Ryuhei Tsukioka was elbow-deep in gore, and that was the way he liked it.
The first time he had taken a human anatomy course, he had known what he wanted to do with his life. Muscle, bone, organs, blood, it fit together like a puzzle. It could be dismantled. It could be reassembled, though not completely in the same way. That didn't matter to Tsukioka, though; he liked parts of humans better than humans themselves. All his real friends smelled of formaldehyde, cut with a Y-shape from breastbone to pubic bone, then stitched back up with large, heavy black stitches. Their organs were carefully removed, catalogued, and then thrown back a jumble. They were silent, drained flesh, animation not included. Tsukioka liked it that way.
He was counting parts, cataloguing them. Three people died, he figured that out early on. He sent scraps of different limbs to the genetics lab, for official confirmation. Now Tsukioka was more concerned about piecing the bodies back together, figuring out what toes belonged on what foot, what shredded torso was whose. He didn't worry much about organs; those were set aside, to be inspected later. No one minded if those didn't get to the funeral.
Tsukioka's method at this stage was simple. He would select a body part, examine it to see if anything was out of place, and then put it in one of three piles: father, mother, daughter, and unknown. The unknown piled was the mother and the daughter, since they were both small and some of their parts could be interchangeable. He probably wouldn't have DNA testing done on most of these parts – not unless it was absolutely necessary. It's not like anyone would care.
It was arms that started giving Tsukioka a headache. He found the man's well enough, but then when he got to the women, a slight problem arose. Namely, two women should have four arms. The pile only had three. That was the kind of thing that was either an important clue, or somebody's huge screw up. Either way, it meant a phone call, which was exactly the kind of thing Tsukioka hated.
"Yeah?" Tsukioka bulked at the surly voice coming over the phone.
"Are you guys finished bringing the evidence to the lab?"
"Yes, we finished this morning."
"Hmm. I'm missing an arm."
"Can't help you there."
"It was just you two in the ambulance?"
"That cop followed."
"The cop?"
"Sugimura. He was the first one on the scene."
"Was he in the ambulance?"
"Well, we let him watch the truck while we got lunch."
"You what?"
"We were hungry."
Tsukioka scoffed and hung up the phone. He then began rifling through his pockets, looking for the STN-J's phone number.
When Amon had been six years old, he came home from the first day of the school year with a bloody nose and half his teeth missing. His mother had looked at him for a long time, standing in the doorway, unshed tears making his eyes glassy, the blood around his nose bubbling when he breathed. Then she took him into the bathroom to clean him up, and told him her philosophy about humanity.
"Honey," she said, carefully scrubbing his bruised skin with a washcloth, "People aren't always as nice as they should be. Sometimes you have to take the punches and not say anything. Go the high road. Complaining won't get you anywhere. Just don't let them see you cry and always be the nice guy – you'll win in the end."
Fast-forward nineteen years.
Amon was winding a thin metal chain over his knuckles, standing by the window of a pay-by-the-hour motel waiting for a sleek, black car to appear in the parking lot. He had removed his coat and jacket, making him look much less professional and feel much more naked than he was willing to deal with at the office. But there were some parts of the job that were necessary, no matter how much he hated them.
Down the street, past rows of blinking neon signs – most of which were missing a few key tubes – Amon thought he spied Zaizen's car.
Five years ago Zaizen had made Amon stay late after work. While the old man made a few irrelevant phone calls and piddled around at his desk, Amon stood in the corner of the office mentally replaying his hunting performances and wondering what he could have done that he could have gotten fired for. After wasting a good half-hour or so torturing the hunter, Zaizen looked up.
"Ok, let's go for a drive," he said, fetching his keys from his coat pocket.
They drove to this same motel. Sitting in the room waiting was Junichiro, and older man who had been a hunter at the STN-J at the time and a man about Amon's age who was tied to a chair and gagged. Amon surveyed this scene with shock, his bloodstream suddenly full of adrenaline and his mind racing with questions.
"We're going to show you some of the perks of the job," Zaizen explained.
A mere three minutes later Amon was taking his first swing at the man tied to the chair.
Fast-forward.
The car that drove by was not Zaizen's. Amon, his hands wrapped appropriately to the job he had to do tonight, began trying to fiddle with his cell-phone using his bound hand. After some awkward punching of wrong buttons and a glance at the clock to calculate how much time he had left, he successfully dialed Touko's number.
"Hello?" she answered, sounding half-bored.
"It's me," Amon informed her, reminding himself not to use his work voice with his girlfriend.
"Hi," Touko perked up now. "I haven't heard from you in a while. How are you doing, Amon?"
"I'm ok," he told her. "I'm doing some work for your father tonight."
"Oh." Bad tone. "Maybe --,"
"I don't think so."
"Oh … Amon?"
"Yes?"
"How long will this go on? You hate doing this shit for my father."
Amon sighed.
"I don't know … I'm not the one that makes the executive decisions."
"But he listens to you --,"
"He hates me, Touko," Amon was glancing back and forth between the clock and the window, closely examining every sleek black car that drove by. "You know how much he hates me – why he makes me do all this extra shit."
"Look, I can talk to him."
Silence on the line.
"I'm sorry; I shouldn't have called right now …"
"No, we should do something this weekend. It's about time …"
"Ok."
"I'll meet you at Harry's?"
"Yes."
"Alright then. Take care." Touko hesitated a moment before she hung up.
Fast-forward twelve minutes.
Amon was hitting police officer Shogo Sugimura in the mouth with the fist he had bound with the metal chain. Zaizen stood back against the wall, letting Amon play bad cop. He smoked a cigar and ignored Amon's pointed looks between punches, May I stop now?
"Alright," he said after his cigar had burned a third of the way to the end and Sugimura was properly bloody. "I'll take it from here." Amon back away. "Now, Shogo, do you know why we're here?"
Sugimura sputtered, blood and chips of teeth getting in the way of his words.
"I think you know why we're here. Or maybe Amon could refresh your memory a little …"
"No!" Sugimura managed. "I didn' do 'ny thin'."
"Amon, hit him, please."
Amon obliged. He felt the cartilage in Sugimura's nose pop out of place, knew that his skin was sliding out of place and catching in his chain. Sugimura tried to lean out of the punch, which only succeeded in making his skin tear more when Amon pulled his fist back. The cop's face was becoming a mask of blood, his nose barely a ghost of what it had been in its original form.
"Now, Mr. Sugimura," Zaizen continued in his oh-so-reasonable-and-self-assured tone, "why did you feel it was necessary to tamper with evidence?"
Sugimura didn't respond at first, except for a series of gasps and near whimpers. He was having difficulty making his mouth work for him. He stared at Zaizen, his eyes begging for a moment of composure. Zaizen granted this, waiting for the cop to learn how to speak again and fiddling with his cigar.
"I --," Sugimura at lost last managed. "Police … should've … investigated … I found the … bodies." He stopped to hack up a gob of blood.
"So, you wanted to investigate the case, since you found the bodies." Here Zaizen began pacing the room like any good television detective who just solved a big case and is now explaining his shocking discovery should. "Let me guess. You hate your job as a two-bit cop that nobody gives a fuck about. This was obviously a case that had potential for media coverage and a big raise. Never mind the fact that you have no experience in homicide, let alone homicide of this nature. Never mind the fact that you would only get yourself killed in this kind of investigation. Never mind that even if we did allow you to help us – and we wouldn't, you know – you'd only distract our more qualified detectives with your pitiful lack of knowledge about homicide and your absolute ineptness. Am I right?"
Sugimura nodded, his blood-mask defeated.
"But instead of channeling this desire for a little recognition into your regular job, you snuck into the forensics lab, stole a few limbs – blatantly disrespecting the dead, as you dumped the aforementioned limbs in a dumpster nearby – and left, well aware of the fact that your petty actions did no good, and would only result in a minor inconvenience to us and a severe facial deformity for you. Am I right?"
Again, Sugimura looked down ashamed and nodded.
"I'm always right," Zaizen observed, heading toward the door. On his way out, he turned back to Amon. "Give him a little more, just to remember us by. Then you can dump him by the bar over there. I'll write off the room as a business expense." His gaze turned to the lump of bloody flesh that was Sugimura. "Honestly, Officer, you really should stop breaking up barroom brawls. At your age you'll only get hurt." He turned back to Amon. "Enjoy your car."
At that moment, if Amon had had a gun in his hand, he would have shot Zaizen. Instead, he turned his energy against Sugimura.
Rewind.
The first time Amon ever punched someone he was nine years old. It was one of his first group homes (orphanages, they used to call them orphanages) and he was still sick, hurt, bruised from his mother's death. He was hiding in a corner during lunch, trying to go n unnoticed. A group of boys approached him, asked him what the hell kind of shoes he was wearing. By the time they pulled Amon off the boy, his jaw was broken. Amon got a reputation as being a bully, a psychopath, but he didn't touch anyone in that home again. He didn't have to touch anyone after that – they were afraid of him. He was afraid of himself.
Some things never change.
Fast-forward.
Amon wrapped Sugimura up in his trench coat, because he didn't want the cop to bleed on his car. He was only going to drive him down the street, but there was no way Sugimura was going to walk, being unconscious and all. The man's breathing was shaky, high-pitched and broken because of the nose. God, to be the doctor that fixed that nose.
Zaizen had instructed Amon to leave Sugimura by a bar. Amon did just that, pulling up by the shabby building and tossing Sugimura out on the sidewalk. He leaned the officer against the wall, looking for all the world like any other wino, and got in his car, shifting it into drive. He looked back, briefly, and thought about how cold it was. Surely, that blood would freeze to his face.
How much skin would Sugimura lose tonight? How much cartilage? How much bone? How much can anyone lose in one night?
Amon tried not to think about snow as he drove away.
