVE YOUR LEGS.

I try to call this number but my attempts do nothing; there isn't even a dial tone answering back. If they're smart, they'll have scrubbed their phone of this number by this point.

Had I the energy to be angrier I would have let myself indulge in the various fantasies of me tearing apart this person's insides with my bare hands. But inspiration isn't coming.

Because I know exactly where they're pointing me to. And that knowledge stamps out every single violent urge I have inside me.

It takes me an hour and a half to get there by train. By the time I do it's well into the evening, 9:00 PM. Maruki's been calling me, texting me, asking where the hell I've been, and I haven't answered nor replied.

I dare not take a step forward. My phone buzzes relentlessly; whether due to an influx of messages from Maruki, or from the person with a stranglehold on my finances, or both, I don't really know.

When I get to where I need to be I'm staring at an apartment complex. Streets are narrow and deserted, bereft of life save for a few stray cats and untamed dogs.

Years ago I'd go here, every now and again, and help a girl with her studies as her child would either sleep or sit with us next to our kotatsu. It's a place that, had I a choice in the matter, I would never have even come remotely close to ever again for the rest of my life.

I remember her sleeping, her hair spread out over the kotatsu wildly. Like the rays of the sun. I remember her struggling with math, with history, with biology. I remember her laughing at me or getting bored at the shit I'd spew about books I'd read as a kid. I remember dragging all my notes and past booklets, I remember Masako looking at us and not knowing what the hell was happening but smiling all the while.

I remember reading to her The Little Prince, as my mother had once done. I'd read enough books by that point. I'd read The Little Prince enough times by that point to know each word on each page and not get the letters all jumbled in my head.

I remember feeling so proud of myself.

I remember thinking that Masako would've grown up to've been the smartest girl in the world.

I remember wishing that I could have sat at that kotatsu forever.

And when the whole world drowned itself in a bottomless red, so thick and warm and all consuming - I realized what a fool I'd been.

The phone rings suddenly, and it's only now that I give enough of a shit to actually answer it.

The voice that comes out the other end is deep and throaty and obviously modulated to the point of unrecognizability; there's a distinct cadence to it. The voice pauses and stammers awkwardly near the end of each sentence but each sentence remains full of bile in spite of it all.

The apartment itself isn't selling. Rumors spread like herpes; whole neighborhood doesn't wanna touch that place, knowing a murder-suicide took place there. And now you're standing around like a stalker. You've been standing there for fifteen minutes now. What, is the guilt eating away at you? You wretched little fuck. You probably don't even feel anything at all, do you?

I don't answer her back for a while. Ribs shudder, hands tremble, teeth grind and chatter against each other.

"I've never been more sorry for anything."

They don't respond. Not for a time. When they speak again they almost mumble their words, almost like they're on the verge of tears themselves.

Save me your fucking self-pity.

"Why bring me here? Just to teach me a lesson?"

There're no lessons to be learned, no ransoms to be paid, nothing you can give me that I want. I don't want you to find even the slightest shred of happiness. Everything you've gone through, you deserve far worse than this.

"Please don't hurt the people I know," I say slurredly. "They have nothing to do with this. Why bring them into this? Why are you doing this?"

Oh, why the fuck do I do anything. You were there with her, you stupid motherfucker. You were, you were fucking there, the only witness at the scene, her mother massacred her daughter and Kana fucking killed herself in your house. What the hell was she even doing there!?

"I..." The sight of Masako remains burning in my mind. The memory of Masako is clearer than day - it causes my insides to boil. "I brought her there. To protect her."

Good fucking job, you arrogant fucking pogue - and now, now you have the fucking balls to go out with someone else, to take some dumb cunt out to a fucking restaurant somewhere like nothing happened?! How could you let her die!? She was in your house! The one fucking thing you had to do was be there for her and you couldn't even do that!? What the hell is wrong with you!?

"I tried to save her," is all I tell them.

Heavily they breathe, as if I just told them the one thing they didn't wanna hear me say. Don't start moaning and bitching now. This is only the beginning. This... this is the last thing I'll ever be able to do for her.

"To do what!? What do you even want from me!?"

They don't say anything for a time.

How much did she tell you?

"Of what?"

Of her stepfather. Did she even tell you anything?

"What are you talking about?"

Yanaka cemetery. Go there. Now. It's open twenty-four hours a day.

"Wait, what's this about her stepfather!?"

Click goes my phone as they hang up on me.

I very nearly throw my phone to the ground again, but I shove it in my bag and through my exhaustion I march my way to Yanaka cemetery, about another hour and a half away from here. It's 6:30 PM. I turn off all notifications from Maruki and it no longer matters if he'll send me to jail after this.

I remember so many things. But what hurts me the most isn't a memory of Kana, nor a memory of even Masako. I remember Makoto Niijima, crying in that jail cell with the knowledge that her father had been a monster and she didn't even know. I remember sitting with her on the roof, and asking her out, and being both elated and terrified when she said yes.

But the memory that strikes me the deepest has nothing to do with Kana, has nothing to do with Masako.

I was... happy, to talk with her today.

And I didn't deserve any of it.

They send me coordinates to a very specific grave, in a very specific spot; wind's howling wildly, the leaves rushing here then there. Air's so cold I'm almost afraid it'll rain, but it never does. In the evening light the headstones look like jagged stalagmites, the screaming winds cutting into my ears deeper and deeper for every step I take to my destination. By the time I get there the cold gives way to a white-hot, burning kind of sadness - the kind you'd feel when you don't know whether you should be angry or if you should just kill yourself, and it's a feeling that comes seemingly without reason.

Anger is a feeling I know fairly well. After all, the time I don't spend being sad is time spent being angry at something, or someone. Mostly myself.

And something about this mystery caller bugs the shit out of me. I don't doubt they've gotten a foothold on my finances, nor can I afford to doubt that they can do the same to Maruki or Niijima. The instant I let anyone else know they get into this person's crosshairs and everything's all fucked for them as well. But still, something's off.

They know about Kana. They know about the mother, and what happened to Masako. They know I took Kana in, after the fact.

But all of it reads like they'd combed through police records. Murder suicide in their apartment, victims: Masako Kohaku and her grandmother. Suicide at my home, victim: Kana Kohaku. How much did she know of Kana to begin with? Kana had never mentioned a friend like her. Then again, Kana had never mentioned a lot of things to me. Something that nags at me is the surname they'd used to address her, initially.

Kana Magario.

Kana had a different surname? Why was the surname Kohaku the trigger in the Navigator, then?

Most puzzling of all. They know me. They hacked into my phone and found my location and used that to get me to follow their directives and hack into my accounts and shit. Only one problem with that.

That being I have no social media accounts. No Twitter, or Facebook, or anything of the sort. I never needed them. Closest I have to one is a Viber group chat that I only used to consult the others when we were still pursuing Kaneshiro. That chat was private. They had to work my way to me, somehow, someway - despite having virtually no leads on my location or my phone number to begin with.

So how did they get to me in the first place?

Niijima wouldn't sell me out. Nor would Takamaki or Maruki. Yoshizawa, probably not. Sakamoto's hardly the kind of guy to make those types of connections.

Akechi's the closest I can think of, but even if he wasn't responsible, I doubt he'd help me out. Guy would likely relish in my misery.

Anger is a feeling I know fairly well. They would have done all of this much sooner had they access to me much sooner.

Most likely scenario, I feel... is that they couldn't have found me. In all this time. More likely scenario is that they'd only recently gotten this information. They hadn't had the resources to track me, hadn't the foggiest idea. Until today. But what changed? What enabled them to get to me, today of all days? Did they wait until I got myself on a date with someone to strike?

But all my mulling comes to a grinding halt when I reach where I need to be.

Kouta Magario

Says the name on the headstone, and in all this stress I nearly mix up the letters. It's unremarkable, stands amidst other taller, more pristine-looking graves. This one's aged, the stone chipped at the edges. Dates carved in the stone mark his death in 2011. Something within me hungers for answers, feels an uncontrollable anger, for no reason whatsoever.

Why did Kana never tell me about her stepfather?

But then again, when had she ever told me anything important about herself?

Phone rings.

Good. You're there.

"What's the meaning of this?"

So she never told you.

"She didn't tell me a lot of things."

You pathetic fuck. Of course she didn't. She couldn't even trust you to protect her.

"Who is this man?" I growl, through gritted teeth.

Her stepfather.

"I know that much, but what - what did you bring me here for!? Who is this guy and what did he have to do with Kana!?"

First things first. What were you to her?

"I was... why does this matter?"

You were there when her mother killed her daughter and then herself. Kana killed herself in your home. I can assume you're either a very shitty friend, or an awful boyfriend. But one she trusted enough to let in her own home, one she trusted enough to stay in your home to recover after all the shit went down. How important was she to you?

I close my eyes, breathing harshly through my teeth, "She meant everything to me."

If she meant everything to you, you'd have stopped her before she-

"You motherfucker. You don't know what it was-"

I don't wanna hear it. That piece of shit that you're looking at killed himself a couple years ago. Tied a blanket into a noose and hanged himself by his doorknob.

My God. "Why?"

Because he was found to have run a child porn website and distributed videos and pictures of half-dressed kids to sick bastards who could only jerk off to prepubescents.

I feel my left hand tremble.

I feel tears storm out my eyes.

I feel my throat go dry and my chest go cold. My heart alternates between stopping dead and going a thousand beats a second, because all at once I wish this person was alive so that I might kill him myself. And all at once the implications dig into my bones and poison the marrow - and everything I think I know about Kana becomes even more tainted than it already is.

"You... you, what are you, wait, what are you even...?"

I don't want her to say it, but I want to know the truth all the same. I know that the instant I hear it I'll want to kill myself all over again, but like the protagonist of a Lovecraftian short story I feel compelled to know the great and terrible abomination hiding behind our veneer of reality.

I've read up on you before all this, you know. Dug into your records. For a criminal piece of shit, you've got fine grades all across most of your school years. You're smart enough to make it through with nineties in most of your subjects, but stupid enough not to get the obvious when it's handed to you right on a platter.

"She...," She never told me any of this at all. "You're lying."

I'm not.

"She had never said a thing about-"

To you? Why would she? She was smart enough to know telling you wouldn't have meant shit.

"What...what proof do you have?"

Well, for one thing I could send you the records. Kouta Magario, aged thirty-seven, found out to have had hundreds of gigabytes of child porn kept in his computer. Now, most of the time he'd keep it simple and clean. Girls aged thirteen and fifteen - pushing the boundaries, but nothing illegal in this country. But he has pictures of fucking nine-year olds, eight-year olds. Some of them were of old fuckers raping babies. He'd distribute this shit to his neighborhood, to the frequenters on his website.

Kana's mother. "Her mother... did she...?"

The mother was fucking stupid, perhaps willingly so. Turned a blind eye to her husband's fucking monstrosities, probably because she couldn't face her own complicity in remaining silent. How did she act in front of you? Was she this, this kind and supportive and cheerful fucking mom, who laughed and giggled and made you uncomfortable in the way mothers tend to do?

"I-I..."

What am I supposed to say? That she'd never do such a thing to Kana?

I never thought Kana's mother would do half the things she ended up doing.

She turned around after her husband garroted himself, I guess. Maybe she decided it was time to do her fucking job as a mom for once. Maybe she decided to salvage what little of her reputation she could. Maybe she saw Kana as an extension of herself, and couldn't leave her in the filth alone anymore. But we all know what Kana's mother was made of, don't we? We know now, now that she murdered a baby before plunging a knife into her heart. The cowardly bitch.

"This can't be real. You can't be serious. None, none of this makes sense."

You knew their living conditions. You knew they had to make money somehow. When you're a pedophile and your stepdaughter's a fuckin' hot bitch, what the hell else do you do?

"THAT'S NOT FUCKING TRUE!" I shout so loud I nearly lose my voice on the spot, as tears run down my eyes and I cry inelegantly, almost blubbering. "That's not true, it can't be true, she never, it never, I never knew, I never fucking knew - she didn't say a goddamned thing, God in Heaven I, I refuse to believe that she-"

You want evidence? They laugh. I would, too. But I can't exactly send you child porn. Getting you sent to the slammer too soon would fuck things up for me. But I can get you something equally good. I can get you their local distributor.

"What?"

Online's awfully convenient, but some poor fuckin' assholes out there who don't even have the money for internet need to get their kiddie fix somewhere. Magario was a smart piece of shit, made deals with DVD and rental people to get his product out to the poor and downtrodden working class.

"Are you fucking with me?"

I've been very, very depressed, for a long time now. So depressed I'd have a hard time just getting up in the morning. But then you came into the mix, and suddenly, I have purpose again, they growl. Made me reevaluate what I wanted, made me pick up old things I told myself I'd do but never did because everything hurt so much.

"What are you talking about?"

After Magario offed himself his collaborator went dark. I tried tracking his partner down. But he was way better at hiding his tracks online. Took me a good long while to decrypt his shit. Even worse was that the guy was patient. Left basically no online footprints, because he restricted himself to distributing locally and in-person, through proxies and shit.

"Wait, wait, what - ?"

I had a fair share of problems going on at the time...problems which ended up getting worse. So I stopped for a while. But inspiration to finish the unfinished came around when you got in my crosshairs. Followed a few leads and checked points of interest I'd logged long ago... and I found a suspicious amount of traffic around one very specific thrift store in Akihabara. Guy's gotten bold again.

At once my bottomless depression turns into a bottomless, seething rage. "You have his name?"

His name is Futoshi Arakawa. At least that's the name he goes by now. His real name, is Masaru Matsubara. You'll know him when you see him. Bright-red dyed hair that looks uncombed. Text neck. Skinny. The kind of guy who could only sleep with girls whose drinks he'd roofie'd. Professionally speaking he just sells old anime OVAs and shit. His true night job is a sight to behold. You'll be able to catch him before closing hours if you go now.

"If you know what he's done, you should have called the cops on him-"

Oh, I'll do that, don't you worry. His time will come, and it'll come very very soon. I had big plans for him, you know. I was planning on dealing with him after you, but since you're so desperate to know shit, maybe you oughta get it from the horse's mouth. Two birds with one stone. Go there. Demand answers.

"Right, because he'll admit to peddling kiddie porn to a stranger."

He'll admit to peddling kiddie porn to a stranger who's got the right tools for persuasion.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

You'll find the necessary tools when you arrive on the spot. I've already coordinated my people to get you what you need.

"Your people!? What will you have me do!?"

I'll have you get there. And do as I say when you get there. And if you don't move your ass then I'll deprive your new whore of all her assets.

"HEY!"

Don't you worry. The guy's five-foot-two and he's bone-thin. He's great with computers, but he's a fucking coward in confrontation. Always got the shit beat out of him in high school, so much so he's developed bladder incontinence and has to piss seventeen times a day. Couldn't have happened to a better guy.

"What am I going to do once I get there!?"

Electronics Superstore Akindo. Find him.

They hang up again. Then they send me coordinates.

I really do throw my phone, this time around.

I pick it up. Screen's cracked.

Then I rush to Akihabara, which isn't that far off from the cemetery at all. Once I get to Akihabara, I get to looking, because if I don't find this motherfucker in the next ten minutes I'll kill everyone and everything I can lay my eyes on. Getting here from Yanaka cemetery isn't difficult; takes nine minutes by car. But when you're oscillating between horrified to the point of tears and unbearably exhaustingly furious at everything, whatever distance it takes to get where you need to go feels like it goes on forever.

Electronics Superstore Akindo stands, a modest store compared to all the rest. Small. Glass windows. Anime DVDs line the shelves, a skinny and short fucker at the counter. According to google it'll close in the next fifteen minutes. No customers. Had the caller planned all this down to the letter? Did they get me here, knowing there'd be no customers in my way to do whatever the fuck they want me to do? Or would they have had me do this even if there were customers inside?

I see a hooded figure enter an alleyway between Akindo and some other storefront next to it and the phone at my side is ringing like mad and I know, I know, I know this motherfucker has something to do with this person fucking me up over the phone and I'm too fucking pissed to believe otherwise -

By the time I wake up I'm in the dark alley, the side of my face roaring with pain. The hooded man leaves the alleyway, shaking his hand as if he'd hit a brick wall, and storms out. My left eye is swollen, my nose feels almost broken, and I'm sure to be dizzy for hours. It's in this dazed, mildly confused state, that I let my guard down enough to open my phone, which has been ringing non-stop since I set foot in the district.

And that's what you get for trying to tackle one of my people.

"What the fuck is wrong with all of you...?" I murmur, blood pooling out my nose.

The dark web has hitman services, child porn, instructions on the proper way to cannibalize people, and so on. Don't be so surprised that I can hire a couple couriers to drop off a package here and there, with full permission to get rough with customers if the need arises.

I heave over to my side as I open the ziplock bag left behind, and for some unconscionable reason I'm shivering like mad. Inside I find a mask; a Guy Fawkes mask, to be precise. The kind V for Vendetta had popularized. Next to it is a gun. Not even one that looks as high quality as the fakes in Untouchable. And all at once I realize what the caller plans for me to do.

What? Are you getting cold feet? Judging from your silence I can guess you are.

"You...you want me to..."

Pick up the gun. And rob the guy. Or threaten him, whatever you like. Make him show you his data. Maybe then, you'll know I'm not lying about Kana.

"Why...?"

Because I wanna see how you do. I wanna see how you flounder.

"You motherfucker."

Oh, you have a criminal record. It's not like a few more crimes'll do you any harm.

"Fuck this-"

If you don't do it, then I'll spend your new girlfriend's money on gift cards and sex toys. I'll have your therapist be destitute for the rest of his life. I'll go to everyone you know and everyone you've even so much as looked at and ruin their lives.

"Okay stop!"

Guy's a pedo piece of shit, so anything you do to him is pretty much justified. Wave that gun in his face and watch him shit himself. He'll spill everything. And if he doesn't, well, he will once I send to the police files about the terabytes' worth of child porn he's got in his computer.

I stroke the gun, a ringing noise passing through my ears. For no reason I begin to cry, terribly - very nearly letting loose a vile scream that could be heard on the other side of the planet.

I don't want to hear you snivel, you fucking freak-

I march into the store, the world becoming a dream, or perhaps a nightmare.

He looks up at me and he is exactly how the caller had described him; skinny and short. He has bright red-dyed hair and he's got freckles; his teeth, unbraced, are mangled in their front four - some are larger than others, some are chipped, some are yellow and some aren't. He's wearing a bright red collared shirt and on the shirt his nametag reads Arakawa.

With a smile, an awkward kinda childish smile, he asks "You're just in time, sir. We're about to close up. How can I-?" He shows concern once he sees my face, a black left eye and blood storming out my nose. "Are you okay, sir!? Do you need a-"

"Masaru Matsubara."

Immediately his face clenches. I see it in his eyes. A flagrant fear he tries so desperately to hide. Great at computers. Terrible at lying. "I-I don't know what you're talking about-"

I don't know what happens after that.

Then I find myself in my Kingdom.

In my left hand I have him literally by the throat, my grip so tight I might just tear out his Adam's apple. I unhand him and he writhes and he retches, in the middle of a world he could not possibly comprehend. He starts by screaming at the sights and sounds all around him, he holds his head in his hands because I guess this piece of shit is scared of the dark. He sees everything and then he sees me and he starts shouting at me.

He has bulging eyes and he's asking me what the fuck I'm doing to him, what have I done to him, where I've brought him and he lashes out by trying to throw a punch. I grab his fist and he's so frail that I manage to break three of his fingers without him being able to do much at all. A thousand boots to the face, so many his eyes swell and his nose breaks and his already distorted teeth start falling off one by one by one.

I kick him in the ribs a few times and then I summon Satanael and I so politely tell Masaru Matsubara to reveal everything he's kept hidden. He confesses, he confesses to everything, everything he's done ever since he was a child. He confesses to having masturbated to his relatives, he confesses to going to playgrounds to look at kids, he confesses that he was once on a date and forced her to bring him to a park so he could jerk off at nine year olds and none of this shit means anything to me until he confesses about the videos.

The videos, he explains, were distributed like mad in the underground. Snivelling little shit argues that he didn't hurt anybody, just distributed the shit. Sent them out to people. Explains that pedophiles have no representation in the media other than as sick pieces of shit or vile killers, that the pornography helps them maintain their urges, prevents them from going out and doing the same to other kids. He's never touched any kids, he says - he's never tried. He always just restrained himself to the videos, he would never dare hurt a kid he knew. He's crying, trying to get me to sympathize when he tells me how his father and uncle molested him, how his cousins had sodomized him in his youth, how in school they'd shoved a broom up his ass and the only thing I end up asking him is what he did with Kouta Magario's videos.

The name is unfamiliar to him for a second, but within seconds he loses a foot and Satanael's blade drips with thick, fresh blood. It's exactly the push the guy needed and he's frantic, he's laughing mad as he's crying and he's crying as his leg shoots red from the stump. He tells me Magario died a couple years back, he said the guy killed himself once he was outed as a pedophile piece of shit who used his stepdaughter in photos - he tells me on pain of losing more limbs that the videos are no longer in distribution, but stragglers on the net still send out copies here and there and he pleads, he pleads with me to get him to a hospital, he's bleeding out and he's scared, he doesn't want to die. He has no idea where he is or what this place is and he's scared and pissing himself and crying out for his mother.

An explosion goes off next to him and I demand to know the name of the stepdaughter and he tells me he doesn't track their names, he doesn't write them down or anything, only thing that matters is that the kids are fucking naked or sexy and he realizes how horrible that sounds far too late. I land a boot down and he cries with a voice far too high for his own good that he's never hurt anyone, it isn't his fault that he likes looking at kids, it's not his fault at all, it's not any of their fault at all, tells me to get his foot off his flattened testicles as he pisses blood into his jeans.

Once he loses an arm he shouts and cries, telling me he'd told me everything I needed to know. The guy pleads and tries to appeal to a humanity I'm unwilling to show to him, and I hear a child laughing, shades in my periphery appearing then disappearing. I see a baby thrown and broken and dismembered, pieces of her sinking into floorboards or splattering against mirrored glass. The sky turns a vile, nuclear red, as the buildings all around me crumble to pieces. Men and women and children roam the streets mindlessly, their bodies bloated or burnt or shredded beyond recognition. A seven headed beast with my face screams at the skies, blaring hellfire from its open maws-

And the things I do next to this man are things that cannot be spoken aloud.

I leave the thrift store, my lungs having forgotten how to breathe. My heart beating at a rate which would kill a weaker man, my pulse firing off at speeds that are undoubtedly unhealthy for anyone as slim as I am. I alternate between seeing Kana and Masako but I see neither of them clearly - I see them in bursts and shades and vague afterimages. I hear them crying, I hear them laughing, I feel them clawing at my spine and digging into the nape of my neck. I feel Kana's hairs entering my ears and eyes and mouth, I feel a thousand Masakos tugging at my clothes and groping me all over.

I see Makoto Niijima, crying her eyes out, with furious tears - it is clear as day. It is a premonition of the future that has to come, the future that I will set in stone. I make my way to the road and I'm close, so close to just throwing myself into traffic right on the spot -

What the hell!? the caller cries out, so loud she might as well be on speaker. How did I... you, how did-!? How did you make me lose your signal!? Where - why can't I hear him!? What did you do to Matsubara!? You motherfucker, answer me! What did you do!?

"I tried to save her." I grunt out through the phone. "I crushed a man's skull and sent myself to jail just to protect her. When her mother went mad I did everything in my power to prevent her from killing any of us, and I failed. She stabbed me in my shoulder, in my stomach, and left me to lie in my own blood as I watched her smash her granddaughter to pieces. I brought Kana to my house and I stayed with her for as long as I possibly could. In my bed she slept and I thought of the future I could never have with her and her daughter. I hear and see her every single day. I hear and see her now. Even as we speak I can feel their nails grinding against my skin."

They breathe heavily. They speak like they hate me more than they've ever hated anything, Now you listen here-

"You loved her too, didn't you?" I say warmly. "You wouldn't be doing any of this if you hadn't."

They sound like they want to cry for the rest of their life. I did.

And I can't resist at all.

"So what did you do to save her?" I chuckle, almost suicidally. "You know everything about her, her step-dad, the shit he had her do to make the family a quick buck. Did you just sit there and let all of it happen? Are you just taking your guilt out on me?"

They do not say a word at all, for the next twenty seconds.

"What do you want with me? What are you trying to do?"

Right now...all I want from you, is for you to stand still for just a few more seconds.

"What?"

Immediately a van pulls up and I'm grabbed by a dozen black leather gloves.

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7 / 25 / 2016

They throw me down at the foot of the apartment building Maruki lives in, in the early hours of the morning.

They had brought me to a secluded location, close to the woods, before anything else. The first pain I could comprehend was a ringing noise in my left ear. A burst drum. Then my nose shattered. Boots to my chest, to my stomach. They kicked on my back and as I curled into a ball they slammed baseball bats against the parts uncovered. Within seconds I got enough concussions to put me out of commission for days, perhaps weeks. Blacking in and out of consciousness, through the pain I saw three, perhaps five hooded figures - their faces obscured by bandanas wrapped over their mouths. Soon enough I didn't see much of anything at all, as blood drips over my eyes from the holes in my head. Soon enough the pain all but disappeared and all I was left with was this cold darkness.

I wake up when I feel warm water dashing upon my face, my open wounds, and then I realize by the sound of zippers going up and the smell that it wasn't water after all. One of the hooded figures procures their phone from their pockets, places it against my ear. It's through sheer luck that I'm able to hear what comes from the other end at all.

You had the veneer of kindness when you entered Leblanc and said hi to Sojiro. But you showed your true colors. No wonder you couldn't save her.

I breathe, and blood pools out my mouth, dribbling down my chin. Black eyes can't see shit. Crushed ribs means it's agony to breathe.

I'll keep your cell. All you'll need is the burner phone I'm leaving you with. Depending on what happens next, these fine gentlemen will come after you and beat your ass whenever I say they should, for at least the next two weeks. As of now, you do as I tell you. Sojiro looks at you and he sees you as this fucking loser kid he took in to help in wash dishes and shit, but I know what you really are. I know what you've always been. But now... now, you are my dog. From now until I say you're not.

The three hooded figures abandon me on the cold hard ground and of fucking course nobody calls the police or an ambulance. Body shivers, everything feels cold and wet and smells of blood and piss. Tears stream down my eyes, mixed in with the blood pouring off the top of my head, and I've mere seconds before I lose consciousness. In these measly few seconds I form a plan.

They referred to Sakura-san, as Sojiro.

As a figure emerges out from the front door, frantically calling my name - I recognize his voice as Maruki's - I realize that in their rage this person has slipped up. I laugh, bruised and broken and bleeding, in Maruki's arms - I laugh, as he pleads with me to stay awake. I laugh and cry, and scream and weep, and I wish Makoto Niijima would never see me again.

Because I don't know what she would think, if she sees me do what I intend to, to the person that is most likely Futaba Sakura.

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If you think this is bad, wait till you see the next chapter. We go into the Pyramid of Wrath, and it'll be spectacularly brutal.

Futaba's a super interesting character in that not only does she have a Palace, but her Palace is centered on Wrath, of all things - you could argue the Thieves themselves run on Wrath as basically their motivator throughout anything they do. They "feed their anger like fire," so to speak, and while they fight for justice and what have you, an equally large motivation for the Thieves on the whole is their *anger* towards society's oppressiveness - and its willingness to enable injustices.

But, as The Sopranos puts it, depression is just rage/anger turned inward. In her own way, Futaba is her own greatest enemy. But you could say the same of Kaz, couldn't you?